National Security State

By David Shields | (Informed Comment) | – – The following is an excerpt from War Is Beautiful by David Shields: For decades, upon opening the New York Times every morning and contemplating the front page, I was entranced by the war photographs. My attraction to the photographs evolved into a mixture of rapture, bafflement, […]

Featured

Senior National Security Advisers urge Obama to put Spec Ops Troops close to ISIL Front

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Missy Ryan and Greg Jaffe at the Washington Post reveal that President Obama’s senior national security advisers have recommended positioning US special operations forces closer to the enemy lines of Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) in Iraq and even in Syria. Apparently it is felt that Iraqi troops […]

Militarization

But are they effective? Elite US Forces Deploy to a Record-Shattering 147 Countries in 2015

contributors

By Nick Turse | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – They’re some of the best soldiers in the world: highly trained, well equipped, and experts in weapons, intelligence gathering, and battlefield medicine. They study foreign cultures and learn local languages. They’re smart, skillful, wear some very iconic headgear, and their 12-member teams are “capable of […]

National Security State

Former Detainees Sue CIA Torture Psychologists

contributors

By Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian | (The Young Turks) | – – “Ten months after the Senate released its report on the CIA’s illegal torture program, the ACLU is getting involved. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian (The Point), hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down. “Three former CIA detainees are suing over […]

Afghanistan

Still underestimating al-Qaeda & Taliban despite 1500 Military Analysts

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – That figure stunned me. I found it in the 12th paragraph of a front-page New York Times story about “senior commanders” at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) playing fast and loose with intelligence reports to give their air war against ISIS an unjustified sheen of success: […]

Militarization

Endless Rounds of “Vietnamization” as America’s Colonial Armies Collapse one by One

contributors

By Andrew J. Bacevich | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – First came Fallujah, then Mosul, and later Ramadi in Iraq. Now, there is Kunduz, a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan. In all four places, the same story has played out: in cities that newspaper reporters like to call “strategically important,” security forces trained and […]

Featured

No, Donald Trump, Mideast wouldn’t be more Stable under Saddam & other Dictators

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump alleged this weekend that “of course” the Middle East would be more stable if dictators like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were still around or if Bashar al-Assad could be restored in Syria. The mistake Mr. Trump is making is to think ahistorically, that […]

Foreign Policy

Americans are Powerful & Safe; So why do they feel Like Victims?

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – 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 silence of shock and triumph in Washington, Eastern Europe was freed, Germany unified, and the Soviet Union […]

National Security State

How Henry Kissinger created a world of bad guys Armed to the Teeth

contributors

By Greg Grandin | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – The only person Henry Kissinger flattered more than President Richard Nixon was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. In the early 1970s, the Shah, sitting atop an enormous reserve of increasingly expensive oil and a key figure in Nixon and Kissinger’s move into the Middle […]