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David Corn – WikiLeaks Cables Reveal Obama and GOPers Worked Together to Kill Bush Torture Probe
From AlterNet:
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WATCH: The Dumbest, Most Hilarious Abstinence-Only Metaphors
Glenn Greenwald on Joe Lieberman’s Thuggish, Authoritarian Attack on WikiLeaks
Shameless: Drug Companies Hired Ghostwriters to Pose as Doctors
Interpol Arrest Warrant for Dick Cheney? Nigeria to Charge Former VP in Bribery Scandal
WikiLeaks Cables Reveal Obama and GOPers Worked Together to Kill Bush Torture Probe
In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A “confidential” April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution. Read more
By David Corn | Mother Jones
Posted on Thursday, December 2, 2010 @ 08:25 AM
Spiegel Online – A President’s Memoirs: Ex-Chancellor Schröder Says Bush ‘Is Not Telling the Truth’
From Spiegel Online:
Classified Papers Prove German Warnings to Bush (11/24/2010)
- A ‘Dumb War’: Taking Stock of the Iraq Invasion (10/25/2010)
- Incompatible Interests: The Truth Blurs for Bush and Schröder (11/14/2010)
- Memoirs Trigger New Row Over Iraq: Bush Made Empty Promises to Schröder (11/13/2010)
- Battle over Memory: Former Schröder Spokesman Questions Bush’s Intelligence (11/11/2010)
- A President’s Memoirs: Ex-Chancellor Schröder Says Bush ‘Is Not Telling the Truth’ (11/09/2010)
Ray McGovern – Bush Lies – Not Just To Us, But To Himself
From Information Clearing House:
Bush Lies – Not Just To Us, But To Himself
By Ray McGovern
November 23, 2010 “Information Clearing House” –Why should George W. Bush have been “angry” to learn in late 2007 of the “high-confidence” unanimous judgment of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon four years earlier? Seems to me he might have said “Hot Dog!” rather than curse under his breath.
Nowhere in his memoir, Decision Points, is Bush’s bizarre relationship with truth so manifest as when he describes his dismay at learning that the intelligence community had redeemed itself for its lies about Iraq by preparing an honest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. As the Bush-book makes abundantly clear, that NIE rammed an iron rod through the wheels of the juggernaut rolling toward war.
Nowhere is Bush’s abiding conviction clearer, now as then, that his role as “decider” include the option to create his own reality.
The Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) has missed that part of the book. And hundreds of Dallas “sheriffs,” assembled to ensure decorum at the Bush library groundbreaking last week, kept us hoi polloi well out of presidential earshot.
But someone should ask Bush why he was not relieved, rather than angered, to learn from U.S. intelligence that Iran had had no active nuclear weapons program since 2003. And would someone dare ask why Bush thought Israel should have been “furious with the United States over the NIE?”
It seems likely that Bush actually dictated this part of the book himself. For, in setting down his reaction to the NIE on Iran, he unwittingly confirmed an insight that Dr. Justin Frank, M.D., who teaches psychiatry at George Washington University Hospital, gave us veteran intelligence officers into how Bush comes at reality – or doesn’t.
“His pathology is a patchwork of false beliefs and incomplete information woven into what he asserts is the whole truth… He lies – not just to us, but to himself as well… What makes lying so easy for Bush is his contempt – for language, for law, and for anybody who dares question him…. So his words mean nothing. That is very important for people to understand.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Dangers of a Cornered Bush.”]
Boris Johnson – George W. Bush can’t fight for freedom and authorize torture
From The Telegraph:
George W. Bush can’t fight for freedom and authorize torture
It is not yet clear whether George W Bush is planning to cross the Atlantic to flog us his memoirs, but if I were his PR people I would urge caution. As book tours go, this one would be an absolute corker. It is not just that every European capital would be brought to a standstill, as book-signings turned into anti-war riots. The real trouble — from the Bush point of view — is that he might never see Texas again.
One moment he might be holding forth to a great perspiring tent at Hay-on-Wye. The next moment, click, some embarrassed member of the Welsh constabulary could walk on stage, place some handcuffs on the former leader of the Free World, and take him away to be charged. Of course, we are told this scenario is unlikely. Dubya is the former leader of a friendly power, with whom this country is determined to have good relations. But that is what torture-authorizing Augusto Pinochet thought. And unlike Pinochet, Mr Bush is making no bones about what he has done.
Unless the 43rd president of the United States has been grievously misrepresented, he has admitted to authorizing and sponsoring the use of torture. Asked whether he approved of “waterboarding” in three specific cases, he told his interviewer that “damn right” he did, and that this practice had saved lives in America and Britain. It is hard to overstate the enormity of this admission.
Related…
Categories: Uncategorized George W. Bush, War Crimes
Daily Mail – Hundreds of masked protesters call for George Bush to be arrested for war crimes as he opens Presidential Centre in Dallas
From the Daily Mail Online:
Message: Masked activists carry placards calling for former president George W. Bush to be arrested over water-boarding claims
Outcry: Some activists also had signs around their necks with the names of people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan
David Corn – Bush Photoshops Rove out of Plame Scandal
From Mother Jones:
Bush Photoshops Rove out of Plame Scandal
By David CornIn his new book, George W. Bush repeatedly challenges the charge that he misled the country into the Iraq war. He writes, “I didn’t like hearing people claim I had lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” But while defending his integrity, he presents assertions that are outright false: for instance, that Iraq had a WMD infrastructure and was pursuing such weapons at the time of the invasion (it did not and was not), and that Saddam Hussein had refused to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors (he was not fully cooperating with inspectors, but the inspectors had reported Iraq’s cooperation was increasing).
His account is often selective—such as when he recounts a 2003 meeting with Tony Blair and fails to mention that at this session he (Bush) raised the possibility of kick-starting the Iraq war with a phony provocation. But Bush’s selectivity is glaringly apparent when he recounts one of the dark moments of his presidency: the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. [READ MORE]
Ralph Nader – Bush At Large
From Common Dreams:
Tuesday November 16, 2010
- Ralph Nader:
Bush At Large - Nick Turse:
Twenty-First Century Blowback? - Michael Moore:
Don’t Be Lame Duck Dems: An Open Letter to Congress - Christopher Phelps:
The Democrats’ Problem Was Not Overreach - Paul Thomas:
The Corporate Takeover of American Schools - Karl Zeeuw:
Airport Security: The Invisible Hand Cops A Feel - Jon Walker:
Where are the “Obama Tax Cuts?” - Marcy Wheeler:
We Will Always Be at War against Everyone - Nora Barrows-Friedman and Maureen Clare Murphy:
US Activists Face New Repression as Political Prisoners Fight for Justice - Matthew Rothschild:
Bush Can’t Travel Abroad Without Risking Arrest - Pierre Tristam:
Offshoring War: How Obama—and Those Moments of Silence—Insult Military Sacrifice - Juan Cole:
Kandahar: The Latest Casualty of an Invisible War - Tom Gallagher:
The American Midterm Elections Seen from Abroad
by Ralph Nader
George W. Bush is on a roll-a money roll with a $7 million advance for his book Decision Points and a rehabilitation roll to paint his war crimes as justifiable mass-slaughter and torture.
His carefully chosen interviewers-NBC’s Matt Lauer and Oprah Winfrey-agreed to a safe pre-taping to avoid demonstrations and tough questions. Requests for him to speak are pouring in from business conventions and other rich assemblages willing to pay $200,000 for “the Decider’s” banalities. This is “Shrub’s” month in the sun. In his first week of book promotion, he was asked about anything he would have done had he known then what he knew now-especially regarding Iraq and its encircled dictator. Well, he deplored receiving “false intelligence” about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction which was one of several false claims he fed the American people before invading Iraq in 2003. But he has no regrets, saying that “the world was undoubtedly safer with Saddam gone.”
But was it safer for over a million Iraqis who lost their lives due to the invasion, over 4 million refugees, 4500 American soldiers lost, 1100 amputees, tens of thousands injured, sick and tens of thousands more GIs coming back with trauma to lost jobs, broken families and permanent damage to their health.
Was it worth a trillion dollars to blow apart the country of Iraq and incur many more enemies? Was it worth starting a war paid for by a massive debt handed to our children so that George W. and Dick Cheney could give themselves and their rich buddies a massive tax cut? Ex-presidents possess self-excusing delusions, but this is non compos mentis run amuck.
Media Matters – Still lapdogs: Media figures host Bush’s rehabilitation tour
From Media Matters:
Still lapdogs: Media figures host Bush’s rehabilitation tour
Numerous media figures have interviewed former President George W. Bush following the November 9 release of his book, Decision Points. Bush and his interviewers used these interviews as an opportunity to rewrite his presidency by promoting false claims and misinformation about Bush’s tenure.
CLAIM: Bush advances disputed claim that waterboarding “saved lives.”
CLAIM: Bush repeats falsehood that tax cuts on the rich help small businesses.
William Rivers Pitt – A Small Fraction of a Man
From Truthout:
A Small Fraction of a Man
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: “George W. Bush was all over my television this past week, all over the newspapers, and the feelings inspired by his sudden reappearance are almost beyond my capacity to describe…. This is the guy who, not even a month after the Towers came down, looked into a television camera and said, ‘We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates’.”
Read the Article
Peter Hart – Bush’s ‘Sickening Feeling’ on WMDs Was an Inside Joke With the Press
From Fair:
Bush’s ‘Sickening Feeling’ on WMDs Was an Inside Joke With the Press
11/08/2010 by Peter Hart
“I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.” That’s how George W. Bush referred to the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in his new book Decision Points. The quote is featured in Time magazine’s Verbatim section (11/15/10), and has been discussed pretty widely.
This is an interesting claim. When Bush appeared at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner on March 23, 2004, his sickening feeling was gone–and replaced by his funny bone. Bush’s speech included a routine where he joked about the fruitless search for Iraq’s deadly weapons, showing slides where administration officials hunted around the White House offices for the weapons. (You can see a partial video of that speech here or here; both include commentary critical of Bush.)
The media reaction at the time, as FAIR noted (Extra!, 5-6/04), was to defend Bush’s jokes–the L.A. Times had an editorial called “Commander in Comedy.” Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly said, “You know, trying to be funny at these things is so difficult, and he is quite good at it. I mean, he really is very good at self-deprecating humor. The pictures were funny. I laughed at the photos. I mean, he looks goofy, and he’s got that great deadpan delivery.” You can bet few media outlets will recall this now.
FP – Don’t fall for the nostalgia — George W. Bush’s foreign policy really was that bad
From Foreign Policy:
Don’t fall for the nostalgia — George W. Bush’s foreign policy really was that bad.
BY STEPHEN M. WALT | NOVEMBER 8, 2010
Two years into Barack Obama’s presidency, it has become a cliché to observe that the newish president, who spent his 2008 campaign promising a U-turn from his deeply unpopular predecessor’s activities abroad, has ended up with a foreign policy that looks surprising like George W. Bush’s. The United States has more troops in Afghanistan than it did at the end of the Bush years, Guantánamo is still open, efforts to engage Iran have failed, and while American soldiers may have begun pulling back from Iraq, they’ve left plenty of Western defense contractors in their wake.
In anticipation of tomorrow’s release of Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, this line of thinking is reinforcing one of the Beltway press corps’ favorite rituals: the “was he really that bad?” nostalgia for a president that the same reporters and analysts were happily pummeling only two years ago.
Don’t believe a word of it. George W. Bush’s presidency really was that bad — and the fact that Obama has largely followed the same course is less a measure of Bush’s wisdom than a reminder of the depth of the hole he dug his country into, as well as the institutionalized groupthink that dominates the U.S. foreign-policy establishment.
Decision Points has 14 chapters, each one pivoting around a key decision that Bush made in his adult life. So, in honor of America’s newly published ex-president, here’s my own list of 14 decisions that Bush made — ones that tell a slightly different history of the 43rd presidency.
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