In 2002-03, the Bush administration coordinated with retired military officers who were acting as policy experts on CNN and elsewhere to whip up the Iraq War frenzy. Such military commentary can have a significant and dangerous impact on U.S. public opinion,…
Category: Obama Administration
Dr. King’s Warning of ‘Two Americas’
Besides battering down the walls of racial segregation, Martin Luther King Jr. demanded that America address its economic barriers to fairness and justice, a challenge that may have earned him even more contempt from the power structure, as Bill Moyers…
The Right’s Second Amendment Fraud
Exclusive: The Senate has beaten back a filibuster from Tea Party Republicans to block debate on possible gun-reform laws in the wake of last December’s massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators in Connecticut. But the setback won’t stop the extremists from continuing…
The Madness of NYT’s Tom Friedman
Exclusive: Looking back at the Iraq War and other disastrous U.S. foreign policy choices, you might wonder about the sanity of American leadership. But if you read star columnist Thomas L. Friedman, you’ll learn that it’s the rest of the world…
Tyranny of Deception
Truth has always been a challenging pursuit, often resulting in the persecution of its pursuers. But the modern era offers a special challenge as lies are now the mass-manufactured product of an industry that relentlessly serves the interests of the…
The Consensus Behind Militarism
While the U.S. media has some spirited debate over politics and social issues i.e. Fox News vs. MSNBC there remains a broad consensus about foreign adversaries whose behavior is almost always cast in the harshest light, a reality that colors how…
What’s the End Game for Iran Talks?
The mainstream U.S. news media is blaming Iran for the impasse over nuclear talks, but many stumbling blocks like refusal to accept Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program are the fault of Western negotiators, raising Iran’s concerns about what…
Demonizing Realism on Iran
Venturing outside Official Washington’s conventional wisdom to apply realistic analysis to U.S. foreign policy can be dangerous to one’s reputation, especially when challenging cherished myths about a designated enemy. Then, the realist can expect to be dismissed as a loon,…
Hollywood’s Dangerous Afghan Illusion
From the Archives: A newly discovered document undercuts a key storyline of the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s that it was “Charlie Wilson’s War,” wrote Robert Parry on April 7, 2013.
Behind the North Korean Crisis
U.S. propagandists and the mainstream media present foreign crises, like the current one with North Korea, as black-and-white morality plays with Official Washington behaving wisely and the adversaries as crazy. But the reality is always more complex, as Christine Hong…