News Crawl 1-21-07

Pentagon sees U.S. war cost in Iraq rising

The steadily rising Iraq war price tag will reach about $8.4 billion a month this year, Pentagon spokesmen said on Thursday, as heavy replacement costs for lost, destroyed and aging equipment mount.
The Pentagon has been estimating last year's costs for the increasingly unpopular war at about $8 billion a month, having increased from a monthly "burn rate" of around $4.4 billion during the first year of fighting in fiscal 2003.

For war zone workers, a new fight

US companies employing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have refused to settle workers' compensation and medical benefit claims for hundreds of war-zone injuries that range from back pain to post-traumatic stress.
A Globe review of rulings by administrative judges that resolve disputed claims found that Halliburton Co. , DynCorp International, and other US contractors have been ordered to pay millions of dollars in compensation to workers whose claims they initially denied. In some cases, the companies had fought the claims for years even though their own doctors agreed that a worker had been injured.
Judges ruled in favor of the employee three times as often as they ruled for the companies, according to the review.

Show Me The Intelligence

Have you noticed? Neither President George W. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney have cited any U.S. intelligence assessments to support their fateful decision to send 21,500 more troops to referee the civil war in Iraq. This is a far cry from October 2002, when a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was rushed through in order to trick Congress into giving its nihil obstat for the attack on Iraq.

The Central Question

Government routinely lies, and so do many corporations. That mysterious commitment to the public good, which once joined Americans from many different classes and positions, seems to have dissolved. Integrity, which simply means being true regardless of consequences to one's own beliefs, seems to have no market value in America today.

US Plans Envision Broad Attack on Iran: Analyst

US contingency planning for military action against Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former US intelligence analyst said on Friday.

Cheney's Dead-Enders

"With the departure of his longtime friend Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton's resignation as UN ambassador, and Democrats taking over Congress, times seem grim for the Dick Cheney wing of the Bush administration. The vice president's vision of a 'unitary executive' - otherwise known as the imperial presidency - will almost certainly be challenged by congressional oversight committees, and perhaps by the courts."

Protesters Will Urge Congress to Stand Up to Bush

Americans angered by Bush's plans to escalate the Iraq war will flood the streets of Washington on Saturday, January 27, in a massive national peace march organized by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). Marchers will call on Congress to listen to the voters, not Bush, by using its power to end Bush's war and bring the troops home. The last three national marches organized by UFPJ each attracted between 300,000 and 500,000 people.

"I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of
gratitude" - The pResident {Yep up to 655,000 are really Grateful, many in
their Mass Graves, as are their Survivors}


"I think once they get in harm's way, Congress's tradition is to
support those troops," Mr. Hadley said. {Harms Way, shows what the
administration thinks of the Troops, it's called a Strong Defense!}

The Failed Policies will Haunt Us and the World for Decades!