Bush-Cheney Crony Got Iraq Oil Deal

By Jason Leopold
July 6, 2008

Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s.

Despite those longstanding connections – and Hunt’s work for George W. Bush as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board – the Bush administration expressed surprise when Hunt Oil signed the agreement last September.

Read on.

Palestinian Journalist Abused, Stripped

By Nora Barrows-Friedman and Dennis Bernstein
July 5, 2008

The U.S.-supported occupation violence against Palestine continues unchecked. The failure of major Western politicians and the Big Press to cover the story has given Israel an absolute free hand to prosecute its program of ethnic cleansing.

It is nearly impossible these days to get substantial, unbiased information out on punishing Israeli policies. The few reporters who have chosen to take on the story head-on oftentimes risk their life and their limbs to do their work.

Read on.

The Risk of an Iran War Fireball

By TheRealNews.com
July 4, 2008

The U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the United Nations’ atomic energy commission have both issued warnings about the risks of a military conflict with Iran.

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A Most Radical President

By TheRealNews.com
July 4, 2008

President George W. Bush is again riding roughshod over the U.S. Congress, authorizing a $400 million covert operation against Iran and receiving little but acquiescence, according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

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Bush, Colombia & Narco-Politics

By Andres Cala
July 3, 2008 (Originally published August 8, 2007)

George W. Bush’s strategy of countering Venezuela’s leftist president Hugo Chávez by strengthening ties to Colombia’s rightist government has been undercut by fresh evidence of high-level drug corruption and human rights violations implicating President Alvaro Uribe’s inner circle.

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McCain Pushes Colombia Trade Pact

By TheRealNews.com
July 3, 2008

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, on a visit to Colombia with top supporters Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, is a strong supporter of a proposed free trade agreement between the US and Colombia and planned to promote it during his visit.

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What Patriotism Is, and Is Not

By Michael Winship
July 3, 2008

At the beginning of the week, a friend sent me a scurrilous, anonymous e-mail attacking Barack Obama that has been circulating around her elderly cousin’s Jewish senior living community in New Jersey.

Headlined “Something to Think About,” it lists 13 acts of assassination, kidnapping, war and terrorism, all of which, it notes, were committed “by Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 40.”

Read on.

Manufacturing Consent on Iran

By TheRealNews.com
July 3, 2008

Seymour Hersh writing in The New Yorker notes that a Gallup poll taken last November found that 73 percent of those surveyed thought that the United States should use economic action and diplomacy to stop Iran’s nuclear program, while only 18 percent favored direct military action.

Read on.

Iraq Oil Deals Fulfill Cheney's Goals

By Jason Leopold
July 2, 2008

Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain “a prisoner of its energy dilemma” as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

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Bush's 'Wonderland' Logic

By Robert Parry
July 2, 2008

The first Guantanamo Bay “enemy combatant” review case to go before a federal appeals court has offered a peek down the rabbit hole of capricious irrationality that underlies George W. Bush’s “war on terror.”

The rabbit-hole analogy follows a three-judge panel comparing the Bush administration’s assertion of “evidence” to the writings of Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

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Bush Expands Covert War on Iran

By TheRealNews.com
July 1, 2008

In an article in The New Yorker, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh writes that President George W. Bush issued a "presidential finding" for a covert operation against Iran that could spend up to $400 million, and that top Democrats were informed.

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Pakistan Moves on Militant Strongholds

By TheRealNews.com
July 1, 2008

In its first major military offensive, Pakistan’s newly elected government deployed 700 frontier corps troops late last week, to combat armed fighters of the Lashkar e-Islam group in the Northwest Frontier Province.

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Fundraiser Off to a Slow Start

By Robert Parry
June 30, 2008

Our mid-year fundraiser is off to a slow start. So far we’ve raised only $2,000 toward our goal of $40,000.

I realize times are tough – and there are plenty of financial demands on everyone – but sadly a big part of the reason for the mess we’re in is that the American people were not armed with the information they needed to make sound judgments at key moments.

Simply put, those of us who tried to tell the truth were out-gunned by powerful interests who had the money to spread lies and propaganda.

Read on.

Iran-Contra's 'Lost Chapter'

By Robert Parry
June 30, 2008

As historians ponder George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency, they may wonder how Republicans perfected a propaganda system that could fool tens of millions of Americans, intimidate Democrats, and transform the vaunted Washington press corps from watchdogs to lapdogs.

To understand this extraordinary development, historians might want to look back at the 1980s and examine the Iran-Contra scandal’s “lost chapter,” a narrative describing how Ronald Reagan’s administration brought CIA tactics to bear domestically to reshape the way Americans perceived the world.

Read on.