Exclusive: The American neocons are again on the upswing as they undercut peace initiatives from the Obama administration and gain Republican support for maintaining massive Pentagon spending, in exchange for limiting senior citizens’ access to Medicare. As Robert Parry reports, the…
Tag: Barack Obama
Manufacturing Fear on Iran Nukes
By embracing false or unproven allegations about foreign adversaries, U.S. policymakers may believe they are looking tough or pleasing some important constituent group. But they are also creating a situation that can get out of hand and get lots of…
Skating to the Financial Abyss
Even as another potential Great Depression looms, the U.S. political/media system seems incapable of addressing the crisis and devising coherent answers. Instead, the old partisan and lobbying games dominate the political world and obsession with trivia commands the news media’s…
Three Deadly War Myths
Exclusive: The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have involved myths pleasing to Official Washington — about its own wisdom and the evil of the enemy — but these false narratives have caused President Barack Obama and other U.S. policymakers to base decisions on illusion rather…
Ellsberg on Pentagon Papers Release
On the 40th anniversary of Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers, the Nixon presidential library is touting its release of the entire set, including a section on Vietnam peace talks that Ellsberg withheld to avoid disrupting the negotiations. The misimpression…
Can Obama Escape from Afghan War?
Holdovers from the Bush administration, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus, boxed President Obama into a counterinsurgency “surge” during the 2009 policy review for Afghanistan. Now, Obama has a chance to go in a different direction, but…
Neocons Spin Two ‘Lost’ Wars
Exclusive: The looming U.S. defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan represent a threat to the political fortunes of America’s neocons — if they get blamed for the disasters. However, if they can hang the failures around President Obama’s neck, the two lost wars…
Making the US Economy ‘Scream’
Exclusive: Over the past several decades, Republican methods for winning national power have come to resemble CIA techniques for destabilizing an enemy country — through the use of black propaganda, political skullduggery and economic disruptions. Now, heading toward Election 2012, the Republicans appear poised to make the U.S. economy “scream,” observes…
Obama’s Peace Talk Ploy
The killing of Osama bin Laden and reports of peace talks with the Afghan Taliban have raised U.S. hopes that the long war in Afghanistan might finally be heading toward a conclusion, but some sources suggest that there is less to these…
Why US Must Leave Iraq
Neoconservatives want the Obama administration to pressure Iraq into permitting American troops to stay in the country after 2011, all the better to avoid having to admit what a strategic disaster the Iraq invasion was. But the Independent Institute’s Ivan…