Saturday, Jul 05th
Last update03:37:42 AM GMT
Retired General Paul Eaton, senior adviser to the National Security Network, has hit back hard at Dick Cheney a day after the former vice president criticized the Obama administration again for "dithering while America's armed forces are in danger." In a speech Wednesday night, Cheney said, "President Obama now seems afraid to make a decision, and unable to provide his commander on the ground with the troops he needs to complete his mission."
After seven years of forced silence, a government whistleblower is opening up on what she learned while working as a Turkish translator for the FBI in the wake of 9/11. In sworn testimony to attorneys on Aug. 8, Sibel Edmonds described a Pentagon where key personnel helped pass defense secrets to foreign agents or provided them names of knowledgeable officials who were vulnerable to blackmail or co-option.
And firmly rooted in this espionage program in the 1990s, according to Edmonds’ deposition, were two men who, with the election of George W. Bush as president in 2000, found themselves in the Pentagon: Douglas Feith, who would head the Office of Special Plans, and Richard Perle, who would become chairman of the Defense Advisory Board.
Afghanistan has a monopoly on illegal opium production that has devastating global consequences, a UN report says. UN findings say an opium market worth $65bn (£39bn) funds global terrorism, caters to 15 million addicts, and kills 100,000 people every year.
The UN says corruption, lawlessness and uncontrolled borders result in only 2% of Afghan opiates being seized locally. The UN says more Russians die annually from Afghan drugs than Soviet soldiers were killed during its Afghan conflict.
Israel's prime minister has instructed his government to draw up plans for a "world wide campaign" to lobby for changes in the international laws of war.
A months-long review of documents and interviews with Pentagon personnel has revealed that the Bush Administration's military analyst program -- aimed at selling the Iraq war to the American people -- operated through a secretive collaboration between the Defense Department's press and community relations offices.
There is obviously a huge risk in sending an extra 40,000 machine-gun wielding troops into a country they don't understand to "clear" huge areas of insurgent fighters who look exactly like the civilian population, and establish "control" of places that have never been controlled by a central government at any point in their history.
To justify these risks, the proponents of the escalation need highly persuasive arguments to show how their strategy slashed other risks so dramatically that it outweighed these dangers. It's not inconceivable – but I found that in fact the case they give for escalating the war, or for continuing the occupation, is based on three premises that turn to Afghan dust on inspection.
People chatting on mobile phones are oblivious to their surroundings and can pose a risk to themselves and others, scientists have claimed. Researchers made the discovery by watching the movements of hundreds of people as they crossed a university campus.
They then got a clown to ride a unicycle around the campus square and asked how many phone users spotted him as they walked by. They found that those that used mobile phones meandered randomly and failed to ackowledge other pedesterians. More than two-thirds also failed to notice the clown, even though he wore a purple and yellow shirt, outsized shoes and a giant red nose.
A seven-year-old second-grader attempted suicide while his father was serving yet another tour in Iraq. Seven years old. Seven. His mother was one of half a dozen military spouses I have spoken with about soldiers' kids who have attempted suicide during their fathers' deployments.
Three-plus decades ago, parents were exempt from conscription because of overwhelming concern about the harmful effects of deployment on children. Today, roughly half of the troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are parents, many of whom have served multiple tours.
The level of poverty in America is even worse than first believed. A revised formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations show that approximately 47.4 million Americans last year lived in poverty, 7 million more than the government's official figure.
The disparity occurs because of differing formulas the Census Bureau and the National Academy of Science use for calculating the poverty rate. The NAS formula shows the poverty rate to be at 15.8 percent, or nearly 1 in 6 Americans, according to calculations released this week.
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