Clear evidence concerning the bias of multiple, high-ranking current and former intelligence community officials should make us think twice about letting retired intelligence officials keep access to classified information, especially if they become talking heads on television after leaving public service.
There is a great danger that vital, secret details may be revealed on television, even inadvertently.
John Brennan is no stranger to this problem.
Whether or not to expand NATO is a question that deserves debate. Would it help or hurt U.S. national security?
Does adding countries such as Albania and Montenegro increase our security or ensnare us in possible regional disputes? Are we willing to risk war with Russia by including countries that already are mired in military conflict with Russia?
To understand what NATO expansion does to our relations with Russia, one must at least be aware of Russia’s perspective. Such awareness does not mean we agree with their point of view, but rather that we are aware our actions lead...Read more
Once upon a time, there were fiscally conservative Republicans. It is said that when Republicans are out of power, they are the conservative party, but when Republicans are in the majority, there is no conservative party.
Virtually every Republican you meet travels home and tells the local Rotary how they are for balancing the budget.
Yet, in Washington, the majority of Republicans recently voted to bust the budget caps on spending, allowing a deficit this year that will exceed $1 trillion.
This spring, the House of Representatives voted on a...Read more
We know that in the early 2000s, Gina Haspel’s CIA was rendering accused terrorists to unfathomable torture in Syria, as well as Egypt and Jordan. And we know that in 2005, Haspel herself was busy ordering the destruction of evidence of her involvement in the waterboarding of prisoners.
What we don’t know is if she was involved in sending Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer, to Syria, where he was tortured by Bashar Assad—the same Assad now condemned for gassing his own people; the same Assad the CIA has been trying to depose for the past six years.
Did Haspel...Read more
In the near future, Congress will debate a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). I use the word “debate” lightly. So far, no hearings have been scheduled, and no testimony is likely to be heard unless something changes. That’s a shame, because this is a serious matter, and this is a deeply flawed AUMF.
For some time now, Congress has abdicated its responsibility to declare war. The status quo is that we are at war anywhere and anytime the president says so.
So Congress—in a very Congress way of doing things—has a “solution.” Instead of reclaiming its...Read more
Over the past several days, there has been an increasingly granular debate about the degree of Gina Haspel’s participation in the torturing of detainees at the CIA’s Thailand “black site,” with neocons going out of their way to try to defend the president’s choice to run the agency in the wake of Mike Pompeo’s departure for Foggy Bottom.
Some details may be disputed, but it remains true that Haspel ran a secret center in Thailand where prisoners were tortured.
There is no question that during her career, Haspel...Read more
Since President Trump took office, our country finally seems to be heading in the right direction. In just the past year, the American people have seen enormous tax cuts, more judges appointed who take the Constitution seriously, relief from the massive regulatory state, and an economy rapidly gaining strength and offering greater opportunities for those seeking to turn their dreams into reality.
But when it comes to our place on the world stage, we are at a crossroads. We can continue to build on our recent successes by reaffirming America’s role as a trusted, powerful nation...Read more
The neocons have been so completely and regularly wrong for decades now that it’s almost unimaginable to believe they would ever be in a position to advise a president again – let alone to wield the kind of power they will have if they lead some of our nation’s most powerful institutions.
Yet the past week has brought such a resurgence of this failed ideology that you would be forgiven for thinking we had time-traveled back to 2003.
Since President Trump took office, we have removed unnecessary and overzealous regulations from the American people’s backs, cut taxes,...Read more
Despite overwhelming support from the American people for action, and a grassroots push that has led to multiple victories in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate has so far failed to follow the lead of our colleagues across the Capitol to Audit the Fed.
So the Federal Reserve continues to largely dictate the terms of its own transparency, the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) hands remain tied from conducting a thorough audit, and you pay the price through devalued savings, higher costs, and devastating economic crashes ushered in by market manipulation.
I...Read more
Is our military budget too small, or is our mission too large? Since 2001, the U.S. military budget has more than doubled in nominal terms and grown over 37% accounting for inflation. The U.S. spends more than the next eight countries combined.
It's really hard to argue that our military is underfunded, so perhaps our mission has grown too large. That mission includes being currently involved in combat operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Niger, Libya, and Yemen. We have troops in over 50 of 54 African countries. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost over a...Read more
