Ignoring the fact that we have a system of civilian control over the military, which is why he, the elected president, is designated the commander in chief, Bush hides behind the fiction that the officers in the field are calling the shots when in fact he has put them in an unwinnable situation and refuses to even consider a timetable for getting them out.
Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense who helped sell a stupid war, now finds himself in a bit of trouble. As head of the World Bank, he secured a cushy pay raise for his girlfriend, lied about it and alienated his staff in the process. Not to worry—President Bush still thinks he’s doing a bang-up job.
Iraqis want Americans out of their country more than ever, as indicated by the recent mass protest in Najaf. But if you ask Joe Lieberman, the sight of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis chanting anti-American slogans and tearing apart our flag was just proof that the “surge” is working.
The Supreme Court may not be interested in applying American values to Guantanamo Bay, but at least one soldier has taken a principled stand against the prison’s tortured justice system.
The military covered its ass on Monday, with a report on the investigation into the exploitation of Pat Tillman that stank of non-denial denials. After three years of lies and obfuscation, the Tillman family deserves better.
The man who once famously took a sledgehammer to Saddam Hussein’s statue now says “the Americans are worse than the dictatorship.” That’s a growing sentiment in George W. Bush’s Iraq, where a majority of people view attacks on coalition forces as acceptable.
Dick Cheney has once again accused his critics of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, yet that’s precisely what his administration’s own policies have achieved.
There is nothing wrong with negotiating with our enemies rather than weakly blustering at cartoon images of them—I wish we would do the same in our dealings with Iran—but it would be nice if we would stop shooting ourselves in the foot first.
In light of her hawkish posturing and consistent support of the war for all the wrong reasons, the best advice on Hillary’s campaign comes from the candidate herself: If you’re against the war, vote for someone else.
The lies of Douglas Feith, exposed by the Pentagon’s inspector general, are the key to understanding the greatest intelligence fiasco in American history.
President Bush’s outrageous military budget has nothing do with fighting terrorism but everything to do with pumping up the profits of the administration’s generous political donors in the defense industry. So, the question is: Will the Democrats have the guts to stop this betrayal of the public trust?
Revelations in the perjury trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby re-emphasize the need for an impeachment trial to establish the true story behind President Bush’s erroneous claim about Saddam Hussein’s supposed nuclear weapons program.
Stop him before he kills again. That is the judgment of the American people, and indeed of the entire world, as to the performance of our president, and no State of the Union address can erase that dismal verdict.
If it ever narrows down to a choice between Chuck Hagel and some Democratic hack who hasn’t the guts to fundamentally challenge the president on Iraq, then the conservative Republican from Nebraska will have my vote. Yes, the war is that important.
To surge or not to surge, that is the question. As our prince proposes, once again, to take arms against a sea of troubles, he responds not to the disaster that he has visited upon Iraq, but rather embraces a desperate strategy for salvaging what remains of his reign.
Someone has to say it: The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush’s claim it was “an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy.”
The grisly holiday hanging of Saddam Hussein has been greeted mostly with cheers from the media, but Truthdig editor Robert Scheer takes a different view, noting that even top Nazis, in the Nuremberg trials, received a far superior grade of justice.
Many critics of the war suggest that the U.S. remains in Iraq because it wants that nation’s petroleum. But oil is not the primary reason. Instead, look to the military-industrial complex, a threat that President Eisenhower warned of in the 1960s.
Here we go again: A new secretary of defense and yet another call for ending the war in Iraq by escalating it. What are they smoking in the Bush White House?
Truthdig’s editor enters the mind of Donald Rumsfeld, who journeyed to Iraq recently to bid farewell to the troops, but ended up repeating the lies that put them at risk.
The Founding Fathers won a war, but their true contribution to human history was to tackle head-on the reality that humans and their institutions can so easily become that which they despise.
How in the world did George W. Bush manage to turn Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme Leader” of “Axis of Evil” Iran, into a prophet of peace in the Middle East?
The Crushing Legacy of Bush and Cheney
