After drawing a line in the sand warning Syrian President Bashar Assad not to use chemical weapons, President Obama is now in a precarious place. The unimaginable may have happened. Detailed accounts of Assad’s use of the weapons are not clear, but several reports of Assad’s army using chemical weapons began to surface last week. […]
Iraq war
Posted inNews & Opinion
Petraeus scandal may pull covers off the effects of war
Fresh off his re-election, President Obama will be holding a press conference later today. Presumably he’ll want to talk about his looming battle with Congress over avoiding the fiscal cliff. But the first questions the White House press will almost certainly ask will concern the sex scandal involving his top CIA and military brass. The […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
No more troops!
And so we are going to send more Americans to die in Iraq, escalating a disastrous, ill-conceived war. Ignoring the advice of generals, ignoring the advice of allies, President Bush is preparing to send 21,500 more troops into the cauldron that Iraq has become. This is not even the escalation that the neocon warriors have […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Awaiting the surge
“Picture the person you love most in the world,” wrote David Brooks at the start of his Sunday Times column
Posted inNews & Opinion
Reader feedback – 12-27-06
The mail THE NEXT STEP Approximately three weeks ago, my wife was a victim of a stray bullet as she was leaving a church service. The bullet struck her. However, even though she was hit, she expressed concern for everyone outside the church, urging them to go inside. She did everything within her power to […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Limiting the pain
Urban journal For many of us, this is traditionally a season of hope. I’m having trouble finding any, though, given the escalating tragedy in Iraq. There certainly isn’t much hope to be found in the report by the Iraq Study Group. The report calls for diplomacy, and James Baker, the group’s co-chair, says we must […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
How bad can it get?
Urban journal I’m beginning to feel like we’re all on a runaway train, hurtling toward disaster. The latest documentation of how bad things are: a report from the US intelligence community — the intelligence community — saying that our war in Iraq has increased the terrorism threat. The response from the White House and Republican […]
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Batiste Interview
Prepare for a long war A retired general stays on the attack Retired Army Major General John Batiste has lived in Rochester for less than a year, but his outspoken criticism of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has quickly made him one of the area’s most well-known residents. Batiste, who moved to Rochester to join […]
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A question of competence
Hanging on the wall in retired Army Major General John Batiste’s office at Klein Steel is a framed sheet of paper asking: :Who Needs to Know This?” Batiste is president of Klein Steel, a Rochester company he joined in November 2005. And the phrase, which he says is one of his favorites, is a typical […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Reader feedback – 4.26.06
ATTENTION PAID Mr. Kunstler’s statements about the future are interesting. They deserve and shall receive from me more thought than I have been able to devote to them so far. This letter is actually a comment about the editorial decision made in the highlighting of one of Mr. Kunstler’s statements. Why, from a thoughtful and […]
