You don’t want to read this, and I take no pleasure in writing it, and no one really wants to hear it right now. But I believe it needs to be said. I join the world in grieving for the dead in Paris. I have grieved for the dead from 9/11 forward — the Australians who...
The same ridiculed and useless techniques used by the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) to not find terrorists at America’s airports are now being used at Orlando theme parks, including Disney World, Seaworld and Busch Gardens, to not find terrorists. (click...
When I was a kid, three presidents told us we had to fight in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, because if we didn’t fight them over there, we’d have to fight them on the beaches of California. We believed. It was a lie. I was a teenager during the Cold War, and several...
The United States does not formally acknowledge the existence of Delta Force, and rarely mentions the names of any of its members, even after they leave the service. Unlike the SEALs, who seem to be prolific writers, Delta operators keep to themselves. Most of the...
Hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan after US attackAmerica and its allies make modern war in a way that assures “mistakes” destroy hospitals, and civilian lives are taken by drones. These horrors are all too often strategic decisions, or the result of the profligate use...
It is very, very difficult to discuss Benghazi and Clinton without almost immediately dipping deep into partisan politics cesspool, and no doubt any hearings she will testify at on Thursday will be ugly and deeply partisan. About half of the people reading this just...
As Obama fails on another campaign promise, this one to end the war in Afghanistan, and as that war moves into its 15th year, it is important to remember the US has spent around $110 billion (no one knows the exact amount due to poor record keeping) to “rebuild” that...
You are a tool of the state, according to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA in the U.S., and its equivalent in the UK, GCHQ, are taking control of your phone not just to spy on you as needed, but also to use your device as a way to spy on others around you....
Sustaining America’s state of post-9/11 perpetual war requires skillful manipulation of the public at home. The key tool used for this purpose is the bloodless narrative, a combination of policy, falsehoods and media manipulation that creates the impression that...
Allegations that American military analysts may have “cooked the books” to skew intelligence assessments about the campaign against Islamic State (IS), providing a more optimistic account of progress, are a sign of bad things to come. Bad intel leads to bad decisions....
A well-done article in the New York Times reminds us that four years after the United States assassinated American citizen and Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (and his teenage son) in a drone strike, his influence on jihadists is greater than ever. At the same time, the...
The old adage, “follow the money,” is still not a bad way to suss out wrongdoing. Originated during the Watergate era, the term says if you follow the trail of money through an organization or a caper, you’ll find the guilty people at the end. With the State...
Hey, Big Brother? It’s me. Can we talk about facial recognition please? The Download Festival See, the police used facial recognition technology to scan the faces of thousands of attendees at the Download music festival in the UK without their knowledge. The excuse...
In the world of handling America’s secrets, words – classified, secure, retroactive – have special meanings. I held a Top Secret clearance at the State Department for 24 years and was regularly trained in protecting information as part of that privilege. Here is what...
I’ve visited Hiroshima many times. There is a Japanese jail not far from the Hiroshima Peace Park, and in my guise as a diplomat working in Japan, one of my jobs was to visit Americans in jail, typically young men and women who’d smoked a little weed in drug-conscious...
Rahinah Ibrahim is a slight Malaysian woman who attended Stanford University on a US student visa, majoring in architecture. She was not a political person. Despite this, as part of a post-9/11 sweep directed against Muslims, she was investigated by the FBI. In 2004,...
Retired general and former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Friday called for World War II-style internment camps to be revived for “disloyal Americans.” In an interview on MSNBC in the wake of the mass shooting in Chattanooga, Clark said that during...
Social media sites such as Twitter and YouTube would be required to report “terrorist” videos and other content posted by users to federal authorities under legislation approved this past week by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The measure, contained in the 2016...
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may be planning to invade northern Syria to prevent Kurds from forming their own state there. Turkey to Invade Syria In a speech last Friday, Erdogan vowed that Turkey would not accept a move by Syrian Kurds to set up their own...
In one form or another, the US has been at war with Iraq since 1990, including a sort-of invasion in 1991 and a full-scale one in 2003. During that quarter-century, Washington imposed several changes of government, spent trillions of dollars, and was involved in the...
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