◄►Bookmark◄❌►▲▼Toggle AllToC▲▼Add to LibraryRemove from Library • BShow CommentNext New CommentNext New ReplyRead More
ReplyAgree/Disagree/Etc.More...This CommenterThis ThreadHide ThreadDisplay All Comments
AgreeDisagreeThanksLOLTroll
These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.
Something good happened in Washington last week, suggesting that the year might actually end on a high note without Joe Biden starting World War 3 and opening up all the country’s prisons for the on-the-street rehabilitation of the inmates where they will undoubtedly learn new skills. The good thing was the signing by Biden of... Read More
Unfortunately, a machine has not yet been developed that can take one back in time and undo terrible mistakes being made due to lack of appreciation of possible downstream consequences of certain actions. If Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary had been somewhere else other than in Sarajevo back in June 1914 Serbian Gavrilo Princip might... Read More
There is some speculation in Washington about a so-called October Surprise being engineered by either party or their supporters to change the outcome of the upcoming election. The original October Surprise took place in 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager William Casey conspired with several senior CIA officers in Europe to convince the Iranian government... Read More
Some commentators who bothered to watch the Trump-Harris debate observed that both candidates adroitly maneuvered around saying anything that might be truly important. The issue of war and peace, meaning in this case nuclear war, appeared to be of no concern even though the Biden-Harris continuum and its British and French allies are reportedly considering... Read More
Does anyone really think that Iran threatens the United States? It’s only plausible if you can be convinced by a congenital liar and war criminal like Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or by a buffoon like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. My head was still throbbing recently due to the damage done while watching... Read More
When are American soldiers not really engaged in combat? Over the past week it was revealed that Congress is considering legislation that will strengthen current conscription registration requirements and could even include women. It seems that the US armed services can no longer obtain enough volunteers to meet their needs and are getting desperate given... Read More
Many individuals who actually care about the United States Constitution and its guarantee of basic liberties for the American people have been seriously concerned over how recent Administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have taken steps to control and limit the rights of citizens to exercise free speech as well as freedom to travel and associate... Read More
I recently returned from a twelve-day cruise to celebrate my wife’s seventieth birthday. I usually spend much of my cruise time in the ship’s bar instructing the bartender how to make a proper James Bond gin martini “shaken not stirred,” a successful endeavor which has transformed the alcohol culture on a number of vessels. Less... Read More
You are feted by Washington’s most celebrated and powerful and featured as Time magazine’s Man of the Year. You return home in triumph bearing pledges of tens of billions of dollars in support for your war against a feared and hated invader. But a year later, everything looks a lot different with all the backslappers... Read More
Many Americans have come to accept that corruption and lying is the name of the game in Washington and, increasingly, at both state and local levels of government, in part because lying and stealing by those who run the country has become virtually consequence free. To cite only one example, the current ruinously expensive war... Read More
Most Americans do not understand how the United Nations functions, or does not function as the case might be, preferring to think of it as some kind of debating society where the 193 member nations representing the world community can vent over issues that they rarely have control over. Nevertheless, in spite of the torrent... Read More
August 23rd was a big news day all over the world. The western media’s focus on the events of that day was solidly on the unproven claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the sabotage or shooting down of an executive jet that killed his former associate Yevgeny Prigozhin. In reality, however, there was... Read More
I am surely not the only one who has noticed that the defensive propaganda lines that are flowing out the Democratic Administration have become more than ordinarily ridiculous of late. One is astonished at the melding of fact and fiction to create narratives that depict the White House and all that pertains to it as... Read More
It is interesting to observe how, over the past twenty-five years, the United States has become not only a participant in wars in various places on the planet but has also evolved into being the prime initiator of most of the armed conflict. Going back to the Balkans in the nineteen-nineties and moving forward in... Read More
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), famed for its hidden agendas and its preference to operate in the shadows, has featured in a couple of recent breaking stories. On July 22nd the White House announced that CIA Director William Burns would be stepping up to cabinet level in the Joe Biden Administration. That means that beyond... Read More
It is a lucky break that the Screen Actors Guild has gone on strike as it will give Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky an opportunity to dust off his thespian credentials and look for a new job when the Russians eventually bring down his government. Hollywood and Las Vegas would undoubtedly compete for such a nice... Read More
“A riddle wrapped up in an enigma” is a shortened form of a quotation made in October 1939, just one month after the Second World War had begun, by Sir Winston Churchill in a radio broadcast to the British people. At the time, Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty. The full comment was "I... Read More
There are a lot of anonymous bureaucrats that man the offices in the nation’s capital. If one were to mention the name Wendy Sherman at a Washington DC cocktail gathering it is likely that few in the room will have ever heard of her, but she has long been one of the most important players... Read More
Recent developments in Washington relating to Ukraine and the Middle East remind me that there is a big difference between maintaining secrecy when a situation warrants it and lying over issues where there is no compelling reason to do so beyond political expediency. Having spent more than twenty years in American intelligence agencies where secrecy... Read More
Watching a once great nation commit suicide is not pretty. President Joe Biden does not seem to understand that his role as elected leader of the United States is to take actions that directly or indirectly benefit the folks who voted for him as well as the other Americans who did not do so. That... Read More
Back in the 1970s I was part of the Field Trade Craft course for new Case Officers at the Central Intelligence Agency’s principal training facility, located at Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Virginia. Peary was and still is referred to by one and all as “the Farm,” though it engaged in animal husbandry only in the... Read More
Sometimes I think that the script being used by the Biden Administration to manage its foreign and national security policies has been written by George Orwell, though I am not sure if it based on 1984 or Animal Farm. Maybe it is a combination of the two. Either way, it would help explain why there... Read More
At last week’s Rage Against the War Machine peace rally in Washington there was no shortage of speakers who denounced the Biden Administration’s hypocritical foreign policy, which essentially judges any violent action undertaken by the United States and its friends as good by definition while anything done by rivals or competitors, sometimes conveniently referred to... Read More
One might actually be willing to consider that there might be some value in the “rules based international order” being promoted by the Joe Biden Administration if such a thing actually existed and was applied equally to all transgressors. Of course, in reality, the “rules” being referred to are neither agreed upon nor driven by... Read More
In spite of an overwhelming flood of disinformation coming from the Western mainstream media and governments, there continue to be obviously widely divergent views on the current war between Ukraine and Russia. The official and media supported narrative is that Moscow attacked its neighbor in violation of “rule based” principles of international relations, whereby an... Read More
Even though one has become accustomed to seeing the United States government behaving irrationally on an epic scale with no concern for what happens to the average citizen who is not a member of one of the freak show constituencies of the Democratic Party, it is still possible to be surprised or even shocked. Shortly... Read More
As has frequently been the case in America’s recent wars, in Ukraine a largely hidden clandestine conflict is paralleling the actual fighting on the ground. One should assume that a variety of western spies using various kinds of cover are operating at all levels as well as in adjacent areas in Poland and the Baltic... Read More
In history books as well as in politics every story is shaped by where one chooses to begin the tale. The current fighting in Ukraine, which many observers believe to already be what might be considered the opening phase of World War 3, is just such a development. Did the seeds of conflict arise subsequent... Read More
One week ago, the Ukrainian government may have deliberately attacked neighbor Poland in an attempt to draw the NATO alliance into its war with Russia. The incident involved a missile that hit a grain processing site inside Poland and killed two farmers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately blamed Russia for the incident even though he... Read More
To be sure there is an election coming up today in the United States and President Joe Biden has clearly taken the low road in the lead up to it by speaking before friendly audiences and repeating over and over the bromides that cause the brain to go numb. During the past week it was... Read More
According to the New York Times those naughty Russians are at it again. Today’s online lead story entitled “Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Tuesday’s Midterms” with the subtitle “Researchers have identified a series of Russian information operations to influence American elections and, perhaps, erode support for Ukraine” marks a new low in... Read More
Prussian Major General Carl von Clausewitz famously drew on his own experience in the Napoleonic Wars to examine war as a political phenomenon. In his 1832 book “On War” he provided a frequently quoted pithy summary of war versus peace, writing in terms of politico-military strategy that “War is a mere continuation of politics by... Read More
My wife and I completed a cruise recently that started in Venice, visited islands and historic sites in the Eastern Mediterranean, and concluded in Rome after stops in Valletta, Palermo and Naples. There were inevitably good things and bad things in terms of how the shore excursions were programmed, more bad than good unfortunately, and... Read More
Russian President Vladimir Putin has certainly been a naughty boy! The always unreliable and unofficial government-originating disinformation source The Hill is reporting that Moscow has spent the equivalent of $300,000,000 in an effort to “influence” world politics in its favor. The story relies on and follows a New York Times special report which again seeks... Read More
It is astonishing how many observers of war in Ukraine who should know better have been inclined to take at face value the assertions of “sources” that clearly originate among the various governments that are involved in the conflict. Those leaders who are engaged in the inexorable march by the US and its allies to... Read More
If the non-stop dancing duo Biden and Blinken is seriously seeking to validate its view that the United States of America is and should be the world’s hegemon, they are going about it the wrong way. They should be taking their lead from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky by turning their press conferences into entertainments with... Read More
The horrific car bombing in Moscow that killed twenty-nine year old Darya Dugina last week raises many questions about the motives of the Ukrainian regime and its supporters that sent an assassin to murder a prominent Russian civilian who has no overt role in the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. It should be assumed... Read More
Every leader and top official now in power in the so-called Western World seems to have forgotten that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 as an alliance that was ostensibly defensive in nature, intended to counter the expansion of Soviet style communism in Europe. That role continued to be the raison... Read More
[This article is derived from a speech I made at the July 23rd Peace and Freedom Rally in Kingston New York] There are some things that I believe to be true about the anarchy that purports to be US foreign policy. First, and most important, I do not believe that any voter cast a ballot... Read More
The White House keeps insisting that it will not directly involve American soldiers in the war in Ukraine, but it keeps taking steps that will inevitably lead to a large-scale open combat role for the US against Russia. Among the most recent moves to increase the pressure on the Kremlin, Biden revealed at a NATO... Read More
Five years ago, I wrote an article entitled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s wars.” It turned out to be the most popular piece that I have ever written and I was rewarded for it by immediately being fired by the so-called American Conservative magazine, where I had been a regular and highly popular contributor for... Read More
So Honest Joe Biden is now going to give another $1.2 billion to the Ukrainians on top of the sixty or so billion that is already in the pipeline, but who’s counting, particularly as Congress refused to approve having an inspector general to monitor whose pockets will be lined. The money will be printed up... Read More
One recalls that when war fever surged demanding intervention by Imperial Britain in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, a song became popular in the music halls which included “We don’t want to fight, But by Jingo if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.” If the refrain... Read More
Once upon a time United States foreign policy was based on actual national interests, but that was long ago and far away before the country was beguiled into a colonial war with Spain followed by a twentieth century that was chock-a-block full of any type and intensity of warfare that one might imagine, including the... Read More
The White House plan to destroy Russia by calling President Vladimir Putin names proceeds apace. Apparently, the man whom President Joe Biden has called a “thug,” “killer,” and “war criminal” is now also charged with carrying out a "genocide" and, according to CIA Director William Burns, he may in “despair” over his apparently stalled invasion,... Read More
The United States is now insisting that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be put on trial for “war crimes” committed in Ukraine. As Putin is still insisting that he will attend the upcoming G20 summit in November on the island of Bali, Indonesia, it will be a great opportunity to have US Marshalls snatch him... Read More
There are many backstories surfacing from what is going on in Ukraine and Washington that have been largely ignored amid the drumbeat of casualty counts combined with claims and counter-claims from the two sides. Two stories that I believe have received insufficient attention are the US government’s three decades long obsession with weakening and de... Read More
The semi-official United States government plus media lie machine knows that constructing a plausible reason to bomb the crap out of someone all depends on where you begin your narrative. If you keep starting your accusations at a point where the target has done something bad, all you have to do is repeat yourself over... Read More
Well, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle and there is no easy way to encourage it to return. Thanks to a relentless flow of propaganda, the American public has become increasingly convinced that the United States “looks weak” and must stand up against Vladimir Putin. Richard Haass of the Council on... Read More
It should come as no surprise that many observers, from various political perspectives, are beginning to note that there is something seriously disconnected in the fumbling foreign policy of the United States. The evacuation failure in Afghanistan shattered the already waning self-confidence of the American political elite and the continuing on-again off-again negotiations that were... Read More
Phil Giraldi is a former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism cases. He holds a BA with honors from the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in Modern History from the University of London. In addition to TAC, where he has been a contributing editor for nine years, he writes regularly for Antiwar.com. He is currently Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and resides with his wife of 32 years in Virginia horse country close to his daughters and grandchildren.
RSS
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese