McCain doesn't rule out preemptive war Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McLunatic said on Wednesday he would not rule out launching preemptive wars against future enemies.
'If history can take me back, I will kiss the statue of Saddam Hussein which I helped pull down.' 'Today we have 50 Saddams.' Fierce clashes and mortar attacks in Baghdad's Shiite bastion of Sadr City killed 13 people on Wednesday as Iraq marked the fifth anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Ibrahim Khalil, one of the Iraqis who pulled down the statue in Firdoos Square, told AFP he regretted what he did that day. "If history can take me back, I will kiss the statue of Saddam Hussein which I helped pull down," he said when he met an AFP reporter in the square. "Now I realise that the day Baghdad fell was in fact a black day. Saddam's days were better ... Under Saddam's regime, we were safe. We got rid of one Saddam, but today we have 50 Saddams," he said. For Iraqis, the five years since the ouster of Saddam have been a period of turmoil and bloodletting. "When I saw the American tanks roll into Baghdad, I was happy and full of dreams... dreams of a prosperous Iraq, a developed Iraq. But since then it has become a nightmare of suffering and destruction," said Sarah Yussef. According to World Health Organisation, between 104,000 and 223,000 people were killed from March 2003 to June 2006 alone. Majeed Hameed, a gift-shop owner in Baghdad's northern Antar Square, said the American tanks on the streets of Baghdad are now seen as "enemy" forces. "We can't describe how savage these barbarians are whose promises were false and full of lies. They came to occupy and cause destruction. We got nothing but disaster," said Hameed.
'If history can take me back, I will kiss the statue of Saddam Hussein which I helped pull down.' 'Today we have 50 Saddams.' Fierce clashes and mortar attacks in Baghdad's Shiite bastion of Sadr City killed 13 people on Wednesday as Iraq marked the fifth anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Ibrahim Khalil, one of the Iraqis who pulled down the statue in Firdoos Square, told AFP he regretted what he did that day. "If history can take me back, I will kiss the statue of Saddam Hussein which I helped pull down," he said when he met an AFP reporter in the square. "Now I realise that the day Baghdad fell was in fact a black day. Saddam's days were better ... Under Saddam's regime, we were safe. We got rid of one Saddam, but today we have 50 Saddams," he said. For Iraqis, the five years since the ouster of Saddam have been a period of turmoil and bloodletting. "When I saw the American tanks roll into Baghdad, I was happy and full of dreams... dreams of a prosperous Iraq, a developed Iraq. But since then it has become a nightmare of suffering and destruction," said Sarah Yussef. According to World Health Organisation, between 104,000 and 223,000 people were killed from March 2003 to June 2006 alone. Majeed Hameed, a gift-shop owner in Baghdad's northern Antar Square, said the American tanks on the streets of Baghdad are now seen as "enemy" forces. "We can't describe how savage these barbarians are whose promises were false and full of lies. They came to occupy and cause destruction. We got nothing but disaster," said Hameed.
Questions over journalists' deaths An international media advocacy group has criticised the US military for not fully investigating the deaths of three journalists killed when their hotel and Al Jazeera's office came under US fire as Baghdad fell on April 8, 2003. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says it has continuously called on the US military to fully investigate the incidents that came just before the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled.
The 9/11 Stand Down in 2 Minutes NORAD, responsible for intercepting errant aircraft over the U.S., has a standard operating procedure for scrambling planes for interception which takes less than 15 minutes. They did this successfully (on time) 129 times in 2000 and 67 times between September 2000 and June 2001. Yet, on September 11th, they failed to do their job 4 times in a single day.
Immigration, Outsourced (The New York Times) To see how unhinged things have become, it pays to zero in on the squalid doings in Maricopa County, Ariz... For months now, Sheriff Joe [Arpaio] has been sending squads of officers through Latino neighborhoods, pulling cars over for broken taillights or turn-signal violations, checking drivers’ and passengers’ papers and arresting illegal immigrants by the dozen... "By the way," he said, "we do have a 3,000-person posse -- and about 500 have guns. They have their own airplanes, jeeps, motorcycles, everything. They can only operate under the sheriff. I swear ’em in. I can put up 30 airplanes tomorrow if I wanted." The federal government so far seems unconcerned.
In Justice Shift, Corporate Deals Replace Trials --Justice Dept. has put off prosecuting more than 50 companies suspected of wrongdoing over the last three years. In 2005, federal authorities concluded that a Monsanto consultant had visited the home of an Indonesian official and, with the approval of a senior company executive, handed over an envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. The money was meant as a bribe to win looser environmental regulations for Monsanto’s cotton crops, according to a court document. Monsanto was also caught concealing the bribe with fake invoices. A few years earlier, in the age of Enron, these kinds of charges would probably have resulted in a criminal indictment. Instead, Monsanto was allowed to pay $1 million and avoid criminal prosecution by entering into a monitoring agreement with the Justice Department.
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