News Crawl 4-14-07

"He Was Sent Back"

"`My Brother Was Diagnosed With PTSD, Extreme Depression, And Still He Was Sent Back,' She Said"

Fort Carson Deaths Include Twice-Wounded Soldier On Third Iraq Tour

FORT CARSON, Colo. -- One was a sergeant who had survived a sniper attack and a roadside bomb in two earlier combat tours in Iraq.

"I keep thinking that, you know, he was my future. And now I don't know what I've got."

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At 64, California grandmother blogs from Baghdad

BERKELEY, California -- Jane Stillwater is an unlikely war correspondent. She is 64, a self-described Berkeley "flower child, 40 years later."

Inspired by a sense of outrage and determined to blog from inside the war zone, Stillwater ate peanut butter sandwiches for months to save up for a ticket to Kuwait. She got a small Texas newspaper to sponsor her, and eventually boarded a troop transport to Baghdad.

Janes Blog

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Canada Offers Forum for Lecturer Barred From U.S.

By Jonathan Woodward

Unable to travel to the University of Washington, Riyadh Lafta -- best known for a controversial study that estimated Iraq's body count in the U.S.-led war in Iraq at more than half a million -- will arrive at Simon Fraser University in B.C. this month to give a lecture and meet with research associates.

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The Baghdad Gulag

By Pepe Escobar

There were hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than a million Iraqi nationalists, waving Iraqi flags - with no room for a religious divide - responding to Muqtada's call for "Occupation out!" The Shi'ite million-man march proved once again Sadrists rule the Shi'ite street - and are the most powerful political force among Iraqi Shi'ites.

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Dark of Heartness

A Journey Into The (Reputed) Soul of Conservatism

By David Michael Green

I have been haunted this last quarter-century, and especially this last decade, by the darkness that has descended over the American political landscape, a long shadow unlike any I remember from the first half of my life.

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry's Dangerous Database

By Jake Bernstein, Texas Observer

Texas is amassing an unprecedented amount of information on its citizens.

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Protest Grows over Blackwater U.S.A Training Camp

by Tony Perry

POTRERO, Calif. - With its isolation and rustic ambience, this sparsely populated hamlet in eastern San Diego County offers the privacy and quiet its residents crave."It's perfect: nobody here but us rural souls," Will Lee said as he headed to the Potrero General Store.

But Lee's solitude and sense of being far from the crowd may soon be ruffled.

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Al-Sarafiya bridge bombing..deja vu from Al-Askari shrine

Roads to Iraq Just like the bombing of Al-Askari shrine, Al-sarafiya bridge witnessed strange events hours before the bombing.

Iraqirabita quoting an eyewitness lives in Al-Atafiya - western side of the river says she woke up 07,10 this morning because of the unusual sounds of Americans helicopters above the river Tigris. I thought that this a beginning of an raid in our neighborhood, to be sure I went upstairs to see where are these helicopters are heading to. I saw with my own eyes a helicopter firing two missiles, I heard an explosion, then I saw the bridge collapsed. Another report says...It is interesting to note this morning Iraqi police blocked the traffic on the bridge for more than two hours, shortly before the explosion they allowed civilians cars to cross the river, which confirms that there is an orchestrated destruction of Al-Sarafiya bridge and resumption of movement by the time of the bombing was to cover up the actions of the "bombers"...

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'This Is Tough News': Soldiers and Their Families Brace for Extended Tours

By Joshua Partlow and Sylvia Moreno

“I was mad before I even heard about the 15 months.
“I don’t want to be here.
“I don’t think you need to sit here an extra three months to help people do what they don’t want to do for their dadburn selves,” said Sgt. Shawn Miller, 30.
“To me, if you’ve been here four years and the country ain’t straight, why extend another three months?
“Why don’t we just go?”

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April 2007: The deadliest month of the Iraq occupation

We're more than a third of the way through April now, and I haven't seen this actually reported in the media anywhere, but unfortunately this has been the deadliest month for the U.S.-led coalition forces -- on an average daily basis -- of the four-year occupation of Iraq. So far, according to icasualties.org, 47 American troops and six British soliders have died in the 11 days of April so far -- an average of 4.82 coalition deaths every day. And -- looking at the month to month statistics -- no month has been that high since Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003...

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Refugees Speak of Escape from Hell

Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service Hussein, who left three months back, described Baghdad as a "city of ghosts" where black banners of death announcements can be seen hanging on most streets. The city, he said, lives on an hour of electricity a day, and there are no jobs to be had. "I was an ex-captain in the Iraqi Army, and I think that's why I was threatened," he said. Asked how many of his former army colleagues had also received death threats, he replied, "All of them." He said it was not safe for him to go back to the Iraqi Army because it was likely he would be killed. "Most of the deaths are due to the Iraqi politicians and their militias," he added. Security, electricity and potable water supply, healthcare and unemployment are all much worse than during the reign of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, refugees say. "The Americans are detaining so many people," Ali Hassan, a 41-year-old man from the Hay Jihad area of Baghdad told IPS. "My brother was killed by Shia militiamen after he refused to give them the keys to empty Sunni houses we were looking after." Hassan, a Shia who fled Baghdad just three months ago told IPS, "Now I can't go back. I am a refugee here, and I still don't feel secure because I still fear the Mehdi Army." The Mehdi Army is the militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr...