Nearly 70 percent of Americans tell Newsweek that “the United States will be bogged down in Iraq for years without achieving its goals.” Yet 61 percent tell the same poll that invading Iraq was the right thing to do. The reason for this weird disconnect: people think that we’re in Iraq to spread democracy and rebuild the Middle East. They think we’re The Good Guys. But the longer we keep patting ourselves on the back, the more we tell ourselves that the Iraqi resistance is a bunch of evil freedom-haters, the deeper we’ll sink into this quagmire. It’s time to get real.

Has USA use of depleted-uranium (DU) weapons turned Iraq into a radioactive danger area for both Iraqis and occupation troops? This question has already had serious consequences. In hot spots in downtown Baghdad, reporters have measured radiation levels that are 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal background radiation levels.

It was probably pure coincidence that the bloodiest day in U.N. history, the day a massive truck bomb killed the world body’s chief Iraq envoy and 19 others, came on the 50th anniversary of the CIA-plotted coup in Iran that seeded today’s Islamic terrorism.

During the last days of July, Representative Tom Delay (Republican) of Texas, the House majority leader described routinely as one of the three or four most powerful men in Washington, delivered himself of his opinions regarding the roadmap and the future of peace in the Middle East. What he had to say was meant as an announcement for a trip he subsequently took to Israel and several Arab countries where, it is reported, he articulated the same message. In no uncertain terms Delay declared himself opposed to the Bush administration’s support for the roadmap, especially the provision in it for a Palestinian state.

When a man knows he is to be hung,” Samuel Johnson famously observed, “it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” With just over two weeks to go before the next phase of global trade talks, the prospect of the world’s trading system collapsing might have been expected to concentrate the minds of negotiators from the rich countries. Judging by a pact announced on Wednesday, however, American and European political leaders relish nothing more than the prospect of a good hanging.

I worry when I hear the Egyptian foreign minister say, as he did Monday after meeting his Saudi Arabian and Syrian counterparts, that the USA-appointed provisional Governing Council in Iraq lacks legitimacy, and that these Arab states agreed to revive Arab action on Iraq and Palestine. I worry because legitimacy and collective Arab action are two of the greatest problems facing our societies, and repeating hollow old phrases and pursuing discredited policies in the face of our region’s new realities will only ensure more failures, tensions, and violence.

A new opposition coalition challenges the hard-line regime of President Alvaro Uribe for its devastating economic policies and systematic violations of freedoms. A general strike has been called for August 12th.

Get out of the way. American capitalism has declared war on the laws of physics.  Somebody please tell the president of the United States that whatever political and economic system we create, human beings cannot change the 1st law of thermodynamics. We can’t create energy from thin air. Big business may be able to swindle the American electorate, but it can’t repeal the law of diminishing returns.

’’Although the War did not make any immediate demands on me physically, while it lasted it put a complete stop to my artistic activity because it forced me into an agonizing reappraisal of my fundamental assumptions.’’ These words were spoken by Thomas Mann in his Nobel laureate speech in 1929, a reflection of the broad psychological rupture inflicted on the European mind by World War I. But just as war can lead to the ‘’reappraisal of fundamental assumptions,’’ it can do the opposite, reinforcing assumptions to the point of shutting down debate. That seems a more American story.