Sunday, November 25, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Bush More Emphatic In Backing Musharraf
President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."
Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Musharraf's government yesterday released about 3,000 political prisoners, although 2,000 remain in custody, according to the Interior Ministry.
Taliban control half of Afghanistan
The Senlis Council claimed that the insurgents controlled "vast swathes of unchallenged territory" and were gaining "more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people".
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Bush Is In Legal Jeopardy for Torture
Though it failed to send his nomination the way of Robert Bork, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey's evasiveness on the definition of torture has done something historic. It has made it unmistakably clear to mainstream observers that the President may be criminally liable for violating anti-torture laws. Criminal liability of this White House will have wider repercussions than Mr. Mukasey's confirmation. It will reverberate through his tenure as Attorney General, and beyond the end of the Bush administration.
We now know the reason why Mr. Mukasey refused to acknowledge that waterboarding meets the legal definition of torture, or at the very least cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment clearly had nothing to do with not being briefed about the procedure. If he didn't know at the time of the Senate committee hearing, he certainly learned afterwards that the US considered waterboarding criminal and prosecuted it for at least a century. The real reason, as to mainstream news analysts now acknowledge, was that publicly admitting waterboarding is torture or cruel and inhuman would have put the President in jeopardy of criminal charges.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Vetoes Domestic Spending Bill
President George W. Bush vetoed a major spending measure on Tuesday that would have funded education, health care and job training programs, saying it contained too many special projects, even as he signed a $459 billion bill to increase the Pentagon's non-war funding.
The veto, of a measure providing $150.7 billion in discretionary spending for the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services, was announced as Bush was en route to southern Indiana to deliver an economics speech at which, his spokeswoman said, he would criticize Congress for its "wasteful spending."