Dating Cheney’s Nuclear Drumbeat

In a recent piece, "The Media's Roving Eye," trying to establish a timeline that would offer context for the Plame case, I wrote the following: "Vice President Cheney started the administration's atomic drumbeat to war in Iraq with a series of speeches on...

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Unraveling the Plame Case

The Media's Roving Eye by Tom Engelhardt Oh what a tangled web we weave When we first practice to deceive… I've written regularly about the media's inability to connect the dots. The other day a reporter out in the far-flung reaches of our imperium wrote in to...

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The Spies Who Came in From the Hot Tub

Like so much else in our moment, it contravened laws the U.S. had once signed onto, pretzeled the English language, went directly to the darkside, was connected to various administration lies and manipulations that preceded the invasion of Iraq, and was based on...

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Iraq’s Dead Unnamed and Unnoticed

On July 23, 2003, not quite four months after Baghdad had been occupied by American troops, TomDispatch published a piece by Jack Miles, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book God: A Biography, entitled "How Many Iraqis Have We Killed?" At that time, less than 100...

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Cyberstalking the Recruitable Teen

At some level, the situation is simple enough. As retired Lt. Col. Charles A. Krohn, former Army deputy chief of public affairs at the Pentagon and in Baghdad, put it recently in the Washington Post, the Bush administration has "basically committed most of the Army's...

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Boy President in a Failed World?

On Thursday morning, with the London bombings monopolizing the TV set, I watched our president take that long, outdoor, photo-op walk from the G-8 summit meeting to the microphones to make a statement to reporters. Exploding subways, a blistered bus, the dead,...

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The Smash of Civilizations

Another successful landmark has been reached in our occupation of Iraq: The World Monuments Fund has just placed the country on its list of the Earth's 100 most endangered sites. ("Widespread looting, military occupation, artillery fire, vandalism, and other acts of...

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Chasing Zarqawi

Just in the last few days, according to USA Today, a "propaganda video purportedly made by al-Qaeda-linked terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi" has been released showing suicide attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq supposedly inspired by or ordered by him. Since George...

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They Died for Their Country

"In this time of testing, our troops can know: The American people are behind you. Next week, our nation has an opportunity to make sure that support is felt by every soldier, sailor, airman, Coast Guardsman, and Marine at every outpost across the world. This Fourth...

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Immoral Relativism

"At a breakfast meeting with reporters, Wolfowitz said he hasn't read the [Downing Street] memos because he doesn't want to be 'distracted' by 'history' from his new job as head of the world's leading development bank. He returned this weekend from a tour of four...

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