Posts filed under “Dismantling Bushworld”
On Deficit-Financed Wars
This part of President Obama‘s Oval Office address was clearly aimed at Bush: Unfortunately, over the last decade, we’ve not done what’s necessary to shore up the foundations of our own prosperity. We spent a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, [...]
“Trying To Split The Difference Between The Irreconcilable”
How’s this for most succinct summation of last night’s Oval Office address? President Obama‘s Oval Office address was impressive and perplexing. Politically, I liked the clever pivot to the domestic economy, but he left me utterly confused about the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are we to continue to spend trillions supposedly building “democracy” in [...]
Our Collective Shame
Time poll: 15. Do you think that a Muslim should be allowed to … Run for President of the United States? Yes: 61% No: 32% No answer/Don’t know: 7% Serve on the U.S. Supreme Court? Yes: 65% No: 28% No answer/Don’t know: 7% Almost one-third of the country would bar Muslims from running for President? [...]
Videotape And Lies (No Sex)
Well, well, well, well, well! The CIA has videotapes, after all, of interrogations in a secret overseas prison of admitted 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh. Discovered in a box under a desk at the CIA, the tapes could reveal how foreign governments aided the United States in holding and interrogating suspects. And they could complicate U.S. [...]
We-a Culpa! We-a Minima Culpa!
Back in May, the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government published an interesting little study of media dishonesty. It examined how four major newspapers — the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today — have covered the topic of waterboarding [...]
The Dream Team With Feet Of Clay
Back in January 2009, when President Obama was assembling his Justice Department team, liberal bloggers were giddy with excitement over the fine, fine people he was picking. Champions of the Constitution, and paragons of virtue, they were going to preside over the Constitution’s slow but complete recovery from the gang rape it had suffered for [...]
The State Secrets Privilege
It’s a privilege to be in a position where you can conspire to destroy evidence in order to preserve the ugly secrets of the torture state. A proud privilege. A privilege that Senator Pat Roberts, who used to be chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee back when Bush was adding phrases like “enhanced interrogation” to [...]
UK Court Of Appeals Labels Bush A Liar
(1) We finally have a final resolution of the Binyam Mohamed case in the UK (backstory here): Three of Britain’s most senior judges have ordered the government to reveal evidence of MI5 complicity in the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed – unanimously dismissing objections by David Miliband, the foreign secretary. In a ruling that [...]
Horton Hears A What
As in “what really happened”. In June 2006, the Bush military announced that three Guantánamo detainees had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. In November 2009, a team of students and faculty at the Seton Hall University law school analyzed a heavily redacted NCIS report of the alleged suicides, and found the official [...]
Walking On Water: Persistence Of Vision
I’m not a great one for year-end lists, and Looking Back (sagely or otherwise) at The Year That Was. But I thought I’d share this reflection. The biggest political story of the year, I think, should have been the huge gulf between the Obama we were sold (Obama-who-walks-on-water) and the Obama we find we actually [...]