Salon.com > george bush

“Indisputable” that U.S. practiced torture after 9/11

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:23:00 +0000

While a 6,000-page Senate report on the CIA's use of extraordinary rendition and enhanced interrogation remains shrouded from public view, a new report released Tuesday by a legal research and advocacy group states, in no uncertain terms, that the U.S. practiced torture in the years following 9/11. As the New York Times noted, the report from the Constitution Project "is the most ambitious independent attempt to date to assess the detention and interrogation programs." Based on interviews with former American and foreign officials, as well as former detainees, the report investigated the post-9/11 treatment of suspects at at Guantánamo Bay, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and at CIA black sites.

Not only did the task force conclude that U.S. use of torture was "indisputable" but that “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.”

Via the NYT:

Alexandra Pelosi: “If it’s guilt or shame — Jim McGreevey’s actually doing some good in the world”

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:08:00 +0000

Alexandra Pelosi doesn't come to a film festival struggling to woo backers or hoping to attract distributors. For the past 13 years, the youngest child of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has been employed by HBO, which has enabled her to make the documentaries that have compelled her most and cover the kinds of political topics that keep America up late at night: homelessness, immigration and naturalization, the evangelical community and, with her latest film, women’s jails, recidivism, homosexuality in the Catholic and Episcopal churches and, in no small measure, redemption. Best known for getting on the campaign bus with then-presidential candidate George W. Bush for her Emmy-winning “Journeys with George” to her doc about the closeted evangelical, "The Trials of Ted Haggard," she has just arrived at Sundance to present her latest documentary, “Fall to Grace,” an 18-month study of former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey.

George H.W. Bush in intensive care

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 23:49:00 +0000

A spokesman says former President George H.W. Bush is in the intensive care unit at a Houston hospital.

Bush's spokesman, Jim McGrath, said Wednesday evening that the former president has been in the ICU at Methodist Hospital since Sunday.

A bronchitis-like cough initially brought Bush to the hospital on Nov. 23.

McGrath says the cough has improved, and that the 88-year-old is now coughing about once a day.

A "stubborn" fever that kept former President George H.W. Bush in a hospital over Christmas has gotten worse, and doctors have put him on a liquids-only diet, his spokesman said Wednesday.

"It's an elevated fever, so it's actually gone up in the last day or two," McGrath told The Associated Press. "It's a stubborn fever that won't go away."

Doctors at Methodist Hospital in Houston have run tests and are treating the fever with Tylenol, but they still haven't nailed down a cause, McGrath said. Doctors also have put Bush on a liquid diet, though McGrath could not say why.

Positive thinking is for suckers!

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:00:00 +0000

The man who claims that he is about to tell me the secret of human happiness is eighty-three years old, with an alarming orange tan that does nothing to enhance his credibility. It is just after eight o'clock on a December morning, in a darkened basketball stadium on the outskirts of San Antonio, and -- according to the orange man -- I am about to learn 'the one thing that will change your life forever." I'm skeptical, but not as much as I might normally be, because I am only one of more than fifteen thousand people at Get Motivated!, America's "most popular business motivational seminar," and the enthusiasm of my fellow audience members is starting to become infectious.

"So you wanna know?" asks the octogenarian, who is Dr. Robert H. Schuller, veteran self-help guru, author of more than thirty-five books on the power of positive thinking, and, in his other job, the founding pastor of the largest church in the United States constructed entirely out of glass. The crowd roars its assent. Easily embarrassed British people like me do not, generally speaking, roar our assent at motivational seminars in Texas basketball stadiums, but the atmosphere partially overpowers my reticence. I roar quietly.

Jeb Bush: He blames my brother

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 14:58:00 +0000

At a Romney campaign rally in Coral Gables, Fla. yesterday, Gov. Jeb Bush criticized President Barack Obama's inability to unite people. Bush said, "His entire strategy is to blame others -- starting with my brother, of course." He added, "Basically, he blames every possible thing rather than having the humility to be able to reach out and to find common ground."

Video via Politico