The Endless Smearing of Joe Wilson

By Robert Parry
July 26, 2008

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee reminded everyone that rules barred personal attacks on George W. Bush during Friday’s hearing on his presidential abuses, but they didn’t feel obliged to forego the lashing of a favorite whipping boy, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

In a continuation of what has amounted to a five-year campaign to destroy Wilson’s reputation, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, flourished two pieces of evidence that supposedly showed that Wilson was a perjurer and that President Bush was right all along when he accused Iraq of seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger.

Read on.

The Torturing Company We Keep

By Michael Winship
July 25, 2008

At one point during the five and a half years John McCain spent as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, he was tortured and beaten so badly he tried to kill himself.

After four days of this brutality, he gave in and agreed to make a false confession, telling lies to end the unbearable pain.

Read on.

Bush's 'Surge' Gets Mixed Reviews

By Jason Leopold
July 24, 2008

President George W. Bush’s Iraq War troop “surge,” which is now ending, got a mixed report card from congressional investigators, who found that many of Bush’s stated goals remain unmet.

The Government Accountability Office reported that violence in Iraq has dropped over the past year, but that the training of Iraqi security forces still lags, Sunni insurgents have not been defeated, cease-fires with Shiite militias are fragile, and political reconciliation has not been achieved.

Read on.

Rove End-Runs House Democrats

By Jason Leopold
July 24, 2008

Former White House political adviser Karl Rove, who has refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, ran an end-around against Democratic leaders by having his denial of sponsoring a political prosecution inserted into the Congressional Record by a senior Republican.

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the committee’s ranking Republican, submitted a written question-and-answer exchange with Rove in which the political strategist said he played no role in the controversial prosecution of Alabama’s former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman.

Read on.

Protecting McCain; Pounding Obama

By Brent Budowsky
July 23, 2008

John McCain, presumably advised by Karl Rove and definitely imitating the politics of George Bush, is now saying that Barack Obama would rather lose a war than lose an election.

This is a defamation; this is a slander; this is a lie. McCain should apologize to Obama.

Read on.

The Exaggeration of Terror

By Ivan Eland
July 23, 2008

After having begun a series of investigative stories criticizing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in May 2008, CNN reporter Drew Griffin reports being placed with more than a million other names on TSA’s swollen terrorism watch list.

Although TSA insists Griffin’s name is not on the list and pooh-poohs any possibility of retaliation for Griffin’s negative reporting, the reporter has been hassled by various airlines on 11 flights since May. The airlines insist that Griffin’s name is on the list.

Read on.

Little Progress Seen in Iran-Nuke Talks

By TheRealNews.com
July 22, 2008

U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns left Geneva without making a public comment on the talks he witnessed between Iran and European negotiators about Iran’s nuclear program.

Read on.

McCain's Afghan Strategic Blunder

By Robert Parry
July 22, 2008

John McCain has denounced Barack Obama as being “completely wrong” on Iraq, but it was McCain who advocated what turned out to be the fundamental strategic blunder in the post-9/11 conflicts, the hasty – and premature – pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq.

Only weeks after the Taliban were routed from Kabul and the remnants of al-Qaeda had fled from bases in Tora Bora, McCain took the lead in urging the Bush administration to turn its attention toward Iraq.

Read on.

Iraqi Resistance to US Bases Grows

By TheRealNews.com
July 21, 2008

Iraqi political resistance to the indefinite presence of U.S. troops is growing, limiting what the Maliki government can do and what the Bush administration can expect.

Read on.

Obama's National Security Challenge

By TheRealNews.com
July 20, 2008

What kind of movement and leader would it take to really try to change America’s very rigid national security state – and how might Barack Obama measure up to that challenge?

Read on.

Gitmo 'Justice' for US Citizens?

By Robert Parry
July 21, 2008

A conservative-dominated U.S. Appeals Court has opened the door for President George W. Bush or a successor to throw American citizens – as well as non-citizens – into a legal black hole by designating them “enemy combatants,” even if they have engaged in no violent act and are living on U.S. soil.

The federal Appeals Court in Richmond, Virginia, ruled 5-4 on July 15 that Bush had the right, while prosecuting the “war on terror,” to hold Qatari citizen (and Peoria, Illinois, resident) Ali al-Marri indefinitely as an “enemy combatant.”

Read on.

'Justifying' Torture: Two Big Lies

By Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern
July 19, 2008

One can assume that former Attorney General John Ashcroft didn’t mean it to be funny, but his testimony on Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee might strike one as hilarious, were it not for the issue at hand — torture.

Ashcroft is the Attorney General who approved torture before he disapproved it, but committee members spared him accusations of flip-flopping.

Read on.

Mother's Milk of Politics Turns Sour

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
July 18, 2008

Once again we're closing the barn door after the horse is out and gone.

In Washington, the Federal Reserve has finally acted to stop some of the predatory lending that exploited people’s need for money.

Read on.

Iraq's Falling Fig Leaf

By Peter W. Dickson
July 18. 2008

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s call for a timetable on American troop withdrawals has touched off a dramatic change in the debate over the future U.S. engagement in Iraq – essentially, it marks a falling away of the fig-leaf rationales for the five-plus years of occupation.

As these fig leaves drop to the ground, they are exposing raw geo-strategic objectives that were present in the original calculations of Republican foreign policy experts going back to the early 1990s, a desire for a firm U.S. foothold in the Middle East to protect the West's access to oil and to defend the state of Israel from, then, primarily its Arab enemies.

Read on.

Conyers Plans Impeachment Substitute

By Jason Leopold
July 18, 2008

Rebuffing Dennis Kucinich’s calls for impeachment hearings on George W. Bush, the House Judiciary Committee instead will hear testimony about Bush’s “imperial presidency” and several of his administration’s scandals.

In a press release issued Thursday, Rep. John Conyers, House Judiciary Committee chairman, said his panel will explore a variety of Bush controversies, including manipulation of prewar Iraq intelligence, politicization of the Justice Department, and refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations.

Read on.

Bush Hides 'Plame-gate' Testimony

By Jason Leopold
July 16, 2008

In the latest twist in the “Plame-gate” scandal, President George W. Bush has asserted executive privilege to block release of Vice President Dick Cheney’s interview with a special prosecutor about possible criminal violations in the leaking of a CIA officer’s covert identity.

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, promptly denounced the White House legal reasoning as “ludicrous,” noting that executive privilege covers advice that an aide gives the President, not responses to legal questions posed by a prosecutor about a possible crime.

Read on.

Maliki's 'Timetable' Shakes Iraq Debate

By Ray McGovern
July 16, 2008

You say you expected more rhetoric than reality from Senators Obama and McCain in their speeches about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, that’s certainly what you got.

What I find nonetheless amazing is how they, and the pundits, have taken such little notice of the dramatic change in the political landscape occasioned by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s bombshell on July 7 — his insistence on a “timetable” for withdrawal of U.S. troops before any accord is reached on their staying past the turn of the year.

Read on.

The High Cost of Bush's Iraq Gambit

By Robert Parry
July 15, 2008

Most Americans who have followed the twists and turns of the Iraq War would agree that George W. Bush misled the nation into the conflict with false claims about WMD and Saddam Hussein’s links to al-Qaeda. But it’s less understood that Bush never stopped deceiving the public.

Indeed, one of President Bush’s favorite lines – telling the American people to listen to what the enemy says and thus to know that al-Qaeda considers Iraq the “central front” in the “war on terror” – has been every bit as misleading as his earlier false assertions about WMD.

Read on.

Kucinich Pushes on Impeachment

By Jason Leopold
July 12, 2008

Congress has plenty of evidence that George W. Bush deserves impeachment for misleading the nation into war in Iraq, authorizing torture and other grave crimes, and violating the Constitution – and it is now time to act, says Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

Read on.

Obama Helps Give Bush a Victory

By TheRealNews.com
July 12, 2008

After vowing in January to filibuster any wiretap bill that included retroactive immunity for telecommunication companies, Barack Obama changed his mind, voting on Wednesday for legislation that included immunity.

Read on.

Iran Sees Nuclear Bomb as Deterrent

By TheRealNews.com
July 12, 2008

Iran does not intend to build a nuclear bomb, unless it is confronted with an external threat, according to Muhammad Sahimi, the National Iranian Oil Company chair in petroleum engineering and a professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Read on.

Bush Looks to His (Secret) Legacy

By Jason Leopold
July 11, 2008

George W. Bush, who has expanded his power to access the e-mails and other electronic communications of Americans, is resisting congressional demands that White House e-mails be saved for later research by historians.

Bush signaled he would veto a House-passed bill that seeks to overhaul the Presidential and Federal Records Act to ensure that e-mails and other government documents are preserved in the age of the Internet.

Read on.

Mukasey: Bush's New 'Mr. Cover-up'

By Robert Parry
July 10, 2008

Even Sen. Charles Schumer, whose vote last year ensured Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General, was left sputtering as Mukasey returned the favor by rebuffing Schumer’s concerns about the Bush administration’s political prosecutions.

At the end of his round of Senate Judiciary Committee questions, Schumer referred to allegations that White House political adviser Karl Rove had pressed for the selective prosecution of Alabama’s Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman, who was viewed as a threat to Republican dominance of the South.

Read on.

America's 'Security Gap'

By Brent Budowsky
July 9, 2008

The great issue in 2008 is the public sense that events are out of control, that we drift deeper into dangerous waters while our leaders lack the clarity or courage to act.

This is the security gap. It spreads across the landscape of American civic life. Our military has suffered a decade of damage through disastrous execution of an unwise war, without the trumpet that summons Americans to fully join the mission.

Read on.

Will the Democrats Ever Learn?

By Robert Parry
July 8, 2008

A popular Washington saying holds that “politics is about the future, not the past.” Regrettably, that often translates into sweeping serious wrongdoing under the rug in the name of “looking to the future” – a mistake the Democrats appear poised to make again in approving a new wiretapping law.

What infuriates the Democratic “base” and many other Americans about this “compromise” bill is not only that it grants the President powers beyond the narrow technological fixes that were initially cited, but that it sanctions a cover-up of George W. Bush’s past abuses of power.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

Read on.

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.

It Was Oil, All Along

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
June 27, 2008

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.

Read on.

Bush 'Torture' Lawyers Duck Questions

By Jason Leopold
June 27, 2008

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.

Read on.

Defending the President as Tyrant

By Robert Parry
June 27, 2008

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.

Monsanto Criticized for Practices

By TheRealNews.com
June 26, 2008

Monsanto is a world leader in industrial agriculture, providing the seeds for 90 percent of the world's genetically modified crops.

Read on.

Moon Shot,, Obama

By Brent Budowsky
June 25, 2008

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.

Read on.

Saudis Blame Others for High Oil Prices

By TheRealNews.com
June 25, 2008

At a recent summit in Saudi Arabia between oil-producing and oil-consuming nations, Saudi King Abdullah said his country was not to blame for soaring oil prices.

Read on.

Help Us Cover Campaign 2008

By Robert Parry
June 24, 2008

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.

Read on.

Health-Care Crisis Endangers Economy

By Jason Leopold
June 24, 2008

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.

Read on.

Campaign Finance Reform Has Failed

By Robert Parry
June 23, 2008

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.

Read on.

Alarm over 'Unfair' Campaign Money

By Jeff Cohen
June 22, 2008

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.”

Read on.

Top Dems Hand Bush Key Victories

By Jason Leopold
June 21, 2008

In November 2006 when Democrats won control of Congress for the first time in 12 years, Rep. Nancy Pelosi explained the significance behind the record voter turnout that helped shift the balance of power in Washington.

“People voted for change and they voted for Democrats who will take our country in a new direction,” Pelosi said during a victory speech in San Francisco on Nov. 8, 2006.

Read on.

Democrats Legalize Bush's Crimes

By Robert Parry
June 20, 2008

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that a key positive feature of the new wiretap “compromise” is that the bill reaffirms that the President must follow the law, even though the same bill virtually assures that no one will be held accountable for George W. Bush's violation of the earlier spying law.

In other words, in the guise of rejecting Bush’s theories of an all-powerful presidency that is above the law, the Democratic leadership cleared the way for the President and his collaborators to evade punishment for defying the law.

Read on.

US-Backed Offensive Hits Taliban

By TheRealNews.com
June 20, 2008

Afghan and NATO troops, backed by helicopter gunships, launched a massive counter-attack against Taliban militants occupying villages near Kandahar.

Read on.

Israel Accepts Gaza Truce

By TheRealNews.com
June 20, 2008

Israel officially has confirmed that the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire deal between the Israeli government and Hamas would go into effect.

Read on.

Bomb Iran? What's to Stop Us?

By Ray McGovern
June 19, 2008

It’s crazy, but it’s coming soon – from the same folks who brought us Iraq.

Unlike the attack on Iraq five years ago, to deal with Iran there need be no massing of troops. And, with the propaganda buildup already well under way, there need be little, if any, forewarning before shock and awe and pox – in the form of air and missile attacks – begin.

Read on.

Europe Gives Bush a Cool Good-bye

By TheRealNews.com
June 19, 2008

Public reception to the last European tour of Bush's presidency was less than warm in the UK earlier this week.

Read on.

Hamas Declares Truce with Israel

By TheRealNews.com
June 19, 2008

After months of failed negotiation, while 400 Palestinians and 7 Israelis died, Hamas has announced a cease-fire with Israel.

Read on.

Kandahar Braces for Taliban Offensive

By TheRealNews.com
June 18, 2008

In anticipation of a Taliban offensive, the Afghan army flew four planeloads of soldiers to Kandahar from the capital Kabul.

Read on.

The Semantics of Bush's Torture Policy

By Jason Leopold
June 18, 2008

The Bush administration built a legal framework – relying on semantics and secrecy – to subject detainees at Guantanamo Bay to brutal interrogation techniques and then to hide the reality from human rights observers, according to internal government documents.

The documents, made public by the Senate Armed Services Committee, undercut assertions by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials who have blamed cruel treatment of detainees on "a few bad apples" who acted on their own.

Read on.

Kucinich Comments on Impeachment

Interview by Dennis Bernstein
June 17, 2008

Bernstein: Let’s cut to the quick and tell us what you see as being at the core of your call to impeach the President and the Vice President.

Kucinich: An attempt to destroy constitutional governance by violating numerous constitutional provisions, U.S. code and international law, taking us into a war based on lies, making a false case for the war, saying falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that it had the intention of attacking the United States, that there was a readiness to imminently attack, pursuing policies of torture, illegal detention, wiretapping, spying, rendition. I mean, there’s…you know these articles…

Read on.

Bush/Cheney Transcripts Subpoenaed

By Jason Leopold
June 17, 2008

A House committee has subpoenaed FBI transcripts of interviews with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney regarding their possible roles in the exposure of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued on Monday to Attorney General Michael Mukasey in the latest chapter of a standoff over what Bush and Cheney told a special prosecutor about the case in 2004.

Read on.

Izzy Stone, Patron Saint of Bloggers

By Jeff Cohen
June 17, 2008

It was nineteen years ago this week that I.F. (Izzy) Stone died. The legendary blogger was 81.

Confused? You say he died years before web blogs were invented?

Read on.

Finally, Congress Looks at Plame-gate

By Jason Leopold
June 16, 2008

Five years ago this month, an extraordinary battle was taking shape in the shadows of official Washington: a former U.S. ambassador was preparing to go public to challenge a central deception used by the White House to justify invading Iraq – and the Bush administration was readying a fierce counterattack against him.

Now, after many nasty clashes – which led to the exposure of a covert CIA officer, a criminal White House cover-up, a special prosecutor investigation, the conviction of a senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and a subsequent presidential commutation – one key administration insider finally has agreed to testify before Congress.

Read on.

Media Reform and Economic Injustice

By Michael Winship
June 13, 2008

Last weekend’s National Conference on Media Reform in Minneapolis was a freewheeling, articulate, committed gathering of activists, policy wonks and everyday citizens dedicated to the idea that there can be no real democracy without a media democracy – independent reporting from diverse communities free of the interference and spin of government and big business.

Perhaps nowhere else can you witness an FCC commissioner like Michael Copps get a rock star standing ovation worthy of Mick Jagger or hear the words, “Common carrier rules are hot!”

Read on.

GOP Congressman Hypes Iran Threat

By TheRealNews.com
June 13, 2008

In an emotionally loaded speech before AIPAC, Congressman Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, envisioned a doomsday scenario, justifying increased military presence in the Middle East.

Read on.

The Republic on a Knife's Edge

By Robert Parry
June 13, 2008

There are two ways of looking at the landmark 5-4 Supreme Court decision recognizing the habeas corpus rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: As a stirring victory for individual liberty over collective fear – or as a reminder that the one more right-wing justice could make George W. Bush’s imperial presidency “constitutional.”

At the heart of the June 12 decision was the majority’s recognition that President Bush and his political allies have been playing games with the Constitution by turning Guantanamo into a legal black hole for the indefinite imprisonment (or kangaroo-court trials) of people Bush deems “unlawful enemy combatants.”

Read on.

Does Obama Truly Stand for 'Change'?

By TheRealNews.com
June 12, 2008

So what are the differences and similarities between Barack Obama and John McCain?

Read on.

Ron Paul, Others Urge Talks with Iran.

By TheRealNews.com
June 12, 2008

A diverse group of politicians, including Barbara Lee, Ron Paul and Lynn Woolsey, gathered in Washington on Tuesday along with activists and other citizens for "Time to Talk with Iran," an event and press conference held by the Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran.

Read on.

McCain Makes Stuff Up

By Robert Parry
June 12, 2008

For years now, the U.S. political press corps has traveled with John McCain on his “Straight Talk Express,” buying into his image as a paragon of truth-telling. But the real truth is that McCain routinely makes stuff up, as he did on June 11 in lying about Barack Obama’s “bitter” comment.

During a political talk in Philadelphia, McCain claimed that Obama had described “bitter” small-town voters as clinging to religion or “the Constitution” – when the second item in Obama’s comment actually was “guns.”

Read on.

Jail Time for Tenet?

By Ray McGovern
June 11, 2008

President George W. Bush used to complain that being president was “hard work,” but he has gotten over that. Now he says it “has been a fabulous experience.”

Why fabulous? Well, a good part of it has to do with his past.

Read on.

WPost's Enduring Bush Cover-up

By Robert Parry
June 10, 2008

In a kind of Watergate in reverse, the Washington Post has rallied once again to defend George W. Bush’s honesty, with the paper’s editorial-page editor swatting away the latest swarm of evidence showing how the President took the nation to war in Iraq via a series of lies.

Much as the rival Washington Star in the 1970s let itself be used by Richard Nixon to muddy the Watergate waters – obscuring the mounting evidence of his guilt – now Washington Post editor Fred Hiatt and the newspaper’s hierarchy have lent themselves to the task of covering up Bush’s deceptions about the Iraq War.

Read on.

Abramoff Had Closer Ties to Bush

By Jason Leopold
June 10, 2008

Imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff was photographed with President George W. Bush at least five times and had hundreds of lobbying contacts with White House staff, a House committee’s draft report says.

Hundreds of pages of documents, released Monday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, show that Abramoff regularly communicated with former White House political adviser Karl Rove and his deputies regarding the administration’s domestic agenda.

Read on.

Make No Mistake: McCain's a Neocon

By Robert Parry
June 8, 2008

Since clinching the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain has sought to hide the forest of his neoconservative alignment with George W. Bush amid the trees of details, such as stressing differences over military tactics used in Iraq.

But the larger reality should be clear: McCain is a hard-line neoconservative who buys into Bush’s “preemptive war” theories abroad and his concept of an all-powerful “unitary executive” at home.

Read on.

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.

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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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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.

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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.

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'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.

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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.

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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.

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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. …

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.