Pentagon

(Tomdispatch.com) – There once lived an odd little man — five feet nine inches tall and barely 140 pounds sopping wet — who rocked the lecture circuit and the nation itself. For all but a few activist insiders and scholars, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is now lost to history. Yet more […]

Donald Trump

Lawmakers blast Trump plan to take $3.8 billion from Pentagon Budget for Border Wall

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Christopher Scragg | – (Cronkite News) – WASHINGTON – The Trump administration plans to tap the Pentagon for another $3.8 billion in military funds to pay for border wall construction this year, a move critics blasted as “theft,” a raid and a money grab. The fund transfers, detailed in Defense Department budget documents uncovered […]

Pentagon

Is America Addicted to War?

Tom Engelhardt

(Tomdispatch.com) – My first question is simple enough: After 18-plus years of our forever wars, where are all the questions? Almost two decades of failing American wars across a startlingly large part of the planet and I’d like to know, for instance, who’s been fired for them? Who’s been impeached? Who’s even paying attention? I […]

Donald Trump

Will Trump Ride Pentagon Spending to Reelection? The President Bets on Arms Sales Big Time

William D. Hartung

(Tomdispatch.com) – Donald Trump likes to posture as a tough guy and part of that tough-guy persona involves bragging about how much he’s spent on the U.S. military. This tendency was on full display in a tweet he posted three days after an American drone killed Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad: “The United […]

Pentagon

As Fossil Fuels Melt Arctic, Pentagon Dreams of North Pole War

Michael T. Klare

(Tomdispatch.com) – In early March, an estimated 7,500 American combat troops will travel to Norway to join thousands of soldiers from other NATO countries in a massive mock battle with imagined invading forces from Russia. In this futuristic simulated engagement — it goes by the name of Exercise Cold Response 2020 — allied forces will […]

Pentagon

The Art of the Deal, Pentagon-Style: Wars Without Victories, Weapons Without End

William J. Astore

By William J. Astore | – (Tomdispatch.com) – The expression “self-licking ice cream cone” was first used in 1992 to describe a hidebound bureaucracy at NASA. Yet, as an image, it’s even more apt for America’s military-industrial complex, an institution far vaster than NASA and thoroughly dedicated to working for its own perpetuation and little […]

Donald Trump

American Apocalypse: The Rapture of a U.S. Foreign Policy Off the Rails

Danny Sjursen

By Danny Sjursen | – (Tomdispatch.com) – In March 1906, on the heels of the U.S. Army’s massacre of some 1,000 men, women, and children in the crater of a volcano in the American-occupied Philippines, humorist Mark Twain took his criticism public. A long-time anti-imperialist, he flippantly suggested that Old Glory should be redesigned “with […]

Pentagon

Why the Pentagon never Wins Wars any More but Needs Bigger and Bigger nearly trillion-dollar Budgets

Tomdispatch

By Mandy Smithberger | – (Tomdispatch.com) – Call it a colossal victory for a Pentagon that hasn’t won a war in this century, but not for the rest of us. Congress only recently passed and the president approved one of the largest Pentagon budgets ever. It will surpass spending at the peaks of both the […]

Donald Trump

The Emperor’s Clothes: The Absurdity of the US-Iran Conflict

Bahman Fozouni

Sacramento, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – The leaders of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the United States, President Donald Trump, share an identical strategic aim: ending the US’s military presence in the Middle East. I cannot recall any other conflict where the antagonists fully agree on a specific end goal. This fact alone makes the […]