Tag Archives : Bush

Dick Cheney admits being a supporter of the near-drowning torture technique called waterboarding, even if the US generally regards its use as a war crime. Robert Parry, author of a new book entitled Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, writes in AlterNet, “Cheney was unrepentant about his support for the technique. [...]

Former US president George W. Bush convoluted some definitions. ‘The ambiguity began shortly after 9/11, when then-U.S. President George W. Bush defined two missions: waging a war on terror, and bringing Osama bin Laden and his followers to justice. Both made for good rhetoric. But they also were fundamentally contradictory. A war is not a judicial [...]

It is said that there are ‘two poles in Washington: the counterinsurgency experts, or COIN-istas, who believe Afghanistan’s deteriorating security can only be reversed by adding tens of thousands of troops – perhaps as many as 80,000; and those who believe US interests in Afghanistan are few, and the best way to keep it on a low simmer is [...]

Cuba responded positively to the U.S. proposal to reopen negotiations on Cuban immigration to the United States, halted in 2004 by President George Bush. The U.S. offer was a new gesture of openness of the Obama administration which attempts a cautious and gradual approach with the Castro regime. Cuba also accepts the U.S. proposal to establish direct [...]

For starters, Bush insisted that torture was legal. He bought into the official legal reviews on it, hook, line, and sinker. If his administration’s legal counsels said that no international or domestic law can bind him to legal culpability in times of war, then the advice must have been sound. Everybody dealing with the top terror-suspect Abu Zubaydah [...]

There is now such a thing as the Bush administration’s Torture 13. They belong to the nefarious circle by virtue of authorizing torture to be systematically employed in the name of information gathering post-9/11 for the sake of intelligence. They carried out the strategy, as well as legally justified it. All these point to the creation of a [...]

For the past few months, former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been reeling under an unpopular reputation. Some regard him as a bad guy. Now come more punches from a magazine feature that includes a slideshow of ‘cover sheets that accompanied intelligence updates produced by Rumsfeld’s DOD for Bush.’ These show pictures of soldiers [...]

A few days back, Obama was pondering on an ‘exit plan’ for Afghanistan. The strategy for Afghanistan presented on Friday by the U.S. president represents a radical change in relation to his predecessor George W. Bush’s strategy. Obama presented in a ceremony in the White House the long-awaited new strategy that will be presented next week at [...]

Once again, the American people are living in a time of utter concern for their economy. While the American government speaks in terms of its military victories over agents of terror, the ordinary American taxpayer might not be aware that he or she shall continue to shell out for his or her government’s military spending. Through the decades, however, [...]

According to a secret report prepared in 2007 by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the treatment received by Al Qaeda suspects subjected to interrogation in CIA secret prisons was torture. According to the document, the practices used by the United States were cruel, inhuman, or degrading and expressly forbidden by the Geneva Conventions. These [...]