bush administration

White House signals continued Iraq escalation as US death toll tops 4,000

By Bill Van Auken
WSWS
25 March 2008

The White House delivered a strong signal Monday that President Bush is virtually certain to support a recommendation that the escalation of the US military intervention in Iraq continue indefinitely, despite the rising death toll among US troops.

Bush held a two-hour video conference with the chief commander of the US forces occupying Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, the day after a roadside bomb killed four US troops in southern Baghdad, bringing the total American death toll in the five-year war to 4,000.

Rigged Trials at Gitmo

by ROSS TUTTLE
The Nation
February 20, 2008

Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon's announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes--and seeking the death penalty for all of them.

Bush Opens Roadless Tongass National Forest to Logging
Roadless area of the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska.

January 26, 2008
Environmental News Service
CommonDreams.org

JUNEAU, Alaska - Yesterday, the Bush administration put a “for sale” sign on trees in pristine roadless areas of the Tongass rainforest in Alaska - America’s largest national forest.

This move by Bush officials to reverse roadless area protections parallels two others made recently in national forests located in Idaho and Colorado.

Study documents nearly 1,000 lies from Iraq war propaganda campaign

By Alex Lantier
WSWS
26 January 2008

The systematic propaganda campaign waged by the Bush administration with the full collaboration of the mass media to drag the American people into a war of aggression has been newly documented by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI). The Washington-based, non-profit public policy journalism organization this week released a large database of the lies top government officials used to terrorize the US public into accepting the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations

By SCOTT SHANE, DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN
The New York Times
October 4, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Hired Gun Fetish

By PAUL KRUGMAN
New york Times
Op-Ed Columnist
September 28, 2007

Sometimes it seems that the only way to make sense of the Bush administration is to imagine that it’s a vast experiment concocted by mad political scientists who want to see what happens if a nation systematically ignores everything we’ve learned over the past few centuries about how to make a modern government work.

Thus, the administration has abandoned the principle of a professional, nonpolitical civil service, stuffing agencies from FEMA to the Justice Department with unqualified cronies. Tax farming — giving individuals the right to collect taxes, in return for a share of the take — went out with the French Revolution; now the tax farmers are back.

The bicycle thief

Bike activists face an uphill climb against Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who claims bike paths are not transportation and are stealing tax money from bridges and roads.

By Katharine Mieszkowski
Salon.com
Sep. 14, 2007

Imagine you're the federal official in the Bush administration charged with overseeing the nation's transportation infrastructure. A major bridge collapses on an interstate highway during rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring an additional 100. Whom to blame? How about the nation's bicyclists and pedestrians!

Media, politicians maintain silence on flight of US nuclear bomber

By Bill Van Auken
WSWS
14 September 2007

When analyzing the US corporate-controlled media, it is often more important to take note of what is not reported than what is.

Such is clearly the case with the revelation earlier this month that a US B-52 Stratofortress bomber flew nearly 1,500 miles over the length of the United States with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles fixed to its wings.

The flight took place August 30 between Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

Bush Appointee Campaigns for Evangelicals
By Aaron Glantz
IPS

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SAN FRANCISCO, Sep 5 (IPS) - The head of the U.S. federal government agency that doles out benefits to disabled veterans is under fire for saying Bible study is "more important than doing [my] job."

Two organisations, Veterans for Common Sense (VCS) and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), demanded an investigation Tuesday of Daniel Cooper, President George W. Bush's undersecretary for benefits at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

No WMD - Since September 2002Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction

Salon exclusive: Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Sep. 06, 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.