contributions

The Honorable Christopher Shays Chairman Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations B-372 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515
Dear Mr. Chairman:
I am writing to request that the Subcommittee hold a hearing on the findings of the July 2004 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) prepared for President Bush by the National Intelligence Council.
As recent reports in the media have disclosed, the classified document is the first (…)

By Mark Steyn
The other day, the BBC interviewed Kofi Annan. Don’t ask me why. But, in the course of the programme, the United Nations Secretary-General said that the liberation of Iraq did not conform to the UN Charter and therefore was "illegal". The best response to that comes from George W Bush, after Gerhard Schroder made a similar point last year: "International law?" said the President. "I better call my lawyer. He didn’t bring that up to me."
As the Australian Prime Minister (…)

Recent upsurge in attacks against authorities and US forces has parallels, and differences, with past insurgencies.
By Brad Knickerbocker
War is never by the books. Adversaries learn and adapt. The political climate shifts on both sides. Loyalties and alliances couple and decouple. The civilian populace - caught in the crossfire - often remains passive just to survive.
To many experts, the conflict in Iraq has entered a new phase that resembles a classic guerrilla war with US forces (…)

By Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON - Leading members of President Bush’s Republican Party on Sunday criticized mistakes and "incompetence" in his Iraq policy and called for an urgent ground offensive to retake insurgent sanctuaries.
In appearances on news talk shows, Republican senators also urged Bush to be more open with the American public after the disclosure of a classified CIA report that gave a gloomy outlook for Iraq and raised the possibility of civil war.
"The fact is, we’re in (…)

President Bush warned on Saturday that deadly guerrilla violence in Iraq and Afghanistan could worsen in the coming weeks as the two countries move toward national elections.
But days before he was due to speak to the U.N. General Assembly, Bush used his weekly radio address to challenge international leaders to help the United States "create a safer world" in an effort of common security.
More than 200 Iraqis have been killed in recent days by bombings and other violence that have cast (…)

by Michael Saba
In Washington D.C. this week at the Arab policy-makers annual conference, sponsored by the National Council on US-Arab Relations, the mood was bleak. Almost none of the speakers and very few of the participants felt that anything positive would be happening in the immediate and near future regarding US-Arab and Mideast relations. Most complained that both major presidential candidates, Bush and Kerry, had the equation wrong and neither really understood what was going on in (…)

Film shows that when it comes to satire, Moore is not the only show in town
by Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
In the current US election season, Dickie Pilager’s website stands out as a model of clarity and vision. Here is the candidate standing before a view of the mountains and lakes of his native Colorado, extolling the virtues of the outdoor life. Here is the family man, praising family life and the American way. And here is the nitty-gritty of his campaign: his views on healthcare, (…)

By Jerry Mazza
In a letter to the editor of Atlantic Monthly, October 2004, Joseph M. Price, M.D. of Carsonville, Michigan, comments that James Fallows’ July/August Atlantic article on John Kerry’s debating skills ("When George Meets John"), "was interesting, but most remarkable was Fallows’s documentation of President [sic] Bush’s mostly overlooked changes over the past decade-specifically ’the striking decline in his sentence-by-sentence speaking skills.’" Dr. Price understands Fallows’ (…)

by Molly Ivins
Shouldn’t we understand our enemies in order to combat them?
AUSTIN, Texas — You open the paper and read the news from Iraq these days, and all you can say is, "Damn, damn, damn."
I’m flat out of ideas about how we can fix this, but I maybe see a couple of wrong roads we should give a miss. I was much struck by a column last week by David Brooks in The New York Times written in an understandable rage against the perpetrators of the school massacre at Beslan, Russia. (…)

The chickens are coming home to roost for the Bush administration; as the situation in Iraq turns from bad to worse, the president’s re-election chances are slipping away
By MICHAEL HARRIS
According to the latest Harris Poll (No. 66), the much-ballyhooed bounce for the president out of the recent Republican convention in New York has vanished. Ahead of Democratic rival John Kerry by 10 points as recently as June, President Bush now finds himself a point behind in the race for the White (…)