William Fisher
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Articles by William Fisher
August 10, 2005
In our country, we seem to revere only a few presidential speeches – Washington´s Farewell Address, Lincoln´s Emancipation Proclamation, Franklin Delano Roosevelt´s First Inaugural, John F. Kennedy´s "Ask Not", and a few others.
But I have to confess that, while I have wri...
July 22, 2005
As the U.S. faces increasingly negative attitudes around the world, the previously arcane subject of public diplomacy has become a serious issue in the Bush Administration, Congress, universities, think-tanks and with ordinary citizens.
"Why do they hate us?" is being asked in more places and by ...
July 15, 2005
Many people will remember Janice Karpinsky, the Army Reserve Brigadier General who was reprimanded and demoted for failing to stop the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
But few will remember Brigadier General Rick Baccus, who was sacked as commander of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cu...
June 28, 2005
Most people under forty have no idea what investigative journalism is. Those old enough to remember Watergate and Deep Throat think it started with Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward and "All the President´s Men".
But investigative journalism has a rich and distinguished history in the United ...
August 19, 2005
By William Fisher
Countries that rely on ‘diplomatic assurances’ that other countries won’t torture transferred prisoners “are either engaging in wishful thinking or using the assurances as a figleaf to cover their complicity,” a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) charges.
HRW said, “The...
February 11, 2006
Small government is one of the golden tenets of American conservatism. Small government is more efficient. The smaller the government, the more power will be returned to the people. The smaller the government, the freer our people will be of bureaucratic intrusion, regulation and control. The smalle...
January 18, 2006
Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, launched a media tsunami when he declared the Holocaust a myth.
But we shouldn’t be all that surprised. The Middle East is chockablock with Holocaust-deniers and Holocaust-minimizers. And it is not only the so-called Arab Street that has been infected. T...
January 02, 2006
My editors, as well as many friends around the world, have been urging me to write something about how I think about George W. Bush as 2005 ends and a new year begins.
I was reluctant because I have been reading dozens of year-enders on this subject, and wondering if I had anything to add.
...
December 29, 2005
After a thousand days of widely acknowledged failure in the job of rebuilding Iraq, the Department of Defense has quietly been relieved of that responsibility, with the State Department taking over as America’s lead reconstruction agency and coordinating the work of all other government departments....
November 28, 2005
Years from now, we’re likely to remember two things about Hurricane Katrina: The massive human suffering caused by the incredibly dysfunctional response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, and President Bush’s iconic kudo to FEMA’S clueless head: “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie!...
September 19, 2005
The speech President George W. Bush delivered in New Orleans recently had the phony ring of a second-term president driven by a single goal: to rebuild what is left of his tattered legacy.
The President still contends he is a ‘compassionate conservative’, yet conservatives in his own party will f...
August 21, 2005
Countries that rely on ‘diplomatic assurances’ that other countries won’t torture transferred prisoners “are either engaging in wishful thinking or using the assurances as a figleaf to cover their complicity,” a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) charges.
HRW said, “There is substantial evi...
August 11, 2005
Hooray, a win for science!
At last, there is something nice I can say about John H. Marburger III, President Bush's science advisor.
It’s about time. I have usually found myself being critical of Dr. Marburger for either being complicit or remaining silent as the Bush White House ado...
August 11, 2005
In our country, we seem to revere only a few presidential speeches – Washington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural, John F. Kennedy’s “Ask Not”, and a few others.
But I have to confess that, while I have written thousands of w...
August 01, 2005
“The committee say they want truth and reconciliation, then forget it and move on, it'd have been forgotten 20 years ago if it didn't keep it in the news…you ought to be tryin' to create jobs and get this mess behind and forget it, get people comin' in here to create jobs….My boys in the Klan, they'...
July 29, 2005
As some Latin American analysts complain that Washington has declared "electronic war" on Venezuela with a plan to target the country for special radio and television broadcasts, it remains uncertain whether the project will ever get off the ground.
If approved by a joint congressional committee,...
July 28, 2005
Michelle Malkin, sometimes known as Bill O’Reilly in drag, opened one of her recent syndicated rants with this question:
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Civil-liberties activists, anti-war organizers, eco-militants and animal-rights operatives are in a fright over news that the nefarious FBI is watchin...
June 24, 2005
When he took office in 2000, President Bush promised us he would be a uniter. Since then, he has managed to create the most divided country in our history.
If the president is content with that legacy, so be it. But that will mean a second term in which virtually nothing of consequence wi...