Exclusive: Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision not to prosecute CIA torturers in two high-profile homicides bows to the political difficulty of going after field agents while sparing superiors, including ex-President George W. Bush. But the all-clear on torture sends a dangerous message, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Even as Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu urges a war-crimes trial for George Bush and Tony Blair for invading Iraq, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder gives an all-clear to Bush’s subordinates for homicides that resulted from torture in Afghanistan and Iraq, a repudiation of U.S. law and principles, says Marjorie Cohn.
From the Archive: The death of Rev. Sun Myung Moon at 92 ends the long personal saga of a Korean theocrat whose life intertwined his bizarre religion with threads into organized crime and right-wing politics. Moon also showed how a fortune spent on media could change Washington’s political dynamic, as Robert Parry wrote in 2010.
Exclusive: The Republican National Convention offered a look into one alternate future for America, a place where the ultimate liberty is to be fact-free. Mitt Romney’s campaign set sail confidently toward that future trusting that a plurality of Americans who will vote (or be allowed to vote) is onboard, says Robert Parry.
President George W. Bush and his neocon advisers made much of mocking international law, with Bush once responding to a question in fake horror: “I better call my lawyer.” But the issue of the U.S. and its allies abiding by such laws is front and center again with Iran, notes Paul R. Pillar.
Exclusive: As President Obama faces a tough reelection fight, some on the Left vow to sit it out or vote for a third party, saying support for Obama would dirty them. But there is another moral imperative, to mitigate the harm a U.S. president can inflict on the world’s people and the planet itself, says Robert Parry.
Bush-era torture and extraordinary rendition have been pushed aside by the Obama administration, as it still seeks to look forward, not backward. But a group of international parliamentarians revived the troubling issue in calling for serious investigations now, not later, reports Nat Parry.
From the Archive: July 14 is a French holiday celebrating the 1789 liberation of the Bastille prison in Paris, leading to the overthrow of the monarchy. But there were less auspicious events connected to that date in 2003, during the autocratic presidency of George W. Bush, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern wrote in 2007.
Exclusive: In 2004, when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat suddenly fell ill and died, suspicions swirled that he might have been poisoned, but no autopsy was performed. Now, nearly eight years later, his death is getting new scrutiny, though ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern doubts a complete answer will ever be found.
President Obama rebranded the “global war on terror” the “war on Al Qaeda,” but his counterterrorism strategy hews closely to President George W. Bush’s, as the U.S. joins conflicts in Yemen and elsewhere that have little connection to the 9/11 attacks, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar writes.
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