Datenbank der Irak-Lügen der Bush-Regierung

--- Schon ein bisschen älter, aber unbedingt noch nachzutragen: Das Center for Public Integrity und der Fund for Independence in Journalism haben eine frei durchsuchbare Datenbank der Lügen und Falschdarstellungen von Mitgliedern der US-Regierungen rund um den Irak-Krieg in Form der angeblichen Bedrohungen durch das Saddam-Regime und sein bis heute nicht gefunden Massenvernichtungswaffen ins Netz gestellt:

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses. On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war. ...

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric. President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. ...

Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period.

Und sonst: Blogger gegen Putin und Medwedew. Russische Netzautoren bilden mit ihrer oft beißenden Kritik an Präsident Putin und seinem Kandidaten Medwedew ein Gegengewicht zur Kreml-Presse. Die Bedingungen, unter denen sie das tun, sind oft schwierig.

US Air Force schränkt Zugang zu kritischen Blogs drastisch ein: The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address.