World-News

A lengthy study by Bowen's office, "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," reviews the problems in an effort the Bush administration initially thought would cost $2.4 billion.

http://tinyurl.com/dmjf2t


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=taxpayer

About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

By John Tirman

Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21888.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=John+Tirman

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/02/02-3

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US military leaders are pressuring Obama to cancel his Iraq withdrawal promise

By Real News

An interview with Gareth Porter, Porter explains his discovery that Gen. David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and other US military leaders have been applying pressure on Obama to change his plan for US withdrawal from Iraq. - According to Porter, the military has already begun its public relations campaign to paint recent events in Iraq in their favor, meanwhile setting Obama up for the fall in the future.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21900.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Petraeus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Gates
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Iraq+withdraw
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Gareth+Porter

Ernesto Londono and Qais Mizher, The Washington Post: "The Iraqi government has informed the US Embassy in Baghdad that it will not issue a new operating license to Blackwater Worldwide, the embassy's primary security company, which has come under scrutiny for allegedly using excessive force while protecting American diplomats, Iraqi and US officials said Wednesday."

http://www.truthout.org/012909S

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Blackwater Mercs Likely to Stay in Iraq, Despite Gov't Ban

Iraq's government says it won't give Blackwater a license to operate in the country. So does that mean the firm's cadre ... will be gone from Iraq, forever? Not exactly.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/blackwater-bann.html


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Blackwater
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ernesto+Londono
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Qais+Mizher

Maya Schenwar, Truthout: "Amid talk of a drawdown of troops in Iraq, new statistics from the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) show that US casualties are still climbing quickly. Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield injuries and deaths number 81,361, up from 72,043 last January, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Veterans for Common Sense (VCS). Veteran patients - including those who didn't seek care until their return home - shot up to 400,304 (from 263,909 in December 2007). For the thousands of soldiers flooding the VA, mental illness tops the list of ailments.... However, many barriers to adequate care and compensation remain, particularly for veterans filing for disability benefits."

http://www.truthout.org/012909J



Purple Hearts: A Cold-Blooded Decision

Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus: "Behind the recent Pentagon decision to deny Purple Heart medals to soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a cold-blooded calculation: It saves money. The official rationale for refusing to honor what is widely considered the 'signature wound' of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that PTSD, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez, is 'an anxiety disorder caused by experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event,' not 'a wound intentionally caused by the enemy.'"

http://www.truthout.org/012909N



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=US+casualties
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Veterans+for+Common+Sense
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Purple+Hearts
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=mental+illness
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=disability
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=PTSD
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Maya+Schenwar
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Conn+Hallinan

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/28-14



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Iraq+withdraw
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Tom+Andrews

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/28-6



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=KBR
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Andrea+Shalal-Esa

http://www.lewrockwell.com/greenwald/greenwald22.html

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Why they might miss Dubya

Spiked
by Mick Hume

01/20/09

How much easier it has been to blame Bush for ‘stealing’ the 2000 election or ‘duping’ American voters than to ask the hard questions about why the Democrats twice failed to win enough support to defeat such a joke character. (Indeed many of the liberal media insults hurled at Bush have really been aimed at the ‘lizard-brained’ American voters who were stoo-pid enough to prefer him over his enlightened opponents.) How much simpler is it to blame Bush for lying over Iraq than to ask why so many on all sides supported the invasion, or seriously to examine the wider problem of US intervention, a policy pursued by the likes of Clinton before him and supported by Obama today. Why bother examining the deeper causes of terrorism or economic crisis in the heart of American society, when you can simply pin the blame for it all on the personality flaws of a discredited president? … Without such an obvious boil to blame for all of their ills, the liberal intelligentsia on both sides of the Atlantic might even be forced to confront some deeper questions about themselves and the sort of societies in which we live...

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6122/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bill+Kristol
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Glenn+Greenwald
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=/greenwald
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Mick+Hume

On Wednesday, Dhiyaa al-Saadi, Zaidi's lawyer, said he had recently seen medical records that were part of Zaidi's court file that added credence to the journalist's claim that he had been beaten and tortured after his arrest on Dec. 14 by the security detail of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/15/mideast/shoe.php


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Zaidi
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=torture

Re-Writing the First Draft of History

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "The mainstream American news media is just as responsible for what has happened in Iraq as the Bush administration; they are as responsible for the lies they repeated as the ones who first told them, and are as guilty for what happened in Iraq as the Bush administration officials they enabled and covered for."

http://www.truthout.org/011509J



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=William+Rivers+Pitt