For decades the US and Saudi Arabia have shared a peculiar relationship: the Saudis sell relatively cheap oil to the United States for which they accept our fiat currency. They then recycle those paper dollars into the US military-industrial complex through the...

American interventionism isn’t just sending in the Marines – more often it’s sending in the President. The “bully pulpit” has worldwide resonance, and President Obama recently used it to urge the British to reject “isolationism” and stay in the EU. As usual with the...

Let’s take a moment to think about the ultimate strangeness of our American world. In recent months, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have offered a range of hair-raising suggestions: as president, one or the other of them might order the U.S. military and the CIA to commit...

Fighting erupted between Shi’ite militias and Kurdish Peshmerga members in Tuz Khormato again.

Bombers struck again in Baghdad and the suburb of Hussieniya.

At least 13 people were killed on a mostly quiet Prayer Day; however, suicide bombers did attack a Shi’ite mosque in Baghdad.

The Constitution provides for three branches of government: the executive, Congress, and the judiciary – but there have been a few additions lately. With the rise of mass communications, common parlance has designated the media as the “Fourth Estate,” because – in...

Originally posted at TomDispatch. In our part of the world, it’s not often that potential “collateral damage” speaks, but it happened last week. A Pakistani tribal leader, Malik Jalal, flew to England to plead in a newspaper piece he wrote and in...

At least 111 were killed in recent violence, including Peshmerga fighters in a chemical attack.

War may be thought of in two ways. First, as a football game between armies, in which the function of the citizenry is to cheer for the home team. In football, success is measured in points scored, yardage gained, brilliance of play, and time of possession. In war as...