Originally posted at TomDispatch. How the mighty have fallen. Once known as "Obama’s favorite general," James Cartwright will soon don a prison uniform and, thanks to a plea deal, spend 13 months behind bars. Involved in setting up the earliest military...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. After an argument about a leave denied, Specialist Ivan Lopez pulled out a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun and began a shooting spree at Fort Hood, America’s biggest stateside base, that left three soldiers dead and 16...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Be careful what you wish for. In 2011, a Libyan rebellion began against autocrat Muammar Gaddafi. It undoubtedly reflected the wish of many Libyans for a new world of their own without his heavy hand or that of his secret police and...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Let me explain why writing the introduction to today’s post by TomDispatch Managing Editor Nick Turse is such a problem. In these intros, I tend to riff off the ripples of news that regularly surround whatever subject an author might...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Here’s what the president said back in June 2013, while reassuring the American people about the National Security Agency’s collection of their phone metadata: “When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Isn’t there something strangely reassuring when your eyeballs are gripped by a “mystery” on the news that has no greater meaning and yet sweeps all else away? This, of course, is the essence of the ongoing tale of...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. "Up to a few months ago, Ben Suc was a prosperous village of some thirty-five hundred people." That is the initial line of The Village of Ben Suc, his first book, a copy of which I recently reread on a plane trip, knowing...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. After years in the shadows, U.S. Navy SEALs emerged in a big way with the 2011 night raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Afterward, they were lauded in print as supermen, feted by the president, and praised by the first lady. Soon, some...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Our major post-9/11 wars are goners and the imagery of American war-making is heading downhill. The Iraq War was long ago left in the trash heap of history, while in Afghanistan the talk is now about “the zero option”...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Washington and Kabul have, for endless months, been performing a strange pas de deux over the issue of American withdrawal. Initially, the Obama administration insisted that if, by December 31, 2013, Afghan President Hamid Karzai...
