For us old-timers, memories of those post-9/11 days persist like that rotting squirrel stuck somewhere under your back porch.One of the features of those dirty days was the panic index, actually called the terrorism alert system, created by the then-new Department of...
Just like their Sugar Daddy America bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan “by accident,” the Saudis bombed for the second time this year a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen. But it’s OK – just like the U.S.,...
Mustafa Abd-al-Qawi Abd-al-Aziz al-Shamiri was captured in 2002 and believed then to be a major al Qaeda facilitator or courier, or maybe a trainer, according to the Department of Defense. He was interrogated “vigorously” and when he did not admit to those...
Wars are expensive. The recruitment and sustainment of fighters in the field, the ongoing purchases of weapons and munitions, as well as the myriad other costs of struggle, add up. So why isn’t the United States going after Islamic State’s funding sources as a way of...
The same ridiculed and useless techniques used by the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) to not find terrorists at America’s airports are now being used at Orlando theme parks, including Disney World, Sea World, and Busch Gardens, to not find...
When I was a kid, three presidents told us we had to fight in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, because if we didn’t fight them over there, we’d have to fight them on the beaches of California. We believed. It was a lie.I was a teenager during the Cold War, and several...
As Obama fails on another campaign promise, this one to end the war in Afghanistan, and as that war moves into its 15th year, it is important to remember the US has spent around $110 billion (no one knows the exact amount due to poor record keeping) to “rebuild” that...
You are a tool of the state, according to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA in the U.S., and its equivalent in the UK, GCHQ, are taking control of your phone not just to spy on you as needed, but also to use your device as a way to spy on others around you....
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...
No one except John Kiriakou is being held accountable for America’s torture policy. And John Kiriakou didn’t torture anyone, he just blew the whistle on it.In a Galaxy Far, Far AwayThe United States sanctioned acts of torture by the Central Intelligence...
