January 19, 2009
One phrase can divide an entire country, one phrase can circumvent 800 years of law, one phrase can justify the horrific, condone the illegal, and bankrupt a nation, both financially and morally. One phrase can kill.
One phrase can divide an entire country, one phrase can circumvent 800 years of law, one phrase can justify the horrific, condone the illegal, and bankrupt a nation, both financially and morally. One phrase can kill.
It’s not uncommon for Presidents to embellish their accomplishments upon leaving office, but George W. Bush, who will exit the White House leaving the country in the worst shape since Herbert Hoover, has gone a step further, moving past exaggeration into outright lying.
For the past three decades, Israel has charted a course that invites its own destruction by relying on two risky propositions: first, that it could extend its security perimeter beyond the reach of a devastating missile attack, and second, that it could permanently control the political debate inside its crucial ally, the United States.
Read on.The U.S. government’s torture of detainees in the “war on terror” can be traced directly to a Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by President George W. Bush.
Baz Luhrmann, the creative force behind "Moulin Rouge" and "Strictly Ballroom," has written and directed an epic valentine to 1940s-style films with his latest effort, "Australia."
A high-ranking CIA official warned Condoleezza Rice in September 2002 that allegations about Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger were untrue and that she, as national security adviser, should stop President George W. Bush from citing the claim in making his case against Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to new evidence released by a House committee.
Read on.
Over the years, Washington has evolved into a city of deceptions where semantics cloud reality and where a hazy mix of lies, half-truths and mythology can combine to unleash the devastating military might of the United States for no good reason.
You might have thought that when audiotapes were released of President Lyndon Johnson accusing Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign of “treason” for sabotaging Vietnam peace talks – as 500,000 U.S. troops sat in a war zone – the major U.S. news media would be all over it, providing insight and context.
In what’s been called George W. Bush’s first exit interview, the outgoing President continues a lie that he first unveiled several months after launching the Iraq War, justifying the invasion by claiming that Saddam Hussein didn’t let the U.N. inspectors in.
Surprisingly this Thanksgiving, the Washington Establishment had a lot to give thanks for. And its chief mouthpiece – the Washington Post’s neoconservative editorial page – was glowing over its good fortune in the three-plus weeks since Barack Obama's election.
With Bob Gates as Secretary of Defense and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, the incoming Obama administration is shaping up to be a reunion of strong supporters of the Iraq War.
The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) must be a person whose previous professional performance has been distinguished by unimpeachable integrity and independence. The director must have the courage of his or her own convictions.
Barack Obama’s Pentagon transition team is sitting down with Defense Secretary Robert Gates in a move that some Beltway observers believe signals that the President-elect does plan to keep Gates on despite protests from Iraq War opponents.
After a masterful campaign, Barack Obama seems headed toward some fateful mistakes as he assembles his administration by heeding the advice of Washington’s Democratic insider community, a collective group that represents little “change you can believe in.”
Most of the attention on whether Joe Lieberman should be ousted from his Senate committee chairmanship has focused on his disloyalty to Democrats and his control of homeland security issues, but there’s also the question of how well he has handled his panel’s broad government oversight responsibilities.
After a week lecturing at Kansas State University and then in Kansas City, Missouri, I could not shake the feeling that what Kansas and Missouri need most is the equivalent of Radio Free Europe, which was so effective in spreading truth around inside Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
President-elect Barack Obama, in one of the first policy statements of his transition, demanded that the Bush administration either submit the proposed U.S.-Iraq “status-of-forces agreement” to Congress or leave an opening for him to change it next year.
Around midnight, when the election outcome was clear, thousands of young people walked and skipped and ran to the north gates of the White House, celebrating not just the election of Barack Obama but the repudiation of George W. Bush.