Buried in last week's $72.4 billion emergency supplemental appropriation bill for the war on terror is nearly half a billion dollars worth of military construction. The bulk of the $485 million requested will go "to fund various military construction projects to support U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," according to the supplemental. "The requested funds," the document goes on, "will provide force protection measures, enhanced airfield operations and safety, power distribution, water treatment and distribution infrastructure, operational facilities and improved logistics, and associated planning and design efforts." ...
http://www.upi.com
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Editor - 22:38:00 02-20-06
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 Standout officer's charges stun many |
For 15 years, Metro police officer Charles R. Williams III was seen as a model officer, known for his mild manner and intelligent interrogation techniques.Five years ago, he was recognized by the head of the FBI for helping break up an international cocaine smuggling ring that netted more than 30 arrests from here to Mexico. That's why Williams' family and peers are struggling to understand the federal indictment announced last month, accusing Williams of shedding his role as one of Nashville's top vice officers by handcuffing a suspected drug dealer and stealing more than a pound of cocaine at gunpoint.Williams has denied the allegations, said his father, the Rev. Charles Williams Sr., pastor at the Roger Heights Baptist Church on Whites Creek Pike."He told me, 'I haven't done nothing, daddy. I've done nothing,' " said Williams Sr., 73. "And I believed him. And until somebody can show me something, I believe him."...
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060219/NEWS03/602190391
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Editor - 22:24:00 02-20-06
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| Canada rethinks policy of unarmed border guards |
The 100-mph car chase ended in a blaze of gunfire at the Peace Arch, the graceful marble monument that straddles the U.S.-Canada border here and proclaims the two nations to be "Children of a Common Mother."As two murder suspects from California blew past the U.S. Customs station and raced north for the border, a deputy sheriff managed to ram their vehicle with his squad car, spinning it down an embankment and across a broad lawn between the two border stations before it came to a stop. The suspects fled on foot, and in the ensuing gunbattle one was wounded; in the end, they were captured.While the Jan. 24 episode was by far the most dramatic encounter between fugitives and law-enforcement officers at the border in recent months, the reaction on the Canadian side unfolded along a standard — if contentious — script: The Canadian border guards walked off their posts....
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002816947_border20.html
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Editor - 22:13:00 02-20-06
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| Australia increases Afghan troops |
Australia says it will send another 200 troops to Afghanistan, to work on reconstruction projects in the south. The group will be a "mixed security and reconstruction task force," announced Prime Minister John Howard. The Australian Defence Force troops will be sent in late July for a two-year mission and form part of a Dutch-led team. The deployment will almost double the Australian military presence in Afghanistan to almost 500 soldiers. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4734694.stm
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Editor - 21:40:00 02-20-06
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| Strain and battle fatigue of war hit home front |
This sprawling airbase in the swamps of central Georgia sits 6,500 miles from the nearest battlefield in Iraq. But it hasn't escaped the death and injury brought on by war. The situation at Robins, where thousands of workers repair military aircraft, is a case study on how the war overseas has affected those serving on the home front. Here, a different kind of strain and battle fatigue has surfaced, often in startling ways.The wounded came not from engaging the enemy, but from scores of workplace injuries that increased as the war intensified. The low morale was measured in rises in drunken driving and domestic abuse, discrimination complaints and lost productivity. Most dramatic were the suicides — double the national rate in 2004 — and murders on the base, the first in Robins' 65-year history."We do have the rigors of a wartime mission," explains Lt. Col. Dan Mokris, the base safety officer. "We just have to do it right here."...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-20-war-stress_x.htm?csp=34
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Editor - 21:38:00 02-20-06
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| US removing documents from public access: report |
U.S. intelligence agencies have been secretly removing from public access at the National Archives thousands of historical documents that were available for years, The New York Times reported on Monday. The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the CIA and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton, the Times said on its Web site. The secret program accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the September 11 attacks, according to archives records, the paper said. Anyone still think a Police State is not possible? Oh but they wouldn’t do that, or would they? It’s just to protect you, right? But from whom do you need protecting from, the Foreign Boogieman, or the Domestic Traitors undermining your freedoms on the pretext of protecting you? ...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1642975
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Editor - 21:27:00 02-20-06
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