Truthout roundup 9/21

William Greider Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle
http://www.truthout.org/article/paulson-bailout-plan-a-historic-swindle
William Greider, The Nation: "Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses - many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What's not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?"

Seven Hundred Billion Dollars Sought for Wall Street in Vast Bailout
http://www.truthout.org/article/seven-hundred-billion-dollars-sought-wall-street-vast-bailout
David M. Herszenhorn, The New York Times: "The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed a vast bailout of financial institutions in the United States, requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from the private firms. The proposal, not quite three pages long, was stunning for its stark simplicity. It would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt."

Iraq Moving Toward Biden's Controversial Vision
http://www.truthout.org/article/iraq-moving-toward-bidens-controversial-vision
Bryan Bender, The Boston Globe: "In May 2006, at the height of the violence in Iraq, Senator Joe Biden floated a controversial proposal: carve out autonomous regions for the three main ethnic and religious groups - Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Arab Shi'ites - and give them control of most governmental functions except for the military and oil industry, which would remain under central authority. While there remain many detractors who insist that Biden's proposal is unworkable, a growing number of them assert that a rough approximation of what Biden envisioned - a decentralization of power - appears to be taking shape anyway."

Cheney Ordered to Preserve All Records
http://www.truthout.org/article/cheney-ordered-preserve-all-records
The Associated Press: "A federal judge on Saturday ordered Dick Cheney to preserve a wide range of records from his time as vice president. The decision by the judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, is a setback for the Bush administration in its effort to promote a narrow definition of materials that must be safeguarded under the Presidential Records Act."

Molly Ivins and Louis Dubose The Assault on Freedom
http://www.truthout.org/article/the-assault-freedom
Molly Ivins and Louis Dubose, The Texas Observer: An excerpt from Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights, the last book by the late Molly Ivins.

FOCUS McCain and the POW Cover-Up
http://www.truthout.org/article/mccain-and-pow-cover-up
Sydney H. Schanberg, The Nation: "John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books."

FOCUS Blast Kills Dozens in Pakistan
http://www.truthout.org/article/blast-kills-dozens-pakistan
Shaiq Hussain and Pamela Constable, The Washington Post: "A massive suicide truck bomb ripped through a luxury hotel in the Pakistani capital Saturday night, killing at least 60 people and wounding more than 250 as the building was engulfed in flames, officials said. Witnesses and officials said the bomber drove up to one side of the heavily guarded hotel and detonated more than a ton of explosives, leaving a 30-foot-deep crater."