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Special Reports Last Updated: Jun 5th, 2008 - 01:28:35


Special Reports
Iraq war costs skyrocketing, but Congress unable to scrutinize spending
By Jason Leopold

Nearly all of the $516 billion allocated by Congress to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has come in the form of emergency spending requests, a method the White House has abused, depriving Congress of the ability to scrutinize how the Pentagon spends money in the so-called global war on terror.

Apr 14, 2008, 00:18

Special Reports
'Power of the purse' best hope Dems have to change direction in Iraq
By Jason Leopold

Tuesday�s highly anticipated congressional testimony by General David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, appeared to be an exercise in futility.

Apr 10, 2008, 00:20

Special Reports
American Israeli Jeff Halper arrested for the 8th time in Jerusalem
By Eileen Fleming

JERUSALEM -- On April 3, the Associated Press in Jerusalem reported, "An Israeli wrecking crew knocked down Shadi Hamdan's home in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem in just a couple of hours, reducing the upholsterer's savings to a pile of gray rubble . . . Since 2004, Israel has leveled more than 300 homes in Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods, citing a lack of building permits. However, critics say the permits are virtually impossible to obtain and consider the demolitions part of a decades-old policy to limit Palestinian population growth in the disputed city." [1]

Apr 8, 2008, 00:17

Special Reports
White House asked DOJ how Bush could sidestep Fourth Amendment
By Jason Leopold

Last week, the Pentagon declassified an 81-page memorandum John Yoo, a former deputy in the Justice Department�s Office of Legal Counsel, drafted in March 2003 that authorized military interrogators to use brutal techniques to obtain information about terrorist plans from prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Apr 7, 2008, 00:18

Special Reports
Building a legal framework for torture
By Jason Leopold

On Jan. 17, 2003, Mary Walker, the Air Force general counsel, received an urgent memo from the Pentagon's top attorney. Attached to the classified document was a set of directives drafted two days earlier by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Apr 4, 2008, 00:42

Special Reports
Why food prices will go through the roof in coming months
By F. William Engdahl

A deadly fungus, known as Ug99, which kills wheat, has likely spread to Pakistan from Africa, according to reports. If true, that threatens the vital Asian Bread Basket including the Punjab region.

Apr 4, 2008, 00:40

Special Reports
Pigs causing illness in humans even before they�re eaten
By Martha Rosenberg

The bad news just doesn't end for the hog industry.

Apr 4, 2008, 00:38

Special Reports
The Great Lake of Gaza: A new crisis in the making
By Suzanne Baroud

In a place just a few miles from sandy beaches and soaring skyscrapers, white stone villas and sky-blue swimming pools, it seems the epitome of irony and injustice that over 1.5 million people would be subjected to drinking sewage-contaminated water. When there is such a fine line bordering wealth and poverty, privilege and need, how unsettling to realize that just a stone's throw away, mothers and fathers must nourish their families with poison. As if the occupier could not find one more creative way to torment his victim.

Apr 1, 2008, 00:38

Special Reports
A third American war crime in the making
By Paul Craig Roberts

The US Congress, the US media, the American people, and the United Nations, are looking the other way as Cheney prepares his attack on Iran.

Mar 31, 2008, 00:20

Special Reports
Classified memo reveals Iraqi prisoners as "starving"
By Jason Leopold

A classified memo written by a top military official stationed in western Iraq reveals that a prison in downtown Fallujah is so overcrowded and dirty that it does not even meet basic �minimal levels of hygiene for human beings.�

Mar 28, 2008, 00:19

Special Reports
IBM, Darrell Issa, and millions of �lost� White house emails
By Jason Leopold

At a congressional committee hearing in February, Theresa Payton, the chief information officer at the White House Office of Administration, testified that White House emails sent and received between 2003 and 2005 fell into a virtual black hole when the Bush administration transitioned from Lotus Notes to the Microsoft Outlook email exchange -- a system that apparently was incapable of copying and archiving emails from Lotus.

Mar 27, 2008, 00:20

Special Reports
Averting war with Iran: A matter of trust
By John Stanton

With approximately 10 months remaining of US President George W. Bush's second and final term of office, a nervous world wonders whether Bush will authorize a military strike on Iran to neutralize what he believes to be a nuclear weapons program camouflaged behind the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Mar 27, 2008, 00:18

Special Reports
How an unwanted guardianship cost a firefighter his freedom and his fortune
By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

Norman Baker is an American hero who has been detained against his will for more than three years.

Mar 25, 2008, 00:53

Special Reports
White House official tells judge searching for missing emails too much work
By Jason Leopold

The White House�s chief information officer said the Bush administration should not be compelled to search for millions of emails on individual computers and hard drives that may have been lost between 2003 and 2005 because it would be too expensive and require hundreds of hours of work, according to a filing the White House made with a federal court late Friday.

Mar 24, 2008, 00:56

Special Reports
Postscript to �Spitzer taken down by Mossad?�
By Jerry Mazza

In my March 14 article, Spitzer taken down by Mossad, I quoted veteran Beltway reporter Wayne Madsen who said, �Defenses sources have confirmed our March 11 report that Emperors Club VIP, the prostitution firm that entangled New York�s outgoing Governor Eliot Spitzer in a call girl ring, is viewed by US intelligence as a front for Israel�s intelligence agency, the Mossad.

Mar 21, 2008, 01:05

Special Reports
The making of "Operation Iraqi Freedom"
By Jason Leopold

The Iraq war, which was predicated on the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), has resulted in the deaths of nearly 4,000 US troops and has cost taxpayers roughly half-a-trillion dollars.

Mar 21, 2008, 01:03

Special Reports
Questionable trading practices may have led to Bear Stearns� collapse
By Jason Leopold

Last March, Scott Coren and Michael Nannizzi, analysts at Bear Stearns, issued a report upgrading the stock of New Century Financial, a company that provides subprime mortgages to low-income homebuyers, from "underperform" to "peer-perform."

Mar 20, 2008, 01:12

Special Reports
Spitzer taken down by Mossad?
By Jerry Mazza

Eliot Spitzer took on Wall Street like no other attorney general before him. As the Washington Post reported in 2004, �His targets in the past have included everyone from big Wall Street investment banks and the $7.5 trillion mutual fund industry to polluting power plants and supermarket chains that underpaid delivery workers.�

Mar 14, 2008, 00:36

Special Reports
Accused of abusing workers, animals and the environment, �Teflon� Tyson eyes business friendly China
By Martha Rosenberg

No one has ever accused Tyson Foods of being green.

Mar 14, 2008, 00:32

Special Reports
Myth of voter fraud focus of Senate hearing
By Jason Leopold

Last year, during the height of the congressional investigation into the firings of US attorneys David Iglesias and John McKay, two of the nine federal prosecutors who were ousted, revealed that they were pressured by Republicans to bring charges of voter fraud against people who intended to vote for Democrats in separate elections in New Mexico and Washington state several years ago.

Mar 11, 2008, 00:48


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