Sunday, September 17, 2006

N E W Y O R K, May 1, 2001 In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Continue Reading

While
President Bush and other Republican politicians spent the day exploiting the memory of those we lost five years ago, the nation overlooked a grim milestone: More Americans have now died in
Iraq than died on 9/11. Iraq didn't attack us on that day, and our misguided policy there has now taken more American lives than Al Qaeda.
ADVERTISEMENT

Here are the numbers: 3,015 Americans have died in Iraq as of September 9. 2,666 of these were military deaths and 349 were civilians.

The Republicans are fond of playing cheap number games with Iraqi casualty figures, and one of the ways they do it is by listing the deaths of enlisted personnel only. They're hoping that a lazy press and an indifferent public will overlook the civilian losses, and to a large extent they've been right so far.

A total of 2,973 people died on 9/11. Most, although not all, were Americans.

Continue Reading


A LITTLE bloating after a big meal is an occupational hazard for pythons. But this unfortunate creature found itself unable to slink away and sleep it off.
In fact, after swallowing a pregnant sheep, it couldn't move at all.

Firemen in the Malaysian village of Kampung Jabor, about 190km east of Kuala Lumpur, easily caught it after it was spotted on a road.

Continue Reading

Argentine ants, those aggressive unstoppable pests that invade homes and farms throughout California and many other states, live in peace and harmony with each other inside their enormous colonies, but scientists are finally discovering how to make those ants destroy their own relatives in spasms of chemical warfare.

Continue Reading