This piece reprinted from The Consortium News with the express permission of the author.
It is time for serious soul-searching regarding the role of the CIA and the intelligence community. Last month’s operational and intelligence failures led to the deaths of seven CIA officers in Afghanistan and might have resulted in nearly 300 deaths on a [...]

Editor’s Note: Reprinted from Truthout.org with the express permission of Mel Goodman, whose bio is at the end of this post.

Former Deputy CIA Director John Edward McLaughlin. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: CIA)

The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, [...]

Reprinted from Truthout.org with the express permission of Mel Goodman, whose bio is at the end of this article.

President Barack Obama noted last week after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize that the United States "has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades."
While this was certainly true in Germany and Japan during World War [...]

Reprinted from Consortium.com with the express permission of Mel Goodman, whose bio is at the end of this article.
Consortium Editor’s Note: President Barack Obama’s unwillingness to rock Washington’s boat after he won Election 2008 — his desire to "look forward, not backward" — continues to haunt him.
One of these areas of difficulty remains the U.S. [...]

Reprinted from Consortium.com with the express permission of Mel Goodman, whose bio is at the end of this article.
Consortium Editor’s Note: It’s been said that Official Washington moves like a school of fishes, darting in different directions but always together in a pack. That school of fishes has now decided that Defense Secretary Robert Gates [...]

Reprinted from Truthout.org with the express permission of Mel Goodman, whose biography follows this post.
President Barack Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, will go down in history as one of America’s worst presidents, squandering diplomatic, international and economic assets that were bequeathed to him. As a result of the perfidy of President Bush and Vice President [...]

Reprinted from Consortium.com with the express permission of Mel Goodman, whose bio is at the end of this article.
Consortium Editor’s Note: Given the Bush administration’s imperial overreach and the massive U.S. budget deficits, a new realism would suggest that President Barack Obama get serious about pulling back American troops stationed around the world and pushing [...]

Reprinted from Consortium.com with the express permission of Mel Goodman, whose bio is at the end of this article.
Consortium Editor’s Note: The Washington Post’s neoconservative editorial page is at it again, using made-up “facts” and dubious logic to influence a foreign-policy debate in the direction favored by the capital’s still influential neocons. [...]

    The national security policy inherited by President Barack Obama has been increasingly militarized over the past two decades despite the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the demise of the Warsaw Pact, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war.
    The president has addressed the problem incrementally, reducing growth in spending [...]

NQ Editor’s Note: Reprinted from Truthout.org with the express permission of Mel Goodman.
    The Washington Post is running scared these days with its editorial writers having great difficulty coming to terms with the possibility of improved US relations with Russia and Iran. They also can’t understand why the Obama administration might decide that additional US [...]

NQ Editor’s Note: This story is reprinted from Consortium News with the express permission of Mel Goodman. Whether we agree 100% of the time or not, Mel Goodman’s remarkable analyses are always worth reading and pondering. Check out his 30 posts at No Quarter and his impressive bio at the end of each post. And [...]

Reprinted from The Public Record (pubrecord.org) with the express permission of author Mel Goodman, whose biography is at the end of this article.
The neocon editorial writers at the Washington Post used the run-up to the Geneva meetings between the United States and Iran to marginalize the significance of the negotiations, to endorse a policy of [...]

Reprinted from The Public Record (pubrecord.org) with the express permission of author Mel Goodman, whose biography is at the end of this article.
For the past several months, the editorial and oped writers of the Washington Post have railed against Russia as expansionist and assertive toward the West and have argued against improving bilateral relations between [...]

Reprinted from The Public Record (pubrecord.org) with the express permission of author Mel Goodman, whose biography is at the end of this article.
Last week, seven former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, who made their own contributions to the CIA’s low esteem over the past 35 years, asked President Barack Obama to make sure there [...]

The prestigious Brookings Institution has joined the ranks of various government and public institutions to suggest reform steps for the Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence community (IC).
Unlike previous reform proposals, the Brookings study manages to overlook the serious systemic issues that face the world of intelligence analysis and to propose a full slate of [...]