Words seem to mean different things in the Middle East. “Training” is a new term for escalation, and “Iraq” seems more and more like the Arabic word for Vietnam. But the terms “slippery slope” and “quagmire” still mean what they have always meant. In 2011, making good...
Keeping abreast of the waste of U.S. taxpayer money in Afghanistan’s so-called “reconstruction” is a full-time job. Since I already have a full-time job and can’t do it, luckily the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) does document the waste as...
When at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again. And with that, we woke up Wednesday to see the Obama administration ready to announce a change of course in Iraq, one that is very much a back to the future kind of event. Following about a year of not defeating,...
Is there hope for Iraq? It depends on what you are hoping for. It is becoming clearer that there is little hope of destroying Islamic State in Iraq. Islamic State has no shortage of new recruits. Its fighters capture heavy weapons with such ease that the United States...
Iraq? On another Memorial Day, we’re still talking about Iraq? Remembering I attended the 2015 commencement ceremonies at Fordham University in New York. The otherwise typical ritual (future, global, passion, do what you love, you’ll never forget this place) began...
The government can block your foreign husband or wife from living with you in America, based on secret information you can’t see or contest. Like with the No-Fly list, in post-Constitutional America the walls are built of secret databases. Taking Visas to the Supreme...
The FBI surveilled peaceful protests in Baltimore following the police killing of Freddie Gray, protest acts protected by the First Amendment, from the air, using high-tech monitoring aircraft. The surveillance aircraft can be equipped with infrared and other...
When Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State in 2009, the Obama White House required her to sign an agreement promising to have her family’s charities, under the umbrella of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI; now known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton...
Here’s one of those “Now what could possibility go wrong?” stories. Drones for Everyone Reversing years of restricted sales of America’s robot drone killers, the Obama administration announced it will begin allowing sales of armed drones to some friendly and allied...
The American reconstruction campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have, and continue, to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on pointless projects seemingly designed solely to funnel money into the pockets of US government contractors. Empowering Women These projects (Iraq...
Hot on the high heels of the Clinton email atrocity, where one individual determined for her own campaign and indeed for all of history which parts of her work as a taxpayer-paid government official would be forever sent down the Memory Hole, the White House announced...
It was necessary to destroy the Syrian town of Kobane (above) in order to save it from ISIS. The rubble and ruin of what was once a place more than 200,000 people lived is now free. Want to know the future of Mosul? Look to Kobane. Destroying Kobane Kobane once...
The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issued a scathing report showing the Department of State gave a staggering 87 percent of all Afghan reconstruction funds to only five recipients. In fact, 69 percent of all taxpayer money spent went to...
Libya is the perfect storm example of the failure of US interventionist policy in the Middle East. The Obama-Clinton Model In 2011, Libya was to be the centerpiece of Middle East Intervention 2.0, the Obama-Clinton version. Unlike the Bush model, that of Texas-sized...
Brian Williams was seduced. He is a liar of course, someone who did not tell the truth no matter the reason or excuse, a bad trait for a journalist. Williams lied about being RPG’ed in a helicopter over Iraq; he did not see any variant of what you can see in this...
Whistleblower laws exist because government officials do not always act in the nation’s best interests. The Obama administration, in its war on whistleblowers, just lost a major battle. Major in its venue — the Supreme Court — and major in its implications for future...
The current American war in Iraq is a struggle in search of a goal. It began in August as a humanitarian intervention, morphed into a campaign to protect Americans in-country, became a plan to defend the Kurds, followed by a full-on crusade to defeat the new Islamic...
So how’s 2015 so far? Outside playing on your hoverboard while Dad brings in the family helicopter? Mom inside serving up a hearty meal, all in pill form? Planning a trip to the Lunar Grand Hyatt? Enjoying a life free from all disease, war and hunger, courtesy of the...
click photo to enlargeThe Bush and Obama administrations have gone to extraordinary lengths to hide America’s archipelago of secret prisons and systems of torture. For all the empty talk of “transparency” being high-fived around following the Senate Report, they at...
In a Galaxy Far, Far Away The United States sanctioned acts of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency and others. The acts took place in secret prisons (“black sites”) against persons detained indefinitely without trial. They were described in detail and...
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