Weekly Review

An American cattleman. Abdullah Abdullah, presidential challenger to Hamid Karzai, announced that he was quitting the runoff election. In a choked-up voice he cited concerns about increased violence in Afghanistan and outrage at the fraudulent election process. The election was cancelled and Karzai was declared president. More U.S. troops… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. Twin car bomb attacks just outside the Green Zone in Baghdad destroyed three government buildings, killed 155 people, and injured 520. The attack was the country’s worst since 2007 and killed an unspecified number of children at the Justice Ministry day-care center. “There were children… Read More

President Obama appeared likely to surge 40,000 troops into Afghanistan, thus adopting the key military tactic that the Bush Administration defined as successful in Iraq.NY TimesIn Afghanistan, a country with no duly elected president, citizens were turning to Taliban “shadow… Read More

The wire master and his puppets, 1875. As the United States marked the eighth anniversary of its war in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal asked President Barack Obama to send 40,000 more troops there. Senator John McCain was in favor of the surge, while Vice President Joe… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. The International Monetary Fund said that the global economy was improving and that banks would probably have to absorb another $1.5 trillion in losses in addition to the $1.3 trillion already written off. There remained, the IMF said, “risk of a reintensification of the… Read More

An American cattleman. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy revealed that Iran had a secret uranium-enrichment facility. The announcement, based on previously classified intelligence, came soon after the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution to limit the proliferation of… Read More

After months of negotiation by the bipartisan “gang of six” in the Senate, Senator Max Baucus unveiled his $776-billion health-care reform bill, which is supported by none of the gang’s three Republican members and received a lukewarm response from Democrats. Baucus’s plan, which includes member-run insurance co-operatives but… Read More

A Christian martyr. President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and implored Democrats to pass their own health-care legislation. During the speech, the president noted that the bill would not extend health insurance to illegal immigrants, at which South Carolina Representative Joe… Read More

An American cattleman. Polls showed that the level of public support for health-care reform was plummeting, a result of both Democratic capitulation–as when Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D., Mont.), after a year of preparation, released a proposal that lacked a public option–and a Republican campaign… Read More

Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D., Mass.) died of brain cancer at age 77 and was buried near his brothers John and Robert at Arlington National Cemetery. He served 46 years in the Senate, where he was an advocate for voting rights for minorities (and 18-year-olds), the rights of the disabled,… Read More

Barack Obama claimed that the same groups that attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001, were “plotting to do so again,” that the eight-year conquest and occupation of Afghanistan were a “necessity,” and that free-spending congressional legislators were conspiring with the military-industrial complex to weaken national security with… Read More

The Obama Administration abandoned its quest for a public, government-run health-care option for the uninsured. Protesters waved signs that read “Death to Obama” and depicted the president with an Adolph Hitler mustache at “town hall” meetings hosted by senators; at one such event, a conservative University of Colorado student… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. With Congress in recess, opponents of and advocates for health-care reform stepped up their media campaigns. Angry citizens, led by industry front groups, former “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” organizers, and Rush Limbaugh, shouted down Democratic lawmakers at “town hall” meetings across… Read More

Congress defied President Barack Obama and adjourned for the summer without passing a health-care-reform bill. The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved its own version of the bill 31-28 (with five Democrats and all 23 Republicans voting against it); its bill is one of five already… Read More

An American cattleman. The Congressional Budget Office announced that a proposed plan to control health-care spending would save only $2 billion over ten years, compared to a proposed $1 trillion in spending, although the agency also pointed out that the legislation could increase the proportion of people receiving… Read More

An American cattleman. Sonia Sotomayor, who is expected to be confirmed to the Supreme Court in August, was interrogated for four days by Democratic and Republican senators of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans grilled Sotomayor on her legal positions. Democrats lauded her; Senator Sheldon… Read More

CIA director Leon Panetta admitted that the agency, initially under orders from then-Vice President Dick Cheney, kept secret from Congress the existence of a special counterterrorism program for eight years. Panetta also said that the program–intended to deploy small teams to assassinate Al Qaeda leaders–was canceled… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska announced that she would not seek reelection and that she would resign by the end of July. “‘We’re not retreating,'” she said, citing General Douglas MacArthur, who was not the author of the quotation. “‘We are advancing… Read More

Iraq held its first National Sovereignty Day in honor of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraqi cities. A celebration was held with poets and singers in Baghdad’s al-Zawraa park and former Vice President Dick Cheney said that he was worried that the withdrawal would “waste… Read More

Protesters supporting Mir Hussein Moussavi clashed with security forces throughout Iran as Moussavi called for further civil disobedience and the nullification of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election as president. “I am ready for martyrdom,” said Moussavi. Hundreds of people were arrested and at least a dozen were killed; Iran blamed the deaths… Read More

A Christian martyr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran’s presidential election. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the election results a “divine miracle,” but fraud and voter irregularities were reportedly rampant; Ahmadinejad’s main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, asked the ayatollah for an investigation into the results. Read More

An American cattleman. President Barack Obama visited Cairo and addressed the Muslim world in a 55-minute speech that the White House arranged to be televised, text-messaged in four languages, and posted to Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter. Obama quoted from the Koran, spoke in Arabic, recognized Palestine,… Read More

President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor, a Bronx-born, divorced, childless, diabetic, Hispanic federal judge on the U.S Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Analysts studying Sotomayor’s decisions were unable to determine whether she would uphold Roe v. Wade,… Read More

Democrats in Congress denied President Barack Obama the $80 million he sought to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and move its prisoners to maximum-security prisons in the United States. “We don’t want them around,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said of the prisoners. Read More

The Sri Lankan government declared an end to their 26-year war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers, after a final battle in which Tiger leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran was killed along with hundreds of other rebel fighters. More than 70,000 people died in the course of the… Read More

An American cattleman. After much bargaining with the largest banks in the United States,Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced the results of the Treasury’s “stress tests,” studies that estimate how the banks will fare if the economic crisis deepens. Ten banks, said Geithner, including Bank of America, Citibank,… Read More

Swine flu, renamed under pork-lobby pressure to “influenza A (H1N1) virus, human,” and referred to as “killer Mexican flu” by anti-immigration activists, had infected 985 people, or 0.0000145 percent of the world’s population. Twenty countries reported infections; one death from the flu was confirmed in the… Read More

An American cattleman. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control declared a public-health emergency over an outbreak of swine flu that has infected at least 20 people in California, Kansas, New York, Ohio, and Texas. The virus is believed to have originated in Mexico City, where… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. The Department of Justice released four Office of Legal Counsel memos, issued in 2002 and 2005, to address CIA concerns that interrogation methods used on some high-level Al Qaeda members in custody were torture. Besides waterboarding, stress positions, slapping, and face-grabbing,… Read More

A Christian martyr. On the sixth anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s fall from power, tens of thousands of Iraqis loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr protested the continued U.S. occupation. “When America came, they didn’t do anything for Iraq,” said one protester. “This is not democracy.”… Read More