nthposition online magazine

Maria Ryan

Ryan is a doctoral student at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is researching the network of ‘neo-conservative’ foreign policy advocacy groups during the 1990s, the development of their policies and the extent to which this influenced the Bush Administration before and after 9/11.

The Rumsfeld Commission: Filling in the "unknown unknowns"

[ politics - july 04 ]

"The Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, followed slavishly by the CIA, designed an 'hypothesis-based' analysis - in effect, a worst-case scenario, presented as a probability."

The Project for the New American Century, 9-11 and the so-called "war on terror"

[ politics | opinion - may 03 ]

"[A]n earthquake of the magnitude of 9/11 can shift the tectonic plates of international politics", according to Condoleeza Rice, and the US has to figure out how to "capitalise on these opportunities".

The inspections sham: Why the US won't take 'yes' for an answer

[ politics | opinion - september 02 ]

For the US, the most important issue is not whether Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, but simply that it has a pretext to enter Iraq.

The manufacture of fear: 9-11, intelligence, and the "axis of evil"

[ politics | opinion - july 02 ]

It's obvious that US pressure upon the so-called Axis of Evil is likely to increase rather than decrease the threat of WMD.