Extraordinary renditions, torture, abuse, humiliation, detention without charge or end, an obsession with protecting American officials (and military men) from future foreign or domestic criminal charges for their acts – these are the cornerstones of foreign...
On the April day in 2003 when American troops first entered Baghdad, historian Marilyn Young suggested that Operation Iraqi Freedom was "Vietnam on crack cocaine." She wrote presciently at the time: "In less than two weeks, a 30-year-old vocabulary is back:...
It's been a month of momentous White House announcements. First, there was Laura's gender-bending, glass-soufflé-dish breaking decision to choose Cristeta Comerford for the previously all-male post of White House head chef. Then came the issuing of the...
Retired four-star Army General Barry McCaffrey to Time magazine: "The Army's wheels are going to come off in the next 24 months. We are now in a period of considerable strategic peril. It's because Rumsfeld has dug in his heels and said, I cannot retreat from my...
Rumors and leaks continue to swirl around the case of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame and the various journalists and Bush "senior administration officials" believed to be involved in some fashion in her outing. Whole forests have undoubtedly been pulped for...
We have now reached another of those recurring tinderbox moments relating to Iran. Yesterday, the Iranians officially relaunched their nuclear program, beginning a suspended process of uranium conversion at a facility near Isfahan. In this, Iran's emboldened clerical...
"Asked about continued political challenges such as Iraq and Social Security, Bush said he doesn't care about the polls. "Q: But power is perception. "THE PRESIDENT: Power is being the president." -George Bush in an interview with Texas reporters G-SAVE Yourself! Last...
I'm too old for the typical Web site with lots of posted back-and-forth commentary. So the TomDispatch e-mail box is – and often I regret this – normally my own private adventure. I'm regularly amazed by the letters that come in, many encouraging, some...
In a recent piece, "The Media's Roving Eye," trying to establish a timeline that would offer context for the Plame case, I wrote the following: "Vice President Cheney started the administration's atomic drumbeat to war in Iraq with a series of speeches on...
The Media's Roving Eye by Tom Engelhardt Oh what a tangled web we weave When we first practice to deceive… I've written regularly about the media's inability to connect the dots. The other day a reporter out in the far-flung reaches of our imperium wrote in to...
