Salon.com > Compiled by Mark Follman

Marching off the cliff

Tue, 25 May 2004 23:47:00 +0000

Michael Lind, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of "Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics."

George W. Bush began and ended his speech with a brazen lie. He claimed that the United States is in Iraq to fight al-Qaida.

Before the war, Bush, Cheney and the neoconservatives did all they could to convince the American people that there was some link between Saddam Hussein's tyranny in Iraq and al-Qaida. They succeeded in deceiving a large number of Americans. Now Bush is trying the same trick again. He is trying to justify his failed and unnecessary war in Iraq by parading, once again, the corpses of those murdered by Osama bin Laden and his followers in New York, Washington and Bali. The shamelessness of George W. Bush is matched only by his contempt for the intelligence of the American people.

Near the beginning of his address, the president claimed: "Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror." The United States must prevail in Iraq to deny "the terrorists" a "base of operation" -- a reference to al-Qaida, presumably, with its need for bases for worldwide operations. As if to underline the implication that Iraq, like Afghanistan, had been a "base" for al-Qaida, Bush said: "This will be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power."

Fox vs. Franken

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 01:40:00 +0000

Fox News [Network], the owner and operator of the world famous Fox News Channel ("FNC"), is the owner of a federal trademark registration in the mark "Fair & Balanced". Fox News has used the mark "Fair & Balanced", sometimes depicted as "Fair and Balanced", (the "Trademark") to distinguish and brand FNC's distinctive method of newsgathering and reporting since its well-publicized launch in October 1996. "Fair & Balanced" has been a registered trademark of Fox News since December 22, 1998. Fox News has made continuous use of the Trademark since 1996, and the mark has become a signature slogan of FNC.

Fox News employs a variety of on-air news personalities to give FNC its distinctive, number-one rated position in the national cable news marketplace. Prominent among those news personalities is Bill O'Reilly ("O'Reilly"), who is the host of cable television news's number-one rated program "The O'Reilly Factor." ...

The world press on Uday and Qusay

Thu, 24 Jul 2003 20:13:00 +0000

United Kingdom, Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian

He was a monster even by the standards of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a sadist with a taste for cruelty so extreme that even his father was forced to acknowledge that his first-born son would not be a worthy heir.

And yet for all that Uday Saddam Hussein symbolised the brutality of the Iraqi regime, his powers were severely circumscribed. Although he retained the privileges of the much-indulged son of a dictator, he was shunted from the real centres of power in the military and security services by his quieter, younger brother Qusay.

Although Uday nominally had a role in politics -- following his election to parliament with 99% of the vote in 1999 -- he was studiously absent from Iraqi television during the dying days of the regime. It was clear controllers realised that showing too many pictures of the most hated man in Iraq was hardly going to spur resistance.