NEWS AND COMMENT
A Random Review of Recent News
New York - A Jury Fails to Convict Gotti.
This is news?
Fox Network - Former President Bill Clinton transformed an interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” into a finger-pointing tirade against what he called a “conservative hit job.”
Clinton did lose his temper. And against such a “fair and balanced” organization. Then, Condoleezza Rice disputed Mr. Clinton’s assertion that he had tried harder to get Bin Laden than the Bush administration did before 9/11. This, from “mushroom cloud” Rice who, along with Bush, failed to heed warnings in the briefing about Bin Laden’s planning to attack U.S.
he Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart.
The construction of this building must have been led by one of those Bush appointees whose only qualification was opposition to
Roe v. Wade
And, last week, we also had the interesting spectacle of a head of state, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, shilling on various talk shows for a book he had just written. Most presidents do this after leaving office.
President Bush condemned the leak of information from the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism that was produced in April stating that the war in Iraq had increased the threat from terrorists. He claimed that the Iraq war had made the world safer and said he would declassify parts of the report to prove his point. But the report concluded that The Iraq conflict has become the "cause celebre" for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. My goodness, it even used a French word to expose the Bush administration’s loose interpretation of the truth.
After Senator McCain and his group caved in to Vice President Cheney and the White House, the Senate passed the legislation for detainee interrogations and trials. The group did preserve the façade of compliance with the Geneva Conventions and some protection at trials, However, Mr. Bush does get to designate “enemy combatants” and to approve harsh interrogation. Coerced testimony may be admitted at trials and, worst of all, the legislation remove the right of habeas corpus, a doctrine that goes back 900 years to the Magna Carta.
So, Republicans were heartened by this legislation and also by approval of fences along the border with Mexico. Offsetting all that was the resignation of Representative Foley because of his sexually suggestive e-mails to his young male pages, and who knows what else. Worst of all, his conduct was known by the Republican leadership for almost a year.
They left him in place, free to engage in unlawful and damaging conduct. Shades of cover up; shades of the problems faced by the Catholic Church.
