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.
Exclusive: The cables and videos allegedly leaked by Pvt. Bradley Manning offer the American people gritty “ground truth” about what the U.S. government has done in their names, such as the slaughter in Iraq, but the information also sheds light on a possible future war with Iran, reports Robert Parry.
In announcing the end of the Iraq War, President Obama ignored its horrors, so as not to further upset its still-powerful supporters. But his silence removed the context for Pvt. Bradley Manning’s moral decision to expose these crimes of war, writes Marjorie Cohn.
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.
Exclusive: The prosecution of Pvt. Bradley Manning for inconvenient truth-telling is more proof of how hypocritical Official Washington is, especially when Manning’s case is compared to how Bush administration officials walked despite clear evidence that they sanctioned torture and other war crimes, notes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
From the Archive: It’s Christmastime again, so just as families pull their tree ornaments and lawn decorations out of storage, Fox News and other right-wing media outlets dust off their annual outrage over the so-called “war on Christmas,” which is just as phony now as it was when Robert Parry addressed the topic in 2005.
The long-delayed court martial proceedings against alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning finally got under way with supporters of the Army private filling a hearing room at Fort Meade, Maryland. But questions about the fairness of his treatment continue, retired Col. Ann Wright reports.
From the Archive: The declared end of the Iraq War leaves behind not only scars from eight-plus years of violence but questions about how the American people got lured into the disaster, a question that Robert Parry addressed only a month after President George W. Bush celebrated “Mission Accomplished.”
By politicizing who is and who is not a “terrorist” – pinning the label on American adversaries and sparing purported American friends – the U.S. government created confusion at FBI headquarters that contributed to the failure to stop the 9/11 attacks, reports ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley.
From the Archive: While preparing the Dec. 9 article on Gary Webb, we pulled up a 1998 article that helps explain how inconvenient facts from recent U.S. history sometimes get “found” and then “lost” again. That summer, a CIA report exposing Nicaraguan Contra drug trafficking forced the New York Times to admit the point, but it soon forgot.
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