political nonsense

The number of U.S. troops in Iraq reached a new high of 162,000.
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US air strikes reportedly killed as many as 200 civilians. According to the US military the strike hit people who had gathered to watch the Taliban hang two men accused of spying for the government; according to locals the strike killed civilians preparing for a picnic.

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The Democrat-led Congress handed President Bush a major legislative victory this weekend when it voted to broadly expand the government’s authority to eavesdrop without warrant on the international telephone calls and email messages of American citizens.
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Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced resolutions calling for the censure of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
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For the past 24 hours, Baghdad has had virtually no running water; it is 115 degrees.
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A US Marine was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for the 2006 murder of an Iraqi civilian and a soldier convicted of rape and murder in an attack on an Iraqi teenager and her family was sentenced Saturday to 110 years in prison, it was estimated that 90 percent of Iraq’s artists had fled the country or been killed and Iraq’s gays were being targeted for murder, though one observer noted that the scale of sectarian violence made it difficult to say whether gays had been killed for any specific reason, at least 25 people were killed in a suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, of Iraq’s thirty-eight ministers, seventeen have now either left the government or suspended their participation in it, and a new public opinion poll found that 63% Iraqis oppose plans to open the country’s oilfields to foreign investment.
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Israeli civilians started launching tomatoes, eggs, cucumbers, mangoes, corn on the cob, and eggs into Palestine. “We decided to take things into our own hands,” they said.

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3% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling the war in Iraq. 24% say the same for the President.
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The House voted Thursday to give U.S. troops guaranteed time at home between deployments to Iraq, which President Bush threatened to veto if passed in the Senate.
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Robots with machine guns are now patrolling Iraq

[don’t move]
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According to current and former intelligence officials, the Bush administration has been arming Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states covertly since “at least” 2004, a year after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. Arming Saudi Arabia in a 10-year, $20 billion dollar arms sale is a “done deal,” officials said.
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The largest Sunni Arab bloc has announced its departure from the Iraqi government citing the failure of Maliki’s government. The move leaves two Sunnis behind.
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The US Government lost 190,000 weapons it sent to Iraq.
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More than one hundred forty people were killed in violence around Iraq.
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A number of Palestinians who have fled war-torn Iraq will be allowed to come to live in the West Bank, Israeli officials said Monday, presenting the decision as the latest in a series of gestures meant to bolster the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
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The aid group Oxfam is warning that about 8 million Iraqis - nearly a third of the population - need immediate emergency aid because of the humanitarian crisis caused by the war, at least two Iraqis were killed and two others wounded in a blast in Baghdad, while a US marine was killed in Anbar province, a soldier accused of acting as a lookout while other troops raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killed her, her parents and her sister pleaded guilty to some lesser offenses, admitting arson, conspiracy to obstruct justice, wrongfully touching a corpse and drinking, war-crime hearings indicated that “rules of engagement” that govern when Marines can use deadly force in Iraq are ambiguous and subjective, celebrations were held across Iraq on Sunday after the national soccer team stunned the sporting world by beating Saudi Arabia in the Asian Cup Finals, and two prominent US political analysts just back from Iraq noted that things were better than they expected- “I still don’t think the odds for Iraq are so great,” they said.
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The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.
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President Bush called for Congress to revise a US security law in order to ease restrictions on the government’s secret communications surveillance of terror suspects.
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A presidential panel on military and veterans health care released a report Wednesday concluding that the system was insufficient for the demands of two modern wars and called for improvements, including far-reaching changes in the way the government determines the disability status and benefits of injured soldiers and veterans.
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The Pentagon is making contingency plans for a gradual U.S. withdrawal of troops from Iraq, according to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who called the planning a “priority.”
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