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Risk to U.S. troops seen if Israel strikes Iran

From the LA Times Website:

If you want to become worried about how the situation in Iran could develop over the next few months, read this article on the LA Times website.

Risk to U.S. troops seen if Israel strikes Iran

By Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 3, 2008

Iran gives 'positive' response to nuclear incentive proposal

This article from the LA Times Website will shed a little light on the saber-rattling going on between Iran, Israel, and the United States.

Uranium from Iraq reaches Canada

From the Associated Press

July 6, 2008

Soldier Made Famous By Photo Dies in Pinehurst

This is such a sad story. Another good soldier lost to PTSD.

http://archives.thepilot.com/20080702photo.html

Iran test fires long and medium range missiles

The main difference between what happened after the U.S. invaded Iraq and what would happen if the U.S and Israel decide to destroy nuclear facilities in Iran is the distinct capability of the Iranian military to respond in a relatively organized and decisive fashion to what it would surely view as hostile actions made by enemy forces.

Read the article linked here: Iran Test Fires Long and Medium Range Missiles for more information.

Of course there is also the question of whether it would be more dangerous to allow Iran to keep working on the development of nuclear weapons (if that is, in fact, what the Iranian government is up to) than to suffer through whatever consequences would come of trying to forcibly halt those development efforts now.

I for one hope that diplomatic talks are successful, and that no military action has to be taken. The decision to bomb targets inside Iran would take us into a whole new world of conflict, upheaval, and unpredictability that I don't even want to consider at the moment.

That said, I don't want to live in a world where Iran is aiming nuclear weapons at its neighbors.

I wish that we weren't aiming nukes at ours.

An American ‘martyr’ is being hailed in the Sunni Triangle for restoring peace to a town where soldiers now fight only water leaks

Here is an important story in today's edition of The Times of London, about how one American soldier's efforts in Iraq have paid off.

Travis Patriquin was killed in Iraq in December, but his legacy lives on in Ramadi.

This article may influence your view of what is possible throughout Iraq with the right guidance.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2358061.ece

You can also hear commentary on this article on today's episode of "The World" from PRI at:

http://www.theworld.org/wma.php?id=083107full

911 Revisted Movie

Please check out this site and watch the video. Consider the evidence for yourself.

Try to keep an open mind. I welcome comments on this topic.

http://www.911revisited.com/video.html

The Black Sites - Jane Mayer - The New Yorker

Here is a link to a must-read article written by Jane Mayer in this week's New Yorker Magazine.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer

Honor the Fallen

See the faces and read the stories of those killed during the last several years since the beginning of Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and ENDURING FREEDOM.

http://www.militarycity.com/valor/honor.html

Website with War Statistics

http://www.militarytimes.com/projects/flash/4000/

The grim statistics.

Jailed 2 Years, Iraqi Tells of Abuse by Americans

From an article in the New York Times
By MICHAEL MOSS and SOUAD MEKHENNET

...

"But as the morning light grew, the American guards moved Mr. Ani, a 31-year-old father of two young children, methodically toward freedom. They swapped his yellow prison suit for street clothes, he said. They snipped off his white plastic identification bracelet. They scanned his irises into their database.

Then, shortly before 9 a.m., Mr. Ani said, he was brought to a table for one last step. He was handed a form and asked to place a check mark next to the sentence that best described how he had been treated:

“I didn’t go through any abuse during detention,” read the first option, in Arabic.

“I have gone through abuse during detention,” read the second.

In the room, he said, stood three American guards carrying the type of electric stun devices that Mr. Ani and other detainees said had been used on them for infractions as minor as speaking out of turn.

“Even the translator told me to sign the first answer,” said Mr. Ani, who gave a copy of his form to The New York Times. “I asked him what happens if I sign the second one, and he raised his hands,” as if to say, Who knows?

“I thought if I don’t sign the first one I am not going to get out of this place.”"

...

The Full Article

Analysis Is Bleak on Iraq’s Future

From The New York Times:

February 3, 2007

Analysis Is Bleak on Iraq’s Future

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — The release on Friday of portions of a bleak new National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s future left the White House and its opponents vying over whether its findings buttressed their vastly different views about how to arrest the worsening sectarian chaos there.

The assessment, by American intelligence agencies, expressed deep doubts about the abilities of Iraqi politicians to hold together an increasingly balkanized country, and about whether Iraqi troops might be able to confront powerful militias over the next 18 months and assume more responsibility for security.

The analysis, the first such estimate on Iraq in more than two years, described in sober language a rapidly unraveling country in which security has worsened despite four years of efforts by the administration.

President Bush acknowledged last month that his strategy had failed so far.

Bush Iraq Plan Is Condemned by Senate Panel

By JEFF ZELENY

Published: January 25, 2007

Smuggler’s Plot Highlights Fear Over Uranium

By LAWRENCE SCOTT SHEETS and WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: January 25, 2007

Stability, not democracy...

Rice Speaks Softly in Egypt, Avoiding Democracy Push

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

Published: January 16, 2007

Some quotes from the article linked above:

Cellphone videos posted on the Internet showed the police sodomizing a bus driver with a broomstick. Another showed the police hanging a woman by her knees and wrists from a pole for questioning. A company partly owned by a member of the governing party distributed tens of thousands of bags of contaminated blood to hospitals around the country. And just 24 hours before Ms. Rice arrived, the authorities arrested a television reporter on charges of harming national interests by making a film about police torture. The reporter was released, but the authorities kept the tapes.

Ms. Rice, who once lectured Egyptians on the need to respect the rule of law, did not address those domestic concerns. Instead, with Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit by her side, she talked about her appreciation for Egypt’s support in the region.

It was clear that the United States — facing chaos in Iraq, rising Iranian influence and the destabilizing Israeli-Palestinian conflict — had decided that stability, not democracy, was its priority, Egyptian political commentators, political aides and human rights advocates said.

5 Years in Limbo...

Some at Guantanamo Mark 5 Years in Limbo
Big Questions About Low-Profile Inmates

By Carol D. Leonnig and Julie Tate

Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 16, 2007; Page A01

Quotes from the article linked above:

"I never had a war against the United States, and I am surprised I'm here," Ruhani told his captors during his first chance to hear the military's reasons for holding him, three years after he arrived at Guantanamo. "I tried to cooperate with Americans. I am no enemy of yours."

Now prison and prisoner are forever linked, joined by hasty decisions made in war and trapped by that fateful beginning.

Insurgent TV channel Iraq's newest cult hit Michael Howard in Baghdad Monday January 15, 2007 The Guardian

Today's Headlines

Sometimes reading the headlines can really give you a wake-up call...

From CNN.com

U.S. official:
Chinese test missile obliterates satellite


From NPR.org:

...senators also wanted to know if there's anything to growing talk of a possible U.S. attack on Iran. Former U.S. Centcom commander Gen. Joseph Hoar would not dismiss that possibility. "I don't know why you have two carrier battle groups in the Gulf," Hoar said, "when fixed-wing air — while an essential part of any campaign — doesn't require a lot of airplanes on a day-to-day basis; and why you would have an admiral in charge of Centcom when you have two essentially ground combat operations going in two separate campaigns."

Hoar said those discrepancies "would all indicate to me that there's something moving right now towards Iran."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Sen. Joseph Biden said he plans to redraft the use-of-force legislation to make clear it does not authorize an attack on Iran.

Court to Oversee Wiretap Program - USA Today

The following is from today's USA Today website:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration said Wednesday that it will allow an independent court to oversee its controversial surveillance program in which the National Security Agency has electronically eavesdropped on Americans and others without obtaining court warrants.

It's about time...