contributions

Army’s Only Muslim Cleric Says Lack Of Respect Has Cost US Lives Toby Harnden in Hawija February 13, 2005 The US Army’s only Muslim chaplain in Iraq has described his struggle to "educate" soldiers to respect Muslims and how he helped free an innocent Iraqi from American custody after he had been framed by the coalition’s Kurdish allies.
Captain Abdullah Hulwe, a Syrian-born Sunni who also said that his wife had experienced discrimination at military bases in America, told The Telegraph (…)

The American Nightmare From The Bogus To The Outrageous To The Illegal, We Are Now Living The American Nightmare
Steve Fowle
It has been another of America’s special, sacred Januaries: The American Dream itself has been wheeled out of storage, washed and waxed, and buffed to a high quadrennial shine. Once again we have demonstrated to the world (as if we really cared what they thought) that anyone — any white male, anyway — can become president.
This year, we actually improved on (…)

We Have Nothing To Fear But Bush Himself Paul Craig Roberts February 12, 2005
Suppose you are the party responsible for invading a country under totally false pretenses. Suppose you had totally unrealistic expectations about the consequences of your gratuitous aggression.
What do you do when, instead of being greeted with flowers, you find your army is tied down by insurgents and you have no face-saving way to get out of the morass? If you are the moronic Bush administration, you blame (…)

Suspicion Surrounds Missing Bay Area Man His Fellow Military Contract Worker Pointed To Kickback Schemes - And Then Was Killed Colin Freeman, Chronicle Foreign Service February 13, 2005 Tikrit, Iraq - In the midafternoon of Oct. 9, 2003, Kirk von Ackermann, an American contract worker from the Bay Area, used a satellite phone to call a colleague from a lonely desert road between Tikrit and Kirkuk in northern Iraq. He told his colleague he had a flat tire and needed a jack.
About 45 (…)

Giuliana Sgrena is an Italian journalist, working for the daily newspaper Il Manifesto. She was kidnapped in Baghdad on the 4th of February, in front of the Al-Mustafah mosque, where she had interviewed a number of families forced by US bombing to fly from Fallujah. She is still a captive.
Florence Aubenas, French journalist of Liberation, disappeared more than one month ago in similar circumstances.
Giuliana has visited Iraq many times, documenting with great honesty the dire sufferings (…)

Australian 60 Minutes program - Channel Nine - transcript of interview with ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib. Transcript: Under suspicion February 13, 2005
Reporter: Tara Brown Producer: Stephen Taylor Mamdouh Habib. INTRO TARA BROWN: Everyone has an opinion. Either Mamdouh Habib is a dangerous terrorist who should have been left to rot in jail or he is an innocent man persecuted because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s one or the other, simple as (…)

Madrid Fire Re-opens 9/11 Questions
Prior to 9/11, no steel building had ever collapsed due to fire. Here is a photo of the smoking buildings. wtc2, was on fire for less than an hour when it collapsed.
Isn’t it odd, the wtc collapsed after an hour, and the black smoke indicates that fire wasn’t even burning hot. Now compare- this is the Madrid Fire, it burned for 10 hours and still has not collapsed.
Why did wtc2 only last an hour before collapse while the Madrid building burned (…)

Bush 2001 vs. Bush 2005, when and why did he change his mind?
Bush in the 2001 State of the Union: "To make sure the retirement savings of America’s seniors are not diverted to any other program, my budget protects all $2.6 trillion of the Social Security surplus for Social Security, and for Social Security alone."
Bush Feb 9, 2005 - "The money-payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They’re spent on benefits and they’re spent on government programs. There is no (…)

WASHINGTON, Feb 13 (AFP) - Iraq’s Ahmed Chalabi, once supported by the United States only to fall from favor, said Sunday that he is vying to become his country’s prime minister, following the formal announcement of election results there.
"I am nominated for position of prime minister. And I will work with my colleagues to win this position," Chalabi, a Shia, told CNN television.
To the anger of anti-Iran hardliners within the government, Chalabi — the leading Iraqi cheerleader for the (…)

AT THE Detroit Economic Club last week, President Bush boasted that his latest budget is "the most disciplined proposal since Ronald Reagan." And, yes, his proposed cuts — in food stamps, Medicaid, housing and child care — are stunning, mainly for their targeting of low-income workers and families.
But even President Reagan never displayed such a taste for tax cuts, though he tried at first. Faced with mounting deficits, Mr. Reagan reversed himself, raising taxes. Mr. Bush’s father did the (…)