#middle easy

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1968

Quan Long, a Mekong Delta city of airy, stucco buildings and thatched peasant huts, was invaded yesterday by a Viet Cong force that occupied a hospital there for a few hours, burned many huts and then retreated through the surrounding rice paddies. Early this morning they struck again with mortars, setting fire to a dispensary building.

The United States, according to informed sources in Cairo, has released to Egypt the contents of a message from Secretary of State Rusk to the Israeli Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, urging that Israel settle for indirect rather than direct negotiations with the Arabs. The note, whose apparent purpose is to generate goodwill for the United States among the Arabs, also appealed to Israel to accept the Security Council resolution calling for a withdrawal from captured Arab territory. 

The new Czechoslovak leadership under Alexander Dubček dismissed its ideological aide, who has attacked rebellious writers and students, and announced that it would publish a “full account” of the Central Committee sessions that resulted in the ouster Jan. 5 of the former party leader, Antonin Novotný. The moves were seen as symptoms of the growing openness of public debate in the country. 

According to Bolivian and American sources, Ernesto Che Guevara talked freely with a C.I.A. agent for two hours before he was executed. The C.I.A. is reported to have been instrumental in the destruction of the guerrilla movement in Bolivia, but there is no evidence that it participated in the decision to eliminate Mr. Guevara. 

With only the stanchest liberals objecting, the Senate tacked an amendment onto the civil rights bill making it a crime to cross state lines with intent to incite a riot. The Senate also rejected by a close vote an amendment that would have removed single-family, owner-occupied homes from the proposed ban on housing discrimination. 

White House spokesmen are fending off a lot of questions these days about President Johnson's reaction to his riot commission's report Mr. Johnson has remained silent it is reported, because he thinks the panel should have addressed its suggestions to a reluctant Congress and doesn’t want to quarrel over the report’s failure to praise his programs.

Without an opponent in the New Hampshire primary, Richard M. Nixon has begun campaigning against President Johnson. If the Administration fails to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion by November, he said, the people would be justified in electing a new President He said he would end the war and bring peace to the area. 

NDP leader Tom Mulcair is forgoing the celebration and raising red flags after reports a Canadian sniper in Iraq broke the world record for the longest confirmed kill.

National Defence said the sniper is a member of the ultra-secret Joint Task Force 2 unit deployed as part of Canada's mission against ISIS, and that his target was more 3.5 kilometres away.

That is more than a kilometre farther than the previous record, which was held by a British sniper who shot a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan in 2009.

'Hell of a shot': Sniper record latest example of deadly Canadian marksmanship

But while news of the shot is spreading around the world like wildfire, Mulcair has written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raising concerns about what the shot means for Canada's mission in Iraq.

"It is not clear exactly how and when this engagement occurred but it seriously calls into question your government's claim that Canadian Forces are not involved in direct combat in Iraq," Mulcair writes.

In particular, Mulcair says the incident raises fresh questions about the Liberals' promise that Canadian soldiers would not be involved in combat with ISIS.

"Will you now confirm that Canadian troops have engaged in ground combat since your government took office? [...] Why have you not declared that the current military operation is now a combat mission?" Muclair asks, arguing that a change in the role for Canadian troops would require a debate in the House of Commons.

On social media this year, I really don’t see anybody saying much about 9/11.

This isn’t to diminish the lives of those who died that day, or the public servants who heroically gave their lives to save others. I feel an unbelievable sadness when I read the stories of families who lost someone dear to them. 

But it’s to remember that the legacy of 9/11 is tragic, disturbing, and sad. It’s to remember that we’ve honored those who died by lying and deceiving in order to start vicious wars that killed hundreds of thousands in the Middle East, by committing human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, by massively scaling up the surveillance state. And that’s just the start of it.