Eideard

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki declared a new dawn on Saturday as Iraq celebrated the departure of American troops at a ceremony held amid tight security and without Maliki’s key political rivals…

Saturday marked the end of the 2008 security pact agreed by then-President George W. Bush and was the last day for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and allowed the Shi’ite majority to take power.

Except for a small military contingent attached to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the last of the American troops departed nearly two weeks ago.

“I declare this day, the 31st of December, on which the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq is complete, as a national day,” said Maliki in a televised ceremony, surrounded by security officials in dress uniforms.

“It is Iraq’s day. It is a feast for all Iraqis. It is the dawn of a new day in Mesopotamia … Your country is free.”

Maliki said he would work to maintain freedom and “respect political, intellectual and religious diversity…”

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According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prescription drug overdose deaths in Florida are up a staggering 265% since 2003. But it’s not just the deaths that have Florida officials worried; it’s the births.

“We saw the number of crack babies that died, and this is just another version of that,” Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti said. “We all need to be concerned.”

According to state health records, 635 Florida babies were born addicted to prescription drugs in the first half of 2010 alone. South Florida doctors and intensive care nurses report an dramatic uptick in babies born hooked on pills that their mothers abused while pregnant.

“They go through withdrawal symptoms,” said Mary Osuch, the head nurse at Broward General Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit. “They’re crampy, miserable. They sweat. They can have rapid breathing. Sometimes, they can even have seizures…”

Marsha Currant, who runs the Susan B. Anthony Recovery Center near Fort Lauderdale, says prescription drug addiction overtook crack in 2009 as the main problem afflicting the pregnant women who are treated there…

Currant says new mothers who are hooked on prescription drugs are often reluctant to seek help for fear the authorities will take their babies from them.

“We wanted to have a place where women didn’t have to chose between getting treatment and having their children go into foster care,” she said.

Compounding the problem, women who are addicted to prescription drugs and find themselves pregnant cannot safely go off the drugs without medical supervision. They need to be weaned off slowly, or the baby will go into withdrawal in the womb.

Yes, Florida has a Tea Party governor who made his billions dispensing drugs. He’s so “serious” about the problem that he actually says stuff about it. And had to be dragged kicking and screaming into signing a bill requiring a statewide database tracking pill prescriptions. He calls it an invasion of privacy.

Meanwhile, Florida is the pill center of America. A situation which reflects a lax medical community as a whole – and a governor whose walk-in clinics established the record for the largest fine ever paid for Medicare fraud.

Administering methadone to a 4-week-old infant

As prescription drug abuse ravages communities across the country, doctors are confronting an emerging challenge: newborns dependent on painkillers…Infants…have to stay in the hospital for weeks while they are weaned off the drugs, taxing neonatal units and driving the cost of their medical care into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Like the cocaine-exposed babies of the 1980s, those born dependent on prescription opiates — narcotics that contain opium or its derivatives — are entering a world in which little is known about the long-term effects on their development. Few doctors are even willing to treat pregnant opiate addicts, and there is no universally accepted standard of care for their babies, partly because of the difficulty of conducting research on pregnant women and newborns.

Those who do treat pregnant addicts face a jarring ethical quandary: they must weigh whether the harm inflicted by exposing a fetus to powerful drugs, albeit under medical supervision, is justifiable.

“I’ve had pharmacies that have just called back and said: ‘This lady’s pregnant. Why do you want me to fill this scrip? I can’t do that,’ ” said Dr. Craig Smith, a family practitioner in Bridgton, Me. “But when you stop and think about what actually happens during withdrawal and how violent it can be, that would certainly be not in the baby’s best interest…”

There are no national figures that document the extent of the problem, but interviews with doctors, researchers, social workers and women who abused painkillers while pregnant suggest that it has grown rapidly, especially in rural regions, where officials say such abuse is most common…

RTFA. Please. This is an addictive disaster that is not slowing down in the least.

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Britain withdrew the last of its Royal Marines from the deadly Sangin District in Helmand Province on Monday, handing control over to American troops.

More than 100 British soldiers died in Sangin, nearly a third of that country’s casualties since 2001. British, Afghan and American military officials said the shift represented a routine battlefield rotation…

There are 9,500 British troops remaining in Afghanistan, the second largest component of the 150,000 coalition troops here. The United States recently completed an increase in its own forces to 100,000, the largest American force of the war. President Obama has promised to begin reducing American troops in Afghanistan beginning next July.

That’s OK. No matter which party controls the White House or Congress, Uncle Sugar is always first in line to be the cop of the world.

General Odierno

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq said on Sunday he was confident of meeting an end-of-August deadline for a drawdown of U.S. troops despite political uncertainty and a spate of recent bombings there…

“We’re at about 95,000 today … our plans are intact. I feel very comfortable with our plan. And unless something unforeseen and disastrous happens, I fully expect us to be at 50,000 by the 1st of September.”

He said he believed it would take “a couple of months” for the formation of a new Iraqi government, but he added that a resurgence of sectarian violence was unlikely following a March 7 election that left two rival alliances nearly evenly matched in seats won…

“It’s been clear from all of the political leaders that everybody understands they must include all major political blocs in the government,” Odierno said, referring to the major Sunni, Shia and Kurdish political blocs…

Although al Qaeda was still capable of conducting attacks, Iraqis have rejected its ideology and Iraqi forces have taken the lead in going after the group with help from U.S. troops, he said.

Since he was appearing on Fox Noise, my guess is progress is probably better than he admitted. After all, he wasn’t invited to affirm good news about the administration that replaced the killer klowns that started the war.

A Kenyan man has sued activists who called on women to boycott sex to protest the growing divide in the nation’s coalition government.

James Kimondo said the seven-day sex ban, which ended this week, resulted in stress, mental anguish, backaches and lack of sleep, his lawyer told the state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corp.

The lawsuit filed Friday claims lack of conjugal rights affected Kimondo’s marriage and seeks undisclosed damages from the G-10, an umbrella group for women’s activists…

Gender activists say they are not worried about the lawsuit.

“I have not been served with the papers, but I was told they are coming and I am eagerly waiting,” said Ann Njogu, executive, director of Centers for Rights Education and Awareness. “It will be interesting to see the face of a man who is not willing to abstain for the sake of his country.”

Har!

Russia will withdraw its troops from the “buffer zone” it has created in Georgia when they are replaced by international peacekeepers and once the Georgian government has signed non-aggression pacts with the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, said Moscow’s ambassador to London, Yuri Fedotov…

“I think the European Union is knocking at an open door,” Fedotov said. “If the EU proposes a very clear plan on how to prevent a potential confrontation and further shelling in the territory of South Ossetia … then its not difficult to deploy 200 or 400 people in the zones and to allow Russia to withdraw its personnel. It depends on political will…”

As a further condition for withdrawal, he said the situation on the ground would have to “stabilise” and non-aggression agreements would have to be drawn up between Tbilisi and the two breakaway regions…

Russian leaders have blamed Saakashvili for starting the conflict. The Georgian president claims he only sent his troops into South Ossetia in an abortive attempt to pre-empt a long-planned Russian invasion aimed at occupying Georgia and removing him from office.

Either Saakashvili is a complete idiot – trying out a so-called pre-emptive strike against Russia – or the more likely scenario already offered of the Georgian functioning as a catspaw for Bush and Cheney to strike an October surprise for McCain the the U.S. election.

Since Cheney is over there, right now, bringing a billion dollar payoff – which looks more likely?