happy july (wotisitgood)4

* moonietimes is reporting that there were actually four folk missing in afghanistan. that info has been hard to come by. LINK

* "An illegal group set up to hunt down Islamists and which included police officers in its ranks has been broken up by Italian authorities.
Prosecutors in the port city of Genoa said yesterday that the group was founded last year with private donations from wealthy members just after the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, which killed 191 people." LINK
what the hell is going on italy?

* "Rove's attorney, Luskin, for example, told me earlier this morning that he has been assured by special prosecutor Fitzgerald that Rove has not been a target of his grand jury investigation: "We have been assured consistently that Karl is not a target of the inquiry." Luskin said that the last such assurance from Fitzgerald office was "within the last several days."" LINK
so much noise, so little clarity.

* "Late last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists protested Cameroon's imprisonment of Eric Wirkwa Tayu, publisher of a small private newspaper, Nso Voice, on charges that he defamed a local mayor. The government justified the detention in part by saying: "You are aware courts have decided in a number of countries that protection of free speech does not grant journalists, for instance, the privilege to refuse to divulge names of sources in all circumstances."" LINK

* "Among the multiple mysteries swirling around the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr in Italy, one stands out as by far the most perplexing.
Why would the U.S. government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA's most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?" LINK
so many mysteries, so little time...

* iraq is such a fucking disaster zone. i cant watch. the least-bad possible outcome seems to be really really bad. and probably unlikely.