Fifty years of blockade seemed too little to the favorites. Change! Change! Change! They all cried in unison. I agree. Change! But, inside the United States. Cuba changed long ago and will now follow a dialectical path. We will never go back to the past! Cries our people.

Annexation! Annexation! Annexation! Responds the adversary. That is what it really means when it speaks about change. [More] . . 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

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

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

Exhibit A: We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation, do their best to damp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But crazy people?They look around and decide it's a great time to start another war. That would be with Iran, and you'd have to be deaf not to hear the wardrums.

Last week, Bush remarked that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III... you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." On Sunday, Cheney warned of "the Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power... [we] cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions." On Tuesday, Bush insisted on the need "to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat."

Huh? Iran is now a major threat to Europe? The Iranians are going to launch a nuclear missile (that they don't yet possess) against Europe (for reasons unknown because, as far as we know, they're not mad at anyone in Europe)? This is lunacy in action.  . . read more

Act Two: Josef Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, traveled to Washington where he was received by George Bush at the White House. Three more years have passed, and the country of Iraq is in chaos, its civilization shattered. More than a million Iraqis are dead while 4,500,000 have been forced to flee their homes, most saying they will never be able to return... George Bush and the pope met privately before issuing a joint statement in which they “reaffirmed their total rejection of terrorism as well as the manipulation of religion to justify immoral and violent acts against innocents.” During their personal meeting George Bush presented the pope a crystal cross. The pope accepted it.

Act Three: [Last Wednesday] Barack Obama assured Americans that when it comes to Iran he “will take no options off the table,” a position he shares with the Bush administration and the other presidential candidates. [More] . . read more

On March 30, the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited a high-ranking security source: "The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran." According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future"... The Saudi newspaper Okaz reported March 22, the day following Cheney's visit with the kingdom's rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards... following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors"...

Two massive failures by the American media, the Democratic Party, and the American people have paved the way for Cheney's long planned attack on Iran. One failure is the lack of skepticism about the U.S. government's explanation of 9/11. The other failure is the Democrats' refusal to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush for lying to the Congress, the American people, and the world and launching an invasion of Iraq based on deception and fabricated evidence. If an American president can start a war exactly as Adolf Hitler did with pure lies and not be held accountable, he can get away with anything. And Bush and his evil regime have. [More]

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

The major premise of Bugliosi's case against Bush is that the former Texas governor, who unapologetically executed more death row inmates than any other governor in the country (and joked about killing one of them), intentionally lied and deceived the American public while he was president about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, which has caused the deaths of over 4,000 U.S. service men and women and over a 100,000 Iraqis.

But how can Bush be prosecuted and convicted of murder if he personally did not kill anyone? Bugliosi asks, and then answers his own question: "...it is not necessary for a criminal defendant to have physically committed a murder to be guilty of it. For example, I convicted Charles Manson of the seven Tate-La Bianca murders even though he himself did not participate in any of the killings, nor was he present at the time."

Interesting comparison. Bush and Manson - two twisted sociopaths who revel in death and destruction. But Bugliosi goes further: "I was able to obtain this conviction because of the vicarious liability rule of conspiracy, which provides that each member of a conspiracy is criminally responsible for all crimes committed by his coconspirators... Necessarily, (Bush) conspired with certain members of his inner circle, co-conspirators like Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice." [More]

Related: Will John Howard be tried for war crimes? . . read more

We need to learn the painful lessons of the Iraq War if we're going to secure this country and renew America's leadership. The first thing we have to understand is what happened in Iraq. Because there are two ways to look at this. The first way is to say that Iraq is a disaster because of George Bush's mismanagement. Or because of the arrogance and incompetence of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld in prosecuting the war. Or because Iraq's Prime Minister just hasn't been up to the job.

But I take a different view. I think the problem isn't just how we've fought the war - it's that we fought the war in the first place. Because the truth is, the war in Iraq should never have been authorized, and it should never have been waged. The Iraq War had nothing to do with al Qaeda or 9/11. It was based on exaggerated fears and unconvincing intelligence. And it has left America less safe, and less respected around the world.  . . read more