The other day, Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-supported Afghan president who was once sardonically nicknamed “the mayor of Kabul,” had a few curious things to say about American policy in the Muslim world. Karzai, of course, is a man whose opinions whether...
Edward Snowden vs. the Sovietization of America
What could be more fun? An articulate and very smart young man our Washington mandarins deride as a "twenty-something high school dropout" has the US national security establishment, the Washington punditocracy, and the President himself in a panicky lather....
Baghdad Rattled by Blasts: 43 Killed Across Iraq
How Booz Allen Made the Revolving Door Redundant
Edward Snowden, a low-level employee of Booz Allen Hamilton who blew the whistle on the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), unexpectedly exposed a powerful and seamless segment of the military-industrial complex the world of contractors that consumes some 70...
A Reluctant Warrior Tiptoes to War
Barack Obama has just taken his first baby steps into a war in Syria that may define and destroy his presidency. Thursday, while he was ringing in Gay Pride Month with LGBT revelers, a staffer, Ben Rhodes, informed the White House press that U.S. weapons will be going...
Forget WWZ Movie, Read the Book
David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Bill Keller Wish Snowden Had Just Followed Order
Edward Snowden’s disclosures, the New York Times reported on Sunday, "have renewed a longstanding concern: that young Internet aficionados whose skills the agencies need for counterterrorism and cyberdefense sometimes bring an anti-authority spirit that does not...
Bombings Return to Central Iraq; 23 Killed
Obama’s Syria Policy Looks a Lot Like Bush’s Iraq Policy
President Obama announced late last week that the US intelligence community had just determined that the Syrian government had used poison gas on a small scale, killing some 100 people in a civil conflict that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. Because of this...
The Making of a Global Security State
As happens with so much news these days, the Edward Snowden revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) spying and just how far we’ve come in the building of a surveillance state have swept over us 24/7 – waves of leaks, videos, charges, claims, counterclaims,...


