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Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction.
But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom turns out to be....the bottom line. It is about oil.
Mixing haughty disdain with semantic quibbling, two key legal architects behind George W. Bush’s “war on terror” tactics brushed aside congressional questions about how the administration fashioned its harsh interrogation policies that human rights experts say crossed the line into torture.
Former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington also downplayed their roles in formulating the theories of presidential power that gave Bush wide latitude to order that detainees be subjected to painful treatment to break them down.
All over the world down through history, political leaders who have engaged in torture and other grotesque crimes of state have justified their actions as necessary to protect their governments or their people or themselves.
It was true when England’s King Edward I had William Wallace – “Braveheart” – drawn and quartered in 1305 for resisting the crown’s rule in Scotland, and a gruesome death was what King George III foresaw for America’s Founding Fathers in 1776 when they stood up to his abuses in the Colonies.
Read on.America should mobilize to mass-produce, within five years, a “patriot car” that achieves 100 miles per gallon or runs on entirely gasoline-free fuels.
The next president should issue a call to action and a moon shot-magnitude program to enlist all Americans to a new generation of technology, science and research leadership, similar to JFK reaching the moon within a decade.
Campaign 2008 could well be the hinge that swings open the door to the future of the American Republic – and arguably to the survival of the planet – or it may slam the door shut. (To do the work necessary to cover this historic election, we at Consortiumnews.com need your help.)
While the choice between Barack Obama and John McCain is surely not a perfect one – both candidates have weaknesses and strengths – they nevertheless represent clear choices on crucial questions about how a Republic must function and how America should approach the world.
If the United States does not act soon to address health-care costs, federal and state governments as well as American businesses could face a cascading fiscal crisis with devastating long-term consequences, says a new report by the Government Accountability Office.
In the report entitled, “Long Term Federal Fiscal Challenge Driven Primarily by Health Care,” the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said an immediate “multi-pronged solution” must be pursued before the “window of opportunity” to address the issue closes.
Barack Obama’s decision to opt out of federal campaign financing has riled newspaper editorialists, TV pundits and even some progressives who view regulating “money in politics” as the silver bullet to kill the special-interest domination of Washington.
But the fury over Obama’s choice to rely on his Internet-based small donors – rather than take nearly $85 million in federal funding – misses a difficult truth that may be especially heretical on the Left: campaign-finance reform has been, by and large, a failure.
There was real emotion in his voice when ABC News anchor Charles Gibson used Friday night’s newscast to stand up for little-guy McCain against online-fundraising-powerhouse Barack Obama.
By opting out of public financing, Gibson intoned, the Democrat could obtain “two times, three times, four times, as much money as John McCain.”
