Bush Administration

Next week, the Senate will most likely take up some version of a resolution opposing the deployment of about 20,000 additional U.S. troops in Iraq - either the one approved Wednesday by the Foreign Relations Committee or a substantially similar measure drawn up by Virginia Republican John W. Warner. The vote is almost certain to go against the Bush administration, and the White House is trying to salvage what it can by trying to portray the resolution as a partisan "Democrat" potshot. So the spotlight falls on those Republicans who are sensible enough to acknowledge that this is not the time to escalate the war. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is in the forefront; he was the one Republican who voted with the Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee proposal, angrily declaring that the time has come for every senator to take a stand.

Wiretapping cave-in demeans Democrats In his column "Cowardly Democrats give in to president on NSA wiretapping" (Opinion * Commentary, Aug. 13), Bill Press notes that Congress "with the help of 16 Senate Democrats passed emergency legislation to authorize [President] Bush's past illegal, warrantless wiretaps" and thus "rewarded Mr. Bush's lawless behavior and gave him a free pass to continue doing legally what he had been doing illegally." As Mr. Press adds, "doing so was a huge, cowardly, shameful cop-out."

PHILADELPHIA -- The Bush administration has been rightly and roundly criticized for its failure to plan for the post-Saddam Hussein era. That failure produced the Iraq chaos that has trapped us all. But historians will be equally harsh on those, including members of Congress, who want U.S. troops to leave Iraq but don't plan for what comes after. They will be guilty of the same willful blindness that got us into the current mess. Democrats who want to wind down the war are mostly focused on troop numbers.

WASHINGTON --The Bush administration will inform Congress tomorrow that Israel might have violated agreements with the United States when it fired U.S.-supplied cluster munitions into southern Lebanon during its fight with Hezbollah last summer, the State Department said yesterday. The finding, though preliminary, has prompted a contentious debate within the administration over whether the United States should penalize Israel for its use of cluster munitions against towns and villages where Hezbollah had placed its rocket launchers.

Takeover The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy By Charlie Savage Little, Brown and Company / 336 pages / $25.99 After Sept. 11, we've been told, everything changed. Civil liberties had to be balanced against personal safety and national security. Since information is power, government officials had to conduct some of their business in secret. And for the duration of "the war on terror," the president had to be free to act rapidly and resolutely, at home and abroad, unfettered by Congress and the courts.

WASHINGTON -- Six human rights groups released yesterday a list of 39 people they believe have been secretly imprisoned by the United States and whose whereabouts are unknown, calling on the Bush administration to abandon such detentions. The list, compiled from news media reports, interviews and government documents, includes terrorism suspects and those thought to have ties to militant groups. In some suspects' cases, officials acknowledge that they were at one time in U.S. custody. In others, the rights groups say, there is other evidence, sometimes sketchy, that they had at least once been in American hands.

WASHINGTON -- More than 11,000 children in Maryland - and hundreds of thousands nationwide - are at risk of losing health coverage under a Bush administration plan that would scale back a popular program considered key to state efforts at protecting the uninsured. As part of his plan to balance the federal budget within five years, President Bush wants to narrow the scope of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, widely regarded as a recent health-care success story. The decade-old children's program will expire later this year if Congress does not vote to keep it running - an outcome no one envisions.

Capitol Hill is abuzz over allegations of vigilantism and recklessness by U.S. contractors in Iraq. But reports that Blackwater USA has operated outside the law could turn out to be a window into a much larger Bush administration scandal. Largely unnoticed over the last seven years, President Bush has increased the number of contractors working for the federal government at an unprecedented rate. And as the Blackwater debacle shows, the federal government is not equipped or prepared to exercise proper oversight over this vastly expanded, federally empowered work force.

That day two years ago when Hurricane Katrina advanced on the Gulf Coast with deadly fury marked the beginning of the end of many Americans' faith in the Bush administration to protect them. Weather alerts went largely unheeded by the White House and emergency agencies. Warnings that were passed on to those in harm's way were delivered with no sense of the limitations on people too poor to escape. New Orleans, sitting in a land basin between two bodies of water, never had been provided the protection it needed.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has decided to send an unusually tough message to one of his most important allies, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces became far more aggressive in hunting down al-Qaida operatives, senior administration officials say. The decision came after the White House concluded that Musharraf is failing to live up to commitments he...

With the economy still sputtering, unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and health care reform under attack, it's little wonder President Barack Obama isn't eager for a distracting debate over the Bush administration's policy on torture to extract information from suspected terrorists. But a report released Monday revealing new details of the abuses carried out by the agency shows why Mr. Obama will have to tackle the subject. Indeed, within hours of the report's release, the Justice Department announced a criminal probe of alleged detainee abuses, and the White House said it will assume direct control of interrogations of terror suspects.

WASHINGTON - -After years of silence, top Bush administration political adviser Karl Rove went on a public relations offensive Thursday, saying he did nothing wrong in the controversial firings of nine U.S. attorneys and that soon-to-be-released White House documents and his closed-door congressional testimony on the subject will bear that out. Rove's comments, made through his lawyer Robert D. Luskin, prompted immediate charges of foul play by congressional...

From the beginning, President Barack Obama said he wanted to look forward rather than back. That's why he pledged early on to hold harmless CIA officers who engaged in torture deemed legal by the Bush administration, opposed prosecuting the Bush-era Justice Department lawyers who sanctioned the abuses, announced plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and began phasing out the military tribunals set up to try detainees. Mr. Obama took all these steps in an effort to put the mistakes of the past behind him and avoid opening a Pandora's box of bitter partisan recrimination over the policies of his predecessor that might distract from the important work of fixing the economy, health care, energy policy and foreign relations.

WASHINGTON - Democratic lawmakers criticized former vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday for allegedly ordering that a CIA counter-terrorism program be kept secret from congressional leaders, with two senators questioning the legality of such secrecy. A top Democrat called for an investigation. Republicans were far more circumspect, but some acknowledged the White House should have briefed Congress. Exactly what the secret intelligence program was remained a mystery, but sources said the CIA had opened an internal inquiry.

America is at a turning point. How we will come to terms with the government abuses unleashed in the aftermath of 9/11 is a historic test of our highest principles. Are we a nation of laws? Will we stand by our commitment to the rule of law over the tyranny of state-sanctioned brutality? Maryland's particularly powerful congressional delegation in Washington can be pivotal as the nation chooses how to proceed. And, of course, members of Congress will more likely rise to the occasion if they hear from the public they represent.

WASHINGTON - - The Obama administration will announce plans Friday to revive the Bush-era military commission system for prosecuting accused terrorists, current and former officials said, reversing a presidential campaign pledge to rely instead on federal courts and the traditional military justice system. Word of the imminent decision infuriated human rights groups, who argued that any trials under the system created by former President George W. Bush would be widely viewed as tainted and said the Obama administration was duplicating the mistakes of former administration.

Time to move ahead with light rail line Any time a worthy project comes along, there will be NIMBYs who oppose it, just as is now the case for the Red Line ("Canton organizing to oppose transit plan," April 26). But much of this opposition is based on ignorance. Some people don't want "trains" on Boston Street. But there is an enormous difference between a light rail vehicle and a 100-car coal train. People are also concerned about noise and vibration on the streets. Well, just stand at the corner of Howard and Lexington streets.

Enhanced interrogation techniques" is the euphemism used by the Bush administration for the treatment of "enemy combatants" (another euphemism) - which included sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and, of course, water-boarding. I don't think it takes a big leap of the imagination to label EITs for what they are: torture. Time will tell if these "techniques" were justified, necessary or successful, but for now let's put an end to the name game. After review by the Justice Department, President Barack Obama has begun to release "secret" memos concerning the legal rationalization for the use of torture - mainly by the CIA - in gaining information.

WASHINGTON - A U.S. military agency that trains troops to resist and survive torture offered critical help in developing harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA, according to a Senate committee report to be released Wednesday. The military expertise also was used by the Justice Department to develop controversial legal justifications for abusive interrogation methods, according to the report by the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. Carl M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat and committee chairman, said the report "connects the dots" to show how the techniques familiar to military experts found their way into controversial memos by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that authorized abusive interrogation practices.

For days now, President Barack Obama has been insisting that while he condemns the torture of terrorist suspects, he would not allow the prosecution of CIA personnel for acts that were considered legal under the Bush administration. The president clearly was walking a fine line in trying not to alienate an agency whose help he badly needs in defeating terrorism, and responding to demands of supporters for a full accounting of the mistreatment of prisoners documented in Justice Department memos released last week.