It was the summer of 2002. The Bush administration's top officials knew that they were going into Iraq in a big way. They were then in planning mode, but waiting until fall to launch their full-throttle campaign to persuade Congress and the American people to back...
192 Killed in Iraq; Mass Grave from 1991 Yielding Hundreds of Bodies
More Bombs for Baghdad; 129 Killed in Iraq
The Pentagon Slush Fund
Back in 1959, President Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Khrushchev took a break from their summit and walked in the woods around Camp David. Khrushchev, in his memoirs, relates a conversation in which the president complains of how hard it is to resist the...
After He Leaves, What Will They Say About Obama’s Foreign Policy?
With only eighteen months remaining, Barack Obama's foreign policy legacy will be much debated after he leaves the White House. Excluding our crackpots and bigots, historians, memoirists and biographers will surely take into account the challenges he faced because of...
68 Killed across Iraq; Kurds Deporting Arabs from Territories
Topple the Cult of the Presidency
A certain type of person will bemoan the current lack of respect for the presidency. Sometimes “national greatness” authoritarian centrists are the ones doing this, but often outrage falls on partisan lines. The same people cheering the shoe assault on George W. Bush...
Obama’s Whistleblower War Leaves Dangerous Legacy for Future Presidents
Here’s the thing about President Obama’s war on whistleblowers: In bringing espionage charges in nine cases involving disclosures or alleged misuse of classified information, the current administration has set a floor, rather than a ceiling, on the number and types of...
Rand Paul Takes A Stand
Campaign books are usually forgettable, uniformly boring, and go mostly unread. However, Sen. Rand Paul's recently published addition to the genre is neither forgettable nor boring: if it goes largely unread then that will be a shame. For it is a sincerely written,...
What If There Is No Plan B for Iraq?
Originally posted at TomDispatch.On June 13th, Greg Jaffe and Missy Ryan of the Washington Post reported what should have been big news (though it was hardly noted). In recent White House "debates" over a disastrously deteriorating situation in Iraq, President Obama's...