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The Russian journalist Mikhail Beketov knew the risks he was taking. In a series of articles Beketov had campaigned against the local administration in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. He had received numerous threats. His car had been set on fire. This summer he returned home to discover his dog lying dead on his doorstep. Beketov continued to publish his newspaper, Khimkinskaya Pravda, which regularly lambasted local officials for corruption and abuse. Finally, it seems, the administration had had enough. On November 11 a gang lay in wait outside his home. When he returned, they savagely attacked him with clubs, breaking his fingers and skull, and leaving him for dead.

Beketov lay unconscious in his garden for almost two days. Eventually a neighbour called the police. She had spotted his leg. The police appeared unbothered by the assault and — assuming he was dead — flung a blanket over Beketov’s face. At this point the journalist’s arm twitched. “Mikhail is floating between life and death,” his friend Ludmilla Fedotova said last week. Beketov is in a coma. Doctors have amputated his right leg. They may also have to remove his frostbitten fingers. “He wasn’t afraid of anybody,” Fedotova said.

Beketov’s fate is a graphic illustration of the dangers of working as a journalist in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. His story is depressingly typical: according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Russia is now the third most dangerous place in the world to work as a reporter, after Iraq and Algeria. Since 1992 49 journalists have been murdered in Russia. Last week three men went on trial accused of involvement in the killing of Anna Politkovskaya — the campaigning journalist and fearless Kremlin opponent shot dead in October 2006 outside her Moscow flat. More

Michael Webster
Investigative Reporter
Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV´s) and Space-Based Domestic Spying Surveillance technology the U.S. Government is now watching American citizens under the guise of disaster management and controlling the U.S. Mexican border. The Reaper/Predator B UAV´s robotic killing machines are currently in operation with the USAF, US Navy and the Royal Air Force. In addition non military users of the Predator B include: NASA and Homeland security though the US Customs and Border Protection agencies.

The Reaper/Predator B UAV´s robotic killing machine

The Department of Homeland Security´s (DHS) space-based domestic spy program run by that agency´s National Applications Office (NAO) is now in full operation. Indeed during Hurricane Ike, U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the first time flew the Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle in “support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency´s relief efforts,” the insider tech publication reported. Tom Burghardt in a recent article wrote that the Predator B carries out “targeted assassinations” of “terrorist suspects” across Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The deployment of the robotic killing machines in the United States for “disaster management” is troubling to say the least and a harbinger of things to come.

Despite objections by Congress and civil liberties groups DHS, in close collaboration with the ultra-spooky National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that develops and maintains America´s fleet of military spy satellites, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) that analyzes military imagery and generates mapping tools, are proceeding with the first phase of the controversial domestic spying program. NAO will coordinate how domestic law enforcement and “disaster relief” agencies such as FEMA will use satellite imagery intelligence (IMINT) generated by military spy satellites. Burghardt wrote earlier this year, unlike commercial satellites, their military cousins are far more flexible, have greater resolution and therefore possess more power to monitor human activity. More

Just for fun, let’s take a look at the ultra-spooky National Reconnaissance Office Control Center:

Watch it:

USAF: National Reconnaissance Office Control Center

Patrick Martin
On the eve of the US elections
In the run-up to Election Day, with polls pointing to a lopsided victory by the Democratic Party, both Barack Obama and leading congressional Democrats are making it clear in advance that a popular repudiation of the Bush administration will not determine the policies of an Obama White House or Democratic Congress. Having capitalized on popular hatred for President George Bush and mobilized working and young people on the basis of calls for “change” and “new politics” and invocations of the “fierce urgency of now,” Obama and the Democratic leadership are taking pains to reassure the ruling elite that if they win the election, they will carry out a thoroughly conventional and conservative agenda that upholds the interests of the financial aristocracy.

The mantra of spokesman after spokesman is that the Democrats should not “overreach,” that they should disavow “one-party rule,” and that bipartisan consensus should be the goal of the new administration. They are, in other words, repudiating the most fundamental precept of democracy—that the decision made by the voters on Election Day should determine public policy. Tens of millions of people are going to vote for Obama in the hope that this will lead to a rapid end to the war in Iraq and to domestic policies that promote jobs and decent living standards, as opposed to the unrestrained profiteering by big business and the wealthy fostered by the Bush administration.

The policy of the incoming administration will not be guided by these popular illusions, however, but by the reality of a worldwide financial crisis, a deepening slump in the United States, and the ongoing resistance to imperialist military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A principal concern of Obama and his key strategists is that a large-scale Democratic victory will arouse popular expectations that they have no intention of meeting. The disavowal of any political mandate in Tuesday’s voting was spelled out by the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, in an appearance as an Obama surrogate on the NBC Sunday interview program “Meet the Press.” Program host Tom Brokaw asked Kerry about statements from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, that Obama should move rapidly on tax cuts for middle-income and low-income families, health care reform and a substantive program to promote alternative energy.

Asked how he would pay for such policies, Rangel had replied, “Don’t ask me where the money will come from. I’m going to go to the same place that Paulson went”—referring to the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street authored by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Brokaw asked Kerry, “Is that responsible fiscal policy?” The senator responded, “I don’t agree with all of that and nor does Barack Obama. Barack Obama is the person running for president and he’s made it very clear we’re going to have to restore fiscal responsibility to Washington.”

Kerry added that Obama would seek significant Republican input and involvement in his administration. “He’s going to govern in a way that brings the country together, and no matter what our majority, he’s going to seek to reach a broader consensus because that’s the only way we can govern America at this time.” The senator suggested that the Democrats would not seek to use their majority to push through policies opposed by the Republicans. “We don’t need to pass things by 51 votes or 60 votes,” he said, referring to the Senate. “We need to build 85-vote majorities.”

This statement deserves serious consideration. Insistence on “85-vote majorities” in the Senate means giving the Republican minority veto power over government policy. It amounts to a repudiation of any conception of democracy. If the Democrats win on Tuesday, it will be because of broad popular sentiment for a reversal of the policies of war and social reaction pursued for the past eight years by Bush. But Kerry insists that it would be wrong for the Democrats to govern as though they had a mandate.

The anti-democratic character of this stance was underscored as Kerry voiced his agreement with comments by former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey, who declared recently: “By my lights, the primary threat to the success of a President Obama will come from some Democrats… emboldened by the size of their congressional majority… Obama will need to communicate the following to Congress, in no uncertain terms: The Democrats have not won a mandate for all their policies. Rather, the American people have resoundingly registered their frustration with a failed status quo, and the next president must chart a new, less partisan course.”

Such a position is in stark contrast to the way the Republicans governed after Bush was installed in the White House in 2000 by the Supreme Court. Although Bush had lost the popular vote to his Democratic opponent Al Gore, and the Republicans had far smaller majorities in the House and Senate than the Democrats will enjoy after November 4, the incoming administration boasted that the election had delivered it 100 percent of the power.

Bush proceeded to make policy accordingly, ramming through (with significant Democratic support) massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and then embarking on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a host of other policies that were widely opposed by the American public.

Kerry’s remarks are an indication that an incoming Democratic administration will do as the Democrats did after their sweeping victory in the 2006 congressional elections, which was propelled largely by popular hostility to the war in Iraq. The newly installed Democratic majorities in the House and Senate pledged to work with President Bush on a bipartisan basis. The new House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, immediately ruled out any effort to impeach Bush and eventually agreed to continue funding the Iraq war throughout the remainder of Bush’s presidency.

The comments by Kerry and other Democratic spokesmen underscore the essentially fraudulent character of the entire 2008 election. Despite large increases in voter turnout and widespread involvement by new layers of the population, particularly youth and students, the American people will end up serving as little more than extras in a conflict within the ruling elite. Once Election Day is past, Obama will put “hope” and “change” back in his briefcase and go about his real business: defending the interests of corporate America.

The Democrats responded with alacrity to the danger of a meltdown in the financial markets, turning over trillions in public funds to bail out the banks and speculators. The same political figures will turn to working people after the election and tell them that there is no money to provide health care, jobs, education and other social benefits, especially given the need to spend even more for wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Max Keiser on current (Laundering) $700 Bn Bailout
Max Keiser: “Remember, these congressmen all are huge stock owners in all these banks and corporations. American congress has been co-opted by the corpocracy in America; I don’t really believe that they are speaking absolutely in the best interest of the American people; they’re speaking in their own self interest. John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi, for example, have huge stock positions in the very companies that are suppose to be subjected to some kind of oversight….” Max says there will be NO election in November. See Video

When everyone’s attention was focusing on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s less-than-reassuring interview about foreign policy with ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson, the Republican nominee for vice president was off delivering a speech in which she suggested a dramatically greater ignorance of recent history and international affairs than was on display in the interview. Speaking at Alaska’s Fort Wainwright on Thursday, where she hailed the combat deployment of her son’s Army unit to Iraq as a “righteous cause,” Palin explicitly and repeatedly renewed the discredited claim that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was initiated as a necessary and credible response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “You’ll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans,” Palin told the departing soldiers. More

Russia ranks the eighth in the list of the U.S. creditors, according to Finance magazine. The RF share in the U.S. state debt was 2.5 percent ($65.3 billion) as of June 30, 2008. Japan ($583 billion) and China ($503 billion, less the debt to Hong Kong and Macao) are the key creditors for the United States, accounting for over 40 percent of the state debt on aggregate. What’s more, the debt to China goes up by 25 percent a year.

Other major creditors of the United States are Britain, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland, states of Caribbean offshore zone and the oil-exporting states, including Venezuela, the United Arab Emirates, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman and others. With the private sector taken into account, the U.S. foreign debt totaled $13.77 trillion as of early April, while the country’s GDP is projected to equal $14.4 trillion this year. The U.S. foreign debt didn’t exceed $6.95 trillion in 2003. The share of foreign governments in the U.S. state debt widened from 52.6 percent in 2003 to 73.9 percent in 2007.
www.kommersant.com

Source: Russia Today
Russia will not be isolated because it protected its citizens and upheld its peacekeeping mission, the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said. In an interview on German TV, Putin suggested that if Russia had not responded to Georgian aggression, there could have been a tragedy along the scale of what happened in the former Yugoslavia. “I think a country like Russia, that protected its citizens, and fulfilled its peacekeeping duties, won’t be held in isolation, no matter what our partners think within the limits of their bloc. Europe and the U.S. are not the whole world,” he said.

He recalled the Srebrenica massacre, when thousands were killed when Dutch peacekeepers didn’t intervene in the Balkan war. The Prime Minister insisted that the Georgian government should be held responsible for its action. “Speaking about the Georgian leadership, people who wreck the territorial integrity and national identity of their country with their actions shouldn’t be ruling that country, be it big or small. They should resign straight away,” he said.

”Of course, it’s up to them, but we all remember the precedents that we have in history. Let’s remember how U.S. troops entered Iraq, and what they did with Saddam Hussein for destroying several Shiite villages. Here, ten Ossetian villages were destroyed right out,” Putin told ARD TV.

“Aren’t you aware of what’s been going on in Georgia in the last few years? The mysterious death of Prime Mnister Zhvania, fighting with the opposition, the violent dispersal of protest demonstrations, holding a national election during a practical state of emergency, and now this criminal action in South Ossetia with many casualties. You call it a democratic country, negotiating with it, and thinking it should be admitted to NATO and the EU?” Putin said the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict should be dealt within the frame of international law.

“We don’t have any special rules of our own by which we are going to play. We want everybody to play by the same rules. These are called international law. But we don’t want anyone manipulating them - playing it one way in one region, and another way in another region, to suit their own interests. We want to have the same rules for everyone, which would take into account the interests of all members of the international community”. Putin underlined that Russia wants neighbourly relations with other countries. “Russia isn’t out to aggravate the situation, or to put pressure on anyone. We want good neighbourly relations and partnerships with everyone,” he said.

George Galloway talks to a caller about an impending attack on Iran.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed a ban on Iraq from competing in the Beijing Games in a major blow to seven Iraqi athletes who had hoped to travel to China this August, an IOC letter said. In the letter dated July 23 and addressed to the Iraqi Minister of Youth and Sports, Jassim Mohammed Jaffer, the IOC said it was moving ahead with a ban first imposed on Iraq’s athletes last month. More

They’re worried about $8000 while a U.S. Army officer and his wife collected $9 million in bribes and Halliburton and KBR steal billions of Iraqi funds.

It is a politician’s dream: Handing out cold, hard cash to people on the street as they plead for help. Iraq’s prime minister has been doing just that in recent weeks, doling out Iraqi dinars as an aide trails behind, keeping a tally. The handouts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a handful of other top officials are authorized — as long as each goes no higher than about $8,000, and the same people don’t get them twice. Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security. More

(Reuters) - Iraq will not accept any security agreement with the United States unless it includes dates for the withdrawal of foreign forces, the government’s national security adviser said on Tuesday. The comments by Mowaffaq al-Rubaie underscore the U.S.-backed government’s hardening stance toward a deal with Washington that will provide a legal basis for U.S. troops to operate when a U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. More

Gore Vidal: …Congress has never been more cowardly, nor more corrupt. All Bush has do is to make sure certain amounts of money go in the direction of certain important congressmen and that’s end of any serious investigation. After all, one of the bravest members of Congress is Denis Kucinich who brought the article of impeachment in to the well of the House of Representatives.

Former congressman Curt Weldon is helping broker deals between Russian and Ukranian weapons suppliers and the Iraqi and Libyan governments as part of his new job with a private American defense consulting firm, Wired.com has learned. Weldon, who is currently being investigated by the FBI over alleged corruption during his time in office, visited Libya in March to discuss a possible military deal, according to a letter describing the trip from Weldon to Defense Solutions CEO Timothy Ringgold. In May, Weldon, together with Ringgold and another company representative, traveled to Moscow to discuss working with Russia’s weapons-export agency on arms sales to the Middle East. More

By Bill Moyers & Michael Winship
Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn’t a war about oil. That’s cynical and simplistic, they said. It’s about terror and al Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire, and ashes. And now the bottom turns out to be….the bottom line. It is about oil.

Alan Greenspan said so last fall. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve, safely out of office, confessed in his memoir, “…Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” He elaborated in an interview with the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, “If Saddam Hussein had been head of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands, our response to him would not have been as strong as it was in the first gulf war.”

Remember, also, that soon after the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, told the press that war was our only strategic choice. “…We had virtually no economic options with Iraq,” he explained, “because the country floats on a sea of oil.” More

Source: mathaba.net
The US military has constructed four advanced bases 20 miles from Iraq’s border with Iran, a senior Iraqi police officer has announced. The bases, equipped with missile launch pads, have been set up over the past four months on the Iraq-Iran border; Iraqi al-Noor newspaper quoted the official as saying. He added that one of the bases has been located 30 km (20 miles) from the first border town with Iran and houses remote-controlled launching pads as well as radar systems similar to ones used in Kuwait during the first Persian Gulf war.

“The bases do not serve military intentions and its staff would not be military personnel.” According to the official, the bases are only precautionary measures in case of a military strike against Israel by Iran. A team consisting of high-profile US marines, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) alongside Pentagon experts oversee the bases.
Also See:
More signs of preparations for attacking Iran

BUZZFLASH
A U.S. Army officer and his wife pled guilty to charges in connection with $9 million in bribes collected in exchange for contracts to provide supplies to troops serving in the Iraq war. John Cockerham pled guilty in a closed hearing on Jan. 31, according to a press release from the Justice Department Tuesday. He faces up to 40 years in prison and as much as $1 million in fines on several counts of bribery, conspiracy and money laundering. His wife, charged only with money laundering, faces 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

“Major Cockerham’s job was to provide supplies to our troops serving in Iraq. Instead of acting in the best interests of his fellow soldiers, he steered contracts to those willing to pay him bribes,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich. “Our men and women in uniform deserve better.” The couple was indicted in August 2007 and jailed in the Central Texas Federal Detention Facility in San Antonio because they were both deemed flight risks. In an affidavit from July 2007, John Cockerham admitted to securing only $1 million, and said he intended to use it to build a church. The two are now fully cooperating with authorities in the case. More

We Americans dismiss or apologize for annihilation and genocide in our own country as well. Our country was founded on the decimation of the North American Indian population and built on the backs of abducted slaves. Neither do we speak of the campaign of massive death and destruction unleashed in Latin America. It’s all filed away and justified in a Monroe Doctrine kind of mindset.

New York Times
According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed. Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.” More

“I think people are becoming more aware of these guns or butter questions,” said Gary Gillespie, “But when you talk about $720 million a day, even people who work on this issue are shocked by the number and shocked by what could have been done with that money.”

Extended bonus scene from the new documentary ‘Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers’ Ben Carter, a former Halliburton/KBR water purification specialist, discusses discovering Halliburton was providing dangerously contaminated water to troops, and the serious long-term implications.

Idiot!
MESEBERG, Germany (AP) — President Bush on Wednesday raised unprompted the possibility of a military strike against Tehran’s presumed nuclear weapons ambitions, speaking bullishly on Iran even as he admitted having been unwise to do so previously about Iraq.

Bush’s host in two days of meetings at a baroque castle, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, made clear her views on the saber-rattling - however subtle - without directly countering her guest. “I very clearly pin my hopes on diplomatic efforts,” Merkel said, reflecting the deeply held European opinion that military action against Iran is nearly unthinkable.

Iran’s leader weighed in, too. Speaking before thousands in the central Iranian city of Shahr-e-Kord, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Bush “won’t be able to harm even one centimeter of the sacred land of Iran” and promised continued defiance over Iran’s nuclear activities. Iran says it is enriching uranium to generate electricity, not build a bomb - a claim the West doubts is true. More

For every solder killed or physically wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan, some 10 others come home psychically scarred. The Pentagon has diagnosed roughly 40,000 troops with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since 2003, and tens of thousands of others are dealing with it on their own or ultimately will be diagnosed.

With the war taking such a heavy psychological toll, some inside the military are starting to ask if men and women who become mentally injured in the service of their country deserve the Purple Heart. To some traditionalists, the idea is absurd on its face, but it is not a theoretical debate —the Pentagon is now weighing a change in policy that would make PTSD, in a term only the military could invent, a “qualifying wound” for the medal. More

Iran’s supreme leader told visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Monday that the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq was the biggest obstacle to its development as a united country. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hit out at the “occupiers” in Iraq at a time when Baghdad is negotiating with the United States on a new agreement aimed at giving a legal basis for U.S. troops to stay in Iraq after December 31, when their U.N. mandate expires.

“The presence of occupiers in Iraq, particularly the U.S. armed forces … is the main obstacle to unity in Iraq,” state radio quoted Khamenei, Shi’ite Iran’s top authority, as saying. He accused them of using their military and security powers to interfere in Iraq’s internal affairs but that the “Americans’ dreams” in the Middle East country would not be realized. More

Several soldiers who have returned from combat zones discuss the widespread practice of using “drop weapons” to cover up the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also see: Winter Soldier on the hill

The senate report is out and the proof is there. The Bush Administration LIED the USA into war in Iraq. McCain went right along with them.

The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.

US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday. More

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors

Independent
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country. More

It’s clear the Iraqis don’t want US military presence in their country so there’s no reason for a gradual withdrawal of US troops; we can pull them all out at one time.
Press TV
Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi has declared his country’s opposition to a proposed security agreement with the United States. Al-Hashemi who wound up his five-day visit to Jordan on Monday said that “There is an Iraqi national consensus to reject the draft agreement” which is being discussed by Baghdad and Washington, DPA reported.

He was responding to questions about a draft agreement that was reportedly reached between the Iraqi government and the United States for regulating the US military presence in Iraq after 2008. Iraq’s most revered Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also objected to the security accord and reiterated that he would not allow Iraq to sign such a deal with “the US occupiers” as long as he was alive. More

IRAQ is interested in buying sophisticated French weaponry to help re-equip its military as it moves to take over security duties from coalition forces, a government spokesman said today. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki raised the issue in talks with visiting French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, who was on a two-day visit to Iraq, his second in nine months. Much of Iraq’s air force and military equipment was destroyed during the 2003 US-led invasion. The army, which relies on US military firepower in combating militants, has a few Soviet-era battle tanks and armoured personnel carriers. More

Photo from a second story
PROTESTS are expected to get under way in Iraq against a deal between Baghdad and Washington over the US’s long-term military role in the country. Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia leader of the Mahdi Army, has called for the demonstrations after Friday prayers to pressure the Iraqi government into abandoning the proposed agreement.

Washington wants the Iraqi government to provide a legal framework for US troops to remain in Iraq beyond the expiration of a UN mandate in December. Officials from Washington told Al Jazeera they expect to finalise the deal by the end of July.

Sheikh Salah Obaidi, spokesman for al-Sadr’s bloc in parliament, said the call for protests is not a “threat” to the Iraqi government, but a “warning”. Al-Sadr on Tuesday warned the government against signing the agreement, saying “it is against the interests of the Iraqi people”. More

Photo jurvetson
McClatchy
The U.S. military confirmed Thursday that a Marine in Fallujah passed out coins with a Gospel verse on them to Sunni Muslims, a military spokesman in the Iraqi city said. The man was immediately removed from the checkpoint and reassigned. The coins angered residents who said they felt that the American troops, whom they consider occupiers, were also acting as Christian missionaries in a predominantly Muslim nation. On one side, the coin read, “Where will you spend eternity?” and on the other, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16.” More