Monday, December 31, 2007

Hillary Signals Free Pass for Bush

By Robert Parry
December 31, 2007

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is signaling that a second Clinton presidency will follow the look-to-the-future, don’t-worry-about-accountability approach toward Republican wrongdoing that marked Bill Clinton’s years in office.

That was the significance of former President Clinton’s remarkable Dec. 17 comment that his wife’s first act in the White House would be to send Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush on an around-the-world mission to repair America’s damaged image.

Read on.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Where Are U.S. Democracy's Heroes?

By Brent Budowsky
December 29, 2007

By contrast, Democrats in Washington have a life crisis, consult an army of pollsters, and have trouble taking clear leadership stands on war and peace because members of a Congress with record unpopularity might lose another point or two in the polls.

Read on.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Pakistan Is 'Central Front,' Not Iraq

By Robert Parry
December 28, 2007

The chaos spreading across nuclear-armed Pakistan after the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is part of the price for the Bush administration’s duplicity about al-Qaeda’s priorities, including the old canard that the terrorist group regards Iraq as the “central front” in its global war against the West.

Through repetition of this claim – often accompanied by George W. Bush’s home-spun advice about the need to listen to what the enemy says – millions of Americans believe that Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders consider Iraq the key battlefield.

Read on.

Creeping Fascism: History's Lessons

By Ray McGovern
December 27, 2007

These are the words of Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a first-hand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and published it the following year as “Geschichte eines Deutschen” (The Story of a German).

Read on.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Are We Worth It?

By Robert Parry
December 22, 2007

Like millions of Americans, we’ll be traveling some before Christmas, so we’ll probably not be posting as many stories as usual. But we are leaving up on the home page the stories from the past six or seven weeks for you to review while making an assessment of whether we’re worth it.

That’s because you – our readers – are the ones who will decide whether we can continue as a source of independent news. Either we make it with your financial support – through donations and book sales – or we don’t.

Read on.

Friday, December 21, 2007

A Society on Steroids

By Bill Moyers
December 21, 2007

The findings prompted my fellow journalist and friend Dick Starkey to recall an important insight into America by the eminent social critic, Jacques Barzun. A Frenchman by birth, now 100 years old and living in Texas, Barzun, like his illustrious ancestor Alexis de Tocqueville, has been a canny interpreter of the American character.

Read on.

Huckabee & the 'Persecuted' Christians

By Robert Parry
December 21, 2007

Editor’s Note: To understand Mike Huckabee’s surprising rise to the top of the Republican presidential field, it’s worth looking back two years to December 2005 when the right-wing media manufactured an alarming tale about how secularists and non-Christians were waging a “War on Christmas.”

Huckabee – in his unthreatening, easy-going style – has managed to tap into that now widely perceived view among white Christian conservatives that they are somehow facing persecution at the hands of Jews, Muslims and atheists.

Read on.

Review of 'Charlie Wilson's War'

By Lisa Pease
December 20, 2007

“Charlie Wilson’s War” has been billed as a political satire or comedy. While the film ripples throughout with truly hilarious moments, it is based on the true and very serious story of the largest covert operation in history.

Read on.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Robert Parry on Neocon Media Manipulation

Watch a segment from the recent Media Accountability Conference at Sonoma State University:

Media Is the Key to Democracy

By Robert Parry
December 20, 2007

When senior Democrats, such as House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, explain why impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is off the table, they cite their fears of hostility from the American news media.

On Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now” on Dec. 20, Conyers said the U.S. news media has become such a problem that any Democratic attempt to hold the President and Vice President accountable might end up achieving the opposite result.

Read on.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Is Hillary or Barack More Vulnerable?

By Robert Parry
December 19, 2007

Even as Hillary Clinton’s operatives were dropping hints that Republicans would exploit Barack Obama’s youthful drug use, some Clinton insiders privately worried about her own vulnerability because the Bush administration possesses detailed knowledge of her movements – and her husband’s – over the past seven years.

Because of Sen. Clinton’s unique status as the first former First Lady to run for President – and because her husband was succeeded by a Republican – she is the first candidate to have both her and her spouse be subject to regular, long-term surveillance by an Executive Branch agency controlled by the opposing political party.

Read on.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Bush's Torture Policy Is a Cancer

By Brent Budowsky
December 18, 2007

He couldn’t because a policy claimed to be legal when committed by our government would be equally legal when committed by our enemies against our troops and POWs.

Read on.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Huckabee's Chairman Hid Payoff Secret

By Robert Parry
December 18, 2007

The pundits on CNN’s “Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” were unanimous: Republican campaign strategist Ed Rollins was a great guy and his hiring as national chairman for Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign gave it a solid jolt of credibility.

But Blitzer’s panel of journalists on Dec. 14 didn’t seem to either know or care that Rollins has withheld evidence since 1991 about the identity of a top Filipino politician who admitted delivering an illegal $10 million cash payment to Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign from Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Read on.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Surprise! Mukasey Covers Up Torture

By Robert Parry
December 15, 2007

Last month, Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California joined Republicans to ensure Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General, even though he refused to acknowledge that the simulated drowning of waterboarding was torture.

Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada helped the Bush administration, too, by rushing a floor vote on Mukasey before rank-and-file Democrats could get organized and push for a filibuster.

Read on.

Special Prosecutor Needed on Torture

By Brent Budowsky
December 15, 2007

Waterboarding is torture. Torture is a crime.

Read on.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Review of 'The Great Debaters'

By Lisa Pease
December 14, 2007

Denzel Washington directs and stars in “The Great Debaters,” a film inspired by the true story of the Wiley College debating team from Marshall, Texas, that, under the guidance of professor, poet and labor activist Melvin B. Tolson, rose to national prominence.

Read on.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Mobile Labs to Target Iraqis for Death

By Robert Parry
December 13, 2007

U.S. forces in Iraq soon will be equipped with high-tech equipment that will let them process an Iraqi’s biometric data in minutes and help American soldiers decide whether they should execute the person or not, according to its inventor.

"A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot?” Pentagon weapons designer Anh Duong told the Washington Post for a feature on how this 47-year-old former Vietnamese refugee and mother of four rose to become a top U.S. bomb-maker.

Read on.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Another Day of Infamy

By Mary MacElveen
December 12, 2007

I still remember the phrase that was used in determining the outcome of that case, that “no irreparable harm” comes to George W. Bush. I have often thought of that phrase and have remarked: Well what about the rest of us?

Read on.

Is America 'Better Than That'?

By Ray McGovern
December 12, 2007

The Post’s Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen, which describes Kiriakou’s experience in interrogating suspected terrorists, raises in an unusually direct way an abiding question: Should the United States of America be using forms of torture dating back to the Spanish Inquisition?

Read on.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

America's Judicial Coup

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
December 12, 2007

During the Iran-Contra investigation in the 1980s, special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh likened the Reagan-appointed federal judges in Washington to “the strategic reserve of an embattled army.”

When President Ronald Reagan’s political troops were under the gun of legal accountability, the judges could be counted on to jump into the trenches and find some legal excuse to pull the endangered operatives to safety.

Read on.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Gary Webb's Enduring Legacy

By Robert Parry
December 11, 2007

Three years ago, I walked into my home in Arlington, Virginia, and checked my phone messages. One was from a Los Angeles Times reporter who was looking for a comment from me about Gary Webb’s suicide on the night of Dec. 9, 2004. It was the first I had heard of the news.

After I recovered from the shock, I called the reporter back to get more details. I also told him he would have a hard time writing a decent obituary on Webb because the L.A. Times had never acknowledged that Webb was substantially correct in his reporting about the Nicaraguan contras' role in smuggling cocaine into the United States in the 1980s.

Read on.

America as a Prisoner of Primacy

By Carl Conetta
December 10, 2007

We might call it "exceptional" as well, except that the troubles which beset U.S. policy do not end at Iraq's borders. The policy wreck is a more general one. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan has run aground, too.

Read on.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Why the Democrats Could Lose

By Robert Parry
December 9, 2007

National Democrats are upbeat about their chances in Election 2008, citing George W. Bush’s unpopularity and the weirdness of top Republican presidential candidates bogged down in squabbles over who has the right religious outlook or who is the most hostile to illegal immigrants.

But the smug Democratic hierarchy may be inviting defeat, again, by ignoring the fact that many Americans want leadership that appeals to them on the higher plane of principle. Instead, Democrats often treat Americans more like consumers than citizens, selling them new social programs rather than articulating an uplifting national cause.

Read on.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Bush Spins Iran's Centrifuges

By Ray McGovern
December 8, 2007

Without weaver-in-chief Karl Rove and former presidential spokesman Tony Snow, it is amateur hour at the White House. And the theater would be as funny as The Daily Show were the subject not so serious.

Read on.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Neocons Down, Not Out

By Robert Parry
December 6, 2007

Since the neoconservatives began to emerge as a political force in the mid-to-late 1970s, they have followed a consistent strategy of targeting the information flows inside the United States, paying particular attention to controlling the nation’s intelligence analysts and purging independent thinking from the U.S. news media.

Those were the two key switching points that allowed the neocons to push out favorable information and suppress contrary facts to shape how Americans perceived reality. Thus, the neocons could guide the public on issues such as the severity of the Soviet threat in the late Cold War or the WMD danger from Iraq and Iran this decade.

Read on.

What's at Stake, What Can Be Done

By Robert Parry
December 5, 2007

Election Year 2008 may represent a last-ditch opportunity to save the American Republic and its noble promise of “unalienable rights” for all mankind. Today’s political crisis cannot be overstated.

For the past seven years, George W. Bush has mounted an unprecedented assault on the nation’s Constitution. He has followed a neoconservative path toward an imperial system built on an all-powerful Executive, an ill-informed and frightened public, and a military dispatched globally on ill-defined missions in an endless war.

Read on.

Monday, December 03, 2007

A Miracle: Honest Intel on Iran Nukes

By Ray McGovern
December 3, 2007

For those who have doubts about miracles, a double one occurred today. An honest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program has been issued and its Key Judgments were made public.

With redraft after redraft, it was what the Germans call “eine schwere Geburt”—a difficult birth, ten months in gestation.

Read on.

Thank You, John Nirenberg

By Emily West
December 3, 2007

John is taking this walk to give Americans an opportunity to sign his petition written to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to impeach the neocon criminals in our White House and to draw attention to this important action by The People.

Read on.

Needed Now: Spirit of the Sixties

By Vincent L. Guarisco
December 3, 2007

I certainly hope so, because the Bush administration’s wrecking ball hasn’t quite finished swinging yet, so keep your equilibrium stable and your stand-post securely firm, because before it's over, there may not be much of anything left standing, or worth saving, and I don’t want to lose you.

Read on.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Henry Hyde: Mr. Cover-up

By Robert Parry
November 30, 2007

Official Washington is remembering the late Rep. Henry Hyde fondly, recalling the Illinois Republican as a well-respected “pro-life” advocate who held President Bill Clinton accountable for lying about a sexual dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.

But there was another side to Hyde, who died Nov. 29 at the age of 83. As a senior member of national security oversight committees, Hyde helped cover up criminal and political wrongdoing by the Reagan-Bush administrations in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Read on.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

WPost Buys into Anti-Obama Bigotry

By Robert Parry
November 29, 2007

Normally when the Washington Post refers to stories on the Internet – even legitimate ones like thinking Al Gore prevailed in the news media’s recount of Florida ballots – the Post’s writing drips with sarcasm as it mocks supposed “conspiracy theorists.”

But a very different – even respectful – tone infused a front-page story on right-wing rumor-mongering about Barack Obama’s alleged adherence to the Muslim faith.

Read on.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

How to Get a Real Mideast Peace

By Robert Parry
November 29, 2007

After almost seven years of malign neglect toward Israel-Palestine peace talks, George W. Bush is reinventing himself as a man committed to a fair settlement of this enduring and dangerous conflict.

Hosting a summit in Annapolis, Maryland, President Bush made a great show of getting some Arab delegates to witness the symbolic shaking of hands between two leaders with shaky public support back home, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Read on.

Freeze Foreclosures, Fix Energy Mess

By Brent Budowsky
November 28, 2007

There should be a six-month freeze on home foreclosures while the Federal Reserve Board, Treasury secretary and congressional leaders bring together all stakeholders in the housing crisis to seek rational rescheduling of troubled loans with greater disclosure, transparency and fairness to all parties.

Read on.

The Truth about Colin Powell

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
November 28, 2007

On January 17, 1963, in South Vietnam’s monsoon season, U.S. Army Capt. Colin Powell jumped from a military helicopter into a densely forested combat zone of the A Shau Valley, not far from the Laotian border.

Carrying an M-2 carbine, Capt. Powell was starting his first – and only – combat assignment. He was the new adviser to a 400-man unit of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).

Read on.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The 'Triumphant' Neocons

By Robert Parry
November 27, 2007

Citing signs of military progress in Iraq, America’s neoconservatives are reasserting their vision of the United States as an imperial power that can reshape the Muslim world in a way favorable to the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv.

Casting aside the image of the war as a bloody quagmire, the neocons are again selling Iraq as a vital beachhead in the Middle East from which the United States can project power throughout the region and achieve victory over Islamic militants hostile to Israel.

Read on.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

The Bush Rules of Evidence

By Robert Parry
November 24, 2007

In the history of the American Republic, perhaps no political family has been more protected from scandal than the Bushes.

When the Bushes are involved in dirty deals or even criminal activity, standards of evidence change. Instead of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that would lock up an average citizen, the evidence must be perfect.

Read on.

Friday, November 23, 2007

The Triumph of Crackpot Realism

By Robert Higgs
November 23, 2007

He applied the notion specifically to the intellectual outlook of top government officials, especially the ones known as the “serious people,” who have proven their capacity for dealing with important practical affairs by, say, managing a giant corporation, such as Halliburton or G. D. Searle, or a huge educational institution, such as Texas A&M University or the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Read on.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Thanksgiving in the Two Americas

By Brent Budowsky
November 22, 2007

Last year at this time there was news of soaring bonuses on Wall Street, including some very lavish rewards for those most responsible for the mortgage financing crisis.

Read on.

The Poodles of the U.S. News Media

By Norman Solomon
November 21, 2007

When the president and his team set out to prepare the media ground for war, they can rely on a repetition compulsion that's widespread in the American press.

Read on.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Bush's Plame-gate Cover-up

By Robert Parry
November 21, 2007

In early fall 2003, George W. Bush joined in what appears to have been a criminal cover-up to conceal the role of his White House in exposing the classified identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

That is the logical conclusion one would draw from a new statement by then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan when it is put into a mosaic with previously known evidence.

Read on.

Iraq's Laboratory of Repression

By Robert Parry
November 20, 2007

The Bush administration is turning Iraq into a test tube for modern techniques of repression, from sophisticated biometrics that track populations to devastating weapons systems that combine night-vision optics from drone aircraft, heat resonance imaging and deadly firepower from the sky to kill suspected insurgents.

These high-tech capabilities, when mixed with loose rules of engagement that allow U.S. troops to kill Iraqis at the slightest sign of hostility, have contributed to what U.S. generals and a growing number of American journalists are hailing as an improving security situation.

Read on.

Friday, November 16, 2007

U.S. Helped Push Pakistan to the Brink

By Ivan Eland
November 17, 2007

To prevent the Pakistani Supreme Court from declaring him ineligible to serve another term as president, a role he won last month in dubious elections, the autocratic Musharraf has declared martial law and ousted the Supreme Court’s chief justice.

Read on.

Bush's Clever Cognitive Dissonance

By Robert Parry
November 16, 2007

So, George W. Bush sees himself as the great defender of the U.S. Constitution.

In a Nov. 15 speech to the right-wing Federalist Society, the President embraced the Constitution’s checks and balances as a vital protection against tyranny. And he demanded that federal judges act as fair referees, not political or ideological partisans.

Read on.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Man Who Bombed Hiroshima

By Anthony Gregory
November 15, 2007

Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. did not die from war wounds or violently at the hands of other people, years before his time. He died in hospice care, in a bed, from heart problems and strokes.

Read on.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

How False Narrative Works

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
November 14, 2007

During Campaign 2000, conservative groups were given wide leeway in smearing Democratic candidate Al Gore without being called to account, even when the Vice President was falsely portrayed as a traitor.

For instance, in the weeks before Election 2000, Aretino Industries, a pro-Republican group from Texas, ran an emotional ad modeled after Lyndon Johnson’s infamous 1964 commercial that showed a girl picking a daisy before the screen dissolved into a nuclear explosion.

Read on.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

A Cold Rain: Excerpt from 'Neck Deep'

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
November 13, 2007

The rain pelted down in icy-cold droplets, chilling both the protesters in soaked parkas and the well-dressed celebrants bent behind umbrellas to shield their furs and cashmere overcoats.

Drawn to this historic moment – a time of triumph for some and fury for others – the two opposing groups jostled and pushed their way through security checkpoints, joining the tens of thousands pressing against rows of riot police lining Pennsylvania Avenue.

Read on.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Robert Parry: Why We Write

By Robert Parry
November 13, 2007

After three decades as a Washington journalist, one lesson stands out almost above all others: false narratives get good people killed and, perhaps even worse, could sound the death knell for the great experiment known as the American Republic.

In trying to understand what’s gone wrong with the U.S. political system over those three decades, I have come to view the core problem as the use of mass media to inject Americans with a synthetic reality that misrepresents recent history, exaggerates external dangers and ridicules the few citizens who object.

Read on.

Six Years After 'Gore's Victory'

By Robert Parry
November 12, 2007

Editor’s Note: Six years ago on another Veterans Day holiday, eight news organizations published the findings of their unofficial recount of Florida’s disputed ballots. The recount had discovered that Al Gore would have won the decisive Florida election if all legally cast votes were counted.

However, just two months after the 9/11 attacks, the news organizations chose to conceal the obvious “Gore Won” lead, apparently putting their sense of “patriotism” over journalistic professionalism.

Read on.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Democrats Surrender on Torture

By Brent Budowsky
November 9, 2007

First, let’s be crystal clear about how the Democrats threw a vote they would have won on Michael Mukasey and torture -- and let’s be clear why this happened.

Read on.

The Truth Behind 'Lions for Lambs'

By Lisa Pease
November 9, 2007

Through crackling dialog, splendid performances, and emotional sequences, the film seeks to elevate the national discussion not only on the war in Iraq, but on the Americans at home who have chosen neither to participate nor to protest.

Read on.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Bush's Favorite Lie

By Robert Parry
November 9, 2007

When cataloguing George W. Bush’s lies – even if you stick just to his fabrications about the Iraq War and the “war on terror” – there are so many to choose from, it’s hard to pick a favorite.

There’s the one about how before Sept. 11, 2001, Americans thought that “oceans protected us” – although perhaps not from Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads, which during the Cold War had school children hiding under desks and homeowners buying bomb shelters.

Read on.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Democrats' Year of Living Fecklessly

By Robert Parry
November 7, 2007

One year ago, the Democrats ended Republican control of Congress, stirring millions of Americans to hope that George W. Bush’s Iraq War and his assault on the U.S. Constitution finally would be stopped.

Twelve months later, many of those once-hopeful voters feel bitter disillusionment toward the national Democratic Party, which has surrendered in showdown after showdown with the weakened President, from continuing to write blank checks for the Iraq War to ceding more power to him for his surveillance operations.

Read on.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

The War on Medical Marijuana

By Patrick McCartney and Martin A. Lee
November 6, 2007

On the morning of Jan. 13, 2004, Tehama County prosecutor Lynn Strom unexpectedly announced that the state of California was dropping charges against Cynthia Blake and David Davidson for possessing and growing cannabis with the intent to distribute.

While the two medical marijuana patients waited in the courtroom, Strom and the defense attorneys disappeared inside the judge’s chambers to discuss the motion to dismiss.

Read on.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Hillary Clinton's Unspoken Vulnerability

By Robert Parry
November 6, 2007

An unspoken political vulnerability of Sen. Hillary Clinton is that she is the first presidential candidate to have both her and her spouse subject to regular, long-term surveillance by an Executive Branch under the control of an opposing political party.

Since they left the White House in 2001, Bill and Hillary Clinton – as the former President and First Lady – have been under the protection of the Secret Service, a branch of the Treasury Department. Records are maintained showing where they go and, to an extent, whom they meet.

Read on.

Intel Vets Make 'Waterboarding' Appeal

By Twenty-Four Former U.S. Intelligence Officers
November 5, 2007

Values that are extremely important to us as former intelligence officers are at stake in your committee’s confirmation deliberations on Judge Michael Mukasey.

With hundreds of years of service in sensitive national security activities behind us, we are deeply concerned that your committee may move his nomination to the full Senate without insisting that Mukasey declare himself on whether he believes the practice of waterboarding is legal.

Read on.

Friday, November 02, 2007

Iraq's Early Vietnam Moment

By Ray McGovern
November 3, 2007

Editor’s Note: Four years ago – on Nov. 2, 2003 – a U.S. helicopter was shot down over Iraq, killing 16 U.S. troops, an early “Vietnam moment” in what was emerging as a powerful Iraqi insurgency.

The incident helped convince a newly organized group of former U.S. intelligence officers, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, that the war was unwinnable. Below is the prescient analysis written by VIPS co-founder Ray McGovern on Nov. 3, 2003:

Read on.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Time to Apologize to Plame/Wilson

By Robert Parry
October 31, 2007

During the scandal known as “Plame-gate,” it became an article of faith in many Washington power centers that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson wasn’t “covert” and thus there was no “underlying crime” when the Bush administration intentionally blew her cover.

This view was pushed not only by right-wing acolytes of George W. Bush but by leading media outlets, such as the Washington Post editorial page, which championed an argument from Republican lawyer Victoria Toensing that the CIA-headquarters-based Plame wasn’t covered by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

Read on.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Attacking Iran for Israel?

By Ray McGovern
October 30, 2007

Her claim last week that “the policies of Iran constitute perhaps the single greatest challenge to American security interests in the Middle East and around the world” is simply too much of a stretch.

Read on.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Bush's Free-Fire Zones

By Robert Parry
October 25, 2007

Determined to gain the upper hand in Iraq and Afghanistan, George W. Bush has turned large portions of the two countries into near free-fire zones where any resistance, even in populated areas, is met with aggressive tactics that often kill civilians.

Though more attention has been focused on trigger-happy Blackwater “security contractors,” Bush’s military strategy has employed its own indiscriminate firepower – from loose "rules of engagement" for U.S. troops, to helicopter gun ships firing on crowds, to jet air strikes, to missiles launched from Predator drones.

Read on.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

U.S. Double Standards for Friend/Foe

By Ivan Eland
October 24, 2007

The administration fears that an enraged Turkish ally, already threatening to invade northern Iraq in order to suppress armed Turkish Kurd rebels seeking refuge there, will also cut off U.S. access to Turkish air bases and roads used to re-supply U.S. forces in Iraq.

Read on.

Bush's Heated 'World War III' Rhetoric

By Brent Budowsky
October 23, 2007

The Congress, which has surrendered much of its constitutional responsibility on war and peace while the president aggressively seizes it, treats discussion of World War III as business as usual in Washington.

Read on.

Why Is CIA Suppressing JFK Files?

By Lisa Pease
October 23, 2007

As Jefferson Morley reports in the Huffington Post:

"Lawyers for the Central Intelligence Agency faced pointed questions in a federal court hearing Monday morning about the agency's efforts to block disclosure of long-secret records about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

Read on.

Monday, October 22, 2007

How Best to Partition Iraq

By Ivan Eland
October 22, 2007

The Bush administration and the international community, made up of many states that have their own restive minority populations, have been reluctant to reconcile themselves to the pragmatic Senate admission that Iraq is unlikely to have a unified democratic government.

Read on.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Bush's Spying Hits Americans Abroad

By Robert Parry
October 19, 2007

In August after the Democratic-controlled Congress caved in to George W. Bush’s demands for broader surveillance powers, I noted that the new authority went far beyond what was advertised and that the President could obtain year-long spying orders on Americans who ventured outside the United States.

My analysis, which was based on a reading of the law’s language, wasn’t shared by commentators in the major U.S. news media and even drew some reader criticism as alarmist for failing to take into account secret “minimization” provisions that supposedly would protect American citizens.

Read on.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

On the Ground in Israel-Palestine

By Ray McGovern
October 19, 2007

I had learned from books and newspapers about what happened in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinians were removed from their land in historic Palestine; about the results of the Israel-Arab war in 1967, which years later former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin publicly admitted was started by Israel; and about the confiscation and settlement by Israelis of Palestinian lands in the territories that Israel has now occupied for over 40 years.

Read on.

Risky Jokes About Burma's Dictators

By Don North
October 19, 2007

In this neighborhood of jerry-built houses and open sewers, the electricity is out most of the time. Tonight, as they would do seven nights a week, the three comedians were preparing to regale the audience of a dozen foreign tourists with their “politically incorrect” humor.

Read on.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

MSM Buries Military Dissent on Iraq

By Robert Parry
October 17, 2007

Last summer when two pro-Iraq War pundits returned from a Pentagon-guided tour of Iraq, the New York Times gave them prime op-ed space to re-invent themselves as harsh war critics who had been won over by George W. Bush’s “surge.”

The deceptively packaged op-ed by Brookings analysts Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack – which then was amplified by their many appearances on TV news shows – proved very influential in shaping the congressional war debate.

Read on.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Why Big Media Slimes Al Gore

By Robert Parry
October 16, 2007

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has a point when he describes the rabid reaction of right-wingers to Al Gore, with the latest foaming at the mouth over the former vice president winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming.

But the Right is not alone in its pathological demeaning of Gore. The major news media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, have taken their share of unfair shots at Gore, ironically for reasons similar to those that Krugman attributes to the Right.

Read on.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

NSA Spying: What Did Pelosi Know?

By Ray McGovern
October 15, 2007

Referring to her briefing in an apologia-sans-apology Washington Post op-ed on Jan. 15, 2006, she wrote: “This is how I came to be informed of President Bush’s authorization for the NSA to conduct certain types of surveillance.”

Read on.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Smearing Al Gore: Here We Go Again

By Robert Parry
October 13, 2007

When people wonder how the United States ended up in today’s nightmarish predicament, a big part of the answer is that the right-wing message machine and the mainstream U.S. news media distorted reality at key moments about key people, perhaps most notably Al Gore during Campaign 2000.

That ability to twist reality has been a major focus of our reporting at Consortiumnews.com over the years [See, for instance, “Al Gore v. the Media” or “Protecting Bush/Cheney.”] Much of this work is reprised in our new book, Neck Deep.

But even now – when the consequences of the news media’s earlier “war on Gore” can be measured in the horrible death toll that has followed the Bush presidency – it appears that little has changed.

Read on.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Ex-Commander Blasts Iraq 'Nightmare'

By Robert Parry
October 12, 2007

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq for the first year of the occupation, blamed “incompetence” by President George W. Bush’s national security team for creating a “nightmare” that could last far into the future.

Sanchez, who led coalition forces from June 2003 to June 2004, used an Oct. 12 speech to a conference of Military Reporters and Editors in Arlington, Virginia, to castigate nearly everyone connected to the Iraq War, including the U.S. news media, Congress, the State Department, the White House and the Pentagon.

Read on.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Al Gore's Moral Imperative

By Robert Parry
October 11, 2007

When Al Gore encountered New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof at a recent conference on climate change, the former Vice President lamented the lack of public urgency toward the looming catastrophe from global warming.

“I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers … and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants,” Gore told Kristof, who was accompanied by his teenage son.

Read on.



Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Should Al Gore Run?

By Robert Parry
October 10, 2007

Al Gore’s supporters are making a last-ditch bid to convince the former Vice President to run for President as a candidate of principle, experience and a powerful claim on the sympathy of Americans who believe in fair play and regret the outcome of Election 2000.

In a full-page New York Times ad on Oct. 10, a group of grassroots Democrats, called DraftGore.com, published an open letter to Gore pleading with him to enter the race.

Read on.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Democrats Signal New Spying Cave-in

By Robert Parry
October 9, 2007

An intriguing part of the Washington political dynamic is that the more the Democrats think they might win an upcoming election, the more timid they become – fearful that they will give the powerful right-wing media machine some issue that will destroy their victory dreams.

What often happens, however, is that once the Democrats slip into their four-corner stall offense, their lack of a clear purpose – or discernable principle – can become the lethal political issue that they so desperately wanted to avoid. John Kerry’s “flip-flopping” or Hillary Clinton’s “triangulations” can prove just as deadly as a controversial stand.

Read on.

Friday, October 05, 2007

So Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby?

By Ray McGovern
October 5, 2007

Virtually everyone: Republican, Democrat—Conservative, Liberal. The fear factor is non-partisan, you might say, and palpable.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee brags that it is the most influential foreign policy lobbying organization on Capitol Hill, and has demonstrated that time and again, and not only on Capitol Hill.

Read on.

Why Not Impeachment?

By Robert Parry
October 5, 2007

The disclosure that the Bush administration secretly reestablished a policy of abusing “war on terror” detainees even as it assured Congress and the public that it had mended its ways again raises the question: Why are the Democrats keeping impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney “off the table”?

After the Democratic congressional victory last Nov. 7, Washington Democrats rejected calls for impeachment from rank-and-file Democrats and many other Americans, considering it an extreme step that would derail a bipartisan strategy of winning over Republicans to help bring the Iraq War to an end.

Read on.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

The Clintons and the Bushes

By Robert Parry
October 3, 2007

Editor's Note: Given Hillary Clinton’s emergence as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, a Consortiumnews.com reader asked that we post the entire first chapter of Robert Parry’s 2004 book, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

The book opens with a scene early in the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency with him explaining to White House guests why he didn’t pursue geopolitical scandals that had implicated George H.W. Bush in gross abuses of power and arguably criminal acts.

Read on.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

The Who's Your Daddy Nation

By Phil Rockstroh
October 2, 2007

How many times do we, the people of the U.S., have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout -- enough! -- then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town?

It is imperative the nation's citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve.

Read on.

Forgetting Gandhi

By Pablo Ouziel
October 2, 2007

October 2nd marks the birth anniversary of human rights activist Mahatma Gandhi, and for the first time, the United Nations is officially proclaiming this day to be the International Day of Non-violence.

Hopefully, on this day we can all spare a little of our time to reflect on how little we have all understood Mahatma Gandhi's message, after all everyday we seem to plunge into a worse state of affairs and drift away farther from Gandhi's respectable message:

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."

Read on.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Bush's Global 'Dirty War'

By Robert Parry
October 1, 2007

George W. Bush has transformed elite units of the U.S. military – including Special Forces and highly trained sniper teams – into “death squads” with a license to kill unarmed targets on the suspicion that they are a threat to American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to evidence from recent court cases.

Though this reality has been the subject of whispers within the U.S. intelligence community for several years, it has now emerged into public view with two attempted prosecutions of American soldiers whose defense attorneys cited “rules of engagement” that permit the killing of suspected insurgents.

Read on.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Bush, Ahmadinejad and Authoritarianism

By Nat Parry
September 28, 2007

As usual, any legitimate points Ahmadinejad may have made were lost or drowned out in the uproar over his more controversial remarks.

Read on.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Hillary Prods Bush to Go After Iran

By Robert Parry
September 28, 2007

So let me see if I’ve got this right: Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for the presidential nomination, is demanding that George W. Bush take a more belligerent posture toward Iran.

In her view – and that of 75 other members of the U.S. Senate – President Bush hasn’t been aggressive or hasty enough in designating a large part of the Iranian military, the Revolutionary Guards, as an international terrorist organization.

Read on.

Bush, Oil -- and Moral Bankruptcy

By Ray McGovern
September 27, 2007

On Sept. 23, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned pointedly:

Read on.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Daniel Ellsberg: 'A Coup Has Occurred'

By Daniel Ellsberg
September 26, 2007 (from a speech delivered September 20, 2007)

If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Read on.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Bush to World: Up Is Down

By Robert Parry
September 25, 2007

George W. Bush – who asserts his unlimited personal authority to kill, kidnap, torture and spy on anyone of his choosing anywhere in the world – opened his annual speech to the United Nations by hailing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The U.S. President pushed the envelope of the world’s credulity even further by citing the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of 1948 as justification for his “war on terror” and his draconian policies for eliminating “terrorists” or other threats to world order with little or no due process.

Read on.

#1 Censored Story of 2008

Neck Deep co-author Robert Parry is being recognized this year by Sonoma State University's Project Censored for his reporting on the elimination of habeas corpus rights for those that George W. Bush designates as an enemy of the state. His articles "No Habeas Corpus for 'Any Person'" and "Still No Habeas Rights for You" were designated as this year's 1 censored story.

Parry will be giving the keynote address at Project Censored's Media Accountability Conference this October 26 and 27 at Sonoma State University. Last year,
Neck Deep co-author Nat Parry was recognized by Project Censored for his article "Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs,'" and gave a talk on the subject of "militarizing the homeland."

To order Neck Deep, please visit
www.neckdeepbook.com.

The Left's Media Miscalculation (Redux)

By Robert Parry
September 25, 2007 (Originally published April 29, 2005)

In the mid-1970s, after the U.S. defeat in Vietnam and President Richard Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal, American progressives held the upper-hand on media. Not only had the mainstream press exposed Nixon’s dirty tricks and published the Pentagon Papers secrets of the Vietnam War, but a vibrant leftist “underground” press informed and inspired a new generation of citizens.

Read on.

Monday, September 24, 2007

MoveOn & Media Double Standards

By Robert Parry
September 24, 2007

MoveOn.org’s “General Betray Us” ad may have gotten more attention than it deserved, but it also has underscored several important points: the foolishness of MoveOn’s ad-buying strategy, the cringing hypocrisy of the mainstream U.S. news media when attacked by the Right, and the pressing need to build independent news outlets.

Ironically, MoveOn has long resisted using its fund-raising capability on the Internet to support an independent news infrastructure, favoring instead the idea of making expensive ad buys in the New York Times and other Big Media outlets.

Read on.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Hard Lessons from MoveOn Fiasco

By Robert Parry
September 22, 2007

The furor over MoveOn.org’s silly “General Betray Us” ad – which led to a bipartisan Senate condemnation of MoveOn after Republicans blocked a move to include right-wing smears against military veterans like Democrats Max Cleland and John Kerry – carries a bitter lesson for the American Left.

Simply put: This is what happens when one side of American politics – the Right – spends three decades and many billions of dollars building a sophisticated and powerful media apparatus and the other side – the Left – does next to nothing on meda infrastructure.

Read on.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

George W. Bush's Thug Nation

By Robert Parry
September 21, 2007

It’s said that over time Presidents – especially two-termers – imbue the nation with their personalities and priorities, for good or ill. If that’s true, it could help explain the small-minded mean-spiritedness that seems to be pervading the behavior of the United States these days, both at home and abroad.

On a global level, the world reads about trigger-happy Blackwater “security contractors” mowing down civilians in Baghdad, the U.S. military killing unarmed people under loose “rules of engagement” in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and the CIA “rendering” suspected Islamists to secret prisons or to third-country dungeons where torture is practiced.

Read on.

The Right's Garden of False Narratives

By Phil Rockstroh
September 20, 2007

One would think that from the cries of (feigned) indignation and calls for repentance arising from conservatives regarding Move-On.org's ad in the N.Y. Times that the liberal-leaning group had not simply questioned the insights and intentions of a public servant, promoting, in a public forum, the policy of an illegal and immoral occupation of a sovereign nation; rather, the folks of Move-On.org had committed blasphemy against the holy name of some revered saint -- General Mary Petraeus, Mother of God.

The false outrage of perpetually offended conservatives serves as cover for the true outrages of our era, including: truncated civil liberties, rising levels of social and economic inequality and injustice, and foreign wars of aggression waged by an insular and secretive executive branch and fought by a permanent underclass.

Read on.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Why Cheney Likes Mukasey for A.G.

By Robert Parry
September 19, 2007

In praising George W. Bush’s new choice for Attorney General, Vice President Dick Cheney identified one freedom in particular that retired Judge Michael Mukasey would protect: “the freedom from fear of terrorist attacks.”

The comment spoke volumes about the Bush administration’s priorities, fitting with the President’s oft-repeated claim that the government has no more important duty than to protect the American people.

Read on.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Halfway Measures on Bush's Tribunal

By Robert Parry
September 18, 2007

In a memorable scene from Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Rep. John Conyers explains how it was that Congress passed the USA Patriot Act without knowing many of its provisions. “Sit down, my son,” the courtly Michigan Democrat said. “We don’t read most of the bills.”

That reality does not appear to have changed much. In back-to-back years, Congress rushed through two sweeping pieces of legislation – the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the Protect America Act of 2007 – without a full understanding of the powers being granted to President George W. Bush.

Read on.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Greenspan Spills the Beans on Oil

By Ray McGovern
September 16, 2007

For those still wondering why President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney sent our young men and women into Iraq, the secret is now “largely” out.

No, not from the lips of former Secretary of State Colin Powell. It appears we shall have to wait until the disgraced general/diplomat draws nearer to meeting his maker before he gets concerned over anything more than the “blot” that Iraq has put on his reputation.

Read on.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Bush's War Without End

By Robert Parry
September 14, 2007

Let it be noted that the morning after George W. Bush announced an open-ended – possibly permanent – military occupation of Iraq the premier U.S. newspapers ran headlines about the President ordering “troop cuts,” itself a troubling reminder of how the American people got into this mess.

The New York Times’ lead headline read: “Bush Says Success Allows Gradual Troop Cuts.” The Washington Post went with: “Bush Tells Nation He Will Begin to Roll Back ‘Surge.’”

Read on.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

More reader reviews from Amazon.com

Thanks to all who have taken the time to review Neck Deep at Amazon.com.

Below are a few more reviews from our readers:

Honest, in-depth investigative reporting, September 9, 2007
By Avidreader "Pam" (New Zealand)

For anyone who wants to know what has really been happening politically in the US for the past 50 years or more, this book will add considerably to your knowledge. If you want to know how and why the House of Bush seized power and subverted the American electoral process - read this book. Robert Parry and team at Consortiumnews.com are bright stars in the list of American journalists and investigative reporters who can still wear those names with pride. All their books and articles are well worth your time.

Connects the Dots, September 8, 2007
By Ronald G. Defenbaugh "Ron" (Stanberry, MO USA)

The Parrys do their usual fine investigative reporting in this book Neck Deep. They connect the dots from early in GWB's career to the current fiasco we find ourselves in. This book should be bought even if reading time is precious. Save it for history if you have to, for that is what it is - history without the mainline media spin. The authors use some of their previously written articles to point out the previously mis-leading big media accounts of "facts" and their timely accounts of history. I plan to read it ever so often to remember how we really got into this mess. Buy it - then compare it to the spin of other "historians" and to what you see as truly happening.

Top Notch, September 8, 2007
By Charles F. Kaiser Jr. "ckaiserjr" (Minnesota)

As with everything Robert Parry attaches his name to, this is a Top Notch and thoroughly researched piece of investigative journalism. Since I agree with the other reviews posted before mine, I'll keep it short and advise you to read all of his other books, as well as direct you to visit his website at http://www.consortiumnews.com.

To order Neck Deep, please visit the publisher's web site at www.neckdeepbook.com.

To review Neck Deep, please visit Amazon.com.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Petraeus & the 'Central Front' Myth

By Robert Parry
September 12, 2007

As Gen. David Petraeus outlined plans for a long-term U.S. military occupation of Iraq, he relied heavily on two arguments favored by his civilian superiors in the Bush administration but not supported by the facts – that al-Qaeda views Iraq as the “central front” in the war on terror and is eager to drive American forces out.

Iraq “has been regarded by al-Qaeda senior leadership – AQSL – as the central front,” Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 11. “They’re trying to give us a bloody nose which would be an enormous shot of adrenaline in the arm of the international jihadists.”

Read on.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Neck Deep: The Real 9/11 Scandal

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
September 11, 2007

During the lazy summer of 2001, relatively few Americans had even heard of al-Qaeda, which in Arabic means “the base.” This organization of Islamic extremists had taken shape during the CIA-supported war against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

In the years of the late Cold War, CIA Director William J. Casey and other anti-Soviet hard-liners viewed Islamic fundamentalism as a tool to pry historically Muslim territories in the southern Soviet Union away from Moscow and its atheistic communist government.

Read on.

Monday, September 10, 2007

'Swear Him In' Provokes Expulsion

By Raymond McGovern
September 10, 2007

“Swear him in.” That’s all I said in the unusual silence this afternoon as first aid was being administered to Gen. David Petraeus’s microphone at the hearing before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

It had dawned on me that when House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Missouri, invited Gen. Petraeus to make his presentation, Skelton forgot to ask him to take the customary oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I had no idea that would be enough to get me thrown out of the hearing.

Read on.

Bush 'Kicking Ass' in Congress

By Robert Parry
September 10, 2007

George W. Bush reportedly told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq, but the pithy tough talk may fit better with what the President is doing to the Democrats in Congress.

To cover their political beating, some Democratic operatives are advising the party’s leadership to claim a measure of victory when Bush and Gen. David Petraeus agree to make a symbolic troop cut – perhaps 5,000 – from the current levels of about 172,000.

Read on.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Bush-Bin Laden Symbiosis Reborn

By Robert Parry
September 8, 2007

Just as Sylvester and Tweety Bird achieved lasting Hollywood fame from their comical cartoon chases, the less amusing duo of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden continue to benefit each other by reviving their long-distance rivalry, one posturing against the other in a way that helps them both.

In a new video, al-Qaeda leader bin Laden again taunts Bush, the United States – and then the Democrats for not forcing an American withdrawal from Iraq, which should help guarantee that the Democrats won’t dare press for a withdrawal from Iraq.

Read on.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Is Petraeus Today's Westmoreland?

By Ray McGovern
September 7, 2007

The killing in Hawijah, Iraq, of 18-year old Corporal Jeremy Shank of Jackson, Missouri (population 12,000) merited an article in his local newspaper, the Southeast Missourian.

Cpl. Shank was killed just over a year ago, on Sept. 6, 2006, and I was in that part of Missouri when his body came home for burial. According to the Pentagon, Shank was on a “dismounted security patrol when he encountered enemy forces using small arms.”

Read on.

Neck Deep reader reviews at Amazon.com

So far, there are two glowing reviews at Amazon.com for our new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush. If you've read the book (or even if you're just familiar with our work at Consortiumnews.com), please feel free to put your two cents in at Amazon as well. Reader reviews really do have a big impact on whether an Amazon customer decides to buy the book, so if you want to kindly help us out with a review, we'd really appreciate it. Or, if you don't have the time, take a second to give the book five stars! (Of course, only if you think we deserve it... ;)


Anyway, in case you're interested, here are the two reviews that have already been posted:


raymond compton "racom" (kennewick, wa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   


If you are also tired of the DC spin then this is the book for you. Written by a team, family team, of honest to goodness investigative reporters who have documented the unbelievably long list of failed decisions, policies, executive orders, etc of this administration. The failures have come so fast, so sudden, so numerous we can hardly keep abreast. I plan to read this book at least once every year to never forget the many issues that the American public has been failed on. From even before 9/11 the problems were being planned. Today the mistakes are still coming at us, now the disaster in Iraq is being pushed aside to make room for the coming disaster in Iran. I recommend this book to all who question why we are where we are. The Parrys,father and sons team, have produced an excellent work in this book. Tired of the mind numbing politics and DC spin, then you'll want this book. Also if you really want to know the reason for Iranian distrust of US check out 'All the Shah's Men'. We have some bloody history!

D. Webster - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

 

Robert Parry's book accurately and, for those who count themselves as lovers of liberty, excruciatingly delineates the deceitful, arrogant, and ironic rise of George W. Bush from military coward and failed businessman to President of the United States, via manipulation and coercion of the highest court in the land. Parry's book goes on to reveal that Bush and his political cronies may well have been able to thwart the horrific events of 9/11 had they not been more concerned with personal power and blinded by their hatred of their political opposition. Once again, irony comes to the forefront, in that Bush is looked upon by the American people as a strong and forceful leader in the wake of 9/11, when Parry shows that his bravado was nothing more than a flimsy facade created by a nervous and fearful media. And then, of course, comes the Iraq war, a war actually being fought for oil, but asking for the sacrifice of thousands of brave American soldiers being told they are fighting terrorism. But perhaps the most unforgivable and egregious act committed by George W. Bush during his reign, and revealed by Parry at great length and in minute detail, is Bush's flagrant and criminal disregard for the Constitution of the United States--in essence, making up his own rules as he sees fit, and interpreting the Constitution to suit his own purposes. Reading this book, I found myself asking the question time and time again, "why are we standing still for this, and not demanding reform?" I've since come to the conclusion that we, the American people, no longer deserve our country, and that we must accept whatever fate our lackadaisical attitude and behavior brings us. I commend and admire Robert Parry for having the courage to bring these sad and disastrous facts to light. At least there's still one real American among us.

NYT's Friedman's Addiction to War

By Norman Solomon
September 7, 2007

Nowadays you'll read the NYT's Thomas Friedman decrying the "madness that is Iraq," but the real Friedman is the man who called invading Iraq "one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad."

Reading his "Letter From Baghdad" column in the New York Times this week, you'd never know that Thomas Friedman has a history of enthusiasm for war.

Read on.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Neck Deep: The Real Colin Powell

By Robert Parry
September 6, 2007

Though Colin Powell is still lying low about his role in palming off the Iraq War on a gullible American public, the retired Army general and former Secretary of State is back on the motivational speaking circuit, again raking in big bucks.

For a day-long “Get Motivated” seminar at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 6, Powell got star billing for a show also boasting names like Zig Ziglar, Steve Forbes, Robert Schuller and Sugar Ray Leonard. Admission price at the door was $225.

Read on.

Questions for General Petraeus

By Brent Budowsky
September 6, 2007

It is fashionable though wrong to state “the surge is working,” but this debate misses the point about the devastation to the United States Army, the destabilization of our global force structures, the near-total destruction of our conventional deterrent capability, the extreme damage to the war in Afghanistan and the collapse of recruitment standards imposed by the status quo policy in Iraq.

When Army Gen. David Petraeus testifies next week, here are the hard questions that the nation deserves to have asked and answered, clearly and unequivocally:

Read on.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Bowing Before an American Tyranny

By Robert Parry
September 6, 2007

The 9/11 tragedy did become a demarcation point for the United States, although not in the way many Americans understand. Before that date six years ago, there existed an American Republic – albeit one in decline – but afterwards a New Age authoritarian state quickly took shape.

Though some defenders of the old Republic rose up, nobody was strong enough to protect it.

Read on.

Buzzflash Interviews Robert Parry

Robert Parry Reporting on the Disastrous Bush Presidency, and the News Media's Helping Hand


You don't have liberty if the leader of the country can lock you up without a trial. You don't have liberty if the leader of the country can ignore the ban in the Bill of Rights against cruel and unusual punishment. These are classic definitions of tyranny.



-- Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush



* * *



Robert Parry is a former AP and Newsweek investigative reporter who now runs the website, Consortiumnews.com. Parry made his reputation reporting on corruption and governmental misdeeds in Central America and Iran-Contra. Now his Consortiumnews is a respected and invaluable online resource exposing the right-wing betrayal of the Constitution and democracy.



Parry's newest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, places the troubling events of the George W. Bush era into the fullest historical context. The book's title references Pete Seeger's anti- Viet Nam war lyric: "We were neck deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool said to push on." Says Parry of the Bush debacle, "It was a perfect storm that has been building for a quarter of a century. Aggressive Republicans, accommodating Democrats, and a press corps driven more by careerism than a search for truth have caused our country to become what the Founders fought against."

Read the full interview here.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

How VIPs Get 'Brainwashed' on Iraq

By Robert Parry
September 4, 2007

When members of Congress – or pundits and journalists, for that matter – are taken on tightly controlled visits to a war zone like Iraq, they undergo what the late Michigan Gov. George Romney famously referred to as “brainwashing.”

Romney said he had undergone a propaganda blitz when he visited Vietnam in 1965, persuading him that military progress was being achieved. Similarly, recent visitors to Iraq have flown home from August-recess trips with first-hand accounts about signs of success for President George W. Bush’s troop “surge.”

Read on.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Warner for 'Caretaker' President?

By Robert Parry
September 2, 2007

A political system that was right-side up – rather than upside down – would be debating the need for a “caretaker” U.S. president, not the identity of the likely “caretaker” senator from Idaho.

While few tears will be shed over the resignation of Larry Craig – for allegedly soliciting sex from an undercover policeman in an airport men’s room – there’s a far stronger case for sequenced resignations from Dick Cheney and George W. Bush over a host of misjudgments and misdeeds.

Read on.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Iraq's Endless 'False Hopes'

By Robert Parry
September 1, 2007

Two-and-a-half years ago at another “turning point” in the Iraq War, columnists at the Washington Post and other leading American newspapers were ecstatic over how the Iraqi national election was finally fulfilling the neoconservative dream of remaking the Muslim world.

Now, however, some of the same columnists who praised the Jan. 30, 2005, election are denouncing it as a failure that must be undone so George W. Bush’s newest “turning point” – the American troop “surge” – can achieve its fullest potential.

Read on.

Last Call: Battle for Empire or Republic

By Robert Parry
August 31, 2007

This fall could be a make-or-break moment for the American Republic: Will the powerful forces that favor an empire abroad and an authoritarian state at home prevail?

Or will the country turn away from George W. Bush’s dark vision and insist instead on a revival of the constitutional Republic that the Founders built for “posterity,” for ours and future generations?

Read on.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Bush Puts Iran in Crosshairs

By Ray McGovern
August 30, 2007

Not another warning about war with Iran! Well, suck it up. President George W. Bush’s speech Tuesday makes clear his plan to attack Iran, and how the intelligence, as was the case before the attack on Iraq, is being “fixed around the policy.”

It’s not about putative Iranian “weapons of mass destruction” — not even ostensibly. It is about the requirement for a scapegoat for U.S. reverses in Iraq, and the felt need to create a casus belli by provoking Iran in such a way as to “justify” armed retaliation — perhaps extending to an attempt to destroy its nuclear-related facilities.

Read on.

Bush and the Carnage in Iraq

By Robert Higgs
August 30, 2007

The headline of an Aug. 22, 2007, article in the New York Times reads, “Citing Vietnam, Bush Warns of Carnage if U.S. Leaves Iraq.” Readers with live brain cells must be stunned by such a warning.

What, exactly, does President Bush imagine is happening every day in Iraq now? Does he envision scenes of social tranquility and cooperative harmony amid the peaceful palms of Mesopotamia?

Read on.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Neck Deep: Drowning Accountability

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
August 29, 2007

On Aug. 27, 2005, as a powerful hurricane named Katrina surged through the Gulf of Mexico and took aim at New Orleans, most Americans still had confidence in their government’s ability to respond to crises and natural disasters with efficiency and speed.

The country prided itself on its ability to rescue people in danger, to dispatch resources, to rebuild after the worst was over.

Read on.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Favorite Memory: Gonzo on Habeas

By Robert Parry
August 28, 2007

Everyone has their favorite memory of departing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: his endless “do not recalls”; his quibbling definitions of torture; his dismissive attitude toward the “quaint” and “obsolete” Geneva Conventions.

But my personal favorite was his insistence that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t expressly recognize habeas corpus, the great fair-trial legal principle of English law that dates back to the Magna Carta in 1215.

Read on.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Army Adds Farce to Abu Ghraib Shame

By Sam Provance (NCO at Abu Ghraib from 9/03 to 2/04)
August 27, 2007

Breaking News: The Army officer in charge of the interrogation/torture operation at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 is being court-martialed. My first thought was: Finally an officer is being held accountable. In view of the repeated rebuff to my own attempts to stop the torture and identify those responsible, however, you will perhaps excuse my skepticism that justice will be done.

An Army intelligence analyst, my job at Abu Ghraib was systems administrator (“the computer guy”). But I had the bad luck to be on the 2000 to 0800 night shift. And so I saw the detainees dragged in for interrogation, heard the screams, and saw many of them dragged out.

Read on.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Neck Deep Secret: Gore Was Right

By Robert Parry
August 27, 2007

Having written several books that span periods of years, I’m often surprised how patterns emerge that aren’t apparent to me in day-to-day news coverage. In Neck Deep, our new book about George W. Bush’s presidency, one of those surprises was how often former Vice President Al Gore turned up making tragically prescient comments.

Gore, whose admirers sometimes call him “the Goracle,” comes across more as a Cassandra, warning the nation of looming disasters and finding himself either ignored or mocked by the dominant politicians and media pundits.

Read on.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Bob Gates on the Iraq War Hot Seat

By Robert Parry
August 24, 2007

Defense Secretary Robert Gates may be confronting the career decision of a lifetime: Should the former CIA director lash himself to the mast with George W. Bush and risk going down with the foundering Iraq War ship or should he look to a post-Bush period and position himself as a Washington wise man?

Now that President Bush has invited comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, a parallel could be drawn between Gates and Clark Clifford, the Defense Secretary who took over the job in March 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War and persuaded President Lyndon Johnson to start down the road toward a negotiated settlement.

Read on.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Bush's Bogus Vietnam History Kills

By Robert Parry
August 23, 2007

It is often said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But a much worse fate may await countries whose leaders distort and falsify history. Such countries are doomed to experience even bloodier miscalculations.

That was the case with Germany after World War I when Adolf Hitler’s Nazis built a political movement based in part on the myth that weak politicians in Berlin had stabbed brave German troops in the back when they were on the verge of victory.

Read on.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Many Democrats Wrong on Iraq, Again

By Brent Budowsky
August 22, 2007

Here is my answer to Kenneth Pollack, Michael O’Hanlon and the latest tragic evasion and spin on the Iraq War currently circulating in high Democratic circles:

The Aug. 22 story in The Washington Post is accurate and fits with what I am hearing privately. Many Democrats are again missing the first principle of the matter and treating Iraq in political and tactical terms.

Read on.

If the Democrats Want to Lose...

By Robert Parry
August 22, 2007

Many national Democrats saw last year’s election as a political turning point. They cheered the voters’ repudiation of a Republican one-party state; they hailed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s ouster the next day; and they were sure that resurgent GOP “realists” would help wind down the Iraq War.

In this Democratic view, George W. Bush was going to be both the lamest of lame ducks and a deadly albatross draped around the neck of the Republican Party in Election 2008. The Democrats believed they could pretty much start measuring their curtains for a move into the White House on Jan. 20, 2009.

Read on.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Bush's New War Drums for Iran

By Ray McGovern
August 21, 2007

It is as though I’m back as an analyst at the CIA, trying to estimate the chances of an attack on Iran. The putative attacker, though, happens to be our own president.

It is precisely the work we analysts used to do. And, while it is still a bit jarring to be turning our analytical tools on the U.S. leadership, it is by no means entirely new. For, of necessity, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been doing that for almost six years now—ever since 9/11, when “everything changed.”

Read on.

Monday, August 20, 2007

NYPD's Homegrown Hysteria

By Nat Parry
August 20, 2007

An influential report by two New York Police Department counterterrorism analysts crosses a dangerous threshold in recasting the “war on terror” as primarily a struggle that requires increased domestic surveillance and pre-emptive action against American Muslims who might become “homegrown terrorists” by visiting Internet sites.

Written by Mitchell Silber and Arvin Bhatt, the Aug. 15 report recommends increased police attention “to identify, pre-empt and thus prevent homegrown terrorist attacks.” The report was promptly hailed in the U.S. news media. (Newsweek called it “insightful.”)

What makes the report troubling to civil libertarians, however, is that it lowers the bar for fighting terrorism to simply the possibility that some domestic Muslims might be influenced by jihadist Web sites, and it applies lax standards to target Americans of a specific religious faith as prospective terrorists.

Read on.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Bush Fails Upward in 'War on Terror'

By Ivan Eland
August 19, 2007

If a restaurant, dry cleaner, or home repair business provided inferior goods or shoddy services, it is likely that the concern would go belly up. Yet when the U.S. government makes a blunder, the more its citizens reward its failure with further money and authority.

For example, after the Bush administration exacerbated the worldwide threat from Islamic terrorists by invading and occupying two Muslim nations, spied on Americans without warrants—which is both illegal and unconstitutional—to “urgently” combat such terrorism, and then saw its Attorney General dissemble about the espionage program, Congress has actually rewarded the administration for its actions.

Read on.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

My Fellow Texan

By Bill Moyers
August 18, 2007

Like the proverbial hedgehog, Karl Rove knew one big thing: how to win elections as if they were divine interventions.

You may think God summoned Billy Graham to Florida on the eve of the 2000 election to endorse George W. Bush just in the nick of time, but if it did happen that way, the Good Lord was speaking in a Texas accent.

Read on.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Rumsfeld's Mysterious Resignation

By Robert Parry
August 17, 2007

The disclosure that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned on Nov. 6, 2006 – the day before the election, not the day after as previously thought – means that he was pushed out of his job the same day he suggested a de-escalation of the Iraq War.

When Rumsfeld’s resignation was announced on Nov. 8, with both his resignation letter and his de-escalation memo still secret, it was widely assumed in Washington political circles that President George W. Bush was reacting to the stinging Republican electoral defeat on Nov. 7 and was appointing Robert Gates as an olive branch to the Democrats.

Read on.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Saudi Arabia's Myth of Moderation

By Barbara Koeppel
August 17, 2007

Almost daily, the Bush administration ratchets up the war-like rhetoric about Iran’s alleged role in destabilizing Iraq. Eerily, like the pre-Iraq War drumbeat, the U.S. press repeats the accusations with little skepticism and Congress marches in lockstep, as a new Middle East villain is marked for punishment.

On Aug. 15, front-page stories in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other leading newspapers described how the Bush administration planned to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a “global terrorist” organization for supporting anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli forces in the Middle East.

Read on.