Sandyenglish’s NewsCloud Journal

An 80-page study written by two British security analysts and released on August 28 makes a chilling estimation of the overwhelming force that the US would use in the event of any attack on Iran. “The US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days, if not hours, of President George W. Bush giving the order,” the paper declared.

Read the full story

Police in the Australian state of New South Wales launched a major operation yesterday aimed at intimidating high school students protesting against the Iraq war and US President George Bush. Along with 20 other world leaders, Bush is in Australia for this week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Read the full story

The Bush administration and its co-thinkers, seeking the best way to distract the populace from the facts of the Iraq occupation, an economy on the rocks, a collapsing national infrastructure, the ongoing devastation in New Orleans and other scandals too numerous to mention, have inaugurated a new public relations exercise.

Read the full story

In his second foreign policy speech in less than a week, President Bush Tuesday portrayed the ongoing US military occupation in Iraq as part of a broader regional struggle to defend vital US interests against “radicals and extremists.”

Read the full story

A New York Times article published Sunday reports that a dispute within the Bush administration over its domestic spying programs in 2004 centered on so-called “data mining” operations. These programs involve accessing massive databases of communications logs—both foreign and domestic—to search for links and associations between tens of millions of people.

Read the full story

A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a report that synthesizes the findings of Washington’s 16 separate spy agencies, warns that the US faces a “heightened threat environment” for terrorist attacks. The Bush administration’s release of the report strongly suggests that the US government is seeking to justify new military interventions in both Pakistan and Iran, as well as stepped up domestic surveillance and other forms of state repression at home.

Read the full story

As Senate Democratic leaders moved Tuesday to stage an all-night session devoted to votes on supposedly “anti-war” measures that have no chance of passage, the Bush administration has dropped a series of hints that it plans to intensify rather than reduce the violence in Iraq.

Read the full story

At President Bush’s July 11 press conference a significant exchange took place that has received very little media attention. Edwin Chen, who writes for Bloomberg.com, asked Bush, “How hard is it for you to conduct the war without popular support? Do you ever have trouble balancing between doing what you think is the right thing and following the will of the majority of the public, which is the essence of democracy?”

Read the full story

The Thursday morning press conference by President Bush demonstrated the unbridgeable gulf between the Washington political and media elite, who reflect the interests of the US financial aristocracy, and the vast majority of working people, who are increasingly opposed to the war in Iraq and the administration that perpetrated it.

Read the full story

President Bush’s commutation of the 30-month prison sentence of I. Lewis Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is a monument to the lawlessness of the Bush administration and the utter corruption of the American ruling elite.

Read the full story