A half century ago, in summer 1964, brave Americans challenged the entrenched racism of white-ruled Mississippi and overcame bars against black voting. Now, those gains are under attack from right-wing efforts to restrict voting and reverse the legacy of Freedom Summer, writes Brian…
Month: June 2014
Iran Answers Questions on Explosives
To get elected chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2009, Yukiya Amano agreed to carry water for the U.S. on the Iranian nuclear issue, a chore that he is continuing in a dispute over Iran’s work on detonators,…
Keeping Iran as a Bogeyman
Despite the disastrous Iraq War, the neocons never stopped pushing for violent “regime change” in any country that gets in their way or Israel’s. Now, neocons are getting downright hysterical over possible U.S. cooperation with one old target, Iran, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes.
Reviving the ‘Successful Surge’ Myth
Exclusive: The military offensive by Sunni extremists driving into the heart of Iraq has brought the neocons out of the shadows to blame President Obama, by arguing that they had “won” the war before Obama “lost” it, a deeply engrained false…
Forgetting Who Messed Up Iraq
Key U.S. political and media figures who were deeply implicated in the illegal invasion of Iraq are playing an audacious “blame game” over the current Iraqi security crisis, pointing at President Obama when they were the principal culprits, as Lawrence Davidson recalls.
Misreading Benghazi and Terrorism
The Republican case of a Benghazi terror “cover-up” never made much sense because President Obama immediately called it an “act of terror.” But now other parts of the GOP’s contorted narrative are collapsing as well, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R.…
A Glimmer of Pragmatism on Iran
The crisis in Iraq is finally getting some U.S. policymakers to apply some pragmatism to events in the Middle East, including a recognition that Iran could help stabilize the region, as Flynt Leverett, Hillary Mann Leverett and Seyed Mohammad Marandi…
Obama at a Crossroad of War or Peace
Exclusive: The dramatic spread of Sunni extremism into the heart of Iraq may force President Obama to finally make a choice between simply extending a slightly less violent Bush Doctrine and charting his own innovative course in the name of peace,…
Treating Snowden as a ‘Personality’
The mainstream U.S. media prefers personalities over substance, so it was perhaps not a surprise that its focus at the first anniversary of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks was on his alleged peculiarities, not the frightening prospect of a Big Brother state,…
How Iran Could Help on Iraq
If Official Washington were a place where sanity prevailed and true American national interests were protected, there would be calls for cooperation with Iran to address the crisis in Iraq, but that would upset a big part of the neocon agenda,…