Common Dreams

Last month, the U.S. Army announced 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty after charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners.

Recently, Karen Hughes, one of Bush's advisors, linked those of us who are pro-choice with the terrorists. In an interview with CNN, Hughes said that since 9/11 people value life more, unlike the terrorists who don't value life, their own or lives of the unborn.

It is a cruel irony that countries around the world that suffer from some of the highest rates of poverty, disease, corruption, violent conflict and human rights troubles are also - at least on paper - some of the richest

The recent battles in Fallujah brought this report from Amnesty International: "Half of at least 600 people who died in the recent fighting between Coalition forces and insurgents in Fallujah are said to have been civilians, many of them women and children."

A virtual cottage industry has sprung up comparing Iraq with Vietnam. And well that it should. Vietnam cost the lives of not only 58,000 Americans but of three million Vietnamese. Neither the US nor the Iraqi people nor the world need another such horror.

There are 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Nearly 700 American troops have died since the beginning of the war. As of Friday, 493 had been killed by hostile fire.

After a year of fighting in Iraq and an occupation fraught with violence, surely it is not rash to suggest, given the debacle over missing "weapons of mass destruction," that it is a good general rule to treat any official rationale for war with skepticism.

Fallujah is a bit like southern California. On the edge of Iraq's western desert, it is extremely arid but has been rendered into an agricultural area by extensive irrigation. Surrounded by dirt-poor villages, Fallujah is perhaps marginally better off.

White House maintains business-as-usual facade

President Bush invaded Iraq hoping to spread democracy across the Middle East, but after the worst week of violence since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, he's now struggling to avoid a costly, humiliating defeat.

Operation Resolute Sword. That's what the U.S. military in Iraq is calling its effort to crush rebellious Shi'ite forces. Osama bin Laden could not have chosen a more inflammatory name.

US National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice listens to a question during testimony before the 9/11 commission in the Hart Senate office building in Washington April 8, 2004.

During the past weekend, the death toll among America's military personnel in Iraq topped 600 -- including as many as 20 American soldiers killed in one three-day period of fierce fighting. Many of the dead, most perhaps, were mere youngsters, just starting out on the great adventure of life.

Revolutionary violence engulfs Iraq. By Bassem Mroue and Abdul-Qader Saadi.

Lady Olivia was on the phone from Washington. And Sam Seder, a nighttime host on Air America Radio, the fledgling liberal talk-radio network, had a question about the clientele of his guest, who identified herself as a dominatrix.

Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from this 2-mile-high station atop a Hawaiian volcano.

Step 1: Look in the Mirror

Still angered by the death of Rachel Corrie, a U.S. peace activist who was run over and crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer, peace campaigners here are urging U.S. legislators to investigate the death of the 23-year-old activist.

On March 20, the one-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, opponents of the war and the ongoing occupation will stage protests and memorials in countries across the globe. The actions will recall the massive demonstrations that took place before the war.

The internet is again buzzing with talk of protest. The targets are many in 2004: the Democratic convention in Boston in July; the Republican convention in New York City in September; the Group of 8 industrialized countries meeting off the coast of Georgia in June.

Ten years after the ratification of a United Nations treaty on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming are still on the rise, signaling a "collective failure" of the industrialized world, according to the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI), a leading envir

Politicians who spark a culture war for the sake of their own power are playing with fire, and journalists who exploit a culture war for the sake of its unleashed furies are throwing gasoline on the flames.

It was never a question of whether, but of how President Bush would use the graveyards of Sept. 11 to season his re-election campaign. The question was just answered: By eroticizing the dead of that fateful day and using the flag as their g-string.

They were living under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the weight of onerous UN sanctions and living in fear of impending war. This year, Saddam Hussein is gone and sanctions have been lifted. But Iraqi women face a brand new set of burdens.

"No one wants drugs or plastics in our corn flakes"

The Bush reelection campaign yesterday unveiled its first three campaign commercials showcasing Ground Zero images, angering some 9/11 families who accused President Bush of exploiting the tragedy for political advantage.

If the circumstances were not so calamitous, the American-orchestrated removal of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti would be farcical.

We still don't know the exact circumstances of President Aristide's departure from Haiti last Sunday. Aristide, as well as some members of the U.S. Congress, call it a kidnapping. The Bush Administration denies these charges.

First county in U.S. to bar gene-altered farming

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig tells the story of a South American Indian tribe that has devised an ingenious monkey trap.