How The Military-Industrial Complex Preys On Troops

Here’s a question for you: How do you spell boondoggle?

The answer (in case you didn’t already know): P-e-n-t-a-g-o-n.

William D. Hartung
By William D. Hartung

Hawks on Capitol Hill and in the U.S. military routinely justify increases in the Defense Department’s already munificent budget by arguing that yet more money is needed to “support the troops.” If you’re already nodding in agreement, let me explain just where a huge chunk of the Pentagon budget — hundreds of billions of dollars — really goes. Keep

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Agent Orange: Vietnam’s Ongoing Calamity

The U.S. government’s crime of saturating large swaths of Vietnam with poisonous Agent Orange got short shrift in PBS’ “The Vietnam War,” but it remains an ongoing calamity.

Marjorie Cohn
Jonathan Moore
By Marjorie Cohn
And Jonathan Moore
A U.S. Air Force C-123 flies low along a South Vietnamese highway spraying Agent Orange on dense jungle growth beside the road to eliminate ambush sites for the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War, Air Force C-123 planes sprayed millions of gallons of herbicides over the jungles of Southeast Asia to destroy enemy crops and tree cover.

Watching the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick 18-hour series, “The Vietnam War,” is an emotional experience. Whether you served in the U.S. military during the war or marched in the streets to end it, you cannot remain untouched by this documentary. The battle scenes are powerful, the stories of U.S. veterans and Vietnamese soldiers who fought on both sides

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Pentagon Allowed To Keep Chemical Weapons Tests On US Troops Secret

Veterans groups and members of Congress, including Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), are demanding to know exactly what happened during the Pentagon’s series of secret chemical and biological weapons tests involving military personnel in the 1960s and 1970s.

Jason Ditz
By Jason Ditz
The Pentagon conducted a series of secret chemical and biological weapons tests on military personnel in the 1960s and 1970s. Veterans groups and members of Congress are demanding to know exactly what happened – and who has suffered. Jae C. Hong AP

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Pentagon conducted multiple secret tests of chemical and biological weapons, deliberately exposing some 6,000 US troops to nerve gases and various bacterial toxins, to “develop a response plan” in case US troops were ever attacked by chemical weapons. You know, attacked with chemical weapons by someone other than

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Veterans Returning To Standing Rock As Fight Against DAPL Continues

A group of veterans is promising to return to Standing Rock after local law enforcement raided a newly created resistance camp and arrested 76 water protectors who continue to oppose the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.

Derrick Broze
By Derrick Broze
Grandma Redfeather of the Sioux Native American tribe walks in the snow to get water at the Oceti Sakowin camp where people have gathered to protest the Dakota Access oil pipeline in Cannon Ball, N.D. (AP/David Goldman)

Cannonball, North Dakota (ANALYSIS) – Morton County Sheriff’s arrested 76 water protectors on Wednesday after the opponents of Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline crossed onto private property to create a new camp. The “Last Child Camp” was launched on the top of a hill and marked by seven tepees representing seven tribes. The new camp

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Veterans Arrive At Standing Rock To Act As ‘Human Shields’ For Water Protectors

“I signed up to serve my country and my people.”

Nika Knight
By Nika Knight
Military veterans stand on a closed bridge to protest across from police protecting the Dakota Access oil pipeline site in Cannon Ball, N.D., Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

As tensions grow in North Dakota, with multiple eviction orders facing the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in their battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline, U.S. military veterans on Friday began arriving at the Oceti Sakowin protest camp. The 2,000 veterans, which include Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), plan to act as an unarmed militia and peaceful

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