Every now and then, you have to take a lesson or two from history. In the case of George Bush's Iraq, here's one: No matter what the President announces in his "new way forward" speech on Iraq next week – including belated calls for "sacrifice" from the man whose...
After six years, the administration's foreign policy team is a wreck. The president's poll ratings look good only in comparison to those of the vice president. Both the original defense secretary and deputy defense secretary are gone, discredited by the Iraq...
Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan, said a rueful John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. George W. Bush knows today whereof his predecessor spoke. For as he prepares to "surge" 20,000 more U.S. troops into a war even he concedes we "are...
One of the lessons of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials of Germans after Germany's defeat in World War II was that obeying orders is no excuse for war crimes. U.S. prosecutors took the position that the German military should have refused to obey Hitler's orders. Chief...
An Iraqi friend whom I've known for 10 years looked worn and very weary yesterday when he came to visit me at my apartment in Amman, Jordan. He hadn't slept the night before because he'd been on the phone with his wife, who throughout the night was terrified by...
The Trap of Recognizing Israel Jonathan Cook denies the right of the Jewish people to political self-determination and independence. He writes nothing against the right of any other nation-state in the world to exist, just the Jewish one. That is as racist as it can...
On New Year's Eve, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq passed 3,000. By Tuesday, the death toll had reached 3,004 – 31 more than died in the Sep. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the number of injured has far outstripped the dead,...
With the New Year, the Democrats have now taken over the Congress. In the last election the public turned against the mismanagement of the war in Iraq and against the war itself, leading the voters to throw out the Republicans. To respond to the voters, the...
Updated at 11:40 p.m. EST, Jan. 4, 2007 Today's planned execution of two of Saddam Hussein’s colleagues has been postponed indefinitely following criticism over the former leader’s hanging. The 96 Iraqis who were killed or found dead today were not so...
In February 2003, President Bush argued that "a liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America's interests in security, and America's belief in liberty, both lead in...
