contributions

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
NEWARK, Ohio, Sept. 3 - Senator John Kerry opened the final 60 days of the presidential campaign on Friday with a slashing indictment of President Bush’s record on jobs and health care, saying he had misled the United States into war in Iraq and left a trail of broken promises and worsened problems at home.
As his running mate and their wives swept across the electoral battlegrounds of Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin, Mr. Kerry asked voters in this economically (…)

By JIM KRANE
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Army general who once ran detention operations in Iraq said a "conspiracy" among top U.S. commanders has left her to blame for the abuses of Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded the Army’s 800th Military Police Brigade, said she fears more senior Army generals may escape punishment, even though they issued or approved guidelines on the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners.
Karpinski said in an e-mail interview with (…)

By CURT ANDERSON
WASHINGTON, The FBI investigation into whether a major pro-Israel lobbying organization was spying on the United States began at least two years ago, officials said Friday. President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, and her top deputy, Stephen Hadley, were informed of the probe into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee not long after Bush took office in 2001, according to two administration officials speaking on condition of anonymity (…)

by David Corn
It’s official: the 2004 campaign is a referendum on whether the United States should wage a crusade to bring liberty to the repressed of the world—particularly in the Middle East—in order to heed the call of God and to protect the United States from terrorists who target America because they despise freedom. Or, at least, that is how George W. Bush would like the contest to be framed.
In his acceptance speech, Bush pushed the message of the week—it’s the war, stupid—to (…)

A staggering series of recent terrorist attacks rooted in the Chechen conflict have been both horrific and remote to most Americans. It’s hard to imagine what the public reaction would have been here if terrorists had seized a school full of children, blown up two passenger planes and set off a deadly suicide bomb outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada. But the Chechen conflict has always seemed to be an internal problem in a rather remote part of Russia that has little impact (…)

By GARDINER HARRIS
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 - A day after President Bush heralded his efforts to help the elderly cope with increased medical expenses, federal officials announced the largest premium increase in dollars in the Medicare program’s history, raising the monthly expense by $11.60 to $78.20.
The increase, which amounts to 17 percent, results largely from increased payments to doctors and reflects rising medical expenses generally, officials said. The rise has nothing to do with a (…)

By Michael Moore
NEW YORK - If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a hundred times from discouraged Democrats and liberals as the Republican convention here wrapped up this week. Their shoulders hunched, their eyes at a droop, they lower their voice to a whisper hoping that if they don’t say it too loud it may not come true: "I...I...I think Bush is going to win."
Clearly, they’re watching too much TV. Too much of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Zell Miller, Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani. Too much (…)

by Justin Raimondo
The Washington Post is confirming the analysis, posted here two days ago, that Israel’s spy nest in the Pentagon involves a lot more than neocon ideologue Larry Franklin leaking the text of a draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC employees, who then passed it on to Israel:
"For more than two years, the FBI has been investigating whether classified intelligence has been passed to Israel by the American Israel Political Action Committee, an influential U.S. (…)

The demonstrations in New York offer lessons on future strategies to get protesters’ messages across to the public.
By Rachel Neumann
Tourists, old ladies and gentlemen, a building superintendent who was taking out the garbage, teenagers on their first date to a play, ministers, students, bicycle messengers and a good number of bruised and dirty yet singing and chanting protesters. It’s the kind of diversity that New York City is famous for, and during this past week, the best place to (…)

John Kerry & The Bush Cabal Iran-Contra Conspiracy
"It’s interesting to note that in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, John Kerry talked about his so-called achievements, yet he neglected to mention the Kerry Committee hearings on Iran Contra," writes political analyst Al Martin in his article called "Consequences of the Truth in America, ’Land of the Naive and Home of the Provincial’"published on Insider Intelligence (www.insiderintelligence.com)
Martin, (…)