Has Obama Moved Right on Israel?

By TheRealNews.com
June 6, 2008

In his speech to AIPAC, Sen. Barack Obama tilted to the right on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, blurring past policy differences with President George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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."

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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”).

Read on.

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.

Read on.

McClellan and the Media 'Enablers'

By Jeff Cohen
May 31, 2008

No sooner had Bush’s ex-press secretary (now author) Scott McClellan accused President Bush and his other former collaborators of misleading our country into Iraq than the squeals of protest turned into a mighty roar.

I’m not talking about the vitriol directed at him by former White House colleagues like Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer. I’m talking about McClellan’s other erstwhile war collaborators: the movers and shakers in corporate media.

Read on.

Carter Blasted for Citing Israeli Nukes

By TheRealNews.com
May 31, 2008

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has again come under fire in the U.S. mainstream media, since publicly saying that Israel has 150 or more nuclear weapons in its arsenal.

Details about Israel's nuclear weapons program started emerging in 1986. International nuclear experts now believe that Israel maintains a cache of between 100 and 300 nuclear weapons, though Israel, backed by the U.S., maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity.

Read on.

'The Matrix' Creators Meet Speed Racer

By Lisa Pease
May 30, 2008

I grew up watching the after school cartoons of Speed Racer, Marine Boy, and Kimba.

While I wished I had a pet like Kimba, and remembered shooting off my imaginary aqua boots ala Marine Boy on the playground, I think I loved Speed Racer the most because I loved to travel, and his races always traversed long distances and exotic locations.

Read on.

Olmert Faces Fallout from Scandal

By TheRealNews.com
May 30, 2008

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he would use his considerable power to topple the coalition government if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert does not step aside to face corruption allegations.

Although Barak stopped short of setting a firm deadline, his comments make it extremely difficult for Olmert to stay in power. If Barak's Labor Party withdraws from the coalition, Olmert would lose his parliamentary majority and the country would be forced to hold new elections.

Read on.

George Bush, At Sea in the Desert

By Michael Winship
May 30, 2008

President Bush’s recent speech before the Knesset, ostensibly to celebrate Israel’s 60th birthday, was not only a display of political cynicism at its worst – using a diplomatic occasion to perpetrate an unseemly attack on Barack Obama – but a microcosm for the disregard with which the President holds the rest of the world. And vice versa.

Events in the Middle East over the last two weeks are all the proof you need. Here’s what the President said: "Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Read on.

McClellan Suggests Plame Cover-up

By Jason Leopold
May 29, 2008

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan says George W. Bush’s political guru Karl Rove arranged a private meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in 2005 when the two men were under mounting suspicion for leaking the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

Calling the scene “one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” McClellan writes in his new memoir that “in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, [the meeting] sticks vividly in my mind. …

Read on.

Surprise, Surprise: Bush Lied

By Robert Parry
May 28, 2008

Some may view ex-White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s new book as vindication for those who took grief – accused of “derangement,” “treason” and a bunch of less-printable things – for calling George W. Bush a liar over the past eight years.

But the more troubling point is that there has been little improvement in the Washington political/media structure that failed to call Bush out on his lies in a timely fashion.

Read on.

GOP Contender Linked to Attorney Firing

By Jason Leopold
May 28, 2008

Though virtually unknown outside the Albuquerque area, Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White is betting that his conservative credentials and close ties to the White House will help Republicans retain the hotly contested New Mexico congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Heather Wilson.

Wilson, in turn, is campaigning hard for the Senate seat that Republican Pete Domenici has held for 36 years in a race that could go a long way toward determining whether Democrats expand their narrow control of the U.S. Senate.

But all three of these Republicans – Domenici, Wilson and White – have something else in common: They all were implicated in the firing of New Mexico’s U.S. Attorney David Iglesias as part of the White House-driven federal prosecutor purge in 2006.

Read on.

What's Wrong with Oklahoma?

By Richard L. Fricker
May 28, 2008

Democrats – divided into warring camps behind Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – might want to take a look at Oklahoma to see what the future could hold if their party fails to unite, letting right-wing evangelicals and neoconservatives have their way.

The Republican-dominated Oklahoma legislature is defining the frontier of xenophobic immigration laws, anti-Muslim bigotry, gay bashing and encouragement of gun-toting students – with Democratic legislators often too timid to resist.

Read on.

Remembering Sydney Pollack

By Lisa Pease
May 27, 2008

Sydney Pollack has died of cancer at 73. If you don't know his name, you should, as he's responsible for some of the best films from the last 40 years.

Pollack was a film director par excellence, a name you could take to the bank. If he was involved, you knew the film would be compelling, and possibly an award winner.

Read on.

End of the Bush-Clinton Era?

By Robert Parry
May 25, 2008

Hillary Clinton’s comment, referencing Robert Kennedy’s 1968 assassination to explain why she’s continuing her campaign, may serve as a crass punctuation point for the end of a grim period in American history, the Bush-Clinton era.

This period – roughly marked by George H.W. Bush’s rise as Vice President and then President from 1981 to 1993, Bill Clinton’s embattled two terms, and then eight years under George W. Bush – represented an extraordinary period of lost opportunities for the nation as its global power peaked and began a rapid descent.

Read on.

Hillary's Shark-Jumping Moment

By Lisa Pease
May 24, 2008

Okay. I am SO DONE with the Clintons.

I was no fan of theirs during their administration. And Hillary Clinton has run one of the most negative campaigns in modern history against Barack Obama, who, by contrast, has managed to stay, rather miraculously, above the fray.

Read on.

Taking a Toll of War on Memorial Day

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
May 24, 2008

We honor our war dead this Memorial Day weekend. The greatest respect we could pay them would be to pledge no more wars for erroneous and misleading reasons; no more killing and wounding except for the defense of our country and our freedoms.

We also could honor our dead by caring for the living, and do better at it than we are right now.

Read on.

Rove Protégé to Dig for Dirt on Obama

By Jason Leopold
May 23, 2008

Timothy Griffin, a central figure in the U.S. Attorney scandal and a protégé of Republican political guru Karl Rove, reportedly has been hired to dig up dirt on likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

FirstRead, a political Web site of NBC News, cited a Republican source as confirming that Griffin was being brought onboard by the Republican National Committee to handle opposition research on Obama.

Read on.

Bush's 'War Crimes' and Misdemeanors

By Robert Parry
May 22, 2008

Facing a tough reelection fight in 2004, George W. Bush expressed outrage over leaked photos showing U.S. military police at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison abusing detainees, who were paraded naked before female guards, threatened by attack dogs, chained in “stress positions” and forced to wear ladies underpants on their heads.

President Bush assured the American people that he “shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated.” Other administration officials pinned the blame on a “few bad apples” and dismissed the prison guards’ claim that they were told to “soften up” the detainees for interrogation.

Read on.

Bush's Endless Hypocrisy on Terror

By Robert Parry
May 21, 2008

Is a government guilty of terrorism if it harbors known terrorists? What should one say about a country that permits open fund-raising on behalf of a terrorist implicated in the mass killing of civilians?

What about a government that secretly arms a guerrilla army that wantonly kills and abuses civilians while seeking to overthrow an elected government?

Read on.

An Appeal to Admiral Fallon on Iran

By Ray McGovern
May 19, 2008

Dear Admiral Fallon,

I have not been able to find out how to reach you directly, so I drafted this letter in the hope it will be brought to your attention.

First, thank you for honoring the oath we commissioned officers take to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. At the same time, you have let it be known that you do not intend to speak, on or off the record, about Iran.

But our oath has no expiration date. While you are acutely aware of the dangers of attacking Iran, you seem to be allowing an inbred reluctance to challenge the commander in chief to trump that oath, and to prevent you from letting the American people know of the catastrophe about to befall us if, as seems likely, our country attacks Iran.

Read on.

McCain Defends 'Enron Loophole'

By Jason Leopold
May 19, 2008

Sen. John McCain says he opposes the $307 billion farm bill because it would dole out wasteful subsidies, but his chief economic adviser Phil Gramm also wants to stop its proposed regulation of energy futures trading, a market that was famously abused when Enron Corp. manipulated California’s electricity prices in 2001.

Clearing the way for that California price gouging, Gramm, as a powerful Texas senator in 2000, slipped an Enron-backed provision into the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that exempted from regulation energy trading on electronic platforms.

Read on.

The Bush's and Hitler's Appeasement

By Robert Parry
May 18, 2008

The irony of George W. Bush going before the Knesset and mocking the late Sen. William Borah for expressing surprise at Adolf Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland is that Bush’s own family played a much bigger role assisting the Nazis.

If Borah, an isolationist Republican from Idaho, sounded naïve saying “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided,” then what should be said about Bush’s grandfather and other members of his family providing banking and industrial assistance to the Nazis as they built their war machine in the 1930s?

Read on.

Danger: Tough Talk & Wishful Thinking

By Robert Parry
May 16, 2008

If the American people should have learned one lesson from the past seven years, it is that the careless mix of tough talk and wishful thinking gets good people killed – and pushes even powerful nations to the brink of bankruptcy.

Yet, the current and possibly future Republican presidents combined these two dangerous elements on the same day: George W. Bush eschewing “appeasement” in the Middle East and John McCain offering a dreamy image of military victory in Iraq by 2013.

Read on.

Bush's Iraq War Harms US Security

By Charles V. Pena
May 15, 2008

More than five years after the decision to invade Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein and impose democracy, nearly 160,000 U.S. soldiers remain there.

Despite the war’s growing unpopularity with Americans, President Bush is adamant about not setting an “artificial deadline” for withdrawing troops.

Read on.

Torture Policy Undermines 9/11 Case

By Jason Leopold
May 15, 2008

The Pentagon’s decision to drop war-crimes charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged “20th hijacker” in the 9/11 attacks, again underscores the consequences of the Bush administration’s descent into torture and other abusive treatment of “war on terror” detainees.

If al-Qahtani’s case had gone forward, the U.S. government would have been forced to reveal its own violations of the Geneva Convention, anti-torture statutes and the laws of war, according to lawyers representing al-Qahtani.

Read on.

Politicizing Burma's Tragedy

By Ivan Eland
May 14, 2008

From the administration that used the 9/11 tragedy to violently pursue an unrelated vendetta against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, we get Round Two.

After a cyclone devastated portions of Burma (which the despotic Burmese government has renamed Myanmar) and killed an estimated 100,000 people, instead of concentrating on providing relief, the Bush administration couldn’t resist scoring points on First Lady Laura Bush’s pet issue—the tyranny of the Burmese military junta.

Read on.

Bush Operative Pushes Voter-ID Law

By Jason Leopold
May 14, 2008

A senior legal adviser to the Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection campaign is working behind the scenes to help enact a Missouri state constitutional amendment that critics say would suppress the vote in the key battleground state this November by requiring voters to show proof of citizenship.

Mark “Thor” Hearne, Bush-Cheney’s national counsel in 2004 and now a partner in the St. Louis, Missouri, firm of Lathrop & Gage, has been collaborating with Missouri’s Republican state Rep. Stanley Cox, the sponsor of the constitutional amendment,Cox’s office confirmed this week.

Read on.

Bush's Worst Lie

By Jay Diamond
May 13, 2008

Jimmy Carter has written a post on the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog entitled "Presidents Should Not Be Liars."

Carter states: “I do not think the President of the United States should be a liar, and believe that the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens agree with me. For security reasons, the whole truth cannot always be revealed, but it is quite obvious that lies are seldom made to protect our nation. Almost invariably, the political fortunes of the prevaricator are at stake.”

Read on.

McCain and the 'Unitary Executive'

By Robert Parry
May 13, 2008

If John McCain wins the presidency – and gets to appoint one or more U.S. Supreme Court justices – America’s 220-year experiment as a democratic Republic living under the principle that “no man is above the law” may come to an end.

To put the matter differently, if a President McCain replaces one of the moderate justices with another Samuel Alito – as McCain has vowed to do – then Justice Department lawyer John Yoo’s extreme vision of an all-powerful Executive could well become the new law of the land.

Read on.

Lost E-Mails Obscure 'Plame-gate'

By Jason Leopold
May 9, 2008

Earlier this week, the White House disclosed that it could not recover lost e-mails from emergency backup tapes for the period covering the invasion of Iraq and the U.S. failure to find Iraq’s alleged WMD.

This new gap – from March 1, 2003, to May 23, 2003 – also may have wiped out evidence of how George W. Bush and his top aides reacted to the emerging criticism from former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson that the White House had sold the war using false claims about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger in Africa.

Read on.

The Night the Old Politics Died

By Brent Budowsky
May 7, 2008

The old politics died on May 6, 2008 as the predictable and inevitable happened and the voters said no to business as usual.

The voters said no to the most phony and fraudulent proposal in memory for a gas tax cut that would never happen, that would profit the oil companies that Senator Clinton falsely said she was fighting with it, that would do nothing for the people she falsely claimed she was helping with it.

Read on.

Executive or Imperial Branch?

By Ivan Eland
May 7, 2008

More memos recently have surfaced that were written early in the Bush administration by John C. Yoo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel -- the man who gave us the administration's horrifyingly narrow definition of torture.

As difficult as it is to believe, the recently released memos are even scarier than the original torture memo.

Read on.

US Media Trivializes Campaign 2008

By Robert Parry
May 6, 2008

Every four years, during U.S. presidential elections, the same thing happens, except it’s always a little bit different.

Some clever political operative injects “oppo” into the campaign – some little “scandal” that supposedly speaks to the “character” of a candidate – and the press corps obsesses on this marginal issue nearly to the exclusion of all substantive matters.

Read on.

Reflections on Israel's 60th

By Rabbi Michael Lerner
May 5, 2008

When I was a child, Zionism was the national liberation struggle of the Jewish people.

While the United States and all other countries -- including the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist countries -- closed their doors to Jews seeking refuge from the murder of millions of Jews by the fascists, and while the Palestinian people's leadership used their influence with the British to ensure that Jews would not be able to settle in our ancient homeland both during and immediately after the Second World War as hundreds of thousands of survivors languished in displaced persons' camps in Europe, the Zionist movement championed the need for a state of the Jewish people with its own army and its own territory.

Read on.

The Clintons and the 'War on Obama'

By Robert Parry
May 4, 2008

Last December, when I first learned via Clinton insiders that their “oppo” package would include Barack Obama’s associations with fiery black preacher Jeremiah Wright and Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers, I shrugged at what sounded to me like sub-standard fare from the dark side of American politics.

So what if someone’s minister said some stupid things or that an aging one-time student radical had lent some support to a politician’s campaign, I thought.

Read on.

Hillary's 'Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy'

By Brent Budowsky
May 3, 2008

Even a creative Hollywood producer couldn't have conjured up a film in which Bill and Hillary Clinton would pursue the tactics of personal destruction against a Democrat in full-throated alliance with the vast right-wing conspiracy!

Wonder why Clinton confidant Terry McAuliffe sings the praises of Fox News with the hilarious compliment that they are the most fair of the cable networks?

Read on.

'Beware the Terrible Simplifiers'

By Bill Moyers
May 3, 2008

I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam: “Who’s telling the truth over there?”

“Everyone,” he said. “Everyone sees what’s happening through the lens of their own experience.”

Read on.

Sending Felons Off to War

By Ivan Eland
May 2, 2008

Enmeshed in two military occupations that have turned into well-publicized quagmires, the Army and Marines are understandably having trouble enlisting new recruits. Their answer: vastly increase the number of convicted felons and other societal miscreants accepted into their ranks.

According to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, from 2006 to 2007 the Army more than doubled its felonious recruits and the Marine Corps increased its share by more than two-thirds.

Read on.

The Right's America-Hating Preacher

By Robert Parry
May 2, 2008

One of the advantages that the American Right has achieved from investing tens of billions of dollars in media – from talk radio and cable TV, to print and the Internet – is the ability to define what is and what isn’t a “scandal,” a powerful factor in determining who wins national elections.

By comparison, American progressives have short-changed their own investments in media. The disparity leads to the spectacle of Democratic presidential candidates submitting to questioning on Fox News while no one would expect a Republican leader to undergo interrogation from, say, the DailyKos.

Read on.

Reagan's Bargain/Charlie Wilson's War

By Peter W. Dickson
May 1, 2008

What’s left out of a movie about history often interests only a few experts in the field. However, the recent release of one that chronicles the successful sub rosa American effort to bleed the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s may prove to be an exception.

“Charlie Wilson’s War,” which stars Tom Hanks, tells the story of a hard-drinking, womanizing Texas congressman who nudged Congress and the Reagan administration to give more arms, especially high-tech Stinger missiles, to shoot down Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Read on.

Abu Ghraib Film Obscures Truth

By Sam Provance
April 30, 2008

Representatives for film director Errol Morris told me during pre-production that “Standard Operating Procedure” would be the very best documentary on the abuses of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib – the one that would tell the whole truth.

I had pinned great hope on that. It didn’t turn out that way.

Read on.

Halliburton Bribe Case Haunts Cheney

By Jason Leopold
April 29, 2008

Dick Cheney’s tenure at Halliburton ended eight years ago, but a federal investigation of alleged bribes from a company subsidiary to Nigerian officials lingers from the Cheney era, raising questions about what the Vice President knew or should have known.

In its quarterly filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 25, Halliburton said the Justice Department was widening its probe to determine whether Kellogg Brown & Root paid $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials to win a $5 billion construction contract for the Bonny Island natural gas liquefaction plant.

Read on.

Truth or Neo-Consequences

By Morgan Strong
April 29, 2008

An obscure academic dispute – over whether Israeli archeology sought to obscure the land’s last two millennia of history and promote a continual Jewish claim of ownership – has shown again how tensions in the Middle East can reverberate in unlikely ways in the United States.

The dispute centered on whether Barnard College should grant tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj, an American-born scholar of anthropology who, in the 1990s, challenged the scientific integrity of what she saw as the Israeli use of archeology in a politically motivated way to justify Jewish settlements on territory that had belonged to Palestinians.

Read on.

Fastened to a Dying Animal

By Phil Rockstroh
April 29, 2008

Here in this crumbling empire once known as the American Republic, here in a nation that, at present, for all practical purposes, only produces Cheetos and killer drones, whose architecture is being winnowed down to thriving rural meth houses and foreclosed upon suburban mchouses, whose corrupt corporate culture has bequeathed upon our suffering planet dying oceans and the hyper-caffeinated tsunami of Red Bull Capitalism -- the essential question confronts us -- how does one retain (not retail) one's humanity amid the catastrophic machinery and inane accouterment of our age?

Read on.

TV Networks Silenced Anti-War Voices

By Jeff Cohen
April 28, 2008

In the fall of 2002, week after week, I argued vigorously against invading Iraq in debates televised on MSNBC. I used every possible argument that might sway mainstream viewers – no real threat, cost, instability.

But as the war neared, my debates were terminated.

Read on.

Redefining Iran as the Enemy in Iraq

By Ivan Eland
April 26, 2008

According to General David H. Petraeus’s progress report to Congress on Iraq, the latest worst threat to the shaky U.S. position is Iranian-backed “special groups.”

This label refers to parts of Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his security forces ham-handedly sought to confront and undermine in Basra before the fall local elections.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is so passé.

Read on.

The Bush Team's Geneva Hypocrisy

By Jason Leopold
April 25, 2008

Newly released U.S. government documents, detailing how Bush administration officials punched legalistic holes in the Geneva Convention’s protections of war captives, stand in stark contrast to the outrage some of the same officials expressed in the first week of the Iraq War when Iraqi TV interviewed several captured American soldiers.

Then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush and other administration officials orchestrated a chorus of outrage, citing those TV scenes as proof of the Iraq’s government contempt for international law in general and the Geneva Convention in particular.

Read on.

Making a 'Killing' on the 'War on Terror'

By Ian S. Lustick
April 25, 2008

Nearly seven years after Sept. 11, 2001, what accounts for the vast discrepancy between the terrorist threat facing America and the scale of our response?

Why, absent any evidence of a serious domestic terror threat, is the War on Terror so enormous, so all-encompassing, and still expanding?

Read on.

Campaign 1988 Lives!

By Robert Parry
April 24, 2008

Hillary Clinton’s 10-point victory in the Pennsylvania primary should put to rest the wishful thinking of Barack Obama’s campaign that the United States has slid painlessly into some “new politics” that can transcend character smears and McCarthyistic tactics, the sort of ugliness that has defined U.S. elections for the past two decades.

Some political observers had hoped that the painful results for the nation from two decades of this style of politics – including the disastrous two-term presidency of George W. Bush – would have convinced the public that a change was needed; that the old tactics wouldn't work anymore.

Read on.

A Counterproductive 'War on Terror'

By Ivan Eland
April 23, 2008

At the passing of the 25th anniversary of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon—the first large suicide bombing to target Americans—the time is right to ask the perennial question: has the Bush administration’s “war on terror” since 9/11 made Americans safer?

Although the Bush administration regularly boasts that its war on terror has been effective because no large terrorists attacks on U.S. soil have occurred since 9/11, such terrorism in North America has historically been a rare event.

Read on.

VA Debated PR Plan on Vets' Suicides

By Jason Leopold
April 22, 2008

Senior officials at the Veterans Administration debated internally how to downplay evidence of a stunning number of suicides and suicide attempts among veterans who were treated or had sought help at VA hospitals around the country, according to newly disclosed internal VA e-mails.

On Feb. 13, 2008, Ira Katz, the VA’s mental health director, and Ev Chasen, the agency’s chief communications director, exchanged e-mails discussing P.R. strategy for handling this troubling news, according to evidence made public Monday in a federal court case in Northern California.

Read on.

What About the War, Benedict?

By Ray McGovern
April 21, 2008

Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the United States last week against a macabre backdrop featuring reports of torture, execution and war. He chose not to notice.

Torture: Fresh reporting by ABC from inside sources depicted George W. Bush’s most senior aides (Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice and Tenet) meeting dozens of times in the White House during 2002/03 to sort out the most efficient mix of torture techniques for captured “terrorists.”

Read on.

US News Media's Latest Disgrace

By Robert Parry
April 21, 2008

After prying loose 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents, the New York Times has proven what should have been obvious years ago: the Bush administration manipulated public opinion on the Iraq War, in part, by funneling propaganda through former senior military officers who served as expert analysts on TV news shows.

In 2002-03, these military analysts were ubiquitous on TV justifying the Iraq invasion, and most have remained supportive of the war in the five years since. The Times investigation showed that the analysts were being briefed by the Pentagon on what to say and had undisclosed conflicts of interest via military contracts.

Read on.

Torture Question Hovers Over Chertoff

By Jason Leopold
April 20, 2008

John Yoo and some other Bush administration lawyers who built the legal framework for torture are now out of the U.S. government, but one still holds a Cabinet-level rank – Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

In the summer of 2002, Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, offered assurances to the CIA that its interrogators would not face prosecution under anti-torture laws if they followed guidelines on aggressive techniques approved by the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, where Yoo worked.

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Unhappy Republicans Weigh Switch

By Richard L. Fricker
April 19, 2008

Seated amid the clatter and chatter of a mall food court in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I was reminded of the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s famous saying, “All politics is local.”

O’Neill’s observation came to mind as I was having lunch with Penny, my 39-year-old niece, a mom with a child in “Christian” day-care, a Presbyterian, a manager of an upscale jewelry store, a wife of a department store manager – and, oh yes, a Republican.

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Are the Clintons Playing Joe McCarthy?

By Robert Parry
April 18, 2008

In the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, with Sen. Joe McCarthy near the peak of his guilt-by-association bullying, he famously attacked the patriotism of a young Boston lawyer who worked for Joseph Welch, the Army’s chief legal representative.

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” Welch responded. “Have you left no sense of decency?”

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The Weather Underground 'Theme'

By Robert Parry
April 17, 2008

While nearly all politicians shade the truth now and then, some utterly disdain the truth, a category that includes George W. Bush and increasingly Hillary Clinton, as she made clear again in Wednesday night’s debate on the strange topic of Vietnam-era Weather Underground leader William Ayers.

Since last year, the Clinton campaign has been pushing the supposed Ayers connection to Barack Obama as an attack "theme" to take down his candidacy. But Clinton went even further in the debate suggesting that Ayers had reveled in the 9/11 attacks – a false claim clearly meant to inflame Americans against Obama.

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Another Reason to Help Consortiumnews.com

By Robert Parry
April 16, 2008

Since its founding in 1995, Consortiumnews.com has been an unusual force on the Internet. Unlike many Web sites, which “aggregate” stories from other sources, we originate most of the stories that you see at our site – including the work of American heroes like former CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

Our original journalism then gets re-posted at scores of other Web sites, helping to give the Internet both independence and vitality. We don’t just reflect mainstream journalism or criticize it; we seek to create a credible alternative to the mainstream.

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Would Obama Hold Bush Accountable?

By Robert Parry
April 16, 2008

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have shied away from the issue of holding George W. Bush and his top aides accountable for war crimes, torture and other offenses – apparently out of fear of alienating potential Republican crossover votes.

But – under questioning on April 14 – Obama agreed that, if elected, he would have his Attorney General initiate an investigation into whether Bush and other senior officials violated criminal statutes and thus deserved to face prosecution.

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Bush's Torture Quote Undercuts Denial

By Jason Leopold
April 15, 2008

President George W. Bush’s comment to ABC News – that he approved discussions that his top aides held about harsh interrogation techniques – adds credence to claims from senior FBI agents in Iraq in 2004 that Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.

When the American Civil Liberties Union released the FBI e-mail in December 2004 – after obtaining it through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit – the White House emphatically denied that any such presidential Executive Order existed, calling the unnamed FBI official who wrote the e-mail “mistaken.”

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Clinton's Experience: Fact and Fancy

By Barbara Koeppel
April 15, 2008

The problem for candidate Clinton is how to stop kicking herself in the leg. Although she’s scored real achievements over the years, when repeating her 35-years-of-experience mantra, she pushes the facts too far.

By now, her gaffes on Tuzla, Bosnia, where her claims of “landing under sniper fire” and “running for cover” are well-known. Ditto her lines on Northern Ireland – where Nobel Peace Prize winner Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, Ireland, said she was “a wee bit silly” for exaggerating the part she played in bringing peace.

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Bill and Hillary's 'Stockholm Syndrome'

By Robert Parry
April 14, 2008

As one of the few mainstream Washington journalists who defended the Clintons when they were under often unfair attack in the 1990s, it sometimes pains me to watch how that experience shaped – or misshaped – them in their national political revival a decade later.

The two most distinctive features of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign – and Bill Clinton’s attempts at a supporting role – are a seemingly bottomless pit of self-pity (excavated in part by the right-wing attack machine years ago) and the copycat use of many right-wing tactics to demonize their opponents and critics.

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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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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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Hillary Low-balled Bill's Pay in Forms

By Robert Parry
April 6, 2008

In her disclosure forms for the U.S. Senate and her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton downplayed Bill Clinton’s income from two key financial backers, billionaire investor Ronald Burkle and consumer-data executive Vinod Gupta, when compared with the Clintons’ recently released tax filings.

Sen. Clinton’s earlier disclosure forms listed the former President’s compensation as “over $1,000” each from Burkle’s and Gupta’s firms – when the actual amounts ran into the hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars, according to the tax returns.

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Beijing's Reality Intrudes on Shangri-la

By Don North
April 5, 2008

As the Beijing-to-Lhasa train pulls out of Golmud in western China, starting the long climb into Tibet, it passes through an archway with a debatable slogan in Chinese characters: “The railroad is to create happiness for the people of all nationalities.”

At 16,640 feet above sea level, the train crosses through the Tanggula Pass into the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region. Three diesel locomotives power the rapid ascent of the highest rail line in the world.

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(The Late) M.L. King Still Silenced

By Jeff Cohen
April 4, 2008

Soon after Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday became a federal holiday in 1986, I began prodding mainstream media to cover the dramatic story of King’s last year as he campaigned militantly against U.S. foreign and economic policy.

Most of his last speeches were recorded. But year after year, corporate networks have refused to air the tapes.

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Building a Legal Framework for Torture

By Jason Leopold
April 3, 2008

On Jan. 17, 2003, Mary Walker, the Air Force general counsel, received an urgent memo from the Pentagon's top attorney. Attached to the classified document was a set of directives drafted two days earlier by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

"Establish a working group within the Department of Defense to assess the legal, policy and operational issues relating to the interrogations of detainees held by the U.S. Armed Forces in the war on terrorism," the directives said.

Read on.

All Power to the President

By Robert Parry
April 2, 2008

Though little discussed on the campaign trail, a crucial issue to be decided in November is whether the United States will return to its traditions as a constitutional Republic respecting “unalienable” human rights or whether it will finish a transformation into a frightened nation governed by an all-powerful President who can do whatever he wants during the open-ended “war on terror.”

That reality was underscored on April 1 with the release of a five-year-old legal opinion from former Justice Department official John Yoo asserting that President George W. Bush possessed nearly unlimited authority as Commander in Chief, including the power to have military interrogators abuse terror suspects.

Read on.

A Good Thing from the Bush Years

By Robert Parry
April 1, 2008

There have been plenty of negatives from George W. Bush’s presidency – a disastrous war, a damaged economy, exploding government debt and assaults on the U.S. Constitution – but, as my mom used to say, it’s always important to look for the positives.

And here is one: At no time in my three decades in Washington have I seen more common purpose between honest American journalists and patriotic U.S. intelligence analysts. By trampling on a principle that both groups hold dear – respect for the truth – Bush has pushed these historic adversaries together.

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Delusionary, Dancing Bush

By Ray McGovern
March 31, 2008

Events of the last week offer a metaphorical glimpse at the delusion pervading President George W. Bush’s White House and other enclaves of Iraq War supporters in Washington.

Bush and the First Lady spent last Monday clowning with the Easter Bunny (White House counsel Fred Fielding having donned the costume).

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Telling Truth Early

By Robert Parry
March 31, 2008

One of our top goals at Consortiumnews.com – and what I’ve tried to do throughout my three-decade career in national journalism – is to give readers important information that they haven’t encountered elsewhere, what you might call telling truth early.

There is always a danger in doing this, because many people tend to reject what they haven’t heard before. Sometimes, the information is unwelcome because it goes against a preconception or it disrupts a favored point of view. It might cause discomfort or anger.

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PBS on Iraq: A Compilation of Deceit

By Morgan Strong
March 30, 2008

There have been five agonizing years of this war in Iraq. Five terrible years of bewilderment and rage.

Commemorating that anniversary, Frontline, the PBS investigative series, allotted four-and-one-half hours over two nights to an in-depth analysis of the war in Iraq and how it came about.

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When a Great Power Goes Mad

By Robert Parry
March 28, 2008

With the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War and the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. dead, the nation has been awash with news retrospectives on the war and speeches by politicians, mostly offering sanitized versions of what's transpired.

With a few exceptions, these media/political reflections have had the feel of self-rationalizations, more than self-criticisms. They’ve conveyed a sense that the U.S. system is doing just fine, thank you, although a few mistakes were made.

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National Pentagon Radio?

By Norman Solomon
March 28, 2008

While the Iraqi government continued its large-scale military assault in Basra, the NPR reporter's voice from Iraq was unequivocal on the morning of March 27: "There is no doubt that this operation needed to happen."

Such flat-out statements, uttered with journalistic tones and without attribution, are routine for the U.S. media establishment.

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Hillary Sinks with the 'Kitchen Sink'

By Robert Parry
March 27, 2008

Ever since George H.W. Bush went into “campaign mode” in 1988 and exploited black convict Willie Horton to dirty up Michael Dukakis, it’s been a staple of modern politics that you can negate your own high negatives by driving up those of your opponent.

Except in 1992, when the “Passportgate” scheme for demeaning Bill Clinton’s patriotism blew up in Poppy Bush’s face, some effective smear has been associated with every Bush national campaign. Think of John McCain’s “black child,” Al Gore’s “delusions” and the Swift Boat lies about John Kerry’s heroism.

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US Document Confirms Iraq Dungeon

By Jason Leopold
March 27, 2008

A classified memo written by the top U.S. military officer in western Iraq reveals that a prison in downtown Fallujah is so overcrowded and dirty that it does not even meet basic “minimal levels of hygiene for human beings.”

“The conditions in these jails are so bad that I think we need to do the right thing in terms of caring for the prisoners even with our own dollars, or release them,” says the memo, written in late February by Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S forces in western Iraq.

Read on.

Dr. Hamilton and Mr. Hyde

By Jerry Meldon
March 27, 2008

When former Rep. Lee Hamilton gives the keynote address – entitled “Iraq: Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond” – at a Tufts University symposium on March 27, he may be thankful if he doesn’t have to discuss “yesterday.”

He probably would prefer not to revisit fateful decisions he made while chairing investigations into Republican dirty work, especially those that let George H.W. Bush off the hook and cleared George W. Bush's path to the White House.

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A Few Big Lies: Not Handling Iraq Truth

By Nat Parry
March 26, 2008

With the Iraq War entering its sixth year and the U.S. death toll now surpassing 4,000, it has become fashionable – and rather convenient – to claim that no one prior to the invasion five years ago could have foreseen what a bloody disaster the war would turn out to be.

Typical is a recent article by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter John Burns, published in the New York Times a few days before the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion.

Read on.

Frontline's Timid Iraq Retrospective

By Ray McGovern
March 26, 2008

Frontline’s “Bush’s War” on PBS Monday and Tuesday evening was a nicely put-together rehash of the top players’ trickery that led to the attack on Iraq, together with the power-grabbing, back-stabbing and limitless incompetence of the occupation.

Except for an inside-the-beltway tidbit here and there – for example, about how the pitiable Secretary of State Colin Powell had to suffer so many indignities at the hands of other type-A hard chargers – Frontline added little to the discussion.

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Why Is Hillary Clinton Lying?

By Robert Parry
March 26, 2008

Two weeks ago, I wrote a story that observed a disturbing trend in Hillary Clinton’s campaign – her growing tendency to stretch the truth, twist what her chief rival was saying and then rely on her supporters to go on the offensive against you if you spoke up.

These tendencies were troubling, in part, because they mirrored what had become so common during George W. Bush’s years: to declare that a fantasy is the truth and then to attack the patriotism or sanity of anyone who thinks otherwise.

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4,000 Dead, Zero Accountability

By Robert Parry
March 25, 2008

Passing the grim milestone of 4,000 dead American soldiers in Iraq -- not to mention hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis -- George W. Bush can now see a clear path to the finish line of his presidency, with no accountability lurking in the shadows and almost no chance that he will be forced to relent on his “stay-the-course” strategy.

Plus, with Hillary Clinton continuing her trench-warfare battle for the Democratic nomination – even knowing it could damage Barack Obama’s chances against John McCain – President Bush may end up with the happy opportunity to hand over the White House to a Republican successor who has promised to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for possibly a hundred years.

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White House Balks at E-Mail Search

By Jason Leopold
March 24, 2008

The White House’s chief information officer said the Bush administration should not be compelled to search for millions of e-mails on individual computers and hard drives that may have been lost between 2003 and 2005 because it would be too expensive and require hundreds of hours of work, according to a filing the White House made with a federal court.

The court filing late Friday came in response to an order issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola demanding that the White House show cause why it should not be ordered to create and preserve a “forensic copy” of e-mails from individual hard drives.

Read on.