Last week Trump suspended former CIA head John Brennan’s security clearance.His defenders immediately rose to declare this shall not stand. Twelve former intelligence officials signed a statement criticizing Trump’s decision, claiming “We have never before seen the...
More than a few people have cited the exchange below as justification for my forever trip down the Memory Hole, my ban from Twitter. I used to be there as @wemeantwell. My bad zombie joke about #MAGA, or anything else I wrote that was flippant, is not writing I’m...
Some readers are aware I have been permanently suspended from Twitter as @wemeantwell.This followed exchanges with several mainstream journalists over their support for America’s wars and unwillingness to challenge the lies of government. After two days of silence,...
While I can say there isn’t a formal class at the American State Department called Diplomacy 101, some training offered to new hires comes pretty close. Those basic tenets of statecraft, largely unchanged from Thucydides to Bismarck to Pompeo, are important to review...
A foreign policy crisis is coming May 12. President Donald Trump’s likely decision on that day to not continue waiving sanctions on Iran under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will significantly increase the chances of war.The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of...
Despite the lofty title, in A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership James Comey comes across in turns petty, smug, sanctimonious, bitter, and most of all, pandering.Comey feeds the rubes exactly what they paid the carnival sideshow barker in front at Barnes and...
A bipartisan group of lawmakers called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate if Al Jazeera, the news outlet connected to the Qatari government, should register with the Justice Department as an agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA.)This...
The role pervasive surveillance plays in politics today has been grossly underreported. Set aside what you think about the Trump presidency for a moment and focus instead on the new paradigm for how politics and justice work inside the surveillance state.“Incidental...
Each week brings a new indictment from Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller along with the same question: when will he produce evidence that the president of the United States committed treason?Because that’s what this is really about; Some Russians somewhere may have...
Leaving aside the validity of what has become known as the “Steele dossier,” it’s important to look at how Christopher Steele was able to guarantee that the information in it would play a significant and ongoing role in American politics. Steele, who is British, did...
The rumors of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s demise may finally not be greatly exaggerated.A marked man, it was only about a month ago the media speculated on how soon United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley would replace Tillerson. Two weeks ago a trial balloon...
Bad news: President Donald Trump may be dismantling the State Department. The good news? No recent president has made much use of those diplomats, so they are unlikely to be missed. And that’s really bad news.Recent stories try hard to make the case that something new...
Donald Trump's victory was so loathsome to many journalists that instead of acknowledging their cultural and partisan blindness lead to them misreport the election, they doubled down, growing two overlapping myths to delegitimize a presidency they never wanted to...
The New York Times is featuring a piece stating Iran is the big winner of the US-Iraq wars, 1991-2017.So what does winning in Iraq look like, asks the Times? About like this:A Shia-dominated government is in Baghdad, beholden to Tehran for its security post-ISIS. Shia...
US Secretary of Defense James Mattis has said “civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation,” referring to America’s war against Islamic State. How can America in clear conscience continue to kill civilians across the Middle East? It’s easy; ask...
It’s a helluva question: “Tell me how this ends.”It was a good question in 2003 when then Major General David Petraeus asked it as the United States invaded Iraq, an ironic one in 2011 when the US withdrew, worth revisiting in 2014 when the US reinvaded Iraq, and...
Because we traded the smooth talking guy for the clumsy boob with no manners, it is popular to bleat that America has given up its role as leader of the free world, to say other nations don’t respect us anymore, or look to us for moral guidance — in the extreme, that...
“My guilt will never go away,” former Marine Matthew Hoh explained to me. “There is a significant portion of me that doesn’t believe it should be allowed to go away, that this pain is fair.” If America accepts the idea of fighting endless wars, it will have to accept...
NSA "leaker" Reality Winner An NSA document purporting to show Russian military hacker attempts to access a Florida company which makes voter registration software is sent anonymously toThe Intercept. A low-level NSA contractor, Reality Winner, above, is arrested...
Without free speech people stop thinking, losing out on all but a narrowing band of ideas. Open discussion, debate, and argument are the core of democracy. Bad ideas are defeated by good ideas. Fascism seeks to close off all ideas except its own. Yet all of these most...
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