Neo CulpaAs Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.
I remember sitting with Richard Perle in his suite at London's Grosvenor House hotel ... (more)
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This was a guilty verdict on America as wellSo America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, an... (more)
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Part II: A Suicide in IraqThey served in the same battalion in Iraq at the same time. Kayla Williams spoke with Alyssa Peterson about the young woman's troubles a week before she died -- and afterward, attended her memorial service. Williams even has her own interrogation horror story to tell. So what, in Williams ' view, caused Alyssa Peterson to put a bullet in her head in September 2003 after just a few weeks in Iraq?
The death of Alyssa Peterson, 28 – a former Mormon missionary -- is first and fo... (more)
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Bush’s carnival of bloodThis is a dark day for Americans and Iraqis alike.
Killing Saddam Hussein isn’t justice; it's vengeance. Only Bush believes the two are the same.
How are we supposed to feel now that we know that Saddam will be hanged for his crimes?
Elated? Energized? Jubilant?
Will it wash away the oceans of blood that Bush generated with his misguided and tragic war?
The administration clings to the foolish notion that killing Sa... (more)
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A question about Saddam Hussein's death sentenceSince former Iraq president Saddam Hussein has been found guilty by a special tribunal of crimes against humanity, and is to be punished by hanging for the torture and execution of more than 100 people from a small town north of Baghdad 24 years ago, then what is the sentence that George Bush and Dick Cheney should receive for initiating a unilateral war against Iraq, based on information that was proven totally false and resulted in the following?
A study at Johns Hopkins Univers... (more)
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Possible Iraq Deployments Would Stretch Reserve ForceThe Army's National Guard and Reserve are bracing for possible new and accelerated call-ups, spurred by high demand for U.S. troops in Iraq, that leaders caution could undermine the citizen-soldier force as it struggles to rebuild.
Two Army National Guard combat brigades with about 7,000 troops have been identified recently in classified rotational plans for possible special deployment to Iraq, according to senior Army and Pentagon officials, who asked tha... (more)
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Sweden: Camera Surveillance Has Doubled in Recent YearsSwedish Radio News reports that the number of surveillance cameras in public places has more than doubled here in the past four years.
County councils have approved more than 900 applications for new cameras so far this year. Most are intended to prevent crime in taxis and schools. But criminologists say confidence in the cameras is misplaced.
One researcher at the Swedish Crime Prevention Council says that cameras are not always the best solution for each location.... (more)
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Widows of military police in Iraq get secret MOD pay-outs of £400,000 The widows of two Redcaps murdered in Iraq have received secret payments of £200,000 each from the Ministry of Defence, it was revealed yesterday.
Corporals Russell Aston, 30, and Paul Long, 24, were among six Royal Military Police officers killed by a mob in the town of Majar al-Kabir in June 2003.
Along with Sgt Simon Hamilton-Jewell, 41, Cpl Simon Miller, 21, L/Cpl Benjamin Hyde, 23, and L/Cpl Thomas Keys, 20, the men were shot afte... (more)
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Saudi court sentences rape victim to 90 lashesA Saudi court has sentenced a gang rape victim to 90 lashes of the whip because she was alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married.
The sentence was passed at the end of a trial in which the al- Qateef high criminal court convicted four Saudis convicted of the rape, sentencing them to prison terms and a total of 2,230 lashes.
The four, all married, were sentenced respectively to five years and 1,000 lashes, four years and 800 lashes, four years and 350 la... (more)
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Cleared: the black motorist convicted despite white culprit caught on CCTVIt should have been an open and shut case. But a black man has revealed how blunders by court officials meant he was convicted of a driving offence...despite police having video footage of a white offender.
Edmond Taylor, 25, fought a bizarre year-long battle to clear his name. But only when an astonished judge was finally shown the CCTV footage last week was Mr Taylor cleared on appeal.
He had been convicted of dangerous driving, the only evidence being police repo... (more)
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PRIVATE LINE: Shades of '1984'?It's an alarming prospect. The recent report out of the U.K., equating the spread of surveillance technology to the rise of the Big Brother state, is enough to send more than the occasional shiver down one's spine.
It would seem that George Orwell's "society of the future" has been transported from the pages of his satirical novel, 1984, directly into the real world.
The totalitarian society of Orwell's novel, written way back in 1949, has no place for truth since h... (more)
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Disgusting briefcase found at bus stopNo telling what can turn up in a briefcase these days.
A school bus driver last week called 9-1-1 to report an old brown briefcase wrapped in duct tape left behind at a school bus stop at Fay Boulevard and Adobe Street in Port St. John. She told deputies that it seemed out of the ordinary.
Brevard County Sheriff’s Office evacuated the immediate area and closed down the street. The bomb unit used a robot to open the case, to find out it contained fecal matter.
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'Gas Limos' terrorist faces sentencingA British Muslim plotted to cause "massive explosions" in Britain and the United States designed to kill thousands of people, a court heard today. Dhiren Barot, a 34-year-old from north London, led a conspiracy to commit mass murder and was intent on causing, in his own words, "another black day for the enemies of Islam".
Opening the sentencing against him at Woolwich Crown Court today, Edmund Lawson QC, for the Crown, said that Barot was a member or close a... (more) Flashback: Media Hypes Nutcase Scribblings as "Terror Plot Admission" |
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Flashback: Saddam Key in Early CIA PlotU.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.
United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the f... (more)
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U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk.
The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be ex... (more)
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Homeland Security Tightens Grip on International Travel A radical change in international travel rules has been lost in these tumultuous last few months that have seen the demise of habeas corpus, the legalization of torture and the expansion of the President's martial law powers.
The Department of Homeland Security proposed new rules back in July that would fundamentally undermine the right of American citizens to travel abroad. Public carriers--airlines, cruise lines, even fishing boa... (more)
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Gaza's pain: 'We're bored of this life and want to die'HE WAS a small man in a small hospital ward about to hear words that no father ever should. Outside the window, a short drive away, Israeli battle tanks and snipers fought Palestinian gunmen in Beit Hanoun during the fiercest street fights in Gaza for months.
Muhammad Zakout’s 14- year-old son, Alaa, leaked blood on to a hospital pillow as his family gathered around the bed, incredulous that after repeated warnings to stay out of trouble he had been shot while throwing stone... (more)
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Iraq War Will Cost More-than-$2-TrillionIn January, we estimated that the true cost of the Iraq war could reach $2 trillion, a figure that seemed shockingly high. But since that time, the cost of the war – in both blood and money – has risen even faster than our projections anticipated. More than 2,500 American troops have died and close to 20,000 have been wounded since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. And the $2 trillion ... (more)
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The Case for EngagementThe distance between the northern suburbs of the Iranian capital of Tehran and the nuclear enrichment facility of Natanz is roughly 180 miles. What transpires on the ground between these two geographical points has seized the attention of the international community, and in particular the government of the United States, as the world wrestles with how best to respond to the issues surrounding Iran's decision to pursue indigenous enrichment of uranium in defiance of the United Nations Security Co... (more)
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70% Of Iraqi's Want U.S. Occupation Troops Withdrawn Within A Year BAGHDAD, Iraq - Ask an Iraqi what American troops are fighting for in Iraq, and the answer likely will be: not for me.
No matter the politics of the respondent, recent interviews with 19 Iraqis, both Shiite and Sunni Muslims, found almost no one who thought the Americans were fighting for them. Only ethnic Kurds, who have established a largely autonomous region in Iraq's north, were willing to say that American troops serve their interests.
Public opinion surveys o... (more)
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Anthrax Vaccine Testing Called OffFederal drug regulators halted plans by a California biotechnology firm to begin human testing of an anthrax vaccine this month, throwing the fate of the troubled program into doubt.
VaxGen Inc. officials said yesterday that it was unclear how long it would take to address Food and Drug Administration concerns about the vaccine's reliability. The delay prompted the Department of Health and Human Services to warn the company that it might terminate work potenti... (more)
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Ivy League Professor Caught with Videos That Show Him Having Sex with Children, Feds SayAn Ivy League business school professor is in federal custody for allegedly having videos of himself engaging in sexual acts with children, ABC News has learned.
Lawrence Scott Ward, 63, Professor Emeritus of Marketing at University of Pennsylvania's renowned Wharton School of Business, was caught with child pornography in his luggage and on his laptop computer after arriving at Dulles International Airport on a flight from Brazil, according to court documents.
An <... (more) Related: This film is not supposed to exist... |
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