Category: Obama Administration

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,…

Learning No Lessons About War

Americans like to think of themselves as a peace-loving people but their record has been one of war-making with the pace of interventions picking up in recent decades as the U.S. military and intelligence services are dispatched around the world, notes…

America’s Dangerous Mideast Illusions

America’s neocon-driven interventions in the Middle East have combined to create what is shaping up as a geopolitical disaster, with U.S.-backed “regime changes” contributing to victories by Saudi-funded Sunni extremists, as Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett explain.

Why Take the Neocons Seriously?

Exclusive: The Sunni extremist offensive into central Iraq appears to have stalled, but the political battle rages in Washington where neocons see an opening to pressure President Obama into recommitting the U.S. military in support of neocon goals in the Middle…

Iran Offers Scaled-Back Nuke Program

To seal a deal with world powers, Iran has agreed to structure its nuclear enrichment in ways only useful for generating electricity, but that still might not satisfy U.S. negotiators, writes Gareth Porter from Tehran for Inter Press Service.

Neocons Double-Down on Iraq/Syria

America’s neocons won’t let go of their Middle East delusions, now trying to leverage the worsening crisis in Iraq into an excuse to return U.S. forces to that tragic country while also escalating military involvement in Syria, a compounding of…

Overreacting to the Iraq Crisis

The new hysteria gripping Official Washington is over the collapse of the Iraqi army in the face of an offensive by Islamic militants. But the threat is not as extreme as some opinion leaders are describing, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul…

How NSA Can Secretly Aid Criminal Cases

Though the NSA says its mass surveillance of Americans targets only “terrorists,” the spying may turn up evidence of other illegal acts that can get passed on to law enforcement which hides the secret source through a ruse called “parallel construction,” writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

GOP Descent into Mindless Meanness

Since the days of Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”  a crass appeal to angry pro-segregationist whites the Republican Party has descended into a political nastiness that has corroded the foundations of American democracy, a problem that Lawrence Davidson examines.

Blaming Obama for Iraq’s Chaos

Exclusive: As Islamic militants gain ground in Iraq, Official Washington’s neocons and the mainstream media are blaming President Obama for ending the U.S. military occupation, but they ignore their own role in destabilizing Iraq with the 2003 invasion, Robert Parry…