Ivan Eland
Three seemingly unrelated recent events highlight the imperial nature of the Bush administration's foreign policy: U.S. F-16 sales to Pakistan, the creation of an office in the State Department to plan for future U.S military interventions in developing nations and the indefinite detention in Guantanamo prison of a German man held on the basis of secret evidence that even U.S. intelligence disputes... [more]
The Missile Defense Agency has spent $80 billion since 1985 and has very little to show for it. Over the next five years, the U.S. government will dump another $50 billion into missile defense programs. Yet rogue states probably will be able to come up with cheap countermeasures to foil costly defensive systems. [more]
The only way to find and eliminate Iranian nuclear weapons using military action would be to launch a full-scale invasion of Iran. If the Bush administration even began to contemplate this course of action, however, the U.S. military would probably be near open revolt. Invading Iran would likely make the bloody quagmire in Iraq look like a picnic. [more]
The Federal Court (Bundesgerichtshof) in Karlsruhe is obliged to accept the case filed by the American-based Center for Consitutional Rights (CCR) [against Rumsfeld], a legal group renowned for their spirited defense of the Guantanamo-detainees and representation of soldiers victimized by "stop-loss" policies, because of a law passed in 2002 in Germany stipluating that War Crimes can be tried in Germany regardless of whether the case involves a German citizen or resident. Whether Rumsfeld will be able to weather this and other storms may have less to do with the letter of law, however, than with the strength of his persona. [more]
Unfortunately, Iraq is then likely to descend into chaos and civil war. So despite Bush administration boasting of killing 1,200 guerrillas in Falluja, the future of Iraq looks grim indeed. [more]
Any U.S.-brokered Israeli settlement reached with Abbas and Qurei would lack widespread legitimacy among Palestinians and would thus be only a paper agreement. [more]
Many intelligence personnel have leaked embarrassing—and accurate—information to the media about the Bush administration’s missteps in Iraq. Now it’s payback time from the White House. [more]
Probably even worse than the lives lost in vain in the Iraq War is the modern imperial presidency’s ability, using the excessive media coverage accorded to it, to sell the public on an unnecessarily broad “war on terror,” including the aggressive invasion of a sovereign country. [more]
Many Americans, like the citizens of dominant nations of the past, believe that their way of life is superior and should be shared with other peoples—often at gunpoint. [more]
Over the years, according to the New York Times, the U.S. government has spent a whopping $130 billion on missile defense but still has no genuinely effective system to fulfill Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars fantasy. The desire on the right to deify Reagan and preserve his legacy has made support for missile defense a litmus test issue—even though it has little to do with national security. [more]
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(Reuters, Dec 18)
"Federal prison officers in Brooklyn physically and verbally abused immigrants detained after the Sept. 11 attacks, slamming them against the wall and painfully twisting their arms and hands, the U.S. Justice Department's inspector general said on Thursday." [more]
(STAFF, DEBKAfile, Dec 14)
"Saddam was seized, possibly with the connivance of his own men, and held in that hole in Adwar for three weeks or more, which would have accounted for his appearance and condition. Meanwhile, his captors bargained for the $25m prize the Americans promised for information leading to his capture alive or dead." [more]
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