The Guardian, Washington Post, and Der Spiegel have last week published “bombshell” revelations about Russian cyberwarfare based on leaked documents, but have produced only one single, rather innocuous leaked document between them (in the Washington Post),...
Iraq Monthly Roundup: 85 Killed in March
Former Soldiers Without a Future
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Here’s something we seldom focus on when it comes to war, American-style, even during the just-passed 20th anniversary of our disastrous invasion of Iraq: many more soldiers survive armed conflict than die from it. This has been...
This Women’s History Month, Celebrate the Resolve of Jeannette Rankin
Do we have a shortage of female heroes in this country? Are virtuous women that scarce? Or is it simply that Women’s History Month, by eliminating women from the conversation who don’t fit the narrative of the State Department and the Pentagon, failed to...
Iraq Daily Roundup: Four Killed
The Pentagon’s Budget from Hell
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Somehow, when it comes to Congress and the mainstream media, the true strangeness of the Pentagon budget always is missing in action. Despite arguments about the small things, just about everyone accepts that the United States must...
20 Years Later: Confessions of a Conscientious Quitter
It’s been 20 years since the lies and obfuscation that led to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. I’m about to turn 37 and it hit me: those events 20 years ago were how I began my political journey, though I didn't know it at the time. As a progressive activist, one...
Vladimir Putin vs. the International Criminal Court
On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant of arrest for Russian President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal for allegedly deporting and transferring children from Ukraine to Russia. The Nuremburg Tribunal declared that "To initiate a war of...
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Now Ukraine: Reductio ab Absurdum
The recent 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 has caused me to reflect on the two years (2007-08) that I worked as a field-level civilian advisor in Iraq followed by six years in Afghanistan (2009-14) and to correlate this experience to the current...
We Don’t Have To Choose Between Nuclear Madmen
The announcement by Vladimir Putin over the weekend that Russia will deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus marked a further escalation of potentially cataclysmic tensions over the war in neighboring Ukraine. As the Associated Press reported, "Putin said the...


