Archiv: Bush Administration 2001-2009


30.05.2026 - 17:50 [ American Prospect ]

The Miller Doctrine

(May 27, 2026)

Yet proposals that skirt the edges of international law didn’t come out of nowhere. The U.S. under George W. Bush created legal mechanisms following the September 11th attacks to torture hundreds of people in CIA black sites and then at Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration’s targeted drone strikes were assassinations by another name. The Biden administration further eroded international norms and subverted its own policies by financing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, in violation of the Leahy Law, which prohibits foreign military assistance to nations that violate human rights.

“Seems like Miller is sort of taking what he was already willing to do during the first term and then combining that with what Israel has been doing in the way it has just been completely ignoring any kind of international law, Geneva Conventions, any of it in its conduct in Gaza and Lebanon, to then influence U.S. foreign policy,” Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said in an interview.

In other words, Miller and the Trump administration have been able to steamroll what was left of international law; they just had to figure out how to do it.

28.04.2026 - 15:29 [ Washington Post ]

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda‘s Secrets

(October 9, 2007)

The al-Qaeda video aired on Sept. 7 attracted international attention as the first new video message from the group‘s leader in three years. In it, a dark-bearded bin Laden urges Americans to convert to Islam and predicts failure for the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan. The video was aired on hundreds of Western news Web sites nearly a full day before its release by a distribution company linked to al-Qaeda.

Computer logs and records reviewed by The Washington Post support SITE‘s claim that it snatched the video from al-Qaeda days beforehand. Katz requested that the precise date and details of the acquisition not be made public, saying such disclosures could reveal sensitive details about the company‘s methods.

18.04.2026 - 21:03 [ Jacobin ]

The Imperial Presidency Is Bigger Than Donald Trump

A future Democratic-controlled Congress should take up the job that Obama and the party’s old guard abandoned: put strict limits on the use of drones that won’t simply be alternately loosened and tightened by whichever president comes to power, explicitly outlawing “targeted killing” and any other attempt at finding a loophole for the already existing ban on assassinations; finally repeal the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force that has been serially abused by presidents to fight often secret wars all over the world; end mass surveillance, whether in the form of the National Security Agency’s warrantless backdoor searches that Democrats actually expanded under Joe Biden, or in the warrantless spying that the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies now do through private data brokers; close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp that Trump is now trying to send migrants to; and embark on a twenty-first-century version of the Church Committee to investigate and lay bare national security abuses.

29.03.2026 - 12:18 [ Nicolas J.S. Davies / Mintpress.com ]

Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen: Calculating the Millions-High Death Toll of America’s Post-9/11 Wars

(26.4.2018)

As Barbara Lee presciently warned her colleagues before she cast her lone dissenting vote in 2001, we have “become the evil we deplore.” But these wars have not been accompanied by fearsome military parades (not yet) or speeches about conquering the world. Instead they have been politically justified by “information warfare” to demonize enemies and fabricate crises, and then waged in a “disguised, quiet, media free” way, to hide their cost in human blood from the American public and the world.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many more destabilized, it is urgent that the American public come to terms with the true human cost of our country’s wars and how we have been manipulated and misled into turning a blind eye to them – before they go on even longer, destroy more countries, further undermine the rule of international law and kill millions more of our fellow human beings.

29.03.2026 - 12:03 [ Reuters ]

Iraq conflict has killed a million, says survey

(January 30, 2008)

The margin of error in the survey, conducted in August and September 2007, was 1.7 percent, giving a range of deaths of 946,258 to 1.12 million.

ORB originally found that 1.2 million people had died, but decided to go back and conduct more research in rural areas to make the survey as comprehensive as possible and then came up with the revised figure.

29.03.2026 - 11:58 [ NPR.org ]

Survey Puts Iraqi War Dead Above One Million

(September 18, 2007)

The British polling agency ORB has released a new survey of Iraqis that suggests that more than one million Iraqis have been killed since the war began. One surprising finding from the study was that most of the estimated 1.2 million deaths were the result of a gun shot, not car bomb.

29.03.2026 - 11:46 [ Al Jazeera ]

How many countries has the US bombed since 2001, and how much has it cost?

(March 3, 2026)

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, President George W Bush launched what he called a “war on terror”, a global military campaign that reshaped US foreign policy and triggered wars, invasions and air strikes across numerous countries.

According to an analysis by Brown University’s Watson Institute of International & Public Affairs, US-led wars since 2001 have directly caused the deaths of about 940,000 people across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other conflict zones

29.01.2026 - 20:10 [ theGuardian.com ]

Curveball: How US was duped by Iraqi fantasist looking to topple Saddam

(15 Feb 2011)

Since the fall of Baghdad, Curveball‘s identity had been sought throughout Iraq and Europe. He was finally outed in late 2007 as the main source for Powell‘s speech, but has tried to keep a low profile ever since, refusing — under the orders of the BND — the approaches of the few reporters who had tracked him downto Karlsruhe.

The only other time Curveball has agreed to be interviewed was in late 2007, when he told CNN that he had been set up as a fall guy by the BND and had never breathed a word to them about WMD.

29.01.2026 - 19:59 [ Welt.de ]

Der Fall „Curveball“: Wie ein BND-Informant den Irak-Krieg auslöste

(28.8.2011)

Diese bis heute verbreitete Darstellung ist unangenehm für die Bundesrepublik. Deutschland steht da als ein Land, das ein Doppelspiel betrieben hat: nach außen den Pazifisten geben – und hintenherum über seinen Geheimdienst einen entscheidenden Grund für die militärische Intervention liefern. Der Bundesnachrichtendienst nahm die Vorwürfe schweigend hin.

18.12.2025 - 03:46 [ theIntercept.com ]

Congress Squanders Last Chance to Block Venezuela War Before Going on Vacation

“Americans do not want another Iraq. If we intensify hostilities in Venezuela, we have no idea what we’re walking into,” McGovern said. “At least George Bush had the decency to come to Congress for approval in 2002. Don’t the American people deserve that respect today?”

Bush in 2002 sought and received a formal authorization for his attack on Iraq. Without taking any similar steps, Trump has massed thousands of American service members in the Caribbean without formal approval.

20.11.2025 - 17:20 [ Nicolas J.S. Davies / Mintpress.com ]

Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen: Calculating the Millions-High Death Toll of America’s Post-9/11 Wars

(26.4.2018)

As Barbara Lee presciently warned her colleagues before she cast her lone dissenting vote in 2001, we have “become the evil we deplore.” But these wars have not been accompanied by fearsome military parades (not yet) or speeches about conquering the world. Instead they have been politically justified by “information warfare” to demonize enemies and fabricate crises, and then waged in a “disguised, quiet, media free” way, to hide their cost in human blood from the American public and the world.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many more destabilized, it is urgent that the American public come to terms with the true human cost of our country’s wars and how we have been manipulated and misled into turning a blind eye to them – before they go on even longer, destroy more countries, further undermine the rule of international law and kill millions more of our fellow human beings.

20.11.2025 - 17:15 [ Middle East Eye ]

Dick Cheney may be gone, but the wars he waged are forever

(November 8, 2025)

As Bush‘s vice president, Cheney became a key architect of the US „war on terror“, which included the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 war on Iraq, and sweeping intelligence, surveillance and torture programmes.

Most notoriously, Cheney helped the Bush administration construct an elaborate double lie as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq.

(…)

Cheney‘s true legacy, then, lies not only in the „war on terror“ he helped engineer, but in the political and moral infrastructure he left behind.

More than two decades later, his post-9/11 world order – defined by endless wars, government overreach and impunity – endures, and today‘s war criminals, following in his path, roam free.

20.11.2025 - 16:52 [ ABC News ]

Dick Cheney funeral: Guests begin to arrive, Trump and Vance not invited

A polarizing and powerful figure, Cheney worked for four decades in Washington. He served in Congress, was secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and then vice president under President George W. Bush.

He played a leading role in the response to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, including the war on terror and invasion of Iraq.

20.11.2025 - 16:49 [ USA Today ]

A funeral for Dick Cheney, and the ‚adults-in-the-room‘ GOP establishment

Cheney and Bush took office under a cloud of controversy after the Supreme Court ended Florida‘s recount during the 2000 presidential election. They left the White House eight years later with the economy collapsing into the Great Recession and two unpopular wars raging.

It was that political landscape that Trump found so amendable to his own outsider campaign in 2016 that helped catapult him from New York real estate and reality TV star into the White House. Along the way, Trump would accuse Bush and Cheney of leading the U.S. into „endless wars.“

11.09.2025 - 20:41 [ Nicolas J.S. Davies / Mintpress.com ]

Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen: Calculating the Millions-High Death Toll of America’s Post-9/11 Wars

(26.4.2018)

As Barbara Lee presciently warned her colleagues before she cast her lone dissenting vote in 2001, we have “become the evil we deplore.” But these wars have not been accompanied by fearsome military parades (not yet) or speeches about conquering the world. Instead they have been politically justified by “information warfare” to demonize enemies and fabricate crises, and then waged in a “disguised, quiet, media free” way, to hide their cost in human blood from the American public and the world.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many more destabilized, it is urgent that the American public come to terms with the true human cost of our country’s wars and how we have been manipulated and misled into turning a blind eye to them – before they go on even longer, destroy more countries, further undermine the rule of international law and kill millions more of our fellow human beings.

11.09.2025 - 18:13 [ Jacobin.de ]

Mit dem Krieg gegen den Terror hat der Westen das Völkerrecht ausgehebelt

Der 11. September lieferte den USA den Vorwand, geopolitische Interessen unter dem Deckmantel der Terrorabwehr zu verfolgen. Der »War on Terror« führte zu einer gefährlichen Erosion des Völkerrechts, die unsere Welt heute prägt.

23.06.2025 - 02:23 [ Daniel Neun / Radio Utopie ]

Israel fordert atomaren Angriff auf den Iran

(July 22, 2006)

„Washington Times“, 31.01.2003,
Bush genehmigt Einsatz von Atomwaffen
Im geheimen „National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 17“ Dokument genehmigt die US-Regierung den präventiven Einsatz von Atomwaffen, explizit zum Ausschalten unterirdischer Anlagen oder falls Alliierte mit chemischen oder biologischen Waffen angegriffen würden, so die Washington Times.

(…)

Boston Globe, 25.01.2005,
Der Chef des Mossad, Meir Dagan, sagt, daß der Iran an der Schwelle zur Anreicherung von Uran steht und innerhalb von 2 Jahren Atomwaffen produzieren könnte.
Dazu Dick Cheney:

„Wenn die Israelis wirklich zu der Überzeugung gelangt sind, daß der Iran Nuklearkapazitäten hat,… dann könnten sie entscheiden zuerst zu handeln und den Rest der Welt sich darum kümmern lassen den diplomatischen Scherbenhaufen hinterher wegzumachen.“

(…)

New Yorker, 08.04.2006 (Anm.: 17. April 2006 später vermerkter Erscheinungstermin), Seymour Hersh:
Laut Hersh plant die Bush-Administration und das Pentagon den Einsatz von atomaren B61-11 „bunker busters“ gegen Iran´s unterirdischen Einrichtungen wie in Natans (Natanz). Anders seien Anlagen, die wie Natans unter 75 Fuß Erde und Gestein liege, nicht zu zerstören.
Kommentar eines Air-Force-Planers: „Es ist eine harte Entscheidung. Aber wir fällten sie in Japan.“
Die Entscheidung zur Option eines Atomkrieges rief offenbar größte Unruhe im Generalstab der US-Militärs hervor, einige Offiziere hätten mit Rücktritt gedroht, es wurde verlangt diese Option vom Tisch zu nehmen.
Doch das Weiße Haus habe das zurückgewiesen. „Was wollt Ihr denn? Die Option kam doch von Euch.“
Ein früherer Regierungsbeamter berichtete, die Bush Administration ginge von der irrwitzigen Annahme aus, daß das iranische religiöse Regime durch eine schwere Bombardierung zusammenbrechen und von der Bevölkerung gestürzt würde.

23.06.2025 - 02:13 [ Seymour M. Hersh / New Yorker ]

The Iran Plans

(April 9, 2006)

One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is no longer under I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the surface. (…)

The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” the former senior intelligence official said. “ ‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”

19.04.2025 - 01:43 [ Nicolas J.S. Davies / Mintpress.com ]

Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen: Calculating the Millions-High Death Toll of America’s Post-9/11 Wars

(26.4.2018)

As Barbara Lee presciently warned her colleagues before she cast her lone dissenting vote in 2001, we have “become the evil we deplore.” But these wars have not been accompanied by fearsome military parades (not yet) or speeches about conquering the world. Instead they have been politically justified by “information warfare” to demonize enemies and fabricate crises, and then waged in a “disguised, quiet, media free” way, to hide their cost in human blood from the American public and the world.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many more destabilized, it is urgent that the American public come to terms with the true human cost of our country’s wars and how we have been manipulated and misled into turning a blind eye to them – before they go on even longer, destroy more countries, further undermine the rule of international law and kill millions more of our fellow human beings.

15.02.2025 - 19:17 [ Nicolas J.S. Davies / Mintpress.com ]

Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen: Calculating the Millions-High Death Toll of America’s Post-9/11 Wars

(26.4.2018)

As Barbara Lee presciently warned her colleagues before she cast her lone dissenting vote in 2001, we have “become the evil we deplore.” But these wars have not been accompanied by fearsome military parades (not yet) or speeches about conquering the world. Instead they have been politically justified by “information warfare” to demonize enemies and fabricate crises, and then waged in a “disguised, quiet, media free” way, to hide their cost in human blood from the American public and the world.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many more destabilized, it is urgent that the American public come to terms with the true human cost of our country’s wars and how we have been manipulated and misled into turning a blind eye to them – before they go on even longer, destroy more countries, further undermine the rule of international law and kill millions more of our fellow human beings.

22.01.2025 - 20:02 [ Cato Institute ]

The Imperial Presidency and the War on Terror

(March/​April 2006)

Since the start of the war on terror, the Bush administration has singlemindedly advanced the view that, in time of war, the president is the law, and no statute, no constitutional barrier, no coordinate branch of the U.S. government can stand in the president’s way when, by his lights, he is acting to preserve national security. Bush administration officials have argued

– that the president has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as “enemy combatants,” strip them of any constitutional protection, and hold them for the duration of the war on terror;
– that the president has the power to ignore validly enacted statutes prohibiting war crimes if he believes those statutes impede his prosecution of the war on terror; and
– that the president has the power to launch invasions of other countries at his discretion, without so much as a by-yourleave to Congress.

In a 1977 interview with David Frost, Richard Nixon described his view of the president’s national security authority: “Well, when the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” In the arguments it has advanced, both publicly and privately, for untrammeled executive power, the Bush administration comes perilously close to that view.

08.12.2024 - 21:34 [ BBC ]

US expands ‚axis of evil‘

(6.5.2002)

The United States has added Cuba, Libya and Syria to the nations it claims are deliberately seeking to obtain chemical or biological weapons.

08.12.2024 - 21:24 [ Washington Post ]

Text of President Bush‘s 2002 State of the Union Address

(Jan. 29, 2002)

Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction.

Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September 11, but we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.

Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people‘s hope for freedom.

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade.

This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.

11.09.2024 - 13:45 [ ABC News ]

Obama: `This War, Like All Wars, Must End`

(23. Mai 2013)

Now, the speech:

The president who dramatically expanded the CIA secret drone war, ordered a troop surge in Afghanistan and aggressively prosecuted leakers made a forceful defense of his actions and an even more forceful case for winding down the war on terrorism.

The key line: „This war, like all wars, must end. That‘s what history advises. That‘s what our democracy demands.“

20.03.2024 - 22:55 [ Nicolas J.S. Davies / Mintpress.com ]

Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen: Calculating the Millions-High Death Toll of America’s Post-9/11 Wars

(26.4.2018)

As Barbara Lee presciently warned her colleagues before she cast her lone dissenting vote in 2001, we have “become the evil we deplore.” But these wars have not been accompanied by fearsome military parades (not yet) or speeches about conquering the world. Instead they have been politically justified by “information warfare” to demonize enemies and fabricate crises, and then waged in a “disguised, quiet, media free” way, to hide their cost in human blood from the American public and the world.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many more destabilized, it is urgent that the American public come to terms with the true human cost of our country’s wars and how we have been manipulated and misled into turning a blind eye to them – before they go on even longer, destroy more countries, further undermine the rule of international law and kill millions more of our fellow human beings.

26.02.2024 - 23:06 [ Shafaq.com ]

Kurdistan‘s PM: we are very proud to say that we are American allies

On Monday, the Kurdish Government revealed that Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani met with the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the headquarters of the US State Department in Washington.

Before the meeting, the two officials expressed in remarks reported by the Secretary of State the close ties between the two sides.

04.02.2024 - 08:10 [ Nicolas J.S. Davies / Mintpress.com ]

Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen: Calculating the Millions-High Death Toll of America’s Post-9/11 Wars

(26.4.2018)

As Barbara Lee presciently warned her colleagues before she cast her lone dissenting vote in 2001, we have “become the evil we deplore.” But these wars have not been accompanied by fearsome military parades (not yet) or speeches about conquering the world. Instead they have been politically justified by “information warfare” to demonize enemies and fabricate crises, and then waged in a “disguised, quiet, media free” way, to hide their cost in human blood from the American public and the world.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many more destabilized, it is urgent that the American public come to terms with the true human cost of our country’s wars and how we have been manipulated and misled into turning a blind eye to them – before they go on even longer, destroy more countries, further undermine the rule of international law and kill millions more of our fellow human beings.