Topic: Bush administration

Lugo on the military: No draft, no way!

By Chris Lugo | April 20, 2008 |

My father is a Vietnam Veteran. He was an officer in ROTC in 1968 while he was in college and went to Vietnam as a Lieutenant the year I was born. My father felt an obligation to his country and a duty to serve when called. I was born in a snowstorm in rural Minnesota while my father was halfway around the world in the jungles of Vietnam. I am proud of my father and his service to my country.

When I was a teenager, going to private Catholic school, I was approached by military recruiters. I was encouraged to join the military and to enlist in the ROTC program, much like my father had been. For whatever reason, I declined. I was not yet a peace activist like I became after the first Gulf War, but something in my instincts told me that I could not serve in the military the way my father had served.

In 1990, while I was enrolled at the University of Minnesota, George Bush Sr. began beating the drums of war. I was enrolled in the selective service program at that time in order to get student loans to go to college. I remember clearly the night the bombs began to drop in Iraq for the first time. I was living in the student district of Minneapolis and there had been anti-war activity on campus leading up to the invasion. Students were busy organizing against the campus military center, sometimes called the stockade, holding demonstrations and putting anti-war material in front of the recruiting and training center. «Read the rest of this article»

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‘Taxi to the Dark Side’ details U.S. torture

By Bill Larson | December 19, 2007 |

From the director of “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side is a gripping investigation into the reckless abuse of power by the Bush Administration.

By probing the homicide of an innocent taxi driver at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, the film exposes a worldwide policy of detention and interrogation that condones torture and the abrogation of human rights. This disturbing and often brutal film is the most incisive examination to date of the Bush Administration’s willingness, in its prosecution of the “war on terror,” to undermine the essence of the rule of law. The film asks and answers a key question: what happens when a few men expand the wartime powers of the executive to undermine the very principles on which the United States was founded.

Incorporating rare and never-before-seen images from inside the Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons, and interviews with former government officials such as John Yoo, Alberto Mora and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, interrogators, prison guards, New York Times reporters Tim Golden and Carlotta Gall (who wrote the first stories about the homicides in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan) and the families of tortured prisoners, the film dissects the progression of the Administration’s policy on torture from the secret role of key administration figures, such as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and others to the soldiers in the field.

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Sections: Arts and Leisure | 1 Comment »

The resurrection of Habeas Corpus

By Bill Larson | January 24, 2007 |

We posted several articles in the past about the Republican Congress and the Bush Administration taking away the right of Habeas Corpus from American citizens in clear violation of the constitutional prohibitions against suspending it.

Nothing could be less American than a government that can indefinitely hold people in secret torture cells, take away their protections against horrific and cruel abuse, put them on trial based on evidence that they cannot see, sentence them to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and then slam shut the courthouse door for any habeas petition, but that’s exactly what Congress just approved. - Christopher Anders, an ACLU Legislative Counsel

Here’s a video clip showing what a difference having a Democrat controlled House and Senate will do for you!

No more and never again!

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ACLU Report Shows Widespread Pentagon Surveillance of Peace Activists

By Bill Larson | January 17, 2007 |

NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today released a new report revealing that the Pentagon monitored at least 186 anti-military protests in the United States and collected more than 2,800 reports involving Americans in an anti-terrorist threat database.

Pentagon Tracked at Least 186 Anti-Military Protests

“It cannot be an accident or coincidence that nearly 200 anti-war protests ended up in a Pentagon threat database,” said Ann Beeson, Associate Legal Director of the ACLU. “This unchecked surveillance is part of a broad pattern of the Bush administration using ‘national security’ as an excuse to run roughshod over the privacy and free speech rights of Americans.”

«Read the rest of this article»

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Did Warmonger Bush Declare “Secret War” Against Syria and Iran?

By Bill Larson | January 13, 2007 |

Did the President Declare “Secret War” Against Syria and Iran?
by Washington Note for Indybay.
Thursday Jan 11th, 2007 6:27 PM

The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country.

Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.

The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country. «Read the rest of this article»

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New Orleans: Big Easy to Big Empty

By Bill Larson | October 29, 2006 |

August 29th, 2006 marked the one year anniversary of the devastation in New Orleans caused by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This Special Report brings you exclusive footage and the stories you won’t hear on the other networks–the hidden political agendas and the suppressed eyewitness reports. Includes on-the-spot reporting from independent journalist Greg Palast. «Read the rest of this article»

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9/11 Conspiracy Theories

By Bill Larson | September 24, 2006 |

I frequently review the top 100 videos on both Google video, and Youtube, looking for interesting materials to share with the readers of this website. I look at the dross, so that you don’t have to.

Since September 11th there have been those who say that what we actually saw, may not have been what we thought. Videos on this subject have been in the top 100 videos on Google video for a long time. Well after a new one recently appeared in to the top 100 videos, I felt that perhaps we should all take a look. I make no judgments on the content of these videos. I don’t advocate for them or against them, consider this simply an exercise in constructive reasoning.

«Read the rest of this article»

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NSA’s Warrantless Domestic Surveillance UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

By Bill Larson | August 17, 2006 |

Judge orders program to be halted!

It’s just coming out, MSNBC and the AP are reporting that U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has ruled that the President’s warrantless domestic spying program is unconstitutional, and that she has ordered an immediate halt to it.

This is a serious rebuke to the Bush Administrations, and their attempt to use the State secret privilege to block an independent judicial review of the legality of this program. This is something that other judges need to take note of as well. «Read the rest of this article»

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