[CarlV]

However, the reality is much different from what Bush and Cheney would have you believe. The fact of the matter is that the Bush administration ignored hard evidence from its top intelligence officials between April and September of 2001 about an impending attack by al-Qaeda on US soil. There's no chance that the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping initiative would have saved the lives of 3,000 American citizens if an intelligence memo titled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside US" that President Bush received a month before 9/11 couldn't move Bush to take such threats seriously.

Since the New York Times broke the domestic spying story last month, the Bush administration has launched a full-scale publicity campaign aimed at convincing an unsuspecting public that the program is legal and has saved thousands of lives. It's the administration's attempt to control the news cycle.

But to suggest that the 9/11 attacks could have been avoided if the NSA had had domestic surveillance powers is outrageous.

Simply put, terrorism was not a priority for the Bush administration during the first nine months of 2001. As former Bush administration counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke told the 9/11 Commission investigating the attacks in 2004: "To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you."

Clarke served as a White House counter-terrorism official in three presidential administrations.
http://truth-out.org/archive/compone...d-911-warnings

The number of United States troops who have died fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had passed 6,800 at the beginning of 2015.

They died in a host of ways. The causes of death include rocket-propelled grenade fire and the improvised explosive devices that have been responsible for roughly half of all deaths and injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their deaths were also the result of vehicle crashes, electrocutions, heatstroke, friendly fire, and suicides in theater.

Official Pentagon numbers do not include the many troops who return home and kill themselves as a result of psychological wounds such as PTSD. The DOD does not report suicides among non-active duty reservists. However, the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has released data on suicides among all veterans, in a comprehensive February 2013 report. The VA issued a public statement that it is using this data in order to implement rigorous suicide prevention measures.

The military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have also produced fatalities among large numbers of private contract workers. A full and accurate accounting of contractor deaths has not yet been done by the Pentagon. Over 6,900 contractors working for the US have been killed in the two war zones. The true number is likely much larger: the majority of US contractors are the citizens of other countries, many of whose deaths appear not to have been reported.

http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/c...ilitary/killed

Researchers estimated there were 405,000 excess Iraqi deaths attributable to the war through mid-2011.

They also attempted to account for deaths missed because families had fled the country, and estimated 55,805 total deaths, bringing the total to nearly 461,000.

About 70 percent of Iraq deaths from 2003-2011 were violent in nature, with most caused by gunshots, followed by car bombs and other explosions, said the study.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4102855.html

Nice, huh?


Carl