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Arabs hail shoe attack as Bush's farewell gift by Salam Faraj Salam Faraj 14 mins ago BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraq faced mounting calls on Monday to release the journalist who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush, an action branded shameful by the government but hailed in the Arab world as an ideal parting gift to the unpopular US president. Colleagues of Muntazer al-Zaidi, who works for independent Iraqi television station Al-Baghdadia, said he "detested America" and had been plotting such an attack for months against the man who ordered the war on his country. "Throwing the shoes at Bush...

Kerry: Iraq a Great Failure of Judgment Associated Press WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Wednesday called the situation in Iraq "one of the greatest failures of diplomacy and failures of judgment that I have seen in all the time that I've been in public life." "Where are the people with the flowers, throwing them in the streets, welcoming the American liberators the way Dick Cheney said they would be?" Kerry said in an interview with American Urban Radio Networks. "Since I fought in Vietnam, I have not seen an arrogance in our foreign policy like this."

"Today Show" host Katie Couric apparently just can't resist giving deposed Iraqi mass murderer Saddam Hussein an occasional compliment. During an interview with Senators Joe Biden and John McCain on Monday, she said that while the Butcher of Baghdad may have been "deplorable," at least he "kept the Sunnis and the Shiites apart and from killing each other?" Actually, Couric's party right - though she failed to mention how Hussein accomplished his amazing peacekeeping miracle: by exterminating the Shiites who dared to rise up against him, including the father of the Iraqi imam who's currently leading the latest insurgency. Last...

Kennedy: Bush lied Mass. senator issues stinging rebuke that accuses president of deceiving the public, compares his actions to those of Richard Nixon BY WASHINGTON BUREAU April 6, 2004 WASHINGTON - Shifting his ongoing criticism from Iraq to domestic issues, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) yesterday took President George W. Bush to task for what he called misleading the American public on everything from Medicare to education. "This president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon," Kennedy said in a speech at the Brookings Institute, a think tank in Washington. "He has broken the basic bond of trust...

OCEANSIDE - Leo Diaz, a young Marine from Texas based here at Camp Pendleton, went to Iraq full of faith in the president who sent him. Today, he is burdened by the horror of what he saw and shocked at what he calls President Bush's ``frat boy'' mentality in starting the war. ``I show up. I'm proud. I'm looking forward to do my part,'' said Diaz, 22, whose father, uncle and grandfather served in the military. ``Turns out, we find no weapons of mass destruction. People hurt, killed.'' Diaz voted for Bush in 2000. But now he plans to vote...

<p>At the Brookings Institution in Washington on Feb. 25, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton charged that, with Saddam Hussein gone, there have been "pullbacks" in the rights Iraqi women enjoyed under his rule. Not even such bellicose critics of the war as Sen. Ted Kennedy have claimed that the regime change has cost women in Iraq the leading defender of their rights.</p>

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has strongly criticised George Bush and Tony Blair for waging an unnecessary war to oust Saddam Hussein based on "lies or misinterpretations". The 2002 Nobel peace prize winner said Mr Blair had allowed his better judgement to be swayed by Mr Bush's desire to finish a war that his father had started.

Media Panels: Fear of Seeming Unpatriotic Prevented Critical Iraq Reporting Mar.19, 2004 By Mielikki Org/ Associated Press Writer BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - Competitive pressures and a fear of appearing unpatriotic discouraged journalists from doing more critical reporting during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, according to reporters and others at a conference on media coverage of the war. The journalists on the panels at the University of California at Berkeley this week blamed the Bush administration for leaking faulty information, but said the media also has itself to blame for not being more skeptical about the case for war....

James Carville, looking none-too-happy, and alone, in cab after a FReeping by Kristinn and Doctor Raoul Last night Kristinn and Doctor Raoul had a little fun outside the site of the Gridiron Club Dinner. Doctor Raoul was in his Saddam costume and holding a sign that read, "Save me - Vote Democrat." Kristinn held a sign that read, "I'm not Fonda Hanoi John Kerry."Passers-by and arrivals to the dinner, as well as limo drivers, cabbies, and others, enjoyed the messages.

Former US attorney general urges “just” trial for Saddam Baghdad, Iraq Press, December 27, 2003 – Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark wants to see a “just” court to try the ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. US troops have captured Saddam Hussein after an eight-month hunt and Clark believes the current Iraqi interim officials will not administer a “just trial because the America has handpicked them.” In a telephone interview, Clark also expected a rise in attacks against US troops occupying the country. “I believe anti-American operations will continue,” despite the arrest of Saddam Hussein, he said. In the nearly two...

One of the leading “America bashers” on the political scene today has endorsed John Kerry for president. Speaking to reporters after a February 27 Washington press conference to rally support for Haiti’s Marxist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Ramsey Clark said he’s voting for Kerry because he would take U.S. foreign policy in a new direction. This is certainly the case. Kerry told the New York Daily News editorial board that he would have intervened “unilaterally” with U.S. troops if necessary to save Aristide’s corrupt regime from a popular rebellion. Aristide, who developed a reputation for brutalizing and killing his political opponents,...

The fact that the President is now on the defensive over the war in Iraq is both puzzling and ominous. The Democratic attack on the credibility of the Commander-in-Chief has gone on relentlessly for more than ten months, ever since the liberation of Baghdad in April of last year. This ferocious attack would be understandable if the war had gone badly or been unjust; if Saddam Hussein had unleashed chemical weapons on the coalition armies, or had ignited an environmental disaster, or if the war had resulted in tens of thousands of coalition casualties, or become an endless quagmire, or...

JERUSALEM -- I turn on CNN, and I see people being grilled -- Bush and Blair. What did you know, and when did you know it? If you had known then what you know now, would you have done what you did? Or did you already know it, and pull a big hoax on all of us? The War on Terror is barely two years old, and already the two statesmen mainly responsible for waging it are in the dock. The grim media interrogators, our self-appointed "representatives," fire questions at them. The opposition parties sling mud at them. And one...

BARMY BBC bosses have banned reporters from calling tyrant Saddam Hussein a former dictator. Instead, staff must refer to the barbaric mass murderer as “the deposed former President”. The astonishing edict was seized on by MPs last night as more proof of a Left-wing bias inside the BBC against the Iraqi war. Labour MP Kevan Jones, of the Commons Defence Select Committee, said: “This shows the crass naivety of the BBC. Such political correctness will be deeply hurtful to many of our servicemen serving in Iraq. “It amply demonstrates elements of the BBC have got a clearly anti-war and anti-Government...

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N.Y. Times Paints Hussein Capture as Bush Vendetta If you believe that the capture of Saddam Hussein was an important step forward in the war against terrorism you are wrong: it was just a case of the Bush family settling old scores, according to the New York Times. The "capture of Mr. Hussein in his earthen hiding place was the sweetest kind of vindication for a president who has earned worldwide skepticism and criticism — along with substantial praise — for his Iraq policy," wrote the Times' Todd S. Purdum. Note that the president "has earned" all that "worldwide skepticism...

We Got HimDate: Sunday, December 14 @ 07:31:19 Topic War on Terror Saddam Hussein in U.S. custody December 14, 2003 As Americans awoke Sunday morning, news came from Baghdad that the Fourth Infantry Division had captured Saddam Hussein in a rural farmhouse near Tikrit. Here's the announcement from Iraqi ambassador L. Paul Bremer. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. Saddam Hussein was captured Saturday 13 December at about 2030 local, in a cellar in the town of al-Dawr which is about 15 kilometres south of Tikrit. Prophetic Message? This article comes from Focus on Freedomhttp://www.gohotsprings.com/focus/ The URL for this...

Found this on LGF...This guy indicates that these people deserved what they got... Iraqi mass graves don't justify war MARK GERYIn the past few months the graves of thousands of civilians have been unearthed in war-torn Iraq. Not surprisingly, the White House wasted no time in declaring the dead to be prime examples of Saddam Hussein's brutality and a further justification for the US-led invasion. But a check of the historical record on this matter reveals yet another calculated distortion by the US administration and its supporters. At the end of the 1991 Gulf War legions of Shia radicals –...

<p>Moderator note: I know it's going to be tough, but, please watch the calls for violence against this creature.</p> <p>In a demoralizing message to U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq, visiting New York Sen. Hillary Clinton told them that Americans back home are growing increasingly skeptical of President Bush's decision to send them into battle.</p> <p>Describing two meetings with G.I.s over turkey dinners in Baghdad, Sen. Clinton told reporters later that soldiers wanted to know "how the people at home feel about what we are doing."</p>

The bombers dance a jig while Bush just gets shriller, writes Paul McGeough in New York. George Bush sold war against Iraq as a king-hit in the war on terrorism. But just as he and Tony Blair began to strut for the cameras in London this week, the bombers capped off a bloody series of Ramadan attacks with two devastating strikes in Istanbul. In a flash, what was to have been a self-congratulatory tango became another sombre session of "we will not flinch; we will not compromise", this time a bit shriller than the last. In that swaggering way of...

<p>"Massachusetts' highest court ruled Tuesday that same-sex couples are legally entitled to wed under the state constitution," the Associated Press reports. But the court "stopped short of allowing marriage licenses to be issued to the couples who challenged the law." Instead it "ordered the Legislature to come up with a solution within 180 days."</p>

A group of Italian anti-war militants is raising funds to support the armed Iraqi resistance, the BBC has learned. The discovery comes as Italy mourns 19 men killed in a suicide attack in Iraq last week. The "Antiimperialista" organisation's internet campaign asks people to send "10 Euros to the Iraqi resistance". Nineteen Italians were killed in last week's suicide attack in Nasiriya They say they have collected 12,000 euros ($14,165) in the past eight weeks and admit the money used could be used to buy weapons. The Antiimperialistas are a group of European anti-war and anti-globalisation supporters. They are currently...

'War," wrote John Stuart Mill, one of the 19th century's greatest thinkers, "is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. "The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight," Mill continued, "is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." That brings to mind the anti-war crowd – those stumping for the Democratic presidential nomination, those opining on the nation's...

Disunity in the US makes Iraq look like a failure September 02, 2003 Opinion Times of London Amir Taheri The reality isn't grim; but Bush must find a clear strategy to win the peace For the world’s 300 million Shia Muslims, Najaf, a dusty city in central Iraq, is the gateway to paradise: to be buried there is a privilege. Today Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s senior religious leaders, will enjoy that privilege when his mortal remains are laid to rest near the tomb of Ali, the first imam of the faith. Hakim’s death in a terrorist attack...

It was a world exclusive for NBC's Jim Miklaszewski, the only television reporter able to show footage of the devastating attack on a Baghdad hotel that narrowly missed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.snip... Gary Thatcher, communications chief for the U.S. occupation authority [said,] "Instead of rendering or summoning aid, they focused on gathering video footage of people in agonizingly painful situations . . .snipSays Miklaszewski..."Our impression was that this was an attempt to censor the news. This event shot holes in the administration's insistence that everything was going well in Baghdad."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of more than two dozen House of Representatives Democrats on Monday said they had introduced a resolution urging President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "This resolution would make official what so many members of Congress already believe -- that the soldiers in Iraq and America's foreign policy would be helped greatly if Donald Rumsfeld would leave," Rep. Charles Rangel of New York said in a statement. Rangel said he so far had 25 co-sponsors to the resolution who were "willing to stand up and say what so many policy makers know, that the...

<p>House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday that Democrats will not cede ground to the Bush administration on military issues.</p> <p>"I think that there is a very strong indictment that can be made against the administration for its lack of preparation for postwar Iraq," Pelosi told reporters.</p>

t sounds like the beginning of a political joke: What do you get when you put Moby, a former White House chief of staff and Katrina vanden Heuvel in the same room? What you got on Tuesday night was an unorthodox attempt to combine brains, beauty and star power to focus criticism of the war in Iraq and the White House's foreign policy. The occasion was a screening of a documentary film called "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War" by Robert Greenwald, a Hollywood producer and director who has spent the last several months interviewing former diplomats, weapons...

Media Aiding Terrorists in Iraq Major media continues to refer the “Iraqi Resistance” when reporting on who might be behind the bombings and attacks on American troops. While it has been said, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” the goal of these killers has nothing to do with freedom. What they are resisting, is peace, freedom and progress. They attack and kill innocents and relief workers to spread terror and chaos. They bombed the Red Cross and the United Nations headquarters and sabotage oil pipelines, water treatment plants and electric generators. What they are resisting, is truth and...

As Democratic presidential hopefuls escalate their criticism of President Bush's policy on Iraq, we should recognize the constant theme amid their calamitous clamor: obstructionism in the War on Terror. No sooner had they joined with the president in resolving to go after terrorist targets and the corrupt Taliban government in Afghanistan did they begin their handwringing at the prospect that we were about to become bogged down in a quagmire. "We haven't put enough troops on the ground." "We haven't properly trained the Afghan rebels." "We haven't found Osama." Meanwhile, President Bush calmly and deliberately stayed the course, exercising presidential leadership and...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Wednesday Oct. 29, 2003; 12:12 a.m. ESTMedia Has Blood on its Hands, Iraq GI Tells Rep. King Rep. Peter King, R-NY, delivered a stark message on Tuesday from an unnamed U.S. military officer now stationed in Baghdad who believes negative press coverage of the U.S. war effort has cost American soldiers their lives. While flying back to the U.S. aboard a military transport, King told nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity via satellite phone, "I promised an American colonel yesterday, an Army colonel, that [I'd relay his message]: 'There's blood on the hands of the American media.'"...

ABC Radio News now referring to Terrorists in Iraq who kill our Troops as “Iraqi Resistance” The ABC Radio News, which airs on ABC radio affiliates nationally, is now referring to terrorists in Iraq who are engaged in terror and murder of Iraqi civilians, Iraqi police and politicians, and international troops and diplomats as “Iraqi resistance”. When I heard the airing of the news, a local host who airs a live gardening show at the time of the report was so outraged that even he, a-political, had to comment on the unbelievable anti-American provocation of the news broadcast as soon...

Is Sen. Edward Kennedy the Joe McCarthy of today? Yes, but -- But in my estimation, the comparison does a disservice to McCarthy. McCarthy insisted more communists than Alger Hiss had infiltrated the government but couldn't effectively prove it. We now know in retrospect that there was the basic undercurrent of truth in the Wisconsin senator's charges. But last month, by ignoring the written and spoken record, Kennedy trashed the truth in attacking President Bush on the issue of Iraq. On Sept. 18, the senator said: ''There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January...

When it comes to the future of Iraq, there's not just one Democratic Party; there are three. First, there are the Nancy Pelosi Democrats. These Democrats voted against Paul Bremer's $87 billion plan for the reconstruction of Iraq. The essence of their case is that the Bush administration is too corrupt and incompetent to reconstruct Iraq. If Bush is for it, they're against it. Their hatred for Bush is so dense, it's hard for them to see through it to the consequences of their vote. But if Pelosi's arguments had carried the day, our troops in Iraq would be reading...

PRESS RELEASE... Post-War Iraq Planning Was 'Perfect Storm' of Mistakes and Bad Luck: Weak Intelligence, Wrong Assumptions, Blinders, Poor Coordination Sunday September 28, 10:49 am ET Infighting at State Dept. and Pentagon Prevented U.S. From Taking Control Of A Bad Situation at the Outset NEW YORK, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Newsweek interviews with top government officials involved in the planning and execution of the reconstruction of Iraq point to a "perfect storm" of mistakes and bad luck: wrongheaded assumptions, ideological blinders, weak intelligence and poor coordination by White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Much of the damage was done...

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president . . . right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Teddy Roosevelt, 1918 Ever have one of those foreign military adventures when your own foot becomes a better target than the enemy? If the tough-guy act is wearing thin, you can always whine. Faced with well-deserved criticism of their adventure in Iraq, Bush administration officials have started to point fingers -- blaming, variously, the French, the United Nations, al-Qaida, Syria and Saddam Hussein. (Who knew Saddam might...

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=S11969&dbname=2003_record Mr. BYRD. Will the distinguished majority leader yield? Mr. FRIST. Yes, sir. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia. Mr. BYRD. I would rather my leader propounded this question but inasmuch as I am the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, the reason I hoped all Members would sit—although there is no requirement they have to in the rules, unless the Chair insists on it—we have a problem. I think the full Senate ought to know about it. That is why I have urged Senators sit if they will; then they will be more comfortable. I don’t know...

General Zinni Bashing Bush Iraqi policy on NIGHTLINE

Media's dark cloud a dangerFalsely bleak reports reduce our chances of success in Iraq By JIM MARSHALL On Sept. 14, I flew from Baghdad to Kuwait with Sgt. Trevor A. Blumberg from Dearborn, Mich. He was in a body bag. He'd been ambushed and killed that afternoon. Sitting in the cargo bay of a C 130E, I found myself wondering whether the news media were somehow complicit in his death.News media reports about our progress in Iraq have been bleak since shortly after the president's premature declaration of victory. These reports contrast sharply with reports of hope and progress presented...

U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., went to Iraq to check out the war for himself. What he saw has him angry ... at America's media establishment. "The Iraq war has predictably evolved into a guerrilla conflict similar to Vietnam. Our currently stated objectives are to establish reasonable security and foster the creation of a secular, representative government with a stable market economy that provides broad opportunity throughout Iraqi society. Attaining these objectives in Iraq would inevitably transform the Arab world and immeasurably increase our future national security," he writes in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "These are goals worthy of a...

DeLay: Dem Leaders Should Repudiate Kennedy Rant; Senator's Comments New Low in Democrat Smear Campaign 9/19/03 1:47:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National Desk Contact: Stuart Roy or Jonathan Grella, 202-225-4000 SUGAR LAND, Texas., Sept. 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sugar Land) today called on Democrat congressional leaders and presidential candidates to repudiate the comments of Sen. Ted Kennedy, who told the Associated Press Thursday that the war in Iraq was a "fraud" "made up in Texas" because it was "going to be good politically." Kennedy proceeded to accuse the Bush Administration of "bribing" world leaders. "I...

<p>BOSTON (AP) &#8212; The case for going to war against Iraq was a fraud "made up in Texas" to give Republicans a political boost, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said yesterday.</p> <p>In an interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Kennedy also said the Bush administration has failed to account for nearly half of the $4 billion the war is costing each month. He said he believes much of the unaccounted-for money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops.</p>

Veteran New York Times foreign correspondent Thomas Friedman charged that the media played up to Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime -- so much so it willfully covered up the dictator's crimes against his own people. Echoing fellow New York Times correspondent John Burns, Friedman appeared on "The Charlie Rose Show" to blast pre-war press coverage. "The press has something to answer for," Friedman told Rose, adding, "I don’t think that the reporting from Iraq in the ten years before this war was a shining example of the best in American or world journalism." "What the press never conveyed, partly because they...

Dems Press Bush to Fire Aides Over Iraq WASHINGTON - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday exhorted President Bush to fire advisers who helped him set U.S. policy in Iraq, saying miscalculations have cost American lives. The California Democrat was joined in that call by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a Vietnam combat veteran and senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. "We can't allow these bureaucrats to get off while these young people are paying such a heavy price," Murtha said at a joint news conference with Pelosi. Neither lawmaker would specify who should lose their jobs. Asked whether...

QATAR (Talon News) -- Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean has links on his campaign website to the various news stories that cover his campaign. He does not, however, have a link to a story that ran in the September 11th copy of Aljazeera.net where the candidate is quoted attacking President George W. Bush. During debates and on the stump, Dean has been an outspoken and unapologetic critic of Bush and his policies and his unrelenting attacks have now caught the attention of the Arab world's leading newspaper: Al Jazeera. In a story that ran in the paper's online English language...

<p>Amanpour: CNN practiced self-censorship CNN's top war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, says that the press muzzled itself during the Iraq war. And, she says CNN "was intimidated" by the Bush administration and Fox News, which "put a climate of fear and self-censorship." As criticism of the war and its aftermath intensifies, Amanpour joins a chorus of journalists and pundits who charge that the media largely toed the Bush administrationline in covering the war and, by doing so, failed to aggressively question the motives behind the invasion.</p>

Michael Stipe, the lead singer of the group R.E.M., appears in an ad from the American Civil Liberties Union that reads, "I am not an American who wants to be shut up or have my neighbors be shut up." THE second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks passed yesterday and President Bush pressed for greater expansion of law enforcement powers, a new advertising campaign by the American Civil Liberties Union has been rolling out to oppose the tactics and proposals of the White House. The ads, which indirectly accuse the administration of trampling on the Bill of Rights,...

WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - A group of House of Representatives Republicans said on Wednesday that Democrats criticizing the Bush administration's plan to stabilize Iraq were damaging that effort and endangering U.S. troops. But as administration officials were set to lobby for an $87 billion spending package largely for Iraq, some Republicans questioned whether the State Department should take a larger role in Iraq's reconstruction and whether Baghdad should have to pay back some of the money. Rep. Ed Schrock of Virginia told a news conference that "all the sniping we've been hearing on TV about the president and how...