Commentary: A shining city on a hill can't have dungeons in its basements

It turns out that even the most paranoid among us were right to be afraid of what George W. Bush's White House and Justice Department were up to in the days and months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. | 03/05/09 20:18:33 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: Doomed to repeat history in Afghanistan?

President Barack Obama this week is laying out the road home from the war in Iraq during the next 19 months. More or less. It's time - past time - to begin a major drawdown of U.S. forces in a war that was begun on false pretenses with little foresight or planning and a rosy forecast of a swift victory and an even swifter withdrawal by the summer of 2003. | 02/26/09 19:06:23 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: Afghanistan has the smell of South Vietnam in 1965

President Barack Obama this week announced that he was ordering an additional 17,000 American troops to Afghanistan. America’s ground commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. David McKiernan, welcomed the news of the reinforcements that'll be on their way this spring and summer, but in a frank assessment of the situation, he said that we are "at best stalemated" in the war against a resilient, home-grown enemy that's proving to be very adaptable and dangerous. | 02/19/09 16:54:18 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: It's time for the change we were promised

Welcome to Washington, D.C. The paint isn't dry on the bathroom walls in the White House, and already President Barack Obama is negotiating his way through the quicksand traps and political cesspools of our capital, and poorly at that. The trouble arises not because the new president arrived with too many arrows of radical change in his quiver, but because he promptly fell into that notorious sinkhole called business as usual. | 02/06/09 17:05:36 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: Bank robbers in Oxxford suits and Mercedes limos

This is a story of the greatest bank robbery in the history of the world, a tale that would have the James gang and John Dillinger and Willie Sutton green with envy. This is the story of a reverse bank robbery, a tale of how the banks looted the national treasury and robbed the American taxpayer and corporate stockholders of billions, if not trillions, of dollars. | 01/28/09 19:47:04 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: It's time to choose right over wrong

While President Barack Obama was busy closing down our military prison in Guantanamo and shuttering the Central Intelligence Agency's secret Gulag around the world, Republicans on Capitol Hill were stalling a vote on Obama’s choice for attorney general, apparently in hopes of negotiating a plea bargain on war crimes. | 01/23/09 17:30:45 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: Adios, Dubya. Vaya con Dios

He's leaving the same way he arrived eight years ago: Clueless and somehow unable to discern up from down, right from left and right from wrong. George W. Bush patted himself on the back Thursday night for keeping America safe since 9/11, though he's leaving us with two ongoing wars where American troops and innocent civilians continue to die. And what about 9/11 itself? | 01/16/09 14:37:44 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: At long last, sir, have you left no sense of decency?

Even as President George W. Bush was packing up his knick-knacks and calling for the moving van, the White House spin machine was whirring along at Warp 6, doing its best to put a happy face on the sorry history of his eight years in the Oval Office. | 01/09/09 16:19:23 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: Remember the empty chairs at holiday tables

Even in hard times, this is the holiday season and a time when thoughts turn to home and family and dinner tables covered with food and gaily wrapped presents and bright lights. Save a moment amid the celebrations to give thought to the hundreds of thousands of men and women in uniform in far-flung parts of this world who won't be sitting down to dinner with their families. | 12/23/08 16:26:00 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: Bush makes a farewell tour. Good riddance

We've been treated to a real spectacle this week as President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney limped into the home stretch of their Magical History Tour, employing distortions, half-truths and untruths in a final, desperate attempt to pervert or somehow prevent history from judging them accurately. | 12/18/08 16:12:36 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: Shinseki's back and VA's got him

President-elect Barack Obama's choice of retired Army Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to head the Department of Veterans Affairs is the smartest and best appointment he's made so far. | 12/09/08 15:38:53 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: The Times drags an honorable soldier through the mud

This week, I'm writing in defense of an old friend, retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who was dragged through the mud this week in a 5,000-word article by David Barstow in The New York Times. | 12/04/08 07:43:52 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: So much for letting the free market rule

Hear that humming sound? That's the printing presses at the United States Treasury running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, churning out an ocean of green paper to bail out the billionaire bankers, brokers and assorted brigands who are responsible for the economic disaster that's befallen us. | 11/26/08 14:17:55 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue

With two months still to go before his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama and his transition team are already getting off on the wrong foot, signaling that they have no intention of investigating anyone in the Bush administration for possible war crimes. | 11/18/08 19:09:59 By - Joseph L. Galloway

Commentary: For what did they die?

It is autumn, and the air is crisp and cool at night at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. It gets very quiet at The Wall around midnight. The tourists have gone home, and are all tucked into bed.

A homeless Vietnam veteran patrols the black granite panels. He tells us that he has cancer and is having a hard time getting any benefits from the Veterans Administration. He lives in a mission that houses those who have nowhere else to go, but the doors don’t open until 11 p.m. | 11/11/08 06:22:09 By - Joseph L. Galloway