A plan by US military planners for the “Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club” in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq. Photograph: US Army/AP
Michael Howard in Baghdad The Guardian
Tuesday May 6 2008
Picture, if you will, a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad’s International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel, which would not look out of place in Sydney harbour. Then, as twilight falls, a pre-prandial stroll, perhaps, amid the cool of the Tigris Riverfront Park, where the peace is broken only by the soulful cries of egrets fishing.
Improbable though it all may seem, this is how some imaginative types in the US military are envisaging the future of Baghdad’s Green Zone, the much-pummelled redoubt of the Iraqi capital where a bunker shot has until now had very different connotations.
A $5bn (£2.5bn) tourism and development scheme for the Green Zone being hatched by the Pentagon and an international investment consortium would give the heavily fortified area on the banks of the Tigris a “dream” makeover that will become a magnet for Iraqis, tourists, business people and investors. About half of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the US state department or private foreign companies.
The US military released the first tentative artists’ impression yesterday. An army source said the barbed wire, concrete blast barriers and checkpoints that currently disfigure the 5 sq mile area would be replaced by shopping malls, hotels, elegant apartment blocks and leisure parks. “This is at the end of the day an Iraqi-owned area and we will give it back to them with added value,” said the source, who requested anonymity.
The military is scrambling for new ways to treat the brain injuries and post-traumatic stress of troops returning home from war. And every kind of therapy — no matter how far outside the accepted medical form — is being considered. The Army just unveiled a $4 million program to investigate everything from “spiritual ministry, transcendental meditation, [and] yoga” to “bioenergies such as Qi gong, Reiki, [and] distant healing” to mend the psyches of wounded troops.
As many as 17 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, one congressional study estimates. Nearly 3,300 troops have suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI, according to statistics assembled last summer. And the lifetime costs of treating these ailments could pile up to as much as $35 billion, a Columbia University report guesses.
Hundreds of Tibetans have died in unrest in Lhasa and elsewhere in the Chinese-ruled Himalayan region, the India-based Tibetan parliament-in-exile said in a statement Monday. “The massive demonstrations that started from March 10 in the capital city of Lhasa and other regions of Tibet, resulting (in the) death of hundreds of Tibetans, and subsequent use of force… needs to be brought to the attention of the United Nations and the international community,” the statement said.
An award winning reporter has detailed an ongoing media blackout concerning a major issue of national security on the southern border.
Sara A. Carter, National Security and Pentagon reporter for the Washington Times, spoke to the Alex Jones show today regarding consistent incursions into the U.S. by armed Mexican troops aiding illegal smugglers.
Ms. Carter has won several national prestigious awards for her coverage of border issues north and south, including the 2006 Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration, presented annually by the Center for Immigration Studies.
“There’s a lot of people who don’t realize how serious the situation is on the southern border.” Ms. Carter said. “Even to the extent when sometimes some of our own government officials choose to ignore it, even though they know it’s going on.”
“This is a very serious national security issue in many respects and it deals with an array from smuggling humans, to smuggling narcotics, and the whole mix up is that there’s many people within the Mexican government and military that have already been bought and sold out to the drug cartels.”
“It’s very difficult to distinguish between those that are really trying to do the job, and those that are sell outs to the drug cartels. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, I’ve been down in many of the same border cities, I’ve spent an enormous amount of time in Mexico working with intelligence officials and others, and I have many Mexican sources who had said ‘please get the truth out’.” Ms. Carter continued.
Ms. Carter pointed out that although such activity has been ongoing for years, there has essentially been a news blackout in America.
“It is a huge story. It is bigger than most of us even know, and people are afraid of covering the story. We hear reports but we don’t see in depth detail.” Carter said.
Aside from Carter herself it has been left entirely to the alternative media to expose the reality of the situation on the border.
We have covered multiple previous incidents of this nature here at Prisonplanet and Infowars:
The mainstream media cautiously began reporting on the issue two years ago when Sara Carter uncovered Department of Homeland Security documents and maps showing that Mexican military has crossed into the United States 216 times in the past nine years. In the documents U.S. officials claimed the incursions are being made to help foreign drug and human smugglers into the United States.
Many incidents have seen Mexican troops fire on U.S. border agents.
Ms. Carter also exposed how the U.S. Border Patrol is “tipping” the Mexican government as to the location of Minutemen and other civilian border patrol groups participating in apprehending illegal immigrants.
Her award winning articles are grouped together here.
In the following MSNBC report from last year, Sara Carter details how one particular incident saw Mexican troops crossing the border along Rio Grande with mounted machine guns pointing at border patrol agents, deputies and Texas highway patrolmen:
In today’s interview with Alex Jones, Ms. Carter also spoke of shockingly commonplace incidents of Mexican troops are aiding the kidnapping of American citizens across the border:
“Many of those people have not been found, I’m gonna tell you something, I was down in Nuevo Laredo and I was there when Betty Flores was still the mayor, I remember having a one on one conversation with her and I said ‘look, there have been Americans in Laredo that have been kidnapped, and taken into Nuevo Laredo in Mexico and there’s still no sign of them, nobody has done anything about it, what are you going to do?’
“Basically the answer to me was ‘well we believe a lot of those folks were involved with the cartels anyway’. Well that isn’t true.” Carter said.
She also delved into great detail concerning the different drug cartels of Mexico and their activities on the border with Mexican authorities, as well as reports of groups such as Los Zetas engaging in corruption inside the U.S. as far north as Indiana.
Listen to the entire fascinating interview here (begins 30 mins into the hour)
Posted May 14, 2008 
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An award winning reporter has detailed an ongoing media blackout concerning a major issue of national security on the southern border. 
