Continuing on my quest to close enough browser tabs for my computer to regain some self-respect and nimbleness, here’s the second installment of stuff I either meant to write but never quite did, or did write but for some reason couldn’t bring myself to part with the web page I used for material. See here […]

When last we noted the Bush administration’s appalling record on national security, a few items fell through the cracks. The story was on the economic resurgence of opium in Afghanistan following the US invasion that drove the Taliban out of power and ended the group’s short-lived but astonishingly effective ban on opium poppy cultivation. Since […]

I haven’t paid much attention to Christopher Hitchens of late because, as prominent born-again wingnuts go, his value to the forces of darkness is much diminished. His latest Slate missive, though, in which he takes after the CIA for destroying the video of interrogations involving the torture of terrorism suspects and participating in the recently […]

This is shaping up to be the strangest and most brutal presidential election any of us are likely to see. That’s with luck: there may be worse ones down the line, but if so we’ll all be too busy gathering roots and berries to care.
It’s hard to see any Republican candidate coming out of […]

Yes, I think that yesterday we saw a potent manifestation of the contagion of our era, a mode of how to comport oneself with others that is modeled (MBA-style?) by Mr. Insolence-in-Chief himself. It had the stamp of a particularly neoconnish brand of disdainful arrogance. And it wasn’t coming from the upstart of […]

Okay, too much silence around here might not be as spooky as too much silence about Iran, but enough is enough.
In the latest follow-up to all the stage-setting documented already below here in Montfort’s post on the administration’s warmongering toward Iran from about three weeks back, this morning’s salon.com has a few […]

The latest signal came from George Bush, warning of a “nuclear holocaust” if Iran gets The Bomb (despite an IAEA report that Iran isn’t as much of a threat as Bush claims). There can’t be any more provocative words than “nuclear holocaust” to justify the purported prevention of one. Nor can there be any doubt […]

The Washington Post’s lead editorial today asserts that Tehran is supplying “sophisticated bombs” that are killing American soldiers in Iraq.
After President Bush made the same accusation last year, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace said, on March 14, 2006, that he had no proof that the Iranian government was responsible for such attacks.
This year, on […]

Hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear that Iran is supplying sophisticated IEDs — improvised explosive devices — to Iraqi insurgents. No one doubts that the Iranian government is perfectly willing to do whatever they think will advance their interests, including arming and otherwise supporting their allies in Iraq, but the story […]

U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice appears to have reverted to her Cold War roots with her announcement last month, in tandem with fellow cold warrior and US defense secretary Robert Gates, that the US intends to sell some $20 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab […]