Author Archives: Team VCS

US Has End in Sight on Iraq Rebuilding

The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which … Continue reading

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Iraqi Civil War? Some Experts Say It’s Arrived

Fourteen members of a Shiite Muslim family are slaughtered in their home. Days later, masked gunmen invade a Sunni Arab household, killing five people. Organized political killing proceeds, as if there had not been elections two weeks ago. In a … Continue reading

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Beyond “Democratic Peace”

As the joyous display of purple fingers in Iraq again attests, the national struggle for democracy is a moral good and, if it succeeds, a human triumph. But it is not by itself a victory for American national security. We … Continue reading

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Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor, Anti-Terror Effort Continues to Grow

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at … Continue reading

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Scholar Stands by Post-9/11 Writings On Torture, Domestic Eavesdropping

John Yoo knows the epithets of the libertarians, the liberals and the lefties. Widely considered the intellectual architect of the most dramatic assertion of White House power since the Nixon era, he has seen constitutional scholars skewer his reasoning and … Continue reading

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Unwarranted Executive Power

AS THE YEAR WAS DRAWING TO A CLOSE, we picked up our New York Times and learned that the Bush administration has been fighting terrorism by intercepting communications in America without warrants. It was worrisome on its face, but in … Continue reading

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Congress May Prevail on War Power

    In defending a decision to let the National Security Agency eavesdrop inside America without a court warrant, the White House is invoking the same legal argument it uses to justify its policies at the prison for terror suspects at Guantánamo … Continue reading

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Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn’t win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help. If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden’s attack our president would … Continue reading

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By surrendering our liberties, we hand victory to terrorists

The authorization of domestic spying without warrants amounts to nothing less than a surrender of our civil liberty, the precise thing that guarantees our freedom and makes us so different from those enemies of freedom from whom the Bush administration … Continue reading

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U.S. Airstrikes Take Toll on Civilians

U.S. Marine airstrikes targeting insurgents sheltering in Iraqi residential neighborhoods are killing civilians as well as guerrillas along the Euphrates River in far western Iraq, according to Iraqi townspeople and officials and the U.S. military. Just how many civilians have … Continue reading

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