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 . '/' . substr('9780805086911',-6,3) . '/' . '9780805086911' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Nick Turse
$30.00
 . '/' . substr('9781403964311',-6,3) . '/' . '9781403964311' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Juan Cole
$17
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AP photo / Hadi Mizban
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It was a violent Sunday in Iraq, as attacks of all stripes killed dozens and the U.S. death toll crossed 4,000. A day of suicide bombings, shootings and rocket and mortar attacks has cast yet another shadow over the “surge.”
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The New York Times / James Hill
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By Patrick Cockburn — All governments lie in wartime, but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any other conflict since the First World War.
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By Marie Cocco — The overdose of Reagan nostalgia to which we’ve been subjected during the Republican presidential primaries is as understandable as it is misplaced.
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guardian.co.uk
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A coalition of human rights and development groups has condemned Israel’s blockade of Gaza as the worst humanitarian crisis the territory has suffered since 1967. The Israeli government has defended the blockade as a necessary strategy against rocket attacks, a claim the aid groups reject.
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AP photo / Ahmad al-Rubaye, pool
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By Robert Scheer — President Bush has made his antagonism for Iran and its president well known, but in Iraq he has created a great ally for his enemy, as was clear from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s historic visit.
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AP photo / U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Lorie Jewell
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For those inclined to ask “who cares?” every time a celebrity-and-politics news item makes the rounds, consider it asked already. For everyone else, The Washington Post published an opinion piece by actress Angelina Jolie on Thursday about the problem of Iraqi refugees fleeing to Syria, Jordan and “a vast and very dangerous no-man’s land” within their own borders. Now, Jolie says, is the time for Americans to “do some of the good we always stated we intended to do.”
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AP photo
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By Chris Hedges — There’s an ugly secret behind the “success” of the surge: The United States is paying off Iraqi militants with weapons and cash. It’s a recipe for disaster, one that reminds Chris Hedges of “Yugoslavia before the storm.”
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By Marie Cocco — While Pakistan steals headlines, neighboring Afghanistan offers a more realistic opportunity to crack down on the incubation of terrorists—if only the United States and other interested governments are willing to think outside the box.
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By Eugene Robinson — John McCain has the advantage of getting to run right away. Too bad he’s campaigning on failed policies and bad ideas.
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Petar Pismestrovic, Kleine Zeitung, Austria
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Kosovo’s declaration of independence has prompted both condemnation and cheers from world leaders. Whether in the U.N. Security Council or the European Union, global opinion is divided. In particular, the declaration has served as a flashpoint for tension between the United States and Russia, an ugly reenactment of the kind of jockeying for influence that was supposed to have been buried with the Cold War.
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freedigitalphotos.net
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The skies won’t seem so friendly to Europeans looking to travel to the U.S. soon if President Bush’s list of new security demands is implemented despite the resistance and outrage it has sparked among EU officials, whose countrymen will encounter additional headaches if their leaders don’t get with Bush’s program.
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AP photo / Karim Kadim
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Two separate bomb blasts claimed 64 lives in Baghdad on Friday and injured more than 100 others—a tragic reminder of the serious and ongoing challenge of containing large-scale violence in Iraq’s volatile capital city.
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By David Sirota — The eight states between California and Kansas often get written off by political snobs, but the electoral complexities at play there will almost certainly swing the next election.
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By Elliot D. Cohen — It’s not enough for George W. Bush’s government to eavesdrop on phone calls, monitor financial transactions and sneak a peek at other people’s e-mails. Now the administration says it needs to monitor all Internet activity in the United States. That means you and everything you do online.
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AP photo / Khalil Hamra
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By Chris Hedges — The former New York Times Middle East bureau chief warns that the actions that led to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza will not bring peace to Israel but will instead create a new generation of Palestinian militants.
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The questionable actions of Blackwater Worldwide are coming back to haunt the private security contractor once again, this time regarding an incident in May 2005. In that incident Blackwater teams on the ground and in the air near a busy Green Zone checkpoint released CS gas, which is used by the U.S. military only sparingly and only in strictly controlled circumstances. The gas temporarily compromised American troops’ ability to maintain security in the area.
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By Joe Conason — A presidential run by the New York mayor would be a monument to egotism. Even worse, it might prevent the nation from ridding itself of today’s destructive policies.
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White House photo / Tina Hager
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For the first time during his presidency, in the final year of his final term, George W. Bush is headed to Israel and the West Bank. Given that he’s even less popular in the Mideast than he is at home, massive security preparations are under way.
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arcent.army.mil
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Despite touting increased stability in the outer provinces as proof of the success of the “surge,” the U.S. military is about to abandon those regions altogether. The Pentagon’s new strategy for dealing with a reduction of forces in Iraq is essentially to pull back to Baghdad and hope for the best.
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By Marie Cocco — After a generation of self-indulgence, America is very close to taking a big step away from foreign oil and all of the environmental and security problems we’ve come to associate with that phrase. Now, if we can just keep the energy industry at bay… .
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mcclatchydc.com
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BBC: “The UK will hand over control of Basra to Iraqi forces despite failing in its goal to establish security there, an MPs’ [members of Parliament] report says. The city is dominated by militias and the police contains ‘murderous’ and ‘corrupt’ elements, the report added.”
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abcnews.com
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A man who said he had a bomb strapped to his chest took and eventually released several hostages at a Hillary Clinton campaign office Friday. The man demanded to speak with Hillary, who was in the Washington, D.C., area at the time. Either for safety reasons or simply to not be outdone, a Barack Obama campaign office also evacuated.
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nymag.com
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During the early days of his romance with his girlfriend (now wife) Judith, then New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani made trips to the Hamptons, where she lived, and billed “obscure city agencies” for costs his NYPD security detail incurred while accompanying him, according to The Politico.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Chris Hedges — All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance.
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The New York Times reports that in certain areas of Baghdad, such as the Dora neighborhood in the south of the city, residents are cautiously returning to their homes and attempting to resume some semblance of normal life by taking advantage of a recent lull in violence. How long it will last, however, remains to be seen.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It’s time that we subject the Iraq war to the same cost-benefit analysis that we are called upon to impose on other government endeavors. We are supposed to repeal or revise domestic programs that don’t work. Shouldn’t a troubled war policy be treated the same way?
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nytimes.com
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The FBI, which is still investigating Blackwater’s Sept. 16 killing rampage in Baghdad, has determined that at least 14 of the 17 shootings were unjustified and in violation of deadly-force rules. The Justice Department is looking into whether to press charges, if it even has the authority, which means that Blackwater could very well get away with murder.
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whitehouse.gov
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While the rest of us have been struggling to survive air travel without our precious liquids and gels, federal investigators managed to sneak liquid explosives and detonators through airport security, according to a Government Accountability Office report issued Wednesday.
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More than seven months before Blackwater’s September killing spree, one of the company’s snipers shot and killed three Iraqi guards, who, witnesses said, never opened fire. A brief “investigation” by the State Department, which included no Iraqi witnesses or visits to the scene of the crime, found that the incident “fell within approved rules governing the use of force.”
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A contract worker who was apparently attempting to bring a small explosive device onto the grounds of Arizona’s Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station on Friday was stopped and detained, according to the Associated Press, and officials would not let anyone enter or leave the plant after the incident.
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By Joe Conason — In Rudolph Giuliani’s narrative of his own life, as confided to rapt Republican voters along the presidential primary trail, he has been fighting the lonely twilight struggle against “Islamic terrorism” since sometime in the 1970s.
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By Ellen Goodman — Pretty soon, we’re going have to amend the favorite mom and dad moniker of the moment. Those much vaunted helicopter parents are turning into black-helicopter parents. The image of parents hovering over their kids is morphing into the darker image of parents spying on their kids.
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By Elliot D. Cohen — The “Last Days of Democracy” author warns that Congress is about to aid the Bush administration with its Orwellian plans by granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications giants for helping the government spy on Americans.
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chinadaily.com.cn
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Three senior law enforcement officials have revealed to the Associated Press that the State Department gave all of the Blackwater guards involved in the Sept. 16 killing of 17 Iraqi civilians immunity from prosecution.
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Original from archives.gov
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By Chris Hedges — A Dallas jury, a week ago, caused a mistrial in the government case against this country’s largest Islamic charity. The action raises a defiant fist on the sinking ship of American democracy.
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The State Department will implement new measures to guard against a repeat of last month’s Blackwater slaughter of 17 Iraqi civilians, but some of the new rules, including more cultural awareness training, feel like a Band-Aid on a serious head wound. In addressing this issue, the Iraqi government has chosen to make a point of its sovereignty, and so far the U.S. has done little to allay the Iraqi concerns.
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By Marie Cocco — By simply deciding that something is a “state secret,” the Bush government has avoided answering for its brutal treatment of innocent victims in the war on terror. This is a perversion of the principle of American justice.
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AP photo / LM Otero
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James Harris and Josh Scheer —
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Philip Coyle knows a thing or two about the “staggering” amounts of money the U.S. funnels into the military-industrial complex, and why it is so difficult to stanch the profiteering.
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According to a devastating new report from the House Oversight Committee, Blackwater USA employees engaged in at least 195 “escalation of force” incidents since 2005, with the private security firm firing 80 percent of the first shots (despite its purely defensive mandate). What’s worse, the State Department has provided little if any oversight, instead assisting the company as it carried out damage control.
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AP photo / Charlie Niebergall
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By Robert Scheer — It’s not just Bushie loyalists and Republicans who are gunning for more money to be poured (out of taxpayers’ pockets) into the Iraq war chest. Take Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who is aiming to double Bush’s proposed $12 billion in funding for the rapid production of mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles—a proposition which, Scheer argues, is about much more than the security of U.S. troops.
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unitedcats.wordpress.com
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Any lingering question as to whether Blackwater USA security contractors were to blame in the Sept. 16 shootout in Baghdad that left 11 Iraqis dead and 12 wounded may be cleared up by a videotape of the incident, which was reportedly filmed from a nearby police station.
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The disturbing security slip-up at North Dakota’s Minot Air Force Base on Aug. 29, which resulted in the unintentional—not to mention unsupervised and unauthorized—transport of six nuclear warheads across the country to Louisiana, has touched off a major military inquiry and raised serious security concerns.
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AP Photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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How could the $720 million the U.S. is currently spending on the Iraq war each day be put to better use? Well, how about paying for the health care costs of 423,529 children? Or giving 34,904 college students four-year scholarships, or providing 6,482 families with homes?
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By Marie Cocco — There is no set piece more emblematic of the tragic farce that is the American involvement in Iraq than the grotesque episode of Blackwater USA and the killing of civilians in Baghdad—at least nine and as many as 28—on Sunday.
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jfkclub.com
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The State Department has restricted all U.S. diplomats to the Green Zone in Baghdad while it conducts a security review, presumably inspired by the suspension of its preferred mercenary bodyguards.
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The Iraqi government is taking a close look at all private security firms still involved in the ongoing conflict there following Sunday’s shootout in Baghdad, after which several contractors from Blackwater USA were accused of killing innocent bystanders while guarding U.S. officials.
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“Blackwater” author Jeremy Scahill sounds off on the security firm’s recent rampage and the impunity of America’s private militias.
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change-links.org
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The Iraqi government has ordered employees of the North Carolina-based security firm Blackwater USA to leave the country and is opening a criminal investigation following Sunday’s deadly shootout in Baghdad, during which a group of Blackwater contractors escorting a convoy of U.S. officials opened fire on nearby civilians.
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other officials have condemned the actions of security contractors who were guarding a State Department convoy that came under fire in downtown Baghdad on Sunday. The unnamed contractors are accused of firing indiscriminately and escalating the violence, which killed nine civilians. Update: The security firm in question was Blackwater USA.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Sen. Angus King
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