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. Bad intel created purposefully suggests a war that is being lost, with the people in charge that loathe to admit it even as they continue to stumble forward, ever-more blind. And if that sounds like America’s previous war in...

The rape of young boys in Afghanistan by our “allies” is getting a lot of press attention these days, provoked by the revelation that US military personnel who tried to stop it are being disciplined for interfering. Two US officers apparently beat up one of our pet warlords, who insisted on keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave: this kind of rough justice got one relieved of his command and the other is being forced to retire. The US military denies ordering its personnel to look the...

For well over three years, heavy doses of propaganda have created a myth about a purported steel cylinder for testing explosives located on a site at Iran’s Parchin military testing reservation. Iran was refusing to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect the site while it sought to hide its past nuclear weapons-related work, according to that storyline. Now Iran has agreed to allow the IAEA to visit the site at Parchin and environmental samples have already been...

The media are anointing former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina as the winner of last Wednesday’s second Republican presidential-aspirant debate. They are saying that she was the best prepared and most convincing speaker, and, indeed, maybe she was. But what is being largely ignored is the actual content of the so-called debate, which was supposed to be focused on foreign policy. Presuming that all the potential candidates had been assiduously primed on the major issues by their...

It is increasingly difficult to watch the most recent coverage of the Syrian war and not be struck by how utterly illogical and convoluted it has become. But look through the media spin and it’s clear: the Russian leader's steady moves in Syria are perplexing the US. Whether it's the latest neocon claim that the way to "help" refugees is to drop more bombs and train more Al-Qaeda-linked rebels, or the conveniently-timed mass hysteria over Russia's (never secret) support for Bashar Assad — or...

Is the current refugee crisis gripping the European Union “all America’s fault”? That is how my critique of US foreign policy was characterized in a recent interview on the Fox Business Channel. I do not blame the host for making this claim, but I think it is important to clarify the point. It has become common to discount any criticism of US foreign policy as “blaming America first.” It is a convenient way of avoiding a real discussion. If aggressive US policy in the Middle East – for example...

Many people are framing the arrest of student Ahmed Mohamed at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas on Monday in terms of Mohamed’s race and religion. The argument goes that a white and non-Muslim student would not have been arrested as was Mohamed for bringing to school a home-assembled clock that school workers and police say looks like a bomb. Even if convincing evidence does come to light indicating Mohamed’s race or religion was the determining factor leading to his arrest, which is not...

“The United States does not lack institutions that continue to conspire, and that’s why I am using this gathering to announce that we have decided to expel USAID from Bolivia” -Bolivian President Evo Morales Washington wants Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa removed from power. Washington says it is concerned about the freedom of the press in Ecuador because their non-government organization "Fundamedios" funded and supported by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the...

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!” So echoed the cry this week from the Pentagon, the US media and Republican candidates for president. How silly. It seems the Russians have sent six tanks to Syria, some medium artillery and a bunch of military technicians to two bases on Syria’s coast near Latakia. According to Republican warmongers, the wicked Soviets…ooops, sorry, Russians…are intervening militarily in the five-year old Syrian War and planning new bases in the strategic...

The Syrian refugee problem was maturing slowly steadily and would have provided the perfect pretext for a US-led ‘humanitarian intervention’ in that country. But Russia is there first and the best-laid American plan may have gone awry. The US Middle East policies have been fixated obsessively on ‘regime change’ in Syria for at least a decade ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. (The original neocon agenda had envisaged regime changes in Iraq, Iran and Syria, but it got derailed as the...

“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning. From metal detectors to drug tests, from increased policing to all-seeing electronic surveillance, the public schools of the twenty-first century reflect a society that has become fixated on crime, security and violence.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes In the American...

Remember when America erupted in fury over France’s refusal to support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003? President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominque de Villepin warned that George Bush’s unprovoked aggression against Iraq would destabilize the Mideast and inflict untold dangers on Europe. America’s response to the sage warning was to change the name of French fries to ‘Freedom fries’ and press ahead with the invasion of Iraq. President Saddam Hussein of Iraq warned that an America...

Does the US government want the Islamic State and/or its fellow-travelers in Al Qaeda to take over Syria? As far as the State Department is concerned, that seems to be a risk worth taking as it moves to cut off Russia’s supply pipeline to the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad — even as Sunni terrorist groups expand their grip on Syrian territory. It appears that hardliners within the Obama administration have placed the neocon goal of “regime change” in Syria ahead of the...

Reports that the official unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1 percent may appear to vindicate the policies of easy money, corporate bailouts, and increased government spending. However, even the mainstream media has acknowledged that the official numbers understate the true unemployment rate. This is because the government’s unemployment figures do not include the 94 million Americans who have given up looking for work or who have settled for part-time employment. John Williams of Shadow...