Christian Science Monitor

11/07/05

Despite a five-day trip to South and Central America, President Bush was unable to work the same wonders on US-Latin American relations that he did earlier this year on ties to Europe. Indeed, this trip was unlike Mr. Bush's February journey across the Atlantic, which was widely seen as successful in repairing relations damaged by the US decision to invade Iraq. Instead, the three-country trip that ends Monday has revealed more than anything how distant and dissonant relations with much of the hemisphere -- in particular South America -- have become...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1107/p03s01-woam.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Detroit Free Press

11/06/05

Lawmakers expressed concern Sunday that the FBI was aggressively pushing the powers of the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act to access private phone and financial records of ordinary people. 'We should be looking at that very closely,' said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. 'It appears to me that this is, if not abused, being close to abused'...

http://tinyurl.com/csanw


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

MSNBC

11/06/05

Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials. Last winter, when Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, began pushing to have the full committee briefed on the CIA's interrogation practices, Cheney called him to the White House to urge that he drop the matter, said three U.S. officials...

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9952038/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Houston Chronicle

11/06/05

A leading Republican senator said today that the Bush administration is making 'a terrible mistake' in opposing a congressional ban on torture and other inhuman treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. Sen. Chuck Hagel, considered a potential presidential candidate in 2008, said many Republican senators support the ban proposed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War...

http://tinyurl.com/dgorp


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Las Vegas Review-Journal

11/06/05

A government document raises doubts about claims al-Qaida members received training for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq, as Senate Democrats on Sunday defended their push for a report on how the Bush administration handled prewar intelligence. Democrats forced the Senate into an unusual closed session last week as they sought assurances the Intelligence Committee would complete an investigation of intelligence about Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003...

http://tinyurl.com/ak2po


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Bianca Jagger Speaks to t r u t h o u t

Human rights activist Bianca Jagger lays out the case against George Bush, and calls on the people to demand his resignation.

http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm

Paul Krugman asks, "Why does American medicine cost so much yet achieve so little? Unlike other advanced countries, we treat access to health care as a privilege rather than a right. And this attitude turns out to be inefficient as well as cruel."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110705O.shtml

Just last week, Cheney showed up at a Republican senatorial luncheon to lobby lawmakers for a CIA exemption to an amendment by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The exemption would cover the CIA's covert "black sites" in several Eastern European democracies and other countries where key al Qaeda captives are being kept.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110705K.shtml

Jane Mayer writes that two years ago, at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad, an Iraqi prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, died during an interrogation. His head had been covered with a plastic bag, and he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe; according to forensic pathologists who have examined the case, he asphyxiated.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110705J.shtml

Marjorie Cohn writes that the dots have finally been connected and the picture is not a pretty one. It is the face of the president of vice, Dick Cheney. The policies on the treatment of prisoners emanating from Cheney's office triggered the abuse and torture, according to Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110705I.shtml