Dahr Jamail has an article "This is our Guernica: Ruined, cordoned Falluja is emerging as the decade's monument to brutality" which he co-wrote with Jonathan Steele (article ran in The Guardian):
Robert Zoellick is the archetypal US government insider, a man with a brilliant technical mind but zero experience of any coalface or warfront. Sliding effortlessly between ivy league academia, the US treasury and corporate boardrooms (including an advisory post with the scandalous Enron), his latest position is the number-two slot at the state department.
Yet this ultimate "man of the suites" did something earlier this month that put the prime minister and the foreign secretary to shame. On their numerous visits to Iraq, neither has ever dared to go outside the heavily fortified green zones of Baghdad and Basra to see life as Iraqis have to live it. They come home after photo opportunities, briefings and pep talks with British troops and claim to know what is going on in the country they invaded, when in fact they have seen almost nothing.
From Newsweek (as noted by Rachel Maddow on her show this morning), note Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball's "Another Lost Opportunity: A convicted terrorist was providing U.S. officials with very specific information about a terrorist attack three months before 9/11:"
In the spring of 2001, one of the U.S. government’s most valuable terror informants gave the FBI a far more alarming account of Al Qaeda plans to attack inside the United States than has ever been publicly disclosed, according to newly available court documents.
Algerian expatriate Ahmed Ressam, whose sentencing for a Millennium-eve plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport was unexpectedly postponed today, told bureau interrogators nearly four years ago that Al Qaeda commander Abu Zubaydah had been discussing plans to smuggle terrorist operatives and explosives into the country for the purpose of launching a strike on U.S. soil, the documents show.
The fresh documents, released in federal court in Seattle in recent days, shed new light on an issue that dominated last year’s hearings by the September 11 commission: precisely how much did the U.S. government know about Al Qaeda plans to strike inside the country in the summer of 2001 when the attacks on the World Trade Towers and Pentagon were in their final stages?
Over at NOW, please note "House Passes Anti-Abortion Legislation Endangering Teen Health:"
"By passing this deceptive legislation, the House took another step toward final passage of a law that will endanger a women's health and safety," said NOW President Kim Gandy. "It is not for anyone else but the woman and her doctor to decide how or when she should get an abortion."
In a 250 to 157 vote, the House passed a teen endangerment bill which restricts a young woman's ability to obtain an abortion outside of the home state by punishing any adult who accompanies her, even if the closest city is across state lines.
Go to NOW to read more and note that the ACLU has several items of interest. For those following the Sibel Edmonds case click here and the Patriot Act is dealt with here.
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