Pentagon

Middle East Monitor | – – The US government’s aid chief, Mark Green, made an unannounced visit to Raqqa in Syria on Monday, the most senior US civilian official from the Trump administration to visit the war-struck northern city months after it was retaken from Daesh, Reuters reports. Green was accompanied by head of the […]

Afghanistan

12 Strong. The Inside Story on the Making of a (Refreshingly Accurate) Hollywood War Epic

contributors

By Brian Glyn Williams (with Julie Romei) | (Informed Comment) | – – When I received a phone call from a representative for famed producer Jerry Bruckheimer to visit the remote mountains of New Mexico to see the filming set for the forthcoming Afghan war movie, 12 Strong: The True Declassified Story of the Horse […]

Arms Sales

Trump Admin flooding Planet with high Tech Weapons; What could Go Wrong?

contributors

Military-Industrial Complex Set for Huge Expansion

Pentagon

Burn Pits and Toxins: Are 800 US Bases abroad Scofflaw Polluters?

contributors

H. Patricia Hynes | (Informed Comment) | – – My nephew, an Army veteran who spent most of his 20 plus years military service as an officer in South Korea, is now a civilian military contractor living on a base in Afghanistan. Our only conversation about US military pollution in South Korea was something of […]

National Security State

From Afghanistan to Somalia, Special Ops Achieves Less with More

contributors

By Nick Turse | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – At around 11 o’clock that night, four Lockheed MC-130 Combat Talons, turboprop Special Operations aircraft, were flying through a moonless sky from Pakistani into Afghan airspace. On board were 199 Army Rangers with orders to seize an airstrip. One hundred miles to the northeast, Chinook and […]

Donald Trump

“Do Kids die, Mom?” Facing the Future With Trepidation in the Age of Trump

Juan Cole

Frida Berrigan | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – As a mother and an activist, here’s what I’ve concluded as 2018 begins: it’s getting harder and harder to think about the future — at least in that soaring Whitney Houston fashion. You know the song: “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and […]

Donald Trump

The Map: Costs of 76 ongoing American Wars

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – He left Air Force Two behind and, unannounced, “shrouded in secrecy,” flew on an unmarked C-17 transport plane into Bagram Air Base, the largest American garrison in Afghanistan. All news of his visit was embargoed until an hour before he was to depart the country. More than […]

Afghanistan

How Hawks and ambitious Generals pioneered our generational Warfare

contributors

By Danny Sjursen | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – I remember the day President Obama let me down. It was December 1, 2009, and as soon as the young president took the podium at West Point and — calm and cool as ever — announced a new troop surge in Afghanistan, I knew. There wasn’t […]

Donald Trump

Global Spec Ops in Trump’s Pentagon: Elite Commandos in record 149 Countries

Juan Cole

By Nick Turse | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in October. That was in the wake of the combat deaths of four members of the Special Operations forces […]