A few days after Barack Obama's December 2009 announcement of 33,000 more troops being sent to Afghanistan, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Robert Gates advanced the official justification for escalation: the Afghan Taliban would not abandon its ties with al-Qaeda unless forced to do so by US military force and the realization that "they're likely to lose."
Gates claimed to see an "unholy alliance" of the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban emerging during 2009. Unless the United States succeeded in weakening the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda would have safe haven in Afghanistan, just as they had before the 9/11 attacks, according to Gates.
The Lies That Sold Obama's Escalation in Afghanistan
President Obama to recognize military suicides with condolence letters
Reversing a longstanding policy, the White House has decided to send condolence letters from President Barack Obama to the families of service members who commit suicide while deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other combat zones.
The president had been weighing a change in the policy since December 2009, and it took effect this week. “The president feels strongly that we need to destigmatize the mental health costs of war to prevent these tragic deaths, and changing this policy is part of that process,” a senior White House official said in a statement to POLITICO.
FDA unleashes end game scheme to outlaw virtually all dietary supplements formulated after 1994
In 1994, after years of armed raids, oppression and censorship by the FDA, Congress passed a law known as DSHEA. This is the law that essentially forced the FDA to stop regulating dietary supplements out of existence, and groups such as the Life Extension Foundation (www.LEF.org) were instrumental in helping get this law passed in 1994.
Now, suddenly, the FDA has decided it wants to enforce NDI, and its enforcement of this technicality would essentially amount to the FDA denying permission to use nearly all dietary supplement ingredients introduced since 1994. So last Friday, the FDA proposed its new rules on NDI -- on the Friday before a long weekend, no less, which is a common tactic government uses when it wants to do something that nobody notices -- and these new rules run the risk of being adopted as active regulations, threatening virtually the entire dietary supplement industry with an eventual shutdown.
Obama Has Finally Become Dick Cheney
The Obama administration wants to jail James Risen, a reporter who exposed Bush-era wrongdoing, if he doesn't reveal one of his sources.
In Barack Obama's rise to national prominence, when he criticized the Bush Administration for its false claims about WMDs in Iraq, its torture of detainees, and its illegal program of spying on American citizens without warrants, he owed a particular debt of gratitude to a New York Timesnational security reporter. In a series of scoops as impressive as any amassed during the War on Terrorism, James Risen reported in 2004 that the CIA failed to tell President Bush about relatives of Iraqi scientists who swore that the country had abandoned its weapons program; the same year, he was first to reveal that the CIA was waterboarding detainees in Iraq; and in 2005, he broke the Pulitzer Prize winning story about the secret NSA spying program.
UNHCR in Somalia 'human tragedy' warning
The levels of malnutrition among children fleeing Somalia's drought could lead to a "human tragedy of unimaginable proportions", the UN refugee head Antonio Guterres has said.
Young children are dying on their way to or within a day of arrival at camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, the UNHCR says. It estimates that a quarter of Somalis are either displaced within the country or living outside as refugees. The drought is compounded by the violence in south and central Somalia.
The Mother of All No-Brainers
If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.
A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.
The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary. This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.
Scientists say Pentagon misleads on dust risk to troops
The Pentagon is falsely claiming its research shows that airborne dust in Iraq and Afghanistan poses no health risk to U.S. troops, say three scientists whose review of that research found it riddled with mistakes.
Military officials then falsely said the review of their research backed their conclusion that the dust in the two war zones is no different from that in California, scientists Philip Hopke, Mark Utell and Anthony Wexler say.
The scientists, who issued their report last year for the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences, were part of a team that reviewed a 2008 study at the request of the Pentagon.
More military families seeking help in Washington state
More soldiers and military families are reaching out for mental health care at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, raising hopes that the Army is breaking down the stigma that keeps them from getting help for distress triggered by repeated combat deployments.
Diagnoses for post-traumatic stress are on the rise at Madigan Army Medical Center. So are prescriptions for common antidepressants.
Concerns rising over US plans to build massive plutonium bomb factory in Los Alamos
Experts are warning about the U.S. plans to build a massive plutonium bomb factory in the Los Alamos nuclear plant in New Mexico.
"They are proposing to build this new facility to make the plutonium production for weapons production four times (than) their current capacity of 20 pits per year," said Subhankar Banerjee, Founder of ClimateStoryTellers.org.
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