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AlterNet: Health and Wellness: Only One Candidate Can Achieve Universal Health Coverage : "And both plans seek to make insurance affordable to lower-income Americans. The Clinton plan is, however, more explicit about affordability, promising to limit insurance costs as a percentage of family income. And it also seems to include more funds for subsidies. But the big difference is mandates: the Clinton plan requires that everyone have insurance; the Obama plan doesn't. Mr. Obama claims that people will buy insurance if it becomes affordable. Unfortunately, the evidence says otherwise. After all, we already have programs that make health insurance free or very cheap to many low-income Americans, without requiring that they sign up. And many of those eligible fail, for whatever reason, to enroll."

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: FBI Deputizes Private Contractors With Extraordinary Powers, Including 'Shoot to Kill' : "The FBI has a new set of eyes and ears, and they're being told to protect their infrastructure at any cost. They can even kill without repercussion."

Al-Qaeda tries to salvage image - USATODAY.com : "There are as many as 30 attacks a day against U.S. and Iraqi forces in Mosul, according to the U.S. military. However, insurgents take precautions such as warning shopkeepers before bombings, Ryan says."

The Daily Star - Politics - Iraqi scientist gave CIA information that should have prevented war : "AMMAN: When Saad Tawfiq watched then-US Secretary of state Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, he shed bitter tears as he realized he had risked his life and those of his loved ones for nothing. As one of Saddam Hussein's most gifted engineers, Tawfiq knew that the Iraqi dictator had shut down his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs in 1995 - and he had told his handlers in US intelligence just that. And yet here was Powell - Tawfiq's television was able to receive international news through a link pirated from Saddam's spies next door - waving a vial of white powder and telling the UN Security Council a story about Iraqi germ labs. 'When I saw Colin Powell, I started crying - immediately. I knew I had tried and lost,' Tawfiq told AFP five years later in the Jordanian capital, Amman."

Iraq Sunni insurgents turn to armor-piercing bombs | U.S. | Reuters WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sunni Arab insurgents in Iraq have developed their own crude versions of the Iran-originated armor-piercing munitions that have been a hallmark of Shi'ite militant roadside attacks on U.S. troops, U.S. defense officials say. The devices are a form of weaponry known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, which have given Shi'ite militants the firepower to penetrate the heaviest U.S. armor. Iran denies U.S. assertions that it has supplied EFPs to anti-U.S. Shi'ites. So far, the Sunni versions, first discovered in 2007, have been crude home-made knock-offs of the Iranian-made EFPs, according to U.S. officials. But officials are concerned that Sunni EFPs could become more deadly if they follow the same path toward sophistication as the most common roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, used throughout Iraq against U.S. forces for much of the war..