The New York Times Magazine
December 15, 2002
Should an American who is suspected of having links to Al Qaeda have the right to a lawyer and the right to not answer questions about coming attacks? The U.S. government has been holding two Americans incommunicado at military prisons. They have not been ...
The New York Times Magazine
December 14, 2003
A convention of military strategy is that you do not rush tanks into the center of a hostile city unless you wish to lose them. In 1994 the Russians learned this fatal lesson when they sent an armored column into Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, and guerrillas ...
The New York Times Magazine
December 14, 2003
During the invasion of Iraq, the American military displayed amazing technological superiority, firing missiles that flew nearly 1,000 miles before hitting their targets precisely, with a margin of error of just a few feet. Once the occupation of Iraq began, ...
The New York Times Magazine
October 19, 2003
The Dear Leader is a workaholic. Kim Jong Il sleeps four hours a night, or if he works through the night, as he sometimes does, he sleeps four hours a day. His office is a hive of activity; reports cross his desk at all hours. Dressed as always in his signature ...
The New York Times Magazine
June 8, 2003
There are two types of people who do well in dictatorships: those who make themselves politically indispensable, doing whatever bit of wickedness the dictatorship requires, and those who make themselves economically indispensable, keeping the trains and refineries ...
The New York Times
May 11, 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The news conference was held in splendid isolation. Splendid, that is, if you enjoy being walled off from the rest of Baghdad by tanks, armored Humvees, barbed wire and a small army of soldiers bearing M-16 assault rifles and .50-caliber machine guns.
The ...
The New York Times Magazine
May 11, 2003
Najaf is one of the great spiritual centers of the world’s 120 million Shiites because it is home to the tomb of Imam Ali, founder of the Shiite faith and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. But the true heart of Najaf today, and the place where the political ...
The New York Times Magazine
April 20, 2003
As the war in Iraq is debated and turned into history, the emphasis will be on the role of technology–precision bombing, cruise missiles, decapitation strikes. That was what was new. But there was another side to the war, and it was the one that most ...
The New York Times Magazine
April 13, 2003
(The following is an interview I conducted with Lance Corporal Derrick Jensen)
First off I want people to understand that there is more than just combat. We’re not seeing fighting at all times. Sometimes accidents happen. The other night, a good friend ...
The New York Times
April 6, 2003
AL KUT, Iraq–A few days ago I drove with a Marine convoy into the desert north of Nasiriya, heading toward Baghdad. The landscape was as unforgiving as it comes–parched and barren, like the moon with an atmosphere of dusty oxygen. As we moved forward, mostly ...
