be just

CommonDreams.org � Print � Walk Away from the Lies: A Recommendation to General Petraeus from a Foreign Service Officer : "Dear General Petraeus, In the coming week you will be briefing Congress and the nation regarding the situation in Iraq, specifically on the so-called “surge.” You will be providing statistics and other data to show the accomplishments of your counterinsurgency measures. Your report will doubtless repeat what you wrote three years ago in the Washington Post (September 25, 2004): “Now … 18 months after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress.”"

Antiwar.com Blog � Is bin Laden Training US Military Forces? : "Sometimes it seems like it. As the Webmaster for Antiwar.com, I get many critical letters every day. I get at least one letter from someone claiming to be a US soldier or veteran who seems to have the same philosophy as bin Laden: “If you don’t agree with us, we will kill you.” The majority of them contain numerous misspellings and grammatical errors. This morning I received this note from Maj. J. McCaffery, USMC. I am including the name and email address he gave since he listed it for publication. Anti-war? Do yall seriously against all military action? I was in Haiti, Afghanistan, and Iraq and I can tell you right now its damn hippies like you who give us a bad name. If I had it my way id take my company straight into your heaquarters and put a end to your damn lies. You have no idea about the good that we do in those countries. All you do is sit your fat ass in a cubicle and read far left bullshit and pass i...

The Myth of AQI - Andrew Tilghman : "How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. 'Al-Qaeda in Iraq,' according to Nance, 'is a microscopic terrorist organization.'"

Black Thursday September - National Business News - Portfolio.com : "High noon. The market’s up after a morning of light trading, and workers on their way to lunch in New York’s financial district fill the sidewalks. As the bells of Trinity Church echo through Wall Street, a horse-drawn cart stops at the corner of Wall and Broad. The driver drops the reins, jumps down, and scurries away. One minute later—at 12:01 p.m. on September 16, 1920—100 pounds of dynamite mixed with 500 pounds of scrap iron shredded the sunny streets."

The Mystery of al-Qaeda- by Justin Raimondo : "Six years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the entity known as al-Qaeda remains largely a mystery: its intent, its ideology, its leadership, and its inner workings are all largely unknown to the American people. Experts study them and interpret the arcane meanings of their utterances in light of Koranic verses. The president of the United States and his allies aver that they hate us because we're so free, so prosperous, so utterly fabulous – yet still al-Qaeda is, at least in the popular mind, an army of shadows, in the sense that they don't seem quite real. The one major military operation undertaken by them, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, is practically the only evidence we have of their existence as an organized network, and, in recent years, it has become fashionable to describe Osama bin Laden as a purely symbolic figure, one who inspires actions by others but is in no position to direct the acti...

Al Jazeera English - News - Fighters 'Free' Pakistani Troops : "Pro-Taliban fighters have freed more than 260 Pakistani troops who were kidnapped nearly two weeks ago in the tribal region on the border with Afghanistan. A local intelligence official said the soldiers were handed over to members of a jirga, or tribal council on Monday."