Peter Van Buren spent a year in Iraq as a State Department Foreign Service Officer serving as Team Leader for two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Now in Washington, he writes about Iraq and the Middle East at his blog, We Meant Well. His book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books), will be published this September and can be preordered by clicking here.
Homeland Insecurity: Seven Years, Untold Dollars to Silence One Man
Crossposted from TomDispatchWhat do words mean in a post-9/11 world? Apart from the now clichéd Orwellian twists that turn brutal torture into mere enhanced interrogation, the devil is in the details. Robert MacLean is a former air marshal fired for an act of whistleblowing. He has continued to fight over ...
Crossposted from TomDispatch: I was there. And “there” was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of end times for the American Empire up close. It was the place to be if you wanted to see the madness -- and oh yes, ...
I Am Patient Zero in Our New Economy: Raise the Minimum Wage
In his State of the Union Address, the president said that the federal minimum wage should be raised to nine dollars an hour. He said also that a person holding down a full-time job should not have to live in poverty in a country like America. I could not agree ...
Crossposted from TomDispatch If you look backward you see a nightmare. If you look forward you become the nightmare. There’s one particular nightmare that Americans need to face: in the first decade of the twenty-first century we tortured people as national policy. One day, we’re going to have to confront ...
Crossposted from TomDispatch We had a debate club back in high school. Two teams would meet in the auditorium, and Mr. Garrity would tell us the topic, something 1970s-ish like “Resolved: Women Should Get Equal Pay for Equal Work” or “World Communism Will Be Defeated in Vietnam.” Each side would ...
The Persecution of John Kiriakou: Torture and the Myth of Never Again
Crossposted from TomDispatchHere is what military briefers like to call BLUF, the Bottom Line Up Front: no one except John Kiriakou is being held accountable for America’s torture policy. And John Kiriakou didn’t torture anyone, he just blew the whistle on it. In a Galaxy Far, Far Away A long ...
Leaking War: How Obama’s Targeted Killings, Leaks, and the Everything-Is-Classified State Have Fused
White is black and down is up. Leaks that favor the president are shoveled out regardless of national security, while national security is twisted to pummel leaks that do not favor him. Watching their boss, bureaucrats act on their own, freelancing the punishment of whistleblowers, knowing their retaliatory actions will ...
Left Behind: What We Lost in Iraq and Washington, 2009-2012
People ask the question in various ways, sometimes hesitantly, often via a long digression, but my answer is always the same: no regrets. In some 24 years of government service, I experienced my share of dissonance when it came to what was said in public and what the government did ...
Crossposted from TomDispatchOn January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort. Kiriakou’s plight ...
No Free Speech at Mr. Jefferson’s Library
Here’s the First Amendment, in full: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of ...
Crossposted from TomDispatchWho doesn’t like roasted chicken? Fresh, crispy with a little salt, it falls off the bone into your mouth. It’s a great thing, unless the price is $2.5 million of your tax dollars. As a Foreign Service Officer with a 20-year career in the State Department, and as ...
Freedom Isn’t Free at the State Department
Crossposted from TomDispatchOn the same day that more than 250,000 unredacted State Department cables hemorrhaged out onto the Internet, I was interrogated for the first time in my 23-year State Department career by State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) and told I was under investigation for allegedly disclosing classified information. ...
Occupying Iraq, State Department-Style
Way out on the edge of Forward Operating Base Hammer, where I lived for much of my year in Iraq as a Provincial Reconstruction Team leader for the U.S. Department of State, there were several small hills, lumps of raised dirt on the otherwise frying-pan-flat desert. These were “tells,” ancient ...
Crossposted from TomDispatchObjective reporting on the SEAL team that killed bin Laden was as easy to find as a Prius at a Michele Bachmann rally. The media simply couldn’t help themselves. They couldn’t stop spooning out man-sized helpings of testosterone -- the SEALs’ phallic weapons, their frat-house, haze-worthy training, their ...
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May 9th, 2013
Homeland Insecurity: Seven Years, Untold Dollars to Silence One Man
Crossposted from TomDispatchWhat do words mean in a post-9/11 world? Apart from the now clichéd Orwellian twists that turn brutal torture into mere enhanced interrogation, ...
March 11th, 2013
Crossposted from TomDispatch: I was there. And “there” was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of ...
February 16th, 2013
I Am Patient Zero in Our New Economy: Raise the Minimum Wage
In his State of the Union Address, the president said that the federal minimum wage should be raised to nine dollars an hour. He said ...
December 20th, 2012
Crossposted from TomDispatch If you look backward you see a nightmare. If you look forward you become the nightmare. There’s one particular nightmare that Americans ...
October 11th, 2012
Crossposted from TomDispatch We had a debate club back in high school. Two teams would meet in the auditorium, and Mr. Garrity would tell us ...
September 12th, 2012
The Persecution of John Kiriakou: Torture and the Myth of Never Again
Crossposted from TomDispatchHere is what military briefers like to call BLUF, the Bottom Line Up Front: no one except John Kiriakou is being held accountable ...
June 13th, 2012
Leaking War: How Obama’s Targeted Killings, Leaks, and the Everything-Is-Classified State Have Fused
White is black and down is up. Leaks that favor the president are shoveled out regardless of national security, while national security is twisted to ...
February 16th, 2013
I Am Patient Zero in Our New Economy: Raise the Minimum Wage
In his State of the Union Address, the president said that the federal minimum wage should be raised to nine dollars an hour. He said ...
September 12th, 2012
The Persecution of John Kiriakou: Torture and the Myth of Never Again
Crossposted from TomDispatchHere is what military briefers like to call BLUF, the Bottom Line Up Front: no one except John Kiriakou is being held accountable ...
February 9th, 2012
Crossposted from TomDispatchOn January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about ...
June 13th, 2012
Leaking War: How Obama’s Targeted Killings, Leaks, and the Everything-Is-Classified State Have Fused
White is black and down is up. Leaks that favor the president are shoveled out regardless of national security, while national security is twisted to ...
May 9th, 2013
Homeland Insecurity: Seven Years, Untold Dollars to Silence One Man
Crossposted from TomDispatchWhat do words mean in a post-9/11 world? Apart from the now clichéd Orwellian twists that turn brutal torture into mere enhanced interrogation, ...
April 9th, 2012
Left Behind: What We Lost in Iraq and Washington, 2009-2012
People ask the question in various ways, sometimes hesitantly, often via a long digression, but my answer is always the same: no regrets. In some ...
March 11th, 2013
Crossposted from TomDispatch: I was there. And “there” was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
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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