Criticism

A second retired British general criticized the United States' Iraq policy, saying in a newspaper interview published Sunday that it was "fatally flawed." Maj. Gen. Tim Cross, the most senior British officer involved in postwar planning, said he had raised serious concerns about the possibility of Iraq falling into chaos but that they were dismissed by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Iraq's beleaguered prime minister accused his U.S. critics Sunday of going too far, saying they did not appreciate the scale of the disaster facing his country and the achievements of his government. "The most important achievement is it stopped a sectarian and civil war," Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said. The Iraqi prime minister has come under increasing pressure as U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H.

When Christopher Edley Jr. became dean of the Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley three years ago, he regretfully gave up his presidential appointment to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He had been an outspoken civil rights activist as a Harvard law professor, but he believed that as a law school dean he could no longer engage in the same kind of high-profile advocacy.

It took Dan Frazier a long time to figure out how to make a living. He cared for a quadriplegic. He sold health food from the back of his bicycle. He drove a van for disabled people. Then, after years of drifting from job to job, Frazier turned to the Internet. Marrying his politics and entrepreneurial instincts, he began selling left-leaning bumper stickers. He designed one in 2003 that listed the names of troops -- about 500 then -- who had been killed in the Iraq war.

When producers Roland Emmerich and Rosilyn Heller set out to make the film "Trade," a harrowing account of an international sex-trafficking ring, they knew there would be obstacles to overcome. First, questions were raised about the source material for the movie: a 2004 New York Times Magazine exposé on sex trafficking whose author, Peter Landesman, found himself defending his five-month investigation from critics in the blogosphere.

Herbert Muschamp's writing, like the buildings he favored, reflected a tug of war between reason and desire. During the first few years of his tenure as architecture critic for the New York Times, reason mostly held the upper hand. After taking over from Paul Goldberger in 1992, Muschamp, who died Tuesday night of lung cancer at 59, produced well-behaved, well-argued essays on the U.S.

Several months into his job as superintendent of the Los Angeles school system, David L. Brewer held court before students at Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks. Barrel-chested and ramrod straight, he showered them with platitudes, perfectly at home as a schoolhouse version of a tent revival preacher. "Repeat after me: If I read, I will succeed," the call and response began. Students reacted a little sluggishly but gamely. "A goal is a dream plus a deadline," Brewer continued.

washington -- Should the world's most-used search engine be more of a Yankee Google Dandy? Google Inc. occasionally features light-hearted doodles on its colorful home-page logo to commemorate special occasions. But now they are drawing criticism from conservatives for not being more patriotic. The Mountain View, Calif.

washington -- Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in Iraq for a year after the March 2003 invasion, accused the Bush administration Friday of going to war with a "catastrophically flawed" plan and said the United States is "living a nightmare with no end in sight." Sanchez described the current troop increase in Iraq as "a desperate attempt by the administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war."

Few movies take critical beatings as bad as the thumping handed out to South Korean director Shim Hyung-rae's "D-War," a dragons-do-battle fantasy that transports a Korean legend to 21st century Los Angeles. A fiasco of a plot, the critics said. Preposterous dialogue. Risible acting. South Korean audiences loved it. Two months after its release, 8 million South Koreans have seen "D-War," making it not just a box-office hit but a national success story, a way of channeling Korean pride.