Editor's note: On Tuesday, we linked to an excerpt of a Noam Chomsky essay from a forthcoming book. TomDispatch has a longer excerpt, which is linked to below. This is, of course, the week before the tenth anniversary of the day that “changed everything.” And enough...
Best of TomDispatch: Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire
Chalmers Johnson died on November 20, 2010, but — for me at least — his spirit lives on in the most active of ways. In his last years at TomDispatch.com, he regularly chewed over the profligacy of the Pentagon, our unbridled urge for military spending, and our...
TomDispatch Blocked by State Department!
I have a friend who sends a note every year in December, pleading with me to pen one upbeat, hopeful piece before the next year rolls around. Mind you, I consider myself an upbeat guy in a downbeat world and, for me, when it comes to pure upbeatness, you couldn't have...
Chalmers Johnson, RIP
Last night, antiwar historian Chalmers Johnson died after an extended illness. This note is from Tom Engelhardt, who was Chalmers' good friend and editor of his books.I’m sad to report that Chalmers Johnson died on Saturday. He was a stalwart of this site, writing...
The Ambassador, the Iraqi, and the Penguin
An ambassador – his name happens to be Timothy Carney – an Iraqi, and a penguin walk into a bar. The bartender asks how the Iraqi will ever possibly pay for his drink. The ambassador replies: "The point to make there is that Iraq is basically a rich country; that...
Biking With Donald Rumsfeld
Last week, someone slipped New York Times reporters Michael R. Gordon and David S. Cloud the secret memo finished by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld just two days before he "resigned." It was the last in a flurry of famed Rumsfeldian "snowflakes" that have...
The Lessons of Iraq, Gates-style
Robert M. Gates, the man slated to fill the "stuff happens" combat boots of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, offered his first cautious pass at the lessons of the Iraq War this week. In a questionnaire he filled out for the Senate Armed Services Committee in...


