Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 172

Why don't the powerful get grilled like this?

Rachel Maddow today is receiving well-deserved praise for a devastating interview she conducted last night with Richard Cohen, an "ex-homosexual" therapist who is head of the "International Healing Foundation," which purportedly helps gay people become straight.  Cohen's rancid slander against gay people (they're a threat to children, etc.), masquerading as "research," is being used by advocates of a proposed law in Uganda that would allow the state to execute homosexuals.  The 17-minute...

Rachel Maddow's well-deserved demolition of her guest

Rachel Maddow today is receiving well-deserved praise for a devastating interview she conducted last night with Richard Cohen, an "ex-homosexual" therapist who is head of the "International Healing Foundation," which purportedly helps gay people become straight.  Cohen's rancid slander against gay people (they're a threat to children, etc.), masquerading as "research," is being used by advocates of a proposed law in Uganda that would allow the state to execute homosexuals.  The 17-minute...

Tony Blair's taxi-derived "45-minute" WMD claim

(updated below)

The British are conducting an actual public investigation into the litany of false claims made by their government to justify the attack on Iraq.  Even for those who have long known it, the disclosures are underscoring just how truly criminal this deceit was:

An Iraqi taxi driver may have been the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.
Adam Holloway, a defence...

Blair's taxi-derived "45-minute" WMD claim

The British are conducting an actual public investigation into the litany of false claims made by their government to justify the attack on Iraq.  Even for those who have long known it, the disclosures are underscoring just how truly criminal this deceit was:

An Iraqi taxi driver may have been the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.
Adam Holloway, a defence specialist, said MI6 obtained...

My friend the president

Over the past couple of days, Andrew Sullivan has linked to and published protests from various individuals who are quite angry that people "on the left" are being so mean to President Obama, and several of them are so upset that they have decided they are "leaving the left," whatever that might mean.  What's most striking about these valiant defenses of Obama is how utterly devoid they are of any substantive points and how, instead, suffuse with weird, even inappropriate, emotional...

A new report questions "suicides" at Guantanamo

(updated below)

On the night of June 10, 2006, three Guantanamo detainees were found dead in their individual cells.  Without any autopsy or investigation, U.S. military officials proclaimed "suicide by hanging" as the cause of each death, and immediately sought to exploit the episode as proof of the evil of the detainees.  Admiral Harry Harris, the camp's commander, said it showed "they have no regard for life" and that the suicides were "not an act of desperation, but an act of...

Do Obama officials know what his Afghanistan plan is?

On the vital question of whether Obama is committed to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July, 2011 -- or whether that's just an aspirational target subject to being moved -- the statements from key administration officials aren't merely in tension with one another, but are exact opposites:

Agence France-Press, yesterday:

President Barack Obama's administration said that a July 2011 target date to begin withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan was not set in stone. Secretary...

America's regression

Ronald Reagan, May 20, 1988, transmitting the Convention Against Torture to the Senate for ratification:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. . . . Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.
The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal...

The commendably missing element from Obama's speech

(updated below)

Comparing video clips of George Bush's 2002 West Point speech on Afghanistan with the one Barack Obama delivered last night, Rachel Maddow argues that Obama has now embraced the fundamentals of the dreaded "Bush Doctrine":  namely, we will fight wars even in countries that are not posing any threat to us in order to prevent some future threat that may (or may not) emerge.  Rachel makes a persuasive albeit not conclusive case:  like most Obama decisions, last night...

Obama's exceedingly familiar justifications for escalation

In order to prepare Americans for Obama's Afghanistan escalation speech tonight at West Point (at least he's not wearing a fighter pilot costume), White House officials have been dispatched to speak to the media (anonymously, of course) to preview all of the new and exciting aspects of the President's plan.  As a result, media accounts are filled with claims that there are major changes ordered by Obama that will transform our approach there.

But to anyone with a memory that extends back...