contributions

Former White House counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke on Sunday accused members of the US administration of using terror warnings to manipulate voters ahead of the presidential election in November.
Clarke, who resigned last year, said the conflicting assessments of the risk of terror attacks presented by US Homeland Security Department Secretary Tom Ridge and US Attorney General John Ashcroft last week showed how some officials sought to inflate the threat for political gain. (…)

By Ken Dilanian
A kind of violence fatigue has descended over news coverage of Iraq. Car bombings that would have made the front page a year ago get scant mention these days.
Assassinations and kidnappings have become so common that they have lost their power to shock. More U.S. soldiers died in July (38) than in June (26), but that didn’t make the nightly newscasts, either.
The U.S.-led effort to restore basic services has become a story of missed goals and frustrations. Hoped-for (…)

By Kim Petersen
Angelo de la Cruz, dubbed by his fellow citizens, a "Filipino everyman," has returned home safely after his Iraqi hostage takers, resisting the Anglo-American occupiers and other foreign troops and civilians working for the occupation, released him. Based on the American reaction to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo having withdrawn her troops from Iraq, it appeared that she offended the feelings of the US hegemon to spare the life of one citizen.
A Filipino (…)

By RAVI NESSMAN
Masked gunmen shot a blindfolded Turkish hostage three times in the head on a gruesome Internet video meant to warn Muslim workers to stay out of Iraq. Soon after the video was discovered Monday, Turkish truckers announced they would stop hauling goods for U.S. forces in hopes of saving two other Turkish captives.
The truckers’ decision was another victory for militants who have taken more than 70 foreigners hostage as leverage to drive coalition forces and anyone (…)

Oil will be the driving factor for military intervention in Sudan
by John Laughland
If proof were needed that Tony Blair is off the hook over Iraq, it came not during the Commons debate on the Butler report on July 21, but rather at his monthly press conference the following morning. Asked about the crisis in Sudan, Mr Blair replied: "I believe we have a moral responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that we can." This last phrase means that troops might be sent (…)

U.S. forces arrested the press official of the Committee of Muslim Ulemas, Iraq’s highest Sunni religious authority, after participating in a televised debate.
The committee’s spokesman Mohamed Bashar al-Faidi said Monday that Muthanna al-Dari was seized on his way back home after taking part in a political debate broadcast live on Lebanese satellite television LBC on the upcoming Iraqi National Congress.
Al-Faidi said al-Dari’s car was intercepted by four U.S. military vehicles after (…)

"Residents, workers and motorists near the IMF and World Bank and elsewhere should expect disruptions," reports the Washington Post. In other words, they should expect police state conditions-militarized cops with automatic weapons like you’d expect to see on the streets of San Salvador. "We will be more aggressive in making traffic stops of cars, trucks and limos," D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said in an interview.
"In New York and New Jersey, stepped-up security was expected to (…)

By Mark Weisbrot
Establishment types are trumpeting America’s role as global police force. Too bad the U.S. just can’t afford the job
Since September 11, 2001, the phrases "American empire" and "America as an imperial power" are being heard a lot more. But in contrast to the 1960s and 1970s, when such terms were brandished by an angry domestic anti-war movement or by developing nations in U.N. debates, the concept they represent has now at least partially entered the mainstream. However (…)

Israel has approved the expansion of an illegal settlement on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, despite an agreement with Washington not to.
Political sources in Tel Aviv confirmed on Monday that 600 new housing units will be added to Maale Adumim, a suburban-style settlement housing 30,000 colonists.
However no building tenders have been published and security sources said the US, Israel’s main ally and key mediator in its conflict with Palestinians, would be consulted before (…)

NEW YORK: US intelligence failures produced "a nasty surprise" by not spotting that Saddam Hussein had dispatched trucks and buses filled with a large paramilitary force to wage an insurgents’ campaign shortly after the war began in Iraq, according to a US Army General who commanded the invasion.
Gen Tommy R Franks also recounts in his new book that much of his certainty that his troops would face attacks by banned weapons "in particular biological or chemical arms" came from conversations (…)