More Than 1,000 in Iraq’s Forces Quit Basra Fight

By STEPHEN FARRELL and JAMES GLANZ
Published: April 4, 2008
BAGHDAD — More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.
The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.
The crisis created by the desertions and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs.
A British military official said that Mr. Maliki had brought 6,600 reinforcements to Basra to join the 30,000 security personnel already stationed there, and a senior American military official said that he understood that 1,000 to 1,500 Iraqi forces had deserted or underperformed. That would represent a little over 4 percent of the total.
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On a Baghdad Street, Palpable Despair

Sudarsan Raghavan reports for The Washington Post, "The mortar shells sailed across the sky Sunday evening and ripped through the corrugated tin roof of the barbershop. They shattered brick walls, mangled beams and knocked over leather chairs. Smoke, debris and glass covered the street outside. There was blood on Abu Ghadeer's shirt. He had pulled out of the wreckage a boy who had come for a haircut but instead received a body full of shrapnel."
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Obama Raises $40 Million Plus In March

Carter hints at Obama backing

The Nigerian paper This Day reports that the former president all but came out for Obama, speaking to reporters in that country:
We are very interested in the primaries. Don’t forget that Obama won in my state of Georgia. My town, which is home to 625 people, is for Obama, my children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama. As a superdelegate, I would not disclose who I am rooting for but I leave you to make that guess.
He was in Abuja, the paper reports, for the Carter Center awards for guinea worm eradication.
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Why al-Maliki attacked Basra

The three reasons the Iraqi prime minister launched his ill-fated assault on the Sadrists of southern Iraq.

McCain Is AWOL On New GI Bill

McCain asked why he hasn't endorsed the 21st Century GI Bill

In November 2007, Sens. Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel penned an op-ed in the New York Times advocating a reformed G.I. Bill that would provide Iraq war veterans with greater educational opportunities.
The idea was at once ambitious and benign. Adjust the current landmark law -- which requires members of the armed services to pay $1,200 in order to participate -- to better account for spikes in tuition and living expenses. Not only would there be a greater incentive for those considering enlistment, but the American economy would be bolstered by an influx of educated veterans.
"We must put together the right formula that will demonstrate our respect for those who have stepped forward to serve in these difficult times," wrote Webb and Hagel. "First-class service to country deserves first-class appreciation."
Flash-forward several months and Webb and Hagel's vision (after months of consideration) is on the cusp of codification. The 21st Century G.I. Bill may be included in the language of the next Iraq war supplemental. And while, if considered separately, it could require 60 votes for passage, more than 50 Senators -- including many Republicans -- have already signed on as co-sponsors.
And yet, surprisingly, one of those Senators who has not yet offered his support is John McCain. How could a veteran of Vietnam and someone widely touted as Congress' foremost champions of veterans' affairs not sign on to a largely bipartisan, uncontroversial measure? (Both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are co-sponsors).
A member of the organization Student Veterans of America asked the presumptive GOP nominee that very question several months after Webb and Hagel wrote their op-ed.
"I have not had the chance to examine it carefully," he said. "It seems to me that it is a good thing to do. But I haven't examined it with the care that it needs. But we obviously need to do something along those lines."
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Stuck in a Conversation...

...Is it so very obvious to you that a whole country has been wiped off the map just like that, in a matter of a few years and 5 years is nothing in the annals of history... it is actually a very short period...and that it happens so easily, so flippantly, so inconsequentially--does not strike you as very obvious? Well, yes...but... - But what ? - But, life goes on ya Layla... - Yes life goes on in your country, you still have a country, but for those who don't have one anymore...for those who don't have a place called home anymore...does life go on the same way ?...
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No April's Fool...

Layla Anwar, The Arab Woman Newsbytes

...And just as Iran is holding Muqtada as the joker card in this deadly poker game, the U.S will hold on to the other joker Iran for the greater game...until the Greater Plan is fulfilled - The Zionist Plan. But Iran, the U.S and Israel, can keep on dreaming... As long as anything called an Arab exists on this earth, this plan will be thwarted...Do not mistake temporary Arab setbacks as a blueprint for the future. This land who gave birth to a Saddam Hussein, will give birth to others... continua / continued

IRAQ: 'Handed Over' to a Government Called Sadr

Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail*
Despite the huge media campaign led by U.S. officials and a complicit corporate-controlled media to convince the world of U.S. success in Iraq, emerging facts on the ground show massive failure. The date March 25 of this year will be remembered as the day of truth through five years of occupation. "Mehdi army militias controlled all Shia and mixed parts of Baghdad in no time," a Baghdad police colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "Iraqi army and police forces as well as Badr and Dawa militias suddenly disappeared from the streets, leaving their armoured vehicles for Mehdi militiamen to drive around in joyful convoys that toured many parts of Baghdad before taking them to their stronghold of Sadr City in the east of Baghdad."....
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It Goes Back to 1990

Felicity Arbuthnot, Islamonline.net

After five years of slaughter and destruction at the hands of the invasion led by the US and Britain (perpetrators of this "supreme international crime," as defined by the Nuremberg Principles), Amnesty International has described Iraq as in a state of "carnage and despair." In modern history, this act of near-unequalled criminality is in danger of eclipsing earlier wickednesses at the hands of these two countries. Life stopped for the majority of Iraqis when the most draconian embargo ever administered by the UN was imposed on Iraq on Hiroshima Day, 1990. Ostensibly devised to prevail on Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, the embargo grounded on for 13 years until the 2003 invasion. Iraq had imported — broadly — 70 percent of everything, ironically upon the advice of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations...

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Pentagon Papers leaker calls Iraq invasion 'supreme war crime'

John ByrnePublished: Wednesday April 2, 2008
The man who leaked secret documents about the US war in Vietnam has a name for the invasion of Iraq.
"Supreme war crime."
He also has appellations for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney: "domestic enemies of the Constitution" and "war criminals."
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A 'perfect storm' of hunger

The U.N.'s World Food Program is struggling as costs of food and fuel skyrocket while the numbers of people needing help surge across the globe. Millions are in danger.
By Edmund Sanders and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers April 1, 2008
KHARTOUM, SUDAN -- For 15 years, he's been a "grocer" for Africa's destitute. But he's never seen anything like this.Pascal Joannes' job is to find grains, beans and oils to fill a food basket for Sudan's neediest people, from Darfur refugees to schoolchildren in the barren south.
Lately Joannes has spent less time shopping and more time poring over commodity price lists, usually in disbelief."White beans at $1,160," the white-haired Belgian, 52, cries in despair over the price of a metric ton. "Complete madness! I bought them two years ago in Ethiopia for $235."Joannes is head of procurement in Sudan for the World Food Program, the United Nations agency in charge of alleviating world hunger.Meteoric food and fuel prices, a slumping dollar, the demand for biofuels and a string of poor harvests have combined to abruptly multiply WFP's operating costs, even as needs increase. In other words, if the number of needy people stayed constant, it would take much more money to feed them. But the number of people needing help is surging dramatically. It is what WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran calls "a perfect storm" hitting the world's hungry.The agency last month issued an emergency appeal for money to cover a shortfall tallied at more than half a billion dollars and growing. It said it might have to reduce food rations or cut people off altogether.
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Loyalty to My Country

By Bill RichardsonTuesday, April 1, 2008; 10:29 AM
My recent endorsement of Barack Obama for president has been the subject of much discussion and consternation -- particularly among supporters of Hillary Clinton.
Led by political commentator James Carville, who makes a living by being confrontational and provocative, Clinton supporters have speculated about events surrounding this endorsement and engaged in personal attacks and insults.
While I certainly will not stoop to the low level of Mr. Carville, I feel compelled to defend myself against character assassination and baseless allegations.
Carville has made it very clear that this is a personal attack -- driven by his own sense of what constitutes loyalty. It is this kind of political venom that I anticipated from certain Clinton supporters and I campaigned against in my own run for president.
I repeatedly urged Democrats to stop attacking each other personally and even offered a DNC resolution calling for a positive campaign based on the issues. I was evenhanded in my efforts. In fact, my intervention in a debate during a particularly heated exchange was seen by numerous commentators as an attempt to defend Sen. Clinton against the barbs of Sens. Obama and John Edwards.
As I have pointed out many times, and most pointedly when I endorsed Sen. Obama, the campaign has been too negative, and we Democrats need to calm the rhetoric and personal attacks so we can come together as a party to defeat the Republicans.
More than anything, to repair the damage done at home and abroad, we must unite as a country. I endorsed Sen. Obama because I believe he has the judgment, temperament and background to bridge our divisions as a nation and make America strong at home and respected in the world again.
This was a difficult, even painful, decision. My affection and respect for the Clintons run deep. I do indeed owe President Clinton for the extraordinary opportunities he gave me to serve him and this country. And nobody worked harder for him or served him more loyally, during some very difficult times, than I did.
Carville and others say that I owe President Clinton's wife my endorsement because he gave me two jobs. Would someone who worked for Carville then owe his wife, Mary Matalin, similar loyalty in her professional pursuits? Do the people now attacking me recall that I ran for president, albeit unsuccessfully, against Sen. Clinton? Was that also an act of disloyalty?
And while I was truly torn for weeks about this decision, and seriously contemplated endorsing Sen. Clinton, I never told anyone, including President Clinton, that I would do so. Those who say I did are misinformed or worse.
As for Mr. Carville's assertions that I did not return President Clinton's calls: I was on vacation in Antigua with my wife for a week and did not receive notice of any calls from the president. I, of course, called Sen. Clinton prior to my endorsement of Sen. Obama. It was a difficult and heated discussion, the details of which I will not share here.
I do not believe that the truth will keep Carville and others from attacking me. I can only say that we need to move on from the politics of personal insult and attacks. That era, personified by Carville and his ilk, has passed and I believe we must end the rancor and partisanship that has mired Washington in gridlock. In my view, Sen. Obama represents our best hope of replacing division with unity. That is why, out of loyalty to my country, I endorse him for president.
The writer is governor of New Mexico and a former Democratic candidate for president.

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Obama Endorsed By Iraq Study Group Co-Chair

INDIANAPOLIS — Former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president Wednesday, praising his ability to transcend partisan division and calling his foreign policy outlook "pragmatic, visionary, and tough."
Hamilton, who during a three-decade House career rose to be chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees, also was vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission. His endorsement could boost the Democratic hopeful's national security standing.
"Barack Obama has the best opportunity to create a new sense of national unity and to transcend divisions within this country, not by ignoring them or smoothing them over, but by working together with candor and civility to meet our challenges," Hamilton said in a statement released by Obama's campaign.
On Obama's foreign policy stance, Hamilton said: "He will work with our friends and allies. Obama will strengthen our ability to use all the tools of American power, and relentlessly promote the American values of freedom and justice for all people."

Rupert Murdoch's Daughter Holds Obama Fundraiser

Gwyneth Paltrow, Elisabeth Murdoch heart Barack

Wyoming governor back Obama

Vanity Fair: Senior Bush Advisers Pressured Underlings To Use Torture Tactics At Guantanamo

Changing the long-accepted rules on interrogation required concerted action. From left: Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, then vice-presidential counsel David S. Addington, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, President George W. Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney. Photo illustration by Chris Mueller.
The abuse, rising to the level of torture, of those captured and detained in the war on terror is a defining feature of the presidency of George W. Bush. Its military beginnings, however, lie not in Abu Ghraib, as is commonly thought, or in the "rendition" of prisoners to other countries for questioning, but in the treatment of the very first prisoners at Guantánamo. Starting in late 2002 a detainee bearing the number 063 was tortured over a period of more than seven weeks. In his story lies the answer to a crucial question: How was the decision made to let the U.S. military start using coercive interrogations at Guantánamo?
The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a “trickle up” explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration—by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense. At the heart of the matter stand several political appointees—lawyers—who, it can be argued, broke their ethical codes of conduct and took themselves into a zone of international criminality, where formal investigation is now a very real option. This is the story of how the torture at Guantánamo began, and how it spread.

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Top Bush Administration officials pressured underlings to use torture tactics at Guantanamo

Of Guantanamo interrogators: “You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas.”
"Torture at Guantánamo was sanctioned by the most senior advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense, according to the international lawyer and professor of law at University College London Philippe Sands, who has conducted a forensic examination of the chain of command leading from the top of the administration to the camp at Guantánamo," Vanity Fair will report on newstands today.
The article directly contradicts the administration’s account to Congress, which placed responsibility on military commanders and interrogators on the ground for the practices banned by the Geneva Conventions.
Excerpts from the magazine's release follow. The full story is available here.

Shocking Bush Administration "Torture Memo" Declassified

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Tuesday made public a now-defunct legal memo that approved the use of harsh interrogation techniques against terror suspects, saying that President Bush's wartime authority trumps any international ban on torture.
The Justice Department memo, dated March 14, 2003, outlines legal justification for military interrogators to use harsh tactics against al-Qaida and Taliban detainees overseas _ so long as they did not specifically intend to torture their captors.
Even so, the memo noted, the president's wartime power as commander in chief would not be limited by the U.N. treaties against torture.
"Our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the president is free to override it at his discretion," said the memo written by John Yoo, who was then deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.
The memo also offered a defense in case any interrogator was charged with violating U.S. or international laws.
"Finally, even if the criminal prohibitions outlined above applied, and an interrogation method might violate those prohibitions, necessity or self-defense could provide justifications for any criminal liability," the memo concluded.
The memo was rescinded in December 2003, a mere nine months after Yoo sent it to the Pentagon's top lawyer, William J. Haynes. Though its existence has been known for years, its release Tuesday marked the first time its contents in full have been made public.
Haynes, the Defense Department's longest-serving general counsel, resigned in late February to return to the private sector. He has been hotly criticized for his role in crafting Bush administration policies for detaining and trying suspected terrorists that some argue led to prisoner abuses at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Yoo's memo became part of a debate among the Pentagon's civilian and military leaders about what interrogation tactics to allow at overseas facilities and whether U.S. troops might face legal problems domestically or in international courts.
Also of concern was whether techniques used by U.S. interrogators might someday be used as justification for harsh treatment of Americans captured by opposing forces.
The Justice Department has opened an internal investigation into whether its top officials improperly authorized or reviewed the CIA's use of waterboarding, which simulates drowning, when interrogating terror suspects. It was unclear whether the Yoo memo, which focuses only on military interrogators, will be part of that inquiry.
The declassified memo was released as part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit to force the Bush administration to turn over documents about the government's war on terror. The document also was turned over to lawmakers.

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When American soldiers get off duty in Iraq, the men usually return to their quarters, the women to theirs. But Staff Sgt. Marvin Frazier gets to go back to a small trailer with two pushed-together single beds that he shares with his wife.
In a historic but little-noticed change in policy, the Army is allowing scores of husband-and-wife soldiers to live and sleep together in the war zone — a move aimed at preserving marriages, boosting morale and perhaps bolstering re-enlistment rates at a time when the military is struggling to fill its ranks five years into the fighting.
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Report: US Embassy moving elsewhere. Sunni group claims GreenZone attacks

Arablinks

The Qatari paper AlArab had this on its front page this morning: A military source lifted the veil on information that the American ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has decided to change the location of the American Embassy [which is now] in the Green Zone in Baghdad, because it has been suject to a series of rocket attacks in recent days, that have led to the killing and injuring of a number of American employees. General Faisal AlAsafi, commander of a Green Zone entrance-protection unit, told AlArab that American Ambassador Ryan Crocker gave the order Saturday night to more the location of the Baghdad Embassy, temporarily, from the Green Zone to an alternate location, which he didn't specify...

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The Lessons of Basra

ROBERT DREYFUSS, The Nation

...The other big winner in the latest round of Shiite-vs.-Shiite civil war is Iran. For the past five years, Iran has built up enormous political, economic and military clout in Iraq, right under the noses of 170,000 surge-inflated US occupying forces. (For details, see my March 10 Nation article, "Is Iran Winning the Iraq War?") Iran has strong ties to Iraq’s ruling Shiite alliance, which is dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose militia, the Badr Corps, was armed, trained, financed and commanded by Iranians during two decades in exile in Iran. Since then, hedging its bets, Iran built a close relationship to Sadr’s Mahdi Army as well, and Sadr himself has spent most of the time since the start of the US surge last January in Iran. In addition, Iran has armed and trained a loose collection of fighters that US military commanders call "Special Groups," paramilitary fighters who’ve kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on American troops. Thus, it was no surprise when Hadi al-Ameri, the commander of the Badr Corps and a leading member of ISCI, traveled over the weekend to Iran’s religious capital of Qom to negotiate the truce with Sadr that resulted in a shaky ceasefire in Basra...Adding to Bush’s utter humiliation, the Iranian-negotiated truce was mediated by the commander of the so-called Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani, who brought Sadr’s representatives together with Hadi al-Ameri, the Badr Corps commander and the leading aide to Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the ISCI leader. The Quds Force, you will recall, was only last year designated as a "terrorist" entity by the US government. So President Bush’s "defining moment" is this: the head of an Iranian "terrorist" force has brokered a deal between the two leading Shiite parties in Iraq, Sadr’s movement and ISCI...

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Americans Say Iraqis Unappreciative of Favors

Haifa Zankana, Translated By Ferris Tubia

Five years crammed with devastation, destruction and vagrancy. Trees burning, and breathing the Uranium-loaded air, flowing from north to south, spreading slow death all over, not distinguishing between race, gender or religion. All types of cancer are stretching and reproducing as fast as their malignant cells; like the abominable racism,; like men coming home to take revenge on their people and their country; like children suddenly losing their innocence, turning into men ready to use their weapon; or maybe like an Iraqi woman, in her black barracan, in an everlasting mourning, looking in hospitals and graves for her beloved ones, with a face eaten by sadness. This face has forgotten the meaning of happiness. It was created by God with lips and eyes always prepared to cry; with eyes blazed with bitterness, taking her permanent rage everywhere she goes, forcing herself to keep living, reminding herself every second that raising what is left from her kids is more essential than cowardliness and death....

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The Last Arab Sovereign

The Arab Advocate

Political midgets in the American-occupied, Iranian-ruled territories of the formerly existing state of Iraq now travel to Qom to resolve their differences. The "Great Satan" has delivered to Iran what it could not achieve in eight years of war with Iraq, the division, fragmentation, and complete destruction of a strong, unified Iraq. Today the state has ceased to exist, and both the US and Iran have no interest in re-establishing a unified, centralized regime in Baghdad...

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Those who control oil and water will control the world

John Gray
The Observer, Sunday March 30 2008

New superpowers are competing for diminishing resources as Britain becomes a bit-player.

The outcome could be deadly

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No One is Leading

By Mark A. Goldman

The real issue is whether we are a nation of laws… i.e., do we believe in the rule of law… or have we simply given up on the American Experiment and the Constitution itself. If we acknowledge that the war was illegal — that egregious crimes were committed in its execution — then it will follow that we must end the war. But what follows is much more than that.

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A Third American War Crime in the Making

By Paul Craig Roberts

The US Congress, the US media, the American people, and the United Nations, are looking the other way as Cheney prepares his attack on Iran.

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An innocent man loses 5 years of his life at Guantanamo Bay

By: SilentPatriot on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 9:00 AM - PDT
This is what George Bush and his band of cronies have turned America into. This is on all of our hands, whether we accept it or not.

Download Play Download Play
CBS:
At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America’s shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one.
The story Kurnaz told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley is a rare look inside that clandestine system of justice, where the government’s own secret files reveal that an innocent man lost his liberty, his dignity, his identity, and ultimately five years of his life.
There’s Dick Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine in action for ya. Mother Jones has a profile of Murat Kurnaz as well as a timeline of his experiences.
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Texas Prosecutes Little Old Ladies for Voter Fraud

State's Attorney General has prosecuted Democrats who help seniors vote by mail while ignoring documented Republican ballot box stuffing.
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Iran Brokers Call for Ceasefire;

Fact Or Fiction?

Bush reduced to Irrelevancy in Iraq;

Fighting Continues By Juan ColeA parliamentary delegation from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's own coalition (mainly now the Da`wa Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) defied him by going off to the holy seminary city of Qom in Iran and negotiating directly with Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr and with the leader of the Quds Brigades of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Qasim Sulaymani.
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Iraq In The Balance

"The Iranians Are Killing Americans" Senator Lindsey Graham By Scott Horton
The U.S.-supported venture has probably actually increased Iranian government influence in Iraq, including inside the government. Tehran sees al-Maliki as a transitional figure, not likely to last long. It is intent on building a solid and broad base of support within the Iraqi Shi’a community, and it seems to be achieving its objectives.

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Land of the Free? You Decide

Unfrikingbelievable, and they call this democracy, come live in America the land of the free, just as long as you don't speak out against Georgie and his gang of murderous thugs, Freedom of speech is now a crime, but killing over 1 million innocent Iraqi men, women, and children and 4011 U.S. Military Personnel, is just dandy with this White House, is just fine.

Do 80 Year Old Men Have Freedom of Speech?

Newsday.com
An 80-year-old church deacon was removed from the Smith Haven Mall yesterday in a wheelchair and arrested by police for refusing to remove a T-shirt protesting the Iraq War.

Debunking Muqtada Al-Sadr

Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues

...He said that this occupation is a crusade against Islam and that muslims have to fight it. When asked about his resistance to the U.S, he said textually-- the U.S knows that I am still resisting them but I am doing it in lawful ways and they know it. He then added --Saddam Hussein was occupying Iraq as a dictator and a tyrant. We have got ridden of Saddam and the Baathists , but whatever you are witnessing right now is also the work of Saddam and the Baathists. The Little Satan has left (Saddam Hussein) and the Great Satan has arrived. I already said that at the beginning of the occupation in 2003. Khomeini used exactly that same sentence when referring to Saddam Hussein and the U.S. I wish the "Baathists" will pay heed...

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The Opium Brides of Afghanistan

In the country's poppy-growing provinces, farmers are being forced to sell their daughters to pay loans.

Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, NEWSWEEK

Khalida's father says she's 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can't keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can't keep her much longer. Khalida's father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It's the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he's losing far more than money. "I never imagined I'd have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter," says Shah.

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THE DECLINE & COMING FALL OF US HEGEMONY

K Gajendra Singh
...An editorial titled ' Collapse of U.S. economy ' in Belleville Intelligencer of 27 Feb, 2008 confirms , by now generally accepted ill health of US economy . Harry Koza in the Globe and Mail recently quoted Bernard Connelly, the global strategist at Banque AIG in London, that the likelihood of a Great Depression is growing by the day. Martin Wolf of U.K.'s Financial Times cited Dr. Nouriel Roubini of the New York University's Stern School of Business, who outlines how the losses of the American financial system will grow to more than $1 trillion, an amount equal to all the assets of all American banks. The next domino to fall will be credit card defaults, and after that... who knows? There are so many exotic funds out there, with trillions of dollars in paper - or rather computer-screen money - all carrying assorted acronyms, and all about to disintegrate into nothingness...US has lost the war on the ground in Iraq and Nato is in disarray in Afghanistan . At the end of 'Operation Iraqi freedom ' transmuted into a ' war on terror' , really the mother of all battles for oil, raw materials and strategic space in west , south and central Asia , the frontiers in the Middle East and even Pakistan are likely to be redrawn , but not by the West but by the movements , militias and peoples of the region...
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Deceit, Pettiness, Treachery, Arrogance, Ignorance and Stunning Callousness by those who took us into this vile war.

PBS on Iraq: A Compilation of Deceit

What we did see in this broadcast was a compilation of the deceit, pettiness, treachery, arrogance, ignorance and stunning callousness by those who took us into this vile war. The key figures who promoted the war were Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Lewis Libby. Those names were not new, but a new motive for the war was revealed: the recognition of Israel by a new democratic Iraq.

Americans in Green Zone Under Siege

Democracy on the March

Saturday: 171 Iraqis, 2 US Soldiers Killed, 289 Iraqis Wounded
Sunday: 95 Iraqis Killed, 28 Wounded

Islam now world's biggest religious denomination

Muslims outnumber Roman Catholics for first time - Vatican

Muslims knock Roman Catholics off top spotFOR the first time in history Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world.

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The body of MIA Sgt. Keith Maupin has been identified in Iraq today.

Obama win appears big in Texas delegate battle

Barrack Obama appeared to have scored a clear victory over Hillary Clinton on Saturday in the second step of Texas' multi-tiered process for selecting its delegates to the Democratic National Convention. With results available from about half of the district conventions held statewide, the Associated Press reported that Obama had won 59 percent of the delegates headed to the state party's June convention to Clinton’s 41 percent. That translates into 1,858 delegates for Obama and 1,270 for Clinton.
That result made it likely that when the delegate selection process is finally completed, Obama will have more Texas delegates to the national convention than Clinton, despite Clinton's having won the March 4 primary vote 51 to 47 percent. Under Texas' delegate selection process, 67 of its 206 delegates are selected by the June state party convention.
Tens of thousands of Texas Democrats turned out for Saturday's district conventions in a chaotic day in which many of the meetings in Texas' large cities lasted late into the night. Some delegates — confused and frustrated by hours-long delays, disorder and disorganization — gave up on the process and left, still not sure if their vote counted. “Please move a bit faster,” urged delegate Whitney Larkins, who attended the largest senatorial district in Fort Worth gathered at the Will Rogers Coliseum. “Have some consideration. Think about those of us who took time out of our lives to participate in this.”
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You want 4 - 8 more year of the same?

Crazy Redux-Bush and Cheney anti-war parody

Silenced Majority Portal