Showing all posts tagged Bush administration
Chomsky’s clarity on Bin Laden death
The man still has it: It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards…
Blackwater is God’s new gift to perverted morality
The private military contractor is a key player in the post 9/11 world. This latest choice shows the complete moral collapse of a corporation that sells itself as an “efficient” and privatised player in the “war on terror”: The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private-security firm just added a new chief…
Majority of US youth back torture
Ten years after 9/11, one of the shameful legacies: A new study by the American Red Cross obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast found that a surprising majority—almost 60 percent—of American teenagers thought things like water-boarding or sleep deprivation are sometimes acceptable. More than half also approved of killing captured enemies in cases where the…
Woodward gives exact lessons in how not to be a decent journalist
Real reporters challenge power, not indulge it. Watergate man Bob Woodward lost long ago that belief, becoming far too keen to amplify the views of those in power. Here’s his lessons on American TV for how to get the powerful to give answers that he can just publish verbatim: WOODWARD: I think the survival of…
Gaddafi loved by the West so very recently
One: Scientists from Britain and America visited the chemical weapons facility as it was being built in August 2006. Nine months later Prime Minister Tony Blair met Col Gaddafi in Libya and set in motion the eventual release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset el-Megrahi. The cable, a copy of which was leaked to the WikiLeaks…
Slamming US occupation of Afghanistan is too biased for Murdoch
Here’s a non-story to fill the pages of the Murdoch Australian. I appeared on ABC TV News24’s The Drum last week and discussed a variety of issues, mostly foreign affairs. On most nights the show has a range of guests, usually from the soft left to the soft right, and a number of more strident…
Even the Bush cabal knew Gitmo was breaking laws
Yet more evidence that Washington is a law unto itself: The Bush administration was so intent on keeping Guantanamo detainees off U.S. soil and away from U.S. courts that it secretly tried to negotiate deals with Latin American countries to provide “life-saving” medical procedures rather than fly ill terrorist suspects to the U.S. for treatment,…
Obama defenders find ways to justify use of arms here and there
The New York Times, being an establishment paper, unsurprisingly backs Barack Obama’s military intervention in Libya. Much more revealing, however, is this interview with Samantha Power, a senior director on the National Security Council. I truly wonder if she believes the words she’s telling Politico: Obama “has used his pulpit and a number of speeches…
