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Eternal Return: Burying the Real Story of War

(UPDATED BELOW.)

One of the best understandings of the war in Iraq can be found in a book published 30 years ago: Dispatches, by Michael Herr, an account of his time as a correspondent in Vietnam. Most of the book deals with Herr’s experiences in the field alongside the soldiers and Marines during some of the most intensive fighting of the war, including the Tet Offensive and the siege of Khe Sanh. But at the end of the book, he offers some broader reflections, including this telling passage that reads as if it

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Progress Report: Redefining Forward Motion in Iraq

Are you confused by the ever-shifting terminology employed by the Masters of War and their frequent banquet buddies, the Media Mavens, when conveying the overarching geostrategic sociopolitical complexities of the Dear Leader’s liberation of Iraq? Well, fear not, befuddled reader; your humble correspondent is here to help, with this handy-dandy update of The Newspeak Lexicon.

Today’s phrase is: “Political Progress.” This sinuous and supple little passage has greased many a clu
msy reality over the transom of

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Great Moments in American Statesmanship

September Could Be Key Deadline in Killing Spree
By Jonathan Wisefellow and Thomas E. Bricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 8, 2007; Page A01

Congressional leaders from both political parties are giving serial killer Theodore Bundy a matter of months to prove that his murder spree has turned a corner, with September looking increasingly like a decisive deadline.

Law enforcement officials have said that by then, they will have a handle on whether the current surge in money and manpower devoted to helping Bundy in his campaign is having any impact on

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Black Hawk Rising: CIA Warlords Take Control in Mogadishu

What’s happening these days in Somalia, the land that Time (and Newsweek) forgot? Well, after killing several hundred civilians and driving more than 350,000 people from their homes during last month’s Terror War blitzkrieg in Mogadishu, George Bush’s proxy “regime change” forces (including the brutal, American-trained military of the Ethiopian invaders) have installed an unelected warlord as the new mayor of the capital, McClatchy Newspapers reports.

Mohamed Dheere is very much in the classic “strongman” mode so

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Blogosphere Black Ops: Hackers Take Aim at Voices of Dissent

As many of you have surely noticed, Empire Burlesque has been under sustained attack by hackers for the past several weeks, with occasional slowdowns or cut-offs in service, and viral infections. What we are seeing is a very serious, very concentrated effort to cripple the site, make it toxic and bring it down — to shut us up, in other words. The same kind of attacks are being directed at our associated site, Atlantic Free Press, as well. These are not just hacker pranks; the

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Surging Into Slaughter: The Bipartisan Death Grip on Iraq

Intro: It is becoming
increasingly clear that regardless of who wins the election in 2008,
the United States government is not going to withdraw from Iraq. It is
just not going to happen. This is the awful, gut-wrenching, frightening
truth we must face. The only way that American forces will ever leave
Iraq is the same way they left Vietnam: at gunpoint, forced into a
precipitous and catastrophic retreat. And how many thousands upon
thousands of needless deaths we will see before that terrible
denouement?


While Congressional leaders

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Decline and Fall: Top UK General Flays Imperial Folly in Iraq

General Sir Michael Rose, one of the most highly decorated British officers since World War II, has written a new book which began as a study of Britain’s failed military tactics during the American Revolution and ended up as damning indictment of the Bush-Blair coalition’s disastrous aggression in Iraq. In fact, Rose “argues that the [Iraqi] insurgents’ tactics have been seen before – ironically when George Washington’s forces succeeded in defeating the British Army — then the world’s greatest military power — to win independence for the US in

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The “No Mercy” Doctrine Strikes Again in Afghanistan

(Updated below.)

Last week, we reported here about the revelations in the UK’s Sunday Telegraph that U.S. forces in Afghanistan have been told to show “no mercy” in using “uncompromising” force against any suspected Taliban insurgents. In that piece, crewmen of American attack helicopters bragged of the “extreme aggression” they employed in the occupied country; one spoke of the pleasure he felt in turning Afghans into “a big dust coud” when he hit them with his 30mm cannon rounds.

This week,

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Dance Macabre: Live Burlesque on Bush’s Somalian Death Trip

This is just a reminder that you can hear your humble correspondent’s dulcet tones cussing and discussing the Bush Administration’s proxy war in Somalia — and its willing enablers in the American media — with that esteemed disabler of government deceit, Scott Horton, on his radio show at Antiwar.com. You can catch the interview here — and catch up on some of the blood-soaked background of Bush’s third Terror War “regime change” operation in this handy compendium from Winter Patriot.

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Taking Exception: The Delusion of Democratic Rescue

Arthur Silber continues to blaze away with posts to which nothing can be added except this admonition: go and read. In his latest, Songs of Death, he does what every visionary does: tells us truths that we have not yet heard — or do not want to hear. In this case, it’s the bitter pill that the Democratic heroes coming to rescue us from Bush will in fact perpetuate, with remarkable fidelity, the brutal policies of loot and dominion that the present Administration has championed so

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