San Diego — They said they were going to protect the borders for the next three weeks, but after only one night in San Diego County, the Minutemen have apparently thrown in the towel.

On Saturday six volunteer spotters, some of them carrying guns, took positions along the U.S.-Mexico border ready to report illegal immigrants crossing into San Diego County.

However, on Sunday, the group calling themselves California Minutemen were nowhere to be found.

Why they left remains unclear, but protestors who also showed up Saturday may have had something to do with it. Protestors and the volunteer spotters clashed in a war of words, NBC 7/39 reported.

“The main thing is to persuade them to go home and let somebody else do the job that they’re supposed to, and our people were very successful in that,” a protester said.

The protestors claim they’ve won this round and they say they plan to stay at the border all week, fighting for immigrant rights.

Every time the Minutemen and their wannabe California clones SOS have called an action here in California, they’ve been met with overwhelming numbers of anti-racist protestors and every time they’ve backed off and retreated. Good. Let’s keep the pressure on.

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Moqtada Sadr, the radical Iraqi Shia cleric whose militia led uprisings against US troops in Najaf has told the BBC armed “resistance is legitimate”.

“The first person who would acknowledge this is the so-called American President Bush who said ‘if my country is occupied, I will fight’.”

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…or an amazing 9-minute recreation thereof that uses the exact words of the “Downing Street Memo.”

This remarkable audio production conveys far more clearly than the written word what went on behind closed doors that day three years ago.

They clearly discuss that Saddam is not a threat, that Bush was already planning to invade and looking for a pretext to justify doing so, – and that they would happily follow and were completely complicit.

The cast and credits for this production, are as follows.

Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee John Scarlett - Anonymous
Sir Richard Dearlove, the Chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) - John Rafter Lee
Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, Chief of Defence Staff - Demian Martell
Then Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon - Ed Asner
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw - Anonymous
Attorney General Lord Goldsmith - Larry Pressman
Sir David Manning, a foreign policy advisor - Brian O’Connor
Prime Minister Tony Blair - Demian Martell
Narrator - Mimi Kennedy
Recording Engineered By Michael Ja

Link to audio.  Transcript (pdf)

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Thinktank says war boosts al-Qaida

Britain’s involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to the terrorist attacks in London, a respected independent thinktank on foreign affairs, the Chatham House organisation, says today.

In the most politically sensitive finding, Chatham House concludes there is “no doubt” the invasion of Iraq has “given a boost to the al-Qaida network” in “propaganda, recruitment and fundraising”, while providing an ideal targeting and training area for terrorists. “Riding pillion with a powerful ally has proved costly in terms of British and US military lives, Iraqi lives, military expenditure and the damage caused to the counter-terrorism campaign.”

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