the/diseased/republik

Gun battles between suspected drug gang members and troops have left 21 dead in northern Mexico, police say. Heavily armed soldiers near the Texan border were seen to remove bodies. The violence started when gunmen drove into Villa Ahumada, a farming town in Chihuahua state. They dragged several people - including police officers - out of their homes and killed at least six. Troops then arrived as the scene and 15 people, including one soldier, died in shootouts. Drug-related violence kills thousands every year in Mexico. In a separate incident on Monday, armed men forced their way into a prison in the northern city of Torreon, and killed three inmates. The dead men were being held for kidnapping and murder, and were transferred to the prison less than two hours before the incident. The gunmen also released nine other inmates from the prison before they escaped. Some 40,000 soldiers and police have been deployed since December 2006 against Mexico's drug cartels. -- VIDEO-BBC ...

Mr. Gates our present Sec of Defence cut his teeth on this little number -- it was called the -- Iran-Contra Affair . Arms transaction The Iran-Contra report found that the sales of arms to Iran violated United States Government policy; it also violated the Arms Export Control Act . [2] Overall, if the releasing of hostages was the purpose of arms sales to Iran, the plan was a failure as only three of the 30 hostages were released. [9] First arms sale Michael Ledeen , a consultant of Robert McFarlane , asked Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres for help in the sale of arms to Iran. [11] The general idea behind the plan was for Israel to ship weapons to Iran, then the US would reimburse Israel with the same weapons. The Israeli government required that the sale of arms meet high level approval from the United States government, and when Robert McFarlane convinced them that the U.S. government approved the sale, Israel obliged by agreeing to sell the arms. [11] Reagan approved M...

June 11 ( Bloomberg ) -- A divided federal appeals court, in a rebuke to the Bush administration, ruled that an alleged al-Qaeda agent held for four years in U.S. military custody can't be detained indefinitely without being charged. The 2-1 decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia said accused terrorist Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri can instead be given a criminal trial in a civilian court. The judges said the U.S. can no longer hold him in a Navy brig in South Carolina. ``The president cannot eliminate constitutional protections (even more details of US Constitution and State's Rights ) with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention,'' the court said. Al-Marri ``can be returned to civilian prosecutors, tried on criminal charges, and, if convicted, punished severely.'' Al-Marri was in the U.S. ...

JERUSALEM, June 11 ( Reuters ) Israel is also monitoring neighbouring Syria for signs of a military build-up following last year's war against the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group, an ally of Damascus.) - Israel launched a new spy satellite on Monday and said it would provide high-quality surveillance over enemies such as Syria and Iran, rivalling the capabilities of the United States. Rocketed into orbit from a coastal Israeli air base, the Ofek 7 was expected to begin relaying high-resolution ground photographs from an altitude of 200-500 km (125-315 miles) by the end of the week. "The successful launch adds an important layer to Israel's defence capabilities and it is a testament to Israel's technological strength," Defence Minister Amir Peretz said in a statement. Haim Eshed, head of the Defence Ministry's space directorate, told Army Radio that Ofek 7 would help Israel "deal with the Iranian issue". Iran's nuclear programme has raised fear...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - With the 4-month-old "surge" in U.S. troops showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, U.S. commanders are turning to another strategy they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight Al-Qaida-linked militants who have been their allies in the past. U.S. officials who have engaged in what they call "outreach" to the Sunni groups say the groups are mostly ones with links to Al-Qaida, but disillusioned with Al-Qaida's extremist tactics, particularly suicide bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. In exchange for U.S. backing, these officials say, the Sunni groups have agreed to fight Al-Qaida and halt attacks on U.S. units. Commanders who have undertaken these negotiations say that in some cases Sunni groups have agreed to alert U.S. troops to the location of roadside bombs and other lethal booby traps. U.S. commanders have successfully tested the strategy in Al-Anbar pro...

"At every point, there was part of me resisting, part of me enjoying," Lagouranis said. "Using dogs on someone, there was a tingling throughout my body. If you saw the reaction in the prisoner, it's thrilling." --washingtonpost -- read more | digg story

Ex-Taleban media leader defects By Charles Haviland BBC News , Kabul The former head of broadcast media for the Taleban has arrived in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and is likely to join the Western-backed government there. There has been no immediate comment from the government. The Taleban and a former mujahideen commander who brokered the deal have confirmed the defection. ...

Iraq has made an official protest to Turkey, accusing it of shelling Kurdish areas in northern Iraq this week. A protest letter by the Iraqi foreign ministry said the shelling caused widespread damage in northern Iraq. Turkey has not confirmed any such shelling but it has been building up forces along the border with Iraq. Speculation grows that Ankara could mount a raid in Iraq on PKK rebels sheltering there who it blames for recent attacks in Turkey. The Iraqi foreign ministry summoned Turkey's charge d'affaires to voice its protest. The letter said that said the shelling took place over several hours on Wednesday and early Thursday, starting large fires and causing serious damage. It said such actions "undermine confidence between the two nations and negatively affect their friendship". However, it added that Iraq would not allow its territory to be used as a base or a springboard for action against neighbours and any PKK (the Kurdistan Workers' Party) presence...

The CIA has dismissed a Council of Europe report alleging that it ran secret jails for terror suspects in Europe after the 11 September attacks. A CIA spokesman said the report was biased and distorted, and that the agency had operated lawfully. Swiss Senator Dick Marty, who wrote the report, said secret CIA prisons "did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania". The charge was denied by both Polish and Romanian officials. Former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who served from 1995 to 2005, said on Friday: "There were no secret prisons in Poland." Romanian senator Norica Nicolai, who headed an investigation into the allegations, also denied his country's involvement. The report says Romania "was developed into a site to which more detainees were transferred only as the HVD programme expanded". "The secret detention facilities in Europe were run directly and exclusively by the CIA," the report says. But i...

JON BOYLE IN PARIS A EUROPEAN investigator said yesterday he had proof Poland and Romania hosted secret prisons for the US Central Intelligence Agency in which it interrogated top al-Qaeda suspects using methods akin to torture. Swiss senator Dick Marty said Poland housed some of the CIA's most sensitive prisoners, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who says he masterminded the 11 September, 2001, attacks on the US that killed 3,000 people. "There is now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania," Mr Marty said in a report for the Council of Europe human rights watchdog. He said US intelligence told him the two EU members hosted the secret jails under a special CIA programme, created by George Bush's administration after 9/11 "to kill, capture and detain terrorist suspects deemed of 'high value". Mr Marty said the former president of Poland and the cu...

Canadian Omar Khadr was accused of killing a US soldier The Pentagon is to ask US military judges to reconsider a decision earlier this week to throw out charges against two Guantanamo Bay detainees. This week charges against Canadian Omar Khadr and Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamdan, were dropped, casting fresh doubt on efforts to try foreign terror suspects. Both cases collapsed because military authorities had failed to designate the men as "unlawful" enemy combatants. The Pentagon will be filing a motion for reconsideration, a spokesman said. Salim Ahmed Hamdan has been accused of being al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden's driver and bodyguard. Canadian Omar Khadr was accused of killing a US soldier in Afghanistan with a grenade.

Presidential Candidate Mike Gravel explains his view on leadership and the immorality of war during the second democratic debates. (youtube)

Although Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, is denying the report, other government insiders anonymously confirmed that several thousand Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq on Wednesday to target Kurdish groups who have been attacking Turkey from Iraq, according to the Associated Press.

Download the original attachment Israel and Jordan: The Samu Incident On 12 November, 1966 an Israeli border patrol hit a mine, killing three soldiers and injuring six others. The Israelis believed the mine had been planted by terrorists from Es Samu on the West Bank. Early on the morning 13 November, King Hussein, who had been having secret meetings with Abba Eban and Golda Meir for three years concerning peace and secure borders, received an unsolicited message from his Israeli contacts stating that Israel had no intention of attacking Jordan.[6] However, at 5:30 a.m. in what Hussein described as an action carried out "under the pretext of 'reprisals against the terrorist activities of the P.L.O.' Israeli forces attacked Es Samu, a village in Jordanian-occupied West Bank of 4,000 inhabitants, all of them Palestinian refugees whom the Israelis accused of harboring terrorists from Syria".[7] In "Operation Shredder", Israel's largest military operation si...