“The U.S. response, engaging in two wars, was a 20th-century reaction to 21st-century realities.”

- wrote Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, in an article for The Washington Post.

Saddam with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in the late 1970s

Shortly after his arrest in December 2003, former Iraqi president Saddam Hussain was interrogated by the FBI.

The secret interrogation documents, which were made public only recently by the National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute in the US, shed light on the state of mind of Saddam, executed in December 2006.

In this series, Gulf News is running the transcripts of the 20 formal interrogation sessions and five ‘casual conversations’ he had with a senior FBI agent. In the third session, Saddam dwells on the roots of the Palestinian issue and the Arabs’ wars with Israel.

Read the rest of the article

And it was about time that German solders fighting in the so-called “War on Terror” receive simbolic acknowledgment for their service.

As you probably know, the real Iron Cross was abandoned after the end of the Second World War – nobody wanted to see it anymore. I find this to be absurd. The Cross has had a long history and tens of thousands of brave men received the decoration after fighting in 19th century wars as well as in both World Wars . By eliminating this decoration, their sacrifice is ignored.

Wouldn’t it be just as absurd to cancel different American military decorations just because some officials believe that the war in Irak is illegal?

I remember a great line in the movie Black Hawk Down when a Delta Force soldier said that (I am now citing from my memory) “when the first bullet passes by your head, politics and all that don’t mean nothing.” Not all German soldiers in WW2 who received the Iron Cross were nazis, and I am sure none of them were in the Great War – not to mention those who fought in previous wars.

Besides, the WW2 Iron Cross had a little swastika in the middle. The German government could have replaced those with old fashion pre-WW2 Iron Crosses.

Anyway, the soldiers that received the now called Cross of Honor fully deserve it.

They had dragged comrades and children to safety after a suicide bomb attack in northern Afghanistan.

War on Terror News writes:

General Custer, commander of the 7th Calvary Regiment, was ill-informed on the number of Lakota and Northern-Cheyenne Indians that he would encounter during the Battle of Little Big Horn, and because the military intelligence was weeks old, he lost this battle and his life, June 26, 1876. Today, our military uses up-to-date information from weather patterns, photography, signals, and human intelligence to give commanders a clear-sight picture of what Marines will be facing when they venture outside of forward operating bases.

At least this is what they should be doing. Anyway, Lance Cpl. Skyler Camacho, an all-source intelligence analyst, intelligence section, is pretty excited about his job:

“We predict what the enemy will do, when he will do it, how he will do it, and what he will do it with all before he does it. It’s a totally sweet job!”

Alright, I am sure the Lance Clp. is good at what he is doing, I’m not contesting that. However, every time I read something about the US Intelligence Service I fail not to think of Bush and Irak’s weapons of mass destruction. Oh wait, if I remember correctly there were chemical weapons and nukes as well.

I think the guys at the Intelligence Service should sue Bush. He really damaged their image by making them look like absolute amateurs, or perhaps the “fog of war’ was so dense that all the advanced military technology couldn’t find the reality.