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Free Iraq "The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush — a man still carrying with $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush’s famous deck of wanted men [emphasis added]— has been America’s secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, “resettled” Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million [emphasis added] in what could only be considered hush money. In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD — as Habbush had foretold — the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq befo...

How Tenet Betrayed the CIA on WMD in Iraq - by Gareth Porter : "Tenet has called the story of the Habbush prewar intelligence a 'complete fabrication,' claiming Habbush had 'failed to persuade' the British that he had 'anything new to offer by way of intelligence.' His statement actually reinforces Suskind's account, however, by indicating that he had simply chosen not to believe Habbush. 'There were many Iraqi officials who said both publicly and privately that Iraq had no WMD,' said the statement, 'but our foreign intelligence colleagues and we assessed that these individuals were parroting the Ba'ath Party line and trying to delay any coalition attack.' Contradicting Tenet's claim that the British did not take the Habbush report seriously, MI6 director Dearlove told Suskind he had asked Prime Minister Tony Blair why he had not acted on the intelligence from Habbush."

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 08/10/2008 | United States holds little leverage over Russia in Georgia conflict WASHINGTON — Even as it accused Russia of using "disproportionate" force in the conflict over Georgia's rebel South Ossetia province, the United States on Saturday found itself with few diplomatic or military options to deter Moscow's ferocious air and ground assault. In fact, most of the key cards, including the power to veto any United Nations Security Council resolution, were held by Russia, which appeared to be using the crisis to ram home to the United State and its allies that it will not accept further expansion of NATO. Both Georgia and the former Soviet republic of Ukraine are seeking to join the alliance. The Russian invasion "sends a message to all of the countries in the former Soviet space that Russia is resurgent and is willing to flex it muscles," said David Phillips, an expert with the Atlantic Council. "This is Russia's ass...

The tragic last moments of Margaret Hassan - Robert Fisk, Commentators - The Independent : "For some in the Al Jazeera studios these archives are intensely personal. 'I trained Ali Khatib – he was a great reporter,' I am told. 'The war was almost declared at an end in Iraq and he went out with our cameraman to cover some story and, while he's approaching an American checkpoint, you can hear an American soldier on the tape say 'Stop – you have to go back'. And then the soldier just shot at them and killed both of them. Ali had got married two weeks earlier.' For some, the videotapes will always be too much. When I met Margaret's husband Tahseen in his Baghdad home after her murder, he was a picture of courage and mourning. There were terrible times. 'I would come home and sit here and weep,' he told me then. 'I would sit here sometimes and go out of my mind crying and sobbing. I don't think insurgents did this. I don't think Iraqi...

The US Government Is the Real Bioterror Threat - by Ivan Eland Assuming the federal government has, after almost seven years, finally identified the perpetrator of the anthrax attacks in 2001 – admittedly a generous assumption given that for most of those years, it pursued, hounded, embarrassed, and ruined the career of the wrong man – larger dangers remain. As is normally the case with issues surrounding terrorism, the average citizen will probably be shocked to learn that their government is often a bigger threat than the terrorists. Remember the CIA's creation of the 9/11 threat by supporting the most radical Islamist groups fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s and then the U.S. government's provocation of terrorist attacks from those same militants by its non-Islamic military presence in Islamic Persian Gulf countries in the 1990s, which had continued unnecessarily subsequent to the first Gulf War. Similarly, in the case of bioterrorism, the threat from the ...

Ethiopia: Pain amid Plenty :: Ethiopian Review : "Paleontologists hunting fossils of early man in the Rift Valley of southern Ethiopia call the area the cradle of mankind. This year it's bursting with life, especially in the fields where local farmers grow barley, potatoes and teff, a cereal used to make the flat, spongy bread injera. As a warm July rain falls on a patchwork of smallholdings half a day's walk from the nearest road, the women harvest yams, the men plow behind sturdy oxen and fat chickens, goats and cows roam outside mud huts. And yet for all the apparent abundance, this area is so short of food that many are dying from starvation. All morning, the hills above the village of Kersa have echoed with the wails of women walking in from the fields. They gather on a patch of open grass before a stretcher made from freshly cut bamboo, bound and laid with banana leaves. On it is a small bundle wrapped in a red-and-blue blanket. An imam calls the crowd together, asks...

VOA News - Afghanistan Coalition Says 4 Women, Child Killed in Offensive Against Militants U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan say Friday they inadvertently killed four women and a child while battling militants in central Afghanistan. A U.S. military spokeswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Nelson-Green, says the civilians were killed Thursday as troops moved in on a key Taliban militant in the Giro district of central Ghazni province. She says armed militants threatened coalition forces, which responded with small-arms fire, killing several Taliban as well as the women and the child. Three militants were arrested. The U.S. military called the deaths "inadvertent" and promised a full investigation. About 2,500 people, including civilians, have been killed so far this year during fighting between coalition forces and militants.