World-News

The Nation
by Katrina vanden Heuvel

05/18/07

Three months into the job, General David Petraeus says it is difficult to predict, before the full number of troops arrive, if the surge in Baghdad will succeed. And he now says he will not have a definitive answer about prospects for progress by September, when he is to report back to Congress. But how to define ‘progress’ in Iraq? (And why should the US have the right to decide what progress in Iraq means? Shouldn’t we, instead, be given the task of measuring the destruction we have caused and held to account for repairing the human and physical damage we have helped inflict?) But if one does engage in this defining-progress project, here are some early measurements to consider...

https://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=196706


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Petraeus
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troop+surge
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Katrina+Vanden+Heuvel

AntiWar.Com
by US Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)

05/22/07

Many of my colleagues, faced with the reality that the war in Iraq is not going well, line up to place all the blame on the president. The president ‘mismanaged’ the war, they say. ‘It’s all the president’s fault,’ they claim. In reality, much of the blame should rest with Congress, which shirked its constitutional duty to declare war and instead told the president to decide for himself whether or not to go to war. More than four years into that war, Congress continues to avoid its constitutional responsibility to exercise policy oversight, particularly considering the fact that the original authorization no longer reflects the reality on the ground in Iraq...

https://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=10999


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ron+Paul

Battle Creek Enquirer

05/21/07

In grudging concessions to President Bush, Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and shorn of at least some of the billions they want for domestic programs, officials said Monday. The legislation would include the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade, a top priority for the Democrats who took control of Congress in January, the officials added...

https://tinyurl.com/2zmhng


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

--------

Democrats Abandon Iraq Withdrawal Timeline

Scrambling to send President Bush an emergency war spending bill he will sign, Democratic leaders have decided to drop their insistence on a timeline for withdrawing US forces from Iraq. The major concession comes because leaders in Congress cannot muster veto-proof majorities.

https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052207J.shtml



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Iraq+war+funding
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=withdrawal

Nineteen-year-old Nafisa Ridwan says she was forced to work as a sex worker to feed her younger brothers after her father died in an attack in the capital, Baghdad. With her mother seriously sick with a heart condition and without anyone to look after the family, she had to resort to prostitution after failing to find other work.

https://snipurl.com/1lgkt


From Information Clearing House

"Last week I was struck to see a well-respected centrist foreign policy analyst discuss President Bush's 'surge' as a serious policy for bringing stability to Iraq," says Dean Baker. "This sight was striking, because at this point it is very difficult to imagine the surge as a serious policy. The analyst's comments were disturbing because they seemed to be yet another example of an expert bending an analysis to accommodate political power."

https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052107R.shtml



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Dean+Baker
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troop+surge

https://www.avaaz.org/en/iraq_oil_law/?cl=9625993



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Iraq+oil
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Big+Oil

Alain Chouet Interview With Le Monde

An April 16 Le Monde article about what the French secret services knew before 9/11 (the translation of which was published on Truthout) included quotations from former French Security Intelligence Director Alain Chouet. Today, we publish the full text of the interview he gave to Le Monde as posted on his web site: It simultaneously contradicts one major conclusion suggested by Le Monde and provides fascinating insight into the United States's failed counter-Islamist-terrorism strategy.

https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052107G.shtml

Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent US occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region, according to Congressional sources and former intelligence officials familiar with the pre-war studies.

https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052107N.shtml