TomDispatch.com

Remember when peaceful, democratic, reconstructed Afghanistan was advertised as the exemplar for the extreme makeover of Iraq?

The single most basic fallacy underlying the present American catastrophe in Iraq is the belief that the U.S. can somehow solve that country's problems, however extreme and intractable they may seem. By Tom Engelhardt

With a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon holding, the ever-hotter war in Iraq is once again creeping back onto newspaper front pages and towards the top of the evening news. By Michael Schwartz

On August 3, Thom Shanker of the New York Times reported on a blunt warning from John B.

Degrading Behavior. The Middle East and the Barbarism of War from the Air. By Tom Engelhardt

Michael Klare's indispensable book, Blood and Oil, is part of the American Empire Project series that Hawkins does little short of denouncing as un-American. Klare responds eloquently to Hawkins' op-ed in sentiments I couldn't share more strongly.

The Force Is Not with Them - The Middle East Aflame and the Bush Administration Adrift

Two weeks earlier, the President made his secret escape from Washington and flew into Baghdad international airport wearing 25 pounds of body armor, helicoptered into the capital's heavily fortified American-controlled Green Zone, met with the new Iraqi prime minister. By Tom Engelhardt

Ditto Tomdispatch writers. Ditto how I operate in life. Many Tomdispatch writers I already knew. I had edited their books. Tomdispatch is a non-submission site, because I'm the only one answering the mail and I'm usually working another job or two. I just can't deal. By Tom Engelhardt

Let me take you back along the glorious path that we have traveled together so far: On D-Day, we landed at Basra. We advanced speedily through the hedgerows of southern Iraq onward to the totalitarian Islamofascist regime's capital in Baghdad, which we took. By John Brown

At Haditha, we know that, in the phrase of the soldier who first reported the My Lai massacre, "something rather dark and bloody" –- and, it seems, criminal -- happened. By Tom Engelhardt

Carter gives the so-called malaise speech, I think, in July '79. The Russians invade Afghanistan in December '79.

Now, your basic travel trailer is great for a family vacation to Yellowstone, but as protection against a storm? By Chad Heeter

His short hair and mustache are heavily flecked with grey, but he still retains the stocky, powerful build of a butcher's son, who once, long ago, hauled animal carcasses for his father in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon.

How fast has Latin America fallen from favor?

Fantasies of American Preponderance. By Tom Engelhardt

It's the perfect day for a march. Sunny, crisp, clear, spring-like. The sort of day that just gives you hope for no reason at all, though my own hopes are not high for New York's latest antiwar demonstration. By Tom Engelhardt

As we enter a dramatically altered world, both internationally and domestically, it is only natural that we look to history for bearings, points of comparison, glimmerings of the familiar. In these predictable uses of the past, "Japan" has emerged as a small trope for both horror and hope.

History Ambushes the Bush Administration. Tom Engelhardt

Buda was undoubtedly disappointed when he learned that J.P. Morgan himself was not among the 40 dead and more than 200 wounded -- the great robber baron was away in Scotland at his hunting lodge. By Mike Davis

The latest in a parade of horrors emanating from the Bush administration appeared Thursday in the form of a revelation buried in papers filed in federal court by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in his investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. By Elizabeth de la Vega

Exporting Ruins. By Tom Engelhardt

"Privatization" has been in the news ever since George W. Bush became president.

On the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, our newspapers and TV news were filled to the brim with retrospectives on the origins of the Iraq war, reassessments of how it was conducted by the Bush administration, and reconsiderations of the current quagmire-cum-civil-war in that country.

Has Latin America ever had such a unifying figure? By Nick Miroff

Ira...[fill in the letter of your choice] Connecting the Dots, Bush-Style

It has now been three months since the Bush administration reluctantly admitted that it has been conducting warrantless surveillance on American citizens, despite the explicit prohibitions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). By Elizabeth de la Vega

Iraq's Sovereignty Vacuum (Part 2)

Shark and Awe. From the Annals of Full-Spectrum Dominance By Tom Engelhardt

George's Inferno And Other Images from a No-Name War