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AP photo / Brennan Linsley
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By Chris Hedges — The last, best hope for averting a war with Iran lies with the United States military. We will be saved or doomed by our generals.
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By Andy Borowitz — Bush, citing his own years of expertise, flies to Islamabad to offer wisdom on how to eliminate democracy.
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By Mark Sarvas — As the first Internet reporter for Yahoo News, Kevin Sites spent a year of living dangerously covering 20 wars all over the world. Is Web journalism the wave of the future? Mark Sarvas, a pioneer of literary blogging, takes a close look.
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By Eugene Robinson — Bush Derangement Syndrome is now a full-blown epidemic. George W. apparently has reduced more of his fellow citizens to sputtering rage than any other president since opinion polling began, with the possible exception of Nixon.
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More than seven months before Blackwater’s September killing spree, one of the company’s snipers shot and killed three Iraqi guards, who, witnesses said, never opened fire. A brief “investigation” by the State Department, which included no Iraqi witnesses or visits to the scene of the crime, found that the incident “fell within approved rules governing the use of force.”
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usafa.af.mil
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By David Antoon — Retired Air Force Col. David Antoon investigates the evangelical Christian takeover of the military, where proselytizing has become institutionalized and religious ideology threatens to supersede the values of the Constitution.
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849 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq this year, the deadliest for U.S. troops so far. While it’s true that the last couple of months have seen lower casualties than has been typical this year, those numbers cannot satisfactorily be explained by a more stable Iraq or some newfound love for Americans, and it would be grotesque to call the deaths of only 38 troops in October “good news.”
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The Pentagon is evaluating how it can streamline the process that allows recruits with criminal records to serve in the military. The proposed action is the latest in a series of cash bonuses and relaxed requirements that are meant to help the military cope with its recruitment problem. We can think of a much more effective measure to get young men and women to sign up for military service: End the war in Iraq.
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By Amy Goodman — U.S. attorney general nominee Judge Michael Mukasey admits waterboarding is repugnant, but refuses to say whether it amounts to torture. Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein voted for his confirmation anyway.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The strangest thing about John McCain’s campaign for president is that it’s supposed to be dead, but it isn’t. This is a real nuisance for his competitors.
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By Marie Cocco — In the beginning—back when most Americans believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, when Rumsfeld was known for his quick verbal jabs and not the quagmire in Iraq, and when Bush still could hope to be revered as a great wartime president—the women of Code Pink would stand quietly in front of the White House and hope someone would take their fliers.
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It looks as though Michael Mukasey is one step closer to becoming attorney general, having secured the support of Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer. Judiciary Committee Chairman (and former Truthdigger of the Week) Pat Leahy, on the other hand, plans to vote no, because “No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture.”
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nytimes.com
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President Bush issued an ultimatum of sorts on Thursday over his embattled nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, who refuses to say whether he considers waterboarding a form of torture. Bush said if the Democrats block the nomination, it “would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war.”
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nytimes.com
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By Todd Gitlin — Was the Bush administration’s fevered response to 9/11 made easier by primal American myths of victimization and fear, as Susan Faludi argues in her provocative new book?
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The Washington Post has obtained a number of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “snowflakes,” curt memos fired off at a rate of up to 60 a day. The documents offer rare, unpolished insight into one of the principal architects of the Iraq war, who “argued that Muslims avoid ‘physical labor’ and wrote of the need to ‘keep elevating the threat,’ ‘link Iraq to Iran’ and develop ‘bumper sticker statements’ to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.”
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By Joe Conason — In Rudolph Giuliani’s narrative of his own life, as confided to rapt Republican voters along the presidential primary trail, he has been fighting the lonely twilight struggle against “Islamic terrorism” since sometime in the 1970s.
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In the spirit of Halloween and the idea of dressing up as something you’re not, we’ve decided to pay tribute to the five best political poses from the other 364 days of the year.
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AP photo / Junji Kurokawa
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By Robert Scheer — 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.
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By Marie Cocco — Though time will certainly tell, the Bush administration so far has not yet surpassed that of Richard Nixon’s in its contempt for a free press and its unrelenting war on the truth.
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Historians may one day debate Rudy Giuliani’s recent preposterous comments at a New Hampshire town hall meeting. “Did he mean it?” they might ask. “Or was he just dehydrated?” While addressing voters, the candidate said that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were debating whether to invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden to their inaugurations. But wait, there’s more.
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Dario Castillejos, Dario La Crisis —
Posted on Oct 29, 2007
READ MORE 
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Original from archives.gov
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By Chris Hedges — A Dallas jury, a week ago, caused a mistrial in the government case against this country’s largest Islamic charity. The action raises a defiant fist on the sinking ship of American democracy.
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The “Real Time” host makes the case for prioritizing our fear: “What’s really scary this Halloween is that the same group of idea-free losers who won the last presidential election could win the next one by making us afraid of the wrong things, which is why this Halloween, I’m going as something truly horrifying: a melting polar ice cap.”
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AP photo / Wisam Sami
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Here’s a good way we can all support our troops: by listening to them when they tell us how the Iraq war is really going. Take this account from Sgt. Victor Alarcon and others in his battalion, who in Saturday’s Washington Post give their frank, and stark, assessment of the situation in Baghdad’s Sadiyah district.
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This week’s Mosaic Intelligence Report looks at the U.S.‘s newly imposed sanctions against Iran’s military—the first time, the Link TV report points out, that the U.S. has sought to punish another country’s military this way. Could America’s latest move constitute a prelude to war? Iranian officials have reacted angrily, saying the sanction strategy is “doomed to failure.”
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The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, a figure that includes interest for putting war costs on the proverbial credit card. To date, the two conflicts have cost more (adjusted for inflation) than the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
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By Chalmers Johnson — The best-selling author of “The Sorrows of Empire” takes a look at David Halberstam’s critical history of the Korean War.
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By Joe Conason — The senator rarely surrenders a juicy quote without a struggle. Yet her familiar preference for caution over candor is gradually changing with each step that she takes toward her party’s presidential nomination.
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By Amy Goodman — Fires rage through Southern California. Massive rainstorms drench New Orleans. The Southeast is in the midst of what could be the worst drought on record there. Atlanta could run out of water. What links these crises? Global warming.
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Former Sen. Mike Gravel’s campaign released this video after the candidate was barred from NBC’s upcoming debate in Philadelphia. Is it just a coincidence that the network is owned by GE, which has a profit incentive for war? Gravel doesn’t seem to think so.
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aftonbladet.se
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The White House’s latest request ($46 billion) for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was greeted with fighting words by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “President Bush should not expect Congress to rubber-stamp his latest supplemental request. We’re not going to do that.” For those keeping track at home, Bush has now asked for $196.4 billion so far for the budget year that began in October.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Scott Ritter — The former intelligence officer and weapons inspector argues that the president’s recent World War III comment offers some rare insight into the highly secretive world of George W. Bush’s White House, where the leader of the free world gets advice from reckless neoconservatives, “war criminal” Dick Cheney and “God.”
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O'Farrell, The Illawarra Mercury, Australia —
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politico.com
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Hillary Clinton may be the front-runner, but her campaign has been doing a bit of damage control in Iowa over the senator’s vote to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, a move critics believe is a prelude to war with Iran. Clinton sent out a mass mailing explaining her vote and insisting that she opposes military action “without full Congressional approval.”
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By Will Durst — Funnyman Durst sends up the absurd criticism of Al Gore and the Nobel Prize. Why stop at global warming when there’s plenty in the world of science and nature to deny?
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report tackles Bush’s heated rhetoric about Iran and the connection with the president’s chilly relationship with Russia.
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sunsearch.info
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The Turkish parliament has authorized military incursions into Iraq in order to track down rebels who, the Turkish government has long claimed, use Iraqi Kurdistan as sanctuary.
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By Will Durst — Oooh. He’s clever. And obviously knows exactly what he’s doing. This is all a setup, people. Has to be. Yes, I’m talking about George Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Who but a total stoned horned ogre would do that? Maybe an ogre with something up his sleeve, eh?
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By Amy Goodman — John Lennon would have turned 67 years old last week had he not been murdered in 1980 by a mentally disturbed fan. On his birthday, Oct. 9, his widow, peace activist and artist Yoko Ono, realized a dream they shared.
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AP photo / Hamza Hendawi
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By Robert Scheer — 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.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi explains to a persistent Arianna Huffington why the Democrats haven’t yet cut off funds for the war, why Mitt Romney isn’t going to be the next president and why she opposes a war tax: “This war has to end. I don’t want any accommodation made to pay for it or to prolong it.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — One of the few things the Republican and Democratic presidential contests have in common is the relentlessness with which candidates on both sides are wrapping themselves in orthodoxy. Heretics need not apply.
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By Marie Cocco — By simply deciding that something is a “state secret,” the Bush government has avoided answering for its brutal treatment of innocent victims in the war on terror. This is a perversion of the principle of American justice.
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The hawks have taken to the Sunday morning air to beat the war drums over Iran, while those who oppose them, including former President Jimmy Carter, try to prevent a disaster worse than Iraq. TPM TV has this roundup.
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Frank Rich of The New York Times argues that although there’s plenty to blame on the Bush administration, a timid Congress and a compliant press, it’s time for the American people to accept at least some responsibility for the Iraq war and its many disastrous episodes. From Abu Ghraib to contractor killing sprees, we the people have known far too much for far too long to feign surprise when things suddenly go sour.
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Another Memorial Day in This Endless War
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