Exclusive: In September 2002, as the Bush-43 administration was rolling out its ad campaign for invading Iraq because of alleged WMD, the Joint Chiefs of Staff received a briefing about the paucity of WMD evidence. But the report was shelved and the…
The Limits of Jihadi Nihilism
US Abets Saudi War Crimes in Yemen
Yemen as Vietnam or Afghanistan
Can US Break with Jihadist Allies?
Betting on the Wall Street Crash
Exclusive: The 2008 Wall Street crash resulted from a combination of unrestrained greed and political contempt for government regulators who might have prevented the devastation. In The Big Short, the tale is told from the perspective of a few players…
Encountering a Sophisticated Putin
Pretty much all that Americans and much of the West get to hear about Russian President Putin is heavy-handed propaganda often read over images of him riding shirtless on a horse. He’s either a bully or a buffoon. But editors…
The Game of Demonizing Putin
Official Washington influences the opinions of the American people about world affairs by demonizing certain foreign leaders, making them objects of both revulsion and ridicule, thus justifying “regime change” strategies, a particularly dangerous game when played against nuclear-armed Russia, as John…
Learning to Love — and Use — the Bomb
Panicked Over the Trump Phenomenon
America’s conservative establishment is in panic mode as renegade billionaire Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican presidential race and thumb his nose at the GOP donor class, which is alarmed that all its money might not dictate the outcome…
Islamic State’s Bloody Decline
Washington’s pundit class has interpreted the Islamic State’s recent turn toward international terrorism as proof of its growing strength, but it may actually represent the opposite, the group’s recognition that its “caliphate” is under stress and shrinking, observes ex-CIA analyst…
Hillary Clinton Seeks Neocon Shelter
Special Report: Stunned by falling poll numbers, Hillary Clinton is hoping that Democrats will rally to her neocon-oriented foreign policy and break with Bernie Sanders as insufficiently devoted to Israel. But will that hawkish strategy work this time, asks Robert…
Neocons Flack for Unsavory Saudis
Merkel’s Power Shaken by Refugee Crisis
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Time magazine’s “person of the year” in 2015, is facing her biggest political crisis as her welcoming of Mideast refugees has troubled and angered many Europeans, raising the possibility that Merkel’s days as the Continent’s undisputed…
Kerry Pressed for MH-17 Evidence
Exclusive: The father of a young American who died aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is pressing Secretary of State John Kerry to release evidence to support his early claims that the U.S. government possessed details about the launch of the…
Institutionalizing the US-Iran Detente
Jailing an Anti-Drone Protester
As the U.S. government fights its endless wars around the globe, some Americans are moving beyond despair and confusion to challenge the military machine, people like Mary Anne Grady Flores, who was sentenced to six months in jail for photographing…