‘National affairs’ Archives
Tim Hates Chris and Other Nasty Business
Kiss, kiss in the Beltway. Tales of media favors, backstabbing and manipulation. This morning's Los Angeles Times reports on the Libby trial: As they talked by phone, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby scribbled down a series of Machiavellian suggestions from Cheney's then-communications guru, Mary Matalin: What to do about MSNBC talk show host Chris [...]
Well, It Sounded Good Last Week….
..... According to The Washington Post: Twenty in 10: Bush said in his State of the Union speech last week that he has a "goal of reducing U.S. gasoline usage by 20 percent in the next 10 years." The fine print: Administration officials said that the goal is 20 percent below projected annual gasoline usage, not off today's levels. That's very [...]
Civilian Reserve Corps: Private Army?
Jeremy Scahill opines in a Los Angeles Times op-ed about President Bush's proposal for a Cvilian Reserve Corps on Tuesday night: A privatized version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage [...]
Arianna’s Aggressive Pursuit of (the) Action
Talk about swing voters! Some readers may take interest in remembering that Arianna Huffington, publisher of the innovative, liberal Huffington Post, first spun into the American political limelight as the GOP diva and head ideological cheerleader when Republicans took control of Congress in 1995 for the first time since 1952. She could be [...]
Energy Independence in 10 Years
Imagine President Bush announcing a national plan to achieve US energy independence by 2011 the day after the 9-11 attack in 2001. We may have already been half way there in reaching the goal. Bush could have muscled all of his political capital and the collective national will to support the development of energy efficient products and [...]
Shrinking Violets
They foresaw a New American Century and it was as if they planned to pump up US foreign policy with steady injections of steroids. ... Then again, maybe they just were metaphorically whacked out on the drug themselves. In their 1997 manifesto, they posed the question: "Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to [...]
Pentagon Ponders Expanding Foreign Recruitment
Want US citizenship? Join the US Globar War on Terrorism today! That's what the Pentagon is now considering: expanding the existing program of trading citizenship to those foreign nationals willing to pick up arms on behalf of US foreign policy and military operations. Insiders at the Pentagon reveal discussions about opening recruiting stations [...]
Happy Birthday, CIA
Someone just sent me this link: from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting: Extra! November/December 1997 One of the most evenhanded examples of mainstream coverage of the CIA's anniversary was on ABC News' website, where the report opens on a note of caution: "No doubt the nation's leading band of spies prefers to forget about the disastrous Bay of [...]
The Shadow Army
CBS and The San Francisco Chronicle both ran recent stories on contractors working in Iraq. Privatizing support services supposedly brings down costs for the Pentagon. It also sweeps a myriad number of problems under the rug -- everything from who gets to carry guns and the liability for shooting people to the longterm health problems of the [...]
Babylon Rising in the Jet Age
Things began looking more sketchier than ever to John Owens as he boarded a nondescript white jet on his way back to Iraq in March 2005 following some R&R in Kuwait city. Working as a general construction foreman for First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, the lead builder for the new $592-million US embassy in Baghdad, Owen remembers being [...]
