Teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany were introduced at an al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9.

Well gee, I see that "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" strategy is working so</> well. Maybe if we'd actually taken out Bin Laden and company and taken out the Taliban in Afghanistan instead of stepping on the national crank wearing golf shoes in Iraq, maybe we wouldn't have this problem.

Suicide Bomb Teams Sent to U.S., Europe

A prosecuting attorney said he would appeal the dismissal of the case.

Under the new war-crimes trial system, the prosecution has 72 hours to appeal, but the court designated to hear the appeal _ known as the court of military commissions review _ doesn't even exist, Sullivan noted.

Even as the U.S. military hoped to rev up its prosecutions of Guantanamo detainees _ with the Pentagon saying it expects to eventually charge about 80 of the 380 prisoners held at this isolated base _ questions lingered about the legitimacy of the process.

Charge 80 of the 380? Wait, weren't these supposed to be "the worst of the worst?" If you're only charging about one in five of them, that sounds like quality control has some serious issues...

Judge Dismisses Charges Against Detainee - The Huffington Post

Defreitas, 63, who immigrated to the U.S. more than 30 years ago from Guyana, was in custody Sunday pending a bail hearing, was arrested two days earlier in Brooklyn.

Ibrahim and another suspect, Abdul Kadir, were in custody in Trinidad awaiting extradition hearings. Officials identified Kadir as a former mayor of a Guyanese town and a member of the country's Parliament.

Authorities in Trinidad were still seeking a fourth suspect, Abdel Nur.

Authorities said the JFK case and last month's arrest of six men suspected of plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., illustrated the need for inside information.

Is this what they mean by fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here? Looks like that plan is going about as well as the fighting them there part of this.

Informant Plays Key Role in JFK Plot - The Huffington Post

This is a question that's been percolating in my mind for quite some time now, and I'd like to hear what others think.

I think that W and company knew there were zero WMDs in Iraq from the get go. The reasoning goes as follows. If Iraq has WMDs, then the force being sent up the road four years ago, which is short on a lot of things, one of which we have found out is MOPP gear, the stuff that would protect the guys from chemical or biologic attack. So either they know they don't have the WMD and therefore the invasion is a slam dunk, or they're sure they have WMDs, and the force being sent up the road is on their way to a slaughter not seen since WWI.

Which is it? Did they think Iraq didn't have them and therefore the attack would work, or did they think Iraq had them and willingly sent 100,000+ soldiers off to get killed?

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, has been very articulate about it. We're in the business now of supporting the Sunnis anywhere we can against the Shia, against the Shia in Iran, against the Shia in Lebanon, that is Nasrullah. Civil war. We're in a business of creating in some places, Lebanon in particular, a sectarian violence.

Call it what it is. They're supporting terrorists.

The Raw Story | Hersh: Bush administration arranged support for militants attacking Lebanon

A small group of protesters gathered near the funeral services to criticize the man who mobilized Christian evangelicals and made them a major force in American politics -- often by playing on social prejudices.

A group of students from Falwell's Liberty University staged a counterprotest.

And Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car.

From reading the headline you'd think they were talking about someone planning to blow up the funeral. That would of course be wrong. Instead it was one of Jerry's kids who was planning to blow up the people who couldn't stand Falwell.

Fundamentalism is a problem, and it doesn't seem to matter if its Islamic, Christian, Jewish or Hindu.

ABC News: Bomb Plot Thwarted at Falwell's Funeral

"Iraq is a big moneymaker for them," said a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official.

Does anyone buy that "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" line of crap anymore? Seems like fighting them there is giving them the money and training they need to do the reverse.

Influx of Al Qaeda, money into Pakistan is seen - Los Angeles Times

Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions.

So, 80+ people are cleared to go, but are still in lock up because we don't know where they go. And of course, we can't let them go at Gitmo because the only place they can go from there is into the ocean (the Cubans don't want them), nor would they be released into the US because thems is like trrests. They may have been better off if the Bushies had simply murdered them because now they're being killed by inches (which is a great way to make more trrests!).

82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo - washingtonpost.com

Extended overseas deployments affecting soldiers serving in Afghanistan and other locales overseen by U.S. Central Command should help to alleviate the stress on the Army, a senior U.S. officer in Afghanistan told Pentagon reporters today.

Holy shit, the brass is in the kool-aid. How in god's green earth do they even come up with this?

DefenseLink News Article: Extended Deployments Should Lessen Army Stress, Commander Says

It took a while for me to finish reading this (three weeks, which for me is an eternity, most things take a day or two days tops, War and Peace took three) but the sheer density of this thing cannot be understated. Ricks breaks down what has gone wrong in Iraq from 2003 to 2006, spending most of the book dealing with 03-05 and why the things people were doing did not, would not and in many cases could not work.

It is a devastating, non-partisan look at how things went horribly wrong and in part tries to deal with why. I finished and think the medals of freedom given to Bremer, Franks and Tenet were actually given freeing us of them. This is a vital read for having an understanding of what is going on in Iraq.

Amazon.com: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq: Books: Thomas E. Ricks