Bush

ANALYSIS: Bush will hand his successor a fait accompli on Iraq

by Paul Woodward 01.13.2008

Bush shakes up ’08 Iraq debate By Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, January 12, 2008 Camp Arifjan in the desert kingdom of Kuwait, America’s depot to the Iraq war, feels about as far away as you can get from South Carolina, Super Tuesday and the election-year squabbles back home. And George W. Bush, who is currently midway [...]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Bush — tough as Bambi in challenging Israel

by Paul Woodward 01.10.2008

Differing opinions fail to dent Israel’s love affair with Bush By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, January 10, 2008 The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, declared last night that Israel reserved the right to expand existing Jewish settlements in Arab East Jerusalem and in parts of the West Bank that it hopes to retain in any [...]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Bush’s trip notes

by Paul Woodward 01.09.2008

Bush’s last throw against Iran By M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, January 10, 2008 The leitmotif of Bush’s high-profile tour of the Middle East is unmistakably Iran. But Washington’s Iran policy lies in tatters and it has no choice but to ratchet up anti-Iran rhetoric, though it realizes there are no takers in the Middle [...]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: Bush heads to Middle East

by Paul Woodward 01.07.2008

Remember him? Bush begins Middle East tour By Leonard Doyle and Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, January 7, 2008 Voters in the United States may have switched their attention to the contest to find his successor, but George Bush will embark on an ambitious nine-day tour of the Middle East tomorrow in a last desperate effort [...]

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: What can’t be forgotten

by Paul Woodward 12.27.2007

Did Bush watch the torture tapes? By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December 27, 2007 … the sequence of statements out of the White House is extremely revealing. It started with firm denials, then went silent and then pulled back rather sharply to a “President Bush has no present recollection of having seen the tapes.” This is [...]

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OPINION: A bridge to the world; democratic renewal; world sick of Bush

by Paul Woodward 12.16.2007

The new face of America By Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times, December 16, 2007 Consider this hypothetical scenario. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man – Barack Hussein Obama – is the new face of America. In one simple image America’s soft power has been ratcheted up [...]

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OPINION: Bush’s real lie about Iran

by Paul Woodward 12.10.2007

Bush’s real lie about Iran By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, Salon, December 7, 2007 The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program raises questions once again about the Bush administration’s veracity in describing a nuclear threat. But President Bush’s worst misrepresentations about the Iranian nuclear issue do not focus on whether Tehran [...]

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OPINION: Torture is inevitably and inextricably bound to tyranny

by Paul Woodward 12.10.2007

The president-tyrant By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December 9, 2007 It is common for people today to question how any leader can be a tyrant who achieves office through popular election, and, indeed, who remains popular. But such talk is foolish and betrays an ignorance of the origins of the term and the historical context of [...]

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OPINION: Die-hard Bush supporters have a death grip on their party

by Paul Woodward 11.19.2007

Fighting words By George Packer, The New Yorker, November 26, 2007 As the tide goes out on President Bush’s foreign policy, the mass of flotsam left behind includes a Republican Party that no longer knows how to be reasonable. Whenever its leading Presidential candidates appear before partisan audiences, they try to outdo one another in [...]

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OPINION: A candidate for the world

by Paul Woodward 11.16.2007

Obama in orbit By Roger Cohen, New York Times, November 15, 2007 Little that is certain can be said about the U.S. election a year from now, but one certainty is this: about 6.3 billion people will not be voting even if they will be affected by the outcome. That’s the approximate world population outside [...]

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FEATURE: Dowd’s split with Bush

by Paul Woodward 11.15.2007

Bush strategist looks back in sadness By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2007 Matthew Dowd knows sorrow and loss. He has been divorced twice. A daughter died two months after she was born. And then there is the added heartbreak — a word he uses — of his split with President Bush. [...]

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NEWS: Blair’s pathetic choice

by Paul Woodward 10.31.2007

Revealed: how Blair rejected Bush’s offer to stay By Andrew Grice, The Independent, October 31, 2007 Tony Blair turned down a last-minute offer from President George Bush for Britain to stay out of the Iraq war because he thought it would look “pathetic”, according to a new book on Mr Blair’s tenure. Mr Bush was [...]

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OPINION: The terroriste-in-chief

by Paul Woodward 10.28.2007

Bush’s dangerous liaisons By François Furstenberg, New York Times, October 28, 2007 Much as George W. Bush’s presidency was ineluctably shaped by Sept. 11, 2001, so the outbreak of the French Revolution was symbolized by the events of one fateful day, July 14, 1789. And though 18th-century France may seem impossibly distant to contemporary Americans, [...]

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NEWS: The biggest spender since LBJ

by Paul Woodward 10.25.2007

Bush is the biggest spender since LBJ By David Lightman, McClatchy, October 24, 2007 George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he’s arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ. “He’s a big government guy,” [...]

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OPINION: The invention of a global threat

by Paul Woodward 10.22.2007

Stalin, Mao and … Ahmadinejad? By Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, October 20, 2007 At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” These were not [...]

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FEATURE: Bush’s return to the imperial strategy of the great powers of Europe

by Paul Woodward 10.22.2007

Bush’s neo-imperialist war By John B. Judis, The American Prospect, October 22, 2007 In 1882 the British occupied Egypt. Although they claimed they would withdraw their troops, the British remained, they said, at the request of the khedive, the ruler they had installed. The U.S. Army Area Handbook aptly describes the British decision to stay: [...]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: State-sanctioned torture

by Paul Woodward 10.04.2007

Secret U.S. endorsement of severe interrogations By Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen, New York Times, October 4, 2007 The administration had always asserted that the C.I.A.’s pressure tactics did not amount to torture, which is banned by federal law and international treaty. But officials had privately decided the agency did not have to [...]

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OPINION: Who will start the war on Iran?

by Paul Woodward 09.19.2007

Why Bush won’t attack Iran By Steven Clemons, Salon, September 19, 2007 During a recent high-powered Washington dinner party attended by 18 people, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran. Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter, said he believed Bush’s team had laid [...]

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NEWS: The coming war with Iran

by Paul Woodward 09.16.2007

Bush setting America up for war with Iran By Philip Sherwell and Tim Shipman, The Sunday Telegraph, September 16, 2007 Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. Pentagon [...]

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OPINION: Deceptive or delusional?

by Paul Woodward 09.15.2007

Bush’s appalling Iraq speech By Fred Kaplan, Slate, September 13, 2007 President Bush’s TV address tonight was the worst speech he’s ever given on the war in Iraq, and that’s saying a lot. Every premise, every proposal, nearly every substantive point was sheer fiction. The only question is whether he was being deceptive or delusional. [...]

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EDITORIAL: The future of democracy depends on abandoning the war metaphor

by Paul Woodward 08.03.2007

The future of democracy depends on abandoning the war metaphor By Paul Woodward, War in Context, August 3, 2007 If presidential candidates can’t come up with some intelligent foreign policy positions, it’s time that they followed State Department advice: shut up — at least for a while. In just three days we’ve heard candidates proposing [...]

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