Bush's Iraq War Double-Speak

By Ivan Eland
April 12, 2008

Some things never change. In a continuation of the Bush administration’s Orwellian double-speak on the Iraq War, President Bush recently gave an upbeat speech in Dayton, Ohio, extolling the progress in Iraq and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s military offensive in the southern oil port of Basra against “criminal” elements.

Strangely, as violence erupted in many cities across the country in response to Maliki’s offensive, the president claimed that “normalcy is returning back to Iraq.”Yet the widespread violence belied the “security gains” of the U.S. troop surge.

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Iraq War 'Blank Check' Balloons

By Jason Leopold
April 11, 2008

Besides demanding Iraq War money with no withdrawal timetables attached, the Bush administration has insisted on another kind of “blank check” – war spending that has more than doubled in four years while evading serious congressional oversight because it’s wrapped in “emergency” appropriations bills – a study says.

The Congressional Research Service reported that the average monthly costs to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached about $12.3 billion, $10 billion for Iraq alone, more than double what it cost to fund the war in 2004.

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The Very Annoying Washington Post

By Robert Parry
April 11, 2008

One of the many annoyances about living in George W. Bush’s Washington is to read the commentaries about the Iraq War on the editorial pages of the Washington Post. Possibly never in modern times has a major newspaper been more wrong, more consistently with more arrogance than has the Post on this vital issue.

Beyond getting almost nothing right – from the Post’s certitude over Iraq’s WMD to its reverence for Colin Powell’s U.N. testimony to its excitement over the purple-ink elections to its enthusiasm over whatever latest corner has been turned – the Post also has this obnoxious tendency to mock Americans who don’t share the paper’s wisdom.

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Yoo's on First?

By Ray McGovern
April 10, 2008

Is it because John Yoo, the former Justice Department's hired hand, is such an easy target? Is it because of the cheeky, in-your-face way in which Yoo argues that the president has the authority to have your eyes poked out and your sons' testicles crushed, because we are "at war" and he is commander in chief?

Or is it because our press is STILL reluctant to go after Yoo's guys – first and foremost his ultimate client – President George W. Bush? Oh, but that would be hard, you say.

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Dems Shy Away from Iraq Money Fight

By Jason Leopold
April 9, 2008

Despite posing some tougher-than-usual questions at hearings on George W. Bush’s open-ended Iraq War strategy, congressional Democrats have signaled they will give the President $100 billion more in war spending without insisting on timetables for bringing U.S. troops home.

Democratic leaders, who vowed in 2006 and 2007 to deny Bush any more “blank checks” for the war, now concede that a new supplemental war appropriation bill will almost surely pass without any meaningful constraints on Bush’s war policies.

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Taking the Incentive Out of War

By Ivan Eland
April 9, 2008

During the early days of the Clinton administration, Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cringed when Madeleine Albright implied that because the United States had such a big, beautiful military, it should be willing to use it promiscuously overseas.

After the debacle in Iraq, the growing group of those who desire a more restrained foreign policy—liberals, conservatives, libertarians and independents—should still be cringing.

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Bush, Petraeus and an Endless War

By Brent Budowsky
April 8, 2008

Our matinee idol general of the day, whatever his virtues and vices, is now the commander in chief of the war without end, which the new Congress, elected to end it, continues.

We now have a president who dresses up like a soldier, in costume, and a general who now assumes the role of president, and a Congress that now looks like the character in the movie “Zelig,” popping up as a bit player during great events.

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Losing the War for Reality

By Robert Parry
April 8, 2008

When future historians look back at the sharp decline of the United States in the early 21st Century, they might identify the Achilles heel of this seemingly omnipotent nation as its lost ability to recognize reality and to fashion policies to face the real world.

Like the legendary Greek warrior – whose sea-nymph mother dipped him in protective waters except for his heel – the United States was blessed with institutional safeguards devised by wise Founders who translated lessons from the Age of Reason into a brilliant constitutional framework of checks and balances.

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Why We Deserve Your Help

By Robert Parry
April 7, 2008

We know that times are tough and there are plenty of worthy causes deserving of your financial support. So why help us at Consortiumnews.com? A fair question – and here’s our answer:

We’ve been in the fight for honest journalism for a long time. Our Internet operation started in 1995, the infancy of the modern Internet.

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Yoo's Memo HInts at Bush's Secrets

By Jason Leopold
April 6, 2008

The Pentagon’s declassification of a five-year-old memo authorizing military interrogators to use brutal methods to extract information from prisoners at Guantanamo Bay sheds new light into the dark corners of the Bush administration’s legal theories that put the President and his subordinates beyond domestic and international law.

In the March 14, 2003, memo – which was released this past week – administration lawyer John Yoo cited the principle of national “self-defense” in combating terrorism as grounds for justifying harsh treatment of detainees up to and including death.

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