Exclusive: In the mid-1970s, Rep. Otis Pike led a brave inquiry to rein in the excesses of the national security state. But the CIA and its defenders accused Pike of recklessness and vowed retaliation, assigning him to a political obscurity that…
Since World War II, the U.S. government has routinely sidestepped blame for the slaughters that have accompanied American foreign policy. One of the few high-profile condemnations occurred when playwright Harold Pinter accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, as…
From the Archive: Ronald Reagan, who was born on Feb. 6, 1911, ranks among the most honored U.S. presidents of modern times with his name etched into public buildings across the country. Even Democrats shy from criticizing his legacy. But…
Official Washington saw how bad intelligence led to the disastrous Iraq War, but U.S. analysts and “experts” like David Albright charged down the same path on Iran’s alleged nuclear program. Again, key “evidence” collapsed under scrutiny, Gareth Porter wrote for Inter Press…
The endless double standards demonstrated by U.S. pols and pundits toward U.S. “friends” vs. “enemies” have created a wildly distorted frame for a public trying to distinguish between genuine threats and propaganda themes, as Lawrence Davidson found regarding Iran.
Exclusive: Official Washington’s neocons still influence U.S. foreign policy despite their Iraq War disaster. Forever pushing what they view as Israel’s strategic needs, the neocons now are stoking fires of war against Iran and Syria by piling on old and new arguments, reports…
The lessons of Franklin Roosevelt are relevant today, especially the need for an activist government to “promote the general Welfare” by investing in infrastructure and combating the power of “organized money.” But many Democrats shy away from the debate, says Beverly…
Exclusive: Over the past generation, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez changed the political dynamics of Latin America with a socialist experiment that spread the wealth and improved the lives of the poor. But nearly a year after Chávez’s death, his movement is…
The United States was built on the idea of civilian control of the military, but as the burden of fighting overseas wars is carried disproportionately by a sliver of the population that control seems to be slipping, as ex-CIA analyst…
Exclusive: The Washington Post’s neocon editors are pushing for another U.S. military ultimatum against a Muslim country in the Mideast. Citing discredited “evidence” pinning the Aug. 21 Sarin attack on the Syrian government, the Post wants President Obama to re-issue a war…
President Obama has promised reform of the NSA’s mass collection of data on virtually all Americans and much of the world. But his proposals are limited and his speech failed to offer clemency to Edward Snowden who made the public…
Nazi metaphors should be avoided except in the most extreme cases of human cruelty. But that metaphor is especially obscene when today’s pampered rich, like billionaire Tom Perkins, compare themselves to persecuted Jews, as Bill Moyers and Michael Winship observe.
U.S. foreign policy elites often speak in their own echo chamber of acceptable thought and thus grow more and more detached from the real world. Such a case is the recent punditry about Iran, as Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann…
President Obama has vowed to veto a Senate bill pushed on behalf of the Israeli government that could sink negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program by weighing them down with even more sanctions, a move that could put the region on course for…
Born to a well-to-do family 132 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt would earn the hatred of America’s plutocrats when as President he deployed the federal government to battle the Great Depression, an animosity toward FDR that the modern Right continues to this…
From the Archive: In a coincidence of history, right-wing icon Dick Cheney shares the same birthday as liberal icon Franklin Roosevelt, Jan. 30. But the ironic link goes even deeper since in many ways it was FDR’s New Deal that…
The death of Pete Seeger on Monday brought back waves of memories for millions of people around the world who recalled his friendly tenor voice appealing to the best instincts of mankind, urging an end to war and want, as…
Exclusive: The Right has locked down political control of a number of states like Oklahoma, making them laboratories for far-right legislation. But some legal experiments are so extreme that they are causing unintended reactions that may hurt the Right’s cause,…
Amid the Afghan government’s growing resistance to an extended U.S. military stay, the Obama administration is trying out a new rationale: the need for a launching pad for drones. But it may be a case of a weapons system causing…
Exclusive: In Official Washington, the gap between image and reality can be wide, but there is a virtual canyon separating the mainstream’s awestruck regard for Robert Gates as a “wise man” and his record as a deceitful opportunist known to his former…