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Red Snow Warning

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Chip Ward, - Sep. 14 (Special Report) - Pink snow is turning red in Colorado. Here on the Great American Desert -- specifically Utah's slickrock portion of it where I live -- hot 'n' dry means dust. When frequent high winds sweep across our increasingly arid landscape, redrock powder is lifted up and carried hundreds of miles eastward until it settles on the broad shoulders of Colorado's majestic mountains, giving the snowpack there a pink hue.

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Measuring Success in Afghanistan

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Engelhardt - Sep. 08 (Opinion) - The problem was that none of the official metrics managed to measure what mattered most in Vietnam. History may not simply repeat itself, but there's good reason to look askance at whatever set of metrics the Obama administration manages to devise. After all, as in the Vietnam years, Obama's people, too, will be mustering numbers in search of "success"; they, too, will be measuring "progress." And those numbers -- like the Vietnam era body counts -- will have to come up from below (with all the attendant pressures). By the time they reach Washington, they are likely to have the best possible patina on them.

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Armageddon at the Top of the World: Not!

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Juan Cole - Jul. 28 (Special Report) - Despite being among the poorest people in the world, the inhabitants of the craggy northwest of what is now Pakistan have managed to throw a series of frights into distant Western capitals for more than a century. That's certainly one for the record books.

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Everything That Happens in Afghanistan Is Based on Lies or Illusions

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Ann Jones - Jul. 17 (News Analysis) - Fixer is the best documentary I've seen on Afghanistan -- so good it's hard to imagine a better one. It's all jagged edges, blurs, and disconnects, catching as it does both the forbidding emptiness of the land and the edginess of war-weary Afghans. One long segment, apparently showing the inside of Parenti's shawl as he conceals a camera from potentially hostile villagers, seems the visual correlative of the feeling that unsettles all outsiders from time to time in this country: the sense of being completely in the dark. In 2006-2007, as the Taliban surged back with kidnappings, murders, bombs, and jihadi suicide attacks, this is how Afghanistan felt. It's the feeling that still drives Hesco sales in the capital.

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Too Big to Fail

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Chip Ward - Apr. 21 (Opinion) - In nature, nothing is too big to fail. In fact, big is bound to fail. To understand why that's so means stepping away from a prevailing set of beliefs that holds us in its sway, especially the deep conviction that we operate apart from nature's limits and rules.

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Is This Last Gasp for the Israel Lobby and the Neocons?

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Robert Dreyfuss - Mar. 16 (News Analysis) - Is the Israel lobby in Washington an all-powerful force? Or is it, perhaps, running scared? Judging by the outcome of the Charles W. ("Chas") Freeman affair this week, it might seem as if the Israeli lobby is fearsome indeed. Seen more broadly, however, the controversy over Freeman could be the Israel lobby's Waterloo. Let's recap. On February 19th, Laura Rozen reported at ForeignPolicy.com that Freeman had been selected by Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, to serve in a key post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC). The NIC, the official in-house think tank of the intelligence community, takes input from 16 intelligence agencies and produces what are called "national intelligence estimates" on crucial topics of the day as guidance for Washington policymakers. For that job, Freeman boasted a stellar resumé: fluent in Mandarin Chinese, widely experienced in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, and an ex-assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration. A wry, outspoken iconoclast, Freeman had, however, crossed one of Washington's red lines by virtue of his strong criticism of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Over the years, he had, in fact, honed a critique of Israel that was both eloquent and powerful. Hours after the Foreign Policy story was posted, Steve Rosen, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), launched what would soon become a veritable barrage of criticism of Freeman on his right-wing blog.

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The Afghan Scam

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Asia Times - By Ann Jones - Jan. 12 (Special Report) - the Bush administration perpetrated a scam. It used the system it set up to dispense reconstruction aid to both the countries it "liberated," Afghanistan and Iraq, to transfer American taxpayer dollars from the national treasury directly into the pockets of private war profiteers. Think of Halliburton, Bechtel, and Blackwater in Iraq; Louis Berger Group, Bearing Point, and DynCorp International in Afghanistan. They're all in it together. So far, the Bush administration has bamboozled Americans about its shady aid program. Nobody talks about it. Yet the aid scam, which would be a scandal if it weren't so profitable for so many, explains far more than does troop strength about why, today, we are on the verge of watching the whole Afghan enterprise go belly up.

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Body Count Nation

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Englehardt - Jan. 07 (Opinion) - Looked at another way, the Bush administration's Global War on Terror and its subsidiary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have, in effect, been a giant Ponzi scheme. At a cost of nearly one trillion taxpayer dollars to date (but sure to be in the multi-trillions when all is said and done), Bush's mad "global war" simply sucked needed money out of our world at levels that made Bernie Madoff seem like a small fry.

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Who Are the Taliban? The Afghan War Deciphered

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Anand Gopal - Dec. 10 (Special Report) - Almost every suicide attack and kidnapping is attributed to "the Taliban." In reality, however, the insurgency is far from monolithic.

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Wrecked Iraq What the Good News from Iraq Really Means

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Michael Schwartz - Oct. 27 (Investigative Report) - In reality, though, since there are far fewer foreign reporters moving around a quieter Iraq, far less news is coming out of that wrecked land.

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The Pentagon's Stealth Corporations

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Nick Turse - Jun. 25 (Special Report) - Then there's a select group that are masters of the universe in the ever-expanding military-corporate complex, regularly scoring more than a billion tax dollars a year from the Department of Defense. Unlike Lockheed, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, however, most of these billion-dollar babies manage to fly beneath the radar of media (not to mention public) attention. If appearing at all, they generally do so innocuously in the business pages of newspapers. When it comes to their support for the Pentagon's wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are, in media terms, missing in action. So, who are some of these mystery defense contractors you've probably never heard of? Here are snapshot portraits, culled largely from their own corporate documents, of five of the Pentagon's secret billion-dollar babies:

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Uranium Frenzy in the West

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Chip Ward - Jun. 20 (Special Report) - The giant mining conglomerate, Phelps Dodge, recently acquired the mineral rights to national forest land in Colorado for just over $100,000. The company expects to extract $9 billion in molybdenum from the land. If, to speculators, the prospect of mega-profits is like sex, the Mining Act of 1872 has always been their Viagra. To add insult to injury, the Act makes taxpayers responsible for any clean-up of the land after the mining companies are through extracting its mineral wealth.

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Tomgram: Why We Can't See America's Ziggurats in Iraq

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By tom englehardt - Jun. 16 (Special Report) - by now, billions have evidently gone into single massive mega-bases like the u.s. air base in balad, about 60 miles north of baghdad......

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The Pentagon as Energy Insecurity Inc.

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Michael Klare - Jun. 12 (Opinion) - A viable long-term approach to actual energy security would not favor one particular source of energy -- in this case, oil -- above all others, or regularly expose American soldiers to a heightened risk of harm and American taxpayers to a heightened risk of bankruptcy. Rather, an American energy policy that made sense would embrace a holistic approach to energy procurement, weighing the relative merits of all potential sources of energy.

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Shocking Bush 'Pep Talk' to His War Cabinet on Iraq: 'We Are Going to Wipe Them out!'

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Engelhardt - Jun. 02 (News Report) - "Kill them." Gen. Ricardo Sanchez's memoirs contain a transcript from a bloodthirsty and over the top private speech by Bush.

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Noam Chomsky, Terrorists Wanted the World Over

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Engelhardt, Noam Chomsky - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - On February 13, Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander of Hizbollah, was assassinated in Damascus. "The world is a better place without this man in it," State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said: "one way or the other he was brought to justice." Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell added that Moughniyeh has been "responsible for more deaths of Americans and Israelis than any other terrorist with the exception of Osama bin Laden." Joy was unconstrained in Israel too, as "one of the U.S. and Israel's most wanted men" was brought to justice, the London Financial Times reported. Under the heading, "A militant wanted the world over," an accompanying story reported that he was "superseded on the most-wanted list by Osama bin Laden" after 9/11 and so ranked only second among "the most wanted militants in the world." The terminology is accurate enough, according to the rules of Anglo-American discourse, which defines "the world" as the political class in Washington and London (and whoever happens to agree with them on specific matters).

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Making Iraq Disappear

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Engelhardt - Feb. 20 (Opinion) - When it comes to those who make the media decisions at home, however, they have practically clamored for the Bush administration to put them in a coffin-like box and saw it in half. Thanks to their news choices, Iraq has for months been whisked deep inside most papers and into the softest sections of network and cable news programs. Only one Iraq subject has gotten significant front-page attention: How much "success" has the President's surge strategy had?

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The War against Women Never Ends

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Ann Jones - Feb. 17 (Special Report) - And here's a little-known reality: When any conflict of this sort officially ends, violence against women continues and often actually grows worse. Not surprisingly, murderous aggression cannot be turned off overnight. When men stop attacking one another, women continue to be convenient targets. Here in West Africa, as in so many other places where rape was used as a weapon of war, it has become a habit carried seamlessly into the "post-conflict" era. Where normal structures of law enforcement and justice have been disabled by war, male soldiers and civilians alike can prey upon women and children with impunity. And they do. So I'm writing to you, here in "post-conflict" West Africa, from an active war zone. I'm writing from the heart of the war against women and children.

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What Progressives and Other Critics Don't Get about the U.S. Military

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By William J. Astore - Feb. 03 (Editorial) - "If you want to change anything -- even our increasing propensity for militarism -- you first have to make an effort to engage with it. And to engage with it, you have to know the wellsprings of its appeal, which transcend corporate profits or imperial power."

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Dilip Hiro, Bush's Losing Iranian Hand

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:30:05 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Engelhardt - Dec. 06 (Opinion) - [The NIE's release is a] measure of inside-the-Beltway Bush administration decline. Whether..."a pre-emptive strike against the White House by intelligence agencies and military chiefs," an intelligence "mini-coup"..., part of a longer-term set of moves meant to undermine plans for air strikes against Iran that involved a potential resignation threat from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and a "near mutiny" by the Joint Chiefs, or an attempt by the administration itself to "salvage negotiations with Iran"...Such an NIE would not have been written, no less released, at almost any previous moment in the last seven years.

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The Sole Superpower in Decline: The Rise of a Multipolar World

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:43:48 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Dipip Hiro - Aug. 20 (Special Report) - 'this disparate challenge to American global primacy stems as much from sharpening conflicts over natural resources...as ideological differences over democracy, american style, or human rights as conceived and promoted by western policy makers.'

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The True -- and Shocking -- History of the CIA

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 11:52:20 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Chalmers Johnson - Jul. 28 (Review) - An on-the-record master history of the CIA has finally been published, and it lesson is that an incompetent intelligence agency can be as great a threat to national security as not having one at all.

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Bush's blank check

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 07:26:18 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Robert Dreyfuss - Jun. 16 (Opinion) - To a rational observer, such spending -- totaling more than $1 trillion in 2008, according to the figures I've just cited -- seems quite literally insane. During the Cold War, hawks scared Americans into tolerating staggering but somewhat lesser sums by invoking the specter of Soviet communism. Does anyone, anywhere, truly believe that we need to spend more than a trillion dollars a year to defend ourselves against small bands of al-Qaida fanatics?

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The Pentagon v. Peak Oil

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:41:04 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Michael T. Klare - Jun. 14 (Opinion) - The administration has, the company notes, "tethered operational capability to high-technology solutions that require continued growth in energy sources" -- and done so at the worst possible moment historically. After all, the likelihood is that the global energy supply is about to begin diminishing rather than expanding. Clearly, writes LMI in its April 2007 report, "it may not be possible to execute operational concepts and capabilities to achieve our security strategy if the energy implications are not considered." And when those energy implications are considered, the strategy appears "unsustainable."

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Patrick Cockburn, Iraq Dismantled

Thu, 10 May 2007 09:38:51 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Engelhardt, Patrick Cockburn - May. 10 (Special Report) - Patrick Cockburn has been hailed by Sidney Blumenthal in Salon as "one of the most accurate and intrepid journalists in Iraq." And that's hardly praise enough, given what the man has done. The Middle Eastern correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, he's been on the spot from the moment when, in February 2003, he secretly crossed the Tigris River into Iraq just before the Bush administration launched its invasion. Here, for instance, is a typical striking passage of his, written in May 2003, just weeks after Baghdad fell. If you read it then, you hardly needed the massive retrospective volumes like Thomas Rick's Fiasco that took years to come out: "[T]he civilian leadership of the Pentagon... are uniquely reckless, arrogant and ill informed about Iraq. At the end of last year [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz was happily saying that he thought the Iraqi reaction to the capture of Baghdad would be much like the entry of the U.S. Army into Paris in 1944. He also apparently believed that Ahmed Chalabi..., then as now one of the most unpopular men in Iraq, would be the Iraqi Charles de Gaulle.

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