Failure and unintended consequences: these are often hallmarks of U.S. military interventions. Who could have imagined, for instance, that forcing open the Kingdom of Japan at the point of U.S. Navy guns would eventually lead to bombs falling on ships from that same...
“Mirwais, son of Hayatullah Haideri. He was 1½ years old and had just started to learn how to walk, holding unsteadily to the poles of the family tent before flopping onto the frozen razorbacks of the muddy floor. “Abdul Hadi, son of Abdul Ghani. He was not even a...
More than 11 years after the 9/11 attacks, the American public is still barraged with sensational media coverage of the occasional uncovering of a terrorist plot. Many of these are so-called sting operations, which, rather than saving America from significant...
The setup and railroading of Mansoor Arbabsiar, a mentally ill Iranian emigrant, in the alleged “terror plot” to kill the Saudi ambassador was completed last week when he entered a guilty plea. The 57-year-old Iranian-American, a naturalized citizen, was charged with...
When the Bush-Cheney administration was in power, Dick Cheney tried hard to find an excuse for military attacks on Iran. After all, according to Gen. Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO from 1997 to 2000, Cheney and other hawks had plans for...
In 1998, the Defense Department vetoed a delegation of prominent U.S. nuclear specialists to go to Iran to investigate its nuclear program at the invitation of the government of newly-elected Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, according to the nuclear scientist who...
On Halloween, an army of the undead will be unleashed upon Mission Bay off the coast of San Diego. U.S. soldiers, Marines, special forces, police and emergency responders will face the challenge of a lifetime as the flesh-eating scourge threatens to devour their ranks...
When pundits name-check “the welfare-warfare state,” we usually mean, and are usually understood to mean, something along the lines of “bread and circuses at home, military adventurism abroad.” That’s as good a definition as any, I suppose, and certainly an accurate...
Here in America we have only just begun to feel the social and political effects of the worldwide economic crisis: rising unemployment, a wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures, and a general contraction in economic activity. State and local governments are imposing...
