war

Chafee for Senate

An R next to a politician’s name might as well be a scarlet letter in 2006. Voters have tired of Republican President George W. Bush for his ignorance of reality in Iraq and abuses of power at home. And Americans have soured on Republican custodians of Congress for lining their pockets with lobbyists’ bribes and concealing the depredations of individual congressmen. Because of these failings of national Republicans, the incumbent Republican Senator for Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, must win re-election …

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Neo-Containment for a Nuclear Iran

As anyone who has opened a newspaper or watched the news over the past few years knows, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been pursuing nuclear capability. Iran’s government insists its only goal is to develop nuclear power plants that would not threaten anyone. The United Nations, though, is concerned Iran might instead covet nuclear weapons. The United States is convinced that is the case. In any event, for an aggressive and fanatical theocracy such as Iran to research nuclear …

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The Rise of the Vulcans Paper

How did the members of President George W. Bush’s foreign policy team rise to power?  What events shaped their policy viewpoints and political worldviews?  James Mann, in The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, seeks to answer those questions.  He describes the careers of the six top “Vulcans”—officials who worked in the foreign policy apparatuses of past Republican presidents and returned under the latest Bush: Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and …

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Packaging the news for maximum crassness

Avid watchers of the news over the past decade will have noticed something: Media companies now package the news as they do TV programs, motion pictures, and DVD releases. Consider the coverage of Hurricane Katrina over the last few days. The news channels regaled their audiences with snazzy logos for the crisis. CNN even billed itself as “Your Hurricane Home” or “Your Hurricane Channel” or something like that. Or think about how the media handled the invasion of Iraq a …

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