Bush and Cheney Didn’t Have to Do It

Originally posted at TomDispatch. The post-9/11 moment offered them their main chance to transform their dreams into reality and they seized it by the throat. They wanted to “take the gloves off.” They were convinced that the presidency had been shackled...

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‘Honor’ the Vietnam Veteran, Forget the War

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Suddenly he appeared, riding in the back of a truck, his arms thrust to the heavens, his fists clenched tight. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Ho Chi Minh, modern Vietnam’s founding father... and he was holding dumbbells. It was...

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The Fear of Lone-Wolf Terrorism Rises

Originally posted at TomDispatch. He was undoubtedly one of the worst “lone-wolf” terrorists in modern history. On July 22, 2011, after trying to take out Norway’s political leadership in Oslo with a car bomb and killing eight people, Anders Breivik...

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Groundhog Day in the War on Terror

Originally posted at TomDispatch. It was August 2, 1990, and Saddam Hussein, formerly Washington’s man in Baghdad and its ally against fundamentalist Iran, had just sent his troops across the border into oil-rich Kuwait. It would prove a turning point in American...

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Bringing the Battlefield to the Border

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Predator drones, tested out in this country’s distant war zones, have played an increasingly prominent role in the up-armoring of the U.S.-Mexican border. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched its first Predator in 2004,...

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Washington’s Walking Dead

Originally posted at TomDispatch. When it comes to the national security state, our capital has become a thought-free zone. The airlessness of the place, the unwillingness of leading players in the corridors of power to explore new ways of approaching crucial problems...

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A Shadow War in 150 Countries

Originally posted at TomDispatch. In the dead of night, they swept in aboard V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Landing in a remote region of one of the most volatile countries on the planet, they raided a village and soon found themselves in a life-or-death firefight....

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The Military-Industrial Complex in Iraq

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Call it what you will – Iraq War 3.0, the war against ISIS, the new Syrian War – it was regularly headline-making news in this country in the second half of last year: the stunning advances of the Islamic State (IS)...

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Unpacking the War on Terror

Originally posted at TomDispatch. About a year ago, I hit the road for a couple of months. I went to Albany and Albuquerque, Berkeley and Boston, Chapel Hill and Chicago, Seattle and Schenectady. I wasn’t reporting. I wasn’t writing. I sure wasn’t...

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How the Iraq War Began in Panama

Originally posted at TomDispatch. So many years and wars later, it’s easy to forget what a total television hit the first Gulf War of 1991 was. Just in case you no longer remember – and why should you? – that was the war that was to bury America’s defeat in Vietnam...

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