Stories by Jason Vest
Jason Vest is a contributor to the Nation and the Village Voice.
John Bolton has left a trail of alienated colleagues and ridiculed ideas. He's a shoo-in for Senate confirmation.
Posted on Apr 18, 2005
He bungled Iraq, the Pentagon, and East Timor. Look out, World Bank – here he comes.
Posted on Mar 22, 2005
The U.S. counterinsurgency tactics used in El Salvador are at best a case study in how to prolong an insurgency, not end it. And it won't be any different in Iraq.
Posted on Jan 12, 2005
An FBI investigation is uncovering links between an analyst in the office of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, and Israel.
Posted on Sep 7, 2004
The identity of the CIA veteran whose book indicting the Bush administration is creating a media storm is finally unmasked.
Posted on Jul 2, 2004
An Australian documentary contains shocking footage of U.S. military conduct in Iraq never seen on American TV -- even though it was easily available to major news outlets in the United States.
Posted on May 27, 2004
Iraq's biggest con man has finally lost favor with his biggest victim -- the United States government.
Posted on May 24, 2004
The Pentagon's Stephen Cambone claims he's out of the loop with regard to prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib, leading some to believe that he's willfully obfuscating.
Posted on May 17, 2004
How American moral authority died, who killed it, and why nincompoops like James Inhofe will never learn.
Posted on May 13, 2004
George Bush's speech did not explain why he should be rewarded for his failures in Iraq with either a $87 billion bailout or a UN mandate.
Posted on Sep 8, 2003
With their Iraq plan in shambles, the neocons keep changing their facts to suit their theories.
Posted on Aug 28, 2003
Soon to be new chief of the DEA Karen Tandy will be confirmed with little real examination of the dubious policy and prosecutions that she has been involved in.
Posted on Jul 15, 2003
Military intelligence reports have always been open to political interpretation and outright manipulation.
Posted on Jun 10, 2003
Almost a century ago, another army of Anglos underestimated its enemy in an invasion based on a hodge-podge of untenable rationales.
Posted on Apr 8, 2003
The United States' own Army War College studies conclude occupying troops will face ongoing violence during a long, treacherous transition.
Posted on Mar 28, 2003
For an influential group of neoconservative hawks, overthrowing the governments of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Palestine is both urgent and neccesary.
Posted on Aug 29, 2002
While the Bush administration lays its plans for Iraq, military insiders are increasingly -- and desperately -- looking to Congress to help stave off what they fear will be a disaster.
Posted on Aug 5, 2002
For the Bush administration, the Cold War never ended -- so al-Qaeda had to get in line behind more serious enemies.
Posted on May 24, 2002
With Osama bin Laden still at large and no obvious ties between him and Saddam Hussein, taking the fight to Baghdad makes little sense. That hasn't stopped the hawks in D.C. from arguing it does, though.
Posted on Nov 20, 2001
Now that we've begun bombing Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, the unavoidable question is: How will we leave a country already destroyed and abandoned?
Posted on Oct 7, 2001
Joe Vallone, the U.S. Army's environmental technology chief, crossed the threshold of his office in Corridor 5 of the Pentagon's D ring a few minutes shy of 8 Monday morning...
Posted on Sep 12, 2001
When Congress pushed Plan Colombia, it took into account concerns that the U.S. might find itself mired in another Vietnam. So it placed caps on the number of military specialists -- government and private -- that could operate in Colombia. No more.
Posted on Jul 15, 2001
Is the U.S.'s $1.3 billion stake in Plan Columbia actually funding drug running? Perhaps, if the State Department's antidrug contractors are running a business on the side.
Posted on Jul 10, 2001
The U.S. government has been waging a stealth counter-narcotics war in South America through private military contractors, including one tied to the recent downing of a missionary plane in Peru.
Posted on Apr 27, 2001
Back in 1994, a law was written to protect U.S. officials who supplied information to Peru about drug smuggling aircrafts, just in case Peru accidentally shot down a civilian plane. Or had Peru already done so?
Posted on Apr 24, 2001
While offering a public prayer at the 1992 Republican National Convention, then-Missouri-governor John Ashcroft requested that "those in the media join us to spread the truth of His word." How will he affect the freedom of the press if he becomes the Attorney General?
Posted on Jan 10, 2001
With the constant buzz of police helicopters overhead, the alternating scents of irritant gas, pepper spray and vinegar, police barricades at intersection after intersection and throngs of protesters expressing themselves in every which way, downtown D.C. was quite a scene on Sunday, April 16. Jason Vest happened to be in all the right places at all the right times and filed this report on the major clashes of the day.
Posted on Apr 1, 2000
What happened at the A16 protests was, to some extent, what progressives have always wanted: the mainstream media started taking them seriously.
Posted on Apr 1, 2000
Since late March, a number of anti-IMF/World Bank activists and organizers (as well as a few journalists) have been confronted by the DC police force with numerous tactics -- from surveillance to implicit threats to bureaucratic intransigence -- apparently designed to marginalize the effectiveness of their mission.
Posted on Apr 1, 2000
As activists gear up for protests against the IMF and World Bank in Washington, they are facing an abnormal hurdle in their planning -- DC cops. Washington's Metropolitan Police Department has been monitoring activists' e-mails and has dropped in on at least one meeting to intimidate protest organizers.
Posted on Apr 1, 2000
In burnt-out Midwestern towns, private prisons are sprouting up among the shuttered steel mills that dot the landscape, intended to shore up the sagging local economies and create new jobs. But while the prisons have produced plenty of bounty for the politicians that cut the deals, the communities that got the jails are worse off than ever.
Posted on Apr 1, 2000
