Chalabi for the Nobel Peace Prize...

We woke up this morning to a huge explosion. I was actually awake and just lying there, staring at the ceiling, trying to decide if today would be a good day to go shopping for some things we need in the house. Suddenly, there was a loud blast and the house shuddered momentarily. In a second I was standing in front of the window in my room, hands pressed to the cool glass. I couldn’t really see anything, but the sky seemed overcast. I rushed downstairs to find E. and my mother standing in the kitchen doorway, trying to see beyond the houses immediately in front of our own. “Where did it happen?” I asked E. He shrugged his shoulders indicating he couldn’t tell either. We later learned it was a large garbage truck of explosives in front of Sadeer Hotel, a hotel famous for hosting foreign contractors- some of a dubious/mysterious reputation. It’s said that the foreign security contractors stay at the hotel, like former South African mercenaries, etc. Since the hotel is quite far from our home, we assume it was a very large explosion. Immediately afterwards, black plumes of smoke began to drift into the sky.

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"Foreign Forces Must Leave Iraq as Soon as Possible," Declares the Head of the Shiite Alliance

Permanent American bases in Iraq? The question seems so incongruous to His Most Austere "Eminence Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim," (as the leader of the Shiite party which won the January 30 elections identifies himself on his visiting card) that he almost bursts out laughing. "Ha! Ha! No. No one in Iraq desires the establishment of permanent foreign bases on our land. The United Nations Security Council resolutions are clear: it will be up to the elected Iraqi government, when the time comes, to give those forces a specific departure date. As soon as possible."

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  thanks to Antiwar.com

They're back from Iraq, but are they OK?
Ephrata guard unit loses no lives, but life is different

A guardsman walks into a local Wal-Mart, freaks, does a 180, and walks back out again. Even after seven months, he can't stand the crowds. Another jerks awake in the middle of the night, holding an imagined gun at his wife's temple. "Uh ... honey?" she asks. The soldiers tear down highways, swerve to avoid trash in the road. The bag that held a Big Mac could now hide a bomb. One still jumps if you touch his neck. Others refuse to sleep in beds. Those who do may awake in a sweat.

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Military Update: Black Army recruits down 41 percent since 2000

The Army's wartime recruiting challenge is aggravated by a sharp drop in enlistments by black people during the past four years. Internal Army and Defense Department polls trace that to an unpopular war in Iraq and concerns among black citizens with Bush administration policies. The Army strains to meet recruiting goals in part because black volunteers have fallen 41 percent. They've gone from 23.5 percent of recruits in fiscal 2000 down to 13.9 percent in the first four months of fiscal 2005.

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Army report: U.S. lost control in Iraq three months after invasion

The U.S. military lost its dominance in Iraq shortly after its invasion in 2003, a study concluded. A report by the U.S. Army official historian said the military was hampered by the failure to occupy and stabilize Iraq in 2003. As a result, the military lost its dominance by July 2003 and has yet to regain that position. "In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative gained over an off-balanced enemy," the report said. "The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since."

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  thanks to Drudge Report

Twisting the Minds of the American People
More War Crimes

Let me paint a word picture. An unarmed, wounded American soldier is lying helpless, bleeding and barely conscious on the floor of a church in a country with which the US is at war. An armed soldier of that country walks up to the wounded American. It so happens that a TV cameraman is present. He films the foreign soldier shouting, "He's fucking faking he's dead!" One of his comrades says "And he's breathing". The first soldier again yells "He's faking he's fucking dead!" He then kills the helpless, wounded man with a burst of fire that blows his head off and spatters the room with blood and tiny bits of flesh and bone. One of the foreign soldiers says "He's dead, now." Question One: What do you think the reaction of most of the American people would be to the murder of a wounded, unarmed US soldier lying helpless and barely conscious on the floor of a church in a foreign land? Question Two: What was the reaction of most of the American people to the murder of a wounded, unarmed Iraqi lying helpless and barely conscious on the floor of a mosque in his own country? First Answer: Shrieking outrage and demands for the foreigner to be tried and executed, whichever came first. Second Answer: Unconcern.

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