Author: Gareth

NBC News has obtained a 400-page secret Pentagon document that shows that the U.S. military is collecting information on American peace activists and monitoring Iraq war protests.

The CIA can’t spy on American soil? NO PROBLEM! The Pentagon can!

A gathering helding at a Quaker Meeting House in Florida by a small group of activists planning to protest military recruitment at High Schools, for example, is descibed in the documents as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country.

During the Vietnam War, a whistle-blower revealed that the Defense Department had been monitoring and infiltrating anti-war and civil rights protests. The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at least 100,000 American citizens. In the wake of the investigations, Congress wrote new laws placing limits on military spying inside the U.S.

How much you want to bet that there’s no outrage or congressional investigation this time around?

I hate feeling this helpless.

So, I was bored this evening, and I whipped up a quick wallpaper for the Icarus crew, using the actors specified.

Here you go, kids!

It’s a bit more of a hatchet-job than I usually do, but it works.

Today marks 1000 days of the Iraq War. Here are some numbers for you:

2,339: Allied troops killed

15,955: US troops wounded in action

Of the 18,000 US servicemen killed or wounded in Iraq, 94 percent have been killed or wounded since the fall of Baghdad. “Mission Accomplished.”

$204.4 billion: The cost to the U.S of the war so far.

30,000 : Estimated Iraqi civilian deaths

53,470: Iraqi insurgents killed

66: Journalists killed in Iraq. (Contrasted with the number of journalists killed during the entire Vietnam war: 63)

183,000: British and American troops are still in action in Iraq.

13,000: from other nations.

90: Daily attacks by insurgents in Nov ’05. In Jun ’03: 8

A BBC poll yesterday showed that half of the Iraqis questioned say that Iraq needs a strong leader–while only 28 percent cited democracy as a priority. Approximately 70 percent of Iraqis questioned were “strongly opposed” to presence of coalition troops.

0: Number of WMDs found (and, coincidentally, also the number of Iraqis who participated in the 9/11 attack)

(Data taken from the Independent)