TIME'S UP

I wish I could say it took me longer to find, copy and paste these news items into this blog entry, but it didn't. About five minutes, all of them and too many more to count on msnbc's site. All of the articles are from today's news reports. It probably took about as long for me to fill this space as it took for Bush to swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Yeah, he's doing just a wonderful job. If he were doing any better we'd all have been blown into the most spectacular nova-like implosion of mother earth even Speilberg or Lucas couldn't create on the wide screen. And this is just a tiny sprinkling from today's news. One man, one legacy, one shattered dream for humanity!

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ITEM: BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber detonated a belt of explosives near a highly revered Shiite shrine in southern Iraq Thursday, killing at least 35 people and injuring 122, an official said.

The bomber blew himself up while being patted down by policemen near the Imam Ali mosque in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, said Dr. Munthir al-Ithari, the head of the city’s health directorate.

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ITEM: A bombing near another Shiite shrine in Kufa, the twin city of Najaf, on July 18 killed 53 people. Thursday’s explosions is the first time that an attack has taken place near the Imam Ali shrine.

The bloodshed has dashed U.S. hopes for an early drawdown in the 127,000-member U.S. military force here. Instead, the U.S. military is rushing about 12,000 American and Iraqi soldiers to Baghdad.

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ITEM: BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. Army private on Tuesday described the ever-present fear of death gripping his unit, whose members stand accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl and killing her family in Iraq’s infamous “Triangle of Death.”

“You’re just walking a death walk,” Pfc. Justin Cross told a hearing to determine whether five fellow soldiers must stand trial in the March 12 attack near Mahmoudiya.

“It drives you nuts. You feel like every step you might get blown up,” Cross told the hearing. “You just hit a point where you’re like, ‘If I die today, I die.”’

Cross said the unit was “full of despair,” and he feared dying at his post before he could go home.

“I couldn’t sleep mainly for fear we would be attacked,” Cross said. He said the deaths of two soldiers at a checkpoint “pretty much crushed the platoon.”

To cope with the stress, he said, soldiers turned to whiskey — a violation of U.S. regulations in Iraq — and painkillers to ease their fears.

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ITEM: EL PASO, Texas - Four U.S. soldiers accused of murdering suspected insurgents during a raid in Iraq said they were under orders to “kill all military age males,” according to sworn statements obtained by The Associated Press.

“The ROE (rule of engagement) was to kill all military age males on Objective Murray,” Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard told investigators, referring to the target by its code name. Girouard's orders were confirmed by others in his unit.

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ITEM: RALEIGH, N.C. - An ex-CIA contractor on trial for allegedly beating an Afghan prisoner had enthusiastically volunteered to interrogate the man about rocket attacks on a remote base housing U.S. and Afghan troops, the top CIA officer at the base testified Wednesday.

David Passaro is charged with beating Abdul Wali during two days of questioning in June 2003 at the base in Asadabad, Afghanistan. He is the first American civilian charged with mistreating a detainee during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wali died during the second day's questioning.

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ITEM: The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.

Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.

The draft U.S. amendments to the War Crimes Act would narrow the scope of potential criminal prosecutions to 10 specific categories of illegal acts against detainees during a war, including torture, murder, rape and hostage-taking.

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ITEM: More than 11 months after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana’s “Road Home” housing-aid program for victims of Katrina and Hurricane Rita has yet to come through with money for Watts or the roughly 100,000 others who have applied.

The first anniversary of Katrina at the end of August could come and go before they see the first dime. And it could be more than two years before the last of the money is handed out.

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I didn't bother to look in the financial, job market, health care, or other sections. No time, too depressing and somehow life must go on. Well, at least we hope it can go on, the president notwithstanding. This November and the one two years hence had better hurry. It can't get here soon enough as it is!