Wars and conflicts

Articles

• Senior officer linked to killing of Palestinian youth gets promoted
  1 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
  

  Senior officer linked to killing of Palestinian youth gets promoted
  By Amos Harel
  Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz on Sunday authorized the promotion of a senior officer who was reprimanded for his role in an incident in which a Palestinian teenager was killed near the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
  Lieutenant Colonel Adam Zussman, who is currently serving as a battalion commander, will be appointed as a brigade commander in the Southern Command and promoted (…)

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• Neck deep in the Big Muddy
  31 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
  

  BY ANDREW GREELEY
  The Big Muddy is deeper and darker. Two Pentagon reports this week show just how muddy. In a survey of the morale of soldiers in Iraq, the Pentagon found that more than half said that morale in their units was either "low" or "very low." Morale was especially low, as one would have expected, among the National Guard and Reserve units. Only half of them said they had "real confidence" in their ability to carry out their mission, probably because they were not trained for (…)

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• The U.S. Congress Sends Mixed Message On Indonesian Military
  31 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
  

  The U.S. Congress Sends Mixed Message On Indonesian Military
  by Brian McAfee
  The U.S. Senate voted against giving the human rights abuses countering the House’s vote to reinstate funding and training for the Indonesian military.
  President George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice had been pushing for a full restoration of all military ties to Indonesia because of the ongoing terrorist threat but the persistence of human rights abuses and the corrupt nature of the Indonesian military and (…)

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• Vatican in terror dispute with Israel
  30 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
  3 comments

  Vatican in terror dispute with Israel
  John Hooper in Rome and Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
  Pope Benedict XVI was yesterday immersed in the first big diplomatic crisis of his papacy after the Vatican issued an unusually blunt statement criticising Israel for its response to Palestinian attacks.
  The Vatican’s stinging rebuke came after Israel demanded to know why the Pope did not refer to a Palestinian suicide bombing in remarks he made on Sunday condemning terrorist attacks in London and (…)

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• Judy Miller: Do We Want To Know Everything or Don’t We?
  30 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
  3 comments

  Judy Miller: Do We Want To Know Everything or Don’t We?
  by Arianna Huffington
  Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.
  But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It’s July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson’s now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush (…)

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• State Dept. Now Says Bolton Interviewed
  30 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
  1 comment

  State Dept. Now Says Bolton Interviewed
  By MARK SHERMAN
  WASHINGTON — John Bolton, President Bush’s nominee for U.N. ambassador, neglected to tell Congress he been interviewed in a government investigation into faulty prewar intelligence that Iraq was seeking nuclear materials in Africa, the State Department said.
  Democratic senators said the admission should forestall Bush from using his authority to give Bolton a temporary appointment to the U.N. post, without Senate confirmation, (…)

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• Security Costs Slow Iraq Reconstruction
  30 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
  2 comments

  Security Costs Slow Iraq Reconstruction
  Contract Excesses Also Hamper Progress
  By Renae Merle and Griff Witte
  Efforts to rebuild water, electricity and health networks in Iraq are being shortchanged by higher-than-expected costs to provide security and by generous financial awards to contractors, according to a series of reports by government investigators released yesterday.
  Taken together, the reports seem to run contrary to the Bush administration’s upbeat assessment that (…)

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• The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!
  30 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
  4 comments

  The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!
  Mobilize for November 2, 2005
  Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.
  Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it.
  Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.
  Your government is moving each (…)

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• TV Anchors; field-marshals in the Information-war
  30 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
  5 comments

  Television news is the frontlines in the war on terror. That’s where the symbols of national pride merge with the logic of war and thrust the nation towards aggression. The same was true with Iraq. The anti-war voices were excluded, the pro-war advocates were celebrated, and the drumbeat was sounded from every corner of the country. The pre-war strategy for marshalling popular support was the most flawlessly executed public relations scheme in modern times; the thunderous music echoing in (…)

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• A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945 to the Present
  30 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
  5 comments

  by William Blum
  The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:
  * making the world safe for American corporations;
  * enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;
  * preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the (…)

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