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Baghdad - Seven US soldiers were killed and six wounded in Iraq, the military said on Saturday.
A bomb attack on a Task Force Freedom convoy on Thursday killed four US soldiers in Tal Afar city, 150km east of the Syrian border, the military said in a brief statement. Two soldiers wounded in the attack were treated at a combat hospital.
Two US soldiers were killed on Friday when a Task Force Baghdad patrol struck a homemade bomb in the western part of the capital, the military said in a (…)

Two Army recruiters in Golden have been suspended from their jobs while military officials look into allegations the two men used improper tactics to get an Arvada high school student to sign up for duty.
The Denver Army Recruiting Battalion, which oversees recruiting for Colorado and parts of three other states, launched the investigation Friday after CBS 4 News broadcast a report the previous night about the alleged improprieties. The report featured David McSwane, an Arvada West High (…)

The Pentagon has got to be kidding.
It turns out that only those rogue enlisted men and women, and one woman general, are to blame for the horrifying treatment of prisoners and detainees of the Iraqi war, according to Lt. Gen. Stanley Green, the Army Inspector General.
He cleared four senior Army officers of any responsibility for the abuse of prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison after reviewing the results of 10 separate inquiries into the prison abuse, some of which the world was (…)

The Iraqis have thrown us another curveball.
Ahmad Chalabi - convicted embezzler in Jordan, suspected Iranian spy, double-crosser of America, purveyor of phony war-instigating intelligence - is the new acting Iraqi oil minister.
Is that why we went to war, to put the oily in charge of the oil, to set the swindler who pretended to be Spartacus atop the ultimate gusher?
Does anybody still think the path to war wasn’t greased by oil?
The neocons’ con man had been paid millions by the (…)

ALMOST half of Australia’s Vietnam War veterans experienced extreme difficulty settling into a job after returning from military service, research has found.
By Roberta Mancuso
ALMOST half of Australia’s Vietnam War veterans experienced extreme difficulty settling into a job after returning from military service, research has found.
The study has been released a day before the 30th anniversary of the war’s end, when Saigon capitulated to the communists and was subsequently re-named Ho (…)

AMY GOODMAN: He is an historian and author of one of the most popular books on American history, A People’s History of the United States. But before we go to him, we’re turning to an excerpt of a new film that chronicles his life. It’s titled, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, which is also the title of his autobiography. The film is produced by First Run Features. It’s narrated by Howard Zinn’s next door neighbor, actor Matt Damon.
HOWARD ZINN: We grow up in a controlled society. (…)

Venezulean leader: U.S. citizens oppressed Hugo Chavez in Havana for trade talks
HAVANA, Cuba (AP) — Saying that U.S. citizens are oppressed by their own government, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez promised Friday that he would not visit the United States again until Americans "liberate" their nation.
Chavez, in Havana for trade talks, told an international gathering of activists here that before an earlier trip to Cuba, a U.S. State Department undersecretary he did not identify warned (…)

The hotly disputed results of the 2004 presidential election have become entangled in a fundamentalist crusade over who will control Ohio. Extremist right wing screachers such as Pastor Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church, Ann Coulter, Alan Keyes, Ohio gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell and followers of Jerry Falwell, have taken center pulpit in an escalated war over what really happened when George W. Bush was allegedly re-elected in November, 2004, and who will occupy the (…)

A tortured version of his message is being marketed for political gain
What would Jesus filibuster? The question is bizarre, of course, but the fact that many prominent religious and political leaders believe that there is an answer surely marks our time as pretty strange.
How quickly it has all happened - that the media, particularly television, has convinced itself that Christianity is little more than a Republican political action committee. When the pope died, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (…)

It was the last question at the first "Lincoln-La Follette" Democratic dinner in Amery, Wis. (I know what you are thinking. Hey, Abe and "Fighting Bob" were Republicans. The answer from Amery was, "True, but today they would be Democrats. So we are adopting them.") The woman asked, "Why is no one outraged by this war?"
I asked for a show of hands: "How many of you want to bring the troops home now?" Every hand went skyward but her question hung over the audience.
Where is the voice of (…)