Okami’s NewsCloud Journal

Ingrid Betancourt arrived in France today after being held captive for six years in the Colombian jungle, amid claims that a ransom was paid to free her.
The Colombian government said that she was freed in an audacious operation after the military tricked Farc into handing the French-Colombian politician over without a shot being fired.
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Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (now retired) served as the deputy commanding general for support for the Third Army for ten months in Kuwait during the early days of the Iraq occupation. In a statement released today, he bluntly accuses the Bush administration of war crimes and lays down a challenge for prosecution.
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In the waning months of his tenure, President Bush and his allies are once again trying to scare Congress into expanding the president’s powers to spy on Americans without a court order.
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Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration […]

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Gaza is under murderous assault and the United States is escalating regional threats while pushing new sanctions against Iran.
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The latest annual count of hate groups operating in the United States rose to 888 last year, capping a 48 percent increase since 2000.

(THESE are the terrorists Americans should be worrying about.)
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America’s national security institutions have failed and the military has been left holding the bag in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, conducting nation-building tasks for which it is ill-suited, according to the final report of a House Armed Services Committee panel established in 2007 to examine military roles and missions.
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ABC News’ Jonathan Karl Reports: The Bush Administration apparently does not want a U.S. military study that found no direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda to get any attention.  This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report’s release and will no longer make the report available […]

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More than six years after the Bush administration first introduced military commissions, finally we will learn whether they offer a plausible means of trying terrorists or whether the system really is the total flop it has seemed to be so far.
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David Miliband has admitted two US “extraordinary rendition” flights landed on UK territory in 2002.
The foreign secretary said in both cases US planes refuelled on the UK dependent territory of Diego Garcia.
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The litany of complaints about the legal treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon’s announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes - and seeking […]

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Russian state-controlled Channel One TV has broadcast a report containing allegations that US forces are involved in drug-trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe. It also highlighted the problem of drug abuse in the British army.
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“Let the world make its own choice between life and death. Why should we be saddled with the responsibility?”
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Recognizing that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be the last of their kind, a new RAND Corporation study issued today finds that U.S. capabilities to meet the threat of Islamist insurgencies are seriously deficient and out of balance.
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Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, the U.S. government regularly stated in a variety of forums that Iran possessed a large undeclared stockpile of chemical weapons (CW) and a substantial production capability. . .
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