"Do you realize now what you have done?" So Vladimir Putin in his U.N. address summarized his indictment of a U.S. foreign policy that has produced a series of disasters in the Middle East that we did not need the Russian leader to describe for us. Fourteen...
Sustaining Perpetual War: The Bloodless Narrative
Sustaining America’s state of post-9/11 perpetual war requires skillful manipulation of the public at home. The key tool used for this purpose is the bloodless narrative, a combination of careful policy, deliberate falsehoods, and media manipulation that creates...
War Party Hates Putin – Loves al-Qaeda
As Russian fighter jets target al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, the Western media is up in arms – and in denial. They deny the Russians are taking on ISIS – and they are indignant that Putin is targeting al-Qaeda, which is almost never referred to by its actual name, but...
257 Killed in Iraq as Abadi Asks for More Airstrikes
Whether Drones ‘Work,’ US Policy Is Still Rotten
The question of the legitimacy of drone strikes has occasionally bubbled up in media over the years. As with most international news, the media and the public have a short attention span for the issue. On September 30, the BBC published a survey on whether drone...
Rouhani’s Dual Messages and Iran’s Security Strategy
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s address at the UN General Assembly and a talk the previous night to about 150 Americans touted the recent nuclear breakthrough as a precedent for further diplomatic accommodation with the United States. But both speeches also...
3,974 Killed in Iraq during September
The Superpower as Victim
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Three Exceptional Facts About America It's Safe to Be Paranoid in the US Given the cluttered landscape of the last 14 years, can you even faintly remember the moment when the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War ended in a stunned...
Showdown at the UN Corral
If there was any doubt that Washington has learned absolutely nothing since George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, then President Obama’s address to the United Nations has confirmed the world’s worst fears. It was an oration that combined the most egregious lies with the...
The US Is Neck-Deep in Yemeni Blood
The death toll from the Saudi strike on a wedding in Yemen has now risen to 130. The wedding took place near Mocha, a port city on the Red Sea. The groom was tied to the Houthi rebels somehow, which apparently assuaged whatever moral qualms remained within the...


