Month: June 2015

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 them. As White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, … Continue reading “‘Hi, I’m Uncle Sam and I’m a War-oholic’”

A mass grave dating to the 1991 Shi’ite Uprising was excavated in Basra province. It gave up at least 377 victims. In current violence, at least 192 were killed and 61 were wounded.

Iraq announced the arrest of senior Saddam administration official Abd al-Baqi al-Saadun. At least 129 were killed and 42 were wounded.

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 military’s demands for more money. Military leaders, said Eisenhower, invariably insist the … Continue reading “The Pentagon Slush Fund”

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 the two wars he inherited – one of which, Afghanistan, he always supported. Even so, … Continue reading “After He Leaves, What Will They Say About Obama’s Foreign Policy?”

Kurdish authorities are banishing Arab Iraqis from Kurdish territory under the guise of expelling supporters of the Islamic State militants.At least 68 were killed across Iraq.

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 call “treason” when someone yells at Obama. What these camps have in … Continue reading “Topple the Cult of the Presidency”

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 whistleblower espionage cases a future President can bring. And here’s another thing: With leaders … Continue reading “Obama’s Whistleblower War Leaves Dangerous Legacy for Future Presidents”

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, even passionate defense of liberty in the tradition of Barry Goldwater’s The … Continue reading “Rand Paul Takes A Stand”

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 top military officials were dragging their feet on the question of what more the … Continue reading “What If There Is No Plan B for Iraq?”