USA

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Tuesday to raise the government’s debt ceiling and cut trillions of dollars from its spending, finally ending a fractious partisan battle just hours before the government’s borrowing authority was set to run out.

The bill, which passed 74 to 26 after a short debate devoid of the oratorical passion that had echoed through both chambers of Congress for weeks, was headed for the White House, where President Obama was poised to sign it immediately.

A few minutes later, Mr. Obama said he would sign the bill right away, but excoriated his opposition for what he called a manufactured crisis that could have been avoided. “Voters may have chosen divided government,” he said, “but they sure didn’t vote for dysfunctional government.”

Cuarenta años después se confirma lo que ya se filtró en 1971, que dos Administraciones distintas de Estados Unidos mintieron a sus ciudadanos sobre la guerra de Vietnam. Aquella revelación, que entonces se filtró primero por el diario The New York Times y luego por otros periódicos, queda ahora probada con la salida a la luz de las 7.000 páginas de documentos desclasificados por el Departamento de Defensa denominados Papeles del Pentágono. Excepto por 11 palabras que siguen tachadas y permanecerán desconocidas para el gran público.

Podría decirse que los Papeles del Pentágono y Daniel Ellsberg son -en los años setenta y la edad de la fotocopiadora- los antepasados de Wikileaks y Julian Assange -en pleno siglo XXI y la era de Internet.