Antiwar.com Blog

Please note the following changes for Antiwar.com Radio:

The new site is located at http://antiwar.com/radio

The new podcast is located at http://feeds.feedburner.com/AntiwarRadio

Since they will be dumping Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer.

As I have written about over and over and over again, the purpose of the military should be to defend the country. That’s it. One would think that the Secretary of Defense would know that. Yet, in a recent speech before the Association of the United States Army, Robert Gates articulated the following role for the U.S. military:

“Army soldiers can expect to be tasked with reviving public services, rebuilding infrastructure and promoting good governance. All these so-called nontraditional capabilities have moved into the mainstream of military thinking, planning, and strategy—where they must stay.”

That is, anything but do what the military should do.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_12_12_dreyfuss.mp3]

Investigative reporter Robert Dreyfuss discusses his view that the new Iran NIE has made it virtually impossible for the administration to start a war any time before 2009, the State Department and U.S. military’s undercutting of the accusations about Iran’s involvement in Iraq, Iran’s relationship with the Hakim and Sadr factions, the history of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, why the Bush administration favors that faction (which is the closest to Tehran) over the Shi’ite nationalists, the danger to U.S. troops in Iraq in the event of war with Iran, why the U.S. occupation is the main obstacle to the creation of a multi-ethnic coalition government, the split within the Da’wa Party and various moves by the administration which have strengthened the hands of the Iraqi nationalists they oppose.

MP3 here. (30:54)

For nearly fifteen years Robert Dreyfuss has worked as an independent journalist who specializes in magazine features, profiles, and investigative stories in the areas of politics and national security. In 2001, he was profiled as a leading investigative journalist by the Columbia Journalism Review, and two of his articles have won awards from The Washington Monthly. In 2003, Dreyfuss was awarded Project Censored’s first prize for a story on the role of oil in U.S. policy toward Iraq.He has appeared on scores of radio and television talk shows, including Hannity and Colmes on Fox News, C-Span, CNBC, MSNBC, Court TV, and, on National Public Radio, The Diane Rehm Show and Public Interest with Kojo Nnamdi, and Pacifica’s Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.

Based in Alexandria, Va., Dreyfuss been writing for Rolling Stone for at least a decade, and currently covers national security for Rolling Stone’s National Affairs section. He’s a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. His articles have also appeared in The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, Newsday, Worth, California Lawyer, The Texas Observer, E, In These Times, The Detroit Metro Times, Public Citizen, Extra!, and, in Japan, in Esquire, Foresight and Nikkei Business. On line, he writes frequently for TomPaine.com, and produced a popular blog for Tom Paine called The Dreyfuss Report.

Dreyfuss is best known for ground-breaking stories about the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy. In 2002, he wrote the first significant profile of Ahmed Chalabi by a journalist, for The American Prospect. Also in 2002, he wrote the first analysis of the war between the Pentagon and the CIA over policy toward Iraq, which included the first important account of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. Other stories in The American Prospect included detailed accounts of neoconservative war plans for the broader Middle East. In 2004, he co-authored what is still the most complete account of the work of the Office of Special Plans in manufacturing misleading or false intelligence about Iraq, for Mother Jones, entitled “The Lie Factory.”

Before 9/11, Dreyfuss wrote extensively about intelligence issues, including pieces about post-Cold War excursions by the CIA into economic espionage, about the CIA’s nonofficial cover (NOC) program, and about lobbying by U.S. defense and intelligence contractors over the annual secret intelligence budget.

Among his many other pieces, Dreyfuss has profiled organizations, including the Democratic Leadership Council, the Center for American Progress, the National Rifle Association, the NAACP, the Human Rights Campaign, and Handgun Control. He has also profiled Vermont Governor Howard Dean, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, conservative activist Grover Norquist, House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, Senator John McCain, and, in 1999, Texas Governor George W. Bush. One of his most important pieces was the result of a weeks-long visit to Vietnam in 1999, where he wrote about the effects of Agent Orange dioxin in Vietnam since the 1970s. His stories on the privatization of Social Security and the politics of Medicare and Medical Savings Accounts have been widely cited.

Dreyfuss is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). He graduated from Columbia University.

All the cool stuff I’m not allowed to write about on Antiwar.com goes to Taki’s Top Drawer. The Huckster bloviates about education, why Rudy’s off his game (hurrah!), Alan Keyes is either high or nuts, the Paulista rebellion against the neocons at National Review, and whatever happened to the AIPAC spy trial — it’s all over at TTD!

And, yes, I’m going to tout my recently-published piece in The American Conservative on the poet Robinson Jeffers. No, it’s not online: you’ve got to go out and buy a copy.  

 

Just coming across the wire: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi spent $16,000 on flowers this year. Of course, not one was strewn on the grave of a soldier who fell in the senseless war in Iraq she and her party have continued to fund. According to her office, all those posies went to various “heads of state” who visited Washington, such as Ehud Olmert.