PARIS – The kind of torture inflicted upon Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. army followed methods France used during the Algerian war of independence in the late 1950s, several French historians and journalists say. Both the U.S. and the French armies had obviously studied Islamic traditions in order to devise torture methods aimed particularly at …
Continue reading “US Hawks Owe More to the French Than They Realize”
Paul Bremer suddenly left Iraq on Monday, having “transferred sovereignty” to the caretaker Iraqi government two days early. It is hard to interpret this move as anything but a precipitous flight. It is just speculation on my part, but I suspect that the Americans must have developed intelligence that there might be a major strike …
Continue reading “Sovereignty Without Substance”
“It will be like in Lebanon during the civil war. The only person who could move outside the embassy then was the ambassador, with a tank in front and a tank in back.” – Edward S. Walker, Jr., former ambassador to Egypt, former deputy chief of mission in Saudi Arabia, and current president of the …
Continue reading “Handover or Hangover?”
BAGHDAD – The daily mortar attacks on Camp War Eagle of the U.S. First Cavalry at the edge of the seething Shia Muslim Sadr City tapered off over the weekend. Just a few dry pops of exploding mortar grenades could be heard in the late afternoons. During the week the attacks had been so intense …
Continue reading “As Violence Rises, an Unexpected Ceasefire”
Michael Moore’s new film embodies all the virtues, and vices, of the American left at the present moment: it is trenchant and wrongheaded, serious and superficial, startlingly original and horribly clichéd. There is humor, sophomoric as well as dark; emotion, spontaneous and staged. Fahrenheit 9/11 is, in short, the best of films, and the worst …
Continue reading “A Tale of Two Movies”
Well, there they go again. The neo-crazy media sycophants are quoting unnamed “Western diplomats” to the effect that Syria is secretly developing nukes. Evidence? Well, it seems someone’s “experimental” sensors may have picked up what may be the acoustic or electronic signature of a high-speed gas-centrifuge. That’s it? We’re going to war with Syria because …
Continue reading “Casus Belli: High-Pitched Whine”
ROME – In an interview with Arabic broadcaster al-Jazeera, President Bush’s national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in 2001 that she did not want U.S. networks to show Osama bin Laden tapes because “it was not a matter of news, it was a matter of propaganda.” Is the U.S. government above propaganda? Well, it is …
Continue reading “The ‘Prop-Agenda’ at War”
According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Russia today is estimated to have 7,800 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal. I emphasize “estimated” because Russia, like all the nuclear powers, remains quite secretive about its nuclear arsenal. Altogether, Russia’s nuclear arsenal of intact warheads is put at 17,000. The difference is classified as being …
Continue reading “A Boy and His Nukes”
Neocons Earn an ‘F’ The Neocons and their champions should be charged, at the very least, with malfeasance for leading the US into an unnecessary Iraq war. By steering US foreign policy down the preemptive path without imminent threat, they have set precedents that make the world a more dangerous place. The consequences of their …
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According to the U.S. government, these before and after satellite images from Iran are evidence of nuclear activity and a subsequent cover-up. Ironically, the accusation is based on the identification of a U.S.-made radiation monitor at the site.
