Pentagon

What does President Trump’s recent nomination of retired Army General John Abizaid to become the next U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia signify? Next to nothing — and arguably quite a lot. Abizaid’s proposed appointment is both a non-event and an opportunity not to be wasted. It means next to nothing in this sense: while once […]

Washington (AFP) – About half a million people have died violently in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan due to the US “war on terror” that was launched following the September 11 attacks in 2001, according to a study released Thursday. The report by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs put the death toll […]

(Tomdispatch.com) – Here’s a paradox of the last few decades: as American military power has been less and less effective in achieving Washington’s goals, the rhetoric surrounding that power has grown more and more boastful. The cliché that our armed forces are the best and mightiest in the world — even if the U.S. military […]

( Tomdispatch.com) – Given his erratic behavior, from daily Twitter eruptions to upping his tally of lies by the hour, it’s hard to think of Donald Trump as a man with a plan. But in at least one area — reshaping the economy to serve the needs of the military-industrial complex — he’s (gasp!) a […]

(Tomdispatch.com) – Like many in my generation, undoubtedly including Donald Trump, I went into space early (and I’m not even counting all those hours in my early teens I spent reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy or H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds by flashlight under the covers while supposedly asleep). I’m thinking of 1966 and […]

(Tomdispatch.com) – Early last month, at a tiny military post near the tumbledown town of Jamaame in Somalia, small arms fire began to ring out as mortar shells crashed down. When the attack was over, one Somali soldier had been wounded — and had that been the extent of the casualties, you undoubtedly would never […]

By William D. Hartung | – (Tomdispatch.com) – Other than shouting about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Donald Trump’s most frequently proclaimed promises on the 2016 campaign trail was the launching of a half-trillion-dollar plan to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure (employing large numbers of workers in the process). Eighteen months into […]