A month ago at TomDispatch, I wrote an essay, "Which War Is This Again?," about the naming of the "war" our president declared in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The neocons fell in love with the idea of us being in a generational struggle like...
While our media is filled with stories on the Bush administration and Iran, they almost invariably focus on the Iranian nuclear program (or European negotiations and U.S. non-negotiations about the same). You could read our press for weeks at a time – if you...
Last December, Mark Danner took a piercing look back at our Presidential election in Florida, "How Bush Really Won," printed up in the New York Review of Books and posted on line at Tomdispatch. In the aftermath of another election, closely linked to our own and to...
In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the USA PATRIOT Act, the following exchange took place between former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, now attorney general, and Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.): "GONZALES: Mr. Chairman, let me, kind of, reassure the...
If Iraq has been the disaster zone of Bush foreign policy, Afghanistan is still generally thought of as its success story – to the extent that anyone in our part of the world thinks about that country at all any more. Before the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan...
There's that classic line of career advice to the confused young hero of the 1967 film The Graduate: "I want to say one word to you. Just one word… plastics." With the perspective of a few extra decades under our belts (or beltways), that word probably should...
Earlier this month, having long been bothered by the claims of various neocons that we were in "World War IV" (also known as "the Global War on Terrorism"), I wrote a piece, "Which War Is This Again?," considering the idea. I pointed out among other things...
Quote of the day: "'I don't think that the world gives us the luxury of picking areas,' [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas] Feith said. 'We have interests all over the world. I dare say that if anybody before September 11, 2001, was listing places that we...
A Little Background Music Shakar Odai, the head of the Internal Affairs Department of the Baghdad police, was recently interviewed by David Enders of Mother Jones magazine, who wrote: "'More than 98' percent of the police officers (a force known alike for its use of...
Have we really almost rolled around – yet again – to the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, this time amid much Bush administration and neocon self-congratulation, as well as media congratulations (grudging or otherwise) for an Iraqi-election-inspired...
