I have taken a few steps back from my statement that we are going to bomb Iran in the near future, seeing how the influence of Dick Cheney and his neocon cabal has let up a bit since the scandal with Scooter Libby, and since Condi started to assert herself. However there are people whose opinion I hold high who think that the danger is not yet past ( Read more... )

I just thought about the administration's love and hate relationship with hypothetical statements. It seems they love using hypothetical situations to get their way, but immediately stonewall when getting the same sort of treatment from the press.

They love throwing them around, as in "don't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud." Or we must be ( Read more... )

First, it was the Air Force Academy. Now, it's the VA Medical Center in Iowa City. There is an article in the Navy Times about a jewish veteran being proselytized to, and denied access to kosher food or rabbi who could deliver it during his several hospitalizations due to kidney stones. He ended up going hungry. It appears that fundamentalist ( Read more... )

Reasons to stay in Iraq: The Guardian has a well-written piece on the reasons why other governments and groups in the Middle East might want Americans to remain in Iraq. It claims that our friends and enemies both inside and outside that country are exploiting the living daylights out of our presence there, despite issuing calls for us to leave.

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Yeeeesssss! The chinese dissidents who were arrested and tortured after a being given up by Yahoo are suing the fuckers. If these companies have no morals, then maybe hitting them where it hurts will make them grow some. Too bad whatever the monetary loss will be, it won't be enough to hurt badly. Just in this one case, I hope the punitive damages ( Read more... )

I just turned to Fox News, and guess which dead horse they are floggin in this day and age? The tale of Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Advisor, removing classified documents back from the National Archives in 2003. I am guessing they needed a break from all the other scandalous news making rounds these days (US Attorneys scandal, lost e- ( Read more... )

NPR just had a discussion on the pressure from shareholders of the media company that owns LA Times to cut international reporting at that paper. On one hand, that wouldn't be much of a loss: their international coverage isn't that good anyways ( Read more... )

It looks like we will be bombing Iran after all. All the same elements that were present with Iraq are here. I knew that we were going into Iraq when our soldiers started amassing on their border. It was obvious that we weren't just going to menace them and come back. Today, we have aircraft carriers streaming into the gulf and the same doom-and- ( Read more... )

Looks like there is no longer any need to doubt that Putin's government murdered Litvinenko. They are back to their old tricks now.

I think Robert Fisk is onto something. It's a good thing Iraqis executed Saddam before the court got to his gassing of Iranians and Kurds. That would have been embarrasing to us.