In a diplomatic coup, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a deal last week with the U.K. and U.S. to have those Anglo-American allies help build a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia. A $66 billion French deal to provide Canberra with diesel...
Mark Milley and the Rogue Military Brass: Dress Rehearsal for a Coup?
Leaks to the news media from a new book, Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on the last weeks of the Trump administration are generating a firestorm of controversy, especially regarding the conduct of Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff....
How Provocative Are Australia’s Nuclear Submarines?
At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama realized that the US was "overweighted" in the Middle East, fighting wars against countries that could not challenge American hegemony and "underweighted" in the Asia-Pacific region where there was a...
Iraq Daily Roundup: Three Killed
Afghan Withdrawal Enhances Long-Term US Credibility
The failure of America’s expensive Potemkin regime in Afghanistan triggered predictable wailing and caterwauling by members of Washington’s War Party. In their view the U.S. can never leave any conflict anywhere at any time lest no one ever again believe that America...
Despite Its Exit, the US Will Continue To Wage War on the Taliban
The United States has always been a bad loser. Whether it has viewed itself as an imperial power, a military superpower or, in today's preferred terminology, the “world’s policeman”, the assumption is that everyone else must submit to its will. All of which is the...
A Bright Future for Weapons and War
Originally posted at TomDispatch. There are always winners and losers, aren’t there? For instance, the seven children who died in that last drone strike the U.S. military launched in Kabul as it was leaving town were certainly losers. Those who ordered that...
Washington’s Wars: The Killing of Zemari Ahmadi
The US government killed no ISIS-K fighters in its drone strike in Kabul last month. Instead, it killed 10 civilians. Zemari Ahmadi arrived home from work on Aug. 29 as his white Toyota Corolla was hit by an MQ-9 Reaper drone missile. He worked with Nutrition &...
Old Soldier Mark Milley Should ‘Fade Away’
A week after President Harry Truman fired WWII war hero Gen. Douglas MacArthur in April 1951, MacArthur addressed a joint session of Congress with some self-pity about being overruled and under-appreciated by that civilian Truman: "Old soldiers never die – they...
From the ‘Iron Wall’ to the ‘Villa in the Jungle’: Palestinians Demolish Israel’s Security Myths
25 years before Israel was established on the ruins of historic Palestine, a Russian Jewish Zionist leader, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, argued that a Jewish state in Palestine could only survive if it exists "behind an iron wall" of defense. Jabotinsky was speaking...


