Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi is ill and is seeking a way to flee the country, according to the Arabic news site Albawaba.com. This report is plausible if only because Qaddafi’s performance on Sunday, in which he released a jumbled and mostly inaudible speech to state media for broadcast, raised questions as to whether he is […]
Archives for August 2011
Historical Question for Governor Perry
Dear Rick Perry: I am a historian and if you will indulge me, I’d just like to ask you a question about historical parallels. So if we were living in Germany’s Weimar Republiic and it was 1930, and a politician warned a central banker that his policies were treasonous to the nation, and threatened to […]
Tripoli Surrounded, Cut Off
Aljazeera Arabic is reporting directly from Zawiya (to the west of Tripoli along the Mediterranean), where Free Libya forces have liberated some 80 percent of the city, all but the eastern areas and the refinery. People in most of Zawiya look pretty happy about the end of their ordeal. Stories are coming out about arbitrary […]
President Bachmann as Mideast Prophet: Cole/ Truthdig
My column in Truthdig is now out, “President Bachmann: Another Mideast Messiah” Excerpt: “Bachmann recently alleged that Iran had been “delivered a nuclear warhead” (this assertion, like many of Bachmann’s bromides, is simply untrue). That Bachmann would be a hawk on Iran, favoring at least covert intervention, probably via the MEK, and perhaps even military […]
Iraq Bombings unlikely to Change Minds on US Troop Withdrawal
Some 80 people were killed and over two hundred wounded on Monday in a clearly coordinated set of bombings and attacks in 17 Iraqi cities. The prime suspect is radicalized Sunni Arabs who are typically called “al-Qaeda” in Iraq even though they likely have little connection to the original. The biggest toll came from two […]
Rebels Advance, Surround Tripoli, as Qaddafi Totters
The long slow slog of the Libyan struggle to throw off the rule of Muammar Qaddafi, accelerated this weekend, possibly decisively, with rebel forces making major advances. Tripoli was said to be ready to embrace the rebel youth when they came into the capital. Free Libya forces made substantial advances over the weekend, coming up […]
Rick Perry and the Hucksterism of the Rich
Rick Perry’s announcement of his presidential ambitions marks the triumph of fantasy over reality in American politics. Among our more pressing problems are global climate change caused by human production of greenhouse gases; religious fanaticism and interference in governance; and the structural deficit faced by the US government It used to be that political divisions […]
Iraq declines to Cut Syria Off
As Syria passed another bloody Friday of protests, Arab journalists and now the New York Times are noting that the Iraqi government of PM Nouri al-Maliki has declined to withdraw its ambassador from Damascus or to put any significant pressure on Syria with regard to the suppression of protests. The NYT speculates that Baghdad has […]
Paul, Santorum and the Sixth War (on Iran)
One of the places foreign policy emerged in the GOP Iowa debate last night was an exchange between Ron Paul and Rick Santorum on Iran, as right wing analyst Thomas R. Eddlem has explained in detail. Chris Wallace of Fox News asked libertarian Rep. Ron Paul why he was soft on Iran and opposed economic […]
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