the war that is far away

I was talking to a friend today about the war in Iraq and I started looking up info. Did you know that the documented civilian death-toll is between 89 and 98 thousand Iraqi civilians? This is a well documented and important site dedicated to current information about the civilian death-toll in Iraq.

Also on their site is a very interesting article about the military's determination of the value of an Iraqi ciitizen's life. Check this article out.

Next check out this aritlce written by Frank Rich of the NYT about a year ago. It poses a number of really important questions, one of which I will hopefully treat in greater depth in the next few days (What is our -the american people's responsibility for the violence in Iraq?) This article is filled with links to other articles that deal with certain issues more in depth.

ALso, Rich's article talks about the important witness of WWII vetrans who worked specifically interogating former Nazi officials - their words about torture and interrogations are moving and thought provoking. Check out this link to read the article.

On another note here is another article, written much earlier in the war about the first appearance of contracters in Iraq (that is the first apperance to the public). It is quite interesting to go back and read the information given and now to look at what we know about private contracting companies in Iraq, specifically Blackwater.

That's all for now - keep checking though. I'll keep writing when I can.

Follow up on guantanamo guilty plee

This article talks a bit about the news coming out in the last two days about five men in GB pleading guilty to the crime of Sept. 11, 2001. To clarify, they did not plead guilty but asked if they were allowed to, and as you can see in this article three of them dropped the request.

Families visit Guantanamo - but which ones?

this article talks about the recent decision by the Bush administration to invite family members to Guantanamo bay to see how things are going - that is family members of vicitims of 9/11. A really odd and skechy decision in my opinion - this article talks about the reaons why.

Obama's CIA

Here is an interesting article about how Obama is dealing with his transition to presidency, particularly related to who he will appoint as head in the next few weeks. An important issue especially when looking at questions about exxtraordinary rendition, enemy combatant detainment and coercive practices within CIA detention (aka torture).