NEWS: Book by anonymous al-Qaeda expert says to expect bin Laden strike to help re-elect Bush
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- Written by Jerry Gwizdka
On July 4 an extraordinary book will be published, written by an anonymous intelligence official who was an early Cassandra with respect to the danger of al-Qaeda in the mid-1990s, who is still a highly regarded employee of the intelligence establishment, and who has been centrally involved in the search for bin Laden. The fact that this critique of the Bush administration, entitled Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, is being published at all can be taken as a measure of the degree of frustration felt by senior intelligence officials, according to Julian Borger of the Guardian....
BOOK EXCERPT: <I>Guant·namo: What the World Should Know</I>
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- Written by Hank Berger
Michael Ratner is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing the Guant·namo detainees in the appeal that is currently before the Supreme Court. -- In an interview (1) that is part of a soon-to-be released book entitled Guant·namo: What the World Should Know, he says: "For nearly eight hundred years, since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, our laws have insisted that every single human being is entitled to some kind of judicial process before he or she can be thrown in jail. The United States is trying to overturn one of the most fundamental principles of Anglo-American jurisprudence and international law. This is a principle that is found in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights" -- not to mention the U.S. Constitution. -- As for the physical reality there, Ratner says: "Guant·namo is like Dante's ninth circle of hell. The temperature is often 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and of course the prisoners have no such thing as air conditioning. The place is infested by scorpions and banana rats. The detainees sleep on concrete floors, with no mattresses; the toilet is a hole in the ground. It is a horrific situation from a physical, psychological, and legal point of view." -- How is it that the United States could have built such a place? How can we allow our government to maintain and operate such a facility? What manner of people are we? And ultimately, what is Guant·namo doing to us? Michael Ratner says: "Bush's actions take us all back to the Inquisition; it really is medieval. We have to be aware that allowing Americans to engage in torture corrodes the moral fabric of our society. To the extent that a civilized society remains in this country, and to the extent that we have any remaining values, they are seriously endangered." -- Yet despite our veritable post-9/11 "descent into barbarism," Michael Ratner is resolutely optimistic: "The president and his cohorts, who have brought us to this state, are in trouble: trouble in Iraq and trouble in Guant·namo. That even the Supreme Court appears to think so is a cause for optimism. We are at the beginning of what will be a long struggle to repair the damage that the government has inflicted on us all." -- The scheduled publication date of Guant·namo: What the World Should Know is June 29. -- Following the interview, some information about Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray, the book's authors, from the publisher. (2) ...
BOOK EXTRACT: How Cheney rose to power (from <I>Rise of the Vulcans</I>)
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- Written by Donna Quexada
James Mann's well researched Rise of the Vulcans traces the careers of the key figures in George W. Bush's war cabinet. He has this to say about how Dick Cheney rose to preeminence....