My Fellow Texan

By Bill Moyers
August 18, 2007

Like the proverbial hedgehog, Karl Rove knew one big thing: how to win elections as if they were divine interventions.

You may think God summoned Billy Graham to Florida on the eve of the 2000 election to endorse George W. Bush just in the nick of time, but if it did happen that way, the Good Lord was speaking in a Texas accent.

Read on.

Rumsfeld's Mysterious Resignation

By Robert Parry
August 17, 2007

The disclosure that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned on Nov. 6, 2006 – the day before the election, not the day after as previously thought – means that he was pushed out of his job the same day he suggested a de-escalation of the Iraq War.

When Rumsfeld’s resignation was announced on Nov. 8, with both his resignation letter and his de-escalation memo still secret, it was widely assumed in Washington political circles that President George W. Bush was reacting to the stinging Republican electoral defeat on Nov. 7 and was appointing Robert Gates as an olive branch to the Democrats.

Read on.

Saudi Arabia's Myth of Moderation

By Barbara Koeppel
August 17, 2007

Almost daily, the Bush administration ratchets up the war-like rhetoric about Iran’s alleged role in destabilizing Iraq. Eerily, like the pre-Iraq War drumbeat, the U.S. press repeats the accusations with little skepticism and Congress marches in lockstep, as a new Middle East villain is marked for punishment.

On Aug. 15, front-page stories in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other leading newspapers described how the Bush administration planned to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a “global terrorist” organization for supporting anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli forces in the Middle East.

Read on.

Democrats Need 'Conviction Politics'

By Brent Budowsky
August 15, 2007

The Bush-Rove vision is so daring it is breathtaking.

George Bush and Karl Rove seek one-party domination of American politics, with executive domination over the legislative and judicial branches of the American government.

Read on.

Congress's Orwellian Compromise

By Nat Parry
August 15, 2007

A little over a year ago, I wrote an article called “Washington’s Orwellian Consensus,” which faulted Congress for rubberstamping many of George Bush’s sweeping assertions of presidential power, particularly his claimed right to spy on some American citizens without warrants.

The article noted that “the near-term outlook appears to be for a consolidation of George W. Bush’s boundless vision of his own authority” – but added the caveat, “at least until the November elections.”

It now seems that the caveat was not necessary. The implication that a Democratic victory in the 2006 congressional elections might rein in the authoritarian inclinations of the Bush administration appears to have been unfounded.

Read on.

A Disneyland of Militant Ignorance

By Phil Rockstroh
August 14, 2007

Given the nation's tottering infrastructure, imperial overreach abroad and vandalized constitutional process by a lawless executive branch, what will it take to scare the general public, mainstream press and political classes into immediate action to bring about meaningful change?

At this twilight hour of the American republic, there must come a paradigm shift of seismic proportions or else the republic will perish. I'm less than optimistic.

Read on.

New Spying Law Broader Than Thought

By Robert Parry
August 13, 2007

Before the Democratic-controlled Congress caved in on George W. Bush’s warrantless-wiretapping powers, White House lawyers slipped in two provisions to give the President even more authority – and less accountability – than he claimed on his own. And the U.S. press corps largely missed that part of the story.

U.S. news reports mostly parroted the White House claim that the law “modernizes” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance of 1978 and “narrowly” targets overseas terror suspects who call or e-mail their contacts in the United States. But the “Protect America Act of 2007” actually casts the wiretapping net much wider.

Read on.

Battle for Democrats' Spine and Soul

By Brent Budowsky
August 11, 2007

Howard Dean in the 2004 campaign; Al Gore as the effective leader of the Loyal Opposition; and now Barack Obama challenging the tired and decadent national security establishment — these are the first true voices of 21st century politics.

If you believe supporting the Iraq war for five years was right; that America is safer under George Bush; and that special-interest lobbyists are the heart of America who do not buy laws with money, Hillary Clinton, the leader of the old establishment, is your girl (as she said).

Read on.

Spinning the Iraq War Death Toll

By Robert Parry
August 10. 2007

Mindful of the political fallout from a rising American death toll in Iraq, the U.S. military has pulled back from widespread use of aggressive tactics on the ground this summer, helping to explain a modest reduction in the number of soldiers killed in July, according to intelligence and military sources.

The number of U.S. military fatalities declined to 80 in July after three months of a death toll in the triple digits (104 in April, 126 in May, and 101 in June). The lower death toll has been cited by some U.S. commanders in Iraq and Bush administration supporters in Washington as a sign that President George W. Bush’s “surge” of U.S. troops is working.

Read on.

Consortiumnews.com's Home Stretch

By Robert Parry
August 9, 2007

We’re trying to wrap up our mid-year fundraiser, but we’re still about $10,000 short of our goal. So here are some reasons why it’s important to help us:

Perhaps the biggest threat to the American Republic has come from the disinformation, propaganda and false historical narratives that are fed to the American people through the national media.

This “perception management” – as the neocons like to call it – has tricked many Americans into supporting misguided policies and left many others paralyzed by confusion.

Read on.

'Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death'

By Brent Budowsky
August 8, 2007

Patrick Henry’s words ring hollow after Congress passed, and the president signed, a law of enormous constitutional and security importance in an atmosphere of fear, without any semblance of serious debate. Again.

While many members of the House and Senate and leading legal scholars did not fully understand this as the roll was called, this law expands the reach of surveillance of American citizens, on American soil, communicating with those “reasonably” targeted while abroad, without protections that have long existed.

Read on.

Bush, Colombia & Narco-Politics

By Andres Cala
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.

These new allegations about Colombia’s narco-politics have tarnished Uribe’s reputation just as Bush has been showcasing the Harvard- and Oxford-educated politician as a paragon of democratic values and an alternative to the firebrand Chávez, who has used Venezuela’s oil wealth to finance social programs for the poor across the region.

Read on.

Bush Gets Spying Blank Check

By Robert Parry
August 5, 2007

Eager to leave for its August recess, Congress handed George W. Bush another blank check on executive power, letting him order up spying directives against a vast number of people, including Americans, if they are physically outside the United States.

The “Protect America Act of 2007” sets the standard for a surveillance order – which can last for up to one year – as simply that it be “directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.”

The bill’s advocates claim it is intended to intercept communications when at least one party is linked to a terrorist group or a terrorist affiliate and is outside the United States. But the bill’s language doesn’t limit the surveillance to “terrorists” or “enemy combatants” – indeed those words are not mentioned in the legislation.

Read on.

Neck Deep in the [Alternative] Media!

Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, just published by the Media Consortium, is making a splash in the alternative media. Author Robert Parry has been appearing on several radio programs to discuss the book and the general issues that it covers, particularly the disastrous war in Iraq. You may want to check him out on Radio Chaos, based in Austin Texas: Scott Horton Interviews Robert Parry.

Also, BuzzFlash.com has a review of the book online that may be of interest.

Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush (Paperback & Hardcover)
By Robert Parry, Sam Parry and Nat Parry

BuzzFlash.com's Review (excerpt)

Just released, the BuzzFlash copies of "Neck Deep" are signed by the lead author, Robert Parry.

Parry is a former AP and Newsweek reporter, who runs one of our favorite websites, Consortiumnews.com. Parry is a mainstream journalist who came in from the cold, having seen the duplicity and buried truth that came out of governmental misdeeds in Central America and Iran-Contra.

Consortiumnews, launched way back in 1995, has been a key source of analytical commentaries exposing the right wing for their betrayal of the Constitution and democracy.

"A real-life who-done-it, Neck Deep unravels what may become one of history's great mysteries: Who killed the American Republic?

How did plutocrat George W. Bush come to lead the United States at the start of the 21st century - and how did he get away with using the 9/11 tragedy to overwhelm the constitutional safeguards that had protected the nation's liberties for more than two centuries?

Neck Deep shows how this crime was committed and then lines up the suspects - aggressive Republicans, accommodating Democrats, abrasive pundits, careerist journalists - for an assessment of collective guilt."

A solid overview of the nightmarish years known as the Bush Administration.

"It was a perfect storm that has been building for a quarter of a century," says Parry. "Aggressive Republicans, accommodating Democrats,and a press corps driven more by careerism than a search for truth have caused our country to become what the Founders fought against."

Read The Full Review >>>

And don't forget to check us out on MySpace. If you're on the MySpace network, please do add us as a friend.

Hillary's Nuclear 'Tough-Gal-ism'

By Robert Parry
August 3, 2007

For years now – arguably for decades – the dominant ideology of Washington has been what could be called “tough-guy-ism,” which usually consists of politicians and pundits competing for the most belligerent pose on any given foreign policy issue.

Sometimes the results can be comical, with arm-chair warriors who have never been near a real battlefield spouting military jargon and threatening America’s “enemies.” Other times, the consequences can be tragic, as when the Washington Rambos get their way and send someone else or someone else’s kids off to kill or be killed in a misguided war.

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is now indulging in what might be called “tough-gal-ism” as she berates rival contender Barack Obama for allegedly showing his inexperience by not brandishing nuclear weapons against possible al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Read on.

Collapsing Bridges vs. War in Iraq

By Stephen Crockett
August 3, 2007

The kind of money being spent by the Bush Republicans can result in saved or lost lives.

We all can see the results in the case of Iraq. Launching his optional war against Saddam Hussein, in the way he did, Bush has directly cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers and maybe a hundred thousand mostly innocent Iraqi civilians. We have failed as a nation to come to terms with the massive costs that are less direct and obvious but just as real.

Read on.

Bush's Secret Spying on Americans

By Robert Parry
August 2, 2007

The dispute over whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales committed perjury when he parsed words about George W. Bush’s warrantless surveillance program misses a larger point: the extraordinary secrecy surrounding these spying operations is not aimed at al-Qaeda, but at the American people.

There has never been a reasonable explanation for why a fuller discussion of these operations would help al-Qaeda, although that claim often is used by the Bush administration to challenge the patriotism of its critics or to avoid tough questions.

Read on.

Impeachment & the Constitution

By Stephen Crockett
July 31, 2007

The United States has been in a prolonged Constitutional crisis since the Supreme Court showed it had been corrupted by partisan politics when the Bush vs. Gore ruling was issued in December 2000.

The Bush Administration began by Republican politicians thumbing their noses at the rule of law. The past seven years have been an unending assault on Constitutional government, American political traditions and personal freedom.

It is time to place impeachment fully on the table for the top members of the Bush White House and Cabinet.

Read on.

NYT's New Pro-War Propaganda

By Robert Parry
July 30, 2007

No need to wait until September. It’s already obvious how George W. Bush and his still-influential supporters in Washington will sell an open-ended U.S. military occupation of Iraq – just the way they always have: the war finally has turned the corner and withdrawal now would betray the troops by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

At one time, the Iraq story line was how many schoolrooms had been painted or how well the government security forces were doing. Now there are new silver linings being detected that will justify a positive progress report in September – and the U.S. news media is again ready to play its credulous part.

Read on.

Iraq & the Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal

By Norman Solomon
July 27, 2007

Last week, a media advisory from “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” announced a new series of interviews on the PBS show that will address “what Iraq might look like when the U.S. military leaves.”

A few days later, Time magazine published a cover story titled “Iraq: What will happen when we leave.”

But it turns out, what will happen when we leave is that we won’t leave.

Read on.

A Gathering Storm

With Congress issuing subpoenas relating to its investigation of the Bush administration's firing of nine U.S. attorneys, the latest target being Bush's top political aide Karl Rove, the ominous question that hangs in the air is whether the authoritarian foundations that George Bush has laid over the past several years have overwhelmed America's system of government to the point that it should properly be called a dictatorship rather than a republic. With the administration boldly refusing to cooperate in any way with the congressional investigation, it appears that Bush's strategy may be to simply stonewall and wait until the matter makes its way through the Federal courts, which have been stacked with conservative allies who generally embrace a broad view of presidential power. With this in mind, there seems to be a real possibility that the president's unprecedented assertion of executive privilege may become the standard by which all future presidents operate.

Not only is the administration asserting a claim of executive privilege that is so sweeping that it lacks historical precedent, it also cites this executive privilege in arguing that Congress has no power to compel a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases relating to the prosecutor firings.

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration's stance "astonishing."

"That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell said.

What he left unsaid though is whether the United States still actually has a system of separation of powers, with three co-equal branches of government that serve as checks and balances on each other. Depending on the outcome of the current showdown, we will find out whether the rule of law still applies to those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, depending on the outcome of this showdown, high school civics textbooks that claim that "no man is above the law" in America may have to be amended to read, "no man is above the law, except in the Executive Branch."

With Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) now warning that there is a "cloud over this White House and a gathering storm," it should be pointed out that had Congress put up a bigger fight in the past regarding confirming Bush appointees to both Cabinet-level positions and the Federal courts, it's possible that the nation wouldn't be facing this potential constitutional crisis. Although Democrats did not have control of the Senate -- which is responsible for confirming presidential appointees -- from 2003 until 2007, there were numerous chances to put significant challenges to Bush's authoritarian view of Executive power. For instance, even with officials such as Alberto Gonzales on record as supporting policies of torture and the inapplicability of the Geneva Conventions in the "war on terror," the Senate easily confirmed the former White House lawyer to the position of Attorney General, the highest law enforcement official in the land. Four Democrats broke ranks to vote to confirm Gonzales, with three abstaining.

Congress again deferred to Bush's broad view of executive power when the president nominated a key architect of the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program – former NSA director Michael Hayden – to become CIA director. Hayden was waved through after a polite round of hearings and a resounding 78-15 confirmation vote in the U.S. Senate. Bush Supreme Court nominations have also received similar deference in the Senate. Samuel Alito, for example, was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court despite his unorthodox views on the “unitary executive.”

At a Federalist Society symposium in 2001, Judge Alito recalled that when he was in the Office of Legal Counsel in Ronald Reagan’s White House, “we were strong proponents of the theory of the unitary executive, that all federal executive power is vested by the Constitution in the President.”

In 1986, Alito advanced this theory by proposing “interpretive signing statements” from presidents to counter the court’s traditional reliance on congressional intent in assessing the meaning of federal law. Bush has issued more than 750 “signing statements” since 2001, effectively rejecting legal restrictions especially as they bear on presidential powers. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Alito & the Point of No Return.”]

These views were well-known at the time of Alito's nomination, yet, he was confirmed by a party-line vote of 58-42. While Democrats held firm in their opposition to Alito, they nevertheless refused to exercise the filibuster option, which may have prevented Alito from making his way onto the court. Now, with this "gathering storm" that Sen. Leahy warns about, these past concessions to the White House may prove to be the unravelling of America's system of checks and balances. Congress can issue as many subpoenas to the White House as it likes, but if the courts come to endorse Bush's sweeping assertion of executive privilege, the constitutional separation of powers may in effect be permanently revoked. For these reasons and others, some critics are arguing that going after officials like Gonzales and Rove is not nearly enough.

For instance, as attorney Shahid Buttar observes at Commondreams, "the Administration’s policy failures need not serve as the only basis for impeachment proceedings, because the threat to the Republic posed by Executive self-aggrandizement is far more dangerous and worthy of congressional rebuke. Despite all the recent attention on the Attorney General, the nation seems to casually overlook the White House’s ongoing assault on the Separation of Powers. ...

"Congress should absolutely demand - and if necessary, bring to effect - the Attorney General’s departure from office. But it should not stop there. Only the impeachment of the Vice President and President can restore the Rule of Law to the United States."

Dangers of a Cornered George Bush

By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and Dr. Justin Frank
July 27, 2007

Recent events have put a great deal more pressure on President George W. Bush, who has shown little regard for the constitutional system bequeathed to us by the Founders. Having bragged about being commander in chief of the “first war of the 21st century,” one he began under false pretenses, success in Iraq is now a pipedream.

The “new” strategy of surging troops in Baghdad has simply wasted more lives and bought some time for the president. His strategy boils down to keeping as many of our soldiers engaged as possible, in order to stave off definitive defeat in Iraq before January 2009.

Read on.

John Conyers Is No Martin Luther King

By Ray McGovern
July 24, 2007

What do Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and President George W. Bush have in common? They both think they can dis Cindy Sheehan and count on gossip columnists like the Washington Post’s David Milbank to trivialize a historic moment.

I’ll give this to President Bush. He makes no pretence when he disses. He would not meet with Sheehan to define for her the “noble cause” for which her son Casey died or tell her why he had said it was “worth it.”

Read on.

Neck Deep's 'Flap' Language

By Robert Parry
July 23, 2007

Often, before buying a book, I like to read the “flap” language, what’s written on the dust jacket that folds inside the front and back covers. So, below you will find the “flap” language for our new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush:

“The rain pelted down in icy-cold droplets, chilling both the protesters in soaked parkas and the well-dressed celebrants bent behind umbrellas to shield their furs and cashmere overcoats. Drawn to this historic moment – a time of triumph for some and fury for others – the two opposing groups jostled and pushed their way through security checkpoints, joining the tens of thousands pressing against rows of riot police lining Pennsylvania Avenue.

Read on.

The Logic of Impeachment

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bush/Cheney or the Republic

By Stephen Crockett
June 25, 2007

The recent claim by Dick Cheney to have both executive privilege and not to be part of the executive branch of government seems to amount to a claim that Cheney is simply above the rule of law.

It appears that both Bush and Cheney think they rule by divine right like the absolute monarchs of medieval Europe or the dictators of the old Soviet Bloc. Both need to be impeached.

Read on.

The Iraq-gate Cover-up Continues

By Robert Parry
June 25, 2007

In another show trial for Saddam Hussein’s compatriots – followed by more death sentences – an unnoted success for George W. Bush was how the U.S. press corps has continued to avert its eyes from the role of Westerners, including Bush’s father, in aiding and abetting Hussein’s murderous regime.

Major U.S. newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, reported on the June 24 death sentences meted out to Ali Hassan al-Majeed and two other senior Hussein aides without a single mention of the American role in helping arm and protect the Iraqi regime in the 1980s.

Read on.

Is Obama Getting 'Colin-ized'?

By Robert Parry
June 23, 2007

Sen. Barack Obama’s decision to seek foreign policy advice from former Secretary of State Colin Powell has boosted the Democratic presidential hopeful in the eyes of Washington’s insider crowd, but the move suggests that Obama is positioning himself as a conciliator rather than a battler, which may unnerve the party’s “base.”

Powell remains a beloved figure among Washington pundits and journalists despite his controversial role in selling the Iraq invasion with a deceptive speech to the United Nations. Many insiders forgive Powell that transgression, in part, because they also clambered aboard the Iraq War bandwagon in 2003.

Read on.

Sen. Levin's False History & Logic

By Robert Parry
June 21, 2007

If you’re wondering why the Iraq War is likely to continue indefinitely despite mounting public outrage and a failed military strategy, part of the answer can be found in two words: Carl Levin.

Levin, a low-key Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, has wedded himself to a line of thinking that is both historically wrong and logically unsound. Yet, his faulty reasoning, if maintained, virtually guarantees that George W. Bush will keep winning every war-funding round with Congress through the end of his presidency.

Read on.

Bush's Mafia Whacks the Republic

By Robert Parry
June 20, 2007

In years to come, historians may look back on U.S. press coverage of George W. Bush’s presidency and wonder why there was not a single front-page story announcing one of the most monumental events of mankind’s modern era – the death of the American Republic and the elimination of the “unalienable rights” pledged to “posterity” by the Founders.

The historians will, of course, find stories about elements of this extraordinary event – Bush’s denial of habeas corpus rights to a fair trial, his secret prisons, his tolerance of torture, his violation of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, his “signing statements” overriding laws, the erosion of constitutional checks and balances.

Read on.

The Iraq War's Nuclear Boomerang

By Ivan Eland
June 20, 2007

The Bush administration may live in a bubble of “unreality,” regarding its foreign policy in Iraq, but neo-conservatives inhabit a parallel universe on Iran.

Unbelievably, despite the fact that the U.S. quagmire in Iraq has greatly weakened the U.S. position vis-à-vis Iran, the neocons are pushing for military action against that theocratic regime.

Read on.

Is WP's Cohen the Dumbest Columnist?

By Robert Parry
June 19, 2007

Granted it would be quite a competition, but is Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen the dumbest columnist ever?

In his June 19 op-ed, Cohen joined the latest Inside-the-Beltway craze, the neoconservative media riot over the 30-month jail sentence facing former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

Read on.

Begging for Libby's Pardon

By Bill Moyers
June 19, 2007

We have yet another remarkable revelation of the mindset of Washington's ruling clique of neoconservative elites-the people who took us to war from the safety of their Beltway bunkers.

Even as Iraq grows bloodier by the day, their passion of the week is to keep one of their own from going to jail.

Read on.

How Not to Counter Terrorism

By Coleen Rowley & Other Intelligence Veterans
June 18, 2007

Given the effort that many of us have put into suggestions for reform, how satisfying it would be, were we able to report that appropriate correctives have been introduced to make us safer. But the bottom line is that the PR bromide to the effect that we are “safer” is incorrect. We are not safer. What follows will help explain why.

Wrong-headed actions and ideas had already taken root before that Senate hearing on June 6, 2002. Post 9/11 dragnet-detentions of innocents, official tolerance of torture (including abuse of U.S. citizens like John Walker Lindh), and panic-boosting color codes, had already been spawned from the mother of all slogans—“The Global War on Terror”—rhetorically useful, substantively inane. GWOT was about to spawn much worse.

Read on.

The Silence of the Bombs

By Norman Solomon
June 14, 2007

Three years have passed since most Americans came to the conclusion that the Iraq war was a "mistake." Reporting the results of a Gallup poll in June 2004, USA Today declared: "It is the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a major deployment of US forces a mistake."

And public opinion continued to move in an antiwar direction. But such trends easily coexist with a war effort becoming even more horrific.

Read on.

America's Fragile Republic

By Robert Parry
June 13, 2007

By a two-to-one margin, a federal appeals court has repudiated George W. Bush’s right to snatch a civilian off the streets of America and hold the person indefinitely without trial. But the makeup of the three-judge panel was a fluke, with two Clinton appointees comprising the majority.

The proportion of Republican appointees to Democrats on the full U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, is the opposite, eight-to-four Republican. So, the Bush administration retains high hopes that the full court will agree to review the case of Ali al-Marri and grant the President the authority he wants.

Read on.

Leaving Iraqi Refugees in the Lurch

By Ivan Eland
June 12, 2007

The Iraq War has made refugees of millions of Iraqis. They have been ethnically cleansed or displaced to other locations both inside the country, to neighboring countries, and overseas. Yet the Bush administration, the creator of the chaos and mayhem in Iraq, has done little to help them.

According to NBC News, since April 2003, when the initial U.S. military action was over, the United States has taken in a scant 535 Iraqi refugees. In contrast, European countries, many of which opposed the Bush administration’s invasion, have taken in 18,000.

Read on.

Powell Belies 'Commander Guy' Bush

By Robert Parry
June 10, 2007

For the past several months, the Washington press corps has dutifully reported George W. Bush’s attack on Democrats as politicians who wish to impose their Iraq War judgments on the military commanders in the field.

According to Bush, the Democrats think that U.S. commanders in Iraq should “take fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, D.C.,” while he by contrast is “a commander guy” who follows the advice of military men on the front lines.

Read on.

Thompson Courts the Right-Wing Base

By Richard L. Fricker
June 9, 2007

Timothy Griffin, the Karl Rove protégé at the center of the federal prosecutor scandal, is negotiating for a senior position on Fred Thompson’s Republican presidential campaign, another sign that the actor and former senator is positioning himself as the reddest of red-meat candidates appealing to the right-wing base.

A litmus test among devoted followers of George W. Bush remains an instinctive rejection of all scandals considered important by liberals, from the deceptive intelligence behind the Iraq War to the torture of terror suspects to the exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the politicization of the U.S. Attorneys.

Read on.

GOP/Media Rewrite Iraq War History

By Robert Parry
June 8, 2007

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and radio personality Jay Diamond are right to wonder why Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney got away with rewriting a key chapter of the Iraq War history without political reporters raising a peep.

At the June 5 Republican debate, co-sponsored by CNN, Romney defended George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003 on the grounds that Saddam Hussein refused to let United Nations weapons inspectors in to search for WMD.

Read on.

Iraq Parallels Vietnam, Not Korea

By Ivan Eland
June 7, 2007

The Bush administration has decided its new model for a long-term solution in Iraq is Korea. It’s an attempt to stifle the inevitable comparisons of the Iraq quagmire to Vietnam and a way to justify the eventual reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq (to take the heat off of Republican candidates in the 2008 elections), while retaining a substantial U.S. military presence by establishing three or four long-term major military bases.

The plan would ultimately be a disaster for the United States.

Read on.

Last Plamegate Worry for Bush/Cheney

By Robert Parry
June 6, 2007

It’s a well-worn talking point for George W. Bush’s supporters to say there was no underlying crime beneath former White House aide I. Lewis Libby’s conviction for obstructing justice, a debatable point itself. But the evidence is clear there was a larger cover-up conspiracy – and it could still unravel.

The problem for prosecutors has been that the cover-up conspiracy involves the top two executive officers of the U.S. government, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, meaning that the standards of proof required and concerns over the nation’s well-being if charges were brought have risen to near prohibitive levels.

Read on.

The New Assault on Al Gore

By Robert Parry
June 5, 2007

An irony about Al Gore’s new book, The Assault on Reason, is that the former Vice President blames TV much more than the print media for America’s drift into the world of the irrational.

Yet, while author Gore has encountered mostly respectful interviews on TV, his book has been savaged by major newspapers and print reviewers, often distorting the contents and resurrecting one of the favorite press themes of Campaign 2000, that Gore is an obnoxious pedant.

Read on.

Bush's Global Warming Foot-Dragging

By Robert Parry
June 1, 2007

George W. Bush snared front-page attention for his supposed shift on global warming, but the President’s tepid “aspirational goals” – and comments from his NASA chief that a hotter planet might actually be beneficial – continue to reflect Bush’s long-held doubts about the urgency of the problem.

Since running for the presidency in 2000, Bush has justified his foot-dragging on the issue, in part, through reliance on coal-industry-financed research embracing the same notion expressed by Bush’s NASA administrator Michael Griffin, that global warming may turn out to be a good thing.

Read on.

The Hariri Case & Double Standards

By Robert Parry
May 31, 2007

A terrible crime has been committed in the Middle East. Many innocent people have died. International law may have been violated. The United Nations is determined to bring the perpetrators to justice. An extraordinary international tribunal will be organized with the authority to assess guilt and recommend punishments.

Read on.

Dem Consultants: Calculations of War

By Brent Budowsky
May 30, 2007

Now we read in the Boston Globe how John Kerry, preparing to campaign to be Commander in Chief, voted in 2002 for the Iraq War after his political consultants informed the would-be leader of the free world that he would not be “politically viable” unless he voted yes.

This followed the disclosure that Bob Shrum advised John Edwards to send young men and women to die as a way of improving his weak national-security resume in 2002.

Read on.

How Bush Risks an Islamist Bomb

By Ivan Eland
May 30, 2007

The Bush administration has failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden or to win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, the administration has also missed the chance to maintain a stable nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Like the U.S. policy toward the Shah’s Iran in the 1960s and 1970s, the Bush administration, despite a rhetorical commitment to spread democracy around the world, has put all of its eggs in the basket of an autocrat unlikely to survive—in this case, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Read on.

Bush's Killer Iraq Talking Points

By Robert Parry
May 30, 2007

It’s an old military adage that bad intel can get soldiers killed, but it now turns out that false talking points may be even more lethal, a lesson that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney continue to teach the world as the death toll mounts in Iraq.

In pounding the Democratic-controlled Congress into submission on Iraq War funding last week, the President and Vice President let loose a withering barrage of non-sequiturs, appeals to fear, long-discredited canards and personal attacks on critics for endangering U.S. troops.

Read on.

No Celebration This Memorial Day

By Mary MacElveen
May 28, 2007

As I sat here visiting a non-political chat room which I tend to do from time-to-time just to escape this ugly war and the world of politics, someone asked in the room if we were enjoying this holiday weekend.

I just sat there with an anger rising since I do not see this and recent Memorial Day weekends as being holidays. In reading where 3,451 soldiers are now dead due to President Bush’s lies and his lust for power and greed; just how can one treat this as a normal holiday weekend?

Read on.

Lost Whales & a Lost Presidency

By Ray McGovern
May 26, 2007

I know not everyone believes in God. But I do; and I’m really struck by the ways she chooses to penetrate our thick skulls.

So often we just don’t get it. To help us understand, allegory or parable is chosen—and sometimes leviathans.

Read on.

Grieving Moms vs. Washington Pols

By Robert Parry
May 22, 2007

Every other month, Gold Star mother Teresa Arciola drives from her home in Westchester County, New York, to Arlington Cemetery in Virginia, sits on her son’s grave and reads aloud from “Corduroy,” his favorite baby book. Another mother spent winter afternoons in a sleeping bag stretched across her son’s final resting place.

The unspeakable suffering of these parents of dead soldiers stands in marked contrast to the maneuvering over the Iraq War now underway across the river in Washington. There, George W. Bush appears quietly planning another escalation of the Iraq War – possibly doubling U.S. combat troops by Christmas – and many members of Congress are frightened of the political repercussions if they stand up to him.

Read on.

Thinking Past Plan B in Iraq

By Ivan Eland
May 22, 2007

After initially spurning the Iraq Study Group’s (ISG) recommendations, President Bush now seems inclined toward the ISG’s recommendation of transforming the U.S. military’s role from fighting insurgents and militias into a smaller force that would train Iraqi forces in seeming perpetuity.

Although this solution would lower U.S. casualties, and perhaps increase Republican chances in the 2008 elections, it will do little to dampen the combination of guerrilla and civil war in Iraq. A more radical solution is needed: a dramatic decentralization of Iraqi governance.

Read on.

Gingrich's War on 'Secularism'

By Robert Parry
May 20, 2007

All 43 American presidents – even those who doubted religion – associated themselves with the Christian faith. Today, it is still far easier for a politician from a fringe religious sect, such as Mormonism, to be a serious national candidate than it would be for an atheist or an agnostic.

Yet, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is basing his political comeback, in part, on an assertion that the real bias in America is against those who believe in religion and that “radical secularism” is oppressing them.

Read on.

Rejecting Reality in Iraq

By Robert Parry
May 18, 2007

The well-regarded British research organization, Chatham House, has published a new report with the seemingly unobjectionable title “Accepting Realities in Iraq.” But it is that difficulty – facing up to what is real – that has been at the heart of this political and military catastrophe.

From the beginning, George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers have put ideology and wishful thinking ahead of rationality and realism. This tendency explains why so many pieces of evidence cited to support the Iraq invasion have proven false and why so many claims of progress have proven overly optimistic.

Read on.

Michael Moore's New Film Takes on the Health Industry, Gets Him in Trouble with Treasury Dept.

For those who have been wondering, as I have, when Michael Moore's film taking on the health insurance industry would finally be complete, there's no need to wait any longer. Yesterday, Moore announced that the film was finished and that it would be debuting at the Cannes Film Festival, which opened on Wednesday.

Moore explained the lack of publicity surrounding the film, titled "Sicko," in a letter to supporters yesterday:

My intention was to keep "Sicko" under wraps and show it to virtually no one before its premiere in Cannes. ... [My] silence was also because I knew that the health care industry -- an industry which makes up more than 15 percent of our GDP -- was not going to like much of what they were going to see in this movie and I thought it best not to upset them any sooner than need be.

But there is some concern that he will have trouble even getting the film out of the country and to the Cannes festival.

"For some strange reason," he explains, "on May 2nd the Bush administration initiated an action against me over how I obtained some of the content they believe is in my film."

Bush's Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, launched an investigation of a trip I took to Cuba to film scenes for the movie. These scenes involve a group of 9/11 rescue workers who are suffering from illnesses obtained from working down at Ground Zero. They have received little or no help with their health care from the government. I do not want to give away what actually happens in the movie because I don't want to spoil it for you (although I'm sure you'll hear much about it after it unspools Saturday). Plus, our lawyers have advised me to say little at this point, as the film goes somewhere far scarier than "Cuba." Rest assured of one thing: no laws were broken. All I've done is violate the modern-day rule of journalism that says, "ask no questions of those in power or your luncheon privileges will be revoked."

This preemptive action taken by the Bush administration on the eve of the "Sicko" premiere in Cannes led our attorneys to fear for the safety of our film, noting that Secretary Paulson may try to claim that the content of the movie was obtained through a violation of the trade embargo that our country has against Cuba and the travel laws that prohibit average citizens of our free country from traveling to Cuba. (The law does not prohibit anyone from exercising their first amendment right of a free press and documentaries are protected works of journalism.)

I was floored when our lawyers told me this. "Are you saying they might actually confiscate our movie?" "Yes," was the answer. "These days, anything is possible. Even if there is just a 20 percent chance the government would seize our movie before Cannes, does anyone want to take that risk?"

In order to avoid the master copy of the documentary being confiscated by the Bush administration, Moore made a duplicate master copy last week and smuggled it out of the country.

While this action taken by the Bush administration may seem extraordinary, it actually fits in quite well with a pattern it has established over the past several years. Since taking office, Bush has been cracking down hard on Americans who defy the Cuba travel ban, on both individuals and agencies that specialize in travel to the forbidden island. In 2006, the U.S. Treasury Department suspended the licenses of four travel agencies and six religious organizations for illegally providing travel to Cuba.

Also, Bush's use of the Treasury Dept. to go after Michael Moore, a long-time thorn in the side of the administration and its corporate allies, is reminiscent of other actions taken by the government against administration critics, including environmental groups, civil liberties organizations, and peace groups.

In 2003, for example, Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Justice Department dusted off an 1872 law against “sailor-mongering” to prosecute Greenpeace. The case against the environmental organization followed an attempt by a couple of its members to board a ship transporting illegally harvested Brazilian mahogany. The protesters intended to unfurl a banner that read, “President Bush: Stop Illegal Logging.”

The law that was used against them however was clearly never intended for environmental activists. Its purpose was described by an Oregon court in 1890: to prevent “the evil” of “sailor-mongers [who] get on board vessels and by the help of intoxicants, and the use of other means, often savoring of violence, get the crews ashore and leave the vessel without help to manage or care for her.”

The environmental group came under attack again in 2005 when the IRS launched a months-long audit of the organization for alleged money laundering and other crimes. The audit was prompted, according to an IRS auditor, by complaints from a group called Public Interest Watch, which has been funded almost entirely by Exxon-Mobil.

Greenpeace and other administration critics also have been investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. “The FBI has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace,” the New York Times reported. [NYT, July 18, 2005]

Another group singled out by the FBI was United for Peace and Justice, which has facilitated many of the mass marches against the war in Iraq. Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for the coalition, said she was particularly concerned that the FBI’s counterterrorism division was examining the coalition’s operations.

“We always assumed the FBI was monitoring us, but to see the counterterrorism people looking at us like this is pretty jarring,” Cagan said.

So, despite how extraordinary the administration's actions against Michael Moore may seem, unfortunately, they should not come as a surprise. Nevertheless, "Sicko" is being called Cannes' "hottest ticket," and with the positive publicity the film is sure to receive, it could prove quite difficult for the administration to succeed in squashing the movie, as it seems intent on doing.

The Iraq War: Going, Going, ...

By Robert Parry
May 17, 2007

How should the American people interpret the extraordinary fact that George W. Bush couldn’t convince a single retired four-star general to sign up as the new “war czar” for coordinating the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – and finally had to settle for an active-duty three-star general who had opposed Bush’s “surge” in Iraq?

After an embarrassing failure to convince at least five former generals, including one of the original “surge” architects, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, to take the new high-powered job, Bush finally gave the “war czar” role to Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, a known critic of Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq.

Read on.

Jerry Falwell's Deal with the Devil

By Robert Parry
May 16, 2007

The Rev. Jerry Falwell’s death will elicit scores of eulogies on the good the televangelist did, even while acknowledging some hurtful actions, such as blaming gays and civil libertarians for 9/11. But there is another little-known chapter of Falwell’s career: his collaboration with a Korean cult leader bent on transforming the United States into a theocracy.

Like other prominent Republican figures, Falwell entered into a behind-the-scenes alliance with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon even as the self-proclaimed Messiah was denouncing America as “Satan’s harvest” and vowing to incorporate the United States into a worldwide theocratic empire that would eradicate all individuality.

Read on.

Iran's Mission Accomplished

By Ivan Eland
May 16, 2007

With its usual tin ear for public relations, the Bush administration provided another “Kodak moment” of incompetent belligerence by yet again sending a high-level administration official to use an aircraft carrier as a prop for a hawkish rant.

Vice President Dick Cheney did manage to refrain from displaying another “Mission Accomplished” banner during his address to the crew of the John C. Stennis, stationed 150 miles off Iran’s coast. But as Cheney warned Iran against disrupting oil transportation routes or getting nuclear weapons, the speech’s imagery also reminded the American public of President Bush’s previous fiasco on another aircraft carrier.

Read on.

How George Tenet Lied

By Ray McGovern
May 14, 2007

Mercifully, the flurry of media coverage of former CIA director George Tenet hawking his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, has abated. Buffeted by those on the right and left who see through his lame attempt at self-justification, Tenet probably now wishes he had opted to just fade away, as old soldiers used to do.

He listened instead to his old PR buddy and “co-author” Bill Harlow who failed miserably in trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. By this point, they may be having second thoughts.But, hey, $4 million is a sizable sum, even if split two ways. But, aside from the money, what else could they have been thinking?

Read on.

No More Purple Fingers: GOP Disappointed with Iraq's Government

Republicans in Congress who once seized on the election of an Iraqi government as a total vindication of George W. Bush's decision to invade the country and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, are now expressing overwhelming disappointment in that very government.

As Reuters reported yesterday,

The top-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate on Sunday expressed frustration with the Iraqi government, saying Republicans were "overwhelmingly disappointed" with the lack of political progress.

"The Iraqi government is a huge disappointment," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN'S Late Edition on Sunday.

"So far, they've not been able do anything they promised on the political side," the Kentucky Republican said, citing the Iraqis' failure to pass a new oil revenue bill, hold local elections and dismantle the former Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. "It's a growing frustration."

"Republicans overwhelmingly feel disappointed about the Iraqi government," he added.

It's a far cry from the sentiment expressed at Bush's 2005 State of the Union address, given just weeks after Iraq's much-heralded national elections. At that that State of the Union, Republican lawmakers dyed their fingers purple in a gesture meant to convey their solidarity with the people of Iraq and its newly elected government.



The purple fingers were a reference to a technique used in the Iraqi elections to protect against voter fraud. After casting their ballots, Iraqis had their fingers dipped in purple dye, in order to prevent multiple voting. The practice produced many media-friendly images which were broadcast widely on U.S. television in a self-congratulatory atmosphere, with pundits endlessly marvelling at how proud Americans should be for bringing democracy to the long-oppressed Iraqi people. One of the most iconic of these images was of a young Iraqi woman giving the "victory" sign with her purple-stained finger:



This image became a symbol of the hope that the U.S. had brought the people of Iraq, particularly the women.

But even at the time, most commentators seemed to miss the significance of the elections, which astute observers noted actually pointed to the desire of the Iraqi people for U.S. and coalition forces to leave their country. As Matthew Rothschild wrote in The Progressive,

Despite President Bush's trumpeting of the elections as a symbol of support for the U.S. efforts, many Iraqi voters, like [Khalid] Kareem, cast their ballots to boot out the Americans. Even in Fallujah, a city that is one of the most potent symbols of resistance to the occupation and the new government, local leaders and resistance groups risked assassination by jihadis by encouraging their followers to vote and avoid attacking polling stations. In some cases, these leaders even called upon their people to protect polling stations from Al Qaeda operatives, who threatened death for anyone participating in the political process.

Rothschild quoted Moayed Jassim Abed, a truck driver from Ramadi, who seemed to reflect the sentiments of many Iraqi voters, that their primary concern in electing their government was the ongoing problem of security. "We want security and stability," Abed said. "The Americans have been there three years and they have done worse than Saddam has done."

By participating in the electoral process and electing a national government, Abed, like so many other Iraqis, hoped that he would be hastening the day that the Americans would leave.

Beyond anecdotal evidence, Rothschild also cited a nationwide poll conducted just before the election:

A recent Oxford Research Associates poll conducted for a number of Western media organizations found two-thirds of Iraqis oppose the presence of U.S. troops in their country. In the same poll, "occupation forces" came last behind religious leaders, police, the United Nations, the new Iraqi army, and political parties when Iraqis were asked, "How much confidence do you have in ...?" A survey conducted by Iraqi pollster Saadoun Al-Dulaimi (now the minister of defense) ahead of the January 2005 elections found that 85 percent of Iraqis wanted withdrawal "as soon as possible."

A secret poll taken by the British Ministry of Defense less than a year later found an even greater majority of Iraqis opposing the presence of foreign troops in their country. The poll, reported the conservative British Telegraph, found that 82% of Iraqis opposed the occupation and that up to 65% of Iraqis supported attacks on occupation forces. Fewer than one percent thought that U.S. and British military involvement was helping to improve security in their country.

Now, two years later, with the security situation in Iraq worse than ever, it appears that the Iraqi parliament is finally coming to express the popular will of the Iraqi people. As the Washington Post reported last week,

A majority of members of Iraq's parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq's legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.

The draft bill proposes a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some U.S. Democratic lawmakers have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.

For his part, Mitch McConnell said that if the Iraqi legislation passes, the U.S. would be happy to leave the country. "I want to assure you, if they vote to ask us to leave, we'll be glad to comply with their request," he said.

If so, it may mark the first time that Republicans actually respect the popular wishes of the people being occupied by U.S. forces, or for that matter, the American people, who also support ending the occupation as soon as possible. These wishes have been expressed both in public opinion polls, and at the voting booth. As Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) noted last week,

The congressional vote reflected public opinion about the war. Before the [November 2006 congressional] election, the Iraq war was a top priority for 61% of Democrats and 52% of Independents, compared to 38% of Republicans. Democratic Party leaders in both the House and the Senate have explained their effort to pass legislation to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq as keeping faith with the voters in the November 2006 congressional elections, which brought Democrats to power. As Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) put it, “Last fall, the American people voted for a new direction in Iraq.”

Public opinion has become even more opposed to the war since the November elections. A recent New York Times-CBS News poll found 64% of Americans supported a timeline for withdrawal in 2008. A CNN poll shows that 54% of American opposed the Bush veto of the deadline for withdrawal bill. In February 2007, the Vermont state legislature became the first in the union to support resolutions calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Other states may follow as they see the congressional initiative stall.

If other states begin to follow suit as FPIF predicts, and if the anti-occupation legislation passes in the Iraqi parliament, it could be interesting to watch just how stubborn George Bush and his allies in Congress remain in continuing this unpopular war. With the vast majority of the world, as well as the Iraqi and American people, opposed to the war, the Republican rationales for continuing it are increasingly difficult to justify.

Indeed, if by dipping their fingers in purple ink they meant to indicate their support for democracy -- either in Iraq or at home -- they would be working to end this war as soon as humanly possible.

Mumia's Chance for a New Trial: May 17

On May 17, oral arguments for death-row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, PA. In the following days, the court will decide whether Mumia will be granted a new trial, life in prison, or whether he shall be put to death.

The issues under consideration by the court will include whether Abu-Jamal was denied the right to due process of law and a fair trial under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments because of the prosecutor’s “appeal-after-appeal” argument. This argument essentially encouraged the jury to disregard the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt, and err on the side of guilt.

Also being considered on May 17 is whether the prosecution’s use of peremptory challenges to exclude African Americans from sitting on the jury violated Abu-Jamal’s rights to due process and equal protection under the law. In addition, the court will consider whether the jury instructions and verdict form that resulted in the death penalty deprived Abu-Jamal of rights guar­anteed by the Eight and Fourteenth Amend­ments to due process of law.

After 25 years on Pennsylvania's death row, the May 17 court date may represent Abu-Jamal's best chance yet during his long incarceration for the chance of a new trial -- especially due to newly discovered evidence, such as a crime scene photograph from Dec. 9, 1981 that purportedly documents police manipulation of the scene.

For years, human rights and legal groups such as Amnesty International and the National Lawyers Guild have called his original trial deeply flawed and have been calling for a new chance for the former Black Panther and radio journalist to prove his innocence in the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. As Amnesty International said in 2000,

Amnesty International today called for a new trial in the case of Mumia Abu Jamal on the basis that his original trial was deeply flawed.

"This is not about an issue affecting the life of just one man. This is about justice -- which affects us all. And justice, in this case, can only be served by a new trial," Amnesty International said.

After many years of monitoring the case and an exhaustive review of the original documents, Amnesty International has concluded that the proceedings under which Mumia Abu-Jamal was tried, convicted and sentenced to death fail to reach the minimum international standards for fair trials.

Their exhaustively researched report, A Life In The Balance -- The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, was made available online. It begins by noting the international significance of Mumia's case:

His case has generated more controversy and received more attention, both national and international, than that of any other inmate currently under sentence of death in the United States of America (USA).

Having lived in Europe for a couple of years, I can vouch for the passionate commitment many Europeans have for his case. While travelling through Italy, I remember once seeing a huge mural of Mumia in Milan, and in Copenhagen, Denmark, I once joined a march of thousands of Danes to the US embassy demanding a new trial for Mumia.

Indeed, as the New York-based International Action Center notes,

Mumia Abu-Jamal is recognized internationally as a political prisoner whose Constitutional rights have been consistently violated in the state's mad dash to railroad him to execution. Mumia has been declared an honorary citizen of Paris, Palermo, the Central District of Copenhagen. Mumia was awarded the coveted Solhvervfonden Foundation Award in Copenhagen, Denmark for his services to humanity as a voice of conscience.

While Amnesty International is careful not to identify him as a political prisoner, choosing instead to focus on the unfairness of his original trial, many around the world have no such qualms. While marching in Copenhagen, I remember asking one young Dane how much he knew about Mumia's case. He replied that he just knew that Mumia was an American political prisoner that the U.S. government was trying to execute in order to silence his voice.

Many of these suspicions are fueled by the criticism that Mumia Abu-Jamal levels against the U.S. criminal justice system, the failures of American capitalism, and the injustices of U.S. foreign policy -- criticisms that are so scathing that they seem to go beyond the limits of acceptable political discourse in America. His imprisonment has not stopped him from continuing to speak out, with several books published over the years, and countless radio commentaries broadcast on Pacifica Radio and other outlets.

Many of the commentaries are now available on YouTube, and listening to him slam U.S. policy, one might be forgiven for reaching the conclusion that his voice is one that the U.S. government would simply love to silence:





Whether one subscribes to the view that Mumia is a victim of a system that has targetted him due to his political views, it has become increasingly difficult to justify his continued denial of a new trial. So much evidence has emerged since 1981 that points to his innocence, it is hard to imagine what more it might take for the Appeals Court to allow it to finally be heard. One man, Arnold Beverly, has even personally admitted to the murder of Daniel Faulkner, saying Mumia had nothing to do with it.

Furthermore, it has become clear that exonerating evidence was suppressed in his original trial, that key witnesses were intimidated from testifying, that other witnesses were intimidated into fingering Mumia as the shooter, and that his presiding judge, Albert Sabo, was on a personal crusade to send Mumia to death. With a fair hearing on May 17, there's a real possibility that Mumia may be given a new chance to prove his innocence in a court of law.

But as Amnesty notes in A Life in the Balance, "The politicization of Mumia Abu-Jamal's case may not only have prejudiced his right to a fair trial, but may now be undermining his right to fair and impartial treatment in the appeal courts." With this politicization in mind, many worry that Mumia will once again be denied a new trial and sent back to prison, where he has now spent more than half of his life.

In an attempt to ensure that Mumia is finally granted the fair trial that he has for so long been denied, several groups are urging concerned citizens to descend on the courthouse in Philadelphia on May 17. The Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition is calling on people converge at 8:30 am at the U.S. Courthouse in Philadelphia on 6th and Market Streets to demand justice for Mumia.

The New Emperor's New Clothes

By Inez Hollander, Ph.D.
May 11, 2007

In 2000 I lost my Dutch citizenship to become a God-fearing and patriotic American. This was never much of a moral dilemma as Lady Liberty had been a shining beacon throughout my life in The Netherlands.

Americans had liberated Holland when my parents were still teenagers: conversations around the dinner table sometimes went back to that moment of liberation when my parents had been dancing in the streets, decked out in red, white and blue, smoking American cigarettes and eating chocolate handed out by good-looking GIs.

Read on.

Unrest in France Following a General Trend Across Europe

In France, anarchists and other leftists are reacting to the electoral victory of conservative Nicolas Sarkozy with riots, although you probably have not heard about the unrest in the U.S. media. While it is obvious that many of the rioters see Sarkozy as an anti-immigrant zealot and denounce him as a "fascist," informative reporting from the streets may be hindered by a law recently passed by the French Constitutional Council that effectively criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists.

Despite the new law, there is plenty of footage on YouTube, some of which we are providing here.





While there may not be one single issue that could be blamed for sparking the riots, it's worth noting that Sarkozy is decidedly pro-American, and with so much anger in France over the Iraq war and other unpopular U.S. policies, it shouldn't come as a great surprise that passions are so intense over the election results. Also, Sarkozy has vowed to tackle the French "welfare state," promising to “restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect for the nation.” In a country like France, with its 35-hour work week and generous vacation time, many see Sarkozy as a threat to their very way of life.

In a broader sense, it could also be pointed out that the riots seem to be following a general pattern that is being seen across Europe recently. From Greece to Italy to Denmark, people are taking to the streets -- sometimes violently -- to protest neoliberal economic policies such as the privatization of the university system in Greece and American encroachments into Europe such as the new military base proposed for Vicenza, Italy.

In typically tranquil Denmark, thousands of youth recently rioted in response to the Danish government's decision to shut down a decades-old anarchist squat known as Ungdomshuset, or "The Youth House." Following the eviction of Ungdomshuset, the Copenhagen neighborhood of Norrebro became the scene of ongoing street battles for several days:



A similar scene played out in Greece in March, when the Greek constitution was amended to allow privatization of the country's university system:



These scenes of violence may soon sweep Italy as well, if the U.S. government carries through on its plans to make the northeastern Italian town of Vicenza the largest US military site in Europe. David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org reported yesterday that "the people of Vicenza, and all of Italy, have sworn it will never happen," and noted that in February 200,000 people descended on the town in protest of the plans.

Largely as a result [of the protest], the Prime Minister of Italy was (temporarily) driven out of power. Meanwhile, just outside Vicenza, large tents now hold newly minted citizen activists keeping a 24-hour-per-day vigil and training hundreds of senior citizens, children, and families every day in how to nonviolently stop bulldozers. The bulldozers they are waiting for are American.

The conflict, should it come about, will be as surprising to American television viewers as were the attacks of 9-11, unless someone tells them ahead of time what is going on. This week a group of Italians is in Washington, D.C., attempting to do just that. A group of Italian Members of Parliament also visited Washington last month in opposition to the base.

While so far the demonstrations have been peaceful, it should not come as a great surprise if Italian anger over the proposed base spills into violence, if recent trends across Europe are any indication.

Panel Calls for Due Process for Journalists Held by U.S. Military

On a panel held yesterday in connection with World Press Freedom Day, representatives of two journalists held by the U.S. military called upon the U.S. to either charge them with crimes or release them. Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been held in Iraq for a year, and Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for the Middle East television station Al-Jazeera, has been detained since late 2001 and is currently at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Neither have been provided an opportunity to prove their innocence in a court of law.

U.S. officials claim that because Hussein took photographs of explosions in Iraq, that he must have been at the locations ahead of time, and therefore complicit with the Iraqi insurgency. But Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the AP, said he was "simply the unlucky fellow who happened to be the photographer for the world's largest newsgathering organization in a difficult province." She called the U.S. claims against him a "rolling set of allegations that arise and then disappear without the benefit of a trial."

Similarly, Al-Hajj has faced varying allegations, but has been denied the opportunity to refute them because the U.S. government has never filed charges or presented evidence against him. He has been in custody since he was stopped at the Afghanistan border by Pakistani authorities in December 2001 and turned over to U.S. authorities six months later.

His attorney, Zachary Katznelson, pointed out that the evidence being used to justify al-Hajj's detention is classified, so neither the journalist, his lawyers, nor the public have been able to see it. In al-Hajj's ongoing interrogations at Guantanamo, U.S. officials have focused almost exclusively on obtaining intelligence regarding al-Jazeera and its staff. His interrogators have told him that he would be released if he provided information about the satellite network’s activities, an offer that al-Hajj has consistently refused. Al-Hajj, who has been force-fed while on a hunger strike to protest his incarceration, appeared weak during a recent visit, the lawyer said.

Katznelson called upon the U.S. to make public the classified evidence that the U.S. says justifies his detention. "If there is any evidence, then let's see it," Katznelson said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which sponsored yesterday's panel at the National Press Club, details Al-Hajj's case in a 2006 report called, "The Enemy?"

In the report, CPJ notes that al-Hajj

has been held for nearly five years on the basis of secret evidence; he has not been convicted or even charged with a crime. Until this year—when an Associated Press lawsuit prompted the Pentagon to identify the detainees—the military would not acknowledge al-Haj was in custody. Al-Haj’s lawyer, who has been barred from attending his client’s hearings, has called the allegations baseless and the justice system at Guantanamo a sham.

“There is absolutely zero evidence that he has any history in terrorism at all,” said Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, a London-based human rights group, who took up al-Haj’s case in 2005. Stafford Smith contends that al-Haj’s continued detention is political, and the main focus of U.S. interrogators has not been al-Haj’s alleged terrorist activities but obtaining intelligence on Al-Jazeera and its staff.

CPJ also notes that the detentions of al-Hajj and Hussein are part of an ongoing pattern by the U.S. military to detain reporters without charges, in what could be seen as a concerted campaign of intimidation.

Hussein’s detention is not an isolated incident in Iraq. Over the last four years, dozens of journalists, mostly Iraqis, have been detained by U.S. troops, according to CPJ research. While most have been released after short periods, in at least eight cases documented by CPJ Iraqi journalists have been held by U.S. forces for weeks or months without charge or conviction. In all previous detentions journalists were released without charges ever being substantiated.

Even without the arbitrary detentions of journalists by the U.S. military, Iraq is already the most dangerous place in the world for reporters to work. Of the 56 confirmed deaths of journalists worldwide in 2006, CPJ notes that 32 were in Iraq.

The latest victim was Dmitry Chebotayev, a Russian photographer killed on Sunday in Baqouba. He was 29 years old.

The Right's Parallel Universe

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.