George W Bush

The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 surveillance efforts went beyond the widely publicized warrantless wiretapping program, a government report disclosed Friday, encompassing additional secretive activities that created "unprecedented" spying powers. The report also raised new questions about how the Bush White House kept key Justice Department officials in the dark as it launched the surveillance program.

In one of his final acts in office, President Bush on Monday commuted the controversial prison terms of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting an unarmed Mexican drug smuggler who fled across the Rio Grande, away from a van loaded with 743 pounds of marijuana.

Legal experts said Tuesday that they were taken aback by the claim in the latest batch of secret Bush-era memos that the president alone had the power to set the rules during the war on terrorism. Yale law professor Jack Balkin called this a "theory of presidential dictatorship. They say the battlefield is everywhere. And the president can do anything he wants, so long as it involves the military and the enemy." The criticism was not limited to liberals.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert boasted Monday that he successfully pressured President Bush last week to reverse course on U.S. diplomacy over fighting in Gaza, in an episode that could sharpen tensions between the close allies at a sensitive moment. Speaking to an audience in Ashkelon, Israel, Olmert said he had called Bush last Thursday and convinced him that the United States should not vote for a pending U.N. Security Council resolution urging a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

George W. Bush made it clear during his final presidential news conference Monday that he wants to be remembered as a decisive president who followed his convictions about the best way to protect and strengthen his country, even though they were often unpopular with "some of the writers and the, you know, opiners and all that." Unfortunately, Bush still doesn't recognize that holding firm beliefs and sticking to them aren't nearly as important as being right.

Taking a final turn in the spotlight before the nation begins a four-day celebration of its new leaders, President Bush on Thursday offered a defense of his widely unpopular administration, telling Americans that while they may have opposed some of his policies, "I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions."

Israel's ground invasion of the Gaza Strip has abruptly increased the stakes for Washington at an awkward moment when President Bush's power is ebbing and his successor is choosing to remain on the sidelines. The ground assault that began Saturday raises the chances of a sharp increase in casualties, perhaps on both sides, that would heighten international pressure on the United States to intervene in an attempt to end the conflict.

Shiite Muslim clerics Friday called for the release of the Iraqi journalist sentenced to three years in prison for throwing his shoes at then-President George W. Bush. Sheik Suhail Uqabi, a follower of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr, said the sentence imposed on Muntathar Zaidi is "a verdict against the Iraqi people who refuse the American occupation" of Iraq. Efforts to release detained Sadr loyalists and others who have opposed the U.S.

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of Al Qaeda captives "constituted torture," according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document. The report, an account of alleged physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Convention.