Common Dreams

With friends like Ahmad Chalabi, the United States doesn't need enemies. Chalabi is the Iraqi exile who now brags that his years of lobbying and coaxing American officialdom into war against Iraq have paid off.

If he's smart enough to use it, the Democratic nominee may have just been handed the perfect cudgel with which to pummel President Bush - and cripple Karl Rove's attempts to position his man as America's go-to guy on national security.

A group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisers to past Republican presidents, on Wednesday accused the Bush administration of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes.

The newspapers on December 30 reported that 477 American GIs had died in the war. But what is not usually reported is that for every death there are four or five men and women seriously wounded.

Consider what is taking place in our oceans. In 1960, only 5 percent of marine fisheries were classified as overfished or fished to capacity. Today, that number is estimated at 70 percent.

On April 23, 1971, a 27-year-old Navy veteran named John Kerry sat before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and chided members on their leadership failures regarding the war in Vietnam.

And Because of That, New Limits Don't Go Far Enough, Say Activists

37 Percent Strongly Want to See Him Re-Elected, 47 Percent Strongly Do Not, Kerry Leads Dems With 30 Percent; Edwards Follows at 13 Percent; Dean Slips, Even With Clark at 12 Percent, But a Large Majority (78%) Says That it is Very Likely (40%) or Somewhat Likely (38%) That he Will Get a Second Term

Thomas Friedman, the respected foreign affairs columnist for the respectable New York Times, announced recently that we are fighting World War III, a war of ideas. In his last four columns, he told us how to fight and win this war.

In an exclusive interview, repentant Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara breaks his silence on Iraq: The United States, he says, is making the same mistakes all over again

President George W. Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, virtually guaranteeing that the panel will have to complete its work by the end of May, officials said last week.

A strong case arguing the illegality of the invasion of Iraq will be handed soon to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

The United States has consistently valued military power more than the environment - but at what price?

Since the Dec. 23 announcement that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was traced to a cow in Washington state that has entered the U.S. meat supply, news sources have focused almost invariably on one question: How will this affect meat sales?

The Bush Administration began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks as has been previously reported.

When Sheldon Rampton and I wrote our 1997 book, "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?," it received favorable reviews from some interesting publications such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, New Scientist, and Chemical & Engineering News.

When it emerged that the Kurds had captured the Iraqi dictator, the US celebrations evaporated. David Pratt asks whether a secret political trade-off has been engineered

The USDA's much ballyhooed new measures to address the emergence of mad cow disease in the US are wholly inadequate.

The capture of Saddam Hussein and the announcement that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had agreed to open his country to weapons inspections demonstrated that ability of the occupant of the White House to generate positive and transformative news.

Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean Kean promises major revelations in public testimony beginning next month from top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, National Security Agency and, maybe, President Bush and former President Clinton.

The sons of Adam are limbs of one another having been created of one essence. When the calamity of time afflicts one limb, the other limbs cannot remain at rest... The Nobel Lecture given by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2003, Shirin Ebadi

President Bush is obsessed with the war on terrorism, especially with the military response to terrorism.

The peace plan signed in Geneva December 1 by leading Israeli and Palestinian political figures represents an important step forward.

Republicans had better worry. Angry people are motivated to get out to vote. If they can channel that anger into something constructive, they can literally upset the presidency.

The report's bleak tone and Bremer's private endorsement differ sharply with the upbeat public assessments that President Bush, his chief aides and Bremer are giving as part of an aggressive publicity campaign aimed at countering rising anxieties at home over increasing U.S. casualties in Iraq.

In the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib is a compound on an abandoned airstrip that once belonged to a state organization known as M-21, or the Special Operations Directorate of the Iraqi Intelligence Service... by Scott Ritter

There are great cultural, political and physical differences between Vietnam and Iraq that cannot be minimized, and the geopolitical situation is entirely different.

More than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years, according to a new study by the Center for Public Integrity.

More U.S. soldiers have died in combat in Iraq since May 1, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations, than died during main phase of the war, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

former Navy attorney who helped lead the military investigation of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 American servicemen says former President Lyndon Johnson and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, ordered that the inquiry conclude the incident was an accident.