“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.”

The shift in Iraq runs counter to trends of rising religious practice among young people across much of the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology.

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Gus: Whoa... I can see some improvements on the horizon... Was this the US game plan from the start? Make Islam so loathed by youths trying to get a better life? But then the trends runs contrary to "the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology..." May be what we might see is more serious blood baths in Iraq... and more hanging and more repression... Who knows. In the end as long as the oil gets pumped, Dubya and Cheney are smug.

Pentagon Is Expected to Close Intelligence Unit
Brian Smialowski for The New York Times

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: April 2, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is expected to shut a controversial intelligence office that has drawn fire from lawmakers and civil liberties groups who charge that it was part of an effort by the Defense Department to expand into domestic spying.

The move, government officials say, is part of a broad effort under Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to review, overhaul and, in some cases, dismantle an intelligence architecture built by his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The intelligence unit, called the Counterintelligence Field Activity office, was created by Mr. Rumsfeld after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as part of an effort to counter the operations of foreign intelligence services and terror groups inside the United States and abroad.

Yet the office, whose size and budget is classified, came under fierce criticism in 2005 after it was disclosed that it was managing a database that included information about antiwar protests planned at churches, schools and Quaker meeting halls.

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Gus: Is this "soon-to-be-closed" intelligence unit going to morph into something else same or worse, since the "infastructure is in place"?... Who knows what those Quakers can do: bake a few cakes for peace... Yep, peace is a messy business for "Alexander-the-Shrub" — the warrior for "god-the-oil"...

Gates Budget Plan Reshapes Pentagon’s Priorities

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Monday announced a broad reshaping of the Pentagon budget, with deep cuts in many traditional weapons systems but billions of dollars for new technology to fight the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The decisions represent the first sweeping overhaul of American military strategy under the Obama administration, which wants to spend more money on counterterrorism and less on preparations for conventional warfare against large nations like China and Russia.

Mr. Gates announced cuts in missile defense programs, in the Army’s expensive Future Combat Systems and in Navy shipbuilding operations.

But he proposed, as he has before, spending an extra $11 billion to finish enlarging the Army and the Marine Corps and to halt reductions in the Air Force and the Navy. He also announced an extra $2 billion for intelligence and surveillance equipment, including more spending on special forces units and new Predator and Reaper drones, the unmanned vehicles that are currently used in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq for strikes against militants.

More broadly, Mr. Gates signaled that he hopes to impose a new culture on the Pentagon, particularly the way it chooses and buys weapons.

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see toon at top...