Antiwar.com

Colin Powell recently confessed that his presentation of US "intelligence" – which turned out to be all wrong – to the UN Security Council to justify Bush’s unprovoked and unsanctioned war of aggression against Iraq was a "blot" on his record, and he "feels terrible" about it. Don’t we all? However, his successor, Condi Rice, … Continue reading “Such a Blot”

The closer we look at what happened in Basra the other day, the murkier and more suspicious the picture gets. Two British undercover operatives fired at the Iraqi police, killing one and injuring another, and were taken into custody, then “rescued” as British tanks laid siege to police headquarters. The incident culminated in a pitched … Continue reading “Bizarro Basra”

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States and the former Soviet Union jealously safeguarded their own global political and military interests by vetoing each other’s resolutions in the most powerful body at the United Nations: the Security Council. "We will soon see the same cat-and-mouse game," predicts … Continue reading “Iran’s Nuclear Dispute Sparks East-West Rivalry”

Not long after Baghdad fell to American troops, it was already apparent that the United States was part of the problem, not part of the solution, in Iraq; and that, as long as the American military occupied the country, matters would just get worse. Every passing month has only predictably confirmed that reality. There’s no … Continue reading “Why Immediate Withdrawal Makes Sense”

Hurricane Katrina and its near-catastrophic aftermath, which bids fair to be compounded by Rita, might be reason enough, given the resources that will be used (whether they are really required on the federal level is another matter, but President Bush is approaching this disaster like the big-government Republican he has turned out to be) to … Continue reading “Before It’s Too Late”

Dan Rather caused some ripples the other day when he lamented the state of U.S. news media. The former CBS anchor said "there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career," according to the Hollywood Reporter. Speaking at a law school in New … Continue reading “The Occasional Media Ritual of Lamenting the Habitual”

This week’s six-party agreement on the principles for denuclearizing the Korean peninsula is being greeted somewhat warily here, with most experts stressing that the accord marks only the beginning of what is likely to be a protracted negotiating process that could take years, rather than months, to achieve. The deal reached by the two Koreas, … Continue reading “Promise and Peril in North Korea Deal”

It has long been an article of faith among America’s senior policymakers – Democrats and Republicans alike – that military force is an effective tool for ensuring control over foreign sources of oil. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to embrace this view, in February 1945, when he promised King Abdul Aziz of Saudi … Continue reading “More Blood, Less Oil”

The Bizarre Balkans Stage It is arguably the Bard’s most famous play; there is hardly a civilized soul on Earth who has not heard of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. It has been modernized, localized, deconstructed, filmed countless times, and even translated into Klingon. Now, however, courtesy of Sarajevo director Haris Pasovic, Hamlet … Continue reading “Theater of the Absurd”

It was four years ago that a little-known group called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) published an open letter to President George W. Bush advising him on how precisely he should carry out his brand-new “war on terrorism.” In addition to ousting Afghanistan’s Taliban, the letter’s mostly neoconservative signatories called for implementing … Continue reading “Uncertain Anniversary for Iraq War Champions”