The irony is that sacrificing fundamental commitments to the rule of law ("disappearing" suspects into secret CIA prison and "waterboarding" them to compel them to talk; asserting unchecked executive power to violate criminal laws and spy on Americans without warrants; holding suspects indefinitely in Guantanamo's law-free zone; attacking Iraq against the will of the U.N. Security Council and most of the world) have not made America safer, but in fact more vulnerable to future terrorist attacks. . . read more

It is now an incontrovertible fact, known all over the world, that George W. Bush and his regime lied through their teeth in order to launch wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the Bush regime is doing the same thing again in hopes of launching an attack on Iran.

As a consequence of Bush’s lies, there are a million dead Iraqis, mostly women and children, and four million displaced Iraqis, 4,100 dead American soldiers and tens of thousands of seriously wounded. No one knows how many dead in Afghanistan. And there is the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese that has fallen under the rubric of the “war on terror.” The only ones pleased with these wars are the American neoconservatives, the Israeli right-wing, the U.S. corporate military-security complex, and Osama bin Laden...

Reelecting Republicans means the end of the United States as a land of liberty. [More]

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. . . read more

George Bush came to office in 2001 promising a new era of integrity, civility and "compassionate conservatism," an era of humble American foreign policy, and a bi-partisan approach to government. What did we actually get? Once in office, this chameleon president almost immediately set out to embroil the country in a major war in the Middle East against the nation of Iraq. The game plan was laid out at the president's first National Security Council meeting... It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Bush/Cheney administration, at a minimum, wanted an attack on American soil, and a national disaster that would put the country on a war footing.

Surveying at the appalling wreckage left after eight years of the Bush administration, it is hard to recognize the country that he started out with in 2001. A once proud nation-one that only a few years ago was admired around the world and that now is viewed as a pariah and a rogue state-today trembles before a handful of turbaned fanatics holed up in caves in the Hindu Kush, its trillion-dollar high-tech military colossus fought to a standstill in Iraq and Afghanistan by a few thousand brave men and women armed with RPGs, antique AK-47s and home-made roadside bombs...

Forget all the nonsense about Barack Obama being a closet Muslim. We already have our Manchurian Candidate in the White House, and he has largely accomplished what he was programmed to do: destroy the country. [More] . . read more

I don't know what President Bush thinks, but I think he's bought hook, line and sinker the Cheney rationale that the only way for us to be able to be dominant in the 21st century is to use our overwhelming power in the face of the moral disapprobation of the rest of the world, threaten the rest of the world, and that's how we avoid war in the future...

[As for Iran] the president has no constitutional authority to take this nation to war against a country of 70 million people, unless we're attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked. And if he does, I would move to impeach him... I don't say it lightly. I say it because they should understand that what they were threatening, what they were saying... what we were about to do would be the most disastrous thing that could be done at this moment in our history. . . read more

By week's end, the evidence that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other top government officials had deliberately created a system of torture which they knew was illegal – indeed, a capital crime – under U.S. law was so plain, so overwhelming, and so handily concentrated that it broke through the levees of institutional cover-up and media complicity that had held this clear truth at bay for so long. The grim facts had finally worked their way into "conventional wisdom." It was now permissible for good "centrist" folk to speak of such things, even condemn them, without being automatically relegated to ranks of "the haters," the "unserious," the "shrill partisans," etc.

And yet, even as this new consensus was forming, you could see the sandbags piling up in the background to make sure that the water didn't reach too far. A line of defense was being laid that would allow the purveyors of conventional wisdom to vent a bit of righteous outrage at official wrongdoing without actually having to do anything about it or admitting of any flaws in their fundamentalist doctrine of American exceptionalism. No one need take any risks, make any effort, or discomfort themselves in any way to rectify the injustice; indeed, even the perpetrators should be left undisturbed. Instead, our uniquely good and smooth-running political system will magically make everything all better, and somehow prevent the bad things from happening again. [More] . . read more

[Americans] must elect - by an overwhelming, theft-proof majority - a candidate who promises to renounce Bush and all his works. A reform-minded president's first act should be to sign a law that reads as follows: "The federal government of the United States having been illegitimate and illegal since January 20, 2001, all laws, regulations, executive orders, and acts of commission or omission enacted between that infamous day and 12 noon Eastern Standard Time on January 20, 2009 are hereby declared invalid and without effect."

Guantánamo, secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, spying on Americans' phone calls and emails, and "legal" torture would be erased. Our troops should immediately pull out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Somalia; we should apologize to our victims and offer to compensate them and their survivors. Bush should never appear on any list of American presidents. When he dies, his carcass shouldn't receive a state funeral. It ought to be thrown in the trash. Unfortunately, no one like that is running for president. To the contrary, most of the major presidential candidates want to accelerate America's slide into outright moral bankruptcy. [For more]   . . read more

Afghanistan was supposed to be "the Good War". Originally, 95% of the American people supported the invasion as the proper response to the attacks of September 11. Liberals and conservatives alike joined the rush to war. The world needed to see America's iron-fisted wrath. It was "payback time". Tariq Ali called it, "A crude war of revenge". He was right. No one talks about caves anymore - or smoke. The pre-war zeal is gone. Vanished. The "hearts and minds" campaign is lost, too.

"The American war on terror is a mockery and so is the U.S. support of the present government in Afghanistan which is dominated by Northern Alliance terrorists," says Malalai Joya. "Far more civilians have been killed by the U.S. military in Afghanistan than were killed in the U.S. in the tragedy of September 11. More Afghan civilians have been killed by the U.S. than were ever killed by theTaliban... The U.S. should withdraw as soon as possible. We need liberation not occupation."

The Bush administration has reneged on every commitment it made to the Afghan people. There was never any attempt to provide security beyond the capital. Never. The U.S. handed over the countryside to the warlords who run their fiefdoms like Mafia Dons. There's no freedom. There's no safety. There's no rule of law. It's all a fabrication - another made-for-TV invasion that's 99% fiction. [More] . . read more

We are told the “surge is working”, whereas it is the U.S. military’s abandonment of its brutal home invasions that has led to the lull. Insurgents still control their own terrain. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Iraqis face the prospect of malnutrition and outright starvation, which is not newsworthy. Bush psychopathy stretches from the Middle East to the White House, where it is widely suspected that prior to its illegal erasure, the CIA torture tape was screened for the pleasure of the President.

Looking back over the terror war years, we can now contemplate accusations of high crimes & misdemeanours that once seemed impossible. The recent announcement that eight U.S. State Department veterans challenge the official account of 9/11 is likely to flush out more witnesses. Mainstream media are too embedded with the power elite to conduct an impartial yet vigorous evaluation of the evidence relating to dirty deeds on 9/11. In the end, the bloggers will have the last laugh. . . read more

Drawing from a host of media reports, a jig-saw-puzzle picture of sexual torture employed in the War on Terror begins to emerge. Scotland’s Sunday Herald reports that a former Iraqi prisoner claimed that there is a photo of a civilian translator raping a male juvenile prisoner; he stated, “They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming… and the female soldier was taking pictures.”... Such interrogation practices were not limited to Iraq. According to a report in the Sydney Morning Hearld: “Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood"...

The clock is ticking down on the Bush administration. For all their respective protestations, one can only wonder whether the next president will (secretly) approve the use of cruel, humilating and degrading interrogation techniques, especially sexual terror. Hidding behind plausible deniability is one of the oldest practices of those in power. Morality and the law nearly always take second place to expedience and necessity, whether real or invented. [More] . . read more

A Rudd Government would likely sanction a U.S.-led strike against Iran. Perhaps covertly, but Rudd has offered no assurances that he believes the Bush Administration should not be trusted over its Iran policy. Besides, arguing against the Iraq invasion is a luxury that Rudd would never indulge in power. Not unlike Howard and a host of past Labor Prime Ministers, Washington’s call is one that Australian leaders find impossible to resist...

A likely Rudd Government may be forced to make a decision on this matter within months of assuming office. Silence is not an option. If Rudd, like Howard, joins America in an unprovoked attack against a Middle Eastern nation, he will be as worthy of contempt as our current prime minister.  . . read more