The military timetable for war in Iraq did not allow UN weapons inspectors the time to conclude their work, a former British ambassador to the US has told a public inquiry.
Christopher Meyer told a hearing in London on Thursday that because contingency military plans had been decided before inspectors went in, "we found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun". "When you looked at the timetable for the inspections, it was impossible to see how [Hans] Blix could bring the process to a conclusion, for better or for worse, by March," when the US invasion began.
US sought 'smoking gun' in Iraq
US will not join treaty banning landmines
President Barack Obama has no plans to join a global treaty banning landmines because a policy review found the United States could not meet its security commitments without them, the State Department said on Tuesday."This administration undertook a policy review and we decided that our landmine policy remains in effect," spokesman Ian Kelly told a briefing five days before a review conference in Cartegena, Colombia on the 10-year-old Mine Ban Treaty.
Website Wikileaks publishes '9/11 messages'
A website has published what it says are 573,000 intercepted pager messages sent during the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Wikileaks says it will not reveal who gave it the messages - some of which are from federal agencies as well as ordinary citizens.Internet analysts say they believe the messages are genuine but federal authorities have refused to comment. The attacks on 11 September 2001 left nearly 3,000 people dead.
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Does this picture show British soldiers broke Geneva Conventions?
It is claimed that hours after the picture, left, was taken, the four men were transferred to a UK-run detention camp where they were badly beaten and where 20 other civilians were murdered by British soldiers.
Catholic order pays out for abuse
A Catholic religious order is to supply a 161m euros (£145m) package of measures as reparation for child abuse in Ireland.
The Christian Brothers said the decision had been taken in response to the Ryan report which revealed decades of abuse at religious institutions.
TVNL Comment: More virtues of organized religion. But it is the athiests who are the evil ones, right?
US pitches unique F-35 fighter jet to Israel
The United States has offered to add Israeli systems and munitions to a new U.S.-built fighter jet and deliver it to Israel by 2015, provided a deal is sealed in coming months.
Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), maker of the radar-evading F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, would tie in Israeli-built command, control, communications, computer and intelligence systems for a unique version of the jet for sale to Israel, Jon Schreiber, a senior Pentagon program official, told Reuters Monday.
NSA helped with Windows 7 development
The National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Microsoft on the development of Windows 7, an agency official acknowledged yesterday during testimony before Congress.
British officials heard 'drum beats' of war before 9/11
British officials heard the "drum beats" of war with Iraq emanating from the US government more than two years before the 2003 invasion and several months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Sir John Chilcot's Iraq inquiry has heard.
But the UK in 2001 refused to back a policy of regime change because the British view was that toppling Saddam Hussein would have been illegal.
Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found.
The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
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