86 Articles

Friday, November 20, 2009
McChrystal to Obama: Fogh You; McChrystal Testing the Limits
(6 comments) It's hard to know if the Obama-led ongoing consultation on Afghanistan is for real, or just a charade. I seem to be in the minority comprised of those who tend to give the President the benefit of the doubt. This decision is a BIG one. What is abundantly clear is the extreme pressure he is under, mostly from the senior military, some of whom (Petraeus) have political ambitions of their own.

Monday, November 16, 2009
Shining Light on Roots of Terrorism
(16 comments) Media commentary on the upcoming 9/11 trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has raised concern that state secrets may be divulged, including details about how the Bush administration used torture to extract evidence about al-Qaeda.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Heeding George Kennan's Wise Advice
It is yet to be known how many Americans will die in Afghanistan if President Obama follows the advice of his generals – much as President Johnson did – and escalates. Can we not learn from history?

Friday, October 30, 2009
Kipling Haunts Obama's Afghan War
You may be in a position to help give the President the wherewithal to resist pressure to escalate the war in Afghanistan

Monday, September 28, 2009
Intelligence Veterans Urge President to Authorize Wider CIA Probe
(5 comments) A dozen U.S. intelligence veterans urge President Obama to reject a call from seven ex-CIA directors to stop a torture probe.

Sunday, September 27, 2009
CIA Torturers Running Scared
(2 comments) For the CIA supervisors and operatives who were responsible for torture, the chickens are coming home to roost. That is, if President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder mean it when they say no one is above the law — and if they have the courage to stand up to brazen intimidation ~ Ray McGovern

Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Torture: the Fault is Not in Our Stars
(4 comments) Unlike many of my progressive friends, for me the current administration's behavior on torture is a glass half full. In my view, the real scandal is how very few have taken a sip.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Help for Obama Speech Wednesday Evening
(6 comments) The President, I believe, can use all the input he can get. My draft includes suggestions about how to save billions for healthcare reform by putting a timely end to wasteful spending on the feckless foreign adventures launched by his predecessor. Here is my unsolicited draft. I no longer have access to the White House. If you do, please pass this along.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Afghanistan for Dummies
(6 comments) I'm going to ask for my money back. I've seen this Afghanistan movie before. The first time, Vietnam was in the title. As in an early scene from the Vietnam version, U.S. military officials are surprised to discover that the insurgents in Afghanistan are stronger than previously realized.

Sunday, August 30, 2009
Media Ape Goebbels in Defending CIA Abuses
(2 comments) It seems coverage of the Bush administration's “war on terror” has been put back on track by the editors of the Washington Post and their “sources,” who appear determined to highlight the supposed successes of waterboarding and other forms of torture. In the last few days the Post has markedly increased its effort to “catapult the propaganda” (to borrow a phrase from former President George W. Bush).

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Closing In on the Torturers
(5 comments) Ray McGovern asks: Do you think the wardens will let George Tenet wear his Presidential Medal of Freedom over the orange coverall?

Friday, August 21, 2009
Unwritten Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater
(5 comments) Hats off to Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times for ferreting out what it was that sent CIA Director Leon Panetta scurrying over to Congress in late June.

Friday, August 14, 2009
Pundits Trying to Help Cheney Avoid Jail
(15 comments) The stenographers of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) are missing the most obvious explanation for former Vice President Dick Cheney's widely reported "disappointment"- with former President George W. Bush on the issue of pardons - self-interest.

Saturday, August 1, 2009
“Christians” Wink at Torture
(10 comments) Anyone harboring doubts that the institutional Church is riding shotgun for the system, even regarding heinous sin like torture, should be chastened by the results of a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.

Friday, July 24, 2009
Recalling the Downing Street Minutes
(5 comments) The minutes observed quite bluntly that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Thursday, July 23, 2009
Dallas: Into the Belly of the Beast
(6 comments) Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern reports on his attempt to bring some accountability to George W. Bush's new home front.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Cheney Sweats Out the Summer
(14 comments) His situation has grown pathetic. Aside from the man himself, it has fallen almost solely to faithful daughter Liz to defend her dad and to start a political backfire to keep him out of prison. She is to be admired for her faithfulness. In the process, though, she has unwittingly given much away.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Is Texas Harboring Torture Decider?
(9 comments) Seldom does a crime scene have so clear a smoking gun. A two-page presidential memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, leaves no room for uncertainty regarding the "decider" on torture. His broad-stroke signature made torture official policy. This should come as no surprise. You see, the Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum has been posted on the Web since June 22, 2004, when then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales mistakenly released it...

Thursday, June 25, 2009
Torture eats away at the soul of this nation
(8 comments) Something evil has seeped into the soul of our nation. Those many years when we looked the other way, choosing to ignore the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, eroded our morality.

Friday, June 19, 2009
Ray McGovern: Why single-payer health insurance is close to his heart
(6 comments) Ray McGovern shares an intimate experience that has moved him to "promote single-payer health insurance as the only real way to get everyone covered."

Monday, June 1, 2009
Navy Vet Honored, Foiled Israeli Attack
(3 comments) What's the difference between murder and massacre? The answer is Terry Halbardier, whose bravery and ingenuity as a 23-year-old Navy seaman spelled the difference between the murder of 34 of the USS Liberty crew and the intended massacre of all 294.

Thursday, May 28, 2009
Colin Powell: No Good Samaritan
(7 comments) Watching retired Gen. Colin Powell cite Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan during Sunday's Memorial Day ceremonies on the Mall in Washington, it struck me that Powell was giving hypocrisy a bad name. Those familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan and the under-reported behavior of Gen. Powell, resurgent star of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM), know that the two do not mesh.

Friday, May 22, 2009
Cheney: Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism
(2 comments) Former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern writes,"If we hear in the coming days that former Vice President Dick Cheney has fired one of his speechwriters - or perhaps grounded Lynne or Liz - it will be clear why. Oozing out of the sleazy speech he gave Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute was an inadvertent truth regarding the Israeli albatross hanging around the neck of U.S. policy in the Middle East."

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Note to Nancy Pelosi: Colin Powell Got Snookered at CIA, too
(32 comments) We're in a tough situation, Ray McGovern says he's never seen in his 40+ years of government service, The president of the United States and Leon Panetta are afraid of the CIA. Now, thanks to Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff, we know a lot more about how Powell allowed himself to be snookered into helping Bush sell the war-- and bad information acquired by torturing al-libi, who lied to evade further torture.

Thursday, May 14, 2009
Rumsfeld Redux: 'Ugly' Questions for Gen. Myers
(11 comments) Ex-CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, reminiscent of his CNN broadcast grilling of Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta in 2006, questions former Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers about his role in stopping an in-depth legal review on torture. McGovern once again shows the "Fawning Corporate Media" how it's done. He describes Myers' actions as, "a combination of dullness, cowardice and careerism."

Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Rudman: Deus ex Machina on Torture
(2 comments) The announcement in mid-March that CIA Director Leon Panetta had picked former Sen. Warren Rudman to act as CIA "liaison" with the Senate Intelligence Committee during its "review" of interrogation and detention practices has drawn virtually no criticism from the Fawning Corporate Media.Yet,it is a dead give-away as to how congressional leaders plan to go through the motions for a year or so, and then let everyone off the hook

Thursday, April 23, 2009
Obama Plays Hamlet; Shredders Hum
(17 comments) The New York Times has finally put a story together on the key role played by two faux psychologists in helping the Bush administration devise ways to torture people. We should, I suppose, be thankful for small favors. Apparently, a NY Times expos� requires a 21-month gestation period. The substance of the Wednesday's lead story on torture had already appeared in an article in the July 2007 issue of Vanity Fair.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Anatomy of Bush's Torture 'Paradigm'
(14 comments) The prose of the recently leaked report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on torture seems colorless. It is at the same time obscene - almost pornographic.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009
After Torture, Resurrection
(5 comments) Three years ago, Easter dawned on Crawford, Texas, for the many friends of justice and peace who were gathered there to celebrate new hope. Rev. Joseph Lowery gave an inspired message that morning, in what turned out to be a warm-up for his Benediction at the Inauguration of our new president in January 2009.

Monday, April 6, 2009
Holder and Powell Ain't Misbehavin'
(12 comments) I used to take a certain pride by association with prominent Bronxites who have "made it." Cancel that for Attorney General Eric Holder and former secretary of state Colin Powell. Why would they want to whitewash torture, given what blacks have suffered at the hands of torturers in this country and abroad?

Saturday, March 28, 2009
Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President
(2 comments) Former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, responds to President Obama's decision for a military escalation in Afghanistan, a path that parallels Vietnam.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Obama Caves to Israel Lobby
(10 comments) On Tuesday morning Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, employed the indicative mood in describing the high value that Chas Freeman, his appointee to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC), will bring to the job-"his long experience and inventive mind," for example. By five o'clock in the afternoon, Freeman announced that he had asked that his selection "not proceed."

Thursday, March 5, 2009
Iran in the Crosshairs
(57 comments) President Barack Obama's first major international crisis may be provoked by Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu's determination to strike at Iran's nuclear facilities, say Gareth Porter and Ray McGovern.

Friday, February 6, 2009
Leon Panetta Makes Nice
(2 comments) "I am a creature of Congress," said Leon Panetta with a broad smile, which was returned by equally wide smiles from members of the Senate intelligence committee meeting yesterday to consider his nomination to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.I really wish he hadn't said that. For that sobriquet fits the worst of the worst, so to speak, of former CIA directors-the tarnished Medal of Freedom awardee, George Tenet.

Saturday, January 31, 2009
From Prison to Award for Iraq War Whistleblower
(2 comments) On Jan. 26 in Copenhagen, I had the privilege to present to former Danish intelligence officer, Frank Grevil, the annual Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. Our purpose was not only to honor Sam's memory; it was also to show future generations of intelligence officers that it is possible-actually, it is morally required-to expose the lies that facilitate war.

Thursday, January 15, 2009
What's Hayden Hidin'?
(30 comments) Outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden is going around town telling folks he has warned President-elect Barack Obama "personally and forcefully" that if Obama authorizes an investigation into controversial activities like water boarding, "no one in Langley will ever take a risk again."

Thursday, January 8, 2009
Obama Picks a Conscience for the CIA
(1 comments) In choosing Leon Panetta to take charge of the CIA, President-elect Barak Obama has shown he is determined to put an abrupt end to the lawlessness and deceit with which the administration of George W. Bush has corrupted intelligence operations and analysis. First and foremost, the appointment gives hope that torture and "rendition"(a euphemism for kidnapping people for delivery to foreign torture chambers) is over ...

Thursday, January 8, 2009
Obama Picks a Conscience for the CIA
(7 comments) At long last. Change we can believe in. In choosing Leon Panetta to take charge of the CIA, President-elect Barak Obama has shown he is determined to put an abrupt end to the lawlessness and deceit with which the administration of George W. Bush has corrupted intelligence operations and analysis.

Saturday, December 20, 2008
Deterring Torture Through the Law
(9 comments) Former FBI agent Coleen Rowley and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern discuss criminal intent as it relates to Bush/Cheney approved torture.

Thursday, December 11, 2008
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?
(4 comments) You've got to hand it to them. Torture aficionados at the White House and CIA have conned key congressional leaders into insisting not only that torture-lite would be a swell idea, but advocating also that the overseers of torture be kept on.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Seeking Integrity at the CIA
(10 comments) Without integrity and courage, all virtue is specious, and no amount of structural or organizational reform will make any difference. Instructive lessons can be drawn from the performance of George Tenet, the sixteenth director since the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, and from his predecessors regarding what attributes a director needs to discharge the duties of the office.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Kafka and Uighurs at Guantanamo
(3 comments) "There is no right to due process for an alien who is not here," insisted Solicitor General of the United States, Gregory G. Garre, proudly representing the President of the United States. Garre claimed that U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina had exceeded his authority on Oct. 7, 2008 in ordering that 17 men held in Guantanamo for almost seven years be brought to his court for a fair hearing on the modalities of their release.

Sunday, November 23, 2008
Gates and the Urge to Surge
(1 comments) It may become a biennial ritual. Every two years, if the commander-in-chief (or the commander-in-chief-elect) says he wants to throw more troops into an unwinnable war for no clear reason other than his political advantage, panderer-in-chief Robert Gates will shout "Outstanding!" Never mind what the commanders in the field are saying - much less the troops who do the dying.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Robert Gates: As Bad As Rumsfeld?
(8 comments) "As Bad As Rumsfeld?" The title jars, doesn't it. The more so, since Defense Secretary Robert Gates found his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, such an easy act to follow. But the jarring part reflects how malnourished most of us are on the thin gruel served up by the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM).

Saturday, November 8, 2008
Try These on Your CIA Briefer, Mr. President-Elect
(9 comments) Aware that I helped prepare the President's Daily Brief for Presidents Nixon and Ford and conducted one-on-one PDB briefings of Reagan's most senior advisers, [Mike Cadell of Radio Free Kansas] suggested that I focus on what I would tell President-Elect Barack Obama if I were Mike Morell, CIA's Director of Intelligence...It seemed more useful to prepare questions of the kind President-Elect Obama might wish to ask Morell.

Saturday, October 18, 2008
Attack on Iran Off the Table?
(6 comments) On Sept. 23, the neo-conservative chiefs of the Washington Post's editorial page mourned, in a tone much like what one hears on the death of a close friend, that "a military strike by the United States or Israel [on Iran is not] likely in the coming months." One could almost hear a wistful sigh, as they complained that efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program has "slipped down Washington's list of priorities."

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
To Joe Biden: Time for Confession
(10 comments) Dear Senator Biden, I don't have to remind you of the importance of this Thursday's debate from a political perspective. But as you prepare, I invite you to spare a few minutes to look at the opportunity from a moral and religious perspective.

Thursday, September 11, 2008
Iran's Road Less Traveled to Nukes
Thomas Fingar, the U.S. government's top intelligence analyst, in a public speech on Sept. 4, repeated the intelligence community's key judgment that Iran's work on the "weaponization portion" of its nuclear development program "was suspended" in 2003. Not that the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) has exactly trumpeted this important conclusion.

Monday, September 8, 2008
Trickle-Down Preemption: Baghdad on the Mississippi
(4 comments) Ten days ago, as the nation focused attention on the hurricane nearing the Mississippi delta, another storm was brewing far upstream in St. Paul, Minnesota - a storm far more dangerous, it turned out, but one by and large overlooked by the Fawning Corporate Media(FCM).

Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Musharraf Out, Like Nixon; Bush Still In, Like Flynn
(4 comments) Most of the fawning corporate media (FCM) coverage of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's resignation Monday was even more bereft of context than usual.

Friday, August 15, 2008
Out Damn Blot: A Letter to Colin Powell
(3 comments) Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, in an open letter to Colin Powell, offers an opportunity to wipe the "blot" off his record.

Sunday, July 20, 2008
Obama, McCain Allergic to New Iraq Reality
(1 comments) Campaign rhetoric by both Obama and McCain ignores dramatic change in the policital landscape in Iraq. Israel is likely to be preparing a September/October surprise designed to keep the US bogged down in Iraq and in the wider region by provoking hostilities with Iran. And don't be surprised if it starts as early as August.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Obama, McCain Allergic to New Iraq Reality

Friday, June 20, 2008
Bomb Iran? What's to Stop Us?
(5 comments) I have been reviewing the bidding on the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran. I found the assurance and confidence projected by Israeli PM Olmert after his hour-and-a-half with President Bush truly alarming.

Thursday, June 19, 2008
Impeach Bush now?
(27 comments) Congressional proceedings would help prevent another mistaken war. A move to impeach would bolster the resistance to Bush among our senior military leaders who know that attacking Iran at this time would be the strategic equivalent of the marches into Russia by Napoleon and Hitler.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Jail Time for Tenet?
(1 comments) As president, young George has found he can escape accountability altogether. Now when he screws up royally, he need not call Dad; George W. Bush is himself in control of all the levers he needs to pull in order to bail himself out. Is this a great country or what?

Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Australia Bolts Iraq Over Bush's Lies
(1 comments) Even into the sixth year of war in Iraq – even as ex-White House press secretary Scott McClellan admits the deceptions used to justify the invasion – the U.S. news media still averts its eyes from the full ugliness of what happened in 2002-03.

Monday, June 2, 2008
McClellan Book Proves Bush Replays Iraq Games on Iran
(1 comments) Neglected in all the McClellan material is what he said (to Keith Olbermann) about propaganda preparation for attacks on Iran. This piece picks up from there, and deals with the difficulty the White House has encountered in picking the best rationale to "justify" bombing/missile attacking Iran. Again, there are malleable martinets doing the president's bidding and a president who prefers Israeli intelligence to ours.

Thursday, May 22, 2008
An Appeal to Admiral Fallon on Iran
(3 comments) I have not been able to find out how to reach you directly, so I drafted this letter in the hope it will be brought to your attention. First, thank you for honoring the oath we commissioned officers take to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. At the same time, you have let it be known that you do not intend to speak, on or off the record, about Iran.

Monday, April 21, 2008
What About the War, Benedict?
(9 comments) Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Washington last week against a macabre backdrop featuring reports of torture, execution, and war. He chose not to notice. Looks as if the Vatican made a deal with the MSM. If the pope doesn't say anything meaningful on the war, torture, you name it, we the MSM will suppress the unconscionable role he played in covering up the widespread pedophilia and he can present himself as hero not goat.

Monday, March 31, 2008
Delusionary, Dancing Bush
At the American Enterprise Institute war-cheerleaders, dressed as academicians, were delivering a panegyric on how peaceful and stable the situation in Iraq had become. The "surge," they announced had nipped a civil war in the bud.

Thursday, March 27, 2008
Frontline: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late
(6 comments) Frontline has been, let's just say it, cowardly in real time""no doubt intimidated partly by attacks on its funding that were inspired by the White House. And now? Well the retrospective criticism of incompetence comes as polling shows two-thirds of the country against the Iraq occupation (and the number is surely higher among PBS viewers). So, Frontline is repositioning itself as a mild ex-post-facto critic of the war...

Friday, February 1, 2008
Iniquities and Inequities of War
(7 comments) Oil-- that was Bush's true reason, in spite of his hundreds of lies-- for invading and occupying Iraq. And this becomes painfully clear as heroic writer, Ray McGovern discusses the top rate health care he's receiving for his cancerous tumor, compared to the pathetic care our Iraq vets are receiving, let alone the close to 50 million Americans who receive no health insurance supported care at all.

Saturday, January 12, 2008
Gulf Shenanigans: No Laughing Matter
(2 comments) a message to HONEST intelligence analysts and managers still on "active duty." Last Sunday's misadventure in the Strait of Hormuz shows that our senior military need all the help they can get from intelligence officers more concerned with the truth than with "keeping lines open to the White House" and doing its bidding. If you find that your leaders are cooking intelligence, think long and hard...

Friday, December 28, 2007
Creeping Fascism: Lessons From the Past
(4 comments) "There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater...Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later...." These are the words of Sebastian Haffner who as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a first-hand account.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Are Americans Really "Better Than That?"
(8 comments) The past few weeks have witnessed an unseemly square dance in Congress, highlighting conflicting claims about what those who are supposed to be overseeing the intelligence community knew and when they knew it""about torture, about Iran, about many things. It is an insult to the Founders that members of the House and Senate can find nothing more useful to do than wring their hands over their largely self-inflicted powerlessness

Saturday, December 8, 2007
White House & Press Spinning Iran's Centrifuges
(6 comments) Without Spinmeister Karl Rove and former spokesman Tony Snow, it is amateur hour at the White House. And the theater would be as funny as The Daily Show, were the subject not so serious. Judging from President George W. Bush's words and body language he is far from giving up on ways to "justify" attacking Iran's nuclear program""weapons-related or not.

Monday, December 3, 2007
Fact-Based Intelligence Prevails on Nukes and Iran
(2 comments) For those who have doubts about miracles, a double one occurred today. An honest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear program has been issued and its Key Judgments were made public. With redraft after redraft, it was what the Germans call "eine schwere Geburt"""a difficult birth, ten months in gestation.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007
former intelligence and national security officials Speak out on Mukasey Nomination
Twenty-four former intelligence and national security officials delivered an urgent message yesterday morning to the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calling on them to hold the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey for attorney general until he states his opinion on the legality of waterboarding.

Thursday, September 27, 2007
Bush, Oil "" and Moral Bankruptcy
(2 comments) As the truth about our country's policy becomes clearer and clearer, can we summon the courage to address it from a moral perspective? The Germans left it up to the churches; the churches collaborated.

Sunday, September 16, 2007
Greenspan Misses Cheney's Memo: Spills the Beans on Oil
(1 comments) For those still wondering why GW Bush and Dick Cheney sent our young troops into Iraq, the secret is now "largely" out. No, not from the lips of former secretary of state Colin Powell. It appears we shall have to wait until the disgraced general/diplomat draws nearer to meeting his maker before he gets concerned over anything more than the "blot" that Iraq has put on his reputation. We get the truth from Alan Greenspan.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
"Swear Him In"
(5 comments) I wrote this after being thrown out of the Petraeus hearing earlier this afternoon. That's all I said in the unusual silence on Monday afternoon as first aid was being administered to Gen. David Petraeus' microphone before he could make himself heard before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

Friday, September 7, 2007
Are Petraeus and Westmoreland Birds of a Feather?
Official Washington is awaiting the Iraq War assessment of Gen. Petraeus, though it's clear he will tout progress in line with President George W. Bush's pro-surge rhetoric. The Petraeus team in Baghdad already is massaging the numbers, much like another ambitious commander did four decades ago. In this Vietnam flashback, veteran intelligence analyst Ray McGovern notes the parallels between Petraeus and Gen. William We

Friday, August 31, 2007
Do We Have The Courage To Stop War With Iran?
(3 comments) I fear our country is likely to be at war with Iran""and with the thousands of real terrorists Iran can field around the globe. It is going to happen, folks, unless we put our lawn chairs away on Tuesday, take part in some serious grass-roots organizing, and take action to prevent a wider war""while we still can.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Bush League War Drums Beating Louder on Iran
(15 comments) Attacking Iran Would Be Crazy! Despite the administration's war-like record, many Americans may still cling to the belief that attacking Iran won't happen because it would be crazy; that Bush is a lame-duck president who wouldn't dare undertake yet another reckless adventure when the last one went so badly. But rationality and common sense have not exactly been the strong suit of this administration.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007
John Conyers Is No Martin Luther King
What do Rep. John Conyers (D, Michigan), chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and President George W. Bush have in common? They both think they can dis Cindy Sheehan and count on gossip columnists like the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to trivialize an historic moment.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Bush's Wooden-Headedness Kills
(1 comments) I began this article last night, with the idea of focusing on the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on terrorism, parts of which were declassified and made available yesterday. But it became quickly clear there was a much larger—and more important—story here...and that, when all is said and done, the NIE is not going to make much difference one way or another.

Sunday, July 15, 2007
Ray McGovern: Remembering an: Ill-Starred Day Four Years Ago
(2 comments) For those tracking the long train of abuses and usurpations of a modern-day George who would be King and his eminence grise behind the throne, July 14 has a resonance far beyond the fireworks of Bastille Day. Four loosely related events on that same day four years ago throw revealing light on key ingredients of the debacle in Iraq.

Monday, July 2, 2007
Unimpeachably Impeachable
(8 comments) The evidence has now grown beyond a reasonable doubt: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have committed impeachable offenses. In this guest essay, former CIA officer Ray McGovern writes that any lingering doubts in his mind were dispelled by a series in The Washington Post detailing Vice President Cheney's disdain for the law and the Constitution, with the buck also stopping on President Bush's desk

Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Four-letter Word for Tenet; : Liar
(4 comments) Tenet's book is a self-indictment for the crimes with which Socrates was charged: making the worse cause appear the better, and corrupting the youth. But George is not the kind to take the hemlock. Rather, with no apparent shame, he accepted what one wag has labeled the "Presidential Medal of Silence" in return for agreeing to postpone his Nixon-style "modified limited hangout" until after the mid-term elections last Nov.

Sunday, April 29, 2007
Sorry They’ve Been So Mean To You, George Tenet
(3 comments) George Tenet's book shows that he remains, first and foremost, a politician - with no clue as to the proper role of intelligence work. He is unhappy about going down in history as "Slam Dunk Tenet." Maybe Tenet was naive enough to believe that the president, whom he describes as a "kindred soul," would protect him from thugs like Vice President Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld...

Friday, March 9, 2007
Why Cheney Lost It When Joe Wilson Spoke Out
(1 comments) There was plenty else to enrage Dick Cheney. It is a safe bet that he went bananas when he learned that Joe Wilson's wife was a CIA officer - and working on the issue of highest priority, how to prevent countries like Iraq and Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction.

Monday, February 12, 2007
Are Bush and Cheney the Biggest Threats to Israel's Survival?
(5 comments) President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are unwittingly playing Dr. Jack Kevorkian in helping the state of Israel commit suicide.

Monday, February 12, 2007
Wake Up! The Next War Is Coming
Sen. Rockefeller, why not stop the war against Iran before it starts. You are chair of the intelligence committee. You don't have to be stonewalled, as previous chair Sen. Bob Graham was in 2002. Yes, he voted against the war in Iraq because he knew of the games being played with the intelligence. But he failed to play a leadership role; he didn't tell his 99 colleagues they were being diddled. It's time for some leadership.

Saturday, August 26, 2006
Hoekstra's Hoax: Just When You Thought You'd Seen Everything
With an Iran war as the target in his crosshairs House intelligence committee chair, Pete Hoekstra is blowing off the real intelligence of the intelligence community, pulling the same crap Cheney and the Office of Special Plans used to gin up the Iraq war with fraud, lies and distortions.

Saturday, August 19, 2006
The Constitution: Checking a Would-Be King
(1 comments) Who can forget the chutzpah of President George W. Bush as he bragged to Bob Woodward, "I'm commander in chief.... That's the interesting thing about being president...I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." Wrong, Mr. President. You and Vice President Cheney seem to have missed "Constitution 101."