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By J. M. Coetzee
$16.47
By Michael Goldfarb
$19.80
$20
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news.bbc.co.uk
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A Yemeni man has told Amnesty International that he was abducted and tortured and spent nearly three years in secret prisons at the hands of the CIA. Khaled al-Maqtari says that without charge, legal representation or even a word to his family he was shuttled from one prison to another and ultimately dumped into Yemeni custody, once the U.S. had finished with him.
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By Marie Cocco — The overdose of Reagan nostalgia to which we’ve been subjected during the Republican presidential primaries is as understandable as it is misplaced.
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The Iraq occupation has once again taken a violent turn. Dozens of Iraqis were killed on Tuesday as the average number of Iraqis killed or found dead each day continues to rise. Eight U.S. soldiers died on Monday, the most in one day since last September. U.S. military officials, however, have been anxious to downplay any talk of a trend.
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Adm. William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, resigned on Tuesday, explaining that his reputation as an obstacle to President Bush’s military designs had become too much of a distraction. Fallon was often reported to be a thorn in the side of the president and his other military advisers, a role both the admiral and administration officials strongly deny.
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The Pennsylvania primary isn’t until April 22, and the campaign has already gotten nasty. There have been so many dust-ups between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the last couple of days, it’s almost hard to keep track. With weeks to go, there’s no sign of a cease-fire.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Stanley Kutler — The president must be delighted with the Arizona senator, a candidate who is credited as a foreign policy authority despite his devotion to the long-term occupation of Iraq.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Liberals who have sung the praises of John McCain in the past confront a fascinating test of consistency, integrity and political commitment now that McCain is the virtually certain Republican nominee. It could be an amusing moment. I should know, since I’m one of them.
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By Marie Cocco — Because superdelegates—not to mention Democrats in general—want a candidate who can beat McCain, they want answers to some very uncomfortable questions.
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Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges argues in the Philadelphia Inquirer that Ralph Nader may not win, but “[h]e is the only candidate who has not lined his pockets with tens of millions of dollars of corporate campaign money, [not] talked out of both sides of his mouth about the war in Iraq, NAFTA and health care, and has dedicated his life to battling the corporations who make war on working men and women.”
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In one of the deadliest strikes in months, five U.S. soldiers were fatally injured by a suicide bomber Monday as they patrolled Baghdad’s Mansour district. Three other soldiers and an Iraqi translator were wounded in the blast but survived, according to the BBC.
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AP photo / Oded Balilty
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By Chris Hedges — War creates a world without empathy. Those who have empathy cannot, as did Palestinian gunman Alaa Hisham Abu Dheim, coldly murder students in a Jerusalem library. Those who have empathy cannot drop tons of iron fragmentation bombs on crowded Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, killing more than 120 Palestinians in a week, of whom one in five were children and more than half were civilians.
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A week after Turkey withdrew troops from northern Iraq, claiming its military initiative against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was successfully completed, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani met with Turkish President Abdullah Gul to try to figure out how regional tensions might be contained in the future.
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This week’s Mosaic Intelligence Report from Link TV takes a look at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Iraq, where he was greeted with smiles and red carpets, and explains how Ahmadinejad has “outmaneuvered” President Bush everywhere in the Middle East (except Israel).
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By Warren I. Cohen — Just who are the “neocons,” where did they come from and how was it they came to wield so profound an influence among the highest circles of America’s policy elites? These are some of the questions asked by Jacob Heilbrunn in his new book, “They Knew They Were Right.”
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A joint probe by the Center for Investigative Reporting and National Public Radio traces the money behind a new anti-McCain ad, revealing an alliance of top Democratic donors who’ve already raised millions to take back the White House.
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A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows John McCain losing to either Democrat—Barack Obama beats him by 12 points while Hillary Clinton wins by half that margin. According to the survey, McCain’s age is significantly more troubling to voters than either Obama’s race or Clinton’s gender.
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Something called the Campaign to Defend America has purchased a reported $1 million worth of air time in Ohio and Pennsylvania to run this ad, which connects John McCain to George W. Bush. Update
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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Republicans are starting to line up behind their nominee, including the president, who officially gave his blessing at the White House on Wednesday, along with an offer to help John McCain campaign. That couldn’t make Democrats happier, who long to depict McCain as what Howard Dean called “another out-of-touch Bush Republican.”
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By Amy Goodman — While the Iraq war is off the front pages, and Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama embark on what may well be a scorched-earth primary battle against each other, let’s keep our eye on where the real scorched earth lies: who profits and who dies.
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AP photo / Ahmad al-Rubaye, pool
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By Robert Scheer — President Bush has made his antagonism for Iran and its president well known, but in Iraq he has created a great ally for his enemy, as was clear from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s historic visit.
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As Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled it out in several states Tuesday, Republican front-runner John McCain sent out a word of warning about the “dangerous” state of the world in trying to win supporters in San Antonio, Texas.
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AP photo / Hadi Mizban
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By Patrick Cockburn — Ahmadinejad’s unprecedented trip to Baghdad demonstrates his nation’s influence on its neighbor since the fall of Saddam.
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By Eugene Robinson — If you’re among those who believe the news media have focused too much on the presidential horse race and the personalities of the candidates—and not enough on vital issues of state—let me submit that you’re wrong.
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In what could shape up to be a general election preview, John McCain and Barack Obama have been trading barbs on Iraq. The two have been critical of each other in the past, though they’ve also professed mutual respect, but the tone of this exchange was a bit tougher, at least on Obama’s end.
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AP photo / U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Lorie Jewell
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For those inclined to ask “who cares?” every time a celebrity-and-politics news item makes the rounds, consider it asked already. For everyone else, The Washington Post published an opinion piece by actress Angelina Jolie on Thursday about the problem of Iraqi refugees fleeing to Syria, Jordan and “a vast and very dangerous no-man’s land” within their own borders. Now, Jolie says, is the time for Americans to “do some of the good we always stated we intended to do.”
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By Joe Conason — Within the next two weeks, the number of American troops killed in Iraq is likely to reach 4,000, assuming that the average number of fatal casualties per day remains steady. It is an arbitrary number, given meaning by the fact that the nation may briefly take notice, but a day will come in this presidential campaign when Sen. John McCain must explain what he thinks we have gained by the sacrifice of those men and women.
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thepage.time.com
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There have been 20 debates between the Democratic candidates, three featuring only Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and if this final confrontation had any game-changing potential, the opportunity has come and passed. There were a few tense moments, to be sure, but no gaffes, no inappropriate sighs to puzzle over, just two people who claim to like each other and largely agree on everything.
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On Tuesday, the Iraqi Cabinet expressed extreme displeasure over the incursion of Turkish troops into the Kurdish northern region of Iraq and called for a halt to Turkish interference, which Cabinet officials called a “violation of Iraqi sovereignty.” Also on Tuesday, an apparent suicide attack on a bus headed toward Syria from Mosul in northern Iraq killed nine people, according to The New York Times.
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AP photo / Hussein Malla
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By Scott Ritter — Imad Mughniyeh was once America’s most-wanted terrorist, and his crimes were truly abhorrent. But his assassination, Ritter argues, will only lead to more violence.
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AP photo
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By Chris Hedges — There’s an ugly secret behind the “success” of the surge: The United States is paying off Iraqi militants with weapons and cash. It’s a recipe for disaster, one that reminds Chris Hedges of “Yugoslavia before the storm.”
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wcsh6.com
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Ralph Nader has announced that he will run for the presidency for a third time. In the past months on Truthdig, the case has been made both for and against such a campaign. Here Chris Hedges says why he should run, while Robert Scheer tells Nader himself it would be better if he didn’t.
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By Andy Borowitz — Of all the voices in Washington recently, who could be better equipped to speak for this president than Roger Clemens?
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english.aljazeera.net
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After bombarding the area with airplanes and artillery, Turkish forces entered northern Iraq, ostensibly in search of Kurdish rebels. It isn’t the first time Turkey has crossed the border, but one source described the force as much bigger—roughly 10,000 men—than previous incursions. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, however, said he believed only a few hundred Turkish troops were involved in the operation.
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By Joe Conason — As a presidential candidate, John McCain stands out not only for his vocal endorsement of the unpopular war in Iraq, but also because one of his own sons is a Marine Corps officer on active duty there.
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AP photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
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By Bill Boyarsky — Since Super Tuesday produced not one but a duo of Democratic front-runners, pundits from across the political spectrum have made ominous noises about the potential dangers of a prolonged contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Here, Truthdig’s seasoned political correspondent, Bill Boyarsky, begs to differ.
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By Eugene Robinson — John McCain has the advantage of getting to run right away. Too bad he’s campaigning on failed policies and bad ideas.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The boilerplate in a candidate’s speeches gets little attention because words used over and over never constitute “news.” But one of John McCain’s favorite lines—his declaration that “the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is radical Islamic extremists,” or, as he sometimes says it, “extremism”—could define the 2008 election.
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By Marie Cocco — Barack Obama has had success against Hillary Clinton’s experience argument in part, Cocco argues, because she is a woman. He’ll have a harder time taking on John McCain.
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AP photo / Emilio Morenatti
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The death of Benazir Bhutto in December, tensions within the country and concerns over President Pervez Musharraf’s leadership (and his regime’s relationship with the U.S. government) registered in a loud and clear message from Pakistanis at the polling booths Monday: Musharraf is standing on shaky ground.
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By Marie Cocco — The president and other fear mongers love to harangue Americans with the specter of terrorism when their pet projects (and our freedoms) are on the line, but when it comes to the basic programs that protect us from disaster, money talks louder than threats.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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It’s safe to assume that the people currently advising Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on foreign policy will continue to do so if their candidate is elected. So what approaches can we expect from an Obama or a Clinton administration? There are some bad apples in either bunch, but Foreign Policy in Focus says the company Obama and Clinton keep largely parallels their votes on the war.
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flapsblog.com
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he’s considering delaying this summer’s planned reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq in order to look into how the drawdown would impact security, an approach also supported by Gen. David Petraeus.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report investigates France’s aggressive new push to involve itself in the Middle East. The French have signed a deal to set up a permanent military base in the Persian Gulf region, the first such facility controlled by a Western nation that isn’t led by George W. Bush.
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By Joe Conason — The revival of John McCain’s presidential candidacy, now expected to carry him through to his party’s nomination, can be interpreted as either proof of the judgment of Republican primary voters or evidence of the paucity of alternative choices.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The Super Tuesday primaries were a test of strength that demonstrated weaknesses in both parties and pointed to problems each could confront in the fall.
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AP photo / Khalid Mohammed
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By Scott Ritter — The former U.N. weapons inspector examines the president’s claims about the “surge” and says what the media and Congress won’t: It is not a strategy, it is an escalation, one that will not prevent the coming collapse of Iraq. There are no solutions just waiting to be found, and the only sensible thing to do is leave. Now.
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By Marie Cocco — George W. Bush has little, if any, credibility left, but he should be taken seriously as he commits the United States to the long-term occupation of Iraq.
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