A 29-year-old Wenatchee man told police a pterodactyl caused him to drive his car into a light pole about 11:30 p.m. Thursday.

Well, who hasn't used that excuse at one time or another?

Tent city in suburbs is cost of home crisis

ONTARIO, California (Reuters) - Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.

The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.

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flag over tent city

Pope's exorcist squads will wage war on Satan

The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism.

Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult.

What next, a squad of vampire killers?

The Bhutto Assassination Cover-up

The "official story" in the Bhutto is coming out. She didn't die from the bomb explosion, or from gunshot wounds, or from shrapnel, as was later reported. She hit her head, violently against the sunroof as she ducked back into the vehicle. She was killed by al-Qaeda. There is a transcript.

The new story, however, is inconsistent with what a doctor on the surgical team told the Associated Press:

Bhutto was rushed into surgery. A doctor on the surgical team said a bullet in the back of her neck damaged her spinal cord before exiting from the side of her head. Another bullet pierced the back of her shoulder and came out through her chest, he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. She was given an open-heart massage, but the spinal cord damage was too great, he said.

Also, according to ABC News:

A security adviser to Bhutto's party said she was shot in the neck and chest. The gunman then blew himself up.

Well, at least the autopsy should reveal the truth. Oh, wait: Government sources say there will be an investigation to determine why no autopsy was conducted.

Bhutto herself was more afraid of the government than al Qaeda. As she told the Reverend Jessie Jackson:

She felt far more threaten by the Musharraf government as she did by Taliban or Al Qaeda. She felt that as she mentioned it, about that Taliban and Al Qaeda was a pretext to clandestine -- to control by fear. So, her focus really was on the government.

Bhutto had spoken to Parade magazine about the earlier attack on her life:

The Musharraf propaganda machine called it a suicide attack by Islamic extremists. Bhutto herself believed it was the dirty work of Musharraf’s political allies. The ISI, Pakistan’s infamous security service, is infiltrated by ideologically jihadist elements that support al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists in Pakistan's border provinces. Bhutto had tried as prime minister to eject the ISI from politics, but that “country within a country” managed to overthrow her instead. She was well aware the security services were less than enthusiastic about Benazir Bhutto becoming prime minister a third time.

"For years he's fought conservatives and religious extremists..Mitt Romney." I love it.

CLOSET lesbian Hillary Clinton with lesbian and Israeli MOSSAD asset Huma Abedin behind her on the left

So says "International Intelligence Expert" Tom Heneghan

Queerty covers the story: Hillary’s Lesbian Rumors Just Won’t Quit (not if I can help it)

A beautiful woman working for Hillary Clinton has Muslims in the closet? Obviously Clinton must be licking her coochie. What other explanation could there possibly be?

Update: FREE BOOK ONLINE: Hillary Clinton's Gay, Lesbian, & Feminist Task Force - Her Femi-Nazi Lesbianism Revealed!

Download the PDF. Check out the hot lesbian porn on pages 397-406. I'm not kidding. I've always thought that rightwing Christian literature needed more hot girl-on-girl action. After the lesbian photo spread the author writes:

"THIS IS JUST A FEW EXAMPLE OF THE MILLIONS OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF LESBIAN SEX THERE IS IN THE PORN INDUSTRY. THE PORNOGRAPHIC INDUSTRY EARNS BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. ALL OF THESE LESBIAN WOMEN PROMOTE, SUPPORT, ADVOCATE A LIFESTYLE THAT GOD SAYS IS SEXUALLY IMMMORAL! "

I am so getting a lot of google hits on this post.

Ron Paul: 'We're getting ready to bomb Iran'

"It is getting worse over there," he said. "Afghanistan is getting worse. Turkey is bombing Iraq. And Pakistan is blowing up and we're getting ready to bomb Iran. A bunch of those neocons want to bomb Iran."

Palestinian prisoners in Guinness Book of Records

According to the report, Palestinian prisoner Sa'id Al-Ataba has been detained for more than 30 years which is the longest imprisonment in the world. No other political prisoner had served such a long period ; Nelson Mandela had served 26 years, and Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of former US president John Kennedy served 28 years in prison.

Emphasis added.

Fun Fact: Lee Harvey Oswald was a homing pigeon enthusiast. News to me.

Gottfried Helnwein, "Epiphany I: Adoration of the Magi"

I may put this on my Christmas card next year. Via Rigorous Intuition.

Merry Christmas!

An Israeli scholar says that Jesus may not have been born in Bethlehem but in another city with the same name.

Stolen baby Jesuses replaced with pigs heads

'To have something like that left in its place was not nice, to say the least'

Not nice at all. Love that British understatement.

San Jose Teen Killed by Tiger on Christmas

I live in San Jose. That could have been me. If I had gone to the zoo on Christmas.

And in the Christmas spirit: Wife found dead under family's Christmas tree

QKENCHANT update

QKENCHANT was a CIA project that has been of great interest to those interested in the possible connections of Clay Shaw to the JFK assassination. My earlier posts on this subject can be found here.

A 1992 CIA release has been cited by a number of writers to conclude that Shaw was cleared for this project. It actually does no such thing although it does not preclude this possibility. The document states:

"A memorandum marked only for file, 16 March 1967, signed Marguerite D. Stevens, says that J. Monroe SULLIVAN, #280207, was granted a covert security approval on 10 December 1962 so that he could be used in Project QKENCHANT. SHAW has #402897-A."

Other documents indicate that Shaw was likely not cleared for QKENCHANT.

QKENCHANT, as best anyone can tell at this point, existed, in the words of this document, "to provide security approvals on non-Agency personnel and facilities" for CIA operational projects utilizing private companies to provide Non-Official Cover (NOC) to agents operating abroad. I'm not sure that it was called NOC at that time. The International Trade Mart would have been a likely candidate for this and it has always seemed a bit suprising to me that Shaw was not, or may not have been cleared for this project.

This document sheds a bit more light on the question. The document states "QKENCHANT was an indicator used by Central Cover Staff with a program for clearing [deleted] providers (businesses, etc.) with access to classified material."

Later we read: "With regard to Clay Shaw and his association with the QKENCHANT project: A review of Shaw's security file indicates a "five Agency" clearance on 23 March 1949. Our records indicate that the QKENCHANT project did not begin until sometime in 1952, therefore Shaw in all probability was not cleared by the QKENCHANT program."

So Shaw was apparently not cleared for QKENCHANT because he had already been cleared previously. There is a possiblity that he was cleared later, as the document states "in all probability he was not cleared by that program, at least not initially."

Joseph Cannon directs us to this article by Bob Fitrakis on Bushes and election fraud. Apparently the Bush connection to election fraud goes back aways.

Take the following quote from the Manchester Union Leader from the 1980 Iowa caucus: “The Bush operation has all the smell of a CIA covert operation . . . strange aspects of the Iowa operation [include] a long, slow count and then the computers broke down at a very convenient point, with Bush having a six percent bulge over Reagan.”

In 1984, President Reagan signed National Security Directive Decision NSDD245. A year later, the New York Times explained the details of Reagan’s secret directive: “A branch of the National Security Agency is investigating whether a computer program that counted more than one-third of all the votes cast in the United States in 1984 is vulnerable to fraudulent manipulation.”

Would you let your 13-year old daughter wear this shirt? Would anyone?

The JFK Assassination and the Unspeakable

Charles Drago on The JFK Assassination Debate Forum posted this excerpt from a 17-page pamphlet by peace activist James W. Douglass titled Compassion and the Unspeakable in the Murders of Martin, Malcolm, JFK, RFK.

The Warren Report gave us the unspeakable in prose, with a void at the center of its almost one thousand pages. Remember Merton's description of the unspeakable. It sounds as if he is describing the Warren Report:

It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience ... (Raids, p. 4)

The Warren Report is a monument to the unspeakable. Yet it provoked no revolution. That void of citizen response remains at the heart of our national security state. The unspeakable that rules us now took power on November 22, 1963, and was confirmed by the Warren Report. By denying the void at the heart of our system, we have allowed it to undermine everything. The unspeakable rules by the power of our denial.

William Casey Confirmed the October Surprise (from Secrets and Lies: A History of CIA Mind Control and Germ Warfare). In a conversation with CIA agent William Buckley (p317):

Casey had told Buckley the story of the hostages release. Known as the "October Surprise," it was an operation that Casey had orchestrated over dinner one night with some of the future president's aides. Casey had raised the possibility of doing a deal with Iran and said there would "have to be something in it for the ayatollahs." He had proposed approaching a number of wealthy Republicans. In a week they had pledged $40 million. The money was to be laundered through a number of Swiss banks before ending up in Tehran. Earl Brian, a business associate of Reagan, agreed to handle the transfer because of his long-standing high-level contacts in Tehran. He arranged to fly to Paris on October 17, 1980, less tha a month before the race for the White House was decided. His cover story was that he was going to sign a deal for one of his own companies. The next day, sixteen high-ranking Iranian government officials arrived. It took two days to hammer out the deal. Terms for the hostage's freedom were agreed on.

One of the terms, of course, was that they not be released before the election.

Who else but Michael Jackson?

The two CIA drug planes caught in Mexico recently both exhibit the classic hallmark of a CIA job. The plane's ownership, as shown in FAA reg docs, leads the unwary directly into a dizzying hall of mirrors, designed to disorient the observer, and effectively mask the number of missions CIA aircraft are flying everyday.

Isn't it odd that The Madcow Morning News breaks more real news than The Washington Post? Daniel Hopsicker is still on the trail of the American Drug Lords.

Operation Often: Satanism in the CIA

This operation was based on Dr. Cameron's earlier research into the supernatural. Operaton Often was going to go further, exploring the world of black magic. In Dr. Gottlieb's mission statement the intention was to "harness the forces of darkness and challenge the concept that the inner reaches of the mind are beyond reach. The project will aim to create a new kind of psycho-civilized human being."

Operation Often was soon deep into demonology. In April 1972, an approach was made to the monsignor in charge of exorcisms for the Catholic archdiocese of New York. He flatly refused to cooperate.

Buckley, still a devout Catholic, found himself surrounded by a "mysterious and magical vortex in an agency that was supposed to deal in facts and predictions based upon them, that corner of the CIA which Gottlieb had set aside for his work with the Devil was an inner black hole from which came the constant cries 'There is no God! The cosmic deity is all!'

“This government does not torture people.” - George W. Bush

Former US interrogator recounts torture cases in Afghanistan and Iraq

"My sole job was to sit there and make sure the prisoner didn't die. But there were several times when I thought they were about to die, when they were interrogated by those people who have no name and who work for no-one in particular. It's incredible what a human being can take".

Inside the CIA's notorious "black sites"

Bashmilah finally tried to slash his wrists with a small piece of metal, smearing the words "I am innocent" in blood on the walls of his cell. But the CIA patched him up.

Book Review

Programmed to Kill, according to neocon Michael Ledeen, "must be considered one of the basic books about the Kennedy assassination." That fact is, in itself, almost enough for us to consider it disinformation. But good disinformation contains a kernal of truth so let us consider Ion Pacepa's book in that light.

Pacepa was, before he defected to the West in 1978, national security advisor to Romanian dictator Nicolae Cezsusescu and acting chief of his foreign intelligence service. He makes a case that Lee Harvey Oswald was recruited by the KGB, and returned to the United States, at their direction, to kill President Kennedy. Khrushchev tried unsucessfully to cancel Oswald's mission but Oswald went ahead on his own and committed the assassination. Khruschchev then had Ruby kill Oswald, to keep this all a secret. One cannot help but wonder why he did not have Oswald killed before the assassination rather than after. (Or maybe they did; one thinks of Richard Case Nagell.)

Pacepa's case is rather circumstantial, derived from his familiarity with the operational patterns and practices of Soviet bloc intelligence. The only actual evidence in the book is that he claims to know "for a fact" that Oswald's friend and mentor, George de Mohrenschildt, was an agent of Soviet bloc intelligence.

On the evening of November 26, 1963 General Sakharovsky, chief of the PGU, the foreign intelligence arm of the KGB, arrived in Bucharest. His purpose was "to unleash a diversionary intelligence effort aimed at directing world attention away from the Soviet Union and focusing suspicion for the killing of President Kennedy on the United States itself." The program, which continued for years, was called Operation Dragon. This suspicion was inevitable as the accused assassin had defected to the Soviet Union and had married a Soviet woman before returning to the United States. And there was another problem: his closest friend in the United States was a Russian emigre. The general did not mention his name but did mention the international association that had once sent him to Belgrade. An associate of Pacepa's named Doicaru checked the records of the Rumanian intelligence service, the DIE:

He remembered that the DIE station in Belgrade had once wanted to recruit an American with a German name who was assigned to Yugoslavia as a representative of the International Cooperation Administration. "I was right," Doicaru told us when he returned. "George de Mohrenschildt" was the name of the man who seemed to fit Sakharovsky's description. DIE archive records showed that in 1957, when de Mohrenschildt had been assigned to Belgrade, the DIE station there had spotted him as a target for recruitment. In those days, however, the rule was that, before trying to recruit a foreigner, the DIE first had to ask Moscow for a name check on the target individual. In this case the PGU had answered that de Mohrenschildt was already "taken."

Pacepa next makes his case that Oswald was recruited by the PGU in Japan. The case is circumstantial but quite plausible and he may well be right. Oddly, though, he completely ignores the possibility that Oswald might have been already under the control of American intelligence, that he might have been what is called in the trade a "dangle." I do not see how the Soviet's could ever have been certain that Oswald was really working for them. They would have played along, no doubt, but that they would have used an agent of doubful reliability, and one who, at that, had such an obvious connection to them, for a mission so important as the assassination of an American President simply defies belief.

As I said, though, Pacepa is fairly plausible in his description of how Oswald was likely recruited and managed by the PGU. To make his case, though, he has to counter the testimony of Yuri Nosenko, an earlier defector who maintained that the KGB had minimal interest in Oswald and certainly never recruited him. Nosenko's credibility has been hotly contested. James Angleton went to his grave convinced that Nosenko was a fake defector, sent to draw attention away from the Soviet's role in the assassiation.

Pacepa, however, maintains that Nosenko was the real thing, but that he was working in the wrong wing of Soviet intelligence to really know what was going on with Oswald. He worked for the domestic wing, the VGU, rather that the foreign wing, the PGU, that would have recruited Oswald. Pacepa maintains, rather plausibly, that the PGU would not have informed the VGU that Oswald was working for them and, in fact, would have gone to greath lengths to conceal it.

As evidence that Nosenko did not really know what was going on Pacepa cites several facts. First, that "Nosenko had no knowledge that OSWALD ever directed a communication of any type to the American Embassy in Mosco." Second, that Nosenko was unaware that Oswald had visited the American Embassy in Moscow in October of 1959. Also that Nosenko was unware of Oswald until he declared his intention to defect, although Nosenko should have been routinely advised when Oswald was first issued his visa to visit the Soviet Union.

Pacepa's descriptions of Soviet and Eastern bloc intelligence patterns and practices are fascinating. It seems to me quite plausible, even likely, that they recruited Oswald in Japan and kept in touch with him after he returned to the United States. If so, they would have been horrified to learn that he had been accused of the assassination of, as were many, perhaps, in the CIA.

So, who is she?

Thanks to both Joseph Cannon and Xymphora for drawing my attention to this photo. I have long wondered if Xymphora was a man or a woman. Clearly a man (or a lesbian).

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran figured out. It's TREASON AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS .

This is a coup against America's duly elected government, an attempted overthrow of the will of the American people. This is shocking. The danger here is incalculable. The system is not merely broken, it is traitorous. Americans do not yet fully understand the enormity of this act of sedition.

I do agree with Pam, though, that there is treason at the highest levels. She's getting warmer.

Piglipstick draws our attention to this article which says:

More than 500 Iraqi scientists and professors have been murdered by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, an Iraqi newspaper reports.

The report stated that the killings were part of a mission to get rid of those Iraqi nuclear specialists and university professors that refused to cooperate with the Zionist regime.

The assassinations were carried out by Mossad and the US Defense Department - the Pentagon.

Piglipstick's post provides links to other articles on the murders, one of which attributes them to "an unknown group."

Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

The Empire Strikes Back

Wingnuts and war-mongers are not taking the Iranian NIE lying down. Leading neo-crazy John Bolton is still criticizing it: Bolton calls report on Iran quasi-putsch:

Der Spiegel magazine quoted Bolton on Saturday as alleging that the aim of the National Intelligence Estimate, which contradicts his and President Bush's position, was not to provide the latest intelligence on Iran.

"This is politics disguised as intelligence," Bolton was quoted as saying in an article appearing in this week's edition.

Bolton described the report, released Monday, as a "quasi-putsch" by the intelligence agencies, Der Spiegel said.

Some in Israel are playing the holocaust card:

"The manner in which the Americans relate to the intelligence report on Iran is similar to the way in which they viewed those reports they received during the Holocaust on railways transporting hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death at Auschwitz," Minister Yitzhak Cohen of Shas said during a security cabinet meeting Sunday morning on the Iranian nuclear issue.

Cabinet Member Cohen had this to say to his fellow ministers not present in the meeting: "Whoever thinks that the president of Iran is a lover of Zion, with Kosher certification from the Americans, misleads and is mislead. He is not a lover of Zion, but instead an aspiring strangler of Zion. Someone in America fell asleep on his watch, but we must remain awake and aware."

Meanwhile Colonel W. Patrick Lang, a retired military intelligence professional, has this to say:

The "jungle telegraph" in Washington is booming with news of the Iran NIE. I am told that the reason the conclusions of the NIE were released is that it was communicated to the White House that "intelligence career seniors were lined up to go to jail if necessary" if the document's gist were not given to the public. Translation? Someone in that group would have gone to the media "on the record" to disclose its contents.

Walter Cronkite (and some other guy): Our Troops Must Leave Iraq

The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start. Not only was Congress lied to in order to secure its support for the invasion of Iraq, but the war lacked the support of the United Nations Security Council and thus was an aggressive war initiated on the false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Nor has any assertion of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda proven to be true. In the end, democracy has not come to Iraq. Its government is still being forced to bend to the will of the US administration.

What the war has accomplished is the undermining of US credibility throughout the world, the weakening of our military forces, and the erosion of our Bill of Rights. Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz calculates that the war is costing American tax payers more than $1 trillion. This amount could double if we continue the war. Each minute we are spending $500,000 in Iraq. Our losses are incalculable. It is time to remove our military forces from Iraq.

U.S. Intel Possibly Duped by Iran

Newsmax sources in Tehran believe that Washington has fallen for “a deliberate disinformation campaign” cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats in Europe.

ANALYSIS: Iran laughing at U.S. lack of nuclear intelligence

The CIA is so angry with Bush, it seems, that it is ready to go to great lengths in order to help another president. Not Ahmadinejad, God forbid, but the next president in Washington. The result is likely to be the opposite: Higher Iranian militancy along with Bush and Cheney's determination to act - regardless of what the intelligence agencies say.

Bush: `Nothing Has Changed' With Iran

"Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," the president told a White House news conference a day after the release of a new national intelligence estimate representing the consensus of all U.S. spy agencies.

From Girl in Short Shorts:

And oh yes--no matter how annoying you may find Tila Tequila, isn't it something when a celebrity is angrily denying rumors she is a closet straight girl?

Iran report frustrates US hawks (BBC)

One source, who has close links to US intelligence, said that members of Vice President Dick Cheney's staff continued to call for military strikes against Iran "on a daily basis".

Senior military officers and intelligence officials are understood to have grave reservations about an attack on Iran - not least because it would be unclear how a military confrontation with Iran could be brought to a conclusion.

Norman Podhoretz: Dark Suspicions about the NIE

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations.

Detainee Alleges Torture

Mr Habib today said he was beaten from the day of his arrest in Pakistan in 2001 until his final moments in 2005 at Guantanamo Bay, where he claimed he was experimented upon.

"People have no humanity, they have been using us for experiments," he told the court.

"They [were] using us like rats and dogs and animals.

"Every single injection, I take it by force."

Former President of Italy: 9/11 was an Inside Job

"From sources close to Palazzo Chigi, nerve center of the Italian intelligence services, it is noted that the non-authenticity of the video is proven by the fact that in it Osama Bin Laden "confesses" that Al Qaeda authored the 9/11 attacks on the two towers in New York, while all democratic elements of America and Europe, and especially the Italian center-left, are well aware that the disastrous attack was planned and executed by the American CIA and the Mossad with help from organized Zionists in order to accuse the Arab world and to induce the Western powers to intervene in both Iraq and Afghanistan"

Breaking News: Senator Craig is still not gay--but he does like dick.

U.S. report: Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in 2003

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iran halted work toward a nuclear weapon under international scrutiny in 2003 and is unlikely to be able to produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb until 2010 to 2015, a U.S. intelligence report says.

A declassified summary of the latest National Intelligence Estimate found with "high confidence" that the Islamic republic stopped an effort to develop nuclear weapons in the fall of 2003.

There have been reports that this National Intelligence Estimate had been held up or kicked back because Dick Cheney didn't like it. (As in this article Spooks refuse to toe Cheney's line on Iran.) It looks like the intelligence community held firm. This makes an attack on Iran less likely.

Iran has no nuke program, U.S. intel says (LA Times)

The National Intelligence Estimate: Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.

Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.

Atrios summarizes it: CIA To Dick Cheney: Suck. On. This.

Sunday religion corner

"Of all the systems of religions that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contadictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, to impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics." --Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

The News

US says it has right to kidnap British citizens

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

Bush handed blueprint to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal

The man who devised the Bush administration's Iraq troop surge has urged the US to consider sending elite troops to Pakistan to seize its nuclear weapons if the country descends into chaos.

In a series of scenarios drawn up for Pakistan, Frederick Kagan, a former West Point military historian, has called for the White House to consider various options for an unstable Pakistan.

Focus Grouping War with Iran

On November 1, she went to the offices of Martin Focus Groups in Alexandria, Virginia, knowing she would be paid $150 for two hours of her time. After joining a half dozen other women in a conference room, she discovered that she had been called in for what seemed an unusual assignment: to help test-market language that could be used to sell military action against Iran to the American public. "The whole basis of the whole thing was, 'we're going to go into Iran and what do we have to do to get you guys to along with it?" says Sonnenmark, 49.