October 2007

By David Swanson

If you haven’t already, you really should read Chris Hedges’ book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.” The portrait of war and wartime propaganda and emotion is brilliant and deadly accurate. But the headline is misleading. War does not give us lasting solid self-assured meaning. War gives us a temporary high that is rooted in desperate self-deception. Hedges’ book carries on the cover a photo of people with candles and U.S. flags, holding hands, read more

By David Swanson

If Bush and Cheney attack Iran, we will almost certainly know it’s coming. For months prior to the invasion of Iraq, even while the corporate media bombarded us with the pretense that Bush and Cheney had not yet decided on war, other stories further back in the pages of newspapers and on the internet informed us, or should have informed us, that an attack was coming.

Many of these stories involved the deployment of troops. (We were told that they were deploying “in read more

By David Swanson

Senator Chris Dodd on Thursday single-handedly blocked a bill to legalize unconstitutional spying and immunize criminals who have engaged in it. But by doing so, Dodd may have made the biggest blunder Washington has seen in many months. He advertised the fact that a single senator with nerve has the power to block a bill, including – of course – every bill to further fund the occupation of Iraq. Now, how will Dodd explain his past and future failure to use the same power read more

By David Swanson

On June 22, 2005, Democratic Senators Kerry, Johnson, Corzine, Reed, Lautenberg, Boxer, Kennedy, Harkin, Bingaman, and Durbin sent the following letter to the Republican Chairman and Democratic Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The letter stressed the urgent need for an investigation that over two years later has not been done. Only, now the Democrat is Chairman of the committee, and the other 10 Democrats have gone as silent as the dead.

June 22, 2005
The read more

By David Swanson

A constituent of Senator Jay Rockefeller, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent his office an article I wrote lamenting his failure to conduct over the past 10 months the investigation of White House war lies that he spent the previous three years criticizing the Republicans for not doing.

Rockefeller’s office replied thus: “The Committee is still working on a final report that examines public statements by government officials and whether they were supported read more