The private security firm Blackwater USA has been involved in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, according to a US Congress report that depicts the company’s employees as dangerously out of control.
Blackwater has covered up fatal shootings involving its staff, is the first to shoot in most incidents, and has joined in US military tactical operations, the report released Monday said.
The marauding pack of jackals known as the rabid right wing of the Republican Party is pissed over not getting what it wants and is threatening to leave the GOP to back a third party candidate.
Good. Let them go. It’s time the rabid right returned to the political stone age where they belong.
If Republicans want to have any shot at remaining a viable political force in this nation they need to shed themselves of these political Neanderthals and pay more attention to the realities of modern day America.
Let the hypocritical right go the way of the Druids.
The US Senate Monday passed a mammoth 648 billion dollar defense policy bill, shorn of attempts by disappointed anti-war Democrats to dictate President George W. Bush’s Iraq strategy.
The bill included around 128 billion dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate.
The legislation passed by 92 votes to three after Democrats lost several attempts to dictate US troop levels in Iraq.
Nobody can dispute that Barack Obama opposed the Iraq war from the start and, with striking prescience, predicted U.S. troops would be mired in a costly conflict that fanned “the flames of the Middle East.”
But nobody should accept at face value the Illinois senator’s claim that he was a “courageous leader” who opposed the war at great political risk.
The truth is that while Obama showed foreign policy savvy and an ability to keenly analyze both sides of an issue in his October 2002 warnings on Iraq, the political upside of his position rivaled any risk.
Some of the nation’s most politically influential conservative Christians, alarmed by the prospect of a Republican presidential nominee who supports abortion rights, are considering backing a third-party candidate.
More than 40 Christian conservatives attended a meeting Saturday in Salt Lake City to discuss the possibility, and planned more gatherings on how they should move forward, according to Richard A. Viguerie, the direct-mail expert and longtime conservative activist.
Barack Obama raised more than $19 million this summer for the presidential primaries, holding his lead for now in the race for campaign cash though still trailing Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton in national polls.
Fred Thompson, the GOP newcomer, has collected more than $11.5 million since June when he began exploring a run, Republicans familiar with his fundraising said Monday.
Congress proposes to fund its $35 billion expansion of children’s health coverage — assuming it survives an expected presidential veto — with a 61-cent increase in the federal cigarette tax, bringing it to a dollar a pack.
Superficially, the idea has considerable appeal. The high tax might discourage — it certainly punishes — people engaged in a life-threatening habit that the government officially discourages. Simultaneously, it provides the funds to extend health coverage to uninsured children.
But Congress may find it has run afoul of the law of unintended consequences.
Few prospects are more disturbing than an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to New York did nothing to allay our concerns, despite his insistence that his country is interested in nuclear power only for electrical generation.
President Bush has been clear on this point: The United States will use any means necessary to prevent Iran’s development of a nuclear arsenal. Since no options are “off the table,” the military option is definitely “on.” In fact, war is in the air.
They worked the buffet line like newlyweds greeting guests at their wedding.
Former Sen. Fred Thompson and his bride, Jeri, made all the new friends they could at the Iowa Christian Alliance dinner in the Des Moines suburb of Clive on Saturday night.
They slowed down people on their way to the broasted chicken and mashed potatoes, shook hands and made mostly small talk — all while their young daughter, wearing pigtails and a pink party dress, looked on.