NewsTrust - Bush Administration - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Nov. 16 (Opinion) - In the mosques across the city, I hear a fringe of young men talk dreamily of flocking to Afghanistan to "resist". Yet this whisper never has an immigrant accent. It shares my pronunciations, my cultural references, and my national anthem. Beneath the beards and the burqas, there is an English voice.

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TALIBAN = 9/11?? Afghanistan by Hypnosis

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Greg Palast - By Greg Palast - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - On September 11, 2001, my office building, the World Trade Center, was attacked by al Qaeda, a murder cult of Saudi Arabians, funded by Saudi Arabians. And so, in response to the Saudis' attack, America invaded ... Afghanistan. Like, HUH? And here we go again. New York Times headline last Friday: "Pakistani Army, In Its Campaign In Taliban Stronghold, Finds A Hint Of 9/11."

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Why Gay Marriage Is Such A Big Deal

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

American Chronicle - By Sean Prophet - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - In the grand scheme of American politics, the gay marriage issue seems like it should really be a footnote. It affects so few people, how could it be so important? The question is simple enough, right? Either you think same-sex marriage is a symbol of plummeting morality and the decline of Western Civilization, or you see it as a fundamental human right. Like abortion or gun control, it's not a subject that lends itself to much middle ground.

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22 Things Dick Cheney Can't Recall About the Plame Case

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

Mother Jones - By Nick Baumann - Oct. 31 (Opinion) - Notes from former Vice President Dick Cheney's interview with the FBI about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity were finally released on Friday afternoon after a lengthy legal battle. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued the Justice Department last year to obtain the interview notes; a judge finally ordered their release on October 1. In the interview, Cheney demonstrated a behavior common among Bush administration officials under investigation: he couldn't remember much of anything. Here's a non-comprehensive list of 22 things Dick Cheney claimed he couldn't recall about the Plame case, in the order they appear in the FBI's notes:

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Zakaria on a Third Surge in Afghanistan

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fareed Zakaria - Oct. 26 (Opinion) - The real question we should be asking in Afghanistan is not "Do we need a surge?" but rather "Do we need a third surge?" The number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in January 2008 was 26,607. Over the next six months, the Bush administration raised the total to 48,250. President Bush described this policy as "the quiet surge," and he made the standard arguments about the need for a counterinsurgency capacity—the troops had to not only fight the Taliban but protect the Afghan population, strengthen and train the Afghan Army and police, and assist in development.

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Obama's Choice: Failed War President or the Prince of Peace?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Nick Turse - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - More than 100 years after their early counterinsurgency efforts on two tiny islands in the Philippines, U.S. troops are still dying there at the hands of Muslim guerillas. More than 50 years later, the U.S. still garrisons the southern part of the Korean peninsula as a result of a stalemate war and a peace as yet unmade. More recently, the American experience has included outright defeat in Vietnam, failures in Laos and Cambodia; debacles in Lebanon and Somalia; a never-ending four-president-long war in Iraq; and almost a decade of wheel-spinning in Afghanistan without any sign of success, no less victory.

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Obama’s Dick Cheney Moment

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Benjamin Wittes - Sep. 28 (Opinion) - His decision not to consult Congress on detentions represents a virtually wholesale adoption of Bush’s failed policies.

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Fear was no excuse to condone torture

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miami Herald - By Charles C. Krulak, Joseph P. Hoar - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to ``take off the gloves.'' As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster. But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics.

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David Cole on "The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable"

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Amy Goodman, David Cole - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - Legal scholar and attorney David Cole looks at the story behind the infamous Bush administration torture memos. Cole argues the memos show that the United States government’s top attorneys were instrumental in rationalizing acts of torture and cruelty, employing chillingly twisted logic and Orwellian reasoning to authorize what the law absolutely forbids.

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So far, Obama's failing miserably

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Jeremy Lott - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - When he ran for president, George W. Bush promised to be a modest reformer at home and a humble representative of the United States on the world stage. The Al Qaeda-organized-and-funded terrorist attacks of eight years ago changed all that.

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Karzai, Election Fraud and the Wages of Empire

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By John Nichols - Sep. 10 (Opinion) - So we get the "news" -- not from the satirical Onion but from the nation's newspaper of record -- that U.S. officials are trying to prevent Karzai from declaring "victory" in the exercise in fraud that naive commentators still insist on referring to as an election.

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Liz Cheney can't handle the truth

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

Salon - By Vincent Rossmeier - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - Liz Cheney, the easily exasperated eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has become a one-woman TV juggernaut in 2009, racking up more airtime than a cloud as she defends her daddy's administration records. And boy, is she wrong. Unlike so many TV pundits who spin and slide around the facts, Cheney makes no fuss about completely ignoring them, and sticking to talking points that have little relation to the truth.

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Cheney for President

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

Wall Street Journal - By James Taranto - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - As the Obama administration moves toward prosecuting intelligence agents for allegedly overzealous questioning of terrorism in the months following the 9/11 attacks, the Washington Post delivers a timely reminder of why those methods were thought necessary.

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Video: Dick Cheney calls Eric Holder's interrogation investigation political

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

Fox News - By Chris Wallace - Aug. 31 (Interview) - WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it. CHENEY: I am.

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Reopening the Interrogation File

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

Washington Post - By Eugene Robinson - Aug. 25 (Opinion) - History's demands can seem inconvenient, unfair or unreasonable. But they can't be ignored. The Obama administration has a legal and moral duty to determine whether crimes were committed in the Bush-era detention and interrogation of "war on terror" prisoners -- and, if so, to prosecute those responsible.

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Nadler: Obama Violating Law By Not Investigating Bush

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Sam Stein - Aug. 21 (Opinion) - New York Congressman Jerry Nadler, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told the Huffington Post that he believed that President Obama would be breaking the law if he decided to oppose launching investigation into the authorization of torture. "If they follow the law they have no choice," Nadler said in an interview this past weekend.

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Cheney's New Gambit

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern - Aug. 16 (Opinion) - The stenographers of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) are missing the most obvious explanation for former Vice President Dick Cheney’s widely reported “disappointment” with former President George W. Bush on the issue of pardons -- self-interest.

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McGovern on 'Downing Street Minutes'

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern - Aug. 10 (Opinion) - Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern recalls the remarkable case of the Downing Street Minutes, the documentary proof of President George W. Bush’s willful misuse of intelligence to justify an aggressive war in Iraq -- and the unwillingness of the major U.S. news media to do much with the evidence.

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A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Free Inquiry - By James A. Haught - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse. Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

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Cheney's Fondness for the Dark Side

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Sherwood Ross - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - In (Bush lawyer) John Yoo’s version of events, writes Jane Mayer in her book The Dark Side that “the impetus to break out of Geneva’s strictures…came from the CIA. Many at the Agency, however, saw this differently, suggesting it was Cheney and his lawyer, (David) Addington, who pushed the Agency to take the path toward torture.” A few days after 9/11 Cheney observed the CIA had gone over “to the dark side,” but whether he starred in the role of Darth Vader needs to be established or denied.

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Torturing Children: Bush's Legacy and Democracy's Failure

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Henry Gireaux - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - The best kept secret of the Bush's war crimes is that thousands of children have been imprisoned, tortured, and otherwise denied rights under the Geneva Conventions and related international agreements. Yet both Congress and the media have strangely failed to identify the very existence of child prisoners as a war crime.(3)

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Torturing Children: Bush's Legacy and Democracy's Failure

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Henry A. Giroux - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - Nowhere is there a more disturbing, if not horrifying, example of the relationship between a culture of cruelty and the politics of irresponsibility than in the resounding silence that surrounds the torture of children under the presidency of George W. Bush - and the equal moral and political failure of the Obama administration to address and rectify the conditions that made it possible.

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John Walker Lindh's Parents Discuss Their Son's Story, from Joining the US-Backed Taliban Army to Surviving a Northern Alliance Massacre, to His Abuse at the Hands of US Forces

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Frank Lindh, Marilyn Walker - Jul. 31 (Interview) - We turn now to a Democracy Now! exclusive. For the first time in over seven years, the parents of John Walker Lindh have agreed to sit down together for an extended interview to discuss their son, who is known by many as the American Taliban.

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What the CIA hid from Congress

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Jane Harman - Jul. 26 (Opinion) - Were members of congressional intelligence committees told everything about the Bush administration's surveillance programs? Not even close, reveals Jane Harman, the former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

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The latent seeds of Auschwitz

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

granma.cu - By Inés Míriam Alemán - Jul. 25 (Opinion) - AFTER Nuremberg, where those centrally responsible were tried for crimes against humanity and peace, it seemed as though the world had seen the end of an era, the end of barbarism, and the beginning of a new era based on an international order that would not allow a repetition of the events of World War II

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