Which war worries you more -- the one in Iraq or Afghanistan?

What do you see when you look into a Dawg's eyes?
The back of his head.

The News We Kept To Ourselves - New York Times
 
Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard -- awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.
 
For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.
 
Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.
 
We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).
 
Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.
 
I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.
 
Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would ''suffer the severest possible consequences.'' CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.
 
Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for ''crimes,'' one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.
 
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9506E7DC173BF932A25757C0A9659C8B63

The culture war in the United states worries me the most

The culture war (or culture wars) in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditional or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal. The "culture war" is sometimes traced to the 1960s and has taken various forms since then.

Afghanistan !!

My god, time sure do change a whole lot.........I remember the time when violence is everywhere and people careless........but nowadays people are like being scared like the violence is horrible........ even though its no where even near as severe as the old days.

The war in Mexico

Works beside smuggler cartels to fund operations

EXCLUSIVE:

Hezbollah is using the same southern narcotics routes that Mexican drug kingpins do to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, reaping money to finance its operations and threatening U.S. national security, current and former U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials say.

The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America's tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S.

Hezbollah relies on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels," said Michael Braun, who just retired as assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

"They work together," said Mr. Braun. "They rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected.

"They'll leverage those relationships to their benefit, to smuggle contraband and humans into the U.S.; in fact, they already are [smuggling]."

His comments were confirmed by six U.S. officials, including law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism specialists. They spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the topic.

While Hezbollah appears to view the U.S. primarily as a source of cash - and there have been no confirmed Hezbollah attacks within the U.S. - the group's growing ties with Mexican drug cartels are particularly worrisome at a time when a war against and among Mexican narco-traffickers has killed 7,000 people in the past year and is destabilizing Mexico along the U.S. border.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in Mexico on Thursday to discuss U.S. aid. Other U.S. Cabinet officials and President Obama are slated to visit in the coming weeks.

Hezbollah is based in Lebanon. Since its inception after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, it has grown into a major political, military and social welfare organization serving Lebanon's large Shi'ite Muslim community.

The war in American

DICTATORS

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OBAMA SHAKES HANDS WITH MAN WHO CALLS HIM AN "IDIOT"
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  Drama Obama shook hands with Dictator of Venezuela 's Hugo Chavez "The man who called him an idiot" on Friday at the opening of the Summit of the Americas being held this weekend in Trinidad and Tobago.Hugo Chavez could be right! Tommorow  Raul Castro Wow three DICTATORS together.Another embarrassing day in American history.Hugo Chavez said Obama has a stench.How many antiamerican rulers can obama bow dow to .HOW LOW CAN YOU GO.ali be with you!
 
 

 New York Times killed a story about the relationship between ACORN and the Obama campaign conspired in the 2008 election. Other media outlets refuse to disclose how ACORN uses vote fraud to steal elections.
When a paper like the New York Times hides the truth, we live in worrisome times.
At stake is nothing more than our democratic freedoms and way of life.
As you may know, we at the Republican National Lawyers Association have been fighting for a fair election in Minnesota.
On election night, Republican Norm Coleman led by 725 votes. But after a "recount" and questionable activities by the state's liberal Secretary of State, Franken now leads.
We have been fighting and so far Al Franken has yet to be seated.
Franken's Outrage
But we were shocked last week when the three judge panel in Minnesota decided that it is okay to treat voters in different parts of Minnesota differently, instead of treating all voters equally. The judges have basically said that the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution does not apply in Minnesota.
And in New York, lawyers are already battling over absentee and military ballots in the special election to fill a vacant seat for Congress. RNLA Members are there right now, helping ensure the vote counting is as fair as possible.
The results show a dead heat, and absentee ballots are crucial. These ballots usually favor the Republicans but at the urging of the Democrat Candidate’s lawyer the counting of absentee ballots is going ahead before the deadline for receipt of absentee ballots from our military and overseas voters even occurs!
Once again, Democrats are trying to disenfranchise military voters because soldiers are perceived to favor Republicans.
This is why our work at the Republican National Lawyers Association is so critical.
ACORN's Dirty Tricks
Years ago the left realized if they can't win at the ballot box, they could work the process. George Soros backed liberals in various states who became Secretary of State — the chief state officer who usually controls the election process.
The Democrats in Congress worked hard to give liberal groups like ACORN billions — to "register" voters. There have been widespread charges, prosecutions, convictions and allegations of fraud against groups like ACORN.
We need to do what the left has done. We need to organize and prepare. The 2010 elections are fast approaching. We need to train lawyers who will protect your right to vote and have it count!
We also need to expose groups like ACORN — in both the courts and the media.