Looking forward to the day when America’s interminable wars finally grind to a halt? Don’t.
There are any number of reasons to be way less than confident that our armies are ever leaving Iraq or Afghanistan, not least among which is that the people responsible for getting US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan tend [...]

Specifically, our freedom to do whatever it is we want to do to them and their part of the world without consequence.
Disclaimer: I don’t support terrorism as an expression of political or ideological frustration, or in any event, but I understand the impulse and one has to admit that as a negotiating technique, it [...]

George W. Bush’s public statements have been absurd for so long, that it’s almost poor sport to continue to skewer them. Nevertheless, because I haven’t done so on BTC News in quite a while, and because this may be my last opportunity, I can’t resist one last shot. For auld lang syne, as it were.
When [...]

You don’t try very hard to please me; with what you know it should be easy … this could be the last time, this could be the last time, may be the last time, I don’t know …
If I had an audience large enough, I’d make “The Last Time”, a pre-punk Rolling Stones anthem of [...]

The Georgian invasion of South Ossetia, which precipitated a wider conflict between Georgia and Russia, was a move so boneheadedly perverse that it almost certainly has roots in the Bush White House. The Georgians obviously believed that they had sufficient backing from the West, i.e., from the US and its allies in the EU and [...]

One of the most unfair aspects of George W. Bush’s foreign policy disasters, not counting the literally millions of people who have been killed, maimed or driven from their homes in direct consequence — we’re not counting them because, let’s face it, for Americans they don’t count — is that he won’t suffer any repercussions [...]

The Sacramento Bee asks the headlined question and answers, unsurprisingly, “Yes.” Other news outlets have reported the increasing use of criminal history waivers by the Army and the Army National Guard as recruiting became one of the casualties of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, but the Bee is the first to connect the [...]

Blaming our country’s woes exclusively on the people who have most directly wrought them—Bush, Cheney, torture maven David Addington et al—becomes increasingly difficult in the face of the refusal by Democratic party leaders to confer accountability, let alone make any attempt to visit some sort of necessarily inadequate justice, upon the administration.
The party’s presidential [...]

On Monday at the White House press briefing, Press Secretary Dana Perino declined to answer when I asked her whether the White House would apologize for last Friday’s raid by U.S. forces in Iraq that reportedly killed a relative of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The slain man, Ali Abdul Hussein al-Maliki, was described as the [...]

The more we learn of the Bush administration’s proposed long-term security agreement with Iraq, the less sensible Iraqi acquiescence seems. In essence, it codifies the administration’s desire to turn Iraq into the world’s least seaworthy but largest, by many orders of magnitude, aircraft carrier. Under the Bush plan, the US would have massive, permanent basing [...]

Circumstances in Iraq are insanely complicated, but not generally indecipherable. The major players are known—some well, some not so well—many major occurrences are reported, and a fair number of people who are either in Iraq or know the country well regularly provide commentary and analysis. Yet the US press continue to rely largely on the [...]

That’s a joke, the “adversarial” tag, but a story in the New York Times today helps explain the reason so many people see the press as anti-government. Investigative reporter David Barstow uncovered a White House-approved Pentagon operation to use high-profile television and print military analysts, mostly retired general officers, to help sell the Iraq invasion [...]

I had hoped to provide a detailed breakdown of the various forces operating in Iraq as I understand them, complete with colorful graphics of the sort favored by people testifying to Congress, but that will have to wait until BTC News world headquarters is permanently settled somewhere. (Readers who would like to help advance that [...]

To say that US troops killed in Iraq are dying for their country is to do them a profound disservice. The invasion and occupation of Iraq were and remain bad for this country by every measure: moral, financial, diplomatic, military. What the troops are dying for is an epic blunder foisted upon them and us [...]

That’s a mind-boggling but logical implication of an amazing anecdote in a Washington Post commentary today written by John Rogers, a captain in the U.S. Army who served in Iraq from June 2006 to September 2007.
Rogers’s piece is an explanation of why he plans to leave the army. One of his reasons is that his [...]

Continuing on my quest to close enough browser tabs for my computer to regain some self-respect and nimbleness, here’s the second installment of stuff I either meant to write but never quite did, or did write but for some reason couldn’t bring myself to part with the web page I used for material. See here [...]

Many months ago when I was writing something about health care I ran across a blog that had a number of entries on the subject, one of which I used in my piece. That web page and 70-some others are still open in my browser, which in retaliation is now consuming most of my computer’s [...]

When last we noted the Bush administration’s appalling record on national security, a few items fell through the cracks. The story was on the economic resurgence of opium in Afghanistan following the US invasion that drove the Taliban out of power and ended the group’s short-lived but astonishingly effective ban on opium poppy cultivation. Since [...]

Sometimes I resent not owning a television, but at least once a year for the past eight years I’ve been grateful for the lack.
I read the various State of the Union speech press releases from the White House yesterday, including the morning press gaggle with Dana Perino during which she noted repeatedly that last [...]

Note to regular patrons: you’re not hallucinating. This piece is an updated and greatly expanded version of the previous one.
Nancy Pelosi is at it again. On Friday, she reiterated her opposition to impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney, saying that impeachment “would be very divisive in our country” and that despite increasing heat from constituents [...]

Despite the news that Iraq is still a bombed-out economic wreck and that highly-touted conciliatory legislation will actually heighten sectarian conflict, there is good news coming from the country’s entrepeneurial agriculture sector. For the first time in a millennium or two, opium production is flourishing.
The US Government Accountability Office says that reconstruction spending from Iraq’s [...]

Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, has an op-ed today in which he asserts that the lack of political progress in Iraq is an argument for staying there indefinitely. It’s another version of the now familiar If-Things-Are-Getting-Worse-We-Must-Stay-In-Iraq-And-On-The-Other-Hand-If-Things-Are-Getting-Better-Then-We-Must-Stay-In-Iraq argument that, whatever its deficiencies might be, is at least admirably consistent.
But I’m [...]

Michael O’Hanlon, the Brookings Institution wonk who once famously posed as a harsh critic of the adventure in Iraq in order to highlight his devotion to The Surge, has another (but mercifully more brief) op-ed on the subject in the New York Times.
In this one, he says that “the greatest American military comeback late [...]

The Washington Post has a story today, on page 14, about the results from nineteen focus groups—conducted for the U.S. military—that were held throughout Iraq last month. According to a military analysis of the results, there is good news: Iraqis from every sectarian and ethnic group share many beliefs in common.
And what are those [...]

You may have missed it, but for about 30 seconds this week a Democrat drew a line in the sand on funding for Iraq. And then another Democrat shot his foot off.
Appropriations maven David Obey, defying the White House, Congressional Republicans and House Majority Leader Steny “Stand Fast, Retreat Faster” Hoyer, announced that he was [...]

I haven’t paid much attention to Christopher Hitchens of late because, as prominent born-again wingnuts go, his value to the forces of darkness is much diminished. His latest Slate missive, though, in which he takes after the CIA for destroying the video of interrogations involving the torture of terrorism suspects and participating in the recently [...]

House Majority “leader” Steny Hoyer has announced that Democrats are preparing to abandon attempts to impose conditions on new funding for the occupation of Iraq. The Washington Post is reporting that Hoyer, Senate Majority “Leader” Harry Reid and other top Democrats have caved on imposing a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq in exchange [...]

The San Diego Air Show was in town a week ago and my residence was squarely in the flight path. The noise was nervewracking, and that’s without the expectation that missile or bomb strikes were imminent. Imagine what Iraqis who live in the vicinity of the air strikes conducted by the US military must be [...]

The Bush administration have once again proved themselves the most effective minority executive branch in history. Bush, Cheney & Co. have persuaded Democratic leaders to avoid investigating even the possibility of impeaching the pair; they’ve persuaded the Democratic Congress to immunize the administration against prosecution for crimes it may have and may yet commit; they’ve [...]

I wrote recently about Joe Biden’s more or less hallucinatory plan to salvage Iraq by federalizing it and bringing in a UN peacekeeping force that would necessarily be an order of magnitude larger than any previously assembled. Some people are latching on to Biden’s plan, which would simultaneously fail and extend the U.S. occupation of [...]

The latest signal came from George Bush, warning of a “nuclear holocaust” if Iran gets The Bomb (despite an IAEA report that Iran isn’t as much of a threat as Bush claims). There can’t be any more provocative words than “nuclear holocaust” to justify the purported prevention of one. Nor can there be any doubt [...]

The foreign policy community has been subjected to considerable rigorous scrutiny by various, generally liberal commentators of late. The proximate cause of the exercise was the New York Times op-ed column from born-and-raised community residents Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon, Iraq invasion supporters who recast themselves as occupation critics in order to create an artificial [...]

It’s yet another example of reporting that makes no effort at analysis of Bush’s claims. This time, Bush says that an American withdrawal from Iraq would have an effect like that of our withdrawal from Vietnam – a bloodbath resulting in the deaths of millions of people.
…one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price [...]

The Washington Post’s lead editorial today asserts that Tehran is supplying “sophisticated bombs” that are killing American soldiers in Iraq.
After President Bush made the same accusation last year, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace said, on March 14, 2006, that he had no proof that the Iranian government was responsible for such attacks.
This year, on [...]

The war – George Bush’s War, the Neo-con’s War, Joe Lieberman’s War, the Republican-Democrat’s War – is as catastrophic as its opponents predicted, but the reality of it is far more catastrophic than they could have imagined, because it’s impossible to imagine such endless, grinding horror. It must be lived to be known. Words can [...]

Can “Democrats,” “resolve” and “Iraq” be used in the same sentence without violating the Associated Press style manual guidelines? I traded my copy to a literate streetcorner pharmacist for a few days of anti-depression medication, so I don’t know. I do know that congressional Democrats will not be taking any action to hasten our exit [...]

A recent article in slate by Columbia economics professor Ray Fisman, drawing on a forthcoming paper in American Economic Review ["Diamonds Are Forever, Wars Are Not. Is Conflict Bad for Private Firms?"] by fellow economists Massimo Guidolin and Eliana La Ferrara, takes the answer to their question [i.e., no, not necessarily, and sometimes it is [...]

Hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear that Iran is supplying sophisticated IEDs — improvised explosive devices — to Iraqi insurgents. No one doubts that the Iranian government is perfectly willing to do whatever they think will advance their interests, including arming and otherwise supporting their allies in Iraq, but the story [...]

U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice appears to have reverted to her Cold War roots with her announcement last month, in tandem with fellow cold warrior and US defense secretary Robert Gates, that the US intends to sell some $20 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab [...]

Quiz: How many people have been killed and wounded in Iraq since Hillary Clinton said that an immediate full-scale withdrawal would be a “big mistake”?
Answer: She said that on Nov. 22, 2005. Not really that long ago, but since then 1,600 American soldiers have been killed and 11,000 wounded, and about 32,000 Iraqi civilians and [...]

It’s not just Iraqis, or even Muslims. Christian militarism has been getting along just fine for centuries now, even turning on each other when there was no non-Christian enemy to bring to Jesus at the point of a sword. When it comes to war, Christian militarists – I also like the term Christian fascists, and [...]

What could possibly go wrong with a scheme to introduce tens of thousands of young, stressed out soldiers fighting a guerrilla war in a Muslim country to a particularly bloody-minded brand of aggressively evangelical apocalyptic Christianity? As Max Blumenthal reports in The Nation, the Pentagon is on a quest — one might say a crusade [...]

When the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has lost more than 100,000 Ak-47s in Iraq, along with a number of other combat items, the number rang a bell. A little more than two years ago, at the same time as we were tossing guns into the void, then defense-secretary Donald Rumsfeld was fretting publicly [...]

He’s a notorious world conqueror, barely able to conceal his lust for empire behind a facade of altruistic spreading of Kagan-style democracy throughout the benighted world. And he seems to see America as his alter ego, created to do his bidding. America is Superman, destined to save the world from itself and mold it into…into…what? [...]

Right-wing talk show host and hardened War on Terra® veteran Hugh Hewitt came away from a Wednesday sit-down with president Bush convinced that the president can regain public confidence on Iraq by sharing his grasp of the situation and commitment to victory with Americans just as he shared it with Hewitt and nine other right-wing [...]

Republican senator Lindsay Graham, last heard from on the subject of relaxing one’s expectations for Iraq, slipped the leash and found his way to a television studio again. He took the opportunity to allow as how he hopes that vacationing Iraqi legislators “will get an earful” from their constituents about the disappointing political situation in [...]

Veteran CBS News reporter Mark Knoller interviewed Dick Cheney at the White House today. He asked few substantive questions and religiously refrained from following up on the vice president’s shallow responses to the ones he did ask. One question did stand out, though.
What do you make about the extent to which you and the President [...]

70 House Democrats have told the president that they will not support any appropriations bill that includes funding for military operations in Iraq other than “for the protection and safe redeployment of all our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.” The Congressional Progressive Caucus informed the White House of their decision in a [...]

Democrats got the headlines they wanted from Tuesday’s Republican filibuster of an amendment aimed at restricting US troop commitments to Iraq, but Republicans got near unanimous support for an amendment that recommends against the passage of any such legislation.
Only six Democrats didn’t vote for the Cornyn amendment to the defense appropriations bill, a “sense [...]

Susie Madrak at Surburban Guerrilla neatly illustrates the educational clout blogs bring to the masses when she links to this post at Boing-Boing, which explains the genesis of the Bush-Cheney policy toward Iran. The vice-president, under the bedsheet, with a flashlight …

The Guardian published a story on Sunday detailing concern about Afghanistan among Britain’s military, [...]