Jun 2, 2009

To Obama and others of his ilk: Quit now!

MIAMI — We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through. ...

Sep 25, 2007

Ugly truth of antiwar lefties

NEW YORK — Although its appearance in The Nation guaranteed it would receive scant notice, a July 30 essay by Alexander Cockburn was one of the first to seriously address the most troubling internal contradiction of the anti-Iraq War left. War, everyone knows, is ...

Aug 28, 2007

America's dirty little victory

NEW YORK — “Just about everyone agrees that the recent conviction of Abdullah al-Muhajir, aka Jose Padilla, is a good thing,” wrote rightwing pundit Neil Kressel in The New York Post. Indeed, just about everyone did. “It is hard to disagree with the jury’s ...

May 6, 2007

George Tenet's worst ever career choice

DETROIT — Four years late and half a trillion dollars short. Why didn’t George Tenet tell us this stuff when it mattered — before we invaded Iraq? Tenet could have been a hero. He could have changed history. Imagine the scenario: It’s Jan. 18, ...

Apr 18, 2006

No wonder Chavez makes Bush uneasy

NEW YORK — When the hated despots of nations like Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan loot their countries’ treasuries, transfer their oil wealth to personal Swiss bank accounts and use the rest to finance (in the House of Saud’s case) terrorist extremists, American politicians praise ...

Dec 6, 2005

Bush should do the right thing, and quit

NEW YORK — By August 2003, California Gov. Gray Davis’ approval rating had plunged to 22 percent. Two months later, he lost a special recall election. Now it’s President George W. Bush’s turn to take a drubbing. The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finds that ...

Jun 16, 2003

They impeach murderers, don't they?

NEW YORK — U.S. President George W. Bush told us that Iraq and al-Qaeda were working together. They weren’t. He repeatedly implied that Iraq had had something to do with 9/11. It hadn’t. He claimed to have proof that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ...

Nov 3, 2002

Bush's legacy of cynicism and contempt

U.S. President George W. Bush and his henchmen stole the presidency. They threw thousands of innocent people into prison without even charging them with a crime. They’re gearing up to invade Iraq without bothering to come up with a substantial justification. Now some Democrats ...

Jun 23, 2002

Time for redesigning tacky U.S. images

WASHINGTON — This will, for obvious reasons, be the biggest Fourth of July ever. People who tally such things predict record numbers of flag displays, cookouts and youthful fingers blown off by cherry bombs. Expressions of gung-ho patriotic sentimentality are selling briskly, from Royal ...

May 12, 2002

Voter alienation feeds Le Pen's success

NEW YORK — On May 5, I voted for a rightwinger. It was my first time, and with any luck it will be my last. I really didn’t have much choice. Born in the United States of a French parent, I enjoy dual nationality ...

May 5, 2002

Why it must be Bush vs. Gore in 2004

NEW YORK — It is impossible to overstate the importance of tossing U.S. President George W. Bush back onto the unemployment lines in 2004. His illegitimate presidency isn’t even half-over, yet Bush’s disreputable Cabinet of tin-pot gangsters has already succeeded in causing irreparable harm ...

Nov 10, 2001

Brace yourself for the new McCarthyism

NEW YORK — According to The Wall Street Journal I’m “probably the most bitterly anti-American commentator in America.” The National Review calls me “a big fat zero, an ignorant, talentless hack with a flair for recycling leftist pieties into snarky cartoons that inspired breakfast-table ...