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WASHINGTON -- Three ballistic missile crew members in North Dakota fell asleep while holding classified launch code devices this month, triggering an investigation by military and National Security Agency experts, the Air Force said Thursday. The probe found that the missile launch codes were outdated and remained secure at all times. But the July 12 incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by the Air Force that had already put the service under intense scrutiny. "This was just a procedural violation that we investigated," said Air Force Col. Dewey Ford, a spokesman at Peterson Air Force Base...

Two articles in one post discussing the Berlin speech. ‘This Is the Moment’  And now we are loved again? It’s America, ObamaA modest dissent to the citizen of the world July 24, 2008Given the size of the audience in Berlin Thursday, the enthusiastic response, and the standard lines about how we-were-, -are-, and -will-be-friends boilerplate, one wonders whether all it took to win the Euro-hearts and minds was to have a charismatic, multiracial American spice up a standard George W. Bush speech about helping the world, addressing AIDs, more troops in Afghanistan, etc.? So supposedly sophisticated Europeans, who constantly dissect...

The Pentagon said Barack Obama phoned wounded U.S. soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical center in Germany today a day after a firestorm developed over his cancellation of plans to visit the base and Ramstein Air Force Base.Pentagon spokeswoman Elizabeth Hibner told Bloomberg News that Obama was told by the military he could visit the bases as an offical but not as a candidate and without campaign staff.Obama chose to cancel the visit and instead phoned it in to the troops.

In a stunning upset, Barack Obama this week won the Iraq primary. When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki not once but several times expressed support for a U.S. troop withdrawal on a timetable that accorded roughly with Obama's 16-month proposal, he not only legitimized the plan. He relieved Obama of a major political liability by blunting the charge that, in order to appease the MoveOn left, Obama was willing to jeopardize the astonishing success of the surge and risk losing a war that is finally being won. Maliki's endorsement left the McCain campaign and the Bush administration deeply discomfited. They underestimated...

JERUSALEM - A written prayer that Barack Obama left this week in the cracks of the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, asks God to guide him and guard his family, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday. "Lord—Protect my family and me," reads the note published in the Maariv daily. "Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will." The paper's decision to make the note public drew fire. The rabbi in charge of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitz, said...

Radical optimism is America’s contribution to the world. The early settlers thought America’s founding would bring God’s kingdom to earth. John Adams thought America would emancipate “the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.” Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush preached their own gospels of world democracy. The great illusion of the 1990s was that we were entering an era of global convergence in which politics and power didn’t matter. What Obama offered in Berlin flowed right out of this mind-set. This was the end of history on acid. Since then, autocracies have arisen, the competition for resources has...

Obama's speech today in Berlin, hailed as a "major" address, has at least one major, glaring error that shows that nether Obama nor his handlers and speech writers were thoroughly familiar with the facts. Obama's main theme was about the "walls" that separate all of us one from another. He claims that many of these "walls" have been taken down and hails that as progress. But in at least one instance he is wrong. In fact more walls have been built where Obama claimed they were taken down. First the relevant section of Obama's misconception (my bold for emphasis): The...

Israel's 'Supernatural Rats'   By Itamar Marcus and Barbara CrookPalestinian Media Watch | Friday, July 25, 2008 The Palestinian Authority has come up with yet another wild accusation about Israel. Two PA newspapers - one directly controlled by the office of PA President Mahmoud Abbas - are accusing Israel of releasing rats with  supernatural qualities to chase away the Arab residents of Jerusalem.    According to the PA papers, the Israeli-Jerusalem rat is: 1. Immune to rat poison;2. Aggressive and larger than usual;3. Unafraid of cats and able to scare them away;4. Highly fertile -- female rat gives birth to 140...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Chihuahua -- While consumers just across the Rio Grande in El Paso are paying about $4 a gallon for gas -- more for diesel -- government subsidies here have kept fuel prices well below the $3 per gallon mark. Those low prices have kept El Pasoans hopping the border to stay ahead of sky-rocketing fuel prices at home in the United States, many of them filling up portable tanks with diesel which sell for between $300 and $1,000 in El Paso. "Over the past three months with the price of diesel up where it is, we've seen an...

Whistling Past the Graveyard   By John PerazzoFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, July 25, 2008 Last week, columnist Paul Weyrich reported that there is credible evidence that Osama bin Laden has acquired twenty suitcase-sized nuclear bombs from Chechen rebels in the former Soviet Union and smuggled them into the United States by way of the Mexican border. If that is true, the al Qaeda kingpin has laid the groundwork for an “American Hiroshima” plan that he intends to carry out in the very near future. Once bin Laden gives the signal, his henchmen will proceed to detonate their explosives in a...

Whistling Past the Graveyard   By John PerazzoFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, July 25, 2008 Last week, columnist Paul Weyrich reported that there is credible evidence that Osama bin Laden has acquired twenty suitcase-sized nuclear bombs from Chechen rebels in the former Soviet Union and smuggled them into the United States by way of the Mexican border. If that is true, the al Qaeda kingpin has laid the groundwork for an “American Hiroshima” plan that he intends to carry out in the very near future. Once bin Laden gives the signal, his henchmen will proceed to detonate their explosives in a...

U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama hopes his visit to Europe and the Middle East will show U.S. voters that he is a safe pair of hands, the Democrat said in an interview on Friday. "What this trip has done is allowed me to talk about some of the critical issues we face," Obama said in an interview broadcast on CNBC television on Friday. "It has also allowed me to send a message to the American people that the judgments I have made and the judgments I will make are ones that are going to result in them being safer," he...

'Still time for peace deal this year' Rice says Israel, PA negotiating seriously, 2-state solution common wisdom since Bush came to office US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there was still hope that Israel and the Palestinians could reach a deal before US President George W. Bush leaves the White House at the end of his second term early next year. "There is still time for them to, in accordance with Annapolis, reach agreement by the end of the year," Rice told reporters in Australia. "We will keep working toward that goal." Rice is to sit down with senior...

So Barack Obama, whose father is from Kenya and who attended school in Indonesia, now appears before a crowd of 200,000 cheering Germans in Berlin to proclaim himself a "citizen of the world." It makes you wonder whether he's running for president of America or secretary general of the United Nations, and it is reminiscent of Senator Kerry's ill-fated 2004 debate pledge to subject American policies to a "global test." Not that these columns are against a judicious internationalism. Mr. Obama's turn toward the idea of global responsibility is actually a welcome note coming from someone who spent the primary...

A mysterious explosion in a suburb of Teheran that killed 15 people last Saturday was likely an attack on a Iranian military convoy carrying arms to Hizbullah, the Telegraph reported Friday. The Revolutionary Guards imposed a news black-out immediately after the blast, but the UK newspaper reported that it looked like sabotage was responsible for destroying the convoy as it traveled through Khavarshahar. The newspaper noted that the company responsible for moving the military equipment, LTK, was owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and was allegedly involved in shipping arms to Hizbullah. Last Saturday's incident was the latest in a...

Obama Flipping and Floundering in Middle East July 24, 2008 Kenneth R. Timmerman Everything seemed planned for the future campaign commercials — at least, that’s how it seemed to a U.S. Air Force captain when Sen. Barack Obama and his entourage swooped into Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan for an hour-long visit last Saturday at the start of a week-long foreign tour. “He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle” without pausing to acknowledge the U.S. troops who had been waiting all day just for the opportunity to meet him, the officer told the Blackfive...

Here in Miami we amuse ourselves -- please forgive the impertinence -- by making jokes about the elderly and their driving habits. Perhaps it is a defense mechanism of sorts. The latest one to make the rounds has the old woman desperately calling 911. She has just entered her car and found that she has been robbed: they took the radio, the CD player, and even the steering wheel. The dispatcher promises to send an officer forthwith. Ten minutes later the policeman calls his report back in to headquarters: "No emergency here. The lady got into the back seat by...

The enormous improvement in Iraq's security situation caused by the surge has been so undeniable that even the mainstream press has started alternating between ignoring Iraq completely and acknowledging, albeit reluctantly, that the surge has put victory within reach in Iraq. So with that in mind, it's worth taking the time to look back at what the crème de la crème of the Democratic Party has had to say about the war and the surge over the last few years. "We cannot support the increase in troops unless George Bush disavows the NeoCon strategy and presents a new strategy. George...

Are reporters in the business of reporting facts or rumor? Andrea Mitchell, for one, has no problem sending along "scuttlebutt" that if true would be deeply damaging to John McCain. Barack Obama's cancellation of plans to visit injured military members at bases in Germany has drawn considerable attention and criticism. On today's Morning Joe, Mitchell passed along a rumor that McCain used his Pentagon connections to sabotage the Obama visit. View video here.

UNITED NATIONS - A Swiss-led, five-nation panel proposed Thursday that the United Nations assert itself as leader of a global fight against terrorism and establish a new agency or program to coordinate that effort. U.N. ambassadors from Costa Rica, Japan, Slovakia, Switzerland and Turkey suggested that the U.N. General Assembly create an agency for counterterrorism along the lines of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. It also recommended that the U.N. assist counterterrorism officials from individual nations in promoting "a human rights-based approach to counterterrorism" that disdains torture and preserves prisoners' rights. snip But the panel pointed...

Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, handed a two-page letter riddled with typing errors - and mysteriously titled the "None Paper" - to diplomats from the world's six leading powers in Geneva last weekend. For the first time, America had sent the State Department's third highest-ranking official, William Burns, to join the talks. Mr Jalili had been expected to give Iran's formal response to last month's offer of technical and economic help if Tehran stopped enriching uranium. Instead, he only bemused his interlocutors. "His discourse was rambling. He had a lot to say about Iranian history...

Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki, despite owing his job to Bush and McCain, presented Obama with a big fat bouquet. His assertion, in an interview with Der Spiegel, that American forces should leave Iraq “as soon as possible,” and preferably on the 16-month timeline proposed by Obama, was just what the messiah ordered — effectively tossing McCain under one of those metaphorical buses the 2008 campaign seems to produce by the fleet. Now, let me be clear about my biases. I have been a supporter of the surge but not an enthusiastic one. I’ve always thought it necessary but insufficient in...

Taking the protest against the Gaza blockade to a new level, two boats packed with foreign left-wing activists will attempt to sail from Cyprus to the sealed Gaza harbor in two weeks' time. Slideshow: Pictures of the week The operation is being directed by members of the International Solidarity Movement and the Israeli Commission against House Demolitions. A Web site, FreeGaza, has been set up to collect donations and update the public. The group - which numbers some 40 activists - has purchased two boats, one called SS Free Gaza and the other SS Liberty, named after the USS Liberty...

While Mao’s body has been amazingly preserved since his death in 1976, it seems that his spirit has not survived the test of time. He may lie in eternal peace inside his Mausoleum but the world around him has changed considerably; China is no longer the gray and drab country that it was during Mao’s time. It is now a place where people can dream and then go out and make that dream come true. It is not like the old days. People other than just high government officials can drive cars. Chinese people can do business and store up...

The Democratic candidate is putting together a team to prepare him for taking office in January should he win the Nov 4 election. It is headed by John Podesta, Bill Clinton's chief-of-staff when he was in the White House. A senior adviser travelling with Mr Obama on his global tour told Atlantic.com: "Barack is well aware of the complexity and the organisational challenge involved in the transition process and he has tasked a small group to begin thinking through the process. "Barack has made his expectations clear about what he wants from such a process, and the establishment and execution...

London-based Daily Telegraph reports of mysterious blast in military convoy leaving Revolutionary Guards Base last weekend. At least 15 people killed in explosion, but Iranian authorities seeking to silence incident Was sabotage responsible for disrupting a shipment of arms from Iran to Hizbullah? The London-based Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Friday of a mysterious explosion which devastated an Iranian supply convoy intended to reach Hizbullah. According to the report, the strong blast took place in one of Tehran's suburbs as a military convoy left a Revolutionary Guards' ammunition storehouse. At least 15 people were killed in the explosion. Western sources reported...

ATHLETES from Iraq have been banned from taking part in this summer's Beijing Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced. The team was already the subject of an interim ban after the Iraqi Government replaced the country's Olympic committee with its own appointees. Under the IOC charter, all committees must be free of political influence. As a result, the team of two rowers, two sprinters, one archer, one weightlifter and one judo competitor cannot attend the Games. "We sent a letter to the Iraqi Government today saying that as the situation stands, today it is unlikely to have Iraqi...

The American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is in the Western Australian captial, Perth. She is in the country for a short, unofficial visit after attending a regional security forum in Singapore. Dr Rice touched down on a US airforce jet with the foreign minister, Stephen Smith, and was greeted by the WA premier, Alan Carpenter, the immigration minister, Chris Evans, and the US ambassador. The secretary of state is visiting as a personal guest of Mr Smith, and will not hold any official diplomatic talks while in Australia. Dr Rice will meet troops from the Special Air Services regiment,...

US presidential hopeful Barack Obama was due in Paris on Friday to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy during a fleeting and low-key visit in stark contrast to his crowd-pulling trip to Berlin the day before. Obama's aides did not detail his agenda, but the Illinois senator was expected to land at Le Bourget airport and head into Paris solely for the Sarkozy meeting before leaving for London soon afterwards. "Senator Obama looks forward to meeting with President Sarkozy and discussing areas of mutual interest, including the common challenges of security, transnational threats, and the global economy," his national security spokeswoman Wendy...

Obama’s “citizen of the world” speech in front of an adoring crowd of German leftists is likely to go over with many American voters like a lead Zeppelin. Indeed, the audacity of his presidential-style trip is nothing short of galling, and it is sure to backfire with many who see a glaring incongruence between Obama’s accomplishments and his magisterial pretensions. Europeans of course are delighted by their chance to hopefully influence an American election. The chance to be relevant in the impenetrable mind of the American voter is exciting enough, but helping to nudge what would be America’s first leftist...

MOSCOW - Russian strategic bombers may soon be deployed at airbases in Cuba, Venezuela and Algeria as a response to the U.S. missile shield in Europe and NATO's expansion, Russian daily Izvestia said on Thursday. Moscow has strongly opposed the possible deployment by the U.S. of 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and an accompanying tracking radar in the Czech RFepublic as a treat to its national security. Washington says the defenses are needed to deter a possible strike from Iran, or other "rogue" states...

The professional odds-makers favor Barack Obama two-to-one to win the election. It's no wonder. Americans overwhelmingly believe the country is on the wrong track. They can't stand the current Republican occupant of the White House. The economy is weak and shows little sign of getting significantly stronger before the election. The country is fighting an unpopular war. And Obama, as he reminds us every time he opens his mouth, is all about "change." So why hasn't Obama closed the deal? Most national polls show Obama ahead -- but by margins so thin it can hardly give comfort to the putative...

Barack Obama concedes that America's troops have contributed to improvements on the ground in Iraq, but he still stands by his vote against the surge. Why not just admit that he was wrong? Come on, senator, this is a lot easier than changing churches. Say: "As a proud American, I'm delighted that the surge has worked so we can move forward with my timetable for withdrawal. Look, if I'd known how successful it was going to be, I would have voted for it. At the time it didn't seem like a good bet, but prognosticators go broke in wartime." See,...

We know who you are and who your friends are. Barack Obama, why don't you just go home? Barack, your visit here is just a waste of time; you're not wanted or needed here. We'll do just fine without you and you'll probably do better with out us, too. Don't come around here making as if you're looking out for the good of Israel. We know who you are and who your friends are. Zigzagging back and forth about dividing or un-dividing Jerusalem won't clear your history. I'm not talking about your middle name. Any good Christian might have the...

    Major gongs for heroic Our Boys   Award ... Captain Paul Britton is congratulated by Major General Gary Robison    By TOM NEWTON DUNN Defence Editor Published: Today     AN Army officer who led a battle despite a lump of burning shrapnel in his shoulder was one of 19 forces heroes awarded the Military Cross yesterday.   Praise ... Lieutenant General Graeme Lamb  Captain Paul Britton, 28, refused morphine so he could control artillery and air strikes to beat off Taliban attackers in Helmand province, Afghanistan. The Royal Artillery officer was wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade...

Bogotá (ICRC) – Yesterday, 23 July, in a rural area of Vigía del Fuerte, Antioquia department, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) received eight civilians who had been held by the FARC-EP since 17 July 2008. The operation was the outcome of a strictly confidential dialogue between the parties concerned and the ICRC’s neutral and independent humanitarian action. The civilians were released following a request made by the FARC to the ICRC. The ICRC will continue to support efforts to find means of obtaining the release of other hostages and detainees in the hands of armed groups....

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is Master Sgt. Cirildo Valencio, U.S. Army, of Carrizo Springs, Texas. He will be buried on Aug. 4 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. Representatives from the Army met with Valencio’s next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process on behalf of the Secretary of the Army. Valencio was assigned to Company L, 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st...

IMF welcomes US rescue plan for Fannie, FreddiePosted: 25 July 2008 0152 hrs WASHINGTON : The International Monetary Fund on Thursday welcomed the US government's plans to aid mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and ease the housing crisis. "The announced measures on Fannie and Freddie go in the right direction and are consistent with approaches that the Fund has supported," IMF spokesman David Hawley said at a news conference. "And we agree that public sector intervention is warranted, accompanied by improved supervision." His comments in response to a question came a day after a wide-ranging housing rescue...

The latest chain e-mail smear against Barack Obama: He "blew off" troops at an Afghan base to shoot hoops for a publicity photo. The letter was apparently written by a Utah Army National Guard intelligence officer in a linguist unit at Bagram Airfield who claimed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was rude to G.I.s. "As the soldiers where [sic] lined up to shake his hand he blew them off," wrote the Task Force Wasatch "battle captain." But angry Army brass debunked the Obama-bashing soldier's allegations, which went viral Thursday over the Web and on military blogs such as Blackfive. The...

The McCain campaign is slamming Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., over a decision to cancel a visit with U.S. troops in Germany. The German magazine Der Spiegel is reporting online that Obama has “cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl U.S. military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday.” “Barack Obama will not be coming to us,” a spokesperson for the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl told Der Spiegel. “I don't know why.” Obama senior adviser Robert Gibbs told ABC News in a statement, “During his trip as part of the...

Iraq banned from Beijing Olympics Seven Iraqi athletes from five different sports qualified for the Olympics Athletes from Iraq have been banned from taking part at this summer's Beijing Games, the International Olympic Committee has announced...

GLASGOW (Reuters) - Britain's ruling Labour Party lost a parliamentary seat in one of its traditional strongholds, a stinging electoral setback for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, results showed on Friday. Defeat in Thursday's poll in the Glasgow East constituency, which Labour won with a huge 13,500 majority at the 2005 election, will fuel Labour discontent with Brown's leadership and could lead to moves to oust him, some analysts believe. The pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) scored a dramatic victory by a slim 365-vote margin as voters in Britain's third-largest city turned against Labour in droves. The result, following a series...

Disfigured fruits and vegetables could be allowed in stores after most European Union members voted to loosen restrictions on produce, officials say. Misshapen bananas and cucumbers could be in stores by next year if reforms on produce rules are carried out, The Telegraph reported Thursday. The Telegraph said produce standards are so strict, many edible foods are discarded by farmers. European agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said she thinks some regulations should also be thrown out for onions, garlic, cauliflower and spinach. In this era of high prices and growing demand, it makes no sense to throw (misshapen fruit and...

Swedish clothing company Ellos has pulled two-piece bikinis designed for baby girls and apologized for the products after widespread protests. The bikinis, which were designed for girls as young as 2 months old, were pulled from stores after children's and women's groups complained that the revealing swimwear contributed to the sexualization of the bodies of small children, Swedish news agency TT reported Thursday. Ellos is a family company. We do not want anyone taking offense from our assortment, Ellos representative Per-Olf Gustafsson said. We have erred in this case and we will do our best to ensure that there is...

MOSUL, IRAQ: The Battle for Mosul over the past several years has worked as a microcosm for the larger Iraqi conflict, with Coalition and Iraqi forces successfully imposing its will only after Al Qaeda and other insurgent groups held large parts of the city and region for long periods. Control over the city of 1.9 million people and the surrounding Ninewa province have been lost to Coalition and government forces twice since 2003. Only a successful security operation in May has brought attacks to their lowest recorded levels since the conflict began. Operation “Lion’s Roar” in May involved 5,000 Coalition...

BALAD, Iraq – Iraqi Special Operations Forces detained eight suspected members of the Islamic State of Iraq, a front organization for al-Qaeda in Iraq, in Mosul July 22.The ISOF conducted the operation to disrupt an active improvised explosive device cell in Mosul that operates in an area reportedly known to support criminals. Two other suspected terrorists were detained during the operation.-30-

Canberra: Audit figures have revealed that television advertising can produce a large amount of carbon dioxide. According to a report carried out in www.news.co.au, this fact was revealed by audit figures from pitch consultants TrinityP3, who estimated that Australian television advertising is producing as much as 57 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hour, with thirty second ad breaks being among the worst offenders. Adding lime to seawater could cut back carbon levels Carbon emissions are particularly strong during high-rating programs such as the final episodes of the Ten Network’s Biggest Loser, which produced 2135kgs per 30-second ad, So You Think...

The President of Belarus has threatened to jail farmers who harvest inefficiently, saying such carelessness is criminal in the midst of a global food crisis. Agriculture is a mainstay of Belarus' economy, and President Alexander Lukashenko seems determined to keep it that way. While on a regional tour to inspect a rural revival program, Mr Lukashenko has offered his own encouragement, saying it is criminal to be careless in harvesting grain when there is a global food crisis. The Interfax agency reported him as saying that "special measures" may be necessary for proper harvesting. "No one will understand until we...

Universal access to contraception is needed to help fight climate change, it has been claimed. A spiralling global population, with an annual increase of 79 million people, is driving up greenhouse gas emissions, John Guillebaud of University College, London, and GP Pip Hayes of St Leonard's Practice, Exeter, said. And in an editorial in the British Medical Journal they raised the question of whether people in the UK should be told that stopping at two children is "the simplest and biggest contribution" that can be made to saving the planet. The doctors said every person born adds to greenhouse gas...

He does not include these little persons in his claims to care about the poor and his concern for the immigrants. Yet, they are, in the words of a great treasure of our age, the late “Mother” now “Blessed” Teresa of Calcutta, the “poorest of the poor”. These little boys and girls are being evicted from their first home every day by the thousands. No, they are actually being killed, burned, and dismembered, in a war on the womb being waged with surgical strikes and chemical weapons. And, he supports it all, calling this evil a “right”. Frankly, I can...