Few incoming presidents have been left by their predecessors with as many challenges as Barack Obama. In fact, with the daunting terrain facing the incoming president, one wonders why Obama and John McCain even wanted the office. Other presidents facing an...
It appears increasingly likely that the most important and enduring legacy of the Bush-Cheney administrations will be the destruction of the international nuclear-weapons proliferation-prevention regime as it existed at the end of the second Clinton-Gore...
Updated at 8:35 p.m. EST, Nov. 15, 2008At least 16 Iraqis were killed and 75 more were wounded in the latest round of violence. Four U.S. servicemembers died in separate incidents, including a helicopter crash in Mosul. Meanwhile, Iraqi and U.S. negotiators have...
Most politicians wait at least until they've been sworn in before they start breaking their campaign promises. In this sense, as in so many others, Barack Obama represents an entirely new phenomenon: the politician who preemptively reneges. A recent Wall Street...
Recently, TomDispatch launched a series of pieces aimed at the coming Obama era. Michael Klare wrote on the new president's "energy challenge of a lifetime"; I explored his future arrival in "airless Washington"; and today, John Feffer, co-director of the Foreign...
The Bush administration's time is draining away. President George W. Bush apparently believes that history will vindicate his policies, but a positive legacy is not likely to be. On the domestic side his record is a horrid mishmash of wild spending, massive corporate...
Updated at 4:15 p.m. EST, Nov. 14, 2008Only two reports of Iraqi casualties came out of Iraq today. In them, three people were wounded. It is the prayer day and many journalists and gunmen take the day off, but this figure is far below normal. Instead, the Associated...
On the day that Americans turned out in near record numbers to vote, a record was set halfway around the world. In Afghanistan, a US Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party. This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American...
The promotion of Robert M. Gates as President-elect Barack Obama's secretary of defense appears to be the key element in a broad campaign by military officials and their supporters in the political elite and the news media to pressure Obama into dropping his plan to...
Updated at 10:59 a.m. EST, Nov. 14, 2008At least 12 Iraqis were killed and 40 more were wounded in the latest violence. One U.S. soldier died this morning of non-combat-related causes as well. Meanwhile, a civilian cargo plane has crashed in the desert near Fallujah,...
