President Barack Obama's choice to take charge of the war in Afghanistan Tuesday called "significant growth" of the Afghan army and national police the key to his strategy, but the annual cost of building and maintaining the existing Afghan force is already roughly four times larger than the entire Afghan economy.
Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is considering his nomination to lead U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, suggested that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is likely to cost American taxpayers and NATO member nations billions of dollars for many years.
New U.S. Afghan strategy will cost billions, take years
VIDEO: 87% Of U.S. Counties Have No Access To Abortion Clinic
There are three states in the country that have only one abortion clinic, Rachel Maddow reported on MSNBC last night. Others heavily restrict abortion, ban abortions in clinics or any facility that receives public funds, or ban abortion counseling or clinic recommendations. The effect, she explained, is that in 87% of all U.S. counties it is not possible to get an abortion. "Why bother making it illegal if you can just make it impossible to get?"
Why'd Obama switch on detainee photos? Maliki went ballistic
President Barack Obama reversed his decision to release detainee abuse photos from Iraq and Afghanistan after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki warned that Iraq would erupt into violence and that Iraqis would demand that U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq a year earlier than planned.
TVNL Comment: Yeah, like the pictures of these crimes will not be leaked. Get real.
Bush: I Personally Authorized Torture Of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
BUSH: One such person who gave us information was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. … And I’m in the Oval Office and I am told that we have captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the professionals believe he has information necessary to secure the country. So I ask what tools are available for us to find information from him and they gave me a list of tools, and I said are these tools deemed to be legal? And so we got legal opinions before any decision was made.
MPs' expenses scandal spreads to the US: Capitol Hill snouts also in the trough?
Politicians spending taxpayers' money to lease a 2008 luxury Lexus hybrid sedan, a digital camera and two 46-inch Sony TVs, a top-of-the-line laptop for use in hostile environments.
Representative Howard Berman - $84,000 worth of personalised calendars, printed by the US Capitol Historical Society, to be sent to his constituents
Representative Alcee Hastings - $24,730 to lease a 2008 luxury Lexus hybrid sedan
Representative Michael Turner - $1,435 for a digital camera
Eni Faleomavaega, House delegate - $2,946 for two 46-inch Sony TVs
Representative William Jefferson - $2,793 for a Panasonic Toughbook laptop
Former Vice President Dick Cheney 'a strong believer' in waterboarding
Former Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated his praise for waterboarding Al Qaeda terrorists on Monday, calling it a "well done" technique that gathered valuable information from unusually bad guys.
"I'm a strong believer in it," Cheney told a National Press Club audience. "I thought it was well done."
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Immune therapies finally working against cancer
First there was surgery, then chemotherapy and radiation. Now, doctors have overcome 30 years of false starts and found success with a fourth way to fight cancer: using the body's natural defender, the immune system.The approach is called a cancer vaccine, although it treats the disease rather than prevents it.
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Doctor Who Performed Abortions Is Shot to Death
George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who was one of the few doctors in the nation to perform late-term abortions, was shot to death on Sunday as he attended church, city officials in Wichita said.
UK forces taught torture methods
The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources.
The techniques devised in the system, called R2I - resistance to interrogation - match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.
One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: "It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn't know what they were doing."
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