Pentagon

Russia Today | (Video Report) | – – Editorial note: Russia Today is an organ of the Russian government, so this report is not independent, critical analysis. On the other hand, Russia is a player in Syria and what it thinks is important, and US media tend not to report outside-the-Beltway points of view. Just […]

Bill of Rights

Revealed: The private firms tracking terror targets at heart of US drone wars

contributors

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 […]

Barack Obama

Iran Deal can only Succeed with the Support of Civil Society

contributors

By John Robert Kelley | ( Euractiv) | – – . . . [T]he key to success in the Iran nuclear deal lies in its implementation, and that should be everyone’s business. Diplomacy is not just for elites anymore. Success will require total cooperation throughout the societies of parties to the deal, and this applies […]

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

Drone Warfare

The Ghost of Soviet Collapse haunts the West: Military Hegemony isn’t what it Used to Be

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – The rise and fall of great powers and their imperial domains has been a central fact of history for centuries. It’s been a sensible, repeatedly validated framework for thinking about the fate of the planet. So it’s hardly surprising, when faced with a country once regularly labeled […]

Barack Obama

Demonizing as Policy: Washington Elites divided over which state to declare Enemy No. 1

contributors

By Michael T. Klare | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – America’s grand strategy, its long-term blueprint for advancing national interests and countering major adversaries, is in total disarray. Top officials lurch from crisis to crisis, improvising strategies as they go, but rarely pursuing a consistent set of policies. Some blame this indecisiveness on a lack of […]

Militarization

America’s “Wars on . . .” have become an unhealthy Addiction

contributors

By William J. Astore | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – War on drugs. War on poverty. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. War on terror. The biggest mistake in American policy, foreign and domestic, is looking at everything as war. When a war mentality takes over, it chooses the weapons and tactics for you. It limits the terms […]