The Pentagon pours vast sums of money into many things – and it isn't only what you imagine. It's not just weapons and equipment, nor even technological and scientific research. Don't forget, for instance, the military money that goes into conferences to talk...
It may finally be 2009, but in some ways, given these last years, it might as well be 800 BCE. From the ninth to the seventh centuries BCE, the palace walls of the kings who ruled the Assyrian Empire were decorated with vast stone friezes, filled with enough dead...
Once upon a time, Detroit was known as "the arsenal of Democracy" because the city's big three automakers converted so quickly from turning out civilian vehicles to producing the tanks and trucks that "helped win World War II"(and then "lent their technology to...
The single omnipresent historical reference in the American media immediately in the wake of September 11, 2001, was, of course, "Pearl Harbor" – and those code words for it, "infamy" and "day of infamy," splashed in mile-high letters across the front pages of...
Did you know that the IBM Center for the Business of Government hosts a "Presidential Transition" blog; that the Council on Foreign Relations has its own "Transition Blog: The New Administration"; and that the American University School of Communication has a...
[Note for Readers: To listen to a TomDispatch audio interview with journalist Anand Gopal about the difficulties involved in reporting from Afghanistan, click here.] Just when the Obama presidency-to-be was revving up to introduce its new national security "team" and...
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… After all, that massive U.S. air attack on Iran that anti-imperial critics long expected to arrive, that Seymour Hersh wrote about, that so many feared, never happened and, with Barack Obama's election,...
The Obama national security "team" – part of that much-hailed "team of rivals" – does not yet exist, but it does seem to be heaving into view. And so far, its views seem anything but rivalrous. Mainstream reporters and pundits lovingly refer to them as...
[Note to Readers: In the spirit of Nick Turse's article below on truth-telling and civilian deaths in war, TomDispatch would like to direct your attention to a recently published paperback, Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations,...
It's the ultimate argument, the final bastion against withdrawal, and over these last years, the Bush administration has made sure it would have plenty of heft. Ironically, its strength lies in the fact that it has nothing to do with the vicissitudes of Iraqi...
