In 2002-03, the Bush administration coordinated with retired military officers who were acting as policy experts on CNN and elsewhere to whip up the Iraq War frenzy. Such military commentary can have a significant – and dangerous – impact on U.S. public opinion, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
Exclusive: Looking back at the Iraq War and other disastrous U.S. foreign policy choices, you might wonder about the sanity of American leadership. But if you read star columnist Thomas L. Friedman, you’ll learn that it’s the rest of the world that’s crazy, as Robert Parry explains.
Official Washington has long ignored the genocide and terrorism that Ronald Reagan inflicted on Central America in the 1980s, making it easier to genuflect before the Republican presidential icon. That also helped Reagan’s “death squad” tactics resurface in Iraq last decade, as William Boardman reports.
As the Iraq War’s architects and boosters remain respected figures in Official Washington, whistleblower Bradley Manning faces possible life in prison. To counter this injustice, media critic Jeff Cohen thinks Manning should get the Nobel Peace Prize, as he explained to Dennis J. Bernstein.
As wretched as the Iraq War was, the absence of any meaningful accountability for the U.S. policymakers and pundits who made the catastrophe happen is nearly as stomach-turning. Every day the same faces show up on the TV talk shows and Op-Ed pages spouting more of their “wisdom,” as Adil E. Shamoo notes.
The neoconservative Washington Post wants people to forget about how it and other Iraq War boosters got pretty much everything wrong about that disaster. Amnesia is especially important now as the Post and the neocons begin a new push for U.S. military intervention in Syria, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
From the Archive: A decade ago, as U.S. troops gained control of Iraq, there were many false alarms about finding WMD, leading to President Bush declaring the discovery of mobile biological weapons labs. Robert Parry led the way in challenging that bogus claim in this analysis of America’s false reality.
A basic tenet of “tough-guy-ism” is that throwing around U.S. military and economic muscle is the way to advance American global power. A corollary is that sensitivity toward world opinion is for sissies. But the reality is that the U.S. government undermines America’s influence with this arrogance, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
As minor African despots are dragged before the International Criminal Court, ex-President George W. Bush remains free, despite having committed major war crimes like torture and aggressive war. With the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands, he will now celebrate his presidential library, Coleen Rowley notes.
By glorifying or sanitizing war, U.S. officials and a complicit news media may insist they are shielding “the troops” from unfair criticism. But real democracy and simple human decency require that citizens know the full and often ugly truth, as Michael True notes in this review of Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves.
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