April 23, 2007

McCain v. Sa'di

I once admired Senator John McCain. We even appeared together 16 years ago on a national radio call-in show, just after I returned from my first trip to Iran. I...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 02:52 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

July 19, 2006

George Will vs. The Weekly Standard

In a wildly confused front-page Washington Post story today (19 July), Michael Abramowitz asserts that President Bush is "facing a new and swiftly building backlash on the right over his...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 04:58 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

October 31, 2005

Ledeen, Franklin, Rhode, SCIRI, Iranians in key pre-war meeting?

Nur al-Cubicle has an English translation today of yet another great piece from La Repubblica on the Italian angle to the planning of the US War on Iraq. Like the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:05 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

October 28, 2005

Libby indicted; administration battered

I work hard at not being a vengeful person, but I can't help being really delighted with the news that Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, has been...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:08 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

October 25, 2005

"Yellow-cake" from Niger: the Italian angle

Nur al-cubicle, a gifted linguist as well as dedicated blogger, has a lengthy post up that translates for us non-Italian-speaking lowlifes the first half of a lengthy piece in La...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:36 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

Cheney as Agnew?

NYT today: I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:56 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

October 20, 2005

Former Powell aide tells all (okay, "much")

Col. Larry Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, and had worked for Powell for many years before that, gave a blockbuster speech at the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:13 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

October 10, 2005

Rats and sinking ships

This important piece by Tim Phelps of Newsday highlights the disillusionment that three key, previous ultra-hawks-- Kanan Makiya, Rend Rahim (Francke), and Danielle Pletka-- are now expressing about the situation...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:13 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

August 11, 2005

George and Cindy

I guess practically every reader of JWN is well familiar by now with the campaign of that persistent and heroic woman, Cindy Sheehan. She's been camping outside GWB's vacation home...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:14 PM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

August 04, 2005

Rosen & Weissman indicted

Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, both former high-level employees of the powerful, strongarming pro-Israeli pressure group AIPAC, were both indicted in federal court today. The WaPo's Dan Eggen wrote that,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:39 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

July 29, 2005

More from Giraldi

The short article in which former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi wrote about Cheney/Pentagon contingency plans touse tactical nukes against Iran is now up on the American Conservative website. I'd written...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:26 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

July 26, 2005

'GWOT' ended (but not 'won')

Attention all enthusiastic participants in, and perpetuators of, the discourse of "terror"-- your one-time leader Donald Rumsfeld has now abandoned you! Writing in the NYT today, Eric Schmitt and Thom...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:48 AM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

July 13, 2005

Dougie admitting doubts now?

Douglas Feith, a longtime pro-Likud mole inside successive US administrations and one of the small coterie of neocons near the top of the Rumsfeld Pentagon who worked tirelessly to push...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:30 AM | Fulltext link (24 comments)

June 15, 2005

Starting with his own lovely daughters?

Oh, don't you love all those chickenhawks who just love to extol the military lifestyle-- but not for their own offspring? Latest one to join the club is Tom Friedman,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:58 AM | Fulltext link (42 comments)

June 12, 2005

A Hoagland classic

Jim Hoagland, MSM's war-drum-beater-in-chief in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq (on behalf of his trusted pal, A. Chalabi) seems to be running scared... He's writing in the WaPo...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:01 AM | Fulltext link (21 comments)

June 01, 2005

Bush completely AWOL?

You have to know a President is losing political capital rapidly when he finds himself at a public press conference-- as Bush did yesterday-- having to answer a question about...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:42 AM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

May 21, 2005

Newsflash! Newsweek never tortured anybody!

The way the White House wants us to 'think' about things, they want to blame Newsweek for all the anti-US riots that occurred in Muslim countries last week-- and you...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:35 PM | Fulltext link (31 comments)

May 19, 2005

Hoagland nears the end of his powers

Jim Hoagland of the WaPo, who was one of the main, most influential, and most insistent voices in the commentatoriat who goaded a (never-reluctant) Bush administration into the truly disastrous...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:16 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

May 18, 2005

The militarization of everything

In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Uzbekistan-- indeed, just about everywhere they lay its hands-- the Bush administration is showing us that it seems to understand only one faulty "logic": the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:21 AM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

April 01, 2005

Toothless Robb-Silberman report

Before last year's election, things were getting so bad in Iraq that the Bush administration was forced to commission two additional studies of "what went wrong?" The higher-level of these...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:32 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

March 21, 2005

Iraq burning, Nero(ponte) fiddling?

It is now 26 days since I wrote this about Iraq: It is 24 days already since the election. It took the authorities an inordinately long length of time to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:39 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

March 17, 2005

Mission accomplished?

So, Negroponte has today left Iraq. Mission accomplished? It depends what the mission was, of course. If it was to "lead" Iraq through a mockery of an election, leave the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:50 AM | Fulltext link (21 comments)

February 24, 2005

Rogue tentacles,now?

You think it's scary to have the United States occasionally barging around the world starting wars, defying international conventions, and generally acting like a rogue state? Well, how about this:...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:52 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

February 17, 2005

Bushies fixin' to fight Hizbullah

Steve Weisman has a piece in today's NYT about both the Bush administration's recent escalation of its campaign against the Lebanese party Hizbullah, and the difficulties it has encountered in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:22 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

December 17, 2004

Further American aggressions?

Asia Times Online's incomparable Pepe Escobar has a lengthy piece there today titled "Evildoers, here we come"... Evidently, that's a reference to how he sees the mindset of the GWB-2...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:31 PM | Fulltext link (34 comments)

December 12, 2004

A bountiful WaPo

Every so often the WaPo brings out an issue that's filled with great news (from the journalistic viewpoint that is, meaning "news stories that are well reported and well written")....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:28 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

November 25, 2004

Pentagon board trashes "public diplomacy" efforts

Today, the NYT published a story by Thom Shanker in which he wrote that, A harshly critical report by a Pentagon advisory panel says the United States is failing in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:22 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

November 24, 2004

Author of the Palestinian "democracy hurdle"?

Today's WaPo has an intriguing article by Dana Milbank in which he writes that just nine days after Bush's re-election he had a special meeting in the White House with...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:47 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

November 16, 2004

It's going to get worse. Much worse.

So you thought US foreign policy in Bush's first term was as bad as it could get?? Ha-ha-ha. Does Unca Dick Cheney have some surprises in store for you. Those...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:08 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

November 13, 2004

Disarray in US policymaking

The war against Fallujah is putting a lot of strain on the US forces inside Iraq. But at the same time, the bullying nature of the ideologically driven political appointees...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:03 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

November 04, 2004

Rumsfeld's massive "own goal"

There have been lots of reports that the "shock and awe" component of the Rumsfeld-Cheney invasion of Iraq last year was directed primarily not at the Iraqi people--who were merely...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:33 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

October 16, 2004

Scowcroft on W and Sharon

Brent Scowcroft, who was the first Pres. Bush's National Security advisor (and therefore Condi Rice's boss that time around) has weighed in again with publicly expressed views that directly challenge...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:32 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

September 28, 2004

'Mini-me': the proof

The WaPo's Dana Milbank presents the proof regarding the amazing feat of political/rhetorical cloning by which Iyad Allawi became Bush's very own 'Mini-me'. By the way, Juan Cole links to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:27 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

September 25, 2004

Robert Kaplan goes beserk

Robert Kaplan is an Atlantic Monthly writer who's been fairly influential over the years. His books about the Balkans and West Africa both painted a picture of a world "out...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:22 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

September 24, 2004

"That place"

So for Rumsfeld, Iraq today became "that place". As in: "Any implication that that place needs to be peaceful and perfect before we can reduce coalition and U.S. forces would...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:23 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

September 15, 2004

Escalations and excuses in Iraq

Regarding the development Sunday when US helicopters opened fire on (mainly or wholly civilian?) Iraqis in Baghdad, killing or injuring many of them, today Reuters' Ed Cropley from Baghdad filed...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:59 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

September 05, 2004

Thinking like Karl Rove

It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it... So okay, if I were Karl Rove, what would I need to have happen in Iraq before November 2? I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:21 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

September 01, 2004

Perle, the kleptocrat

Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:17 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

August 29, 2004

Larry Franklin Affair, contd.

Kudos to Laura Rozen of "War and Piece" for the interview she got in which wellknown international arms-and-snakeoil salesman Manouchar Ghorbanifar spoke (=bragged) about the number of meetings he's had...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:12 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

August 24, 2004

Schlesinger skewers mainly Sanchez

I have just started reading the Schlesinger report on US detainee operations. Its main thrust, in my reading is to skewer Lt.-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, until recently the commander of all...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:08 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

August 21, 2004

It's the policies, stupid!

More moaning and handwringing in Washington this week over the everywhere evident lack of success of the US government's campaign to "sell" the US to the hearts and minds of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:15 AM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

July 22, 2004

New neocon group gets egg on face

It was clearly meant to be an impressive launch... Tuesday, Senators Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl had an op-ed in the WaPo where they announced the launch of the third...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:05 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

June 27, 2004

Transition? What transition?

Update note, Monday a.m.-- I wrote the following Sunday evening, before news came in that they'd brought the transition 'ceremony' forward. Most of the post still stands, except that where...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:02 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

June 04, 2004

Gelb on Tenet resignation

I cruised around the 'net a bit to check out speculation etc about Tenet's resignation. Actually, the most interesting thing I found came from that very well-connected old fox, Les...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:36 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

June 03, 2004

Tenet resigning--who's next?

I'm in Ontario. I see there's lots of speculation about why George Tenet resigned. Of course, there are many reasons he should have resigned, at many points along the way--...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:45 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

June 02, 2004

U.S. military pressgangs at work

The strain imposed on U.S. military planners by the total failure to do decent follow-up ('Phase 4') planning for either Iraq or Afghanisatn continues to grow. Today, the NYT carried...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:49 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

May 29, 2004

In Bernard Lewis-land meanwhile...

Responding to my recent post on Fouad Ajami, commenter John Koch asked the excellent question: Why pick on the humbled Ajami when, week by week, Lewis makes bold assertions and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:32 PM | Fulltext link (29 comments)

May 26, 2004

Fouad Ajami's mea not-quite-culpa

I admit it. There is a certain delicate pleasure to be had by parsing the terms in which one-time supporters of--and even cheerleaders for--Bush's quite optional invasion of Iraq have...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:39 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

May 21, 2004

Beware of chaos--and the wounded neocon tiger

Just how deeply has the U.S. national-security establishment (and therefore, its ability to make rational decisions on national-security issues) been damaged by the accelerating confusion marking the conduct of its...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:34 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

May 15, 2004

Hersh on background to Abu Ghraib

Sy Hersh has yet another blockbuster piece on the Iraqi torture issue in the upcoming (May 24) issue of the New Yorker. This one details the institutional background, within the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:32 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

May 14, 2004

Escaping from 'terrorism'

The whole Bushite discourse of the US being involved in a "Global War on Terror" is, it seems to me, not only misleading but actually inimical to the best interests...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:03 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

May 05, 2004

Breakdown of U.S. Mideast policymaking

The abuse of prisoners that has started to be revealed in the U.S. detention center in Abu Ghraib is quite disgusting to contemplate. I have tried to imagine the broader...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:29 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

April 14, 2004

Bush and 'civilization'

Ah, you're saying, why is Helena wittering on about the Golden Dunce's Cap when there have been so many other important things going on? Well okay, be patient, I'll get...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:26 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

April 04, 2004

The 'threat that dare not speak its name'

Alert JWN readers will recall that I wrote here just a couple weeks ago about ambitious Charlottesville hometown boy Phil Zelikow, who's the Exec Director of the 9/11 Commission. (And...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:51 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

April 03, 2004

Beware, language twisters at work

The Bushies have distorted and twisted the meaning of so many of the words of our fine English language that it might seem irrational of me to take note of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:30 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

April 01, 2004

Contractors in Iraq: the convergence

This use by the U.S. military of private U.S. contractors for security duty in Iraq is something fairly new and very unsettling in international affairs and international law. I mean,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:58 PM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

March 21, 2004

Zelikow's commission to interrogate-- Zelikow!

And talking of hometown Charlottesville news, here was ambitious hometown boy Philip D. Zelikow in a front-page story in the New York Times yesterday. Zelikow-- in addition to being the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:38 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

January 26, 2004

Emperors, clothes, and David Kay on intelligence

I read and re-read James Risen's interview with David Kay in the NYT today. Kay comes across as a thoughtful person, no patsy by any means; someone who seems prepared...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:55 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

January 13, 2004

Inflating perceptions of 'threat'

I've just finished a quick scroll through strategic expert Jeffrey Record's riveting and controversial study, "Bounding the Global War on Terrorism". I found it meticulously written and carefully argued. It...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:39 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

December 01, 2003

A globalized 'Manifest Destiny'

Buried down at the bottom of the long post I put up here yesterday, "Sistani speaks" were some slightly derogatory comments on something my old buddy Tom Friedman put in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:24 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

October 26, 2003

Iraq Survey Found NO Nuclear Threat

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that David Kay's Iraq Survey Group found--contrary to what Kay said in public or told the US Congress-- that "it is now clear...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:34 PM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

October 24, 2003

Bombs-Away Don and the G.O.P. Senators

Washington Post and NYT both full of great stories today. One in the NYT gave me particular pleasure. It's Douglas Jehl and David Firestone's piece about how even some of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:13 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

October 20, 2003

"Shock & Awe", six months on

Yesterday, Al-Hayat published a column I wrote earlier this month titled Six Months after the fall of Baghdad. I wrote it in a tremendous hurry, but it still seems to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:38 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

October 17, 2003

Funding the occupation of Iraq

The US House and Senate this evening passed different versions of the bills the White House had sent them, authorizing the funding of the US occupation of Iraq (and US...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:33 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

September 23, 2003

The Pentagon, Chalabi, and the cheerleaders

Regular readers of JWN may have noticed that I'm not the biggest fan of Ahmed Chalabi. Still, I admit there's something just a touch delightful about seeing him use all...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:38 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

Excavating the pre-9/11 record

From John Pilger via the Sydney Morning Herald via this post on Juan Cole's blog comes a useful reminder that we should look at what Bush administration heavies were saying...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:14 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

September 10, 2003

"What Bush left out..."

Here is the link to my CSM column, out in Thursday's edition of the paper. Buried inside there you'll see a proposal for a big personnel change. Eagle-eyed readers of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:54 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 08, 2003

Bush (speech) notes

Reactions to Sunday night's speech: (1) Back to the scared-deer look. Makes you sorry for the guy. (2) Notably peevish and ungracious toward the UN. UN has "an opportunity, and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:07 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 04, 2003

Setbacks for the monarchs of spin

Lots happening that I've been wanting to blog about. First, a good discussion about the utility of war developing on the Comments board under the next post down: check it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:16 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

August 06, 2003

Gullible Westerners, then and now

I have written here before about Ahmad ("You can't blame me for trying") Chalabi and the way this convicted fraudster was so easily able to put one over on Bush...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:49 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

July 12, 2003

More on Chalabi, Feith, Perle

So at last, administration insiders are starting to talk openly about how it was Douglas Feith and Richard Perle's insistence on installing pro-Israeli con-man Ahmed Chalabi in power in Baghdad...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:20 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

July 10, 2003

CSM column on US policy in Iraq

So, my CSM column on US policy in Iraq came out today. The lead graf is: The US intervention in Iraq, which was earlier sold to the US public as...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:26 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

June 03, 2003

THE 'CON' IN 'NEO-CON':

THE 'CON' IN 'NEO-CON': I was just re-reading (and correcting a typo or two in) yesterday's post about Chalabi. And it came to me with the proverbial blinding flash! Now...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:07 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

April 24, 2003

EARTH TO ARI FLEISCHER:

EARTH TO ARI FLEISCHER: Fleischer, I just saw, was warning everyone that Öutsiders had better stay out of the process of building democracy in Iraq." How's that again?...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:57 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

April 16, 2003

RICHARD PERLE, VIEWED FROM AFRICA:

RICHARD PERLE, VIEWED FROM AFRICA: Sitting around waiting in the the ICTR press office earlier this week, I pisked up a copy of The East African. UN Public Affairs Officer...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:14 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 27, 2003

BILL SAFIRE GOES BESERK

BILL SAFIRE GOES BESERK: I think that at heart of the present (and impending) imbroglio in Iraq lies not only a profound moral/ethical miscalculation-- to the effect that problems can...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:53 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

March 18, 2003

BUSH CONVERTS TO KEYNESIANISM-- JUST

BUSH CONVERTS TO KEYNESIANISM-- JUST NOT FOR DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION? Among the many unseemly and downright scandalous aspects of this war (which I need not list here), one of the most...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:22 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)