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By Paul Conrad
By Chris Hedges
$16.47
$17
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By Will Durst — The list of folks who turn out not to have the ability to destroy the world is growing at a dangerous rate.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Congressional Democrats need a Plan B. So far, they have been unable to place the blame for governmental paralysis where it belongs: on the Do-Nothing Republicans.
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AP photo / Bela Szandelszky
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By Chris Hedges — The refusal to pay my taxes if we go to war with Iran, and the portion of my taxes spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if we do not cut off funding for these two conflicts, is not a means. It is an end. I do not know if my refusal, and the refusal of others, will be effective in halting these wars. All I know is that it is worth doing.
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AP photo / Lawrence Jackson
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By Scott Ritter — The former chief weapons inspector argues that the Bush administration isn’t going to let facts get in the way of its eagerly sought war with Iran. If there’s any hope of avoiding such a conflict, Ritter writes, Congress will have to rouse from its slumber and act, rather than continuing to wait for the White House to make the first move.
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news.google.com
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The Israeli government has been decidedly hawkish about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, even after the NIE report suggested there isn’t one. The Israeli people, on the other hand, have taken a more enlightened view: According to a new poll, roughly two-thirds oppose a unilateral attack on Iran.
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By Marie Cocco — The head of the Iraqi Red Crescent has a plan for Iraq, one that could test the theory that a few hundred million dollars spent on humanitarian aid would be more effective than a few hundred billion spent on bombs.
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By Joe Conason — Even when George W. Bush tells the truth, he cannot quite bring himself to tell the whole truth.
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AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Robert Scheer — Bush is such a liar. Or is he just out to lunch on the most important issue that he faces? In October, he charged that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was bringing the world to the precipice of World War III, even though the White House had been informed at least a month earlier that Iran had no such program and had stopped efforts to develop one back in 2003.
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Truthdig / Zuade Kaufman
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The Truthdig columnist (and WMD expert) warns that war with Iran could be inevitable, despite the National Intelligence Estimate report that says Iran dismantled its nuclear program in 2003. Bush, Ritter argues, doesn’t let facts get in the way of what he wants.
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mcclatchydc.com
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BBC: “The UK will hand over control of Basra to Iraqi forces despite failing in its goal to establish security there, an MPs’ [members of Parliament] report says. The city is dominated by militias and the police contains ‘murderous’ and ‘corrupt’ elements, the report added.”
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AP photo / Sasa Kralj
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By Reese Erlich — In this excerpt from his new book, “The Iran Agenda,” veteran independent journalist and Truthdig contributor Reese Erlich challenges the conventional wisdom on Iran’s nuclear ambitions as he investigates the drive for war.
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By Joe Conason — The ascension of George W., according to many Bush loyalists, was a return of mature and wise foreign policy. Tell that to the ailing Middle East, whose future is now being pondered in a U.S. meeting that seems destined to fail.
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foxnews.com
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Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani clearly shares a particular personality trait with President Bush: the kind of unassailable certainty that even evidence to the contrary can’t uproot. Take his position on the Iraq war, for example, which he still believes—even more so, now—was the right move for the U.S. to have made.
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By Marie Cocco — Winter approaches, and as many as 400,000 Afghans face starvation. The trouble is not an insufficient supply of food. There is no way to get food to those who need it.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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While we Americans were gorging ourselves on turkey and dressing, Australians were busy voting out their Prime Minister John Howard, who has been one of President Bush’s closest allies. His successor, Kevin Rudd, has pledged to sign the Kyoto climate treaty, withdraw from Iraq and apologize to aborigines for Australia’s past abuses.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Chris Hedges — All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance.
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By Andy Borowitz — The satirist imagines what the president might be thankful for. A compliant Congress, perhaps? A lack of impeachment proceedings? Jena’s book deal?
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defenseindustrydaily.com
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Roughly 20,000 soldiers who aren’t on the military’s list of combat wounded have signs of brain injury, according to an analysis of Army, Navy and Veterans Affairs data conducted by USA Today. The Pentagon’s official tally of troops who’ve suffered brain trauma in combat is 4,471—one-fifth the total gleaned from military records.
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The Truthdig columnist writes in The Nation that he will not pay his taxes if the United States attacks Iran. Like Henry David Thoreau before him, Hedges will not help finance an immoral war. “I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture,” he writes. “But an attack on Iran—which appears increasingly likely before the coming presidential election—will unleash a regional conflict of catastrophic proportions.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The contours of the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination are set, and it is not a battle about “issues.” Advisers to the major contenders largely see things this way, and Democratic voters are in a quandary about what to do.
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By Nicholas von Hoffman — Why is it that so many voters continue to elect reactionaries who do their best to disenfranchise them? The answer, says Paul Krugman in his new book, is racism.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It’s time that we subject the Iraq war to the same cost-benefit analysis that we are called upon to impose on other government endeavors. We are supposed to repeal or revise domestic programs that don’t work. Shouldn’t a troubled war policy be treated the same way?
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The horse-race coverage of the campaign mostly missed this absolute gem of a speech from Barack Obama, who has scratched and clawed his way to a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in Iowa.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Robert Scheer — “The war on terror” made me do it. That’s the excuse that works for George W. Bush to rationalize his assaults on the rule of law, from arbitrary arrest to torture. So why not try some war-on-terror obfuscation to bail out his president-dictator buddy over in Pakistan?
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By Amy Goodman — One of the 20th century’s greatest journalists, interviewers and storytellers is alive and working at age 95: Studs Terkel offers both the wisdom of age and keen insight into the issues of today.
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According to the calculations of congressional Democrats, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost about $1.5 trillion. That’s nearly double the (already staggering) $804 billion that’s been appropriated or requested. Lawmakers arrived at the revised estimate by considering larger economic factors, including interest on debt and health care costs for wounded veterans.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Democrats in Congress are discovering what it’s like to live in the worst of all possible worlds. They are condemned for selling out to President Bush, and for failing to make compromises aimed at getting things done.
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AP photo / Brennan Linsley
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By Chris Hedges — The last, best hope for averting a war with Iran lies with the United States military. We will be saved or doomed by our generals.
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By Andy Borowitz — Bush, citing his own years of expertise, flies to Islamabad to offer wisdom on how to eliminate democracy.
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By Mark Sarvas — As the first Internet reporter for Yahoo News, Kevin Sites spent a year of living dangerously covering 20 wars all over the world. Is Web journalism the wave of the future? Mark Sarvas, a pioneer of literary blogging, takes a close look.
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By Eugene Robinson — Bush Derangement Syndrome is now a full-blown epidemic. George W. apparently has reduced more of his fellow citizens to sputtering rage than any other president since opinion polling began, with the possible exception of Nixon.
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More than seven months before Blackwater’s September killing spree, one of the company’s snipers shot and killed three Iraqi guards, who, witnesses said, never opened fire. A brief “investigation” by the State Department, which included no Iraqi witnesses or visits to the scene of the crime, found that the incident “fell within approved rules governing the use of force.”
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usafa.af.mil
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By David Antoon — Retired Air Force Col. David Antoon investigates the evangelical Christian takeover of the military, where proselytizing has become institutionalized and religious ideology threatens to supersede the values of the Constitution.
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849 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq this year, the deadliest for U.S. troops so far. While it’s true that the last couple of months have seen lower casualties than has been typical this year, those numbers cannot satisfactorily be explained by a more stable Iraq or some newfound love for Americans, and it would be grotesque to call the deaths of only 38 troops in October “good news.”
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The Pentagon is evaluating how it can streamline the process that allows recruits with criminal records to serve in the military. The proposed action is the latest in a series of cash bonuses and relaxed requirements that are meant to help the military cope with its recruitment problem. We can think of a much more effective measure to get young men and women to sign up for military service: End the war in Iraq.
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By Amy Goodman — U.S. attorney general nominee Judge Michael Mukasey admits waterboarding is repugnant, but refuses to say whether it amounts to torture. Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein voted for his confirmation anyway.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The strangest thing about John McCain’s campaign for president is that it’s supposed to be dead, but it isn’t. This is a real nuisance for his competitors.
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By Marie Cocco — In the beginning—back when most Americans believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, when Rumsfeld was known for his quick verbal jabs and not the quagmire in Iraq, and when Bush still could hope to be revered as a great wartime president—the women of Code Pink would stand quietly in front of the White House and hope someone would take their fliers.
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It looks as though Michael Mukasey is one step closer to becoming attorney general, having secured the support of Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer. Judiciary Committee Chairman (and former Truthdigger of the Week) Pat Leahy, on the other hand, plans to vote no, because “No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture.”
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nytimes.com
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President Bush issued an ultimatum of sorts on Thursday over his embattled nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, who refuses to say whether he considers waterboarding a form of torture. Bush said if the Democrats block the nomination, it “would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war.”
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nytimes.com
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By Todd Gitlin — Was the Bush administration’s fevered response to 9/11 made easier by primal American myths of victimization and fear, as Susan Faludi argues in her provocative new book?
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The Washington Post has obtained a number of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “snowflakes,” curt memos fired off at a rate of up to 60 a day. The documents offer rare, unpolished insight into one of the principal architects of the Iraq war, who “argued that Muslims avoid ‘physical labor’ and wrote of the need to ‘keep elevating the threat,’ ‘link Iraq to Iran’ and develop ‘bumper sticker statements’ to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.”
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By Joe Conason — In Rudolph Giuliani’s narrative of his own life, as confided to rapt Republican voters along the presidential primary trail, he has been fighting the lonely twilight struggle against “Islamic terrorism” since sometime in the 1970s.
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