Month: March 2014

The War Activists

Having evaded accountability for the Iraq War and other bloody disasters, star neocons William Kristol and Robert Kagan have refashioned their pro-war arguments, dressing them up in humanitarian garb, with glamorous accessories of national greatness, as David Swanson explains.

Crimea and Punishment

U.S. politicians and pundits want the American people to get so upset about Crimea’s decision to split with Ukraine and rejoin Russia that they will support more U.S. military spending and more U.S. interventions around the world, a tragic misreading…

Firewall: Inside the Iran-Contra Cover-up

From the Archive: The death of Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh on Wednesday at the age of 102 marked the passing of what is now rare in the American Establishment, a person who courageously fought for a truthful historical record,…

Robert Strauss’s Watergate Secret

Special Report: Robert Strauss, who died Wednesday, was a Democratic powerbroker who thrived in the age of Nixon, Reagan and Bush-41. But an enduring Watergate mystery is whether Strauss earned his GOP spurs by secretly helping the Republicans in the spy scandal, reports Robert…

WPost’s Anti-Putin ‘Group Think’

Exclusive: In a stunning display of “group think,” virtually the entire Washington Post editorial section was devoted to denunciations of Russian President Putin, especially his “crazy” belief that the U.S. government often ignores international law and applies “the rule of…

US ‘Exceptionalism’ Boomerangs

Official Washington thinks “American exceptionalism” means the U.S. government can ignore international law when intervening in other countries. But that hypocrisy is now coming back to bite the U.S. with Russia’s annexation of Crimea, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.

Neocons’ Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit

Exclusive: The Ukraine crisis in part stirred up by U.S. neocons has damaged prospects for peace not only on Russia’s borders but in two Middle East hotspots, Syria and Iran, which may have been exactly the point, reports Robert Parry.

Why UK’s Tony Benn Didn’t Bend

Since the Thatcher/Reagan era, “liberals” like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton have scurried toward “safer” political terrain, whether that meant endorsing aggressive wars or embracing deregulation. But some progressives, like UK’s Tony Benn, refused to bend, as Michael Winship recalls.

Europe’s Not So Shiny ‘Recovery’

Exclusive: The mainstream U.S. press explains the overwhelming Crimean vote to leave Ukraine as vote-rigging or coercion, but the reality is that “European aspirations” are not so attractive to people aware of the painful life for many in the EU’s “periphery,” from Spain to…

Risks of a New ‘Zero-Sum’ Cold War

The one-sided uproar in Official Washington over the Ukraine crisis, a cartoonish depiction even including parallels to Hitler, ignores the many on-the-ground gray areas. It also threatens to recreate the Cold War’s dangerous “zero-sum” calculations, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.