contributions

by John Powers
I’ve spent the last few months dreading The Manchurian Candidate, Jonathan Demme’s remake of the outrageous political satire that was shunned by audiences back in 1962 but has been celebrated by critics ever since. John Frankenheimer’s original was one of the most bracingly inventive American movies of the last 50 years, a witches’ brew of Cold War paranoia, Freudian camp, hipster absurdism and a nihilism so subversive that it spooked even the film’s star, Frank Sinatra, who (…)

US President George W. Bush’s administration today forecast a record $US445 billion ($639 billion) budget deficit in 2003-04, blaming the war on terrorism and repeated economic shocks.
The shortfall for the fiscal year ending September 30 represented a sharp deterioration from a gap of $US375 billion (about $540bn) in 2002-03.
The 2004 deficit would be equal to 3.8 per cent of total economic output, the Office of Management and Budget said.
Nevertheless, Bush’s administration, gunning (…)

By Robert Fisk
Iraq, we are told by Mr Blair, is safer. It is not. US military reports clearly show much of the violence in Iraq is not revealed to journalists, and thus goes largely unreported. This account of the insurgency across Iraq over three days last week provides astonishing proof that Iraq under its new, American-appointed Prime Minister, has grown more dangerous and violent.
But even this is only a partial record of events. US casualties and dozens of Iraqi civilian deaths (…)

by Lila Rajiva
Part One & II
By now, everyone has heard of the ghost detainees of Abu Ghraib — the prisoners who were never processed into the system and were kept out of sight of the Red Cross so that they could be whisked from prison to prison unaccounted for. But what about the other ghosts detainees — the women? Where are the women of Abu Ghraib and why have they been kept out of sight?
When the Abu Ghraib story first broke at the end of April, no one appears to have found it (…)

The first American soldier charged with murder in Iraq appeared before a U.S. military court Wednesday as it opened investigative hearings that could lead to his court martial.
Capt. Rogelio M. Maynulet, who maintains he is innocent, appeared before a military version of a U.S. grand jury. The inquiry is looking at the shooting of a man during the hunt for Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Wearing a green camouflage Army uniform, the 29-year-old sat expressionless as the proceedings began (…)

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
BOSTON, July 29 - John Forbes Kerry accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday night, pledging to "restore trust and credibility to the White House" as he accused President Bush of misleading the nation into war and pursuing policies that he described as a threat to the economy, the Constitution and the nation’s standing in the world.
Mr. Kerry, speaking in a convention hall that was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with delegates and other Democrats two and (…)

The U.S. Army reserve unit at the center of the Iraqi prison abuse scandal is in Kuwait, preparing to return to the United States within a few weeks, a U.S. military official said Wednesday.
The seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company charged with abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad will likely stay in the region, however. One, Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to a year in prison.
Proceedings were under way against Staff Sgt. (…)

By SAUL LANDAU
In a July 16 speech in Tampa, George W. Bush leveled his human rights gun—mouth—at Cuba for promoting sex tourism. "The regime in Havana, already one of the worst violators of human rights in the world, is adding to its crimes. The dictator welcomes sex tourism," Bush said at the National Training Conference on Combating Human Trafficking forced labor, sex and military service.
Associated Press reporter Scott Lindlaw (July 16) appropriately placed Bush’s remark in the (…)

Anyone paying minimum attention to the 2004 presidential campaign knows that John Kerry is a Vietnam War veteran. His combat record offers tangible evidence of physical courage and leadership under enemy fire. Voters are also learning that Vietnam is a place where Kerry met men for whom war was not a choice, and that shared combat duty forged intimacy that continues today. They also know that Kerry opposed the Vietnam War when he returned home and boldly asked the Senate Foreign Relations (…)

By William Saletan
I don’t know how much of John Kerry’s acceptance speech the candidate penned himself. I don’t know who suggested which lines, how many drafts there were, or who edited them. But I can tell you who wrote the speech: George W. Bush.
The power of the speech, reflected in a deafening series of ovations that consumed the FleetCenter tonight, came not from Kerry’s biography or the themes he brought to the campaign two years ago. It came from his expression of widespread, (…)