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BAGHDAD, Iraq - While American politicians and generals in Washington debate the possibility of civil war in Iraq, U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad daily say it has already begun. Army troops in and around Baghdad interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open...

NEW YORK A new Gallup poll released today revealed another upward bump in the number of Amercians who now want a complete U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq in the next 12 months. That number now stands at 55%, with 19% supporting immediate withdrawal and another 36% wanting it done by August 2007. "While the percentage of Americans who favor a withdrawal of all U.S. troops either now or within a year is not a supermajority, it is a majority, suggesting that the Democratic leadership is speaking to an issue that resonates with many Americans," Frank Newport, director of the Gallup...

More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. The national survey of 1,010 adults also found that anger against the federal government is at record levels, with 54 percent saying they "personally are more angry" at the government than they used to be. Suspicions that the 9/11 attacks were "an inside job" - the common phrase used by conspiracy theorists on the Internet...

WASHINGTON, June 22 - Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials. The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly...

WE ARE IN the first war of the Information Age, and we have a critical advantage over our enemy: We are far better at gathering intelligence. It's an advantage we must utilize, and it's keeping us safe. But every time classified national security information is leaked, our ability to gather information on those who would do us harm is eroded. We suffered a setback Thursday when USA Today ran a front-page story alleging that the National Security Agency was collecting domestic phone records. This article hurt our efforts to protect Americans by giving the enemy valuable insights into the Terrorist...

Lucia Newman, CNN's first and only correspondent based in Havana, has jumped to the new Al-Jazeera International network, which plans to begin operations later this spring. Newman will be based in Al-Jazeera's bureau in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Journalist Mariana Sanchez, a former news anchor for Panamericana Television, will also work for Al-Jazeera International in a Caracas, Venezuela bureau, the network said on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the network is still targeting a launch in late May, spokeswoman Rana Jazayerli said. She labeled as misleading some reports that circulated last week that the network would have trouble meeting that target. The English-language network...

Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. apparently was given quite a chilly reception in his annual state-of-the-Times address yesterday. Newspaper Guild members have already had to give up their raises for the year to rescue their embattled healthcare coverage, and 500 employees are losing their jobs. Floyd Norris, a business columnist, was said by media blogs such as Gawker to be particularly intense in grilling Sulzberger on why he would not give back his hefty million-dollar bonus this year to save jobs.

AN AIR BASE IN IRAQ - The U.S. Air Force has begun moving heavily armed AC-130 airplanes — the lethal "flying gunships" of the Vietnam War — to a base in Iraq as commanders search for new tools to counter the Iraqi resistance, The Associated Press has learned. An AP reporter saw the first of the turboprop-driven aircraft after it landed at the airfield this week. Four are expected. The Iraq-based special forces command controlling the AC-130s, the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, said it would have no comment on the deployment. But the plan's general outline was confirmed...

Journalist Judith Miller and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald squared off in court again yesterday, with a lot less public attention than last year, when the dogged special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case had the then-New York Times reporter jailed for 85 days to force her to disclose the identity of an anonymous source. Yesterday appearance in Manhattan before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was another instance of Mr. Fitzgerald trying to find out about Ms. Miller's sources, this time by looking at the New York Times's phone records, and prosecutors raised the prospect of pressing...

Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller turned up at a federal appeals court in Manhattan yesterday for arguments over whether the feds have a right to subpoena her phone records as part of a probe into Islamic charities and terror financing. The New York Times is seeking to stop authorities from gaining access to records for calls that Miller and another reporter, Philip Shenon, made to sources in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

In today's article on the investigation of the leaks underlying the New York Times's December 16 disclosure of the NSA terrorist surveillance program, the Times finally acknowledges its own legal jeopardy: [C]onservatives have attacked the disclosure of classified information as an illegal act, demanding a vigorous investigative effort to find and prosecute whoever disclosed classified information. An upcoming article in Commentary magazine suggests that the newspaper may be prosecuted for violations of the Espionage Act and says, "What The New York Times has done is nothing less than to compromise the centerpiece of our defensive efforts in the war on...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 — Federal agents have interviewed officials at several of the country's law enforcement and national security agencies in a rapidly expanding criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding a New York Times article published in December that disclosed the existence of a highly classified domestic eavesdropping program, according to government officials. The investigation, which appears to cover the case from 2004, when the newspaper began reporting the story, is being closely coordinated with criminal prosecutors at the Justice Department, the officials said. People who have been interviewed and others in the government who have been briefed on the...

Tired of seeing the New York Times getting all the headlines with their treason, the Washington Post has decided to join in the fun of betraying its country's most vital national secrets.This self-styled military expert, William Arkin, must surely be aware it is a gross and illegal violation of national security to release code names. (Ask Kissinger about "Umbra.") Of course that didn't stop him from writing a book that does just that a year ago, either.In fact, Mr. Arkin considers himself more of an activist than a journalist. (Not that there is any discernible difference in our one party...

HOW THE NYTIMES IS RINGING IN 2006 By Michelle Malkin   ·   December 31, 2005 10:45 PM Yes, it's New Year's Eve. And since there's no rest for the NYTimes, I'm not taking it easy tonight either. You see, NYTimes' reporter James Risen has been a busy bee over the holidays. The co-author of the infamous Chicken Little opus exposing the NSA special collection program to monitor international communications between suspected al Qaeda operatives and their contacts will be launching his new book, State of War, on January 3. Turns out the publisher of Risen's new book, which includes a discussion...

The probe is the latest in a series of controversial investigations into leaks of classified information during the Bush administration, including the disclosure of a CIA agent's identity that has resulted in criminal charges against former vice presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The Justice Department has also opened a probe into whether classified information was illegally disclosed to The Washington Post, which reported on a network of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Just announced on Fox News, the Justice Department is going to investigate leaks pertaining to Goverment Wiretapping and Security programs.

WASHINGTON — Federal law-enforcement officials said Friday that FBI agents have secretly monitored radiation levels at Islamic mosques, businesses and homes for several years in large cities to determine whether nuclear or chemical bombs were being assembled. The officials said no suspicious radiation levels have been found. The disclosure, after the revelation last week that the government has secretly spied on U.S. citizens without court permission, angered a number of U.S. Muslim leaders. They cited a Supreme Court ruling three months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in which the justices rejected such government monitoring. "All Americans should be concerned...

As I viewed this morning's "news", I noticed that the Legacy Media has manufactured a new Bush piñata just in time for Christmas: "illegal" monitoring of Muslim mosques, businesses and homes in the D.C. area for nuclear radiation. All of us here on Free Republic know, of course, that this is merely the weekly installment of the Legacy Democrat Media's thrilling serial series Bush Sucks, Bush Lied, And Bush Is Corrupt. Upon further reflection, though, I began to realize something. The American Left who apparently considers this radiation monitoring to be the newest outrage that they can beat the "illegal...

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality...