OLIVER STONE: ... Every school kid -- still, my daughter in her school, in private school, in good school, is still learning this: We dropped the bomb because we had to, because the Japanese resistance was fanatic, and we would have lost many American lives taking...
CNAS National Security Hive on Syria: “Meh”
President Obama is expected to make an announcement this week on whether his administration will begin arming the Syrian rebels in their suddenly uncertain effort to topple the autocratic regime of Bashar Assad. All signs point to a lifting of the White House...
Free-market Groups Want to Slash $1.9 Trillion from Pentagon
From R Street's Andrew Moylan: As lawmakers begin discussing the National Defense Authorization Act in earnest this week, many in Washington are wondering, is it possible to defend America’s national interests and defend taxpayers’ wallets at the same time? According...
Beltway Braces for a Very Cratchit Christmas
Today's Washington Post informs us that "for the holidays, the spies say they’ll scrimp." [W]ith budget cuts looming, party plans are being pared back for the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA. … Under then-director Leon E. Panetta last year, the CIA...
The Future Affordability of US National Security
That's the title of a timely paper by MIT researcher Dr. Cindy Williams [.pdf]. The summary points: 1. The United States currently devotes about 4.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to national defense and another 1.5 percent to broader security efforts,...
Pentagon’s Doomsday Looks a Lot Like 2007
The Project on Defense Alternatives sends along "Pentagon Cuts in Context: No Reason for 'Doomsday' Hysteria" [.pdf]. Key points: * The Budget Control Act (BCA) provides for assured caps and reductions on Pentagon spending only if the Joint Select Committee – the...
Blackout?
Can YOUR card do this? AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you how war fits into this. I mean, you co-wrote the book with Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War. How does war fit into our problems with the economy? JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, war fits in because you're creating a...
Hiroshima & Nagasaki: The inside story — again
At 8:16 on the morning of August 6, 1945, the world got a glimpse of its own mortality. At that moment, the city of Hiroshima was obliterated by a fireball that sent waves of searing heat, then a deafening concussion, across the landscape. Three days later, a second...
Afghanistan bottom-line
"The entire COIN strategy [the COunterINsurgency strategy engineered by Petraeus and McCrystal et.al.] is a fraud perpetuated on the American people," says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with...
Peña/Bandow on Closing U.S. Military Bases
Charles Peña and Doug Bandow debate Lawrence Korb and Frank Gaffney on closing down the U.S. empire of bases. Pt. 2 Pt. 3 (Somebody get Gaffney a squeaky red nose and rainbow-afro wig please, huh?) Update: Dr. Gordon Prather - a real nuclear expert - uses facts to...
