War News Stories

Excerpts of Key War News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on war from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

For further exploration, delve into our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

2023 was a year marked by devastating conflicts from Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine to Hamas's horrific terror attacks on Israel, from that country's indiscriminate mass slaughter in Gaza to a devastating civil war in Sudan. And there's a distinct risk of even worse to come this year. Still, there was one clear winner in this avalanche of violence, suffering, and war: the U.S. military-industrial complex. In December, President Biden signed a record authorization of $886 billion in "national defense" spending for 2024, including funds for the Pentagon proper and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. Add to that tens of billions of dollars more in likely emergency military aid for Ukraine and Israel, and such spending could well top $900 billion for the first time. Annual spending on the costly, dysfunctional F-35 combat aircraft alone is greater than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, Lockheed Martin's contracts with the Pentagon were worth more than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined, and its arms-related revenues continue to rival the government's entire investment in diplomacy. One $13 billion aircraft carrier costs more than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Before investing ever more tax dollars ... the military strategy of the United States in the current global environment should be seriously debated.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

The Pentagon did not properly track $1 billion worth of military equipment sent to Ukraine, according to a watchdog report. The report from the Pentagon Inspector General says that while the Defense Department has improved its ability to track military aid sent to Ukraine, it "did not fully comply" with requirements and much of the equipment sent is "delinquent," meaning it's not possible to complete an inventory of everything sent. Among the items that are designated for enhanced end-use monitoring (EEUM) are weapons like Javelin and Stinger missiles, night-vision devices, AIM-9X missiles, and Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles. According to the IG report, roughly $1.005 billion of the total $1.699 billion of equipment subject to end-use monitoring was not inventoried as of June 2023. The new report comes at a critical moment for Ukraine aid, as Congress debates whether to authorize a supplemental package of more than $60 billion in aid. While delinquency could suggest weapons had been stolen or diverted away from Ukrainian forces, the inspector general said it was outside the scope of its probe to determine what had happened to the weapons that were not properly tracked. "The DoD OIG now has personnel stationed in Ukraine," the report says, "and the DoD OIG's Defense Criminal Investigative Service continues to investigate allegations of criminal conduct with regard to U.S. security assistance to Ukraine."

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

President Joe Biden's administration has taken a cruel weapon–the cluster bomb–off the shelf and sent it to Ukraine to be used in the war against Russia. Prior to being transferred to Ukraine, cluster bombs made in the United States were used by Saudi Arabia as recently as last year to devastating effect in its war in Yemen. Cluster bombs are large bombs that contain dozens or even hundreds of smaller bombs, or "bomblets." Cluster bombs are designed to scatter the bomblets over a wide area upon detonation. Inevitably, not all of the smaller, scattered bombs explode on impact. The bomblets lie on or below the surface of the ground, potentially for years or even decades, waiting to be detonated when touched. They are, in effect, land mines. The U.S. has used cluster bombs in large-scale military operations since World War II, including its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The bomblets that the U.S. used in those invasions were the same size and color as the packaged meals–humanitarian daily rations, or HDRs–that the U.S. also air-dropped for civilians. Human rights groups warned at the time against using cluster bombs, pointing to a similar problem that occurred when the U.S. used them in the Balkan Wars in the 1990s and children mistook the bomblets for toys–but the Pentagon used them anyway. More than 120 countries have signed the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. The U.S. remains in the minority of countries that refuses to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions, along with Ukraine and Russia.

Note: The cluster bomb trade is funded by the world's biggest banks. It's been estimated that 98% of cluster bomb victims are civilians. Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

In the past 20 years, every major US foreign policy objective has failed. The Taliban returned to power after 20 years of US occupation of Afghanistan. Post-Saddam Iraq became dependent on Iran. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad stayed in power despite a CIA effort to overthrow him. Libya fell into a protracted civil war after a US-led NATO mission overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. Ukraine was bludgeoned on the battlefield by Russia in 2023 after the US secretly scuttled a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2022. Despite these remarkable and costly debacles ... the same cast of characters has remained at the helm of US foreign policy for decades. American foreign policy is not at all about the interests of the American people. It is about the interests of the Washington insiders, as they chase campaign contributions and lucrative jobs. In short, US foreign policy has been hacked by big money. To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today's federal government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders. The Wall Street division is run out of the Treasury. The Health Industry division is run out of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Big Oil and Coal division is run out of the Departments of Energy and Interior. And the Foreign Policy division is run out of the White House, Pentagon and CIA. Each division uses public power for private gain through insider dealing, greased by corporate campaign contributions and lobbying outlays.

Note: War profiteering is an old game. General Smedley Butler wrote War is a Racket in 1935. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and government corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

The latest White House spending package includes $50 billion in additional military funding, which is more than Ukraine has received from the United States since the war began in early 2022. There's a better way. The United States can take an active role in organizing a ceasefire, to be followed by negotiations toward a permanent settlement. Unfortunately, so far Biden has made little effort to end the slaughter. In fact, there is serious evidence that Great Britain and the US played a decisive role in blocking a 2022 peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. The State Department reports that the United States has given Ukraine $44.2 billion in military aid since Russia invaded at the end of February, 2022. At the current pace of spending, the additional military aid requested by the White House would keep the Ukraine war going until sometime in mid-2026 – that is, unless there is a plan to intensify the attacks, which would increase the risk of a nuclear conflict. The US has reportedly spent a total of $111 billion on Ukraine since Russia's invasion. If the supplemental spending package is approved ... military-only spending for Ukraine will be greater than the annual budget of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration – combined. The US has already spent ten times as much on Ukraine as we spend on the Centers for Disease Control. That does not mean Ukraine doesn't deserve to be defended, but it does raise serious questions about the direction of the war and our government's priorities.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and government corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

As of Wednesday, a U.S.-based Quaker group's online database listed over two dozen companies profiting from the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have spent the last 10 weeks waging what experts call a "genocidal" war that sent defense stocks soaring. Backed by $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States, Israel declared war on October 7 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack that killed over 1,100 people. Since then, Israeli forces have killed over 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza. "The scale of destruction and war crimes in Gaza would not be possible without massive weapon transfers from the U.S.," said Noam Perry of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Boeing, the world's fifth-largest weapon manufacturer, makes F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters used by the Israeli forces, as well as "multiple types of unguided small diameter bombs (SDBs) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits" that have been used "extensively" during the war. Caterpillar's armored D9 bulldozers ... have been crucial in the Israeli military's ground invasion. Other companies on the list include weapons giants such as General Dynamics, General Electric, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX–formerly Raytheon–as well as vehicle companies AM General, Ford, Oshkosh, Toyota, and drone manufacturers AeroVironment, Skydio, and XTEND.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

Two Dozen human rights organizations called on the Pentagon Monday to make amends to a Somali family following an investigation by The Intercept of a 2018 U.S. drone strike that killed a woman and her 4-year-old daughter. The 14 Somali groups and 10 international organizations devoted to the protection of civilians urged Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to take immediate action. The family is seeking an explanation, an apology, and compensation. Congress appropriates millions of dollars annually for the Defense Department to compensate families of civilians killed or injured in U.S. attacks, but the Pentagon has shown an aversion to confronting its mistakes and rarely makes compensation payments, even in cases as clear cut as this one. A drone pilot and analyst, who served in Somalia the year Luul [Dahir Mohamed] and [her daughter] Mariam were killed and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the attack was no anomaly. "When I went to Africa, it seemed like no one was paying attention. It was like, ‘We can do whatever we want,'" he told The Intercept. When he counted the civilians he knew the U.S. had killed and compared that tally with publicly announced figures, he said, "the numbers just didn't add up." Luul's family was traumatized by the airstrike and has suffered for more than half a decade. Her brothers say their elderly father – who died earlier this month – never recovered from his daughter's sudden death.

Note: Since 2008, the US has supported at least nine coups in African countries, with a vast network of military bases scattered across the continent. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

The story of two enemies cuts through the darkness. It begins on a battlefield in the Iran-Iraq war, and ends 20 years later in a waiting room in Vancouver. The Iran-Iraq war began in 1980, and ended eight years later. It was the longest conventional war of the 20th century, claiming at least a million casualties. Najah Aboud was nearly one of them. Najah was severely wounded. He crawled off to a bunker, where he saw corpses from both sides and prepared himself to die. Zahed Haftlang ... was assigned as a medic. After the Iranians recaptured Khorramshahr in May 1982, Zahed was ordered to go into the bunkers and treat wounded countrymen. It was then that he ... spotted Najah near the back. Both men were suspicious of each other. Zahed thought Najah's body might be booby-trapped. Najah thought Zahed might kill him. Then Zahed reached into Najah's breast pocket and pulled out a photograph. It showed Najah, with a beautiful woman, and infant son. It was at that very moment that Zahed decided to save Najah's life, even though it meant risking his own. Najah was taken to a prisoner of war camp, where he'd remain in unspeakable conditions for the next 17 years. While reading magazines in [a Vancouver] waiting room, Zahed noticed the door open as another man entered the room. The two men erupted into shouts, hugs, kisses and tears. Their spectacular reunion happened two decades years after the battle of Khorramshahr and on the other side of the world. "Najah is like my family … he really is my angel, because he gave me life. After he got a new chance at life, he gave me a new chance at life. He is the dearest and most precious thing in the entire world to me."

Note: Don't miss the powerful 16-min documentary about Zahed and Najah. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.

The Department of Defense relies on hundreds, if not thousands, of weapons and products such as uniforms, batteries, and microelectronics that contain PFAS, a family of chemicals linked to serious health conditions. Now, as regulators propose restrictions on their use or manufacturing, Pentagon officials have told Congress that eliminating the chemicals would undermine military readiness. PFAS, known as "forever chemicals" because they don't break down in the environment and can build up in the human body, have been associated with such health problems as cancer. In July, a new federal study showed a direct link between testicular cancer and PFOS, a PFAS chemical that has been found in the blood of thousands of military personnel. In a report delivered to Congress in August, Defense Department officials pushed back against health concerns raised by environmental groups and regulators. According to the report, most major weapons systems, their components, microelectronic chips, lithium-ion batteries, and other products contain PFAS chemicals. These include helicopters, airplanes, submarines, missiles, torpedoes, tanks, and assault vehicles; munitions; semiconductors and microelectronics; and metalworking, cooling, and fire suppression systems. Beyond cancer, some types of PFAS have been linked to low birth weight, developmental delays in children, thyroid dysfunction, and reduced response to immunizations.

Note: If the above link fails, you can read the article here.  PFAS are linked to serious health conditions: cancer, liver damage, hormonal disruption, reproductive issues, reduced sperm count, reduced immune response, and more. PFAS have also been found in 45% of US tap water. Read more on how war is hazardous to our health and environment in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

"How in the hell do you lose an F-35?" wondered Rep. Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican, in a post on social media Sunday that speaks for everyone who read the headline about the state-of-the-art military plane that went missing earlier in the day. A more general ... question could be asked of the F-35 program: How in the heck can you spend so much money on a plane that doesn't work the way it's supposed to? The exact amount of money for a single aircraft like the one that went missing is somewhere around $100 million. The entire F-35 program is on track to cost $1.7 trillion. The Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, has written extensively on the F-35 and its cost overruns. I asked Dan Grazier, an F-35 expert for POGO, what has gone wrong. It all boils down to "failure at the conceptual level," he told me in an email. "The architects of the program attempted to build a single aircraft to meet multiple mission requirements for not just three separate services but also those of multiple countries," Grazier said. The jet has never reached its full operational capability and already needs updates and tweaks, including a new engine. "Every F-35 built until now is nothing more than a very expensive prototype," Grazier told me. The Government Accountability Office ... earlier this year described the F-35 program as "more than a decade behind schedule and $183 billion over original cost estimates."

Note: Watch a brief, 2-min video about the F-35 fighter jet. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Palantir's founding team, led by investor Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, wanted to create a company capable of using new data integration and data analytics technology – some of it developed to fight online payments fraud – to solve problems of law enforcement, national security, military tactics, and warfare. Palantir, founded in 2003, developed its tools fighting terrorism after September 11, and has done extensive work for government agencies and corporations though much of its work is secret. Palantir's MetaConstellation platform allows the user to task ... satellites to answer a specific query. Imagine you want to know what is happening in a certain location and time in the Arctic. Click on a button and MetaConstelation will schedule the right combination of satellites to survey the designated area. The platform is able to integrate data from multiple and disparate sources – think satellites, drones, and open-source intelligence – while allowing a new level of decentralised decision-making. Just as a deep learning algorithm knows how to recognise a picture of a dog after some hours of supervised learning, the Palantir algorithms can become extraordinarily apt at identifying an enemy command and control centre. Alex Karp, Palantir's CEO, has argued that "the power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

The U.S. military retreated from Afghanistan two years ago, leaving behind weapons that are now turning up in far-flung trouble spots. In markets that have sprung up across the southern and eastern badlands ... merchants with Taliban permits are offering U.S.-made automatic assault rifles and handguns for sale. Ad hoc weapons bazaars are offering rockets and bombs, shoulder-fired grenade launchers, night vision goggles, sniper rifles and scopes, and ammunition. The Taliban, allies of if not quite affiliates of al Qaeda ... appear to be funneling small arms to like-minded extremists. U.S. assault weapons have reportedly been used in recent attacks by non-state groups in Kashmir, bitterly divided between India and Pakistan, and in Israel's Gaza Strip. The U.S. Department of Defense estimated that left-behind stockpiles of arms and vehicles were worth $7.12 billion of the $18.6 billion spent from 2002 on arming the Afghan security forces. "This included roughly 600,000 weapons of all calibers, nearly 300 fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, over 80,000 vehicles of several models, communications equipment, and other advanced materiel such as night vision goggles and biometric systems," according to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). SIGAR quoted a Taliban official as saying, "The group took possession of more than 300,000 light arms, 26,000 heavy weapons, and about 61,000 military vehicles."

Note: Why didn't the US military prioritize removing this huge amount of equipment that they knew would be taken over by the Taliban? Read more about the shocking lack of oversight of money and equipment sent to Afghanistan. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

The Department of Defense's Office of Inspector General issued a report that details widespread failures in the Pentagon's operations. In a semiannual report to Congress, the watchdog found a breakdown in the process to provide care for sexual assault survivors, damaged artillery earmarked for Ukraine, and continued failures to monitor the Defense Department's single most expensive program, the scandal-ridden F-35 fighter jet. Taken together, the inspector general's findings paint a picture of a sprawling military-industrial complex that, while providing billions in aid to foreign militaries, has failed to solve long-standing issues that result in extreme levels of taxpayer waste. In October, President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve $75 billion in combined security assistance for Israel and Ukraine. The request would add to the $44 billion in security assistance already pledged to Ukraine since Russia's invasion, and the tens of billions of dollars in security assistance delivered to Israel over the past five years. Just last month, the Department of Defense failed its sixth straight audit, underscoring the lack of oversight of the funds that Congress forks over to the armed forces every year. The inspector general also reported that the Defense Department's protocols for protecting its employees are not routinely followed. The Pentagon's medical treatment facilities failed to consistently triage and record care administered to survivors of sexual assault. 

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul plans to force a vote this week on a joint resolution to remove all U.S. troops from Syria within 30 days, according to sources on Capitol Hill familiar with his plans. "The American people have had enough of endless wars in the Middle East," Paul told The Intercept by email. "Yet, 900 U.S. troops remain in Syria with no vital U.S. interest at stake, no definition of victory, no exit strategy, and no congressional authorization to be there." The U.S. conflict in Syria is just one of several forever wars – including conflicts in Niger and Somalia – that continue to smolder more than two decades after 9/11 and more than two years after President Joe Biden declared that, for the first time in 20 years, the United States was "not at war." For almost 10 years, the U.S. has battled a rotating cast of enemies in Syria, including the Syrian Armed Forces and pro-Syrian government forces; terrorist organizations such as ISIS; Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Iranian-backed militias; the Russian-backed Wagner Group; and the armed forces of Turkey, according to Paul's bill, which notes that Congress has not declared war against Syria or any group in that country. "The United States cannot fix Syria. Yet we still have 900 troops in eastern Syria for eight years, going on nine," said Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria. "I'm puzzled that we haven't had a national debate on what U.S. troops are doing in Syria."

Note: Read how the Pentagon-trained Kurdish militia group once brutally fought with CIA-trained militia group Fursan al Haq (who fights alongside Al-Qaeda) in war-torn Syria. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

Israel's military has made no secret of the intensity of its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. There has, however, been relatively little attention paid to the methods used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to select targets in Gaza, and to the role artificial intelligence has played in their bombing campaign. After the 11-day war in Gaza in May 2021, officials said Israel had fought its "first AI war" using machine learning and advanced computing. The latest Israel-Hamas war has provided an unprecedented opportunity for the IDF to use such tools in a much wider theatre of operations and, in particular, to deploy an AI target-creation platform called "the Gospel", which has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets. In early November, the IDF said "more than 12,000" targets in Gaza had been identified by its target administration division. Aviv Kochavi, who served as the head of the IDF until January, has said the target division is "powered by AI capabilities" and includes hundreds of officers and soldiers. According to Kochavi, "once this machine was activated" in Israel's 11-day war with Hamas in May 2021 it generated 100 targets a day. "To put that into perspective, in the past we would produce 50 targets in Gaza per year. Now, this machine produces 100 targets a single day, with 50% of them being attacked." A separate source [said] the Gospel had allowed the IDF to run a "mass assassination factory" in which the "emphasis is on quantity and not on quality".

Note: Read about Israel's use of AI warfare since at least 2021. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

Israel's military was aware of Hamas ' plan to launch an attack on Israeli soil over a year before the devastating Oct. 7 operation that killed hundreds of people, The New York Times reported Friday. It was the latest in a series of signs that top Israeli commanders either ignored or played down warnings that Hamas was plotting the attack, which triggered a war against the Islamic militant group that has devastated the Gaza Strip. The Times said Israeli officials were in possession of a 40-page battle plan, code-named "Jericho Wall," that detailed a hypothetical Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities. The document was seen by many Israeli military and intelligence officials, the report said, though it was unclear if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top leaders had seen it. The document predicted that Hamas would bombard Israel with rockets, use drones to disable Israel's security and surveillance abilities at the border wall, and take over southern communities and military bases. Another 2016 Israeli defense memo obtained by the Times said Hamas intended to take hostages back to Gaza. The Oct. 7 attack – in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 people were abducted and taken to Gaza – would uncannily mirror the one outlined in the battle plan. But Israeli officials had brushed off the plan, the report said, dismissing it as "aspirational" rather than something that could practically take place, the report said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

The White House has requested the removal of restrictions on all categories of weapons and ammunition Israel is allowed to access from U.S. weapons stockpiles stored in Israel itself. The move to lift restrictions was included in the White House's supplemental budget request, sent to the Senate on October 20. "This request would," the proposed budget says, "allow for the transfer of all categories of defense articles." The request pertains to little-known weapons stockpiles in Israel that the Pentagon established for use in regional conflicts, but which Israel has been permitted to access in limited circumstances – the very limits President Joe Biden is seeking to remove. Created in the 1980s ... the War Reserve Stockpile Allies-Israel, or WRSA-I, is the largest node in a network of what are effectively foreign U.S. weapons caches. Highly regulated for security, the stockpiles are governed by a set of strict requirements. Under circumstances laid out in these requirements, Israel has been able to draw on the stockpile, purchasing the weapons at little cost. With the WRSA-I, Biden is looking to lift virtually all the meaningful restrictions on the stockpile and the transfer of its arms to Israel, with plans to remove limitations to obsolete or surplus weapons, waive an annual spending cap on replenishing the stockpile, remove weapon-specific restrictions, and curtail congressional oversight. All of the changes ... would be permanent, except for lifting the spending cap, which is limited to the 2024 fiscal year.

Note: Israel has received at least $158 billion in military aid from the US since 1948. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

Israel has cast the deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip as a regrettable but unavoidable part of modern conflict, pointing to the heavy human toll from military campaigns the United States itself once waged in Iraq and Syria. But ... experts say that even a conservative reading of the casualty figures reported from Gaza shows that the pace of death during Israel's campaign has few precedents in this century. People are being killed in Gaza more quickly, they say, than in even the deadliest moments of U.S.-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups. Civilian casualties are notoriously hard to calculate, and officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip do not separate the deaths of civilians and combatants. Researchers point instead to the roughly 10,000 women and children reported killed in Gaza as an approximate – though conservative – measure of civilian deaths in the territory. More women and children have been reported killed in Gaza in less than two months than the roughly 7,700 civilians documented as killed by U.S. forces and their international allies in the entire first year of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And the number of women and children reported killed in Gaza since the Israeli campaign began last month has already started to approach the roughly 12,400 civilians documented to have been killed by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan during nearly 20 years of war.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

When we think of how to rescue suffering children from the unbridled carnage of numerous wars that have forced people to go underground, the vast network of tunnels built by the Vietnamese comes to mind. Following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, weapons makers in the United States focused on developing ordnance that could destroy underground tunnels and bases. In Afghanistan, on April 13, 2017, the United States used a Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb nicknamed MOAB, the Mother of All Bombs, to destroy a network of tunnels in the Hindu Kush mountains. The United States had helped the Mujahideen construct these tunnels during their war against the Soviet Union in the late 1970s. Locals say this harsh terrain has been haunted by a deadly, hidden hazard: chemical contamination. Living as we do in a world where countries like the United States maintain a permanent warfare state, we must reckon with the horrific cost of war – and the obscene profits. The Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal notes that weapons makers' stocks on Wall Street have risen 7 percent since the Israel-Hamas war started. As much as we might long to grasp the hand of the child trying to free herself from underneath a collapsed building's rubble, we need to imagine and long for the chance to grasp the hand of someone outside our own community, someone we've been taught to regard as an enemy or an invisible "other."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

Over the last century, the U.S. military has shown a consistent disregard for civilian lives. It has repeatedly cast or misidentified ordinary people as enemies; failed to investigate civilian harm allegations; excused casualties as regrettable but unavoidable; and failed to prevent their recurrence or to hold troops accountable. These long-standing practices stand in stark contrast to the U.S. government's public campaigns to sell its wars as benign, its air campaigns as precise, its concern for civilians as overriding, and the deaths of innocent people as "tragic" anomalies. Such campaigns have mainly served to obscure the true toll of the American way of war, from the "banana wars" of the 1920s to the "forever wars" a century later. During the first 20 years of the war on terror, the U.S. conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes across seven major conflict zones – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen – and killed up to 48,308 civilians, according to a 2021 analysis by Airwars, a U.K.-based airstrike monitoring group. A 2020 study of post-9/11 civilian casualty incidents found most have gone uninvestigated. When they do come under official scrutiny, American military witnesses are interviewed while civilians – victims, survivors, family members – are almost totally ignored, "severely compromising the effectiveness of investigations," according to the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute.

Note: The profit motive behind these wars was clearly described in 1935 by General Smedley Butler in War is a Racket. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.