This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Seventeen days after the Twin Towers fell in an apocalyptic mushroom cloud of smoke and ash, Congress passed with a single dissenting vote an “Authorization for Use of Military Force,” or AUMF, stating:

“That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, read more

By Dave Lindorff

These are tough days to be a serious journalist. Report a story now, with your facts all lined up nicely, and you’re still likely to have it labeled “fake news” by anyone whose ox you’ve gored — and even by friends who don’t share your political perspective. For good measure, they’ll say you’ve based it on “alternative facts.”

Historians say the term “fake news” dates from the late 19th-century era of “yellow journalism,” but read more

By John Grant

I’m admitting I made a horrible mistake.
– Bo Bergdahl’s testimony in his court martial

Charging a man with murder in Vietnam is like charging someone for speeding at the Indianapolis 500.
– From Apocalypse Now

Obviously, to ask who endangered soldiers more, President Bush or Bo Bergdahl, is a rhetorical question. The real issue is whether a Dishonorable Discharge, a demotion and a fine is enough punishment for Bo Bergdahl. read more

By John Grant

read more

Jason Hall, the screenwriter who wrote the script for the Clint Eastwood blockbuster American Sniper, a well-made piece of hagiographic cinema based on a memoir by Chris Kyle, has made what feels like a corrective on the subject. This time, he’s both writer and director of a film that reportedly was initially slated to be directed by Hollywood giant Stephen Spielberg, with Hall read more

By Dave Lindorff

If you want to understand why the Democratic Party lost to Trump and the Republicans in 2016, why they’ll probably fail to take back Congress in 2018, and why they’ll probably lose big in the next presidential election in 2020, just look at their obscene stand on the GOP’s proposal to slash the taxable employee deduction for contributions to 401(k) plans from the current $18,000 to just $2500.

Of course the GOP proposal read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

I’m 73, which means that saying goodbye for the last time is increasingly a part of my life.  Today, with the deepest regret, I’m bidding a final farewell at TomDispatch to one of the more remarkable writers I’ve known, Eduardo Galeano. I initially got involved with him in the early 1980s. I was a young editor at Pantheon Books and, on some strange impulse, decided read more

Congress Members Jones and Garamendi are going to screen and discuss a hilarious movie mockery of militarism. They’re going to do it in the U.S. Capitol. They’re going to go right on funding the war madness, sanctioning possible new enemies, and risking all of our lives. But for a moment, they’re going to open a window and let a bit of sanity in. And you can sign up here to join them.

Here’s my review of the film to be screened, written back on June 5th:

Brad Pitt Does Stanley McChrystal: When Netflix’ War Movie Stops Being Funny

The new movie, War Machine, read more

The state capitol of Illinois is ground zero of a contagious outbreak of war fever. The origins, I’m afraid, may lie in part in a resolution I drafted that was passed, with various modifications, by numerous cities around the United States and by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The resolution did educate some people, create some good discussion, generate some attention for antiwar organizing, and bring some peace groups together in a coordinated read more