Maybe this post by George Hawley, “Solving Non-Interventionism’s Tough-Guy Problem,” wasn’t directed at Antiwar.com, but I’ll address some excerpts from it anyway.
In the years since I abandoned my status as a typical neoconservative chicken hawk and adopted Old Right non-interventionism, I’ve been somewhat uneasy with much of the movement’s rhetoric. Specifically, I often find much [...]
A piece we ran in Viewpoints yesterday, “Iran’s Election Drama More Elaborate Than You Think,” indicated that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a former member of the Revolutionary Guards. This was incorrect (see this for details). We regret the error.
On a less clear-cut matter, I received the following e-mail from Halliburton’s PR department:
FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE [...]
While an argument could be made that all money spent on defense (war) appropriations is a waste, a new report shows that 20% of the money set aside by Congress to rebuild Iraq was “wasted” on shoddy craftsmanship and “excessive payments to contractors.”
In other breaking news, $900 billion has been spent destroying offices, kiosks, stores, [...]
Since the collapse of Lehman, how many times have both politicians and pundits suggested that wars act as economic stimuli? Aren’t we taught that it was World War II that ultimately got the US out of the Depression?
Worried that the US may not find any war(s) big enough to do the trick again? [...]
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says — and he should know — there is no difference between the policy of “absolute support” for Israel between Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
Obama’s own spokesman Robert Gibbs affirmed that, as under Bush, “all options remain on the table” with regard to Iran.
A recent executive order from the new [...]
Does your portfolio continue to take a hit in this helter skelter market?
Have you thought about boosting it with some nitroglycerin-filled firepower?
Bloomberg is reporting that Raytheon not only turned a profit but beat analyst estimates. This is great news for the defense industry which only received a nominal increase in new appropriations for FY 2009, [...]
Earlier today President Bush said “people should conserve and be wise about how they use gas and energy.”
This is ironic in part because the US military is a large player in the oil economy. If the US military was a country it would be the worlds 38th largest consumer of oil. Yet despite its large [...]
If you have a chance be sure to read the latest TomDispatch piece from the Highlights section.
Researcher Frida Berrigan copiously details the geometric rise of the Pentagon’s budget and omnipotence through the concerted efforts of the current administration. As Tom notes, it is perhaps the most powerful and concise overview on the breadth [...]
Scifi author Charlie Stross recently discussed other alternatives for the monies that funded the Iraq war. He noted that using current technology the bounty could have created and staffed a colony of 500 astronauts on Mars or enabled the construction of tens of gigawatts in nuclear energy throughout the US. Or even helped [...]
The Libertarian Longhorns have invited me to speak at their meeting this Monday, the 28th at 8:00 PM on the subject of America’s biggest big government program: Empire.
The room is Mezes 1.306 (the Mezes Auditorium). Here is the link to the campus map.
Hope to see you there.
I’m not a big fan of the New York Times, but today’s front-page investigative report on the Pentagon’s managing of the news is absolutely first-rate. One of the Pentagon officials, Torie Clarke, the Pentagon’s main propagandist, said her goal had been to achieve “information dominance.” In other words, she wanted the Pentagon’s [...]
Senator Everett Dirksen, a hawk during the Vietnam era, is credited with coining the sarcastic phrase.
However, forty years later, it should be updated to read a trillion here and there. For instance, one of the articles highlighted in the Viewpoints section today details the ever expanding blackhole that is the accounting system(s) used by [...]
