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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
(9 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 24, 2010 The CIA/Likud Sinking of Jimmy Carter
History must finally confront the troubling impression that remains: that disgruntled elements of the CIA and Israel's Likud hardliners teamed up to remove a U.S. president from office. CIA officer Miles Copeland said, "Carter was not a stupid man," adding that Carter had an even worse flaw: "He was a principled man."
(25 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 20, 2014 What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine?
The U.S. media's Ukraine bias has been obvious, siding with the Kiev regime and bashing ethnic Russian rebels and Russia's President Putin. But now -- with the scramble to blame Putin for the Malaysia Airlines shoot-down -- the shoddy journalism has grown truly dangerous, says Robert Parry.
(102 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 27, 2012 Ron Paul's Appalling World View
There was buzz on the Internet after libertarian Ron Paul delivered what was billed as his final address in Congress. But his near-hour-long speech sounded more like the ramblings of a right-wing crank than the coherent thoughts of the principled idealist that his fans rave about.
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, June 5, 2009 Ronald Reagan: Worst President Ever?
There's been talk that George W. Bush was so inept that he should trademark the phrase "Worst President Ever,"- though some historians would bestow that title on pre-Civil War President James Buchanan. Still, a case could be made for putting Ronald Reagan in the competition. [U]nprecedented greed was unleashed on Wall Street, fraying old-fashioned bonds between company owners and employees.
(20 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 22, 2011 The Disappearance of Keith Olbermann
The ongoing significance of media imbalance is that it gives the Right enormous capabilities to control the national debate, not only during election campaigns but year-round. Republicans can deploy what intelligence operatives call "agit-propaganda," stirring controversies that rile up the public and redound to the GOP's advantage. The sudden disappearance of Keith Olbermann is an ominous omen.
(22 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 23, 2010 A Perjurer on the US Supreme Court
It is now obvious that Thomas committed perjury as a necessary element of gaining his seat as one of nine justices on the Supreme Court and only its second African-American. Though perjury before Congress is a felony, the Right appears to have suddenly lost its enthusiasm for demanding impeachment as the proper remedy for high officials caught lying under oath.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 18, 2014 WPost's Slimy Assault on Gary Webb
The movie, "Kill the Messenger," portrays the mainstream U.S. news media as craven for destroying Gary Webb rather than expanding on his investigation of the Contra-cocaine scandal. So, now one of those "journalists" is renewing the character assassination of Webb, notes Robert Parry.
(83 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 15, 2011 The 9/11 'Truth' Parlor Game
At times, "9/11 truth" has taken on the feel of a political movement, if not a cult. One elderly historian told me that he had felt "pressured" by "truthers" to give them something that they could cite as an endorsement of their position. Other notable people on the Left have described meetings with "truthers" as akin to "recruitment" sessions.
(14 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 2, 2014 What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis
Special Report: The Ukrainian crisis – partly fomented by U.S. neocons including holdovers at the State Department – has soured U.S-Russian relations and disrupted President Obama’s secretive cooperation with Russian President Putin to resolve crises in the Mideast, reports Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, December 21, 2012 The Right's Second Amendment Lies
A big obstacle to commonsense gun control is the Right's false historical narrative that the Founders wanted an armed American public that could fight its own government. The truth is that George Washington looked to citizens militias to put down revolts and maintain order.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 5, 2009 Colin Powell and Lessons of My Lai
"We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters," Powell recalled. "Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said the people were like the sea in which his guerrillas swam. ... We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference did it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?"
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 14, 2012 The Romney "Fact-Checking" Scandal
Mitt Romney cites "independent fact-checkers" to spare him from having to explain exactly what he did with Bain Capital after February 1999. But those "fact-checkers" are acting less like impartial journalists and more like argumentative lawyers covering Romney's political flanks.
(32 comments) SHARE Friday, October 15, 2010 The 'Teach-the-Dems-a-Lesson' Myth
The Left's sideline-sitting contributed to the unnecessary deaths of millions in wars from Vietnam and Central America to Iraq and Afghanistan. Even worse, US inaction on global warming a neglect surely to be continued if Republicans and Tea Partiers are victorious in Election 2010 may doom the future of a livable planet. In other words, the "teach-the-Dems-a-lesson" strategy not only doesn't work, it's extremely dangerous.
(15 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 25, 2012 Is Mitt Romney a Racist?
Mitt Romney "jokingly" observed that "no one's ever asked to see my birth certificate" as he once again pandered to "birthers" and their racist conspiracy theory. But TV commentators rushed to put down any suggestion that Romney is a racist. But -- is he?
(18 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 19, 2009 Why Obama Is Failing
After all the compromising and concessions, Obama and the Democrats are now looking at disaster in the congressional races for 2010. The millions of voters who were inspired by Obama's call for change in 2008 are disillusioned if not embittered. Many are likely to stay home next fall.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, September 3, 2012 Romney's New Global-Warming "Joke"
At the Republican National Convention and on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney has come up with a new laugh line, mocking President Obama's policies to slow global warming. In doing so, Romney distorts a quote from an Obama speech in 2008 about ocean levels.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, March 8, 2010 How Reagan's Propaganda Succeeded
In the late 1970s and through the 1980s, conservative foundations poured millions of dollars into right-wing think tanks, media outlets and anti-journalism attack groups that targeted American reporters who challenged the Reagan administration's propaganda.
(15 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 15, 2009 Is Joe Lieberman Protecting Israel?
Lieberman has been careful not to connect his disruptive behavior on health-care reform to his support for Israel, but there can be little doubt that a chastened Obama, either defeated on health care or forced to sign a bill that liberals will view as a betrayal, will have much less political capital to expend in applying pressure on Israel.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 9, 2015 A Day When Journalism Died
Dec. 9 has a grim meaning for the Republic, the date in 2004 when investigative reporter Gary Webb, driven to ruin by vindictive press colleagues for reviving the Contra-cocaine scandal, took his own life, a demarcation as the U.S. press went from protecting the people to shielding the corrupt, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Thursday, July 17, 2014 The Human Price of Neocon Havoc
Neocons are the "masters of chaos" as they destabilize disfavored governments around the world. But real people pay the price as we've seen with Israel's slaughter of four boys on a Gaza beach and an apparent shoot-down of a Malaysian airliner over war-torn Ukraine, writes Robert Parry.
(21 comments) SHARE Friday, August 8, 2014 Was Putin Targeted for Mid-Air Assassination?
Official Washington's conventional wisdom on the Malaysia Airlines shoot-down blames Russian President Putin, but some U.S. intelligence analysts think Putin, whose plane was flying nearby, may have been the target of Ukrainian hardliners who hit the wrong plane, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 20, 2015 You Be the Judge
An Australian news show bristled at being caught broadcasting misleading images designed to prove Russian President Putin was responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last July. The program says it simply opted for "a wide shot" to give its audience the fuller "layout," reports Robert Parry.
(16 comments) SHARE Monday, October 20, 2014 Germans Clear Russia in MH-17 Case
For months, Western governments and media have accused Russia of supplying the anti-aircraft missile that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 killing 298 people. But now German intelligence has reportedly determined the missile came from a Ukrainian military base, writes Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 8, 2015 Cruz Threatens to Nuke ISIS Targets
Republican presidential campaign rhetoric is red-hot regarding Islamic terrorism, with Sen. Cruz suggesting the use of nuclear weapons to see "if sand can glow in the dark," a threat even more troubling than Donald Trump's call to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the U.S., writes Robert Parry.
(11 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 17, 2013 The Abject Failure of Reaganomics
House Republicans got next to nothing from their extortion strategy of taking the government and the economy hostage, but they are sure to continue obstructing programs that could create jobs and start rebuilding the middle class. What they won't recognize is the abject failure of Reaganomics.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 1, 2012 The Source of Romney's Lying
An enduring mystery about Mitt Romney is why he lies so persistently and with so little shame. Some people blame his business experience or cite the basic dishonesty of politics, but there is also the curious foundation of his Mormon religion which was started by a proven conman.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 1, 2010 Iranian Students Ask About 1980
another part of the secret Reagan/Bush operation in the 1980s was to balance the U.S. weapons going to Iran, via Israel, with other clandestine military support to Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Reagan's CIA Director William Casey, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, would sometimes joke that the real goal was to get Iranians and Iraqis to kill each other off.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 28, 2012 Iran War on the Ballot
War or peace with Iran will be on the U.S. presidential ballot, with Barack Obama's reelection likely to clear the way for direct talks on resolving the dispute over Iran's nuclear program but with a victory by Mitt Romney putting neocons in a position to seek "regime change,"
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 27, 2014 A Shadow US Foreign Policy
The National Endowment for Democracy, a central part of Ronald Reagan's propaganda war against the Soviet Union three decades ago, has evolved into a $100 million U.S. government-financed slush fund that generally supports a neocon agenda often at cross-purposes with the Obama administration's foreign policy. U.S.-financed outfits like NED are doing all they can to create crises for Putin on his own border.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, December 9, 2011 The Warning in Gary Webb's Death
Webb's suicide on the evening of Dec. 9, 2004, was also a tragic end for one man whose livelihood and reputation were destroyed by a phalanx of major newspapers -- the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times -- serving as protectors of a corrupt power structure rather than as sources of honest information.
(71 comments) SHARE Friday, January 13, 2012 Ron Paul's False Founding Narrative
Rep. Ron Paul and other right-wingers have lured many average Americans into their camp by creating a false narrative about America's Founding, claiming that the drafters of the Constitution wanted a weak central government. But that's not the real history
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 1, 2010 How Rev. Moon's 'Snakes' Infested US
Even the passing of Moon's Washington Times will not mean that the snakes and other vermin that Moon let loose in the American political system will soon disappear. In fact, they may be more prevalent than ever.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 6, 2011 Ronald Reagan, Enabler of Atrocities
Democrats mostly approached this deification of Reagan as harmless, an easy concession to the Republicans in the name of bipartisanship. Some Democrats would even try to cite Reagan as supportive of some of their positions as a way to protect themselves from attacks launched by the increasingly powerful right-wing news media.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 18, 2012 An Israeli October Surprise for Obama?
A pressing foreign policy question of the U.S. presidential race is whether Israel might exploit this politically delicate time to bomb Iran's nuclear sites and force President Obama to join the attack or face defeat at the polls, a predicament with similarities to one President Carter faced in 1980.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, December 9, 2016 Big Media's Contra-Cocaine Cover-up
Twelve years ago, a campaign of character assassination by the major U.S. newspapers drove an honest journalist to suicide. Now those papers claim to be paragons of truth-telling, says Robert Parry.
(59 comments) SHARE Monday, July 13, 2015 The Mess that Nuland Made
Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine's "regime change" in early 2014 without weighing the likely chaos and consequences. Now, as neo-Nazis turn their guns on the government, it's hard to see how anyone can clean up the mess that Nuland made, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Thursday, December 9, 2010 Big Media's Guilt in Gary Webb's Death
The ostracism of Gary Webb was part of a larger back story. It was a prelude to the massive journalism failures of the past decade when many of the same newspapers joined the stampede for George W. Bush's wars, instead of showing professionalism and skepticism.
(17 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 14, 2016 Democrats, Too Clever by Half on Clinton
Democratic Party honchos who wanted Hillary Clinton's coronation are having some regrets as her weaknesses become obvious, her poll numbers sink, and Donald Trump surges toward the lead, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 14, 2012 Turning America into Pottersville
The Republican presidential race has taken a detour into the "class warfare" that the party supposedly despises, with Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry tagging Mitt Romney as an elitist who got rich by laying off workers. But this spat misses the larger point of what the Right is doing to America.
(87 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 19, 2017 Why Hillary Clinton Really Lost
An insider book on Campaign 2016 reveals a paranoid Hillary Clinton who spied on staff emails after losing in 2008 and carried her political dysfunction into her loss to Donald Trump, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 9, 2009 Why Journalist Gary Webb Died
Webb's death on the night of Dec. 9, 2004, came as the U.S. press corps was at a nadir, having recently aided and abetted President George W. Bush in taking the country to war in Iraq under false pretenses. The press corps also had performed abysmally in Bush's two presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004, hesitant to take on the powerful Bush Family.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Haiti and America's Historic Debt
Recent Republican administrations have been particularly hostile to the popular will of the impoverished Haitian masses. When leftist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was twice elected by overwhelming margins, he was ousted both times -" first during the presidency of George H.W. Bush and again under President George W. Bush.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 9, 2016 Why Trump Won; Why Clinton Lost
Hillary Clinton's stunning defeat reflected a gross misjudgment by the Democratic Party about the depth of populist anger against self-serving elites who have treated much of the country with disdain, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 12, 2011 Jimmy Carter's October Surprise Doubts
If Carter had freed the hostages and won a second term, the United States might have continued on a path toward alternative energy, the federal deficit would not have soared as it did under Reagan, and deregulation of corporations would not have opened the environment and the financial sector to such dangers.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 27, 2011 Taking a Bush Secret to the Grave
The National Archives has approved an appeal by journalist Robert Parry seeking release of a 30-year-old secret, the address where George H.W. Bush supposedly went on an October weekend in 1980 -- when several witnesses put Bush in Paris meeting with Iranians. But it turns out the "alibi witness" is now dead.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 16, 2008 Predictable Economic Disaster by George W. Bush
In his trademark goofy way, George W. Bush explained why he supported a bailout of the U.S. financial markets, saying he was "a free-market person, until you're told that if you don't take decisive measures then it's conceivable that our country could go into a depression greater than the Great Depression."
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 12, 2011 Keeping a Curious Bush Secret
One of the strange mysteries from the Reagan-Bush era is where did George H.W. Bush go on one Sunday in October 1980 when some witnesses placed him meeting with Iranians in Paris. More than three decades later, Bush's supposed alibi remains a state secret.
(13 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 21, 2013 Newtown's Hidden Crime-Scene Photos
Each time, these "gun rights" enthusiasts shout out their truncated version of the Second Amendment -- leaving out the parts about "a well-regulated militia" and the "security of a free state" -- they could have these images of mangled children flash through their minds.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 4, 2011 Making the US Economy "Scream"
Over the past several decades, Republican methods for winning national power have come to resemble CIA techniques for destabilizing an enemy country -- through the use of black propaganda, political skullduggery and economic disruptions. Now, heading toward Election 2012, the Republicans appear poised to make the U.S. economy "scream."
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 28, 2016 Troubling Gaps in the New MH-17 Report
The new accusation of Russian complicity in 2014 Malaysia Airlines shootdown was based on Ukrainian intelligence intercepts that were selectively interpreted while contrary information was ignored, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 29, 2011 Reagan's 'Tear Down This Wall' Myth
None of the ugly reality of the Cold War is likely to find its way into the U.S. news media's adulation over the late Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday. Instead, the American people will get a steady dose of Reagan shouting, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" -- and the Wall magically coming down.
(51 comments) SHARE Monday, February 23, 2015 Ready for Nuclear War over Ukraine?
A year after a U.S.-backed coup ousted Ukraine's elected president, the new powers in Kiev are itching for a "full-scale war" with Russia -- and want the West's backing even if it could provoke a nuclear conflict, a Strangelovian madness that the U.S. media ignores, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 11, 2016 Donald Trump's Incendiary Language
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is taking a P.R. pounding for a sloppy Second Amendment reference interpreted as calling for Hillary Clinton's assassination, but what was his intent, asks Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 5, 2011 Reagan's "Greed Is Good" Folly
For three decades, the United States has undertaken an extraordinary social experiment, incentivizing greed among the richest Americans by cutting their top tax rates in half or more. The results are now in from Ronald Reagan's bold gamble and they aren't good.
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 22, 2014 The Mystery of a Ukrainian Army "Defector"
U.S. intelligence officials suggest that the person who fired the missile that downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 may have been "a defector" from the Ukrainian army, an apparent attempt to explain why some CIA analysts thought satellite images revealed men in Ukrainian army uniforms manning the missile battery, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, November 28, 2014 Der Spiegel Tones Down Anti-Putin Hysteria
The mainstream U.S. news media continues to spew out a steady flow of anti-Russian propaganda over the Ukraine crisis, but the prominent German newsmagazine Der Spiegel has begun to temper its belligerent tone, finally reflecting the more nuanced reality, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 8, 2013 The Koch Brothers' "Samson Option"
The fiscal crisis in Washington is not simply a threat to economic and government stability, as serious as that is. It is a premeditated scheme to carve out a new constitutional structure that gives the Koch Brothers and other right-wing billionaires the power to void the democratic process.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 20, 2016 Democrats in "Group Think" Land
When Sunday's Democratic presidential debate turned to world affairs, the NBC correspondents and both Sen. Sanders and ex-Secretary Clinton fell in line behind "group thinks" about Syria, Iran and Russia that lack evidentiary support, writes Robert Parry.
(20 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 23, 2014 Neocons and the Ukraine Coup
Exclusive: American neocons helped destabilize Ukraine and engineer the overthrow of its elected government, a “regime change†on Russia’s western border. But the coup – and the neo-Nazi militias at the forefront – also reveal divisions within the Obama administration, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Tuesday, November 28, 2006 Why Trust Robert Gates on Iraq?
While in charge of the CIA's analytical division in the mid-1980s, Robert M. Gates made wildly erroneous predictions about the dangers posed by leftist-ruled Nicaragua and espoused policy prescriptions considered too extreme even by the Reagan administration, in one case advocating the U.S. bombing of Nicaragua.
(26 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 20, 2016 NYT Advocates Internet Censorship
The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the Internet to block what it calls "fake news," but the Times ignores its own record of publishing "fake news," reports Robert Parry.
(12 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 3, 2014 Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts
From magazine covers to pronouncements by top politicians, Official Washington jumped to the conclusion that Ukrainian rebels and Russia were guilty in the shoot-down of a Malaysian passenger plane. But some U.S. intelligence analysts may see the evidence differently, writes Robert Parry.
(11 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 22, 2016 Washington's New Lock-Step March of Folly
Confident in a Hillary Clinton victory, Washington's foreign policy elite is readying plans for more warfare in Syria and more confrontations with nuclear-armed Russia, an across-the-spectrum "group think" that risks life on the planet, says Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 19, 2014 Neocons' Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit
The Ukraine crisis – in part stirred up by U.S. neocons – has damaged prospects for peace not only on Russia’s borders but in two Middle East hotspots, Syria and Iran, which may have been exactly the point, reports Robert Parry.
(11 comments) SHARE Friday, March 14, 2014 Neocons Have Weathered the Storm
Official Washington’s bipartisan hysteria over Ukraine and Crimea is evidence that the neocons not only weathered the public fury over the Iraq War but are now back shaping U.S. geopolitical strategies, reports Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 17, 2011 Ray McGovern Bloodied at Clinton Talk
In comments after being jailed on Tuesday, McGovern explained the reason for his protest: "Hillary is the driving force, together with a few others, behind the war in Afghanistan. "When people die because we have hypocrites at the top of our government, that compels me to make a statement in whatever way I can.
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 14, 2012 The Neocons' Waterloo
The last week has witnessed what might be called the Neocons' Waterloo as their bid to reclaim power was beaten back by President Obama's reelection and their last major government ally, CIA Director David Petraeus, resigned amid a sex scandal.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 28, 2011 Ronald Reagan's 30-Year Time Bombs
Many other trends set during the Reagan era continued to corrode the U.S. political process in the years after Reagan left office. After 9/11, for instance, the neocons reemerged as a dominant force, reprising their "perception management" tactics, depicting the "war on terror" -- like the last days of the Cold War -- as a terrifying conflict between good and evil.
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 24, 2016 Another Kerry Rush to Judgment on Syria
The U.N. withdrew its claim that an airstrike hit its Syrian relief convoy but Secretary of State Kerry relied on the outdated claim in lashing out at Russia in a repeat of his earlier rushes to judgment, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 28, 2007 The Truth about Colin Powell
Few modern Americans have enjoyed better press clippings than Colin Powell, which made him the perfect choice to sell the Iraq War. But there was a troubling side of Powell's history that Americans should have known,
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 13, 2005 Colin Powell Being Colin Powell
What we found in our investigation of Powell’s legend was not the heroic figure of his press clippings, but the story of an ambitious man with a weak moral compass. He either hid in the reeds when others were standing up for what they knew to be right or he contributed to the wrongdoing.
(13 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 26, 2017 The Rise of the New McCarthyism
As the New McCarthyism takes hold in America, the neocon Washington Post makes Russia the villain in virtually every bad thing that happens, with U.S. dissidents treated as "fellow-travelers," writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Monday, October 22, 2012 The October Surprise Mysteries
With hopes brightening that President Obama is close to a negotiated settlement of the Iran nuclear dispute, Mitt Romney's campaign is eager to counter any positive news. The moment is reminiscent of past October Surprise moments, says Robert Parry in this article adapted from America's Stolen Narrative.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 23, 2010 US Democracy's End of the Road
after the Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations to spend whatever they want to punish some politicans and reward others, it is hard to see a road back for American democracy. President Obama may begin striking a more populist tone, but it may be too little, too late. Even if he's sincere, he's sure to be bombarded with corporate-funded 30-second ads mocking him and his policies.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, August 20, 2010 Spinning the US Failure in Iraq
There seems to be more relief that the war is finally coming to an end than a willingness to comment on the American failure. There is also some suspicion on the Left that the U.S. military occupation will simply continue under some new subterfuge. Yet, without hard-hitting assessments of the failure, Official Washington gets yet another reprieve on any accountability.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 21, 2011 Netanyahu Sets Limits for Obama
With another angry Likud prime minister taking aim at the second term of another Democratic president, who is perceived as pushing too hard for a Palestinian state, it might finally be time for this important history to be examined honestly and presented clearly to the American people.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 5, 2014 The Age of the Oligarchs
The concentration of power in the hands of billionaire “oligarchs†may be most alarming in places like Ukraine but the United States is moving in the same direction as wealth is consolidated at the top — and both elections and media are up for sale, says Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 10, 2015 Enforcing the Ukraine "Group Think"
U.S.-taxpayer-funded Radio Liberty has a checkered history that includes hiring Nazi sympathizers as Cold War commentators. Now, one of its current writers has used the platform to bash an American scholar who won't join Official Washington's "group think" on Ukraine, Robert Parry reports.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 15, 2010 America's Decoupling from Reality
As Election Day 2010 approaches -" as the United States wallows in the swamps of war, recession and environmental degradation -" the consequences of the nation's three-decade-old decoupling from reality are becoming painfully obvious.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, March 20, 2015 A Family Business of Perpetual War
Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan have a great mom-and-pop business going. From the State Department, she generates wars and -- from op-ed pages -- he demands Congress buy more weapons. There's a pay-off, too, as grateful military contractors kick in money to think tanks where other Kagans work, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, September 10, 2012 Romney's Audacious Corporate Raid
Wall Street's audacity in pushing one of its own, Mitt Romney, to be President has the look of a classic corporate takeover, targeting a struggling U.S. and plotting to install new management for restructuring. But that usually means the big boys get the profits and everyone else the sacrifice.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, April 27, 2015 Syria's Nightmarish Narrative
With military and political help from Saudi Arabia and Israel, the nightmare scenario of an Al-Qaeda and/or Islamic State victory in Syria may be coming true, as the army of the more secular Syrian government retreats and as President Obama seems frozen by indecision, reports Robert Parry.
(37 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 28, 2017 'Getting Trump' with the New McCarthyism
National Democrats and many progressives are embracing a troubling New McCarthyism to justify what amounts to a "soft coup" against Trump.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 18, 2011 Tea Party Gets the Constitution Wrong
The Tea Partiers love to cite the U.S. Constitution as supporting their contempt for the federal government. But they don't realize that the Constitution represented the most important assertion of central authority in American history.
(19 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 14, 2017 The 'Soft Coup' of Russia-gate
The Russia-gate hysteria has grown stronger after President Trump's firing of FBI Director Comey, but the bigger question is whether an American "soft coup" is in the works, reports Robert Parry.
(11 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 10, 2014 NYT Discovers Ukraine's Neo-Nazis at War
Throughout the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. State Department and mainstream media have downplayed the role of neo-Nazis in the U.S.-backed Kiev regime, an inconvenient truth that is surfacing again as right-wing storm troopers fly neo-Nazi banners as they attack in the east, Robert Parry reports.
SHARE Tuesday, October 9, 2012 Mitt Romney Lies to the World
While it's true that all politicians play games with the facts, it is actually rare for a politician to be an inveterate liar. But Mitt Romney is one of that rare breed on matters both big and small. And with some polls showing his surge toward victory on Nov. 6, his dishonesty may soon become an issue for the entire world.
(11 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 28, 2015 NYT Publishes Call to Bomb Iran
The New York Times continues its slide into becoming little more than a neocon propaganda sheet as it followed the Washington Post in publishing an op-ed advocating the unprovoked bombing of Iran, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, June 12, 2015 U.S. House Admits Nazi Role in Ukraine
The U.S. House of Representatives has admitted an ugly truth that the U.S. mainstream media has tried to hide from the American people -- that the post-coup regime in Ukraine has relied heavily on Nazi storm troopers to carry out its bloody war against ethnic Russians, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, November 11, 2011 Richard Nixon's Darkest Secret
In just-released Watergate grand jury testimony from 1975, ex-President Richard Nixon complained that his 1968 campaign was bugged by the Johnson administration. But there was little curiosity then -- or now -- as to why that surveillance was justified.
(17 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 5, 2017 Neocons Leverage Trump-Hate for More Wars
The enactment of new sanctions against Russia and Iran -- with the support of nearly all Democrats and Republicans in Congress -- shows how the warmongering neocons again have come out on top, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, March 4, 2011 From The Archives: Bush's Interrogators Stressed Nudity
The CIA said the prisoner is kept nude (or occasionally dressed in a diaper) while being subjected to other "conditioning techniques," sleep deprivation and a bland diet of Ensure. Nudity continues while interrogators apply other more aggressive techniques designed to emphasize a prisoner's helplessness.
(12 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 26, 2009 The GOP's Anti-Obama Propaganda
Today's Republicans are thumbing through Newt Gingrich's worn playbook of 1993 looking for tips on how to blunt President Barack Obama's political momentum and flip it to their advantage. In doing so, they also appear to have dug in to what might be called the secret appendix.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 21, 2012 Getting Rid of "Anti-Israel" Presidents
Some staunch supporters of Israel believe that its interests are so compelling that they trump American self-governance, with one extremist suggesting the murder of President Obama. Others, however, appear to have joined in an earlier subversion of U.S. democracy.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, February 9, 2015 Wretched US Journalism on Ukraine
The U.S. news media has failed the American people often in recent years by not challenging U.S. government falsehoods, as with Iraq's WMD. But the most dangerous violation of journalistic principles has occurred in the Ukraine crisis, which has the potential of a nuclear war, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 6, 2010 Key October Surprise Evidence Hidden
The congressional investigation was shoddy and incomplete, thus reopening the question of whether Reagan's landslide victory in 1980 was, in part, set in motion by a dirty trick that extended the 444-day captivity of the hostages who were freed immediately after Reagan was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 1981.
(27 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 29, 2017 The Sleazy Origins of Russia-gate
Official Washington's groupthink is that Russian "disinformation" helped elect Donald Trump, but the evidence is actually much stronger that Russian "dirt" was helping Hillary Clinton, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 29, 2015 The Day After Damascus Falls
The Saudi-Israeli alliance has gone on the offensive, ramping up a "regime change" war in Syria and, in effect, promoting a military victory for Al-Qaeda or its spinoff, the Islamic State. But the consequences of that victory could toll the final bell for the American Republic, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, December 17, 2010 Special Report: Hitler's Shadow Reaches toward Today
The Washington Times remains a reliably right-wing voice in the U.S. capital, although Moon, now 90, has ceded much of the day-to-day control of his organization to his wife and children.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 14, 2016 Getting Fooled on Iraq, Libya, Now Russia
After the British report exposing falsehoods to justify invading Iraq in 2003, a new U.K. inquiry found similar misconduct in the 2011 attack on Libya, but no lessons are learned for the West's new propaganda about Russia, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, March 11, 2011 How the US Press Corps Lost Its Way
Often called "the Dean of the Washington press corps," Broder was more the efficient police officer who tells the public, "move along, nothing to see here." He forever made excuses for the crimes of Washington's powerful and discouraged investigations that might expose serious wrongdoing.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 28, 2009 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission?
While woeful in terms of penetrating official lies in pursuit of truth, Hamilton parlayed his performance as a congressional investigator into the esteemed status of a Washington's Wise Man. He was a natural choice for the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group, someone who would do all he could to avoid ruffling the feathers of prickly Republicans.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 20, 2010 George W. Bush: Dupe or Deceiver?
after finishing Decision Points, I still wasn't sure where the line was between Bush being the one getting manipulated and the one manipulating the rest of us. Had he drunk his own Kool-Aid or had he cynically instructed his ghost writer to fashion some old talking points into a memoir designed to rehabilitate himself and his powerful family?
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 31, 2017 Sorting Out the Russia Mess
The U.S. mainstream media finally has its "smoking gun" on Russia-gate -- incriminating information from a junior Trump campaign adviser -- but a closer look reveals serious problems with the "evidence," writes Robert Parry.
(11 comments) SHARE Friday, November 18, 2016 What to Do About "Fake News"
A pushback is coming to the Internet's success in giving the world access to diverse opinions and dissenting information. Politicians, mainstream media and technology giants are taking aim at what they call "fake news," reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 7, 2009 A Special Report -- The Crazy October Surprise Debunking
An irony of the falsified October Surprise history was that Hamilton's wished-for bipartisanship never materialized. The Republicans pocketed the Democratic readiness to cover up for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush–and then launched a partisan war against Bill Clinton.
Now 30 years after Iranian radicals seized the American hostages, the real story of how the Republicans manipulated the process remains mostly unknown.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 4, 2012 Did Romney "Win" the Debate?
The instant analysis after the first presidential debate -- even on liberal-leaning MSNBC -- was that Mitt Romney was the decisive "winner." But Romney not only ducked the specifics of his plans but looked sneaky and nervous in doing so.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 2, 2017 A Blacklisted Film and the New Cold War
As Congress still swoons over the anti-Kremlin Magnitsky narrative, Western political and media leaders refuse to let their people view a documentary that debunks the fable, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 27, 2014 The Danger of False Narrative
Like a decade ago with Iraq, Official Washington’s pundits and pols are locked shoulder-to-shoulder in a phalanx of misguided consensus on Ukraine, presenting a false narrative that is taking U.S. policy into dangerous directions, writes Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 10, 2014 Burning Ukraine's Protesters Alive
For the second time in a week, Ukrainian anti-regime protesters holed up in a building were killed by fires set by pro-regime attackers with ties to newly formed neo-Nazi security forces, reports Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 9, 2015 Obama's Stupid Propaganda Stuff
Just last month, President Obama dispatched Secretary of State Kerry to secure Russian President Putin's help in addressing the Syrian crisis and other world hotspots -- but despite Putin's agreement, Obama has reversed himself and is back hurling insults at the Russians, a troubling development, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, October 17, 2014 The Neocons -- Masters of Chaos
America's neoconservatives, by stirring up trouble in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, are creating risks for the world's economy that are surfacing now in the turbulent stock markets, threatening another global recession, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 7, 2012 The Almost Scoop on Nixon's "Treason"
The Nixon campaign's brazen attempt to ensure his victory in 1968 by sabotaging peace talks was so shocking then that Democrats shied away from discussing it publicly even after they found evidence.
(12 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 10, 2010 Hard Lessons from Election 2010
Because of the magnitude and intensity of the Right's media, Republicans can confidently sell a wide variety of propaganda themes to the American people. The themes might not make much sense, but they develop a ring of truth because they get repeated so often.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, June 1, 2012 Showing that Hostage-Taking Works
The U.S. news media has been quick to cite the lousy May jobs report as proof that President Obama's economic stimulus has failed and that Mitt Romney's odds of winning have improved. But the real winner is the Republican strategy to make the U.S. economy "scream."
(34 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 8, 2016 Key Neocon Calls on US to Oust Putin
A prominent neocon paymaster, whose outfit dispenses $100 million in U.S. taxpayers' money each year, has called on America to "summon the will" to remove Russian President Putin from office, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 7, 2015 Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists
Ukraine's post-coup regime is now melding neo-Nazi storm troopers with Islamic militants -- called "brothers" of the hyper-violent Islamic State -- stirring up a hellish "death squad" brew to kill ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, on Russia's border, reports Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 3, 2016 Phony "Corruption" Excuse for Ukraine Coup
The U.S.-backed "regime change" in Ukraine -- launching the New Cold War with Russia in 2014 -- was rationalized by the need to rid Ukraine of corruption, but post-coup officials are busy lining their pockets, reports Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 11, 2015 Nuland's Mastery of Ukraine Propaganda
In House testimony, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland blamed Russia and ethnic-Russian rebels for last summer's shoot-down of MH-17 over Ukraine, but the U.S. government has not substantiated that charge. So, did Nuland mislead Congress or just play a propaganda game, asks Robert Parry.
(18 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Pity the Poor Tea Partier!
Ryan's 2012 proposal doesn't envision balancing the budget for almost 30 years. So, as the Tea Partier hobbles through his late 60s, suffering through insurance-induced poverty and anticipating an early death, the prospect of the government having its fiscal house in order will still be a hazy future promise, maybe a decade or more still to go.
(15 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 12, 2017 Russia-gate's Fatally Flawed Logic
By pushing the Russia-gate "scandal" and neutering President Trump's ability to conduct diplomacy, Democrats and Congress have encouraged his war-making side on North Korea, writes Robert Parry.
(10 comments) SHARE Monday, May 5, 2014 Ukraine's "Dr. Strangelove" Reality
The horrendous fire in Odessa, killing dozens of ethnic Russians protesting against the U.S.-backed coup regime in Kiev, has lurched the country closer to full-scale civil war and disrupted the American media's efforts to deny the existence of pro-regime neo-Nazis, Robert Parry reports.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 21, 2016 A Cheap Shot at Bernie Sanders' Summer Home
Charles Lane and other Washington Post editorialists defend neocon and neoliberal orthodoxies by demonizing foreign leaders who step out of line and now by making fun of Bernie Sanders for buying a summer home, writes Robert Parry.
(13 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 15, 2009 Betraying 'President's Men' Legacy, WaPo Becomes Neocon Propaganda Sheet
For Americans who hear the name Washington Post and still think of "All the President's Men" – brave journalists and editors facing down a corrupt President – today's version of the newspaper would be a sad disappointment, a betrayal of a noble past.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 10, 2013 New Evidence of Contra-Cocaine Scandal
Special Report: Since journalist Gary Webb died in 2004, the story that destroyed his life has slowly come into clearer focus, revealing how President Reagan's beloved Contras really were enmeshed in cocaine trafficking. On this ninth anniversary of Webb's suicide, new corroboration has emerged.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, April 27, 2009 Democrats' 'Battered Wife Syndrome'
In recent years, the Washington political dynamic has often resembled an abusive marriage, in which the bullying husband (the Republicans) slaps the wife and kids around, and the battered wife (the Democrats) makes excuses and hides the ugly bruises from outsiders to keep the family together. So, when the Republicans are in a position of power, they throw their weight around, break the rules, and taunt: "Whaddya gonna do "bou
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 17, 2013 How False History Props Up the Right
The Right's policy nostrums are failing across the board -- from free-market extremism to austerity as a cure for recession to continuing the old health-care dysfunction -- leaving only an ideological faith that this is what the Framers wanted. But that right-wing "history" is just one more illusion.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 9, 2011 Bush's "October Surprise' File in Dispute
The enduring October Surprise mystery -- whether Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign sabotaged President Jimmy Carter's efforts to free 52 American hostages in Iran -- has reached a possible turning point, whether details of George H.W. Bush's activities on a key day will be released.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 10, 2012 Behind Petraeus's Resignation
The resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus over an extramarital affair marks a stunning reversal for the longtime media darling. But some in President Obama's inner circle are not displeased the neocon-friendly ex-general is gone.
(16 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 23, 2015 NYT's Orwellian View of Ukraine
In the up-is-down Orwellian world that is now The New York Times' editorial page, there was no coup in Ukraine in 2014, no U.S.-driven "regime change," no provocation on Russia's border, just Moscow's aggression -- a sign of how propaganda has taken over mainstream U.S. media, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 13, 2011 Rick Perry's Revolutionary War "History"
The stupidity of the Republican presidential field seems to know no bounds, with Gov. Rick Perry's putting the American Revolution in the 1500s and joining Rep. Michele Bachmann and the Tea Party in messing up the history of the nation's founding
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 8, 2016 New York Times: Apologist for Power
Over the past couple of decades, America's preeminent newspaper, The New York Times, has lost its journalistic way, becoming a propaganda platform and an apologist for the powerful, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 9, 2016 UN Team Heard Claims of "Staged" Chemical Attacks
A widely touted U.N. report accusing the Syrian government of two chlorine-gas attacks relied on shaky evidence and brushed aside witness testimony that claimed some incidents were staged, reports Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 3, 2012 LBJ's "X" File on Nixon's "Treason"
In the dusty files of Lyndon Johnson's presidential library in Austin, Texas, once secret documents and audiotapes tell a dark and tragic story of how Richard Nixon's team secured the White House in 1968 by sabotaging peace talks that might have ended the Vietnam War four years earlier.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 27, 2010 The Supreme Court's Partisanship
The Right's influence is so wide and so deep that it can front for wealthy special interests under the guise of "populism" and persuade many Americans that their real enemy is not Big Corporations, but Big Government.
(16 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 29, 2016 The De Facto US/Al Qaeda Alliance
Buried deep inside Saturday's New York Times was a grudging acknowledgement that the U.S.-armed "moderate" rebels in Syria are using their U.S. firepower to back an Al Qaeda offensive, reports Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 14, 2015 US Intel Stands Pat on MH-17 Shoot-down
Almost eight months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine -- creating a flashpoint in the standoff between nuclear-armed Russia and America -- the U.S. intelligence community claims it has not updated its assessment since five days after the crash, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 16, 2017 Russia-gate Spreads to Europe
The Russia-gate hysteria has jumped the Atlantic with Europeans blaming Russia for Brexit and Catalonian discontent. But what about Israeli influence operations or, for that matter, American ones, asks Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, December 22, 2014 The Liberal Idiocy on Russia/Ukraine
American pundits are often more interested in scoring points against their partisan rivals than in the pain that U.S. policies inflict on people in faraway lands, as columnists Paul Krugman and Thomas L. Friedman are showing regarding Russia and Ukraine, writes Robert Parry.
(16 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 9, 2009 Ancient Israeli Myths Deter Peace
"This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Isrealites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel," summed up Professor Ze'ev Herzog, director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 4, 2015 Sleepwalking to Another Mideast Disaster
Denied crucial information about Syria, the American people are being led toward the precipice of another Middle East war, guided by neocons and liberal hawks who are set on "regime change" even if that means a likely victory for Sunni terrorists, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 3, 2014 The Whys Behind the Ukraine Crisis
Given the very high stakes of a nuclear confrontation with Russia, some analysts wonder what's the real motive for taking this extraordinary risk over Ukraine. Is it about natural gas, protection of the U.S. dollar's dominance, or an outgrowth of neocon extremism, asks Robert Parry.
(17 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 2, 2010 Does Obama Know the War He's In?
When out of power in recent years, the Republicans haven't even pretended to cooperate with Democrats; instead, the GOP and its media allies have set out to make Washington ungovernable. The incivility is not just some naturally occurring phenomenon; it is a conscious strategy for regaining power.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, February 4, 2011 Reagan's Epoch Shatters in Egypt
The political crisis sweeping the Middle East is another part of Ronald Reagan's dark legacy that is shattering into chaos even as the United States prepares to lavishly celebrate his 100th birthday.
(11 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 12, 2011 Palin Depicts Herself as Tucson Victim
Palin still did not seem willing to reflect on the harm that violent rhetoric can inflict on a democratic society, especially one like the United States where prominent leaders have been struck down by assassins. Instead, she defended her verbal assaults as something of a civic duty, even as she condemned any criticism of herself.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, December 18, 2009 Elliott Abrams and 'Neocon-ing' Obama
For the eight years of the Bush-II administration, a key behind-the-scenes architect of U.S. strategy in the Middle East was Elliott Abrams, a neoconservative whose devotion to Israel is hard to overstate -" and who is now engaged in what looks like a PR campaign to bend Barack Obama's Mideast policies in the direction favored by Israel's hard-line Likud government.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 7, 2010 A Long History of America's Dark Side
Reagan operatives were not shy about their defense of political terror as a necessity of the Cold War. Neil Livingstone, a counter-terrorism consultant to the National Security Council, called death squads "an extremely effective tool, however odious, in combatting terrorism and revolutionary challenges."
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 6, 2016 Hillary Clinton as Damaged Goods
FBI Director Comey's judgment that Hillary Clinton was "extremely careless" but not criminal in her sloppy email practices leaves her limping to the Democratic nomination and stumbling toward the fall campaign, writes Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 13, 2013 "Dirty War" Questions for Pope Francis
The U.S. "news" networks are bubbling with excitement over the selection of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to be Pope Francis I. But there was silence on the obvious question that should be asked about any senior cleric from Argentina: What was Bergoglio doing during the "dirty war."
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 2, 2016 How Hillary Clinton Ignores Peace
Despite neocon-instigated chaos and bloodshed across the Mideast (and now into Europe), Hillary Clinton continues to advocate more "regime change" wars with almost no fear from a marginalized anti-war movement, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, May 29, 2015 More Video Fakery on MH-17
Australia's "60 Minutes" program refuses to admit the obvious: that it messed up in determining the location where the "getaway" video was taken after last July's Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down. Instead, the show presented an update with more deceptive video, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, May 18, 2015 Fake Evidence Blaming Russia for MH-17?
Pointing the finger of blame at Russian President Putin for the Malaysia Airlines shoot-down last July, an Australian news show claims to have found the spot where the Russian BUK missile battery made its getaway, but the images don't match, raising questions of journalistic fakery, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 1, 2015 Obama's Secrecy Obsession
Though President Obama likes to present himself as a regular guy, he acts like an elitist when he unnecessarily withholds information from the American people. At this critical juncture of his presidency, he might finally take a chance on trusting the public with facts, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 11, 2015 WPost Plays Ukraine's Lapdog
Ukraine's Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and Finance Minister Jaresko are on a U.S. trip to drum up weapons and money to crush the ethnic Russian resistance in the east -- and they are finding a lapdog U.S. press that won't ask them tough questions, reports Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 27, 2014 Blaming Russia as "Flat Fact"
The American rush to judgment blaming ethnic Russian rebels and Russian President Putin for the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 continues unabated despite other possible explanations, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 2, 2014 Who's Telling the "Big Lie" on Ukraine?
Official Washington draws the Ukraine crisis in black-and-white colors with Russian President Putin the bad guy and the U.S.-backed leaders in Kiev the good guys. But the reality is much more nuanced, with the American people consistently misled on key facts, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 24, 2015 Ukraine's Oligarchs Turn on Each Other
Ukraine's post-coup regime is facing what looks like a falling-out among thieves as oligarch-warlord Igor Kolomoisky, who was given his own province to rule, brought his armed men to Kiev to fight for control of the state-owned energy company, further complicating the State Department's propaganda efforts, reports Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 18, 2016 Good Deaths in Mosul, Bad Deaths in Aleppo
As the U.S.-backed offensive in Mosul, Iraq, begins, the mainstream U.S. media readies the American people to blame the terrorists for civilian casualties but the opposite rules apply to Syria's Aleppo, reports Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 31, 2013 The Russian-Saudi Showdown at Sochi
Last summer, Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar reportedly offered Russian President Putin a deal: if Russia abandons Syria, Saudi Arabia would protect the Sochi Olympics from Islamic terrorists. Putin is said to have angrily rebuffed the offer. Now, with two terrorist attacks, it's Putin's move, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 21, 2010 Colin Powell's Tolerance of Murder
Powell's peripheral role in the My Lai cover-up did not slow his climb up the Army's ladder, indeed it may have helped by establishing him as the kind of guy who would play along with whatever his superiors wanted.
(13 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 5, 2017 The Politics Behind "Russia-gate"
The hysteria over "Russia-gate" continues to grow -- as President Trump's enemies circle -- but at its core there may be no there there while it risks pushing the world toward nuclear annihilation, writes Robert Parry.
(15 comments) SHARE Monday, September 22, 2014 High Cost of Bad Journalism on Ukraine
By driving a wedge between President Obama and President Putin over Ukraine, America's neocons and the mainstream media can hope for more "shock and awe" in the Mideast, but the U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill, including $1 trillion more on nuclear weapons, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 5, 2015 Gifting Russia "Free-Market" Extremism
Official Washington's Putin-bashing knows no bounds as the Russian president's understandable complaints about U.S. triumphalism and NATO expansion, after the Soviet collapse in the 1990s, are dismissed as signs of his "paranoia" and "revisionism," writes Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 5, 2016 New "Group Think" for War with Syria/Russia
Official Washington has a new "group think" that is even more dangerous than the one that led to the Iraq War. This one calls for U.S. escalation of conflicts against Syria and nuclear-armed Russia, writes Robert Parry.
(21 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 24, 2015 NYT Is Lost in Its Ukraine Propaganda
One danger of lying is that you must then incorporate the falsehood into the longer narrative, somehow making the lies fit. The same is true of propaganda as the New York Times is learning as it continues to falsify the narrative of the Ukraine crisis, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 3, 2017 Hillary Clinton's Deceptive Blame-Shifting
While complaining about "fake news" that undercut her campaign, Hillary Clinton continued her own "fake news" falsehood about the U.S. intelligence assessment on Russian election "meddling."
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 9, 2015 MH-17 Case Slips into Propaganda Fog
Almost a year ago, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine killing 298 people. Yet, instead of a transparent investigation seeking justice, the case became a propaganda game of finger-pointing, with the CIA withholding key evidence all the better to blame Russia, reports Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, August 25, 2017 The Possible Education of Donald Trump
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is ratcheting up war tensions in Syria again, but President Trump reportedly is not happy with the threats as he shifts again toward resisting the neocons, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 7, 2011 Rep. Ryan's Free-Market 'Death Panels'
Ryan has been widely hailed by the mainstream media as a "courageous" visionary, a thoughtful guy brave enough to make tough choices. Watching CNN and CNBC--not to mention Fox--it's as if the revenue side of the budget crisis is non-existent. "Political courage" only comes from destroying the remnants of FDR's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, if not Theodore Roosevelt's progressive era.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 13, 2014 Ignoring Ukraine's Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers
You might think a story about modern-day Nazi storm troopers attacking a European city without mercy would merit front-page coverage in the U.S. press, but not when the Nazi paramilitaries are fighting for the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government and are killing ethnic Russians, writes Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 18, 2014 The Best and Worst US Presidents
From the start of the Republic, some U.S. presidents favored government activism to address the nation’s problems, while others let the states do what they wanted and business tycoons have their way, a distinction that Robert Parry says can define the best and worst.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, April 24, 2015 Obama's "Openness" and Deceit
President Obama claims to value "openness" as a core principle of democracy, but the truth is that his administration has been among the most secretive and manipulative in modern times, tailoring what the public hears about foreign crises to what serves his agenda, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 20, 2016 "Fraud" Alleged in NYT's MH-17 Report
An amateur report alleging Russian doctoring of satellite photos on the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 case -- a finding embraced by The New York Times -- is denounced by a forensic expert as an "outright fraud," reports Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Monday, March 2, 2015 Playing Chicken with Nuclear War
U.S.-Russian tensions keep escalating -- now surrounding the murder of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov -- yet almost no one on the American side seems to worry about the possibility that the tough-guy rhetoric and proxy war in Ukraine might risk a nuclear conflagration, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 5, 2015 Whining White Southerners
Some brave white Southerners, including the son of segregationist Strom Thurmond, have spoken out against Confederate symbols like the battle flag, but many whites still react with fury at calls for retiring those symbols and other honors bestowed on Confederate leaders, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 30, 2011 Unmasking October Surprise "debunker"
The fake "debunking" of the 1980 October Surprise case in the early 1990s was driven by a few "journalists," including Steven Emerson, who has been identified in a recent report as a "misinformation expert" spreading anti-Muslim propaganda.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 6, 2015 NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine
The New York Times keeps insisting that last year's Ukrainian coup wasn't a coup and anyone who thinks so lives inside "the Russian propaganda bubble." But a slanted Times "investigation" shows that the newspaper remains lost inside the U.S. government's "propaganda bubble," writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 23, 2009 Neocon Judge's History of Cover-ups
On Sept. 11, the eighth anniversary of the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Silberman issued a 2-to-1 opinion dismissing a lawsuit against the private security firm, CACI International, brought by Iraqi victims of torture and other abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 25, 2011 Cheering Netanyahu's Intransigence
Republicans and Democrats in Congress leapt to their feet again and again to applaud Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even as he was challenging the policies of President Barack Obama. Yet, this pro-Israeli solidarity could have harmful consequences for Israel, the Palestinians and the United States.
SHARE Thursday, September 13, 2012 Romney's Jaw-Dropping Incoherence
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's latest distortion about an attempt by the U.S. Embassy in Egypt to calm Mideast tensions is not only renewing concerns about his honesty but raising new questions about his mental stability.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 24, 2009 Iran Divided & the 'October Surprise'
Extensive evidence now exists that Begin's preference for a Reagan victory led Israelis to join in a covert operation with Republicans to contact Iranian leaders behind Carter's back and delay release of the 52 American hostages until after Reagan defeated Carter in November 1980.
Khomeini's blessing allowed Rafsanjani, Karoubi and later Mousavi to proceed with secret contacts that involved emissaries from the Reagan camp
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, January 19, 2015 The Danger of an MH-17 "Cold Case"
The Obama administration continues to drag its feet on releasing U.S. intelligence evidence on who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 six months ago, a failure that has given the guilty parties time to scatter and has created a new breeding ground for conspiracy theories, writes Robert Parry.
(16 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 15, 2010 Some Hard Truths about America
Since Reagan's presidency, the Republicans have been determined to "starve" the government of resources so it can't address problems like climate change, renewable energy, education, transportation, health care, housing, etc. The only big expenditure that the GOP won't cut is military spending, especially for overseas wars.
SHARE Sunday, November 6, 2016 NYT Admits Key Al Qaeda Role in Aleppo
In a backhand way, The New York Times admits that the U.S.-backed "moderate" rebels in east Aleppo are fighting alongside Al Qaeda jihadists, an almost casual admission of this long-obscured reality, writes Robert Parry.
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, December 19, 2014 Krugman Joins the Anti-Putin Pack
Official Washington's "group think" on the Ukraine crisis now has a totalitarian feel to it as "everyone who matters" joins in the ritualistic stoning of Russian President Putin and takes joy in Russia's economic pain, with liberal economist Paul Krugman the latest to hoist a rock, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 4, 2014 America's Staggering Hypocrisy
Official Washington is in deep umbrage over Russia’s intervention in Ukraine after a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected president. Some top neocons want a new Cold War, but they don’t want anyone to note their staggering hypocrisy, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 8, 2016 Reasons to Risk Nuclear Annihilation
The latest neocon/liberal-hawk scheme is for the U.S. population to risk nuclear war to protect corrupt politicians in Ukraine and Al Qaeda terrorists in east Aleppo, two rather dubious reasons to end life on the planet, says Robert Parry.
SHARE Monday, April 3, 2006 Condi, War Crimes & the Press
During the three years of carnage in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has shifted away from her now-discredited warning about a “mushroom cloud” to assert a strategic rationale for the invasion that puts her squarely in violation of the Nuremberg principle against aggressive war.
SHARE Monday, December 21, 2009 How Myths Can Kill
Grand theories about American "exceptionalism" have rationalized U.S. imperial interventions around the world, wars and covert actions that would have been condemned as aggression or even terrorism if carried out by some other nation.
SHARE Sunday, February 27, 2011 Gates Agrees, Bush's Wars Were Nuts
You might think that "opinion leaders" who were so completely gulled by the sophistry of the neoconservatives -- or who perhaps simply went opportunistically along with a war that was an international crime -- might suffer some negative consequences, like a demotion or a firing. But that's not the world we live in.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 15, 2014 Ukraine's Neo-Nazis Demand Respect
Thousands of Ukraine's neo-Nazis surrounded the parliament in Kiev demanding that the government honor Ukrainian paramilitary forces who fought for Adolf Hitler in World War II, another embarrassing reminder of the extremism unleashed by last February's U.S.-backed coup, says Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 7, 2015 Holes in NFL's "Deflategate" Report
A high-profile NFL probe into the champion New England Patriots concluded that "it is more probable than not" that quarterback Tom Brady's footballs were intentionally deflated prior to a January playoff game, but the report sloughs off scientific evidence that undercuts the finding, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 5, 2016 The NYT's Neocon "Downward Spiral"
Every day, The New York Times -- America's "paper of record" -- sinks deeper into the swamp of propaganda, now reliably touting predictable neocon notions about the Middle East and Russia, reports Robert Parry.
(19 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 4, 2009 Democrats Ponder Health-Care Suicide
If Democrats enact something like the health-care bill emerging from the Senate Finance Committee, they may call it a legislative victory and it may keep the campaign donations flowing from the insurance industry, but the Democrats would surely infuriate millions of American voters.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 11, 2013 The Right's Second Amendment Fraud
The Senate has beaten back a filibuster from Tea Party Republicans to block debate on possible gun-reform laws in the wake of last December's massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators in Connecticut. But the setback won't stop the extremists from continuing to twist the Second Amendment.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, February 6, 2015 Nuclear War and Clashing Ukraine Narratives
America and Russia have two nearly opposite narratives on Ukraine, which is more an indictment of the U.S. news media which feigns objectivity but disseminates what amounts to propaganda. These divergent narratives are driving the world toward a possible nuclear crisis, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 25, 2016 Neocon Kagan Endorses Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton's cozy ties to Washington's powerful neocons have paid off with the endorsement of Robert Kagan, one of the most influential neocons. But it also should raise questions among Democrats about what kind of foreign policy a President Hillary Clinton would pursue, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 4, 2009 Israel's Looming Catastrophe
For the past three decades, Israel has charted a course that invites its own destruction by relying on two risky propositions: first, that it could extend its security perimeter beyond the reach of a devastating missile attack, and second, that it could permanently control the political debate inside its crucial ally, the United States.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 24, 2011 America's Debt to Bradley Manning
The cables and videos allegedly leaked by Pvt. Bradley Manning offer the American people gritty "ground truth" about what the U.S. government has done in their names, such as the slaughter in Iraq, but the information also sheds light on a possible future war with Iran
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 16, 2011 The Dangerous Reagan Cult
Ronald Reagan's anti-government philosophy inspires Tea Party extremists to oppose any revenue increase, even from closing loopholes for corporate jets. For their part, Democrats try the spin that "even Reagan" showed flexibility on debt and taxes.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 15, 2016 Trump's Slim Chance for Greatness
Special Report: Donald Trump's unlikely victory created the opportunity to finally break with the orthodoxy of Washington's neocon/liberal-hawk foreign policy, but can Trump find enough fresh thinkers to do the job, asks Robert Parry.
(11 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 18, 2017 Netanyahu Pushes Trump Toward Wider Wars
Russia-gate is empowering Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to strong-arm President Trump into escalating the Syrian war by abandoning a recent cease-fire and challenging Iran and Russia, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 3, 2015 WPost Blames Obama for Syrian Mess
As Al-Qaeda forces advance in Syria -- with the help of the Saudi-Israeli alliance -- American neocons are shielding themselves from the blame if Damascus falls to the jihadists by preemptively faulting President Obama for not intervening for "regime change" earlier, Robert Parry reports.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 10, 2015 Madness of Blockading Syria's Regime
The U.S. State Department is trying to block Russian supplies going to Syria's embattled government despite the risk that collapsing the regime would create a vacuum filled by the Islamic State or Al Qaeda, another nightmare dreamt up by the neocons and liberal hawks, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 8, 2016 The Need to Hold Saudi Arabia Accountable
One of Official Washington's favorite "group thinks" is to insist that Iran is the "chief sponsor of terrorism," but the reality is that Saudi Arabia is much guiltier and U.S. officials know it, says Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 17, 2011 How I View the American Crisis
The Right feels it is strong enough to impose its Ayn Rand vision of a winner-take-all society and deploy its vast resources to prevail on Election Day. It is possible that the Republicans have overreached this time, with their ambitious agenda of slashing domestic spending, replacing Medicare with a voucher system, and lavishing more tax reductions on the rich.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 15, 2015 Did Money Seal Israeli-Saudi Alliance?
The odd-couple relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel may have been sealed with more than a mutual desire to kiss-off Iran. According to an intelligence source, there was a dowry involved, too, with the Saudis reportedly giving Israel some $16 billion, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Wednesday, November 4, 2015 America's Chalabi Legacy of Lies
The passing of Iraqi fabricator Ahmed Chalabi, one of the "heroes in error" who duped the American people into the Iraq invasion, is a good time to remember how the corrupted intelligence/media process worked back then -- and how it continues to operate today, writes Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 19, 2015 Tangled Threads of US False Narratives
Official Washington's many false narratives about Russia and Syria have gotten so tangled that they have become a danger to the struggle against Sunni terrorism and conceivably a threat to the future of the planet, a risk that Robert Parry explores.
(29 comments) SHARE Monday, May 16, 2016 The Coming Democratic Crackup
Though the mainstream media is focused on Republican divisions, a more important story could be the coming Democratic crackup, as anti-war Democrats resist Hillary Clinton's pro-war agenda, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, March 14, 2011 Inside America's 'Adjustment Bureau'
In effect, the October Surprise/Iran-Contra storyline has been split into two contradictory narratives that coexist in the same confused space that is now American history, like the shifting diagrams maintained by the felt-hatted operatives in "The Adjustment Bureau."
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, March 20, 2015 Ukraine's Poison Pill for Peace Talks
The Ukraine government's latest maneuver -- undermining the Minsk-2 agreement with a requirement for a rebel surrender -- is likely to drive the country back into a full-scale civil war and push the U.S. and Russia closer to a nuclear showdown, reports Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, February 7, 2014 Israeli Rabbis Warn Kerry of God's Wrath
Secretary of State John Kerry’s negotiations to resolve the generations-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict may look like a quixotic pilgrimage into endless frustrations to many. But it is causing worries among nationalists on Israel’s Right, Robert Parry reports.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 2, 2011 Neocons Want War and More War
The neoconservatives remain powerful in Washington in large part because of their continued influence inside leading opinion-setting journals like the New York Times and the Washington Post, two prestige newspapers that have pressed ahead with the neocon agenda despite serious blows to their credibility in recent years, a dilemma.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, August 25, 2014 Selective Outrage over Ukraine POWs
The U.S. news media regularly engages in selective outrage, piously denouncing some adversary for violating international law yet hypocritically silent when worse abuses are committed by the U.S. or allied governments, as the New York Times has shown again, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 13, 2015 Who's to Blame for Syria Mess? Putin!
Official Washington's new "group think" is to blame Russia's President Putin for the Syrian crisis, although it was the neocons and President George W. Bush who started the current Mideast mess by invading Iraq, the Saudis who funded Al Qaeda, and the Israelis who plotted "regime change," says Robert Parry.
SHARE Thursday, December 16, 2010 Journalists Are All Julian Assange
The Obama administration appears to be singling out Assange as an outlier in the journalistic community who is already regarded as something of a pariah. In that way, mainstream media personalities can be invited to join in his persecution without thinking that they might be next.
(42 comments) SHARE Friday, December 23, 2016 The Good That Trump Could Do
Despite fears about the many negatives from a Donald Trump presidency, one positive could be his shattering of the monopoly that neocons and liberal hawks now hold over U.S. foreign policy, says Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 28, 2016 Trading Places: Neocons and Cockroaches
Neocons want a new Cold War -- all the better to pick the U.S. taxpayers' pockets -- but this reckless talk and war profiteering could spark a nuclear war and leave the world to the cockroaches, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 11, 2015 Obama's Deadly Cold War Legacy
President Obama is endangering his legacy by letting neoconservatives still set his foreign policy, including the creation of a new and costly Cold War with Russia that could have been easily avoided and that now risks spinning off into a nuclear showdown, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Tuesday, January 10, 2012 NYT "Clarified" Santorum's "Black" Quote
Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum is denying his slur about "black people" and "somebody else's money" with absurd claims that the recordings of his quote aren't accurate, now getting a sympathetic hearing from a New York Times reporter.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 28, 2016 Escalating the Risky Fight with Russia
To box in President-elect Trump, the neocons and liberal hawks are pushing for "crippling sanctions" against Russia that they see as crucial to their dangerous "regime change" agenda in Moscow, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 25, 2015 Embracing the Saudi War on Yemen
Fearful of further offending the powerful Saudi-Israeli alliance, President Obama is deploying the U.S. Navy to seal off poverty-stricken Yemen so the Saudi air force has free rein to pummel its regional rivals from the air while the population faces a humanitarian crisis on the ground, reports Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 18, 2016 The State Department's Collective Madness
More than 50 U.S. State Department "diplomats" sent a "dissent" memo urging President Obama to launch military strikes against the Syrian army, another sign that Foggy Bottom has collectively gone nuts, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Saturday, October 15, 2011 Is Mitt Romney a Neocon Purist?
Anyone still doubting that the Washington Post is the media flagship for neoconservatism should reflect on Saturday's editorial in which the Post criticizes Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney for saying U.S. troops should be pulled out of Afghanistan "as soon as we possibly can."
(16 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 29, 2017 NYT Finally Retracts Russia-gate Canard
A founding Russia-gate myth is that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that Russia hacked into and distributed Democratic emails, a falsehood that The New York Times has belatedly retracted, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 15, 2011 Will Iraq Debacle Prevent Iran War?
Neoconservatives are livid over President Obama's declaration that the Iraq War is over, fearing that its disastrous outcome will undercut plans for a new war with Iran. But Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich says, if elected, he stands ready to join Israel in invading Iran
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 28, 2014 The Victory of "Perception Management"
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pioneered "perception management" to get the American people to "kick the Vietnam Syndrome" and accept more U.S. interventionism, but that propaganda structure continues to this day getting the public to buy in to endless war, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, March 23, 2015 Crimeans Keep Saying No to Ukraine
In a rare moment of honesty, a Western news outlet, Forbes, admits that the people of Crimea expressed their legitimate will in last year's referendum when they voted to abandon Ukraine and rejoin Russia, an inconvenient truth for the U.S. State Department and press corps, writes Robert Parry.
(27 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 12, 2017 Has the NYT Gone Collectively Mad?
Crossing a line from recklessness into madness, The New York Times published a front-page opus suggesting that Russia was behind social media criticism of Hillary Clinton, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 7, 2011 The Curious Bush/Bin Laden Symbiosis
When Bush failed to take action as president to prevent 9/11, the blame had to be shifted to his predecessor, and now when his successor succeeds at getting bin Laden, the credit must accrue to Bush. Perhaps Bush's apologists will next claim that Bush deserves credit for getting bin Laden because he gave the terrorist leader what turned out to be a false sense of security.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, September 16, 2011 Cheney's Unintended Admissions
Former Vice President Dick Cheney's memoir is filled with accounts about the great and wonderful people who agree with him -- and the evil buffoons who don't. But the book offers some unintentional insights into how the American Republic got into today's mess.
(11 comments) SHARE Friday, December 1, 2017 The Scalp-Taking of Gen. Flynn
The Russia-gate prosecutors have taken the scalp of ex- National Security Adviser (and retired Lt. Gen.) Flynn for lying to the FBI. But this case shows how dangerously far afield this "scandal" has gone, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, September 12, 2016 The Existential Madness of Putin-Bashing
Official Washington loves its Putin-bashing but demonizing the Russian leader stops a rational debate about U.S.-Russia relations and pushes the two nuclear powers toward an existential brink, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 6, 2017 Learning to Love McCarthyism
Many American liberals who once denounced McCarthyism as evil are now learning to love the ugly tactic when it can be used to advance the Russia-gate "scandal" and silence dissent, reports Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, December 5, 2014 Ukraine's Made-in-USA Finance Minister
A top problem of Ukraine has been corruption and cronyism, so it may raise eyebrows that new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, an ex-U.S. diplomat and newly minted Ukrainian citizen, was involved in insider dealings while managing a $150 million U.S. AID-backed investment fund, writes Robert Parry.
(23 comments) SHARE Monday, January 1, 2018 An Apology and Explanation
Perversion of principles -- twisting information to fit a desired conclusion -- became the modus vivendi of American politics and journalism. And those of us who insisted on defending the journalistic principles of skepticism and evenhandedness were increasingly shunned by our colleagues, a hostility that first emerged on the Right and among neoconservatives but eventually sucked in the progressive world as well.
(12 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 4, 2016 The Danger of Excessive Trump Bashing
The prospect of Donald Trump in the White House alarms many people but bashing him over his contrarian views on NATO and U.S.-Russian relations could set the stage for disasters under President Hillary Clinton, writes Robert Parry.
(16 comments) SHARE Monday, March 13, 2017 When "Disinformation" Is Truth
Democrats and liberals have climbed into bed with the neocons to push the "Russia-did-it" conspiracy theory as a way to "get Trump," but this New McCarthyism has grave dangers, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 7, 2013 "October Surprise" and "Argo"
Iran's ex-President Bani-Sadr, in criticizing inaccurate history in "Argo," says most Iranian officials wanted a quick end to the 1980 U.S.-Iranian hostage crisis, but Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign struck a deal with Ayatollah Khomeini to delay the hostages' release.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 12, 2015 Tom Brady and Theoretical Crime
The NFL meted out a four-game suspension to New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady while also fining the team $1 million and taking away two draft picks -- though the NFL didn't conclusively prove that footballs were deflated, establishing only a theoretical crime, a dangerous precedent, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Wednesday, October 12, 2011 Free Market v. Government Intervention
Today's rapacious capitalism is unsustainable at least without devastation to the livability of the planet and to the living standards of the vast majority of its inhabitants. But most people will opt to cling to the little comfort and security they have rather than throw it away for some ill-defined, post-modern future that is more frightening than it is promising.
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 29, 2015 The Misinformation Mess
As Americans approach Election Year 2016, the crisis of misinformation is growing more and more dangerous. On issues from foreign policy to the economy, almost none of the candidates in the race appears to be addressing the real world, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 7, 2016 The Forgotten Libyan Lessons and the Syrian War
Western leaders are plotting to bomb another Mideast nation, this time Syria, citing "humanitarianism." But similar claims in Iraq and Libya were deceptive and ended up killing far more people than were "saved," says Robert Parry.
(12 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 3, 2014 Obama, the People and the Facts
The political crisis facing President Obama and the Democratic Party results from a profound loss of faith in the U.S. government, made worse by Obama's obsessive secrecy. But he could address both problems by opening the books on some key hidden chapters relevant to today, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 4, 2009 How Two Elections Changed America
Two clandestine operations during hard-fought presidential elections. One unfolded in the weeks before Election 1968 and the other over a year before Election 1980. These operations altered the nation's course and went a long way toward defining the current personalities of America's national parties, the anything-goes Republicans versus the ever-accommodating Democrats.
(14 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 9, 2012 A "Treason" Trial for Barack Obama?
Right-wing propagandists have gulled many of their followers into accepting a false narrative of America's Founding, a made-up history that now has become the basis for some extremists to call for President Obama's trial for "treason," an idea that Mitt Romney only belatedly rejected.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 18, 2014 The Crazy US "Group Think" on Russia
Congress has voted to up the ante in the showdown with Russia over Ukraine, embracing a new Cold War and the neocon scheme for "regime change" in Moscow. But -- amid the tough-guy-ism -- there was little consideration of the risks from destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Wednesday, October 25, 2017 What Did Hillary Clinton Know?
With the disclosure that Hillary Clinton's campaign helped pay for the original Russia-gate allegations against Donald Trump, a new question arises: what did Clinton know and when did she know it, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 16, 2017 The Kagans Are Back; Wars to Follow
The neocon royalty Kagans are counting on Democrats and liberals to be the foot soldiers in the new neocon campaign to push Republicans and President Trump into more "regime change" wars, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 18, 2017 Blaming Russia for the Internet "Sewer"
As the Russia-gate hysteria spirals down from the implausible to the absurd, almost every bad thing is blamed on the Russians, even how they turned the previously pristine Internet into a "sewer," reports Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 18, 2012 The Right's "Limited Government" Scam
Libertarians and Tea Partiers pretend they are the only Americans who believe in "limited government" as envisioned by the Framers, but that is a false conceit. The real history is that Madison and Washington devised a Constitution with broad powers to promote the "general Welfare."
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 7, 2016 New York Times and the New McCarthyism
The New Cold War and its fellow-traveler, the New McCarthyism, are arriving on the hawkish wings of The New York Times and other mainstream U.S. media outlets, writes Robert Parry.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 15, 2012 The 2nd Amendment and Killing Kids
As Americans reel in shock over the slaughter of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, defenders of "gun rights" insist, in effect, that such deaths are part of the price of "liberty" enshrined by the Framers in the Second Amendment. But this was not what James Madison had in mind.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 5, 2012 Mitt Romney as Eddie Haskell
The conventional wisdom has spoken: Mitt Romney trounced Barack Obama in the first debate. But there was a squirrely sneakiness to Romney's behavior as if Eddie Haskell from "Leave It to Beaver" had grown up and somehow won the Republican presidential nomination.
(12 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 17, 2015 Neocons: The "Anti-Realists"
America's neocons, who wield great power inside the U.S. government and media, endanger the planet by concocting strategies inside their heads that ignore real-world consequences. Thus, their "regime changes" have unleashed ancient hatreds and spread chaos across the globe, as Robert Parry explains.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 14, 2011 Mitch Daniels, Architect of US Debt Crisis
In his hard sell for Bush's policies, Daniels also was not above hitting his opponents below the political belt. In December 2001, he denounced Democratic "tax and spend extremists" as "people for whom taxes can't be high enough and we can never spend too much government money."
(11 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 28, 2013 The Four Eras of the American Right
In the coming weeks, the Republican Party and its Tea Party extremists vow to create budgetary and fiscal crises if the Democrats don't gut health-care reform and submit to a host of other right-wing demands. But a driving force in this craziness is an anti-historical view of the Constitution.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, April 10, 2015 Neocons, R2Pers and Hypocrisy
R2Pers say America has a "responsibility to protect" endangered people around the world, but this R2P moral imperative is selective, often indistinguishable from neocons tolerating some slaughters and choosing to wage war against certain enemies -- just dressed up in liberal rhetoric, reports Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 11, 2015 NYT Whites Out Ukraine's Brown Shirts
The New York Times has been more biased on the Ukraine crisis -- endlessly promoting State Department propaganda -- than when it published false Iraqi WMD stories last decade. Case in point: a story from Mariupol hailing the Azov battalion without noting its neo-Nazi fighters, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 14, 2017 Trump Caves on Flynn's Resignation
President Trump's acceptance of National Security Advisor Flynn's resignation marks Official Washington's first big success in neutering Trump and killing hopes for a detente with Russia, reports Robert Parry.
(21 comments) SHARE Monday, February 20, 2017 Was Thomas Jefferson a Rapist?
As Thomas Jefferson's apologists retreat in their denials about Sally Hemings, the new defensive line is to assert that Jefferson's sex with his slave girl was "a relationship," not another r-word, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 16, 2013 Pope Francis, CIA and "Death Squads"
In the 1970s, Father Jorge Bergoglio faced a moment of truth: Would he stand up to Argentina's military neo-Nazis "disappearing" thousands including priests, or keep his mouth shut and his career on track? Like many other Church leaders, Pope Francis took the safe route.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 22, 2010 Rand Paul Exposes the Real Tea Party
What Paul was really doing was explaining what the Tea Party movement is truly about. Though it draws from a variety of political animosities -" like white resentment of the nation's demographic changes and a desire to "take our country back" from the likes of President Barack Obama -" the Tea Party's core mission is to stop the federal government from limiting the power of corporations.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 16, 2016 NYT's Absurd New Anti-Russian Propaganda
The New York Times is so determined to generate hate against Russia that it has lost all journalistic perspective, even portraying Russia's military decoys -- like those used in World War II -- as uniquely evil, writes Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 3, 2014 Will Ukraine Be NYT's Waterloo?
As Ukrainian soldiers from the coup regime in Kiev tighten the noose around anti-coup rebels in eastern Ukraine, the New York Times continues its cheerleading for the coup regime and its contempt for the rebels, raising grave questions about the Times' credibility, writes Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 12, 2014 When Henry Kissinger Makes Sense
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger disputes the mainstream U.S. media's view of the Ukraine crisis, noting that Russia's response was reactive to the West's actions, not the other way around. But the MSM keeps up the drumbeat about Russian "aggression," writes Robert Parry.
(21 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 5, 2012 The "Blame Obama" Syndrome
Obama did make mistakes. He can be fairly faulted for not recognizing early that his bipartisan outreach was a fool's errand, that the likes of Olympia Snowe lacked the courage to buck party discipline, that he would get no credit from the Republicans for giving a pass to George W. Bush regarding his misguided and criminal policies.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 12, 2010 Bush v. Gore's Dark American Decade
A decade after the fateful court ruling with the results of Bush's presidency now painfully apparent and his own appointed justices helping to open the floodgates of special-interest money to further distort the democratic process Bush v. Gore must be viewed as a moment when the United States started down a very dark road.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 25, 2013 Supreme Court's War on Democracy
The U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority is a serial killer of American democracy -- first Bush v. Gore, then Citizens United, now gutting the Voting Rights Act -- but another part of this crime story is the Right's grotesque last stand for white supremacy.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 20, 2016 America's Worldwide Impunity
The mainstream U.S. media is treating the U.S.-led airstrike that killed scores of Syrian troops as an unfortunate boo-boo, ignoring that the U.S. and its allies have no legal right to operate in Syria at all, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 22, 2010 Is Barack Obama the Problem?
One truism that I've learned about political and media survival in Washington is that it's always smart to shift toward where the power lies. In effect, that is what "practical" politicians and journalists do. They venture only as far as they feel they can without creating undue political or career risks for themselves.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 12, 2015 How "Free Markets" Defame "Democracy"
Venezuela seems to be following Ukraine on the neocon hit list for "regime change" as Washington punishes Caracas for acting against a perceived coup threat. But a broader problem is how the U.S. conflates "free markets" with "democracy," giving "democracy" a bad name, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Sunday, October 23, 2011 Neocons Blame Obama For Iraq Disaster
The solution favored by the Post's editors and the Republicans is to continue the U.S. military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, just as they want a similar open-ended war in Afghanistan and sought a more aggressive U.S. military role in Libya. Simply put: Spare no expense in the blood of U.S. soldiers and the dollars of U.S. taxpayers.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 8, 2013 Second Thoughts on October Surprise
New evidence has shaken the confidence of former Rep. Lee Hamilton in his two-decade-old judgment clearing Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign of going behind President Carter's back to frustrate his efforts to free 52 U.S. hostages in Iran, the so-called October Surprise case
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 23, 2012 Mitt Romney: Professional Liar
Last week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney claimed his dad had been attacked by President Obama, who "likes to attack fellow Americans." Yet, Romney's verbal assault on Obama was itself a multi-layered fabrication that revealed Romney consummate skill as a professional liar.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, November 21, 2016 Trump's Tulsi Gabbard Factor
By inviting in Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat hostile to "regime change" wars, President-elect Trump may be signaling a major break with Republican neocon orthodoxy and a big shake-up of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Tuesday, April 21, 2015 The US Hand in Libya's Tragedy
Some 900 Libyans may have died when their boats capsized in the Mediterranean Sea as they fled the barbaric chaos that the Obama administration helped unleash in Libya in 2011. Yet, the mainstream U.S. media has amnesia about the bloody American hand in this tragedy, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Saudis Said to Aid Israeli Plan to Bomb Iran
As the Obama administration is rushing to complete a nuclear agreement with Iran and reduce regional tensions, the Israeli media is reporting on a deal with Saudi Arabia to let Israeli warplanes transit Saudi airspace en route to bombing Iran, reports Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 10, 2016 Hillary Clinton's Turn to McCarthyism
Hillary Clinton's campaign is engaging in over-the-top Russia-bashing and guilt-by-association tying Donald Trump to the Kremlin, a McCarthyism that previously has been used on Democrats, including Bill Clinton, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 5, 2011 Justice Scalia's 'Originalist' Hypocrisy
A decade after the fateful court ruling -- with the results of Bush's presidency now painfully apparent and his appointed justices helping to open the floodgates of special-interest money to further distort the democratic process -- Bush v. Gore must be viewed as a moment when the United States started down a very dark road.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 20, 2014 Delusional US "Group Think" on Syria, Ukraine
Official Washington's "group think" on Syria and Ukraine is so delusional that it is putting the whole world in danger, but -- as with the Iraq War -- the major U.S. news media is part of the problem, not part of any solution, writes Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 21, 2015 Failing Tonkin Gulf Test on Ukraine
As the Ukraine crisis worsens, Official Washington fumes only about "Russian aggression" -- much as a half century ago, the Tonkin Gulf talk was all about "North Vietnamese aggression." But then and now there were other sides to the story -- and questions that Congress needed to ask, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Wednesday, October 24, 2012 "Moderate Mitt": Neocon Trojan Horse
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney did all he could in Monday's debate to calm voters' fears that he would revert to George W. Bush's neocon foreign policy. But there was one telling slip-up when Romney signaled that his heart remains with the neocon plan to remake the Middle East.
SHARE Saturday, December 31, 2011 Cables Hold Clues to U.S.-Iran Mysteries
As the West's confrontation with Iran grows more dangerous -- and major U.S. news outlets blame Iran -- it may be worth recalling the documents that revealed how the U.S. and its allies showed bad faith in talks with Iran about its nuclear program.
(21 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 6, 2014 Was Turkey Behind Syrian Sarin Attack?
Journalist Seymour Hersh has unearthed information implicating Turkish intelligence in last summer’s Sarin attack near Damascus that almost pushed President Obama into a war to topple Syria’s government and open a path for an al-Qaeda victory, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, August 26, 2013 A CIA Hand in an American "Coup"?
The U.S. government decries leaks, but the other side of the story is that key chapters of American history are hidden from the public for decades and maybe forever. The CIA has just admitted its 1953 Iran coup and may never acknowledge a role in ousting Jimmy Carter in 1980.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, April 25, 2014 John Kerry's Sad Circle to Deceit
Secretary of State John Kerry is framing the Ukraine narrative to make the U.S. side -- despite neo-Nazis overthrowing an elected president -- the good guys and Russians the bad guys. But Kerry's strident propaganda is a sad ending to a career that began as a truth-teller, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, January 27, 2012 Selling the "Supply-Side' Myth
Any rational assessment of America's economic troubles would identify Ronald Reagan's reckless "supply-side" economics as a chief culprit, but that hasn't stopped Republican presidential hopefuls, led by Newt Gingrich, from selling this discredited theory to a gullible GOP base.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, September 11, 2017 Echoes of Iraq -- WMD Fraud in Syria
Just as the West ignored signs in 2002-03 that anti-government Iraqis were fabricating WMD claims, evidence is being brushed aside that Syrian jihadists have ginned up chemical attacks, reports Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 8, 2010 Standing Up for Helen Thomas
The key problem with the Washington press corps wasn't that it had one Helen Thomas, it was that it only had one Helen Thomas, someone willing to ask the impertinent but important questions. #When Thomas departed the scene, the thankful Washington press corps was finally freed from those periodic embarrassments of having to watch presidents squirm in reaction to Thomas's out-of-the-box questions.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 3, 2011 Is Obama to Blame for America's Mess?
With the 2009 stimulus money running dry and with businesses unnerved by Washington's political gridlock and brinksmanship, America's weak "recovery" has stalled, prompting more criticism of President Barack Obama.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 20, 2011 The Dark Legacy of Reaganomics
For half a century -- from the depths of the Great Depression until the rise of Ronald Reagan -- the U.S. government invested in building the nation and funding key research. And the country flourished. But Reagan then reversed those priorities. The results are in.
SHARE Monday, January 2, 2012 Iran/Iraq "Defectors" and Disinformation
Official Washington has a soft spot for "defectors" from hostile nations, especially if their tales of perfidy about their ex-homelands fit with favored policy. That was the case with Iraq before the 2003 invasion and now with Iran, but these "defectors" often tell lies.
SHARE Tuesday, February 9, 2010 Palin, Psy-Ops & 'Condescending' Libs
The American Right again has taken on the "populist" mantle of the plucky underdog facing down the "elitist" Obama and his arrogant entourage of House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, defenders of Big Government, not to mention the "liberal" news media.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 16, 2016 Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon
The argument over whether Hillary Clinton is a neocon may have been settled by her hawkish debate performance on Thursday, which followed her Israel-pandering speech before AIPAC, reports Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 25, 2014 Obama's Propagandistic UN Address
The longer President Obama has been in office the less honest he has become, a problem growing more apparent in his second term as he reads speeches containing information that he knows to be false or at least highly misleading, Robert Parry recounts.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 9, 2017 U.N. Enablers of "Aggressive War"
U.N. investigative reports, like a new one condemning Syria for alleged sarin use, are received as impartial and credible, but are often just more war propaganda from compromised bureaucrats, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 13, 2012 Bohemian Grove & Reagan's "Treason"
This weekend, Occupy protesters are targeting the Bohemian Grove in California, where well-connected rich men go on retreats several weekends each summer. The secrecy of the 1980 encampment became a factor in the cover-up of possible "treason" by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 27, 2016 The Dumbed-Down New York Times
A New York Times columnist writes Americans are so "dumbed-down" that they don't know that Russia "invaded" Ukraine two years ago, but that "invasion" was mostly in the minds of Times editors and other propagandists, says Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, September 27, 2010 How Bush Holdovers Trapped Obama
President Barack Obama trapped himself in the morass of Afghanistan by his post-election decision to show bipartisan continuity and to keep in place George W. Bush's military command structure, particularly Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 20, 2014 Ukraine's Neo-Nazi Imperative
The mainstream U.S. news media is flooding the American people with one-sided propaganda on Ukraine, rewriting the narrative to leave out the key role of neo-Nazis and insisting on a “group think†that exceeds even the misguided consensus on Iraq’s WMD, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 2, 2015 Neocon Fugitive Given Ukraine Province
Ukraine's President Poroshenko has tapped another international "carpetbagger" to rule his people, ex-Georgian President Saakashvili, a neocon hero wanted in his homeland for embezzlement and human rights abuses who now governs Odessa, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 14, 2015 The World Rebukes Netanyahu
Led by President Obama, six world powers ignored Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's harangues against Iran and agreed to a plan for limiting -- not bombing -- Iran's nuclear program. But Netanyahu wields more sway with Congress and the mainstream media, which parrot his complaints, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 26, 2014 NYT Revamps Its False Ukraine Narrative
Official Washington's Ukraine narrative has been that it was all Vladimir Putin's fault, that the Russian president staged the crisis to restore the Russian empire, a storyline that never made sense and is now being rearranged to explain why Putin is seeking peace, writes Robert Parry.
(15 comments) SHARE Monday, September 26, 2011 The One Answer: Tax the Rich
When President Barack Obama suggested a minor adjustment in tax rates for the rich -- to make sure they pay at least the same percentage as their employees -- Republicans cried "class warfare." But higher taxes on the rich may be the only way to rebuild the middle class.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, September 18, 2015 Obama's Fateful Syrian Choice
President Obama faces a choice that could define his legacy and the future of the American Republic: He can either work with Russia's President Putin to stabilize Syria or he can opt for a confrontation that could lead to an open-ended war with grave risks of escalation, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 6, 2015 Obama's Fateful Indecision
With Israel and Saudi Arabia siding with the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda versus Iran and its allies, President Obama faces a critical decision -- whether to repudiate those old allies and cooperate with Iran or watch as Sunni terrorist groups possibly take control of a major country in the Mideast, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, December 11, 2017 Russia-gate's Litany of Corrections
As much as the U.S. mainstream media insists that the Russia-gate scandal is growing, what is undeniably growing is the list of major corrections that news outlets have been forced to issue, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 31, 2015 Deciphering the Mideast Chaos
The tangle of conflicts in the Middle East is confusing to many Americans who lack some key facts, such as the transformational Israeli-Saudi alliance that is dragging the American people into a sectarian religious war dating back 1,300 years, as Robert Parry explains.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 16, 2016 America's Journalistic Hypocrites
The U.S. news media flip-flops on whether international law is inviolate or can be brushed aside at America's whim -- and similarly whether killing civilians is justified or not depending on who's doing the killing, says Robert Parry.
(14 comments) SHARE Monday, September 4, 2017 How "Regime Change" Wars Led to Korea Crisis
The U.S.-led aggressions against Iraq and Libya are two war crimes that keep on costing, with their grim examples of what happens to leaders who get rid of WMDs driving the scary showdown with North Korea, writes Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, February 13, 2015 The Putin-Did-It Conspiracy Theory
A new truce agreement in Ukraine rekindles hope that the bloodshed can be reduced if not stopped, but Official Washington's gross misunderstanding of the crisis, blaming everything on Russia's President Putin, raises doubts and portends a potentially grave catastrophe, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 2, 2017 Russia-gate's Totalitarian Style
The New York Times is at it again, reporting unproven allegations about Russia as flat fact, while anyone who questions the Russia-gate groupthink faces ugly attacks, reports Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, October 3, 2016 Do We Really Want Nuclear War with Russia?
The U.S. propaganda war against Russia is spinning out of control, rolling ever faster downhill with a dangerous momentum that threatens to drive the world into a nuclear showdown, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Tuesday, March 3, 2015 Congress Cheers Netanyahu's Hatred of Iran
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu showed off his extraordinary control of the U.S. Congress as he bathed in waves of applause while denouncing President Obama's proposed deal with Iran and urging America to sign up for the Israeli-Saudi regional war on Iran and its Shiite allies, reports Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 17, 2016 MH-17: Two Years of Anti-Russian Propaganda
Two years ago, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine killing 298 people and opening an inviting path for a propaganda campaign toward a new Cold War with Russia, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 24, 2013 Racist Roots of GOP War on Obama
Right-wing Republicans in Congress are plotting to cripple the U.S. government if Barack Obama, the first African-American president, doesn't submit to their demands. The battle pretends to be over the size of government but it echoes the whips, chains and epithets of America's racist past.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, April 22, 2013 Second-Guessing George W. Bush
At the heart of the new George W. Bush Presidential Library -- and the Bush Family's frantic efforts to rehabilitate its image -- is a novel approach toward putting visitors on the spot by putting them in Bush's shoes as he faced tough choices, a challenge that Robert Parry agrees to take on.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 12, 2013 Ignoring the GOP's White Racism
Conservative columnist David Brooks can't understand why right-wing Republicans are so determined to kill immigration reform, especially since the Senate-approved bill would boost the economy and cut the deficit. But Brooks ignores what might be called the white elephant in the room.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, September 15, 2017 The NYT's Yellow Journalism on Russia
The New York Times' descent into yellow journalism over Russia recalls the sensationalism of Hearst and Pulitzer leading to the Spanish-American War, but the risks to humanity are much greater now, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, July 31, 2017 Can Trump Find the "Great" Path?
After a half year in office, President Trump is stumbling toward a "reality TV" irrelevance or worse, but a narrow path remains to make a historically important contribution to the nation, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 4, 2013 The White Man's Last Tantrum?
With the U.S. government shutdown and a threatened credit default, Tea Party Republicans are testing out a new system of national governance in which they get their way -- or else. But is this the beginning of a new Jim Crow era of imposed white supremacy or just the white man's last tantrum?
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 10, 2017 Russia-gate Jumps the Shark
Russia-gate has jumped the shark with laughable new claims about a tiny number of "Russia-linked" social media ads, but the U.S. mainstream media is determined to keep a straight face, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 19, 2012 Neocons Guided Petraeus on Afghan War
Gen. David Petraeus was so cozy with neocon think-tankers that he ensconced two of them in his Afghan War command and granted them top-secret access to U.S. military policy. One later leveraged Petraeus's friendship to impress military contractors for funding support.
(13 comments) SHARE Friday, February 10, 2017 The Neocons' Back-Door to Trump
By enforcing a "group think" calling Iran the chief sponsor of terrorism, Official Washington's neocons are maneuvering the Trump administration into conforming with Israeli (and Saudi) desires, reports Robert Parry.
(25 comments) SHARE Friday, July 17, 2015 MH-17 Mystery: A New Tonkin Gulf Case?
In 1964, the Tonkin Gulf incident was used to justify the Vietnam War although U.S. intelligence quickly knew the facts were not what the U.S. government claimed. Now, the MH-17 case is being exploited to justify a new Cold War as U.S. intelligence again is silent about what it knows, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 16, 2014 Mainstream US Media Is Lost in Ukraine
The U.S. mainstream news media is reaching a new professional low point as it covers the Ukraine crisis by brazenly touting Official Washington’s propaganda themes, blatantly ignoring contrary facts and leading the American public into another geopolitical blind alley, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 9, 2014 The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga
If you ever wondered how the mainstream U.S. media changed from the hard-nosed Watergate press of the 1970s into the brown-nose MSM that swallowed the Iraq War lies, a key middle point was the Contra-cocaine scandal of the 1980s/1990s, the subject of a new movie, reports Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 25, 2014 Treating Putin Like a Lunatic
Official Washington treats whatever comes out of Russian President Putin's mouth as the ravings of a lunatic, even when what he says is obviously true or otherwise makes sense, as the New York Times has demonstrated again, writes Robert Parry.
(29 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 21, 2017 Selectivity in Trashing Trump
Around the United States, massive demonstrations have protested the inauguration of Donald Trump, but there is a danger that the anti-Trump forces could block the positive elements of his message, writes Robert Parry
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 17, 2012 Mitt Romney's "Perry Mason" Moment
Mitt Romney thought he had President Obama set up for the fall, like TV lawyer Perry Mason boring in on a suspect. He called out Obama on his claim to have termed the Benghazi attack "an act of terror." But the Republican presidential nominee again showed a reckless disregard of the facts.
(44 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 18, 2017 The Did-You-Talk-to-Russians Witch Hunt
Democrats, liberals and media pundits -- in their rush to take down President Trump -- are pushing a New McCarthyism aimed at Americans who have talked to Russians, risking a new witch hunt, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 8, 2014 Is Arlington County, VA, Racist?
Many Southerners get outraged at the suggestion that racism persists these days, but residues of segregation continue in laws discouraging black voting and in the casual neglect of minority communities, even in places like Arlington, Virginia, writes Robert Parry.
(31 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 20, 2015 MH-17 Case: "Old" Journalism vs. "New"
For skilled intelligence operatives, the Internet can be a devil's playground, a place to circulate doctored photos, audio and documents, making investigations based on "social media" and such sources particularly risky, a point worth recalling in the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, says Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 19, 2016 Trump and the Long History of Media Bias
The mainstream U.S. news media insists that its bias against Donald Trump is an aberration justified by his extraordinary recklessness, but the truth is U.S. media bias has a long history, says longtime journalist Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 1, 2011 The Lost Opportunity of Iran-Contra
A quarter century ago with the breaking of the Iran-Contra scandal, the United States had a chance to step back from its march toward Empire and to demand accountability for White House crimes. But instead a powerful cover-up prevailed
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 11, 2013 Why France Sank an Iran Nuke Deal
Saudis and Israelis wanted to sink the negotiated deal on Iran's nuclear program, so the French launched the diplomatic torpedo to take it down. But behind France's action were Saudi financial muscle and Israel's political skill.
SHARE Wednesday, June 1, 2011 The Mysterious Robert Gates
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is leaving the Pentagon as a Washington "wise man," admired by both Republicans and Democrats for his supposed judgment and integrity. But does he deserve that reputation -- or is he just an especially clever manipulator of the political process?
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, June 29, 2009 Obama, They Want You to Fail
For almost as long as I've been in Washington (I arrived for the Associated Press in 1977) it has worked the other way. Even when the Republicans appear to be on the defensive and outnumbered, they band together and vote as a bloc, while Democrats bend over backwards to be "bipartisan."
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 3, 2010 US Voters Drink Reaganism's Kool-Aid
History may shake its head over why so many progressives abandoned the nation's first African-American president less than two years after his election. Obama's core political mistake may have been trying to stabilize a very sick patient, the U.S. economy, rather than applying more radical remedies.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, September 17, 2010 Lee Hamilton, the Un-Wise Man
The sad truth is that Lee Hamilton has done great damage to the U.S. political process by elevating bipartisanship above a commitment to the truth. One reason why many Americans buy into baseless conspiracy theories today is that Hamilton failed to expose real ones when he was in Congress.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 22, 2011 America 'Trapped' by False Narratives
As long as this political-media dynamic continues, Americans can expect to be herded like confused sheep toward the slaughterhouse, with the powers-that-be picking which wars to fight and selecting an economic strategy that concentrates wealth at the top.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 20, 2013 Who Controls US Foreign Policy?
The new Saudi-Israeli alliance wants to drag the U.S. government -- and military -- into the region's Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict by sabotaging negotiations over Iran's nuclear program and the Syrian civil war.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 24, 2015 Israel Clears the Bench in Iran Fight
Israel -- in its desperation to kill the Iran nuclear deal -- is exposing its often-denied influence over the U.S. political/media process. Israeli officials are even using football analogies to rally U.S. lawmakers while emptying the bench of friendly "experts" to mount a goal-line stand, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, June 24, 2016 A "Brexit" Blow to the Establishment
British voters turned a deaf ear to scary warnings about leaving the E.U. and struck a blow against an out-of-touch, self-interested and incompetent Western Establishment, a message to the U.S., too, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 30, 2014 Ukraine's Inconvenient Neo-Nazis
When Ukrainian neo-Nazis – infuriated over the killing of an ultranationalist leader – surrounded the Parliament in Kiev, the incident presented a problem for the U.S. news media which has been trying to airbrush the neo-Nazis out of the Ukraine narrative, Robert Parry reports.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 4, 2014 The Right's Tenth Amendment Myth
Millions of Americans have been deceived into a false understanding of what the Constitution's Framers intended because of a right-wing lie about the significance of the insignificant Tenth Amendment, reports Robert Parry.
(14 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 25, 2017 Policing "Truth" to Restore "Trust"
The U.S. mainstream media insists it just wants "truth" algorithms to purge "fake news" from the Internet, but the real goal seems to be restoring public "trust" by limiting what the people get to see, reports Robert Parry.
(29 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 19, 2013 How Fake 2nd Amendment History Kills
Another mass shooting has stunned America, although the sentiment is now more numbness and hopelessness than outrage and resolve. The gun carnage will probably never end unless the Right's bogus history of the Second Amendment is exploded and the real intent of the Framers is explained.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 31, 2015 Holes in the Neocons' Syrian Story
The Islamic State and Al-Qaeda's Nusra Front continue to make gains in Syria while Official Washington plays the blame game, pushing a dubious narrative that the crisis wouldn't have happened if President Obama had just backed "regime change" earlier, Robert Parry reports.
(10 comments) SHARE Monday, April 14, 2014 What's the Matter with John Kerry?
As a young warrior and senator, John Kerry stood up to politicians who spread propaganda that misled the public and got people killed. Now, as a 70-year-old Secretary of State, he has become what he once challenged, reports Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 4, 2015 Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and Israel
Saudi Arabia is under a new cloud after a jailed al-Qaeda operative implicated senior Saudi officials as collaborators with the terror group -- and the shadow could even darken the political future of Israeli Prime Netanyahu because of his odd-couple alliance with Riyadh, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 19, 2013 Racism and the American Right
From the start of the Republic to today's Republican ranting against Barack Obama, racism has been a central element of the American Right. But this ugly feature of U.S. history has often come concealed behind words praising traditions, liberty and states' rights.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 15, 2017 How Netanyahu Pulls Trump's Strings
It turns out that Hillary Clinton was partly correct: President Trump is a "puppet," but his puppet master isn't Russian President Putin but Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, reports Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 31, 2010 A Method to Republican 'Madness'
There is another way to view the GOP political strategy, as neither principled nor reactive to the rantings of Tea Partiers, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. It is that the Republicans are following a playbook that has evolved over more than four decades, to regain power by sabotaging Democratic presidents.
SHARE Friday, November 10, 2017 Did Al Qaeda Dupe Trump on Syrian Attack?
Buried deep inside a new U.N. report is evidence that could exonerate the Syrian government in the April 4 sarin atrocity and make President Trump look like an Al Qaeda dupe, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 12, 2016 NATO Reaffirms Its Bogus Russia Narrative
President Obama and NATO leaders signed on to the false narrative of a minding-its-own-business West getting sucker-punched by a bunch of Russian meanies, a storyline that suggests insanity or lies, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 14, 2017 The Legacy of Reagan's Civilian "Psyops"
When the Reagan administration launched peacetime "psyops" in the mid-1980s, it pulled in civilian agencies to help spread these still-ongoing techniques of deception and manipulation, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 14, 2017 America's Righteous Russia-gate Censorship
Arriving behind the anti-Trump "resistance" and the Russia-gate "scandal" is a troubling readiness to silence dissent in the U.S., shutting down information that challenges Official Narratives, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 19, 2014 The Powerful "Group Think" on Ukraine
Official Washington's "group think" on Ukraine -- blaming everything on Russian President Putin -- is so dominant that even independent thinkers like Paul Krugman get sucked into the collective misinformation, reports Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 8, 2014 Putin's Subtle Message to Obama
Russian President Putin sought to cool the rhetoric over Ukraine with an appeal for a postponed referendum in the east and an order to pull back Russian troops, but another message was to President Obama -- over the State Department's head -- that it's time to talk, reports Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 23, 2017 How Trump Could Be a Truth-teller
Viewed as uncaring about facts, President Trump could change his image by releasing important information about recent turning-point moments that President Obama chose to hide from the people, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 14, 2010 Israel, the US and Propaganda's Power
Beyond his evenhanded comment about the need "to break out of old patterns of antagonism," Obama further irritated the Likud government by holding the security summit amid demands that all countries rein in nuclear ambitions and increase transparency for their programs.
SHARE Monday, April 20, 2015 A Fact-Resistant "Group Think" on Syria
CBS News' anchor Scott Pelley is known for his clueless journalism which never goes beyond Official Washington's "group think" -- and he was at it again in a dangerously provocative "60 Minutes" segment on the sarin gas attack near Damascus, Syria, in 2013, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 14, 2016 Donald Trump's False Martyrdom
Donald Trump is presenting himself as a martyr absorbing the "slings and arrows" of false charges that he groped and abused women, even though he boasted about doing exactly that, writes Robert Parry.
(18 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 1, 2017 Dangers of Democratic Putin-Bashing
As national Democratic leaders continue to blame Russian President Putin for their 2016 defeat, they're leading their party into a realignment with the neocons and other war hawks, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 4, 2010 CIA's 'Red Cell' Hypocrisy on Terror
Reagan was well aware of the contras' cruelty (he privately called them "vandals" in a conversation with CIA officer Duane Clarridge), while he hailed them publicly as "freedom fighters" and equated them with America's "Founding Fathers."
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 8, 2010 Neocons, Likud Conquer DC, Again
The clout of Washington's neoconservatives and the political fear induced by Israel's Likud hardliners were on display again with recently released e-mails in which Gen. David Petraeus grovels before a key neocon and in White House meetings at which President Obama pandered to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, August 6, 2010 October Surprise Cover-up Unravels
It should come as no surprise that "respectability" and "honors" don't necessarily go to people who stand up for the truth or for rationality. Indeed, it's almost always the opposite; they are bestowed on people who go with the flow and get along.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, November 24, 2014 Possible Motives for Ousting Hagel
At the start of Barack Obama's second term, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was seen as the best hope for standing up to the neocons, inside and outside the administration. Though Hagel proved to be a weak champion, his sudden removal could portend more trouble ahead, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 4, 2010 George Shultz's Counterfeit 'Coin'
The fact that PBS is continuing to move in that same direction -" helping to establish a bogus, neocon version of the history of the Cold War -" is demonstrated by its readiness to air a fawning and flawed three-part series on George Shultz, paid for by his admirers.
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 1, 2016 Waiting for California and the FBI
Some Democratic leaders are privately scouting around for someone to replace Hillary Clinton if she stumbles again in California and/or the FBI detects a crime in her email scandal, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 1, 2016 The Orwellian War on Skepticism
Official Washington's rush into an Orwellian future is well underway as political and media bigwigs move to silence Internet voices of independence and dissent, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 16, 2010 NY Times Promotes UN-Syria Conspiracy Theory
That stubbornly one-sided approach has now extended to the fifth anniversary of the Hariri slaying. Instead of acknowledging the flaws in Mehlis's initial findings -" or recognizing how recklessly premature those accusations were -" the Times is now promoting a conspiracy theory that U.N. officials willfully tanked the investigation.
SHARE Thursday, April 2, 2015 The US-Israel-Iran Triangle's Tangled History
Iran and world powers have gone into double-overtime in negotiations to ensure that Iran doesn't build a nuclear bomb, but the shadow over the talks is darkened by decades of distrust and double-dealing, a dimly understood history of the U.S.-Israeli-Iranian triangle, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 16, 2015 Syrian Rebels Caught in "False-Flag" Kidnapping
In August 2013, when the U.S. government almost went to war in Syria over a Sarin attack, suspicions that it was a rebel "false-flag" were ridiculed. But new disclosures about a rebel role in kidnapping NBC's Richard Engel several months earlier show the rebels knew such propaganda tricks, says Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, July 9, 2012 The Silence on Global Warming
What has become most striking about the growing evidence that climate change is a clear and present danger -- indeed an emerging existential threat -- is the simultaneous failure of the U.S. news media to deal seriously with the issue, another sign of how the Right can intimidate the mainstream into going silent.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, June 28, 2013 The Marriage of Libertarians and Racists
The modern Republican Party and its chic libertarians have dallied with white supremacists as a political necessity, because blacks and other minorities have rallied to the Democrats due to their better civil rights record. But the Right's dancing with the racist devil is not new. It's as old as the Founding.
SHARE Friday, April 17, 2015 How Ukraine Commemorates the Holocaust
Pundit Thomas Friedman says the new Ukraine regime "shares our values" but -- as much of the world marked the 70th anniversary of the Nazi Holocaust finally being ended by Russian and U.S. armies -- politicians in Kiev were busy honoring Ukraine's Nazi collaborators, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, June 10, 2016 Deflategate Twist: 31 NFL Teams Are Cheating
In pressing ahead with the absurd "Deflategate" case against Tom Brady, the NFL's 31 rival owners appear to be using a made-up scandal to get an edge on the New England Patriots and -- to put it bluntly -- cheat, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 7, 2016 How War Propaganda Keeps on Killing
The "fake news" hysteria has become the cover for the U.S. government and mainstream media to crack down on fact-based journalism that challenges Official Washington's "group thinks," writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, March 6, 2017 Official Washington Tips into Madness
President Trump responded to evidence-lite accusations from Democrats about his ties to Russia with his own air-filled allegations about President Obama wiretapping Trump Tower, as Robert Parry shakes his head.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 7, 2011 The Gop's History Of "Hostage-Taking"
For more than four decades, Democrats have tolerated Republican abuses, claiming accountability wouldn't be "good for the country." But this softness has only encouraged the kind of hardball behavior that has now taken the U.S. economy "hostage."
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 3, 2016 Clinton's "Russia Did It" Cop-out
In a last-ditch effort to salvage Hillary Clinton's campaign, establishment Democrats are slinging McCarthyistic mud, joining in smearing independent journalists and blaming everything on Russia, writes Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, January 30, 2015 "Group-Thinking" the World into a New War
The armchair warriors of Official Washington are eager for a new war, this time with Russia over Ukraine, and they are operating from the same sort of mindless "group think" and hostility to dissent that proved so disastrous in Iraq, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, September 8, 2017 A New Hole in Syria-Sarin Certainty
A new contradiction has emerged in the West's groupthink blaming Syria for an April 4 chemical attack, with one group of U.N. investigators raising doubt about the flight of a Syrian warplane, reports Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 18, 2015 Netanyahu Unmasks Israel
For years, U.S. politicians have rejected allegations of Israeli racism and excused mistreatment of the Palestinians as a temporary necessity that would be fixed by a two-state solution. But Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has destroyed those arguments in his panic to keep his job, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Thursday, June 11, 2009 Two Key Health-Care Numbers
President Barack Obama says he strongly supports inclusion of a public option in any reform legislation as necessary to keep the private industry "honest." His reference to the public option during a speech on Thursday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was greeted with some of the strongest applause as was his reference to prohibiting insurers from denying someone coverage because of a "preexisting condition."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 20, 2017 The Lost Journalistic Standards of Russia-gate
The Russia-gate hysteria has witnessed a widespread collapse of journalistic standards as major U.S. news outlets ignore rules about how to treat evidence in dispute, writes Robert Parry.
(12 comments) SHARE Monday, November 5, 2012 Risking a Repeat of Election 2000
President Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney are locked in a tight race with Tuesday's election likely to be decided in a few hard-fought battleground states, much like 2000. And, Robert Parry sees other troubling parallels to that disastrous election.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 23, 2016 Will NYT Retract Latest Anti-Russian "Fraud"?
In covering the new Cold War, The New York Times has lost its journalistic bearings, serving as a crude propaganda outlet publishing outlandish anti-Russian claims that may cross the line into fraud, reports Robert Parry.
(13 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 25, 2017 How US Flooded the World with Psyops
The mainstream U.S. media obsesses over Russian "propaganda" yet the U.S. government created a "psyops" bureaucracy three decades ago to flood the world with dubious information, reports Robert Parry.
(19 comments) SHARE Friday, August 18, 2017 Russia-gate's Evidentiary Void
5A cyber-warfare expert sees no technical evidence linking Russia to the Democratic email releases, but The New York Times presses ahead with a new hope that Ukraine can fill the void, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 11, 2015 Official Washington's Delusions on Delusions
Official Washington operates in its own bubble of self-delusion in which the stars of U.S. politics, policy and media don't realize how the rest of the world sees their sociopathic behavior. This craziness is now reaching a crisis point on Iran and Russia, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, December 16, 2016 Making Russia "The Enemy"
Despite conflicting accounts about who leaked the Democratic emails, the frenzy over an alleged Russian role is driving the U.S. deeper into a costly and dangerous New Cold War, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 12, 2012 Mitt Romney: The New Teflon Man
Mitt Romney is fast becoming the new Teflon man. Whenever he faces criticism for his past business practices, "independent fact-checkers" rush to his rescue and insist that he's been wronged, regardless of what the evidence actually is.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 29, 2017 Trump Lets Saudis Off His "Muslim Ban"
By leaving Saudi Arabia and other key terrorism sponsors off his "Muslim ban," President Trump shows the same cowardice and dishonesty that infected the Bush and Obama administrations, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, September 26, 2014 The CIA/MSM Contra-Cocaine Cover-up
With Hollywood set to release a movie about the Contra-cocaine scandal and the destruction of journalist Gary Webb, an internal CIA report has surfaced showing how the spy agency manipulated the mainstream media's coverage to disparage Webb and contain the scandal, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 17, 2011 The Back Story on Iran's Clashes (A Special Report)
Mousavi, who came in second in the election, seemed to acknowledge this point when he released his supposed proof of the rigged election, accusing Ahmadinejad of buying votes by providing food and higher wages for the poor. At some Mousavi rallies, his supporters reportedly would chant "death to the potatoes!" in a joking reference to Ahmadinejad's food distributions.
(59 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 2, 2013 Climate-Denying Libertarianism
Some "libertarians" accept the global-warming science but still can't bring themselves to recognize that a coordinated government response is needed. Anti-government ideology trumps even the possible destruction of life on the planet, a very real possibility given the likelihood of mass dislocations of populations and the availability of nuclear weapons.
SHARE Friday, December 23, 2011 The GOP History of Hostage-Taking
Since the days of Richard Nixon, Republicans have pursued an anything-goes brand of politics that often has the look of hostage-taking, with Democrats usually caving in. But, has President Obama finally learned that the only way to stop bullying is to stand up to it?
(16 comments) SHARE Monday, January 14, 2013 More Second Amendment Madness
The Right's powerful propaganda apparatus has sold millions of Americans on the dangerous -- and false -- notion that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution incorporated the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights so an armed population could fight the government that the Framers had just created.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 27, 2014 Why Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia
Any propaganda war starts by planting stories that your target is getting rich, whether he is or isn't, the latest move in demonizing Vladimir Putin. But the larger question is what might happen if the neocons succeed in destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia, asks Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 10, 2012 Demonizing Gunter Grass
One of the angriest Israeli accusations against Grass -- echoed in the news columns of the New York Times and among German officials -- was the poet's alleged offense of treating Israel and Iran as moral equivalents, or as the Times put it "placing Israel and Iran on the same moral plane."
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, June 8, 2015 Cold War II to McCarthyism II
With Cold War II in full swing, the New York Times is dusting off what might be called McCarthyism II, the suggestion that anyone who doesn't get in line with U.S. propaganda must be working for Moscow, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 13, 2017 Reagan Documents Shed Light on U.S. "Meddling"
"Secret" documents from the Reagan administration show how the U.S. embedded "political action," i.e., the manipulation of foreign governments, in ostensibly well-meaning organizations, reports Robert Parry.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 1, 2013 Regret over Gary Webb's Demise
For several decades, mainstream U.S. journalists have fled from the career-threatening label "liberal," even to the point of destroying honest colleagues who got in the crosshairs of the Right. The story of the late Gary Webb and his Contra-cocaine revelations was a troubling case in point.
(9 comments) SHARE Monday, September 29, 2014 Neocons' Noses Into the Syrian Tent
The neocons say the next step in President Obama's bombing raids inside Syria must be to move from attacking the terrorist Islamic State to destroying Syria's air force and air defenses, all the better to achieve the neocons' long-sought "regime change," reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Monday, September 1, 2008 Palin's Trouble with the Police
You have to admire the Republican chutzpah. Still confronting a national scandal about packing the Justice Department with "loyal Bushies," they pick a vice presidential candidate who – in her two executive jobs in Alaska – ousted top law-enforcement officials because they were insufficiently loyal or not malleable enough.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 8, 2012 Fleecing the Angry Whites
Subtly and not so subtly, Republican presidential contenders are playing the race card again, hoping to win over the votes of angry whites by implicitly blaming the shrinking of the middle-class on preferential treatment of blacks and other minorities.
SHARE Thursday, August 29, 2013 The Saudi-Israeli Superpower
Egypt's counterrevolution and Syria's civil war could herald the arrival of a new superpower coalition, an unlikely alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia, one with great political clout and the other with vast financial wealth, together flexing their muscles across the Middle East.
SHARE Thursday, June 11, 2009 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess
So, it is useful to read Wednesday's New York Times analysis of the CBO budget projections, which revealed that Obama's stimulus plan and other domestic programs account for "only a sliver" of the deficits, about 10 percent of the projected $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 18, 2012 The Delusional Mr. Romney
Mitt Romney told supporters behind closed doors that he's disadvantaged because he was born to a rich white family, that he'd have a better chance to win if his dad were a Mexican. It's getting hard to decide if Romney is simply a country-club racist or delusional.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 28, 2011 How Greed Destroys America
New studies show that America's corporate chieftains are living like kings while the middle class stagnates and shrivels. Yet, the Tea Party and other anti-tax forces remain determined to protect the historically low tax rates of the rich and push the burden of reducing the federal debt onto the rest of society.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, January 23, 2012 Reagan's Hand in Guatemala's Genocide
Guatemala has begun a politically difficult process to make human rights violators of the 1980s accountable for their crimes, including genocide inflicted on Indian villages, but the United States still heaps praise on the killers' chief American accomplice, Ronald Reagan.
SHARE Friday, May 8, 2015 Why Write about NFL's "Deflategate"
After release of a tendentious NFL report on "Deflategate," there is now a rush to the penalty phase with the media and public demanding severe punishment for quarterback Tom Brady -- despite any clear evidence that he did anything wrong, writes Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 30, 2010 The Coming War over the Constitution
While supposedly revering the Constitution and its original intent, the Tea Partiers and their Republican allies simultaneously are proposing a radical revision of the founding document, an amendment that would allow a super-majority of states to overturn laws passed by Congress and signed into law by the president.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 8, 2017 Fresh Doubts about Russian "Hacking"
The gauzy allegations of Russia "hacking" the Democrats to elect Donald Trump just got hazier with WikiLeaks' new revelations about CIA cyber-spying and the capability to pin the blame on others, reports Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 17, 2017 Harvard's Cowardice on Chelsea Manning
In an abject display of intellectual cowardice, Harvard's Kennedy School withdrew a fellowship from Chelsea Manning after hearing protests from accomplices in the war crimes she exposed, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 25, 2011 The Lie Behind the Afghan War
A recurring refrain about the Afghan War is that the United States must stay for the long haul now to avoid repeating the "mistake" made in 1989 when Soviet forces left and Americans supposedly disappeared, too. But this conventional wisdom, spread by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others, is a lie.
SHARE Monday, March 7, 2011 CNBC Advocates Unbridled Capitalism
Reagan's anti-government mantra became the dominant message of the era amplified by a growing right-wing media that propagandized the public. Over the next three decades, propelled by Reagan's strategy of massive tax cuts for the rich and hostility to unions, the rich got richer, while the poor and middle class stagnated, struggled and sank.
SHARE Wednesday, November 9, 2011 Who Is Judge Richard Leon?
The appointment of federal judges is a key power of the U.S. president. It can reward partisan allies for past services and ensure favorable rulings in the future. Both factors were in play for District Judge Richard Leon who just struck down new cigarette warnings.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, January 27, 2017 Donald Trump and His "Magic Mirror"
President Trump's vain tirades about crowd size and voter fraud make him look like Snow White's evil queen gazing into her mirror, but he could turn that around by telling some important truths, says Robert Parry.
SHARE Thursday, June 9, 2011 Three Deadly War Myths
The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have involved myths pleasing to Official Washington -- about its own wisdom and the evil of the enemy -- but these false narratives have caused President Barack Obama and other U.S. policymakers to base decisions on illusion rather than reality.
SHARE Thursday, October 26, 2017 Russia-gate Breeds "Establishment McCarthyism"
As Russia-gate gives cover for an Establishment attack on Internet freedom and independent news, traditional defenders of a free press and civil liberties are joining the assault or staying on the sidelines, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 29, 2010 Cables Hold Clues to US-Iran Mysteries
Newly released U.S. diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks show that the Obama administration, like its predecessors, has played a double game with Iran's Shiite government, mixing public offers of reconciliation with secret collaboration on hard-line strategies favored by its Sunni Arab rivals and Israel.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 7, 2017 Castigating Trump for Truth-Telling
President Trump says much that is untrue, but he draws some of Official Washington's greatest opprobrium when he speaks the truth, such as noting that senior U.S. officials have done a lot of killing, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 27, 2016 A Sour Holiday Season for Neocons
For the past couple of decades, the neocons have ruled the roost of American foreign policy, but they have now suffered some stunning reversals that have left them fuming, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 26, 2016 Kerry Balks at Supplying MH-17 Data
The father of a young American killed aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014 says Secretary of State Kerry balks at turning over U.S. data that Kerry cited three days after the tragedy in eastern Ukraine, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 27, 2016 The Modern History of "Rigged" US Elections
Donald Trump claims the U.S. presidential election is "rigged," drawing condemnation from the political/media establishment which accuses him of undermining faith in American democracy. But neither side understands the real problem, says Robert Parry.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 17, 2009 The Ugly Truth about Jobs
Many Americans have been sold on the right-wing and neoconservative message that any government effort to address the nation's domestic needs is dreaded “socialism†and that the government's primary -- if not only -- role must be to lavish money on the military to “keep us safe.â€
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 23, 2017 Democrats Trade Places on War and McCarthyism
The anti-Russia hysteria gripping the Democratic Party marks a "trading places" moment as the Democrats embrace the New Cold War and the New McCarthyism, flipping the script on Republicans, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 8, 2011 Neocons Spin Two "Lost" Wars
The looming U.S. defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan represent a threat to the political fortunes of America's neocons -- if they get blamed for the disasters. However, if they can hang the failures around President Obama's neck, the two lost wars might help bring the neocons back to power as early as 2013.
SHARE Wednesday, July 15, 2015 US/Israeli/Saudi "Behavior" Problems
In Official Washington's latest detour from the real world, top pundits are depicting Iran as the chief troublemaker in the Mideast and saying the nuclear deal should hinge on Iranian "behavior." But the real "behavior" problems come from Israel, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., writes Robert Parry.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 19, 2017 Trump Falls in Line with Interventionism
President Trump's U.N. speech showed that despite his America First rhetoric, his policies are virtually the same as the neocon strategies of George W. Bush and liberal interventionism of Barack Obama, says Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 22, 2015 Congress Seeks Netanyahu's Direction
Conservative Pat Buchanan once got in trouble by calling Capitol Hill "Israeli occupied territory," but even he might not imagine what's happening now -- with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu invited to address a joint session of Congress to decry President Obama's foreign policy, Robert Parry notes.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 2, 2010 Washington's Ethical Double Standard
As two longtime members of the Congressional Black Caucus -" Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters -" are dragged into the public square to be punished for alleged ethical indiscretions, it may be worth remembering how Official Washington responded to evidence that President George W. Bush aided and abetted his corrupt benefactors at Enron.
SHARE Wednesday, April 9, 2014 Reagan-Bush Ties to Iran-Hostage Crisis
The Senate wants to block Iran’s new UN ambassador because he was linked to the Iran hostage crisis 35 years ago, but that standard would strip honors from Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, implicated in extending the hostage crisis to win the 1980 election, reports Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 24, 2011 Budget Crisis? Duh, Tax the Rich!
The solution to these many problems -- from the budget deficit to crumbling infrastructure, from mass joblessness to income inequality, from environmental degradation to educational shortfalls -- is to raise taxes on the rich and to use that money to get the United States back on track and advancing toward the future.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, May 17, 2013 Reagan and Argentina's Dirty War
The 87-year-old ex-Argentine dictator Jorge Videla died Friday in prison where he was serving sentences for grotesque human rights crimes in the 1970s and 1980s. But one of Videla's key backers, the late President Ronald Reagan, continues to be honored by Americans.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, September 22, 2017 The Crazy Imbalance of Russia-gate
If the U.S. government and mainstream media are really concerned about foreign influence in American politics, they might look at Israel and other nations with much more clout than Russia, notes Robert Parry.
SHARE Thursday, May 21, 2015 Obama's Strategic Shift
President Obama has belatedly detected the looming catastrophe in Syria and Iraq as Sunni terrorists gain ground. He also grasps the need for Russian and Iranian help. But his administration remains infested with neocons and liberal war hawks who could sabotage the needed deals, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Wednesday, July 13, 2011 Inside the October Surprise Cover-up
The George H.W. Bush Library in Texas has just released thousands of pages of documents on the October Surprise mystery, revealing how Bush's inner circle handled allegations that the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 struck a treacherous deal with Iran. It was a textbook case of controlling the narrative.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 24, 2017 Obama Bequeaths a More Dangerous World
President Obama may have entered the White House with a desire to rein in America's global war-making but he succumbed to neocon pressure and left behind an even more dangerous world, reports Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Blaming Obama for Iraq's Chaos
As Islamic militants gain ground in Iraq, Official Washington's neocons and the mainstream media are blaming President Obama for ending the U.S. military occupation, but they ignore their own role in destabilizing Iraq with the 2003 invasion, Robert Parry reports.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 17, 2016 The Danger of Demonization
As the West is sucked deeper into the Syrian conflict and starts a new Cold War with Russia, the mainstream U.S. news media has collapsed as a vehicle for reliable information, creating a danger for the world, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, July 26, 2010 How Bush Botched the Afghan War
Though the reports don't directly address Bush's strategic blunder, they tell the story of badly stretched U.S. forces trying to manage a complex task in Afghanistan while the Taliban, al-Qaeda and their allies in Pakistan regrouped along the border and became a dangerous adversary.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, May 21, 2012 NYT Admits Lockerbie Case Flaws
Even in death, Libyan Ali al-Megrahi is dubbed "the Lockerbie bomber," a depiction that proved useful last year in rallying public support for "regime change" in Libya. But the New York Times now concedes, belatedly, that the case against him was riddled with errors and false testimony.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, December 15, 2017 Protecting the Shaky Russia-gate Narrative
The New York Times continues its sorry pattern of falsifying the record on Russia-gate, giving its readers information that the newspaper knows not to be true, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 27, 2016 Washington Post's "Fake News" Guilt
The "fake news" theme has captivated The Washington Post and the mainstream U.S. media so much that it is stooping to McCarthyistic smears against news outlets that don't toe the State Department's propaganda line, says Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, December 8, 2014 The New Republic's Ugly Reality
Mainstream pundits are outraged over a Silicon Valley barbarian riding in and defacing The New Republic, a temple to all that is wonderful about deep-thinking policymaking and long-form journalism. But the truth about the Washington-based magazine is much less honorable, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 12, 2016 What Hillary Knew about Libya
In Official Washington's propaganda world, the U.S. government and its "allies" are always standing for what's right and good and the "enemies" are the epitome of evil doing the vilest things. But some emails to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton depicted a far different reality, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, October 6, 2017 President Zigzag
President Trump boasts about his "zigzag" foreign policy as if inconsistency is an attribute in dealing with a fragile world, but his zigzagging endangers backchannel intermediaries handling outreach to North Korea, reports Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, August 21, 2015 The Riddle of Obama's Foreign Policy
For nearly seven years of his presidency, Barack Obama has zigzagged from military interventionist to pragmatic negotiator, leaving little sense of what he truly believes. Yet, there may be some consistent threads to his inconsistencies, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Friday, April 3, 2015 Iran Deal: A Possible Crossroads to Peace
The Israeli-Saudi alliance and the American neocons are furious over the framework agreement for a peaceful settlement to the Iran nuclear dispute, but the deal gives hope to people who see the need to end the perpetual wars that have roiled the Middle East and deformed the U.S. Republic, writes Robert Parry.
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, August 3, 2012 More on "Vanity of Perfectionism"
Americans are faced with a tough choice this fall: to stick with Barack Obama despite his faults, switch to Mitt Romney who is surrounded by neocons and trickle-down economists, or essentially boycott the process by voting for a third party or staying home. Some are angry because Robert Parry criticized Option Three.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 3, 2015 NYT's New Propaganda on Syria
The New York Times' new conspiracy theory about Syria is that the Assad regime is in cahoots with the Islamic State, calling those two bitter foes only "nominal enemies" and using this new story to implicitly push for another U.S.-imposed "regime change," writes Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 28, 2017 Russia-gate Is No Watergate or Iran-Contra
Many comparisons have been made between Russia-gate and the earlier scandals of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but the similarities are at best superficial, explains Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 28, 2017 The Slimy Business of Russia-gate
As the U.S. government doles out tens of millions of dollars to "combat Russian propaganda," one result is a slew of new "studies" by "scholars" and "researchers" auditioning for the loot, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 11, 2010 Big Media's Curious Nixon Judgment
We get to learn from the new Nixon tapes that he made bigoted assertions about "abrasive and obnoxious" Jews, Irish who get "mean" drunk, Italians without "heads screwed on tight," and blacks who would need "500 years" and have to "be, frankly, inbred" to become useful contributors to the nation.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 5, 2014 Forgetting Why Al-Qaeda Spread
Al-Qaeda extremism is resurgent across the Middle East with its affiliates seizing territory in western Iraq and in neighboring Syria. But the neocons are whitewashing their role in spreading this extremism via George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, reports Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, December 2, 2013 Contra-Cocaine Was a Real Conspiracy
he 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination saw a mainstream media blackout of nearly all evidence of conspiracy in that case. But New York Magazine went even further, mocking the proven Contra-cocaine scandal as a "conspiracy theory."
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 10, 2016 Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars?
Savvy neocons see Hillary Clinton as their Trojan Horse to be pulled into the White House by Democratic voters, raising the question: would a Clinton-45 presidency mean more wars? asks Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 26, 2013 Return of "Three-Fifths' of a Person
Stung by back-to-back defeats to Barack Obama, the Republican Party is undertaking a national strategy to devalue the votes of blacks and other minorities, a partial revival of the infamous clause in the U.S. Constitution rating African-American slaves as "Three-Fifths" of a person.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 20, 2012 How to Save the GOP
The only practical way to get the U.S. back on track economically is to raise taxes on the rich and use the money to rebuild the country. But anti-government extremists have taken over the Republican Party and won't let go. So, what can be done to save the GOP from itself?
(11 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 2, 2014 Ukrainians Get IMF's Bitter Medicine
Though lacking legitimacy from national elections, Ukraine’s coup regime has approved a harsh IMF austerity plan that hits Ukraine’s “99 percent†the hardest and asks little from the country’s “1 percent,†including the corrupt “oligarchs,†reports Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 24, 2015 The Nitwits Are in Charge
Pundit Thomas Friedman laments that the new Cold War isn't funny enough for him, but there really isn't anything funny about the U.S. plunging into an unnecessary nuclear showdown with Russia over Ukraine while Friedman and his fellow VIPs misreport what's happening, writes Robert Parry.
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 21, 2009 To Save the Republic, Tax the Rich?
We thought technological progress was going to mean more free time for the human race "" to play with the kids, to read a book, to travel or to just take it easy.
Instead, technology has contributed to making our lives more slavish and more brutish, especially when job loss is combined with lost health benefits and endless pressure from bill collectors.
(9 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 21, 2016 Trump's Need to Trust Americans
President Obama promised transparency but delivered a deceptive administration hostile to truth-tellers. President-elect Trump's narrow path to greatness would require the opposite choice, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 4, 2017 How 2nd Amendment Distortions Kill
The Las Vegas massacre underscores the intellectual dishonesty of the "gun rights" lobby, which falsifies Second Amendment history and pretends armed citizens could shoot back to stop slaughters, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 19, 2015 Seeking War to the End of the World
Despite the disastrous Iraq War, neocons still dominate Official Washington's inside-outside game, government policymakers coordinating with think-tank opinion leaders to keep world tensions high and money flowing to military projects, a process personified by Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland, says Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, April 6, 2009 Another Bush Intelligence Failure
Despite these two intelligence disasters, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission operated within its own narrow concept of what was politically acceptable, meaning that it couldn't very easily decry the politicization that Ronald Reagan molded and Bill Clinton hardened.
Instead, the commission recommended putting a new bureaucratic box on top of the old flow chart.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 20, 2017 Man Bites Dog: NYT Does Journalism
When the Trump administration blamed Cuba for a "sonic attack" on U.S. diplomats, a New York Times reporter did something unusual for his newspaper: he tried objectively to assess the evidence, as Robert Parry reports.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 6, 2009 Obama's Mideast Peace Dilemma
While it is unclear how President Obama feels about the Iranian initiative, he did mute his criticism of the Iranian post-election crackdown, at least initially.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 14, 2016 NFL's Crazy Conspiracy Theory Prevails
The lesson of the absurd "Deflategate" case is that a powerful institution like the NFL can ride roughshod over almost anyone, including quarterback Tom Brady, regardless of what the facts and logic are, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Sunday, July 19, 2009 Cronkite's Unintended Legacy
After the broadcast, President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the country." Johnson began serious negotiations aimed at ending the war before he left office, an endeavor that the Nixon campaign surreptitiously sabotaged.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 22, 2015 We Lucky Molecules
As American neocons and other war hawks push for endless war in the Mideast and now eastern Europe, the resulting chaos is straining the capacity of civilization to meet basic human needs and raising the risk of nuclear war, what would be a tragic ending to the Universe's luckiest molecules, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Wednesday, April 26, 2006 Bush's Hypocrisy: Cuban Terrorists
Like an aging rock star singing a beloved oldie, George W. Bush can count on cheers whenever he delivers a favorite line from the Bush Doctrine enunciated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks: Any country that harbors a terrorist is equally guilty as the terrorist.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, September 7, 2015 How Neocons Destabilized Europe
The neocon prescription of endless "regime change" is spreading chaos across the Middle East and now into Europe, yet the neocons still control the mainstream U.S. narrative and thus have diagnosed the problem as not enough "regime change," as Robert Parry reports.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 18, 2012 Mitt Romney's New Lie
Mitt Romney is echoing a lie that has been rumbling through the right-wing echo chamber, a selectively edited comment by President Obama about how roads, bridges and other public spending help business. This is a classic case where "independent fact-checkers" could help out.
(11 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 5, 2009 The Need to Hold the GOP Accountable
Congressional Republicans voted almost unanimously against every major piece of legislation that Obama proposed to address short- and long-term national problems. It was, as some observed, like watching the arsonist who set the fire throwing rocks at the firefighters who tried to put out the blaze.
Which brings us to the central role of George W. Bush's younger brother Jeb at a Saturday event in Arlington, Virginia....
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 14, 2017 The Foundering Russia-gate "Scandal"
Taking on water from revealed FBI conflicts of interest, the foundering Russia-gate probe -- and its mainstream media promoters -- are resorting to insults against people who note the listing ship, writes Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 1, 2015 Ukraine Rightists Kill Police; Putin Blamed
As rightists riot in Ukraine -- killing three policemen in a protest against making any concessions to ethnic Russians in the east -- The New York Times had to move nimbly to again foist all the blame on Russia's President Putin, but the Times was up to the propaganda task, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 12, 2013 Ronald Reagan: Accessory to Genocide
More than any recent U.S. president, Ronald Reagan has been lavished with honors, including his name attached to Washington's National Airport. But the conviction of Reagan's old ally, ex-Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt, for genocide means "Ronnie" must face history's judgment as an accessory to the crime.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 16, 2012 How Tea Partiers Diss the Framers
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution never looked smarter than when the American system of a strong central government is compared to the European Union model, a loose federation staggered by disunity. But the Tea Partiers want a states' rights structure more like Europe's.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 4, 2014 Another NYT "Sort of" Retraction on Ukraine
The mainstream U.S. media likes to talk about Ukraine as an "information war," meaning that the Russians are making stuff up. But the false narratives are actually being hatched more on the U.S. side, as a new New York Times story acknowledges, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 12, 2013 Obama's Syria Strategy at a Crossroads
The Islamic Front's capture of a U.S.-stocked supply depot in northern Syria prompted a suspension of those shipments to "moderate" Syrian rebels. The incident also drove home how Islamists are gaining ground -- and why President Obama may shift U.S. strategy.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 8, 2017 Trump and Democrats Misread Mandates
Neither the Democrats nor President Trump learned the right lessons from the 2016 election, leaving the nation divided at home and bogged down in wars abroad, writes Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 19, 2016 Will We Miss President Obama?
President Obama doesn't take on Official Washington's powerful neocons head-on, but he does drag his heels on some of their crazy schemes, which is better than America can expect from Hillary Clinton, writes Robert Parry.
(17 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 6, 2014 Obama's Last Chance
For six years, President Obama has bent to the will of Official Washington by reneging on promises to the American people for "transparency" and operating instead as an out-of-touch "insider." Now, the Democratic election debacle offers him a last chance to remember why he was elected, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Wednesday, February 18, 2015 Ukraine Finance Minister's American "Values"
Special Report: Among the arguments for why Americans should risk nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine is that the regime that took power in a coup last year "shares our values." But one of those "values" -- personified by Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko -- may be the skill of using insider connections, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 12, 2017 Pulling a J. Edgar Hoover on Trump
President-elect Trump is fending off a U.S. intelligence leak of unproven allegations that he cavorted with Russian prostitutes, but the darker story might be the CIA's intervention in U.S. politics, reports Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 8, 2011 Is Gingrich Fit to Be President?
Soaring in the polls, Newt Gingrich is confidently predicting his capture of the Republican presidential nomination and now sees the White House within his grasp. But, is this divisive megalomaniac fit to run the most powerful nation on earth?
SHARE Wednesday, October 19, 2016 The Democrats' Joe McCarthy Moment
To shield Hillary Clinton from criticism of her Wall Street speeches, the Democrats are engaging in a new McCarthyism for the New Cold War, suggesting that Donald Trump is in league with the Russians, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 9, 2013 Rethinking Watergate/Iran-Contra
New evidence continues to accumulate showing how Official Washington got key elements of the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals wrong, especially how these two crimes of state originated in treacherous actions to secure the powers of the presidency.
(10 comments) SHARE Monday, September 15, 2014 Ukraine's "Romantic" Nazi Storm Troopers
While most civilized people view the Swastika and other Nazi symbols as abhorrent reminders of unspeakable evil, the Washington Post trotted out a new way of seeing them -- as "romantic" -- a sign that apologists for Ukraine's coup regime know no limits, reports Robert Parry.
(10 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 2, 2016 The Bigger Nuclear Risk: Trump or Clinton?
If the U.S. election comes down to Hillary Clinton v. Donald Trump, the American people will have to decide between two candidates who could risk the future of the planet, albeit for very different reasons, writes Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 14, 2010 Cheney Exposes Torture Conspiracy
Cheney acknowledged that the White House had told the Justice Department lawyers what legal opinions to render. In other words, the opinions amounted to ordered-up lawyering to permit the administration to do whatever it wanted.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 20, 2014 WPost's Anti-Putin "Group Think"
In a stunning display of “group think,†virtually the entire Washington Post editorial section was devoted to denunciations of Russian President Putin, especially his “crazy†belief that the U.S. government often ignores international law and applies “the rule of the gun,†reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 21, 2014 Behind Obama's "Chaotic" Foreign Policy
The chaos enveloping U.S. foreign policy stems from President Obama's unwillingness to challenge Official Washington's power centers which favor neoconservatism and "liberal interventionism" -- strategies that have often undercut real U.S. national security interests, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Monday, February 28, 2011 Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome
What Americans didn't know at the time -- and still don't understand today -- is that this first U.S. war with Iraq had become less about liberating Kuwait and more about consolidating domestic public support behind a new phase of the American Empire, one that continues to this day.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 22, 2013 What to Make of Barack Obama?
In his Second Inaugural Address, President Obama offered a powerful rejoinder to the Right by arguing that progressive reform fits firmly within the Founders' vision of a strong country advancing the "general Welfare" and securing "Blessings of Liberty." But does his rhetoric reflect the real Obama?
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 24, 2014 The State Department's Ukraine Fiasco
The State Department's handling of the Ukraine crisis may go down as a textbook diplomatic fiasco, doing nothing to advance genuine U.S. interests while disrupting cooperation with Moscow and pushing Russia and China back together, reports Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 6, 2014 Sidestepping Ukraine's "N-Word" for Nazi
The mainstream U.S. media is hazing German Chancellor Merkel and President Obama for sidestepping the "I-word" -- invasion -- in reference to Russia and Ukraine. But the MSM goes mute on Ukraine's "N-word" for "Nazi" so as not to disrupt the pro-Kiev "group think," says Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 4, 2014 The Only Standards Are Double Standards
President Obama is still embracing Official Washington's false narrative on Ukraine as he hypocritically blames the crisis entirely on Moscow and ignores the West's role in toppling an elected president and provoking a nasty civil war, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 6, 2010 Obama Threatens Iran with Nukes
In readjusting U.S. policy on when to launch a nuclear strike, President Barack Obama has repudiated the use of nukes against non-nuclear states with the exception of Iran, which he termed an "outlier" along with North Korea.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 23, 2010 Bush Gloats Over Dan Rather's Ouster
George W. Bush, in his memoir Decision Points, says he was shown a copy of a purported memo about his shirking of his National Guard duty before a story citing the document appeared on CBS' "60 Minutes-2," and the former president gloats over the resulting controversy that cost the jobs of Dan Rather and his star producer Mary Mapes. Bush's account suggests the White House may have had a larger role in discrediting the memo.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 10, 2011 Bachmann's Aide Hides $10M Secret
When Rep. Michelle Bachmann landed Ed Rollins as her campaign manager, the move gave a shot of credibility to her presidential bid. Washington pundits adore Rollins and his blunt style, so much so that they have ignored the fact that he is still covering up an illegal $10 million suitcase full of cash from Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 26, 2013 Obama's Not-So-Terrible Year
Official Washington is giving a big thumb down to President Obama's performance in 2013. But his diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East and even some of his troubles with Obamacare and the NSA could ultimately make the year a historic turning point, says Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, October 31, 2016 Who Will Weed Out the Warmongers?
Progressive Democrats are gearing up to fight Wall Street appointees to a Hillary Clinton administration, but there is no similar campaign to weed out neocon/liberal-hawk warmongers, writes Robert Parry.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 7, 2017 US Report Still Lacks Proof on Russia "Hack"
Despite mainstream media acceptance, the U.S. intelligence community's assessment on alleged Russian "hacking" still lacks hard public evidence, a case of "trust-us" by politicized spy agencies, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 18, 2009 Why the Right's Propaganda Works
As much as the Left criticizes Obama and the Democrats for bungling health-care reform and showing a lack of courage on a range of other issues "" all valid points "" the larger problem can be traced back to the Left's historic miscalculation on media.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 11, 2012 The Neocons and 9/11
The emerging history of 9/11 reveals that President George W. Bush's failure to protect the nation resulted from neocon insistence that Iraq was the real threat, not al-Qaeda. The political relevance today is that the neocons want back into power under a Mitt Romney presidency.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 4, 2016 Libya's "Chaos Theory" Undercuts Hillary
Hillary Clinton's Libyan "regime change" project remains in chaos with one U.S. official likening rival factions to rogue water "droplets" resisting a U.S.-carved rewards-and-punishment "channel" to reconciliation, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, December 30, 2016 Details Still Lacking on Russian "Hack"
The mainstream U.S. media is all atwitter about Russia having to pay a price for hacking into Democratic emails and supposedly tilting the U.S. election to Donald Trump, but the evidence still is lacking, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, September 12, 2011 Who Are These People?
When President George W. Bush took aim at Iraq in 2002-03, it was the smart career play in the U.S. news media to jump on the pro-war bandwagon and cheer on propaganda about WMD and other excuses for war. Belatedly, the New York Times' Bill Keller admits that mistakes were made
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 25, 2010 Covert US Military Strategy on Iran
"The Obama administration insists that for the moment, it is committed to penalizing Iran for its nuclear activities only with diplomatic and economic sanctions. Nevertheless, the Pentagon has to draw up detailed war plans to be prepared in advance, in the event that President Obama ever authorizes a strike."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, October 30, 2017 Guardians of the Magnitsky Myth
In pursuit of Russia-gate, the U.S. mainstream media embraces any attack on Russia and works to ensure that Americans don't hear the other side of the story, as with the Magnitsky myth, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, April 5, 2010 Is Vatican Guilty in Child-Sex Scandal?
As the outside world has looked on with horror at the endless accounts of child molestation, the main Church response has been to tighten the protective circle around the Vatican and especially Pope Benedict. Despite some words of regret about the rape victims, the Vatican's angrier reactions have been directed against those who would dare question the pope.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 22, 2012 "Lucky" Voters Can Pick Romney
Mitt Romney's political struggles are testing the patience of the Republican presidential nominee and his wife Ann, who tells Americans that they should know how "lucky" they are that her husband is offering himself as the nation's savior. Romney's message to voters is "you're welcome."
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 1, 2014 Will the Right's Fake History Prevail?
Tea Partiers have convinced millions of Americans that they are standing with the Constitution's Framers in a common disdain for a strong, activist federal government. That is false history but it is undergirding the expected Republican congressional victories on Tuesday, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 24, 2015 Turkey Provokes Russia with Shoot-down
Turkey appears to have deliberately shot down a Russian warplane as a provocation designed to escalate tensions between NATO and Russia, a ploy that seems to have sucked in President Obama as he tries to look tough against Russia to appease his neocon critics, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 30, 2013 Tea Party and "12 Years a Slave"
Some on the Right like to compare the Affordable Care Act to slavery, apparently to get under the skin of Barack Obama, the first African-American president. But the glib talking point also reveals a callous disregard for slavery's evils, which popular culture is finally addressing.
(18 comments) SHARE Monday, April 4, 2016 "Corruption" as a Propaganda Weapon
Mainstream U.S. journalism and propaganda are getting hard to tell apart, as with the flurry of "corruption" stories aimed at Russia's Putin and other demonized foreign leaders, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 29, 2010 Gen. Petraeus and the 'Surge' Myth
It appears that people in both Iraq and Afghanistan don't much like having foreigners from around the world occupying their countries. But that is not a reality that David Petraeus -- or the Washington press corps -- is likely to take to heart.
(9 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 3, 2014 Itching for a Genocide
A meeting of French, German, Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers sought a new ceasefire in Ukraine, but the U.S. State Department and the mainstream U.S. media seem eager for more bloodshed, an unseemly rush into a war that could become genocide, writes Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 27, 2016 Clinton Toned Down Her Hawkishness
Hillary Clinton's strongest point in Monday's debate may have been what she didn't say, as she avoided a return to her hawkish rhetoric that has alienated many anti-war Democrats, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Tuesday, October 11, 2016 Debate Moderator Distorted Syrian Reality
The American people are receiving a highly distorted view of the Syrian war -- much propaganda, little truth -- including from one of the moderators at the second presidential debate, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, March 20, 2017 NYT's "Tinfoil Hat" Conspiracy Theory
There is a "tinfoil-hat" quality to The New York Times' pushing its "Donald Trump Is Russia's Manchurian Candidate" conspiracy theory as the newspaper sinks deeper into a New McCarthyism, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 9, 2016 Democrats Are Now the Aggressive War Party
For nearly a half century -- since late in the Vietnam War -- the Democrats have been the less warlike of the two parties, but that has flipped with the choice of war hawk Hillary Clinton, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 9, 2010 Hard Lessons from Decades Past
By the early 1990s, the historic role of the American press as watchdogs for the public had been transformed. Instead of growling at the corrupt and powerful, the press corps had become guard dogs, protecting the new Republican establishment and snarling at citizens, whistleblowers and even fellow journalists who sought to expose wrongdoing.
SHARE Tuesday, November 10, 2015 How Ukraine's Finance Chief Got Rich
Ukraine's Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko collected at least $1.77 million in bonuses from a U.S.-taxpayer-funded investment project that she ran even as it was losing money, a sign that her image as a paragon of public-interest "reform" may not be all that it's cracked up to be, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 21, 2016 WPost's "Agit-Prop" for the New Cold War
The Washington Post, the neocons' media flagship, has fired a broadside at a new documentary after it blasted a hole in the side of the anti-Russian Magnitsky narrative, which helped launch the new Cold War, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 3, 2016 MH-17 Probe's Torture-Implicated Ally
The Ukrainian intelligence service at the center of the inquiry into who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is accused by a top U.N. official of blocking a probe into Ukrainian government torture, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Friday, February 1, 2013 The Lesson in Hagel's Inquisition
Several U.S. senators rudely questioned Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel for alleged heresies against Official Washington's orthodoxies, like his strange detection of an Israel Lobby operating on Capitol Hill and his refusal to accept that the 2007 troop "surge" in Iraq won that war.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, August 19, 2013 Did Manning Help Avert War in Iran?
Government prosecutors are seeking 60 years in prison for Pvt. Bradley Manning as punishment for his release of classified documents. But little attention is being paid to the benefits from those disclosures, including how he may have helped prevent a war with Iran.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, June 15, 2012 Admissions on Nixon's "Treason"
Definitive proof of a historical mystery is often elusive, even with archival documents and memoirs. Skeptics can always say some witness or some evidence isn't perfect. But the case that Richard Nixon sabotaged the Vietnam peace talks in 1968 to win that pivotal election is clear.
SHARE Thursday, September 30, 2010 Our Unheeded Warnings to Obama
In the days after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, we published a three-part series warning him of dangers ahead. However, the new President chose to ignore all our warnings. So nearly two years later, it might be a good time to assess whether our concerns were valid or not.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, June 15, 2015 Samantha Power: Liberal War Hawk
Liberal interventionist Samantha Power -- along with neocon allies -- appears to have prevailed in the struggle over how President Obama will conduct his foreign policy in his last months in office, promoting aggressive strategies that will lead to more death and destruction, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 26, 2015 The Trump/Sanders Phenomenon
The prospect of another competition between the Clinton and Bush dynasties has sent activists from across the political spectrum searching for someone new -- and leading to the unlikely emergence of unorthodox candidates, billionaire Donald Trump and socialist Bernie Sanders, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 9, 2008 The Significance of Nixon's 'Treason'
You might have thought that when audiotapes were released of President Lyndon Johnson accusing Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign of "treason" for sabotaging Vietnam peace talks - as 500,000 U.S. troops sat in a war zone - the major U.S. news media would be all over it, providing insight and context. If you thought that, of course, you would be wrong.
SHARE Wednesday, December 31, 2014 Murdoch, Scaife and CIA Propaganda
The rapid expansion of America's right-wing media began in the 1980s as the Reagan administration coordinated foreign policy initiatives with conservative media executives, including Rupert Murdoch, and then cleared away regulatory hurdles, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 30, 2015 A Glimmer of Hope for Syria
With new negotiations starting in Geneva -- and with Iran now allowed to participate -- there is finally a glimmer of hope that the Syrian slaughter might end. But that will require concessions from all sides and President Obama standing up to the neocons who put "regime change" ahead of peace, writes Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 17, 2011 Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal
"When I was born [on Jan. 30, 1941] my granddad wanted to send a telegram to the president," Cheney writes in his memoir. "Both sides of my family were staunch New Deal Democrats, and Granddad was sure that FDR would want to know about the 'little stranger' with whom he now had a birthday in common."
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 18, 2016 A Spy Coup in America?
As the Electoral College assembles, U.S. intelligence agencies are stepping up a campaign to delegitimize Donald Trump as a Russian stooge, raising concerns about a spy coup in America, reports Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 24, 2008 Cheney's Shocking Admissions on How Close He Came to Nearly Destroying the Country
Though Cheney cited constitutional precedents from the Civil War&WWII to justify his position,what has made the "war on terror" such an insidious basis for asserting the broadest presidential powers is that it is amorphous both in time &space.Unlike conventional wars that have beginnings and ends-as well as battlefronts-this "war" is theoretically everywhere and never-ending,with constitutional limits eliminated forever.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 31, 2011 In Libya, a Bloodbath Looms
The Orwellian hypocrisy of NATO's mission "to protect civilians" in Libya has now been encapsulated in a vow from a NATO-backed Libyan rebel who announced plans to crush the few towns still loyal to Muammar Gaddafi with the words, "sometimes to avoid bloodshed you must shed blood."
SHARE Tuesday, May 4, 2010 Did Kent State Have to Happen?
Today, looking at the consequences from the resulting Republican political dominance over much of the past four decades -" weakened labor unions, rampant deregulation, a shrinking American middle class, a swelling national debt, endless foreign wars, crimped civil liberties, and a deeply polarized electorate -" the question must be: did it all have to happen?
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 19, 2016 US Media as Conduits of Propaganda
The "group think" about the Syrian government crossing President Obama's "red line" in a 2013 sarin attack has collapsed, but The New York Times still reports it as flat fact, an industry-wide problem, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, February 13, 2012 The Right's Inside-Out Constitution
The revisionist view is now at the heart of the Tea Party movement and is reflected in comments by Republican presidential hopefuls, such as the insistence of Rep. Ron Paul of Texas that much of what the federal government has done domestically in recent decades has been unconstitutional. It also apparently was what Gingrich was driving at with his recent comment about his belief in the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 7, 2013 The Right's Re-Branding, 1860 to 1776
A new poll says 44 percent of Republicans believe "an armed revolution" may be needed in the next few years "to protect liberties," proof of the Right's success in re-branding itself with Revolutionary War symbols and fueling paranoia about the elected national government.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, December 6, 2013 Honoring Mandela, Not Reagan
The U.S. government's relationship with Nelson Mandela was often strained, from the CIA's hand in his imprisonment to Ronald Reagan's veto of a sanctions bill aimed at getting him freed, lost history that must now be reconciled.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 15, 2015 Are Neocons an Existential Threat?
Despite a record of unprecedented error, American neocons remain the dominant foreign policy force in Official Washington, demanding more "regime change" in the Middle East and a new Cold War that could heat up and end all life on the planet, writes Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 9, 2017 Trump's Foreign Policy at a Crossroads
Recent U.S. foreign policy -- driven by neocons and liberal hawks -- has spread chaos and death around the globe. But can "crazy" Donald Trump bring sanity to how the U.S. approaches the world, asks Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, December 23, 2013 UN Investigator Undercuts NYT on Syria
Amid last summer's rush to judgment on the Aug. 21 Sarin attack in Syria, the New York Times joined the stampede blaming the Assad regime by pushing a "vector analysis" showing where the rockets supposedly were launched, but now that certainty has collapsed.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 16, 2015 Explaining Myself
U.S. government propagandists know that the best way to get Americans to support a war is to get them despising and laughing at some "designated villain," though the technique applies to more mundane cases, too. That's when journalists should step in but often they just pile on, says Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 22, 2015 Will US Grasp Putin's Syria Lifeline?
The neocons' obsession with "regime change" in Syria is driving another one of Official Washington's "group thinks" toward rejecting Russia's offer to help stabilize the war-torn country and stem the destabilizing flood of refugees into Europe, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 7, 2016 Reality Peeks Through in Ukraine
With corruption rampant and living standards falling, Ukraine may become the next failed state that "benefited" from a neoconservative-driven "regime change," though the blame will always be placed elsewhere -- in this case, on the demonized Russian President Putin, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 14, 2008 Obama and US-Russia Tensions
Author's Note: The following article was written by two analysts from an international organization. However, given the political sensitivity of NATO expansion and anti-missile deployments, we are publishing the article anonymously at their request
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, July 21, 2014 Kerry's Latest Reckless Rush to Judgment
Though the investigation of the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 has barely begun, the Obama administration and the U.S. media have sold the world on the narrative blaming Russia's President Putin, with Secretary of State Kerry sealing the deal, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, March 25, 2011 The Neocons Regroup on Libyan War
Over the past several decades as the neocons have grown in influence inside the U.S. political/media circles, one of their consistent characteristics has been to advocate wars against perceived "enemies" in the Muslim world. The neocons have one great strength: they are clever enough -- and well-connected enough -- to block any accountability.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, April 18, 2014 The Dangerous Neocon-R2P Alliance
After U.S. neocons helped stir up a crisis in Ukraine—with a big assist from the biased American press corps – the Obama administration looked for a diplomatic off-ramp, but this pattern of hyped outrage and belated reconciliation is a risky way to make foreign policy, says Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 18, 2009 WPost Is a Neocon Propaganda Sheet
For Americans who hear the name Washington Post and still think of "All the President's Men" – brave journalists and editors facing down a corrupt President – today's version of the newspaper would be a sad disappointment, a betrayal of a noble past.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 29, 2013 NYT Backs Off Its Syria-Sarin Analysis
For months, the "slam-dunk" evidence "proving" Syrian government guilt in the Aug. 21 Sarin attack near Damascus was a "vector analysis" pushed by the New York Times showing where the rockets supposedly were launched. But the Times now grudgingly admits its analysis was flawed, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Tuesday, November 22, 2011 Slanting the Case on Iran's Nukes
The U.S. news media shows no skepticism as it accepts the toughly worded report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. Ignored is the fact that the IAEA's new chief appears to have joined the U.S./Israel camp.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 12, 2014 How "Looking Forward" Tripped Up Obama
President Obama has stumbled into a constitutional firefight between the CIA and Senate Intelligence Committee over the spy agency’s attempted cover-up of its Bush-era torture practices, a clash he could have averted by wielding a declassification stamp, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Monday, February 27, 2012 Santorum "Throws Up" on JFK/Obama
Rick Santorum says he almost threw up reading John Kennedy's 1960 speech on religious tolerance, and the GOP presidential hopeful sees sinister intent in President Obama's plea that young Americans seek higher education. So, what would a Santorum America be like?
SHARE Sunday, April 8, 2012 GOP Five's Code: "Power Is Power"
In December 2000, what was at stake was not only the enormous powers of the presidency but one specific power in particular, the ability to appoint federal judges and justices. If Gore had been allowed to become president, that would have meant at least 12 consecutive years of Democratic control of the judicial appointment power, thus threatening Republican domination of the Supreme Court and the lower courts.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 3, 2009 Obama Pleases the Neocons
The neocon detachment from reality continues to pervade their wishful thinking about a successful counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, the nation they persuaded Bush to put on the back burner so they could advance their grandiose vision of Middle East victories.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, February 15, 2013 How Neocons Messed Up the Mideast
Newly available documents reveal how Ronald Reagan's neocon aides cleared the way for Israeli arm sales to Iran in 1981, shortly after Iran freed 52 U.S. hostages whose captivity doomed Jimmy Carter's reelection. The move also planted the seeds of the Iran-Contra scandal.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, February 3, 2017 "Deflategate" Cloud over the Super Bowl
There's a larger point to the NFL's bizarre Deflategate story -- how checks and balances have broken down in America letting powerful institutions do almost whatever they want to anyone even Tom Brady, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 11, 2016 Neocons and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill
Hillary Clinton wants the American voters to be very afraid of Donald Trump, but there is reason to fear as well what a neoconservative/neoliberal Clinton presidency would mean for the world, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Tuesday, July 3, 2012 Shamir's October Surprise Admission
Two decades ago, ex-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir offered the stunning confirmation that "of course" an October Surprise plot had blocked President Jimmy Carter from gaining the release of 52 U.S. hostages in Iran, thus helping Ronald Reagan win the presidency in 1980.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 6, 2014 NYT Dishes More Ukraine Propaganda
The mainstream U.S. media continues to sell the American people a one-sided storyline on the Ukraine crisis as the Kiev regime celebrates a key military victory at Slovyansk, an eastern city at the center of ethnic Russian resistance to last February's violent coup that ousted elected President Yanukovych, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, September 28, 2015 The Power of False Narrative
"Strategic communications" or Stratcom, a propaganda/psy-op technique that treats information as a "soft power" weapon to wield against adversaries, is a new catch phrase in an Official Washington obsessed with the clout that comes from spinning false narratives, reports Robert Parry.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 13, 2016 Hypocrisy Behind the Russian-Election Frenzy
The madness sweeping Official Washington and the mainstream media about alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election is pervaded by breathtaking hypocrisy, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Monday, January 10, 2011 Dangerous Right-Wing 'Victimhood'
Though it was clear from initial reports that Loughner was a troubled young man, it was less clear what exactly set him off. FBI Director Mueller noted how threats and hate speech especially over the Internet, can lead to "lone wolves or lone offenders undertaking attacks." Another common thread in the recent history of political violence is how often attackers are motivated by what they view as their "victimhood."
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 9, 2016 Two Corrupt Establishments
The insurgent campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have staggered Official Washington's twin corrupt establishments on the Republican and Democratic sides, but what happens next, asks Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, December 12, 2014 How "Awesome" Is America?
America has an extraordinary capacity to submerge unpleasant truths about its past and present, from African-American slavery and Native-American genocide to bloodbaths in Vietnam and Iraq. Now faced with clear evidence of torture, one cheerleader simply says the U.S. is "awesome," as Robert Parry reports.
SHARE Sunday, August 16, 2015 Neocons to Americans: Trust Us Again
Marching in lockstep with Israeli hardliners, American neocons are aiming their heavy media artillery at the Iran nuclear deal as a necessary first step toward another "regime change" war in the Mideast -- and they are furious when anyone mentions the Iraq War disaster and the deceptions that surrounded it, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Tuesday, February 28, 2017 Mainstream Media's "Victimhood"
Just weeks ago, mainstream U.S. media decried "fake news" and backed a blacklist of independent news sites over "Russian propaganda." Now, under fire from President Trump, the MSM loves a free press, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 27, 2010 Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It!
The New York Times and its senior editors have matched the Post's hysterical coverage of Iran, much as they also contributed to the rush to war in Iraq. Since last June, the Times has run many editorials and news stories that reflect a deep-seated bias against Ahmadinejad and his government.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 5, 2014 An Insider's View of Nixon's "Treason"
A recently released oral history by one of President Nixon's secretive operatives sheds new light on perhaps Nixon's darkest crime, the sabotaging of Vietnam peace talks so he could win the 1968 election, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 23, 2014 NYT Retracts Russian-Photo Scoop
After starting a propaganda stampede --- with a lead story about photos of Russian troops purportedly in Ukraine --- the New York Times admits the pictures really don't prove much, and one photo was labeled as snapped in Russia when it was really taken in Ukraine, writes Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 18, 2016 Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?
The risk that the multi-sided Syrian war could spark World War III continues as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and U.S. neocons seek an invasion that could kill Russian troops -- and possibly escalate the Syrian crisis into a nuclear showdown, amazingly to protect Al Qaeda terrorists, reports Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 3, 2010 The Right Gets Itself 'Wired'
"The ability of a single e-mail to shape a message illustrates the power of the conservative network -- loosely affiliated blogs, radio hosts, "tea-party' organizers and D.C. institutions that are binding together to fuel opposition to President Obama," said the Washington Post's Jerry Markon.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 30, 2011 Questioning Obama's Americanism
While some on the American Left seem to have forgotten how extraordinary it was for the United States to elect a talented black politician as president, it does not appear that the Right has been so colorblind.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 1, 2014 Official Washington's Syrian "Fantasy"
It is perhaps not news that the U.S. government bases wars on illusions, such as the nonexistent WMD in Iraq, but it is rare when there is a broad consensus before the conflict begins that a war's success rests on a "fantasy" like the chimera of "moderate" Syrian rebels, reports Robert Parry.
(17 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 4, 2013 Rethinking Thomas Jefferson
Americans are proud that their Declaration of Independence was also a declaration of universal rights. But the hard truth is that, in 1776, the words were mere propaganda cloaking the fact that a third of the signers were slaveholders, including the famous author, Thomas Jefferson.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 2, 2014 NYT Shows How Propaganda Works
The U.S. mainstream media pretends it operates with professional standards of objectivity and fairness, but -- especially in its international reporting -- the only real standards are double standards, as the New York Times has shown on Ukraine and Syria, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 9, 2014 The Heinous Crime Behind Watergate
The mainstream media's big takeaway from Richard Nixon's Watergate resignation is that "the cover-up is always worse than the crime." But that's because few understand the crime behind Watergate, Nixon's frantic search for a file on his 1968 subversion of Vietnam peace talks, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Friday, December 27, 2013 The Year of the "Leaker"
Critics of "leakers" Manning and Snowden claim that unauthorized disclosures risk lives, but a stronger case can be made that many more lives have been lost due to government deceptions on issues of war or peace, lies that secrecy made possible, writes Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Monday, June 29, 2015 Confronting Southern "Victimhood"
Many white Southerners are getting their backs up again over demands that the Confederate flag and other symbols of slavery be removed. But the core problem is that the South never admitted that slavery and then segregation were wrong, instead offering endless excuses, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 21, 2013 How Reagan Promoted Genocide
A newly discovered document reveals that President Reagan and his national security team in 1981 approved Guatemala's extermination of both leftist guerrillas and their "civilian support mechanisms," a green light that opened a path to genocide against hundreds of Mayan villages.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 9, 2009 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed
Obama's cover-up of the Bush administration's crimes also enables the Republicans to gloss over the abuses of the past eight years and makes a GOP comeback more likely in the not-too-distant future. It's also a sure bet that the Republicans will do Obama no reciprocal favors, anymore than they did for Bill Clinton, who similarly concealed Reagan-Bush-I abuses.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 29, 2011 Slip-Sliding to War with Iran
Having apparently learned nothing from the Iraq disaster, many of the same political/media players are reprising their tough-guy roles in a new drama regarding Iran. These retread performances may make another war, with Iran, hard to avoid, writes Robert Parry
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 19, 2017 How the NYT Plays with History
By failing to tell the hard truth about Establishment wrongdoing, The New York Times -- along with other mainstream U.S. media outlets -- has destabilized American democracy, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 3, 2013 Perverting the Constitution for Power
The U.S. Supreme Court's right-wingers are making bizarre arguments for gutting the Voting Rights Act, suggesting their real goal is to allow more suppression of minority voters and thus elect a Republican president who will keep the right-wingers as the Court's majority.
SHARE Sunday, August 16, 2009 WTimes' Hypocritical Obama-Nazi Slur
Anti-Obama protestors were showing up at rallies with Obama pictured with a Hitler mustache. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh likened Obama's logo for health care reform to a Nazi symbol. A swastika was painted on the office sign of a Democratic member of Congress.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, January 18, 2013 The Right's Dangerously Bad History
Reacting to President Obama's modest executive orders on gun safety and his proposed legislation to Congress, the Right is engaging in hysterical rhetoric about "tyranny" and riling up angry whites to arm themselves. But key Republicans can't even get their historical facts straight.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 3, 2015 Dangerous Redefinition of "Terrorism"
"Terrorism" is a word of condemnation, referring to the coldblooded killing of civilians to advance a political cause. But U.S. pundits and officials have blurred its meaning to cover attacks on American soldiers in foreign lands, a word game that can contribute to more wars, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 26, 2015 Obama's Flak Demeans Putin's Posture
Afraid of neocon criticism, President Obama is going out of his way to insult Russian President Putin prior to a summit meeting. Obama's press secretary mocked Putin as "desperate" and accused him of displaying poor posture in a meeting with Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, reports Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 14, 2015 Can Obama Level with the People?
Another terrorist outrage -- this one in Paris -- is spreading fear and fury across Europe. Which makes this a key moment for President Obama to finally level with the American people about how U.S. "allies" -- such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar -- have been aiding and abetting extremists, reports Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 23, 2013 Treating Anti-Syria Charges as Flat Fact
More than two months after the chemical weapons attack near Damascus, President Obama has still not released any proof to support his allegations blaming the Syrian government. But the New York Times has embraced the accusations as flat fact, a replay of the run-up to invading Iraq.
SHARE Thursday, July 23, 2015 NYT Enforces Ukraine "Group Think"
Determined to enforce the "group think" on Ukraine, the editors of The New York Times lashed out at Russia for urging an expanded inquiry into last year's MH-17 shoot-down. But the Times won't join calls for the U.S. government to release its intelligence on the tragedy, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 28, 2013 The Neo-Confederate Supreme Court
The Right's desperation over U.S. demographic changes has spread to the U.S. Supreme Court where its five Republican partisans appear ready to tear up the most important part of the Voting Rights Act and thus clear the way for suppressing the votes of minorities. The Supreme Court's arguments tend to sound more like a pundit debate on Fox News.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 28, 2014 How Neocons Constrain Obama's Message
President Obama said that just because the U.S. military is "the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail" -- a wise observation -- but he then confused his foreign policy speech by pandering to neocon narratives on crises in Ukraine and elsewhere, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 9, 2014 Crimea’s Case for Leaving Ukraine
Virtually everyone in Official Washington is condemning Russian “aggression†in Ukraine and demanding a belligerent U.S. response to Crimea’s desire to secede and join Russia, as a new Cold War hysteria grips U.S. pols and pundits, reports Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 29, 2009 Al-Qaeda Outwitted Bush, Neocons
One of the most remarkable aspects of life in Washington today is how the neocons remain exceptionally influential. They keep their well-paid jobs at prestigious think tanks, write books for major publishing houses, and control key opinion columns in the Washington Post and, to a lesser degree, the New York Times.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, March 28, 2016 Bernie Sanders as Commander-in-Chief
Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii congresswoman and Iraq War veteran, stars in a stunning ad endorsing Bernie Sanders as "Commander-in-Chief," a potential turning point in the Democratic race, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 8, 2010 Who's Right? Obama or the 'Base'?
Obama compared the current liberal furor over his tax-cut deal with Republicans to the fury on the Left over his abandonment of the "public option" in health-care reform. But the latest anger among progressives reflects more than that; it is a cumulative disgust.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, November 17, 2014 Letting the Neocons Lead
At the G-20 meeting, Putin-bashing was all the rage, as President Obama and other Western leaders berated Russian President Putin for his supposed "aggression" in Ukraine. The mainstream media also piled on. But the reality is much more complex, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 15, 2011 Big Media's Double Standards on Iran
The mainstream U.S. press corps is again pounding the propaganda war drums, this time over dubious accusations of Iran's secret work on a nuclear bomb. It is a pattern of bias that is the U.S. media's worst -- and most dangerous -- ethical violation.
SHARE Saturday, July 19, 2014 Airline Horror Spurs New Rush to Judgment
President Obama and the State Department's "anti-diplomats" are fanning flames of anger against Russia after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine. But some U.S. intelligence analysts doubt the popular "blame-the-Russians" scenario, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Sunday, October 29, 2006 Original October Surprise (Part 3)
Editor's Note: Part 3 of our series about the "Original October Surprise" of 1980 addresses the troubling question of whether disgruntled CIA officers collaborated with their former boss, George H.W. Bush, to sabotage President Jimmy Carter's Iran-hostage negotiations -- and thus changed the course of U.S. political history. Links to part 1 & 2 are featured also.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, June 17, 2011 Bob Gates' "Business" of Lying
As Defense Secretary Robert Gates prepares to retire in late June, he is routinely lauded as a "wise man" committed to telling it like it is, even making a frank comment this week about how "most governments lie to each other." But Gates's own record for honesty is a deeply checkered one.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 30, 2012 Some Israelis Resist Netanyahu
In the past week, several senior Israelis have criticized the extremism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward Iran and the Palestinians, but his American supporters continue to escalate their denunciations of anyone who won't march in lockstep.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 13, 2012 Romney-Ryan Bet on "Greedy Geezers"
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were quick to assure U.S. seniors that they will be grandfathered in to today's Medicare -- even if younger Americans get stuck with an inferior system -- a bet that the selfishness of "greedy geezers" will grease the way to a Republican victory.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 21, 2010 Al Haig and a 'Green Light' to Chaos
A "top secret" document authored by Haig in 1981 contained a stunning claim: that Carter, frustrated over his failure to resolve the hostage crisis, gave a "green light" to Iraq's Saddam Hussein to invade Iran in September 1980, starting a war that altered the region's power balance and reverberates to today.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, May 1, 2009 Who Betrayed 'Objective' Journalism?
Though the world has now seen the extraordinary cost in blood and treasure because of the failure of the U.S. news media to act professionally in the run-up to the Iraq War, there is little indication that the national press corps has learned lasting lessons from that catastrophe.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 15, 2010 Lessons from America's Lost Decade
Not only did the Great American Job Engine grind to a halt in the past decade, but the dire economic numbers were accompanied by massive increases in federal debt, part of a risky right-wing strategy to hamstring the government's ability to ever address domestic problems in the future.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 8, 2014 Robert Gates Double-Crosses Obama
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is slamming President Obama in a new memoir, accusing him of lacking enthusiasm for the Afghan War. But perhaps Obama’s bigger mistake was trusting Gates, a Bush Family operative with a history of dirty dealing, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 4, 2014 Eyes Finally Open to Syrian Realities
For the past three years, Official Washington has viewed the Syrian civil war as "white-hatted" rebels against "black-hatted" President Assad, but finally some of the "gray-hatted" reality is breaking through, though perhaps too late, Robert Parry reports.
SHARE Thursday, October 20, 2011 Petraeus's Cia Steers Obama On Policy
President Barack Obama may have thought appointing David Petraeus as CIA director was a political masterstroke, keeping the ambitious ex-general inside the tent. But Petraeus's close ties to the neocons may now be undercutting Obama's policy goals.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 6, 2013 Dangerous "State Sovereignty" Myth
In the U.S. system, the "supreme law" of the land is set by the Constitution and the federal government, though states, counties and cities have wide discretion over local matters. But problems arise when right-wingers start espousing the notion of "state sovereignty."
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 9, 2014 Malaysia Airlines Whodunnit Still a Mystery
More than seven weeks after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine killing 298 people, a preliminary report failed to address the mystery of who shot the plane down. The Dutch investigators didn't even try to sort through conflicting allegations and evidence, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Wednesday, July 1, 2015 Hillary Clinton's Failed Libya "Doctrine"
Libya remains a nation shattered by political chaos and bloody terrorism, a result of the U.S.-backed "regime change" in 2011 that Secretary of State Clinton championed and once saw as her crowning foreign policy achievement, even the basis for a "Clinton Doctrine," reports Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, May 25, 2009 Colin Powell Skates Free on Torture
There is no one, it seems, that the U.S. mainstream news media loves more than Colin Powell, a "moderate" Republican who gives a careerist journalist the chance to do some smart positioning in the "center." But the truth about this retired four-star general is that he is the ultimate careerist.
SHARE Saturday, November 17, 2012 The Death Toll of Watergate
Major gaps in the history of Watergate and Iran-Contra have let Republicans minimize those scandals by comparing them to the fabricated "scandal" over the Benghazi attacks. A fuller understanding of Watergate would reveal its links to Richard Nixon's prolonging the Vietnam War.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, September 8, 2014 Seeing No Neo-Nazi Militias in Ukraine
With a new Amnesty International report on possible war crimes by a Ukrainian militia against ethnic Russians in the east, the evidence is mounting that the U.S.-backed Kiev regime willfully deployed extremists, including neo-Nazis, as part of a conscious strategy, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Thursday, May 1, 2014 Who's the Propagandist: US or RT?
After Secretary of State Kerry lashed out at Russia's RT network over its reporting on Ukraine, a senior aide assembled a list of particulars, which have backfired by showing how weak Kerry's case is and how hypocritical Kerry's State Department has been, reports Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 20, 2016 No Reward for Sanders's Israel Stance
Sen. Sanders showed guts when he broke from the political lock-step of unrestrained praise for Israel, but his loss in the New York primary shows there's little reward for such courage, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The GOP's Jihad on Obama
Only a few weeks into Barack Obama's presidency, a threatening political and media dynamic has rushed to the fore cutting short a very brief honeymoon.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 16, 2013 Tales of Reagan's Guatemala Genocide
Guatemala is finally putting ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt on trial for genocide in the extermination of hundreds of Mayan villages in the 1980s, but Ronald Reagan remains an American icon despite new evidence of his complicity in this historic crime.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 5, 2014 Putin or Kerry: Who's Delusional?
Official Washington and its compliant mainstream news media operate with a convenient situational ethics when it comes to the principles of international law and non-intervention in sovereign states. The rules apply only when they’re convenient, explains Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 7, 2007 Zeroing in on Cheney-Bush
The four-count conviction of White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice has left many Americans, including the jury, wondering why Libby's bosses weren't in the dock with him. The evidence, viewed chronologically, leaves little doubt that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and other senior officials had a hand in both the exposure of a covert CIA officer's identity and the cover-up.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 13, 2014 Tea Party and Thomas Jefferson
Black History Month celebrates talented African-Americans, but it also should be a time to reflect on distorted white history that has ignored damage inflicted by racist ideologues, like how Thomas Jefferson’s hypocrisies helped give us the Civil War and the Tea Party, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 1, 2010 Rethinking Iran-Contra
with Washington's failure to get at the larger truth about the Iran-Contra Affair, crucial patterns were set: Republicans acted aggressively, Democrats behaved timidly, and the U.S. national news media was transformed from Watergate-era watchdogs, to lapdogs and finally to guard dogs protecting national security wrongdoing.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 18, 2011 Through the US Media Lens Darkly
As Americans turn to their news media to make sense of the upheavals in the Middle East, it's worth remembering that the bias of the mainstream U.S. press corps is most powerful when covering a Washington-designated villain, especially if he happens to be Muslim.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 21, 2006 Bush Shields Dad on Chile Terrorism
Chilean investigators say the Bush administration is undercutting their case against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for his alleged role in the terrorist assassination of a political rival on the streets of Washington three decades ago, a crime that then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush appears to have tolerated and then helped cover-up.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 22, 2012 The Enduring Secrets of Watergate
Forty years ago, burglars working for President Nixon planted bugs in the Democrats' Watergate headquarters. Then, a month later, a follow-up break-in went awry, touching off America's most notorious political scandal. But few understand what really happened.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 24, 2010 On Korea, Here We Go Again!
Before the war rhetoric gets completely out of control again and creates another political dynamic that leads toward a bloody escalation perhaps the U.S. news media should reflect for a moment on all the other times the American press corps has let itself and the country be stampeded into a dangerous misunderstanding of an international incident.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 30, 2015 Obama's Ludicrous "Barrel Bomb" Theme
In addressing the United Nations, President Obama singled out for condemnation Syria's President Assad and his alleged use of "barrel bombs," but Obama was silent on his own use of far more powerful ordnance or the civilian tolls from Saudi/Israeli attacks with highly lethal U.S. bombs, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 31, 2014 Petraeus Spared Ray McGovern's Question
New York City police arrested ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern to prevent him from attending a public event where he planned to pose a pointed question to retired Gen. David Petraeus, another sign of how much U.S. neocons love democracy, writes Robert Parry.
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, July 27, 2012 The Vanity of Perfectionism
As President Obama faces a tough reelection fight, some on the Left vow to sit it out or vote for a third party, saying support for Obama would dirty them. But there is another moral imperative, to mitigate the harm a U.S. president can inflict on the world's people and the planet itself.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 11, 2014 Obama and the Truth Agenda
The euphemism, "enhanced interrogations," is finally fading amid truth-telling that President George W. Bush authorized -- and the CIA engaged in -- torture of "war on terror" detainees. The lack of a backlash to the stomach-turning new details also suggests that Americans are ready for a truth agenda, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, June 21, 2013 The Tea Party's Legacy of Racism
The American Right demeans racial minorities for playing the victim's role, but today's Tea Party is draped in "victimhood," claiming to be the target of an African-American president and feeling threatened by the nation's demographic shift. But racist fears have always had a home on the Right.
SHARE Monday, February 16, 2015 President Gollum's "Precious" Secrets
Despite promises of "openness," President Obama has treated information that could inform American democracy like Tolkien's character Gollum coveted his "precious" ring. Obama is keeping for himself analyses that could change how the public sees the crises in Syria and Ukraine, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Wednesday, July 4, 2012 How Scalia Distorts the Framers
In rejecting the Commerce Clause as the constitutional foundation for the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court's right-wing justices distorted America's founding narrative, including one made-up view attributed to Alexander Hamilton.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, November 1, 2013 NYTimes Mentions Israeli Nukes
The U.S. press is very tolerant of Israeli cross-border attacks inside Syria, like the latest one against a military target in Latakia. Israel's nuclear arsenal usually goes unmentioned, too. But the New York Times surprisingly deviated from that pattern.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, February 11, 2011 Hard Lessons from the HuffPost Sale
A lesson for progressives from AOL's purchase of Huffington Post may be that they should be a bit more leery of converts from the Right, especially those who don't explain adequately what led to their ideological switch.
(19 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 31, 2013 Crazy Gun-Toting Insurrectionists
Just a few months after 20 first-graders were mowed down by a deranged killer wielding an assault rifle, the prospects of restraining this gun madness are fading. A major factor is the Right's success in promulgating a bogus history of what the Framers were doing with the Second Amendment.
SHARE Monday, September 25, 2017 WPost Pushes More Dubious Russia-bashing
The Washington Post has published another front-page story about Russia maybe placing some ads on Facebook, but the article violates a host of journalistic principles in hyping its case, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 11, 2014 Neocons Revive Syria "Regime Change" Plan
President Obama plans to violate international law by launching airstrikes inside Syria without that government's consent, even though Syria might well give it. Is Obama playing into neocon hands by providing a new argument for "regime change" in Damascus, asks Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, May 18, 2009 Knowing 'What's Good for the Country'
In my three decades-plus in Washington journalism, I have witnessed the creeping opportunism behind this claim of doing "what's good for the country," which usually translates into keeping unpleasant truths from the American people and spares politicians and journalists from the difficult task of having to speak ill of some U.S. government actions.
SHARE Sunday, March 20, 2011 Protecting Libyan Civilians, Not Others
Absent the enforced jingoism that usually accompanies a U.S. war buildup, the American press corps also seemed a bit less gung-ho. One should offer thanks for small favors. At least in this third ongoing U.S. war in the Muslim world, there hasn't been quite the propaganda bullying that surrounded the other two.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 16, 2016 MH-17's Unnecessary Mystery
Nearly 18 months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine, one of the troubling mysteries is why the U.S. government -- after rushing to blame Russia and ethnic Russian rebels -- then went silent, effectively obstructing the investigation into 298 deaths, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 2, 2016 Taking a Page from Joe McCarthy
Hillary Clinton and her supporters have turned to ugly McCarthyism in attacking Donald Trump to divert attention from their email scandals, a dangerous use of Russia-bashing, says Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 28, 2015 When Israel/Neocons Favored Iran
The modern history of U.S.-Israeli-Iranian relations dates back 35 years to a time of political intrigue when Israel's Likud leaders and the Reagan administration's neocons secretly worked to arm Iran's radical regime, an inconvenient truth given today's anti-Iran hysteria, writes Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 25, 2011 Why The Left Won't Accept Success
With the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops, the neocon dream of U.S.-controlled bases in Iraq has been dashed and the diplomatic outposts are already being downsized. The gargantuan embassy complex in Baghdad may well be viewed in the future as more a monument to American hubris than a hub of U.S. intervention.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 5, 2013 Is the Constitution Still Relevant?
The U.S. Constitution has become part of today's political battlefield, with the Right claiming to be its true defender and the Left questioning why the old parchment should undercut democratic choices in the modern age. But neither side seems very interested in what the document actually did.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 31, 2010 A Neocon Re-write of American History
What Boot and other neocons envision for American citizens is endlessly footing the bill for a global police force, one that would wage war anytime and anywhere to defend some vaguely defined U.S. interest, essentially what President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney set off to do after the 9/11 attacks with catastrophic results.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 24, 2013 A Saudi-Israeli Defeat on Iran Deal
The Saudi-Israeli alliance hoped to sink a deal between Iran and world powers that limits but doesn't end Iran's nuclear program, so the deal's signing in Geneva is both a defeat for that new alliance and a victory for President Obama and diplomacy.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 23, 2014 Prepping for a Ukrainian Massacre
As the rhetoric rages out of control, worsening violence in Ukraine grows more likely. Official Washington is readying the American people to view the slaughter of eastern Ukrainians as justified because they are “terrorists†and linked to the hated Russians, Robert Parry reports.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 12, 2012 Herding Americans to War With Iran
The murder of a fifth Iranian scientist on the streets of Tehran had all the earmarks of an Israeli-sponsored assassination. The killing also worsened tensions at a moment when the momentum toward war with Iran seems unstoppable.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 20, 2015 Facing America's Great Evils
A 21-year-old white supremacist is charged with entering a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and murdering nine black parishioners, merging two of America's great evils -- gun violence and racial injustice. But what can be done, asks Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 1, 2011 Enduring Terror Double Standards
President Barack Obama ordered the targeted killing of al-Qaeda figure and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki despite the lack of any legal due process. But the same week, the U.S. government continued to turn a blind eye to a Cuban-American terrorist harbored in Miami.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 12, 2015 Lynching and Jeff Davis Highway
Many parts of the South, including Arlington, Virginia, just outside the U.S. capital, still honor Confederate President Jefferson Davis by attaching his name to important roadways. But a recent study on lynching puts the motive for honoring that white supremacist in a sickening new light, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Friday, April 1, 2016 Cleaning Up Hillary's Libyan Mess
U.S. officials are pushing a dubious new scheme to "unify" a shattered Libya, but the political risk at home is that voters will finally realize Hillary Clinton's responsibility for the mess, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 7, 2015 When Silencing Dissent Isn't News
The criminal case against ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern for "resisting arrest" when he was denied entry to a public speech by retired Gen. David Petraeus appears to be nearly over, but the image of police brutally shielding the mighty from a citizen's question remains troubling, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 28, 2010 Obama's Fear of the Reagan Narrative
Obama generally has fit into the mold of a risk-avoidance pol. Despite his protestations that he is eager for a debate on Reaganism and its trickle-down economics, he has shown little stomach for such a fight. Indeed, when he's had the chance, Obama has followed the timid pattern of most national Democrats in finding excuses to praise Ronald Reagan.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 16, 2015 A Blind Eye Toward Turkey's Crimes
The alleged ties between Turkish President Erdogan and Islamist terrorists in Syria is an embarrassment for the Obama administration and the U.S. news media, which would prefer to look the other way rather than face up to the danger created by an out-of-control NATO "ally," writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 11, 2016 "Yats" Is No Longer the Guy
Several weeks before Ukraine's 2014 coup, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Nuland had already picked Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be the future leader, but now "Yats" is no longer the guy, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, January 12, 2015 The Sorry Record of a Muslim-Basher
Jumping on the Muslim-bashing bandwagon, Fox News' commentator Steven Emerson claimed Muslims have seized control of parts of London and all of Birmingham, terrorizing non-Muslims to flee, claims so absurd that even he was forced to back-track, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, February 19, 2016 Hillary Clinton's Hypocrisy on Dissent
Hillary Clinton says she's a great defender of American veterans, but when Army vet (and ex-CIA analyst) Ray McGovern was assaulted for silently protesting one of her speeches, she did nothing -- and newly released emails show she rebuffed an adviser's proposal to apologize, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 14, 2010 The Return of Madcap Capitalism
Amid relentless anti-government propaganda and endless pressures for more deregulation, madcap capitalism has returned. The consequences can now be seen from the desolate factory towns in Michigan to the oil spill poisoning the Gulf of Mexico, from teacher layoffs in California to crazy market swings on Wall Street.
SHARE Tuesday, May 15, 2012 How the US Press Lost Its Way
People often wonder what happened to the American press after it distinguished itself in the 1970s by exposing the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. How did the U.S. news media lose its way over the past four decades?
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 30, 2009 How the War Hawks Caged Obama
Obama went with war-time “continuity†and bipartisanship in keeping Gates and U.S. Central Command Gen. David Petraeus. By doing so, Obama ensured that the “surge†escalation strategy that Gates and Petraeus sold in Iraq would be repackaged for Afghanistan.
(9 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 1, 2015 Should US Ally with Al Qaeda in Syria?
The new U.S. "group think" is that Russian President Putin broke his promise to attack only the Islamic State when his warplanes hit other rebel targets in Syria. But Putin never limited which terrorists he'd hit and the targeted rebel coalition includes Al Qaeda's affiliate, as Robert Parry reports.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 23, 2016 Hillary Clinton Seeks Neocon Shelter
Stunned by falling poll numbers, Hillary Clinton is hoping that Democrats will rally to her neocon-oriented foreign policy and break with Bernie Sanders as insufficiently devoted to Israel. But will that hawkish strategy work this time, asks Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 5, 2015 Obama's Pragmatic Appeal for Iran Peace
President Obama defended the Iran nuclear deal and urged Americans to support this initiative for peace, but his choice of American University for the speech invited comparisons with JFK's famous words that "we all inhabit this small planet" and Obama fell far short of that standard, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, October 12, 2015 Needling Obama for More Wars
Rather than encourage a healthy, wide-ranging debate on world affairs, the mainstream U.S. news media prevents any serious deviation from Official Washington's war-loving "group thinks," a task undertaken by CBS' Steve Kroft in a hostile interview with President Obama, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 14, 2011 The Tale of Two Assassination Plots
The top aim of today's neocon agenda is to support Israel's eagerness to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities -- with the United States either taking part directly or at least providing support. As CIA director, Petraeus finds himself in a perfect position to generate the necessary "intelligence" to bolster that neocon goal.
SHARE Monday, June 13, 2016 MH-17 Probe Trusts Torture-Implicated Ukraine
The floundering inquiry into who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014 has relied heavily on a Ukrainian intelligence agency that recently stopped U.N. investigators from probing its alleged role in torture, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 18, 2012 Lieberman Edges US to War with Iran
American neocons have moved the United States closer to war with Iran via a subtle change in the "red line" phrasing, inserting the word "capability" after the usual threats to take out an Iranian "nuclear weapon." Now, Sen. Joe Lieberman is making the shift official.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 23, 2014 Obama's Novel Lawyering to Bomb Syria
The U.S. government likes international law when it serves Washington's purposes, but not when it constrains U.S. desires to use military force. Then, the rules are bent, ignored or subjected to novel lawyering, as President Obama is doing with airstrikes into Syria, reports Robert Parry.
(18 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 8, 2015 The Second Amendment's Fake History
A numbness followed the latest mass shooting -- this time at a community college in Oregon. Many Americans were frozen in futility as powerful political forces asserted that the Second Amendment prohibits any gun laws. But that claim is historically false, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, December 9, 2013 Deceiving the US Public on Syria
The United States nearly went to war with Syria last summer after a rush to judgment over a mysterious sarin attack. Now, several months later, reporter Seymour Hersh shows how the case was spun. Washington and the mainstream U.S. news media have learned little from the Iraq War debacle. Timely skepticism on matters of war or peace remains marginalized in small-circulation Web sites with very few financial resources.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 19, 2014 Blocking a "Realist" Strategy on the Mideast
Official Washington's influential neocons appear back in the driver's seat steering U.S. policy in the Middle East toward a wider conflict in Syria and away from a "realist" alternative that sought a Putin-Obama collaboration to resolve the region's crises more peacefully, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 27, 2011 Taking the Side of the Billionaires
America's Right pitches itself as populist, taking the side of the common man against "big guv-mint" and "lib-rhul elites," but its actual policies -- from the NFL lockout to Rep. Paul Ryan's budget -- side with the billionaires in what amounts to an escalating class war against the middle class and the poor.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 24, 2011 The Slaughter in Norway
A right-wing Christian fundamentalist has reportedly taken credit for the terrorist slaughter of some 92 people in Norway on Friday. The alleged perpetrators' stated goal was to spark a Christian war against Muslims, a reaction to what he saw as a growing multiculturalism, an echo of Christian Right extremism elsewhere.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 29, 2012 The Founders' True Foresight
he Tea Party's revisionist history of the nation's founding document may play well with the ill-informed, but the truth is the framers of the Constitution were fed up with state "sovereignty" and decided on a strong central government, a judgment that has served the United States well.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 4, 2012 Profiting Off Nixon's Vietnam "Treason"
The Rostow memos are in a file with scores of secret and top secret documents tracing Nixon's peace-talk gambit as Johnson tried frantically to stop Nixon's blocking operation and still reach a peace agreement in the waning days of his presidency. The Vietnam War dragged on another four years, leading to the deaths of an additional 20,763 U.S. soldiers, with 111,230 wounded.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 4, 2012 Declaring War on "Political Islamism'
If Mitt Romney wins in November, the neocons have made clear they will reclaim full control of U.S. foreign policy and reverse President Obama's few halting steps toward peace. The neocons even want to move past George W. Bush's "global war on terror" to a "war with political Islamism."
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 9, 2016 Is Hillary Clinton "Qualified"?
The question of "qualifications" is suddenly at the center of the Democratic race with Hillary Clinton's backers touting her resume but ignoring her many failures in job after job, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Tuesday, June 14, 2011 Neocons Trade Medicare for War
The American neocons are again on the upswing as they undercut peace initiatives from the Obama administration and gain Republican support for maintaining massive Pentagon spending, in exchange for limiting senior citizens' access to Medicare. As Robert Parry reports, the neocons can now see the light at the end of the tunnel for their restoration to power.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 20, 2013 The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War
Americans today know a lot more about Iraq than they did ten years ago, knowledge gained painfully from the blood of soldiers and civilians. But a crucial question remains: why did George W. Bush and his neocon advisers rush headlong into this disastrous war, a mystery Robert Parry unwinds.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, June 6, 2016 MH-17 Probe Relies on Ukraine for Evidence
The oft-delayed probe into the 2014 shoot-down of MH-17 over eastern Ukraine has been tainted by its dependence on Ukraine's intelligence service for much of its evidence, as a new interim report makes clear, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Wednesday, February 22, 2017 NYT's Fake News about Fake News
The West's anti-Russian propaganda links Moscow to the blight of "fake news" but the evidence doesn't connect the two. So, The New York Times makes the case with its own "fake news," reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 16, 2013 The Right's Racism Is Showing
The House Republicans dumping the food stamp program, the continuing GOP assaults on voting rights and the celebrating among some right-wing commentators over the Trayvon Martin murder verdict are indications that white racism is alive and well in the United States.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 6, 2014 What Obama Can Do to Save Ukraine
The fate of Ukraine --- whether it descends into civil war or finds a path back from the brink -- may rest with President Obama and whether he can work with Russian President Putin while recognizing the legitimate concerns of both eastern and western Ukrainians, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 2, 2013 NYTimes Again Ignores Israel's Nukes
If a country with a large but undeclared nuclear arsenal threatens war against a country without a single nuclear bomb, you might think that a serious news organization would note the existing nuclear arsenal at least in passing. But if the country doing the threatening is Israel and the country being threatened is Iran, the New York Times can't seem to find space to mention Israel's rogue nuclear weapons.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 27, 2011 Who Commits Terrorism?
A right-wing Christian nationalist has claimed credit for the terrorist attacks in Norway, killing at least 76 people. Though his writings show that Anders Behring Breivik was inspired by anti-Muslim extremists in the United States, that bigotry also made Muslims the early suspects in the U.S. media.
SHARE Wednesday, October 9, 2013 Making the Economy "Scream"
In the past when the CIA targeted a troublesome government, a key part of the strategy was to make the economy "scream" to get the people ready for regime change. This tactic now appears to have come home to roost in the Right's efforts to destabilize President Obama's government.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 22, 2009 Obama Frees Bush Historical Records
ronically, President Obama has renewed the timeliness of this Gates credibility question in two ways: first, by keeping him on as Defense Secretary and now, by revoking the Bush Family's power to delay and obstruct.
In his first full day in office, Obama revived hope that historical records might become available in a reasonable length of time.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, September 6, 2010 Blair Reveals Cheney's War Agenda
Cheney wanted forcible "regime change" in all Middle Eastern countries that he considered hostile to US. Cheney thought the world had to be made anew, and that after 11 September, it had to be done by force and with urgency. So he was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes." interests, according to Blair.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 28, 2014 How the Washington Press Turned Bad
There was a time when the Washington press corps prided itself on holding the powerful accountable -- Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Vietnam War -- but those days are long gone, replaced by a malleable media that puts its cozy relations with insiders ahead of the public interest, writes Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 24, 2016 More Game-Playing on MH-17?
The West keeps piling the blame for the 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on Russian President Putin although there are many holes in the case and the U.S. government still withholds its evidence, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 18, 2010 US Media Replays Iraq Fiasco on Iran
While American journalists silence themselves about Israel's secret nuclear arsenal and treat the persecution of Vanunu as somehow deserved, they rail against Iran's nuclear program even though it is under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency and remains far short of any breakout capability for a nuclear weapon even if Iran's government decided to build one.
SHARE Thursday, May 27, 2010 NYT's Friedman Rejects Iran Nuke Deal
According to Friedman, Americans who were right about the ill-fated invasion of Iraq were still airheads who couldn't grasp the bigger picture that had been so obvious to himself, his fellow pundits and pro-war politicians who had tagged along with Bush and Blair.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, April 24, 2009 How Bush's Torture Helped al-Qaeda
Captured al-Qaeda operatives, facing the threat or reality of torture, appear to have fed the Bush administration's obsession about Iraq, buying Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders time to rebuild their organization inside nuclear-armed Pakistan Even now, as al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies expand their power ever closer to Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, ex-Bush administration officials continue to insist they protect
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, June 24, 2011 Afghan War: No Vietnam Redux
Many on the American Left are furious with Barack Obama -- and find nothing to praise in his gradual troop drawdown in Afghanistan. But the President's speech may be seen, in retrospect, as an important turning point in U.S. war policy toward the Muslim world as well as a signal that the Afghan conflict will not follow the pattern of the Vietnam War with one incremental escalation after the next.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 21, 2011 Giving War a Chance
It seems that the neocons who dominate two of America's dominant newspapers can't get enough of "giving war a chance," an attitude reminiscent of their behavior prior to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003.
SHARE Monday, May 4, 2009 'One More Bubble!'
When I took an editing job at Bloomberg News in March 2000, my arrival coincided with the bursting of the Internet bubble. As once-hot IPOs tanked and the Nasdaq crashed. I would joke to other editors that what the U.S. economy needed was "to build a better bubble." Then, to my amazement that was pretty much what happened, except that the bubble moved from the peripheral world of dot.com to a cornerstone of the economy
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 17, 2016 The Ever-Curiouser MH-17 Case
The shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine has served as a potent propaganda club against Russia but the U.S. government is hiding key evidence that could solve the mystery, writes Robert Parry.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, March 7, 2014 The "We-Hate-Putin" Group Think
The only foreign policy show on the U.S. media dial this past week has been the bashing of Russian President Putin over the Ukraine crisis – with a slap or two at President Obama for having worked with Putin on Syria and Iran. Lost in this “group think†is the why behind this demonization, reports Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, April 15, 2016 The "Credibility" Illusion
The Obama administration protects its "credibility" by refusing to budge on its claims about the 2013 Syria-sarin case or the 2014 plane shoot-down in eastern Ukraine even as the evidence shifts, writes Robert Parry.
(15 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 11, 2009 The Neocons Strike Back
In effect, the neocons showed that their influence over the national news media, especially the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, combined with solid Republican support and some key Democratic backing, still lets them blackball potential government appointees who favor a more evenhanded approach toward the Middle East.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 2, 2009 FBI Ignored Bush-Hussein Ties
While President George W. Bush and many of his supporters were thrilled with the execution "" what the New York Times called Bush's "triumphal bookend" to the Iraq invasion "" the hanging was not just rough justice meted out to a harsh dictator. It also snuffed out a dangerous witness who could have implicated senior Republicans, including Bush's father.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 13, 2013 Rewarding "Group Think" on Syria
"Group think" is alive and well in Official Washington, with virtually all the important pundits marching in lock-step with the Obama administration's accusations against the Syrian government and everyone fuming over an Op-Ed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
SHARE Friday, September 28, 2012 Romney's Curious View of Freedom
Election 2012 is a choice between two visions for America's future and also a contest between two versions of the U.S. past. Mitt Romney and the Tea Party draw from a national narrative that claims the Framers opposed a strong central government, while President Obama sees the opposite.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 21, 2006 The Bushes & the Truth About Iran
Having gone through the diplomatic motions with Iran, George W. Bush is shifting toward a military option that carries severe risks for American soldiers in Iraq as well as for long-term U.S. interests around the world. Yet, despite this looming crisis, the Bush Family continues to withhold key historical facts about U.S.-Iranian relations.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 2, 2012 Romney's Revolutionary War Bungle
Mitt Romney tries to impress the Tea Partiers with his love of the Founders, but the ex-Massachusetts governor writes that the Revolution began in April 1775 with the British capturing Boston by sea, rather than the Minutemen driving the Redcoats back to Boston from Lexington and Concord.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 7, 2016 A Media Unmoored from Facts
Mainstream U.S. journalism has completely lost its way, especially in dealing with foreign policy issues where bias now overwhelms any commitment to facts, a dangerous development, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, July 16, 2012 Romney's "Fact-Checker" Cover-up
The "independent fact-checkers," who have been shielding Mitt Romney from questions about Bain Capital's off-shoring jobs and closing factories, are growing more isolated as the New York Times and other news outlets call for Romney to disclose more.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 27, 2016 A Crazy Establishment Demands "Sanity"
As support grows for anti-Establishment candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, a frantic Establishment is demanding that Americans "stay sane" and vote for one of its approved candidates. But is it sane to follow advice that has led to endless wars and a disappearing middle class, asks Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 31, 2011 A Two-Decade Detour into Empire
Between the aggressive defense mounted by the Republicans and their neocon allies, and the timidity of congressional Democrats and mainstream journalists, the rebuilt walls of government secrecy were protected. The route for the restoration of the Bush Dynasty only eight years later was left open.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 16, 2014 Does Nixon's "Treason" Boost LBJ's Legacy?
The Vietnam War has doomed President Lyndon Johnson to a lowly status among presidents, overshadowing his domestic successes. But LBJ’s ranking might change if the new evidence on Richard Nixon sabotaging LBJ’s Vietnam peace talks were factored in, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 2, 2014 Neocons Seek New Ultimatum on Syria
The Washington Post’s neocon editors are pushing for another U.S. military ultimatum against a Muslim country in the Mideast. Citing discredited “evidence†pinning the Aug. 21 Sarin attack on the Syrian government, the Post wants President Obama to re-issue a war threat, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 1, 2010 Taking a Stand for Sanity
Beyond ducking the competing crowd numbers and making no effort to understand the significance of hundreds of thousands of Americans rallying "to restore sanity," the news media also trivialized the substance of the event. Rather than a source of illumination and transparency, the news media for the most part has become one more brick in the wall.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, January 19, 2007 Gonzales Questions Habeas Corpus
In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 29, 2015 The Tom Brady Railroad
Powerful institutions -- whether the U.S. government, the mainstream media or the NFL -- can run roughshod over individuals, twisting facts in whatever direction is desired. The current railroading of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is a cautionary case in point, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Monday, July 23, 2012 Finally, Fact-Checking Romney's Lie
For 10 days, right-wing talkers and Mitt Romney have circulated a deceptively edited quote tricking Americans into thinking that President Obama believes businessmen didn't build their businesses. Belatedly, one of the "independent fact-checkers" has spoken up.
SHARE Friday, August 31, 2012 Romney World's Freedom from Fact
The Republican National Convention offered a look into one alternate future for America, a place where the ultimate liberty is to be fact-free. Mitt Romney's campaign set sail confidently toward that future trusting that a plurality of Americans who will vote (or be allowed to vote) is onboard, says Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 25, 2009 George W. Bush's Sci-Fi Disaster
Now, eight years later, a fuller measure can be taken of what Bush's power grab meant for the United States "" the federal debt ballooning, the economy in freefall, unemployment skyrocketing (along with bankruptcies and foreclosures), environmental degradation, two open-ended wars, and the nation's image around the world soiled by torture and other official crimes.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 3, 2015 Obama Ignores Russian Terror Victims
President Obama has displayed a stunning lack of sympathy for the Russian civilians killed in an ISIS plane bombing in Egypt and for two Russian military men slain as victims of U.S. weapons systems in Syria, putting insults toward President Putin ahead of human decency, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, December 13, 2013 Fresh Doubts about Syria's Sarin Guilt
A new analysis, buried in a UN report, reveals that one of the two missiles at the center of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, which nearly led to a U.S. military attack, showed no evidence of Sarin, further undermining Official Washington's certainty that the Syrian government was to blame.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 8, 2015 CIA's Hidden Hand in "Democracy" Groups
Special Report: Documents from the Reagan presidential library reveal that two major institutions promoting "democracy" and "freedom" -- Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy -- worked hand-in-glove, behind-the-scenes, with a CIA propaganda expert in the 1980s, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 10, 2015 "Realists" Warn Against Ukraine Escalation
The neocons' war-and-more-war bandwagon is loaded up again and rolling downhill as "everyone who matters" in Washington is talking up sending sophisticated weapons to Kiev to escalate Ukraine's civil war, but some "realists," an endangered species in U.S. foreign policy, dissent, notes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 12, 2012 How Neocons Sank Iran Nuke Deal
Iran is resuming talks over its nuclear program with leading international powers -- the United States, Britain, Russia, China, France and Germany -- with the prospect of an agreement to swap some enriched uranium for research isotopes. But a similar plan was torpedoed by U.S. neocons in 2010.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, June 23, 2014 Obama's True Foreign-Policy "Weakness"
President Obama has shied away from confronting Washington's neocons who continue to exercise undue influence at think tanks, on op-ed pages and even inside Obama's administration. With the new Iraq crisis, Obama's timidity is coming back to haunt him, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Saturday, April 9, 2011 Letting a Cuban Terrorist Go Free
The Obama administration's Justice Department did prosecute Posada on perjury charges (the case that was lost on Friday) but has shown no interest in seeking justice for the Cubana Airlines victims. To do so would surely have political repercussions in the swing state of Florida in 2012.
SHARE Tuesday, April 3, 2012 GOP Five Like Stripping Americans
The Supreme Court's GOP Five just finished a run as brave libertarians protecting Americans from President Obama's health-care reform, but now are back to their usual role as defenders of abusive state power, allowing strip searches of anyone arrested for anything -- and perhaps particularly protesters.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 6, 2012 Did Reagan Know about Baby Thefts?
Many Americans adore President Reagan for lifting their spirits after the discouraging 1970s. Yet, in secret, he collaborated with some of the Western Hemisphere's most brutal neo-Nazis, including Argentine generals just convicted in a grotesque baby harvesting scheme
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 29, 2010 Does Sanity Matter?
Many centrists are uncomfortable with Stewart's rally for a different reason. They may find his jokes amusing, but they reject his more serious message that the U.S. political/media process has gone quite literally mad. If you're a Washington-Post-or-CNN-styled journalist, you simply can't accept that the system you have helped sustain is insane.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 24, 2016 Sanders the "Realist"; Hillary the "Neocon"
Sen. Sanders finds himself on the defensive in his uphill primary fight against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in part because he shies away from defining himself as a "realist" and asking if she is a "neocon," writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 31, 2012 The Ugly Words of Newt Gingrich
Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has built his political career on demonizing those who disagree with him. Off-handedly, he will accuse fellow Americans of possessing the most heinous motives for their actions, now even taking aim at medical researchers.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, February 18, 2013 Thin Line: "Good/Bad Guy with a Gun"
For years as a police officer and Navy reservist, Christopher Dorner was what the NRA would call "a good guy with a gun," but something snapped when he was fired from the LAPD, transforming him into "a bad guy with a gun," an important new argument for gun control.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, November 13, 2015 Carpetbagging "Crony Capitalism" in Ukraine
Ukraine's Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko and other key officials were given overnight Ukrainian citizenship -- with the law requiring them to renounce their old allegiances -- but the American-born Jaresko has balked at that mandate, raising questions about her true motives, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Tuesday, November 6, 2012 Power of Anti-Government Propaganda
By many standards, President Obama has done a remarkable job, steering the U.S. and the world away from a global depression and enacting reforms to benefit millions of Americans. But he has fought against a powerful dynamic of modern U.S. politics, a hatred of the federal government.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 1, 2009 Can You Trust the Republicans?
In 1981, as an Associated Press reporter, I was one of a handful of journalists who helped expose Lefever's fondness for white European colonizers of black Africa. In his writings, he had stressed the beneficence of the white conquerors and lamented the barbarism of the black natives. Finally He was replaced by a bright, young neoconservative named Elliott Abrams.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, March 20, 2009 Good News, Bad News
Remarkably, four more years later, even as right-wing and mainstream news outlets are ganging up on President Barack Obama "" much like they did on President Bill Clinton "" the progressive funders continue to grossly underfund media outlets.The truth is that there is no answer other than doing the hard work and investing some serious money.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, June 14, 2010 WPost, NYT Show Tough-Guy Swagger
Moralistic "tough-guy" tones might sit well with armchair warriors like the Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt and the New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, but they appear likely to continue America's stumbling progression toward another Middle East war.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 15, 2011 Punishing the Truth-Tellers
It is a far bigger offense in Washington to tell troublesome truths than to slide along with comfortable lies and distortions. According to the National Whistleblowers Center, Congress is even contemplating how to extend fear of retribution into a person's retirement.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 17, 2014 Reported US-Syrian Accord on Air Strikes
A problem with President Obama's plan to expand the war against ISIS into Syria was always the risk that Syrian air defenses might fire on U.S. warplanes, but now a source says Syria's President Assad has quietly agreed to permit strikes in some parts of Syria, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 25, 2011 Republicans Embrace 'Greedy Geezers'
Though polls show overwhelming numbers favoring raising taxes on the rich, that is the one option that Official Washington considers unthinkable. Far more admiring news coverage has been devoted to Ryan's "bold," "courageous" and "serious" plan to destroy Medicare than to progressive proposals to hike taxes on the well-to-do.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 14, 2012 Romney's Upside-Down Constitution
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney wowed a convention of gun enthusiasts with a flowery talk about the Constitution and his fears about what a re-elected President Obama would do to it. But Romney's speech reflected an American history that never was.
SHARE Wednesday, June 18, 2014 Obama at a Crossroad of War or Peace
The dramatic spread of Sunni extremism into the heart of Iraq may force President Obama to finally make a choice between simply extending a slightly less violent Bush Doctrine and charting his own innovative course in the name of peace, Robert Parry writes.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 29, 2010 Time to Turn to Jeb?
As the American political process grows even more addle-brained, we might be seeing the start of a recurring cycle: a member of the Bush family screws things up; the Democrats eventually take control but don't demand accountability; the media quickly shifts the blame for the problems to the Democrats; the Republicans become agents of change; and the next Bush family member becomes president to get things back on track.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 5, 2010 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq
while it may be impossible to say for certain what Bush believed about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction, it can't be argued that Bush didn't know that Iraq declared that it had destroyed its WMD stockpiles and let U.N. inspectors in to see for themselves in the months before the invasion.
SHARE Thursday, December 4, 2014 Raw Deal for Black Freedom Trail
Columbia Pike has long been the most neglected corridor in Arlington, Virginia, despite -- or perhaps because of -- its historic role as the freedom trail for thousands of African-Americans fleeing the Confederacy and slavery. That neglect now has a new chapter as a planned Streetcar is killed, reports Robert Parry.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 18, 2009 Bush's Only Gift to America
George W. Bush's gift to the American Republic may be that he has discredited a host of right-wing theories and practices--"trickle-down economics"; "self-regulating markets"; "tough-guy" foreign policy; the "imperial presidency"; and the notion that "government is the problem." If Obama and the Democrats fail to drive these lessons home, they are courting a huge risk that the same beharior could reemerge.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 19, 2015 Neocons Object to Syrian Democracy
President Obama has infuriated Official Washington's neocons by accepting the Russian stance that the Syrian people should select their own future leaders through free elections, rather than the neocon insistence on a foreign-imposed "regime change," reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 11, 2014 How Reagan Enforced US Hypocrisy
The mainstream U.S. news media has so fully bought into the U.S. government’s narrative on Ukraine that almost no one sees the layers of hypocrisy, an achievement in “group think†that dates back to Ronald Reagan’s war against “moral equivalence,†writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 24, 2016 Is Hillary Clinton "Honest"?
Hillary Clinton's defenders object to the widespread public view that she is a liar by noting she scores reasonably well on the accuracy of her policy statements, but that is missing the point, says Robert Parry.
SHARE Friday, August 7, 2009 Olbermann-O'Reilly 'Truce' Frays
Stung by criticism of caving in to corporate pressure, Olbermann gave a runner-up “Worst Persons in the World†award to “Bill-O the Clown†and the top prize to Murdoch for having “muzzled Bill-O, kept him from speaking his mind.â€
SHARE Thursday, September 1, 2011 Why Do All Hail Gen. Petraeus?
Iraq continues its drift toward a failed state, amid terror bombings, sectarian violence and a devastated infrastructure. Also, the strategic winner from George Bush's invasion looks to be neighboring Iran. So, why is Official Washington celebrating Gen. David Petraeus for his "successful surge"?
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 31, 2015 Why Russia Shut Down NED Fronts
The neocon-flagship Washington Post fired a propaganda broadside at President Putin for shutting down the Russian activities of the National Endowment for Democracy, but left out key facts like NED's U.S. government funding, its quasi-CIA role, and its plans for regime change in Moscow, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, January 4, 2016 How Obama Enables Atrocities
President Obama seems so scared of offending the Saudis and their Israeli allies that he will tolerate almost any outrage, including Saudi Arabia's mass beheadings and/or shootings of the regime's enemies including a Shiite political leader who dared criticize the monarchy, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, December 21, 2015 Trump Schools ABC-TV Host on Reality
The spectacle of clueless U.S. media personalities, like George Stephanopoulos, chastising Donald Trump for getting facts wrong would be funny if it weren't indicative of a political-media system failing the American people and what's left of the democratic Republic, writes Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 14, 2015 NFL's "Deflategate" Findings "Unreliable"
The widespread hatred of the New England Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady explains the public support for the NFL's harsh penalties in "Deflategate," but independent statistical experts have found the NFL's findings in the case to be "deeply flawed" and "unreliable," writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Friday, March 11, 2016 Neocons Red-Faced Over "Red Line"
Official Washington's neocons love to condemn President Obama for not enforcing his "red line" after a sarin attack in Syria in 2013, even though one neocon now admits that U.S. intelligence lacked the proof, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, November 29, 2013 The Right's Misconstrued Constitution
The U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the right of a corporation owned by abortion opponents to assert its freedom of religion on health insurance, trumping a woman's choice of birth control, another chance for the Right to expand corporate rights.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 11, 2014 Can MSM Handle the Contra-Cocaine Truth?
"Kill the Messenger" tells the tragic tale of journalist Gary Webb who revived the Contra-cocaine scandal in the 1990s and saw his life destroyed by the mainstream media. The question now is: Will the MSM continue its cover-up of this sordid part of Ronald Reagan's legacy or finally accept the truth, writes Robert Parry.
(9 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 27, 2012 The Price of Political Purity
Voting for a minor third-party candidate is a "throw-away" vote. President Obama is 100 times better than the alternative and activists should put aside whatever disappointments they feel about Obama -- and not repeat the mistake of 1968.
(7 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 15, 2014 Why Take the Neocons Seriously?
The Sunni extremist offensive into central Iraq appears to have stalled, but the political battle rages in Washington where neocons see an opening to pressure President Obama into recommitting the U.S. military in support of neocon goals in the Middle East, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 7, 2015 Obama Boots Syrian Peace Chance
President Obama thinks he can appease the neocons and liberal hawks by talking tough about Syria and Russia but -- in doing so -- he is throwing away a promising opportunity to resolve the Syrian conflict, plus he still gets bashed by Official Washington's pundits, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, May 26, 2014 NYT's One-Sided Ukraine Narrative
The U.S. press coverage of the Ukraine crisis has been stunningly biased and one-sided, placing virtually all the blame on Russian President Putin. One of the worst offenders in this journalistic travesty has been the New York Times, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 16, 2012 How the GOP Promoted Gun Madness
When looking at the faces of the six-year-olds butchered in their Connecticut classroom, you should also see the faces of the politicians who pandered to the NRA and its obsessive opposition to commonsense gun control, the likes of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 6, 2016 Bush-41's October Surprise Denials
"Deny everything," British traitor Kim Philby said, explaining how the powerful can bluff past their crimes, a truism known to George H.W. Bush when he denied charges of his own near treason in the October Surprise case, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Friday, September 10, 2010 Islam Basher Claims to Unmask Cleric
For much of Israel's existence, right-wing Zionists, especially Likudniks (since the 1970s), have counted on American propagandists like Emerson to cover Israel's political flanks in the United States. This has involved demonizing the Muslim world and Americans who express sympathy for Palestinians.
SHARE Thursday, June 30, 2011 The New York Times' Favor and Fear
A federal court opinion has revealed that the New York Times's 2004 spiking of the story about President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping of Americans didn't stand alone. A year earlier, the Times bowed to another White House demand to kill a sensitive story, one about Iran's nuclear program.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 27, 2011 Trying 'Shock and Awe' in Libya
Led by the Washington Post and the New York Times, major U.S. news outlets have ignored the United Nations mandate to protect civilians. Instead, there's a renewed excitement over the prospect of a new "shock and awe" bombing of an "enemy" country that's been stripped of its air defenses.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, February 24, 2012 Madison: Father of the Commerce Clause
The Tea Party has been fueled by the idea that key Founders, like James Madison, opposed a strong central government and thus laws like "Obamacare" are unconstitutional. But Madison was the framer who devised the Commerce Clause upon which health-care and other reforms are based
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 10, 2015 Obama's Two-Faced Foreign Policy
President Obama's Syrian strategy is getting roundly denounced as incoherent, which -- while true -- is really a reflection of his failure to fully break with neocon-style interventionism even when he realizes the futility of the strategy, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Sunday, January 18, 2009 Bush's Only Gift to America
What recent history has shown is that failure to address serious government misconduct only invites a repeat of those abuses or worse. It can be unpleasant to exact accountability--it is often easier to look the other way--but it has been a hard-learned lesson for America that leniency in such circumstances can have devastating consequences.
SHARE Wednesday, January 20, 2010 How Obama Lost His Way
Simply put, Obama failed to persuade the American people that he would deploy a reenergized federal government to fight their battles against well-entrenched financial interests. Instead, he was viewed as helping the elites shore up their comfortable trenches.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 10, 2013 The Madness of NYT's Tom Friedman
Looking back at the Iraq War and other disastrous U.S. foreign policy choices, you might wonder about the sanity of American leadership. But if you read star columnist Thomas L. Friedman, you'll learn that it's the rest of the world that's crazy.
SHARE Tuesday, September 13, 2011 CNN Panders to the Tea Party
Mainstream American journalists have long feared the wrath of the well-organized Right, which targets independent-minded reporters with the damaging label "liberal." So, the career-minded are quick to bend over rightward, as CNN just did in teaming up with the Tea Party Express.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, January 20, 2014 The Mistaken Guns of Last August
After hundreds of Syrians died from Sarin gas last summer, Secretary of State Kerry insisted the U.S. had solid intelligence on the locations of the Syrian government’s launch sites used in the attack, thus justifying a U.S. military retaliation which was only narrowly averted. Now, those U.S. government’s claims have collapsed, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 10, 2012 The "America-Held-Hostage" Narrative
From the moment Barack Obama took office, the Republicans plotted to sabotage his presidency, even though the nation faced its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The U.S. news media knows that, but can't resist blaming the President for the high unemployment.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, November 23, 2015 Hitting Saudi Arabia Where It Hurts
Though faced with a global terrorism crisis, Official Washington can't get beyond its neocon-led "tough-guy-gal" rhetoric. But another option -- financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia -- might help finally shut down the covert supply of money and arms to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 14, 2011 October Surprise Evidence Surfaces
Among newly released archival records is the first documentary evidence that William Casey took a trip to Madrid possibly related to the 1980 October Surprise conspiracy. Doubts that Ronald Reagan's campaign chief went to Madrid fueled media attempts in 1991 to debunk allegations of a secret GOP deal with Iran.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, February 9, 2009 The GOP's Filibuster Hypocrisy
Though seemingly forgotten by most TV talking heads, it was only three years ago, when the Republicans had control of both the White House and Congress "" and "filibuster"- was a dirty word. In this obstructionism, the Republicans appear to have a powerful ally in the Washington press corps that - with few exceptions - treats the GOP's promiscuous use of filibusters as some responsible application of a time-honored tradition.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 20, 2016 An Ugly Smear Campaign
A Zionist group bought a full-page New York Times ad to demonize Sidney and Max Blumenthal as "anti-Semites" and to demand that Hillary Clinton renounce them, a revival of a crude McCarthyism, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 2, 2014 Twisting Putin's Words on Ukraine
Anti-Russian bias pervades the mainstream U.S. media in the Ukraine crisis, reflected in word choices -- "pro-democracy" for U.S.-favored protesters in Kiev, "terrorists" for disfavored eastern Ukrainians -- but also in how the narrative is shaped by false summaries, as Robert Parry explains.
SHARE Thursday, March 29, 2012 A Judicial War on Democracy
Comments on the U.S. Supreme Court's three-day debate over the Affordable Care Act have focused on the damage the five Republican justices are expected to do to President Obama by striking down his prized new law. But the bigger story may be their judicial war on democracy.
(8 comments) SHARE Monday, April 7, 2008 Losing the War for Reality
To understand America's sharp decline in the early 21st Century, one must look at its lost ability to deal with reality. In a new book, former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman traces this problem back to the work of Robert Gates and others in the 1980s to "politicize" intelligence.
SHARE Monday, March 15, 2010 Spy Takes US-Israeli Secrets to Grave
Last week's death of Israeli spymaster David Kimche -" and the omissions in his obituaries about his most sensitive operations, especially those regarding the United States -" are a reminder of how much crucial history is being lost as key figures from this era take their secrets to the grave.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 9, 2012 Will Netanyahu Defy Obama on Iran?
President Obama sent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu home with a warning that Israel cannot count on U.S. support if it unilaterally bombs Iran. Top neocons are fuming and Netanyahu must weigh the risk of defying Obama on Iran and trying to deny him reelection
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 12, 2012 The Dark Continuum of Watergate
The 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in has brought reflections on the scandal's larger meaning, but Official Washington still misses the connection to perhaps Richard Nixon's dirtiest trick, the torpedoing of Vietnam peace talks that could have ended the war four years earlier.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 8, 2012 A Test for the Right's Machine
Less than two months from the election, Republicans are in intellectual disarray. Romney and Ryan are basing their campaign on a mix of distortion and concealment--and neither is particularly popular with the American people. But what the GOP ticket does have on its side is an enormous media/political infrastructure that could still wrest away the White House and give Republicans control of the House and Senate, too.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 10, 2016 Hillary Clinton's Very Bad Night
The magnitude of Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire drubbing has establishment Democrats wringing their hands as it dawns on them that no candidate in modern U.S. political history has bounced back from a 22-point loss in that first-in-the-nation primary to win the White House, reports Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 26, 2013 Making "Other America" Fail
Behind today's fight over government spending is a bigger struggle for U.S. democracy's future, pitting the traditional white-ruled country against a new multicultural nation, or the Right's Real America against Other America. To win, Real America must make Other America fail.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, January 26, 2015 Rushing to Judge NFL's Patriots Guilty
The hottest news in the U.S. this past week was not President Obama's State of the Union address but rather did the New England Patriots intentionally deflate footballs to gain a competitive edge, a story that suffered from the same rush to judgment that has afflicted other aspects of U.S. journalism.
SHARE Wednesday, March 28, 2012 GOP Justices Ignore the Founders
As the Republican Supreme Court majority moves toward gutting health-care reform, the justices are making a mockery of the Constitution and the intent of the Founders who had good reasons to include the powerful Commerce Clause. But it appears GOP partisanship will again trump facts and reason.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 13, 2015 MH-17: The Dog Still Not Barking
The dog not barking in the Dutch report on the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is the silence regarding U.S. intelligence information that supposedly had pinned down key details just days after the crash but has been kept secret, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Monday, April 4, 2011 WPost Seeks Longer Iraq Occupation
The neocon dream of using Iraq as a land-based aircraft carrier to project American military power against Iran, Syria and other adversaries dies hard. That's why the Washington Post is mounting its latest rear-guard battle to pressure Maliki and Obama to revise the SOFA and allow for at least a continuing U.S. military toehold in Iraq, with the hope for a much larger footprint later.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 6, 2012 Lessons from Gov. Walker's Win
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the new rock-star of the Republican Right, rode a wave of corporate money and anti-union sentiment to a recall victory. But his win could wake up progressives to the need for more media outreach to educate citizens on the dangers of unchecked corporate power.
SHARE Monday, January 24, 2011 Ted Koppel's Timid Take on Iran-gate
The safe conventional wisdom continues to be the acceptance of the false history that was created in the early 1990s as the easy way for all the various powerful players to avoid painful clashes over accountability and guilt.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 23, 2012 NRA Suggests a Police State
The irony of the NRA's crackpot idea for protecting America's children by dramatically expanding the use of armed guards is that the proposal would push the U.S. further down the path toward a police state, threatening the "liberties" that the NRA claims it wants to ensure.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 17, 2013 WPost's Cohen Fears the Hoodie
After George Zimmerman was acquitted for murdering Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, many Americans reacted with disgust. But others, like columnist Richard Cohen, blamed the slaying on a white person's understandable fear of young black males.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 5, 2010 Accusation of October Surprise 'Lying'
The Russian Report and other undisclosed material that went against the task force's findings ended up in a less grand location. The taped-up boxes were moved to some House office space that years earlier had been carved out of the Rayburn House Parking Garage and there dumped on the floor of an abandoned Ladies Room.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 2, 2012 When Debate "Zingers" Backfired
Zingers are often the most memorable moments in presidential debates, but they are rarely spontaneous. In 1992, aides to President George H.W. Bush prepped him with insults intended to question Bill Clinton's patriotism but the script went awry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 21, 2011 Ending The Iraq Catastrophe
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told President Barack Obama that U.S. troops wouldn't have immunity from Iraqi laws after December, forcing the last thousands of American soldiers to leave. That signals the end of the Iraq War -- and the start of the U.S. battle over what the war's lessons were.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 15, 2011 On Libya, Now They Tell Us
The Washington Post now admits that the key role of Islamists in Libya's uprising "went largely unnoticed" before Muammar Gaddafi was toppled last month. Whose fault was that, since it was the Post and other Big Media that were acting more as propagandists for "regime change" than honest brokers.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 15, 2014 Can Obama Speak Strongly for Peace?
Sen. John McCain is baiting President Obama for making America “look weak†and is demanding more aggressive responses toward Syria, Iran and Russia. Thus, Obama faces a turning-point moment when he must confront neocon warmongering or surrender to it, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Friday, April 11, 2014 A Blind Eye to LBJ's "X-File"
President Lyndon Johnson’s legacy is in the news – whether his many domestic achievements should outweigh his disastrous escalation of the Vietnam War – but no attention is being paid to evidence that LBJ might have ended the war if not for Richard Nixon’s sabotage, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, May 18, 2009 Giving Some Love to the Inquisition
This dynamic is one that has prevailed in Washington for more than a quarter century. Republicans and the right-wing news media put up a fierce defense of Republican crimes, while the Democrats and the mainstream press seek to avoid a confrontation with angry Republicans and right-wingers.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 20, 2013 Will the American Right Kill Us All?
By wallowing in a world of scientific denial and historical fabrication, the Republican Right and its Tea Party allies have prevented the U.S. government from responding aggressively to the existential emergency from global warming.
SHARE Thursday, October 8, 2009 Can US Make Sound Decisions?
While much attention has been focused on recent fabrications from Fox News personalities and other right-wing media voices, the Washington Post, CNBC and similar outlets of elite opinion may represent a greater threat to an informed national debate and to responsible decision-making.
SHARE Wednesday, July 15, 2009 Bush's Hit Teams
The Sandoval case also revealed a classified program in which the Pentagon's Asymmetric Warfare Group encouraged U.S. military snipers in Iraq to drop "bait" "" such as electrical cords and ammunition "" and then shoot Iraqis who picked up the items, according to evidence in the Sandoval case. [Washington Post, Sept. 24, 2007]
SHARE Monday, August 13, 2007 New Spy Law Broader Than Thought
Before the Democratic-controlled Congress caved in on George W. Bush’s warrantless-wiretapping powers, White House lawyers slipped in two provisions to give the President even more authority – and less accountability – than he claimed on his own. And the U.S. press corps largely missed that part of the story.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, February 5, 2016 Giving Peace Very Little Chance
What the next U.S. president can do to bring endless warfare to an end is one of the most important issues of Campaign 2016, but it is getting only a cursory treatment in debates as politicians seem to fear neocon wrath if they seek peace, writes Robert Parry.
(12 comments) SHARE Monday, November 2, 2015 Reviving the "Liberal Media" Myth
The Republicans and the Right have dragged out an old favorite whipping boy -- the "liberal media" -- to distract the voters from the failure of some GOP presidential candidates to answer a few tough questions, a tried-and-untrue exercise in political diversion, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 27, 2009 On Public Option, MSM Gets It Wrong
The mainstream media's opposition to the public option – as reflected in the reporting from CNN and other major networks as well as the Washington Post's columns – is another reminder why honest Americans must do whatever they can to build a truly independent media that will resist pressure from the Right and other powerful vested interests.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 1, 2012 Confusion Over the First Amendment
The Blunt Amendment went down to a narrow defeat in the Senate on Thursday, but its contention that employers must be allowed to impose their religious beliefs on the medical insurance choices of their employees will remain a hot political topic -- one dressed deceptively in the First Amendment.
SHARE Wednesday, April 16, 2014 Ukraine, Through the US Looking Glass
As the post-coup regime in Ukraine sends troops and paramilitaries to crack down on ethnic Russian protesters in the east, the U.S. news media continues to feed the American public a steady dose of anti-Russian propaganda, often wrapped in accusations of “Russian propaganda,†Robert Parry reports.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, May 17, 2010 Itching to Fight Another Muslim Enemy
If you read the major American newspapers or watch the propaganda on cable TV, it's pretty clear that the U.S. foreign policy Establishment is again spoiling for a fight, this time in Iran.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, August 10, 2012 Blaming Obama and Romney Equally
The U.S. press corps is lathered up over the "tone" of Campaign 2012, insisting on a more high-minded discourse. But these journalists are unwilling to make distinctions between legitimate questions about the presidential candidates and distortions in some of the ads.
SHARE Sunday, November 22, 2009 The Madness Returns
As soon as the mainstream news correspondents sensed that the tide was turning again, they smoothly readjusted to the resurgence of know-nothing-ism. Palin's recitation of right-wing talking points was treated with deference and respect, except by the likes of Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's “Daily Show.â€
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 10, 2013 Republican Hypocrisy on Benghazi
Official Washington is obsessing over the Benghazi "scandal," proof that the Republicans and their right-wing media can make the smallest things big and the biggest things small. It is a disparity that has distorted how Americans understand their recent history.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, August 23, 2013 Rick Perry's Neo-Confederate Stance
Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other neo-Confederate politicians are citing the Tenth Amendment in claiming the federal government has no authority to protect minority voting rights. But they're wrong both in their constitutional analysis and their ignorance of the Fifteenth Amendment.
SHARE Tuesday, November 8, 2011 An Iraq-WMD Replay on Iran?
The U.S. press corps and "independent" American weapons experts got almost everything wrong about Iraq's purported WMD before the U.S. invasion in 2003. Now, much the same cast is returning to interpret dubious intelligence about Iran's nuclear program.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 25, 2012 Are the GOP Justices Political Hacks?
The "Obamacare" debate will test whether the U.S. Supreme Court's five Republican justices are political hacks. After all, a right-wing think tank devised the individual mandate, which was embraced by GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, but it's now anathema because it was passed by a Democratic president.
SHARE Sunday, April 15, 2012 America's Founding Pragmatism
America's Founders were not marble statues, but rather real people facing tough challenges. To make ends meet, the esteemed Abigail Adams dabbled in black-market goods, and that kind of tough-minded pragmatism -- not starry-eyed idealism -- imbued the Constitution and guided the early nation.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 6, 2015 Obama's Credibility Crisis
Inside Official Washington's bubble, the Important People believe their "group think" is the envy of the world, but the truth is that their credibility has collapsed to such a degree that their propaganda can't even match up with the head-chopping videos of the Islamic State crazies, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, November 4, 2011 Assessing Obama's "Peace" Moves
The neocons are trying to build on their own myth of a war "won" but then "betrayed" as justification for ousting Obama from office in 2012 and restoring neocon domination of American foreign policy under a President Mitt Romney or a President Rick Perry. If the Left can get past its historic trait of seeing the glass as half empty rather than sometimes half full, it might recognize that some progress is finally being made.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 17, 2013 Judge Leon's Dirty Climb to the Bench
Civil libertarians are cheering federal judge Richard Leon for his ruling against the NSA's massive surveillance program -- and that's all to the good -- but Leon's route to the bench followed a twisted course of partisan investigations and one historic cover-up.
SHARE Saturday, August 1, 2015 The "Two Minutes Hate" of Tom Brady
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady may lose his day in court since the NFL maneuvered "Deflategate" into a corporate-friendly venue in Manhattan -- possibly sparing the NFL from explaining why rival owners were allowed to intervene to push harsh penalties for Brady and the Patriots, says Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, August 24, 2015 The Case for Pragmatism
Since American neocons emerged in the 1980s, they have pushed an aggressive "regime change" strategy that has left bloody chaos in their wake. The cumulative impact, including Mideast refugees flooding Europe and overuse of sanctions, is now contributing to a global economic crisis, says Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 20, 2016 Fearing Sanders as "Closet Realist"
To Washington's neocons like David Ignatius, Sen. Sanders should be disqualified as a presidential candidate for being a "closet realist." Sanders seems not to accept their forced "regime change" in Syria, nor their plans for more "nation building" like the neocon handiwork in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, writes Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, May 7, 2012 Obama Gets Tough, Finally
President Obama looks ready for a political fight, telling his supporters "Let's go get "em. It's game time." But is the U.S. political/media system ready for a Democrat turning the tables on the Republicans in terms of toughness -- after decades of Republicans playing the bullies?
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 15, 2013 America's Upside-Down Morality
Pvt. Bradley Manning has prostrated himself before his court-martial judge, apologizing for leaking documents on U.S. government wrongdoing and referencing his psychological problems as reasons for mercy. The sad spectacle underscores how upside-down American morality now is.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 26, 2016 From Brady to MH-17, Power Defines Reality
From the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down to Tom Brady's NFL suspension, reality gets defined not by facts and reason but by power and propaganda, reports Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 21, 2010 Massachusetts' Message of Stupid
Massachusetts voters may have thought they were sending some kind of message to the nation with their choice of Scott Brown. And surely they have thrown a wrench into the legislative process, whether on health care or on regulating Wall Street. But whatever Massachusetts thought it was saying, it comes across as a message of stupid.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, June 5, 2009 119 Million Americans Must Be Wrong
As the health insurance industry and its defenders in Congress lay out their case against permitting a public option in a reform bill, perhaps their most curious argument is that some 119 million Americans are ready to dump their private plans and jump to something more like Medicare – and that's why the choice can't be permitted.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 7, 2012 A Great Night for US Democracy
President Obama's reelection was a victory for him and the Democrats but also for the principles of democracy. The Republicans sabotaged the economy, sought to suppress the vote and flooded TV screens with attack ads, but young people and minorities led the way in rejecting these tactics
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 15, 2015 NYT Plays Games with MH-17 Tragedy
There was a time when The New York Times showed some skepticism toward the words of the U.S. government but those days are long gone, as the Times sinks even deeper into the propaganda swamp with an editorial playing games with the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 tragedy, writes Robert Parry.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Obama, NYT Keep Israeli Nuke Secrets
By leaving non-nuclear Iran open to obliteration -" because it was tardy in announcing a reactor that isn't operational -" while giving a permanent pass to Israel on a vast nuclear arsenal, Obama devastates his own credibility.
SHARE Thursday, May 23, 2013 Israel's Hand in Guatemala's Genocide
The Guatemalan genocide of the 1980s does not just implicate President Ronald Reagan and his senior aides but the Israeli government which secretly supplied helicopters, guns and computers that were used to hunt down and exterminate Ixil Indians and other perceived enemies of the state.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 15, 2013 Do Syrian Rebels Have Sarin?
A U.S.-Russian agreement calls for the Syrian government to disclose and dispose of its chemical weapons, but that doesn't resolve the mystery of who was behind the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus -- or the question of whether Syrian rebels have their own stores of CW. At least, the Obama administration might clarify what its own intelligence files contain about rebel possession of chemical weapons.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 19, 2014 Reviving the "Successful Surge" Myth
The military offensive by Sunni extremists driving into the heart of Iraq has brought the neocons out of the shadows to blame President Obama, by arguing that they had "won" the war before Obama "lost" it, a deeply engrained false narrative of Official Washington, says Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 10, 2011 US Lost Its Way from Omaha Beach
Visiting Omaha Beach and the nearby American cemetery of World War II dead recalls a moment in time when the US sacrificed to stop a global epidemic of madness. But those memories also underscore how the United States has since lost its way. The cumulative impact of right-wing American policies is pushing the world toward what may be another cataclysm.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 23, 2006 Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project)
The United States is following the lead of "dirty war" nations, such as Argentina and Chile, in enacting what amounts to an amnesty law protecting U.S. government operatives, apparently up to and including President George W. Bush, who have committed or are responsible for human rights crimes.
SHARE Sunday, May 27, 2012 How al-Qaeda Exploits Palestine Cause
When U.S. Special Forces raided Osama bin Laden's compound last year, they grabbed al-Qaeda documents describing internal debates, including how the terror group should continue exploiting Israel's abuse of Palestinians as a crucial recruitment pitch.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 18, 2013 Israel Sides with Syrian Jihadists
Israel's Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, has confirmed suspicions that Israel has taken the side of Syrian rebels in their bloody civil war and wants President Assad to fall even if that turns Syria over to al-Qaeda-connected jihadists, a disclosure that may change how recent events are viewed.
SHARE Thursday, August 25, 2011 Orange Jumpsuits/Double Standards
The U.S. news media regularly rallies the American public to outrage when a U.S. adversary or some unpopular group is linked to a heinous crime. But a different standard applies to U.S. allies even when there is strong evidence of a similar offense.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 26, 2010 WPost Downplays Iraq War Crimes
The Post's editors, who aided and abetted President Bush in building public support for his war of aggression against Iraq, have never been willing to stand up and take full responsibility for those deceptive editorials that parroted Bush's WMD lies and contributed to the bloodbath that followed. The Post's Tuesday editorial dismissed the significance of the nearly 400,000 secret military field reports released by WikiLeaks.
SHARE Wednesday, June 2, 2010 Israel's Dangerous Turn
Even as America's commentariat again generates the predictable excuses for Israeli latest actions, the political reality inside Israel is one that is shifting more and more toward a society dominated by Jewish fundamentalists, including an aggressive and racist settler bloc.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 19, 2010 'Hardball' & Dumbed-Down US Politics
In a stunning display of racial and historical tone-deafness, Matthews compared Haiti's alleged political fun-and-games with those of Louisiana in its supposed tolerance of corrupt machine politicians who left New Orleans vulnerable to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 27, 2015 Will Peace Find a 2016 Advocate?
Campaign 2016 has offered few useful ideas about worsening global crises. On the Republican side, it's been mostly the same-old tough talk while Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have said little. Is there a way to break through the frozen thinking about world conflicts, asks Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 27, 2011 New War Rationale: "Protect Civilians'
The United Nations Security Council authorized NATO's air campaign in Libya "to protect civilians." But that rationale has been stretched by President Barack Obama and other NATO leaders to justify a war for "regime change" that actually is putting civilian lives in danger,
SHARE Sunday, June 24, 2012 WPost's Kessler Earns 4 Pinocchios
Newspaper "fact-checking" is only valuable if the people doing it have the courage to apply careful journalistic standards to their criticisms, not simply show off an artificial "balance" or pose as "tough." The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler is one "fact-checker" who ignores the facts.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 4, 2013 All Scrubbed Up, Nowhere to Show
Two weeks after an apparent chemical attack in Syria, the Obama administration continues to tout its "scrubbed and rescrubbed" intelligence as proving that the Syrian government is to blame. But not a single piece of verifiable evidence has been presented to the American people.
SHARE Wednesday, December 4, 2013 Saudi-Israeli Alliance Boosts Al-Qaeda
Saudi Arabia and Israel see Iran as their worst enemy, but that obsession is allowing al-Qaeda to reassert itself in the Middle East, especially in war-torn Syria, and that could open the West to a new round of terrorist attacks.
SHARE Wednesday, January 31, 2007 Iran Clock Is Ticking
Time may be running out for Congress and the American people to put in place any constraints on President George W. Bush before he plunges ahead with a new war against Iran. Military and intelligence sources say the preparations for a major bombing campaign are moving ahead swiftly, with the deteriorating U.S. situation in Iraq adding to Bush's urgency.
SHARE Friday, May 3, 2013 Howard Kurtz's Belated Comeuppance
Media critic Howard Kurtz has lost his job as Washington bureau chief for Newsweek/Daily Beast after a blog post in which he falsely accused basketball player Jason Collins of hiding his past engagement to a woman while coming out as gay. But Kurtz's journalistic abuses have a much longer history.
SHARE Wednesday, February 15, 2012 New Weasel Word on Iran Nukes
The U.S. news media has consistently created the impression that Iran is building a nuclear bomb and that its denials shouldn't be taken seriously. However, U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments may finally be eroding that smug certainty.
SHARE Sunday, October 3, 2010 Guatemala: A Test Tube of Repression
Last week's grotesque revelation about American public health doctors infecting nearly 700 Guatemalans with venereal disease to test penicillin from 1946-48 marked just the start of the U.S. government's post-World War II abuse of that Central American country.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 30, 2006 Bush's My Lai
Haditha Massacre likely to follow the course of other Iraq war-crimes cases, such as the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib – some low- or mid-level soldiers will be court-martialed and marched off to prison.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 18, 2013 The Power of False Narratives
The defeat of a modest gun-safety bill in the Senate is further vindication of Orwell's cynical observation that "who controls the past controls the future" since the American Right has persuaded millions of Americans that a false narrative about the Second Amendment is true.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, July 15, 2013 Israel's Nuke Arsenal Off-Limits
It was a typical day in the life of mainstream U.S. journalism, a profession which purports to be "objective" -- meaning it should treat all parties to a dispute equally -- but, of course, isn't. Netanyahu also was allowed to denounce Iran as "apocalyptic" without any question about Netanyahu's own frequent references to Israel facing "existential" threats.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 23, 2012 Did the Founders Hate Government?
Orwell's insight -- that who controls the present controls the past, and who controls the past controls the future -- could apply to the American political debate in which the Right has built a false narrative that enlists the Framers of the Constitution as enemies of a strong central government.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 3, 2015 US Tax Dollars and Ukraine's Finance Minister
Though touted as the face of reform inside Ukraine's post-coup regime, Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko enriched herself at the expense of a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund -- and USAID now says it's missing some of the audit records detailing Jaresko's dealings, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 10, 2013 Bringing Back Jim Crow
Many U.S. historians have soft spots for Thomas Jefferson, despite his gross hypocrisy on slavery, and for the Confederates and their supposed gallantry in their fight to preserve slavery. But apologizing for historical racists only invites more racism.
SHARE Wednesday, January 28, 2015 How Roy Cohn Helped Rupert Murdoch
With Fox News and a vast media empire, Rupert Murdoch wields enormous political clout in the United States, but his entree into the world of Washington power came from the notorious McCarthyite Roy Cohn who opened the door into Ronald Reagan's Oval Office, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 2, 2012 The Founders' "Musket Mandate'
The negative tone of the Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court suggests that the Affordable Care Act, with its individual mandate to buy health insurance, may be overturned as "unconstitutional" by a partisan 5-4 vote. But key Founders had a less hostile view toward mandates in 1792.
SHARE Tuesday, January 25, 2011 Washington Post Still Talking Tough on Iran
Washington's pundits and politicians remain wedded to the belief that the United States is all-powerful and that Muslim nations can -- and must -- be bullied into submission. The gap between the world's hard realities and Washington's macho rhetoric is widening into a dangerous chasm -- and the Washington Post's editorial board has chosen the side of illusion.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 29, 2013 Neocons Push Israeli-Saudi Alliance
Early U.S. presidents warned against the dangers of "entangling alliances," prescient advice that the neocons want President Obama to ignore amid demands from Israel and Saudi Arabia that America tie itself up in the endless and bloody sectarian conflicts of the Middle East.
SHARE Saturday, March 12, 2016 Hillary's Double-Standard on Protests
Hillary Clinton is lecturing Donald Trump on the need to respect protesters but -- in 2011 -- she did nothing to stop police from brutalizing a silent protester at one of her speeches, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 27, 2009 Obama Caves to 'Scaredy-Cat Nation'
Given the absence of a compelling rationale, it appears more likely that Obama is bowing to the power of fear, political fear that he might be blamed by fearful Americans if a jury acquitted some allegedly dangerous terrorist because the evidence was insufficient or because the case was tainted by torture or other government misconduct.
SHARE Monday, April 21, 2014 Another NYT-Michael Gordon Special?
The New York Times is at it again with a lead story citing grainy photos from the post-putsch regime in Kiev as proving that Russian special forces are behind the popular uprisings in eastern Ukraine, another slanted story coauthored by Michael Gordon, as Robert Parry reports.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 9, 2009 Blaming the 'Dithering' Obama
Obama has been in office less than 10 months and had to confront a multitude of Bush disasters. Those included the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, a yawning budget deficit, tattered international relations and two open-ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There does appear to be some merit to the “dithering†accusation. Or put differently, Obama has shown a tendency to let himself be diddled.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, October 25, 2010 Records Cast Doubt on Iraq 'Surge'
The latest trove of WikiLeaks documents is further proof that the reality in Iraq was much more complicated than Washington's neocons and the U.S. news media have been willing to admit. The records show that the "surge" was not the panacea that the American people were led to believe.
SHARE Tuesday, January 14, 2014 If Gov. Christie Had NSA's Metadata
New Jersey Gov. Christie’s Bridge-gate scandal is a reminder that unscrupulous politicians can abuse their powers in unexpected and extraordinary ways, which underscores the need to put tight legal constraints on the NSA’s surveillance powers, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, December 2, 2011 Three Pillars of a Revived Republic
As local governments shut down more Occupy encampments, the movement for the "99 percent" is at a crossroads. Some supporters advocate more civil disobedience; others urge a shift toward media outreach; and still others want a move into politics.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 11, 2013 Obama Still Withholds Syria Evidence
President Obama has sidetracked the rush to war with Syria, agreeing to pursue a diplomatic plan involving Syria surrendering its chemical weapons. But the U.S. government still hides its supposedly conclusive evidence that the Assad regime was guilty of the Aug. 21 chemical attack.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 24, 2014 Neocons Take Aim at Syrian Peace Talks
Syrian peace talks have finally begun, but many powerful interests – including U.S. neocons – are determined to see the talks fail. The Washington Post’s neocon editorial page is urging President Obama to give up on “feckless diplomacy†and threaten war, writes Robert Parry.
(13 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 14, 2014 Ethnic Russians Are People, Too
There's an odor of prejudice in how the mainstream U.S. news media treats the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, as if they are mindless beings, easily duped "minions" of Vladimir Putin. But this bias reflects more negatively on the U.S. press than on the people who are being insulted, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Thursday, November 7, 2013 Kerry's Saudi-Israeli Appeasement Tour
Secretary of State Kerry is scurrying from capital to capital across the Mideast in what looks like an apology tour, seeking to soothe the hurt feelings of Saudi Arabia and Israel, but the appeasement may encourage more resistance to U.S. policies.
SHARE Wednesday, April 18, 2012 Misguided Scheme from NYT's Friedman
If Friedman had any journalistic integrity, he would have declared that today's extremist Republican Party has become the chief threat to the nation's well-being -- and indeed the planet's survival. He would say that only the decisive defeat of this Ayn Rand radicalism offers a pathway to the future. However, to do that would put his cherished (and profitable) status as a "centrist" in danger.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 5, 2014 NYT's Belated Admission on Contra-Cocaine
Since the Contra-cocaine scandal surfaced in 1985, major U.S. news outlets have disparaged it, most notably when the big newspapers destroyed Gary Webb for reviving it in 1996. But a New York Times review of a movie on Webb finally admits the reality, writes Robert Parry.
(10 comments) SHARE Monday, January 11, 2010 Do Republicans Deserve a Reward?
Election 2010 is beginning to feel a lot like Election 2000, when Ralph Nader's supporters found "not a dime's worth of difference" between Al Gore and George W. Bush, thus helping to keep the presidential race close enough for Bush to steal the White House
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 2, 2012 Why Romney Insulted the Palestinians
A favorite neocon theme is that the superiority of Western culture explains the world's wealth disparities, not the accident of natural resources and the aggressive use of military force. Mitt Romney echoed those neocon sentiments in touting Israel and disparaging the Palestinians.
SHARE Thursday, June 17, 2010 The Tricky October Surprise Report
Since the 1970s, Democrats have shied away from holding Republicans accountable for a string of national security scandals, with the failed investigation into the 1980 October Surprise case serving as a kind of template, not dissimilar from President Barack Obama's refusal to investigate President George W. Bush's decisions regarding torture and other war crimes.
SHARE Friday, September 14, 2012 US Media Distorts Iran Nuke Dispute
The major U.S. news media continues its biased coverage of the Israel-Iran standoff, tilting consistently in favor of Israel, in part, by ignoring Israel's actual nuclear arsenal and hyping Iran's hypothetical one. Even a rare wrist-slap from the Washington Post's ombudsman has had no effect.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, December 3, 2012 Arson Seen in Attack on Ex-Israeli Spy
Among Ben-Menashe's enemies are some of his former Israeli superiors who consider him a traitor for exposing senstive Israeli secrets and powerful Republicans, including former President George H.W. Bush whom Ben-Menashe fingered as involved in national security scandals in the 1980s.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 12, 2015 Blocking Democracy as Syria's Solution
The long-cherished neocon dream of "regime change" in Syria is blocking a possible route out of the crisis -- a ceasefire followed by elections in which President Assad could compete. The problem is there's no guarantee that Assad would lose and thus the dream might go unfulfilled, writes Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 2, 2010 The Right's Power of Media Money
After Republican leaders finally consented to a White House meeting, Barack Obama apologized for not having done more to reach out to them and promised to collaborate with them on what looks more and more like cave-ins, even as Obama looks more and more like a one-term president.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, May 27, 2013 Source of Anti-Government Extremism
The Right's hostility to "guv-mint" is not new. It traces back to the South's fears that any activism by the national government, whether building roads or providing disaster relief, would risk federal intervention against slavery and later against segregation, perhaps even the end of white supremacy.
SHARE Saturday, October 26, 2013 A Threat to Nuke Tehran
Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson urged the United States to coerce Iran by dropping a demonstration nuke in the desert followed by a blackmail threat that the next one would obliterate Tehran. But this idea of genocide-extortion has drawn no official U.S. condemnation.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 2, 2010 The Woeful Washington Post
The Washington Post's editors never tire of basking in the faded glory of Watergate, a scandal that occurred nearly four decades ago. Some outsiders also still call the Post "liberal." But the reality is quite different as the Post routinely takes neocon stances and has become a scandal onto itself.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, April 2, 2010 The Bomb-Bomb-Iran 'Parlor Game'
The Times' biased approach toward the Iranian nuclear issue is underscored further by the Times' refusal to mention that the presumed "victim" in this story, Israel, possesses one of the world's most sophisticated nuclear arsenals yet has neither publicly admitted that it has nukes nor signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
SHARE Monday, May 2, 2011 Finishing a Job: Obama Gets Osama
Though it remains unclear what the long-term consequences of this action will be, Obama's success -- after years of Bush's failure -- does suggest one important lesson: U.S. officials would be well advised to ignore the special pleadings of the neocons who remain highly influential inside Official Washington.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 19, 2013 Why WPost's Hiatt Should Be Fired
Toting up the Iraq War's cost is staggering, including nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead. But a decade later, few of its architects in government or apologists in the press have faced accountability. Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt for one.
SHARE Sunday, November 10, 2013 A Showdown for War or Peace
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Saudi intelligence chief Bandar are going head-to-head against U.S. President Obama and Russian President Putin on resolving crises in Iran and Syria. The Saudi monarchy has gone to unprecedented lengths to register its disapproval of Obama's peace initiatives, even rejecting a two-year seat on the United Nations Security Council.
SHARE Wednesday, May 13, 2009 WPost Columnist Winks at Torture
These days, the Washington Post has the look of one of those Southern newspapers in the 1960s standing firm for segregation as the wave of civil rights swept across the region. Except for the Post, the blind commitment is to neoconservatism.
SHARE Monday, May 12, 2014 Ukraine's Dueling Elections
Voters in two eastern Ukrainian provinces showed strong support for secession from the coup regime in Kiev, but the U.S. State Department and other regime supporters reject the outcome and vow to press ahead with a special presidential vote on May 25, Robert Parry reports.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 5, 2016 Saudi Game-Changing Head-Chopping
Saudi Arabia likes to distinguish itself from the head-choppers of the Islamic State but the recent mass executions, including decapitating a top Shiite dissident, reveals the Saudi royals to be just better-dressed jihadists, while creating an opening for a U.S. realignment in the Mideast, says Robert Parry.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 10, 2009 Health Insurers Threaten Rate Hikes
Though looking forward to millions of new customers who would be compelled by the U.S. government to buy health insurance, the insurance industry is threatening to raise premiums across the board if more of its demands are not met.
SHARE Monday, December 19, 2011 Is Iraq War End a New Day?
The departure of the last 500 U.S. combat troops from Iraq in the predawn hours on Sunday marked an anti-climatic end to a near-nine-year war that began with "shock and awe" and "embedded" journalists joining the invasion force. Were any lessons learned -- and what lies ahead?
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 20, 2014 Hillary Clinton’s Unlearned Lessons
The Democrats sound self-satisfied that there is so little internal opposition to Hillary Clinton for President, but this rush to a coronation is ignoring questions about her judgment as a New York Senator and Secretary of State — and whether she is prone to war, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Thursday, February 9, 2012 Ginning Up "War" on the Catholic Church
It is sometimes breathtaking to watch the right-wing media/political machine turn a relatively minor dispute into a "war" -- as is now happening over a provision of the health-care law that requires some church-run institutions like hospitals and universities to include contraception coverage in plans offered to female employees.
SHARE Saturday, August 9, 2008 WaPo Admits Bungling Obama Quote
The Washington Post's ombudsman says the newspaper's original source for a quote that was used to portray Barack Obama as a megalomaniac now disputes the Post's negative interpretation that has spread across cable TV, the Internet and even into a John McCain attack ad.
SHARE Friday, April 26, 2013 It's the Media, Stupid!
Rich right-wingers, including the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch, are eying the purchase of the Los Angeles Times and other major regional newspapers to create an even bigger platform for their propaganda, a media strategy that dates back several decades.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 26, 2014 Cheering a "Democratic" Coup in Ukraine
Exclusive: There’s been much celebration in U.S. political and media circles over the violent ouster of Ukraine’s democratically elected president. Nearly everyone is hailing this putsch and ignoring that it was spurred on by neo-Nazi militias, Robert Parry reports.
SHARE Thursday, February 19, 2009 The US Media & Democracy in Crisis
For those of us who have criticized the U.S. mainstream media for failing to resist right-wing pressure over the past three decades, there is a sad sense of vindication watching the downward spiral of so many once-venerable newspapers. But this trend carries with it a new threat to American democracy.
SHARE Friday, June 29, 2012 Roberts Embraces Right's Fake History
Although giving the Affordable Care Act a thumbs-up by citing Congress' taxing authority, Roberts gave a thumbs-down to Congress' reliance on the Commerce Clause to justify the law's legality. In that part of his ruling, Roberts, in effect, rewrote the nation's founding document, second-guessing the Framers' decision to grant Congress sweeping power to regulate interstate commerce.
SHARE Friday, November 15, 2013 The Saudi-Israeli Tag Team
As the Obama administration scrambles to salvage a deal with Iran on its nuclear program, the new Saudi-Israeli alliance shows off its muscles in bending politicians and policies to its will. While the Saudis are showing again that money talks, the Israelis are doing their part by activating their impressive lobbying and propaganda networks inside the United States.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, October 12, 2009 Insurers Make Case for Public Option
Rather than using fines to muscle more citizens into the arms of private insurers, the Democrats might finally rebel against the lobbyists and make sure that a strong public health-insurance option is available as an alternative to private policies. Just the outcome that the industry feared most.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 22, 2013 Dick Cheney's Heartless Hypocrisy
Dick Cheney's new book about his life-saving heart transplant has drawn much fawning coverage. But little attention has gone to the hypocrisy of the ex-vice president accepting expensive government-funded surgeries while endorsing the Tea Party's campaign to deny health coverage to millions of Americans.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 17, 2013 The L'Enfant Plaza Hotel Mystery
To understand why U.S. foreign policy is floundering in the Middle East, one must go back to the pivotal 1980 election when President Carter's hopes for a second term hinged on getting Iran to release 52 U.S. hostages and Republicans went behind his back.
SHARE Friday, March 21, 2014 Robert Strauss’s Watergate Secret
Robert Strauss, who died Wednesday, was a Democratic powerbroker who thrived in the age of Nixon, Reagan and Bush-41. But an enduring Watergate mystery is whether Strauss earned his GOP spurs by secretly helping the Republicans in the spy scandal, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, April 17, 2009 How Bush's Tortured Legal Logic Won
Almost as disturbing as reading the Bush administration's approved menu of brutal interrogation techniques is recognizing how President George W. Bush successfully shopped for government attorneys willing to render American laws meaningless by turning words inside out.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 21, 2013 What a Real Cover-up Looks Like
Republicans won't let go of their conspiracy theory about some nefarious "cover-up" in "talking points" for Ambassador Susan Rice's TV interviews on the Benghazi attack. But they should at least have better skills for detecting a real cover-up, since they've had direct experience.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 23, 2010 Obama, Free at Last on Health Reform
The long-delayed passage of health-care reform may indeed be a historic moment for the United States, but it also marks something else -" the moment when President Barack Obama has been freed, finally, to pursue a more innovative foreign policy, including a more aggressive approach to Middle East peace.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 26, 2013 Syrian Rebels Embrace al-Qaeda
The leading Syrian rebel groups have declared their intent to transform Syria into a Taliban-style state that would collaborate with al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in the heart of the Middle East. This lifting of the veil presents President Obama with an even trickier policy dilemma.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, February 6, 2012 Rigging American "Democracy"
Aided by Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court, America's ultra-rich are buying up the political process with vast sums of cash, some through dummy corporations. The money has made the GOP campaign nasty, but will dirty up President Obama in the fall.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 5, 2012 Ben-Menashe Case Eyes Bomb Residue
Ben-Menashe, 61, said he did not want to speculate about who was behind the attack. However, he noted that he has accumulated a number of enemies over the years after going public with information about his work for Israeli intelligence from 1977 to 1989 and exposing secret dealings by the Reagan administration with Iran and Iraq.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, February 25, 2013 The Shortsighted History of "Argo"
The Oscar for Best Picture went to Ben Affleck's Argo, an escape-thriller set in post-revolutionary Iran. It hyped the drama and edged into propaganda. But Americans would have learned a lot more if Affleck had chosen the CIA coup in 1953 or the Republican chicanery in 1980.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 4, 2010 Bush/Cheney Pulled Torture Strings
John Bellinger, a lawyer at the National Security Council, told the OPR that Yoo was "under pretty significant pressure to come up with an answer that would justify" the interrogation program. Cheney has lashed out at even the mildest suggestion that there might be some accountability. He also has spoken up in defense of waterboarding and of the people in the OLC and the CIA who made it possible.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, September 4, 2015 A Deflategate Slapdown of NFL and MSM
To the surprise of the mainstream U.S. media, a federal judge threw out the NFL's Deflategate suspension of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, citing an arbitrary and unfair process that should have been obvious to any independent observer from the start, writes Robert Parry.
SHARE Thursday, February 14, 2013 Hyping Iran Nukes, Again
Despite signs that Iran is ready to accept new limits on its nuclear program, the neocon lobby in Washington is still trying to gin up support for a U.S.-Israeli military strike that could plunge the world into another crisis, with some of the usual suspects back at work.
SHARE Saturday, March 23, 2013 The WPost's Unbridled Arrogance
Perhaps more than any news organization, the Washington Post steered the United States into the illegal invasion of Iraq. But a Post editorial, which belatedly takes note of the war's 10th anniversary, admits to no mistakes and acknowledges no lessons learned.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 3, 2009 First, Jail All Bush's Lawyers
If the lawyers colluded with policymakers in creating legal excuses for criminal acts, the Bush-Cheney defense collapses. Rather than diligent lawyers providing professional advice, the picture is of consiglieres counseling crime bosses how to skirt the law.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 1, 2013 Getting Syria-ous About Peace Talks
President Obama's decision to seek congressional approval before attacking Syria may represent a needed breather, slowing Official Washington's stampede into another war, but the only way to stop the bloodshed is to get the various sides into peace talks -- and it is the U.S.-supported rebels who won't go.
SHARE Sunday, September 8, 2013 Tell Kristof to Stop Lying on Syria
Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has cultivated a reputation as a caring humanitarian who abhors violence, but he has now joined the ranks of liberal war hawks eager to bomb Syria, a choice that also has led him to enlist in the propaganda campaign to deceive the American people.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, December 31, 2007 Hillary Signals Free Pass for Bush
Hillary Clinton's campaign is signaling that a second Clinton presidency will follow the look-to- the-future, don't- worry- about- accountability approach toward Republican wrongdoing that marked Bill Clinton's years in office.
(23 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 22, 2008 Democrats Have Legalized Bush's War Crimes
The Democratic leadership cleared the way for the president and his collaborators to evade punishment for defying the law.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 25, 2016 Obama's Foreign-Policy Self-Enslavement
President Obama may have seen his refusal to bomb Syria in 2013 as his "liberation day" from Official Washington's expectations, but he promptly put himself back into captivity, writes Robert Parry.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 8, 2014 When Is a Putsch a Putsch?
Secretary of State John Kerry accuses Russia of a “contrived crisis†in Ukraine as the U.S.-backed coup regime in Kiev sends troops to crush resistance in the ethnic-Russian east. But the most “contrived†element of this crisis may be the false U.S. narrative, writes Robert Parry.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 20, 2012 Hagel: The Neocons' Last Stand?
The neocons -- stung by their loss of Washington influence -- are trying to reestablish their clout by disqualifying former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be the new Defense Secretary. But their haste in charging off after Hagel's scalp may lead the neocons into a dangerous last stand.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 15, 2013 America's War for Reality
The United States has been on a three-decade binge of unreality, imbibing delusions that began with Ronald Reagan and have continued through the Tea Party. The challenge now is for rational Americans to show they have the toughness and tenacity to fight for the real world -- and to save it.
(12 comments) SHARE Monday, February 10, 2014 Is Hillary Clinton a Neocon-Lite?
As a U.S. senator and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton often followed a neocon-style foreign policy, backing the Iraq War, teaming up with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on an Afghan War “surge,†and staking out an even more hawkish stance than Gates on Libya, Robert Parry reports.
SHARE Wednesday, December 30, 2015 One County's Global Warming Failure
Even communities where many citizens agree that global warming is a threat to humankind -- and have the money to take action -- find that the politics of doing something can be complicated and seemingly insurmountable, like the case of Arlington, Virginia, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 8, 2011 Resetting the American Narrative
Reagan and his team paved the way for the America that exists today. Incentivized greed (from lower marginal tax rates) encouraged corporate execs to ascend into a world far distant from their beleaguered workers -- and taught Wall Street bankers the lesson that "the closer you are to the money, the more you get to keep."
SHARE Thursday, May 3, 2012 How US Hubris Baited Afghan Trap
Despite what Official Washington thinks it knows, the real error on Afghan policy after the Soviets left in 1989 was not the abrupt cutoff of U.S. aid but nearly the opposite, continued CIA support for the Islamist mujahedeen and rejection of peace overtures from Moscow.
SHARE Thursday, November 14, 2013 Fixing Intel Around the Syria Policy
Senior U.S. intelligence analysts disagreed with the Obama administration's certainty that the Syrian government was behind the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack, but that dissent was suppressed amid the rush to a near war.
SHARE Friday, April 8, 2011 NYT Demands Libyan War Escalation
The Times' belligerent rhetoric about Libya and its one-sided coverage of the conflict recall the behavior of the Times, the Washington Post and other leading U.S. news outlets during the run-up to war with Iraq in 2002-03, except then they were cheering on President George W. Bush whereas now they are hectoring President Obama to do more.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 21, 2013 What to Do with G.W. Bush?
A major bipartisan study confirms that George W. Bush's administration tortured detainees behind of a facade of legal excuses. The report recommends truth-telling and reforms. But the failure to hold Bush and his advisers accountable invites a replay of their criminal acts.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, June 15, 2009 Excusing Outrages of the Right
Official Washington often acts like some primitive community living in the shadow of a rumbling volcano, eager to demonstrate obeisance to the volcano gods and fearful that any show of defiance might start a full-scale eruption.
It seems that the only time mainstream U.S. journalists beat their breasts is when they detect a challenge to the still-prevailing free-market theology.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 13, 2009 US News Media Fails America, Again
The commentariat class also has continued to frame the Republican hatred of Obama as Obama's fault, describing his "failure" to achieve a more bipartisan Washington or – in its latest formulation – calling Obama "the most polarizing President ever."
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 25, 2009 The GOP's Anti-Obama Propaganda
In both Bush One and Two, the Democrats inherited recessions and huge budget deficits from Republican presidents named Bush. In both cases, congressional Republicans rallied against the economic package of the new President hoping to strangle the young Democratic administrations in their cradles. Now, 16 years since the start of Clinton's presidency, the Republicans and their right-wing allies are again on the outside of DC
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 7, 2009 Obama's Iran Peace Talk Dilemma
While it was unclear how President Barack Obama felt about the Iranian initiative, he did mute his criticism of the Iranian post-election crackdown at least initially. In his July 6-7 trip to Russia for meetings with President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Obama also made clear that Iran and Middle East peace were top issues to be discussed.
SHARE Tuesday, November 14, 2006 Blackmail & Bobby Gates
Unresolved mysteries about former intelligence officer Robert Gates mean that his secret -- and possibly illegal -- activities in the 1980s could come back to haunt the USA if he is confirmed as Defense Secretary. Though Gates denies all wrongdoing, substantial evidence now exists that Gates engaged in controversial plans to arm the Iranians and the Iraqis, a past that conceivably could open him to pressure and even blackmail.
SHARE Saturday, February 4, 2012 Return of Cheney's One Percent Doctrine
ust as happened before the Iraq War, those who want to bomb Iran are scaring the American people with made-up scenarios about grave dangers ahead, new warnings as ludicrous as the "mushroom cloud" tales that panicked the U.S. public a decade ago.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 25, 2006 Bush's Enron Lies
The national news media bought into the Bush administration’s spin that Bush did nothing to bail out his Enron benefactors,...but the reality is that the Bush-can’t-be-bought spin was never true. Condi was butt deep in it.
SHARE Wednesday, June 12, 2013 Obama's Dangerous Dilemma
Many Americans, particularly the young, are angry over government spying -- and are cheering on leakers who release "secret" documents. By taking the "establishment" side of this debate, President Obama risks discrediting government just as it is needed on global warming and other critical issues.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 23, 2013 The Right's Dubious Claim to Madison
James Madison, so-called "father of the Constitution" and fourth U.S. president, is at the center of a historical debate over what the original intent of the Framers was and whether a strong federal government fits with those principles. The dispute revolves around Madison's shifting alliances.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 29, 2014 Kerry Grovels over Israeli "Apartheid"
Secretary of State Kerry gets to say whatever half-truth or fiction comes into his head about Syria, Russia or other "designated villains," but when he cites the inconvenient truth of Israeli "apartheid," he must scramble as fast as he can to retract and apologize, Robert Parry reports.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 4, 2014 Big Media Again Pumps for Mideast Wars
Official Washington’s neocons still influence U.S. foreign policy despite their Iraq War disaster. Forever pushing what they view as Israel’s strategic needs, the neocons now are stoking fires of war against Iran and Syria by piling on old and new arguments, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 28, 2013 Rushing to War Against Syria
In a bizarre replay of America's disastrous rush to judgment on Iraq, the Obama administration and the U.S. press corps seem set on brushing aside doubts about the Syrian government's guilt for alleged chemical weapons attacks and pulling the lever on a new war.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 2, 2013 Manning's "Secrets" v. Over-classification
The U.S. government wants to lock away Pvt. Bradley Manning for life because he released hundreds of thousands of classified documents that he believes revealed war crimes and other wrongdoing. But overlooked is how much damage over-classification does to the Republic.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 20, 2010 A Clash Over 'Lesser-Evil' Voting
One of my biggest criticisms of the Left is that it hasn't done enough to build an effective infrastructure of media outlets and think tanks for informing the American people or making the case for progressive ideas, a failure that has created a dangerous imbalance in U.S. politics.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 7, 2013 Hollywood's Dangerous Afghan Illusion
A newly discovered document undercuts a key storyline of the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s -- that it was "Charlie Wilson's War." A note inside Ronald Reagan's White House targeted the Texas Democrat as someone "to bring into circle as discrete Hill connection."
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 6, 2013 Obama's Syrian "Doomsday Machine"
By setting in motion a possibly catastrophic plan to bomb Syria, President Obama has created what amounts to a "doomsday machine" that could detonate if not disarmed by a breakthrough on peace talks. Obama is gambling that Saudi opposition to negotiations can be neutralized first
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 19, 2013 Rand Paul's Neo-Confederate Aide
Much as the white-dominated South tied up Congress in the pre-Civil War days and then used political obstructionism to end post-Civil War Reconstruction, the nearly all white Republican Party is now intent on creating a Second Jim Crow Era by suppressing the non-white vote, gerrymandering congressional districts and investing heavily in anti-government propaganda.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, July 30, 2010 To Publish Official Secrets -- or Not
Information is not only the lifeblood of the democracy but it belongs to the democracy. If the release of these documents serves to ignite and inform a public debate about the Afghan War -" and how to end it -" then Secretary Gates and the Pentagon might not be happy with that, but the lives of many Afghanis and American soldiers may be spared.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, August 30, 2013 A Dodgy Dossier on Syrian War
President George W. Bush misled the world on Iraq's WMD, but Bush's bogus case for war at least had details that could be checked, unlike what the Obama administration released Friday on Syria's alleged chemical attacks -- no direct quotes, no photographic evidence, no named sources, nothing but "trust us."
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, February 20, 2009 Obama's 'Seven Days in May' Moment
The current Republican strategy appears to be to hobble the Obama administration out of the gate, have it stumble forward through a deteriorating economy and collapse before the 2010 and 2012 elections, enabling the GOP to retake control of the government. This may not become his "Seven Days in May"- moment, but he can be sure that his adversaries want him-- like Jimmy Carter--to be a one-term President.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, June 1, 2009 America's Political/Media Kabuki
As the right-wing media grew and the Republicans became more powerful, many Democrats and most mainstream journalists learned that to survive they had to accept their assigned roles. Democrats became practiced at apologizing, equivocating and seeking accommodation; mainstream journalists mastered the skill of bending over backwards to appease the Right
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 21, 2016 Kerry Pressed for MH-17 Evidence
The father of a young American who died aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is pressing Secretary of State John Kerry to release evidence to support his early claims that the U.S. government possessed details about the launch of the missile that killed 298 people, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Friday, March 30, 2012 When Is a Hack a Hack?
Ronald Reagan's Solicitor General Charles Fried sees "politics, politics, politics" at play in the apparent move by the Supreme Court's Republican majority to kill health-care reform, but the Washington Post's neocon editors say it's unfair to call any of those five GOP justices a "hack."
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 11, 2010 NYT Pushes Confrontation with Iran
What the Post -" and the Times -" don't mention in their two lead editorials is that they and their neocon friends were instrumental in frustrating President Barack Obama's initial efforts to reach an agreement on the fuel swap last year and that they then helped sabotage a parallel deal negotiated by the leaders of Brazil and Turkey earlier this year.
SHARE Thursday, April 5, 2012 What's Not Good for the Country
Many in the Washington Establishment -- including key parts of the press -- fancy themselves doing what's "good for the country" by shielding Americans from painful realities, like the emerging crisis over a partisan-driven Supreme Court. But the hard truth, not easy lies, is what's best for the nation.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 29, 2013 Reality Bites Back
More than a Right-Left battle, the conflict for the world's future is between empiricists and fantasists, those who are committed to reality and rationality and those who happily embrace propaganda as truth. It is a struggle with global implications.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 2, 2011 Libyan War Recalls Afghan Pitfalls
The lesson from the Afghan conflict in the 1980s would seem to be that all the tough-guy talk about ousting some unsavory leftist dictator -- whether Najibullah or Gaddafi -- can lead to a cure worse than the disease, especially if the United States doesn't understand who its new friends are.
SHARE Monday, March 4, 2013 What Has US Militarism Wrought?
A half century ago, President Eisenhower warned the American people about the "unwarranted influence" of a Military-Industrial Complex, but that influence still managed to pervade U.S. politics and policies. In a new book, ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman takes stock of those changes.
SHARE Wednesday, August 22, 2012 Still Praising Ryan as "Fiscal Hawk"
The U.S. news media continues to hail Rep. Paul Ryan as a "fiscal hawk" despite the ocean of red ink in his budget plan. The latest to misrepresent Ryan's record is the New York Times' Katharine Q. Seelye, who famously distorted Al Gore's words in Campaign 2000.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 16, 2013 The Depressing "Zero Dark Thirty"
Director Kathryn Bigelow -- in both Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker -- presents stories of heroic Americans operating in a world of either apathetic or crazy Muslims, with little explanation of the whys behind the conflicts. This lack of context makes her films vacuous and depressing.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 17, 2012 The "Surge' Myth's Deadly Result
President Obama's choice in 2009 to expand -- rather than wind down -- the Afghan War now looks to be one of his worst decisions as the conflict drifts toward a bloody defeat. But a key factor behind his misjudgment, the myth of George W. Bush's "successful surge" in Iraq, lives on.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 23, 2012 Santorum Abuses "E Pluribus Unum'
In 1776, when America's 13 colonies were uniting to fight for independence, they adopted a slogan, "E Pluribus Unum, from many, one." Now, GOP presidential frontrunner Rick Santorum has hijacked the motto to mean that a diverse United States must live under a single Biblical code.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 22, 2012 A Nation of Wildebeest
The slaughter of 12 moviegoers at the new Batman film in Aurora, Colorado, recalls other moments of horror known by names like Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson. But the repetition of such gun violence and the lack of a coherent response make Americans seem like a nation of Wildebeest.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 4, 2013 Al Gore's "Current TV" Debacle
Current TV's core failure was the choice by its founder Al Gore to avoid political conflict in 2005 when President George W. Bush was near the height of his powers. That act of cowardice made the "progressive" network largely irrelevant to the biggest battles of the last decade.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 24, 2013 Finally, the Republicans Are Afraid
House Speaker John Boehner warned his fellow Republicans that President Obama may be preparing "to annihilate" the GOP, surely an overly dramatic claim but one that marks a stunning reversal of fortune for swaggering Republicans who once dreamt of their own one-party state.
SHARE Friday, December 23, 2005 Democracy's Battle Joined, Again
Bush and Cheney are saying that in the War on Terror, they must be a law onto themselves with the flexibility to do whatever they deem necessary. When they say they are operating within the law, what they mean is that their interpretation of the law gives them unlimited powers.
(16 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 7, 2006 Election 2006 & World War III
As Americans go to the polls in two months, they should have one thought fixed in their minds: they will be voting on whether to commit the nation to fighting World War III against large segments of the world's one billion Muslims. Beyond the cost in blood and treasure, this war will mean the end of the United States as a democratic Republic.
SHARE Monday, January 17, 2011 Troubled History of the Hariri Probe
Lebanon is regarded by the United States and its regional allies as an important battleground in their geopolitical struggle with Iran. According to classified State Department cables released by WikiLeaks, Saudi Arabia even discussed a military intervention in Lebanon in 2008 under cover of UN peacekeepers.
SHARE Thursday, June 10, 2010 Obama Goes with Neocon Flow on Iran
Obama has refused to contest Washington's conventional wisdom on the Iranian election or to buck the neocon-favored trend toward a heightened confrontation with Iran.
Having let his administration rebuff the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal in favor of more UN sanctions and soon even tougher U.S. sanctions, Obama has let his foreign policy either drift -" or be piloted -" toward a worsening crisis.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 2, 2011 End Of The Reagan Narrative?
Election 2012 may turn on whether Ronald Reagan's narrative of evil government and beneficent tax cuts for the rich has finally run its course -- and has been replaced by a new narrative demanding government intervention to save the American middle-class.
SHARE Wednesday, August 8, 2012 WPost Again Defends Romney
Mitt Romney is running the most secretive presidential campaign in modern U.S. history. He won't give details on his policies, his principles, his business record at Bain Capital, or his tax returns. Yet, his cover-ups have found a surprising ally, the Washington Post.
SHARE Sunday, March 1, 2009 Obama's War with the Right (& Media)
"For the better part of three decades, a disproportionate share of the nation's wealth has been accumulated by the very wealthy," the 142-page budget message states. "Technological advances and growing global competition, while transforming whole industries--and birthing new ones--has accentuated the trend toward rising inequality."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 14, 2013 The GOP Knows Power
Today's Republican Party doesn't believe in democracy, at least not when an election is decided by the votes of blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and young urban whites comfortable with multiculturalism. Then, the outcome is deemed illegitimate and deserves obstruction.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 29, 2011 Warriors of the Mainstream Media
It seems the view of the Post's editorial section is that Americans should side with Netanyahu against Obama. That is the world of the neocons. Israel's Likud has even gone so far as to engage in a form of McCarthyism against American Jews who deviate from an unwavering support for whatever the Likud government does, essentially accusing them of "un-Israeli activities."
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 14, 2013 Blaming Obama for Syrian Mess
As the Syrian civil war drags on, al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists are emerging as the fiercest fighters in the rebel coalition and complicating how the conflict can be resolved. So, U.S. neocons are trying to pin the blame on President Obama.
SHARE Monday, February 13, 2006 Why U.S. Intelligence Failed, Redux
Paul Pillar, the CIA's senior intelligence analyst for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005 has added the latest critique of Bush/Cheney/Neocon "cherry-picking" intelligence supporting former Bush officials accounts.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 16, 2009 The Politics of the Public Option
If the Democrats bend to the demands of the industry and the Republicans, Obama and congressional Democrats could find themselves in several years explaining how they enacted “reforms†that bully moderate-income Americans into buying over-priced health insurance, fatten the industry's profits and fail to achieve any meaningful cost controls.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 27, 2012 GOP Justices Clown over Health Care
The questions asked by the Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court suggest they will overturn the Affordable Care Act. Instead of a serious debate about health care and the Constitution, they clowned around with silly what-ifs about mandating broccoli-eating and requiring burial insurance
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, April 15, 2013 Russia Bars Bush-Era Torture Lawyers
Washington and Moscow exchanged lists imposing sanctions on each other's officials accused of human rights crimes. But America's benefit of the doubt no longer applies, as the Russians named John Yoo and David Addington, Bush-era legal advisers who twisted the law on torture.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, June 6, 2008 RFK's Death & the Hope of the Young
The 40th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination may be a fitting time to recall how young Americans in an earlier generation ended up alienated from their parents, much as this year's battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has created its own generational divide.
SHARE Friday, March 6, 2009 Neocons Wage War on a 'Realist'
But that is not the world in which the United States finds itself. In today's Washington, the city's preeminent newspaper publishes a neoconservative attack on President Barack Obama's choice to oversee intelligence analyses because the person is a "realist."
SHARE Friday, December 20, 2013 NYT Replays Its Iraq Fiasco in Syria
Much like the Iraq WMD fiasco in 2002-03, the New York Times has taken sides in the conflict in Syria and is ignoring evidence that undercuts its indictment of the Assad regime as the guilty party in the Aug. 21 Sarin attack outside Damascus.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 26, 2012 The Price of Revolutionary Illusions
To stay armed in anticipation of such eventualities, elements of the Right and the Left are saying, in effect, that the ongoing butchery of American children and thousands of other innocents each year is just part of the price for "liberty" or "justice" or whatever.
SHARE Monday, October 5, 2015 Rupert Murdoch: Propaganda Recruit
Journalistic objectivity was never high on Rupert Murdoch's ethics list, but "secret" records from the 1980s show how far the media magnate went to ingratiate himself with President Reagan by collaborating with U.S. propaganda operations, reports Robert Parry.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 31, 2009 To Bush's GWOT, RIP
How Bush framed the terrorism issue also bred resentment and confusion inside the United States. In answering "why do they hate us?" Bush offered the sophomoric notion that Islamic extremists "hated our freedoms"- and wanted to destroy the American Way of Life.
SHARE Tuesday, January 24, 2012 The Fiscally Reckless Mitch Daniels
Delivering the GOP rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is hailed as a "fiscal conservative," but his actual record as George W. Bush's budget director was one of fiscal recklessness, taking America from surpluses to massive deficits.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 12, 2013 Why Syrian Rebels May Block CW Plan
Ironically, the biggest threat to plans for destroying the Syrian government's chemical weapons may come from Syrian rebels if they balk at a ceasefire and target UN inspectors removing poison gas canisters, a possibility that the rebels may hope would put a U.S. military strike back on the table.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, July 27, 2009 Obama, the Great Wealth Creator?
If one wanted to label Obama a "great wealth destroyer" for the stock market slide early in his presidency, it would only seem fair to call him now a "great wealth creator," because the Dow passed the 9,000 mark last week, representing almost a 40 percent rise from the March lows.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 21, 2009 US Health Insurers Up the Ante
Right now, the Democrats are running a huge political risk by raising expectations of voters and then not delivering anything that helps much until after the next two election cycles. Starting the public option before the 2010 election or at least before the 2012 campaign might go a long way toward persuading voters that the Democrats have done something for the little guy.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 7, 2006 Why Democrats Lose
At dinner a few weeks ago, a well-placed Republican political operative was oozing confidence about GOP prospects in the November elections, not because the voters were enamored of George W. Bush but because the Democrats and liberals had done so little to improve their ability to reach the public with their message.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 23, 2010 The Right's Power of Infrastructure
President Bush launched a crash program to create a massive infrastructure dedicated to fighting the so-called Long War against Islamic militancy. But the size of the endeavor was so vast and its construction so hasty and haphazard that it may not actually be adding to the national security.
SHARE Thursday, March 25, 2010 The Politics of 'Corrections'
The tendency of the Times and other major U.S. newspapers to shun demands from the Left for corrections -" while rushing to fix even dubious claims of error from the Right -" has a long and troubling history. And when corrections are finally issued -" in the face of determined demands -" they are narrowly worded and often still misleading.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, February 22, 2016 Dissing George Washington for Reagan
Was Ronald Reagan a greater American leader than George Washington? That is the impression one gets when historic "Washington National Airport" is redubbed "Reagan National." Are Americans really that anti-historical to have forgotten Washington's significance, asks Robert Parry on the first President's 284th birthday.
SHARE Wednesday, November 5, 2014 Journalism and Reality
Perhaps it's naive to think that ideologues and partisans will ever surrender what is a useful argument, no matter how false it is. But there should be some honesty in political debate -- and some respect for the actual facts and the real history.
SHARE Wednesday, April 24, 2013 Another Ignored Russian Warning
One year after the Cold War ended, Russia tried to cooperate with a U.S. national security investigation into possible treason by senior American officials only to see the information ignored. Two decades later, Russians feel their warning about a Boston Marathon bomber was ignored again.
SHARE Tuesday, March 22, 2016 The Clinton/Trump AIPAC "Pander-Off"
While Sen. Sanders stressed the need for a nuanced approach to the Middle East, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump competed to see who could avow their love for Israel more ardently, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Monday, November 2, 2009 Cheney and the Plame-Gate Cover-up
“The Vice President advised that there was no discussion of ‘pushing back' on Wilson's credibility by raising the nepotism issue, and there was no discussion of using Valerie Wilson's employment with the CIA in countering Joe Wilson's criticisms and claims about Iraqi efforts to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger,†said the FBI summary of Cheney's interview.
SHARE Tuesday, January 4, 2011 Republicans Aim Info-War at Obama
The Democrats do all they can to look the other way when the evidence of Republican wrongdoing is out there (even when Republicans admit their criminal behavior, as Bush and Cheney have done on torture). Meanwhile, the Republicans will happily turn investigative mole hills into mountains to advance their ideological and partisan agendas.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 30, 2013 Sandra Day O'Connor's "Maybe" Regret
Ex-Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who normally ducks questions about overturning Al Gore's election in 2000 and putting George W. Bush in the White House, admits that "maybe" a mistake was made. But she still won't accept the magnitude of her judicial crime.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 16, 2009 What If Ahmadinejad Really Won?
But a strong case can be made that the large turnout, which was estimated at about 85 percent, was the key to a genuine landslide for Ahmadinejad, who is viewed as a friend of more traditional Iranians from the working classes and among the rural peasants.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 3, 2013 America's Government by Extortion
By forcing a U.S. government shutdown -- and threatening a first-ever credit default -- Tea Party Republicans are creating a new constitutional system which lets a determined white minority impose its will on the diverse American majority by inflicting so much pain that the extortionists prevail.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 10, 2009 Obama's DNI Urged to Back Freema
Editor's Note: Former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman has been tapped to head the National Intelligence Council, which oversees the production of National Intelligence Estimates on threats facing the United States.
In a letter to Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair "" dated March 8, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity wrote a letter to Blair to resist the pressure.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 18, 2009 'Bitter' Gore; 'Principled' McCain
A case study in how this current media double standard is playing out can be seen in the divergent treatment in the major news media's reaction to Al Gore's criticism of President Bush's policies in 2002 compared to John McCain's high-profile attacks on President Obama today.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, November 2, 2012 Romney/GOP Play Good Cop, Bad Cop
On Nov. 6, the American people will face a choice, not just between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, but whether they will reward the Republican Party for its four years of obstructionism or whether they will demand that the GOP return to its more responsible past.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 5, 2009 WPost Sees Neocon Hope in Obama
When reading Washington Post editorials, one often is reminded of the famous question from "Shawshank Redemption": "How can you be so obtuse? By narrowing the scope of the conflict, Obama also has implicitly rejected Bush's corollary, that the GWOT requires a suspension of American liberties. Neither of these shifts is insignificant--and to ignore them is obtuse.
SHARE Thursday, August 12, 2010 Don't Try These GOP Alibis at Home
Recognizing the hard truth about how Republicans have gained power -" and how the Democrats and the major news media have enabled this process -" is a necessary first step toward correcting these political distortions and making democracy meaningful again.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, February 14, 2014 Obama Deflects Neocon Pressure on Syria
Despite the angry tone, the Syrian peace talks have made some slight progress, at least in that President Obama and the opposition have backed away from making President Assad’s removal a precondition for negotiations, but the neocons still want U.S. military action, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Sunday, March 21, 2010 NYT Admits Getting Duped on ACORN
The New York Times admits, sort of, that it got duped by right-wing propagandists who appear to have succeeded in a plot to destroy ACORN, an organization that for four decades has aided and defended the poor and powerless across the United States.
SHARE Thursday, June 14, 2012 Media Backsliding on Iran Nukes
Earlier this year, U.S. news outlets began revising their false boilerplate that the United States believed Iran was building a nuclear bomb. They grudgingly recognized that U.S. intelligence didn't believe that. But now there are signs of backsliding.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 12, 2006 Israeli Leaders Fault Bush on War
Amid the political and diplomatic fallout from Israel's faltering invasion of Lebanon, some Israeli officials are privately blaming President George W. Bush for egging Prime Minister Ehud Olmert into the ill-conceived military adventure against the Hezbollah militia in south Lebanon.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 10, 2009 Why Lieberman Blocks a Public Option
Much like the Republicans who hope that defeat of health reform will lead to their political revival in 2010 and 2012, Lieberman may foresee neocons returning to power as well or at least a hobbled Obama unable to compel Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt expansion of West Bank settlements or to take other steps that might lead to a Palestinian state.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 2, 2006 How Neocon Favorites Duped U.S.
When American voters go to the polls on Nov. 7, one of the foremost questions that should be on their minds is how did the United States get into the Iraq mess, which has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. soldiers and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. What went wrong with Washington and what can citizens do about it?
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 5, 2009 War Crimes and Double Standards
Dealing with MSM columnists and the current Truth Commission controversy, conclusion:
It's also not true that any investigation is always better than no investigation. I have witnessed cover-up investigations that not only failed to get anywhere near the truth but tried to discredit and destroy whistleblowers who came forward with important evidence.
SHARE Wednesday, July 9, 2014 NYT Protects the Fogh Machine
In crises ranging from the Iraq War to civil conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, the New York Times has steadily transformed itself into a propaganda organ, promoting false U.S. government narratives rather than providing objective information to its readers, as Robert Parry observes again.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 8, 2012 How the Right's Smear Machine Started
The Right's attack machine, which these days questions President Obama's birthplace and smears Georgetown student Sandra Fluke over contraceptives, arose in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate with young conservatives thinking they were the real victims, thus justifying whatever they did.
SHARE Wednesday, November 13, 2013 Neocons Still Hoping for US-Iran Clash
The Israelis, the Saudis and U.S. neocons are thrilled that the latest plan for limiting (but not ending) Iran's nuclear program collapsed, thus reviving hopes of an eventual U.S. military strike.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, December 28, 2009 What the New Year Demands
the Right has poured billions of dollars into building its own intimidating media infrastructure based largely in Washington and New York, while also reaching out across the country through talk radio, cable television, print outlets and the Internet.
SHARE Friday, July 20, 2012 Advantage to Mr. Romney
Mitt Romney's on a roll. He's turned back suspicions about his curious departure from Bain Capital and blunted demands he release more tax returns. Now, as he surges in the polls, he's twisted a comment by President Obama into a nasty attack ad --- and almost no one is objecting.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 18, 2010 Mosque Furor Endangers US Troops
The world has seen the United States appearing as a weak, prejudiced and vengeful nation, blaming an entire religion for the actions of a few adherents. The Americans most likely to pay for this political posturing are the U.S. troops on the front lines.
SHARE Thursday, May 31, 2012 Steering from the Abyss
The world seems on a headlong rush toward the abyss, with American neocons eager to escalate their "clash of civilizations" and religious fundamentalists of various stripes insisting their own ancient texts must be accepted as political prescriptions for the modern era.
SHARE Friday, April 9, 2010 Watching Innocent Iraqis Die
Bush turned some U.S. soldiers into wanton murderers who had wide latitude to kill Iraqi "military-age males" or MAMS. Yet, it remains out of bounds for the U.S. mainstream news media to deal honestly with these painful issues or to suggest that Bush should be held accountable as a war criminal.
SHARE Friday, April 14, 2006 George W. Bush IS a Liar
The White House is taking umbrage over new press reports that George W. Bush misled the American people on a key justification for invading Iraq. But Bush’s latest excuse – that he was just an unwitting conveyor of bad information, not a willful purveyor of lies – has been stretched thin by overuse.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 20, 2010 Campaign 2010: Where to Put Blame
Republicans hope that public impatience with Obama will work to their advantage, while the Democrats must pray that the voters will recognize that the mess developed over several decades and that it makes little sense to hand power back to the party that dominated those years of national decline.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 1, 2006 Smearing Joe Wilson, Again
In a world that wasn't upside-down, the editorial page of Washington's biggest newspaper might praise a whistleblower like former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for alerting the American people to a government deception that helped lead the country into a disastrous war that has killed 2,627 U.S. soldiers.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 12, 2010 The Danger of Israel's Nuke Hypocrisy
Over the past four decades, Israel's nuclear arsenal has been one of those inconvenient truths that everyone in power knows but agrees not to talk about. In that sense, it represents not only a glaring hypocrisy in the eyes of many around the world but also damages the U.S. democratic process by establishing a factual no-man's-land where public debate fears to tread.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 3, 2009 FBI Ignored Bush-Hussein Ties
The Bush team never ceased playing games with information, the CIA released the so-called Duelfer report in 2004, acknowledging that the administration's pre-invasion assertions about Hussein hiding WMD stockpiles were "almost all wrong."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 29, 2011 Would the Founders Like Health Law?
President Barack Obama's health care law is heading to the rightist-dominated U.S. Supreme Court which may render a decision during the heat of Campaign 2012. Republican jurists are sure to claim that the law violates the "originalist" thinking of the Founders. But today's highly partisan atmosphere, which also pervades the Supreme Court, may well carry the day -- whatever the Founders would have wanted.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 19, 2006 Who Is 'Any Person' in Tribunal Law?
The New York Times lead editorial gives false comfort to American citizens by assuring them that they will not be victims of George W. Bush's new draconian system for prosecuting enemies of the U.S. government in military tribunals outside constitutional protections.
SHARE Monday, April 18, 2011 Spy vs. Spy: the First Patriots Day
Patriots Day commemorates the start of the American Revolution, the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, and the staggering British retreat to Boston. What's less known is how the Americans outfoxed the British at one of their own strengths, intelligence.
SHARE Tuesday, October 1, 2013 Why Right's Lemmings Don Suicide Vest
The government-sabotaging fervor of the Republican Right -- likened by one GOP congressman to "lemmings with suicide vests" -- can only be understood from inside the right-wing bubble where a distorted view of the Constitution prevails and actual democracy is disdained.
SHARE Thursday, April 23, 2009 Connecting CIA Torture to Abu Ghraib
The link between the Abu Ghraib abuses and the U.S. death toll was described by a lead U.S. interrogator in Iraq, who used the pseudonym "Matthew Alexander" for a Washington Post Outlook article on Nov. 30, 2008.
"Alexander," a U.S. Air Force special operations officer, said it was his team's abandonment of those harsh tactics that contributed to the tracking down and killing of the murderous al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Zarqawi
SHARE Tuesday, April 16, 2013 No Rush to Judgment in Boston
Three people died and scores were injured when two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, part of the annual celebration of the Patriots who drove the British back from Lexington and Concord in 1775. For once, the U.S. news media didn't rush to judgment about who did it.
SHARE Wednesday, November 30, 2005 Bush in Iraq, Slouching Toward Genocide
Despite pretty words about democracy and freedom, George W. Bush’s “victory” plan in Iraq is starting to look increasingly like an invitation to genocide, the systematic destruction of the Sunni minority...
SHARE Tuesday, May 14, 2013 The Right's "Scandal" Funhouse Mirror
Official Washington is captivated by the image of Obama "scandals," including Benghazi talking points and extra IRS questions posed to Tea Party groups, but journalists are peering into the Right's funhouse mirror which for decades has made big scandals small and small scandals big.
SHARE Wednesday, February 6, 2013 How Secrecy Corrodes Democracy
The Obama administration is under fire for its secret policy of using drone strikes to kill alleged al-Qaeda terrorists, including Americans. But the public suspicion is heightened by frustration over decades of excessive government secrecy and deception.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 20, 2006 A New War Frenzy
Americans are being whipped into a new war frenzy with simplistic visions of evil villains, much like occurred four years ago before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
SHARE Tuesday, December 1, 2009 Explaining the Drop in Iraqi War Dead
The soaring U.S. death toll had political consequences back home, leading Bush's commanders to a shift away from the more aggressive tactics. Over the next three months, U.S. and coalition fatalities declined to 247. (All told, more than 1,000 U.S. troops died during the “surge†– or roughly one-quarter of the total U.S. deaths in the Iraq War.)
SHARE Monday, May 20, 2013 Does Woodward Know Watergate?
Republicans are hyping the flap over Benghazi talking points by calling it "worse than Watergate," a false narrative that Bob Woodward has helped along by ignoring new evidence connecting Richard Nixon's sabotage of Vietnam War peace talks in 1968 to his political spying in 1971-72.
SHARE Saturday, May 26, 2012 Memorial Day Gas Lower than Bush's
A top Republican indictment of President Obama has been the surge in gas prices and his supposed inability to constrain them. But gas prices have been dropping and are now lower than they were last Memorial Day -- and lower even than the last Memorial Day under President George W. Bush.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 22, 2009 WPost Elitists Feel for Wall St. Brethren
One interesting trait of elitists is that they show remarkable class solidarity, often more so than people of lesser means. Which may help explain why the Washington Post's editorial writers penned three editorials last week decrying the populist outrage over the AIG bonuses.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 11, 2014 No Lessons Learned at the NYT
Mistakes were made on the Iraq War in 2003 and lessons have been learned, the New York Times says, but those lessons haven't carried over to the Times' deeply biased coverage of the crises in Syria and Ukraine, reports Robert Parry.
SHARE Monday, July 30, 2012 Romney Ups the Ante in Israel
Mitt Romney took his campaign to Israel with a belligerent speech suggesting that he, as President, would happily support an Israeli war against Iran. In a major foreign policy speech, he also ignored Palestinian rights and repeated some old Mideast canards.
SHARE Sunday, January 22, 2006 Alito Filibuster: It Only Takes One
With the fate of the U.S. Constitution in the balance, it’s hard to believe there’s no senator prepared to filibuster Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, whose theories on the “unitary executive” could spell the end of the American democratic Republic.
SHARE Thursday, March 2, 2006 'Torture Boy' Signals More Spying
Correcting misleading testimony to Congress, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has signaled that George W. Bush’s warrantless surveillance of Americans went beyond the known eavesdropping on communications to suspected terrorists overseas.
SHARE Wednesday, October 16, 2013 How US Pressure Bends UN Agencies
Lost in the celebration over the Nobel Peace Prize to the UN agency eliminating the Syrian government's chemical weapons is the question of who was really behind the Aug. 21 poison-gas attack near Damascus. Relevant to that mystery is the recent U.S. pressure to control key UN agencies including the prize recipient.
SHARE Tuesday, November 26, 2013 Neocon Name-Calling on Iran Deal
The neocons won't give up on their agenda for more "regime change" in the Middle East, as they lash out at President Obama for daring to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program rather than use it as an excuse for more hostilities.
SHARE Sunday, July 4, 2010 America's First Spymaster
In the years leading up to the start of hostilities on April 19, 1775, Warren worked with fellow patriot Paul Revere in constructing a remarkable intelligence network for its time, a loosely knit collection of sympathetic citizens who uncovered information about the British garrisoned in Boston.
SHARE Monday, May 6, 2013 Pushing for War with Syria
The dam holding back pressure for U.S. war in Syria is giving way with President Obama -- like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike -- seeming unable to stop the inevitable. Cheering on the impending flood are many of the same big-name pundits from the Iraq War.
SHARE Thursday, April 13, 2006 America's Matrix, Revisited
“Matrix” and its sequels offer a useful analogy for anyone trying to make sense of the chasm that has opened between what’s real and what Americans perceive is real. Like the science-fiction world of the trilogy, a false reality is being pulled daily over people’s eyes, often through what they see and hear on their TV screens. Facts have lost value. Logic rarely applies.
SHARE Tuesday, August 30, 2011 Time Finally Ran Out for "Atiyah'
President George W. Bush's post-9/11 pivot from targeting al-Qaeda to invading Iraq left behind two open-ended wars -- and bought al-Qaeda's leaders time to regroup and recuperate, a reality recognized by one named "Atiyah," whose fate turned as President Barack Obama shifted U.S. assets back to Pakistan
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 17, 2013 Murky Clues from UN's Syria Report
The focus of the Syrian crisis has shifted to diplomatic moves for eliminating the government's chemical weapons stockpile, but the whodunit over the Aug. 21 gas attack outside Damascus remains to be solved after a UN report offered a murky account of what happened.
SHARE Tuesday, January 21, 2014 Human Rights Watch's Syria Dilemma
Human Rights Watch, which has pushed for a U.S. military intervention in Syria, continues to blame the Assad government for the Aug. 21 Sarin attack even though the group’s high-profile map supposedly proving the case has been debunked, reports Robert Parry.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 1, 2010 How the Right Still Frames Iraq
Washington's deformed reality also shaped the debate prior to Obama's speech announcing the end of American combat operations. The only media question that seemed to get any traction was whether Obama should thank Bush for all he did for Iraq and particularly for the "surge."
SHARE Tuesday, June 26, 2012 WPost's "Fact-Check-Gate"
On Sunday, the Washington Post published a column accusing President Obama and his campaign of lying for calling Mitt Romney a "corporate raider" who outsourced jobs. But the writer, Glenn Kessler, now acknowledges that he was aware of new evidence that buttressed the campaign's charge.
SHARE Monday, October 2, 2006 Why Capitol Pages Fear Retaliation
For generations, American parents have sent their high-school-age children to Washington to serve as Capitol Hill pages and to learn about the real world of politics. In the scandal surrounding Rep. Mark Foley's salacious e-mails, it's clear that one lesson the pages learned was to fear Republican retaliation.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 30, 2009 'Scaredy-Cat Nation' Risks US Security
After the Pentagon report was officially released on May 26, analysts Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann reviewed the data and concluded that the Pentagon's "numbers are very likely inflated" because the Pentagon included ex-prisoners who were "suspected" of having engaged in militant activity and others whose acts weren't aimed at the United States or its allies.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, June 22, 2009 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex
For a nation facing multiple fiscal crises--all complicated by the costs of health care--one might think that the most sure thing in the health care debate would be to allow a cost-saving public option, which as President Barack Obama says would help keep private health insurers "honest" regarding their promises to trim waste and control premiums.
SHARE Tuesday, March 16, 2010 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel
The U.S. government is in a clash with Israel over Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, housing construction that the Obama administration sees as a threat to renewed peace talks -" and guess which side the Washington Post's neoconservative editorial page is taking?
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 18, 2008 The Bushes and Hitler's Appeasement
The irony of George W. Bush going before the Knesset and mocking the late Sen. William Borah for expressing surprise at Adolf Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland is that Bush's own family played a much bigger role assisting the Nazis.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, March 18, 2013 What Happened to the US Press Corps?
As the U.S. observes the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, a key question remains: Why was there almost no accountability for journalists and pundits who went along with George W. Bush's deceptions. The answer can be found in the cover-ups of the Reagan-Bush-41 era.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 28, 2005 Robert Parry's Year-End Letter
The United States is facing a political crisis almost unparalleled in our history, a crisis uniquely dangerous because at its center it is not about a loss of power but about a loss of principle – and even morality.
SHARE Monday, May 8, 2006 Rummy Logic & Enduring Lies
Facing hecklers over Iraq War lies, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appealed for renewed faith in George W. Bush's honesty. But Rumsfeld then resumed the Bush administration's long pattern of deceiving the American people with what might be called "Rummy logic." Yet, even as the public catches on, the mainstream news media continues to act the fool.
SHARE Saturday, May 25, 2013 The Halfway "Obama Doctrine"
President Obama's counterterrorism speech failed to quiet his critics on the Left who want an immediate end to the "war on terror" and those on the Right who demand more Bush-Cheney policies. Obama charted a middle course of gradually reducing violence and asking for patience.
SHARE Tuesday, December 8, 2009 Gates Dissembles on Afghan History
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who last week was hailed in the Washington Post as someone “incapable of dissembling,†dissembled to a gullible press corps about the history of U.S. dealings with Afghanistan while en route to that country on Monday.
SHARE Saturday, December 8, 2012 Who Bombed Ben-Menashe's House?
Montreal police may hope to just nail the "torch," the culprit who hurled a fire-bomb into the home of ex-Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe. But to solve the mystery, they may have to delve into Ben-Menashe's complex intelligence ties, including his hostile relations with his old superiors in Israel.
SHARE Friday, March 19, 2010 Israel's Troubling Tilt Toward Apartheid
U.S. neocons blaming Obama for the dispute and protecting Netanyahu's back regardless of his reckless actions apparently have emboldened Netanyahu and his coalition allies like Shas to believe they can do pretty much whatever they wish regardless of the desires -" or interests -" of the United States.
SHARE Friday, April 6, 2007 Bush/Cheney Still Lie with Abandon
What makes George W. Bush and Dick Cheney such extraordinary threats to the future of American democracy is their readiness to tell half-truths and outright lies consistently without any apparent fear of accountability.
SHARE Saturday, September 7, 2013 Congress Denied Syrian Facts, Too
While seeking authority for a limited war with Syria, the Obama administration withheld from the American people the U.S. intelligence on the alleged chemical weapons attack of Aug. 21, amid assurances that Congress got all the secret details. But that doesn't appear to be true.
SHARE Wednesday, February 27, 2013 Neocon "Veto" Fails to Block Hagel
The neocons and their Republican allies bloodied former Sen. Chuck Hagel with ugly smears, but he won Senate approval to become Defense Secretary. The neocons' failure to exercise this "veto" now stands as a sign of their diminished standing with the Obama administration.
SHARE Wednesday, March 4, 2009 How Close the Bush Bullet
These theories held that at a time of war--even one as vaguely defined as the "war on terror"--Bush's powers as Commander in Chief were "plenary," or total. And since the conflict against terrorism had no boundaries in time or space, his unfettered powers would exist everywhere and essentially forever. According to his administration's secret legal memos released Monday, Bush could waive all meaningful constitutional rights
SHARE Tuesday, September 10, 2013 Recycling a Bush Iraq Ploy on Syria
Syria's tentative acceptance of a plan for putting its chemical weapons under international control opens a pathway to avoid a U.S. military strike, but the Obama administration may use the opening as a new route for winning congressional war authorization and even UN backing.
SHARE Thursday, October 6, 2005 How Rotten Are These Guys?
The separation of the Bush political machine from organized crime is often like the thin layer of rock between a seemingly ordinary surface and volcanic activity rumbling below. Sometimes, the lava spews forth and the illusion of normalcy is shattered.
SHARE Friday, June 19, 2009 Taking Sides in Iran
Despite the vehemence of Mousavi's supporters regarding what they say is his rightful victory, they have reason to doubt their certainty. Some of the complaints about the Iranian election have become legend, but crack under objective scrutiny.
The complaint, for instance, about the hasty claim of an Ahmadinejad victory ignores the fact that Mousavi was out with a declaration of his own victory shortly after the polls closed.
SHARE Friday, January 18, 2013 The Iraq War "Surge" Myth Returns
To win Senate approval as Defense Secretary, former Sen. Chuck Hagel likely will be forced to bow before Official Washington's cherished myth of the Iraq War's "successful surge." To tell the more nuanced truth would open Hagel to another round of neocon attacks.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 29, 2013 "42" and 44
Most Americans now celebrate the courage of Jackie Robinson in facing down racism in 1947 as the first black Major League baseball player in the modern era. But there has been remarkably little appreciation for the bravery of Barack Obama as he has served as the nation's first black president.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 22, 2008 Bush's Endless Hypocrisy on Terror
Is a government guilty of terrorism if it harbors known terrorists? What should one say about a country that permits open fund-raising on behalf of a terrorist implicated in the mass killing of civilians?
SHARE Monday, October 27, 2008 Bush's Looming Defeat in Iraq
Over the past several months as the agreement has taken shape, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has escalated its demands, and the Bush administration has made concession after concession. Yet even now, many powerful Iraqi politicians -- especially among the Shiites -- are demanding that American troops get out even faster.
SHARE Monday, September 18, 2006 Bush's Way or the Highway
Bush's Sept. 15 outburst – threatening to stop interrogating terror suspects if Congress doesn't let him revise the Geneva Conventions to permit coercive techniques – is part of a pattern of petulance that dates back to even before the 9/11 attacks but has resurfaced as Bush faces new challenges to his authority.
SHARE Tuesday, March 7, 2006 Democrats Need Strong Message
Election 2006 -- and voter dissatisfaction with the Republicans -- offer hope for the Democrats to reclaim one or both houses of Congress. But Democratic leaders have shown little understanding of the potential for a powerful national message that targets George W. Bush's trampling of constitutional principles .
SHARE Wednesday, January 17, 2007 Scooter Libby's Time-Travel Trial
The trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is being billed by the Big Media as a case study of a favorite Washington cliché – "it's not the crime but the coverup" – a smugly delivered line suggesting that Libby committed no real offense beyond trimming a few facts when questioned by overzealous investigators.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, May 13, 2013 WPost Revives Its Plame-gate Smear
The Washington Post not only swallowed George W. Bush's lies about Iraq's WMD but the neocon newspaper spat on Americans who dared challenge those lies, especially ex-U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his CIA wife, Valerie Plame.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 6, 2005 Will Ferrell & ACT's Failed Logic
the Democrats are doomed until they grasp how the Republicans have used media to change the rules of America’s political game.
SHARE Thursday, June 11, 2009 Two Key Health-Care Numbers
President Barack Obama says he strongly supports inclusion of a public option in any reform legislation as necessary to keep the private industry "honest." His reference to the public option during a speech on Thursday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was greeted with some of the strongest applause as was his reference to prohibiting insurers from denying someone coverage because of a "preexisting condition."
SHARE Thursday, August 11, 2005 'Braveheart,' Edward I & George W. Bush
In a dark and musty bar in Stirling, Scotland, a working-class fellow named Colin reminded me why wars – especially invasions – are to be avoided, lest they engender hatreds that can divide people and lands for generations and even centuries.
SHARE Saturday, October 21, 2006 Giving Osama What He Really Wants
The Republican National Committee has released a new campaign ad to rally the GOP base and other voters by showing threatening quotes from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden followed by the pitch: "These are the stakes. Vote Nov. 7."
SHARE Thursday, October 12, 2006 Bush & His Dangerous Delusions
In George W. Bush's world, Saddam Hussein defied United Nations demands that he get rid of his weapons of mass destruction and barred U.N. inspectors; al-Qaeda's public statements must be believed even when contradicted by its private comments; and U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is unthinkable because it would let al-Qaeda "extend the caliphate," a mythical state that doesn't really exist.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 29, 2013 Obama Drifts Toward Syrian War
Black flags of Islamic extremism are flying over "liberated" zones in Syria as hard-line fundamentalists take control of the uprising. Yet, Official Washington continues to demand the overthrow of the secular Assad regime, rather than consider a power-sharing compromise.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, April 14, 2008 Bill and Hillary's 'Stockholm Syndrome'
The two most distinctive features of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign – and Bill Clinton's attempts at a supporting role – are a seemingly bottomless pit of self-pity (excavated in part by the right-wing attack machine years ago) and the copycat use of many right-wing tactics to demonize their opponents and critics.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 27, 2007 Next Generation of 'Family Jewels'?
In hailing release of the CIA's "family jewels" confessions, the Washington news media says that major intelligence abuses stopped in the mid-1970s because congressional oversight was put in place. But the reality is different and much more alarming. The evidence actually points to worse intelligence crimes committed after the period covered by the "family jewels." What really changed was the cover-ups got more effective.
SHARE Sunday, January 14, 2007 The Logic of a Wider Mideast War
White House press secretary Tony Snow dismisses expectations of war with Iran as an "urban legend" and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace says that "from a military standpoint" there's "no need to cross the Iranian border." But there are still strong reasons to suspect the Iraq War may soon spill over to Iran and possibly Syria.
SHARE Friday, March 10, 2006 Oversight by Capitulation
Despite a dip in his opinion polls, George W. Bush’s transformation of the United States into an authoritarian society continues apace with new “compromises” with Congress actually consolidating his claims to virtually unlimited executive power.
SHARE Tuesday, April 17, 2007 Bush/Cheney Dig in to Win
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney believe they can back down the Democrats over legislative timetables for leaving Iraq -- and as a bonus drive a wedge between national Democrats and their anti-war base. But all the political maneuvering in Washington is not likely to change the desperate facts on the ground in Iraq, where the Bush/Cheney military strategies are in dangerous disarray.
SHARE Wednesday, March 15, 2006 Feingold, Kerry & the 'Strategists'
Years before Sen. John Kerry fell under the spell of national Democratic “strategists,” he believed that a Democrat’s best hope for winning the White House was to run as an insurgent. To overcome built-in Republican advantages, Kerry felt a Democrat had to show principle and challenge the status quo.
SHARE Monday, December 19, 2005 The New Madness of King George
Sunday before Christmas, a fidgety George W. Bush interrupted regular programming on U.S. networks to deliver an address to the nation that painted the Iraq War and the War on Terror in the same black-and-white colors he has always favored.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 19, 2007 Time for PBS to Go?
PBS is broadcasting what amounts to a neoconservative propaganda series entitled "America at a Crossroads," which has included a full hour info-mercial for George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq written and narrated by Richard Perle, one of the war's architects.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 21, 2013 Looking Backward on Bradley Manning
A military judge sentenced 25-year-old Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking classified documents including evidence of U.S. war crimes and proof the U.S. public was being manipulated. Yet, the perpetrators of the crimes and lies face no accountability in an upside-down case of moral justice.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 27, 2005 'Plame-gate' & Myth of the Renegade Aide
principal official is almost always lurking somewhere in the background of the original crime, sending signals or pulling strings with the expectation that, if caught, a subordinate will take the fall.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 13, 2008 McCain and the 'Unitary Executive'
If John McCain wins the presidency – and gets to appoint one or more U.S. Supreme Court justices – America's 220-year experiment as a democratic Republic living under the principle that "no man is above the law" may come to an end.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 24, 2013 Dangerous Addiction to Secrecy
After decades of mutual suspicions, the U.S. and Iranian governments appear headed toward face-to-face contacts. But mutual trust still awaits truth-telling about important facts that defined the relationship -- and that may require breaking a dangerous addiction to secrecy.
SHARE Monday, November 6, 2006 America's Slide to Totalitarianism
If the last-minute polling trends showing a powerful Republican comeback carry through the Nov. 7 elections, the end of America as we have known it for more than two centuries will be at hand.
SHARE Friday, August 30, 2013 Who Blocked Syrian Peace Talks?
Though the international press reported earlier this year that it was the Syrian opposition blocking peace talks, that reality has disappeared in recent U.S. articles which blame lack of negotiations on President Bashar al-Assad, all the better to build a propaganda framework for a wider war.
SHARE Tuesday, October 18, 2005 When Journalists Join the Cover-ups
The back story to the Judith Miller NY Times fiasco is the long-term erosion of skeptical journalism in the face of U.S. govt. pressure for greater "patriotism" from the press. In the case of Miller and the Iraq War, the barrier between reporter and govt. seems to have washed away almost completely.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 7, 2005 So Iraq Was About the Oil
The Bush administration has always denied the Iraq invasion was a case of "blood for oil." But recent comments by the former chief of staff to Colin Powell leaves little doubt that oil was an important part of George W. Bush's calculus for invading Iraq -- and for staying there indefinitely.
SHARE Thursday, October 28, 2010 WPost's Blinders on Afghan War
The Post's editorialists even approach their own newspaper with ideological blinders on, seeing only what bolsters the neoconservative cause, not what gives the Post readers a full and fair account of the life-or-death challenges ahead in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 4, 2006 Is O'Reilly a Nazi? Just AskingIf someone else had done what Fox News star Bill O’Reilly did the other day – malign American troops who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and at Iwo Jima – it’s hard to imagine how ugly the Fox News reaction would be.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, July 7, 2006 Was Bob Woodward Slam-Dunked?
New evidence undercuts Bob Woodward's famous account that CIA director George Tenet misled George W. Bush about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction with the assurance that it was a "slam-dunk" case. U.S. intelligence insiders gave a different version of that meeting to author Ron Suskind -- and leaked documents challenge Woodward's depiction of Bush as a leader who wanted to make sure "no one stretches to make our case."
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 6, 2012 Romney's Made-up History on Iran
In facing down Iran as U.S. president, Mitt Romney says he would be guided by the experience of Ronald Reagan threatening Iran with a military strike if it didn't free 52 Americans held hostage during Jimmy Carter's presidency. But Romney's historical precedent is a fantasy.
SHARE Friday, November 25, 2005 Dissing Fitzgerald & Prosecutorial Politics
Former independent counsel Joseph diGenova is one of the harshest critics of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity. But unlike Fitzgerald, when investigating Bush sr., diGenova bent over backward to avoid finding wrongdoing. This raises interesting questions.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 18, 2006 America: What to Do Next?
The Nov. 7 elections took the wind out of the blowhard sails that had been driving the United States toward the shoals of endless war abroad and authoritarianism at home. But the ship of state still finds itself buffeted in very stormy seas, with a safe harbor far beyond the horizon.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, October 31, 2005 Is Impeachment the Answer?
Washington pundits are showering George W. Bush with advice on how to “restart” his presidency, but many Americans seem more interested in whether it's possible to “terminate” his presidency, removing him and other top officials from office. It is a question asked of us often.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 24, 2005 Explaining the Bush Cocoon
The Bush cocoon started years ago, when journalists forgot that their first duty in a democracy was to give the people the truth as fully and fairly as possible, even if some Americans didn’t want to hear it.
SHARE Friday, July 13, 2007 Misreading Iraq, Again
Dubya and his neoconservative allies have misread the reality in Iraq again and again over the past four-plus years.
Now, with some signs of cooperation between U.S. commanders and Sunni tribal leaders, Bush and the neocons say they've finally got it right and Congress should back off on withdrawal deadlines.
But the new evidence can be read the opposite. Their view could give another helping hand to al-Qaeda.
SHARE Sunday, August 7, 2005 Will Ferrell & ACT's Failed Logic
the Democrats are doomed until they grasp how the Republicans have used media to change the rules of America’s political game.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, February 16, 2009 Obama & the Media Dilemma
...when George W. Bush and the Republicans were at the height of their power, media professionals justified booking lots of pro-Bush operatives since they were the insiders. Now, with the Republicans out of power, a premium is placed on having as many voices as possible from the GOP opposition.
SHARE Sunday, February 28, 2010 The NYT Veers Neocon
the hard reality is that the U.S. news media is getting worse, with now both premier national newspapers -" the New York Times and the Washington Post -" decidedly sliding into the neocon camp, where the likes of the Wall Street Journal have long resided.
SHARE Wednesday, March 1, 2006 Bush's War on History
“History will be on the ballot,” I wrote two days before Election 2000, though I didn’t comprehend how much the nation’s ability to know its recent past was weighing in the balance.
SHARE Monday, October 30, 2006 All the President's Lies
Many Americans are cynical about what they hear from politicians – and often with good reason – but perhaps no U.S. political leader in modern history has engaged in a pattern of lying and distortion more systematically than George W. Bush has.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 7, 2007 Neck Deep, the Real Colin Powell, Selling Himself Again
Instead of working to end the Iraq War, which he helped launch with a deceptive speech at the U.N., Colin Powell is cashing in again on his name and government service.
The retired general and former Secretary of State is getting star billing at a full-day motivational seminar with a speech on "take-charge leadership.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, December 22, 2006 Bush's 'Global War on Radicals'
Bush is laying the groundwork for a wider war in the Middle East by stretching the parameters of the "global war on terrorism" to add to his enemies list what he calls "radicals and extremists." The change makes the struggle so amorphous that Bush theoretically could strike at anyone he doesn't like whether there's a credible link to international terrorism or not. The word shift also portends an endless war between the United
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 5, 2008 Where Would Obama Take the Nation?
Among the recent flood of celebrity endorsements, one that has received little attention came in a Washington Post op-ed by President Dwight Eisenhower's granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, explaining why she's backing Barack Obama.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 6, 2012 Sloppy Comments on Iran's "Nukes"
The New York Times and other U.S. news outlets failed miserably to tell the truth before the Iraq War -- and they aren't doing much better as new war clouds build over Iran. Journalists lazily repeat false assumptions like Iran's purported threat to attack Israel with a nuclear bomb.
SHARE Wednesday, December 6, 2006 Democrats Cave on Gates Nomination
Despite winning the Nov. 7 elections largely due to public anger over the Iraq War, congressional Democrats crumbled in their first post-election confrontation with President George W. Bush on the future direction of that conflict.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 24, 2006 How Democrats Might Blow It
As Democrats go through their biennial rite of premature victory celebrations, they are inviting defeat again by obsessing on polls about how many congressional seats are "in play" rather than on explaining to the American people what a Republican victory on Nov. 7 would mean to the nation.
SHARE Sunday, December 4, 2005 A Twist in the Rove-Plame Mystery
new information about a conversation between Rove's lawyer and a TIME reporter suggest, contrary to Rove's attorney's claim, that the evidence buttresses the case against Rove rather than exonerating him.
SHARE Sunday, March 12, 2006 Bush Still Ignores Iraq Reality
As George W. Bush sets out on another speaking tour to justify invading Iraq three years ago, he’s still ignoring what should be the chief lesson for any U.S. President: Don’t play games with the intelligence, especially on matters of war and peace. You only get good people killed.
SHARE Monday, December 19, 2005 Spying and the Public's Right to Know
The New York Times doesn't have a good explanation for why it waited until after the 2004 election to print a devastating report against the White House.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 2, 2007 Operation: Save Bush's Legacy
If press reports are correct ..." that George W. Bush will approve a troop "surge" in Iraq of 17,000 to 20,000 soldiers ..." the follow-up question must be whether the escalation will do anything but get more Americans and Iraqis killed while only forestalling the defeat of Bush's war policy.
SHARE Friday, April 13, 2007 Iraq & the Logic of Timetables
It has become a standard part of George W. Bush's litany for why he will veto a congressional plan for setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq: "Why would you say to the enemy, 'Here's a timetable. Just go ahead and wait us out?'"
SHARE Saturday, March 4, 2006 Bush Flummoxes Kafka, Orwell
Even Kafka and Orwell, masters at dissecting the cruel absurdities of totalitarian state power, might be at a loss for words in the face of George W. Bush’s latest legal and rhetorical formulations on torture.