US war for oil lacks a punchline

Paul McGeough 'What's the difference between a duck,'' my father would ask us as kids.

Alexander leaves us on a downer

Paul McGeough A great week for huffin'-'n'-puffin', what? First, Alexander Downer takes an airbrush to history. And then, more gobsmackery by our top soldier, on what he ''always knew'' was a raw deal for the...

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OPINION

UN fails to get its hands clean in Haiti

Paul McGeough And they wonder why people throw bombs. The United Nations rejects any guilt or responsibility for an outbreak of cholera in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that flattened Haiti, despite...

Sex trumps torture and corruption

Paul McGeough This is about carnal relations, not global security - got it? We're talking sex, so if you're looking for heavy breathing about ethics and morality, move on, turn the page.

Paul McGeough

Still waiting for Western civilisation

Paul McGeough Murder is disturbing - whether the victim is a secular political leader in the fraught, post-revolutionary chaos of Tunisia or a kid at school in the sensible and stable, we-know-how-to-do-it US.

Paul McGeough

Karzai's cabal steals the national capital

Paul McGeough The Kabul Bank fiasco is as much Canberra's legacy as it is Washington's.

So many secrets, not enough intelligence

Paul McGeough Does this jolt to the massive combine that is the US intelligence system, by the unseemly departure of the head of the CIA in what we know as the Petraeus affair, require a pause to look at the house...

Paul McGeough

Bibi the fall guy as Barack wins the lot

Paul McGeough Moscow's thinking on the new Obama line-up comes discreetly, deniably.

Paul McGeough

Light the touch paper and stand back

Paul McGeough What the hell was that? In a perfect global storm: massive over-reach by crackpot Christian fundamentalists in California collided with what may have been a lucky break for the remnants of al-Qaeda's...

Paul McGeough

The military adviser left out in the cold

Paul McGeough The lost pages of Catch-22 have turned up: they are the real-life career notes of Gwenyth Todd.

Paul McGeough

Coalition of the unwilling to understand

Paul McGeough With apologies to film director Ken Kwapis, they're just not that into us. We're talking about Afghans.

Paul McGeough

When charity bites the hand that feeds it

Paul McGeough In Afghanistan it's mop-up time. As foreign armies eye the exits, a meeting in San Francisco last week was a different kind of mopping-up for a non-combat force that is likely to remain on the ground...

Paul McGeough

Take a bite out of Iran at your peril

Paul McGeough You'd have thought the reality of Afghanistan and Iraq might act as a break on the instinctive lunge by hawks to compare apples with oranges as they try to gull us into a belief that war is a doddle.

Paul McGeough

Postage stamp nation as global ringmaster

Paul McGeough The word ''bluff'' gets an outing in analysis these days. Is Benjamin Netanyahu bluffing about an attack on Iran?

Paul McGeough

Terrorists thrive as US turns blind eye

Paul McGeough Who would have thought in a post-September 11 world that you could find an organisation that kills hundreds of Americans in dozens of terrorist strikes - but which Washington refuses to punitively...

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Paul McGeough

US exit creates army ripe for recruitment

Paul McGeough Numbers coming out of Afghanistan often are scary but try wrapping your head around this one - 123,500.

Paul McGeough

Why Obama faces a hopeless war in Syria

Paul McGeough ''Sensible'' doesn't cut it when women and children are being murdered on YouTube.

Paul McGeough

WikiLeaks reveals unreliable war cries and chequebook democracy

Paul McGeough THE danger in WikiLeaks' dump of reams of super-sensitive cables from Washington's worldwide listening posts is not merely that the game has been revealed but how it might play out in future.