Chuck Spinney: Saudi Arabia Funding of Islamic State

This is an informative and important report written by one of the best reporters covering events in the Middle East.  I reformatted it slightly and highlighted it to emphasize points I think are important.  If you find this distracting, this link will take readers to the original. Iraq crisis: How Saudi Arabia helped Isis take over the north of …

Chuck Spinney: Non-Learning in US Foreign Policy

JUNE 16, 2014 Polk Report How to Evolve an Exit Strategy From America’s Foreign Policy Shambles by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY and WILLIAM R. POLK, Counterpunch Attached beneath my introductory comment is an essay by the American historian William R. Polk.  His subject is the American predilection for non-learning in foreign policy. My comment is intended …

Winslow Wheeler: USAF Still Trying to Kill the A-10 — Absent Intelligence with Integrity, They Will Get Away With This Idiocy

Soon to be at the Harper’s website, at http://harpers.org/, is the attached article by Andrew Cockburn.  “Tunnel Vision: Will the Air Force Kill Its Most Effective Weapon?” is sure to generate howls of protest from officialdom in the Air Force and its mouthpieces. The article makes numerous important, indeed key, points.  They involve not just …

Chuck Spinney: Afghan Disaster…Rooted in Western Ignorance and Western Lies

The Afghan adventure is ending in a disaster.  The outsiders are again leaving with their tails between their legs.  This will be the fourth time for the Brits.  For the U.S. Afghanistan is just another disaster in what what is becoming a dreary pattern of military failures at ever higher costs.  Predictably, President Obama’s surge …

Chuck Spinney: Two Evaluations of Middle East After Arab Spring

Attached below are two very important reports by two of the most astute observers of conflicts in the Middle East.  The first is a precisely-focused report by Rami Khouri, editor at large of Lebanon’s Daily Star.  Khouri analyzes how the recent assassination of Mohamad Chatah needs to be interpreted in the context of complexities of …

Chuck Spinney: How Contemporary War “Reporting” Messes Up Your OODA Loops

The attached article is a very important and informative essay.  Patrick Cockurn describes how the media echo chamber warps the Orientation* of the public, as well as that of a government, to unfolding events in the so-called global war on terror that triggered by 9-11 and the continuously metastasizing instabilities the GWOT is unleashing.  I regard …