Gen. David Petraeus and other U.S. commanders have touted supposed progress in the Afghan War to justify the escalation that they demanded more than two years ago, but a new report by an in-the-field Army officer found a less sanguine reality, as Gareth Porter reported for Inter Press Service.
Rick Santorum, the latest Republican “flavor of the month” for president, exudes a boyish enthusiasm that many Americans find personally appealing. But his vision for America would combine a moralistic theocracy with free-market capitalism and perpetual war, a nightmarish scenario, says Lawrence Davidson.
Israeli agents reportedly have collaborated with an Iranian terror group to murder Iran’s civilian nuclear scientists in an escalation of violence that further draws the United States toward the precipice of another Mideast conflict, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar writes.
The dispute over requiring church-run hospitals and schools to cover birth control for female employees has stirred up longstanding confusion over what the First Amendment does and doesn’t do. Some on the Christian Right insist that it means religious doctrine can trump secular law, but Rev. Howard Bess says that’s a misunderstanding.
Money has a way of not just talking – but corrupting nearly everything it touches, including awards purportedly meant to honor artistic quality. At this year’s Grammys, some of the less “popular” genres of music have been slashed to streamline the show, as Danny Schechter reports.
Exclusive: Republicans and the Right are on the offensive again, decrying an Obama administration ruling that some Catholic-run institutions must offer employees birth-control coverage in health care plans. Yet, this latest “war” rhetoric again misrepresents the countervailing principles, Robert Parry reports.
Failed businesses – like failed foreign policies – can’t or won’t see around the next corner where unexpected challenges lie. Often the myopia results from a focus on the next quarter or the next election, a shortsightedness that now risks sending the U.S. off to a new war, with Iran, writes Danny Schechter.
President Obama’s Super Bowl interview included the curious equal billing for U.S. security and that of Israel. And his Republican rivals sometimes act as if Israel’s security should be priority number one. Ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar asks, shouldn’t U.S. security stand alone for U.S. presidents?
Exclusive: In a televised interview before the Super Bowl, President Obama had the chance to send a clear signal to Israel not to launch a preemptive war against Iran but instead offered ambiguous remarks that Israeli hard-liners might read as a partial green light, reports ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Exclusive: GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich claims President Obama has declared “war on the Catholic Church” with a ruling that contraception must be included in health plans for employees of church-led institutions, but Catholic moral theologian Daniel C. Maguire says it is the U.S. bishops (and Gingrich) who are wrong.
In demonizing the long-dead Saul Alinsky, Newt Gingrich is exploiting ignorance about the Chicago community organizer while blowing a dog whistle for some bigots on the Right over the “foreign-sounding” Russian-Jewish name. He’s also got his history wrong, as Bill Moyers and Michael Winship note.
Exclusive: Aided by Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court, America’s ultra-rich are buying up the political process with vast sums of cash, some through dummy corporations. The money has made the GOP campaign nasty, but will dirty up President Obama in the fall, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: Over the past few decades, many U.S. mainstream journalists have learned to protect their careers by not offending the Right’s powerful attack apparatus. That caution (or cowardice) has now infected coverage of the looming crisis over global warming, as Sam Parry notes.
The U.S. appears on the verge of a new war in the Middle East, between Israel and Iran, but much of the casus belli traces back to the long-running dispute over the rights of Palestinians. In that context, Lawrence Davidson asks again if a one-state solution might be the only viable answer.
The Obama administration is engaged in complex diplomacy over Israel’s possible attack on Iran, trying simultaneously to restrain Israel and use its military threat to pressure Iran on its nuclear program. But some maneuvers may work at cross purposes, Gareth Porter writes for Inter Press Service.
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