While Official Washington grapples with how slowly to draw down troops in Afghanistan and debates whether to complete the pullout from Iraq by year’s end a new alliance of Asian states is expanding into the vacuum left by America’s decaying…
Month: June 2011
Gen. Keane Keen on Iran Attack
Exclusive: In Washington, retired Gen. Jack Keane is widely praised for his role in promoting the Iraq War “surge” in 2007 and he is now seeking an escalation of tensions with Iran. However, at a Fordham event in New York,…
American Exceptionalism’s Hypocrisy
U.S. politicians often speak of “American exceptionalism” as some God-given grant of special status that puts the United States above the rules that apply to other nations. In geo-politics, this concept has meant that international law is enforced against countries…
Hailing Gates for Pentagon ‘Savings’
Since becoming Defense Secretary in December 2006, Robert Gates has wallowed in flattering press clippings, most recently hailed as the heroic Pentagon budget cutter eliminating wasteful weapons systems. However, the reality is quite different as Gates ends his tenure at…
The Scandal of Secret Campaign Cash
Secret political donations threaten to inundate Campaign 2012 to flood levels that would make the Watergate slush funds look like kiddy pools. In this guest essay, Michael Winship explains how political scandals big and small trace back to money in politics.
Targeting Cuba’s Health-Care System
The U.S. government’s half-century campaign to discredit and destroy Cuba’s experiment with socialism has had many ruthless aspects, but perhaps none more so than efforts to disparage and damage the Caribbean island’s widely admired health-care system, as William Blum describes in this…
Making the US Economy ‘Scream’
Exclusive: Over the past several decades, Republican methods for winning national power have come to resemble CIA techniques for destabilizing an enemy country — through the use of black propaganda, political skullduggery and economic disruptions. Now, heading toward Election 2012, the Republicans appear poised to make the U.S. economy “scream,” observes…
Is Unity Still a Value?
As the United States commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Civil War fought over the South’s secession in defense of slavery today’s irony is that the U.S. government is experiencing a resurgence of the divisions that empowered secession in 1861,…
US Spying Detects No Iranian Nukes
Despite fresh alarms from U.S. and Israeli officials about Iran’s nuclear program, evidence remains elusive that Iran has resumed work on a bomb. That lack of proof continues even though U.S. intelligence has engaged in extensive monitoring of suspected research…
Obama’s Peace Talk Ploy
The killing of Osama bin Laden and reports of peace talks with the Afghan Taliban have raised U.S. hopes that the long war in Afghanistan might finally be heading toward a conclusion, but some sources suggest that there is less to these…