[Correction: I stated in the following article that "Uranium, of course, cannot be 'transformed' into plutonium." In fact, radioactive isotopes can decay into other elements, which is what occurs when uranium isotopes become plutonium. I regret the error.] Iran, an op-ed in the The New York Times reported yesterday, began…
The debate over what to do about the crisis in Iraq has, on one hand, those who argue for immediate withdrawal and, on the other, those who argue, justification (or lack thereof) of the initial invasion aside, that the US must remain lest the country descend further into chaos. Among…
There is no great lack of ignorance about the religion of Islam in the United States. In a recent New York Times editorial, entitled “Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite”, Jeff Stein relates having asked intelligence and law enforcement officials, as well as members of Congress, what the…
When asked what the U.S. response would be the news that North Korea has detonated a nuclear device, President George W. Bush said that he would not use force because “diplomacy hasn’t run its course,” thus implying that he believes that the use of force should be a last resort.…
Thirty years ago today, a bomb exploded on a Cubana Airlines plane over the Caribbean Sea, resulting in the death of all 73 passengers on board. The anniversary of this terrorist attack “coincides with a critical juncture in the case of Luis Posada Carriles,” the Washington Post explains. Posada is wanted…
In The Washington Post’s October 2 article, “Iraq War Naysayers May Have Hindsight Bias,” author Shankar Vedantum asserts that “it isn’t quite true” that “we saw the disaster coming” in Iraq, with the “disaster” being a reference to the National Intelligence Estimate conclusion “that the war in Iraq was creating…
U.S. intelligence analysts, in a recent National Intelligence Estimate, have once again reiterated that “The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its…
During President Bush’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, he referred to the recent conflict in Lebanon, saying, a “group of extremists deliberately provoked a terrible conflict in Lebanon.” He was referring to the abduction of Israeli soldiers by Hamas and then again by Hezbollah. Irrelevant is the…
To commemorate the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, the New York Times published ten op-eds explaining what the US can do to ensure that such an attack doesn’t occur again. Much thought was clearly put into each of these astounding answers, and it must have been…
A principle obstacle to peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we are frequently told, is Palestinian rejection of Israel’s “right to exist”. Recently, for example, this matter has reared its head as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has called for a referendum calling for a “two-state solution” to the conflict, while…
The revision of the history of the Iraq war continues incessantly, undaunted by fact or reason, with the intelligentsia compliantly playing their role in the development and establishment of any number of popular myths. Peter Wehner’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “Revisionist History: Antiwar myths about Iraq,…
There’s no shortage of debate in the political arena. But examining critically the framework within which the debate on any particular issue is limited may be instructive. Take debate about U.S. foreign policy and, more specifically, war. Typically, the limits of the framework are defined by groups falling into a…
When Charlie Sheen called into The Alex Jones Show on the Genesis Communications radio network to express doubts about the official version of what happened on 9/11, he was, predictably, immediately attacked by a number of media pundits. The New York Post, for example, said that Sheen “has joined the…
The final report of the 9/11 Commission assured us that “To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks.” One might be inclined to think that the inability to track the money trail to the parties responsible for…
One of the principal claims propagated by government officials in making the case for war against Iraq was the threat of Saddam Hussein acquiring a nuclear weapon. The image of a “mushroom cloud” was repeatedly invoked by officials, frightening Americans who didn’t know any better into thinking that Saddam was…
Iraq, claimed the U.S. government, was a “threat” to the world because of its alleged possession of “weapons of mass destruction”. In order to explain that no WMD were found in Iraq after the invasion, the notion that there had been an “intelligence failure” has been widely propagated. But any…
Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst and a recipient of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. He is the founding editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com) and can also be found on the web at JeremyRHammond.com. His new book, "Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian economics in the financial crisis", is now available at Amazon.com.
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