In his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, General Michael Hayden promised to promote autonomy and objectivity in the CIA if confirmed as its new director. Hayden assured the senators he would provide “hard-edged assessments” and be tolerant of dissenting views on intelligence matters. “When it comes to speaking truth to power,” Hayden… Read more »
With much fanfare, Bush announced on Thursday his nomination of John D. Negroponte as the director of national intelligence. “John’s nomination comes in an historic moment for our intelligence services,” Bush proclaimed ceremoniously. Intelligence, he said, is now “the first line of defense” in the war on terrorism. Bush failed to mention that when Negroponte… Read more »
The Bush administration is gritting its collective teeth at the outcome of Sunday’s recall election in Venezuela, which overwhelmingly affirmed President Hugo Chavez’s tenure. If President Jimmy Carter had not lent his enormous credibility to the election results, Bush and his minions would surely be crying foul in unison with the opposition. Chavez was popularly… Read more »
On February 7, 2002, George W. Bush declared in an executive order that he could suspend the Geneva Conventions, which require that war prisoners receive humane treatment. Myriad news reports during the past month suggest that government interrogators took full advantage of that order to extract information from prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in… Read more »