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It was embarrassing putting my flak jacket on backwards and sideways, but in the darkness of the Baghdad airport car park I couldn’t see anything. “Peterik, put the flak jacket on,” the South African security contractor was saying politely, impatiently. “You know the procedure if we are attacked.” I didn’t. He explained. One of the chase vehicles would pull up beside us and someone would drag me out of the armoured car, away from the firing. If both drivers were unconscious—nice euphemism—he said I should try to run to the nearest army checkpoint. If the checkpoint was American, things might...

Rocker David Byrne has accused US President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for leading the country the same way the late Saddam Hussein led Iraq. Byrne is stunned at the Iraq war and is vehemently against it, said contactmusic.com. He said: 'It's like we are in shock. At least I am. The majority of Americans don't want to commit more troops, Congress doesn't want to commit more troops, but George and Dick do and by god they are gonna have it. And I thought, 'Can they just do this?' I thought only people like Saddam Hussein could...

(CBS News) DAVENPORT, Iowa -- Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that President Bush has made a mess of Iraq and it is his responsibility to "extricate" the United States from the situation before he leaves office. It would be "the height of irresponsibility" to pass the war along to the next commander in chief, she said. "This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy," the Democratic senator from New York said in her initial campaign swing through the early-bird caucus state of Iowa. "We expect him to extricate our country from...

BAGHDAD, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The judge presiding over the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven others on charges of crimes against humanity ejected former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark from the court on Sunday for insulting the tribunal. Clark, who heads an international team of lawyers involved in the defence, was ejected at the start of a hearing at which Saddam and two aides were convicted and sentenced to death. The judge, Raouf Abdul Rahman, ejected Clark because he had sent a memo to Abdul Rahman including the accusation that the tribunal was making "a mockery of justice". The...

HOLLYWOOD - Hollywood activist George Clooney has launched a scathing attack on the media, accusing journalists and producers of neglecting their responsibilities to their country. The Ocean's Eleven star is a vocal opponent of President George W. Bush--and he believes the media has betrayed the public by not reporting the truth about the Bush administration. And Clooney, who joined Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel last week to address the United Nations Security Council about the problems in Darfur, blames the American public for focusing on reality TV shows instead of real news.

I don't know why I do this, but sometimes when I read news articles on Yahoo, I click the "discussion" link at the bottom to get an idea of who the audience is. Most of the messages posted in these unmonitored discussion areas are full of hate form both sides to the point of being disturbing. This post, however, is particularly disturbing considering that this individual is apparently an American: http://news.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?action=m&board=37138459&tid=apiraq&sid=37138459&mid=2312990 Even more ominous is the fact that his sentiment is echoed by many on these discussion forums. This poor slob will never appreciate the sacrifice that many Americans are...

<p>West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller said on the CBS evening news on Saturday that America was safer with Saddam in power.</p>

In her new book due out Sept. 19, "Peace Mom," Cindy Sheehan writes of her fantasies of killing President Bush.Sheehan, whose son Army Spc. Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq in April, 2004, couches her desire for the murder of the President by saying she wishes she could go back in time and kill George Bush as an infant in order to prevent the Iraq war.Sheehan has been trying for over a year to meet with President Bush, but to no avail. She met with the President once in 2004 shortly after her son gave his life in Iraq. Since...

To hate other humans or to feel no pain at their suffering, it is necessary to dehumanize them, to write them off as less than human. The Nazis are the classic example of this dehumanization. Germans were the obermensch, the master race. Jews, Slavs, Gypsies were the untermensch, the inferior peoples who barely had the right to exist. The Puritans dehumanized Native Americans, white Americans dehumanized African Americans, Irish Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland dehumanized one another, as do Jews and Arabs in the Mideast, and Shiite and Sunni Muslims. In every case, one attributes to the "other" characteristics...

The End of Christianity in Iraq by Glen ChancyJuly 24, 2006Christians of Iraq.ComThe news from Iraq has been especially grim of late. Daily it seems violent death is everywhere in the form of car bombings at mosques and other public facilities, ethnic cleansing carried out by militias roving about the streets seeking victims, even soldiers and police doubling as sectarian enforcers. The statistics themselves tell a grim tale. Baghdad's morgue is receiving nearly twice as many dead Iraqis each day as it did last year. In June 2005, the Baghdad morgue was receiving 700 to 800 bodies a month, or...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is warning Americans not to get too excited over the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, saying in a statement issued by her office Thursday that it really won't do much to improve the situation in Iraq. After briefly noting that she was "proud of our troops for their tireless work," the top House Democrat wasted no time in throwing cold water on the good news. "[Zarqawi's] death does not alter the fact that our brave men and women in uniform are fighting a war of choice in which the President sent our troops into...

Berg: No good in al-Zarqawi's death DOVER, Del. - The father of Nicholas Berg, a U.S. contractor believed to have been beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, said Thursday that he doesn't see any good coming from al-Zarqawi's death. "I see more death coming out of al-Zarqawi's death," Michael Berg told The Associated Press after learning a U.S. air strike had killed the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi is believed to have beheaded two American civilians in 2004: Nicholas Berg, a 26-year-old businessman from West Chester, Pa., and Eugene Armstrong, a 52-year-old contractor from Hillsdale, Mich. Jack Hensley,...

Michael Moore tries to avoid photographers as he arrives at the Food Bank 'Can-Do' awards gala in New York April 25, 2006. A U.S. war veteran who lost both arms in Iraq has sued the Oscar-winning director for $85 million, saying television clips were used without his permission in the anti-war documentary 'Fahrenheit 9/11' and gave a false impression that he opposed the war. (Chip East/Reuters)

INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana truck driver was sentenced Friday to more than 13 years in prison for what prosecutors said was a plot to sell U.S. intelligence secrets to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. "I am not a bad man," Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban told U.S. District Court Judge John D. Tinder during his sentencing hearing. "I help this country a lot. ... I came to live in peace." Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Jackson said Shaaban was putting up a front in maintaining his innocence. "This defendant is a man without a conscience. Mr. Shaaban has no allegiance to this...

Speaking out against the Iraq war left the Hollywood actress Susan Sarandon and her family facing death threats and a stream of vicious attacks from the public and the media, she reveals today. Sarandon, who is hoping to play 'Peace Mom' Cindy Sheehan in a film about the mother's protest over her son's death in Iraq, said she feared for her safety because of the 'horrifying' way in which she was targeted by newspapers, radio phone-ins and people in the street. In an interview on the Jonathan Dimbleby Programme that will be aired on ITV1 today, she said her stance...

It is not too soon for "United 93," because it is not a film that knows any time has passed since 9/11. The entire story, every detail, is told in the present tense. We know what they know when they know it, and nothing else. Nothing about Al Qaeda, nothing about Osama bin Laden, nothing about Afghanistan or Iraq, only events as they unfold. This is a masterful and heartbreaking film, and it does honor to the memory of the victims. The director, Paul Greengrass, makes a deliberate effort to stay away from recognizable actors, and there is no attempt...

Freed US hostage says Iraq insurgents 'will win:' video 18 minutes ago US authorities guarded freed hostage Jill Carroll in Iraq after insurgents released her from nearly three months of captivity and published a video showing her praising them. US officials declined to say when the 28-year-old freelance journalist would go home to the United States, but a top Sunni leader at whose office Carroll showed up on Thursday said she could arrive "anytime in the US." Video footage posted on the Internet late Thursday showed Carroll in an interview with her kidnappers before her release in which she praised...

The Russian Government had a spy inside the US military command who passed information to Saddam Hussein on America’s war plan in the opening days of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon announced yesterday. The explosive revelation was based on Iraqi documents captured since the fall of the dictator and were set last night to trigger a major diplomatic incident between Washington and Moscow. The Russian spy, who was not named, passed detailed information on US troop movements through the Russian Ambassador in Baghdad, who sent the information to Saddam’s personal secretary. The first document is a handwritten account of...

Jews, neo-Nazis on same page? New York-based Jewish weekly Forward published article over the weekend depicting goings-on at recent conference sponsored by white supremacy magazine, which was attended by representatives of neo-Nazi organizations from all over the U.S., as well as by group of extreme right-wing Jews. Magazine editor: As far as I’m concerned, a white Jew is white The New York-based Jewish weekly Forward published an article over the weekend depicting the on goings at the American Renaissance Conference in Virginian last February. The conference, which is sponsored by a magazine dedicated to the purity of the race, was...

Actor and director George Clooney says he is proud to be denounced as unpatriotic for questioning US policy because he wanted to be on "the right side of history". Interviewed on BBC television about his latest films Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck, Clooney said that not only did he accept the right to be attacked for his views but he even relished them. Clooney, who has weathered attacks since opposing the 2003 Iraq invasion, said at one point that it was "frustrating" to be listed as a "traitor" on a set of playing cards, but he also accepted...

In a surprisingly strong Op Ed on Friday, Ted Koppel, the former "Nightline" host who is now an occasional columnist for The New York Times, argues that when it comes right down to it, the U.S. adventure in Iraq is, as some charge, "about the oil." He likened the situation to H.L. Mencken's statement that when someone says something is "not about the money" it is indeed "about the money." The same is true in this case relating to oil. While it's wrong to say that we invaded the country to take over its oil supply, Koppel writes in the...

This is an update to my thread the other night about Cindy Sheehan. A group called Yearly Kos was auctioning off Cindy Sheehan to do a speaking engagement. Last time I checked, the bids were up to $1,275.00. There is also a thread about this auction on the eBay sellers central discussion forum called "AHHHHHH! Uh, well, at least shipping is free. Is this for real?" It can be found at http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000218333 This thread is still running in that forum, even after several days. Several of the posters there noted that the Cindy Sheehan auction violated ebay's policys, and apparently...

NEW YORK (NNPA)— “I don’t know if President Bush is the greatest terrorist— I’ve not met them all, but he’s damn sure in the running.” As mild and gentile as you want to be, that’s what civil rights activist and beloved performer Harry Belafonte said as he addressed the audience at the Canaan Baptist Church annual King Day celebration. Introduced by the Rev. Al Sharpton, Belafonte was a surprise guest speaker at an event attended by ambitious politicos like Democratic New York Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, and higher-office hopefuls like Jeanine Pirro, Thomas Suozzi, Mark Green and Eliot...

Dear Friends, As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight. I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country. There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened: This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union Address....

Dear Friends, As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight. I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country. CindySheehan's diary :: :: There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened: This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the...

A CINDY SHEEHAN FOR SENATE BLOG: Why not?

Boxer’s letter is as follows: On December 16, along with the rest of America, I learned that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge. President Bush underscored his support for this action in his press conference today. On Sunday, December 18, former White House Counsel John Dean and I participated in a public discussion that covered many issues, including this surveillance. Mr. Dean, who was President Nixon’s counsel at the time of Watergate, said that President Bush is “the first President to admit to an impeachable offense.” Today, Mr....

The bitter truth, as we feast on the bounty of the empire -Our myth of Thanksgiving warps a history of genocide ONE indication of moral and intellectual progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day with a National Day of Atonement. Indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas. But the thought of changing this white-supremacist holiday is hard to...

For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who would listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq. In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians. Among his claims: • Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters. • Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head. • Tractor-trailers were filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and children...

NEW YORK -- An Arabic interpreter for the Army may have secretly helped Iraqi insurgents by improperly taking classified documents from Iraq home to Brooklyn, where he made dozens of phone calls to numbers linked to the insurgency, a federal prosecutor said Monday. The man's attorney said he simply had been maintaining innocent relationships with Iraqi contacts approved by his military supervisors. After returning to the U.S. earlier this year, the man had more than 100 cell phone conversations with numbers directly involved with the insurgency, Buretta said, including numbers found at suspected safehouses for Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,...

Maverick British lawmaker George Galloway solicited and received nearly $600,000 in profits for himself and a charity he ran from secret deals under the Iraq oil-for-food program, Senate investigators charged yesterday.

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 16, 2005 -- The constitution voted on yesterday in Iraq may well constitute an obstacle to securing human rights and individual liberties should it be approved, Freedom House said today. Immediate and comprehensive efforts should be undertaken to ensure that post-referendum amendments and enabling legislation for the constitution address the most problematic provisions. On October 15, Iraqis voted in a national referendum on whether to adopt a constitution that emerged in mid-September after months of negotiation and was expected to be approved. A political agreement reached last week commits Iraq's leaders to consider new amendments to the...

Sean Penn bales water out of a boat with a plastic cup as he and members of his entourage make an attempt to rescue stranded people in New Orleans.

Some of Mother Sheehan's Gentle MusingsOn America "We began the killing as soon as we stepped foot on these shores [of America] and the killing has gone on unabated for over 200 years." "There has always been excuses for wars, but NONE of them have been good or valid."   http://tinyurl.com/7rzr3"This country is not worth dying for.” “America has been killing people on this continent since it was started.""The U.S. government is a morally repugnant system.” http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=17915    On 9/11 “9/11 was Pearl Harbor for the neo-conservatives’ agenda.” http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=17915  The Jewish Plot "Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was...

What is it that the west, and America in particular, have against Islam and Muslim countries? Plenty, I believe, as does a noted political-analyst friend of mine whom I will not name because he does very sensitive work for the government. First, it was the shame of Guantanamo Bay and the barbaric torture of blindfolding of shackled, red-uniformed Muslim prisoners from Afghanistan, who were brutally tortured in barbaric instances which were fully condoned by George Bush and his former secretary of state, Colin Powell. Then came the destruction of Iraq against all sane admonition by sensible people from around the...

MILWAUKEE - A peace activist who went to Iraq to serve as a "human shield" against the U.S. invasion is challenging $8,000 in federal fines. Ryan Clancy, 28, filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department in federal court Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT The department alleges Clancy went to Iraq in violation of sanctions and offered his services to the Iraqi government to shield its facilities from possible military action. Clancy was in Iraq from Jan. 28, 2003, to March 7, 2003, according the lawsuit. The United States attacked Iraq on March 19, 2003.

It seems as though the [insert most vile metaphor you can think of here] that I blogged about here couldn't stand the heat and/or didn't drum up quite the following that he envisioned. According the Marine Corps Times, it appears that this individual faked his own death, supposedly at the hands of pro-military folks. That fits nicely with his MO, but strangely enough, local law enforcement has no report of it. Of course, since the guy also owns the "Forsake The Police" web domain, I'm thinking that any criminal activity involving his demise might not get the attention that a...

So we have Scott Ritter running around on the Ed Schultz show and most of the Air America hotheads interviewed him. Scott is blathering about the Bush plan to attack Iran in 2005. Don't these nitwit liberals understand that Scott is a reporter for Al Jazeera now? I wonder if he still hangs around McDonalds picking up teeny boppers.

CBS Cameraman Shot By US Troops Under Arrest Troops believe he was working for insurgents, not just covering them as reporter. Just announced on CNN. Developing...

We did it... We protested churchill. There was a collection of pro-Churchill moonbats that showed up, and we protested them as well.

TROUBLE SPEAK Ward Churchill copied 'original' art piece Takes a swing at TV reporter who confronted him -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 26, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Professor Ward Churchill Adding to a growing list of allegations, controversial University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill appears to have violated copyright law by claiming a reknowned artist's work as his own. Churchill, whose integrity has been challenged since news broke earlier last month of his paper blaming victims of 9-11 for the attacks, made an Indian-theme serigraph in 1981 called "Winter Attack" and printed 150 copies. But one of the buyers,...

Ward Hill as a member of the schismatic Boulder/Denver branch of AIM [American Indian Movement] as spent his whole life trashing the FBI and police. Here is what he said in his "Roosting Chickens" article. He is an anarchist who publishes his books through anarchist publishers. He wants to trash our law enforcement and intelligence organizations so that we will be destroyed. He doesn't want to make them better. He want the USA off the planet. He has often depicted the FBI and CIA as terrorist organizations.

I decided to change my ways. After a lot of soul searching, I've realized that the GOP does not have my best interests in mind. I can no longer support an administration and a party that cannot look beyond the immediate future and see the long-term consequences of their actions. I've thought about where this administration's policies will leave me and my future family in 30, 40, 50 years....and I do not like the picture. I never thought I would say this, but I'm turning blue. While some of you may call me a jackass, I am now proud to...

Robert Jensen (rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu) is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the author of Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity. In an article written for The Austin American Statesman, Jensen recently claimed that “The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good thing.” While Jensen was careful to say that the loss of American lives is not to be celebrated, he insulted our soldiers deeply by saying that their deaths “haven't protected Americans or brought freedom to Iraqis.” Instead, he brushed off their service to our...

Brethren Agree to Revive 'Alternative Service' Draft Programs By Kevin Eckstrom Religion News Service Leaders of the Church of the Brethren say they will follow through on a request from the Selective Service to have "alternative service" programs in place for conscientious objectors if a draft is reinstated. As one of the historic "peace churches" that shun military service, Brethren officials were "cautious" after an unannounced visit by a draft official to a church center in Maryland last October. Officials were worried that the visit signaled that a draft may be at hand. In follow-up meetings, draft officials urged the...

<p>How many more American soldiers need to die before this country wakes up to the massive fraud that is the Iraq war. Let us not forget, as 19 soldiers lay dead in body bags that before this war and 9/11 for that matter, this fraud was started and conceived by Bush, Rumsfield and the other chicken hawk neo cons down in Texas BEFORE the attacks of 9/11. Do the math right- wingers. You are cheerleaders for a regime that is bent on world dominion and to line their pockets with massive oil profits. Let's not forget that Israel is also involved in this international fraud. As they continue their assault on the Palestinian people they have their Mossad operatives in the DOD named Pearle and Wolfowitz controlling the strings of the simple minded Bush.</p>

Paraphrasing from memory here so forgive me, please. Listening to Mark Belling here in Wisconsin. A woman wrote to him about her experience at Walmart on 27th & Layton. Her husband is in Kuwait and will be missing his second Christmas in a row. She took her FOUR kids to Walmart to see Santa. Her one daughter was asking her all week if Santa will see her daddy when he flies over Kuwait, and she told her to ask Santa when she him. Little girl sat on Santa's lap, asked if he was going to Kuwait and he tells here...

I have been writing to numerous people ever since September 11, 2001. That event changed me. Before September 11, 2001 I assumed our government knew what it was doing in the world and I never questioned anything it did, but after September 11, 2001 i started to think ,why would anybody hate us so much as to try to kill as many Americans as possible. My quest for the truth lead me to one very sobering conclusion.........our policies, even before our independence in 1776, has gradually created a world in which we do not realize what people around the world...