from Moveon.org

By ANDREW O. SELSKY and BEN FOX
The Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - After years of indefinite confinement, many detainees at Guantanamo Bay say they feel they may never receive justice, according to transcripts of hearings obtained by The Associated Press. Fewer than one in five of detainees allowed a hearing last year even bothered to show up for it.

The frustrated words of men, some of whom admit to fighting with the Taliban but swear they would go peacefully home if released, illustrate the seething tension at a prison where hundreds are held without charges. The transcripts also underscore that the U.S. allegations against the men are often as difficult to substantiate as they are for the detainees to refute.

Sometimes the allegations alarmed even the panels of military officers charged with determining whether a detainee should be freed.

Rahmatullah Sangaryar stood accused of “planning biological and poison attacks on United States and coalition forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan” and of possessing anthrax powder and a liquid poison.

The Afghan detainee said he was captured only with muddy clothes, possessed no anthrax and never planned such an attack. The officer in charge of the panel seemed to grope for a response.

read more HERE

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The war in Iraq is not over, but one legacy is already here in this city and others across America: an epidemic of brain-damaged soldiers.

Thousands of troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is science.

“I’ve been in the field for 20-plus years dealing with TBI. I have a very experienced staff. And they’re saying to me, ‘We’re seeing things we’ve never seen before,’” said Sandy Schneider, director of Vanderbilt University’s brain injury rehabilitation program.

Doctors also are realizing that symptoms overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder, and that both must be treated. Odd as it may seem, brain injury can protect against PTSD by blurring awareness of what happened.

But as memory improves, emotional problems can emerge: One of the first “graduates” of Vanderbilt’s program committed suicide three weeks later.

“Of all the ones here, he would not have been the one we would have thought,” Schneider said. “They called him the Michelangelo of Fort Campbell” - a guy who planned to go to art school.

As more troops return from the war, brain injuries are a growing burden - for them, for the few programs to treat them, and for taxpayers who pay for their care and disability if they cannot hold jobs.

read more HERE

The country’s best-known anti-war activist, Cindy Sheehan, made her first trip to the Madison area Saturday, headlining the sixth annual Fighting Bob Festival in Baraboo, and calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush.

The “Peace Mom,” whose soldier son Casey, 24, was killed just five days after arriving in Iraq in 2004, resigned May 29 as an anti-war activist.

Her retirement lasted just five weeks. On July 2, she un-retired after hearing that President Bush had commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby. She announced later that month that she will run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the 2008 congressional election because the speaker won’t pursue impeaching Bush.

“I’ve got to make sure these war criminals, these criminals against international law, against our Constitution, against everything it means to be human, I have to make sure they are impeached for what they’ve done,” she told the largest crowd of the day to huge, sustained applause.

More at Madison.com

From the comments at this article:
The Repugnican candidates refusal to participate in this historic debate while Dems embrace the Cuban community says it all. Miami Cubans are waking up to the truth that the fifty year old embargo against Cuba has failed. It has damaged the Cuban people and strengthed the Castro government’s hold on the people. The best way to promote freedom and Democracy in Cuba is to end the embargo and allow a reunion of Cuban families here and on the island. Those Miami Cubans still hung up on the Bay of Pigs and attempting to force political change in Cuba are fewer and fewer, and good riddance to these dinosaurs! It’s time for the new generation of Miami Cubans to step up and be heard.

The comments at the Sun Sentinel are often racist, sometimes intelligent, always diverse. Take a look.

The presidential election is more than a year away, but Democratic candidates are already trying to breach the Republicans’ stronghold in the Cuban-American community, hoping that a strong enough showing among Cuban voters will help them win Florida’s electoral votes in 2008.

They might have an opportunity today when the Democratic contenders participate in the first Spanish-language presidential debate. The 7 p.m. forum at the University of Miami, moderated by Univisión anchors Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas, will be broadcast by the network on television, radio and the Internet.

More at the Sun Sentinel

More than one in seven US homebuyers with subprime loans failed to keep up with mortgage payments in the second quarter, in a sign of growing distress in the housing market.

More than 619,000 homeowners - or 1.4 per cent of all those with mortgages - face the prospect of repossession, up from 1.28 per cent in the first quarter, according to estimates by the Mortgage Bankers- Association. Total delinquencies rose to their highest level since 2002 - by 0.28 percentage points to 5.12 per cent of all mortgages.

The data indicates an acceleration in the troubles in US mortgage markets, and covers the period before last month’s credit squeeze raised the cost of borrowing.

Most of the rise in foreclosures came from growing numbers of seriously delinquent adjustable-rate subprime, and prime, mortgages. Economists expect foreclosure rates to increase dramatically as subprime loans re’set to higher rates in the coming months.

More at Financial Times

Also from the Financial Times:

Some Federal Reserve policymakers also privately see comparisons between the current distress in credit markets and the bank runs of the 19th century, in which savers lost confidence in banks and demanded their money back, creating a spiralling liquidity crisis for institutions that had invested this money in longer-term assets.

We already knew that the 2000 election was stolen. This story only serves to show the reader how corruption in just one area of our Government can lead to eight years (plus) of total mayhem. One can easily argue that all the deaths that have and are still occurring in Iraq can squarely be placed on Scalia’s back. Knowing now that the Clinton administration left behind urgent information regarding Osama bin-Laden/Al-Qaeda, information totally ignored by the Bush administration, may very well have saved the lives of 3,000 Americans on 9/11/01, in a Gore administration. And I’m not even going to discuss republican greed nor GOP toe-tapping! You can draw your own conclusions.

Book says Souter almost left court

WASHINGTON - Justice David Souter contemplated resigning from the Supreme Court because he was so upset by the decision that sealed the 2000 presidential election for George W. Bush, a new book says.

Souter, one of the four dissenting justices in the case, believed his five colleagues in the majority acted in a “crudely partisan” manner in siding with Bush to shut down the recount of votes in Florida in December 2000, author Jeffrey Toobin writes in “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.” A day after the decision in Bush v. Gore, Vice President Al Gore formally conceded the election.

“Souter seriously considered resigning. For many months, it was not at all clear whether he would remain as a justice,” Toobin writes. “At the urging of a handful of close friends, he decided to stay on, but his attitude toward the court was never the same. There were times when David Souter thought of Bush v. Gore and wept.”

MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

Yahoo! News

The UN has agreed to stall it’s latest quarterly report on human rights in Iraq at Ryan Crocker’s insistence. This way, he and Betrayus can do their lying prior to the release of the report.

So how are things REALLY going for the Iraqis? Call me stupid, but this doesn’t sound like progress.

Well, 1.1 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their neighborhoods for other places in Iraq in the past 18 months, which is an average of 61,000 per month. But in fact, the rate was a bit less than that in 2006, and accelerated to 100,000 a month beginning in February, 07. According to a report there are more displaced Iraqis since the surge began. And now…..they have nowhere to go.

IOM’s latest Emergency Needs Assessment on the extent of internal displacement inside Iraq shows that 11 out of 15 central and southern governorates are now severely restricting the entry and registration of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). In the three northern governorates, entry is now only granted to IDPs who either originate from those governorates or who are sponsored by someone who is a resident.

Those restrictions, according to the report, have been imposed mainly for security reasons and because mass displacement is putting an extra burden on already over’stretched local resources and capacities.

As a result, the plight of IDPs has worsened as an overwhelming majority can no longer access assistance and basic services.

In Basrah as in other governorates, the report finds that displaced women cannot access limited health facilities because of chronic insecurity and in Kirkuk, traditional customs continue to restrict the movement of displaced women.

Syria has issued a decree that bans Iraqis from entering the country , except for businessmen and academics. This will take effect tomorrow.

Leaders of 22 countries met in Iraq today to discuss security, its energy crisis and the exodus of citizens.

Iran is to pay for the construction of a 300-megawatt power plant to provide the electricity of the city of Najaf, an Iranian official stated. (those damned Iranians!)

Iraq will require up to $25 billion in investment to expand its refining capacity over the next five to seven years, an Iraqi oil official said on Saturday.

The Sadr Movement in Basra is warning the US military not to try to come into the province to replace the departing British troops. Suspected Mahdi Army roadside bombs have inflicted unusually high casualties on British troops in the deep south this year.

Supposedly a U.S. airstrike killed the mastermind of the bombings on Iraq’s minority Yazidi community last month.

11 bodies were found in different areas of Baghdad yesterday.

At least four Iraqi soldiers were killed and 15 injured Sunday in a suicide bombing outside a military checkpoint in the town of Balad .

Another mystery death of a U.S. soldier in Iraq.

Doesn’t look so good…..but hey, be patient!!

ABC’s “This Week” - Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and John Kerry, D-Mass.
___

CBS’ “Face the Nation” - Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.
___

NBC’s “Meet the Press” - Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones; Charles Ramsey, former Washington, D.C., police chief; Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.
___

CNN’s “Late Edition” - White House homeland security adviser Frances Frago Townsend; presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie; retired Army Gen. George Joulwan.
___

“Fox News Sunday” - Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Townsend; Michael DuHaime, Rudy Giuliani’s campaign manager