By Tom Engelhardt, Alternet Sometimes, numbers can strip human beings of just about everything that makes us what we are. Numbers can silence pain, erase love, obliterate emotion, and blur individuality. But sometimes numbers can also tell a necessary story in ways nothing else can. This January, President Bush announced his “surge” plan for Iraq,…
By Justin Rood, ABC News The U.S. government has committed to spend a record-high $1.1 trillion with companies holding government contracts “plagued by waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement,” according to a new report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The report blames the rise in bad spending on a sharp increase in noncompetitive…
Associated Press The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office Wednesday for documents relating to President Bush’s warrant-free eavesdropping program. Also named in subpoenas signed by committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., were the Justice Department and the National Security Council. The committee wants documents that might shed light on…
Patrick McElwee, Just Foreign Policy Blog Since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2004, there has been widespread speculation that the abuses captured in the shocking photos were more than the work of a few “bad apples.” Historian Alfred McCoy, who has written a history of CIA interrogation practices, noted that the practices at Abu…
