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By David Halberstam
$35.00
By W. Jackson Bate
$22
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AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
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By Scott Ritter — Iran’s recent missile tests should remove all doubt that an attack by either the United States or Israel would be a terrible mistake.
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Flickr / Allison Harger
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Barack Obama has an Op-Ed article in Monday’s New York Times outlining his vision for Iraq. It’s mostly a rehashing of positions he has stated over and over again, but it’s interesting to read the quilt work of stump speeches, debate sound bites and policy papers assembled into one document.
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President Bush had hoped to shape America’s military presence in Iraq for years after his departure from the White House by negotiating a long-term status-of-forces agreement, but a number of sticking points indicate there will be a much shorter time frame. U.S. negotiators have agreed to a kind of timetable for withdrawal, as demanded by the Iraqis, but are holding out over legal immunity for American forces.
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White House / Chris Greenberg
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Bush’s former press secretary was never shy about his cancer, but friends and colleagues alike were surprised by the news of his death Saturday. As the president’s mouthpiece, Snow knew scorn, but he also had the respect of a number of his critics. As The Nation’s John Nichols elegizes, he brought “a measure of dignity” to the Bush administration.
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Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges warns in an L.A. Times Op-Ed that “If the sweeping surveillance law signed by President Bush on Thursday—giving the U.S. government nearly unchecked authority to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of innocent Americans—is allowed to stand, we will have eroded one of the most important bulwarks to a free press and an open society.”
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instablogsimages.com
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The price of oil is bad now, but it could get much worse, according to OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla Salem el-Badri, if Iran became embroiled in a military conflict with the U.S. or Israel. If a war occurs, Badri says, there’s no telling how high oil prices might climb.
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Executive Office of the President of the United States
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You know a legislative compromise is one-sided when the AP headline announcing its passage reads “Senate Bows to Bush.” Democratic advocates of the new FISA bill, passed by the Senate on Wednesday, are still trying to explain what they got in exchange for rolling back a few civil liberties and burying some of the president’s abuses. When they figure it out, someone, somewhere, will surely be listening.
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AP photo / Greg Baker
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By Robert Scheer — You can’t trust the Chinese. I don’t care if you’re talking about those communists on the mainland or the other guys on Taiwan; they just won’t follow the war-games script that our weapons hawks had counted on.
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commons.wikimedia.org / NASA
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A former EPA official alleged Tuesday that the vice president’s office influenced congressional testimony about the public health effects of climate change. Last October, it was revealed that six of 14 pages of the proposed testimony of the director of the Centers for Disease Control were deleted because so many references to global warming had been cut.
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antiwar.com
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What’s the big deal about the new FISA “compromise”? Simply put, it legitimizes warrantless spying on Americans while papering over one of George W. Bush’s worst abuses. Daniel Ellsberg would like your help in stopping it, provided you can set aside 60 seconds of your Monday.
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AP photo / Kevin Sanders, file
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By Chris Hedges — I survive the degradation that has become America—a land that exalts itself as a bastion of freedom and liberty while it tortures human beings, stripped of their rights, in offshore penal colonies, a land that wages wars defined under international law as criminal wars of aggression, a land that turns its back on its poor, its weak, its mentally ill, in a relentless drive to embrace totalitarian capitalism—because I read books.
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treehugger.com
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While environmentalists and opponents of foreign oil may have found common cause in the use of biofuels, a new, confidential World Bank report estimates that the recent increase in plant-based fuel production has actually contributed to a 75 percent rise in global food prices, sparking riots across the world and pushing millions beneath the poverty line.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Barack Obama keeps trying to end the wars over culture and religion, and good for him. The 1960s are so 40 years ago. But Obama’s opponents, as well as some of his friends, won’t let him do it.
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If new rule changes go through, the FBI will be allowed to open national security investigations without evidence of wrongdoing. Instead, the agency could pursue cases based on profiles of Americans it deems likelier to commit crimes such as terrorism. The policy would be in keeping with the Bush administration’s dragnet, fact-phobic approach to terrorism; the president himself has been critical of profiling.
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There’s a lot more to object to in the new FISA bill than just retroactive immunity for the telecoms. It seems that the regulation of surveillance is still hopelessly out of date. How is a court supposed to handle complex algorithms and countless terabytes of data? Truthdig contributor Elliot Cohen warns that the new law could conceivably allow the theft of the 2008 presidential election.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Scheer — As we head into the Fourth of July weekend of patriotic bluster and beer swilling—but before we are too besotted with ourselves—might we also for once consider our imperfections? Why not take a moment to heed the cautions of our founding father, George Washington, whose true legacy will most likely be ignored during the flag-waving weekend?
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Last week Rep. John Conyers tried to get a straight answer out of John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer who argued that the president had a legal right to order torture. The spectacle of Yoo equivocating over whether the president could have someone buried alive is something to behold.
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By William Pfaff — A basic argument in Washington’s war on terror, an argument that one might think settled by now, concerns whether al-Qaida is the powerful global organization the Bush administration says it is or whether it has been, since its retreat into the Pakistan tribal areas, mostly an Internet phenomenon.
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By Eugene Robinson — George W. Bush’s presidency seems exhausted and irrelevant, but that’s a dangerous illusion.
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There’s a great deal riding on this November’s presidential election—and, clearly, not just for Americans. Link TV has put together a new feature called “Dear American Voter” to tell those who will be able to cast their vote in the U.S. what their choices might represent for the rest of the world.
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independent.com
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Critics and challengers of Naomi Klein’s work had better take a close look at her latest book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” before launching their attacks. This is one writer whose research and documentation are so exhaustive that would-be detractors will not only find her analysis to be dauntingly watertight, even if they don’t share her views about the unnatural disasters enabled by free-market capitalism, but they might also discover that some of her source material seems strangely familiar.
Transcript available here.
Posted on Jun 30, 2008
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By William Pfaff — The Bush government was elected in 2000 on a platform including vigorous opposition to the United States Army’s doing “nation-building.” What a difference a five-year-long military disaster can make!
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Flickr / YouLocalDave
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The theory that the Bush administration wanted Iraq for its oil has just gotten a major boost. It turns out that the U.S. State Department sent over a team of lawyers and consultants to help the Iraqi government work out several high-profile no-bid contracts with five Western oil giants.
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AP photo / Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi
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Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has fought tooth and nail to maintain his position of power during the three months since his authority was threatened by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, widely recognized (but not by Mugabe) as the winner of last March’s election, and now it looks like all that hard work and abject brutality has paid off.
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It’s been more than six years since the invasion of Afghanistan but, as this Mosaic Intelligence Report illustrates, it looks like the Taliban is actually getting stronger and bolder—as evidenced by the recent Taliban-led prison break at Kandahar’s Sarposa Prison. Could 2008 be the Year of the Taliban?
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jumpcut.com / anselpixel2
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After doing everything but follow the overwhelming anti-war mandate given by voters in the 2006 congressional elections, the Democratic-controlled Congress accepted a war bill late Thursday that will keep U.S. troops in Iraq until at least Jan. 20.
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independent.com
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By Kasia Anderson — Critics and challengers of Naomi Klein’s work had better take a close look at her latest book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” before launching their attacks.
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By Joe Conason — Precisely on schedule, the usual assortment of right-wing operatives is preparing its expected assault on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
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By Marie Cocco — Someday, but apparently not a day that will come before November’s election, we might at last have a sober public discussion about terrorism, the attacks of 9/11 and the so-called war on terrorism that has been waged since 2001.
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allamericanpatriots.com
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It might be safe to assume that these folks aren’t fans of President Bush: A group calling itself the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is hoping to commemorate Bush as he leaves office by re-christening a nearby sewage station as the George W. Bush Sewage Plant and by urging locals to flush together on cue on Jan. 20, 2009.
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Ever since he received President Bush’s official smooch of approval, Sen. Joe Lieberman has moved much more aggressively to the right, putting some of the more hawkish types from his new crowd to shame with his saber-rattling rhetoric about Iran. Here, the Brave New Films team charts Lieberman’s nearly complete transformation in recent years.
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Flickr / Drama Queen
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Here’s another outrage that has stumbled out in the twilight of George W. Bush: Under the leadership of John Ashcroft and, especially, Alberto Gonzales, the Justice Department illegally sought to hire conservative lawyers, according to a preliminary report from the department’s own inspector general.
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AP photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez
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By Bill Boyarsky — Watching the couples in line for licenses in Beverly Hills on the first day of gay marriage in California, I was struck by how the scene was so commonplace, even boring—just a bunch of men and women waiting their turn at a nondescript government office.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Barack Obama’s decision to forgo public funds will bring joy to opponents of campaign finance reform. But to say that Obama has killed public financing is to miss the point.
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Mosaic’s Jamal Dajani points out that while President Bush recently likened diplomacy to “appeasement,” the government of Israel has been cutting deals with two of its sworn enemies: Hezbollah and Hamas.
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defectiveyeti.com
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The most recent stop in former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s book tour was Capitol Hill, where he testified about his own participation in the Valerie Plame affair and the involvement of both Bush and Cheney in attempting to cover up the treasonous tracks of 2007 felon of the year Scooter Libby.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The race for electoral votes could be so close in November that small states may well pick the next president.
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AP photo / Brennan Linsley
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By Stanley Kutler — John McCain and Barack Obama’s differences over the Supreme Court’s recent Guantanamo decision speak volumes about the two candidates and their competing visions for America.
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DoD / Sgt. Luis R. Agostini
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President Bush is trying to wrap up a new status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqi government before the U.N. resolution under which the U.S. operates its occupation runs out. Team Bush has made some concessions to the Maliki government, but there’s one sticking point that threatens an agreement: veto power over military operations.
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Actor John Cusack is ramping up his political presence during this election cycle with his film “War, Inc.” and now this advertisement from MoveOn.org, in which he points out how George W. Bush and John McCain are remarkably similar in some pretty fundamental ways, regardless of McCain’s recent bids to distance himself from the outgoing president.
Posted on Jun 17, 2008
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By Marie Cocco — The forceful language of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s decision in the case granting detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp the right to contest their confinement in federal court is the voice of a Supreme Court majority that is fed up.
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AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
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By Robert Fisk — What is it about threats? What possesses half the Middle East to shout abuse all the time? First we have Ahmadinejad, one of the most crackpot presidents in the world, raving away about annihilating Israel. Then we have Shaul Mofaz, the deputy Israeli prime minister, telling the world that there would have to be attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
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z.about.com
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If authoring a war against innocent civilians abroad and civil liberties at home wasn’t enough, George W. Bush is toying with the idea of writing a book upon leaving the Oval Office in January.
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AP photo / Dennis Cook
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By Stanley Kutler — For two centuries, selecting vice presidential candidates was at best a mere afterthought. Hardly anyone knew of the process, if indeed one existed aside from a brief huddle by the presidential candidate with a few advisers and friends. The presidential nominees usually settled on lesser-known figures, deserved obscurities in American history.
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AP photo / Stephan Savoia
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The celebrated historian and author reads from his latest Truthdig essay, which examines Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s articles of impeachment and the lack of attention they garnered in the mainstream media.
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Quelle Surprise! Haiti on the Mend
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