City officials in charge of the airport declared it a "gun-free zone" when a law allowing people to carry guns on public transit and other places took effect Tuesday. Gun rights supporters, including a state legislator who helped pass the law, quickly filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the designation.

Does anyone else think it's a bad idea that if people can just stroll into airports loaded for bear it's a bad idea?

Lawsuit filed over Atlanta airport barring guns - Yahoo! News

Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government has spent nearly $500 million on an Arabic language television and radio station.

Now an investigation finds that the project has not only been poorly run and hemorrhaged taxpayer money but is also airing bizarrely anti-American and anti-semitic coverage despite repeated complaints from the State Department and Congress.

How do you get permanent war? Fund both sides.

TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Today's Must Read

Decius wrote:

Violence in all of Iraq is the lowest since March 2004. The two largest cities, Baghdad and Basra, are calmer than they have been for years. The third largest, Mosul, is in the midst of a major security operation. On Thursday, Iraqi forces swept unopposed through the southern city of Amara, which has been controlled by Shiite militias. There is a sense that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government has more political traction than any of its predecessors.

Radical policy shifts on Iraq seem less reasonable with each passing month. A number of previous threads on this subject are easy to search for. I think this is going to present a problem for Obama, as previous Dem positioning in Iraq is going to get squeezed against improving news from the ground. McCain will easily capitalize on this.

And this would of course be wrong.

Core problems:
The Army is physically unable to maintain the current deployment status so a shift in policy is not only reasonable, it is required.
The primary reason for the decrease in violence has been Muqtada al-Sadr's decision to reign in the Mahdi Army. He's waiting for our shift which he knows is coming before taking further action to consolidate his power.
The main secondary reason for the decrease in violence has been the segregation of Iraq into unmixed enclaves. Areas that used to be part Sunni part Shi'ite are now all one or the other, either by murder or flight.
The recent "maintenance contracts" handed to ExxonMobil, Shell et al is going to make things worse. To operate, they're going to need security forces (Blackwater) and the Iraqi populace is going to see this as a naked grab to steal their oil. Again. People in this country are going to start seeing this as what it always was, a naked grab for the Iraqi oilfields, again. Put that together with higher gas prices and $100+ billion dollar profits for companies like ExxonMobil and that's a backlash loop.

Where this gets really messy is the following. As of December 31, the UN mandate that the US forces are operating under expires. That's why the White House is pushing hard for the mutual treaty. Maliki is also somewhat pushing for this because about the only real support his government has is from the US, but every other group wants nothing of the sort. We want 60 bases in perpetuity, they want us to get the hell out. These are not reconcilable differences, and without the UN mandate, the pretext we are there under expires.

Were Saddam and his kids pieces of crap masquerading as members of the human race? Yes. That part I'm not going to bother disputing. Are we safer now than we were before we invaded? No. Is that situation destabilizing the middle-east? Yes. Is that contributing to what we're paying for gas? Yes.

And oh yeah, remember the guy who kicked off this whole deal, bin Laden? he's STILL out there. Afghanistan? Getting worse. Relations with Pakistan? Getting worse. Iran? Please. If I were the Air Force, I'd seriously consider replacing the contents of "the football" with a copy of "My Pet Goat." I don't need W thinking "Today is the day! Rapture!"

RE: Big Gains for Iraq Security, but Questions Linger - NYTimes.com

Torture "is basically subject to perception," CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials gathered at the U.S.-run detention camp in Cuba on Oct. 2, 2002, according to minutes of the meeting. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."

Well no shit Sherlock. Does anyone still question whether what we were doing at Abu Ghraib, Bagram or Gitmo was torture? How can that still be in question? Because Georgie said we don't and the President wouldn't lie to us? When has he told the truth?

CIA Played Larger Role In Advising Pentagon - washingtonpost.com

The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.

If we're going to continue to use "War on Terror" we have lost. The point of such "quaint" things like the Constitution and Geneva Conventions are to give concrete examples of what we stand for as opposed to sinking into barbarism.

The current administration has failed at every level, and this news, and the approval of these policies at the highest levels of American government, is a disgrace.

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 06/18/2008 | Documents confirm U.S. hid detainees from Red Cross

Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.

Nope, we don't torture, nosireebob.

We did, we probably still do, and the people involved, especially the people who authorized it need to be stuck in a hole someplace they can clear brush. The kind you get shot trying to leave. Like Joliet federal penitentiary. Sorry Mr. Bush, you don't even have plausible deniability. Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not go to Crawford, do not become baseball commissioner. You have done more to destroy this great nation than any prior enemy, foreign or domestic, has ever managed to achieve.

U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

Message to George and Dick. "Go fuck yourselves." Message to everyone, this was a 5-4 decision, the dissent core was Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts. If you need another description on just how thin the margin is between America and a police state is, it's ONE vote.

November matters.

High Court ruling may delay war crimes trials - Yahoo! News

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

If they did or not isn't clear, but as stupid as these guys are, it wouldn't surprise me.

06/05/2008 | Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?

The cost to Iraq of this happening would be the immediate loss of $20bn. The US is able to threaten Iraq with the loss of 40 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves because Iraq's independence is still limited by the legacy of UN sanctions and restrictions imposed on Iraq since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the 1990s. This means that Iraq is still considered a threat to international security and stability under Chapter Seven of the UN charter. The US negotiators say the price of Iraq escaping Chapter Seven is to sign up to a new "strategic alliance" with the United States.

Bush is learning! He's progressed from fights to blackmail!

US issues threat to Iraq's $50bn foreign reserves in military deal - Middle East, World - The Independent

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

I want to say this is unbelievable, in the literal sense of that word. But it's not. This is yet another illustration of why the current administration and their fellow fifth columnists should be run out of town on a rail.

Italian’s Detention Illustrates Dangers Foreign Visitors Face - New York Times