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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 134 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 89 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 61 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 110 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 47 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 150 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 21 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 664 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


jet fighter
AP photo / Junji Kurokawa

Cashing In on Terror

Not to stoke any of the inane conspiracy theories running wild on the Internet, but if Osama bin Laden wasn’t on the payroll of Lockheed-Martin or some other large defense contractor, he deserves to have been. What a boondoggle 9/11 has been for the merchants of war, who this week announced yet another quarter of whopping profits made possible by George Bush’s pretending to fight terrorism by throwing money at outdated Cold War-style weapons systems.

Posted on Oct 30, 2007 76 COMMENTS


Bush in Roosevelt Room
AP photo / Ron Edmonds

War Costs Spiral Out of Control

Hey, a billion here, a billion there, who’s counting?  Not the State Department, which admitted this week that it can’t say “specifically what it received” for the $1.2 billion it paid DynCorp, ostensibly to train the Iraqi police—other than that somebody got an Olympic-size swimming pool out of the deal.

Posted on Oct 23, 2007 55 COMMENTS


Arrest in Iraq
AP photo / Hamza Hendawi

Dissent From the Front Lines

When will we listen to the troops?  I’m not talking about soldiers used as props for a George Bush photo op, telling reporters what Washington wants to hear. The Iraq war has produced brilliant messages of dissent from the ranks that should cause us to stop in our tracks and reconsider what we have wrought. 

Posted on Oct 16, 2007 119 COMMENTS


Viva Che
AP photo / Javier Galeano

The Martyring of Che Guevara

If the CIA thought that executing the guerrilla would kill what he stood for, it mostly assuredly has been proved wrong.  Witness the current state of politics in Latin America, not to mention the reverence this week that marked the 40th anniversary of his death.

Posted on Oct 9, 2007 118 COMMENTS


wounded man
AP photo / Hadi Mizban

The State Dept.’s Murderous Guardians

How did it come to be that the ostensibly best-educated and most refined representatives of the United States in Iraq are guarded by gun-toting mercenaries who kill innocent civilians?  More urgently, why did State Department employees and their bosses in Washington tolerate—and pay to conceal—the wanton murder conducted on their watch? 

Posted on Oct 2, 2007 47 COMMENTS


Joe Biden
AP photo / Charlie Niebergall

Biden One-Ups Bush

It’s not just Bushie loyalists and Republicans who are gunning for more money to be poured (out of taxpayers’ pockets) into the Iraq war chest.  Take Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who is aiming to double Bush’s proposed $12 billion in funding for the rapid production of mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles—a proposition which, Scheer argues, is about much more than the security of U.S. troops.

Posted on Sep 25, 2007 74 COMMENTS


Blackwater helicopter
iraqfact.com

Checkbook Imperialism:  The Blackwater Fiasco

The latest Blackwater USA scandal, in which privately contracted American security troops gunned down innocent bystanders in Baghdad, might cause the Iraqi government to finally give firms like Blackwater their marching orders—if only it could command the power to order these mercenary operations out of the country.

Posted on Sep 18, 2007 143 COMMENTS


Petraeus and Crocker
AP Photo / Gerald Herbert

The General Lies

Of course Gen. David Petraeus predicts success in the Iraq war. What wonders couldn’t generals achieve with more troops and more time? The battle is always going well until it is lost, and then they blame defeat on the politicians and the public.

Posted on Sep 11, 2007 90 COMMENTS


Bush at Al-Asad
AP Photo / Charles Dharapak

Why Is This Man Smiling?

It’s enough to make one a libertarian, Robert Scheer argues, as the federal budget is hijacked by a bloated military-industrial complex wallowing in post-9/11 greed.  As the president smiles, the failures of this American experiment in imperialism become all the more costly and apparent.

Posted on Sep 4, 2007 131 COMMENTS


Gonzales
AP Photo / Charles Dharapak

A Legacy of Legitimizing Torture

President Bush lamented Alberto Gonzales’ resignation and insisted that the “good name” of the attorney general had been besmirched for partisan purposes. Good name? Robert Scheer reviews the highlights (or, rather, the low points) of Gonzales’ tenure and looks at the troubling legacy he leaves behind.

Posted on Aug 28, 2007 48 COMMENTS


rubble in qahtaniya
AP Photo / Petr David Josek

The Real Iraq Progress Report

The recent parade of political tourists to Iraq, during which easily impressed pundits and members of Congress came to be dazzled by the wonders of the troop surge, probably ensures that this murderous adventure will continue well into the next presidency—even if the Democrats win. 

Posted on Aug 21, 2007 62 COMMENTS


hillary
AP Photo/Steve Helber

Hillary Pushes the Button

What in the world was Sen. Hillary Clinton thinking when she attacked Sen. Barack Obama for ruling out the use of nuclear weapons in going after Osama bin Laden? And why aren’t her supporters more concerned about yet another egregious example of Clinton’s consistent backing for the mindless militarism that is dragging this nation to ruin?

Posted on Aug 14, 2007 177 COMMENTS


hiroshima
AP Photo / Shizuo Kambayashi

The Terror America Wrought

During a week of mayhem in Iraq, in which terrorists have rightly been condemned for targeting schoolchildren, it is sobering to recall that this week is also the 62nd anniversary of a U.S. attack that deliberately took the lives of thousands of children on their way to school in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Posted on Aug 7, 2007 182 COMMENTS


bush and abdullah
AP Photo / Gerald Herbert

Bush Keeps Israel Close, Saudi Arabia Closer

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is busy shopping a recently unveiled arms package, totaling a staggering $63 billion in aid and first-rate weaponry, to America’s Mideast “allies” like Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia—but, as Scheer notes, there’s a discrepancy between the Bush administration’s official reasons for this show of goodwill and the real motives behind the deal.

Posted on Jul 31, 2007 136 COMMENTS


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