War Glance
Israeli forces pressed on with their offensive in Gaza today despite a UN security council resolution calling for an "immediate" and "durable" ceasefire.
Seven Palestinians from one family, including an infant, were killed early today, the 14th day of the conflict in Gaza, when Israeli jets bombed a five-storey building in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. There was heavy aerial bombing on the outskirts of Gaza City, and Israeli naval ships shelled Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza.
Gaza bloodshed continues despite UN calls for ceasefire
AP Gaza reporter finds hometown in rubble
I live alone in my office. My wife and two young children moved in with her father after our apartment was shattered. The neighborhood mosque, where I have prayed since I was a child, had its roof blown off. All the government buildings on my beat have been obliterated.
After days of Israeli shelling, the city and life I have known no longer exist.
Gaza City, with some 400,000 people, stopped supplying water when the fuel ran out for the power station driving the pumps. We listen to battery-run radios for news, even though the outside world watches what's happening to us on television. The Hadi grocery where we once shopped is closed. Food is scarce all over town.
Gates estimates 2009 war costs at $136 billion
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan would cost almost $136 billion for the 2009 budget year that began Oct. 1 if they continue at their current pace.
Speaking for neither his current boss, President George W. Bush — nor his future one, President-elect Barack Obama — Gates told top lawmakers in a New Year's Eve letter that the Pentagon would need nearly $70 billion more to supplement the $66 billion approved last year.
Olmert rejects French proposal for 48-hour truce - Summary
Israel rejected calls by the UN, EU and France for a ceasefire and instead prepared for what could be "long weeks of combat," as a ferocious air offensive against Hamas in he Gaza Strip entered its fourth day Tuesday. An Israeli defence official said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had proposed to Israel that it unilaterally halt its assault for 48 hours to give Hamas a chance to end its rocket and mortar attacks as well.
UN official says Israel responsible for breaking truce with Gaza
Palestinians in Gaza believed Israel had called a 48-hour lull in retaliatory attacks with Hamas when Israel Air Force warplanes launched a massive bombardment of militant installations in the Gaza Strip, a UN official said Monday.
Karen Abu Zayd, commissioner of the UN Relief and Works Agency which helps Palestinian refugees, raised the possible violation of an informal truce in a video press conference with UN reporters from her base in Gaza.
Study Criticizes Bush Approach to War Funding, Calls for Changes
President-elect Barack Obama's administration needs to monitor war spending much more closely than the current White House has, according to a new study that criticizes President Bush's approach to funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- a bill that is projected to approach nearly $1 trillion next year.
Even with declining troop numbers in Iraq, the direct price tag of the two wars could grow as high as $1.7 trillion by 2018, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments reported last week. The defense think tank's figure does not include potentially hundreds of billions more in indirect economic and social costs, such as higher oil prices and lost wages.
The war in Iraq alone has already cost more in inflation-adjusted dollars than every other U.S. war except World War II, the CSBA found.
TVNL Comment: The war was started in order to loot this nation. The same people that privatized much of the military also profit from the private military complex of corporations. They weakened the military and made them dependent on private companies. Then they started the wars. It was always about the money for some of them.
Iraq, Contracting Corruption
In exchange for a cash kickbacks and a Harley Davidson motorcycle, a U.S. Army reservist gave a contractor "sensitive information" and "fraudulently" awarded a contract to Raman International, a Cypress, Tex.-based firm, the Justice Department said in a statement.
In another fraud case, Spartan Motors and its subsidiary, Spartan Chassis, of Charlotte, Mich., recently agreed to pay the United States $6 million in fines and penalties to resolve allegations that it paid kickbacks to an employee of Force Protection to receive a subcontract to make chassis for armored vehicles for the Army, Justice reported.
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