Originally posted at TomDispatch. I’ll bet you didn’t know that June is “torture awareness month” thanks to the fact that, on June 26, 1987, the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment went...
America Can’t Force Iran’s Surrender
It took a searing crisis for the United States to officially acknowledge that it needs Iran’s help. On Monday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns reportedly discussed the jihadist takeover of Iraq’s Sunni heartland with his Iranian counterparts on...
The Worst Effect of the Afghan War
As prisoners are exchanged and the combat portion of the long and exhausting U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan winds down, the brazen lethal attack on the Karachi International airport by the Pakistani Taliban graphically highlights the principal unfortunate...
Over 500 Killed in Iraq Carnage
The Neo-Con Travel Agency Is Open for Business
How would you like to spend a week in an exotic locale with “The Boss”? No, not that “Boss,” the other “Boss” – as in the Bruce Springsteen of Neo-Con crooners, the silver-tongued frontman of the rockin’-shockin’-awe-inspiring band that gave America and the world...
Their War, Not Ours
As the Islamic warriors of ISIS rolled down the road from Mosul, John McCain was an echo of French Premier Paul Reynaud, when word reached Paris that Rommel had broken through in the Ardennes: "We are now facing an existential threat to the security of the United...
Over 300 Killed Across Iraq As US Sends Troops
What We’ve Lost Since 9/11
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Here’s what passes for good news when it comes to a free press these days: two weeks ago, the Supreme Court refused without comment to hear a case involving New York Times reporter James Risen. It concerned his unwillingness to...
Haven’t We Already Done Enough Damage in Iraq?
In 2006, I invited the late General Bill Odom to address my Thursday Congressional luncheon group. Gen. Odom, a former NSA director, called the Iraq war “the greatest strategic disaster in American history," and told the surprised audience that he could not...
The Coming Storm
The defeat of Eric Cantor – GOP House majority leader and a leading light of the party’s neoconservative-corporatist wing – has the pundits in an uproar. They are flummoxed: what could have led to one of the biggest upsets in American political history? After all, a...