Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “United States Department of Defense”
The U.S. Department of Defense on Friday released its redacted report on the military’s deadly October 2015 airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which found that the bombing was a mistake—and thus, not a war crime—a conclusion which human rights groups called “an affront” to justice and accountability. The report follows an announcement on Thursday …
From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades. Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 …
The Reuters report put this colossal dereliction simply: “A law in effect since 1992 requires annual audits of all federal agencies—and the Pentagon alone has never complied.” All $585 billion and more, e.g., for the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, of your money—not just unaudited, but, in the sober judgement of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of the Congress, this vast …
Critics have long questioned why violent intervention was necessary in Libya. Hillary Clinton’s recently published emails confirm that it was less about protecting the people from a dictator than about money, banking, and preventing African economic sovereignty. The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a “victory …
For months you’ve read about EmailGate in this column. I’ve elaborated how Hillary Clinton, the apparent Democratic frontrunner for President this year, put large amounts of classified information at grave risk through slipshod security practices by herself and her staff. Now that scandal has taken a significant turn for the more ominous. Last Friday afternoon the State Department’s latest court-mandated release of Hillary …
President Obama’s pledge to pursue “audacious” executive action during his final year in office is stirring a frenzy of speculation about what he might have up his sleeve. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough this week said “audacious” executive actions on tap for 2016 are being carefully crafted to “make sure the steps we have taken are ones we can …
There is “strong” evidence that the U.S. military attack on a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan two months ago constituted a criminal act, and should be investigated as such, Human Rights Watch said Monday in a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter(pdf). “The attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz involved possible war crimes,” said the …
There seems to be a formula for a superpower’s intent to dominate the world: massive surveillance + use of military might in foreign wars and domestic control of citizens (e.g. armored cops; packed prisons, etc.) + control of each method by elites for their own interests = international and domestic dominance by fear and force. Domestically this is called the National …
The New York Times reported last week that climate change is forcing environmental researchers to seek cold-water refuges for imperiled salmon. This raises an obvious question for Republican candidates in the US presidential race: how do we ensure no Muslim salmon are swimming among the pink refugees? Clearly, we need a religious test for lox. The idea is absurd, of course. Climate change …
David Talbot’s latest book, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, examines the post-WWII U.S. intelligence sector and the power it wields, by following the career of Wall Street lawyer, diplomat and spymaster Allen Dulles. Talbot discussed his new book with fellow author Peter Dale Scott, in a public event at the Mechanics’ Institute Library in San Francisco on December 2, 2015. Talbot says he believes CIA assassins were responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy.
David Talbot founded the website Salon.com He was an editor at Mother Jones magazine, and he’s written for Rolling Stone, the New Yorker and other publications. His earlier books include Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years.
Peter Dale Scott is a retired Canadian diplomat, professor emeritus of English at UC Berkeley, and a prolific author. His most recent book is The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy. He writes extensively about the “deep state,” a de facto government that exists beneath the elected one.
