Want news and viewpoints by country but don’t want to find it on our new Regional News page? We have a new way to find links for any country in the world.
Say that you want news on Afghanistan. Simply type the following url into your web browser
Here is the result. The syntax is simple: just put the name (or likeness) of any country after the “=” in the url above.
No joke. The US is plumbing unprecedented depths of reflexive militarism, and we can’t get a measly buck per reader???
St. Petersburg Times
Mom ferrets out truth on Guard duty
By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist
troxler@sptimes.com
Published February 10, 2005
Laramie Misner was surprised when her daughter Kelsie, a 17-year-old
senior at Dunedin High School, came home on the evening of Jan. 7 saying
she wanted to join the Florida National Guard.
Misner listened with growing worry when Kelsie told her that a Guard
recruiter had visited school that day. Kelsie said the recruiter
promised not only that the Guard would pay college tuition, but also
that she would not have to leave Florida.
It is absolutely true the Florida National Guard will pay college
tuition at a Florida school.
But it is absolutely not the case that recruits can be guaranteed to
remain in Florida or even the United States. At this moment, 700 to 800
of Florida’s almost 10,000 Guard members are serving honorably in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Kuwait.
Yet other students at Dunedin High School thought they heard the
recruiter say this, too, and some of them signed up. If you are 18 you
can sign for yourself, but if you’re 17 your folks have to sign too. Continue reading “Recruiting SHENANIGANS”
It’s unclear exactly what is going on south of Baghdad other than utter chaos, but here are two bizarre stories in the news today:
The battle, near the town of Salman Pak, about 65 km (40 miles) southeast of Baghdad, continued for several hours. Earlier police sources said at least 65 officers had been wounded.
The fighting was so fierce that police reinforcements were unable to reach many of the wounded or recover the dead, who were left lying in the road.
The drivers had all been burned in their vehicles. Police said they believed the convoy was attacked at least two days ago.
“This morning a police patrol was in the Suwairah region and found about 20 vehicles that were taking sugar to Baghdad. They were all burned,” said a police official.
Suwairah is about 60 kilometres south of Baghdad.
As well as the drivers, two policemen and two soldiers who were protecting the convoy were also killed, the official told AFP.
“The bodies were rotting in the vehicles which indicates the attack was at least two days ago,” he added.
UPDATE: A little more info on these two related incidents is coming out:
BAGHDAD : US helicopters attacked an Iraqi police station overrun by rebels as the Islamic new year started with dozens more deaths at insurgent hands.
At least six police were killed in the rebel assault on the police station, while the rotting bodies of more than 20 drivers from a government food convoy were found in the same region south of the capital, dubbed the triangle of death, and a dozen people were killed in other violence.
The US military sent in helicopters after insurgents overran the police station at Salman Pak, following a siege that lasted several hours.
The rebels had fired anti-tank rockets at the building, police said.
“The insurgents did assume control of the police station temporarily,” a US military spokesman told AFP. “We attacked them with helicopters, which fired missiles, and the insurgents fled.”
The US spokesman said six police and an unknown number of insurgents were killed. An official at Kindi hospital in Baghdad said earlier that 42 police were wounded in the fighting and two had died in hospital.
The bodies of more than 20 truck drivers and four Iraqi police and soldiers were found in the same region. Their convoy had been attacked at least two days earlier, police said, but no one had dared touch them.
The convoy had been taking sugar to Baghdad for food warehouses which distribute monthly rations. They were attacked on the road from Salman Pak to nearby Suwairah.
I added a new feature to our Quotables that appear on most pages. Just find a page that has a random quote on the top (see here), click on the quote’s author and you are sent to that specific quote on our quotes page. As we continue to update the database, this will become a effective way to find out the source or history of a certain quote. Here are some more examples.
