contributions

By Tom Hamburger and Sonni Efron Times Staff Writers
August 25, 2005
WASHINGTON - Toward the end of a steamy summer week in 2003, reporters were peppering the White House with phone calls and e-mails, looking for someone to defend the administration’s claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
About to emerge as a key critic was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who asserted that the administration had manipulated intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion.
At the White (…)

By Mike Whitney
"We consider that it would be counter-productive and dangerous to use force, the serious consequences of which would be barely predictable." warning from the Russian Foreign Ministry to the Bush Administration about prospective plans to attack Iran
There’s only one thing that Americans need to remember when the read about the standoff between the Bush administration and Iran. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. But, don’t take my (…)

He’s a friend of Fidel Castro, a fierce critic of the war in Iraq, and wants to spread revolutionary fervour throughout South America. Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, has long been a thorn in the side of the US - a fact highlighted this week when televangelist Pat Robertson called for his assassination. Richard Gott on a man at war with the White House
Thursday August 25, 2005 The Guardian
Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, is a genial fellow with a good sense of humour and a (…)

I fault this president (George W. Bush) for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one year olds who wanted to be what they could be.
On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
But this president does not know what (…)

From: B K
To: J C Sent: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 00:29:57 -0400 Subject: Re: HMMWVs
J C Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff U.S. Senator Olympia Snow 154 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Mr. C
We have not received all the 1114 HMMWV’s that are required for our mission.
I still head out of the gate in a 1025 Humvee that doesn’t have floor armor, basically all you have is armored windows and sub par armored doors. As evident by the bullet holes and shrapnel (…)

AVANA, Cuba - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, popular with the poor at home, offered on Tuesday to help needy Americans with cheap supplies of gasoline.
"We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States," the populist leader told reporters at the end of a visit to Communist-run Cuba.
Chavez did not say how Venezuela would go about providing gasoline to poor communities. Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA owns Citgo, which has 14,000 gas (…)

CRAWFORD, Texas - Cindy Sheehan plans on taking her anti-war vigil on the road.
Once President Bush leaves his Texas ranch late this month, Sheehan says she’ll begin a bus tour from her camp nearby. She says it’ll last more than three weeks, wrapping up September 24th in Washington — followed by a 24-hour vigil.
Sheehan’s son died in Iraq. She began camping out near the ranch earlier this month, vowing to stay until Bush met with her. She recently left for a few days to tend to her ill (…)

by Cindy Sheehan, Crawford, Texas
I got up really early today to head back to Camp Casey. On the way, I had some amazing conversations with people. In one of those conversations, I was talking to Tyler who was sitting next to me on one of the planes. We were not talking about me and what I have been doing. Randomly, he told me he had just been in Texas about an hour north of Crawford. I said: "Wow that’s where I am going and that’s where I have been all month." He said: "I know I own a (…)

Michael P. Wright — Norman, Oklahoma USA mpwright9@aol.com
In my article summarizing my comprehensive 9/11 investigation, online at BellaCiao, I mention the fact that University of Oklahoma president David Boren, mentor of George Tenet, brought CIA agent David Edger to that campus during the summer of 2001. Edger had been director of both military and civilian intelligence activities in Germany for the US. This gave him responsibility for surveillance over the Hamburg Al Qaeda cell and (…)

by Richard Rapaport
Give the man big points for chutzpa. Late last month at a speech in front of the National Convention of the NAACP, Republican Party Chairman, Ken Mehlman admitted that his party had indeed engaged in a 40-year racist “Southern Strategy.” In its conception, the idea must have seemed like bold political jujitsu to Mehlman’s speechwriters. After all, if you are chief apologists for the sinister Karl Rove as well as surrogate at the nation’s premier civil rights (…)