On January 6, just days after the U.S. assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, Agnes Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, requested that U.N. Secretary General António Guterres "establish an impartial...
The Global War of Error
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Yes, our infrastructure stinks, our schools are failing, this country’s a nightmare of inequality, and there’s a self-promoting madman in the White House, so isn’t it time to take pride in the rare institutional...
Who Created the Persian Gulf Tinderbox?
Joe Biden’s statement that “President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox” by assassinating Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was not inaccurate. But it skirts an all-important question: who created the tinderbox in the first place? The...
Report: US Drone Strike Kills 60 Afghan Civilians, Taliban Commander
An unconfirmed number of Afghan civilians – reportedly more than 60 – were killed along with the regional leader of a splinter Taliban faction and dozens of militants in a US drone attack in Herat province on Wednesday. Local government officials and members of the...
A Lawless Political Assassination
"America ... goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." ~ President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) Last week, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military to invade a then-friendly country without the knowledge or consent of its government and...
Trump Versus Iran: Power Doesn’t Just Corrupt, It Deludes
On January 8, US president Donald Trump addressed the American public concerning a casualty-free Iranian missile attack on US bases in Iraq, where just last week Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike. If the speech was remarkable in any way,...
Iraq Daily Roundup: Six Killed in Random Attacks
The Donald’s Assassination of General Soleimani – As Stupid as It Gets
During more than a half-century of Washington watching we have seen stupidity rise from one height to yet another. But nothing – just plain nothing – compares to the the blithering stupidity of the Donald’s Iran “policy”, culminating in...
The Islamic Republic of Restraint
Don’t buy the hype 1.0: Look, the administration, Fox News, and a Twitter army of Trumpsters are about to unleash a wave of propaganda. The president was right to assassinate Soleimani all along, they’ll say. The Iranian missiles fired on Tuesday night missed all...
Trump’s Iran Aggression Deserves Full-Throated Opposition
In a full-blown U.S. war with Iran, up to a million people could die initially. Hundreds of thousands more could die in the vacuum to follow. Millions would be made refugees. That’s the conclusion of experts surveyed by Vox reporter Alex Ward. “The worst-case...


