The RPI Challenge

I recently spoke to some college students who, I realized, were in fifth grade when I got on a plane to Iraq. They now study that stuff in history classes like “Opportunities and Errors: 21st-Century America in the Middle East.” About halfway through our conversation, I realized it’s coming up on 10 years since I first went to Iraq. Now that’s real history. I was a Foreign Service Officer then, a diplomat, embedded with the US Army at a series of forward operating bases and in charge of a...

On March 6, 2016, this Deplorable issued a statement formally endorsing Donald J. Trump for the presidency of the United State. I now hereby withdraw that endorsement. No doubt this declaration from your Working Boy will be greeted with the same deafening indifference as my earlier less than earth-shattering announcement of support. Keep calm. The planet will continue to spin on its axis at a 23.44 degree tilt. As I tweeted on April 4, when it appeared that Ecuadorian President Lenín [sic]...

Newsweek is reporting a story regarding how Iran “was responsible for the deaths of at least 608 American troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.” The account is sourced to a newly revised estimate prepared by analysts at the Pentagon that was discussed by Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook at a State Department press briefing on April 2nd. According to Hook, Tehran is now being blamed for 17 per cent of all US military deaths because it supplied weapons to the several Shiite militias...

The indictment of Julian Assange unsealed today by the Trump Justice Department poses grave threats to press freedoms, not only in the US but around the world. The charging document and accompanying extradition request from the US Government, used by the UK police to arrest Assange once Ecuador officially withdrew its asylum protection, seeks to criminalize numerous activities at the core of investigative journalism. So much of what has been reported today about this indictment has been false....

Julian Assange sits in a jail cell today after being betrayed by the Ecuadorian government and his home country of Australia. A British judge named Michael Snow has found the WikiLeaks founder guilty of violating bail conditions, inserting himself into the annals of history by labeling Assange “a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest.” So that tells you how much of a fair and impartial legal proceeding we can expect to see from the British judicial process on this matter....

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested and taken into custody by the London’s Metropolitan police, just as WikiLeaks warned days ago was about to happen. Assange’s lawyer Jen Robinson reports that his arrest is related to an extradition request from the United States, which the British government has until now refused to admit exists. “Just confirmed: #Assange has been arrested not just for breach of bail conditions but also in relation to a US extradition request,” tweeted...

Candidate Donald Trump won the presidency because he talked tough in ways no presidential candidate has done in recent memory, maybe ever. Trump left no sacred cow unscathed with searing attacks on the Iraq War, bad trade deals, Sen. John McCain, and the most sacred cow of them all—illegal immigration. Trump’s words resonated, and millions of Americans delivered victory for Trump at the polls. As president, Trump’s words remain tough, his actions less so. Trump often praises American military...

The Great Russia Deception all began with John Brennan. It was Brennan who reported “contacts… between Russian officials and persons in the Trump campaign”, just as it was Brennan who first referred the case to former FBI Director James Comey. It was also Brennan who “hand-picked” the analysts who stitched together the dodgy Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which said that “Putin and the Russian government aspired to help…Trump’s election chances.”) And it was Brennan who persuaded...

From left: Bill Kristol, Max Boot, David Frum, Elliot A. Cohen.For more than two years they misled us. Exploiting fear and confusion after a shocking event, they warned that our country was in imminent danger at the hands of a mad man. They insisted that legitimate intelligence, including a CIA report issueda month before a national election and a dossier produced by reliable sources in the United Kingdom, proved the threat was real. The subject monopolized discussions on Capitol Hill, in the...

Ever since President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs in the 1970s, advocates of this government program, both conservative and liberal, have argued that the only reason why the U.S. government has failed to win the drug war is that government officials have failed to fight it sufficiently hard. If U.S. officials would really crack down, the argument goes, the decades-long war could finally — finally! — be declared over and done with. In their unwavering support of this failed government...

Because there is a presidential election coming up next year, the Donald Trump Administration appears to be looking for a country that it can attack and destroy in order to prove its toughness and willingness to go all the way in support of alleged American interests. It is a version of the old neocon doctrine attributed to Michael Ledeen, the belief that every once in a while, it is necessary to pick out some crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to demonstrate that the...

Staff Sgt. Travis Atkins last month posthumously became the fifth US service member to receive the Medal of Honor (the nation’s highest award for combat valor) for his actions during the Iraq War—in 2007. According to an article in the Washington Post (“Soldier’s posthumous Medal of Honor highlights the Pentagon’s struggles to fully recognize valor in combat”), Atkins and his fellow soldiers rolled up in their Humvee on “two suspicious men in Iraq’s ‘Triangle of Death.’” Atkins “stepped out of...

(Chinese PLA personnel pose with members of Venezuela’s National Bolivarian Armed Forces, March 29, 2019)The reported arrival of Chinese military personnel in Venezuela last weekend is undoubtedly a major event in world politics. Unlike Russia, which has a history of force projection abroad, this is an extremely rare Chinese move. Although vital Chinese interests are at stake in the war against terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Syria, China refrained from publicising any such deployment. The...