![U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Aug. 30, 2013, claims to have proof that the Syrian government was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, but that evidence failed to materialize or was later discredited. [State Department photo]](https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/plugins/lazy-load/images/1x1.trans.gif?f0ee9e)
Though nearly going to war with Syria last year over a chemical attack, the Obama administration has still not presented a shred of verifiable proof against the Syrian government. And, interest is waning now that suspicions have shifted to Syrian rebels aided by U.S. allies, Nat Parry reports.
Any encouragement that torture opponents may take from an initial step toward releasing part of a long Senate report on CIA abuses during the Bush-43 years is tempered by the fact that the declassification process may be glacially slow and still leave much hidden, writes Nat Parry.
Some of our special stories in January focused on the NSA surveillance scandal, the back story of Robert Gates’s new memoir, the Right’s continued assault on democracy, and the collapse of accusations against Syria and Libya.
Some of our special stories in December 2013 focused on the Saudi role in terrorism, the importance of national security “leakers,” the collapsing case pinning an infamous Sarin attack on Syria, and the renewed war over “the war on Christmas.”
In 2004, at the height – or depths – of George W. Bush’s presidency, the very idea of protesting his “war on terror” or invasion of Iraq was deemed worthy of repressing, the backdrop for mass arrests outside the Republican National Convention in New York City, as Nat Parry recalls.
The year 2013 saw the United States bogged down in ideological conflicts and veering close to new wars in the Middle East, but reporting at Consortiumnews.com contributed to a fuller understanding of the facts domestically and internationally as the fever of partisanship and warfare showed signs of breaking.
Despite America’s over-the-top, month-long celebration of baby Jesus – topped off with a government holiday ignoring the Constitution’s separation of church and state – Fox News and the Right have conjured up a “war on Christmas,” now as much a tradition as eggnog, Nat Parry notes.
From the Archive: Only public outrage – global and domestic – stands any hope of pushing back the National Security Agency’s “surveillance state.” As hard as that may be, there was success a decade ago disrupting President George W. Bush’s Orwellian Total Information Awareness that Nat Parry described in 2002.
Some of our special stories in March focused on dark questions about the new Pope, the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War, fresh insights into Watergate and Iran-Contra, and the Right’s gross distortion of the Second Amendment.
President Obama warns that “all options are on the table” regarding a possible attack against Iran, though there’s no credible evidence that it’s building a nuclear bomb. By contrast, Israel maintains an undeclared nuclear arsenal and the U.S. has thousands of nukes with no specific plans to get rid of them, Nat Parry notes.