Senate Hits Bush, Cheney on Iraq Intel

By Jason Leopold
June 5, 2008

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney knowingly lied to Congress and the public about the threat that Iraq posed to the United States in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, according to a long-awaited report from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Separately, a second report said former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld set up an intelligence office within the Defense Department known as the Office of Special Plans "without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department" to promote alleged links between Iraq and al-Qaeda and cooked intelligence about Iraq's weapons cache.

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RFK's Death & the Hope of the Young

By Robert Parry
June 5, 2008

The 40th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination may be a fitting time to recall how young Americans in an earlier generation ended up alienated from their parents, much as this year’s battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has created its own generational divide.

Before June 5, 1968, it seemed possible that RFK’s anti-war candidacy might overcome the Democratic establishment’s choice of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, thus opening a path for ending the Vietnam War and rekindling the embers of American idealism.

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National Debt Erodes Public Trust

By Andrew L. Yarrow
June 5, 2008

America’s $9.3-trillion-and-growing national debt rightly has been blamed for many economic ills that lurk on our nation’s horizon, but it also had the stealth effect of further eroding Americans’ waning belief in the benefits, efficacy and trustworthiness of government.

Many other, oft-mentioned factors – Vietnam, Watergate, anti-government rhetoric, and a 24/7 cycle of Washington scandals and blunders – have played a huge role in turning post-World War II pride in our government to present-day disdain for it.

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Olmert Urgers Harder Line on Iran

By TheRealNews.com
June 5, 2008

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert calls for a united global front against Iran.

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McCain at AIPAC: Drumbeats of War?

By TheRealNews.com
June 4, 2008

When presumptive Republican nominee John McCain took the podium on June 2 on the first day of the national conference for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, his diction shadowed an all-too familiar rhetoric: "Tehran's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons poses an unacceptable risk, a danger we cannot allow."

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Libby Links Cheney to Plame Leak

By Jason Leopold
June 4, 2008

FBI documents obtained by a congressional committee indicate that Vice President Dick Cheney may have authorized his former deputy to leak the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

In a June 3 letter sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Rep. Henry Waxman, Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called on the Justice Department to release transcripts of interviews that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald conducted with President George W. Bush and Cheney about the leak of Plame's identity.

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Australia Bolts Iraq Over Bush's Lies

By Ray McGovern
June 3, 2008

Matilda is walzing home from Iraq, and the Australians are lucky but chastened.

Lucky for having lost not one soldier in combat of the 2,000 sent to join the “coalition of the willing” attack on Iraq in March 2003.

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Politics of Murder and the 'A' Word

By William Loren Katz
June 3, 2008

Republican Governor Mike Huckabee at the American Rifle Association heard a backstage noise and joked that it was Senator Obama diving to the floor to avoid gunfire.

A week later came some imitators: Senator Clinton underscored her point that one never knows whether one's luck might take a fortuitous turn, by citing Robert Kennedy's assassination in June 1968, just two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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US Balks at Cluster Bomb Pact

By TheRealNews.com
June 3, 2008

Cluster bombs are literally hell from above. Anyone who has seen the effects of cluster carpet bombing on innocent civilians - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and in the 60s and 70s in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam - cannot help but be horrified.

A cluster bomb is a canister that opens in mid-air and ejects hundreds of "bomb-lets" across an area of more or less two football fields. These bomb-lets are little metal balls - as powerful as a hand grenade.

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The Lobbyist Whom McCain Won't Fire

By Jason Leopold
June 2, 2008

John McCain has been purging lobbyists from his campaign trying to reclaim the mantle of political reformer, but there’s one lobbyist whose role as a key economic adviser makes him almost untouchable despite ties to the sub-prime debacle, links to the Enron disaster and alleged evasion of ethics rules.

Former Sen. Phil Gramm, who was listed as a lobbyist for banking giant UBS as recently as December 2007, has emerged as what Fortune magazine calls “McCain’s econ brain,” filling McCain’s acknowledged void on economic expertise (“I don’t know as much about the economy as I should”).

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Bush Replays Iraq Games on Iran

By Ray McGovern
June 1, 2008

Stop! Please. Get beneath the hype over former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. Don’t miss forest for trees.

Not since John Dean told the truth about President Richard Nixon’s crimes have we had an account by a very close aide to a sitting president charging him with crimes of the most serious kind.

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