NewsTrust - Bush Administration - Most Recent Stories: News

Army Suicides Hit Record and Will Likely Continue to Rise

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Yana Kunichoff - Nov. 19 (News Report) - Suicides among veterans and soldiers have reached a record high this year and are set to continue rising, Pentagon officials said.

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CIA Secret Prison Found

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ABC News - Nov. 18 (News Report) - "It obviously took a lot of effort to keep [the prison] secret," said John Sifton, whose firm One World Research investigates human rights abuses. "There's a reason this stuff gets kept secret." "It's an embarrassment, and a crime."

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Obama administration seeks to block wiretap suit

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Devlin Barrett - Oct. 31 (News Report) - The Justice Department invoked the state secrets privilege Friday to try to stop a lawsuit over Bush-era wiretapping -- the first time the Obama administration has done so under its new policy on such cases. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision in a California lawsuit challenging the warrantless wiretapping program begun after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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Official resigns over Afghan war

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Karen DeYoung - Oct. 27 (Special Report) - A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed. But last

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EPA Releases Bush-Era Endangerment Document

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Darren Samuelsohn, Robin Bravender - Oct. 13 (News Report) - U.S. EPA released a long-sequestered document on global warming today showing the George W. Bush administration had concluded in December 2007 that greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles were endangering public welfare and needed to be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

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The Republican War Against ACORN

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Jason Leopold - Sep. 27 (News Report) - In recent days, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other major news outlets have recounted the "troubled" history of the poor people's advocacy group ACORN, but left out the five-year anti-ACORN campaign led by White House adviser Karl Rove and other Republican operatives.

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Meet the Hazzards

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Nomi Prins, Christopher Hayes - Sep. 23 (Special Report) - As we mark the end of the first year of the financial bailout, the public seems to regard the government's actions with a toxic combination of rage and confusion. People are pissed off but too bewildered to know what to do with that anger. The confusion isn't an accident. The government hasn't exactly been forthcoming about how it's made buckets of money available to the banking sector. When it does disclose some information--such as in July's SIGTARP report from the Treasury or the Federal Reserve's weekly balance sheet--it's in the form of intimidating descriptions, accounting mumbo jumbo and technical reports that do little to illuminate just what the hell is going on. What's worse, banks and the establishment press have portrayed TARP as the sum of the banking industry's federal subsidies. An August 30 New York Times article, "As Banks Repay Bailout Money, U.S. Sees a Profit," gives the impression that taxpayers should be happy to have made $4 billion on the deal, as if our checks were in the mail. But when the government became Wall Street's bank, it wasn't just $700 billion of TARP money that flew north to Wall Street. TARP was but a small fraction (roughly 4 percent) of the full $17.5 trillion bailout and subsidization of the financial sector. [See image.] The details of this total bailout are complicated, but the basic mechanisms aren't beyond the average citizen's grasp. We're going to walk you through it.

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Torturing 'does not get truth'

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Sep. 22 (News Report) - Torture techniques used on suspected terrorists by the Bush administration may have failed to get to the truth, researchers say. Professor Shane O'Mara of Trinity College, Dublin, said the interrogation techniques had a detrimental effect on brain.

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Todd S. Purdum on Henry Paulson

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Todd S. Purdum - Sep. 21 (Special Report) - Henry Paulson, then the Treasury secretary, in his office last September, the month Lehman fell and the bailout took shape. By Nigel Parry/CPi Syndication. It was February 2008, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a prince of Wall Street turned secretary of the

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Sept. 11 Attacks Helped Shape Obama's Worldview

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Scott Wilson - Sep. 12 (News Report) - It was not hollow rhetoric. The attacks and the steps that the Bush administration took to prevent another one have defined the way Obama views the world and have influenced, more than any other event, his understanding of national security. That

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Appeals court rules against Ashcroft in 9/11 case

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Sep. 04 (News Report) - A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday to the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government's improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 was "repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history

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Obama formalizes Bush policy on digital searches and seizures

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

wsws.org - By Tom Eley - Sep. 01 (News) - The Obama administration disclosed on August 27 that it will carry on Bush administration policies that allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to seize and search international travelers' laptop computers, cellular phones, cameras, and other electronic devices, even in the absence of suspicion of criminal activity.

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Cheney Still Manipulating People -- Now In Public

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Dan Froomkin - Aug. 31 (News Analysis) - When he was vice president, Dick Cheney got his way by secretly wielding the instruments of power. Now that he's no longer in government, Cheney is still pulling levers and pushing buttons - he's just doing it in plain view. And it's the media that he's manipulating.

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Novak Without Tears

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Eric Alterman - Aug. 26 (Special Report) - Journalist and television personality Robert Novak died August 18. I think it's time to do him the honor of taking his life's work seriously. I got to know Novak a bit in the late 1980s while writing a magazine profile of him, and another of his then-colleague John McLaughlin while researching a book on the history of punditry. I found myself immune to Novak's charms--as he was to mine--but I don't begrudge the fact that many people in Washington did not. Novak was an extremely popular figure within the capital; and while I extend his close friends and family my sincere sympathy, as a historian of journalism I worry that his myriad personal connections may have the effect of obscuring the historical record with regard to his actions. With that in mind, here are a few aspects of Mr. Novak's career that have received short shrift during the past week:

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For Obama, interrogation fight won't be welcome

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Christi Parsons, Julian E. Barnes - Aug. 25 (News Analysis) - The White House had hoped to avoid a polarizing dispute over the CIA's tactics in questioning terrorists. It's likely to be a prolonged distraction from healthcare and other domestic priorities.

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After 6+ Years at Guantanamo, Mohamed Jawad Returns Home

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS, Amy Goodman, Jonathan Landay - Aug. 25 (News Report) - A young Afghan prisoner has returned to Afghanistan following his release from Guantanamo Bay. Mohamed Jawad arrived in Kabul on Monday. He was ordered freed last month after more than six years at Guantanamo. He was as young as twelve at the time of his capture and was tortured and threatened into confessing to throwing a grenade at a US soldier.

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Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Abuse Cases

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Johnston - Aug. 24 (News Report) - The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.

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Report Reveals CIA Conducted Mock Executions

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff - Aug. 22 (Special Report) - Top Bush CIA officials, including Tenet's successors as CIA director, Porter Goss and Gen. Michael Hayden, strongly lobbied for the IG report to be kept secret from the public. They argued that its release would damage America's reputation around the world, could damage CIA morale, and would tip off terrorists regarding American interrogation tactics. "Justice has had the complete document since 2004, and their career prosecutors have reviewed it carefully for legal accountability," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "That's already been done."

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Judge Rejects a Key Tactic in Terror Cases - NYTimes.com

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Eric Lichtblau - Aug. 20 (News Report) - WASHINGTON — In a ruling that threw into doubt one of the government’s main counterterrorism tools, a federal judge said the Treasury Department acted unconstitutionally three years ago when it froze the assets of an Ohio charity suspected of aiding terrorists. The ruling challenged a key tactic used by the government under an emergency executive order signed by President George W. Bush two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. If upheld, the ruling could severely undercut the government’s authority and ultimately require it to get a warrant and submit to court review in moving against charities.

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Former Bush aide says politics colored US 'terror alert'

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Agence France-Presse - By Olivier Knox - Aug. 20 (News Report) - Former US homeland security chief Tom Ridge charges in a new book that top aides to then-president George W. Bush pressured him to raise the "terror alert" level to sway the November 2004 US election.

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C.I.A. Sought Blackwater's Help In Plan To Kill Jihadists

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Pamela Hess - Aug. 19 (News Report) - The CIA hired private contractors at Blackwater USA in 2004 as part of a secret program to kill top-level members of al-Qaida, a person familiar with the program said Wednesday.

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Eight Years After Orchestrating Massacre at Dasht-e-Leili, Afghan Warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum Returns to Afghanistan to Campaign for Karzai

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Sharif Abdel Kouddous - Aug. 18 (News Report) - One of Afghanistan’s most feared warlords has returned to Afghanistan just days before its presidential election. General Abdul Rashid Dostum is one of several warlords who have allied with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is seeking a new term. Karzai is hoping Dostum’s return will help attract ethnic Uzbek voters. Dostum’s return to prominence in Afghanistan comes despite his role overseeing a 2001 massacre at Dasht-e-Leili that left at least 2,000 Taliban POWs dead. He’s also had extensive ties with the US and was formerly on the CIA payroll.

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Canada court says its officials knew U.S. abused detainee

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

McClatchy - By Carol Rosenberg | Miami Herald - Aug. 14 (News Report) - Canada must seek the immediate return of Toronto-born Guantanamo captive Omar Khadr rather than await the outcome of his U.S. military trial because American troops mistreated the alleged teen terrorist and Canadian officials knew about it, Canada's appeals court ruled Friday.

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The Final Days of Merrill Lynch - The Atlantic (September 2009)

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - Aug. 14 (News Report) - On one level, the merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch is a simple story of executive hubris and cowardice. Leaving aside the question of whether [ BofA CEO] Lewis’s failure to publicly disclose new information—about Merrill’s losses, about his deal with [Bush regime treasury secretary] Paulson and [Federal Reserve chair] Bernanke—was legal, his passivity throughout the process was, in the eyes of some financial-industry insiders, contemptible.

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"All Roads Lead to Rove"

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, David Iglesias - Aug. 13 (News Analysis) - Documents released by Congress this week offer powerful new evidence that Karl Rove and other senior Bush administration figures took the lead in the firing of nine US attorneys in 2006. We speak to former New Mexico US attorney David Iglesias, who was fired after refusing Republican pressure to take on allegations of voter fraud and pursue cases against Democrats to help a Republican lawmaker’s re-election campaign.

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