BEFORE:
“I’d like to close Guantanamo.” - George W. Bush, June 2006
“The President has said, and I fully agree, we would like nothing better than to close Guantanamo.” - Condi Rice, October 2007
NOW:
“We’ve long said [Guantanamo] won’t be closed before the end of the president’s term.” - White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, October 2008
Apparently our Imperial [...]
Yesterday I said (in the site subhead) that I didn’t have anything to say about the anniversary of 9/11. That’s still mostly true, but I wanted to share two posts from elsewhere that I think are excellent food for thought.
First up, and most provocatively, is Paul Campos from Laywers, Guns and Money, who posits that [...]
Check out this CIA Office of the Inspector General review of the CIA’s interrogation and detention program (PDF). It doesn’t get much more redacted than that.
Democracy cannot function if the public is kept in the dark about the government’s workings. There are legitimate reasons for secrecy when it comes to national defense. For instance, [...]
JFK (middle) hanging out with the Shah of Iran (left).
If you read the NYTimes.com, you woke up to some lovely news yesterday:
The International Atomic Energy Agency, in an unusually blunt and detailed report, said Monday that Iran’s suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons remained “a matter of serious concern” and that Iran continued [...]
President George W. Bush addressing the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem on Thursday, May 15, 2008:
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into [...]
Back when the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke, most intelligent human beings realized that the blame didn’t rest solely with Private Lynndie England. The news of “extraordinary rendition” and CIA black sites cemented the fact that torture wasn’t an aberration of U.S. policy, but it was U.S. policy.
Last week, thanks to ABC, we learned [...]
Art In Reality
“Official”
“Unofficial”
I’m sure the truth is somewhere in between (but leaning more towards the “unofficial” side of things given that the Chinese typically show nice big banners of hanged criminals in their train stations - not really squeamish about a good shooting, them)
Expect these throughout the torch relay run — this will probably be [...]
I’ve been mulling over this article by Christopher Hitchens about the withdrawal of the UK’s Prince Harry from the front-line in Afghanistan. One of his conclusions is we are perhaps too afraid of so-called “Islamists.” I agree. But first, for those of you not familiar with the story, Prince Harry had been serving in Afghanistan, [...]
John Kerry was right.
In 2004, Kerry said “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives but they’re a nuisance.” He said he we had to contain it, so “it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”
Bush’s response was predictably insulting, simpleminded and inaccurate. [...]
ter·ror·ism (těr’ə-rĭz’əm)
n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
Watch this actual advertisement from House Republicans:
Astoundingly pathetic isn’t [...]