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Reuters AlertNet - Bin Laden's driver is not POW, U.S. judge says : "MIAMI, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's driver is not a prisoner of war as defined by the Geneva Conventions and can be tried by a Guantanamo war crimes tribunal, a U.S. military judge ruled in a decision made public on Thursday. The judge said Yemeni prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan is an 'unlawful enemy combatant' under the law passed by Congress last year to provide a legal basis to try non-Americans on terrorism charges in a special war crimes court at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

The Raw Story | Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US : "The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday. 'We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,' long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference. A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old."

TheStar.com | columnists | U.S. needs to engage Tehran, not order it around : "Russia delivers nuclear fuel to Iran. Russia and China sign multi-billion dollar contracts to develop Iran's oil and gas fields, the auto and telecommunications sectors. Both do so within two weeks of the U.S. intelligence agencies announcing that Tehran does not have a nuclear weapons program. After six years of sabre rattling, George W. Bush's Iran policy is in shambles. It is so for the same reason his Iraq policy has been. It's fundamentally dishonest."

Iraq, Afghanistan War Costs Top Vietnam - by Aaron Glantz : "Congress' approval Wednesday of $70 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mean the twin conflicts are now more costly to American taxpayers than the war in Vietnam. According to a study by the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Congress has now approved nearly $700 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 'Using inflation-adjusted dollars, the total cost of those wars has now surpassed the total cost of the Vietnam war (which ran to $670 billion),' the group's Travis Sharp told OneWorld. 'It's also more than seven times larger than the Persian Gulf War ($94 billion) and more than twice the cost of the Korean war ($295 billion).'"