In January of 1994, Robert B. Fiske was appointed to act as Independent Counsel in investigating what became known as “Whitewater.” He was replaced in August of 1994 by Kenneth Starr, who ran amok until October of 1998, when he was replaced by Robert Ray. Ray produced two reports, neither of which sold as well […]

When Senator Chuck Hagel, who has been sharply critical of the Bush administration’s portrayal of the situation in Iraq, was asked for his response to Iraq prime minister Iyad Allawi’s address to Congress last week, he said the speech was good but “the prime minister was not going to go before the Congress of the […]

In a CNN interview reported by the Los Angeles Times, Iraq interim president Ghazi Ajil Yawer said that Iraqis view U.S. air strikes on residential areas as collective punishment, likening their situation to that of Palestinians in Gaza. Ajil Yawer said video of civilian victims of the air strikes, including women and children, “brings to […]

Health and Human Services chief Tommy Thompson issued a broadside today against a group of liberal doctors, accusing them of “playing politics with children’s lives” by criticising the Bush administration’s efforts on the child health and welfare front.
Thompson offered a laundry list of achievements to rebut the attack of the liberal doctors, calling the group’s […]

A weblog proprietor calling himself John Goldstone is soliciting donations for a reward to be paid to anyone who asks President George W. Bush, in a public forum, how many times he has been arrested.
The weblog, One Simple Question, bills itself as “The World’s Shortest Blog.” At last check, the site had collected $2,386 […]

Colin Powell seems unlikely to garner a return invitation should the Bush administration enjoy a second term, nor is it clear that he has any reason to want one. It may be, then, that his most recent organizational innovation, the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, is the product of a regretful backward glance.
In the months […]

It’s no secret that U.S. soldiers in Iraq have suffered through a series of equipment shortages along with unexpectedly high rates of equipment breakdowns and losses. At one point last year, treads on the Abrams tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle were wearing out so rapidly that forces in Iraq faced a three-month backlog, and the […]

Journalist Laura Rozen has an entry on her weblog featuring a reader’s response to a question she had asked earlier regarding the George Bush-Iraq reality gap. The question was this:
If Bush is so satisfied with his record in Iraq, why does he seem compelled to lie about conditions there?
A reader wrote in with the very […]

Colin Powell was everywhere today, telling whoever his constituency is that things in Iraq are getting worse but that the goal there, which he thinks is achievable, is to hold January elections that can be certified as free and fair.
Centcom chief General John Abizaid went on Meet The Press to tell his consituency, which consists […]

Knight Ridder newspapers said yesterday that Iraq health ministry statistics “obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder” showed that military actions by U.S. and Iraqi forces had killed more than twice as many Iraqi civilians as attacks by insurgents and terrorists during the period in which statistics have been kept.
It now appears that the health ministry […]