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Governments

  • Weaselly Rice tortures facts
    13 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    4 comments

    Does secretary of state think anyone is buying her spiel, asks Maureen Dowd
    by Maureen Dowd
    Our secretary of state’s tortuous defence of supposedly non-existent CIA torture chambers in Eastern Europe was an acid flashback to Clintonian parsing.
    Just as Bill Clinton pranced around questions about marijuana use at Oxford during the ’92 campaign by saying he had never broken the laws of his country, so Condoleezza Rice pranced around questions about outsourcing torture by suggesting that (…)

  • ’Never Before!’ Our Amnesiac Torture Debate
    13 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Naomi Klein
    It was the "Mission Accomplished" of George W. Bush’s second term, and an announcement of that magnitude called for a suitably dramatic location. But what was the right backdrop for the infamous "We do not torture" declaration? With characteristic audacity, the Bush team settled on downtown Panama City.
    It was certainly bold. An hour and a half’s drive from where Bush stood, the US military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational (…)

  • BUSH CRACKS LIBERTY BELL
    12 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    Bush Tolls Liberty Bell at Philadelphia
    By Peter Fredson
    December 12, 2005
    We all know that the Bush propaganda people are good at presenting our tyrannical, impatient, petulant, irresponsible, egomaniacal President as honest, candid, transparent, hard-working, efficient and highly moral.
    We all know this is stage-management, with good background lighting, with sacred or patriotic backdrops, with captive audiences, surrounded by the largest security forces and agents in our history. (…)

  • NEW ORLEANIANS PLAN RALLY IN WASHINGTON DC Wednesday, December 14
    12 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    Frustrated by the slow pace of the federal government’s response, Shawna Doremus and Judith Kaufman, both New Orleanians displaced in Pittsburgh, have planned a rally in the nation’s capital on Wednesday, December 14, 2005.
    ”New Orleans is one of America’s most unique cities, and it is heartbreaking to see the city struggling to get back on it’s feet,” said Doremus. “We are Americans, we are taxpayers, and Judy and I both personally represent small businesses. We are asking Congress to (…)

  • Bush on the Constitution: ’It’s just a goddamned piece of paper’
    12 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    10 comments

    Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.
    Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.
    GOP leaders told Bush that (…)

  • Members of Congress Ask Bush to Stop Undercounting U.S. Casualties
    12 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    December 7, 2005
    The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States of America The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20500
    Dear Mr. President:
    We are concerned that the Department of Defense has been under-reporting casualties in Iraq by only reporting non-fatal casualties incurred in combat. We write today to request that you provide the American people with a full accounting of the American casualties in Iraq since the March 19, 2003 invasion, (…)

  • RHETORICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT CONDI
    11 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    Rhetorical Questions about Lies and Torture
    By Peter Fredson
    December 11, 2005
    Today a news headline stated:
    “NATO CHIEF: RICE ’CLEARED THE AIR’ ON DETAINEE CHARGES”
    The main story was a simple assertion: “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has briefed NATO and European Union colleagues on the Bush administration response to allegations the CIA has abused terrorism suspects and had secret detention sites in Europe. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer says Ms. Rice’s (…)

  • Dinner with Condi & the Fate of Gaza
    11 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    By Conn Hallinan
    There is a moment in Jeffery Goldberg’s New Yorker profile of Brent Scowcroft, George Bush Senior’s former National Security Advisor, when the current Administration’s combination of arrogance and cluelessness crystallize. Over dinner, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice tells Scowcroft that the ’good news’ from the Middle East is that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is pulling out of Gaza, the first step toward resolving the issue of a Palestinian state.
    According (…)

  • Bush Threatens U.N. Over Clinton Climate Speech
    11 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    4 comments

    Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering today in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity.
    Bush officials informed organizers of their intention to pull out of (…)

  • Annals of Outrage III
    10 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Katrina Vanden Heuvel
    Last May, I wrote an Annals of Outrage II chronicling the waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government in the first half of 2004. Plenty of time has passed since my last piece and much has happened. Here, then, is my latest attempt to guide you through the Bush Administration’s most egregious corruption scandals. The information comes to us courtesy of the federal government’s internal investigations into administration fraud, waste and abuse. The cronyism and (…)