On President Obama’s second full day in office, he promised to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, but then encountered fierce resistance from Congress, leading to a humiliating retreat underscored now by the prison’s tenth anniversary — and by renewed worldwide condemnation, as Nat Parry reports.
Exclusive: Subtly and not so subtly, Republican presidential contenders are playing the race card again, hoping to win over the votes of angry whites by implicitly blaming the shrinking of the middle-class on preferential treatment of blacks and other minorities, reports Robert Parry.
Exclusive: Though voicing “serious reservations” about encroachments on civil liberties in a military authorization bill, President Obama signed the law anyway to avoid a nasty veto fight with Congress. But ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern says courage, not timidity, is what’s needed at such moments.
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From the Archive: After 9/11, President George W. Bush expanded his powers to act unilaterally abroad and encroach on constitutional rights at home, a process that Congress continues in the just-approved National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Nearly a decade ago, Nat Parry examined Bush’s grim vision.
From the Archive: Congress keeps expanding government powers in the “war on terror” even when President Obama doesn’t ask for them, unlike President George W. Bush who proudly signed the Military Commissions Act, a precursor to the indefinite detention in today’s National Defense Authorization Act, as described by Robert Parry in 2006.
Congress has sent to President Obama a military spending bill that expands the government’s powers to fight the Long War on terrorism, including the ability to imprison alleged “terrorists” and accomplices indefinitely, even if Americans on U.S. soil, warns ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley.
More than a decade after the 9/11 attacks – even after Osama bin Laden’s death and U.S. intelligence assessments that al-Qaeda is collapsing – Congress keeps on chipping away at U.S. constitutional rights in the name of fighting terrorism, and President Obama is ready to go along, writes Lawrence Davidson.
The harsh treatment of alleged leaker Bradley Manning is part of a broader campaign to silence government whistleblowers, a pattern that began with Vice President Dick Cheney’s outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame but has expanded under President Obama, says ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman.
Catholic bishops are pressuring the Obama administration to retreat on issues of women’s reproductive rights – and with the election year looming, they appear to be making progress, as NOW President Terry O’Neill described in an interview with Dennis Bernstein.
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