Leg-irons for Dickie, Karl and Scooter
Mike Whitney
It‚s weird that the reaction to the Fitzgerald investigation has been so upbeat. After all, it only produced one measly indictment. Typically, that would have put Bush-critics on the ledge teetering towards the street. Alas, there‚ll be no looming guillotine on the White House lawn and no firing squad on Pennsylvania Ave. The iniquitous trio of Cheney, Rove and Libby won‚t be seen edging through the Rose Garden in manacles and prison-pinstripes; just the well-groomed Scooter staring ahead impassively as he speeds away in his chauffer-driven limo. So, where‚s the frustration? I would have expected a collective sigh of grief across the leftist web sites like the air hissssing out of a punctured tire. But, not this time. Instead, all eyes are fixed on America‚s new protagonist, Patrick Fitzgerald, and the stream of details that appear on a daily basis…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.com/?p=17342

By the Rivers of Babylon
Iraqi resistance is not a disorganised act of defiance
CÔME CARPENTIER DE GOURDON
In spite of growing evidence that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating by the day and that the war has turned out to be, in the words of General William Odom, President Reagan‚s Director of the National Security Council “the greatest strategic disaster in US History”, most major media are still echoing the Bush regime‚s heavily censored and doctored version of reality, according to which the ‘’Coalition Forces,‚‚ are gradually introducing irreversible progress in society despite the uncoordinated and irrational terrorist actions conducted by desperate ‘’dead enders‚‚. In fact, the Iraqi resistance is not a disorganised act of defiance. There is evidence that it was carefully planned by Saddam Hussain‚s government in the years leading up to the US-British invasion of March 2003…

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The Department of TORTURE
Where atrocity threatens to become official U.S. foreign policy
thepen, OpEdNews
The Senate amendment to the new Defense Appropriations Act would explicitly prohibit the U.S. government from subjecting those in its custody to cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment. It’s pretty straightforward stuff. Yet despite a rousing 90-9 vote for its passage, there are still dark forces at work trying to subvert the intent of this measure, the language of which must survive the conference committee with the House of Representatives. If the morality perverters have their way, there will be a carve-out to exempt the CIA from this prohibition. They are seeking this with the express knowledge that sadists (acting under the color of CIA authority) have been responsible for the horrific abuses which made necessary further action and clarification of existing law…

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Resisting the Pistons of Empire: One America for Peace
Greg Moses, peacefile
Whip lashed by serial collisions of imperial power, dissident movements in the USA brace for the next shocking thing. We have been hijacked into a crashing invasion of Iraq, slammed around by evasive maneuvers in New Orleans, and now along the borderlands of the Southwest USA, signs warn that a highway of accommodation is about to end, dumping us head-on into deserts of aggression upon Latin American peoples. Into each new crisis, empire roars forward, pumping high octane into its five-piston engine. Whether stirring borderland provocations at home, fighting wars of aggression abroad, or exploiting crises of colonized communities anywhere, the five pistons of empire always work the same…

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Did Rove Cop Last Minute Deal With Fitzgerald?
www.rense.com
Did Rove cop a last minute deal with Fitzgerald? Newsweek is reporting some last-minute two-steps by Karl Rove and his attorney during the early morning of Oct. 28, just before Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Lewis Libby, Cheney’s Chief of Staff. But none of this reportage should be taken that the storm at the White House has passed. On Oct. 25, Fitzgerald and chief Leakgate FBI Special Agent Jack Eckenrode visited Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin at his law firm Patton Boggs. Luskin apparently proffered some new evidence to Fitzgerald and Eckenrode…

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The Libby Indictment: Was It a “Coverup of a Coverup?”
Danny Schechter, Editor, Mediachannel.org
…Yet just as this indictment was akin to accusing Al Capone of income tax invasion instead of the murders he committed, the real issues facing journalists and journalists go deeper. The federal prosecutor not only did NOT find out who leaked name of the CIA’s Valerie Plame˜— the reason for his probe in the first place˜ — but he did not place the lies told by Libby in the context of the greater lie˜ — the conspiracy to wage an illegal war. (And note how all the focus is still on the lies before the war not the crimes committed in Iraq and the way they have been masked.) That’s the crime that demands investigation and prosecution. Libby’s lies were a misdemeanor in the face of multiple felonies that are still unpunished…

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Karl’s Great Escape
Did Rove Rat on Scooter?
Joshua Frank
At a Critical Mass bike ride here in Albany, New York on Friday, I decided to turn the Halloween theme into a political one, at least for myself. I’m not much for costumes and makeup. So I just slapped a sign on the back of my jacket and off I rode. My sign read, “Rove is Next.” Too bad I was wrong. Karl Rove may in fact be bulletproof. At this juncture it is quite likely that Rove will not be indicted over the Plame affair. Scooter Libby is playing the patsy for his petty lies and fabrications…

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The True Cost of War
Cindy Sheehan
This immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq has cost the world so much. George and his reckless war of choice have cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars that could be better spent at home. Judging from Katrina, Iraq has cost our country much of its security. It has cost the US any good standing we enjoyed in the world community. It cost America the post 9/11 good will from almost the entire world. We Americans are the laughing stock of the world community. Not only is our callous and careless leadership disdained, but we the people are scorned because we “re”-elected George for a 2nd term and not only that, we are allowing him to continue to mis-lead our country into ruin…

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100,000 Rings Events Illuminate Iraqi Civilians’ Deaths
Maya Schenwar, Electronic Iraq
The tolling of bells echoed down Dearborn St. once every minute last Thursday and Friday, reverberating off the orange Calder sculpture, causing the businesspeople and shop-goers scurrying past Federal Plaza to take a second look. No, no new churches had been suddenly erected in the middle of downtown, and it was too early in the year for Christmas handbell-ers. The solemn bell-ringing ceremony, entitled “100,000 Rings,” was the work of the Uptown group, Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCN). In nearly 100 communities worldwide—including Chicago—anti-war groups gathered on October 24-28, ringing a bell once a minute, 1,000 times, symbolizing the more than 100,000 deaths of Iraqi civilians since 2003 when the war began…

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After the Libby Indictment, the Press Is Acquitting Itself
Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t
A lot of media outlets are now scrutinizing some of the lies told by the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq. Yet the same news organizations are bypassing their own key roles in the marketing of those lies. A case in point is the New York Times. On Saturday, hours after the indictment of Lewis Libby, the lead editorial of the Times ended by declaring that “the big point Americans need to keep in mind is this: There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” On Sunday, the Times columnist Frank Rich referred to “Colin Powell’s notorious presentation of WMD ‘evidence’ to the UN on the eve of war…

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Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?
F. William Engdahl, GlobalResearch.ca
No sooner are indictments being handed down to Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States for lies and coverup of information used deliberately to suppress the fact the Bush Administration had no ‘smoking gun‚ to prove Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear arsenal, but a new scandal is surfacing every bit as outrageous and ultimately, likely also criminal. Against all scientific prudence and normal public health procedure, the world population is being whipped up into a fear frenzy by irresponsible public health officials from the US Administration to WHO to the United States Centers for Disease Control…

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US toll in Iraq in October is fourth highest of the war
AFP
The killings of six more US soldiers in roadside explosions in Iraq raised the US death toll for October to 93, making it the fourth deadliest month for the US military since the March 2003 invasion. Lawrence DiRita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said there was no single explanation for the increase in US deaths but said it reflected the growing power and sophistication of insurgent bombings…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 31 October 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice.
…Dozens of local residents took to the streets of al-Latifiyah, south of Baghdad and gathered in front of the local American base to demand the release of a woman arrested by troops of the Iraqi puppet “Interior Ministry.” (…) Quds Press noted that US forces regularly arrest Iraqi women in an effort to pressure their husbands or other male relatives to surrender to the occupation authorities. This was the first known occasion in which the Iraqi puppet forces had apparently adopted the same tactic. The puppet “Interior Ministry” troops have repeatedly been accused of involvement in sectarian anti-Sunni raids and arrests in the country…

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More “precision strikes”, more dead Iraqi children who won’t be counted
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
Not by the U.S. government, anyway. 40 Iraqis are dead and 20 wounded thanks to a “precision strike” on a “terrorist safe house.” As you know without even reading the linked article, the latter two phrases come from the U.S. military, while the numbers come from Iraqi hospital sources; you don’t expect the U.S. military (or the U.S. media) to actually inspect the damage and report the results, do you?…

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Scooter and the Neocons
The Libby Indictment
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
…The crime is the falsification of intelligence in order to deceive Congress and the American people. The Bush administration could not have invaded Iraq unless Congress and the American people believed the US was in dire danger from Saddam Hussein. Forged documents purporting to show uranium sales to Iraq and false intelligence reports from Iraqi exiles allied with neoconservative officials in the Bush administration served as the basis for the false claims about weapons of mass destruction and “mushroom clouds” made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and National Security Advisor Condi Rice. The Bush administration neoconservatives who assembled the “intelligence” knew that it was false. The neoconservatives had their own agenda…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.com/?p=17338

GI Special 3C99: The Betrayal – October 30, 2005
www.militaryproject.org
…It’s very simple really. Since the Iraq war is such a “noble cause” then there shouldn’t be a problem by having soldiers who believe in it, fight it. Therefore, soldiers in Iraq who love George Bush, who don’t think he lied or misled the country into the war, who are willing to risk their lives for Iraqi’s, who believe we’re making “progress” and don’t want to leave until the job is finished – and whose families believe that Cindy Sheehan is the enemy – can continue fighting. But any solider that feels otherwise can be discharged honorably and is free to come home. Since Republicans keep telling us about all the “good news” in Iraq and that the military voted overwhelming for Bush, I’m sure more then enough troops would stay and continue fighting…

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“Iraq is a nation on fire”
Imad Khadduri
…Mr. Ritter: Well, I view that Iraq is a nation that’s on fire. There’s a horrific problem that faces not only the people of Iraq but the United States and the entire world. And the fuel that feeds that fire is the presence of American and British troops. This is widely acknowledged by the very generals that are in charge of the military action in Iraq. So the best way to put out the fire is to separate the fuel from the flame. So I’m a big proponent of bringing the troops home as soon as possible. Today’s the best day we’re going to have in Iraq. Tomorrow’s going to be worse, and the day after that’s going to be even worse…

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Medals for Libby, Rove, and Cheney?
Ivan Eland, Online Journal Guest Writer
…No, we expect more from the Bush administration. We expect the same grandiosity and flamboyance shown during the debacle in Iraq. In December 2004, in the midst of the chaos of the post-invasion occupation of Iraq, the president awarded the Medal of Freedom˜one of the nation‚s two top civilian awards˜to Gen. Tommy Franks, intelligence director George Tenet, and U.S. viceroy Paul Bremer (…) The awards ceremony where those medals were presented resembled those held in the old Soviet Union, where senior officials took turns pinning medals on each other‚s chests while Soviet forces in the field were taking a drubbing from a bunch of ragtag Afghan guerrillas. Giving medals to Franks, Tenet, and Bremer was the ultimate chutzpah in the face of an impending disaster in Iraq. The administration faces a comparable calamity in the Plame affair…

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Russians Say Volcker Report Based on Forgeries
Alex Nicholson, Associated Press
Russian politicians and business leaders on Friday issued a scathing response to a report documenting extensive corruption in the UN oil-for-food program in Saddam Hussein‚s Iraq, saying some documents implicating Russian companies and individuals were fake (…) Russian government and company officials denied any wrongdoing. “On a number of occasions, the documents shown to us were forged; in particular, they contained fake signatures of Russian officials,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies…

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Impeach Bush for lies propelling U.S. to war
Bellaciao
The Bush regime told lies to get support for its pre-emptive war against a country that posed no threat to our borders. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, introduced a “Resolution of Inquiry to demand the White House turn over all white papers, minutes, notes, e-mails or other communications kept by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG).” “This group, comprised of the president and vice president‚s top aides, was critical in selling the administration‚s case for war,”Kucinich said. “We now know that the administration hyped intelligence and misled the American public and Congress in their effort to ‘sell‚ the war. After 2,000 American troops have been killed in Iraq, it is long past time for this Congress to ask serious questions about WHIG and its role in the lead-up to the war”…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.com/?p=17332

Just an Accident?
US – Military subdues Losses
Iraq News Network
…The Website ICasualties.org provides detailed statistics of losses of occupation forces in Iraq. Via fortlaufende surveillance of the total numbers of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq – U.S. DoD doesn’t give further information – it’s possible for the Website at least to count the weekly numbers of Wounded in Action. For the period starting October 19, 2005, ending October 25, the provided number of U.S. troops that in effect of being seriously wounded did not report back for duty within 72h was 40. Friday ICasualties published a short note, adding these were corrected figures. Actually this number increased between the report of Department of Defense (DoD) from October 19 and the report from October 26 by 678 men. October 28 DoD changed the report with no comment so that for the afore said period only 40 U.S. troops werde reported as seriously wounded…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.com/?p=17328

Outing Valerie Plame put us all in Greater Danger
Mike Whitney
…The fact that the Bush administration‚s highest ranking officials‚ deliberately endangered national security to pursue a personal vendetta is alarming, but equally disturbing is the fact that their behavior has greatly enhanced the likelihood of nuclear weapons proliferation. By outing Valerie Plame the administration has exposed the war on terror as a fraud. Brewster Jennings and Associates was a vital part of the United State‚s covert strategy to fight the spread of WMD. Cheney and his lieutenants intentionally sabotaged that operation in an effort to destroy a personal enemy of the Bush White House. Their action has put us all at greater risk…

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The Threats Against Iraq and Syria and the Option of Resistance
The North American Committee against Zionism and Imperialism
The Editorial Board of the Free Arab Voice
As the month of Ramadan comes to an end, the threats on the resistance option in Iraq, Palestine, and Syria are mounting. The Iraqi Resistance has intensified its activities and has been hastening, with more success every passing day, the US defeat in occupied Iraq. From the beginning, the US-British Imperialists have been planning the destruction of Iraq and its fragmentation. The establishment of a Karzai-like government was only a prelude to civil war. The Iraqi Resistance Report has helped uncover the covert operations put forth by the US-British Imperialist alliance to stir up sectarian strife and produce a civil war in Iraq. These operations are highly classified and evil in their intent aiming at planting explosives in civilian areas in Basra, Baghdad, and elsewhere…

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Bush’s Crimes and Wounds, Deeper Than He or Neo-Cons Want to Admit
Sam Hamod
Now that the dust has settled on Scooter Libby’s indictment, it is shameful that Bush and his team, even those on Fox such as the absurdly ignorant Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly, refuse to see how much the American people and the world are angry at Bush and his aides, especially the mastermind of this evil, Dick Cheney. Their attitude was voiced by Bush and Coulter who both basically said, “Let’s forget about what happened and put this behind us.” Astounding? No, not for these people, or whatever they are…

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The Bush solution
Expand the war to Syria and Iran
Sara Flounders
“When faced with an unsolvable problem˜expand the problem.” This cynical political advice supposedly hangs on the wall of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld‚s office. Today it is clear to the entire world that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is an unsolvable problem. It is a howling blunder, an arrogant miscalculation by the political servants of U.S. monopoly capital. Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, has labeled it “the greatest strategic disaster in United States history”…

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One Is Not A Bogus Number
Linda Zoblotsky
…Although we come from perspectives, I do agree with you that “2000" is a bogus number. 2,000 is the number of U.S. military deaths that the Pentagon chooses to release. The Pentagon only counts death by bombs and gunfire. The Pentagon does not count heart attacks, strokes and illness leading to the death of our men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. 2,000 is a bogus number, because the number of Iraqi and Afghan women and children dead is much higher. These innocent people died from the U.S. weapons of mass destruction, including depleted uranium used in U.S. weaponry which is killing indiscriminately on both sides of the battle field..

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Aziz: Corporate Media Smearing Galloway
Kurt Nimmo, Another day in the empire
Norm Coleman, take note. “Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz has denied telling investigators that a maverick MP personally profited from the U.N. oil-for-food programme for Iraq, Aziz‚s lawyer said on Saturday,” reports Reuters. “These are lies ∑ he (Aziz) denied this,” Badia Aref remarked. “It is part of a media campaign aimed at smearing Galloway‚s reputation.”…

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Why was Mehlis picked?
Xymphora
The UN could have picked any prosecutor in the world to investigate the Hariri assassination, but chose a German prosecutor named Detlev Mehlis. Mehlis was the prosecutor of the case of the 1982 bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin. This was blamed by Ronald Reagan on Libya, which allowed Reagan to bomb Libya. We can analyze American involvement with Libya with a much more cynical eye now that we have seen so clearly how lies were used to manipulate the attack on Iraq. Mehlis’ entire prosecution was heavily manipulated by American, Israeli and West German intelligence agencies, and Mehlis played right along, a fact which presumably made him perfect for the framing of Syria. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed writes…

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Hey NY Times: Go to Hell You Criminal Bastards!
Jesse, Editor, TvNewsLIES.org
The NY Times and the rest of the criminal corporate media are lying bastards! I can not repeat this enough: none of the information related to the Plame case that is being presented to the public by the corporate media is new. It is almost as if they are visiting sites such as TvNewsLIES.org, Buzzflash.com, Whatreallyhappened.com or the like and skimming through our archives. They are printing 2-3 year old news stories as if they are suddenly finding out new information during some kind of journalistic investigation…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.com/?p=17318

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 30 October 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
An Iraqi Resistance marksman shot and killed a US soldier in the ath-Thilah area in the middle of ar-Ramadi at 2pm local time Sunday afternoon. The ar-Ramadi correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported residents of ath-Thilah who saw the incident as saying that an Iraqi Resistance sharpshooter opened fire on a US soldier who was a part of a foot patrol backed up by four Humvees on the road to ar-Ramadi General Hospital. The American soldier took a direct hit and fell dead instantly…

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Voices from the grave
The world’s new Halloween reality
John Kaminski
…Hmm, how about getting rid of the white Western wraith known as the American/British/Israeli war machine that is currently in the process of enslaving the entire planet? What is the message of our archetypal Halloween characters? What is it makes us thrill to horror? And most of all, why is this fun holiday all too accurately reflected in the behavior of our governments in their everyday affairs? Do we really hear what these characters ˜ these ghosts ˜ are telling us? The characters we choose to portray on Halloween ˜ Dracula, the Hunchback, and Dubya (I remember when Reagan was the No. 1 mask on Halloween, for more or less the same conscienceless behavior) ˜ generally contain a message we want to send. Too few of us heed the messages of the characters we choose to emulate or represent. Isn’t it time for some new Halloween characters? Ones that actually have some meaning in the real world, instead of mythical mirages from the pages of literature…

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US says bombs Qaeda house, Iraqis say 40 dead
Reuters
U.S. aircraft bombed a house near the Syrian border before dawn on Monday in what the military said was a precision strike on an al Qaeda leader. A local hospital doctor in the Iraqi town of Qaim said 40 people were killed and 20 wounded, many of them women and children, and a tribal leader said there were no guerrillas in the area (…) At the hospital, doctor Ammar al-Marsoumi said he believed 40 civilians were killed and 20 wounded; rescuers were still trying to remove bodies from the rubble, he added. Mohammad al-Karbouli, a local tribal leader said: “There are no insurgents in this area, they are all harmless families”…

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Tomgram: De la Vega, Bush’s War, a Case of Presidential Fraud?
Tom Engelhardt & Elizabeth de la Vega
…Legally, there are no significant differences between the investor fraud perpetrated by Enron CEO Ken Lay and the prewar intelligence fraud perpetrated by George W. Bush. Both involved persons in authority who used half-truths and recklessly false statements to manipulate people who trusted them. There is, however, a practical difference: The presidential fraud is wider in scope and far graver in its consequences than the Enron fraud. Yet thus far the public seems paralyzed…

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Syria accuses US of military raids
The Australian
SYRIA has accused the US of launching lethal military raids into its territory from Iraq, escalating the diplomatic crisis between the two countries as the Bush administration seeks to step up pressure on President Bashar Assad’s regime. Syrian army officer Amid Suleiman told Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper that US cross-border attacks into Syria had killed at least two border guards…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.com/?p=17314

GI Special 3C98: “This Job Isn’t Done” – October 30, 2005
www.militaryproject.org
…Dear Sen. Kennedy, We still haven’t heard your voice on the floor of the Senate, demanding that our troops be brought home now. Nor have we heard you, or your fellow Democratic Senators asking, “is now the time for us, Sen. Roberts, to dive into phase II of the investigation to find out just how this white house used the intelligence to take us into this illegal war, that is costing our military families thousands of lives?” I am the mother of an Iraq Vet, who will most likely be facing a redeployment back to a situation he already survived once as a 19 yr. old. Why won’t you protect him, and others, from becoming a statistic at age 20?…

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Rumsfeld, Most Avid reader of my articles – scary!
Maher Osseiran
…The following is an email that I send to the GI special website asking them to communicate this fact and my articles to the GI in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld’s office whose IP (internet address) ends with osd.mil, osd stands for Office of Secretary of Defense was the heaviest single entity to visit and download the articles I write. All this happen in the last month after I managed to post a link to one of my articles in a Washington Post blog.
I am forwarding this email because it best describes what I am going through without having to rewrite it again…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.com/?p=17309

As Scooter Fades, Syria takes Front and Center
Kurt Nimmo, Another day in the empire
Now that the Plame-Wilson Fiasco is more or less over, it‚s time for the neocons to get back to business. “Syrian army officer Amid Suleiman told Britain‚s Sunday Telegraph newspaper that US cross-border attacks into Syria had killed at least two border guards,” reports the Australian. “The charge follows leaks in Washington that the US has already engaged in military raids into Syria and is contemplating launching special forces operations on Syrian soil to eliminate insurgent networks before they reach Iraq, the report said.” Of course, there are no “insurgents” in Syria, unless one considers the Assad regime an insurgency…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.com/?p=17306

Unhappy Fitzmas
Xymphora
I’ve seen a few attempts to make the best of it, but Fitzmas was an absolute slam-dunk victory for the neocons. 60 years? Libby won’t do 60 minutes. It’s actually the best thing that ever happened to him. He’ll be pardoned and have to spend a few years out of obvious political activity, during which time he’ll be given millions of dollars for his valiant services to the Cause, but will be all ready to return in triumph to the Cheney administration, when he can destroy whatever of the world is still left. Libby doesn’t have to turn over anybody in the Administration because he knows he won’t do any time. Just like in the Mafia, a conviction adds to your prestige…

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Bush: Treaty Outlawing Torture Doesn’t Apply Beyond US Soil
Niko Kyriakou
Echoing recent comments by White House officials, a U.S. government report submitted to the United Nations last Friday bears a message that the brutal treatment of people held in U.S. military custody abroad is and should be legal. The report, which was submitted to the UN’s Human Rights Committee and is designed to document U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), fails to mention a number of U.S violations of the treaty that took place off of U.S. soil in places like Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, human rights groups say…

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Demand for grave diggers and coffins soars in Baghdad
Ilham Mohammed, Azzaman
Baghdad grave diggers and coffin makers say they have never been as busy as they are now. Prices are soaring, tempting other professionals to partake their roaring success, they say. The escalating violence that has gripped the country since the 2003 U.S-led invasion shows no signs of abating (…) Muhanad said he rarely buries people who had died of natural causes. “Most of the bodies brought to us are either killed by explosions or firearms”…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.com/?p=17301

US jails doctor for Iraq charity fraud
Aljazeera.net
A New York-based doctor who ran an unregistered charity has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for cheating donors and illegally sending some of the money to Iraq in violation of US sanctions. During brief remarks to the court, Dr Rafil Dhafir on Thursday said prosecutors used “lies and misrepresentations” to build a fraud and tax evasion case against him when it could not link him to terrorism. “It is my belief that my incarceration was, is and will always be political,” said the Iraqi-born Dhafir, who has maintained all along that he was innocent and that the charges against him are politically motivated…

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The Libby Indictment
Beginning of the End? Watergate 2005? Gotterdammerung for the Bushies?
ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Scooter Libby was the lawyer who got the charges dropped against billionaire scamster Marc Rich back in Clintontime. But that had more to do with Rich’s billions than with any legal talents Libby may have. On the evidence of the indictment brought by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on Friday, October 28, one fact stands out: SCOOTER LIBBY IS INCREDIBLY STUPID. And this is what CounterPunch gets from the Fitzgerald indictment as a whole. Special prosecutor Fitzgerald could have suggested that there is a cancer growing on the presidency, metastasizing out of Dick Cheney’s suite. He could have stated, or even hinted that yesterday’s indictment of Libby is the first drum roll in a mighty symphony of prosecutorial onslaughts on felonious conduct in high places. But special prosecutor Fitzgerald did none of these things…

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