DAILY BEAST– Nobel Prize recipient Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget guru Linda J. Bilmes are revising their original $3 trillion war cost estimate. As Bilmes reports, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are at least 25 percent costlier than previous projections. As Election Day draws near, it’s pretty clear: Voters are worried about jobs, the budget deficit and the rising national … Read More
GUARDIAN– A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The electronic archive … Read More
HUFFINGTON POST– In a shocking indication of a split between the White House and the Pentagon over the war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes that the U.S. military will never leave the war-torn country. During a dinner hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Afghan President Hamid Karzai in May, Gates reminded the group that he still … Read More
MSNBC– U.S. government medical researchers intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala, including institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission more than 60 years ago. Many of those infected were encouraged to pass the infection onto others as part of the study. About one third of those who were infected never got adequate treatment. On … Read More
INDEPENDENT– The US Central Intelligence Agency is running and paying for a secret 3,000-strong army of Afghan paramilitaries whose main aim is assassinating Taliban and al-Qa’ida operatives not just in Afghanistan but across the border in neighbouring Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to Bob Woodward’s explosive book. Although the CIA has long been known to run clandestine militias in Afghanistan, including … Read More
