Jeremy Scahill’s new book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, is sort of like approaching a dark cavity in an old tree. How many of us would instinctively cry out, “I don’t want to look – there will be creepy crawly things in there and I’m better off not...
Ten years and the scripted media narrative of the Iraq War -- now receding into the rear-view of our embarrassingly short American memory -- is about as satisfying as the obligatory drum solo at your standard 1980’s rock concert. In other words, a milquetoast,...
Kangaroo Court: 1.) a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted For years, activists have been referring to the military tribunal system at Guantanamo Bay as a “kangaroo court.” Evidence pouring in from the island compound and...
Beware lawyers bearing bright ideas on how to resolve the ticking clock on White House authority to conduct counterterrorism operations across the globe. The silver tongues of rhetoric and reason may say current law need only an “update,” but their remedies would have...
Donna Mulhearn in Fallujah While the media was gearing up last month for the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, Donna Mulhearn was getting off a plane, the memory of six Iraqi cities still clinging to her like dust and ashes. You see, among the din of talking heads and...
The Obama Administration was on the defensive last week as an intensifying hunger strike among the detainees at Guantanamo Bay finally reached international attention. Notably, it’s put into stark relief the fact that nearly half of the prisoners there have been...
For most Americans the death squads and torture chambers that killed thousands in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua in the 1980’s are difficult to understand and easy to forget because, aside for an apology by President Bill Clinton in 1999 – the United...
If CPAC is a key barometer of the conservative movement, then let’s face it -- all hopes that the right side of the political spectrum is ripe for a re-boot in its approach to defense strategy and foreign policy are sadly misplaced. Sure, there was a millisecond of...
Conventional wisdom insists that war crimes and atrocities by U.S forces in Vietnam were isolated, committed by a "few bad apples" and "rogue units." In fact, for 40 years the American public has been collectively assuring the veterans of that war...
Have American university campuses become so inured to the militarization of policy, culture – our thought – that they can’t see the Trojan horse sitting in the quad, its occupants pouring out and passing out sweets and credits to all the Ivy Leaguers passing by with...
