be just

ZNet - No “War on Terror” : "One of the most telling signs of the political naiveté of liberals and the Left in the United States has been their steadfast faith in much of the worldview that blankets the imperial state they call home. Nowhere has this critical failure been more evident than in their acceptance of the premise that there really is something called a 'war on terror' or “terrorism”[1]—however poorly managed its critics make it out to be—and that righting the course of this war ought to be this country's (and the world’s) top foreign policy priority. In this perspective, Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than Iraq ought to have been the war on terror's proper foci; most accept that the U.S. attack on Afghanistan from October 2001 on was a legitimate and necessary stage in the war. The tragic error of the Bush Administration, in this view, was that it lost sight of this priority, and diverted U.S. military action to Iraq and other theaters, reducing th...

News 10 Now | 24 Hour Local News | Watertown/North Country | Anti-war group says war crimes are "encouraged" : "WATERTOWN, NY - 'I was messed up in the head. It was okay for me. I laughed afterwards. We all did. It's just the way things go.' Iraq war veteran Jon Turner said it was almost expected of him to pull the trigger on people who didn't need to die. So he did. 'It was my decision,' Turner said. 'I made it. Now I have to live with the fact I see someone's eyes screaming at me after I shot them.' But Turner says it wasn't his choice to be encouraged to do it from higher ranking officers. He and three other veterans speaking out Saturday at the Different Drummer Cafe in Watertown said committing war crimes is not only the way things go, but it's unofficial policy."

Ethiopian Review | Woyanne rejects 'virtual' border : "Ethiopia Woyanne has dismissed a 'virtual' demarcation of its border with Eritrea, just a day after Asmara accepted the move by an independent boundary commission. The two nations have been deadlocked in a dispute over their 1,000km border since a 2002 decision by the Hague-based commission gave the flashpoint town of Badme to Eritrea. The commission, set up by a peace deal ending a 1998-2000 war, 'virtually' demarcated the border late last year based on the 2002 decision after the two sides failed to come to an agreement on their shared frontier."

The Corpse on the Gurney: The 'Success' Mantra in Iraq - by Tom Engelhardt : "The other day, as we reached the first anniversary of the President's announcement of his 'surge' strategy, his 'new way forward' in Iraq, I found myself thinking about the earliest paid book-editing work I ever did. An editor at a San Francisco textbook publisher hired me to 'doctor' god-awful texts designed for audiences of captive kids. Each of these 'books' was not only in a woeful state of disrepair, but essentially D.O.A. I was nonetheless supposed to do a lively rewrite of the mess and add seductive 'sidebars'; another technician then simplified the language to 'grade level' and a designer provided a flashy layout and look. Zap! Pow! Kebang! During the years that I freelanced for that company in the early 1970s, an image of what I was doing formed in my mind – and it suddenly came back to me this week. I used to describe it this way: The ...

The Hormuz Hoax- by Justin Raimondo : "Following up on the alleged incident in the Strait of Hormuz with those five Iranian speedboats, remember that radioed threat supposedly coming from the Iranian side? Now they're blaming it on – are you ready for this? – 'the Filipino Monkey,' some crazy guy (or guys) whose obscene remarks have come crackling over ship radios in the area for years. Notice how quickly the official story is changing. First the transmission was a threat coming from the Iranians: now they're 'unsure.' This is contrary to the President's characterization of what occurred, and the Pentagon's video presentation of a threat emanating from the speedboats: the allegedly 'aggressive' actions of the Iranians are underscored by an audio overlay in which a voice interpolates 'I am coming to you, you will explode in a few minutes.'"

16 die in latest fighting in Somalia : "Islamic militants fired mortar shells and guns in the Somali capital on Thursday, sparking crossfire with Ethiopian troops and their Somali government allies that killed at least 16 people, witnesses said."

U.S. Boosts Its Use of Airstrikes In Iraq - washingtonpost.com : "The U.S.-led coalition dropped 1,447 bombs on Iraq last year, an average of nearly four a day, compared with 229 bombs, or about four each week, in 2006."