By Richard L. Fricker
May 9, 2007
To understand how the United States got itself into its current fix, it’s helpful to understand that the American Right and its powerful media apparatus have created a kind of parallel universe that has its own internal logic that sort of makes sense even if the “reality” isn’t exactly real.
So, on the Iraq War, everything is going pretty well except, as Fox News reminds its viewers, the “liberal media” keeps hiding all the positive developments from the American people. Plus, the only way to explain hostility toward George W. Bush is to postulate that his critics are consumed by irrational hatreds. The Right’s reality-divergent narrative exists on domestic policy, too.
Read on.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Blaming the Iraqis
By Ivan Eland
May 9, 2007
The Bush administration and Congress have put too much faith in governments—the U.S. as well as the Iraqi—to remedy the chaos in Iraq.
To keep the pressure on the administration for eventual U.S. troop withdrawals, the Democrats have already begun to blame the Iraqi government for not meeting benchmarks for progress and are threatening to include them in legislation.
Read on.
May 9, 2007
The Bush administration and Congress have put too much faith in governments—the U.S. as well as the Iraqi—to remedy the chaos in Iraq.
To keep the pressure on the administration for eventual U.S. troop withdrawals, the Democrats have already begun to blame the Iraqi government for not meeting benchmarks for progress and are threatening to include them in legislation.
Read on.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Qaeda's Reverse-Reverse Psychology
By Robert Parry
May 8, 2007
George W. Bush loves to tell his audiences that they must “listen to the words of the enemy” and “take their words seriously,” thus setting up his argument that al-Qaeda wants the United States to leave Iraq so the U.S. military must stay in Iraq
Like much of what Bush has said about the Iraq War, this presidential homespun wisdom always has had more emotional appeal than actual logic. But a newly released videotape from al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri demonstrates why Bush’s argument has never made sense.
Read on.
May 8, 2007
George W. Bush loves to tell his audiences that they must “listen to the words of the enemy” and “take their words seriously,” thus setting up his argument that al-Qaeda wants the United States to leave Iraq so the U.S. military must stay in Iraq
Like much of what Bush has said about the Iraq War, this presidential homespun wisdom always has had more emotional appeal than actual logic. But a newly released videotape from al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri demonstrates why Bush’s argument has never made sense.
Read on.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Bush Sat on Evidence of Cuban Terror
By Robert Parry
May 7, 2007
Earlier this year, as accused right-wing terrorist Luis Posada Carilles successfully sought to be freed on bond, the Bush administration possessed secret evidence implicating the 79-year-old Cuban exile in terrorist bombings in Havana a decade ago.
The evidence, an FBI document based on interviews with confidential sources in the late 1990s, linked Posada to a wave of hotel bombings in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist. Administration lawyers have now filed the document in court as part of the illegal immigration case against Posada that is scheduled to resume in Texas on May 11.
Read on.
May 7, 2007
Earlier this year, as accused right-wing terrorist Luis Posada Carilles successfully sought to be freed on bond, the Bush administration possessed secret evidence implicating the 79-year-old Cuban exile in terrorist bombings in Havana a decade ago.
The evidence, an FBI document based on interviews with confidential sources in the late 1990s, linked Posada to a wave of hotel bombings in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist. Administration lawyers have now filed the document in court as part of the illegal immigration case against Posada that is scheduled to resume in Texas on May 11.
Read on.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Tenet-Bush Pre-9/11 'Small Talk'
By Robert Parry
May 6, 2007
In late August 2001, when aggressive presidential action might have changed the course of U.S. history, CIA Director George Tenet made a special trip to Crawford, Texas, to get George W. Bush to focus on an imminent threat of a spectacular al-Qaeda attack only to have the conversation descend into meaningless small talk.
Alarmed CIA officials already had held an extraordinary meeting with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10 to lay out the accumulating evidence of an impending attack and had delivered on Aug. 6 a special “Presidential Daily Brief” to Bush entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”
Read on.
May 6, 2007
In late August 2001, when aggressive presidential action might have changed the course of U.S. history, CIA Director George Tenet made a special trip to Crawford, Texas, to get George W. Bush to focus on an imminent threat of a spectacular al-Qaeda attack only to have the conversation descend into meaningless small talk.
Alarmed CIA officials already had held an extraordinary meeting with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10 to lay out the accumulating evidence of an impending attack and had delivered on Aug. 6 a special “Presidential Daily Brief” to Bush entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”
Read on.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
The Ongoing Iraq Intel Fraud
By Robert Parry
May 5, 2007
Almost five years and perhaps half a million deaths too late, it’s finally the accepted wisdom in Washington that the intelligence that George W. Bush used to justify invading Iraq was garbage. But the pattern of twisting the truth about Iraq continues unabated and the President is still rarely called on it.
Bush has never stopped making statements about the Iraq War that are untrue, illogical or irrelevant. Yet, the Washington press corps remains almost as lax today about holding Bush accountable as it was in 2002 and 2003.
Read on.
May 5, 2007
Almost five years and perhaps half a million deaths too late, it’s finally the accepted wisdom in Washington that the intelligence that George W. Bush used to justify invading Iraq was garbage. But the pattern of twisting the truth about Iraq continues unabated and the President is still rarely called on it.
Bush has never stopped making statements about the Iraq War that are untrue, illogical or irrelevant. Yet, the Washington press corps remains almost as lax today about holding Bush accountable as it was in 2002 and 2003.
Read on.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Echoes of Cold War in Russia-Estonia Spat
There is an interesting article at Antiwar.com today (written by Patrick Buchannan of all people), dealing with the current tension between Russia and Estonia. In case you weren't aware, Estonia is becoming increasingly angry with Moscow, saying that the Russian government is not meeting international standards for protecting diplomats. As Buchannan explains,
At issue is a decision by the Estonian government to relocate a Soviet-era statue, which to many Estonians is a symbol of Soviet oppression, but to many Russians is a symbol of their sacrifice in liberating Estonia from Nazi occupation. The tension continues to escalate, as Russia announced on Wednesday that it would halt deliveries of oil products to the small Baltic nation.
Although Americans tend not to concern themselves much with the affairs of Europe, in this situation, the U.S. could find itself directly involved, if the situation continues to deterioriate. As Buchannan further explains,
While many readers might disagree with Buchannan on other issues, on this particular matter, he has a good point.
Although the conventional view is that the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, in significant ways, the East-West competition that characterized the Cold War never really ended. Indeed, that East-West competition actually predated the Cold War, going back to the days of the Russian Empire.
This is why Russia has always seen it as a provocation for NATO to expand all the way to its doorstep, and indeed, the fact the U.S. insists on continuing to expand the NATO alliance can only be seen as an attempt to expand Western and U.S. power at the expense of Russian hegemony.
The neoconservatives in the Bush administration have taken a provocative stance towards Russia almost since day one. Indeed, one of the first foreign policy acts of the Bush administration was to expel dozens of Russian diplomats from Washington, accusing them of being spies. The act was widely seen as provocative in Russia, as well as in Europe.
The Bush administration also announced early on that it would revive a Reagan era project known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, aka, "Star Wars." (See Ivan Eland's article below for more information.) This was also seen by Russia as an act of outright provocation, since it would seem to violate numerous treaties, including the Outer Space Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Bush confirmed Russian fears a few months later, when he announced the official U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty.
"I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue-state missile attacks," Bush announced in December 2001.
Predictably, Putin responded coolly to the decision, but apparently was not surprised. "This step was not a surprise for us. However, we consider it a mistake," he said. Most significantly, the development of a missile shield would disrupt the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which was the cornerstone of the U.S.-Russian balance of power for the entire Cold War.
Following 9/11, the U.S. began further encroaching on Russia's traditional sphere of influence, hatching secret bilateral agreements with autocratic Central Asian nations, and even sending troops into the murky and complicated geopolitical mess in the Caucasus. As I explained in an article written in 2002:
This perceived American overreaching led a group of retired Russian military generals to brand Putin a Western lackey and a traitor to Russian interests. "With your [Putin's] blessing, the United States has received military bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and, maybe, Kazakhstan," the generals declared in a published broadside. "In the long run, these bases are for dealing a strike on Russia, not bin Laden."
For years, Putin was somewhat restrained in his criticism of U.S. policy, but that restraint was abandoned in a speech at security conference this February. “The U.S. has overstepped its political limits in almost all spheres,” Putin told the meeting of policy makers with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in the audience. “We are witnessing an almost unrestrained hyper-use of force in international relations,” Putin said, adding that Russia doesn’t need lessons in democracy from “people who didn’t practice it themselves.”
Now, Putin and Russian diplomats are slamming the West again, for its perceived support for Estonia in its current row over the Soviet statue. As AFP reported yesterday,
Whether the tension will continue to escalate is a matter of speculation, but what is clear is that the competitive East-West dynamic of the Cold War has by no means passed, and that indeed, the policies of the Bush administration -- beginning with its initial decision to expel some 50 Russian diplomats in March 2001 -- has probably done more to fuel the tension than any actions taken by the other two post-Cold War American administrations.
We can only hope that Buchannan is being paranoid when he forsees a possible armed conflict between Russia and Estonia, which according to NATO treaty obligations, could bring the U.S. into open war with Russia. As Buchannan points out, Russia is "a nuclear power that has the ability to inflict 1,000 times the destruction upon us as Iran."
All week, young toughs in Moscow have besieged the Estonian embassy to harass Ambassador Marina Kaljurand. Her bodyguards had to use a mace-like spray to drive back the thugs, who call Estonia a "fascist country." Estonian diplomats and their families are being pulled out of Moscow and sent home.
Relations between the countries are about to rupture, if the Kremlin does not reign in the bully-boys.
At issue is a decision by the Estonian government to relocate a Soviet-era statue, which to many Estonians is a symbol of Soviet oppression, but to many Russians is a symbol of their sacrifice in liberating Estonia from Nazi occupation. The tension continues to escalate, as Russia announced on Wednesday that it would halt deliveries of oil products to the small Baltic nation.
Although Americans tend not to concern themselves much with the affairs of Europe, in this situation, the U.S. could find itself directly involved, if the situation continues to deterioriate. As Buchannan further explains,
If President Putin decides the Estonians need a lesson, and sends troops to teach it, the United States, under NATO, would have to treat Russian intervention in Estonia as an attack upon the United States, and declare war on behalf of Estonia.
So we come face to face with the idiocy of having moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, and having given war guarantees to three little nations with historic animosities toward a nuclear power that has the ability to inflict 1,000 times the destruction upon us as Iran.
While many readers might disagree with Buchannan on other issues, on this particular matter, he has a good point.
Although the conventional view is that the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, in significant ways, the East-West competition that characterized the Cold War never really ended. Indeed, that East-West competition actually predated the Cold War, going back to the days of the Russian Empire.
This is why Russia has always seen it as a provocation for NATO to expand all the way to its doorstep, and indeed, the fact the U.S. insists on continuing to expand the NATO alliance can only be seen as an attempt to expand Western and U.S. power at the expense of Russian hegemony.
The neoconservatives in the Bush administration have taken a provocative stance towards Russia almost since day one. Indeed, one of the first foreign policy acts of the Bush administration was to expel dozens of Russian diplomats from Washington, accusing them of being spies. The act was widely seen as provocative in Russia, as well as in Europe.
The Bush administration also announced early on that it would revive a Reagan era project known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, aka, "Star Wars." (See Ivan Eland's article below for more information.) This was also seen by Russia as an act of outright provocation, since it would seem to violate numerous treaties, including the Outer Space Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Bush confirmed Russian fears a few months later, when he announced the official U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty.
"I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue-state missile attacks," Bush announced in December 2001.
Predictably, Putin responded coolly to the decision, but apparently was not surprised. "This step was not a surprise for us. However, we consider it a mistake," he said. Most significantly, the development of a missile shield would disrupt the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which was the cornerstone of the U.S.-Russian balance of power for the entire Cold War.
Following 9/11, the U.S. began further encroaching on Russia's traditional sphere of influence, hatching secret bilateral agreements with autocratic Central Asian nations, and even sending troops into the murky and complicated geopolitical mess in the Caucasus. As I explained in an article written in 2002:
The Russian government of Vladimir Putin has criticized the Georgian government of Eduard Schevardnadze for giving safe haven to the Chechen rebels. Meanwhile, Schevardnadze’s Georgian government has blamed Putin’s Russia for aiding and abetting separatists from the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia.
While rebels in Chechnya want to break away from Russia, rebels in Abkhazia and South Ossetia want to break away from Georgia. Complicating matters further, the Chechen civil war has been the scene of widespread human rights abuses on both sides, while the Georgian region of Abkhazia has had its own ugly scenes of ethnic cleansing.
Into this maelstrom of regional and ethnic warfare now steps George W. Bush and his “crusade” to “rid the world of evil.” The Bush administration wants U.S. troops to assist Georgian soldiers in hunting down and killing al-Qaeda fighters holed up in Georgia’s lawless Pankisi Gorge.
This perceived American overreaching led a group of retired Russian military generals to brand Putin a Western lackey and a traitor to Russian interests. "With your [Putin's] blessing, the United States has received military bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and, maybe, Kazakhstan," the generals declared in a published broadside. "In the long run, these bases are for dealing a strike on Russia, not bin Laden."
For years, Putin was somewhat restrained in his criticism of U.S. policy, but that restraint was abandoned in a speech at security conference this February. “The U.S. has overstepped its political limits in almost all spheres,” Putin told the meeting of policy makers with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in the audience. “We are witnessing an almost unrestrained hyper-use of force in international relations,” Putin said, adding that Russia doesn’t need lessons in democracy from “people who didn’t practice it themselves.”
Now, Putin and Russian diplomats are slamming the West again, for its perceived support for Estonia in its current row over the Soviet statue. As AFP reported yesterday,
Russia lashed out Thursday at the European Union and NATO for supporting Estonia in its row with Moscow over the relocation of a Soviet war monument.
Russia's representative to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Alexei Borodavkin, attacked what he called EU and NATO "indifference and connivance."
"What happened in Estonia ... cannot fail to affect relations between Russia and the European Union and the North Atlantic alliance," he was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
Whether the tension will continue to escalate is a matter of speculation, but what is clear is that the competitive East-West dynamic of the Cold War has by no means passed, and that indeed, the policies of the Bush administration -- beginning with its initial decision to expel some 50 Russian diplomats in March 2001 -- has probably done more to fuel the tension than any actions taken by the other two post-Cold War American administrations.
We can only hope that Buchannan is being paranoid when he forsees a possible armed conflict between Russia and Estonia, which according to NATO treaty obligations, could bring the U.S. into open war with Russia. As Buchannan points out, Russia is "a nuclear power that has the ability to inflict 1,000 times the destruction upon us as Iran."
Missile Defense Seen as Dangerous
By Ivan Eland
May 4, 2007
President Bush’s plan to deploy missile defenses in Central Europe will reduce U.S. security, not enhance it. Installing radar for tracking incoming missiles in the Czech Republic and anti-missile interceptors in Poland could do more harm than good.
Ostensibly, the European radar and interceptors are aimed at the future threat of nuclear-armed Iranian missiles. But Russia suspects—perhaps with good reason—that the real purpose of the deployments is to cement the security guarantees the United States has given to the two former Russian allies.
Read on.
May 4, 2007
President Bush’s plan to deploy missile defenses in Central Europe will reduce U.S. security, not enhance it. Installing radar for tracking incoming missiles in the Czech Republic and anti-missile interceptors in Poland could do more harm than good.
Ostensibly, the European radar and interceptors are aimed at the future threat of nuclear-armed Iranian missiles. But Russia suspects—perhaps with good reason—that the real purpose of the deployments is to cement the security guarantees the United States has given to the two former Russian allies.
Read on.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Setting the Table, with All the Options
By Peter Dyer
May 3, 2007
There is a consensus among American foreign policy makers and major presidential candidates: “All options are on the table.” This phrase has been repeated so often by so many that it is now a cliche.
It seems reasonable enough. When faced with a problem, most of us would like to have at our disposal any and all tools available to remedy the problem.
But what do these words really mean when used by the most powerful people in the world’s most powerful country? The bland lanaguage of the cliche masks its implicit terror.
Read on.
May 3, 2007
There is a consensus among American foreign policy makers and major presidential candidates: “All options are on the table.” This phrase has been repeated so often by so many that it is now a cliche.
It seems reasonable enough. When faced with a problem, most of us would like to have at our disposal any and all tools available to remedy the problem.
But what do these words really mean when used by the most powerful people in the world’s most powerful country? The bland lanaguage of the cliche masks its implicit terror.
Read on.
Tenet's Disgraceful Apologia
By Ray McGovern
May 3, 2007
“If you can’t say something positive about someone, don’t say anything.” This was drummed into me by my Irish grandmother and, as was the case with most of her admonishments, it has stood me in good stead. On occasion, though, it has been a real bother—as when I felt called to comment on George Tenet’s apologia, In the Center of the Storm, now at a bookstore near you.
On the verge of despair, I ran into an old classmate of Tenet’s from PS 94 in Little Neck, Queens. Help at last. He told me that George was more handsome than his twin brother Billy, and that his outgoing nature and consummate political skill got him elected president of the student body.
Positive enough, Grandma? Now let me add this.
Read on.
May 3, 2007
“If you can’t say something positive about someone, don’t say anything.” This was drummed into me by my Irish grandmother and, as was the case with most of her admonishments, it has stood me in good stead. On occasion, though, it has been a real bother—as when I felt called to comment on George Tenet’s apologia, In the Center of the Storm, now at a bookstore near you.
On the verge of despair, I ran into an old classmate of Tenet’s from PS 94 in Little Neck, Queens. Help at last. He told me that George was more handsome than his twin brother Billy, and that his outgoing nature and consummate political skill got him elected president of the student body.
Positive enough, Grandma? Now let me add this.
Read on.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Washington's Bloody Make-Believe
By Carla Binion
April 26, 2007
It's astonishing that members of Congress are either unaware George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied the nation to war with Iraq, or they are aware of the fact and don't care. A Congress grounded in reality would have unequivocally acknowledged the administration's lies long ago and taken appropriate action - almost certainly impeachment.
If we say the pre-war lies don't matter and the country should sweep them under the rug and only focus on the best way out of Iraq, what we're really saying is that the truth itself doesn't matter.
Read on.
April 26, 2007
It's astonishing that members of Congress are either unaware George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied the nation to war with Iraq, or they are aware of the fact and don't care. A Congress grounded in reality would have unequivocally acknowledged the administration's lies long ago and taken appropriate action - almost certainly impeachment.
If we say the pre-war lies don't matter and the country should sweep them under the rug and only focus on the best way out of Iraq, what we're really saying is that the truth itself doesn't matter.
Read on.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Dying for W
By Robert Parry
April 25, 2007
George W. Bush admits he has no evidence that a withdrawal timetable from Iraq would be harmful. Instead, the President told interviewer Charlie Rose that this core assumption behind his veto threat of a Democratic war appropriation bill is backed by “just logic.”
“I mean, you say we start moving troops out,” Bush said in the interview on April 24. “Don’t you think an enemy is going to wait and adjust based upon an announced timetable for withdrawal?”
It is an argument that Bush has made again and again over the past few years, that with a withdrawal timetable, the “enemy” would just “wait us out.” But the answer to Bush’s rhetorical question could be, “well, so what if they do?”
Read on.
April 25, 2007
George W. Bush admits he has no evidence that a withdrawal timetable from Iraq would be harmful. Instead, the President told interviewer Charlie Rose that this core assumption behind his veto threat of a Democratic war appropriation bill is backed by “just logic.”
“I mean, you say we start moving troops out,” Bush said in the interview on April 24. “Don’t you think an enemy is going to wait and adjust based upon an announced timetable for withdrawal?”
It is an argument that Bush has made again and again over the past few years, that with a withdrawal timetable, the “enemy” would just “wait us out.” But the answer to Bush’s rhetorical question could be, “well, so what if they do?”
Read on.
Exaggerating al-Qaeda's Threat
By Ivan Eland
April 25, 2007
Michael Chertoff, President Bush’s secretary of Homeland Security, desperately tried to refute Zbigniew Brzezinski’s cogent charge that the administration has hyped the “war on terror” to promote a “culture of fear,” in a recent Washington Post op-ed.
In addition to shamefully smearing Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Advisor, by associating him with the fringe opinion that the administration plotted the 9/11 terrorist acts, Chertoff also declared, “Al-Qaeda and its ilk have a world vision that is comparable to that of historical totalitarian ideologues but adapted to the 21st–century global network.”
Read on.
April 25, 2007
Michael Chertoff, President Bush’s secretary of Homeland Security, desperately tried to refute Zbigniew Brzezinski’s cogent charge that the administration has hyped the “war on terror” to promote a “culture of fear,” in a recent Washington Post op-ed.
In addition to shamefully smearing Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Advisor, by associating him with the fringe opinion that the administration plotted the 9/11 terrorist acts, Chertoff also declared, “Al-Qaeda and its ilk have a world vision that is comparable to that of historical totalitarian ideologues but adapted to the 21st–century global network.”
Read on.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Explaining Cheney's Iraq War Smirk
By Ray McGovern
April 24, 2007
Never before have I felt such irk from a Cheney smirk -- the one with which he confidently assured CBS's Bob Schieffer on April 15's "Face the Nation" that the Democrats will continue to vote to fund the war without including serious restrictions.
Cheney referred approvingly to the fact that "Carl Levin, who's chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has indicated that they definitely do want to pass funding for the troops."
Read on.
April 24, 2007
Never before have I felt such irk from a Cheney smirk -- the one with which he confidently assured CBS's Bob Schieffer on April 15's "Face the Nation" that the Democrats will continue to vote to fund the war without including serious restrictions.
Cheney referred approvingly to the fact that "Carl Levin, who's chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has indicated that they definitely do want to pass funding for the troops."
Read on.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Hypocrisy: Thy Name Is Bush
By Robert Parry
April 21, 2007
George W. Bush likes to present the “war on terror” as a clear-cut moral crusade in which evildoers who kill innocent civilians must be brought harshly to justice, along with the leaders of countries that harbor terrorists. There are no grays, only blacks and whites.
But evenhanded justice is not the true core principle of the Bush Doctrine. The real consistency is hypocrisy: violence which Bush favors – no matter how wanton the slaughter of innocents – is justifiable, while violence that goes against Bush’s interests – even an insurgency against a foreign military occupation – must be punished without remorse as “terrorism.”
Read on.
April 21, 2007
George W. Bush likes to present the “war on terror” as a clear-cut moral crusade in which evildoers who kill innocent civilians must be brought harshly to justice, along with the leaders of countries that harbor terrorists. There are no grays, only blacks and whites.
But evenhanded justice is not the true core principle of the Bush Doctrine. The real consistency is hypocrisy: violence which Bush favors – no matter how wanton the slaughter of innocents – is justifiable, while violence that goes against Bush’s interests – even an insurgency against a foreign military occupation – must be punished without remorse as “terrorism.”
Read on.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Gonzales & the 'Mayberry Machiavellis'
By Robert Parry
April 20, 2007
Watching the painfully inept testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales brought to mind the memorable comment in 2002 by ex-White House insider John DiIulio, who described how politics dominated everything in George W. Bush’s government.
“There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus,” said DiIulio, who had run Bush’s office of faith-based initiatives. “What you’ve got is everything – and I mean everything – being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”
Read on.
April 20, 2007
Watching the painfully inept testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales brought to mind the memorable comment in 2002 by ex-White House insider John DiIulio, who described how politics dominated everything in George W. Bush’s government.
“There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus,” said DiIulio, who had run Bush’s office of faith-based initiatives. “What you’ve got is everything – and I mean everything – being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”
Read on.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Is It Time for PBS to Go?
By Robert Parry
April 19, 2007
PBS is broadcasting what amounts to a neoconservative propaganda series entitled “America at a Crossroads,” which has included a full hour info-mercial for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq written and narrated by Richard Perle, one of the war’s architects.
The Perle segment, entitled “The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom,” treated anti-war Americans as deranged individuals. Perle, though known as the “prince of darkness,” spoke in a quiet almost regretful tone, expressing disappointment that “conspiracy theories” and hatred of Bush had blinded so many people to the rightness of the Iraq War.
Read on.
April 19, 2007
PBS is broadcasting what amounts to a neoconservative propaganda series entitled “America at a Crossroads,” which has included a full hour info-mercial for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq written and narrated by Richard Perle, one of the war’s architects.
The Perle segment, entitled “The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom,” treated anti-war Americans as deranged individuals. Perle, though known as the “prince of darkness,” spoke in a quiet almost regretful tone, expressing disappointment that “conspiracy theories” and hatred of Bush had blinded so many people to the rightness of the Iraq War.
Read on.
Iraq Disaster May Cool War Fever
By Ivan Eland
April 19, 2007
America’s problems in Afghanistan and Iraq may have one positive effect: They will cause the U.S. public to withhold support for future military interventions that are not absolutely necessary for U.S. security.
That’s exactly what has happened in the past and there’s no reason to believe the current failed adventures will be different.
Read on.
April 19, 2007
America’s problems in Afghanistan and Iraq may have one positive effect: They will cause the U.S. public to withhold support for future military interventions that are not absolutely necessary for U.S. security.
That’s exactly what has happened in the past and there’s no reason to believe the current failed adventures will be different.
Read on.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Imus Agonistes
By Jay Diamond
April 18, 2007
It would be nice if we had arrived at a teachable moment in the business of talk radio, but don't bet on it. Don Imus' firing over a flippant racially charged remark is already being described as a watershed; a turning point in what the public will accept from radio hosts.
Already, congratulations are flowing into the offices of broadcast managers for "doing the right thing." Unfortunately, like so much of what commands our attention in the media, what passes for "news" is in reality a distraction from the real issue.
Read on.
April 18, 2007
It would be nice if we had arrived at a teachable moment in the business of talk radio, but don't bet on it. Don Imus' firing over a flippant racially charged remark is already being described as a watershed; a turning point in what the public will accept from radio hosts.
Already, congratulations are flowing into the offices of broadcast managers for "doing the right thing." Unfortunately, like so much of what commands our attention in the media, what passes for "news" is in reality a distraction from the real issue.
Read on.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
GOP Senators Misled on Prosecutor
By Richard L. Fricker
April 18, 2007
The Bush administration fed Republican senators misleading talking points that hailed the prosecutorial experience of interim Little Rock U.S. Attorney J. Timothy Griffin, although the protégé of White House political adviser Karl Rove appears never to have actually tried a criminal case.
The Justice Department and White House sent talking points and other information to Congress stressing the 38-year-old Griffin’s “significant experience as a federal prosecutor at both the Department of Justice and as a military prosecutor.” Republican senators then echoed those assessments of Griffin as a seasoned professional.
But an examination of Griffin’s record as a prosecutor reveals a much less impressive body of experience, with no indication that Griffin ever took a criminal case to trial either as a civilian or a military prosecutor.
Read on.
April 18, 2007
The Bush administration fed Republican senators misleading talking points that hailed the prosecutorial experience of interim Little Rock U.S. Attorney J. Timothy Griffin, although the protégé of White House political adviser Karl Rove appears never to have actually tried a criminal case.
The Justice Department and White House sent talking points and other information to Congress stressing the 38-year-old Griffin’s “significant experience as a federal prosecutor at both the Department of Justice and as a military prosecutor.” Republican senators then echoed those assessments of Griffin as a seasoned professional.
But an examination of Griffin’s record as a prosecutor reveals a much less impressive body of experience, with no indication that Griffin ever took a criminal case to trial either as a civilian or a military prosecutor.
Read on.
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