Democrats' 'Battered Wife Syndrome'

By Robert Parry
April 25, 2009

In recent years, the Washington political dynamic has often resembled an abusive marriage, in which the bullying husband (the Republicans) slaps the wife and kids around, and the battered wife (the Democrats) makes excuses and hides the ugly bruises from outsiders to keep the family together.

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Needed: Another Ferdinand Pecora

By Michael Winship
April 25, 2009

For policy wonks near and far, the celebrity of the hour isn't Susan Boyle, the Scottish church marm who belted out "I Dreamed a Dream" with the voice of an airy angel, or ex-Somali pirate hostage Richard Phillips, or Carrie Prejean, the Miss USA contestant from California who's against gay marriage because the Bible tells her so.

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Real World Reasons Against Torture

By Coleen Rowley
April 24, 2009

Back in December 2007, when I wrote "Torture is Wrong, Illegal and It Doesn't Work," I mentioned that "the FBI agent who reportedly had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot, Ali Soufan, the only Arabic-speaking agent in New York and one of only eight in the country, and who has since resigned from the FBI, could and should tell people the truth of how the CIA's tactics were counterproductive."

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Bush Team Ignored Waterboard Cases

By Jason Leopold
April 23, 2009

George W. Bush’s Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near-drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn’t even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.

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Torture-Spinning Punditry

By David Swanson
April 23, 2009

While much of elite U.S. punditry is backing away from torture, Jeff Jacoby is claiming to have opposed it but to now find it excusable.

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How Bush's Torture Helped al-Qaeda

By Robert Parry
April 23, 2009

Captured al-Qaeda operatives, facing the threat or reality of torture, appear to have fed the Bush administration’s obsession about Iraq, buying Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders time to rebuild their organization inside nuclear-armed Pakistan.

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On Torture, the Pressure Builds

By Ray McGovern
April 22, 2009

Well, well. The New York Times has finally put a story together on the key role that two controversial psychologists played in devising the Bush administration's torture policies. Guess we should be thankful for small favors.

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Obama's Tortured Stance on Torture

By Ivan Eland
April 21, 2009

Although Barack Obama should be applauded for stopping torture by the U.S. government and pledging to close the infamous Guantanamo and worldwide CIA secret prisons, he is nevertheless playing politics with the issue to get the best of both worlds.

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Greedy Bankers Fuel Public Outrage

By Brent Budowsky
April 21, 2009

"Bank Lending Keeps Dropping," went the Monday headline in The Wall Street Journal. As Congress returns, bailout backlash will become road rage unless the President and Congress take action that is strong and credible.

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Connecting CIA Torture to Abu Ghraib

By Robert Parry
April 21, 2009

By blurring the lines between terrorism and combat – and by linking the 9/11 rationale to groups only tangentially connected to al-Qaeda – the Bush administration spread the policy of harsh interrogations far beyond terror suspects who worked directly for Osama bin Laden, newly released Justice Department memos reveal.

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GOP's Civil Liberties Hypocrisy

By Nat Parry
April 20, 2009

Just as Republicans have refashioned themselves as fiscal conservatives in the age of Obama, apparently forgetting that they allowed a budget surplus to be transformed into a record deficit while George W. Bush was President, they now seem to be taking up the cause of civil liberties – at least as far as right-wing groups are concerned.

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