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Fueling Stealth
AP photo / Mark Farmer

Wasteful Weapons and the Politicians Who Love Them

Remember Curtis LeMay, the Air Force general played to chilling effect by Sterling Hayden in the 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove”? If you’re too young for that reference, you probably don’t recall when the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) dominated our military posture toward our Soviet enemy.

Posted on Jun 24, 2008 43 COMMENTS


Bush on energy
AP photo / Rich Pedroncelli

Blame Rising Oil Prices on Bush

Wow, a lot of people must have bought Hummers last week. How else to explain the spike in oil prices? No, I’m not being silly: They are, and by they I mean the gaggle of media pundits and other administration apologists—abetted by some green zealots—who want to explain our energy crisis by reference to profligate consumers.

Posted on Jun 10, 2008 76 COMMENTS


McCain
AP photo / Jeff Chiu

What Makes McCain Tick?

Will the real John McCain stand up? Actually, I don’t expect him to, now that he is the Republican presidential candidate, pandering to the irrationalities that drive his party. Nor is it likely that the fawning mass media will pressure him to the point of clarity. But I remain genuinely confused as to what makes him tick.

Posted on Jun 3, 2008 47 COMMENTS


fighter plane
AP photo / LM Otero

Indefensible Spending

What should be the most important issue in this election is one that is rarely, if ever, addressed: Why is U.S. military spending at the highest point, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than at any time since the end of World War II?

Posted on Jun 1, 2008 49 COMMENTS


Guantanamo protest
AP photo / Mary Altaffer

Where Is the Outrage?

Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality? It’s a question demanding an answer in response to the publication of a 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture.

Posted on May 27, 2008 112 COMMENTS


gas prices
AP photo / Lisa Poole

Paying for War at the Pump

What’s it got to do with the price of gas? Would some reporter with access to the Republican presidential candidate please ask John McCain why he wants to continue President Bush’s Mideast policy when it has proved so ruinous for American taxpayers?

Posted on May 20, 2008 91 COMMENTS


Guantanamo detainees
Shane T. McCoy / U.S. Navy

The Tortured Law on Torture

Ah, yes, those torture confessions have proved so useful. That, at least, was the claim of our president in justifying one of the most egregious assaults ever on this nation’s commitment to the rule of law. But now comes news that charges have been dropped against the so-called Sept. 11 attacks’ 20th hijacker, one of dozens so identified, because the “evidence” he supplied under torture and later recanted is not credible enough to go to trial.

Posted on May 13, 2008 29 COMMENTS


Clinton and McCain
AP photo / Gerald Herbert

Battle of the Hawks

In the increasingly unlikely event of a McCain-Clinton election, folks who care about the peace issue would have serious reason to worry. Both of these candidates are inveterate hawks, and what we would be up against is a choice between the neoconservatives and the neoliberals as to who could be more adventurous in getting us into unjustifiable foreign wars.

Posted on May 6, 2008 87 COMMENTS


McCain
AP photo / Mary Altaffer

No Country for Old Men

Would President John McCain forget who made that 3 a.m. call to the special White House phone? I suspect that his aides would not just let him nod off back to sleep, even if they were intimidated by the prospect of one of his alleged intemperate outbursts, but might our septuagenarian president be less than fully focused?

Posted on Apr 29, 2008 38 COMMENTS


Clinton
flickr.com/photos/philgarlic

Clinton Threatens to ‘Obliterate’ Iran

How proud the Clintonistas must be. They have learned how to rival what Hillary once termed the “vast right-wing conspiracy” in the effort to destroy a viable Democratic leader who dares to stand in the way of their ambitions. Neither Karl Rove nor Dick Morris could have done a better job.

Posted on Apr 22, 2008 257 COMMENTS


McCain and Bush
AP photo / Ron Edmonds

The Man Who Would Be Bush

Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water? As millions surrender their homes and sacrifice other standards of our nation’s economic stability and reputation to the caprice of the Bush-Cheney imperium, a majority of voters tell pollsters that they might vote for a candidate who promises more of the same.

Posted on Apr 15, 2008 133 COMMENTS


Petraeus
AP photo / Charles Dharapak

Everything His President Wants to Hear

General Betray Us? Of course he has. MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time. But it was right then—as it would be to repeat the charge now.

Posted on Apr 8, 2008 88 COMMENTS


submarine
AP photo / Carol Phelps

A Submarine to Fight al-Qaida’s Navy

A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you’re talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II.

Posted on Apr 1, 2008 119 COMMENTS


Robertson
AP photo / Jamie-Andrea Yanak

War of the Word

Would God ever damn America? Is there anything we have done or could do as a nation that might court such severe judgment from an almighty, or is there a peculiar American exemption from God’s wrath? The prediction of God’s damnation for bad behavior is made in both black and white churches.

Posted on Mar 25, 2008 126 COMMENTS


Wall St. traders watch Spitzer confession
AP photo / Richard Drew

Spitzer’s Shame Is Wall Street’s Gain

Tell me again: Why should we get all worked up over the revelation that the New York governor paid for sex? Will it bring back to life the eight U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq that same day in a war that makes no sense and has cost this nation trillions in future debt? 

Posted on Mar 12, 2008 137 COMMENTS


Ahmadinejad and Maliki
AP photo / Ahmad al-Rubaye, pool

‘Great Satan’ Gets Struck Out

President Bush has made his antagonism for Iran and its president well known, but in Iraq he has created a great ally for his enemy, as was clear from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s historic visit.

Posted on Mar 4, 2008 95 COMMENTS


Castro greets a crowd
AP photo / Javier Galeano

Castro and the Colossus

The Cuban president, who is resigning after five decades in power, has caused his people suffering, but the giant to the north bears even greater responsibility for the island’s plight.

Posted on Feb 19, 2008 65 COMMENTS


Bush's budget
AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The Legacy of Bush II

Curb your enthusiasm. Even if your favored candidate did well on Super Tuesday, ask yourself if he or she will seriously challenge the bloated military budget that President Bush has proposed for 2009. 

Posted on Feb 5, 2008 107 COMMENTS


Bush and Abdullah
AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Those Ungrateful Saudis

Why is it that George W. Bush only gets a 12 percent favorability rating in Saudi Arabia?  Even Osama bin Laden and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scored higher in a poll last month by the nonpartisan Terror Free Tomorrow group. What ingrates those Saudis are—didn’t the Bush family save them twice from Saddam Hussein?

Posted on Jan 15, 2008 49 COMMENTS


Pelosi
AP photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta

Waterboarding Our Democracy

When the CIA destroyed those prisoner interrogation videotapes, was it also destroying the truth about 9/11?  After all, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, the basic narrative of what happened on that day comes from the CIA’s account of what those prisoners told their torturers.  And what about those congressional leaders, including Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, who were briefed on the torture program as early as 2002? 

Posted on Dec 11, 2007 151 COMMENTS


Bush
AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais

It Turns Out Ahmadinejad Was the Truthful One

Bush is such a liar. Or is he just out to lunch on the most important issue that he faces? In October, he charged that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was bringing the world to the precipice of World War III, even though the White House had been informed at least a month earlier that Iran had no such program and had stopped efforts to develop one back in 2003.

Posted on Dec 4, 2007 174 COMMENTS


Bhutto, Musharraf and Sharif
AP photos / Manuel Balce Ceneta / Adam Rountree / Lefteris Pitarakis

Playing Roulette in Pakistan

Everybody seems to have a pick for president, or even a couple of picks. Problem is, neither Musharraf nor Bhutto nor Sharif stands up very well when the historical record is scrutinized.

Posted on Nov 27, 2007 24 COMMENTS


Ron Paul
AP photo / Charles Dharapak

Cheering for Ron Paul

What can you get for a trillion bucks?  Or make that $1.6 trillion, if you take the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as tallied by the majority staff of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Or is it the $3.5-trillion figure cited by Paul, whose concern about the true cost of this war for ordinary Americans shames the leading Democrats?

Posted on Nov 20, 2007 667 COMMENTS


Musharraf and Bush
AP photo / Gerald Herbert

Bush Stands by His Dictator

“The war on terror” made me do it. That’s the excuse that works for George W. Bush to rationalize his assaults on the rule of law, from arbitrary arrest to torture. So why not try some war-on-terror obfuscation to bail out his president-dictator buddy over in Pakistan?

Posted on Nov 13, 2007 30 COMMENTS


Musharraf and Bush
AP photo / J. Scott Applewhite

Our Man in Pakistan

So, Musharraf, treated ever so respectfully by George Bush throughout his administration, has turned out to be just another crummy dictator.  But he was our dictator, kind of a modern, even westernized one who could stand up to all those bearded Islamic terrorists. Well, not exactly.

Posted on Nov 6, 2007 40 COMMENTS


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