Originally posted at TomDispatch. In our era in Washington, whole careers have been built on grotesque mistakes. In fact, when it comes to our various conflicts, God save you if you’re right; no one will ever want to hear from you again. If you’re wrong, however......
Originally posted at TomDispatch. It was a typical little news story on Washington’s drone wars – six paragraphs from Yemen, the sort of minimalist report that, in these years, has also regularly come out of Pakistan or even, from time to time, Somalia....
Originally posted at TomDispatch. My drone is yours, compadre! Or so Washington has now decided. The latest promise of good times in the arms trade comes from an administration that has pioneered a robotic assassination regime organized out of the White House (though...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Yes, they’ve become “the greatest generation” (a phrase that’s always reminded me of an ad line for a soft drink), but they didn’t feel that way at the time. As Susan Faludi pointed out in her classic...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. I never fail to be amazed – and that’s undoubtedly my failing. I mean, if you retain a capacity for wonder you can still be awed by a sunset, but should you really be shocked that the sun is once again sinking in the West?...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. The post-9/11 moment offered them their main chance to transform their dreams into reality and they seized it by the throat. They wanted to “take the gloves off.” They were convinced that the presidency had been shackled...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Suddenly he appeared, riding in the back of a truck, his arms thrust to the heavens, his fists clenched tight. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Ho Chi Minh, modern Vietnam’s founding father... and he was holding dumbbells. It was...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. He was undoubtedly one of the worst “lone-wolf” terrorists in modern history. On July 22, 2011, after trying to take out Norway’s political leadership in Oslo with a car bomb and killing eight people, Anders Breivik...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. It was August 2, 1990, and Saddam Hussein, formerly Washington’s man in Baghdad and its ally against fundamentalist Iran, had just sent his troops across the border into oil-rich Kuwait. It would prove a turning point in American...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Predator drones, tested out in this country’s distant war zones, have played an increasingly prominent role in the up-armoring of the U.S.-Mexican border. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched its first Predator in 2004,...
