Doing Bin Laden’s Bidding

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Honestly, if there’s an afterlife, then the soul of Osama bin Laden, whose body was consigned to the waves by the U.S. Navy back in 2011, must be swimming happily with the dolphins and sharks. At the cost of the sort of spare...

read more

A Red Scare in the Gray Zone

Memo to Senator John McCain: Senator, the other day I noticed that, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, you threatened to subpoena the Trump administration for information about the recent attack in Niger that killed four American soldiers. “There’s a mindset...

read more

Take Your (Tiny) Fingers Off the Button

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Trump's Nuclear Dreams – Nightmares Past and Present Preventing a nuclear war between the United States and North Korea may be the most pressing challenge facing the world right now. Our childish, ignorant, and incompetent president...

read more

Teaching Revisionist History 101 at West Point

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, a former businessman who had helped run companies into the ground, he was widely considered ill-prepared for the presidency, out of his depth, a lightweight in a heavyweight world....

read more

Nixon’s Children

Originally posted at TomDispatch. It took 14 years, but now we have an answer. It was March 2003, the invasion of Iraq was underway, and Major General David Petraeus was in command of the 101st Airborne Division heading for the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.  Rick...

read more

Gitmo’s Living Legacy in the Trump Era

Originally posted at TomDispatch Karen Greenberg first arrived at TomDispatch in January 2005 in tandem with defense attorney Joshua Dratel. Their book The Torture Papers was just being published and they were asking questions. Thirty-seven of them, to be exact, all...

read more

Embracing Our Inner Empire

Originally posted at TomDispatch. “Bring the war home”: once, a long, lost time ago – in October 1969, to be exact – that slogan represented a promise made by the most radical wing of the vast movement against the war in Vietnam. Wearing football helmets...

read more