Category: Politics

This story Salon.com | The Ted Koppel I knew: Ted was at that time the State Department correspondent for ABC News, and I decided to call him for lunch to talk about the six-month trip to Indochina I had just returned from — particularly the new evidence I had amassed that the ongoing Kissinger-led bombing in Cambodia was continuing to murder civilians…. I still remember the friendliness and warmth of Ted’s jovial greeting when I called him up for lunch, and my awe as I entered the beautiful State Department restaurant, filled with important domestic and international dignitaries.After 15 minutes or so of pleasantries and reminiscences, I brought up the flattering book on Kissinger that had just been published by the brothers Marvin and Bernard Kalb, who worked for NBC and CBS News respectively.

Still, it served U.S. interests very well when opposition parties boycotted the 1994 Nicaraguan elections and when opposition parties boycotted the 2000 elections in Haiti. In each case, the boycott set the stage, in international opinion, to de-legitimize and smooth the path for the eventual defeat of left-leaning governments.

Salon.com News & Politics | War Room: Asked about torture by Iraqi authorities, Rumsfeld said that “obviously, the United States does not have a responsibility” beyond objecting…. Pace fired back: “If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.”

Third, the vice president’s chief of staff — Lewis “Scooter” Libby — has been indicted for disclosing the status of undercover intelligence officers to the press, a charge that may well be pressed against political mastermind Karl Rove, and perhaps even the vice president himself…. His foreign policy agenda is weighed down by the albatross of Iraq, and since congressional Republican leadership is keeping its distance from the president, his legislative agenda has not so much as budged in months.

Salon.com News | Rerouting the bridges to nowhere: While the two bridges had already achieved some notoriety prior to the transportation bill’s passage, after Katrina hit, the notion of spending federal money on infrastructure that would serve so few in such a remote area struck many as outrageous. It sparked some rather dramatic infighting among Republicans.In late October, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., attempted to divert money from the bridge projects in favor of repairing a hurricane-damaged bridge in New Orleans.

In addition to Armitage, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, they were Elliot Abrahms (senior director for near east, southwest Asian and North African affairs on the National Security Council); John Bolton (undersecretary, Arms Control and International Security); Paula Dobriansky (undersecretary of state for global affairs); Zalmay Khalilzad (president’s special envoy to Afghanistan and ambassador-at-large for Free Iraqis); Richard Perle (chair of the Pentagon’s semi-autonomous Defense Policy Board); Peter W…. Lewis Libby (Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff), William Luti and Abram Shulsky (eventually, directors of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans), James Woolsey (Defense Policy Board), and David Wurmser (special assistant to the undersecretary of state for arms control).

News: “If the report is correct then this would be both shocking and worrisome not only to Al-Jazeera but to media organizations across the world,” it said.The network said that if true the report would “cast serious doubts” on the Bush administration’s explanations of earlier incidents involving Al-Jazeera journalists and the American military.Peter Kilfoyle, a former defense minister in Blair’s government, called for the document to be made public.”I think they ought to clarify what exactly happened on this occasion,” he said. “If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn’t embedded with coalition forces.”