Archive for the ' War on Terror' Category


20
Apr

How the Pentagon turned the adversarial media into a PR arm

That’s a joke, the “adversarial” tag, but a story in the New York Times today helps explain the reason so many people see the press as anti-government. Investigative reporter David Barstow uncovered a White House-approved Pentagon operation to use high-profile television and print military analysts, mostly retired general officers, to help sell the Iraq invasion […]


10
Apr

Conyers should open hearings into torture allegations

The news that senior Bush administration officials not only approved the use of torture but actually micromanaged the application of it should be the last straw for dithering Democrats in the House of Representatives.
We have known for years that the president and the vice president approved war crimes, including torture, on the basis of […]


10
Apr

ABC News: Top administration officials conspired in war crimes

ABC News is reporting that senior Bush administration officials were intimately involved in planning torture regimens for use against terrorism suspects. The officials include vice president Dick Cheney; CIA director George Tenet and his successor, former CIA agent and Congressman Porter Goss; then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice; former secretary of state Colin Powell; former secretary […]


04
Mar

Not just the worst president ever: worst cabinet secretaries too

George W. Bush has a death grip on the title of Worst US President Ever, but he’s not alone in achieving historic levels of incompetence: his cabinet secretaries are pulling their weight as well.
Take Condoleezza Rice, for instance. As Bush’s national security council chief, she presided over the administration’s total lack of interest in counter-terrorism […]


19
Feb

Did Bandar Bush blackmail Tony Blair to quash bribe inquiry?

Documents unsealed in a British court allege that Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia’s long time US ambassador and a close family friend of president George W. Bush, threatened to withhold terrorism intelligence from the UK if former prime minister Tony Blair failed to subvert a bribery inquiry into payments to the prince from mammoth British defense […]


06
Feb

Clearing the decks, Part 1: health care for all and a lot more

Many months ago when I was writing something about health care I ran across a blog that had a number of entries on the subject, one of which I used in my piece. That web page and 70-some others are still open in my browser, which in retaliation is now consuming most of my computer’s […]


05
Feb

Worst national security administration ever: omnibus edition

When last we noted the Bush administration’s appalling record on national security, a few items fell through the cracks. The story was on the economic resurgence of opium in Afghanistan following the US invasion that drove the Taliban out of power and ended the group’s short-lived but astonishingly effective ban on opium poppy cultivation. Since […]


29
Jan

Reality found shot, stabbed, beaten and left for dead on K Street

Sometimes I resent not owning a television, but at least once a year for the past eight years I’ve been grateful for the lack.
I read the various State of the Union speech press releases from the White House yesterday, including the morning press gaggle with Dana Perino during which she noted repeatedly that last […]


27
Jan

Worst national security administration ever: Opium edition

The Bush administration probably didn’t actively intend to turn Aghanistan into the very model of a narco-terrorist state, but they clearly had no plan to avoid doing so.
In 2001, opium was a non-factor in Afghanistan’s economy, after the Taliban banned the crop the previous year in a failed effort to improve diplomatic relations with other […]


21
Jan

Democratic leaders: progressives in the mold of Dick Nixon

Note to regular patrons: you’re not hallucinating. This piece is an updated and greatly expanded version of the previous one.
Nancy Pelosi is at it again. On Friday, she reiterated her opposition to impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney, saying that impeachment “would be very divisive in our country” and that despite increasing heat from constituents […]

BTC News: If It Says ‘News,’ It Must Be True is is proudly powered by Wordpress
Navigation Theme by GPS Gazette