Displaced Iraqi children watch U.S. soldiers while waiting at a checkpoint before returning to their home in Fallujah. (Photo by John Moore, AP, April 27, 2004.)
President Bush meets with Lance Cpl. Isaac Gallegos during a visit to the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, November 8, 2007.
REUTERS/Jim Young
Source: http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?collectionId=1272#a=12
YouTube - Bethlehem checkpoint, 4am, accessed December 19, 2007
Argentina: Iran behind bombs at Israeli embassy, Jewish center - Haaretz, December 8, 2007
Iran was behind the bombings over a decade ago in Argentina against the Israeli embassy and Jewish community center, according to the country’s chief prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who served as a special prosecutor investigating the attacks.
“I have no doubt that the most senior Iranian leadership, with the help of Hezbollah, is responsible for the attacks in Buenos Aires against AMIA [the community center in 1994] and the Israeli Embassy [in 1992],” Nisman said Tuesday night at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.
While investigating the two attacks, Nisman found the necessary legal evidence pointing directly to former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani and his chief of intelligence, Ali Falahian, for their role in the decision to target the community center.
Nehemia Shtrasler, So what have we done to them, Haaretz, December 19, 2007
An old Jewish joke tells of a devoted mother who briefs her son before he sets out to battle: “Kill a Turk and rest,” she advises. But the son asks: “And what happens if in fact the Turk tries to kill me?” She opens her eyes wide in surprise: “Why would he want to kill you? What have you done to him?”
This is exactly the kind of self-righteousness that accompanies our attitude toward the Palestinians. It is evident in the reports on the television, radio and in the newspapers - which paint only a partial picture of the conflict. Because when considerations of ratings and just plain cowardice determine coverage, the information the public gets is biased. In this way an extremist public opinion is created, which believes that all of the justice is on our side only, because “what have we done to them?”
Last Wednesday, the media reported the severe rocket attack on Sderot. Twenty rockets landed on the city and Mayor Eli Moyal resigned on live radio. The broadcasts, on all three television channels, were dramatic. Reporters interviewed furious residents who demanded immediate and harsh military action in the Gaza Strip. One of the Qassams hit the home of Aliza Amar, and she was taken in moderate condition to Barzilai Medical center in Ashkelon.
It is clear that the situation in Sderot and the Gaza-envelope locales is very difficult and is deserving of comprehensive coverage. However, the story also has other angles - which the television channels are not presenting at all. None of the channels saw fit to remind its viewers that several days prior to the attack on Sderot, the Israel Defense Forces had begun an extensive action in Gaza, the second largest since the disengagement.
Last Tuesday, the day before the barrage on Sderot, three people were killed in Gaza by a tank shell fired into a house southeast of Khan Yunis. Two more were killed by a bomb dropped by a plane on their car and another “met his death” in the area of Beit Hanoun. According to the IDF, all of the dead were terror activists, members of the Islamic Jihad. A total of 13 people were killed in the action and 40 were arrested for interrogation.
‘Bad’ Women Raped and Killed in Southern Iraq - by Ali al-Fadhily, IPS, December 19, 2007
BAGHDAD - Women are being killed by militia groups in southern Iraq for not conforming to strict Islamic ways, the police say. And increased threats from militia groups are driving many women away from their homes.
Basra police chief Gen. Jalil Hannoon has told reporters and Arab TV channels that at least 40 women have been killed during the past five months in the southern city.
“We are sure there are many more victims whose families did not report their killing for fear of scandal,” Hannoon said.
The militias dominated by the Shia Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army are leading imposition of strict Islamic rules. The enforcement of these rules comes at a time when British troops have left Basra, the biggest town in the south, to the Iraqi government.
The Shia-dominated Iraqi government is seen as providing tacit and sometimes direct support to militias. The Badr Organization answers to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), the Shia bloc in the Iraqi government. The Mahdi army is the militia of anti-occupation Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Women who do not wear the hijab are becoming prime targets of militias, residents say. Many women say they are threatened with death if they do not obey.
“Militiamen approached us to tell us we must wear the hijab and stop wearing make-up,” college student Zahra Alwan, who fled Basra for Baghdad, recently told IPS.
David Lightman, Mormonism an issue for Romney in South Carolina, McClatchy Newspapers, 12/18/2007
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Something about Mitt Romney just isn’t right with Bill Burdette. And something about Mike Huckabee is.
“Romney’s from Utah and he’s Mormon,” said the 41-year-old software engineer from Iva, S.C. “Huckabee’s from the South and he’s Baptist.”
Understand, Burdette said, he’s not choosing his candidate based on religion, but Huckabee, a Baptist minister who was the governor of Arkansas for 10 and a half years, is someone he’s comfortable with.
That’s Romney’s problem throughout this crucial early-voting state, where a win Jan. 19 by the former Massachusetts governor would give him a huge boost in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination.
An estimated 63 percent of Republican primary voters in South Carolina are “born again” or evangelical Christians, so a Romney win would be hailed as dramatic proof that his Mormon faith wasn’t a big factor in voter judgments.
Except that evidence from polls and visits throughout the state shows that it is.
WASHINGTON — Despite significant security gains in much of Iraq , nothing has changed within Iraq’s political leadership to guarantee sustainable peace, a Pentagon report released Tuesday found.
The congressionally mandated quarterly report suggests that the drop in violence won’t hold unless Iraq’s central government passes key legislation, improves the way it manages its security forces and finds a way to reconcile the country’s competing sects. It said none of those steps has been taken.
“Although security gains, local accommodation and progress against the flow of foreign fighters and lethal aid into Iraq have had a substantial effect, more needs to be done to foster national, ‘top-down’ reconciliation to sustain the gains,” the report said.
The Pentagon report is the latest assessment circulating in Washington as officials ponder whether the strategy of increasing U.S. troop strength this year by 30,000 can be called a victory or whether the drop in violence is a lull that will break once the United States returns to last year’s troop levels.
Another report this week, by retired Lt. Gen. Barry McCaffrey , said that mid-ranking U.S. military officers have become “the de-facto low-level government of the Iraq state.”