By Robert Parry
July 21, 2007
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment “off the table,” in line with Official Washington’s view that trying to oust George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would be an unpleasant waste of time. But there is emerging a compelling logic that an unprecedented dual impeachment might be vital to the future of the United States.
If some historic challenge is not made to the extraordinary assertions of power by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the United States might lose its status as a democratic Republic based on a Constitution that adheres to the twin principles that no one is above the law and everyone is endowed with inalienable rights.
Read on.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Bush Is al-Qaeda's Strategic Ally
By Robert Parry
July 19, 2007
U.S. officials have finally admitted what has long been obvious: that George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” has been an expensive failure, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and claiming possibly hundreds of thousands of lives, but making the world no safer and quite likely more dangerous.
Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged as much on July 17 in releasing a summary of a National Intelligence Estimate that represented the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community.
Read on.
July 19, 2007
U.S. officials have finally admitted what has long been obvious: that George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” has been an expensive failure, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and claiming possibly hundreds of thousands of lives, but making the world no safer and quite likely more dangerous.
Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged as much on July 17 in releasing a summary of a National Intelligence Estimate that represented the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community.
Read on.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Bush's Wooden-Headedness Kills
By Ray McGovern
July 18, 2007
President George W. Bush is convinced, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that he is on the right course in the war in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism. He says he will not change his mind.
Thus, we are at an historic moment; and we would be well advised to see what light historians might shed on our current predicament in Iraq and the basic (but unanswered) question as to why so many people resort to terrorism against us.
Read on.
July 18, 2007
President George W. Bush is convinced, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that he is on the right course in the war in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism. He says he will not change his mind.
Thus, we are at an historic moment; and we would be well advised to see what light historians might shed on our current predicament in Iraq and the basic (but unanswered) question as to why so many people resort to terrorism against us.
Read on.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Payback for NATO Expansion
By Ivan Eland
July 18, 2007
Those of us who opposed the expansion of NATO in 1999 (admitting Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic) and 2004 (Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania) warned that it would lead to problems with Russia. Those problems have arrived.
A resurgent Russia—flush with oil revenues and a strong leader who is using accumulated anti-U.S. resentments to become even more autocratic—has just suspended the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty in retaliation for U.S. abrogation of the Anti-ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and U.S. plans to put components of a missile defense system into Poland and the Czech Republic.
Read on.
July 18, 2007
Those of us who opposed the expansion of NATO in 1999 (admitting Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic) and 2004 (Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania) warned that it would lead to problems with Russia. Those problems have arrived.
A resurgent Russia—flush with oil revenues and a strong leader who is using accumulated anti-U.S. resentments to become even more autocratic—has just suspended the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty in retaliation for U.S. abrogation of the Anti-ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and U.S. plans to put components of a missile defense system into Poland and the Czech Republic.
Read on.
If the Democrats Want to Win...
By Robert Parry
July 18, 2007
If the Democrats really want to prevail over George W. Bush on the Iraq War and on his authoritarian vision of presidential powers, they would put back on the table two options that their leaders have removed: a cut-off of war funding and impeachment.
Rather than all-night debates about resolutions that will go nowhere, the Democrats would make the case to the American people that Bush has trampled on the Constitution; he has ensnared the nation in a catastrophic war by lying; and he has his eyes set on more dangerous chicanery in the months ahead.
Read on.
July 18, 2007
If the Democrats really want to prevail over George W. Bush on the Iraq War and on his authoritarian vision of presidential powers, they would put back on the table two options that their leaders have removed: a cut-off of war funding and impeachment.
Rather than all-night debates about resolutions that will go nowhere, the Democrats would make the case to the American people that Bush has trampled on the Constitution; he has ensnared the nation in a catastrophic war by lying; and he has his eyes set on more dangerous chicanery in the months ahead.
Read on.
Please Order "Neck Deep" Now!
By Robert Parry
July 17, 2007
Our new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, is due back from the printers in the next few days. The first copies will be available to Consortiumnews.com readers only through the publisher’s Web site at http://www.neckdeepbook.com/.
For every purchase made through the publisher’s Web site, $5 will go to support Consortiumnews.com and the journalism you read here. So, it’s important that as many readers as possible, order the book through the Web site. If we sell 2,500 books this way, we will meet our mid-year fundraising goal without any further nagging.
Read on.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
July 14, 2003: A Day of Infamy
By Ray McGovern
July 14, 2007
For those tracking the long train of abuses and usurpations of a modern-day George who would be King and his eminence grise behind the throne, July 14 has a resonance far beyond the fireworks of Bastille Day.
Four loosely related events on this day four years ago throw revealing light on key ingredients of the debacle in Iraq.
Read on.
July 14, 2007
For those tracking the long train of abuses and usurpations of a modern-day George who would be King and his eminence grise behind the throne, July 14 has a resonance far beyond the fireworks of Bastille Day.
Four loosely related events on this day four years ago throw revealing light on key ingredients of the debacle in Iraq.
Read on.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Misreading Iraq, Again
By Robert Parry
July 13, 2007
George W. Bush and his neoconservative supporters are hailing some signs of cooperation between Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders and U.S. forces in rooting out al-Qaeda extremists in Anbar Province as proof that Bush’s military occupation of Iraq is finally working and should not be ended by Congress.
“Finally,” wrote neoconservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer on July 13, “after four terribly long years, we know what works.” He, like Bush, cited the Anbar example as reason to reject growing public and congressional demands for a prompt U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq.
But the Anbar evidence could be read almost exactly the opposite way: that it is the growing belief among Sunnis that the American occupation is nearing its end that has caused some of them to view the U.S. military as a lesser evil and position themselves for what they perceive as the next phase of the conflict.
Read on.
July 13, 2007
George W. Bush and his neoconservative supporters are hailing some signs of cooperation between Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders and U.S. forces in rooting out al-Qaeda extremists in Anbar Province as proof that Bush’s military occupation of Iraq is finally working and should not be ended by Congress.
“Finally,” wrote neoconservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer on July 13, “after four terribly long years, we know what works.” He, like Bush, cited the Anbar example as reason to reject growing public and congressional demands for a prompt U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq.
But the Anbar evidence could be read almost exactly the opposite way: that it is the growing belief among Sunnis that the American occupation is nearing its end that has caused some of them to view the U.S. military as a lesser evil and position themselves for what they perceive as the next phase of the conflict.
Read on.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Overstating Iraq Pullout Worries
By Ivan Eland
July 11, 2007
As Congress begins to consider the Iraq War funding bill, defections by important Republican senators have caused a White House debate on whether to try to get ahead of the onrushing train to leave Iraq.
In the Bush administration’s surreal parallel universe, this “post surge redeployment”—normal people would call this a withdrawal after a failed attempt at escalation—would consist of halving the number of U.S. combat forces policing dangerous areas in Iraq and letting the remainder conduct the less dangerous missions of guarding Iraq’s borders, training Iraqi security forces, and keeping al Qaeda off balance in the country.
Read on.
July 11, 2007
As Congress begins to consider the Iraq War funding bill, defections by important Republican senators have caused a White House debate on whether to try to get ahead of the onrushing train to leave Iraq.
In the Bush administration’s surreal parallel universe, this “post surge redeployment”—normal people would call this a withdrawal after a failed attempt at escalation—would consist of halving the number of U.S. combat forces policing dangerous areas in Iraq and letting the remainder conduct the less dangerous missions of guarding Iraq’s borders, training Iraqi security forces, and keeping al Qaeda off balance in the country.
Read on.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Novak's Limited Plame-gate Hang-out
By Robert Parry
July 10, 2007
Right-wing columnist Robert Novak has played a complex game in advancing the Bush administration’s “Plame-gate” cover-up. Novak was the one who first published the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame; he then answered a few questions before going silent; now, he is making a series of misleading arguments via his columns.
Novak’s deceptions and the complicity of major news organization that publish his column without demanding clarifications may be unprecedented in the history of U.S. journalism. Theoretically at least, news organizations are expected to ferret out government wrongdoing, not act as accomplices in the crime and then abettors of the cover-up.
Read on.
By Robert Parry
July 10, 2007
Right-wing columnist Robert Novak has played a complex game in advancing the Bush administration’s “Plame-gate” cover-up. Novak was the one who first published the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame; he then answered a few questions before going silent; now, he is making a series of misleading arguments via his columns.
Novak’s deceptions and the complicity of major news organization that publish his column without demanding clarifications may be unprecedented in the history of U.S. journalism. Theoretically at least, news organizations are expected to ferret out government wrongdoing, not act as accomplices in the crime and then abettors of the cover-up.
Read on.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
NYT on Iraq: Better Late Than Never?
By Robert Parry
July 8, 2007
In an extraordinary full-length editorial, the New York Times has called for an end to the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, a step that some anti-war Americans may praise as a turning-point while others will be left wondering why it took the nation’s leading newspaper more than four years – and scores of thousands of dead – to figure this out.
To its credit, the Times does acknowledge that its previous pro-occupation positions – favoring rebuilding what the U.S. invasion had destroyed and worrying about the dire consequences that might result from a U.S. withdrawal – were faulty.
Read on.
By Robert Parry
July 8, 2007
In an extraordinary full-length editorial, the New York Times has called for an end to the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, a step that some anti-war Americans may praise as a turning-point while others will be left wondering why it took the nation’s leading newspaper more than four years – and scores of thousands of dead – to figure this out.
To its credit, the Times does acknowledge that its previous pro-occupation positions – favoring rebuilding what the U.S. invasion had destroyed and worrying about the dire consequences that might result from a U.S. withdrawal – were faulty.
Read on.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
How the U.S. Media Loved the War
By Norman Solomon
July 7, 2007
Many of America's most prominent journalists want us to forget what they were saying and writing more than four years ago to boost the invasion of Iraq. Now, they tiptoe around their own roles in hyping the war and banishing dissent to the media margins.
The media watch group FAIR (where I'm an associate) has performed a public service in the latest edition of its magazine Extra. The organization's activism director, Peter Hart, drew on FAIR's extensive research to assemble a sample of notable quotations from media cheerleading for the Iraq invasion.
Read on.
By Norman Solomon
July 7, 2007
Many of America's most prominent journalists want us to forget what they were saying and writing more than four years ago to boost the invasion of Iraq. Now, they tiptoe around their own roles in hyping the war and banishing dissent to the media margins.
The media watch group FAIR (where I'm an associate) has performed a public service in the latest edition of its magazine Extra. The organization's activism director, Peter Hart, drew on FAIR's extensive research to assemble a sample of notable quotations from media cheerleading for the Iraq invasion.
Read on.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Why They Really 'Hate Us'
By Ivan Eland
July 6, 2007
When U.S. government officials and foreign policy pundits discuss terrorism, they usually focus on the characteristics, personnel, history, tactics, targets, objectives and effects of terrorist organizations. They rarely talk about motives.
To fully understand Islamic terrorism, one needs to understand what triggers this extraordinary rage. And throughout history one factor stands out above all else: the occupation of Muslim land by non-Muslim forces.
Read on.
July 6, 2007
When U.S. government officials and foreign policy pundits discuss terrorism, they usually focus on the characteristics, personnel, history, tactics, targets, objectives and effects of terrorist organizations. They rarely talk about motives.
To fully understand Islamic terrorism, one needs to understand what triggers this extraordinary rage. And throughout history one factor stands out above all else: the occupation of Muslim land by non-Muslim forces.
Read on.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
The Libby Cover-up Completed
By Robert Parry
July 3, 2007
President George W. Bush’s decision to spare former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby from jail marks the final act of a crime and cover-up that began four years ago when Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials launched a campaign to discredit a critic of the Iraq War.
That campaign started with the leaking of sensitive classified information, the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, destroying her career and jeopardizing the lives of her agents in other countries. That was followed by White House lies being told to both investigators and the public in order to shield the President from dangerous political fallout.
Read on.
July 3, 2007
President George W. Bush’s decision to spare former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby from jail marks the final act of a crime and cover-up that began four years ago when Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials launched a campaign to discredit a critic of the Iraq War.
That campaign started with the leaking of sensitive classified information, the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, destroying her career and jeopardizing the lives of her agents in other countries. That was followed by White House lies being told to both investigators and the public in order to shield the President from dangerous political fallout.
Read on.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Will the Press Idiocy Ever Stop?
By Robert Parry
July 2, 2007
If someone submitted an op-ed to The Washington Post that quoted Marie Antoinette saying about starving Parisians “let them eat cake,” the Post’s editors surely would strike the apocryphal quote – and the op-ed author would be lucky to escape with a tongue-lashing about factual sloppiness.
But different rules continue to apply to made-up quotes for Al Gore. In a June 27 op-ed, Post columnist Ruth Marcus couldn’t resist tossing in one of the favorite joke lines of Campaign 2000, a reference to Gore having declared, “I invented the Internet.”
Read on.
July 2, 2007
If someone submitted an op-ed to The Washington Post that quoted Marie Antoinette saying about starving Parisians “let them eat cake,” the Post’s editors surely would strike the apocryphal quote – and the op-ed author would be lucky to escape with a tongue-lashing about factual sloppiness.
But different rules continue to apply to made-up quotes for Al Gore. In a June 27 op-ed, Post columnist Ruth Marcus couldn’t resist tossing in one of the favorite joke lines of Campaign 2000, a reference to Gore having declared, “I invented the Internet.”
Read on.
Unimpeachably Impeachable
By Ray McGovern
July 2, 2007
Last week’s four-part Washington Post feature on Vice President Dick Cheney removed any doubt in my mind as to whether he and President George W. Bush have committed the kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment.
While President George W. Bush bears the ultimate responsibility, the nature of the evidence against Cheney and his closest associates is so specific and overwhelming that it makes sense to impeach and bring him to trial first.
Read on.
July 2, 2007
Last week’s four-part Washington Post feature on Vice President Dick Cheney removed any doubt in my mind as to whether he and President George W. Bush have committed the kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment.
While President George W. Bush bears the ultimate responsibility, the nature of the evidence against Cheney and his closest associates is so specific and overwhelming that it makes sense to impeach and bring him to trial first.
Read on.
Friday, June 29, 2007
The New Bush-Blair Vanity Play
By Robert Parry
June 30, 2007
Upon learning that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would become a new envoy intervening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a former senior Israeli intelligence official confided to an old colleague a two-word comment in English: “It’s nuts.” One can only imagine what the Palestinians said in private.
Rarely in recent history have a man and an assignment matched up as poorly as this one: an officious and deceitful Brit who collaborated on a disastrous scheme to invade an Arab country and who is blamed for the deaths of possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, now intervenes in another Arab land to get the Palestinians to shape up.
Read on.
June 30, 2007
Upon learning that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would become a new envoy intervening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a former senior Israeli intelligence official confided to an old colleague a two-word comment in English: “It’s nuts.” One can only imagine what the Palestinians said in private.
Rarely in recent history have a man and an assignment matched up as poorly as this one: an officious and deceitful Brit who collaborated on a disastrous scheme to invade an Arab country and who is blamed for the deaths of possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, now intervenes in another Arab land to get the Palestinians to shape up.
Read on.
Lockerbie Ruling Revisited
By William Blum
Reposted June 29, 2007 (Original article posted Feb. 5, 2001)
The newspapers were filled with pictures of happy relatives of the victims of the 1988 bombing of PanAm 103.
A Libyan, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, was found guilty of the bombing by a Scottish court in the Hague, his co-defendant, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, being acquitted. At long last there was going to be some kind of closure for the families.
So what's wrong with this picture?
Read on.
Reposted June 29, 2007 (Original article posted Feb. 5, 2001)
The newspapers were filled with pictures of happy relatives of the victims of the 1988 bombing of PanAm 103.
A Libyan, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, was found guilty of the bombing by a Scottish court in the Hague, his co-defendant, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, being acquitted. At long last there was going to be some kind of closure for the families.
So what's wrong with this picture?
Read on.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Next Generation of 'Family Jewels'?
By Robert Parry
June 27, 2007
The CIA’s belated release of its infamous “Family Jewels” sheds light on U.S. intelligence abuses during the CIA’s first quarter century, but this openness may actually obscure a darker reality – that the subsequent three-plus decades have witnessed worse national-security crimes committed under the cloak of greater secrecy and deception.
Washington’s current conventional wisdom is that the “bad ol’ days” of the 1950s and 1960s couldn’t recur because a formal system of congressional oversight was put in place after press reports first disclosed CIA abuses in the mid-1970s.
Read on.
June 27, 2007
The CIA’s belated release of its infamous “Family Jewels” sheds light on U.S. intelligence abuses during the CIA’s first quarter century, but this openness may actually obscure a darker reality – that the subsequent three-plus decades have witnessed worse national-security crimes committed under the cloak of greater secrecy and deception.
Washington’s current conventional wisdom is that the “bad ol’ days” of the 1950s and 1960s couldn’t recur because a formal system of congressional oversight was put in place after press reports first disclosed CIA abuses in the mid-1970s.
Read on.
The Right Sharpens Knives for 'Sicko'
By Jay Diamond
June 27, 2007
Do a search on "Hannity 'Sicko'" or "Romney 'Sicko''' on any search engine and you will find an assortment of You Tube excerpts of Sean Hannity recycling talking points off the panicked presses of the Heritage Foundation, CEI, AEI, Manhattan Institute, etc., bearing dire warnings of the health care terror Michael Moore and other evil progressives are preparing to inflict on America.
But in all their truculent and fear-mongering invocations of the purported evils of "socialized medicine," there is curiously something that Romney, Hannity, and all the other American rightists consistently omit; and in that deliberate omission is an important lesson in the way America's hard right works their deceptions.
Read on.
June 27, 2007
Do a search on "Hannity 'Sicko'" or "Romney 'Sicko''' on any search engine and you will find an assortment of You Tube excerpts of Sean Hannity recycling talking points off the panicked presses of the Heritage Foundation, CEI, AEI, Manhattan Institute, etc., bearing dire warnings of the health care terror Michael Moore and other evil progressives are preparing to inflict on America.
But in all their truculent and fear-mongering invocations of the purported evils of "socialized medicine," there is curiously something that Romney, Hannity, and all the other American rightists consistently omit; and in that deliberate omission is an important lesson in the way America's hard right works their deceptions.
Read on.
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