Author Archive

On Bended Knee to Bob Gates »

By Mel Goodman on Nov 16, 2009 in Current Affairs | 2 Comments

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 [...]

President Obama’s Timid Use of the “Reset Button” »

By Mel Goodman on Nov 11, 2009 in Current Affairs | 32 Comments

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 [...]

Pentagon’s Gates Plays Ugly American »

By Mel Goodman on Nov 3, 2009 in Current Affairs | 3 Comments

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 [...]

WPost Misleads on Afghan History »

By Mel Goodman on Oct 29, 2009 in Current Affairs | 10 Comments

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 Urgent Need to Demilitarize the National Security State »

By Mel Goodman on Oct 26, 2009 in Current Affairs | 18 Comments

    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 [...]

The Prospect of Change in US Relations With Russia, Iran and Afghanistan Alarms the Washington Post »

By Mel Goodman on Oct 13, 2009 in Current Affairs | 61 Comments

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 [...]

Obama’s Deserving Peace Prize »

By Mel Goodman on Oct 12, 2009 in Current Affairs | 80 Comments

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 [...]

WPost’s Neocons Aim Their Editorial Guns At Iran »

By Mel Goodman on Oct 3, 2009 in Current Affairs | 27 Comments

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 [...]

WPost’s Neocons In High Dudgeon Over European Missile Shield »

By Mel Goodman on Sep 26, 2009 in Current Affairs | 15 Comments

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 [...]

Seven Former CIA Directors Want To Bury The Truth »

By Mel Goodman on Sep 24, 2009 in Current Affairs | 41 Comments

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 [...]

One More Feckless Study On Intelligence Reform »

By Mel Goodman on Sep 18, 2009 in CIA, Intelligence, Mel Goodman | 8 Comments

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 [...]

Exaggeration Of The Threat: Then And Now »

By Mel Goodman on Sep 16, 2009 in Current Affairs | 4 Comments

A recently declassified study on Soviet intentions during the Cold War identifies significant failures in U.S. intelligence analysis on Soviet military intentions and demonstrates the constant exaggeration of the Soviet threat.
The study, which was released last week by George Washington University’s National Security Archive, was prepared by a Pentagon contractor in 1995 that had access [...]

Two More Obstacles To Intelligence Reform »

By Mel Goodman on Sep 12, 2009 in Current Affairs | 13 Comments

The appointment of former Central Intelligence Agency director Michael Hayden to the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) and former senator Warren Rudman to the CIA’s External Advisory Board (EAB) will ensure less openness in the intelligence community and more obduracy in the CIA.
The late senator Daniel P. Moynihan created the PIDB in the 1990s to [...]

Déjà Vu All Over Again: The Media Beats The War Drums For Afghanistan »

By Mel Goodman on Sep 9, 2009 in Current Affairs | 18 Comments

President Barack Obama is currently facing the most two important decisions of his young presidency. On Wednesday, we will learn whether he has the intestinal fortitude to fight for real change in reforming the nation’s health care system.
And later this month, we will learn whether he will commit more young men and women to a [...]

A Tale of Two Davids: The WPost’s Ignatius, Broder Compete For Biggest CIA Apologist »

By Mel Goodman on Sep 4, 2009 in CIA, Mel Goodman | 16 Comments

David Broder, the senior op-ed writer at the Washington Post, has joined his colleagues (Fred Hiatt, David Ignatius, and Richard Cohen) in condemning Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to name a special counsel to examine possible law-breaking by CIA interrogators. And like his colleagues, Broder has put forth a list of irrelevant reasons for turning [...]

CIA IG Describes Interrogation Crime Scene And Becomes A Major Victim »

By Mel Goodman on Sep 3, 2009 in CIA, Mel Goodman | 13 Comments

CIA Inspector General John Helgerson (left) announced his retirement seven months ago. A successor has not yet been named.
President Barack Obama is permitting CIA Director Leon Panetta to weaken the Agency’s’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). The OIG has produced the only official and authoritative study of the abuses of the CIA detentions and [...]

Washington Post Redux: Going from the Sublime to the Ridiculous »

By Mel Goodman on Sep 1, 2009 in Current Affairs | 10 Comments

It only took 24 hours for the Washington Post to go from the sublime to the ridiculous.
On Saturday morning, the newspaper described the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Muhammad (KSM), standing before “U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called ‘terrorist tutorials.’”
KSM “discussed a wide variety of subjects, including Greek philosophy [...]

Exposed: The WPost’s One-Sided Account of Torture and Abuse »

By Mel Goodman on Aug 30, 2009 in CIA, Mel Goodman, Washington Post | 71 Comments

Editor: This op-ed was first published Aug. 29th at The Public Record, and is reprinted with the express permission of Mel Goodman.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was photographed shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan on March 1, 2003.
The lead story in today’s Washington Post, headlined “How a [...]

WPost’s Ignatius Forgives the CIA Again and Again »

By Mel Goodman on Aug 27, 2009 in CIA, Mel Goodman, Washington Post | 22 Comments

Editor: This op-ed was first published Aug. 25th at The Public Record, and is reprinted with the express permission of Mel Goodman.
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius simply cannot get off the wheel he spins for the Central Intelligence Agency. Only two days after the release of the 2004 CIA study of the detention [...]

Washington Post Goes Judge Shopping in the Courthouse »

By Mel Goodman on Aug 26, 2009 in CIA, Mel Goodman, Washington Post | 9 Comments

Editor: This op-ed was first published Aug. 25th at The Public Record, and is reprinted with the express permission of Mel Goodman.
The Washington Post continues to campaign against any accountability for the detentions policies of the Central Intelligence Agency, using its own editorials and oped writers as well as outsiders who support the efforts of [...]

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