NEW
@randpaul
begins trip down rabbit hole of finding out how many troops we have operating in how many countries and why. Maybe he'll be able to touch base w/
@nickturse
down there.
Does anyone remember the US/NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the insistence of Kosovo's independence in 1999? Not conveniently. My colleague
@globalsarang
recalls:
am i alone in thinking a DHS ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ sounds completely Orwellian and the timing of putting someone who worked as an advisor to the Ukrainian govt to head it sounds super odd ?
Live
@SenRandPaul
@amconmag
foreign policy conference:
"You come to my Republican caucus and you'll hear the beating of drums. For war. Everything is about war with China."
New polling shows nearly 70% of Americans want US to pursue talks to end the Ukraine war, a real disconnect with Washington policy right now.
@connor_echols
:
Neoconservative Victoria Nuland, who was responsible for Obama's disastrous democracy promotion efforts in Ukraine and Russia, has just been tapped as Biden's state department undersecretary for political affairs.
Surprise, surprise! Tik-Tok ban proposed in Congress w/21 bipartisan sponsors, "would grant the executive branch unprecedented new national security powers over commerce in information and communication technologies, and by extension, speech."
Honestly, this is what these guys said before the Ukraine counteroffensive. So why are we still taking our cues from them as they subtly shift their tone?
Read:
NEW
@JohnKiriakou
on why we need to wake up and thank
@xychelsea
Manning for not taking the easy way out-- she chose jail over cooperating with federal grand jury against
@wikileaks
and is now paying the price
Tell me again why we are thinking about extending a security umbrella to Saudi Arabia, when the Kingdom, according to
@HRW
, is literally killing women and child migrants at their border?
@connor_echols
:
In order to protect shipping lines the Biden admin bombed a country tonight that has been under bombardment and economic blockade for the better part of 9 years.
Not everyone on the Hill is buying the justifications:
I'm getting increasingly agitated that these US politicians are absolutely dedicated to sending Ukrainian men to die in a meat grinder while using this sanctimonious tone about no American 'boots on the ground'
Surprise!
@Nickturse
has found that Gen. Barmou, the chief of Niger’s Special Ops Forces and one of the leaders of the coup in Niger, was trained by the U.S. military.
@theintercept
:
Biden just asked for another $33 BILLION for Ukraine assistance ($20B for military). That, on top of the nearly $4 billion already pledged. According to my colleague
@BenFreemanDC
that's more than the total defense budgets for all but 13 countries in the world. Let that sink in.
Surprise! Silly smear list that puts orgs incl Code Pink, Quincy, my mag RS, CATO, TAC and and wow, a lot of my friends, on a Ukraine enemies list, turns out to have State Dept. connections. Great wrap by
@masonls1066
@amconmag
This is why Israel's war in Gaza will be the final nail in the coffin of American superiority -- moral and otherwise -- in the world. If we cannot do anything about this we got nothing.
NEW
@CostsOfWar
report: US 9/11 wars led to 4.5 million deaths, one million of them directly related to combat.
Nice to forget, huh?
MORE
@connor_echols
The US military is quietly digging in for the long haul in Ukraine war. As George Beebe tells me here, "You don’t put a 3-star in charge just to keep track of weapons flows in Ukraine."
MORE:
#CrashingtheWarParty
is off this week because our producer
@HeyRemso
had to go and get married! So please catch up w/what you missed, like this recent episode w/
@RandPaul
on Ukraine, Yemen and Iran:
For anyone who doubted that Biden's gambit to tie anti-US proxy war effort to fascism, here's another data point, in
@atlantic
today:
"today’s anti-war caucus is objectively pro-fascist."
Read more as Kirchick smears QI, Mearshiemer, Chas Freeman, et al
I'm old enough to remember when Elliot Cohen was slavishly cheerleading the surge in Iraq and COIN in Afghanistan. We know how that all turned out. I don't blame him for writing this, it's his metier, sadly, but the Atlantic editors should be ashamed.
Nightmare: What it looks like when you “liberate” a country that hasn’t asked for it and unleash a violent chain of events creating the conditions for an even worse tyranny than before. My latest on
#Iraq
:
@Antiwarcom
@GarethPorter
@Mauerback
@Liberty5380
NEW from me: as if on cue, AIPAC funded pols, many of whom sat on the sidelines as tens of thousands of Gazans perished and starved, rush to battle stations to declare US war on Iran for 'disproportionate' highly choreographed, limited attack on Israel.
All: this is my last week at
@amconmag
. It’s been a tremendous run and will miss my colleagues and comrades but I move to
@QuincyInst
@RStatecraft
on 9/14 and so excited to continue the battle against the Blob and for Restraint on a new front!
Grab a coffee this morning and please read this exhaustive argument against Michele Flournoy for Secretary of Defense by Pierre Sprey (who spent decades in the DoD) and Winslow Wheeler (decades in Congress budget staff) for
@POGOBlog
:
the World Kitchen workers killed by airstrikes were delivering food from the coast where the US military plans to build its own aid landing and staging area. let that sink in.
NEW: Yesterday's attack on foreign aid workers in Gaza does not bode well for the Pentagon's plan to construct a makeshift causeway to get aid into the strip, writes
@KelleyBVlahos
Is is moral/ethical to advocate for prolonging a war what will likely end in not a clear victory but the destruction of a country (not your own) including decimation of a generation of young men (not your own)?
Must read George Beebe this morning:
Me on
@mtaibbi
#twitterfiles
4
@amconmag
today: the Russian “malign influence” story got the public’s buy-in for a new Cold War by normalizing idea that Russians not only helped elect Trump, but were trying “to destroy US democracy” & are still doing so.
Honoring the war dead by saying 'no more' to Washington treating our men and women like “toy soldiers to be moved around on some global chessboard.”
#MemorialDay
NEW: The Pentagon won't say who will be getting aid from US built pier/causeway to the beach but there's a private contractor called Fog Bow -- all recently retired special forces, Marines — that appears ready to go.
My latest:
NEW! explosive declassified docs show how much Clinton team knew Russia would recoil from NATO expansion and we're already feeling 'snookered' thirty years ago. h/t
@NSArchive
New from me: GOP Reps Reschenthaler and Max Miller say the more than 20,000 Americans fighting for the IDF in Israel right now should get same legal and employment protections as our US National Guard and Reservists.
RIP: When Christopher Hitchens was calling him a "political and moral cretin" for opposing the Iraq War, Rep. Walter Jones was writing 8k letters to soldiers' survivors. He told me it was what "my lord would want me to do." My '09
@Antiwarcom
interview:
There are mighty men and then there are heroes. Thank you
#DanielEllsberg
for giving Americans a reason to be proud of our traditions of free speech and free press, and inspiring generations to use both to pursue truth, and to challenge power.
Gulf states banding together to punish economically devastated Lebanon because its information minister made an incredible breach in etiquette --calling Saudi & UAE the "aggressors" in Yemen (true) and the war "absurd" (understatement)
Outrageous
@theintercept
@kenklippenstein
@saralsirota
report about US military losing biometric devices to Taliban, putting coalition partners' iris scans and more at risk recalls what we did to our Sunni allies in Iraq. From me:
.
@basedMikeLee
: "(Biden's) pattern of engaging in offensive airstrikes without authorization and calling such actions defensive is a warped understanding of the interactions between the legislative and executive branch powers in war"
Excellent
@GarethPorter
Pentagon’s (failed) pursuit of Vietnam as a potential military partner against China and the extraordinary self-deception surrounding the entire endeavor.
New
@Andrewmcockburn
on how US weapons superiority was tested and failed in Ukraine, ripping the mask off the smoke defense contractors have been blowing for decades.
Can we finally acknowledge that the idea the US is fighting to crush Russia "to the last Ukrainian" is ghoulish and immoral? Must read
@BMarchetich
on all the members of congress, pundit class, etc who say war is 'bargain' for the US
Call them out.
NEW: The military still can't provide a clear answer as to who is providing security on the Gaza beach for the US military pier project, which is supposedly opening for business in the next 24hrs.
@kenklippenstein
@mpdimino
@DanielLDavis1
HISTORIC DEPLOYMENT: CBS News has been given exclusive access to the Army’s 101st Airborne Division as they are deployed to Europe for the first time since the last World War. They are now the closest U.S. forces to the fight in Ukraine.
@mtracey
Not odd if you consider a 'social credit' system has been slowly creeping into American consumer consciousness via Silicon Valley and the private sector for some time now:
New from me: Bill Kristol's new "Republicans for Ukraine" campaign insists there is only one "right" way to support Ukraine. Whoever thinks differently may not even be a real conservative, or a patriotic American.
John Bolton says failed assassination plot against him provides “a real window into what that government in Tehran is like.”
yeah, virtuous governments like Washington and Tel Aviv wouldn't know anything about that.
There is a pro-Putin axis developing in America. And it’s no accident.
@djrothkopf
details Putin’s influence in the MAGA GOP. It also runs through the Tech Bros, libertarians and into the peace movements. Some are consciously allying, some duped.
Susan Glasser thinks that people who know this is bullshit don’t bother reading the New Yorker and many don’t but just a reminder here about what her ilk actually think about anyone who doesn’t toe the neoconservative line on the right.
Just a reminder of how openly nasty and aggressive the warmongering neocon right was in the run up to Iraq-- I just found this in the clutter of a closet.
@connor_echols
Reminder: the acting deputy secretary of state has said as recently as February that there will be no peace in Ukraine until Putin is gone. A regime change policy, which he seems to have advocated for years (and helped to engineer in Ukraine in'14), is a dead ender.
Dangerous game being played by Israel if it is indeed behind the assassination of Razi Mousavi (top Iranian commander) in Damascus neighborhood yesterday. NEW
@tparsi
32. By mid-Sept, 2020, Chan & Roth had set up an encrypted messaging network so employees from FBI & Twitter could communicate.
They also agree to create a “virtual war room” for “all the [Internet] industry plus FBI and ODNI” [Office of the Director of National Intelligence].
Great piece as always from my friend
@GarethPorter
on how the media "provided the military with important cover at the moment when it was at its most vulnerable for its disastrous handling of the entire war."
This is what all those years of war, privatizing war, and letting people like Erik Prince and the rest of his oily privateering cohort define the rules gets you: American vets serving as assassins for UAE in Yemen. Incredible reporting by
@AramRoston
US taxpayers just handed over $1.2 billion to Israel to finish building a giant laser weapon called 'Iron Beam'
What could go wrong?
NEW
@stavroulapabst
It's amazing to me how Petraeus can talk about how disappointing and incompetent the Russian military was in the initial invasion of Ukraine knowing how the US was unable to directly overcome the Iraq insurgency for at least 4 years after 2003 invasion.
NEW
@tparsi
on why ripping up the Iran nuclear deal was one of the biggest strategic screw-ups in American history. Mostly because Iran now has enough enriched fissile material to build several bombs if they wanted.