Nick Turse is an award-winning journalist, historian, essayist, and the associate editor of the Nation Institute’s Tomdispatch.com. He is the editor of The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso, 2010), the author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2008) and has written for The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, Adbuster, GOOD magazine, Le Monde Diplomatique (English- and German- language), In These Times, Mother Jones and The Village Voice, among other print and on-line publications. His articles have also appeared in such newspapers as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune, The Contra-Costa Times, The Fort Worth Star Telegram, The Hartford Courant, The Indianapolis Star, The Knoxville News Sentinel, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Seattle Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Tampa Tribune, among others.
Nuclear Terror in the Middle East: Lethality Beyond the Pale
In those first minutes, they’ll be stunned. Eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare, nerve endings numbed. They’ll just stand there. Soon, you’ll notice that they are holding their arms out at a 45-degree angle. Your eyes will be drawn to their hands and you’ll think you mind is playing tricks. ...
Crossposted from TomDispatch He’s been battered by big-money conservative groups looking to derail his bid for secretary of defense. Critics say he wants to end America’s nuclear program. They claim he’s anti-Israel and soft on Iran. So you can expect intense questioning -- if only for theatrical effect -- about ...
A Failed Formula for Worldwide War: How the Empire Changed Its Face, But Not Its Nature
They looked like a gang of geriatric giants. Clad in smart casual attire -- dress shirts, sweaters, and jeans -- and incongruous blue hospital booties, they strode around “the world,” stopping to stroke their chins and ponder this or that potential crisis. Among them was General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman ...
Washington Puts Its Money on Proxy War The Election Year Outsourcing that No One’s Talking About
Crossposted from TomDispatchIn the 1980s, the U.S. government began funneling aid to mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan as part of an American proxy war against the Soviet Union. It was, in the minds of America’s Cold War leaders, a rare chance to bloody the Soviets, to give them a taste of ...
Crossposted from TomDispatchFROM: Colonel Tom Davis Director, U.S. Africa Command Office of Public Affairs Kelley Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany TO: Mr. Tom Engelhardt, Editor Dear Mr. Engelhardt, We read the recent article “Secret Wars, Secret Bases, and the Pentagon’s ‘New Spice Route’ in Africa” with great interest. It is clear ...
Crossposted from TomDispatchThey call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today’s “spice road” has nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks. Instead, it’s a superpower’s superhighway, on which trucks and ships shuttle fuel, food, and ...
The New Obama Doctrine, A Six-Point Plan for Global War
It looked like a scene out of a Hollywood movie. In the inky darkness, men in full combat gear, armed with automatic weapons and wearing night-vision goggles, grabbed hold of a thick, woven cable hanging from a MH-47 Chinook helicopter. Then, in a flash, each “fast-roped” down onto a ship ...
A Drone-Eat-Drone World: With Its “Roadmap” in Tatters, The Pentagon Detours to Terminator Planet
Crossposted from TomDispatchU.S. military documents tell the story vividly. In the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of West Africa, an unmanned mini-submarine deployed from the USS Freedom detects an “anomaly”: another small remotely-operated sub with welding capabilities tampering with a major undersea oil pipeline. The American submarine’s “smart software” ...
Wars of Attrition: Green Zones of the Mind, Guerrillas, and a Technical Knockout in Afghanistan
Crossposted from TomDispatchRecently, after insurgents unleashed sophisticated, synchronized attacks across Afghanistan involving dozens of fighters armed with suicide vests, rocket-propelled grenades, and small arms, as well as car bombs, the Pentagon was quick to emphasize what hadn’t happened. “I’m not minimizing the seriousness of this, but this was in no ...
450 Bases and It’s Not Over Yet
In late December, the lot was just a big blank: a few burgundy metal shipping containers sitting in an expanse of crushed eggshell-colored gravel inside a razor-wire-topped fence. The American military in Afghanistan doesn’t want to talk about it, but one day soon, it will be a new hub for ...
The Crash and Burn Future of Robot Warfare
Crossposted from TomDispatchAmerican fighter jets screamed over the Iraqi countryside heading for the MQ-1 Predator drone, while its crew in California stood by helplessly. What had begun as an ordinary reconnaissance mission was now taking a ruinous turn. In an instant, the jets attacked and then it was all over. ...
The Drone That Fell From the Sky
Crossposted from TomDispatchThe drone had been in the air for close to five hours before its mission crew realized that something was wrong. The oil temperature in the plane’s turbocharger, they noticed, had risen into the “cautionary” range. An hour later, it was worse, and it just kept rising as ...
Making Repression Our Business
Crossposted from TomdispatchAs the Arab Spring blossomed and President Obama hesitated about whether to speak out in favor of protesters seeking democratic change in the Greater Middle East, the Pentagon acted decisively. It forged ever deeper ties with some of the most repressive regimes in the region, building up military ...
America’s Secret Empire of Drone Bases
Crossposted from TomDispatchThey increasingly dot the planet. There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of ...
Crossposted from TomdispatchIt’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called “the arc of instability.” It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the ...
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May 13th, 2013
Nuclear Terror in the Middle East: Lethality Beyond the Pale
In those first minutes, they’ll be stunned. Eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare, nerve endings numbed. They’ll just stand there. Soon, you’ll notice that they ...
January 31st, 2013
Crossposted from TomDispatch He’s been battered by big-money conservative groups looking to derail his bid for secretary of defense. Critics say he wants to end ...
October 25th, 2012
A Failed Formula for Worldwide War: How the Empire Changed Its Face, But Not Its Nature
They looked like a gang of geriatric giants. Clad in smart casual attire -- dress shirts, sweaters, and jeans -- and incongruous blue hospital booties, ...
August 9th, 2012
Washington Puts Its Money on Proxy War The Election Year Outsourcing that No One’s Talking About
Crossposted from TomDispatchIn the 1980s, the U.S. government began funneling aid to mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan as part of an American proxy war against the ...
July 29th, 2012
Crossposted from TomDispatchFROM: Colonel Tom Davis Director, U.S. Africa Command Office of Public Affairs Kelley Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany TO: Mr. Tom Engelhardt, Editor Dear ...
July 12th, 2012
Crossposted from TomDispatchThey call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today’s ...
June 14th, 2012
The New Obama Doctrine, A Six-Point Plan for Global War
It looked like a scene out of a Hollywood movie. In the inky darkness, men in full combat gear, armed with automatic weapons and wearing ...
October 25th, 2012
A Failed Formula for Worldwide War: How the Empire Changed Its Face, But Not Its Nature
They looked like a gang of geriatric giants. Clad in smart casual attire -- dress shirts, sweaters, and jeans -- and incongruous blue hospital booties, ...
January 31st, 2013
Crossposted from TomDispatch He’s been battered by big-money conservative groups looking to derail his bid for secretary of defense. Critics say he wants to end ...
October 16th, 2011
America’s Secret Empire of Drone Bases
Crossposted from TomDispatchThey increasingly dot the planet. There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in ...
May 31st, 2012
A Drone-Eat-Drone World: With Its “Roadmap” in Tatters, The Pentagon Detours to Terminator Planet
Crossposted from TomDispatchU.S. military documents tell the story vividly. In the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of West Africa, an unmanned mini-submarine deployed from ...
September 18th, 2011
Crossposted from TomdispatchIt’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called “the arc ...
December 21st, 2011
The Drone That Fell From the Sky
Crossposted from TomDispatchThe drone had been in the air for close to five hours before its mission crew realized that something was wrong. The oil ...
June 14th, 2012
The New Obama Doctrine, A Six-Point Plan for Global War
It looked like a scene out of a Hollywood movie. In the inky darkness, men in full combat gear, armed with automatic weapons and wearing ...
'The East'
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
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