Three years after Ecuador’s government granted political asylum to Julian Assange in its small ground-floor London embassy, the founder of WikiLeaks is still there – beyond the reach of the government whose vice president, Joe Biden, has labeled him "a digital...
We Should Stop Talking About Liberating Mosul
In a recent piece on Foreign Policy, titled, “No One Talks About Liberating Mosul Anymore,” Michael Knights wrote about the necessity of training better Iraqi forces and unleashing U.S. airpower in Iraq to fight the so-called Islamic State (IS).“It’s time to let the...
American Meddling in Yemen Means Aggression at Home
If the onsite horrors of the war and embargo against Yemen are not reason enough for us to advocate an American withdrawal from that foreign conflagration, hopefully this is: our government’s support for the Saudi war in Yemen entails aggression in the United States....
Ron Paul on the Iran Deal’s Surprising Supporters
As the neocons continue to bombard Congress demanding that the deal with Iran be killed, a group of former senior US military officers and a group of former Iranian political prisoners living in the US have both signed letters in support of the deal. Who will US...
Jeb Bush Apes His Brother’s Foreign Policy, Torture Playbook
When it comes to Iraq, Jeb Bush was for it before he was against it, and is now for it again. Speaking at a National Security Forum in Iowa, Bush sought to distance himself from his previous attempts to distance himself from his brother's invasion of Iraq, saying he...
Chelsea Manning Faces Indefinite Solitary Confinement for Expired Toothpaste
Railroaded into a military prison for 35 years, whistleblower Chelsea Manning is now facing "indefinitely solitary confinement" for a handful of trivial charges, which stem entirely from allegations by one of the guards (termed "specialists") that she swept food on...
Ron Paul: US Intelligence Confirms US Support for ISIS
Former Defense Intelligence Agency head Gen. Michael Flynn is not backing down from his claims that elements of the US government were aware of and supported the rise of jihadists in Syria as a means by which to overthrow its president, Bashar Assad. As the US moves...
My Dreams Seek Revenge: Revisiting Hiroshima One More Time: Peter Van Buren
I’ve visited Hiroshima many times. There is a Japanese jail not far from the Hiroshima Peace Park, and in my guise as a diplomat working in Japan, one of my jobs was to visit Americans in jail, typically young men and women who’d smoked a little weed in drug-conscious...
Iran, Israel, and American Jews
The struggle over the Iran Agreement reminds me of the seventeen years I spent as editor of Present Tense, a liberal Jewish-oriented magazine, published by the American Jewish Committee. In 1990, we featured a detailed investigative piece, "Speaking for the...
Intelligence, Morality, and the Atomic Bomb
At 8: 16 AM on August 6, 1945 – 08:16:02 to be precise, Hiroshima time – Little Boy exploded. When President Harry Truman learned of the successful detonation of the atomic bomb and the destruction of the Japanese city, he said, "This is the greatest thing in...


