Pentagon

By William D. Hartung | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – At over $600 billion a year and counting, the Pentagon already receives significantly more than its fair share of federal funds. If President Donald Trump has his way, though, that will prove a sum for pikers and misers. He and his team are now […]

Arms Sales

From Ugly American to American Bully

contributors

By William J. Astore | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – I came of age during America’s Cold War with the Soviet Union, witnessing its denouement while serving in the U.S. military. In those days, the USSR led the world’s weapons trade, providing arms to the Warsaw Pact (the military alliance it dominated) as well […]

Arab Spring

Along with pardoning Manning, Obama should have repealed 1917 Espionage Act

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In a daring and bold move that showed his profound humanitarian side, President Obama has commuted the 35-year sentence of Chelsea Manning, a transgender woman and former military intelligence analyst who in 2010 leaked hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and also some Iraq and […]

Health

US Iraq-Afghanistan ‘Burn Pits’ – Poisoning America’s Soldiers

contributors

Reviewed by H. Patricia Hynes | (Truthdig) | – – “The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers” A book by Joseph Hickman They are called “this generation’s Agent Orange”—the open fire pits operated on over 230 US military bases across Iraq and Afghanistan during our wars there. Every kind of waste—plastics, batteries, old ordnance, […]

National Security State

Last Year the US Dropped 26,171 Bombs on 7 Muslim-Majority Countries

contributors

TeleSur | – – The countries include Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. In the waning days of the Obama administration, new research by the Council on Foreign Relations, CFR, has confirmed the militaristic legacy it leaves behind: the United States dropped at least 26,171 bombs in seven Muslim-majority countries in 2016. According […]

Donald Trump

Mr. Trump: Government and War are too Serious to be entrusted to the Generals

contributors

By William J. Astore | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – America has always had a love affair with its generals. It started at the founding of the republic with George Washington and continued with (among others) Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. These military men shared something in common: […]

Displaced and Refugees

Why is the US at War in Yemen and will Trump Escalate?

Rebecca Gordon

San Francisco ( Tomdispatch.com) | – The long national nightmare that was the 2016 presidential election is finally over. Now, we’re facing a worse terror: the reality of a Trump presidency. Donald Trump has already promised to nominate a segregationist attorney general, a national security adviser who is a raging Islamophobe, a secretary of education […]

Donald Trump

All the President’s Men: The Warmongering Washington Blob is Back

contributors

By John Feffer | (Foreign Policy in Focus) | – – Shortly after taking office in 1969, President Richard Nixon devised his “madman theory.” It was the height of the Vietnam War, and Nixon believed that he could end the conflict. It just required a bit of unpredictability. “I want the North Vietnamese to believe […]

Central Intelligence Agency

The Election that Changed everything and Could be History’s Deal-Breaker

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – For decades, Washington had a habit of using the Central Intelligence Agency to deep-six governments of the people, by the people, and for the people that weren’t to its taste and replacing them with governments of the [take your choice: military junta, shah, autocrat, dictator] across […]