Antiwar.com

The willingness of far too many Americans to patiently accept the rationale of Administration talking points through every twist and turn, through every flip-flop, through every Presidential renunciation of previously sacred American civic principles, may at long last be coming to an end. 29 months after the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, the pretext … Continue reading “A Time for Moral Outrage”

I heard a lecture by an Army psychologist who contended that after 90 days of combat, the casualty rate was 98 percent. Those not wounded physically were wounded psychologically. The other 2 percent were psychopaths. His passing remark about the psychopaths was interesting. A psychopath is a defective human being, almost a bionic robot. Psychopaths … Continue reading “No-Win War”

In 1972, after many years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg wrote: “In that time, I have seen it first as a problem; then as a stalemate; then as a crime.” That aptly describes three key American perspectives now brought to bear on US involvement in Iraq. The moral clarity … Continue reading “Cindy Sheehan’s Moral Alternative to Bush and Dean”

The BBC’s striking revelations regarding the secretive and disconcerting British role in making an Israeli nuclear bomb possible, deserves more than a quick pause and a few dozen news reports. It obliges a thorough investigation coupled with a complete reversal in the double standard that views Israel’s fully-fledged nuclear capabilities as a trivial concern. The … Continue reading “Israel’s Nuclear Puzzle Resolved: But To What End?”

Back in 2003, the Brits, French and Germans entered into negotiations they hoped would result in an agreement providing “objective guarantees” to the European Union that “Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.” This agreement was to equally provide “firm guarantees” to Iran “on nuclear, technological and economic cooperation and firm commitments on security … Continue reading “What The Neo-Crazies Knew”

Rumors and leaks continue to swirl around the case of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame and the various journalists and Bush "senior administration officials" believed to be involved in some fashion in her outing. Whole forests have undoubtedly been pulped for the endless flood of summer stories about the Plame case and yet something has … Continue reading “How to Prosecute the Plame Case”

In January of this year, Rep. Curt Weldon made a speech to the House of Representatives – a speech which no one took notice of, and which hardly anyone heard, except maybe inveterate C-SPAN watchers – in which he made a number of extraordinary assertions: “Mr. Speaker, I rise because information has come to my … Continue reading “9/11 Revisionism, Revisited”

Female Circumcision Surfaces in IraqIt’s just before 2:00 a.m. on the east coast, and the fifth headline from the top on Antiwar.com – immediately after the report about nine more U.S. military deaths – announces that female circumcision has, ah, "surfaced" in Iraq. If there’s one thing that puzzles me more than how one would … Continue reading “Backtalk, August 12, 2005”

What I have noticed about conservatives and Republicans is that they are no longer conservative and Republican. They believe in the efficacy of force. If we are losing in Iraq, it is because we are not using enough force. All we have to do to win in Iraq, they maintain, is to nuke the towel-heads. … Continue reading “Nuclear China Good, Nuclear Iran Bad?”

A career diplomat and foreign policy operative, Eric S. Edelman has just replaced the controversial Douglas Feith at the Pentagon as the new undersecretary of defense for policy, having been appointed by President Bush during a congressional recess. Many observers had wrongly assumed that Edelman would become Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s top deputy. Instead … Continue reading “Cheney’s Man Slated to Replace Feith”