The real mystery of our age is this: why do all the media warmongers still have jobs, after the way they goaded us into the epic disaster we’ve found ourselves in? Back in 2001, when a panicked America foolishly handed the steering wheel to pundits like Max Boot, America was at the height of its economic and geopolitical power. What happened next was a lot like that rent-a-car prank in the first Jackass film: decades of America’s accumulated wealth and geopolitical power trashed overnight in a reckless neocon joyride. The warmongers pulled out of the lot in a mint-condition, gas-guzzling boat, cheerfully assuring America that everything would turn out fine. Cut to the slapstick punch line: Boot pushing the remains of the totaled car back onto the lot. Only instead of apologizing like the Jackass pranksters, Boot cheerfully tells America, “You see, I told you it would turn out great! Now give me your next-best car; I’d like to take it out for a spin…” (more…)

America’s chickenhawks are ready to turn Georgia into a nation of missing-relative-seeking refugees.

I’d hate to be Georgia right now. So many American pundits have plans for the Georgians, brilliant schemes designed to get Georgia into a big war with the Russians. “Here’s what you oughta do….” It’s like listening in on bar talk—some drunk trying to talk a 98-pound weakling into a rematch with the hulking thug who just put him on the floor. Funny thing, they never want to prove their theory themselves.

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Five days after Georgia invaded and seized the breakaway separatist region of South Ossetia, sparking a larger-scale Russian invasion to drive Georgian forces back and punish their leaders, Russia surprised its Western detractors by calling a halt to the country’s offensive. After all, the mainstream media, egged on by hawkish neocon pundits and their candidate John McCain, had everyone believing that Russia was hellbent on the full-scale annihilation and annexation of democratic Georgia.

But then came Tuesday’s cease-fire announcement–and we’re now forced to ask ourselves serious questions about the recent conflict: what really started it, how dangerous was it and what, with serious careful consideration, could be done to prevent it from turning into a worst-case scenario? (more…)

The outbreak of war in Georgia on Friday offers a disturbing and somewhat surreal taste of what to expect from John McCain should he become our nation’s Commander in Chief. As the centuries-old ethnic animosities between Georgia and Ossetia boiled over into another armed conflict, drawing in neighboring Russia, McCain issued a stark-raving statement from Des Moines (more…)