Will President Trump’s lengthy visit to Asia signal the beginning of a more diplomatic approach to Washington’s disputes in the region? Will President Trump have a face-to-face with Russian President Putin? Trump has signaled a willingness to sit down with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Any chance that will take place? Our hopes and concerns so far in today’s Liberty Report:

Horrible events like yesterday’s attack in New York capture our attention. The mainstream media focuses non-stop on every imaginable aspect of such events. Unfortunately there is little attention to tragedies of a far greater magnitude in places like Yemen which are largely due to our interventionist foreign policy. The US government has partnered with Saudi Arabia to completely flatten Yemen, with thousands of innocents killed in the process. We should pay attention to tragedies at home, but also tragedies overseas that are being perpetrated by Washington in our name. More in today’s Liberty Report:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) challenged the Defense Secretary and Secretary of State yesterday, asserting that no one of intellectual honesty would believe that the 9/11 war authorization had anything to do with ISIS or Niger. He has a good point. But the White House does not want its war wings clipped and insists that things are fine as they are. We are militarily active in some 19 countries now. Does the 9/11 resolution really encompass all of these wars? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:

Turkey’s decision to purchase a Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system has raised more than eyebrows at NATO headquarters. Top brass in Brussels has warned Turkey that its system would not be interoperable with NATO’s US-made system. Is Turkey turning away from its Western alliance? Hedging its bets? What do Syria and the Kurds have to do with the decision? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:

On Tuesday, all but two Members of the US House voted in favor of the “harshest” sanctions on North Korea yet. As we know from past practice with sanctions — in Iraq and elsewhere — they never achieve their goals, but they do punish civilians and turn them against the US. This time is no different. Will the Senate take up the bill and move us closer to a war that will kill millions? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told the Senate yesterday that he would not seek another term in the US Senate because he could no longer be part of the “discord and dysfunction” of Washington, DC. “[W]e have given in or given up on the core principles in favor of a more viscerally satisfying anger and resentment,” he complained to his colleagues. But does Senator Flake’s complaint about the tone of Washington discourse really get to the bottom of what’s wrong with Washington? Isn’t it more than tone? Isn’t it that there is too much agreement among politicians rather than too much disagreement that is our biggest problem? We look at what’s really wrong in today’s Liberty Report:

Senator Lindsey Graham told NBC News over the weekend that he had “no idea” that there were 1,000 US troops in Niger. But it didn’t bother him at all. He promised that the US military — which already has troops in 53 of the 54 countries in Africa — will soon be far more involved in fighting on the continent. We don’t want the next 9/11 to come from Niger, he warned. Should Congress at least show an interest in this new, expanded war? Join us for today’s Liberty Report:

The US fleet of B-52 bombers is more than 60 years old. It’s been 26 years — since the end of the Soviet Union — that these bombers have been ready to take off and drop nuclear weapons at a moment’s notice. Over the weekend, US Air Force chief of staff, Gen. David Goldfein, announced that the US would be going back to the future — restoring this long-dead feature of the Cold War. Is this just a case of weapons in search of a war? Are we really back to the 1950s? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:

Now that ISIS is all but defeated in Syria, with ISIS control of Raqqa having been ended just last week, why is the US military not going home? After all, that is the mission that was given the military by President Obama in 2014: defeat ISIS. But the US is not going home. In fact it is expanding its presence in Syria and is not about to leave Iraq. Rules of engagement have been loosened, airstrikes have increased. Are the neocons going to “remake the Middle East” yet again? This and more in today’s Liberty Report:

The horrific truck bomb in Mogadishu last weekend was apparently a retaliation over a US special forces-led attack on a Somali village where at least ten civilians were killed. The truck bomber was a native of the village. Why is the US fighting in Somalia? To keep an Islamist movement with no international reach or ambition (thus far) from seizing power. What does continued US military action in Somalia produce? An enraged population ever more determined to seek revenge against the US. Does anyone think this is making us safer? The full story in today’s Liberty Report:

The United States has spent tens of billions of dollars training the Iraqi army over the past 14 years. It’s also spent close to a billion dollars training the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq. Now, with the independence referendum passing in Iraqi Kurdistan and the resulting crackdown by Baghdad, we have the US-backed Iraqi army confronting the US-backed Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Who’s happy? The weapons dealers! This is the folly of an interventionist foreign policy laid bare. What’s next? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:

President Trump’s Iran policy speech on Friday was riddled with errors — the kinds of errors the neocons have been peddling for more than a decade. He did not out and out cancel the US participation in the Iran nuclear deal with claims that Iran has violated the agreement. Everyone knows — and it has been repeatedly certified — that Iran has not violated the terms of the 2015 agreement. Instead he claimed that Iran is not living up to the spirit of the agreement and punted the issue down to Congress — against the advice of most of his senior staff. Will Washington’s allies follow suit? Will the deal fall apart? What will Iran do if it is no longer bound by the nuclear-limiting treaty? Will President Trump follow his neocon whisperers down the path that George W. Bush followed in 2003 — to war? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report: