"The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq –- thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the vice president’s office [Republican Dick Cheney] had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link."

-MSNBC

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Opinion - Noteworthy

[From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]
""CENTCOM had originally called for twelve to eighteen months of Phase IV activity with active troop deployments. But then CENTCOM had completely walked away by simply stating that the war was over and Phase IV was not their job."" ... ""That decision set up the United States for a failed first year in Iraq. There is no question about it. And I was supposed to believe that neither the Secretary of Defense nor anybody above him knew anything about it? Impossible! Rumsfeld knew about it. Everybody on the NSC [National Security Council] knew about it, including Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Colin Powell. [Republican] Vice President Cheney knew about it. And [Republican] President Bush knew about it."" ... ""There's not a doubt in my mind that they all embraced this decision to some degree. And if it had not been for the moral courage of [General] Gen. John Abizaid to stand up to them all and reverse Franks's troop drawdown order, there's no telling how much more damage would have been done."" ... ""In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.""

[From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]
""In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I watched helplessly as the [Republican President] Bush administration led America into a strategic blunder of historic proportions. It became painfully obvious that the executive branch of our government did not trust its military. It relied instead on a neoconservative ideology developed by men and women with little, if any, military experience. Some senior military leaders did not challenge civilian decision makers at the appropriate times, and the courageous few who did take a stand were subsequently forced out of the service...I saw the cynical use of war for political gains by elected officials and acquiescent military leaders. I learned how the pressure of a round-­the-­clock news cycle could drive crucial decisions. I witnessed those resulting political decisions override military requirements and judgments and, in turn, create conditions that caused unnecessary harm to our soldiers on the ground..."" ... ""Over the fourteen months of my command in Iraq, I witnessed a blatant disregard for the lives of our young soldiers in uniform. It is an issue that constantly eats away at me.["]"

[From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]
"During the last few months of 2002, while the highest levels of the U.S. government were sparring with Saddam Hussein and setting up the case for an invasion of Iraq, there is irrefutable evidence that America was torturing and killing prisoners in Afghanistan...In retrospect, the Bush administration's new policy triggered a sequence of events that led to the use of harsh interrogation tactics against not only al Qaeda prisoners, but also eventually prisoners in Iraq—in spite of our best efforts to restrain such unlawful conduct.""

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-WashingtonPost

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Barack Obama - John McCain - Accounting - People - Families - US - Iraq - Military - Book - MT - Arizona - Wisconsin - 2008 Election - "Obama slams McCain on Iraq facts." ... "[2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack] Obama isn't expected to speak until 7:45 pm ET at a rally in Great Falls, MT [Montana]. But his campaign has released excerpts of his remarks, which go right after [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate John] McCain's "pre-surge levels" misstatement yesterday. They also invoke Scott McClellan's new book." ... "[Barack Obama:] "There are honest differences about how to move forward in Iraq, just like there were honest differences about whether or not we should go to war," Obama is supposed to say. "John McCain was for the invasion of Iraq; I opposed it. John McCain wants to continue George Bush’s war in Iraq indefinitely; I want to end it. So there’s going to be a clear choice for the American people this November."" ... ""But that’s not what John McCain’s been talking about the last few days. He’s been proposing a joint trip to Iraq that’s nothing more than a political stunt. He’s even been using it to raise a few dollars for his campaign. But it seems like [Arizona Senator] Sen. McCain’s a lot more interested in my travel plans than the facts, because yesterday – in his continued effort to put the best light on a failed policy – he stood up in Wisconsin and said, 'We have drawn down to pre-surge levels' in Iraq."" ... ""That’s not true, and anyone running for commander-in-chief should know better. As the saying goes, you’re entitled to your own view, but not your own facts. We’ve got around 150,000 troops in Iraq -- 20,000 more than we had before the surge. We have plans to get down to around 140,000 later this summer -- that’s still more troops than we had in Iraq before the surge. And today, Sen. McCain refused to correct his mistake. Just like George Bush, when he was presented with the truth, he just dug in and refused to admit his mistake. His campaign said it amounts to 'nitpicking.'"" ... ""Well, I don’t think tens of thousands of American troops amounts to nitpicking. Tell that to the young men and women who are serving bravely and brilliantly under our flag. Tell that to the families who have seen their loved ones fight tour after tour after tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged."" ... ""It’s time for a debate that’s based on the truth, and I can’t think of anything more important than how many Americans are in harm’s way. It’s time for a debate that’s based on how we’re going to end this war -- not a debate that’s based on raising a few dollars for John McCain’s campaign."" ... ""The American people have had enough spin. Just this week, we were reminded by President Bush’s own former spokesman of how it was deception -- not straight talk -- that misled the American people into war. It’s time to cut through the tough talk so that we can be straight with the American people about a war that’s cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer. It’s time to end the political game-playing so that we can finally end this war. That’s what I’ll do in this campaign. And that’s what I’ll do when I’m President of the United States."" -From Mark Murray and Athena Jones -MSNBC

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Scott McClellan - Books - Counterterrorism - US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Politics - Marketing - "Scott McClellan Apologizes for Bashing Richard Clarke." ... "In an encounter last night in the lobby of a New York hotel, former [Republican President Bush] White House press secretary Scott McClellan apologized for denouncing a former White House colleague, Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism adviser, after Clarke wrote a book ["Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror"] highly critical of the Bush administration in 2004." ... "Now McClellan is facing a similar denunciation from the White House for his own highly critical book." ... "In 2004, McClellan said Clarke's book, asserting the Bush administration failed to take timely action against al Qaeda, was "flat-out wrong." He told reporters at a March 22, 2004 briefing, "Ask yourself why, one and a half years later, after he left the administration, he's all of a sudden, coming forward with these grave concerns? If he had such grave concerns, why didn't he come out with them sooner?"" ... "Now White House aides are saying much the same thing about McClellan's assertions, in his book "What Happened," that President Bush waged a deceitful propaganda campaign to promote the war in Iraq. " ... "Clarke appeared Thursday night on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" to talk about his new book, "Your Government Failed You," and was asked about McClellan's criticism of him in 2004. "I think there is a box in the White House that, if anyone escapes and tells the truth, they break open for talking points about what to say," Clarke told Stewart." (1, 2) -By Brian Ross with contributions by Mark Mooney -ABCNEWS.com 

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Scott McClellan - Book - Noteworthy - US - Iraq - Corporate - Media - Military - Government - Politics - Marketing - Television - History - Gore - Obama - McCain - Russert - Cheney - "Scott McClellan on the "liberal media"." ... "In a minimally rational world, this extraordinary passage, from the new book by Scott McClellan, would forever slay the single most ludicrous myth in our political culture: The "Liberal Media":"

"If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the [Republican President Bush] White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq."

"The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. . . . In this case, the "liberal media" didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."

"I like [Bush]. Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left -- I mean -- like him personally."

Barack Obama - History - Author - Foreign - Military - Terrorism - Torture - Guantanamo - Cuba - Iraq - US - 2008 Election - "Fukuyama backs Obama for US presidency." ... "He is one of America's most famous neo-conservatives and his ideas on the spread of democracy have informed the [Republican President] Bush administration's foreign policy." ... "But Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History and Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University, is now a sharp critic of US President George W Bush and has even come out as a supporter of [2008 Election] Democrat frontrunner Barack Obama for president." ... "ELEANOR HALL: So what advice do you have for the next president of the United States on foreign policy?" ... "FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: I think that the US as a result of Iraq has really alienated itself from a good deal of the global public. Not just people in the Middle East where anti-Americanism is at an all-time high but from its European allies, from a lot of publics in places where there ought to be a lot of sympathy." ... "So I think the United States needs to reconnect with the world. It needs to do some symbolic things like, we shouldn't torture people, so as a first symbolic gesture I think the new president ought to close Guantanamo [Cuba] and I think in general what you need is a shift." ... "There needs to be great downplaying of the whole war on terrorism. To call it a war I think has over-militarised our objectives and the means that we have used to prosecute it, and I think there has to be a greater shift to the use of soft power in projecting American influence and then there are large areas of the world where we have kind of neglected thinking about things like east Asia where you have obviously got some very big changes going off. " -By Eleanor Hall -Yahoo 

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John McCain - John Hagee - Terrorism - Racism - Politician - Military - Religion - History - Germany - Israel - Palestine - Book - Arizona - US - 2008 Election - "McCain Backer Hagee Said Hitler Was Fulfilling God's Will (AUDIO)." ... "[Republican televangelist] John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona Senator] Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis [Germany] had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel." ... "Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: "'And they the hunters should hunt them,' that will be the Jews. 'From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that."" ... "He goes on: "Theodore Herzl is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said 'I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.' So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust." ... ""Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel." (Listen to the audio below.)" ... "The sermon, which was first posted by Bruce Wilson on his site, Talk To Action, adds another element to Hagee's controversial stance on the state and history of Israel." ... "Since McCain secured the endorsement, both his campaign and Hagee have been pressed to explain a series of derogatory remarks the Reverend made about the Catholic Church, including his reference to the institution as "the Great Whore."" ... "As Wilson notes, in his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown", Hagee proposed the theory that "anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves -- the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive." He also wrote that "Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews."" -By Sam Stein -HuffingtonPost.com

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(Audio) "McCain Endorser Hagee: God Sent Hitler, Jews Have Dead Souls"

McCain Hagee:

Entertainment - Political - Humor - Corporate - Government - Military - Halliburton - Blackwater - Foreign - Law - Noteworthy - Women - Journalists - Writers - US - Iraq - "John Cusack: Outsourced Warfare Represents a "Radical, Dangerous, Disgusting Ideology": An interview with Cusack about his latest film, War Inc., which takes the outsourcing of military operations to the absurd." ...

-AlterNet.org

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WATCH - John McCain - Iraq - Military - Disaster - Hurricane Katrina - New Orleans - Louisiana - US - Economy - Politics - Author -  - Media - 2008 Election - "McCain's YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare." [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain]

[John McCain]

[YouTube Video]

Bernard Kerik - Corporate - Police - US - Iraq - Military - History - Book - "Former Iraq Commander: Bernard Kerik was 'a waste of time' in Iraq." ... "The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq took aim at Bernard Kerik in an exclusive interview with the Daily News Sunday, calling his efforts to train Iraqi police in 2003 "a waste of time and effort."" ... "Retired [Lieutenant General] Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top military leader in Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004, blasted the former police commissioner for failing to produce results while Kerik was the interim minister of interior in 2003." ... ""I would be hard-pressed to identify a major national-level success that his organization accomplished in that time," Sanchez told The News a day before his new memoir, "Wiser in Battle" hits bookstores nationwide." ... "Sanchez, who was in charge during Saddam Hussein's capture and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, said Kerik put U.S. [United States] soldiers in danger many times by not telling the Army about his police operations." ... "Sanchez said when Kerik left Iraq, after just 90 days, he checked the Interior Ministry's inventory to see what equipment was bought for the Iraqi police. Sanchez said he was "shocked" to find out that the only thing on the books was 50,000 Glock pistols." ... ""When I was informed of the exorbitant prices that were being paid for these pistols, my first reaction was that there had to be some impropriety, but I had no evidence to substantiate it," he wrote. " -By Stephanie Gaskell -NYDailyNews.com

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People - Health - Environment - Trees - Global - Earth - Science - Politics - Book - North Carolina - "Caring for planet increasingly tied to faith groups." ... "Abraham sits at the oaks. Deborah holds court under a palm tree. Moses speaks to a bush." ... ""I would say connecting this to the Bible is important for some people," said Dr. Matthew Sleeth, a former hospital chief of staff who couldn't shake the faces of patients with seemingly increasing environment-related illnesses. So he quit his job, gave away half his belongings and began spreading the word on the urgency of people paying more attention to the environment." ... "Pointing out the symbolism of trees in Scripture has helped Sleeth link faith with personal responsibility. His book, "Serve God and Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action," is in its seventh printing. Sleeth also has a prominent role in the publication of an upcoming "green Bible."" ... ""The change has come when people who are strong in their faith, who might be against it," Sleeth says of the deterioration of the Earth, "then go look at the Bible with this in mind and they see a different story."" ... "The statewide faith and environment conference that Sleeth will co-headline at Catawba College in Salisbury [North Carolina] this month grew out of a meeting among Greensboro [North Carolina] houses of worship at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. Participants tried to broaden the conversation between the scientific and faith-based communities." ... ""When people realize that there is this direct tie between our own faith and being good stewards of this Earth," said John Wear, founding director of Catawba's Center for the Environment, "then it gives them a purpose that didn't exist before."" -By Nancy McLaughlin -News-Record.com

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CenterForTheEnvironment.org

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Ron Paul - John McCain - Barack Obama - US - Iraq - Foreign - Military - Federal - Dollars - Law- Book - 2008 Election - Texas - Arizona - Illinois - "Paul: Not ready to endorse McCain, likes Obama's foreign policy." ... "Having a Republican win the upcoming presidential election is “secondary” for [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate and Texas Representative Ron] Paul who is more interested in defending the Constitution, having the country go in what he considers the right direction, having a sound currency, and achieving balanced budgets. Paul parts ways with [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona Senator John] McCain over McCain’s support for the Iraq war, his approach to U.S. [United States] foreign policy in the Middle East and his willingness to spend federal dollars to support military operations in Iraq." ... "Instead, Paul favors [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate and Illinois Senator] Sen. Barack Obama because of positions on foreign policy. “But that’s doesn’t mean that’s an endorsement,” Paul quickly added." ... "Paul recently released a new book titled “The Revolution: a Manifesto.” “Unfortunately, it is revolutionary to talk about obeying the Constitution,” Paul said of the book’s title." -CNN

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John McCain - Politics - Book - 2008 Election - Woman - "McCain fields audience question on whether he called wife an expletive." ... "A member of the audience, identified as Marty Parrish of Clive [Iowa], asked [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate John] McCain during the event at the [Iowa] Polk County Convention Complex about a rumor that McCain had once used a profane word referencing female genitalia to describe his wife." ... "A book, “The Real McCain” by Cliff Schecter, accuses McCain of using the word in an exchange with his wife, Cindy, in 1992." ... "Audience member: This question goes to mental health and mental health care. Previously, I've been married to a woman that was verbally abusive to me. Is it true that you called your wife a (expletive)?" ... "[2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate John] McCain: Now, now. You don't want to... Um, you know that's the great thing about town hall meetings, sir, but we really don't, there's people here who don't respect that kind of language. So I'll move on to the next questioner in the back." ... "Parrish, a 45-year-old Baptist minister and technology business owner, said he attended the event specifically to confront McCain about the rumor." ... "“This is about character,” Parrish said, when reached by telephone afterward. “And in a moment of intemperance, he called his wife the most despicable name a person can call a woman." -DesMoinesRegister

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Psychological - Health - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - Science -