Despite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s in-your-face attempts to sabotage President Obama’s foreign policy, Official Washington’s liberal establishment is on bended knee in an obsequious show of obeisance, apparently in line with Hillary Clinton’s political wishes, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Squandering Peace Hopes in Syria
The Obama administration is so wedded to its false narrative on Syria insisting that the only answer is for Russia to force President Assad to cede power to a largely fictional U.S.-backed “moderate” opposition that new peace talks in Vienna…
Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Intelligence, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
Obama’s Risky ‘Mission Creep’ in Syria
Exclusive: President Obama’s plan to dispatch up to 50 Special Forces troops into northern Syria may be a bid to appease Official Washington’s war hawks but it presents a serious risk of “mission creep” if those soldiers and their trainees…
Obama’s Criminal Drone War
President Obama has relied on the lethal drone program as a “low cost” way to eliminate “terrorists,” but the project has institutionalized an imprecise strategy of human slaughter that violates international law and creates more enemies, writes Marjorie Cohn at Truthdig.
America’s Middle-Class Squeeze-Out
The crushing of America’s Great Middle Class continues apace with new statistics on the soaring death rate among middle-age whites. But the pattern is also visible in Greenwich Village where middle-class life is being squeezed out by the luxury of…
Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Right Wing, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
America’s Chalabi Legacy of Lies
Exclusive: The passing of Iraqi fabricator Ahmed Chalabi, one of the “heroes in error” who duped the American people into the Iraq invasion, is a good time to remember how the corrupted intelligence/media process worked back then and how it continues…
Why NYT Dissed the ‘Drone Papers’
When the “Downing Street Memo” surfaced in the UK in 2006 revealing that the intelligence to justify the Iraq War had been “fixed” around the policy, the mainstream U.S. media largely ignored it. The same has now happened with the…
Constitution, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Lost History, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
The Death of a Charming Charlatan
Exclusive: The death of Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who collaborated with U.S. neocons to bamboozle the American people into invading Iraq, merits a moment of reflection on how the ongoing chaos in the Middle East (and now Europe) got…
Constitution, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Intelligence, Media, Obama Administration, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
Obama’s Abuse of ‘Espionage’ Act
President Obama who took office vowing “transparency” has run one of the most opaque administrations in U.S. history, hiding information that the public needs to know and destroying the lives of government officials who dare to share some secrets with…
Campaign 2016, Constitution, Foreign Policy, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
The Dark Truth in the Movie ‘Truth’
Exclusive: Almost four decades after starring in “All the President’s Men,” Robert Redford returns portraying another famous journalist in “Truth.” But the world has been turned upside down. Mainstream media is no longer the hero exposing a corrupt president, but the villain protecting one, as…
Government-Haters for President
Republican presidential front-runners include three candidates with no government experience (Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina) and one senator who wants out of his job (Marco Rubio), an odd cast seeking one of the most challenging and dangerous (for…
Campaign 2016, Constitution, Foreign Policy, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
Reviving the ‘Liberal Media’ Myth
Exclusive: The Republicans and the Right have dragged out an old favorite whipping boy the “liberal media” to distract the voters from the failure of some GOP presidential candidates to answer a few tough questions, a tried-and-untrue exercise in political diversion,…
Syria at a Crossroads
The Obama administration is finally making sounds about a reasonable peace deal for Syria accepting the principle that the Syrians should choose their own leaders but words are cheap and a Saudi official makes clear that “regime change” remains the…
Rubio Follows the Big Money
Exclusive: Sen. Marco Rubio is the new favorite of the Republican establishment, a shift away from Jeb Bush signaled by hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer’s embrace. But Rubio earned that affection by advancing Singer’s high-stakes financial fight with Argentina, Jonathan Marshall reports.
Sanders and the Denmark Model
Denmark prides itself on the happiness of its people who benefit from generous government social programs ensuring access to quality health care and education. But the country also has become an issue in Campaign 2016, whether it can be model…
Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
Obama’s Half-Hearted Cuba Detente
President Obama’s “normalization” of relations with Cuba have been more tell than show, with much of the half-century U.S. embargo left in place and some “relaxations” designed to coerce Cuba into “privatizing” its economy, as Art Heitzer and Marjorie Cohn…
Campaign 2016, Foreign Policy, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
The ‘Anti-Knowledge’ of the Elites
Exclusive: It’s fairly easy to spot the “anti-knowledge” spouted by the Tea Party and the Religious Right’s favorite candidates, but a more subtle form of reality-deprived “group think” pervades America’s elites though it is rarely noted in the polite circles of…
Obama Keeps Pentagon Spigot Open
Though he ran for the White House as a “change” candidate, President Obama has mostly favored continuity, including bending to the usual pressure from the Military-Industrial Complex to keep the Pentagon spending flowing, as budget watchdog Chuck Spinney explains.
Fighting a Cultural Boycott of Israel
Cultural and economic boycotts helped isolate white-supremacist South Africa and encouraged a shift to multi-racial democracy — and a similar strategy has ratcheted up pressure on Israel to reach a peace deal with Palestinians — but there is a new pushback…
Israel’s Endless Cycles of Violence
Israel’s near-half-century-old occupation of Palestinian territory has fueled such animosity that Israelis fear that ending it could unleash even worse violence, a self-perpetuating conundrum that if left unresolved will doom Israelis and Palestinians to chronic bouts of death and destruction, as Alon Ben-Meir…