No Exit

The Baker-Hamilton Report has come and gone. The Petraeus Report has come and gone. Nothing has changed. There is no exit. More to the point, there is no plan for an exit. Give credit to Cheney and Bush. They do what they please, and get away with it. They are blinkered and we are bamboozled. The ...

Buyers”€™ Remorse?

There was the latest issue of Avenue magazine on the desk in my Palm Beach hotel room last November. I have a soft spot for Avenue, ever since it published a short story of mine, back in 1983, entitled “Night of the Mariachis”, inspired by some all-night hijinks in Mexico City with a ...

The Smoking Gun

For all of you out there who think G.W. Bush deserves to be impeached—I’m with you, of course—we may now have the “smoking gun” which would force the Democrats in Congress to act, even if they do not want to. This is a matter of principle, not politics. I believe a ...

The Next War

The biggest scandal at the moment in Washington is a subset of the biggest scandal in Washington ongoing for decades. For the latter, read about it in the most important book on U.S. foreign policy in a long time, entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by professors Mearsheimer and Walt, ...

The Reemergence of Professors Mearsheimer and Walt

The venerable, highbrow publisher—Farrar, Straus and Giroux—is publishing the bombshell book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy this week. In a recent blog entry, “The Lobby Strikes”, Justin Raimondo gave us a heads-up on the book. You may have wondered, as I have, if ...

“€œChildish Unreason”€, Then and Now

It is rather late in the day, granted, but perhaps we can learn something from the track record of the British, especially from their mistakes. The British went everywhere, it seems, for various reasons, some good some bad, and created along the way the greatest empire the world has ever seen or ...

Investigate the Neocons

We urgently need an American Inspector Maigret to investigate who was behind the decision to invade Iraq. The invasion was entirely unnecessary, wanton and ruinous. On its face, it remains inexplicable. America and the world have a right to know who was responsible for it, and those responsible ...

The Avatar

In case anyone out there is wondering what the Avatar—that scary sculpture headlining this blog—is suppose to signify, I can tell you. It is a photo which I took of a plaque affixed to a wall on the second floor of the inner courtyard of the Ducal Palace in Venice. The purpose of the ...

Return of the “€œNeocon”€ Con Men

When it comes to right and wrong, let's throw out the labels "€œconservative"€ and "€œliberal"€. These terms have been denuded of meaning. Thanks to those pushy "€œneoconservatives"€ and their prominence in recent years, the average person is understandably confused as to what a ...

Uncle Cheney Liberates 50 Million People

I was visiting someone in the hospital last night, so I was forced to sit there and watch the Larry King interview with Richard Cheney. Normally, I don’t watch a speech or interview given by either Cheney or his marionette, G.W. First, it is infuriating. Second, it’s just a complete ...