By funding Osama Bin Laden’s operations, training camps, weaponry and political influence from 1979 (even before Russia invaded Afghanistan), Robert Gates personally gave us our principal enemy in the “War on Terror.”

U.S. assets must be unhindered in carrying out their space duties, the Bush space policy says, stressing that “freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power.”

(Not a new policy. See: Space Dominance

“The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat…”

A civil rights group sued the Defense Department on Wednesday in an effort to force the Pentagon to turn over information it’s collected on peace groups and antiwar activists under a controversial program designed to track terrorists.

More than 20 nations - from Central Asia to Western Europe - colluded in a CIA-run “spider’s web” of secret flights and prisons for abducted terrorism suspects that breach European and international human rights accords.