On the charts that the American military provides, those numbers are seen as success, from nearly 4,000 dead in one month in 2006 to the few hundred today. The Interior Ministry offers its own toll of war — 72,124 since 2003, a number too precise to be true. At the morgue, more than 20,000 of the dead, which even sober estimates suggest total 100,000 or more, are still unidentified.
This number had a name, though. No. 5061 was Muhammad Jassem Bouhan al-Izzawi, father, son and brother. At 9 a.m., on that Sunday, Aug. 15, his family left the morgue in a white Nissan and set out to find his body in a city torn between remembering and forgetting, where death haunts a country neither at war nor peace.
For Iraqis, Victims of War Are So Much More Than Numbers
Civil liberties groups challenge constitutionality of secret U.S. program to target terror suspects for killing
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging the U.S. government's authority to target and kill U.S. citizens outside of war zones when they are suspected of involvement in terrorism.
The civil liberties groups sued in U.S. District Court in Washington after being retained by the father of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a radical U.S.-born cleric who is in hiding in Yemen.
Report: Warnings about e-mails went unheeded in Bush White House
Top aides to President George W. Bush seemed unconcerned amid multiple warnings as early as 2002 that the White House risked losing millions of e-mails that federal law required them to preserve, according to an extensive review of records set for release Monday.
The review, conducted by the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, follows a settlement reached last December between President Obama's administration, CREW and the National Security Archive, a George Washington University research institute. The groups sued the Bush White House in 2007, alleging it violated federal law by not preserving millions of e-mails sent between 2003 and 2005.
Questions loom over drug given to sleepless vets
Andrew White returned from a nine-month tour in Iraq beset with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder: insomnia, nightmares, constant restlessness. Doctors tried to ease his symptoms using three psychiatric drugs, including a potent anti-pyschotic called Seroquel.
Thousands of soldiers suffering from PTSD have received the same medication over the last nine years, helping to make Seroquel one of the Veteran Affairs Department's top drug expenditures and the No. 5 best-selling drug in the nation.
Several soldiers and veterans have died while taking the pills, raising concerns among some military families that the government is not being up front about the drug's risks. They want Congress to investigate.
Old soldier drops three bombshells
Saw live Roswell alien, used as a military assassin, asked to assassinate Martin Luther King...
When Paul Epley finally talked publically about some of his secret military activities, his story ended up in a small North Carolina newspaper. Guess what? Two weeks later, two FBI men showed up where he was working and said, “If you don’t keep your mouth shut, we’ll shut it.”
Ron Paul’s Shocking Message To The Tea Party
Ron Paul has some surprising news for the Tea Party:
You’re being taken for a ride.
At least this is what many libertarians like Ron Paul believe when they see someone like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin trying to lead the Tea Party at the “restoring honor” rally this weekend. In fact, Ron Paul believes, if you’re looking for real freedom, you should really go back to the core of the constitution and the bill of rights, which Beck and Palin do not fully endorse when you really look at their beliefs. Whether it be Palin’s support for starting more wars or Beck’s beliefs on paying the private Federal Reserve MORE interest on our money by means of a VAT tax.
Ron Paul believes in neither of the above.
Here was Ron Paul’s message to the Tea Party via The New York Times just the other day:
A U.S. 'legacy of waste' in Iraq
The shell of a prison that will never be used rises from the desert on the edge of this dusty town north of Baghdad, a hulking monument to the wasted promise of America's massive, $53-billion reconstruction effort in Iraq.
Construction began in May 2004 at a time when U.S. money was pouring into the country. It quickly ran into huge cost overruns. Violence erupted in the area, and a manager was shot dead in his office. The Iraqi government said it didn't want or need the prison. In 2007 the project was abandoned, but only after $40 million of U.S. taxpayer money had been spent.
Fire at proposed Tenn. mosque site probed by feds
Authorities are investigating a fire that damaged at least one construction vehicle at a Tennessee site where a new mosque is being built.Federal investigators won't say whether they believe the fire early Saturday was intentionally set at the suburban Nashville project, which has faced vehement opposition.
Still, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro said the fire has frightened the area's Muslim community.
More...
Influential Israeli rabbi says Abbas and Palestinians should perish
An influential Israeli rabbi known for his vitriolic pronouncements against Arabs says Palestinians and their leader should "perish from this world."
Israel Army Radio quoted Ovadia Yosef Sunday as saying the Palestinians were "evil, bitter enemies of Israel" and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas should be struck with a plague. He made the remarks in a Saturday night sermon.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are to resume this week.
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