Until the very moment when the White House announced Colin Powell’s resignation by “mutual” agreement, worried friends of the United States around the world hoped that the Secretary of State would somehow linger to argue for a realistic, multilateral foreign policy. Those friends knew that Mr. Powell was ineffectual in making those arguments more often Read More
Last month, The New York Sun celebrated its second anniversary. And the toddler daily broadsheet knows just what it wants for its birthday: $40 million.
In late March, the paper put forth a private-memorandum offering of 4,000 shares in its parent company, One SL L.L.C., at $10,000 per. Currently, The Sun is backed by $25.6 Read More
Plan of Attack , by Bob Woodward. Simon and Schuster, 468 pages, $28.
Welcome back, Mr. Woodward.
Your friends were worried that maybe “Deep Throat” or Judy Belushi or Bill Casey’s widow kidnapped you in some parking garage, hauled you off to a secret lab in Langley and implanted a chip in your noggin Read More
During the heady opening days, the coalition military effort in Iraq inspired a thunderous scramble among military officers, theorists and analysts to claim authorship of the planning and underlying strategic doctrine. But the clamor heard this week in military, academic and journalistic circles was very different: It was more like the panic of a collection Read More
The physical wounds have mostly healed; the psychic wounds are going to take a little longer. I’m talking about my recent annual ski trip out West with a few friends from college. Don’t get me wrong: I had a good time. I’m one of those wimps who prefers bright sunshine to fresh powder, and there Read More
Whatever anyone says about Osama bin Laden, they can’t call him unhelpful. (They obviously can’t call him “dead,” either.) Just when the Bush administration needs compelling reasons to justify war, he sends a new message to Arab television affirming Al Qaeda’s solidarity with the Iraqi regime against the United States. The President and his aides Read More
Bush at War, by Bob Woodward. Simon & Schuster, 376 pages, $28.
Bob Woodward’s new book, Bush at War, is a great read: For those who yearn to be a fly on the wall during National Security Council meetings, the book is full of detailed accounts of internal debates on the war in Afghanistan; and Read More
Let’s pretend for just a moment-against all previous knowledge of both speaker and subject-that Ari Fleischer’s denial on Sept. 2 of any internal rift over Iraq within the Bush administration might be accurate.
How could it possibly be that the Secretary of State, who urges the renewal of United Nations weapons inspections, and the Vice Read More
John Ashcroft comes before Congress on Dec. 6 to explain the legal strategies of the administration in the terror war. He will not have an easy time. He has been attacked by a range of critics from Senator Patrick Leahy to Representative Bob Barr for secretly detaining terror-related suspects since Sept. 11, and for asking Read More
Let us hope that Colin Powell has the courage to insist on
his convictions, even if that should result some day in his resignation as
Secretary of State. Although unnamed “White House aides” reassuringly insist
that the former general’s public disagreements with Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld are nothing worse than an early policy shakeout, Read More
