Antiwar.com

The eavesdropping-on-Americans scandal came as shock and betrayal to most employees of the National Security Agency – and to other intelligence officers, active and retired. The idea that the once highly respected former director of NSA, Gen. Mike Hayden, had allowed himself to be seduced into sinning against NSA’s first commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Spy … Continue reading “Heck of a Job, Hayden!”

In my last dispatch, The Unrestrained President, I suggested that what we were dealing with in Washington was a virtual cult of the presidency and that its believers were more fervent than any religious fundamentalists in their focus on the quite un-Christian attribute of total earthly power. Their urge to create a president accountable to … Continue reading “Back to 1214”

With Ariel Sharon out of the picture, Benjamin Netanyahu has a better chance to become prime minister of Israel. He’s media savvy. He knows how to spin on American television. And he’s very dangerous. Netanyahu spent a lot of his early years in the United States. Later, during the 1980s, he worked at the Israeli … Continue reading “Axis of Fanatics – Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad”

Resorting once more to controversial “recess” appointments, U.S. President George W. Bush has named two political cronies to key administration positions without Senate approval. Ellen Sauerbrey, a former state lawmaker and unsuccessful right-wing Republican candidate for governor of Maryland, will now move into her new office as Assistant Secretary of State for Refugees, Population, and … Continue reading “Bush Bypasses Senate on Two Crony Appointments”

The Rev. Pat Robertson, the prominent American televangelist and “Christian Zionist,” says the felling of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a massive stroke is punishment from God “for dividing the Land of Israel.” According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Robertson, speaking on the 700 Club on Thursday, said that both Sharon and former Israeli … Continue reading “Sharon’s Epitaph”

The neocons in Washington love to talk about how they’re promoting freedom and democracy in Iraq. They often cite as their example the country’s Kurdish population, staunch allies of Washington, who have been protected by the American military since no-fly zones were imposed after the 1991 Gulf War. But just how much freedom is there … Continue reading “Kurdistan: Meet the New Bosses”

On Dec. 19, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Gen. Mike Hayden held a press conference in which they once again misled the American people. Gonzales and Hayden answered questions about reports that the National Security Agency (NSA), which Hayden directed from 1999 to 2005, was eavesdropping on Americans via a … Continue reading “J. Edgar Hoover With Supercomputers”

The controversy over “cooking the books” on Iraq intelligence to promote an aggressive war might make one think that Dick Cheney and his minions were somehow breaking new ground. But the precedent for fabricating a threat to justify the use of military force was set by the high-ranking national security officials who brought us the … Continue reading “Cooking the Books:
A Requirement for Aggressive War”

ARBIL – Clasping his hands together in a sign of unity, a cheerful Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Shia-dominated United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), entered the hall in this Kurdish city amid applause. Al-Hakim was here to bring Shia groups from the south and Kurds from the north together in government. "We struggled together against dictatorship, … Continue reading “Quarrels Overshadow Talk of Iraq Consensus”

As 2006 begins, we seem to be at a not completely unfamiliar crossroads in the long history of the American imperial presidency. It grew up, shedding presidential constraints, in the post-World War II years as part of the rise of the national security state and the military-industrial complex. It reached its constraint-less apogee with Richard … Continue reading “A Cult of Presidential Power”