Hillary Low-balled Bill's Pay in Forms

By Robert Parry
April 6, 2008

In her disclosure forms for the U.S. Senate and her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton downplayed Bill Clinton’s income from two key financial backers, billionaire investor Ronald Burkle and consumer-data executive Vinod Gupta, when compared with the Clintons’ recently released tax filings.

Sen. Clinton’s earlier disclosure forms listed the former President’s compensation as “over $1,000” each from Burkle’s and Gupta’s firms – when the actual amounts ran into the hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars, according to the tax returns.

Read on.

Beijing's Reality Intrudes on Shangri-la

By Don North
April 5, 2008

As the Beijing-to-Lhasa train pulls out of Golmud in western China, starting the long climb into Tibet, it passes through an archway with a debatable slogan in Chinese characters: “The railroad is to create happiness for the people of all nationalities.”

At 16,640 feet above sea level, the train crosses through the Tanggula Pass into the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region. Three diesel locomotives power the rapid ascent of the highest rail line in the world.

Read on.

(The Late) M.L. King Still Silenced

By Jeff Cohen
April 4, 2008

Soon after Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday became a federal holiday in 1986, I began prodding mainstream media to cover the dramatic story of King’s last year as he campaigned militantly against U.S. foreign and economic policy.

Most of his last speeches were recorded. But year after year, corporate networks have refused to air the tapes.

Read on.

Building a Legal Framework for Torture

By Jason Leopold
April 3, 2008

On Jan. 17, 2003, Mary Walker, the Air Force general counsel, received an urgent memo from the Pentagon's top attorney. Attached to the classified document was a set of directives drafted two days earlier by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

"Establish a working group within the Department of Defense to assess the legal, policy and operational issues relating to the interrogations of detainees held by the U.S. Armed Forces in the war on terrorism," the directives said.

Read on.

All Power to the President

By Robert Parry
April 2, 2008

Though little discussed on the campaign trail, a crucial issue to be decided in November is whether the United States will return to its traditions as a constitutional Republic respecting “unalienable” human rights or whether it will finish a transformation into a frightened nation governed by an all-powerful President who can do whatever he wants during the open-ended “war on terror.”

That reality was underscored on April 1 with the release of a five-year-old legal opinion from former Justice Department official John Yoo asserting that President George W. Bush possessed nearly unlimited authority as Commander in Chief, including the power to have military interrogators abuse terror suspects.

Read on.

A Good Thing from the Bush Years

By Robert Parry
April 1, 2008

There have been plenty of negatives from George W. Bush’s presidency – a disastrous war, a damaged economy, exploding government debt and assaults on the U.S. Constitution – but, as my mom used to say, it’s always important to look for the positives.

And here is one: At no time in my three decades in Washington have I seen more common purpose between honest American journalists and patriotic U.S. intelligence analysts. By trampling on a principle that both groups hold dear – respect for the truth – Bush has pushed these historic adversaries together.

Read on.

Delusionary, Dancing Bush

By Ray McGovern
March 31, 2008

Events of the last week offer a metaphorical glimpse at the delusion pervading President George W. Bush’s White House and other enclaves of Iraq War supporters in Washington.

Bush and the First Lady spent last Monday clowning with the Easter Bunny (White House counsel Fred Fielding having donned the costume).

Read on.

Telling Truth Early

By Robert Parry
March 31, 2008

One of our top goals at Consortiumnews.com – and what I’ve tried to do throughout my three-decade career in national journalism – is to give readers important information that they haven’t encountered elsewhere, what you might call telling truth early.

There is always a danger in doing this, because many people tend to reject what they haven’t heard before. Sometimes, the information is unwelcome because it goes against a preconception or it disrupts a favored point of view. It might cause discomfort or anger.

Read on.

PBS on Iraq: A Compilation of Deceit

By Morgan Strong
March 30, 2008

There have been five agonizing years of this war in Iraq. Five terrible years of bewilderment and rage.

Commemorating that anniversary, Frontline, the PBS investigative series, allotted four-and-one-half hours over two nights to an in-depth analysis of the war in Iraq and how it came about.

Read on.

When a Great Power Goes Mad

By Robert Parry
March 28, 2008

With the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War and the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. dead, the nation has been awash with news retrospectives on the war and speeches by politicians, mostly offering sanitized versions of what's transpired.

With a few exceptions, these media/political reflections have had the feel of self-rationalizations, more than self-criticisms. They’ve conveyed a sense that the U.S. system is doing just fine, thank you, although a few mistakes were made.

Read on.

National Pentagon Radio?

By Norman Solomon
March 28, 2008

While the Iraqi government continued its large-scale military assault in Basra, the NPR reporter's voice from Iraq was unequivocal on the morning of March 27: "There is no doubt that this operation needed to happen."

Such flat-out statements, uttered with journalistic tones and without attribution, are routine for the U.S. media establishment.

Read on.

Hillary Sinks with the 'Kitchen Sink'

By Robert Parry
March 27, 2008

Ever since George H.W. Bush went into “campaign mode” in 1988 and exploited black convict Willie Horton to dirty up Michael Dukakis, it’s been a staple of modern politics that you can negate your own high negatives by driving up those of your opponent.

Except in 1992, when the “Passportgate” scheme for demeaning Bill Clinton’s patriotism blew up in Poppy Bush’s face, some effective smear has been associated with every Bush national campaign. Think of John McCain’s “black child,” Al Gore’s “delusions” and the Swift Boat lies about John Kerry’s heroism.

Read on.

US Document Confirms Iraq Dungeon

By Jason Leopold
March 27, 2008

A classified memo written by the top U.S. military officer in western Iraq reveals that a prison in downtown Fallujah is so overcrowded and dirty that it does not even meet basic “minimal levels of hygiene for human beings.”

“The conditions in these jails are so bad that I think we need to do the right thing in terms of caring for the prisoners even with our own dollars, or release them,” says the memo, written in late February by Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S forces in western Iraq.

Read on.

Dr. Hamilton and Mr. Hyde

By Jerry Meldon
March 27, 2008

When former Rep. Lee Hamilton gives the keynote address – entitled “Iraq: Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond” – at a Tufts University symposium on March 27, he may be thankful if he doesn’t have to discuss “yesterday.”

He probably would prefer not to revisit fateful decisions he made while chairing investigations into Republican dirty work, especially those that let George H.W. Bush off the hook and cleared George W. Bush's path to the White House.

Read on.

A Few Big Lies: Not Handling Iraq Truth

By Nat Parry
March 26, 2008

With the Iraq War entering its sixth year and the U.S. death toll now surpassing 4,000, it has become fashionable – and rather convenient – to claim that no one prior to the invasion five years ago could have foreseen what a bloody disaster the war would turn out to be.

Typical is a recent article by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter John Burns, published in the New York Times a few days before the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion.

Read on.

Frontline's Timid Iraq Retrospective

By Ray McGovern
March 26, 2008

Frontline’s “Bush’s War” on PBS Monday and Tuesday evening was a nicely put-together rehash of the top players’ trickery that led to the attack on Iraq, together with the power-grabbing, back-stabbing and limitless incompetence of the occupation.

Except for an inside-the-beltway tidbit here and there – for example, about how the pitiable Secretary of State Colin Powell had to suffer so many indignities at the hands of other type-A hard chargers – Frontline added little to the discussion.

Read on.

Why Is Hillary Clinton Lying?

By Robert Parry
March 26, 2008

Two weeks ago, I wrote a story that observed a disturbing trend in Hillary Clinton’s campaign – her growing tendency to stretch the truth, twist what her chief rival was saying and then rely on her supporters to go on the offensive against you if you spoke up.

These tendencies were troubling, in part, because they mirrored what had become so common during George W. Bush’s years: to declare that a fantasy is the truth and then to attack the patriotism or sanity of anyone who thinks otherwise.

Read on.

4,000 Dead, Zero Accountability

By Robert Parry
March 25, 2008

Passing the grim milestone of 4,000 dead American soldiers in Iraq -- not to mention hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis -- George W. Bush can now see a clear path to the finish line of his presidency, with no accountability lurking in the shadows and almost no chance that he will be forced to relent on his “stay-the-course” strategy.

Plus, with Hillary Clinton continuing her trench-warfare battle for the Democratic nomination – even knowing it could damage Barack Obama’s chances against John McCain – President Bush may end up with the happy opportunity to hand over the White House to a Republican successor who has promised to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for possibly a hundred years.

Read on.

White House Balks at E-Mail Search

By Jason Leopold
March 24, 2008

The White House’s chief information officer said the Bush administration should not be compelled to search for millions of e-mails on individual computers and hard drives that may have been lost between 2003 and 2005 because it would be too expensive and require hundreds of hours of work, according to a filing the White House made with a federal court.

The court filing late Friday came in response to an order issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola demanding that the White House show cause why it should not be ordered to create and preserve a “forensic copy” of e-mails from individual hard drives.

Read on.

Hillary's Problems with the Truth

Consortiumnews.com's Editors
March 22, 2008

To the dismay of some Hillary Clinton supporters, Consortiumnews.com has noted a disturbing trend in the candidate’s handling of the truth, as she and her advisers have exaggerated her accomplishments and sometimes distorted Barack Obama’s words.

The Washington Post reached a similar conclusion in awarding Sen. Clinton the maximum of “four Pinocchios” for telling a “whopper” in her claims about derring-do during her 1996 trip to war-torn Bosnia.

Read on.

Obama's 'Michael Douglas Moment'

By Robert Parry
March 22, 2008

Barack Obama’s speech on race – both laying out the nation’s multi-sided racial resentments and pointing to a path beyond them – might be called his “Michael Douglas moment,” reminiscent of the speech near the end of “The American President.”

In the climactic scene of that 1995 movie, the President (played by Douglas) responds to political attacks against his girlfriend over an old photograph of a burning American flag and to insinuations about his own alleged lack of patriotism reflected in his American Civil Liberties Union membership.

Read on.

Five Years On, How to Leave Iraq

By Ivan Eland
March 22, 2008

As the fifth anniversary of the United States’ second-longest (next to Vietnam) and second-costliest (next to World War II) war passes, the good news is that the counterinsurgency strategy of Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno seems to be working. The bad news is that it will probably not save Iraq.

Although the U.S. troop “surge” has had some effect, it is probably not the most important factor dampening violence back down to the levels of mid-2004.

Read on.

Obama's Passportgate: Historical Echo

By Robert Parry
March 21, 2008

Five presidential elections ago, when another George Bush was in the White House and when Bill Clinton was the Democratic nominee, State Department officials conducted an improper search of Clinton’s passport files, an echo of the current case in which Barack Obama’s passport files were penetrated three times this year.

The State Department announced on March 20 that two State Department contractors were fired and a third disciplined for accessing Obama’s files. Based on preliminary information, it was unclear what the motive of the Obama search was.

Read on.

The Road to 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'

By Jason Leopold
March 20, 2008

The Iraq War, which was predicated on the existence of weapons of mass destruction and fear of another 9/11, has resulted in the deaths of nearly 4,000 U.S. troops and has cost taxpayers roughly half-a-trillion dollars. (Estimates of Iraqi dead range into the hundreds of thousands.)

Yet, the invasion of Iraq was conceived prior to 9/11, according to Paul O'Neill, President Bush's first Treasury Secretary. In the book, The Price of Loyalty, journalist Ron Suskind interviewed O'Neill who said that the Iraq War was planned just days after the president was sworn into office.

Read on.

Obama's Greater Challenge

By Brent Budowsky
March 19, 2008

Barack Obama's historic speech on race is the beginning of what could become a majority coalition even more powerful than the New Deal realignment of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

What Obama can now do is take the debate on racial injustice to a powerfully transforming level that reaches across all racial and religious divisions and gives voice to the voiceless, respect to the disrespected and power to the powerless.

Read on.

Iraq War as War Crime (Part Two)

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
March 19, 2008

Despite the stiffer-than-expected resistance, the U.S. military continued to blast its way toward its goal of toppling Saddam Hussein.

From the first days of the war, that violence took a heavy toll on Iraq’s civilians, though the bloody images were often sanitized from the American broadcasts so as not to dampen the war enthusiasm and depress the TV ratings.

Read on.

Iraq War as War Crime (Part One)

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
March 18, 2008

Iraq’s “Day of Liberation” – as George W. Bush called it – was supposed to begin with a bombardment consisting of 3,000 U.S. missiles delivered over 48 hours, 10 times the number of bombs dropped during the first two days of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Officials, who were briefed on the plans, said the goal was to so stun the Iraqis that they would simply submit to the overwhelming force demonstrated by the U.S. military. Administration officials dubbed the strategy “shock and awe.”

Read on.

Ex-US Attorney Cites GOP Voter Abuse

By Jason Leopold
March 17, 2008

The Justice Department issued a directive to every U.S. Attorney in the country to find and prosecute cases of voter fraud in their states during the height of hotly contested elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006, even though evidence of such abuses was extremely thin or non-existent, a former federal prosecutor says in a new book.

David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico, recalled receiving an e-mail in late summer 2002 from the Department of Justice suggesting "in no uncertain terms" that U.S. attorneys should immediately begin working with local and state election officials "to offer whatever assistance we could in investigating and prosecuting voter fraud cases," Iglesias writes in his forthcoming.

Read on.

Viewing Iraq 'Winter Soldier' Testimony

By Jeff Cohen
March 17, 2008

In 1971 at age 19, I had a life-changing experience when I met dozens of Vietnam veterans who’d descended on my hometown of Detroit to testify at the “Winter Soldier” hearings organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

In anguished presentations, the vets painstakingly described the horrors against Vietnamese they’d seen or taken part in. And the attitudes of racism and bloodlust that motored the war.

Read on.

Clinton's Child-Health Hype

By Robert Parry
March 17, 2008

A centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s case for her candidacy – that she rebounded from the disaster of her health-care plan in 1994 to help enact a popular state-by-state program for children’s health insurance three years later – looks to be largely a fabrication.

At most, Clinton appears to have been a quiet supporter within her husband’s White House for the so-called S-CHIP program, which was fashioned through bipartisan compromise in the U.S. Senate against initial Clinton administration opposition.

Read on.

St. Patrick's Day & Irish Resistance

By Daniel Patrick Welch
March 16, 2008

Another Saint Patrick's Day is here, with its tacky kegs of green beer, leprechauns, lucky charms, fake plastic hats and all imaginable variety of gaudy faux-Irish...um..."charm."

But it needn't be so. The holiday offers up an incredible opportunity to expose children (and adults, of course) to the history of struggle of a courageous people -- England's first and last colony -- and, by extension, to shed light on the legacy of colonization and imperialism and the universal nature of popular resistance.

Read on.

'Neck Deep,' Iraq War & Campaign '08

By Robert Parry
March 16, 2008

The old saying about history – that those who ignore it are doomed to repeat it – has rarely been truer than in Campaign 2008.

The U.S. news media again flits from one political flap to the next, making “character” judgments about candidates based on trivial matters while missing what really matters.

Read on.

Happy Fifth Birthday, DHS!

By Ivan Eland
March 15, 2008

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just turned five years old. It seems like it was born just yesterday.

The department’s growing pains have made it a slow learner and a downright ugly child.

Read on.

Suddenly, a Dangerous Turn

By Robert Parry
March 14, 2008

Two seemingly disconnected events have created a suddenly dangerous turn regarding the future of U.S. wars in the Middle East.

One was the abrupt resignation of the person who has been the biggest obstacle to a U.S. military strike against Iran, Admiral William Fallon, the chief of Central Command which oversees U.S. military operations in the volatile region.

Read on.

Spitzer & America's Perverse Ethics

By Rabbi Michael Lerner
March 12, 2008

The cross-the-political-spectrum attacks on Elliot Spitzer and the intensity of the demands that he resign his office show just how far the right-wing sexual moralizing has been able to trump any other kind of ethical reasoning in American society.

Going to a prostitute is legal in some states and some countries around the world, and is often the very arrangement that saves families from splitting up whose sexual energies have diminished but whose love is intact.

Read on.

Nadler Disses Voters on Impeachment

By Ray McGovern
March 11, 2008

You would not know it for the news blackout, but New Yorkers of Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s district held a Town Hall/Impeachment Forum on Sunday to encourage Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, to begin impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney.

Panelists included former congresswoman Liz Holtzman, former Reagan Justice Department attorney Bruce Fein, human rights attorney and Harpers commentator Scott Horton, and John Nirenberg, the activist who at the turn of the year walked from Boston to Washington, D.C., in a futile attempt to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on impeachment.

Read on.

Clinton's Up-Is-Down World

By Robert Parry
March 10, 2008

Throughout history, it’s been common for politicians to shade the truth when caught in a tight spot. But sometimes politicians push the limits, crossing the line into an Orwellian world where up is down, where bullies are victims, where people objecting to the lies are shouted down.

If that world seems familiar to Americans, it should. It is the world in which we’ve lived for the past seven or eight years under George W. Bush, as his clever operatives routinely turn truth inside out. Now, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is applying many of these same head-spinning tactics to win the Democratic presidential race.

Read on.

Bush, Colombia & Narco-Politics

By Andres Calas
March 9, 2008 (Originally published Aug. 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.

Honoring Two Activist Parents

By Vincent L. Guarisco
March 6, 2008

Editor’s Note: One of the cruelest acts ever inflicted by the U.S. government on its own servicemen was a 1946 experiment that put 42,000 sailors in close proximity to the detonation of two atomic bombs to test the effects on humans.

The experiment, called Operation Crossroads, harmed the health of many sailors. It also was a turning point in the life of one, Anthony Guarisco, who dedicated his life -- working with his wife Mary -- to address the threat of nuclear weapons.

In this guest essay, their son, Vincent, pays tribute to his parents and what they gave to him and to the world:

Read on.

Guess What? Obama Is Winning Texas

By Lisa Pease
March 6, 2008

Tuesday night, as the polls closed, the media proclaimed Barack Obama the winner of Vermont and gave all the other state contests of the day -- Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas -- to Hillary Clinton.

But there was one big problem. A Texas-sized problem.

Read on.

Losing Iraq and Afghanistan

By Ivan Eland
March 6, 2008

America is an amazing place—one of the wealthiest and freest nations on earth. Yet because Europe has so many more cultures and languages in one contained area, Americans, compared to their European brethren, seem like country bumpkins in their knowledge and understanding of what is happening in the world.

Unfortunately, this tin ear for global affairs sometimes afflicts U.S. leaders and media, too.

Read on.

Hillary Plays the 'Gender Card,' Again

By Robert Parry
March 6, 2008

The campaign press corps missed what may have been the most important comment in the Feb. 26 debate – when Hillary Clinton reminded women that their chance of electing the first female president was slipping away.

“You know, obviously, I am thrilled to be running to be the first woman president, which I think would be a sea change in our country and around the world, and would give enormous… [applause] … you know, enormous hope and, you know, a real challenge to the way things have been done and who gets to do them and what the rules are,” she said in the debate.

Read on.

Hillary Clinton's 'Celestial Choir'

By Robert Parry
February 28, 2008

When the history of Campaign 2008 is written, a memorable image will be Hillary Clinton’s poor imitation of Barack Obama as she strode across a stage in Rhode Island mocking the idea that change will come when the sky opens for a “celestial choir.”

Though Sen. Clinton’s performance left many political observers wondering if the long campaign had finally gotten to her, Sen. Obama brushed off the affront with a smile and a generous critique.

Read on.

Dismissing Ron Paul

By Ivan Eland
February 28, 2008

As the nation’s major media outlets crown John McCain (George W. Bush on steroids) as the Republican nominee for president, their nearly criminal neglect of Ron Paul’s candidacy in the 2008 presidential campaign is nearly complete.

“Big media” have never deemed Paul a “major candidate,” as their paltry coverage of him shows.

Read on.

Obama's Sub-Prime Conflict

By Dennis Bernstein
February 28, 2008

I remember my first piggy bank: a little pink piggy, made of plastic, with a little slot at the top. The slot was big enough, perhaps, to fit a half dollar, a great deal of money to me at the time.

“A penny earned is a penny saved,” my father told me, as we dropped the first few coins into the opening, and I heard them hit bottom and bounce. And I can’t tell you how excited I was when we broke it open, after a year or so, and I couldn’t fit another penny into the slot.

Read on.

Why the War on Obama

By Robert Parry
February 26, 2008

While some cynics still view Barack Obama’s appeal for “change” as empty rhetoric, it’s starting to dawn on Washington insiders that his ability to raise vast sums of money from nearly one million mostly small donors could shake the grip that special-interest money has long held over the U.S. government.

This spreading realization that Obama’s political movement might represent a more revolutionary change than previously understood is sparking a deepening resistance among defenders of the status quo – and prompting harsher attacks on Obama.

Read on.

Behind the Kosovo Crisis

Editors of Consortiumnews.com
February 24, 2008

The Kosovo crisis of 1998-99 was the first international conflict that Consortiumnews.com covered extensively, relying on dispatches from veteran war correspondent Don North in the field and on investigations of Washington’s strategy by reporters Mollie Dickenson and Robert Parry.

Given the resurgence of the crisis over Kosovo – following its unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia and angry reactions in Belgrade and Moscow – we are publishing this look-back on our coverage, which faulted all participants in the human tragedy: Serb nationalists, Kosovar separatists and the Clinton administration.

Read on.

Is John McCain a Liar?

By Robert Parry
February 23, 2008

In journalism, it’s a safe bet that if you write a story with the suggestion that a prominent male politician is bedding an attractive female lobbyist, whatever other point you hoped to make will be overlooked.

That appears to have been the case with the New York Times article on Feb. 21, which led with suspicions held by some McCain staffers that the Arizona senator had gotten too cozy with lobbyist Vicky Iseman. The Times story then veered off into a historical examination of McCain’s over-confidence about his own moral rectitude.

Read on.

When the Terrorists Were 'Our Guys'

By Robert Parry
February 22, 2008

In 1976, when George H.W. Bush was CIA director, the U.S. government tolerated right-wing terrorist cells inside the United States and mostly looked the other way when these killers topped even Palestinian terrorists in spilling blood, including a lethal car bombing in Washington, D.C., according to newly obtained internal government documents.

That car bombing on Sept. 21, 1976, on Washington’s Embassy Row, killed Chile’s former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker Ronni Moffitt, while wounding Moffitt’s husband.

Read on.

McCain's 'Never' Is a Long Time

By Robert Parry
February 21, 2008

John McCain must hope that Americans won’t read the entire New York Times story about his friendship with a female lobbyist, because if they do, they’ll realize that his statement – that he “has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists” – simply isn’t true.

Though the article focuses on the friendship between the 71-year-old Arizona senator and Vicky Iseman, an attractive 40-year-old lobbyist for telecommunications companies, it also recounts McCain’s complicated history as both a violator of congressional ethics and a champion for ethics reform.

Read on.

Hillary Clinton's Options

By Brent Budowsky
February 20, 2008

At this moment, Sen. Hillary Clinton has three options, two of which are acceptable, one of which would be disastrous for her and the Democratic Party.

In my view she should withdraw today, though she won’t. Her second option is to campaign through March 4 at least but suspend all negative attacks and whatever happens, do it with class and grace as a unifier.

Read on.

Charlie Wilson's Warlords

By Ivan Eland
February 20, 2008

Both the book and movie Charlie Wilson’s War glorify the “colorful,” liberal, Democratic congressman’s successful crusade to bludgeon the reluctant, neoconservative Reagan administration into dramatically escalating funding, arming, and training of radical Islamists fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Although the zestful life and escapades of Wilson make for an entertaining and true-to-(Wilson’s)-life movie, both the book and movie give short shrift to the dire, long-term policy consequences of Wilson’s and Reagan’s proxy war.

Read on.

Clintons Plumb Absurd Depths

By Robert Parry
February 19, 2008

Like the Bushes, the Clintons seem to believe they have some special entitlement to the White House, and thus whatever they do to get there is justified. The two ruling families function with a monarchical air that is unique – or foreign – to the American experience.

George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have enjoyed wearing baseball caps emblazoned with “41” and “43” respectively, signifying their numerical claims on the U.S. presidency. It is still not known what articles of clothing the Clintons might embroider with “42” and “44.”

Read on.

An Odyssey to See Barack Obama

By Lisa Pease
February 17, 2008

Most of the time I'm just writing about history. It's rare that I get to encounter it in person. But I did, last Tuesday, in Madison, Wisconsin. Allow me to set the stage first.

There are few things I love more in life than travel. I've been guarding a free airline ticket voucher for the last year, waiting for an event worthy of this most precious possession. I finally found one this week.

Read on.

Explaining Our View of Clinton-Obama

By Robert Parry
February 16, 2008

Over the past few months, as the Democratic presidential race has heated up, we have received a number of complaints about critical stories we have written about Barack Obama and, especially, Hillary Clinton.

A common theme in the complaints is that we should lighten up on the Democratic frontrunners and concentrate more on John McCain and the Republicans. Some readers have accused us of sounding like the MSM in our reporting on Sen. Clinton in particular.

Read on.

Twisting Health Language for Torture

By Jason Leopold
February 16, 2008

John Yoo, the author of the infamous Aug. 1, 2002, "torture memo" that formed the legal basis for so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques against high-level terrorist detainees, used a statute governing health benefits when he provided the White House with a legal opinion defining torture, according to a former Justice Department official.

Yoo's legal opinion stated that unless the amount of pain administered to a detainee results in injury "such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions" than the interrogation technique could not be defined as torture.

Read on.

How Far Will the Clintons Go?

By Robert Parry
February 15, 2008

Hillary Clinton, who has built her case for the presidency on her superior “ready on Day One” management skills, burned through almost $130 million of campaign money, had to kick in $5 million from her own murky family funds, and is now pressing her chief financial backers to find creative ways to raise more money.

Some of those financial schemes appear to skirt the law – as some backers consider putting money into “independent” entities that can spend unlimited sums but aren’t supposed to coordinate with the campaign – while other ideas are more traditional, like appealing to wealthy donors involved with the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby.

Read on.

Bush Turns US Soldiers into Murderers

By Robert Parry
February 13, 2008

By forcing repeat combat assignments to Iraq and Afghanistan – and by winking at torture and indiscriminate killings – George W. Bush is degrading the reputation of the U.S. military, turning enlisted soldiers and intelligence officers into murderers and sadists.

For instance, on Feb. 10 at Camp Liberty in Iraq, Army Ranger Sgt. Evan Vela was sentenced by a U.S. military court to 10 years in prison for executing an unarmed Iraqi detainee who – along with his son – had stumbled into a U.S. sniper position last year.

Read on.

Stomping on Their Children's Dreams

By Robert Parry
February 11, 2008

One painful irony of the Obama-Clinton showdown is that it could end up with middle-aged women – who are determined to elect the first female president – stomping on the dreams of their own children, who have shaken off years of political apathy to rally behind Barack Obama.

What makes this dilemma particularly poignant is that many of these Hillary Clinton supporters themselves experienced the stomping on their dreams four decades ago in the pivotal election of 1968.

Read on.

In Case You Missed These Stories

By Consortiumnews.com's Editors
February 11, 2008

One shortcoming in our effort to publish more and more articles is that some special stories fly by without getting the attention they deserve. So, periodically, we’ll publish this “in case you missed it” feature with links to stories that we feel fall into this category.

Read on.

Bush Family Chronicles: The Patriarchs

By Morgan Strong
February 10, 2008

To fully understand the present manifestation of the Bush family and its excesses, one must consider its history over several generations, a difficult and painful undertaking since it reveals so much about the self-destructive apathy of the American people.

James Madison wrote passionately in the Federalist Papers that in order for a democracy to function and not descend into a tyranny of the wealthy and the well-connected, the citizenry must stay well informed. In Madison’s view, a democratic society was wholly dependent on an informed citizenry.

Read on.

Hillary's Curious Campaign Loan

By Nat Parry
February 9, 2008

Only days before the make-or-break “Super Tuesday” primaries, Hillary Clinton dipped into her personal finances to lend her campaign $5 million, a move she kept secret until the day after she had battled Barack Obama to a standstill in the coast-to-coast voting.

If she had disclosed the loan before Super Tuesday, it might not only have generated troubling questions about the financial health of her campaign; it might have focused unwanted attention on the sources of the Clintons’ money.

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Waterboarding for God

By Ray McGovern
February 8, 2008

After one spends 45 years in Washington, high farce does not normally throw one off balance. But I found the events of Thursday to be an acid test of my equilibrium.

I missed the National Prayer Breakfast—for the 45th time in a row. But, as I drove to work I listened with rapt attention as President George W. Bush gave his insights on prayer:

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Injecting 'Terror' into Campaign 2008

By Robert Parry
February 6, 2008

As Campaign 2008 reaches a critical point, George W. Bush’s top intelligence officials are raising new alarms about a revitalized al-Qaeda recruiting Westerners, possibly including Americans, to carry out terror attacks inside the United States.

At a Feb. 5 hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bush’s Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said al-Qaeda was refining “the last key aspect of its ability to attack the U.S.” by training Western recruits, who could blend in with American society and carry out attacks on U.S. targets.

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Five Years for Powell -- and VIPS

By Ray McGovern
February 5, 2008

It is a difficult anniversary to “celebrate” – Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity’s first publication, a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003, UN address – since what he said helped grease the skids for incalculable death and destruction in Iraq and brought shame on our country.

A handful of former CIA intelligence officers formed VIPS in January 2003, after we could no longer avoid concluding that our profession had been corrupted to “justify” what was, pure and simple, a war of aggression.

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Colin Powell's Fateful Lies

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
February 5, 2008

To make his case before the U.N., Bush dispatched the most credible official in his administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell.

By the time Powell was assigned to make the case for war, he counted himself among the growing list of officials nervous about the quality of the WMD intelligence. Indeed, Powell may have been one of the best positioned officials to know that the threat from Iraq was being exaggerated.

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Where Would Obama Take the Nation?

By Robert Parry
February 4, 2008

Among the recent flood of celebrity endorsements, one that has received little attention came in a Washington Post op-ed by President Dwight Eisenhower’s granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, explaining why she’s backing Barack Obama.

Her principal argument was that she believed Obama could help this generation of Americans pull together to address worsening problems and “leave America a better, stronger place than the one it found,” like her grandfather’s generation did.

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'Stepford Republicans' Caught on Tape

By Jeff Cohen
February 3, 2008

“The Stepford Wives” tells the chilling story of once smart, independent women who get abducted and turned into tamed, mindless robots.

I have a theory about a similarly subversive process that turns grown men once capable of independent and reasoned thought into robotic extremists. Call them Stepford Republicans.

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Obama, Clinton & GOP Attack Machine

By Robert Parry
February 2, 2008

Barack Obama argues that the Democrats will have a better chance for victory in November if they have a presidential nominee who opposed the Iraq War from the start and who can contrast that judgment against John McCain’s enthusiasm for a centuries-long U.S. occupation of Iraq.

What Sen. Obama didn’t say out loud, but what Democratic voters surely recalled was the endless baiting of John Kerry for having been “for the war before he was against it,” earning a place – as George W. Bush put it – “in the flip-flop hall of fame.”

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G.W. Bush Is a Criminal, Like His Dad

By Robert Parry
January 31, 2008

Watching Attorney General Michael Mukasey evade the obvious fact that waterboarding is torture – and the reluctance of Democrats to press him – I was reminded of how the first President Bush got away with an earlier batch of national security crimes.

Indeed, one of the common questions I’ve been asked over the years is – if the evidence really does show that the Reagan-Bush crowd was guilty of illegal dealings with Iran, Iraq and the Nicaraguan contras – why didn’t the Democrats hold those Republicans to account?

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Iniquities of War, Inequities of Life

By Ray McGovern
January 31, 2008

“For the oppressors, what is worthwhile is to have more — always more — even at the cost of the oppressed having less or having nothing. For them, to be is to have and to be the class of the ‘haves.’ ”
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Finally, the truth is seeping out. Contrary to how President George W. Bush has tried to justify the Iraq war in the past, he has now clumsily — if inadvertently — admitted that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was aimed primarily at seizing predominant influence over its oil by establishing permanent (the administration favors “enduring”) military bases.

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Tet Plus 40: US-Vietnam Turning Point

By Don North
January 30, 2008

At midnight, heading into the fateful day of Jan. 31, 1968, 15 Vietcong gathered at a greasy car repair garage at 59 Phan Thanh Bian Street in Saigon.

Wearing black pajamas and red arm bands, they were part of the elite 250-strong J-9 Special Action Unit, formerly known as the C-10 sapper battalion. They were mostly born in Saigon and were familiar with the streets of the teeming city.

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The Fight for Bush's Legacy

By Robert Parry
January 29, 2008

With one year to go in George W. Bush’s presidency, the national Democrats are on the verge of the same miscalculation that they made about his father after his defeat in Election 1992. Instead of doing the hard work to hold the Bushes accountable, the Democrats are “leaving it to the historians.”

In other words, the national Democrats seem ready to let the junior George Bush stroll off into the sunset with his legacy relatively intact, much as the senior George Bush was allowed to do.

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CBS Falsifies Iraq War History

By Robert Parry
January 28, 2008

There’s a cynical old saying that the victors write the history. CBS’s “60 Minutes” demonstrated how that process works on Jan. 27 in airing Scott Pelley’s interview with the FBI agent who de-briefed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

In a world of objective reality, a reporter might say that the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, under the false pretense that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, even after Iraq had repeatedly – and accurately – announced that its WMD had been destroyed in the 1990s.

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Iran & Bush's Crisis of Truth

By Peter Dyer
January 26, 2008

“Iran is a threat to world peace.” Iran is “the world’s leading sponsor of terror.” So declared President Bush in his recent trip to the Middle East. Iran, he said, is seeking to “intimidate its neighbors with ballistic missiles and bellicose rhetoric.”

By now most of us are familiar with the President’s feelings and rhetoric concerning Iran. They have a familiar ring. They sound a lot like the buildup to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

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The Clinton Audacity

By Robert Parry
January 25, 2008

Some rank-and-file Democrats who have weathered three decades of Republican hardball politics aren’t sure what to think when Bill and Hillary Clinton attack Barack Obama over the Iraq War, his attitude toward Ronald Reagan, and his relationship with a sleazy real-estate developer.

On each topic, the Clintons are arguably more vulnerable than Obama: Hillary Clinton voted to give George W. Bush authorization to invade Iraq (while Obama opposed the invasion), the Clintons both have praised Reagan far more than Obama has, and the Clintons had closer ties to an ethically challenged developer, Whitewater’s James McDougal, than Obama apparently had with Tony Rezko.

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Turkey's Drug-Terrorism Connection

By Martin A. Lee
January 25, 2008 (Originally published in 1997)

In broad daylight on May 2, 1997, 50 armed men set upon a television station in Istanbul with gunfire. The attackers unleashed a fusillade of bullets and shouted slogans supporting Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Tansu Ciller.

The gunmen were outraged over the station's broadcast of a TV report critical of Ciller, a close U.S. ally who had come under criticism for stonewalling investigations into collusion between state security forces and Turkish criminal elements.

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Were Republicans 'the Party of Ideas'?

By Robert Parry
January 24, 2008

Hillary Clinton took a cheap shot at Barack Obama in suggesting that he liked the right-wing policies from the past couple of decades. But it’s troubling, too, that Obama would buy into Washington’s conventional wisdom that “the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time.”

The truth is that the Republicans weren’t the folks with a monopoly on “ideas” as much as they were the ones who invested billions and billions of dollars in a media/think tank infrastructure that promoted their ideas no matter how dated or dubious they were.

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The Global Economy's 'Lame Duck'

By Pablo Ouziel
January 24, 2008

In regards to our “global economy,” one is better off reading Dostoevsky’s The Gambler and saying to himself, “at the present moment I must repair to the roulette-table,” than listening to George Bush deluding himself about the fact that “while there is some uncertainty, the financial markets are strong and solid.”

The truth is, our global markets have become a “lame duck” and all we can do is wait for the next disaster to shake the corrupt foundation on which things have been run.

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In Honor of My Mother

By Norman Solomon
January 23, 2008

The last time my mother was in a hospital, an essay by Thich Nhat Hanh moved in front of my eyes.

"Our mother is the teacher who first teaches us love, the most important subject in life," he wrote. "Without my mother I could never have known how to love. Thanks to her I can love my neighbors. Thanks to her I can love all living beings. Through her I acquired my first notions of understanding and compassion."

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The Democrats-Praise-Reagan Game

By Robert Parry
January 23, 2008

As a journalist who investigated Reagan-era scandals – from secret arms deals with Iran and Iraq to drug traffickers protected by the covert wars in Nicaragua and Afghanistan – I always recoiled when Democrats prostrated themselves in praise of Ronald Reagan.

Beyond the pandering component, there was the annoying assumption that the rest of us were too stupid to see what they were up to, as they tried to sound “bipartisan” or buy a measure of protection from Republican attacks.

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Pakistan's Bomb, U.S. Cover-up

By Daniel Ellsberg
January 22, 2008

For the second time in two weeks, the entire U.S. press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt U.S. officials promoting nuclear proliferation.

But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the U.S. Congress and the courts.

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The Bush Debacle: One Year to Go?

By Robert Parry
January 20, 2008

The political calendar indicates that in one more year – on Jan. 20, 2009 – the presidency of George W. Bush will come to an end. However, the worst consequences of his disastrous reign, including the Iraq War, may be nowhere near ending.

Today’s presidential frontrunners, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, were early prominent supporters of the Iraq War and appear to have suffered little political damage for lining up behind Bush in 2002 when he was at the peak of his power.

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Obama's Dubious Praise for Reagan

By Robert Parry
January 19, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama prides himself in transcending the old ideological chasms that have divided the American electorate for decades, so much so that he recently cited Republican icon Ronald Reagan as a leader who “changed the trajectory of America.”

Though Obama’s chief point was that Reagan in 1980 “put us on a fundamentally different path” – which may be historically undeniable – the Democratic presidential candidate went further, justifying Reagan's course correction because of “all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability.”

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Saving Hillary, at Least for Now

By Robert Parry
January 18, 2008

In December and early January – as Hillary Clinton’s lead in the Democratic presidential race evaporated and especially after she lost the Iowa caucuses – her panicked supporters played nearly every card in their political deck to salvage the dream of putting a second Clinton in the White House.

Sen. Clinton and her feminist backers appealed to women to get behind one of their own; Clinton operatives insinuated that Barack Obama’s youthful drug use would make him unelectable; and former President Bill Clinton pulled a page from Karl Rove’s playbook in attacking Obama on a perceived strength, his early opposition to the Iraq War.

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Iraq War: 1,760 Days and Counting

By Robert Higgs
January 17, 2008

On Oct. 19, 2001, in speaking about the new government controls and heightened surveillance already being clamped on the American people in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney said that the new war “may never end. At least not in our lifetime. . . . The way I think of it is, it’s a new normalcy.”

We should have taken his grim forecast more seriously.

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A Surge of More Lies

By Congressman Robert Wexler
January 16, 2008

A new troubling myth has taken hold in Washington and it is critical that the record is set straight.

According to the mainstream media, Republicans, and unfortunately even some Democrats, the President's surge in Iraq has been a resounding success. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

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Will Anyone Pay for the Iraq War?

By Robert Parry
January 15, 2008

If the latest polls are to be believed, the Republican frontrunner is John McCain, who favors continuing the Iraq War for decades if not centuries, and the leading Democrat is Hillary Clinton, who voted to give George W. Bush the power to start the misadventure in 2002 and remained a staunch war supporter until the eve of Campaign 2008.

In Congress, the Democrats appear so spooked about being accused of “partisanship” that they have replaced their periodic little white flags of surrender to President Bush on Iraq with a permanent large one. For his part, Bush is on his own personal victory lap of the Middle East, hailing the success of his “surge.”

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CIA, Iran & the Gulf of Tonkin

By Ray McGovern
January 12, 2008

When the Tonkin Gulf incident took place in early August 1964, I was a journeyman CIA analyst in what Condoleezza Rice refers to as “the bowels of the agency.”

As a current intelligence analyst responsible for Russian policy toward Southeast Asia and China, I worked very closely with those responsible for analysis of Vietnam and China.

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Hillary Plays Risky 'Gender Card'

By Robert Parry
January 10, 2008

Many people who know the Clintons insist that the power couple truly wants what’s best for the American people. It’s just that too often their political needs or their personal foibles overwhelm their responsibility to the public interest.

But rarely could the Clintons’ determination to get their way be more detrimental to both the Democratic Party and the United States than if Hillary Clinton continues to play the "gender card" on behalf of her presidential campaign, especially in what is shaping up as a two-person race against an African-American.

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Where Are Tears for GIs, Iraqis?

By Mary MacElveen
January 10, 2008

I would have to say that this presidential campaign to date has jaded me. The catch phrase that is being thrown around by so many of these candidates is that they want to change things, but as we begin to see the results of both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, I do believe that things will stay the same.

The only change I do see is another name coming after the title president.

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'Iron My Shirts' Taunt Helps Hillary

By Robert Parry
January 9, 2008

Hillary Clinton helped turn her political fortunes around in New Hampshire by flipping a tasteless shock jock stunt – two guys shouting “iron my shirts!” – into a case study of male oppressors blocking her route to the presidency.

The two yahoos, who interrupted one of Clinton’s last speeches on the Monday before the New Hampshire primary, were later identified as Nick Gemelli and Adolfo Gonzalez Jr., who are associated with Toucher & Rich, a white-guy-oriented talk show on Boston’s WBCN radio.

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The Logic of Obama-mania

By Robert Parry
January 8, 2008

Sen. Hillary Clinton is telling Democrats that they shouldn’t let their hearts run away with their heads by embracing the lightly experienced Sen. Barack Obama for President. She says she is the battle-tested one who can best carry the Democratic banner.

“Some of us are ready and some of us are not,” she said in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Jan. 7 as tears welled in her eyes. “Some of us know what we will do on day one and some of us haven't thought it through enough."

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Thank You, Readers!

By Robert Parry
January 7, 2008

We came up several thousand dollars short of our year-end goal of $50,000, but the fundraiser was our most successful ever, thanks to you, our readers.

Besides the many generous donations, we received a number of kind comments in response to our question, “Are We Worth It?” A selection of those comments appears below:

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Reagan's Bargain/Charlie Wilson's War

By Peter W. Dickson
January 6, 2008

What’s left out of a movie about history often interests only a few experts in the field. However, the recent release of one that chronicles the successful sub rosa American effort to bleed the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s may prove to be an exception.

“Charlie Wilson’s War,” which stars Tom Hanks, tells the story of a hard-drinking, womanizing Texas congressman who nudged Congress and the Reagan administration to give more arms, especially high-tech Stinger missiles, to shoot down Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

But the movie distorts or leaves out a number of crucial details.

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Bush, Georgia and Authoritarianism

By Nat Parry
January 5, 2008

As America focuses on the start of the U.S. presidential election process, another election half a world away offers important insights into the nature of democracy and the shortcomings of George W. Bush’s democracy promotion in other countries.

In the former Soviet republic of Georgia, citizens go to the polls today for the first time since the widely celebrated Rose Revolution of 2003. Then, Georgia was hailed by Western governments as a beacon of democracy in a region beset by authoritarianism.

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Bush-Clinton Duopoly Loses in Iowa

By Robert Parry
January 4, 2008

The vaunted Clinton machine is sure to rev up its operations to salvage Hillary Clinton’s political future – and the Bush Family’s Republican Establishment likely will settle on an acceptable GOP representative to protect the status quo, possibly John McCain.

But the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 dealt a stunning blow to the Bush-Clinton duopoly, with Sen. Barack Obama thrashing Sen. Clinton on the Democratic side and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee trouncing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who had the backing of some elements of the Bush Family.

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Will 'Clinton 44' Become Inevitable?

By Brent Budowsky
January 3, 2008

You read it here before Iowa and New Hampshire: The pundits will proclaim 2008 The Year Of The Political Independent that will advantage Barack Obama and John McCain, and disadvantage Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney.

First, what I advocate; then, my predictions.

The great realignment is at hand, and it is anti-Washington, anti-establishment and anti-Bush, with the potential outcome of the next FDR- and JFK-style eras —a progressive centrist alliance between progressive Democrats and political independents electing a reformist president and Congress.

Read on.

Robert Parry on Democracy Now!

Listen to Robert Parry discuss the foreign policy positions of the Democratic contenders and his article, "Hillary Signals Free Pass for Bush."

Click here to view the segment, about a half-hour into the program.

Hillary Signals Free Pass for Bush

By Robert Parry
December 31, 2007

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is signaling that a second Clinton presidency will follow the look-to-the-future, don’t-worry-about-accountability approach toward Republican wrongdoing that marked Bill Clinton’s years in office.

That was the significance of former President Clinton’s remarkable Dec. 17 comment that his wife’s first act in the White House would be to send Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush on an around-the-world mission to repair America’s damaged image.

Read on.