On the Mideast Escalator

While the president's announcement that an additional 20,000 troops would be sent to Iraq dominated the headlines last week, the real story was the president's sharp rhetoric toward Iran and Syria. And recent moves by the administration only serve to confirm the...

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It’s All About Iran

As American troops storm what is, or was, an Iranian consulate – at least that's what the Iraqi government calls it, in spite of American denials – and the president accuses Tehran of arming and aiding Iraqi insurgents, the answer to the question "Why...

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Backtalk, January 13, 2007

Who Is Planning Our Next War? Buchanan has been rightfully warning of the neocons' plan for war on Iran at least since April 28, 2006. ("It is time for Congress to tell President Bush directly that he has no authority to go to war on Iran and to launch such a war...

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Bush’s Sacrificial Americans

On January 4th, the Pentagon "announced the identities" of six American soldiers who had died between December 28th and New Year's Eve. It was just one of many such listings over these last years and, like similar announcements, this one had a just-the-facts quality...

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Mistakes Were Made

The goal of American foreign policy has long been the replacement – by force, if "necessary" – of existing "criminal" regimes, with regimes sycophantic to us. Criminal regimes. Like that of the late Saddam Hussein. What makes a regime criminal? Well, for...

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How It All Began

The U.S., after training and egging on the Ethiopians to intervene in the Somali civil war, is now bombing and strafing Somalis. The government "suspects" they might be al-Qaeda. That is a load of horse apples. You can't identify people, much less their politics, from...

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Less Than Zero

On the surface, President Bush's Wednesday night speech adds up to precisely nothing. The president said, "It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq," but the heart of his proposal, adding more than 20,000 U.S. troops, represents no change in strategy....

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Ratcheting up the Nuclear Ante

NEW DELHI – The stunning story by the London Sunday Times alleging that Israel has drawn up plans to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities with nuclear weapons has focused attention on the growing global nuclear danger and on the worsening situation in the Middle...

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