Mike Pence (R-Nutjob-Ind.), co-author of a ** bipartisan bill to protect reporters and their confidential sources,** said all parties responsible for gathering, distributing and publishing documents released by Wikileaks.org about the Afghanistan war ought to be “thoroughly investigated.”… “Back home in Indiana, people still remember where the attacks on 9/11 came from,” said Pence, the third-ranking House Republican. ***[So do we. Langley, Virginia via Pakistani ISI]]

An archive of classified U.S. military logs spanning six years, more than 91,000 documents, and 200,000 pages, was today made available by WikiLeaks. The papers show a picture of the war in Afghanistan that is far more grim, and far less hopeful, than previously portrayed. The White House has issued a response. The statement from national security adviser Gen. James Jones emphasizes two points: first, the administration asserts that this leak of classified information endangers the lives of Americans and America’s war allies. Includes an excellent opinion and editorial by Kevin, Webmaster at Cryptogon.com.

Researchers found that the cancer rate had increased 4x since before the US attack five years ago, and that the forms of cancer in Fallujah are similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation. In Fallujah the rate of leukemia is 38 times higher, the childhood cancer rate is 12 times higher, and breast cancer is 10 times more common than in populations in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait. Heightened levels of adult lymphoma and brain tumors were also reported. At 80 deaths out of every 1,000 births, the infant mortality rate in Fallujah is more than five times higher than in Egypt and Jordan, and eight times higher than in Kuwait. *** Warning – Pictures of the effects of depleted uranium included.

Tony Blair’s evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry that toppling Saddam Hussein helped make Britain safe from terrorists was dramatically undermined by the former head of MI5 yesterday. She told the inquiry: “Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people – a few among a generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam.”

Soldiers killed themselves at the rate of one per day in June making it the worst month on record for Army suicides, the service said Thursday. Seven soldiers killed themselves while in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan in June, according to the statistics. Of the total suicides, 22 soldiers had been in combat, including 10 who had deployed two to four times.

With the first tar balls from the Gulf oil spill now washing ashore in Galveston, Texas, Rep. Ron Paul, whose district includes the affected area, said Monday the federal government is not doing enough in the recovery effort. “If all our states had their Guard units back here maybe they would have the manpower to do more to help clean up the beaches and prevent the oil from coming in, but, no, our Guard units are all over the world fighting wars we don’t need,” said Paul, a critic of the U.S. deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. *** Embedded Video of Interview

A new United Nations report released on Tuesday calls for abandoning the U.S. dollar as the main global reserve currency, saying it has been unable to safeguard value. “The dollar has proved not to be a stable store of value, which is a requisite for a stable reserve currency,” the U.N. World Economic and Social Survey 2010 said.
Hayden’s Note:
The US Dollar is not a stable store of value because it is not based on any tangible item. It is a fiat currency; that is, it holds value simply by fiat – by decree or lawful order. Nixon took us completely off the gold standard, which unhinged the US Dollar from anything valuable other than the “full faith and good credit of the United States.” Do you believe that the United States could actually make good on it’s “promissory notes” in 5 years?

McChrystal is in trouble for making disparaging remarks about fellow officers and civilian officials — a military tradition that surely goes back to the armies of Hammurabi (and long before). Yet he faced no reprimand or remonstrance whatsoever for his admission, just a few months ago, that brazen war crimes were being carried out under his command. “Another bureaucrat of death” has taken his place, though. Obama has appointed the top imperial proconsul of the age, bipartisan fave David Petraeus, to take direct control of the wars — overt and covert — in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Petraeus, as head of “Central Command” — the core provinces of the eternal War of Terror — is already in overall charge of the Af-Pak morass, having previously been in charge of the Iraq bloodbath.

Rep. Grayson introduces a bill to cut separate funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cosponsors of this bill include Ron Paul, Walter Jones, John Conyers, Lynn Woolsey, and Dennis Kucinich. ** Embedded Video **

The mental health charity Combat Stress has already reported a 66 per cent increase in patients in the last five years. “I think there will be a large number of people out there who will present with PTSD as a result of the Iraq and Afghan war within the next decade.”