Exclusive: Republicans are hyping the flap over Benghazi talking points by calling it “worse than Watergate,” a false narrative that Bob Woodward has helped along by ignoring new evidence connecting Richard Nixon’s sabotage of Vietnam War peace talks in 1968 to his political spying in 1971-72, writes Robert Parry.
In President Obama’s first term, he built a national security “team of rivals” and got mouse-trapped into a dubious Afghan War escalation. For his second term, he’s opted for people who share his views on more restrained military power and faces criticism for “group think,” says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Exclusive: The neocons and their Republican allies bloodied former Sen. Chuck Hagel with ugly smears, but he won Senate approval to become Defense Secretary. The neocons’ failure to exercise this “veto” now stands as a sign of their diminished standing with the Obama administration, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: To win Senate approval as Defense Secretary, former Sen. Chuck Hagel likely will be forced to bow before Official Washington’s cherished myth of the Iraq War’s “successful surge.” To tell the more nuanced truth would open Hagel to another round of neocon attacks, writes Robert Parry.
From the Archive: A State Department inquiry found serious lapses in security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans died in an assault last Sept. 11. But the CIA’s connection is still downplayed, as ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman noted last month.
Exclusive: Gen. David Petraeus was so cozy with neocon think-tankers that he ensconced two of them in his Afghan War command and granted them top-secret access to U.S. military policy. One later leveraged Petraeus’s friendship to impress military contractors for funding support, writes Robert Parry.
In an age of spin and propaganda, one trick is to falsify the chronological order of events to turn reactions into instigations and vice versa, like when George W. Bush says he went to war in Iraq in response to bad intelligence when his decision predated the manufacturing of that intel, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul…
A back story to the sex scandal that ended David Petraeus’s 14 months as director of the CIA is that his mistress, Paula Broadwell, was an apologist for abusive actions by the U.S. command in Afghanistan. She defended the leveling of an Afghan village deemed uncooperative, Gareth Porter says at Inter Press Service.
Exclusive: The last week has witnessed what might be called the Neocons’ Waterloo as their bid to reclaim power was beaten back by President Obama’s reelection and their last major government ally, CIA Director David Petraeus, resigned amid a sex scandal, Robert Parry reports.
Exclusive: Much of Official Washington is in mourning after David Petraeus admitted to an extramarital affair and resigned as head of the CIA. Top pundits were as smitten by the former four-star general as his mistress was, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Towards an Investigative 'War Chest' -- To expand our coverage of issues of war and peace, we are trying to build a $100,000 "war chest," believing honest information is the best way to avoid war.
