Exclusive: Hard-headed realism and outside-the-box thinking might be needed to avert another catastrophe in the Middle East, this time an Israeli attack on Iran and the unpredictable consequences. In that light, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern imagines a bleak report that…
Year: 2012
The Price of Political Purity
Special Report: Some activists on the Left are rejecting President Obama and the Democrats even if that means electoral victories for Mitt Romney, the neocons and the Tea Party. But Sam Brown, a veteran of a similar debate in 1968,…
Drawing Lessons from the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War may seem like ancient history to many Americans, but that destructive conflict holds important lessons for the present, especially the danger of “group think” driving foreign policy and the value of insights that clash with conventional wisdom,…
Why Jesus Died
Recent historical discoveries about northern Palestine of two millennia ago reveal how radical Jesus’s message was, what risks he was asking his followers to take, and why he was arrested and crucified as an insurrectionist when he ventured south to Jerusalem,…
WPost’s ‘Fact-Check-Gate’
Exclusive: On Sunday, the Washington Post published a column accusing President Obama and his campaign of lying for calling Mitt Romney a “corporate raider” who outsourced jobs. But the writer, Glenn Kessler, now acknowledges that he was aware of new evidence…
Hounding Julian Assange
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has taken refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London rather than be extradited to Sweden to face sex-abuse accusations. But Assange’s ordeal reflects a larger and more troubling American hostility to truth-tellers who point the finger at…
What Russia Fears in Syrian Conflict
The U.S. government condemns Russia for blocking aggressive steps to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But Moscow fears Sunni extremists in the Syrian opposition and recalls how the West’s tolerance of such radicals before — in Afghanistan and the Balkans — led…
In Case You Missed…
Some of our special stories in May focused on the moral ambiguity of killing “terrorists,” the troubling role of religion in fomenting violence, the start of President Obama’s reelection campaign, and correcting historical distortions both old and new.
A Comedy at the ‘End of the World’
Exclusive: A comedy about people living their final days, as a massive meteor zeroes in on Planet Earth, may seem an unlikely movie concept. But “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” starring Steve Carell, is one of…
WPost’s Kessler Earns 4 Pinocchios
Exclusive: Newspaper “fact-checking” is only valuable if the people doing it have the courage to apply careful journalistic standards to their criticisms, not simply show off an artificial “balance.” The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler is one “fact-checker” who ignores the…