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Crossing the Red Line
By Bill McKibben
For more than three years now, day after day and week after week, a small circle of political appointees at the EPA, the Forest Service, the Interior Department, and the Department of Agriculture have proceeded methodically to wreck the system of environmental oversight that dates back to the Nixon administration. Apart from their silence on global warming, they have overturned rule after regulation, largely ceased enforcement actions concerning pollution of the atmosphere and water, and reined in inspectors. Their work is not inspired by a grand ideological vision. Instead it's institutionalized corruption: a steady payback to the logging, mining, corporate farming, fossil fuel, and other industries that contributed heavily to put Bush in power.
Torture and Truth
By Mark Danner
Last November in Iraq, I traveled to Fallujah during the early days of what would become known as the "Ramadan Offensive"—when suicide bombers in the space of less than an hour destroyed the Red Cross headquarters and four police stations, and daily attacks by insurgents against US troops doubled, and the American adventure in Iraq entered a bleak tunnel from which it has yet to emerge. I inquired of a young man there why the people of that city were attacking Americans more frequently each day.
Bush: The Dream Campaign
By Elizabeth Drew
The main message of the reelection strategy devised by Karl Rove, the President's chief political adviser, is to present Bush as a strong and successful wartime leader. The war in Iraq was expected to work in Bush's favor, and the Bush people planned to emphasize it more than any other issue. The adverse turn of events in Iraq has therefore been the greatest setback for Bush's reelection effort, and the recent revelations of torture by American troops have caused a political crisis for the President.
A Cautionary Tale
By Brian Urquhart
So far, 2004 is the year of the singing insider. In January Paul O'Neill ascended to a high place on the best-seller list. In March Richard Clarke vaulted over him to the top. In April Bob Woodward surpassed all his predecessors. Although his book may represent the high-water mark of this flood of apparent revelation, there are certainly several smaller surges to come.
The Prophet
By John Leonard
If you have ever seen E.L. Doctorow, you know that he's a mild-mannered Clark Kent kind of guy, more likely to be registering a voter or building a harpsichord than rousing a rabble or leading a charge. And if you've ever heard him, at a committee meeting or reading his own words, you know that he's a man of measured merriment, to be counted on to stay calm, as if the culture's fever blisters were susceptible to sweet reason, as if hate radio and Fox News were squeaky insect creatures on an ammonia-smelling planet in some other, colder solar system. Then why is this man furious?
The David Levine Gallery contains over 2,500 illustrations by the Review's inimitable staff artist, from 1963 to the present.