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Still Living With Jack Bauer in a Terrified New American World

Jul 11, 2014
Once upon a time, if a character on TV tortured someone, it was a sure sign that he was a bad guy. Now, the torturers are the all-American heroes. From "24" to "Zero Dark Thirty," it’s been the good guys who wielded the pliers and the waterboards. We’re not only living in a post-9/11 world, we’re stuck with Jack Bauer in the 25th hour.

Why Washington Can’t Stop

Oct 24, 2013
In terms of advanced and unchallenged military power, there has been nothing like the U.S. armed forces since the Mongols swept across Eurasia. No wonder American presidents now regularly use phrases like “the finest fighting force the world has ever known” to describe it.
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Filling the Empty Battlefield

Apr 23, 2013
With "Blowback," Chalmers Johnson aimed to paint a portrait of how America's informal empire and its historically unprecedented garrisoning of the world looked to others, and so explain why animosity and blowback were building globally. Now we have a secret history of 21st-century American war in Jeremy Scahill’s latest book, "Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield."

How the U.S. Intelligence Community Came Out of the Shadows

Dec 18, 2012
The Invisible Government, published by David Wise and Thomas B. Ross in 1964, was groundbreaking, shadow-removing, illuminating. It caused a fuss from its very first paragraph, which was then a shockeroo: “There are two governments in the United States today. One is visible. The other is invisible.”