Compared to the kind of secret cables that WikiLeaks has just shared with the world, everyday public statements from government officials are exercises in make-believe. In a democracy, people have a right to know what their government is actually doing. In a...
It's already history. In mid-August 2010, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan launched a huge media campaign to prevent any substantial withdrawal of military forces the next summer. The morning after Gen. David Petraeus appeared in a Sunday interview on NBC's Meet the...
Washington's spin machine is in overdrive to counter the massive leak of documents on Afghanistan. Much of the counterattack revolves around the theme that the documents aren't particularly relevant to this year's new-and-improved war effort. The White House seized on...
When Israel attacked the Gaza aid flotilla, Congresswoman Jane Harman was engaged in a parallel assault. Israel's government relied on the efficacy of violence; Harman's campaign was counting on the power of paid media. In both cases, the targets were advocates of...
President Obama has taken a further plunge into the kind of war abyss that consumed predecessors named Johnson, Nixon, and Bush. On Sunday, during his first presidential trip to Afghanistan, Obama stood before thousands of American troops to proclaim the sanctity of...
The event on the House floor Wednesday afternoon was monumental -- the first major congressional debate about U.S. military operations in Afghanistan since lawmakers authorized the invasion of that country in autumn 2001. But, as Rep. Patrick Kennedy noted with...
