The need to expand and better integrate the resources of the U.S. intelligence community was one of the central recommendations of the admirably bipartisan 9/11 commission. With the close of the cold war, Congress had reduced the resources available to the Central Intelligence Agency, as the traditi

The recent letter from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President George W. Bush raises an important question: Does an interlocutor have to have clean hands in order for his or her words to be worthy of consideration? The actions of Iran’s leader certainly give the world much caus

The Commencement SeasonIn the final weeks of May, on campuses across the nation, tens of thousands of newly minted graduates gratefully clutched their diplomas and patiently listened to the exhortation of the commencement speaker. In future years, few of the graduates will remember the content of th

Although the number of women prisoners is far smaller than the number of men, the rate of incarceration for women is rising at a much faster rate than for men. Over 200,000 women are now behind bars throughout the country, most of them African American and Hispanic. And according to the nonprofit Se

Down on IslamSome years ago Cardinal Francis Arinze, then the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, complained that the dialogue with Islam consisted largely of Catholic initiatives, and it was time for the church’s Muslim partners to bear responsibility too for th

Prayers for ChinaWhile the situation of the Catholic Church in China has not been normal for many decades, in very recent times it appeared that the lot of Chinese Catholics was improving. It became known that many bishops of the official Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association were, in fact, also in

Mother Nature’s fury, as we have experienced in our own nation in the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes, devastates communities. But Mother Nature’s worst pales when compared to the disasters created by man’s furyand folly. A hurricane of hatred has created in Darfur a human-ma

Professionals and PatriotsWashington has rumbled for years with rumors of professional dissent at the Pentagon and C.I.A. from Bush administration policies in the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. Occasionally the dissent has become public, as when Gen. Eric Shinseki, then chairman of the Join

As the nation moves beyond the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, difficult choices lie ahead. While it has become increasingly clear that the war in Iraq has not made the United States more secure or the world a safer place, future U.S. policy in Iraq is not nearly as clear. Would the prema

The investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story just as Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had succeeded in enriching uranium. The Bush administration, Hersh wrote, is planning a preventive military attack against Iran, possibly with the use of tactical nu