For years as global warming grew worse, the U.S. government found reasons not to act, but finally the Obama administration has not only talked the talk but walked the walk with tighter CO2 regulations, an example of real leadership, says…
Month: December 2014
‘As Truthful an Account as Possible’
From Editor Robert Parry: As you might suspect, we sometimes receive negative comments from people who don’t like our journalism, but more often we find that readers appreciate what we have tried to do over the past 19 years provide…
America’s Earlier Embrace of Torture
Many well-meaning Americans are shocked by the torture disclosures in a Senate report and can’t believe U.S. officials would sanction acts such as waterboarding and “rectal feeding.” But the uglier truth is that the CIA has long taught and encouraged…
Pinochet’s Mad Scientist
From the Archive: Much like the 9/11 attacks, the Cold War plunged the U.S. government into the “dark side,” especially in Latin America where the CIA colluded with torturers and assassins, leading to grisly murders and enduring mysteries, as Samuel…
How Reagan Promoted Genocide
From the Archive: The Senate’s torture report is provoking some rare self-reflection among Americans even as TV talk shows are dominated by torture apologists. But there is a larger context to America’s modern embrace of the “dark side” including support for…
Clashing Face-to-Face on Torture
Exclusive: It’s rare on TV when you see two former senior U.S. officials clashing angrily over something as significant as torture. Usually decorum prevails. But ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern wasn’t going to let the ex-House intelligence oversight chief get away…
The CIA’s Bureaucracy of Torture
Bureaucratic inertia the CIA’s desire for bigger budgets and then its fear of negative consequences helped drive the torture program from its frantic start to its belated finish, as Gareth Porter explains.
The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga
From the Archive: It’s been a decade since the big U.S. newspapers hounded journalist Gary Webb to suicide because he exposed their failure to stop one of Ronald Reagan’s worst crimes: drug trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contras. The sordid saga finally was told…
How Reagan Enforced US Hypocrisy
From the Archive: To understand why many right-wingers are so defensive about offensive U.S. acts, even waterboarding and anal rape, you must look back to the Reagan years when “moral equivalence” became an accusation against applying universal standards to the U.S.,…
How ‘Awesome’ Is America?
Exclusive: America has an extraordinary capacity to submerge unpleasant truths about its past and present, from African-American slavery and Native-American genocide to bloodbaths in Vietnam and Iraq. Now faced with clear evidence of torture, one cheerleader simply says the U.S. is…