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POPSThe Banality Of Bush White House Evil "Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality."
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POPSA Story Of Rape, Shame, And Honor Killing "At the employee's insistence, lab workers using freshly acquired DNA-testing equipment drew a sample from the fetus. The prison guards were ordered to submit DNA samples and did so, apparently unaware of the sophistication of the morgue equipment and the people trained to use it. The DNA results showed that the father of the unborn baby was a police lieutenant colonel who reportedly supervised guards at the prison. In another society, the scientific evidence would have led to arrests and prosecution. But this being Iraq, the power wielded by men in uniform and the belief that a raped woman is better off dead combined to cloud the truth."
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POPSDon't Ask, Don't Tell, Do Kill It is not on the top of our priorities list, which is occupied by issues of terror, kidnapping and killing," said the judge. Doing it? Or preventing it?? :confused: Persecution of gays will stop only if can abandon centuries-old prejudices. They would have to acknowledge that human rights don't cover only the humans they like.
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POPSStill No Exit "Mr. Obama has offered a sensible blueprint for quickly drawing down American troops in Iraq and bolstering the fight in Afghanistan. After a befuddling silence, Mr. McCain on Tuesday finally agreed that more troops are needed in Afghanistan. What Mr. McCain has yet to explain is where those troops will come from. Mr. Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq has so overtaxed American forces that the math is painfully simple: Until there is a real drawdown from Iraq, there will not be enough troops to win in Afghanistan. "
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POPSHow Rumors Become Conventional Thinking "There are Arabs who hate America, a lot of them, but this is too much,” Mr. Abbas said as he fidgeted with his cellphone. “And look at what happened after this — the Americans invaded two Muslim countries. They used 9/11 as an excuse and went to Iraq. They killed Saddam, tortured people. How can you trust them?”
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POPSWrong Woman; Wrong Message Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."
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POPSRunning Against Themselves "Mr. McCain says he is the candidate who will better protect the country from terrorism. But about all he has to offer is his pledge to continue the war in Iraq. We have yet to hear an explanation for how he plans to do that while also salvaging the war in Afghanistan — the real front line in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban."
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POPSComing Late To The Table "The war in Iraq, which has taken 100,000 or more Iraqi lives, and which will cost the U.S. upwards of $3 trillion, and which continues indefinitely, is a scandal and a crime. Scott McClellan is a little late to be blowing the whistle on this outrage. More important than his belated musings on the war, and his aggrieved take on the leaking of a C.I.A. operative’s identity, is Mr. McClellan’s warning about the “culture of deception” that has poisoned the very atmosphere of national politics and government. Forget that this is supposed to be a government of, by and for the people, and that the truth is supposed to matter. Mr. McClellan is being denounced as a traitor by those who readily accept the culture of deception, and who believe that a government official’s primary loyalty is not to the people, but to power itself — in this case, to the president."
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POPSThe Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Charles Manson prosecutor and Helter Skelter author Vincent Bugliosi. Click on the video and see how serious he is about a legal case against Bush. His prosecution record is almost flawless too.
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POPSA Prosecutor's Choice "Nobody believes that Mr. Smith’s killing of Ms. Speirs can be justified. But many involved in the case have wondered aloud, at some point, whether Ms. Speirs’s life might have been spared if the marine’s combat trauma had been treated more aggressively. Ms. Speirs’s parents do not engage in such speculation. They view their daughter as a victim of fatal domestic violence and not as an indirect casualty of the war in Iraq."
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POPSThe Cost of the Iraq War: A Pundit's Guilt This is a stark moment of humanity for Christopher Hitchens, who I must admit, is not always a lovable character. He has had to soberly (or, maybe not soberly!) face the consequences of his punditry. Political opinions do not exist in a vacuum. These are not simply ideas we are talking about. This nation is overwhelmed with flippant armchair strategists on both sides who have no real understanding of what is actually going on. The Iraq War isn't a failure of American ideals, it is a disaster of well-meaning ignorance.
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POPSThe U.S. Applies Pressure on Iraq for its oil...or else! This excellent article from Walrus Magazine of Canada, makes very important reading for anyone truly interested in the U.S. arm twisting and manipulations of the Iraqi government to convince them to give up their sovereignty of its own natural resource so the U.S. interests can control it. This is really a MUST READ.
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POPSShock Doctrine Explained--How We're Manipulated Howard Zinn says the following in his advance review: "Naomi Klein is an investigative reporter like no other. She roams the continents with eyes wide open and her brain operating at full speed, finding connections we never thought of, and patterns which eluded us. This is a brilliant book, one of the most important I have read in a long time."
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POPSDemocrats Find Their Voices "Democrats say they will continue to push the president and his Republican allies to concede their failed war policy and change course. They must keep at it. It’s far past time to begin a swift and orderly withdrawal of forces from Iraq’s civil war and to refocus on Afghanistan, where America’s win over the Taliban and Al Qaeda is in danger of being reversed."