Anti-War.com

Excerpt: I had given up on finding an American with a moral conscience and the courage to go with it and was on the verge of retiring my keyboard when I met the Rev. Thomas L. Are.

Excerpt: As any military historian will testify, among the most difficult of maneuvers is the strategic retreat. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, Lee's retreat to Appomattox and MacArthur's retreat from the Yalu come to mind. The British Empire abandoned India in 1947 -- and a Muslim-Hindu bloodbath ensued.

Excerpt: Politics is a spectator sport, akin to baseball or football, but with far greater consequences for the rest of us. After all, no matter how much one despises the New York Yankees, it doesn't really matter much if they win the "World" (too bad the rest of the world isn't actually invited to play!) Series. In contrast, if the Republicans win the White House in November, we could be at war with a half dozen countries by next spring. If the Democrats triumph, we might be paying more in taxes and sitting in gas lines by the same time.

Excerpt: Instead of moving toward accommodating the demand of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for a timetable for US military withdrawal, the George W. Bush administration and the US military leadership are continuing to pressure their erstwhile client regime to bow to the US demand for a long-term military presence in the country.

Excerpt: On 12 July, The Times of London devoted two pages to Afghanistan. It was mostly a complaint about the heat. The reporter, Magnus Linklater, described in detail his discomfort and how he had needed to be sprayed with iced water. He also described the "high drama" and "meticulously practiced routine" of evacuating another overheated journalist. For his US Marine rescuers, wrote Linklater, "saving a life took precedence over [their] security." Alongside this was a report whose final paragraph offered the only mention that "47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday."

Excerpt: One thing I hate about the Fourth Estate, and our culture in general, is the very short attention span that traps us in the present. No one remembers anything. Everything is now, now, now. There is no follow-up: stories aren't developed so much as they are announced, and then shoved down the Memory Hole. The result is that the general public, as well as the media, is suffering from a collective form of Alzheimer's. Ah, but here at Antiwar.com we live by a different standard, one that recalls the old-fashioned reportorial style of the sixties and seventies, long before the conflation of news and what passes for entertainment these days.

Excerpt: Iraq continues to be relatively quiet with few reports of violence coming out of the war-torn country today. At least eight Iraqis were killed and nine more were wounded in the latest attacks. No Coalition deaths were reported, but. Meanwhile, Turkey targeted PKK locations in northern Iraq, but the number of casualties there is unknown.

Excerpt: As the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approaches, the world continues to face a litany of nuclear concerns. There is the failure to safeguard all the nuclear material lying loose around the globe. And proponents of nuclear power have gained ground as a result of the current energy crisis.

Excerpt: A one-line communique from the office of the Serbian president flashed across the world on Monday: Radovan Karadzic, wartime leader of the Serbs in Bosnia, was arrested in Belgrade. He is wanted by the Hague Inquisition for allegedly masterminding the Bosnian War, the siege of Sarajevo, and the "genocide" in Srebrenica -- in effect, for being the president of the Bosnian Serb Republic during the war, and therefore responsible for everything that (allegedly) took place during the conflict. For the past twelve years, Karadzic had disappeared from sight; as it turned out, he lived in Belgrade under an assumed identity and practiced alternative medicine.

Excerpt: In a few short weeks the party Beijing has been preparing for the last eight years will finally kick off, and the government's disconnect with the people attending the party is growing ever deeper.

Excerpt: BAGHDAD -- Welcomed at first after the US-led invasion in 2003, most NGOs have run into skepticism and mistrust. Few remain to help.

Excerpt: In the name of "global war on terror," the US government is waging war on non-governmental organization by applying "shortsighted, undemocratic policies" that are "constraining the critical activities of the charitable and philanthropic sectors, stifling free speech, and ultimately impeding the fight against terrorism."

Excerpt: As predicted President Talabani rejected a controversial elections law. This will likely delay provincial elections until next year. Today's light violence was marked by a significant amount of arrests. Overall, at least four Iraqis were killed and five more were wounded. Also, $3 billion has been set aside to rebuild Baghdad.

Excerpt: Civil liberties advocates have lost no time in asking a federal court to stop the government from conducting surveillance under the new wiretapping law passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush last week.

Excerpt: Barack Obama and John McCain are currently engaged in a bidding war to see who can promise more troops in Afghanistan.

Excerpt: Iran's provocative missile tests 10 days ago again fueled the debate on the likelihood of aerial strikes against Iran.

Excerpt: Two of Washington's most prominent foreign policy graybeards praised Saturday's direct participation in multinational talks with Iran by a senior U.S. diplomat but called on the administration of President George W. Bush to drop his demands that Tehran freeze its uranium enrichment program as a precondition for broader negotiations.

Excerpt: Now that Barack Obama has pulled the rug out from under John McCain's "victory or death" campaign theme, with the invaluable assistance of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, he's preparing the way for a surge of his own: an Afghan surge, to be precise.

Excerpt: Updated at 3:35 p.m. EDT, July 22, 2008 Tuesday has been unusually quiet, with very little news about violent attacks coming out of the country. At least nine Iraqis were killed and 25 were wounded. In political news, parliament passed an election meant to allow elections to occur later in the year; however, the law is not likely to survive. Also, four U.S. soldiers were charged with conspiracy to commit murder in relation to suspicious detainee deaths last year, and over 100,000 detainees have been released through an amnesty law.

Excerpt: Why are Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry, and Sam Nunn writing opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons?