In a week dominated by the CIA – the Agency of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s – it might be easy enough to forget the Agency of the new century, the one known for creating its own offshore Bermuda triangle of injustice, including a global system of secret (or...
Sometimes, numbers can strip human beings of just about everything that makes us what we are. Numbers can silence pain, erase love, obliterate emotion, and blur individuality. But sometimes numbers can also tell a necessary story in ways nothing else can. This...
"I may be dangerous," he said, "but I am not wicked. No, I am not wicked." - Henry James, The American It was a failed administration's ritual scapegoating, the ousting last winter of its ruinous secretary of defense. But in the sauve qui peut confirmation of his...
Just when you think the roiling relations between the U.S. and Iran might be quieting down, they heat up again. In the last week, while two U.S. aircraft-carrier strike forces continued to patrol the Persian Gulf (after "exercises" that took the carriers directly...
Today, Michael Klare, expert on war and energy, and author of the indispensable book, Blood and Oil, gives us an unprecedented sense of what it means when the Pentagon fills its own tank (as well as its tanks). It is, after all, the Hummer of Defense Departments, the...
Today, Michael Klare, expert on war and energy, and author of the indispensable book, Blood and Oil, gives us an unprecedented sense of what it means when the Pentagon fills its own tank (as well as its tanks). It is, after all, the Hummer of Defense Departments, the...
An 11-Quote Quiz on the Bush Administration's War of Words From "mission accomplished" through those endless "turning points" and "tipping points" up to the "brink" of "the abyss" and "the precipice," and back again, American officials, military and civilian, in...
Here's the strange thing: Since 2001, our media has been filled with terrifying nuclear headlines. The Iraqi bomb (you remember those "mushroom clouds" about to rise over American cities), the North Korean bomb, and the Iranian bomb have been almost obsessively in the...
Finally, the great American disconnect may be ending. Only four years after the invasion of Iraq, the crucial facts-on-the-ground might finally be coming into sight in this country – not the carnage or the mayhem; not the suicide car bombs or the chlorine truck...
Soon after the invasion of Iraq was launched, war supporters and critics alike, in a bow to the Vietnam era, began to speak referentially of the "Q-word" – for "quagmire," of course. By now, Iraq has had that administration-inspired "Q" hung firmly around its...
