(Daniel Pipes hoped to destroy the National Iranian American Council. His plan backfired: AP) The war over war with Iran has many battlefronts. Inside Washington, the battle line is between a small coalition of peace and security, non-proliferation and religious groups opposing war and favoring a peaceful solution to the stand off with Iran, and […]

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Editor’s Note: Federal and local authorities were called to the compound of a diplomatic mission from Soudi Arabia this week to “rescue two women,” according to Jackie Bensen, a TV reporter for an NBC affiliate in Washington, citing an unnamed source. “One woman had reportedly tried to flee by squeezing through a gap in the […]

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As a general rule, important decisions—say, for instance, deciding whether or not to invade a Middle Eastern nation—turnout better when they are well-informed. Poorly informed choices tend to end in disaster.

Consider our invasion of Iraq—a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and is by no means over, even though our troops have mostly left. That war killed 4,500 American soldiers, injured at least 32,000 at a dollar cost measured in trillions. If you measure defending our national security in blood and money, this war was more damaging to our national security than the Sept. 11 attacks themselves.

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(Men gathered to protest drone strikes in Yemen in January: Times of London) There is one change that the United States could make in response to the terrorism threat that is never discussed. That is to consider the part U.S. policies have played in creating and sustaining it. I understand that we are not supposed […]

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(Jeremy Scahill’s new book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield, which reports on America’s covert operations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, was made into a documentary that competed at the Sundance Film Festival in January.) Editor’s note: In today’s post from TomDispatch.com, Tom Engelhardt once against connects the dots. In focusing on […]

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