British forces backed by armored vehicles rushed to the area but were met by a hail of stones from the crowd of at least 250 people, who jumped for joy and raised their fists as a plume of thick smoke rose into the air from the crash site.

And this is in a PEACEFUL section of Iraq. Hearts and minds? We're fucked. The only way to pacify Iraq as far as having our troops there is to get rid of all the Iraqis.

Iraqis Cheer Crash of British Helicopter - Yahoo! News

After seven days of deliberation, the nine men and three women rebuffed the government's appeal for death for the only person charged in this country in the four suicide jetliner hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

Good for the jury. He doesn't get to be a martyr. He gets the privilege of being someone's bitch in prison for a while before someone decides he doesn't have a "purty mouth" and shivs him.

Moussaoui Gets Life for Role in Sept. 11 - Yahoo! News

The FBI secretly sought information last year on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks and credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court's approval, the Justice Department said Friday.

That's one out of every 85,000 people in the US (roughly). Now it wouldn't surprise me if there are 3500 people who should be checked out, but that's the whole point of FISA and the fact that they can RETROACTIVELY approve searches. National Security Letters have already been discussed here but as also discussed here they get used in areas that have nothing to do with National Security.

AOL News - FBI Investigated 3,501 People Without Warrants

The CIA has conducted more than 1,000 clandestine flights in Europe since 2001, and some of them secretly took away terror suspects to countries where they could face torture, European Union lawmakers said Wednesday.

Sixty years ago we were hanging Germans and Japanese for doing things like this. Now we give them Presidential Medals of Freedom. In the words of Walt Kelly, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

EU Lawmakers Allege Numerous CIA Flights - Yahoo! News

These former officials contrasted the Roberts case with last week's firing of CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy, as examples of how rank and file intelligence professionals now have much to fear from legitimate and even inadvertent contacts with journalists, while senior executive branch officials and members of Congress are almost never held accountable when they seriously breach national security through leaks of information.

"On a scale of one to ten, if Mary McCarthy did what she is accused of doing, it would be at best a six or seven," said one former senior intelligence official, whose position required involvement in numerous leak investigations. "What Pat Roberts did, from a legal and national security point of view, was an eleven."

Here's your next installment in the War of Terror. If it's good for the administration but bad for the country, it's ok. If it's bad for the administration but good for the country, you get fired.

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Is There A Double Standard On Leak Probes? (04/25/06)

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

Here you go. Here's your "War on Terror." I'd like to thank the current administration for lowering the human rights standards of the United States into the area of such towering 20th century figures as the Somozas, and Hideki Tojo.

How many people have been killed in Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, Bagram and the black prisons being operated? Hell, how many people are even IN them? This is AMERICA. When we say something about "the rule of law" it's supposed to mean something. It does not mean, "Hey, we caught this guy skulking around over there, let's beat the shit out of him until he says what he was doing, and if he croaks well too bad." It does not mean making the middle east once again safe for forced protitution and slavery.

When this country fought World War II it was to stop the agression of Germany and along the way it became about genocide. When this country fought in Korea it was to stop the commies who were doing this kind of thing in Russia under Stalin and in China under Mao. When this country fought in Vietnam it was ostensibly for the same reasons and when we realized the people we were supporting were no better and it was turning us into the same kind of people we were fighting, we got the hell out. We stopped propping up the Somozas. We stopped supporting the Shah. We stopped supporting the Duvaliers. We stopped supporting Augusto Pinochet. We stopped supporting Ferdinand Marcos. We fought against Slobodan Milosovic. We stopped supporting Saddam Hussain and fought to remove him from Kuwait.

The people who acted at Bagram and Abu Gharib bear direct responsibilty for their actions, and those actions are called war crimes. They have done what John Demjanjuk was accused of. The people who oversaw and approved those actions are no different from the people who ran POW camps for Japan in World War II or the people who ran the camps where John McCain and ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

'Well, what about the intel?' And they said 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.' "

They didn't want any additional data from Sabri because, says Drumheller: "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy."

A Spy Speaks Out - CBS News

“This isn't just a loss of sensitive information,” Lt. Col. Rick Francona (ret.), an NBC News military analyst, said. “This is putting U.S. troops at risk. This is a violation of operational security.”

I'm quite sure we could manage to screw things up even more in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the sort of thing not even I would have thought of.

'L.A. Times' Afghan Horror Story Confirmed by NBC

Federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents, on campus for a community training project, detained Jeremiah Ransom of Macon Tuesday as a ‘‘suspicious individual’’ when they spotted a masked figure darting near the Georgia Center.

Ransom told The Red & Black student newspaper that he had left a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was snared by agents with guns drawn.

He's obviously not a very good ninja...

Feds pounce on UGA sophomore dressed as ninja

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

Delta Force founder - 'our credibility is utterly zero'