Tag Archives: Iraq

Follow-Up Questions

Before the New Hampshire primary, John McCain had his now-famous colloquy with a voter in which he said he doesn’t care if American troops are in Iraq for 100 years, provided those troops are not getting killed or wounded. There are a number of Republicans running around now, saying Mr. McCain never said that, but […]

Blood and Treasure

Less than a week later, Adrienne and I headed back out for the vigil. The half-dozen senior citizens and nuns who have been there every day for nearly seven years were happy to have us back, even if it meant one of our infrequent thresholds – in this case, the 4,000th American death in Iraq […]

Tet Again?

Happy New Year. Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Tet, short for Tet Nguyen Dan, is the Vietnamese new year. Based on a lunar calendar, Tet will begin on 7 February this year. I’ve been thinking about the Tet Offensive because 1968 was an election year. The […]

Fortunes of War

Conventional wisdom holds that today’s Republican primary in Florida will narrow the race to two candidates – John McCain and Mitt Romney. Further wisdom from the convention holds that next Tuesday’s multiple primaries will determine which of the two men will receive the nomination. I won’t disagree with that wisdom, whether or not it proves […]

Surged or Scourged?

Six to nine months after the surge in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, violence is down, or at least we’re told violence is down. How would we know, really? Pentagon press releases? The mainstream media? Last week’s issue of the New Yorker has a piece on the surge by Jon Lee Anderson, in which he […]

The Iraq Double Standard

The Associated Press reports today that its award-winning Iraqi photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been held without charges by the U.S. military for 19 months, will finally be brought to trial. In the year and a half Mr. Hussein has been jailed, the Pentagon has changed its story several times, all the while making vague […]

Weird Little Gift for America

The autumn afternoons are ripe and warm; the mornings are heavy with dew that is not yet frost, but soon. It’s the annual nostalgia for the summer passed and anxiety for the winter to be endured. I was staring through the window at the blaze orange of a sugar maple the other day, caught up […]