Sometimes you have to go to the regional newspapers for the punchy editorials. The Pentagon's announcement that the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction officially ended quietly in late December provokes the Virginia Pilot to observe, "And America is left with...
Gaza Killings Cast a Long Shadow
Jerusalem The Palestinian militant groups who carried out the attack Thursday night in the Gaza Strip that killed six Israeli civilians said they had been planning the assault for weeks. But the timing is not coincidental: it is the first major challenge by...
Iraqis Suffer Under American Yoke
It's not a new tactic here in Iraq. The US military has been doing it for well over a year now. Last January 3rd, in the al-Dora rural region on the outskirts of Baghdad, where beautiful farms of date palms and orange trees line the banks of the Tigris, I visited a...
Coming Up Empty
President Bush relied almost exclusively upon the top-secret 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction for justification of his pre-emptive invasion of Iraq to "disarm" Saddam Hussein. On the eve...
US Charities Feel Heat From ‘Terror War’
The tsunamis that pounded Indian Ocean coastlines the day after Christmas killed an estimated 30,000 Sri Lankans nearly half in areas controlled by the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group that has been placed on a special list of "terrorist" groups by the...
Neoconservatives at Sea
Jubilant over President George W. Bush's re-election victory just two months ago, neoconservatives who played a leading role in shaping the radical trajectory of U.S. foreign policy after the Sep. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks appear increasingly divided on key issues...
The Power of Nightmares
In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares. - from...
Aussie Gitmo Detainee Mulls Legal Action
CANBERRA - The U.S. and Australian governments could face legal action for damages after the Pentagon announced that it would release Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib from the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba after three years in detention without charges....
Let’s Not Pretend We Didn’t Know
The only thing worse than seeing endless news stories about the torture of "detainees" at U.S. prison camps like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay is seeing the word "shocking" in relation to something that we all, in our heart of hearts, knew was...
The Century of the Believers
In the 18th century, Goethe's romantic novel The Sorrows of Young Werther led than more than one "sensible" young gentleman to emulate the protagonist and kill himself. I hope a happier end awaits Old Werther, the northern Virginia defense analyst who writes under...


