The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gave us the term blowback, and then spent their career encouraging it with foreign interventions. Now, the CIA has found that another one of their habits doesn’t lead to good effects in the real world. As reported by The New York...

Nobody likes a know-it-all. You know the type I mean: somebody who sits there with a smug-as-all-hell look on his/her face while pontificating on a subject with absolute certainty, secure in the knowledge that they’re echoing the Conventional Wisdom. Yes, they could...

Originally posted at TomDispatch. It was May 23, 2012, and President Obama was giving a graduation speech at the Air Force Academy when he told the assembled cadets that they should "never bet against the United States of America... [because] the United States has...

Bombers returned to Baghdad on Thursday, after taking a one-day break. At least 121 people were killed there and elsewhere. Another 157 were wounded. Most of the casualties were either civilian or security personnel.

Consider this comical scene described by Peter Van Buren, a former US diplomat, who was deployed to Iraq on a 12-month assignment in 2009-10: Van Buren led two Department of State teams assigned with the abstract mission of the "reconstruction" of Iraq,...

Earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey gave an interview to "60 Minutes" during which he revealed a flawed understanding of personal freedom. He rightly distinguished what FBI agents do in their investigations of federal crimes from what the NSA does in its...

The violence eased up on Wednesday, at least for civilians, but at least 140 people were killed. Most of them were militants. Another 22 people were wounded.

Originally posted at TomDispatch. You may not believe in the supernatural, but it’s still a certifiable fact. Your tax dollars are paying for ghosts. Just ask John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, who recently wrote to three...

Want proof of the craziness of US foreign and military policy? Just turn to Leon Panetta’s Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace, wherein the former Secretary of Defense and longtime Democratic party hack congressman recounted a 2010 conversation with...

Bombers returned to a Shi’ite neighborhood in Baghdad that is the site of an important shrine. South of the capital, a mass grave was discovered. Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers are going public about their brushes with chemical weapons in Iraq. At least 279 people were killed and 103 were wounded.