National Security State

By Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black | (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism) | – – The overstretched US military has hired hundreds of private sector contractors in the heart of its drone operations to analyse top secret video feeds and help track high value terror targets, an investigation has found. Contracts unearthed by the Bureau […]

Drone Warfare

Requiem for the Home Front: Before War was Covert & Elite

Tom Engelhardt

By Tom Engelhardt | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – Almost three quarters of a century ago, my mother placed a message in a bottle and tossed it out beyond the waves. It bobbed along through tides, storms, and squalls until just recently, almost four decades after her death, it washed ashore at my feet. I’m speaking […]

Constitution

That Time Ronald Reagan opened Iran and Illegally sold Khomeini Weapons

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Reagan administration in the 1980s was buffeted by two policy drives toward Iran. On the one hand, Reagan ally Saudi Arabia supported Iraq, which illegally launched a war on the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1980 in order to steal its oil-rich Khuzistan Province. Reagan […]

Foreign Policy

Why did the US fail in Iraq? Roots of American Overstretch

contributors

By William Polk | (Informed Comment) | – – In The Financial Times of April 23, 2015, Philip Stephens begins a perceptive article with the obvious statement that “It is easier to say that Obama never gets it right than to come up with an alternative strategy.” Of course it is. It was never easy […]

Central Intelligence Agency

The Unbearable Heaviness of the Drone Cowboy

contributors

By Pratap Chatterjee | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – The myth of the lone drone warrior is now well established and threatens to become as enduring as that of the lone lawman with a white horse and a silver bullet who rode out into the Wild West to find the bad guys. In a similar fashion, […]

Iraq War

George W. Bush Started War, then Charged $100,000 to Help US Veterans Charity

contributors

Brian Ross | (ABC News Video) | – – ““It’s not right,” says wounded Marine hero.” ABC News: “George W. Bush Charged $100,000 to Help US Veterans Charity” Estimates of US troops wounded in Bush’s illegal war of aggression range from 32,000 to 100,000

Foreign Policy

The Confederate Flag flew in Iraq as Symbol of Empire and Militarism (“Valor”)

contributors

By Greg Grandin | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – The Pentagon just can’t let go. In the wake of the Charleston Massacre, Amazon and Walmart have announced that they will no longer sell Confederate flag merchandise. Ebay says it will stop offering Confederate items for electronic auction. Mississippi’s Republican speaker of the house calls his state […]

Barack Obama

Ghosts of King George III: Top 5 Things that threaten American Independence Today

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The things that irked the residents of the Thirteen Colonies about British rule have reemerged from other quarters to threaten American democracy. The colonists minded being ruled arbitrarily by British-appointed officials, some of them corrupt. They minded not being represented in parliament even though that body […]

Civil Rights

Your Fourth of July and My Fourth of July

Juan Cole

Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Revised for the 2010s: Your Fourth of July is invasions and wars. My Fourth of July is the pure sunbeam of peace. Yours is the Confederate flag and nostalgia for the hierarchies of slavery. Mine is ‘all men are created equal.’ Yours is kowtowing to billionaires in […]