Category: The Bush-43 Administration

When Rule of Law Meets Politics

Holding national security officials accountable for torture and other crimes against humanity may seem like the right thing to do when it’s someone else’s country. But U.S. politicians keep finding excuses when the abusers are American, observes the Independent Institute’s…

The Neocons and 9/11

Special Report: The emerging history of 9/11 reveals that President George W. Bush’s failure to protect the nation resulted from neocon insistence that Iraq was the real threat, not al-Qaeda. The political relevance today is that the neocons want back into power under…

‘Mushroom Cloud’ Sales Pitch Is Back

Exclusive: A decade ago, George W. Bush’s administration, citing the specter of “mushroom clouds,” launched a PR campaign to rally the American people behind an invasion of Iraq. Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is undertaking a similar effort against…

Obama Ruling Shields Torturers

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,…

Whitewashing Rachel Corrie’s Death

Two recent rulings, one in Israel blaming American Rachel Corrie for her own death while obstructing the demolition of Palestinian homes and another in America absolving torturers in the murder of detainees, suggest that national security trumps justice and international…

An All-Clear for Bush’s Torturers

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…

How Rev. Moon’s ‘Snakes’ Infested US

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…

Romney World’s Freedom from Fact

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…

Recalling a Young American’s Sacrifice

From the Archive: An Israeli court has ruled that Rachel Corrie “put herself in danger” and thus Israel bears no blame for the 23-year-old American being crushed by an Israeli bulldozer as it leveled Palestinian homes in Gaza in 2003.…

More Neglect for America’s Poor

The Wall Street meltdown of 2008 pushed millions of middle-class Americans down the social ladder and left the Obama administration scrambling to limit the damage. But that has meant even less attention to the growing ranks of the nation’s poor,…