In another example of how Democrats deal timidly with Republican crimes, the Obama administration has closed the book on the vast majority of George W. Bush’s torture scandals, including high-level approval of waterboarding and other forms of physical coercion. Only two…
Category: The Bush-43 Administration
Obama Slow-Walks Afghan Defeat
Like George W. Bush’s Iraq War, the Afghan conflict appears grinding toward an American defeat. However, President Obama doesn’t want the voters to recognize that fact until after Election 2012 to avoid getting the blame so he is stretching out…
What Is an American ‘Patriot’?
As the patriotic celebrations of July Fourth fade, there remains the enduring question of what it really means to be an American “patriot.” Is it loyalty to the country whatever its actions or is it a readiness to criticize some…
The NYT’s Favor and Fear
Exclusive: A federal court opinion has revealed that the New York Times’s 2004 spiking of the story about President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping of Americans didn’t stand alone. A year earlier, the Times bowed to another White House demand to kill a sensitive…
Obama’s Decent Interval on Bush’s Wars
The United States continues toward slow-motion defeats in George W. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Barack Obama seeking, in essence, a “decent interval” so the losses aren’t pinned on him and the Democrats. But Lawrence Davidson asks what it…
Was Bob Gates a Success?
Official Washington loves departing Defense Secretary Robert Gates; politicians and pundits alike hang on his every word, applauding his “candor” and praising his “courageous” spending cuts. But military budget expert Winslow T. Wheeler says Gates’s record doesn’t match his press clippings.
How Pakistan Punked America
For most of the Cold War and during the “war on terror,” Pakistan has manipulated U.S. presidents as part of its own great game as the Islamic republic circumvented U.S. laws to build a nuclear arsenal and to support some…
Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 Strategy Explained
Before his murder last month, Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad detailed how al-Qaeda leaders used the 9/11 attacks to induce “cowboy” President George W. Bush to blunder foolishly into the invasions of two Muslim countries, thus advancing an al-Qaeda strategy to discredit the region’s…
Asian Alliance Supplants US Empire
While Official Washington grapples with how slowly to draw down troops in Afghanistan and debates whether to complete the pullout from Iraq by year’s end a new alliance of Asian states is expanding into the vacuum left by America’s decaying…
Gen. Keane Keen on Iran Attack
Exclusive: In Washington, retired Gen. Jack Keane is widely praised for his role in promoting the Iraq War “surge” in 2007 and he is now seeking an escalation of tensions with Iran. However, at a Fordham event in New York,…