TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iranian military troops have shot down a spy plane of the US army during the last few days, an Iranian MP said here on Tuesday.

Representative of Dasht-e Azadegan at the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Seyed Nezam Mola Hoveizeh also told FNA that the aircraft has been a spy drone of the US army and that it has been shot down when trying to cross the borders.

“Americans send such spy drones to the region every now and then,” the lawmaker further pointed out.

Source

Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Phil Guy
Theresa’s Lounge, Chicago

This is a cool video. Gives you the flavor of Southside Chicago’s blues clubs in tthe 70’s.

And of course, it’s all the defense attorneys fault trials haven’t taken place!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior Pentagon official should be fired for suggesting a boycott of American law firms defending detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, four law organizations said in a letter to President Bush on Tuesday.

Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, said last week in a Washington radio interview he found it “shocking” that major U.S. law firms would agree to represent Guantanamo detainees pro bono.

Stimson predicted that those firms would suffer financially once their involvement in Guantanamo cases was known to their corporate clients. He then listed law firms involved in Guantanamo cases.

Stimson’s remarks were aimed at “chilling the willingness” of lawyers to represent Guantanamo detainees and were contrary to the “bedrock principles” of the right to counsel and the presumption on innocence, read the letter signed by the American Association of Jurists, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the National Lawyers Guild and the Society of American Law Teachers.

Read more at Boston.com

Are 17,000 troops going to stop this? I wish it were so……but I fear not.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — More than 100 people were killed in Baghdad on Tuesday in bombing and shooting incidents, most of them in neighborhoods where the militia of a powerful anti-American Shiite cleric holds sway.

A suicide bomber and a car bomb killed at least 70 people and wounded 169 more at entrances to a once-prestigious university in Baghdad.

The strike at Mustansiriya University was a dual bomb attack. The suicide bomber detonated a vest at the back entrance of the school, and a parked car exploded at the main gate under a pedestrian bridge where students and employees get public transit. (Watch aftermath of ‘massive’ bombing )

A CNN producer near the scene said police sealed off the area and there were armed members of the Mehdi Army — the militia under the control of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — on the street.

The university, in northeastern Baghdad, is at the tip of Sadr City, a Shiite neighborhood where there is much support for al-Sadr. It is considered to be a Mehdi militia stronghold. (Map)

Meanwhile, gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on a marketplace in the Mehdi Army-controlled Bunouk area of eastern Baghdad and killed 12 civilians. Seven others were wounded.

In the Sadr City neighborhood, a bomb left inside a minivan detonated, killing four people and wounding 10 others, the official said. The blast occurred 100 to 200 meters away from al-Sadr’s main office.

Read more at CNN.com

One thing our new congress isn’t dealing with right away is the damaged Gulf Coast. Shame on them…..

NEW ORLEANS - Sixteen months after Hurricane Katrina tore this city apart, a hidden sort of damage is emerging. Local officials see it in reports of suicides, strokes and stress-related deaths. They see it in the police calls for fights and domestic violence. They see it in the long waiting lists for psychiatric care that they have no way to provide.
These days, life in the Big Easy isn’t easy at all. Everyone from the mayor to the people staffing the public health clinics sees it: New Orleans is facing an unprecedented mental health crisis - and the city has no way to deal with it.

The obvious problems only fuel the more subtle ones. About half of the city’s 450,000 pre-Katrina residents have yet to return, according to the mayor’s office, and entire neighborhoods remain filled with boarded-up homes and businesses. For those who have come back, everything is hard, and the challenges seem endless: lining up contractors, getting basic services restored, even finding neighborhood places to buy groceries, clothes and gasoline.

Now, many fear the situation could worsen. “This couple of months is our most critical time period. … New Year’s, Mardi Gras, Easter, and if people need (mental health) services right now, there really is almost no place to go,” says Kevin Stephens, director of the city Health Department.

“We’ve got families that have been split up for months, families that lost their homes, crammed in small trailers. … People have lost their jobs, their support system,” he adds. “There’s a heaviness. And we’re seeing a much, much higher incidence of mental illness.”

Read more at USA Today

Let it drop, let it drop, let it drop.

VIENNA, Austria - Oil prices dropped by $2 a barrel to new 19-month lows Tuesday on a report that OPEC powerhouse Saudi Arabia said there’s no need for further production cuts.

Crude oil is now trading below $51 a barrel at a level not seen since May 2005. The commodity has fallen more than 16 percent this year in a sell-off triggered by a historically warm winter in the Northern United States and sustained by large funds taking short positions in the market, or bets that prices will fall.

Some market participants believe that another production cut by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries could halt the price drop, but until that happens, there’s little to stop prices from sliding further.

Read more at MSNBC

MADRID, Spain - A judge on Tuesday reissued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers whose tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the Iraq war, killing a Spanish journalist, a court spokesman said.

The National Court dismissed the case in March, but the Supreme Court overruled that decision last month, ordering the investigation into Jose Couso’s killing to be reopened.

Couso, who worked as a cameraman for the Spanish television network Telecinco, died April 8, 2003, after a U.S. army tank crew fired a shell at a hotel in Baghdad where journalists were staying. Taras Portsyuk, a Ukrainian cameraman for Reuters, was also killed.

Following the incident, then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said American troops opened fire after drawing hostile fire from the hotel. He said a U.S. review of the incident found the use of force was justified.

The arrest warrant is for Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip de Camp, all from the U.S. 3rd Infantry, which is based in Fort Stewart, Ga.

The United States did not respond to the previous arrest warrant or two requests by National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz to have statements taken from the soldiers.

Although it is unlikely the soldiers will be extradited from the United States, they run the risk of arrest should they travel to any country which has an extradition accord with Spain.

Pedraz had initially issued an arrest warrant for the soldiers in October 2005, but the court threw out the case in March, ruling that Spain lacked jurisdiction to examine the causes of death in the Iraq war.

Read more here

Jon Stewart Will Romance Condi for the Good of the Country!

BAGHDAD - Sundus abdul-Fatah says she is still unsure whether she was right to leave her home in Baquba, where she and her late husband raised seven children.

A resident of the Yarmouk neighbourhood in the Sunni majority town 65 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, 30-year-old Abdul-Fatah fled with her family to the capital after Sunni insurgents killed her husband and threatened her children unless they all left.

She only had time to take a few valuables, moving to her sister’s until she could find somewhere to live - a problem facing many Iraqis displaced by the escalating sectarian conflict.

“It’s hard to leave a house you built and spent your life in, with all your best memories. But death is dreadful,” she said through tears. “The image of my husband getting killed in front of the house pushed me to flee with my children, because I feared they will face the same fate. I had to leave everything behind.”

Thousands of families have now been displaced by both Sunni and Shia insurgents. Abdul-Khaliq Zangane, a parliamentary deputy and member of the parliamentary committee on displaced and migrants, says that through November 2006, around 100,000 families had been forced from their homes.
House swaps are going well. So far, we have housed more than a hundred families in Baghdad and the suburbs without any problem, and both sides are satisfied.

As a result, a new phenomenon has emerged: Sunni and Shia families swapping houses. Real estate agents provide lists of available property, facilitating swap arrangements.

Read more at ElectronicIraq