Antiwar.com

As 2005 proceeds, I predict that the mess in Iraq will depart from American consciousness, overtaken by the media’s fixation on Michael Jackson. The lack of knowledge about events on the ground in Iraq is stunning. With no end yet in sight, let’s ponder the consequences of the Iraq war so far: (1) over 1,300 … Continue reading “Ignorance and Illogic About Iraq”

USA Today reports the Bush administration will ask for $100 billion to cover the latest “off-budget” costs of the Iraq war, and notes the response of Senator Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.): “I hope they ask for something big. Look, this is a test of wills. We need to show our enemies that we are not going … Continue reading “Are We Safer Now?”

Led by a dozen retired generals and admirals, including a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, human rights groups are urging the U.S. Senate to carefully scrutinize the role of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales in devising detention and interrogation policies for the Bush administration’s “war against terrorism” before confirming him as attorney … Continue reading “Gonzales Faces Stormy Hearing”

A nation’s foreign policy is bankrupt, Walter Lippmann wrote, when its strategic assets, its arms and alliances, are insufficient to cover its liabilities – i.e., its commitments to defend critical territory and vital interests. Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor and rapid seizure of Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines, Lippmann wrote, revealed the bankruptcy of … Continue reading “Bush’s Checks Returning NSF”

http://www.independent.org/tii/antiwar/e050104.html

BANGKOK – While volunteers, relief workers and families are busy collecting and searching for bodies in Indonesia‘s tsunami-stricken Aceh province, Indonesian soldiers are continuing their offensive against separatist rebels, critics say. This, say international human rights groups, is hindering the delivery of badly needed humanitarian aid to survivors of the world’s worst natural disaster in … Continue reading “Indonesian Govt on the Offensive in Tsunami-Stricken Aceh”

CAIRO – After a year of tough talk from U.S. policymakers about the inevitable “democratization” of the Middle East, Washington appears to be backtracking, along with its Arab friends in the region. With the reelection of U.S. President George W. Bush and his hardline administration, a shift appears to have taken place in U.S. strategic … Continue reading “US Backs Away From Arab Political Reform”

The idea that today’s conservatives are in any way defenders of individual liberty, the free market, and what Russell Kirk called “the permanent things,” i.e., the sacred traditions that have accumulated over time to constitute the core of our Judeo-Christian culture, is no longer a defensible proposition. Instead, what used to be called the conservative … Continue reading “Today’s Conservatives
Are Fascists”

Now that President Bush has been reelected and Franks-Bremer-Tenet awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Washington Post has apparently decided to spill the beans about the true “weapons of mass destruction” threat. In particular, Dafna Linzer spilled the beans about the nuke threat and John Mintz about the chem-bio weapons threat. You ought to … Continue reading “Overblown Threats”

There has been a lot of talk about Humvees lately, ever since an American soldier asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld why soldiers were going to war in unarmored vehicles. “We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to … Continue reading “Humvees Aren’t the Problem”