(From a conservative:)

Rep. Ron Paul, Posted at BellaCiao.org

Before the US House of Representatives, April 6, 2005.

Whenever the administration is challenged regarding the success of the Iraq war, or regarding the false information used to justify the war, the retort is: “Aren’t the people of Iraq better off?” The insinuation is that anyone who expresses any reservations about supporting the war is an apologist for Saddam Hussein and every ruthless act he ever committed. The short answer to the question of whether the Iraqis are better off is that it’s too early to declare, “Mission Accomplished.” But ...   more »

(From a liberal:)

By Richard Cohen, Washington Post

Shortly before the United States went to war in Iraq, I was in contact with a former member of the American intelligence community. This is what he told me: Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program, no chemical or biological weapons program to speak of, and no link to al Qaeda. He said that if America invaded, it would cost us "perhaps 1,000 casualties" and would lead to prolonged "terrorism and harassment." I thanked him very much for his views -- and urged the United States to attack anyway. Along ...   more »

By Max J. Castro, posted at Progreso Weekly

“Dead wrong.” That’s what the president’s own hand-picked committee on intelligence gathering said last week about the information concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration used to bamboozle Americans and attempt to browbeat the world into backing war.

“Dead wrong.” That’s what Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr. of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta – a conservative judge appointed by the president’s own father – just about said last week in a scathing opinion in which he castigated Congress and President Bush for attempting to usurp ...   more »

(Where is the outrage?)

By Chris Floyd, The Moscow Times

Let's face the facts. The game is over and we -- the "reality-based community," the believers in genuine democracy and law, the heirs of Jefferson and Madison, Emerson and Thoreau, the toilers and dreamers, all those who seek to rise above the beast within and shape the brutal chaos of existence into something higher, richer and imbued with meaning -- have lost. The better world we thought had been won out of the blood and horror of history -- a realm of enlightenment that often found its best embodiment in ...   more »

From the conservative Miami Herald

OUR OPINION: INTELLIGENCE ANALYSTS MUST BE FREE OF POLITICAL PRESSURE

It's hard to imagine a more unsettling, scathingly critical assessment of the U.S. intelligence community than the one delivered by a presidential commission last week. The panel called the exaggerated estimates of Iraq's various weapons programs ``one of the most public -- and most damaging -- intelligence failures in recent American history.''…

Perhaps that needed to be said yet again for those who still cling blindly to the belief that the WMDs really did exist. Surely, however, it can't come as a surprise to ...   more »

The New York Times

It was appalling when the House majority leader threatened political retribution against judges who did not toe his extremist political line. But when a second important Republican stands up and excuses murderous violence against judges as an understandable reaction to their decisions, then it is time to get really scared.

It happened on Monday, in a moment that was horrifying even by the rock-bottom standards of the campaign that Republican zealots are conducting against the nation's judiciary. Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, rose in the chamber and dared to argue that recent courthouse violence might ...   more »