In my long experience in Washington, vice presidents did not make major foreign policy announcements or threaten other countries with war. Not even Dick Cheney stole this role from the weak president George W. Bush.But yesterday the world witnessed VP Pence threaten North Korea with war. “The sword stands ready,” said Pence as if he is the commander in chief.Perhaps he is.Where is Trump? As far as I can tell from the numerous emails I receive from him, he is at work marketing his presidency....

Sounds like we’ve heard it all before, because we have, back in August 2013, and that turned out to be less than convincing. Skepticism is likewise mounting over current White House claims that Damascus used a chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on April 4th. Shortly after the more recent incident, President Donald Trump, possibly deriving his information from television news reports, abruptly stated that the government of President Bashar...

The realized truth of modern history is crystal clear. Washington had no business intervening in a quarrel between two no-count wanna be dictators (Syngman Rhee and Kim il Sung) on the Korean peninsula in June 1950, and surely has no business still stationing 29,000 American soldiers there 67 years latter. Yet owing to the institutionalized albatross of that mis-vectored history, the world is now much closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time since the dark days of the early cold...

Audit the Fed recently took a step closer to becoming law, when it was favorably reported by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This means the House could vote on the bill at any time. The bill passed by voice vote without any objections, although Fed defenders did launch hysterical attacks on the bill during the debate as well as at a hearing on the bill the previous week.One representative claimed that auditing the Fed would result in rising interest rates, a stock...

“We’ve reached the point where state actors can penetrate rectums and vaginas, where judges can order forced catheterizations, and where police and medical personnel can perform scans, enemas and colonoscopies without the suspect’s consent.... These tactics are ... about degrading and humiliating a class of people that politicians and law enforcement have deemed the enemy.”—Radley Balko, The Washington Post Daily, all across America, individuals who dare to resist—or even question—a police...

In Official Washington, words rarely mean what they say. For instance, if a US government official voices “high confidence” in a supposed “intelligence assessment,” that usually means “we don’t have any real evidence, but we figure that if we say ‘high confidence’ enough that no one will dare challenge us.”It’s also true that after a US President or another senior official jumps to a conclusion that is not supported by evidence, the ranks of government careerists will close around him or her,...

President Trump says he has no plans to enter Syria, despite ordering airstrikes on a Syrian military base last week. "We’re not going into Syria", Trump told Maria Bartiromo during an exclusive interview on FOX Business. "But when I see people using horrible, horrible chemical weapons… and see these beautiful kids that are dead in their father's arms, or you see kids gasping for life… when you see that, I immediately called General Mattis."So, the attack against Syria was an impulsive...

If anyone is worried whether the prospect of a major war, which many of us considered almost inevitable if Hillary Clinton had attained the White House, is back on track, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Moscow was cold comfort. From his remarks together with his counterpart Sergey Lavrov, there is now little reason to expect any improvement in US-Russia ties anytime soon, if ever, and much reason to expect them to get worse – a lot worse. There has been a great deal of speculation...

In the summer of 2013, the international media was aflame with reports that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had murdered 1,400 civilians in the town of Ghouta: using deadly sarin gas, children, women, and men had been horribly slaughtered, and Syria’s Islamist opposition, in concert with the Washington foreign policy Establishment, was agitating for US intervention. It was the culmination of a years-long propaganda campaign, which then President Barack Obama had stubbornly resisted – and now,...

If you read closely between the warped headlines of the establishment media, you will eventually find the truth about Trump’s decision to strike the Syrian government: it was illegal.Yet most mainstream media outlets clearly supported the strike. Many US allies also supported the strike, including so-called peaceful countries such as New Zealand, which stated the strikes were a“proportional response to a specific incident – the chemical weapons atrocity.” New Zealand also said they would...

President Trump:Last time we discussed your refusal to abide by the Constitution’s hard-and-fast war-making provision, a decision that merits — as it did for most of your post-1945 predecessors — impeachment proceedings. Waging war in the manner you did in Syria is the work of an absolute monarch or a dictator, not that of a popularly elected president of this republic.Today, we must discuss a topic that has been covered in this space on multiple occasions; namely, the need for you to...

The Donald's missile "attack" on Syria's al-Shairat air base is surely the most impetuous, thoughtless, reckless and stupid act from the Oval Office that we can remember — and that covers 50 years at least. And we put "attack" in quotes because it's now evident that virtually every one of those $1.4 million per copy Tomahawks amounted to a big fat nothing-burger. To wit, 36 of the 59 missile were duds and landed somewhere that was not the al-Shairat air base, including a nearby village where...

What does the US administration want with regards to Syria?The elements were clear just a few days ago. The US would split off the east and set up a Kurdish enclave which it would then occupy with the help of proxy forces. It would use the leverage to push for political regime change in western Syria. Israel would occupy another piece of the Golan.While that looked somewhat favorable for the US in the short term it was bad long term strategy. US forces in the east would be surrounded by...

The real Donald Trump has been exposed. The man who promised a sensible and non-interventionist Middle Eastern policy and a reset with Moscow has now reneged on both pledges. His nitwit United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley has directly linked Russia and Syria for punishment by the omnipotent Leader of the Free World lest anyone be confused.The unconscionable attack on Syria based on the usual unsubstantiated allegations has shifted the playing field dramatically, with the “new sheriff in...

Thursday’s US missile attack on Syria must represent the quickest foreign policy U-turn in history. Less than a week after the White House gave Assad permission to stay on as president of his own country, President Trump decided that the US had to attack Syria and demand Assad’s ouster after a chemical attack earlier in the week. Trump blamed Assad for the attack, stated that “something’s going to happen” in retaliation, and less than two days later he launched a volley of 59 Tomahawk missiles...