At least 77 people were killed and 23 more were wounded. Some of these victims were killed during a massacre last week. Meanwhile, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani asked lawmakers to hurry building the new government in order to help reduce the chaos across the country. Also, new eye witnesses emerged in the slaughter of dozens of prisoners on Monday.

With support for interventionism at an all-time low, the War Party is constantly on the lookout for fresh justifications of their failed and increasingly unpopular overseas meddling. The old saw about how "terrorists" mustn’t be allowed to establish...

Originally posted at TomDispatch. When it comes to spying, surveillance, and privacy, a simple rule applies to our world: however bad you think it is, it’s worse. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we’ve learned an enormous amount about the global surveillance...

The Iraqi military is reporting advances in Tikrit. If they should reclaim that town it will be a great psychological triumph for the ailing security forces. Still, at least 260 people were killed and 63 more were wounded across the country.

"Brother, brother," a young man called on me as I hurriedly left a lecture hall in some community center in Durban, South Africa. This happened at the height of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, when all efforts at stopping the ferocious US-western military...

This week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published their study of 20 different law enforcement agencies’ use of SWAT teams on 800 occasions between 2011 and 2013. Their conclusions may not surprise people who have been following the militarization and the...

Once in a while the inconsistencies in American foreign policy become sufficiently clear to reveal the consistency in American foreign policy. Three contemporary inconsistencies in Iraq and Syria, all clearly connected, converge to throw America’s consistent foreign...

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has rejected international calls for a caretaker government even as militants continue to make gains. Meanwhile, the U.S. is considering again using a Sunni militia group that was effective in fighting militants during the occupation. At least 135 people were killed, and another 99 were wounded in the latest violence.

Does anybody remember "Impossible – Yet It Happened!"? When I was a kid, that was my favorite part of the comics page. It was a series based on the work of Charles Fort, the chronicler of the odd, all about – well, supposedly "impossible" events...

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Imagine the president, speaking on Iraq from the White House Press Briefing Room last Thursday, as the proverbial deer in the headlights – and it’s not difficult to guess just what those headlights were. Think of them as...