The U.S. has spent over $5.9 trillion on wars that have directly led to the deaths of close to 500,000 people since the 9/11 attacks in September 2001. Around 370,000 died due to direct war-related violence, while several times more died as a result of the indirect effects of war such as malnutrition and damaged infrastructure, according to Costs of War, an annual research project published by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

Lest we forget what? What exactly? And who is this “we?” By George Theodoridis.

The Real News

The only beneficiaries of the administration’s ineptitude to date have been Iran, Assad, and Russia.

It has been one of the bloodiest weeks of aerial bombardment in the Syrian war. In the eastern suburbs of Damascus, a region called Eastern Ghouta, nearly 500 people have been killed in a deadly escalation that began Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Associated Press. More than 120 of the dead are children, the group says.

A popular thesis since the 1930s is that a natural progression exists from currency wars to trade wars to shooting wars.

A U.S. soldier watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad, April 9, 2003.

The invasion is no longer just one of the great crimes of this or any age – it's become a crossroads event in the history of America's decline. By Matt Taibbi.

Everyone knows Bolton is a hawk. Less understood is how he labored in secret to drive Washington and Tehran apart. By Gareth Porter. (Mar. 22, 2018)

Please, let's not forget what a dangerous nut John Bolton is. By Damon Linker.

The making of Threads, the nuclear war film that shocked a generation. By Jude Rogers.

Those crossed swords in Baghdad, the rockets swooping heavenwards in the giant wall painting in his palace conference room, the military parades – they would surely have tickled the interest of the present lunatic in the White House. Kim Jong-un is Trump’s Saddam. By Robert Fisk.

Attempts to focus world attention on the calamity facing the Kurds of Afrin largely failed as the Turkish forces closed in on the city…By Patrick Cockburn. (Mar. 23, 2018)

Sources tell Reuters that Japan is discussing plans for a new air superiority fighter with international contractors.

Before his arrest, Haji Juma Khan worked with the CIA and the DEA while aiding the Taliban and trading tons of heroin and opium. By Johnny Dwyer.

In the days and hours leading up to U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, Israel was preparing for war in the Golan Heights. Urging all residents in and around the mountainous, border region to prepare bomb shelters, Israeli forces moved in rocket launcher systems capable of striking ground targets with high precision up to 70 km away. Then, mere hours after Trump signed the executive memorandum detailing the U.S. withdrawal, Israel began striking targets inside Syria with jets.

We need to try to talk with Iran’s government, seek a better relationship with the Iranian people, and a more constructive role for Iran in the region. By Bernie Sanders.

A US service member has been killed and two others injured in what appears to be an insider attack in Afghanistan, Nato says. The attack took place in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, a statement from the Nato-led Resolute Support mission said. It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack, or whether they had been apprehended.

'This is going to end up with us all fighting each other, Muslims versus Muslims, Croats against Croats, Serbs against Serbs.' By Robert Fisk.

Make no mistake: Hacking the 2016 election was an act of war. It’s time we responded accordingly. By Mark Hertling, Molly K. McKew.

A high-stakes plan to indict Afghan drug lords and insurgency leaders on criminal conspiracy charges ran afoul of the Obama team. Five years later, it remains buried under Trump. By Josh Meyer.

Decades-long dispute between India and Pakistan is collapsing into itself. By Jeffrey Gettleman.

Shigeaki Mori was 8 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He survived and committed himself to uncovering the names of all those who died — including 12 American POWs.

An airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Shiite rebels hit a bus in a market in northern Yemen on Thursday, killing at least 20 people, including children, and wounding as many as 35, Yemeni tribal leaders said. The Saudi-led coalition, meanwhile, said it targeted the rebels, known as Houthis, who had fired a missile at the kingdom’s south the previous day, killing one person.

Tom Waits

The bomb used by the Saudi-led coalition in a devastating attack on a school bus in Yemen was sold as part of a US State Department-sanctioned arms deal with Saudi Arabia, munitions experts told CNN. Working with local Yemeni journalists and munitions experts, CNN has established that the weapon that left dozens of children dead on August 9 was a 500-pound (227 kilogram) laser-guided MK 82 bomb made by Lockheed Martin, one of the top US defense contractors.

A censored student journalist speaks out. By Ben Norton.

"We now have two large camps, pitted against each other, who have starkly different conceptions of what their societies are and where they need to head. In a very real sense, these two camps no longer speak the same language. There has been a rupture, and they can find no common ground." By Johnathan Cook.

The New Face of War: How War Will Be Fought in the 21st Century

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have declared an official ban on using child soldiers in their battle against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and other hostile forces in the war-ravaged country. The announcement came in the form of an official military order by the Syrian Democratic Forces Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi released Friday by the militia's press office. Recent reports from the U.N. and human rights groups have accused the group of forcefully conscripting minors...

Russia's military said on Sunday that two US F-15 fighter jets had dropped phosphorus bombs over Syria's Deir al-Zor province on Saturday, the TASS and RIA news agencies reported. The air strikes targeted the village of Hadjin and resulted in fires, but there was no information about casualties, the Russian military said.

How a terrible but little-known conflict continues to shape and blight a nation

Ramadan Romih, the heavyset manager of the White House Net, an Internet café up the street from the U.S. embassy in Cairo, sat on a chair on the sidewalk outside his shop, smoking a large tobacco water pipe.

The Cairo-based photographer Moises Saman has been covering the Arab Spring and its repercussions since the revolution’s inception. “The past two years in Egyptian politics have been like a turbulent soap opera, playing out on the streets of Cairo for all the world to see,” he told me.