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Americans are accustomed to thinking of Britain as their most reliable ally, always there in a crisis. Broadly speaking that has been true since 1941 — and mutual. With the exception of a few wobbles like Suez and Edward Heath's refusal of landing rights to U.S. planes supplying arms to Israel in the Yom Kippur war, the Brits have shared a common approach with the U.S. on defense policy, intelligence cooperation, nuclear weapons, trade liberalization, and much else. Margaret Thatcher's backing for Reagan's Libyan raid and Tony Blair's commitment of British forces to the Iraq war strengthened this habitual cooperation....

My first opinion piece for the Evening Standard appeared this morning. It's an attempt to give an overview of the election campaign — and the broad political environment that is shaping it. Once again, with the permission of the Evening Standard's editor, to whom I am grateful, I reprint it below. It has one or two minor amendments, explaining things to a non-British audience, but it is otherwise unchanged except for copyediting:“Henry Kissinger was once asked why academic disputes were so bitter and famously replied: ‘Because the rewards are so small.’ The narcissism of small differences in this election campaign...

Congress tried to use supeona power in an effort to save Terri Shiavo's live. They may have supeoned the wrong Shiavo. Michael Shiavo has been given a pass by the legally blind Judge Greer and the main-stream media outlets. If the Supreme Court does not make the effort to answer the many questions pertaining to this case as the previous courts have done, then congress and the President must step in just as they had to during the Slavery issue. I believe Congress must demand that Michael Shiavo be forced to answer at least these questions before he be given...

Those in a rush to kill Schiavo ignoring facts of case March 23, 2005 BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN In November 1940, just one month before his assignment was due to end and 13 months before Hitler declared war on the United States, William L. Shirer, an American correspondent in Berlin, began to uncover disquieting evidence of one aspect of the Nazi government's then-unknown crimes against humanity. Oddly worded death notices began to appear in German provincial newspapers. Shirer already suspected that the Nazis were contemplating a policy of the euthanasia of the mentally ill and incapacitated. He looked into the matter...

In her two days of confirmation hearings before the Senate, secretary-designate Condoleezza Rice struck all the right notes — or at least all the expected ones. Though unyielding in her defense of Iraq policy and firm in asserting America's right to defend its vital interests in the absence of U.N. approval, she was friendly towards multilateralism, happy to cooperate with international bodies, and positively eager to mend fences with "Europe." "Europe," the U.N., and the U.S. foreign-policy establishment had been hoping for just such a balance. They were resigned to the likelihood of a tough stance on Iraq and the...

With the race tightening in the final stretch, Democrats have begun to believe — for the first time since the Boston convention — that Kerry really will win. Their spirits are rising, their "get out the illegals" drives in full swing, their lawyers primed and ready. But what if they lose again after all? Few Democrats have been prepared to discuss this awful prospect in public. That is partly for reasons of decorum and partly because Kerry may well win — and where would the pessimistic strategist be then? But there are occasional brave cases of men who will put...

My back was turned when, to my surprise, I heard my mother's voice on the evening news. I promptly assumed I must have been mistaken: Why would the evening news interview a 92-year-old retired lady from a Liverpool suburb? Of course, my assumption was correct: The network was interviewing an 86-year-old retired lady from a Liverpool suburb -- the widowed mother of Ken Bigley, the British hostage in Iraq. She was pleading for her son's life. Ken Bigley is one of more than 100 foreigners who have been taken hostage in Iraq since April. They include Turks, Canadians, Egyptians, Brits...

Why those swift boaters want Kerry to sink August 24, 2004 BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN Vladimir Bukovsky, the great anti-Soviet dissident, once reproved me for quoting the old joke about the two main official Soviet newspapers: ''There's no truth in Pravda [Truth] and no news in Izvestia [News].'' He pointed out that you could learn a great deal of truthful news from both papers if you read them with proper care. They often denounced ''anti-Soviet lies.'' These lies had never been reported by them. Nor were they lies. And their exposure was the first that readers had been told of them....

Radical Islamism: 'bastard child' of Marxism John O'Sullivan National Post In his stirring speech to the British on Sunday justifying the Anglo-American bombing of Kabul and Kandahar, Prime Minister Tony Blair warned against any tendency to blame all Muslims for the terrorist acts of Osama bin Laden and the Taleban. "This is not a war with Islam," he declared. "It angers me, as it angers the vast majority of Muslims, to hear bin Laden and his associates described as Islamic terrorists. They are terrorists pure and simple. Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion, and the acts of these ...

Saturday, August 21, 2004 If the presidential election still looks open in America itself -- the polls show the two candidates continually overtaking each other -- Senator John Kerry is agreed to be the firm favourite in Europe. The Senator himself claims that European leaders quietly wish him luck, and according to the polls, European voters have a deep distaste for George W. Bush, too.But this European backing may not be altogether helpful to Kerry. When Adlai Stevenson was asked to explain his landslide defeat by Ike, he quipped: "I was running in the wrong continent."To judge from how...

Truth bound to come out on Kerry's military duty August 10, 2004 BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN When Sen. John Kerry saluted and announced that he was "reporting for duty" at last month's Democratic Convention, he made his military record a legitimate subject of political attack and journalistic investigation. That moment was the culmination of the powerful "Vietnam theme" that has distinguished the Kerry presidential campaign from almost all recent Democratic campaigns. He had turned around a failing primary season in Iowa with the filmed testimony of the sailor whose life he saved when he pulled him back into the swift boat...

Sydney, Australia – Among the formal and organizational wreaths at the war memorial dedicated to the Royal Australian Regiment in the center of Sydney last Sunday were two laid by an RAR corporal in memory of two friends killed in action. They died 51 years ago in Korea fighting alongside Americans, Brits and others in the U.N. force. Aussies were among the first soldiers to join the United States in Afghanistan. They are stationed today in Iraq. Few of us honor the injunction "Lest We Forget" as faithfully as the RAR corporal. But Americans should at least be aware that...

When President Bush and Prime Minister Blair agreed to official investigations into the intelligence failures in the runup to the war, they did so reluctantly. They had to assume that there just might be something in the files that, once exposed, would damage them. In fact, the two reports -- the Senate Intelligence Committee Report in the United States and the Butler Report in Britain -- have rescued both leaders. What tipped observers off to the fact that the Senate report would help Bush was that Democrats on the committee began undermining their own report as soon as it was...

When President Bush and Prime Minister Blair agreed to official investigations into the intelligence failures in the runup to the war, they did so reluctantly. They had to assume that there just might be something in the files that, once exposed, would damage them. In fact, the two reports — the Senate Intelligence Committee Report in the United States and the Butler Report in Britain — have rescued both leaders. What tipped observers off to the fact that the Senate report would help Bush was that Democrats on the committee began undermining their own report as soon as it was...

Bill Clinton's re-appearance on the national stage in the last few weeks to publicize his memoirs reminds one of that old Victorian ad for retiring actors in the lost days of vaudeville: "In his positively final appearance." It never was the old performer's final appearance, of course. However rouged and corseted, even if he occasionally forgot his lines, he simply could not stay away from the lure of the greasepaint. The audience knew that he would be back for many more final appearances until he eventually departed for a command performance in another place. Clinton has that similar quality of...

Belgrade, Serbia – Belgrade is a city where contrasts meet — East and West, Hapsburg and Ottoman, Turkish coffee and espresso. If Serbs are renowned in Europe as fiercely nationalistic, that is because they had to fight so many occupiers over so long a period for their independence. They won those battles — the last of which was the Second World War in which Serbs were on the side of the allies against the Germans, though Serb communist Partisans and Serb monarchist Chetniks fought against each other at least as fiercely in order to control postwar Yugoslavia. The communists won...

Rome – Sunday was Election Day across Europe. Twenty-six nations in the European Union held joint elections for its European Assembly. This is reckoned to be the largest transnational election in history. Yet if the behavior of Romans was any guide, the voters managed to keep their enthusiasm under firm control. A few tattered election posters decorated spare walls. There was apparently a similar lack of reaction in other EU member-states. Turnout was less than 45 percent across the continent, and less than 30 percent in the ''New Europe'' beyond the now dismantled Iron Curtain. Nor did those who troubled...

From: Nick Machiavelli, Senior Partner, Machiavelli, O'Blarney, Iago, Alcibiades & Morris, Political Consultants, Chicago, Ill. To: Ralph Nader, Nader for President Campaign, c/o the Friends of Ralph Nader, Public Interest Research Group National Headquarters, Apartment 13B, Lincoln Steffens Hall of Residence, Harold Stassen Way, Little Kidding, Md., Near Washington D.C. (Donations over Internet, please, to www.naderornadir.com.) Dear Ralph, I am not in the least surprised that you are feeling (as you put it) "confused and disoriented." Anyone in your position would feel exactly the same. John Kerry is a charming guy in private, and the offer must have been a...

In World War II a passerby, lost in London's Whitehall, stopped a military officer and asked him which side the Defense Department was on. The officer thought for a moment and then said: ''Well, it's hard to be sure, but our side, I hope.'' In the last week the coverage of Iraq by the U.S. media has exhibited at least four separate failings: 1. Inferentialism. Several media reports of the Abu Ghraib scandal have been, in effect, prosecuting briefs for the theory that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld either knew about or authorized the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Since the evidence...

May 18, 2004, 2:27 p.m. Left Eye’s View Seeing through the Abu Ghraib coverage. In World War II, a passer-by, lost in London's main official thoroughfare of Whitehall, stopped a military officer and asked him which side the Defense Department was on. The officer thought for a moment and then said: "Well, it's hard to be sure, but our side, I hope." In the last week the coverage of Iraq by the U.S. media has exhibited at least four separate failings: 1. Selective Agonizing. Ever since the Abu Ghraib photographs emerged, the media has shown them on every possible occasion,...