With Wednesday's post-election sacking of Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush showed once again that he's more concerned about managing the news cycle than America's national security. Facing the prospect of explaining away his party's "thumping" at the hands of the Democrats, Bush instead hoped to change the topic. The "blue wave" that swept the Republicans from […]

Once again, the Republicans have put partisan political advantage ahead of national security. And as the New York Times reports today, they may have just given Iran the recipe for a nuclear bomb as a result. As the Times article details, back in March conservatives desperate to salvage President Bush's debunked WMD rationale for the […]

With the looming midterm elections and the imminent report from James Baker's Iraq Study Group facing them like a double-barreled shotgun, Congressional Republicans are beginning to cut and run on President Bush's failed Iraq strategy. In recent days, Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and John Warner (R-VA) have garnered most of the attention with their critiques […]

This week's coup in Thailand highlighted once again the yawning chasm between rhetoric and reality when it comes to President Bush's clarion call for the global expansion of democracy. The tanks rolled in Bangkok at virtually the same moment the President lectured the United Nations about people "from Beirut to Baghdad" making "the choice for […]

On this the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the Department of Defense once again organized the "Freedom Walk" 9/11 commemorative march to the Pentagon. But as I wrote last year in "9/11 and the Culture of Grief," this and other ritualistic displays of grief and remembrance reflect the new mass cultural experience of […]

With this weekend's upcoming mockumentary "The Path to 9/11," Disney and ABC are breaking dangerous new ground in the conservative propaganda war. Even as the ABC network follows in the footsteps of Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ in "mobilizing the base," ABC News on Sunday declared Robert Greenwald's new documentary "Iraq for […]

This week's revelations surrounding the UK terror plot targeting U.S. bound airliners once again focused attention on the phenomenon of "homegrown terrorism." As with last year's 7/7 "Underground Bombers," the Heathrow suspects are virtually all British residents, with most UK citizens and many second-generation Pakistani immigrants. And just as in the aftermath of last November's […]

As the crisis in the Middle East spirals out of control, President Bush jumped into action on Friday. Not by taking control of Secretary of State Rice's failed talks in Rome or by announcing a major American initiative during his press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. No, Bush mobilized the White House to […]

For most watchers of the CIA, the return of Steven Kappes to Langley as the agency's number 2 man is a welcome development. Fluent in Farsi and Russian, the 23-year veteran of the clandestine service can bring a renewed focus on the CIA's core intelligence-gathering mission. Unfortunately, Kappes' return almost certainly signals the resumption of […]

In a bizarre Washington Post op-ed ("Surveillance We Can Live With") pitching his ill-conceived NSA eavesdropping compromise, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) shows all of the hallmarks of a man in the throes of severe cognitive dissonance. While essentially pronouncing the illegality of George Bush's illegal domestic surveillance program, he cannot bring himself […]