Sri Lanka declares end to war with LTTE

� Rebel leader shot dead while fleeing war zone� Call for war crimes investigation into civilian deaths
The Sri Lankan government today formally declared an end to the 25-year civil war after the army took control of the entire island and killed the leader of the Tamil Tigers.
According to the Sri Lankan army, the chief of [...]

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Can the Obama administration stoke public outrage about AIG without getting burned?

Everyone is outraged about AIG. The president is outraged. Press secretary Robert Gibbs used the word (or some form of it) 13 times in his briefing Tuesday. Mild-mannered budget director Peter Orszag told reporters that among the White House staff, "the outrage is visceral." Members of Congress are competing to see who can be most outraged. The fever could almost become stimulative: Think of all the economic activity that would be produced if all 418 AIG bonus recipients purchased home-security systems to protect themselves from the advancing mob.

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What's wrong with white men? In search of an explanation by Kevin MacDonald

What's wrong with white men? In search of an explanation by Kevin MacDonald

In my previous column, I attempted to analyze two important sex differences in political behavior: Womens tendency to be attracted to wealthy, powerful men, and womens relati...

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[Source: Ron Paul forum - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Secret U.S. unit trains commandos in Pakistan

Secret U.S. unit trains commandos in Pakistan
By Eric Schmitt and Jane Perlez
Monday, February 23, 2009

BARA, Pakistan: More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country's lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.

The Americans are mostly Army Special Forces soldiers who are training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops, providing them with intelligence and advising on combat tactics, the officials said. They do not conduct combat operations, the officials added.

They make up a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command. It started last summer, with the support of Pakistan's government and military, in an effort to root out Qaeda and Taliban operations that threaten American troops in Afghanistan and are increasingly destabilizing Pakistan. It is a much larger and more ambitious effort than either country has acknowledged.

Pakistani officials have vigorously protested American missile strikes in the tribal areas as a violation of sovereignty and have resisted efforts by Washington to put more troops on Pakistani soil. President Asif Ali Zardari, who leads a weak civilian government, is trying to cope with soaring anti-Americanism among Pakistanis and a belief that he is too close to Washington.

Despite the political hazards for Islamabad, the American effort is beginning to pay dividends.

A new Pakistani commando unit within the Frontier Corps paramilitary force has used information from the Central Intelligence Agency and other sources to kill or capture as many as 60 militants in the past seven months, including at least five high-ranking commanders, a senior Pakistani military official said.

Four weeks ago, the commandos captured a Saudi militant linked to Al Qaeda here in this town in the Khyber Agency, one of the tribal areas that run along the border with Afghanistan.

Yet the main commanders of the Pakistani Taliban, including its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, and its leader in the Swat region, Maulana Fazlullah, remain at large. And senior American military officials remain frustrated that they have been unable to persuade the chief of the Pakistani Army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to embrace serious counterinsurgency training for the army itself.

General Kayani, who is visiting Washington this week as a White House review on policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan gets under way, will almost certainly be asked how the Pakistani military can do more to eliminate Al Qaeda and the Taliban from the tribal areas.

The American officials acknowledge that at the very moment when Washington most needs Pakistan's help, the greater tensions between Pakistan and India since the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November have made the Pakistani Army less willing to shift its attention to the Qaeda and Taliban threat.

Secret U.S. unit trains

A New Afghanistan Nightmare

When US envoy to Afghanistan , Richard Holbrooke met with Afghanistan s democratically installed President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on February 14, he may have just learned of the historic significance of the following day. February 15 commemorates the end of the bloody Russian campaign against Afghanistan (August 1978-February 1989).But it is unlikely that Holbrooke [...]No related posts.

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Breast cancer biology changing

By Emma WilkinsonHealth reporter, BBC NewsLifestyle changes and screening have shifted the type of breast cancers women are diagnosed with over the past couple of decades, research suggests.Women are now more likely to have hormone-dependent, slow-growing tumours, a comparison of tissue samples from the 1980s and 1990s shows.The Scottish researchers also found improved survival over [...]

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Obama raises the bar: a brief history of presidential drinking.

Barack Obama hada drinks party at the White House on Wednesday night. He invited congressional leaders of both parties for cocktails at 7:30. In his relentless push for his stimulus plan, he's apparently not going to let them out of his sight. He was with the same people on Tuesday, just a few days after he'd met with them at the White House. The cocktail invitation could be a polite gesturethey hosted him Tuesday on the Hill, and he wants to return the favor; or it could be a stratagemafter being with them so much, Obama realizes that everyone could use a good drink. Or it could be a philosophical statement: Sobering times do not necessarily require everyone to be sober.

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