Editor’s note: We’ve offered many critiques of the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq. But what we like about the case advanced by the author Dilip Hiro is that he takes the administration at its word that the real motive behind the invasion was to seed democracy in the volatile Middle East and thereby increase […]

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On December 20, 1960, representatives from U.S. corporations with business interests in Cuba—including Exxon, ITT and Domino Sugar—met with then-CIA director Allen Dulles. The meeting was called, according to an agency history written in the late 1970s, so that Dulles could hear the executives’ grievances about Fidel Castro’s regime. Without hinting that the CIA was […]

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In the short space of five years, Americans have witnessed two major intelligence debacles: first, a sin of omission in 2001 (failure to detect and prevent the 9/11 attacks), followed by a sin of commission in 2002–03 (the estimate that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction). These failures produced four major investigations, two […]

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Reform Fatigue—“Reform” has been the buzzword in Washington this winter. Anxious lawmakers reacted with alarm to lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s guilty plea. Something needed to be done to silence the public outcry—the sooner the better. That something is turning out to be little more than nothing. Abramoff is temporarily off the front page. And every member […]

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At the beginning of January, Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX) announced that he would not attempt to return to his post as House majority leader. After being indicted by a Texas grand jury on money-laundering charges, DeLay had initially said he was stepping down only temporarily. Apparently his simultaneous involvement in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal […]

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