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There have been scenes of jubilation in Baghdad as US tanks rolled into the very heart of the Iraqi capital, confirming that the government of Saddam Hussein has been ousted from power. In the main square in Baghdad, a group of Iraqi men attempted to pull down a massive statue of Saddam Hussein in an unprecedented show of contempt for the Iraqi leader. The metal plaque at the base of the statue was torn off and the statue's marble plinth attacked with a sledgehammer. The men scaled the statue to secure a noose around its neck but were unable to...

<...snip...>Stewartstown, Pa.: It seems to be that a central point has been left out of discussions about Iraq. The U.S. doesn't have a right to attack other nations and remove their leaders just because it thinks that doing so will make the world "better off." Other nations have a right to their governments — even if those governments are nondemocratic. The U.S. — and any other country — only has a right to attack a nation that poses a clear and direct threat. Iraq was not endangering the United States. Even if Saddam had WMDs, why would he use them...

WASHINGTON -- Seven Iraqi men whose hands were ordered cut off by Saddam Hussein met with President Bush at the White House today, along with a Houston doctor who helped fit them with prosthetics. "I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein with six other Iraqi citizens as well who suffered the same fate," Bush said, shaking the new hand of Qasim Ghida Kadhim at a photo opportunity at the Oval Office. "They are examples of the brutality of the tyrant." Kadhim, a salesman, and the six others...

Doc Martins on The Ground We have recently received a letter from a Marine of the second division who happens to be a Conservative Punk. In it, he comments on the state of the Iraqi conflict, as well as recent events. Hey man, I just want to say, I agree whole-heartedly. I'm a Lance Corporal in the Marines. I've been in about two years now. Let me tell you, all this shit that the media is saying is such a lie. I was in Iraq. I watched a friend of mine suffer for nearly 12 hours before he died, but...

Scott Ritter, formerly the top United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, has long argued that claims that Saddam Hussein possessed biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programmes were massively exaggerated. His public campaign against the US-led invasion of Iraq made him a hated figure of the American right, which still demonises him as an apologist for the ousted Baghdad regime. Now, at the very moment when the absence of weapons of mass destruction in post-Saddam Iraq should make Mr Ritter feel vindicated, he faces new questions about his relationship with Baghdad after he quit his UN job in 1998. Mr Ritter...

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The “Mystic River” star was in South America, promoting the flick, when he was asked about the heat he’s been taking for speaking out against the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. When Penn was asked if he considered himself to be a patriot, he replied, according to our source and translator, “I am more patriotic than this president we have, who I consider a traitor of human and American principles.”

The hawks have their tail feathers between their legs these days, no doubt about it. Friends of mine ridicule me mercilessly for swallowing that hokum about WMDs. George Bush has dropped his weapons talk in favour of happy blather about human rights, and the leaders of the Western world stand revealed as liars, or incompetents, or both. As my colleague Jeffrey Simpson argued yesterday, the world is a very scary place. The trouble is, the world might be much scarier if Saddam were still around. My guess is he'd be burning up the phone lines to Pakistan, ordering up some...

I have always admired Edward Luttwak, one of the clearest American thinkers in the strategy/security game, and I have nothing but contempt for the U.S. Homeland Security Department (Heimatsicherheitsabteilung, in the original German) and its ridiculous color-coded threat levels. So I started reading a recent article by the former on the latter with genuine pleasure, anticipating that Luttwak was going to condemn Homeland Security for its habit of running up the levels from puce to magenta and back down to mauve, shredding Americans' nerves with warnings nobody can respond to in a useful way, for no better reason than to...

Friday, January 16, 2004 Iraq's deposed leader Saddam Hussain will be tried in an Iraqi court by Iraqi judges, senior member of the Iraqi Governing Council Mohammed Bahr Al Oloum said. He criticised the US decision to designate the former Iraqi leader, captured by American forces in December, as a prisoner of war. He said the council has protested the decision. "He is not a prisoner of war. He is a war criminal," he told Gulf News on the sidelines of a lecture he gave in Bahrain Wednesday night. "The man was not captured during the war; he was caught...

<p>January 12, 2004 -- It's the all-new Baghdad Bob - he's cleaned up his act, dyed his hair and he's back on the air. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi minister of disinformation who became famous for his absurd daily reports that Iraq was winning the war, has popped up on Arab television as a commentator - as these new exclusive photos show.</p>

A study of television news coverage of the war in Iraq says ABC’s World News Tonight was the most antiwar — far more than CBS, NBC or Fox. — USA Today, September 9 Antiwar? What are we to make of that word, exactly? For starters, it brings to mind a twelve-year-old study on press coverage of the Catholic Church by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the same outfit that did the study mentioned above. The findings then: press coverage is anti-Catholic. The center, which works to maintain a neutral image, did not use exactly those words but did...

Saddam Spit on a G.I. As He Was Handcuffed; U.S. Soldier Punched Back

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A giant photo of fallen dictator Saddam Hussein getting a jail visit from his nemesis Ahmed Chalabi graced the front page of a Baghdad newspaper. A pale and thinner Saddam, dressed in a grey sports jacket and white robes, is sitting on a bed in his crumbling cell, next to his adversary, the longtime Iraqi opposition leader Chalabi, who returned to Baghdad after Saddam was pushed from power last April. The photo was blown up across the front page of Al-Mutamar, the paper of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC). "Today's paper sold out in record time. I...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The name of Saddam Hussein has been removed from the list of descendants of Islam's Prophet Mohammed, the head of the union of Ashrafs, who guard the genealogical tree, told AFP. Al-Sherif Najeh Mohammed Hassan al-Faham al-Aaraji admitted that the ousted dictator had been able to cheat despite the great value and honour attached to the line which is guarded in Baghdad. "Saddam had forced the origin experts to falsify his genealogical tree so that it went back to the Prophet," he said. "We will inform all the experts, and particularly those who yielded to Saddam and...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq  — Members of three Islamic groups stepped forward on Saturday to claim responsibility for a number of recent guerrilla attacks that have left several U.S. soldiers dead and scores of others injured in Baghdad.</p> <p>The five men, all with their faces covered and wearing red scarves, made their boasts on a videotape aired by Arab television station Al-Arabiya (search). They urged fellow group members to follow suit and attack all foreign soldiers stationed in the region as a means of showing the world that they are against the occupation of Iraq.</p>

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - One month before the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 tragedy, the broadcast networks seem set to change the tone of their coverage of that event from focusing on the event itself and the memorials to looking more at policy issues in the aftermath of the attacks. The exact extent of the coverage is still uncertain as the networks await to hear from New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pa., on their plans for the day, but it is highly unlikely that ABC, CBS and NBC News will repeat their 2002 menu of broad live coverage...