Rally round the pyre, boys. Pin the rascal's picture on a voodoo doll and burn it in effigy. ...more

December 16, 2009

Seen from a tiny village on a recent moonless night, the sprawling U.S. base three miles to the north looks more like a medium-size city than a military facility in a war zone. ...more

December 6, 2009

The headline ran in The New York Times a month ago, on Nov. 7: "All Afghan War Options by Obama Aides Said to Call for More Troops." According to White House insiders, Obama considered three choices for digging our way deeper into the "graveyard of empires:" General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the occupation forces, asked for 40,000 additional soldiers. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wanted 30,000 more. Other generals wanted to send 20,000 more. ...more

December 5, 2009

A traveler asks a farmer how to get to a particular village. The farmer replies, "If I were you, I wouldn't start from here." ...more

December 3, 2009

Declaring "our security is at stake," President Barack Obama ordered an additional 30,000 U.S. troops into the long war in Afghanistan tonight, but balanced the buildup with a pledge to an impatient nation to begin withdrawing American forces in 18 months. ...more

December 1, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House braced for a tough sell of President Barack Obama's long-awaited decision on whether to commit tens of thousands of new U.S. forces to the stalemated war in Afghanistan, even as the president met Monday with top advisers for possibly the last major deliberations before an announcement. ...more

November 23, 2009

Any illusions of glorious battlefields conjured in the brains of non-combatants are just that - illusions from someone's imagination. No battlefields are glorious, and the people who know find nothing appealing about war. ...more

November 12, 2009

Sometimes we learn things that we wish we had not learned. Here are some of your thoughts this week: ...more

November 9, 2009

Farm worker protest Last week The Tampa Tribune ran a story about farm workers from Immokalee protesting in front of Publix Supermarket demanding higher prices for the tomatoes they pick (Metro, Oct. 26). ...more

November 2, 2009

Divided over the best way to fight the economic downturn, finance officials of the leading industrial nations agreed Saturday to commit more money to help developing countries, step up efforts to revive bank lending and regulate hedge funds. ...more

March 15, 2009