It never fails to get my adrenaline flowing when my hotel rumbles from a car bomb detonating in central Baghdad. Last night around 7 p.m. the explosion occurred at a hotel compound which houses foreign contractors over near Firdos Square. Shortly thereafter, the...
A leading U.S.-based press watchdog says it is "deeply disturbed" by a directive issued last week by the Iraqi interim government's new media commission that warned the press operating in Iraq to reflect the government's position in fighting by U.S.,...
Monday's announcement that Secretary of State Colin Powell, by far the most popular of U.S. President George W. Bush's war cabinet, has submitted his resignation marks the formal launch of a new scramble for top national-security posts that could bring an even more...
The death of PLO chairman Yasser Arafat last week once again brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the international forefront. The Bush administration finds itself in an uncomfortable but familiar role as peacemaker for yet another intractable, ancient, and...
Undersecretary John Bolton has pushed – unsuccessfully – for nearly two years to get the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors to refer to the UN Security Council what he alleges are violations by Iran of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation...
Like another empire founded on ideological hubris, and stained with the blood of countless victims, this one engages in periodic political purges: when one faction is vanquished, mass firings occur in the upper echelons of the bureaucracy. We don't send them to the...
In a flurry of weekend press releases, the Department of Defense named another 26 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. These deaths bring the total killed since Nov. 8 to 61. Such facts may conflict with "official numbers" released to the unquestioning media. However, in an...
Karl von Clausewitz, the stern old Prussian philosopher of war, had it right. War is politics carried on by other means. He didn't see fit to expand upon the apparent corollary, that politics – which most modern thinkers want to sell us as the alternative to war...
Leaving the hotel is always an adventure. Last night, Abu Talat whisked me, with a full beard and a keffiyeh draped around my shoulders,out into the chaotic streets of occupied Baghdad. As we traveled around the capital, we took side roads, winding, varying routes...
TEHRAN – It is said that the only time Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, smiled was when he sat next to Yasser Arafat in the Iranian capital in 1979. Arafat was the first foreign dignitary to pay tribute to the revolution and was...
