War Glance
Palestinians in Gaza believed Israel had called a 48-hour lull in retaliatory attacks with Hamas when Israel Air Force warplanes launched a massive bombardment of militant installations in the Gaza Strip, a UN official said Monday.
Karen Abu Zayd, commissioner of the UN Relief and Works Agency which helps Palestinian refugees, raised the possible violation of an informal truce in a video press conference with UN reporters from her base in Gaza.
UN official says Israel responsible for breaking truce with Gaza
Study Criticizes Bush Approach to War Funding, Calls for Changes
President-elect Barack Obama's administration needs to monitor war spending much more closely than the current White House has, according to a new study that criticizes President Bush's approach to funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- a bill that is projected to approach nearly $1 trillion next year.
Even with declining troop numbers in Iraq, the direct price tag of the two wars could grow as high as $1.7 trillion by 2018, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments reported last week. The defense think tank's figure does not include potentially hundreds of billions more in indirect economic and social costs, such as higher oil prices and lost wages.
The war in Iraq alone has already cost more in inflation-adjusted dollars than every other U.S. war except World War II, the CSBA found.
TVNL Comment: The war was started in order to loot this nation. The same people that privatized much of the military also profit from the private military complex of corporations. They weakened the military and made them dependent on private companies. Then they started the wars. It was always about the money for some of them.
Iraq, Contracting Corruption
In exchange for a cash kickbacks and a Harley Davidson motorcycle, a U.S. Army reservist gave a contractor "sensitive information" and "fraudulently" awarded a contract to Raman International, a Cypress, Tex.-based firm, the Justice Department said in a statement.
In another fraud case, Spartan Motors and its subsidiary, Spartan Chassis, of Charlotte, Mich., recently agreed to pay the United States $6 million in fines and penalties to resolve allegations that it paid kickbacks to an employee of Force Protection to receive a subcontract to make chassis for armored vehicles for the Army, Justice reported.
Iraqis hope to sue U.S. troops under new accord
The families of three men who were killed last week during a search of a grain warehouse want to press charges against American soldiers under the terms of a new security agreement between the U.S. and Iraq.
Their charges are a preview of some of the nettlesome questions that are likely to arise as the U.S. yields more authority to Iraq under the terms of the pact, which takes effect Jan. 1.
Mass graves still unguarded as U.S., U.N., Afghans duck task
A week after the revelation that remains had been bulldozed from a mass grave site that held up to 2,000 bodies in Afghanistan, the location remains unprotected, the United Nations hasn't released its own investigation and the warlord who's accused of the exhumation is comfortably lodged just down the street from a Starbucks in Turkey's capital.
Perino: We’re not occupiers in Iraq; we’re guests
During today’s White House press briefing, spokesperson Dana Perino echoed President Bush’s claim that Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi’s frustrations are not representative of the Iraqi public’s sentiments. She pointed out that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki apologized for the mistreatment of his guest. When reporter Helen Thomas pointed out that U.S. forces are actually “occupiers,” Perino bristled:
Report: Bush masked cost of wars that could top $1.7 trillion
The nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found that the $687 billion spent so far on Iraq has cost the US more than every conflict aside from World War II. With the $184 billion in Afghanistan, the two main conflicts of the war on terror have proved to be 50 percent more expensive than Vietnam.
An author of the report said President Bush's decision to circumvent the traditional budget process is to blame for the exceedingly high costs.
More Articles...
Page 97 of 120
