U.S. Government

The Little Think Tank That Could

Joining industry lobbyists in the battle against government regulations is a small think tank based at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. The Mercatus Center is earning a reputation as a heavyweight in the business of rolling back and softening unpopular rules, responsible for picking 14 of 23 rules targeted by the Bush White House for elimination or modification.

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The Importance of Timing

Wondering why the Bush administration only "significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar" this spring, The New Republic interviewed Pakistani security officials. One member of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence said, "The Pakistani government ...

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How Conspiracy Theories Took Us To War

Peter Bergen, a professor of international studies and author of a recent book about Osama Bin Laden, takes a look at Laurie Mylroie of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), whose theory that Iraq was behind Al Qaeda exerted strong influence on the Bush administration's decision for war. "She is a conspiracy theorist whose political conceits have consistently been proved wrong," Bergen says.

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The List

"Perhaps no list of reporters has commanded such attention in Washington since Richard Nixon compiled his enemies list more than thirty years ago," writes Douglas McCollam, discussing the reporters whose names and phone numbers appear in a confidential July 2002 memorandum from the Iraqi National Congress (INC). The memo lists 108 news stories that were influenced by INC-supplied defectors.

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Power Play

The "handover of power" to Iraq is "a publicity stunt and has almost no substance to it," says Middle East history professor Juan Cole. "Gwen Ifill said on US television on Sunday that she had talked to Condaleeza Rice, and that her hope was that when something went wrong in Iraq, the journalists would now grill Allawi about it rather than the Bush administration. (Or words to that effect.) Ifill seems to me to have given away the whole Bush show. That's what this whole thing is about. It is Public Relations and manipulation of journalists. Let's see if they fall for it."

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The Enemy Press

After New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau wrote a story reporting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had collected extensive information on antiwar demonstrators, FBI spokeswoman Cassandra Chandler sent around a memo urging agency officials to "please avoid providing information to this reporter," and the Justice Department revoked his press credentials.

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