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Press Release Source: Newsweek NEWSWEEK: Report on Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal Expected to Blame Systemic Failures at the Pentagon Sunday August 1, 10:38 am ET Rumsfeld's Office May Be Rebuked for Not Setting Clear Interrogation Rules NEW YORK, Aug. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- The panel that has been investigating the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is leaning toward the view that failures of command and control at the Pentagon helped create the climate in which the abuses occurred, Newsweek reports in the current issue. The four-member commission's report is still being drafted and its final conclusions are not yet definite. But, as...

BOSTON - John Kerry bounced the ceremonial first pitch during last night's Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway Park, but he said he was just going easy on the National Guard soldier and Iraq war veteran standing in as catcher. "I held back," Mr. Kerry told reporters early this morning, on the plane ride after the game. "He was very nervous. I tried to lob it gently."

Australia Blames Philippines, Spain for Terrorist Threats Australia's foreign minister is blaming Spain and the Philippines for encouraging an Islamic militant group to threaten Australia with terrorist attacks, if it does not withdraw from Iraq. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer admonished the countries for caving in to terrorist demands by withdrawing troops from Iraq. Mr. Downer criticized a Philippine decision to withdraw its contingent early last week to secure the release of a truck driver held hostage by Iraqi militants. He blamed Manila's decision to negotiate with terrorists for the recent taking of six other hostages. The Associate Press reports that...

As someone who sat on the energy crisis task force for one of the state's largest utilities, I believe Doug Gamble ["Let's hope feds lay into Lay," California Focus, July 20] fails to understand that the political responses to the California energy crisis of 2000-02 were comprised of governmental gambling schemes much worse than Enron's legal gaming of the system. Enron charged less on average for electricity than most of the municipally owned utilities in the Pacific West during the crisis. Enron committed accounting and securities fraud that was not uncovered by regulators but by investors who learned Enron was...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Sept. 11 commission concludes that a "failure of imagination," not governmental neglect, allowed 19 hijackers to carry out the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history. The panel calls for an intelligence overhaul to confront an al-Qaida organization intent on striking again. While faulting institutional shortcomings, the bipartisan report being released Thursday does not blame President Bush or former President Clinton for mistakes contributing to the 2001 terrorist attack, Bush administration officials familiar with the findings said. The report, which is the culmination of a 20-month investigation into the plot that killed nearly 3,000 people in New...

WASHINGTON - The Sept. 11 commission's final report concludes the hijackers exploited "deep institutional failings within our government" over a long period but does not blame President Bush (news - web sites) or former President Clinton (news - web sites) for the mistakes, according to administration officials familiar with the findings. The report, being released Thursday, describes the patience and determination of the hijackers and said they explored weaknesses in airline and border procedures, even taking test flights to see when cockpit doors were open. White House officials and congressional leaders were briefed on the report's findings, and Bush is...

Got a problem on your hands? Realize you've done something you shouldn't have? Or failed to do something you should? Instead of beating yourself up with guilty thoughts and carrying around a bruisingly heavy conscience, why not take a page out of the average politician's book? You know the drill. Admit there's a problem. Then blame someone else. This is a skill politicians the world over have mastered. For example, in India, where the railway infrastructure is so poorly maintained accidents are becoming common, the railways minister has now abdicated responsibility to the Gods. "Indian Railways is the responsibility of...

... Judging from the headlines, the spooks are no longer bothering to conceal their political views from broad public view. And their new boldness is mainly directed at discrediting the commander in chief. But all these factious revelations about administration "errors" reveal something more disturbing than the possibility that the Central Intelligence Agency et al have gone out of control. ... First came the estimable Richard Clarke, who emerged some months ago from 10 years of anonymity in the bowels of the White House to claim his 15 minutes of fame. His theme, that the president didn't heed the Clarke...

Cal Thomas October 25, 2001The media must share some blame for Sept. 11Why were we caught with our preparedness pants down on Sept. 11? Some blame the government for ignoring not only the warning signs but also previous terrorist acts and threats to repeat them. While the past two administrations can share some blame, a major culprit is the media. The press fiddled with the likes of Gary Condit and Chandra Levy; with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; with the political games Republicans and Democrats played over the budget and electoral politics, while America was being prepared for burning ...

Compare & Contrast(Regular type from the Guardian article and italic type from the frontpagemag article) On Saturday, June 19, 2004 it was reported Anonymous (an anonymous senior intelligence official [supposedly] from the Bush administration) "is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands." Progressives find it easier to blame the Israeli or American governments for their mistakes than to stare long and hard into the face of radical Islamist evil. People often...

Liberal Democrats and the Left-Wing Media are Responsible for Johnson's Beheading - and Should ApologizeOnce again, in their quasi-religious zeal to tar the Bush administration for mere political gain, the media outlets that released, hyped, and faked photos of prisoner "abuse," and the liberal Democrat politicians who heinously fed the frenzy, are partially responsible for the beheadings of Nick Berg and Paul Johnson.  This is what happens when liberal zealots irresponsibly put politics above reason, logic, and humanity.Of course, the killers who executed this atrocity are directly to blame, but these liberal media outlets and politicians give them ready-made rhetoric,...

I’ll never forget the day that Mr. Wright came to teach our kindergarten class while Ms. Simpleton was out having surgery. The day before she left for the hospital she was teaching us how President Bush was giving tax cuts to the rich instead of ordinary Americans. That was during our math lesson. When Mr. Wright came to our class, he taught us about taxes by using Oreo cookies. We had used Oreo cookies in class once before when Mrs. Simpleton was talking about Clarence Thomas. She said he was black on the outside and white on the inside. I...

<p>Iraq is now a battleground between U.S. forces and al Qaeda terrorists, a top national-security adviser to Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign said yesterday.</p> <p>Florida Sen. Bob Graham made the statement -- something no one on President Bush's national-security team would argue with -- during a conference call with reporters in which he and former Defense Secretary William Perry sharply attacked the administration's policy in Iraq.</p>

DALLAS — Exxon Mobil Chairman Lee Raymond said that no matter how high gasoline prices may be at the pump, oil companies like Exxon take no more than 3 to 5 cents per gallon in profit. "Most of the cost of the price of gasoline at the pump is for taxes and the purchase of crude oil, and we are by far the largest purchaser of crude oil in the world," Raymond said at a news conference after Exxon Mobil's annual meeting Wednesday at the Morton Meyerson Symphony Center. Raymond said that while Exxon Mobil produces about 1 million barrels...

Audio Discrepancies Suggest Berg Video Doctored The Nick Berg Execution Psy-Op: Alex Jones Interviews Fintan Dunne Journalist Fintan Dunne provides an expert analysis of the Nick Berg execution as he and Alex unpeal the labyrinthine onion layers of this military intelligence black-ops program. Western Voice Heard On Nick Berg Videotape: A faint Western voice can be heard twice in the final seconds of the infamous videotape of the beheading of Nick Berg. The voice may be saying "Thy Will Be Done." The sound can be heard in all copies of the tape which BreakFornews.com has examined. We have amplified the...

I like to think our leaders were as clueless as the rest of us, and are now furious and demanding justice in the same way.

In perhaps the most distorted coverage of the brutal murder of a pregnant Israeli mother and her four young daughters, NPR’s Julie McCarthy blamed the victims for their own slaughter. In the atrocity in Gaza on May 2, the gunmen reportedly fired on the family’s car from 20 yards away.

The jaw-dropping moment came right at the beginning of a hearing in a room tucked away near the top of the state Capitol building. Lawmakers wondered: Was anybody managing spending at the state's adult prisons, which had blown their budget by a half-billion dollars this year? The one-word answer they got from a Finance Department official at the March hearing: No. More than two decades after California started toughening its sentencing laws and building new prisons to deal with rising crime rates, the mammoth penal system it created is embroiled in financial and management turmoil. The adult corrections system has...

Courtney's Complex Degenerate rocker Courtney Love is only a few rungs away from rock bottom. She's allegedly millions of dollars in debt, she's facing charges of drug possession and disorderly conduct, her new album has tanked, she allegedly hit a fan in the head with a microphone stand during a concert, and she lost custody of her daughter. But never worry, it's not her fault, she tells Rolling Stone. And why exactly is that? "I believe it's trickledown from Bush," she said. "Did I bring it on myself?" she asks, "I don't think so. The last thing I want to...

April 23, 2004 Stop the Blaming Start the strategizing Cathy Young With the 9/11 commission holding its hearings, the blame game is in full swing. It's Bush's fault. No, Clinton's. No, it's everyone's fault. No, it's no one's fault. And so it goes. Attorney General John Ashcroft goes before the panel and gets grilled on his lack of attention to terrorism pre-9/11. Ashcroft turns the tables and points the finger at panel member Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, for tying law enforcement's hands with guidelines that made cooperation with intelligence agencies virtually impossible....