Guarding the TruthFemale former civilian guard at Nazi concentration camp speaks out. The story doesn't explicitly make the connection to present-day wartime prison guards and soldiers, but it's inevitable. "'So many of them came for such banal reasons -- to get out of their parents' house, make money, maybe get a man. We have to try to understand these women -- and yet at the same time not understand the fact that they stayed.'"..."Even when police were explicitly excused from the mass slaughter of Jews, without adverse consequences, no more than 10 of 400 refused to shoot. 'You realize with horror...that it was easier to decide to participate in mass murder than to break away from the dominant group.'"

Alan Maass: War Crimes and Hunting Misdemeanors: "all the qualities we've come to expect from Cheney and the Bush administration--arrogance, obsessive secrecy and sleazy attempts to avoid blame for anything that goes wrong."

Secrecy News: "The idea that the government can penalize the receipt of proscribed information, and not just its unauthorized disclosure, is one that characterizes authoritarian governments, not mature democracies.The idea that the government can penalize the receipt of proscribed information, and not just its unauthorized disclosure, is one that characterizes authoritarian governments, not mature democracies."

At Spy Agencies, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Declassification in Reverse: The Pentagon and the U.S. Intelligence Community's Secret Historical Document Reclassification Program: "many of the recently withdrawn documents contain information which could easily be construed as embarrassing to the U.S. intelligence community."

The White House's Chilling Effect: "how is it possible this information wasn't sought and considered before the fact?"

Foreign Affairs - Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq - Paul R. Pillar: "During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case."

- toledoblade.com - The Universe of Tom Noe

US faces limited options in trade fight with China - Yahoo! News

Telegraph | News | Rents in Baghdad's Green Zone are now a match for Mayfair: "perks include views of Saddam Hussein's old palaces and a personal Iraqi shopper to avoid the need for death-defying grocery trips."

Robertson Cancels Speech at Convention

U.S. church alliance: Washington is 'raining down terror' with Iraq war, other policies - Yahoo! News

The Blog | Steve Martin: Cheney Shoots Three Presidents in Oval Office Mishap | The Huffington Post