The Bush administration's intelligence reorganization, based on the deified recommendations of the 9/11 Commission to expand the intelligence bureaucracy, is an abysmal failure. A second reorganization is needed that will streamline and consolidate the multi-headed...
Why Are We Baiting Putin?
"[N]o legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail, either by supply management or attempt to monopolize transportation," thundered Vice President Cheney to the international pro-democracy conference in Vilnius, Lithuania....
Backtalk, May 8, 2006
Comrade Cheney vs. President PutinBeing a modest student of geopolitics and the history of the great game, I have never doubted that the primary reason, the final target of America's involvement in the Middle East is the breakup of Russia. Sure, there are other...
Want to Intervene in Darfur? Go Ahead
To George Clooney and the other Americans who demonstrated and demanded that the U.S. intervene in the Darfur region of Sudan, I have a simple and clear message: Buy yourself a gun and plenty of ammunition, and go intervene yourself. In the 1930s, a tougher breed of...
Straw Canned Over Iran?
Sunday's Independent carries a piece speculating on whether former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw lost his job, in part, because the Bush regime disliked his lack of crusading fervor. Francis Elliott writes: "Jack Straw's fate was sealed in a phone call...
The Next World War
All the wheels and pulleys of a very familiar narrative are swinging into motion, creaking and grating against gears, as the usual suspects grind out their war propaganda. Every day, it seems, there is some newly discovered quotation from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran...
Bush’s Wavering Halts Insurgent Peace Talks
The United States has backed away from high-level peace negotiations with Sunni insurgent groups after meeting with them regularly over several weeks in January and February, according to an insurgent leader. Evidence of wavering by the George W. Bush administration...
Building Confidence
Pursuant to a Safeguards Agreement [.pdf] concluded in 1974 with the International Atomic Energy Agency as required by the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Iran has been allowing IAEA inspectors to verify that no "source or special nuclear...
Hawks Looking for New and Bigger Enemies?
As if rallying fading public support for keeping more than 100,000 U.S. troops in a disintegrating Iraq and preparing the ground for a possible military attack on Iran were not enough, some influential hawks are now promoting a more confrontational stance against...
Fantasies of American Preponderance
"We must perhaps reluctantly accept that we have to help this region become a normal region, the way we helped Europe and Asia in another era. Now it's this area from Pakistan to Morocco that we should focus on. The world has gotten smaller and is getting...


