…Despite the diplomatic efforts, Rumsfeld did not retreat from his assessment of Iran. In doing so, Russia and China came under criticism for allowing Iran’s involvement in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The group, which includes Russia, China and four Central Asian nations, was founded to build confidence among the member nations and grapple with militant Islamic groups.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was invited to the annual summit in Shanghai this month. Iran is an observer to group and has applied for full membership.

Rumsfeld said he finds it “passing strange” to bring the “leading terrorist nation in the world into an organization that says it’s against terror.”
cbs2chicago.com

Ah the irony…

Iran bomb ‘within next 10 years’
Iran resumed enrichment of uranium this year but remains a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and maintains that its activities are aimed only at energy production.

However in his interview with the BBC, Mr Negroponte said: “[Iran] seems to be determined to develop nuclear weapons.

“We don’t have a clear-cut knowledge but the estimate we have made is some time between the beginning of the next decade and the middle of the next decade they might be in a position to have a nuclear weapon, which is a cause of great concern.”

Mr Negroponte also accused Iran of being the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism.

…BASRA – A car bomb in the southern city of Basra killed at least 28 people and wounded 62, police said. Police sources said the bomb exploded near a market in the centre of the city.
BAGHDAD – A Russian embassy employee was killed in Baghdad and four others kidnapped, Russia’s Foreign Ministry and police in the capital said.
BAGHDAD – Police found 22 bodies in different parts of Baghdad with bullet wounds and signs of torture, police said.
BAQUBA – Six policemen were killed and two wounded when gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in central Baquba 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
KIRKUK – Gunmen shot dead a civilian in central Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
NEAR BAQUBA – Police said they found eight severed heads by the side of a road near Baquba. Documents at the scene indicated that one of them belonged to Sunni preacher Abdulazeez Hameed al-Mashhadani of a mosque in Tarmiya 30 km (20 miles) north of Baghdad.
BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi army patrol in central Baghdad, wounding two civilians, police said.
BAGHDAD – Two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in eastern Baghdad, police said.
BAQUBA – Gunmen killed three people in an automobile spare parts shop in Baquba, police said.
KIRKUK – Police found the body of a woman beside a highway northwest of Kirkuk.
alertnet.org

The head of the Iraqi branch of Al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has called for the disarmament of Lebanon’s Hizbullah, according to an audio message posted on the Internet.

…In Thursday’s message, Zarqawi called on fellow Sunnis to reject any reconciliation with “infidel” Shiites, saying: “O Sunnis! Prepare to get rid of the infidel snakes and their poison … and don’t listen to those advocating an end to sectarianism and calling for national unity. This is a weapon to get you to surrender,” he said.
dailystar.com

‘Zarqawi’ has apparently been promoted to Iran policy spokesman for the US. And for the record, some of us remember that when the formation of ‘al Qaida in Iraq’ was announced, it was said by the mainstream press that it bore no relation with the other ‘al Qaida’ besides the unfortunate choice of name. If ‘Zarqawi’ is pushing a Sunni jihad against Shiites, how could he be a pal of Osama? Of course, both exist in the same twilight zone of possible but unlikely reality…

…”I don’t like Americans. They are arrogant, they are selfish and they act in a manner quite opposite to our traditions,” said Matin Rahimi, an employee of the national airline Ariana.

“Whoever says they are here to help us, I don’t believe them,” he said.
news.yahoo.com

The day that changed Afghanistan
…”I’ve been in Kabul for nine months and there has never been anything like this before. There is a real feeling in the air that today Kabul changed. There has been a lot of fighting in the south but this has been mainly between the militias and the American forces … I’ve spoken to friends who work in Iraq and they say that there was one day when it all changed. That could be the case here … They [Afghans] have realized that they can take on the police and take on the Americans – they could easily do it again.”

…Normally, American camps in Iraq are almost suburban, with their coffee shops and polite soldiers who idle away their rest hours playing computer games and discussing girls back home.

Haditha was shockingly different – a feral place where the marines hardly washed; a number had abandoned the official living quarters to set up separate encampments with signs ordering outsiders to keep out; and a daily routine punctured by the emergency alarm of the dam itself with its antiquated and crumbling machinery.
telegraph.co.uk

Probe Clears U.S. Troops
A military investigation into allegations that American troops intentionally killed civilians in Ishaqi, a village north of Baghdad, has cleared them of misconduct, the US said, even though it acknowledged the deaths of up to 13 Iraqis in the March raid.

Gen. Caldwell also acknowledged there were “possibly up to nine collateral deaths” in addition to the four Iraqi deaths that the military announced at the time of the raid. The results of the investigation were released after questions were raised about the original US report as television stations aired AP Television News footage of a row of dead children in the aftermath of the raid. The probe was part of US investigations into possible misconduct by American troops in at least three separate areas of Iraq. Besides Haditha and Ishaqi, seven Marines and a Navy Corpsman could face murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges in the April shootings of an Iraqi man, west of Baghdad.

reuters.com”>Iraq rejects US probe clearing troops of killings
…Police in Ishaqi say five children, four women and two men were shot in the head, and that the bodies, with hands bound, were dumped in one room before the house was blown up.

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) – Bolivia’s President Evo Morales calls him “my brother” but elsewhere in Latin America, political leaders are finding out that being seen as a close ally of Hugo Chavez can be harmful for their careers.

As a tripartite alliance between Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba began taking shape after Morales took office in January, there have been signs of irritation in the rest of the continent with the way the Venezuelan leader is trying to convert Latin America to his populist, anti-U.S. agenda.
news.yahoo.com

Well I would say is that in the long-term the US is the master of the toxic embrace.

ABUJA, Nigeria — The U.S. presence in the Gulf of Guinea is said to be a result of the U.S. Navy protecting Nigerian oil plants from terrorists, Nigeria’s The Guardian reported.

A report published in the Nigerian newspaper Wednesday said that the U.S. Navy was patrolling the Gulf of Guinea, home to Nigeria’s biggest oil field, Bonga Project, to prevent the field from being targeted “by terrorists and other maritime criminals.”
wpherald.com

The great grandson of the Apache leader Geronimo has appealed to the big chief in the White House to help recover the remains of his famous relative – purportedly stolen more than 90 years ago by a group of students – including the President’s grandfather.

The story that members of Yale University’s secret Skull and Bones society took the remains – including a skull and femur – from the burial site in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, has long been part of the university’s lore. But a university historian recently recovered a letter from 1918 that appears to support the story that members of the society did indeed take the remains while serving with a group of army volunteers from Yale, stationed at the fort during the First World War.

The students – among them, Mr Bush’s grandfather Prescott – apparently returned with the remains and kept them in their society’s headquarters at the university in New Haven, Connecticut. The society’s initiation rite reportedly involves kissing a skull, referred to as “Geronimo”, usually held in a glass case.
commondreams.org

…Over the past year Swiss officials have requested at least four times that the Bush administration share documents and evidence related to Khan’s nuclear black market. But the United States has never responded.

Swiss officials maintain it needs U.S. assistance in order to convict three Swiss men accused of helping AQ Khan set up a secret Malaysian factory to make components for gas centrifuges.

Last week U.S. weapons expert David Albright testified before Congress and said, “I find this lack of cooperation frankly embarrassing to the United States and to those of us who believe that the United States should take the lead in bringing members of the Khan network to justice for arming our enemies with nuclear weapons.”

Albright has floated one theory as to why the Bush administration won’t help the Swiss investigators. He says the three Swiss men accused of bring part of AQ Khan’s underground network may have been working for the CIA and being paid by the U.S. government.

The CIA has refused to comment on the allegation but former CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged the Agency had penetrated Khan’s network during a speech at Georgetown University in February 2004.
democracynow.org

MASKIOT, West Bank — Israel has begun laying the foundations for a new Jewish settlement deep in the West Bank – breaking a promise to Washington while strengthening its hold on a stretch of desert it wants to keep as it draws its final borders.
nwsource.com

It occurs to me there wouldn’t need to be an Israel lobby if Israeli interests just naturally meshed with those of the U.S., even the kooks.

The rabbi who pricks Israel’s conscience
Rabbi Arik Ascherman has spent years planting himself atop doomed Palestinian homes, reading extracts of international law to Israeli forces as they demolish the buildings beneath his feet.
More recently, the American-born rabbi, with a knitted blue skull cap pinned to his woolly black hair, has been at the forefront of resistance to the construction of what Israel calls its “security barrier” penning in and carving up West Bank villages.

Along the way he has been a persistent embarrassment to the Israeli government as a fervent Zionist who claims to reflect the true soul of the Jewish state by resisting its oppression of Palestinians. He has been arrested many times but this week, for the first time, the 45-year-old director of Rabbis for Human Rights was convicted for his form of resistance.