Politics

The Case Against Donald Rumsfeld lays out the evidence that high–level officials of the Bush administration ordered, authorized, implemented, and permitted war crimes, in particular the crimes of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

Using primary source documents ranging from Rumsfeld’s “techniques chart” and Iraqi plaintiffs’ statements to the testimony of whistleblowers and key pieces of reportage, the book sets forth evidence of a torture program that took place throughout the world: in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo, secret CIA prisons, and other places unknown.

The accused are accorded a defense drawn from their memos and public statements. Readers are allowed to judge whether the Bush administration has engaged in torture and whom among the administration to hold responsible.

Reminiscent of Christopher Hitchens’s bestselling The Trial of Henry Kissinger, The Case Against Donald Rumsfeld constitutes one of the only attempts to hold high–ranking Bush administration officials criminally responsible for their actions.

When asked which single issue most affected their vote in the last presidential election, more than one in five Americans said “moral values”—and 78 percent of these voters chose to reelect President George W. Bush. Indeed, Christian fundamentalists made up close to 40 percent of the president’s electorate in 2004, and their turnout increased by some four million voters over 2000.

As Esther Kaplan shows in her richly detailed investigation, it’s no wonder the Christian right voted for Bush in droves—their loyal support in 2000 produced fantastic results. While organizations that offer abortion counseling and services or help to prevent HIV see their funds cut, church groups receive millions in federal dollars to promote sexual abstinence and marriage (provided, of course, it is heterosexual). Bush has appointed a Christian right dream team to the federal courts, dedicated to tearing down what one such judge calls “the so-called separation of church and state. Religious zeal even shapes Bush’s foreign policy, as Christian belief in the end times spurs the administration’s support for hard-line policies in Israel.

A prescient study of the Christian right’s growing political clout, With God on Their Side is essential reading for anyone concerned about America’s direction.

Here is the definitive portrait of the ultimate power broker by “the toughest, most in-your-face investigative reporter in the U.S.A.” (Greg Palast). Dick Cheney sets energy policy. He guided the nation into war with Iraq. And, working closely with Karl Rove, he oversees the political infrastructure that allows corporate interests and the religious right to control lawmaking, regulation, the selection of judges, and the development of foreign policy. As John Dean put it, “This page-turner closes the case: Cheney is our de facto president.”

With an emboldened administration that has turned a thin victory into a renewed mandate—rewarding ideologues and purging dissenters—John Nichols’s question is more urgent than ever: can this nation survive four more years of Dick Cheney?

The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney draws on groundbreaking reporting—including exclusive interviews with Cheney’s college professors, Nelson Mandela, Gore Vidal, and political insiders.

Exiled from Pakistan in the 1960s for his activism against the military dictatorship, Tariq Ali has gained a reputation as one of the English speaking world’s most forceful political thinkers, speaking out consistently against imperialism, religious fundamentalism, and, most recently, the misguided Anglo–American war on terror, including the disastrous fiasco in Iraq.

Ali’s most recent books, The Clash of Fundamentalisms and Bush in Babylon, have been widely praised and read. A prolific and eloquent writer, Ali is also a captivating conversationalist, and Speaking of Empire and Resistance captures him at his provocative best. This series of interviews brings together Ali’s insights into a wide range of topics—among them the fate of modern-day Pakistan, the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the intractable Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the state of the Islamic world, and the continuing significance of imperialism in the twenty-first century. Speaking of Empire and Resistance reinforces Tariq Ali’s reputation as one of the most perceptive and engaging figures of today’s Left.

The Reverend Billy is a revivalist preacher who leads the Church of Stop Shopping, an anticonsumerist communion devoted to putting the odd into God. Created by the actor Bill Talen, the Reverend first appeared alongside the sidewalk preachers in New York’s Times Square during the Giuliani years, bringing his new post-religious theology to eager crowds. Now Reverend Billy has a cult following across the country and was recently featured in a profile in the New York Times Magazine.

In these pages we go inside the Disney Store on 42nd Street (“the high church of retail”) to witness staged dramas against consumerism that employ eight hundred Disney characters with their “reeling eyeballs and sky-cracking grins” as the mise-en-scène. We encounter the icon-twisting logic of credit card exorcism performed in front of astonished tourists and listen to a gospel choir made up of “recovered preachers’ kids” singing anti-Starbucks anthems at the cash register of the $5 latte. We watch as the defense of a community garden is turned into an Off-Broadway hit and join with the Reverend as he preaches love and peace to the crowds that gathered spontaneously in Union Square after the attacks of September 11.