Antiwar.com

World Peace Forum Moves to Create International Peace Secretariat Kudos to you for attending the Malaysian peace seminar. I missed it as I could not get a firm seat to get back home. I would have loved to have met you guys. Your Web site is great. Your thoughts are great, and it gives us … Continue reading “Backtalk, December 23, 2005”

The strong turnout in last week’s parliamentary elections in Iraq may have been just the kind of civic demonstration that President George W. Bush needed to restore some confidence in a weary public that Washington’s adventure in the country may not turn out to be such a disaster after all. But one week after a … Continue reading “Iraqis Spoke, but Hardly in Unison”

As those loyal to President George W. Bush circle the wagons to aggressively defend his program of conducting surveillance of phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens, a judge on the court set up to review requests for such actions has resigned, apparently in protest. At the same time, a prominent Republican senator promised to … Continue reading “Congress to Probe Domestic Spying”

I went to see the new Warner Bros. political thriller Syriana over the weekend (going to the movies is a rare treat when you’re the parent of a young child). For most people, movies are entertainment and escapism (for that, I took my 6-year-old daughter to Chicken Little, which is my more usual moviegoing fare … Continue reading “Syriana: It’s Not About the Oil”

Balkans and the Demise of Principles As 2005 draws to a close, the ruined remnants of what used to be Yugoslavia are nowhere near the peace or prosperity both their demagogic leaders and imperial interventionists have promised. Saddled with the heritage of state supremacy, total war, and ethnic politics, people of the region are destroying … Continue reading “The Road to Serfdom”

(With Arkan Hamed) BAGHDAD – Despite the parliamentary elections last week and temporary ease in violence, Iraqis remain bitter about the outgoing year, and skeptical of 2006. “As a doctor I usually travel daily from home to college,” said Um Feras, a doctor of physics at Baghdad University who asked that her last name be … Continue reading “Iraqis Glad 2005 Over, Have Dim Hopes for 2006”

Rigoberto Alpizar, a gentle Christian man with a loving family and a lot of friends, did not deserve to be shot to death by two federal goons in a jetway at Miami International Airport. What is the duty of air marshals? It is to prevent terrorists from taking over an airplane. How can a man … Continue reading “Rigoberto Alpizar, RIP”

In his address to the American people last Sunday evening, President George W. Bush said, “Yet now there are only two options before our country: victory or defeat.” As usual, Mr. Bush is wrong. Victory is not an option, and it never was. The strategic objectives the Bush administration set for this war – a … Continue reading “Two False Options”

In defending his edict authorizing surveillance of phone calls and e-mails originating in the United States, President Bush reiterated legal arguments, long made by his intellectual Praetorians, that imbue the White House with wartime powers no different from those exercised by a Roman emperor. As Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer pointed out in the Washington … Continue reading “Bush’s Wartime Dictatorship”

For several months – actually, since the U.S. invasion of Iraq – neoconservative propagandists have been trying to counter-spin the depressing reality in Mesopotamia that we’ve been watching on television by celebrating several "tipping points" that were supposed to mark the victory of freedom in Baghdad: The bringing down of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad; … Continue reading “Turning the Corner in Iraq – Yet Again”