BAGHDAD - Reports of the poor health among high-ranking Iraqi politicians are being seen as symbolic of the popular mood here about the US-backed government. In late February, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was flown to neighboring Jordan for medical treatment amid...
Hardly the Whole Truth but…
If you want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about how the CIA and later the United States as a whole coped with the terrorist threat posed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and later invaded Iraq on specious grounds, this relentlessly...
Answering Prayers
Is there anything worse than a President launching a War of Aggression to "remove" what he knows to be a non-existent threat to Americans? Well, how about a President launching a war of aggression to "remove" what he knows to be a non-existent...
Saturday: 2 GIs, 78 Iraqis Killed; 59 Iraqis Injured
Updated at 12:20 a.m. EDT, June 3, 2007Although the number of casualties was moderate today, significant events are taking place, including further posturing by Turkey. At least 78 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 59 were injured in violent attacks. Also, two GIs...
Israel: Mythologizing a 20th Century Accident
One of the many quirks of the nineteenth century's intellectual heritage was the great intensification of nationalism and to quote one expert the creation of "nation-ness," the consequences of which have varied dramatically all the way from the...
Words in a Time of War
A few weeks ago, I offered Tomdispatch readers, "Close Your Eyes," my fantasy graduation speech for the class of 2007, given from the podium of some university of my mind. Mark Danner, however, recently stood at an actual podium at the University of California,...
Dying for Nothing
I didn't watch any of the Memorial Day events on television. Memorial Day, it seems to me, should be only for the families of the dead. It's really impossible to remember someone we never knew. Of course, these days Memorial Day gets larded with politics and...
Anxiety in Wake of US-Iran Talks
ARBIL, Iraq - US-Iranian talks about Iraq have been received with skepticism and some foreboding here, with some calling for limitations on the extent of issues that the two countries can negotiate regarding Iraq. The ice-breaking ambassador-level talks Monday between...
Rep. Paul and the Founders versus Our Interventionist Elite
Americas bipartisan governing elite never expected their common interventionist foreign policy to be damned by a man who has long worked among that august group. But Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) proved himself not only a political maverick, but one of the few elected...
To the Shores of Tripoli
The bloody battles that have erupted around the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli in Lebanon remind us that the refugee problem has not disappeared. On the contrary, 60 years after the "Nakba," the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948, it is again the center of...


