February 23, 2005
After a long run in this space,
The Dreyfuss Report is coming to an end. To our delight, readers will still be able to find Bob's signature humor and trenchant analysis on TomPaine.com—but in our Opinion section, where he will pen occasional commentaries. And this fall, readers can look forward to his book on political Islam,
Devil's Game, forthcoming from Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt.
Wednesday 10:36 AM
February 15, 2005
The chaos in Iraq makes chaos in Syria more likely. In Iraq, the Shiite fundamentalists, the Chalabi Iraqi National Congress, and both Kurdish parties have it in for Syria, which they blame for harboring leaders of the (mostly Sunni) Iraqi resistance.
Tuesday 12:34 PM
February 14, 2005
The precious Shiite fundamentalists favored by the neoconservatives only got 48 percent of the vote. The results, of course, show the utter futility of the elections in Iraq.
Monday 11:45 AM
February 10, 2005
Named and anonymous intelligence sources go on the record about the United States' lack of knowledge about what's happening in Iran.
Thursday 10:58 AM
February 07, 2005
The truth is finally coming out about the Iraqi resistance, which is in fact a popular movement with tens of thousands of supporters. And those noted experts on Islam, Cheney and Rumsfeld, told TV audiences yesterday that people worried about Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq ought to calm down.
Monday 10:55 AM
February 01, 2005
...the more they stay the same. A 1967
New York Times story about elections in Vietnam seems strangely familiar.
Tuesday 11:15 AM
January 31, 2005
It doesn't matter how many people voted yesterday in Iraq. In the end, the Iraqi parliament that results from yesterday's vote will be illegitimate, having been elected under the guns of U.S. soldiers
Monday 11:25 AM
January 28, 2005
Your Dreyfuss-approved guide to Sunday's elections in Iraq.
Friday 2:59 PM
January 25, 2005
Today's
Wall Street Journal, faithfully reflecting the neoconservative view on Iraq, takes a whack at both the CIA and Iraq's Prime Minister Allawi—and says that it prefers none other than Ahmed Chalabi.
Tuesday 10:25 AM
January 24, 2005
The
Times suggests today that Ayatollah Sistani's Shiite fundamentalist party in Iraq has graciously decided not to appoint mullahs to the new Iraqi government, leaving the door open for (surprise!) Chalabi. He's baa-aa-aack.
Monday 10:40 AM
January 20, 2005
What's most ironic about Bush's speech is this: It's as if suddenly all of the hundreds of tyrants and despots and dictators that the United States created, supported and sustained during the Cold War didn't exist.
Thursday 2:18 PM
January 18, 2005
One of the funniest things about the upcoming Iraqi election is the plan to ban all private vehicular traffic on election day. How are people supposed to get to the polls? Why don't they just impose an all-day curfew and order people to stay in their homes? That would make the election safe.
Tuesday 12:42 PM
January 12, 2005
The papers report this morning that finally, after two years and probably a billion dollars in expense, the Bush administration finally gave up looking for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Wednesday 4:45 PM
I've been hammering for weeks now to postpone or cancel the elections scheduled for 18 days from now. Finally, the
New York Times weighs in, and not a moment too soon.
Wednesday 10:57 AM
January 11, 2005
The United States has rejected one of the last "last chances" for a deal to unify Iraq with the Sunni establishment.
Tuesday 10:30 AM
January 10, 2005
Talk is growing about an American withdrawal from Iraq, but ironically the election on Jan. 30—which is likely to intensify strife in the country—will make it harder, not easier, to stage a U.S. exit.
Monday 11:27 AM
January 07, 2005
A
Washington Post reporter says more than 20 officials have left the CIA in recent months, most forced out by Porter Goss and Co.
Friday 11:36 AM
January 05, 2005
Chances that the elections in Iraq scheduled for Jan. 30 now won't be held have risen from one in 10 to perhaps two or three in 10, and the momentum is working against the vote.
Wednesday 12:22 PM
January 03, 2005
Adnan Pachachi is a Sunni politician, a pre-Saddam era foreign minister, and a leading candidate for the hand-picked job that Prime Minister Allawi has now. He is a conservative, pro-Gulf monarchy businessman, with ties to the CIA. And he wants to delay the Jan. 30 elections.
Monday 10:55 AM
December 23, 2004
My assessment is that any election too scary for the monitors to monitor isn't worth having.
Thursday 10:28 AM
December 22, 2004
The battle lines are shaping up. On one side are the neocons, the Pentagon, the Shiites, Chalabi and the
Wall Street Journal. On the other side are the realists, the CIA, the Sunnis and
The New York Times.
Wednesday 11:02 AM
December 21, 2004
In the end, the battle of Fallujah will be nothing compared to what seems to be emerging as the battle of Mosul.
Tuesday 3:50 PM
President's Bush's clumsy statement yesterday that the resistance in Iraq is proving more troubling than he expected and that the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces aren't up to the job is no surprise.
Tuesday 11:35 AM
December 20, 2004
In the most explicit neocon endorsement of Iran yet, neocon-supporting writer Jim Hoagland says that behind the warnings of Shiite-Iranian ties is the CIA.
Monday 10:59 AM
December 17, 2004
It's just yet another part of the pendulum—which is continuing still to swing away from civil liberties.
Friday 1:34 PM
December 16, 2004
Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim Shalaan's statement that Ayatollah Sistani's Shiite fascist party is a Trojan Horse for Iran is a stunner, and the fact that he is a chief actor in the puppet U.S. interim government doesn't take away from the fundamental truth of what he had to say.
Thursday 11:30 AM
December 15, 2004
Not many neoconservatives are descended from the Prophet Mohammed. But you wouldn't know it from the way many neocons—and their puppet in the White House—are backing the Iraqi Shiites.
Wednesday 10:39 AM
December 14, 2004
It might be a long way away—I'd guess 2006—but the war-on-Iran hawks in the Bush administration, led by John Bolton of the State Department, are rattling sabers.
Tuesday 10:12 AM
December 13, 2004
Amid all the talk about the supposed crisis in Iran, I haven't heard anyone say what the legal basis would be for an attack on Iran. Is there any? Is there an international lawyer in the house?
Monday 10:43 AM
December 09, 2004
Sistani is intent on imposing his will, like most would-be dictators. Hiding under the label of "quietist,"—that is, apolitical—the in fact extremely political Sistani is using his muscle to force all Shiite factions into a unified election list.
Thursday 11:55 AM
December 08, 2004
We'll return to the Shiite fundamentalist takeover of Iraq tomorrow, but today I can't resist commenting on the terrible intelligence reform bill passed in a panic by a cowed Congress.
Wednesday 10:33 AM
December 07, 2004
The neocons continue to press the alliance with the Shiites, even accusing Washington of not doing enough to support the Shiites.
Tuesday 11:55 AM
December 06, 2004
The seven weeks or so between now and Jan. 30—the scheduled date for the elections in Iraq—is by far the most critical period for the region since the start of the war itself.
Monday 11:44 AM
December 02, 2004
There's no question that the United States, occupying Iraq and now strengthening the size of its occupying force, can successfully insist on elections there Jan. 30. In recent days, given the opportunity to hedge its bet, the Bush administration has staked all of its chips, and all its prestige, on that date.
Thursday 9:53 AM
November 30, 2004
If the United States insists on supporting the power-mad Ayatollah Sistani and his crew of Iranian-backed Islamist parties (SCIRI, Al Dawa, and a host of smaller southern-Iraq militant groupings, including Hezbollah), it will only guarantee a resistance that goes on for the entire decade.
Tuesday 10:14 AM
November 29, 2004
Here's a challenge to an enterprising investigative reporter: Why is it that the neoconservatives, who are most loudly demanding a showdown with Iran, are the same ones supporting pro-Iranian radical Shiite fundamentalists in Iraq?
Monday 11:04 AM
November 24, 2004
More and more—from the Goss-led purge at the CIA to the battle over intelligence "reform" to the planned, vast expansion of spookdom—America's foreign policy is shaping up to be more covert than ever. Does that worry anyone but me?
Wednesday 10:39 AM
November 22, 2004
The conference in Egypt that begins today might have been a way to create a unified Iraqi consensus, minus the outright terrorists. Now, it won't.
Monday 10:42 AM
November 18, 2004
So Colin Powell, just days after bailing out, has decided to add fuel to the neocons' Iran fire.
Thursday 9:55 AM
November 17, 2004
Israel's Mossad is undergoing an internal crisis of its own. It's part of a pattern of anti-Sharon resistance from the security services and army in Israel, who don't like Sharon's occupation and settlement policies.
Wednesday 11:33 AM
November 16, 2004
It's clear to me that the invasion of Fallujah was just a diversionary action. It was meant to distract attention from the real offensive: the blitzkrieg against the CIA and the State Department. Those two agencies were the locus of opposition to Bush's reckless foreign policy, and they are no more.
Tuesday 9:45 AM
November 15, 2004
Daddy ran the CIA, and W. is president, so why not let Jeb Bush run the CIA now? Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. But the Porter Goss-led regime change at the CIA is working its magic, and the Bush family mafia seems to be pushing it.
Monday 9:57 AM
November 12, 2004
Yasser Arafat is crafty 'til the end. His death could not have come at a worse time for the Bush administration.
Friday 11:03 AM
November 11, 2004
Yasser Arafat is the ultimate political Rorschach test. But it's impossible to deny that he not only personified but virtually created the idea of Palestine, beginning in the mid 1960s.
Thursday 10:39 AM
November 10, 2004
On the first public gathering after the election of the neocons who brought us the Iraq debacle.
Wednesday 8:54 AM
November 09, 2004
Occupying Fallujah won't end the violence. It will only create another new symbol of the U.S. occupation.
Tuesday 9:20 AM
November 08, 2004
U.S. forces can conquer Fallujah. It's a small city, and U.S. firepower is overwhelming. By going down that path, however, the Bush administration is sending an important signal of the type of foreign policy it intends to pursue for the next four years.
Monday 10:40 AM
November 05, 2004
So the Democrats nominated an aloof, stiff-backed billionaire from Yale who voted for the most unpopular war since Vietnam, and they are surprised they lost.
Friday 12:55 PM
November 04, 2004
The next few weeks will provide at least three important clues about the power of the neocons in Bush II.
Thursday 11:10 AM
November 03, 2004
There's no good way to spin this disaster. The zombies marched to the polls.
Wednesday 10:53 AM
November 01, 2004
The "prince of darkness" talks to the Prague
Post (yes, that Prague) about why terrorists like John Kerry.
Monday 11:44 AM
October 29, 2004
The staggering research reported in the British journal
Lancet shows the magnitude of the Bush administration's war crimes: 98,000 Iraqi civilians dead, including 40,000 children. And that's not even counting Fallujah.
Friday 10:35 AM
October 28, 2004
On what the
Washington Times is saying about what happened to those vanished explosives.
Thursday 12:29 PM
"Here come the sons of dogs." That is a quote, not from the Iraqi resistance, but from an Iraqi National Guardsman in Ramadi, a city that, according to the
New York Times today, is becoming a Fallujah-style no-go zone.
Thursday 11:26 AM
October 27, 2004
The turning point in the Iraq crisis could come on November 22, when the world's powers meet to talk about Iraq. It's a way out. It's like a neon sign, blinking: "Exit, This Way." France, Egypt and Saudi Arabia could organize this, with UN support, with a deal including the opposition forces in Iraq.
Wednesday 10:36 AM
October 26, 2004
We've heard a lot this election year about the threat to democracy. But nothing is scarier than the Bush administration's cavalier attitude toward civil liberties, and its willingness to use the military at home.
Tuesday 10:59 AM
October 25, 2004
By now it's clear that if Bush wins the election, it will be because many Americans believe that the president will better protect them from terrorism at home. I believe that the White House has consistently exaggerated the threat from Islamic terrorists in order to keep people scared.
Monday 10:33 AM
October 22, 2004
More and more, it looks like Iran is going to take over Iraq. That's been the case for more than a year now. But the Iraqi resistance won't be going along. Welcome to the second Iran-Iraq war.
Friday 11:35 AM
October 21, 2004
A Jordanian newspaper has printed an interview purportedly with one of the leaders of the Iraqi resistance. I can't vouch for its veracity, of course, except to say that it sounds real and may provide some insights into the people that the United States is fighting in Iraq.
Thursday 10:31 AM
October 20, 2004
Here's a scenario: With the election just two weeks away, U.S. forces move into Fallujah. After a firefight, the Army and the Marines get to the center of the city and declare it pacified, announcing a major victory. And President Bush, with the election now just days away, proclaims that the United States has turned a corner in Iraq.
Wednesday 9:25 AM
October 19, 2004
Yesterday I reported on the fact that the United States had inexplicably arrested the main negotiator for Fallujah, making it clear that Bush and Rumsfeld have no intention of trying to resolve the Iraq crisis. Instead, for electoral purposes, they are trying to show their "resolve" in an effort to win a war that is clearly not winnable.
Tuesday 10:09 AM
October 18, 2004
The question that we ought to be asking about the current bloody offensive in Fallujah is: Was this offensive ordered with the November 2 vote in mind? Are hundreds of Iraqis dying just to give Bush a PR victory?
Monday 10:35 AM
October 14, 2004
Little noticed in the American press, the Europeans and the Arabs are stepping up on Iraq. It's good news for Kerry, because it resonates with his oft-repeated plans to get "the allies" more involved in Baghdad.
Thursday 10:50 AM
October 13, 2004
On the advice of Newt Gingrich, Bush has changed tactics. No longer is he describing Kerry as a flip-flopper. Now he's using the L-word.
Wednesday 11:27 AM
October 12, 2004
America is reading intelligent stuff again.
Tuesday 3:23 PM
Matt Bai's 8,000-word Kerry foreign policy piece in
The New York Times Magazine is despicable journalism.
Tuesday 10:28 AM
October 08, 2004
Kerry's countermove on the intelligence question: Yes, I looked at the very same intelligence. The intelligence you faked. Fictionalized. Manufactured. Mr. President, you lied to the American people about why we needed to invade Iraq.
Friday 10:02 AM
October 07, 2004
It's not just Kofi Annan who says, correctly, Bush's war in Iraq was illegal. Kerry may have trouble citing Annan, but now he can rely on that paragon of international correctness, the Council on Foreign Relations'
Foreign Affairs.
Thursday 3:43 PM
For George W., the latest string of reports, comments and leaks is catastrophically bad news. They ensure that the Nov. 2 vote will be a referendum on Bush's handling of Iraq.
Thursday 10:21 AM
October 06, 2004
Usually we get to choose the lesser of two evils. Now we get to choose the least hawkish of two ultra-hawks. That's my take on the Edwards-Cheney dustup.
Wednesday 1:42 PM
October 04, 2004
The neocons' favorite Iraqi is well on his way toward a comeback.
Monday 10:41 AM
October 01, 2004
Only the brain dead could be confused about which of those two men was presidential.
Friday 10:00 AM
September 30, 2004
What won't get mentioned in tonight's debate is that George Bush, Dick Cheney et al. lied to get us into Iraq. For this, I blame the media.
Thursday 10:22 AM
September 29, 2004
Tomorrow night, Kerry gets one chance, and one chance only, to win the domestic war over Iraq. He needs to look the president in the eye and tell him that the war was wrong, that he deceived the American people (and their senators) about the threat from Iraq, that he doesn't know enough about foreign affairs to understand the consequences of the bad advice he gets from hawkish advisers, and that we are losing the war.
Wednesday 10:13 AM
September 28, 2004
I continue to wonder why there isn't more leaking happening during the pre-election struggle about Bush's bungling of Iraq. It might be starting.
Tuesday 10:49 AM
September 27, 2004
With any luck, the hilariously stupid incarceration and expulsion of Cat Stevens will help convince Americans just how paranoid the Department of Homeland Security and its ilk are.
Monday 10:27 AM
September 24, 2004
The Federation of American Scientists has posted a very interesting article from
Al Zawra, an Iraqi weekly published by the Iraqi Journalists Association, that provides an unprecedented (for me, at least) look at the size and shape of the resistance groups in Iraq.
Friday 10:16 AM
September 23, 2004
As Iraq disintegrates, there are six weeks left to hold Bush accountable for it. I'm not sure if Kerry can directly attack Bush over this, because the Democrat has to seem like he has a "plan" to fix Iraq. There is no plan to fix it—it's broken, permanently.
Thursday 10:26 AM
September 22, 2004
Will Kerry's new stance resonate in the swing states?
Wednesday 1:03 PM
September 21, 2004
Yesterday's speech by John Kerry was a watershed event. Kerry now has just a few weeks left to make it stick. But the candidate has taken a huge step toward finally putting President Bush on the defensive about Iraq.
Tuesday 10:57 AM
September 20, 2004
Things John Kerry should have said last spring.
Monday 1:02 PM
I'm not sure what to make of the latest insider leak from the Bush administration to Robert Novak of Plame fame. In a column titled "Bush's Escape Route," Novak says that "well-placed sources in the administration" say that in 2005 Bush will pull out of Iraq and leave that country to its own (Shiite) devices.
Monday 9:46 AM
September 17, 2004
Here's a question for Mr. Bush's lawyers, who crafted the legal defense of the illegal war: You say that the United States went to war in Iraq to enforce UN resolutions that Saddam Hussein had supposedly defied. What if Iran had made the same decision, in 2003, and invaded Iraq to enforce those resolutions? Would that be okay?
Friday 10:22 AM
September 16, 2004
It's too late to make a difference, with President Bush cruising toward re-election and rolling over the pathetic, disorganized Kerry "campaign," but Kofi Annan spoke the truth: The war on Iraq was illegal.
Thursday 10:13 AM
September 15, 2004
The Iraqi resistance is getting, well, serious. And with each passing day, Kerry's inexplicable inability to articulate a position on Iraq becomes ever more painful.
Wednesday 11:46 AM
September 13, 2004
The U.S. media momentarily focused on Iraq when the toll of Americans killed passed 1,000, but that only means that they won't pay attention again until it reaches 2,000. Meanwhile, Iraqis continue to die by the thousands
Monday 9:17 AM
September 09, 2004
The Vietnam-era antiwar slogan might be adapted by the neocons: Two, three, many Iraqs. Obvious targets for a second-term Bush administration would be Iran, Syria and Sudan, all of which I've been following in this space. Now we add Chechnya.
Thursday 11:19 AM
September 08, 2004
There are now 1,001 American reasons why Bush's invasion of Iraq was a mistake, but Don Rumsfeld is talking about Iran.
Wednesday 9:52 AM
September 07, 2004
We've lost close to 1,000 Americans, we're pulling out of the cities and now it looks like we're going to exclude troublsome cities from voting. No, this isn't Florida, it's Iraqistan.
Tuesday 11:25 AM
September 03, 2004
On Monday, in this space, I stated what for me was obvious: that Larry Franklin, the apparent Israeli spy, and Ahmad Chalabi, the known Israeli spy and leading Friend of Neocons, were peas in a pod. Today's
Washington Post reports exactly that.
Friday 10:03 AM
September 01, 2004
Here's the axis we should be worried about: The Axis of Spies made up by the American Enterprise Institute, AIPAC and the Embassy of Israel. If the FBI weren't so busy trying to catch nonexistent Al Qaeda suspects, they might consider devoting a few more resources to tracking down this expanding Israeli nest of spies.
Wednesday 10:03 AM
August 31, 2004
Paul Krugman ought to stick to economics. After pointing out the obvious—that America is facing a no-win situation in Iraq—Krugman then suggests something: Why don’t we let the scowly
fatwa man, Ali Al Sistani, run the place?
Tuesday 4:14 PM
August 30, 2004
When Iranian "students" took over the U.S. embassy in 1979, they called it the "nest of spies." Now it seems, the FBI has discovered a real nest of spies, Israeli ones. Inside the Pentagon.
Monday 9:29 AM
August 27, 2004
The United States is making the same mistake with the scowly
fatwa man, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, that it made on countless other occasions in Middle East history. Bereft of any understanding of fundamentalist Islamic culture, Washington is hoping that a cleric can carry America's water in Iraq.
Friday 11:58 AM
August 26, 2004
The rampages of the Sudan government-backed Janjaweed in Darfur, that country's unfortunate Western province, have been widely reported. Usually the coverage of Darfur, however, provides no clue about why it's happening. It condescends to Africa: Oh well, it must be another one of those African things that make no sense, just evil Africans out to kill.
Thursday 11:40 AM
August 25, 2004
The fighting in Najaf is a story made for the media: a set-piece confrontation, lots of blood and gore ("if it bleeds, it leads"), a villain (Sadr) and the good guy (U.S. troops and, oh yes, Iraq's so-called troops). And there's no question that what happens there is important.
Wednesday 10:45 AM
August 24, 2004
Raymond Close, a longtime CIA operations officer in the Middle East, has penned a provocative analysis of the Bush administration's options in Iraq—one that might end with what he calls a "doomsday scenario," namely, an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
Tuesday 9:28 AM
August 20, 2004
The situation in Najaf is still confused after a night of U.S. bombing of the city, scores killed, and conflicting pledges by Muqtada Sadr to hand over the shrine that has become his base.
Friday 9:37 AM
August 19, 2004
Ned Walker, the president of the Middle East Institute, is ringing the alarm bell: the Richard Perle-led neoconservatives are still with us.
Thursday 9:32 AM
August 18, 2004
Consider these two items: First, Congress, stampeded by the families of 9/11 victims, is holding hearings about reorganizing the intelligence system to further blend the CIA and the FBI and strengthen domestic spying and surveillance capabilities. And second, there is a growing flap over the FBI's shocking abuse of its powers.
Wednesday 10:11 AM
August 17, 2004
Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney attacked Sen. John Kerry for using the word "sensitive" in discussing war combat.
Tuesday 4:05 PM
August 16, 2004
The anti-terrorist chickens have come home to roost. For several years I've been writing about how the frenzy to lock down America over counterterrorism would lead to abuses and paranoia.
Monday 11:15 AM
Maybe the Bush administration and U.S. media pundits will shut up now that Hugo Chavez beat back his U.S.-sponsored opposition handily in Venezuela.
Monday 9:45 AM
August 13, 2004
Kerry's failure to articulate a coherent policy on Iraq has now reached the status of a three-alarm fire. It seems almost unbelievable.
Friday 9:45 AM
August 12, 2004
The Chalabi saga continues. Let's start with this item: "Supporters [of Chalabi] had brought 11 sheep to Chalabi's home in an affluent Baghdad neighborhood for a ritual slaughter to welcome him."
Thursday 11:12 AM
August 11, 2004
Ayatollah Sistani, the scowly
fatwa man who's probably been on the Pentagon payroll, scuttled off to London this week, but it might not be because of heart problems.
Wednesday 10:45 AM
August 10, 2004
The appointment of Porter Goss to head the CIA comes as no surprise, but if reform is on the agenda, Goss isn't the man.
Tuesday 10:51 AM
August 09, 2004
Jim VanderHei has a great piece today describing how the 9/11 Big Brother Commission's recommendations have gone to the center of the political debate, and how John Kerry has glommed onto the issue.
Monday 3:55 PM
Poor Ahmed Chalabi. First he is an innocent banker in Jordan in the 1980s, when the mean Jordanians charge him with fraud and—after he flees—sentence him to 22 years in prison. Now the mean Iraqis are charging him....
Monday 9:23 AM
August 06, 2004
So the scowly fatwa man, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has been bundled off to London because of a failing heart. It happens in the midst of a Shiite uprising led by the Muqtadarites, an eruption that has led to hundreds of people killed in 48 hours, including several American soldiers.
Friday 2:59 PM
I don't usually quote from the loony-Moonie Washington Times (especially when they cite the equally loony, but non-Moonie New York Post), but here's an item.
Friday 11:45 AM
August 05, 2004
Somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 Iraqis have been killed by Mr. Bush's war. Maybe we should ask the families of those victims to come over to the United States and campaign against the president.
Thursday 1:51 PM
August 04, 2004
John Kerry and the Center for American Progress continue to demand that the Bush administration hatch the 9/11 Commission's Big Brother scheme. Thankfully, George W. Bush isn't going along.
Wednesday 1:20 PM
The litany of deception and failed imperial ventures by the Bush administration is a long one: a bungled invasion of Afghanistan and an illegal invasion of Iraq made worse by an occupation gone awry, plus blustery threats against Iran and Syria.
Wednesday 11:06 AM
August 03, 2004
So now we know that the exciting new terrorism breakthrough that our intrepid CIA discovered was years old. Some of the "images" discovered in that Pakistani raid were taken before 9/11.
Tuesday 9:25 AM
August 02, 2004
Chances are, Iraq is going to blow up in John Kerry's face between now and November. By all accounts, it's already blowing up. Because I spent last week writing about the 9/11 Commission, I didn't say anything about the Kerryfest in Boston.
Monday 10:34 AM
July 30, 2004
Kerry's unthinking endorsement of the 9/11 Commission is craven and absurd. And Bush, purporting to consult with his national security team (as if he could ever grasp the issues at stake) may implement a lot of the commission's terrible ideas right away.
Friday 10:40 AM
July 29, 2004
In its workmanlike account of the birth and rise of bin Ladenism, the 9/11 Commission flatly ignores America's role in creating the conditions for the triumph of that ideology.
Thursday 11:07 AM
July 28, 2004
Despite some juicy tidbits about the Bush administration's post-9/11 obsession with Iraq, the 9/11 Commission unconscionably lets Bush off the hook on this one. Nowhere in the report does it conclude, as virtually any fair-minded observer would, that the attack on Iraq had nothing to do with the so-called War on Terrorism.
Wednesday 11:51 AM
July 27, 2004
Perhaps it's too much to expect people like Fred Fielding, Slade Gorton, Jim Thompson, Bob Kerrey and the rest of the 9/11 Commission to say anything intelligent about how to "Prevent the Continued Growth of Islamist Terrorism."
Tuesday 10:56 AM
July 26, 2004
I'm going to spend some time this week pointing out five things wrong with the 9/11 Commission report—one each day. A thorough job could be, well, 567 pages long, which is the size of that bulky, now-a-best-seller tome.
Monday 9:29 AM
July 22, 2004
The fact that four Americans were killed in Iraq on Tuesday found itself mentioned in the 19th paragraph on an inside page of the
New York Times today.
Thursday 10:38 AM
July 21, 2004
The Committee on the Present Danger is back, and this time the neocons seem positively proud—and transparent—in their quest to keep Americans fearful.
Wednesday 10:21 AM
July 20, 2004
Bush has started substituting "Iran" for "Iraq" in his standard regime-change speech, saying he's going to look into an Iran-and-9/11 connection. Here we go again.
Tuesday 11:38 AM
July 19, 2004
It's now a 50-50 bet, I would say, whether a crisis with Iran will erupt before the November elections.
Monday 9:01 AM
July 16, 2004
Since we're into this latest wave of apologies, how 'bout we also have some retrospective investigations into the actual strategic reasons for war?
Friday 10:56 AM
July 15, 2004
Following the Senate report, everyone's got a plan to reform the CIA. Too bad the president—not the intelligence—was the problem.
Thursday 9:48 AM
July 13, 2004
Readers of this blog know that I pay a lot of attention to Iran and how it fits into things. So, of course, do a lot of others, from Ariel Sharon and Ahmad Chalabi to the crew of so-called "realists" in the American foreign policy establishment.
Tuesday 4:28 PM
July 12, 2004
Tom Ridge says there could be terror attacks around the election. A certain Florida county, perhaps? Also: Anonymous' insights on Afghanistan.
Monday 11:11 AM
July 09, 2004
It's becoming clear that the resistance is much stronger than the Bush administration told us. Which seems like par for the course.
Friday 9:50 AM
July 07, 2004
An Israeli hit on Iran's nukes would certainly destabilize an already-volatile region. It also might help Bush on November 2.
Wednesday 10:03 AM
July 06, 2004
Maybe we ought to be worried about more than Chalabi's supposed ties to Iran's intelligence service.
Tuesday 10:40 AM
July 02, 2004
Apparently Saddam Hussein, during long months in captivity, kept telling the truth—exactly the truth that Bush administration interrogators didn't want to hear. In reporting that borders on the idiotic, Neil Lewis and David Johnston today in
The New York Times quote unnamed U.S. officials who questioned Saddam, who say, "We got very little, I would say almost nothing."
Friday 11:22 AM
July 01, 2004
Do as we say, not as we do. And that goes double for ordering assassinations of terrorist suspects.
Thursday 8:21 AM
June 30, 2004
Did Michael Moore really miss the point when he avoided Bush's Israel connections in his movie? Or was he playing it safe?
Wednesday 8:15 AM
June 29, 2004
So now the "new Iraq" is in place. Too bad the "new Iraqis" haven't got any faith in it.
Tuesday 10:48 AM
June 28, 2004
Prepare yourself; it's happened: Our esteemed blogger agrees with the neocons.
Monday 11:04 AM
June 25, 2004
Bob Dreyfuss is taking a well-deserved rest this week—back on June 28.
Friday 9:34 AM
June 18, 2004
The New Republic still refuses to admit it was wrong about Iraq.
Friday 12:11 PM
June 17, 2004
Those are the exact words of a Naval War College professor who's just returned from Iraq.
Thursday 9:51 AM
June 16, 2004
The Council on Foreign Relations has some creative sources behind its latest anti-terrorism report.
Wednesday 9:14 AM
June 15, 2004
It's investigation fever in Washington this summer—we hope John Kerry's enjoying the irony.
Tuesday 10:26 AM
June 14, 2004
Trouble's brewing in the Middle East...and not just where we're focused.
Monday 12:12 PM
June 11, 2004
How bad was the G8 meeting? All Chirac could praise was the food.
Friday 9:51 AM
June 10, 2004
Who knows Chalabi? Not Bush, and not Doug Feith or Paul Wolfowitz, apparently.
Thursday 9:06 AM
June 09, 2004
The Kurds have no oil. So an opt-out is not an option.
Wednesday 10:07 AM
June 08, 2004
Things aren't any better in Iraq . But you wouldn't know it from the news.
Tuesday 8:36 AM
June 07, 2004
The Pentagon gave legal legitimacy to torture.
Monday 9:02 AM
June 04, 2004
Tenet's exit helping Bush? Not likely. When a member of your national security team quits in the middle of the Great War on Terror, it's a bad sign.
Friday 9:32 AM
June 03, 2004
President Bush is warning against the "logic of the fanatic?"
Thursday 9:21 AM
June 02, 2004
Who leaked sensitive information to Ahmed Chalabi? And what was he drinking?
Wednesday 8:09 AM
June 01, 2004
With an Iraqi government picked not by the UN but by the U.S.-created IGC, those thousands of Americans will be just so many targets.
Tuesday 9:55 AM
May 27, 2004
Somehow, we're back to another "imminent threat." Again.
Thursday 9:11 AM
May 26, 2004
Who has been circulating classified info?
Wednesday 10:00 AM
May 25, 2004
Quick: Name two reasons we're in Iraq.
Tuesday 2:28 PM
What was the big question Bush failed to answer last night?
Tuesday 8:35 AM
May 21, 2004
Is the raid on Chalabi's office part of a nudge-nudge, wink-wink strategy?
Friday 10:42 AM
May 20, 2004
Is the United States clearing the way for a Brahimi-run government?
Thursday 10:20 AM
May 19, 2004
The Vulcans are distancing the United States from Chalabi...to strengthen his hand.
Wednesday 11:19 AM
May 18, 2004
The assassination of the Iraqi Governing Clowncil president yesterday morning is only the latest sign that Iraq is unhinged, and that the Bush administration is out of repair hinges. But what's curious about the coverage of the killing is how whitewashed...
Tuesday 9:02 AM
May 17, 2004
Tick, tick, tick. The countdown is underway to June 30, and yet what happens on that day is still as perilously unclear as ever. On Friday, I went over to the American Enterprise Institute to take the temperature of the...
Monday 7:58 AM
Pay-any-price liberals are salivating over the idea of Sen. John McCain in the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket in November. I’m not. But on Saturday The New York Times ran a front-page story touting McCain as the next Democratic...
Monday 7:04 AM
May 16, 2004
Here’s some good news: A Newsweek magazine poll released Saturday put Bush's overall job approval at 42 per cent, the lowest yet in that poll. Other recent surveys have rated Bush in the mid-40s. "Iraq is sucking the life out of...
Sunday 6:06 PM
