political nonsense

A survey found that almost 60 percent of the military community are critical of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war.
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The UN Committee Against Torture has determined the use of taser stun guns can be a form of torture and violate the UN Convention Against Torture. Four men in the United States and three in Canada have died after being shot with tasers in the past two weeks.
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The Bush administration threatened to lay off up to 150,000 civilian workers at military bases in mid-December if Congress does not approve unrestricted Iraq funding immediately, around 60% of all foreign militants who entered Iraq to fight over the past year came from two of America’s allies- Saudi Arabia and Libya, a former top US commander in Iraq has come out in support of withdrawing most combat troops by the end of next year, and Al Qaeda insurgents disguised as members of a Sunni alliance council attacked the council’s headquarters outside Baghdad leaving at least 18 people dead.
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The House approved a war funding bill ordering President Bush to withdraw most troops from Iraq by the end of next year.
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It was revealed that US snipers would kill Iraqis that picked up fake guns they had planted as bait regardless of any further indication they were insurgents, the US contested that the quantity of Iranian bomb-making components being found in Iraq is increasing and 20 Iranian-trained agents are still operating south of Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced amnesty for detainees who had been “deceived” into joining the insurgency in Iraq, and the head of police intelligence in Iraq’s Kerbala province was detained after roadside bombs and other weapons were found in a raid on his house.
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A suicide bomber killed at least 50 people, including five MPs and several children, in northern Afghanistan.
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In Afghanistan, at least 60 people have been killed and 50 injured in a suicide bombing targeting Afghan lawmakers. The dead include six parliamentarians, as well as schoolchildren and senior citizens. It was the worst suicide bombing in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion in 2001.
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It was reported that 2007 was the deadliest year yet for US troops in Iraq, hundreds of US diplomats protested against a government move to force them to accept postings in war-torn Iraq, the UN reported that independent security contractors in Iraq are mercenaries, Congress approved a $459 billion military spending bill, and the Pentagon was secretly reviewing plans to ease enlistment standards to make up for recruiting shortfalls. The number of recruits seeking waivers for criminal behavior rose three percent last year to nearly one-fifth of all prospective servicemembers. Two-thirds of the waivers were approved.
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The Bush administration is trying to diffuse a public relations fiasco over news U.S. diplomats are refusing mandatory job assignments in Iraq.
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A jury ordered an anti-gay Kansas church to pay $10.9 million in damages to relatives of a reportedly gay dead U.S. Marine after church members cheered his death at his funeral.
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UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday he had no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding “fuel to the fire” with recent inflammatory rhetoric.
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The US government is to order up to 50 diplomats to fill vacant posts in Iraq in the first such large-scale forced assignment since the Vietnam War, at least 33 people were reported killed in a fresh wave of Iraq violence, Turkey’s prime minister rejected an Iraqi proposal to resolve the standoff over raids by Kurdish guerrillas across the rugged border into Turkey because it included a military role for the United States, Iraqi troops found 17 decomposed bodies of unidentified men, and a British private security company was being sued in the US over the death of a US soldier hit by one of its convoys in Iraq.
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It was reported that there are now more than three quarters of a million names on the U.S. government’s terrorist “watch list,” and a government report raised concerns the list may be becoming too large.
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The UN warned that the situation in Gaza was deteriorating fast in a way that undermined potential progress in planned peace talks, and Israel’s defense minister approved sanctions against Gaza, including cuts in the supply of electricity and fuel.

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A Fox News anchor speculated that Al-Qaeda might have started the fires in California.
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A State Department review of its own security practices in Iraq assailed the department for poor coordination, communication, oversight and accountability involving armed security companies like Blackwater USA and DynCorp, Blackwater was being accused of tax evasion and defrauding the government of millions of dollars by designating many of its employees as independent contactors instead of company personnel, President Bush requested another $46 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bringing the total request this year to $196 billion, Osama bin Laden released a video urging Sunni Arab insurgents in Iraq to unite to fight against the US, about 10,000 Turkish troops were amassed along Turkey’s border with Iraq, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he would shut down the offices of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and will not allow the group to operate in Iraq after Kurdish rebels killed 12 Turkish soldiers on Sunday. The PKK has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984.
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It was reported that since the US invaded Iraq in 2003 an estimated 4.2 million Iraqis have fled their homes, US-led forces reported killing 49 insurgents and no civilians on Sunday during predawn clashes with renegade Shiite militia members, while Iraqi police said at least 13 civilians were dead, including three children and a woman, at least 3,834 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war, and Kurdish rebels crossed the Iraq-Turkey border and killed at least 17 Turkish soldiers Sunday, while the Turkish army retaliated by stepping up its bombardment of the Iraqi side of the border, hitting 11 different areas close to towns and villages, Kurdish officials said.
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At least three civilians were killed and nine wounded when an explosive charge went off south of Baghdad on Saturday morning, and in the northern oil city of Kirkuk insurgents blew up an oil pipeline, battled a convoy carrying bodyguards of a deputy prime minister and ambushed a police chief,
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Turkey authorized a military offensive against Kurdish rebels in Northern Iraq.
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US and Iraqi officials were negotiating Baghdad’s request to expel the private security company Blackwater within six months following last month’s deadly shoot out in Baghdad, a Washington Post correspondent was shot dead in Baghdad, former US military commander in Iraq Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez described the war as a “nightmare with no end in sight,” the Turkish government formally sought authorization from the Turkish parliament to invade Northern Iraq and attack Kurdish rebel groups after amassing 60,000 troops along the country’s border and shelling Kurdish regions across the border, and a former top US general admitted the war in Iraq was about oil. “Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that,” former Commander General John Abizaid said.
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