Thursday, March 22, 2007

WPost Prints New Wilson/Plame Attack

By Robert Parry
Marcn 22, 2007

Rather than fire Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt or at least apologize for all the newspaper’s past misstatements about former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, ex-CIA officer Valerie Plame, the Post instead has published a rehash of the lies and distortions about the couple.

This new attack is contained in a column by right-wing pundit Robert D. Novak, who originally blew Plame’s CIA cover in July 2003 and has sought to add insult to the injury ever since. Some of Novak’s past falsehoods about Wilson/Plame also have found their way into Post editorials, apparently without benefit of fact-checking.

Read on.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

U.S. News Media's 'War on Gore'

By Robert Parry
March 22, 2007

When historians sort out what happened to the United States at the start of the 21st Century, one of the mysteries may be why the national press corps ganged up like school-yard bullies against a well-qualified Democratic presidential candidate while giving his dimwitted Republican opponent virtually a free pass.

How could major news organizations, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, have behaved so irresponsibly as to spread falsehoods and exaggerations to tear down then-Vice President Al Gore – ironically while the newspapers were berating him for supposedly lying and exaggerating?

Read on.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Republican RICO-Style Abuse of Power

By Stephen Crockett
March 21, 2007

There is nothing as corrupt as using the governmental powers of law enforcement, to selectively prosecute your political enemies and to cover-up criminal behavior by your political organization and allies, while in a position of political power. This situation is the essence of the current scandal concerning the firing of U.S. Attorneys by the Bush White House.

The Watergate scandal should have taught the Republican Party that this kind of abuse is outside the bounds of acceptable political behavior in American society. Republican activists failed to learn the lessons of Watergate and are now reliving history on issue after issue.

Read on.

Monday, March 19, 2007

The Terrorists-Follow-Us-Home Myth

By Ivan Eland
March 20, 2007

The Bush administration, desperate for justifications to buy a little more time with the American people for its failed adventure in Iraq, markets the idea that if the United States rapidly withdraws from Iraq, the “terrorists will follow us home.”

A closer examination of this assertion—like the rest of the administration’s fear mongering—demonstrates it is baseless.

Read on.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Iraq & Washington's Systemic Failure

By Robert Parry
March 19, 2007

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney may deserve the most blame for the Iraq War, but a core reality shouldn’t be missed: the four-year-old conflict resulted from a systemic failure in Washington – from the White House, to congressional Republicans and Democrats, to an insular national news media, to Inside-the-Beltway think tanks.

It was a perfect storm that had been building for more than a quarter century, a collision of mutually reinforcing elements: aggressive Republicans, triangulating Democrats, careerist journalists, bullying cable-TV and talk-radio pundits, aggressive and well-funded think tanks on the Right versus ineffectual and marginalized groups on the Left.

Read on.