Free Republic

On Nov. 3, the day before Americans elected Barack Obama president, drug cartel henchmen murdered 58 people in Mexico......By comparison, on average 26 people -- Americans and Iraqis combined -- died daily in Iraq in 2008. Mexico's casualty list on Nov. 3 included a man beheaded in Ciudad Juarez whose bloody corpse was suspended along an overpass for hours. No one had the courage to remove the body until dark. The death toll from terrorist attacks in Mumbai two weeks ago approaches the average weekly body count in Mexico's war. ..... in Juarez, which is just across the Rio Grande...

Impaired illegal-immigrant driver triggered a crash Saturday at 6:30 am. He killed a 16-year-old girl and injured her 17-year-old brother. The students were on their way to a school band event. The illegal immigrant driving a truck turned left in front of the students sedan. Perps name is Manuel Contreras-Galdean age 32. He is in Maricopa Count Jail on a charge of manslaughter and aggravated assault. He has an immigrantion (ICE) hold on him. The girl ha massive head injuries and damage to her legs from the crash and died in the operating room.

Last week, as federal regulators seized Washington Mutual in the largest U.S. banking failure, Congress was grappling with whether to spend $700 billion of public money to fix the financial industry's troubles. Lawmakers' initial reaction to the Treasury Department's staggering request: shock. That sum amounts to about a quarter of the U.S. government's annual spending. It's more than the Pentagon's annual budget, more than the nation pays out each year in Social Security benefits and more than the federal government's cost for Medicare and Medicaid. Members of Congress then asked the questions that continue to be on many Americans' minds:...

About a dozen people showed up at St. Vincent Catholic Church in South Los Angeles to console Luis Angel Garcia's mother, view the tiny casket holding her baby and hear the funeral Mass. It took only two pallbearers to carry the casket at the end of the 30-minute service. But Luis' death has reverberated throughout Los Angeles as city officials and residents try to make sense of how a 23-day-old baby could be a victim of gang violence. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the slaying and its causes were a "top priority," and the Los Angeles Police Department initially devoted...

For 60 years they have towered over some of London's most famous thoroughfares, admired by strolling tourists and office workers. But now 12 landmark trees around Whitehall are being chopped down to be replaced by concrete barriers and bollards - for security reasons. At a time when Gordon Brown has pledged to make environmental issues one of his key priorities, the decision to chop down trees just yards from No 10 has been criticised by Tory MPs and environmental groups. Conservative environment spokesman Peter Ainsworth said he was 'depressed and unhappy' at the loss of the trees, which he said...

TROUBLE IN THE HOLY LAND Shrapnel-filled rockets used on civilians Israel documents civilian-targeted weapons from Syria, Iran Posted: August 31, 20065:00 p.m. Eastern By Jerome R. Corsi © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com School-zone sign in northern Israel shows evidence of lethal metal balls from Hezbollah rockets (photo: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Steel balls and other lethal fragments were encased in rockets from Syria and Iran that were used by Hezbollah on Israeli civilian areas during the recent war, the Israeli Ministry of Defense confirmed to WND today. Photographs of the anti-personnel "flying metal" damage done by Syrian-made 220-mm rockets fired by Hezbollah...

Eleven Israelis were killed Thursday in the war with Hizbullah: three soldiers in the ground battles, and eight civilians in the terrorists' stepped-up Katyusha rocket attacks. The news of the three separate incidents was broken all at once at approximately 4:30 PM. The army first released for publication that two soldiers had been killed in battles with Hizbullah in southern Lebanon in the course of the day. Later, it was announced that a third soldier died of his wounds at Rambam Hospital. Early hints of the news had been provided earlier with reports of "very heavy battles" in southern Lebanon....

Sometimes it seems as if United Nations Secretary General Kofi Anan isn't really of this world. For a head of the United nations he seems to exhibit a surprising otherworldliness. Today, a direct strike against a UNIFIL post in southern Lebanon by an Israeli shell killing four UN military observers has been lambasted by Anan as a deliberate attack. This accusation is without any foundation and Israel has rightly demanded an apology. UNIFIL began as an opportunity for peace, but the UN Interim Force in Lebanon has never made good on its promise. It looked on as Hizballah fortified southern...

Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah has issued an apology to the Nazareth Arab family whose two children, Rabiya and Mahmou Talouzi, were killed by a Katyusha missile. "I ask this family for forgiveness, he told Al-Jazeera. "I know apologies are insufficient and I take full responsibility. It was not intentional and the dead in Nazareth are considered martyrs like those in Lebanon, Palestine and the resistance." The Associated Press reported that the Talouzi family does not blame Nasrallah and that the boys' funeral was peppered with speeches and slogans declaring the children martys in the war against Israel. Meanwhile, in...

Eight Canadians were killed and six others seriously wounded in an Israeli air raid that hit a Lebanese town on the border with Israel on Sunday, Ottawa says. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said the wounded Canadians were in critical condition after the town of Aitaroun was hit in the fifth day of fighting between the Israeli military and the Lebanese-based militant organization Hezbollah. The victims were not immediately identified. Lebanese TV reports said some of the victims were from the same family and had come from Canada to spend the summer holidays in Aitaroun. Ottawa sends vessels to...

Spurred by new laws restricting the sales of cold remedies such as Sudafed, which contain pseudoephedrine, a necessary component of popular meth-cooking recipes, police and prosecutors across the country have been arresting convenience store clerks -- sometimes on charges that carry substantial prison sentences. In one Georgia case, authorities made mass arrests of immigrant store clerks and owners, but it's starting to look less like a criminal conspiracy and more like culturally naive foreign-born merchants simply trying to sell their merchandise. It's all a big waste of money, says the Drug Policy Alliance, which issued a press release this week...

Aug. 17 — BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana was shot dead on Sunday while working near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, witnesses said. A spokesman for Iraq's U.S.-led administration confirmed a journalist had been killed and said an investigation was under way. Witnesses said Dana, a Palestinian who has worked for Reuters for a decade, was filming outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad when he was shot. Journalists had gone to the prison after the U.S. military said a mortar bomb attack there a day before had killed six Iraqis and wounded 59. Dana's...

As the war in Iraq is debated and turned into history, the emphasis will be on the role of technology -- precision bombing, cruise missiles, decapitation strikes. That was what was new. But there was another side to the war, and it was the one that most of the fighting men and women in Iraq experienced, even if it wasn't what Americans watching at home saw: raw military might, humans killing humans. The Third Battalion, Fourth Marines was one of the rawest expressions of that might. Based in Twentynine Palms, Calif., it specializes in desert warfare, and its forces number...

A US-led War is being waged upon the Iraqi people for power lust and corporate greed. This was according to the audience and those on the podium at an anti-war rally held near the Washington Monument on Saturday Apr. 5. (GWU) Students Against the War in Iraq [SAWI] /Campus Anti-war Network [CAN] also backed simultaneous rallies in Chicago and Oakland

Ali Ismail Abbas, 12, who says he was wounded during an airstrike, lies in a hospital bed in Baghdad, April 6, 2003. Abbas was fast asleep when war shattered his life. A missile obliterated his home and most of his family, leaving him orphaned, badly burned and blowing off both his arms.

NEW DELHI (AFP) - British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in an interview broadcast Thursday, told India's national television station that civilian casualties in the Iraq war were likely to be lower than feared. In the interview with state-run Doordarshan late Wednesday, Straw also said coalition forces had not underestimated the level of resistance US and British troops would face in the conflict. "We've worked very hard to avoid civilian deaths and casualties. There will be some, very sadly, but I believe that once this military action is over the total number of civilian deaths and casualties would have been...

Hypothesis: Coalition forces will not win the war against Saddam with the current restrictions imposed on them by the media and public opinion to not engage in activities that will result in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians and coalition troops (current civilian deaths only number in the hundreds, even though thousands of tons of ordinance has been used, surely a standard never achieved before in history of warfare - I need some numbers here, things like #civilians killed per ton of ordinance dropped in past conflicts in comparison with this one). Sub-hypothesis: Saddam is taking advantage of...

Relatives say man was angry about abortion When the first of three blue body bags was carried out of the two-story house on N. 39th St. Saturday morning, screams and sobs erupted from the crowd of relatives and onlookers gathered along the yellow police tape. The wailing grew louder when a man emerged from the house cradling the last body bag in his arms. Less than half the size of the first two, this one contained the body of a 2-year-old girl. It was grim confirmation of what those standing in the cold for about three hours had known but...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq has moved missiles and other military equipment near civilian sites in recent days, mirroring similar movements in the past that signalled President Saddam Hussein was feeling threatened, a U.S. official says. Many Iraqis assume President George W. Bush is planning an attack on Baghdad to topple a leadership he says is working furiously to get its hands on weapons of mass destruction. "We are seeing some evidence that the Iraqis are moving some military assets to positions that are near civilian facilities, things like surface-to-air missiles, obviously making it harder to hit them in the...