During a Sunday morning interview on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nevada, Dem) indicated that he would back a short-term surge of more US troops sent to Iraq, as reports indicate that President Bush may be contemplating such a plan.
"If the president calls for adding more troops to Baghdad, adding more troops to Iraq, will you oppose it?" Stephanopoulos asked.
It seemed that at last Senate negotiators were doing the right thing by Medicare. They turned down a Medicare proposal pushed by scandal-ridden House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill) that would have meant big slices of pork for an insurance company in his home state.
This was on the morning of December 7, ironically the 65th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, in which numbers of today’s seniors participated. Yet, like the proverbial phoenix, the Washington Post reports t... (more)
Army prosecutors have sent subpoenas to journalists in Oakland and Honolulu demanding testimony about quotes they attributed to an officer who faces a court-martial after denouncing the war in Iraq and refusing to deploy with his unit.
The Army's subpoenas, which the journalists said they received last week, put them in the uncomfortable position of being ordered to help the Army build its case against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who faces up to six years in prison if convicted.
... (more)
When rats snuggle up for a nap, they replay "movies" of their daily activities in what scientists suggest is the animal equivalent of dreaming, a new study suggests.
The research supports the idea that memories are cemented into the brain during sleep.
"This work brings us closer to an understanding of the nature of animal dreams and gives us important clues as to the role of sleep in processing memories of our past experiences," said co-researcher Matthew Wilson at... (more)
The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.
Robert Pastor, a leading intellectual force in the move to create an EU-style North American Community, told WND he believes a new 9/11 crisis could be the catalyst to merge the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
Pastor, a professor at American University, says that in such a case the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP – launched in 2005 by the heads of the three countries at a summit in Waco, Texas – could be developed into a continental union, complet... (more)
A major criminal investigation into alleged corruption by the arms company BAE Systems and its executives was stopped in its tracks yesterday when the prime minister claimed it would endanger Britain's security if the inquiry was allowed to continue.
The remarkable intervention was announced by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, who took the decision to end the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into alleged bribes paid by the company to Saudi officials, after consulting cabinet coll... (more)
WASHINGTON — The hard core of detainees held at America's Guantanamo Bay detention camp will be held indefinitely even if there is insufficient evidence to bring them to trial, a senior Bush administration official said.
Of the 435 detainees being held at Guantanamo, only 10 have so far been charged with terrorism-related offenses. A further 14 detainees — the so-called high value detainees such as the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Moham... (more)
Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett, who served under President Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, revealed today that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. The column is critical of the administration’s refusal to engage Iran.
Leverett’s op-ed has already been cleared by the CIA, where he was a sen... (more)
THERE'S A RANCID odor escaping from the cracks in the Jose Padilla case. Padilla is the American citizen arrested in Chicago and declared by President Bush to be an "enemy combatant." He was then kept for nearly two years in a South Carolina brig without access to a lawyer, family or friends.
The courts finally forced the Bush administration to release Padilla into the justice system, and he is now imprisoned in Miami awaiting trial on charges that have nothing to do with what he ... (more)
The booming credit card business is one of the most profitable and destructive industries to ever emerge from the inventive capitalist mind. Citibank is raking in more money than Microsoft and Wal-Mart. Obscene profits are realized without lifting a finger to perform any physical work. In 2004 a single credit card company—the MBNA—realized 1.5 times the profits of fast food industry giant McDonald’s. Collecting on credit card debt is a very lucrative business.
Sometimes I’m struck by the sheer enormity of Bush’s stupidity. It is truly breathtaking. After nearly 4 years of steadily-intensifying guerilla warfare with no end in sight, Bush has decided to expand the war.
Think I’m kidding?
As Robert Dreyfuss says, “The president is trying to cobble together, brick by brick, an Iraqi government that is able and willing to do what al Maliki’s can’t or won’t do: break the back of Muqtada... (more)
Reports from the Kremlin today are portraying President Putin as being 'furious' with the American War Leader Bush over his breaking of a promise to the Russian President to not provide US funding to the Israelis for their Lebanese War. Less than 3 weeks after making this promise the United States used a little known provision in their security agreements with Israel to fully pay for the war, and as we can read as reported by Israel's Ynet News Service in their article titled "US to double emerg... (more)
Republican Senator John McCain has introduced legislation that would fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos posted by visitors on comment boards, effectively nixing the open exchange of ideas on the Internet, providing a lethal injection for unrestrained opinion, and acting as the latest attack tool to chill freedom of speech on the world wide web.
McCain's proposal, called the "Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children A... (more)
The perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attack on Congress likely was a government scientist employed at the Army’s Ft. Detrick, Md., bioterrorism lab having access to a “moonsuit” that made it possible to safely process and manufacture super-weapons-grade anthrax, a bioterrorism authority says.
Although only a “handful” of scientists had the ability to perpetrate the crime, the culprit, or culprits, among them may never be identified as the FBI ordered ... (more)
Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen of Syrian descent who was detained by the US as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, and tortured in a Syrian prison, remains on a post-9/11 US government watch list, RAW STORY has learned. In a Canadian Broadcast Corporation radio appearance, US Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins, when asked if Arar was still on a government watch list responded, "My information is that he is on the watch list and has been since he was de... (more)
American troops lead a group of Iraqi children in a profane chant, as seen in a video viewed by RAW STORY.
In the brief, undated video at the site liveleak.com, a U.S. soldier appears atop a military vehicle as another mills about, directing the children to shout, "F*ck Iraq." The youngsters, though smiling, do not seem to understand what it is they are saying.
The soldiers have a laugh, presumably at the childrens' expense, with one at the end heard saying with a ... (more)
WASHINGTON--U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Thursday defended forthcoming national ID cards as vital for security and consistent with privacy rights.
Chertoff said one of his agency's top goals next year is to forge ahead with recommendations for the controversial documents established by a federal law called the Real ID Act in May 2005. By 2008, Americans may be required to present such federally approved cards--which must be electronic... (more)
President Bush and Vice President Cheney today heaped lavish praise on outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, part of an afternoon of military pageantry and tribute for the man who was ousted from his job after becoming the face of the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.
"This man knows how to lead and he did, and the country is better off for it," Bush said at the outdoor Pentagon ceremony for the departing 74-year-old Rumsfeld, the nation's second-longest serving def... (more)
Democrats, worried about not appearing “hawkish” enough—that is willing to invade small countries and slaughter large numbers of innocents—are attempting to out-neocon the perfidious neocons.
“If you think a new wind is blowing in Washington in terms of security issues because the Democrats are going to take over Congress, you probably have another think coming,” Christopher Hellman o... (more)
A fence-building company in Southern California agrees to pay nearly $5 million in fines for hiring illegal immigrants. Two executives from the company may also serve jail time. The Golden State Fence Company's work includes some of the border fence between San Diego and Mexico.
After an immigration check in 1999 found undocumented workers on its payroll, Golden State promised to clean house. But when followup checks were made in 2004 and 2005, some of those same illegal workers ... (more)
