Saturday, June 09, 2007

Thompson Courts the Right-Wing Base

By Richard L. Fricker
June 9, 2007

Timothy Griffin, the Karl Rove protégé at the center of the federal prosecutor scandal, is negotiating for a senior position on Fred Thompson’s Republican presidential campaign, another sign that the actor and former senator is positioning himself as the reddest of red-meat candidates appealing to the right-wing base.

A litmus test among devoted followers of George W. Bush remains an instinctive rejection of all scandals considered important by liberals, from the deceptive intelligence behind the Iraq War to the torture of terror suspects to the exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the politicization of the U.S. Attorneys.

Read on.

Friday, June 08, 2007

GOP/Media Rewrite Iraq War History

By Robert Parry
June 8, 2007

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and radio personality Jay Diamond are right to wonder why Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney got away with rewriting a key chapter of the Iraq War history without political reporters raising a peep.

At the June 5 Republican debate, co-sponsored by CNN, Romney defended George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003 on the grounds that Saddam Hussein refused to let United Nations weapons inspectors in to search for WMD.

Read on.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Iraq Parallels Vietnam, Not Korea

By Ivan Eland
June 7, 2007

The Bush administration has decided its new model for a long-term solution in Iraq is Korea. It’s an attempt to stifle the inevitable comparisons of the Iraq quagmire to Vietnam and a way to justify the eventual reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq (to take the heat off of Republican candidates in the 2008 elections), while retaining a substantial U.S. military presence by establishing three or four long-term major military bases.

The plan would ultimately be a disaster for the United States.

Read on.

Last Plamegate Worry for Bush/Cheney

By Robert Parry
June 6, 2007

It’s a well-worn talking point for George W. Bush’s supporters to say there was no underlying crime beneath former White House aide I. Lewis Libby’s conviction for obstructing justice, a debatable point itself. But the evidence is clear there was a larger cover-up conspiracy – and it could still unravel.

The problem for prosecutors has been that the cover-up conspiracy involves the top two executive officers of the U.S. government, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, meaning that the standards of proof required and concerns over the nation’s well-being if charges were brought have risen to near prohibitive levels.

Read on.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

The New Assault on Al Gore

By Robert Parry
June 5, 2007

An irony about Al Gore’s new book, The Assault on Reason, is that the former Vice President blames TV much more than the print media for America’s drift into the world of the irrational.

Yet, while author Gore has encountered mostly respectful interviews on TV, his book has been savaged by major newspapers and print reviewers, often distorting the contents and resurrecting one of the favorite press themes of Campaign 2000, that Gore is an obnoxious pedant.

Read on.