Since Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the USA, he has largely remained out of sight, getting high-level government briefings and conferring with his transition team. But he eventually surfaced, alongside his wife Michelle to give 60 Minutes his first post-election interview.
While advocating regulatory reform and new rules on accounting and fraud, President George W. Bush yesterday said world leaders should rely on capitalism and free markets to see them through the financial turmoil.
A hour with linguist, political activist & writer Noam Chomsky. He talks about the crisis in the Middle East and the communicative power of Internet. Professor Chomsky also discusses his book, "America's Quest for Global Dominance".
Colombia extradited 14 paramilitary warlords to the United States to stand trial on drug trafficking charges in a surprise move applauded by the Bush administration.
What do the arch hawks of the Bush administration, such as Paul Wolfowitz, have in common with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard?
Answer: they both fêted Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi banker who put “regime change” in Baghdad at the top of US agenda. Chalabi attracts adoration and enmity in equal measure and has courted controversy through his life.
Chalabi comes across here as a charismatic, Machiavellian individual, fascinated with the world of intelligence from the beginning. He moved the Washington establishment towards the invasion of Iraq but appears to have paid no thought about what to do afterwards, except that he wanted a central role.
There is much detail here about how he took tens of millions of dollars, first from the CIA, with whom he fell out; then from the State department, with whom he fell out; and then from the defence department, with whom he fell out. Government auditors struggled in vain to discover how this money was spent.
Chalabi often promised more than he delivered. He was to provide troops for the Free Iraqi Forces, which the Pentagon would train to enter Iraq.
A training centre was established, where 1,100 US soldiers and trainers waited, but Chalabi sent nobody. The programme cost an estimated $200m and the number of Iraqis trained was, in the words of a general, “teeny-tiny”.
Via FT
Former world chess champion Bobby-Fischer, considered by many to be the greatest player of all time, has died at the age of 64.
American-born Fischer was the US's first and only world chess champion, winning the title in the classic Cold War showdown against Russian Boris Spassky in 1972.
Fischer - the youngest international grandmaster ever at 15 - settled in Iceland in 2005 having been granted citizenship after eight months in detention in Japan.
Via ITN
E-mail messages sent and received by White-House personnel during the first three years of the Bush-administration were routinely "recycled,".
During the period in question, the Bush presidency faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Iraq-war.Two federal statutes require presidential-communications, including e-mails involving senior White House aides, to be preserved for the nation's historical record.
Some historians responded to the court disclosure yesterday by urging that the White House's actions be thoroughly probed.
"There certainly could have been hugely important-materials there . . . and of course they're not owned by President Bush or anybody in the administration, they're owned by the public," said presidential historian Robert-Dallek.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any E-mails were deliberately destroyed.
The court filing said tapes were recycled before October 2003, and at that point, the White House "began preserving and storing all backup tapes."
Via Washington-Post
"Apocalypse Now" remains an important artistic-statement. The title of the movie appears as graffiti late in the film, which reads, "Our motto: Apocalypse Now".
President George W. Bush is to answer-questions submitted through the official White House Website about his week-long trip to the Middle-East.
Via AFP
A US soldier from the 2nd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, plays with a young girl during a patrol in Baghdad, 13 January 2008.
After talks yesterday with General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Iraq, and US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan-Crocker, US President Geroge W. Bush told reporters that his goal of reducing troop numbers in Iraq by July was on track but called on Syria and Iran to stop fuelling-violence in Iraq.
> AFP/Getty Images
It's one of the biggest air-strikes in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The US military says it carried out a 10-minute bombardment of suspected Al-Qaeda safehavens.
The Bush administration is building its new-case to stay in Iraq as a war against Al-Qaeda. However, it is not the largest group fighting in Iraq-today.
Six years ago today, the most-depressing icons of the 21st century opened.
On January 11, 2002, the first of nearly 800 prisoners arrived at a hastily erected prison in the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
It was there that the Bush administration unveiled its novel approach to justice in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Declaring that the prisoners were the "worst of the worst," President George W. Bush insisted that he had the right to hold them not as prisoners of war protected by the Geneva-Conventions, but as "unlawful enemy combatants," who could be imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial.
As hundreds of detainees arrived at Guantanamo in early 2002, the government's rhetoric was undermined when Brigadier General Mike-Lehnert, the prison's first commander, admitted, "A large number claim to be Taleban, a smaller number we have been able to confirm as Al-Qaeda, and a rather large number in the middle we have not been able to determine their status."
Nevertheless, the story of Guantanamo on its sixth anniversary is not as grim as it could have been. Through diplomatic negotiations, and to a lesser extent decisions made in the tribunals, 492-detainees have now been released from Guantanamo, and the majority are at liberty in their home countries.
Via Daily-Star, Lebanon
Simon Reeve looks into the reasons behind the war in Iraq, from oil to the petro-dollar, to US supremacy and finishes with the Iranian oil bourse.
Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards fought in Iowa's presidential caucus, a multimillion-dollar exercise.
Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee vied for the Republicans.
With President Bush constitutionally barred from seeking re-election, both parties had wide-open, costly campaigns. Obama, Clinton and Edwards spent at least $19 million on television advertising among them.
Obama, a first-term Illinois senator, stressed a need for change as he campaigned to become the first black president in history.
Arizona Sen. John McCain, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson were also on the ballot, although their aides made no claim they were in the running for a first-place finish. So, too, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who largely abandoned the state in the campaign's final days.
Via Guardian-Unlimited
Professor Alfred McCoy talks about his book "A Question of Torture", a startling expose of the CIA development of psychological torture.
