How Bush betrays Reagan

September 4, 2007
How Bush betrays Reagan

Reagan never repudiated any of these right-wing political positions. Yet as president, he caved in on every one of them. As Joshua Green argued in 2001 in the Washington Monthly, "beyond his conservative legacy, Ronald Reagan has bequeathed a liberal one." After taking office, he promised to "rebuild the foundation of our society" by slashing the size of the federal government, but during his eight years in office, the federal government expanded. He inveighed against the deficit, but on his watch the deficit grew enormously. Instead of killing Social Security, he saved it with a $165 billion bailout. And, most heretically, he raised taxes -- a whopping $100 billion increase over three years, the largest increase in almost 40 years.

By backing the dictatorial regime in El Salvador, which he saw as a bulwark against communism, Reagan abetted a brutal civil war that cost 75,000 lives. Similarly, his support for the Nicaraguan Contras, whom he infamously described as "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers," led to fighting that killed as many as 50,000 people. Instead of building on Jimmy Carter's breakthrough at Camp David, his incompetence and unwillingness to challenge the right-wing Israeli government of Menachem Begin severely weakened America's ability to broker a Mideast peace. As the Washington Post's David Ignatius wrote, "The Reagan years saw the demise of the Great American Mediation Machine in the Middle East." The consequences of Reagan's Mideast failures haunt us today.

During Reagan's second term, when his conservative supporters realized he was not going to live up to their expectations, they blamed moderates, who, they said, were tying his hands. Their deluded mantra was "let Reagan be Reagan." Bush is the living embodiment of that dream of a "real" Reagan. But the figure from the past is a fake, a Freddy Krueger, wearing a mask adorned not with a smile but a twisted grimace. By summoning up the wrong Reagan, Bush has brought to life not an American dream, but an American nightmare.

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction

September 5, 2007
Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction

Sept. 6, 2007 | On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

Six Nuclear Weapons Involved in Incident

September 5, 2007
Six Nuclear Weapons Involved in Incident

It was originally reported that five nuclear warheads were transported, but officers who tipped Military Times to the incident who have asked to remain anonymous since they are not authorized to discuss the incident, have since updated that number to six.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said a host of security checks and warning signs must have been passed over, or completely ignored, for the warheads to have been unknowingly loaded onto the B-52.

The Defense Department uses a computerized tracking program to keep tabs on each one of its nuclear warheads, he said. For the six warheads to make it onto the B-52, each one would have had to be signed out of its storage bunker and transported to the bomber. Diligent safety protocols would then have had to been ignored to load the warheads onto the plane, Kristensen said.

B-52 carried nuclear missiles over US by mistake

September 6, 2007
B-52 carried nuclear missiles over US by mistake

The nuclear weapons expert said the air force keeps a computerized command and control system that traces any movement of a nuclear weapon so that they have a complete picture of where they are at any given time.

He said there would be checks and detailed procedures at various points from the time they are moved out of bunkers until they are loaded onto planes, and flown away.

"That's perhaps what is most worrisome about this particular incident -- that apparently an individual who had command authority about moving these weapons around decided to do so," he said.

Senate pushes higher vets’ funding over Bush objection

September 6, 2007
Senate pushes higher vets’ funding over Bush objection

Opposition from the Bush administration will not stop the Senate from passing a $109.2 billion funding bill for veterans' programs and military construction.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., acting chairman of the appropriations subcommittee responsible for the bill, said a $4 billion increase over the Bush administration's request would go mostly to boost veterans' health care programs. He called it "an obvious response to spiraling health care needs."

Troop buildup fails

September 4, 2007
Troop buildup fails

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. military buildup that was supposed to calm Baghdad and other trouble spots has failed to usher in national reconciliation, as the capital's neighborhoods rupture even further along sectarian lines, violence shifts elsewhere and Iraq's government remains mired in political infighting.

In the coming days, U.S. military and government leaders will offer Congress their assessment of the 6-month-old plan's results. But a review of statistics on death and displacement, political developments and the impressions of Iraqis who are living under the heightened military presence reaches a dispiriting conclusion.

52% of Australians think Bush worst US president

September 4, 2007
52% of Australians think Bush worst US president

SYDNEY: Most Australians believe George W Bush is the worst United States president in history, a poll showed on Tuesday as the US leader headed Down Under for a state visit.

The Galaxy poll, commissioned by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW), found 52 per cent of Australians rated him the worst, just 32 per cent disagreed while the rest were undecided.

"Australians are not anti-American, they're anti the policies of George Bush, particularly the invasion of Iraq," said MAPW spokesman Robert Marr.

GAO: Iraqi Government 'Dysfunctional,'

September 5, 2007
GAO: Iraqi Government 'Dysfunctional'

RTTNews) - A gloomy assessment on the political and military situation in Iraq released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office has drawn criticism from commanders on the ground and reignited calls for troop withdrawals.

The congressional report, which concluded that Iraq had failed to meet all but two of the nine security goals Congress had set as part of a list of 18 benchmarks, comes just days before Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker deliver their much-anticipated progress report to federal lawmakers next week.

Pattern Cited in Killings of Civilians by U.S

September 4, 2007
Pattern Cited in Killings of Civilians by U.S

Newly released documents regarding crimes committed by United States soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan detail a pattern of troops failing to understand and follow the rules that govern interrogations and deadly actions.

The documents, released today by the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a lawsuit, total nearly 10,000 pages of courts-martial summaries, transcripts and military investigative reports about 22 cases. They show repeated examples of troops believing they were within the law when they killed local citizens.

The killings include the drowning of a man soldiers pushed from a bridge into the Tigris River as punishment for breaking curfew, and the suffocation during interrogation of a former Iraqi general believed to be helping insurgents.

Second British general bashes US strategy in Iraq

September 1, 2007
Second British general bashes US strategy in Iraq

LONDON (AFP) - The British backlash over the US handling of post-invasion Iraq grew Sunday as another military commander blasted Washington's "fatally flawed" policy.

Major General Tim Cross, the top British officer involved in planning post-war Iraq, said he raised serious concerns with then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the possibility of the country descending into chaos.

But Rumsfeld "ignored" or "dismissed" his warnings, the general told the Sunday Mirror newsapaper.

Pentagon 'three-day blitz' plan for Iran

September 2, 2007
Pentagon 'three-day blitz' plan for Iran

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for "pinprick strikes" against Iran's nuclearfacilities. "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military," he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: "Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same." It was, he added, a "very legitimate strategic calculus".

Condoleezza Rice has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty

September 1, 2007
Condoleezza Rice has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty

On May 25, Stanford University's independent student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, devoted the bulk of its front page to the university's former provost, who is on leave while she serves out her term as secretary of state. "Condi Eyes Return," read the headline, "but in What Role?"

Within hours, the letters to the editor started coming in. "Condoleezza Rice serves an administration that has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty. Stanford should not welcome her back," Don Ornstein, an emeritus professor of mathematics, wrote in a letter published on May 31.

Stamping documents 'secret' cost taxpayers $8.2 billion last year

August 31, 2007
Stamping documents 'secret' cost taxpayers $8.2 billion last year

WASHINGTON -- Government secrecy is expanding at an unprecedented clip, despite growing public concern about barriers to information, a report expected to be released Saturday found.

OpenTheGovernment.orgreports that stamping government documents "secret" cost American taxpayers $8.2 billion last year -- a 7.5 percent increase over the year before.

The coalition found that for every dollar spent declassifying documents, the federal government spends $185 to conceal government documents. Over all, classification cost 2 1/2 times what it cost in 1997.

Poll: Majority mistrustful of upcoming Iraq report

August 16, 2007
Poll: Majority mistrustful of upcoming Iraq report

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A majority of Americans don't trust the upcoming report by the Army's top commander in Iraq on the progress of the war and even if they did, it wouldn't change their mind, according to a new poll.

President Bush frequently has asked Congress -- and the American people -- to withhold judgment on his so-called troop surge in Iraq until Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, issue their progress report in September.

Leading lender likens US credit crisis to Great Depression

August 31, 2007
Leading lender likens US credit crisis to Great Depression

The US financial industry displayed fresh signs of distress from the credit crunch afflicting global money markets yesterday, with one mortgage provider describing lending conditions as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Leading accountancy firm H&R Block revealed huge losses at its up-for-sale mortgage arm, Option One, and said it was considering a halt on new loans. Reporting a quarterly loss of $302m (£150m), Mark Ernst, chief executive, said: "The loan originations market is in the midst of the most severe dislocation it has seen in years, maybe the most severe since the 1930s."

Iraq benchmark findings

August 30, 2007
Iraq benchmark findings

IRAQ HAS NOT MET REQUIREMENTS TOWARD:

• Providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations


• Ensuring that the Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for outlaws, regardless of sectarian or political affiliation, as Bush says Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has pledged to do


• Enacting and implementing legislation on de-Baathification


• Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources of the people of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, and enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the energy resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner


• Providing Iraqi commanders with all authorities to execute this plan and to make tactical and operational decisions, in consultation with U.S commanders, without political intervention, to include the authority to pursue all extremists, including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias


• Ensuring that the Iraqi Security Forces are providing evenhanded enforcement of the law


• Increasing the number of Iraqi security forces units capable of operating independently


• Ensuring that Iraq's political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the Iraqi Security Forces


• Reducing the level of sectarian violence in Iraq and eliminating militia control of local security


• Enacting and implementing legislation establishing an Independent High Electoral Commission, provincial elections law, provincial council authorities, and a date for provincial elections


• Forming a Constitutional Review Committee and then completing the constitutional review


• Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty


• Enacting and implementing legislation establishing a strong militia disarmament program to ensure that such security forces are accountable only to the central government and loyal to the constitution of Iraq.

Pentagon disputes bleak GAO Iraq report

August 29, 2007
Pentagon disputes bleak GAO Iraq report
Iraq, the Pentagon has asked that some of the negative assessments be revised.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Thursday that after reviewing a draft of the Government Accountability Office report — which has not yet been made public — policy officials "made some factual corrections" and "offered some suggestions on a few of the actual grades" assigned by the GAO.

Study: Troops could leave with little risk

August 29, 2007
Study: Troops could leave with little risk

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most U.S. troops can be withdrawn safely from Iraq in roughly one year and the Bush administration should begin planning the pullout immediately, according to a study released Wednesday.

With the exception mostly of two brigades of about 8,000 troops who would remain in the touchy Kurdish region in the north for a year, trying to guard against conflict with Turkey, the U.S. troops would be moved to Kuwait initially, says the study by the Center for American Progress, a self-described "progressive think tank" headed by John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff to former President Clinton.

CEOs Earn More in A Day than Most Workers in A Year

August 29, 2007
CEOs Earn More in A Day than Most Workers in A Year

Top executives at major U.S. businesses last year made as much money in one day of work on the job as the average worker made over the entire year, according to a report released on Wednesday.

Chief executive officers from the nation's biggest businesses averaged nearly $11 million in total compensation, according to the 14th annual CEO compensation survey released jointly by the Institute for Policy Studies based in Washington and United for a Fair Economy, a national organization based in Boston.

Criminal Investigations Focus on Defense Department Weapon Contracts

August 28, 2007
Criminal Investigations Focus on Defense Department Weapon Contracts

BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 — Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.

That federal agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, responded with a report in October 2006 that found serious discrepancies in American military records of where thousands of the weapons actually ended up. The military did not take the routine step of recording serial numbers for the weapons, the inspector general found, making it difficult to determine whether any of the weapons had ended up in the wrong hands.

In July 2007, the Government Accountability Office found even larger discrepancies, reporting that the American military "cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80 items of body armor, and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi security forces as of Sept. 22, 2005."

Bush Wants $50 Billion More for Iraq War

August 29, 2007
Bush Wants $50 Billion More for Iraq War

President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.

The request -- which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- is expected to be announced after congressional hearings scheduled for mid-September featuring the two top U.S. officials in Iraq. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker will assess the state of the war and the effect of the new strategy the U.S. military has pursued this year.

Army officer reprimanded in Abu Ghraib trial

August 21, 2007
Army officer reprimanded in Abu Ghraib trial

A U.S. military court in Fort Meade, Maryland has heard opening arguments in the court martial of the only U.S. military officer charged in connection with the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan entered a plea of not guilty Monday to charges of mistreatment of detainees and disobeying a superior officer. Two more serious charges were dismissed by the military judge because of technicalities.

A jury of nine Army colonels and one brigadier general promised the court it will not use the case against Jordan as a judgment on the Abu Ghraib scandal as a whole.

Colonel Jordan, who was in charge of interrogation at the prison, is the only officer to be court-martialed in the case. Eleven enlisted men and women were convicted, receiving sentences of up to 10 years in prison.

A more senior officer who admitted approving the use of dogs during interrogation was given a
reprimand and a fine.

Active-duty US troops become outspoken critics of Iraq war

August 29, 2007
Active-duty US troops become outspoken critics of Iraq war

A recent op-ed about the war in Iraq charged that upbeat official reports amount to "misleading rhetoric." It said the "most important front in the counterinsurgency [had] failed most miserably." And it warned against pursuing "incompatible policies to absurd ends."

Five years into a controversial war, that harsh judgment in a New York Times opinion piece might not seem surprising, except for this: The authors were seven US soldiers, writing from Iraq at the end of a tough 15-month combat tour.

Snow's on way out; Rove's gone

September 1, 2007
Snow's on way out; Rove's gone

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Tony Snow will leave this month to devote time to writing, speaking and playing a more active public role in combating cancer, a disease he has confronted for three roller-coaster years.

Snow is the latest in a long line of senior Bush advisers to leave before the end of the president's second term. Friday was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove's last day. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation this week. Former White House counselor Dan Bartlett, White House attorney Harriet Miers, budget director Rob Portman, political director Sara Taylor, deputy national-security adviser J.D. Crouch and Meghan O'Sullivan, a national-security adviser who worked on Iraq, also have stepped down.

U.S. weapons end up in Turkey

August 29, 2007
U.S. weapons end up in Turkey

WASHINGTON: Weapons that were originally given to Iraqi security forces by the American military have been recovered over the past year by the authorities in Turkey after being used in violent crimes in that country, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

The discovery that serial numbers on pistols and other weapons recovered in Turkey matched those distributed to Iraqi police units has prompted growing concern by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that controls on weapons being provided to Iraqis are inadequate. It was also a factor in the decision to dispatch the department's inspector general to Iraq next week to investigate the problem, the officials said.

Deadliest Summer in Iraq

August 31, 2007
Deadliest Summer in Iraq

June-July-August 2003: 113 American troops died
June-July-August 2004: 162 American troops died
June-July-August 2005: 217 American troops died
June-July-August 2006: 169 American troops died
June-July-August 2007: 260 American troops died

Iraqi civilian deaths climb again in August

September 1, 2007
Iraqi civilian deaths climb again in August

BAGHDAD -- Bombings, sectarian slayings and other violence related to the war killed at least 1,773 Iraqi civilians in August, the second month in a row that civilian deaths have risen, according to government figures obtained Friday.

In July, the civilian death toll was 1,753, and in June it was 1,227. The numbers are based on morgue, hospital and police records and come from officials in the ministries of Health, Defense and the Interior. The statistics appear to indicate that the increase in troops ordered by President Bush this year has done little to curb civilian bloodshed, despite U.S. military statements to the contrary.