Dispatches

Can't Get Enough of That Pound of Flesh
02.28.2006 06:00 | RUSS WELLEN
As stated in a previous Dispatch, in spite of poll results to the contrary, this correspondent remains unconvinced that the majority of Americans object to torture. Neither, he suspects, are they receptive to findings it's an ineffective approach to elici...

Finally, Evidence to Put 9/11 Conspiracy Theories to Rest (or Is It?)
02.25.2006 11:25 | RUSS WELLEN
The 9/ll Truth Movement would have us believe that the administration either LI- or MIHOPped* 9/11 to provide a pretext for its own twin towers: international and domestic policy. That's intervention and surveillance, respectively. We've all heard the...

Netting Dolphins Along with Tuna
02.21.2006 06:26 | RUSS WELLEN
A Zogby poll taken in early January revealed that 52% of Americans would like to see Congress weigh impeaching President Bush for authorizing NSA spying without a warrant. Like all polls, it comes with a margin of error, in this case, plus or minus 2.9...

Bush & Co.: A Steady Stream of Grist for the Humor Mill
02.17.2006 05:56 | RUSS WELLEN
In 1968 politics was the most exciting game in town. With the Vietnam War as a backdrop, the Democratic Convention was held in the midst of running riots. Mayor Richard Daley of host Chicago provided an object lesson in how to turn young Americans off to...

Bull in China Shop to Get Commemorative Plate?
02.13.2006 06:13 | RUSS WELLEN
According to Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder, State Department officials appointed by President Bush have replaced career experts on WMD and arms control with political appointees. "Among those who have left is the State Department's top authority on t...

How Are You Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the (Nuclear-Free) Farm?
02.10.2006 05:21 | RUSS WELLEN
Who are we to express outrage that Iran has procured designs and documents for constructing an atomic warhead on the nuclear black market? After all, wasn't it the US that underfunded securing loose Russian nukes while Al Qaeda may have been busy buying t...

Terror Tunnel
02.06.2006 06:06 | RUSS WELLEN
"Senior U.S. intelligence officers are concerned that the sophisticated 1.4 mile tunnel, complete with ventilation, electrical, and water systems, as well as cement flooring, that connects two warehouses on each side of the border, could have been used to...

When Corruption Was King
02.02.2006 06:10 | RUSS WELLEN
Oh, that would be now. "The scale of the scandals now coming to light, of which the Abramoff affair is just a part, dwarfs anything in living memory." -- From "A False Balance" by Paul Krugman, January 30 Squandered billions in Iraq, where, as post...

Filibuster or Bust
01.26.2006 07:28 | RUSS WELLEN
"Democrats break silence on Alito: Filibuster unlikely, frustration high" reads the title of a Raw Story article by John Byrne. "One aide said part of the problem is that Democratic senators haven't felt a groundswell of opposition from constituents. ....

They've Got to Do Something, Don't They?
01.24.2006 08:04 | RUSS WELLEN
The creator of the earth-as-Gaia theory, is reading us the riot act again: ". . . climate centres. . . which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition. . . . [It's] soon to pass into a morbid fe...

Give Me a Military Coup Any Day
01.20.2006 06:53 | RUSS WELLEN
On Thursday, January 19, The New York Times and The Washington Post published bookend columns. For the Times, James Webb, Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, weighed in [no link provided since op-ed page is subscribers only]; for the Post, columnist E.J. Dion...

Maybe We're Not as Violent as We Think We Are
01.17.2006 08:05 | RUSS WELLEN
First, just how war-like are Americans? Listen to Howard Zinn in his recent article, "After the War," in The Progressive: "There is a persistent argument. . . We will never do away with war because it comes out of human nature. The most compelling coun...

Whom the Gods Would Destroy. . .
01.12.2006 06:28 | RUSS WELLEN
. . . they first make mad with power, wrote historian Charles A. Beard. Meanwhile, in a recent TomDispatch, contemporary chronicler Tom Englehardt wrote: ". . . when critics concentrate on any specific issue or set of administration acts, no matter how...

Empathy, Sympathy--What's the Difference?
01.09.2006 07:25 | RUSS WELLEN
On New Years Day, President Bush visited troops at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. Apparently, former advisor Karen Hughes once clued him in on this empathy thing, which she remembered from a mandatory senstivity training course during h...

Abramoff Euphoria Already Deflated by Fears of Attack on Iran
01.05.2006 07:55 | RUSS WELLEN
Nobody can ruin your day like Wayne Madsen: "Intelligence and military sources in the United States and abroad are reporting on various factors that indicate a U.S. military hit on Iranian nuclear and military installations, that may involve tactical n...

A Slippery Slope
01.04.2006 06:57 | RUSS WELLEN
After reading Sidney Blumenthal's December 30 Guardian article, "Victory in Name Only," charting President Bush's reversal of fortune in 2005, one can't help but notice that his slide has been greased by words that begin with "S". From Schiavo to Social S...

So Much for Sources
01.02.2006 10:15 | RUSS WELLEN
As if the rulings against Judy-Judy-Judy Miller and Time Magazine's Matthew Cooper weren't enough to put a damper on the use of sources. Then along comes news that the administration ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on communications betw...

Just the Facts, Ma'am
12.30.2005 06:17 | RUSS WELLEN
Journalist Mark Bowden is non-PC to a T. Famous for writing Black Hawk Down, he also wrote an article collected in Road Work about our air assault on Afghanistan called "The Kabul-Ki Dance." It's nauseating three times over: The number of sorties flown...

Vote Smart, Not from the Heart
12.27.2005 13:23 | RUSS WELLEN
As detailed by Professor Ilya Somin in "When Ignorance Isn't Bliss: How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy," most people vote based on vague feelings about how life is treating them. (Though written for the faux-libertarian Cato Institute, his policy...

Constitutionally Incapable of a Constitution
12.23.2005 11:16 | RUSS WELLEN
One of Doug Thompson's beats at CapitolHillBlue.com is the president's psyche. He talked to three people present for a meeting Bush held last month with Republican Congressional leaders about renewing the Patriot Act. An aide informed him there was a vali...