BAGHDAD - American soldiers rolled into Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City slum today in search of Iranian-linked militants and as many as 26 Iraqis were killed in what a U.S. officer described as “an intense firefight.”
But residents, police and hospital officials said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused U.S. forces of firing blindly on the innocent. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raids and demanded an explanation for the assault into a district where he has barred U.S. operations in the past.
Separately, two American soldiers were charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqis, the U.S. military said today. And in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of the capital, police said a suicide bomber blew himself up near a crowd of police recruits, killing at least 23 people and wounding 17.
A U.S. soldier was killed Friday and three wounded when a sophisticated, armor-piercing bomb hit their combat patrol in southern Baghdad, the military announced a day later.
The U.S. military said it conducted two pre-dawn raids in Sadr City, killing 26 “terrorists” who attacked U.S. troops with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs. But Iraqi officials said all the dead were civilians.
An American military spokesman insisted all of those killed were combatants. “Everyone who got shot was shooting at U.S. troops at the time,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver. “It was an intense firefight.”
U.S. troops detained 17 men suspected of helping Iranian terror networks fund operations in Iraq, a military statement said. There were no U.S. casualties.
Witnesses said U.S. forces rolled into their neighborhood before dawn and opened fire without warning.
I’ve been following the Jill Metzger case. So has Militarycorruption.com. This is an open letter to Gates. I guess there are the haves and the have nots in the military, also. Jill Metzger is a have. This is sickening.
We commend you for the swift action you took when you became our nation’s new defense chief. You fired a political hack, the former secretary of the Army; canned two generals involved in the Walter Reed medical care incident; and dumped Gen Peter Pace, a “Rumsfeld yes-man,” who promptly went whining to the media about how he “didn’t want to go.”
Now we urge you, on behalf of all the honorable men and women in the United States Air Force, to exercise your ultimate authority in the case of one of the worst scandals in Air Force history.
We are talking about the Maj. Jill Metzger cover-up and the very real possibility that this officer - who we think is fortunate not to have faced disciplinary action for what we suspect she did while in Kyrgyzstan last year - will be “rewarded” with a “disability” pension as she leaves military service while our wounded and disabled vets from Iraq and Afghanistan come home with arms and legs blown off, hands mangled, faces disfigured. They will not have as generous a pension as Jill, someone who was never under enemy fire.
Jill Metzger has been seen jogging around Moody AFB with her “minders” in recent months, so we guess there’s nothing physically wrong with her. If she is, as we have been told, going to receive a 100% PTSD pension, that is worth thousands of tax-free dollars a month. And to our way of thinking, that is absolutely unacceptable.
Ever have one of those lazy days? Well that’s what we’re doing today. Some days are just meant for lazy…..and this is one of them. The pooch gets the Dallas Cowboys blanket. NOT the Bears blanket. ha!
By IAN STEWART, Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO! NEWS
GLASGOW, Scotland - Two men rammed a flaming Jeep Cherokee into the main terminal of Glasgow airport Saturday, crashing into the glass doors at the entrance in what appeared to be the third attempted terror attack on Britain in two days, witnesses said.
Hours later, Britain raised its security alert to “critical” - the highest level possible and an indication that terrorist attacks are imminent. U.S. airports increased safety precautions.
Both suspects were arrested at the Glasgow airport, Scotland’s largest. One, his body engulfed in flames as police pulled him from the vehicle, was hospitalized.
There were no reports of injuries but the airport was evacuated and all flights suspended, a day after British police thwarted a plot to bomb central London, discovering two cars abandoned with loads of gasoline, gas canisters and nails. Hundreds fled screaming from the terminal as one of the men poured gasoline over the Jeep and tried to force it further inside the terminal, one witness said.
“One has to conclude … these are linked,” Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of Britain’s joint intelligence committee, told Sky News. “This is a very young government, and we may yet see further attacks.”
Another lie. And what’s with “we”…….does he have a mouse in his pocket?
By Claire Cummings, Globe Correspondent
WELLESLEY — Usually, the high school seniors who win the federal government’s highest honor just go to the White House, pick up their Presidential Scholars medal, and get their picture taken for posterity with the president.
Mari Oye had other ideas.
In the Georgetown University dormitory the night before the big moment, the newly minted Wellesley High graduate persuaded 49 of her 140 fellow scholars to sign a letter she and a dozen others had drafted and she had just written longhand on notebook paper, calling on President Bush to reject torture and treat terrorism suspects humanely.
Before the scholars posed for a photo with Bush on Monday, she handed him the letter. He put it in his pocket and took it out after the photo shoot. Reading silently to himself, the president looked up quizzically at Oye and said, according to her, “We agree. America doesn’t torture people.”
The minute-long confrontation earned the Yale-bound student a mention in The New York Times and other national media outlets. Dana Perino , White House deputy press secretary, also responded later Monday. “The president enjoyed a visit with the students, accepted the letter and upon reading it let the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights,” Perino said.
After a surprisingly optimistic prediction just a couple of weeks ago- “I’ll see you at the bill signing” - Bush couldn’t pull it off.
Yeah, that worked out really well for ya, huh?!
“Congress really needs to prove to the American people that it can come together on hard issues,” Bush admonished.
No. Congress really needs to prove to the American people that it can come together and IMPEACH your sorry ass!
Bush focusing on final 18 months in office
Energy legislation, education and health coverage on the agenda
With over a year and a half still left in his second term, President Bush must shrug off some recent losses and move forward.
WASHINGTON - President Bush likes big ideas. Yet his second term shows the risk - big collapses.
He lost his bid Thursday to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, just as he had to shelve his attempt to reshape Social Security earlier. Bush had begun his second term talking boldly of ending tyranny in the world, but the bloodshed in Iraq has narrowed his focus and turned much of the country against him.
So what’s left? Plenty, his advisers say, even though this latest loss clearly hurt.
[...]
Expect Bush to spend his time pushing energy legislation to promote alternative fuels, an education law that stands firm on standardized testing and health coverage for the uninsured.
“I think there are a lot of opportunities left this year, and next year, to get some important things done,” said the president’s counselor, Ed Gillespie. Both he and Sullivan and are among the new additions to Bush’s staff, key advisers who will be counted on to infuse ideas and energy where the administration might otherwise be slumping toward the finish.
[...]
Meanwhile, the clear theme coming from the White House on Thursday was a message to Congress: Don’t spend long gloating over Bush’s immigration loss, because voters want results.
“Congress really needs to prove to the American people that it can come together on hard issues,” Bush admonished.
SANTA FE, N.M. (UPI) — New Mexico officials say patients will be allowed to grow their own cannabis plants when the state’s medical marijuana laws goes into effect Sunday.
Lobbyists had originally said patients would not be allowed to grow the plans but the Health Department Thursday unveiled a provision that allows patients to grow a limited number of marijuana plants, the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper said.
Jim Burleson, director of the state sheriffs’ and police association, said he is opposed to allowing individual growers.
“If a person is growing their own (marijuana), there is no quality control and no quantity control — and it’s absolutely contrary to what was discussed at the (legislative) session,” he told the newspaper.
The law is limited to people with conditions such as cancer, HIV-AIDS, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.
The Health Department said qualified patients and caregivers may cultivate as many as four mature marijuana plants and three immature marijuana seedlings, the newspaper said.
NEW YORK (AP) - An accident involving a gyrating ride at an amusement park north of New York City left a young woman dead Friday night, police said.
The woman was killed while riding the Mind Scrambler ride at around 9:30 p.m. at Playland Amusement Park in Rye, said Westchester County Police spokesman Kieran O’Leary. The indoor ride has cars that travel in a circular path while also rotating themselves.
Emergency workers responded quickly, but the woman was pronounced dead at the scene, O’Leary said. He said the woman was about 20 years old.
Police were still investigating early Saturday, and no details about the circumstances of the accident were available. The woman’s name was not released because her family had not been notified, and it was not known whether she was riding the Mind Scrambler alone or with friends, O’Leary said.
The ride and a surrounding section of the amusement park were closed after the accident, but the rest of the park remained open, O’Leary said.
The park is located on Long Island Sound about 20 miles north of the George Washington Bridge in Manhattan.
Trained as an air conditioning repairman and technician, Ramil Autencio says his recruiter in the Philippines agreed to place him in a two-year job at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Kuwait for 450 dollars a month — maybe more with overtime.
But when he arrived at the Kuwait airport in December 2003, Autencio says he was quickly shuttled to a rundown three’story building managed by First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting, a Kuwaiti firm doing a booming multi-million-dollar business with the U.S. military and the Pentagon’s primary support contractor Kellogg Brown and Root.
To date, the company has billed the U.S. government perhaps 2 billion dollars for work in Iraq, including the 592-million-dollar U.S. embassy in Baghdad now nearing completion.
There were no more jobs at the hotel, Autencio was told, and because the recruiter only processed him for a one-month travel visa, he was told he could not stay in Kuwait. Autencio said First Kuwaiti offered him one of three options: pay a 1,000-dollar penalty and work in Kuwait for free for six months; be arrested and jailed; or work for the company in Iraq.
Deep in the jungles of the upper Amazon, in a land rife with coca plantations and drug runners, roughly 1,500 Bolivian soldiers and police camp out each night at U.S. taxpayer expense. They are offered three meals and a snack each day as part of a $31 million State Department effort to stop the cocaine trade at its source.
Until this spring, the troops were fed by a local Bolivian company, contracted to the United States through a competitive process for $3.34 per soldier per day. But in March, the same contract was awarded — without competition — to an Alaskan Inupiat Eskimo firm, Olgoonik Management Services, which is headquartered 180 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The new cost is $5.16 per soldier per day, an increase of 54 percent, or about $1 million more each year.
Given the State Department’s $32 billion budget, an additional $1 million for food hardly ranks as a major scandal. But this tangled tale of how an Alaskan tribal company ended up in a South American tropical forest sheds an illuminating spotlight on the often’secretive world of federal contracting, an area of government rife with abuse and poor oversight. It is a story that involves Bolivian police, Balkan nationals, a no-bid contract, a senator whose office has been contacted by the FBI, emergency military rations and a helping hand from the biggest private contractor in Iraq — a recently spun-off division of Halliburton , the Fortune 200 company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney. It is also a story that squarely addresses one of the principal concerns of lawmakers looking to reform federal contracting: the ability of Alaska native companies to get no-bid government contracts of any value. During the Bush administration those contracts have grown fivefold and now probably top $1 billion.
The so-called Alaska Native Corporation privilege came into effect in 1986 at the urging of Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the powerful former chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who recently announced that he has been asked for documents in a widening FBI investigation of political corruption in his home state. Stevens pushed through a law that exempted Alaska native companies from many of the limitations that apply to other federal minority-preference programs. Unlike other small minority businesses, Alaskan firms can get “small business” preferences even if they are owned by multibillion-dollar parent companies and employ no native Alaskans. One government contracting official recently told congressional investigators that the program amounted to an “open checkbook” given that there are no limits on the size of the awards.
Saturday, June 30th
Hours later, Britain raised its security alert to “critical” - the highest level possible and an indication that terrorist attacks are imminent. U.S. airports increased safety precautions.
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