Free Republic

Rumsfeld resigned before election, letter shows Wed Aug 15, 2007 11:40AM EDT By Kristin Roberts WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Rumsfeld, architect of the unpopular Iraq war, resigned as defense secretary before last year's November election but his decision was not announced until after the voting, according to his resignation letter obtained by Reuters on Wednesday. The letter was dated November 6, the day before voters, angered by Iraq, went to the polls and swept Republicans from power in Congress. According to a stamp on the letter, President George W. Bush saw it on election day. Bush, however, did not announce...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc... the world's largest retailer, reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit and cut its full-year earnings forecast on Tuesday, saying its customers remain under economic pressure. Chief Executive Lee Scott blamed the disappointing performance on economic pressure around the world. "It is no secret that many customers are running out of money toward the end of the month," Scott said on a recorded conference call, adding that higher fuel prices, interest rates, utility costs and "more financial pressure" are hurting sales in its international market, including Mexico and Canada. With more than 127 million customers visiting a Wal-Mart store...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Higher state taxes on smoking are producing sharp declines in tobacco consumption in the United States, just as Congress considers a huge federal cigarette tax hike, USA Today reported in its Friday editions. The newspaper, conducting its own analysis of taxation and consumption figures, said the degree of decline in smoking appears to be tied directly to the size of the tax increase. For example, cigarette sales fell 18 percent in North Carolina last year after the state tax was raised in two steps to 35 cents from a 5 cents, the newspaper said. In Connecticut, per...

No confirmation yet. Also mentioned on Fox News...

I am bringing this item from a Blog written by an anti-Hizbollah Shiite in Beirut. I have been viewing him since last summer and have found his blog to be a great source of news and opinion that the "mainstream" doesn't want to us to hear... here is today's post: Reuters: no arms smuggling If you read Reuters' coverage of Nasralllah's latest interview, you will come across the following "background information" in nearly every story filed by their editors: Lebanese security and political sources said in May that Hezbollah had replenished its rocket arsenal and received improved anti-aircraft and...

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, June 6 (Reuters) - Government officials in the northern Iraqi autonomous region of Kurdistan on Wednesday denied media reports that Turkish troops had crossed the border into Iraq to hunt for Turkish rebels. Fouad Hussein, the head of the office of Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani, said the government had no knowledge of any invasion. "Up to this moment, there is no incursion by Turkish troops into the Iraq Kurdistan region. But I don't know if the troops have entered into distant parts of the mountains, situated between Iraq and Turkey," he told Reuters. A deputy minister responsible for...

KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban will stage a "massive" operation against Western troops in Afghanistan and civilians must stay away from them in order to avoid casualties, a spokesman for the group said on Sunday. After the traditional winter lull, followed by last year's bloodiest fighting since the Taliban's ouster in 2001, the militants have stepped up their attacks in recent months against Afghan and foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military. Foreign forces have already warned civilians to avoid their military convoys in the face of rising Taliban suicide attacks against them. These attacks have resulted in...

Guantanamo Saudi 'kills himself' Reuters | Thursday, 31 May 2007 A Saudi Arabian prisoner has died of an apparent suicide at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, the US military said. "The detainee was found unresponsive and not breathing in his cell by guards. The detainee was pronounced dead by a physician after all lifesaving measures had been exhausted," the US Southern Command in Miami said in a statement. The military did not indicate how the prisoner died nor release his name. He is the fourth detainee to die of apparent suicide at the detention camp, which opened in January 2002...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Hunters will now get cash and other incentives to kill wolves under Alaska's predator-control program that aims to protect moose populations, state officials said on Wednesday. Alaska's Department of Fish and Game announced it will give $150 for every left foreleg of a wolf killed in the five areas where state officials are hoping to cull packs. The incentives are an extension of Alaska's controversial aerial wolf-control program, which allows hunters with permits to shoot the animals from aircraft. The department said it will also seek to raise the number of permits for hunters who kill...

Doug Dunbebin, who walked door-to-door collecting signatures to get the question onto the town meeting ballot, said there are still unanswered questions about September 11, 2001, when hijacked plane attacks killed 2,992 people at New York's World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

Reuters Counts 9/11 Hijackers as 9/11 Victims Posted by Ken Shepherd on March 8, 2007 - 18:15. From the March 8 edition of James Taranto's Best of the Web. (H/t: Nathan Burchfiel): Another Man's Victim?Reuters has a cute little human interest story about funny people from Vermont holding "town meetings" where they call for President Bush's impeachment. What caught our eye was not the darling little Vermonters, though, but something in this paragraph: Doug Dunbebin, who walked door-to-door collecting signatures to get the question onto the town meeting ballot, said there are still unanswered questions about September 11, 2001, when...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House offered support on Wednesday for Vice President Dick Cheney, a powerful proponent of the Iraq war, after the conviction of his top aide dealt a fresh blow to Cheney's political reputation and raised new questions about his influence. The trial of Lewis "Scooter" Libby showed Cheney, often portrayed by critics as the shadowy Darth Vader behind the war in Iraq, was deeply involved in an effort to discredit a critic of the administration's prewar intelligence. Libby's conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges placed Cheney squarely in the center of a new political...

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani police arrested five suspected Afghan militants in a raid in the city of Quetta and a Pakistani newspaper said on Sunday the Taliban had conceded the arrest last week of one of their top leaders.The five suspected militants were among 32 Afghans rounded up in the southwestern city where Pakistani security officials said senior Taliban leader Mullah Obaidullah Akhund was arrested last Monday."They are Afghans aged between 20 and 25 and they came from Waziristan," senior Quetta police officer Qazi Abdul Wahid said, referring to a volatile Pakistani region on the Afghan border where Taliban...

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent Fri Mar 2, 4:36 PM ET Republican presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani acknowledged his differences with the party's conservative base on Friday but said bigger principles should be at stake in the race for the White House. The former New York mayor led a parade of six Republican White House contenders who wooed frustrated conservatives at an annual convention. He asked the activists to look past his support for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control. Giuliani, dubbed "America's Mayor" for his leadership after the September 11 attacks, touted his New York record of reducing crime,...

Italy arrests man for locking up "lively" wife Wed Feb 28, 2007 11:02 AM GMT ROME, Feb 28 (Reuters Life!) - Italian police arrested a jealous husband in the north of the country who forced his young wife to stay at home for two years because she was "too lively" to be let outside."She was too lively. She absolutely had to be locked up otherwise who knows what she might have done," Egyptian immigrant Emad Zied, 31, was quoted as saying in Corriere della Sera daily newspaper on Wednesday.His 20-year-old bride, Rasha, was rescued by local police and firemen...

BAGHDAD, Feb 10 (Reuters) - The new U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, warned on Saturday that failure to stabilise the country would condemn Iraq to continued civil strife. "The prospects for success are good," he said, referring to a new crackdown to curb sectarian violence in Baghdad. "Failing that, Iraq will be doomed to continuing violence and civil strife and surely that is a prospect all must strive to avoid." "The stakes are very high," he said, after taking over command of America's 130,000 troops in the country from General George Casey.

new information about the Reuters Photoshop scandal: Reuters fired a top photo editor for the Middle East during an internal investigation of two doctored photos from the Israel-Lebanon war that were published last summer. The editor was the second casualty of the photo manipulation controversy surrounding Reuters freelancer Adnan Hajj. Two of Hajj’s photographs showed obvious signs of digital alterations. Facing a storm of criticism last August, Reuters terminated its relationship with Hajj and pulled more than 900 of his photos from its archive. A Reuters spokesperson said Thursday that the company would not release the name of the editor...

President George W. Bush said on Wednesday the budget he presents to Congress next month will aim to balance the budget by 2012 and make lower tax rates permanent. "Next month I will submit a five-year budget proposal that will balance the federal budget by 2012," Bush said after a meeting at the White House with top administration officials. Bush said the budget would address "priorities" like "the need to keep this economy growing by making tax relief permanent." Balancing the budget in the given timeframe would require substantial spending discipline, given that recent projections by the White House showed...

Second Colorado evangelical resigns over gay sex 40 minutes ago DENVER (Reuters) - A second Colorado evangelical leader in little over a month has resigned from the pulpit over a scandal involving gay sex, church officials said on Tuesday. Paul Barnes has resigned from the 2,100-member Grace Chapel, a church he founded in suburban Denver, said church spokeswoman Michelle Ames. Barnes' resignation follows last month's admission by high-profile preacher Ted Haggard that he was guilty of unspecified "sexual immorality" after a male prostitute went public with their liaisons. Many evangelical Christians view homosexuality as a sin, though some are more...

French police the target in urban guerrilla war By Jon Boyle Mon Nov 27, 11:29 AM ET PARIS (Reuters) - Stoned, beaten and insulted, their vehicles torched by crowds of hostile youths, French police say they face an urban guerrilla war when they enter the run-down neighborhoods that ring the major cities. "Our role is to guarantee the safety of people and property but the great difficulty today is that police are having problems ensuring their own safety," said Jerome Hanarte of the Alliance-Police Nationale union. Bedside television interviews with officers hospitalized after beatings in "les banlieues," or suburbs, support...

Go to right side of page. The economy has never been better yet the poll is running 67% to 31% AGAINST Bush's handling of the economy! My guess is that the libs at the Democratic Underground hit this poll. Either that, or people have lost their minds. Let's turn the poll numbers around!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Sen. John Kerry apologized directly to U.S. troops on Wednesday for comments about Iraq that had prompted a firestorm of criticism from Republicans and President George W. Bush. "I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform and I personally apologize to any service member, family member or American who was offended," Kerry said in a statement. Kerry said earlier in the day he was sorry for a "botched joke" about Bush that was interpreted as a slam on the U.S. military. Republicans demanded a more direct apology...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush gently admonished his father for saying he hates to think what life would be like for his son if the Democrats win control of Congress in the November 7 election. It was the latest sign of possible strain in the relationship between the two men. "He shouldn't be speculating like this, because -- he should have called me ahead of time and I'd tell him they're not going to (win)," a smiling Bush told ABC "This Week" in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

On Tuesday, a Reuters cameraman was remanded to prison until trial for his part in rock-throwing attacks on security forces in Bil'in, where the separation fence is a constant target of protesters. The cameraman, Imad Muhammad Intisar Boghnat, was arrested and charged as a result of violent riots in the Arab village of Bil'in, in the Modi'in region, on October 6, 2006. A videotape that the prosecution presented to the judge shows Boghnat encouraging and directing rioters in Bil'in to throw large chunks of rock at Israeli vehicles in such a way as to cause maximum damage. The accused is...

Israel: Foreign reporters' vehicles may be used terrorists Government Press Office director warns Shin Bet that armored vehicles used by foreign news agencies may serve hostile groups to carry out attacks against Israel Itamar Eichner Armored vehicles that were given to foreign news agencies operating in the country with the authorization of the State of Israel, may be used by hostile groups to carry out terror attacks against Israel, Director of the Government Press Office Danny Seaman warned in a letter addressed to Shin Bet Head Yuval Diskin. On August 27 an Israel Defense Forces helicopter hit an armored vehicle...

RIYADH (Reuters) - Muslim tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world, ministers from Islamic countries heard at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Information ministers and officials meeting under the auspices of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world's largest Islamic body, said Islam faced vilification after the September 11 attacks, when 19 Arabs killed nearly 3,000 people in U.S. cities in 2001. "Muslim investors must invest in the large media institutions of the world, which generally make considerable profits, so that they have the ability to...

See for example this thread first. There's news one of those AP guys was one of Saddam Hussein's spies! My mind then loiter on pics by Al-Reuters ...and the news is just not a surprise.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats enter the fall campaign with a clear edge in the high-stakes fight for control of the U.S. Congress, riding a wave of momentum that has them positioned to retake the U.S. House of Representatives and make significant gains in the Senate. President George W. Bush's low approval ratings and public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, gas prices and the country's direction threaten Republican leadership in Congress and put Democrats within reach of victory on November 7, analysts said. "I don't think the question any longer is can Democrats win control of Congress, it's can Republicans do...

The Vatican's envoy in the Holy Land and bishops from three other churches have launched a rare joint attack on the Christian Zionist movement, accusing it of promoting "racial exclusivity and perpetual war." Christian Zionists form a growing part of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, the Jewish state's main ally. They believe the return of Jews to the Holy Land and establishment of Israel are proof of God's promises to biblical patriarchs. Churches in the Middle East often appear closer to the Palestinians, whose Christian minority makes up a substantial portion of their clergy in the region. The...

IT'S bad enough that friends of Hezbollah terrorists could trick so many journalists with just a tall story and a rusty Lebanese ambulance. Worse is that some of those journalists seemed so eager to believe this ambulance was indeed wickedly blown up by an Israeli missile fired straight through the big red cross on its roof -- leaving not even a scorch mark. But worst is that even now that this hoax has been exposed, none of the countless writers and commentators who fell for it have admitted to passing on as fact the propaganda of terrorists. It is this...

The media war against Israel Early in the recent Lebanon war, the blogosphere revealed the fabrication of images by Reuters, whose reputation is now in shreds among those dwindling numbers in the western mainstream media who still acknowledge there is such a thing as the truth. Since then, the nature and scale of the various frauds perpetrated by the media during that war put those doctored Reuters pictures into the shade. The western media are no longer merely producing questionable professional practices in reporting a war. They are now active participants in it — and on the wrong side of...

International journalists discuss Lebanon war coverage; NYT bureau chief: Israel 'not interested in Lebanese deaths' A number of journalists claimed during a convention in Jerusalem Monday evening that Israel and the IDF were mostly to blame for the way the foreign media covered the Lebanon war. The panel of journalists, largely from the international media, convened to discuss their coverage of the war, at a conference arranged by the Media Line agency's Mideast Press Club. "Journalists' access to the battlefield is controlled exclusively by the IDF," said Simon McGregor-Wood, Chairman of the Foreign Press Association, and Bureau Chief of ABC...

You would think that Reuters learned its lesson about publishing to the world photos doctored to create a false image. After all, they were caught with multiple false photos from Lebanon, and had to take down more than 900 images from one stringer. Reuters promised it would have "experienced editors" look at all such photos in the future.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An Israeli airstrike hit a car belonging to journalists from the Reuters news agency, witnesses said Sunday.

Fauxtography Defender's Faux News Turns out that Greg Mitchell, the Editor & Publisher editor who has been attacking the blogosphere like a rabid ferret for pointing out the bogus news from the Middle East, has first-hand experience with staging news. (Hat tip: Confederate Yankee.) Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts,...

It turns out that Osama bin Laden valued the western media so much that one of his media advisers had the pseudonym "Abu Reuters." Al Qaeda videos are specifically designed for play in the Western media, with its own production company providing English subtitles. Said one CNN producer, "The media meant and still means a lot to them.”

All Your Fakes Are Belong to Us A jawa video spoof on Beirut Fauxtography.

Amid the controversy over certain pictures from Lebanon, a longtime student of war photography asks, "I'm not sure if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both." By David D. Perlmutter (August 18, 2006) -- The Israeli-Hezbollah war has left many dead bodies, ruined towns, and wobbling politicians in its wake, but the media historian of the future may also count as one more victim the profession of photojournalism. In twenty years of researching and teaching about the art and trade and doing photo-documentary work, I have never witnessed or heard of such a wave of attacks...

It's the story that the journalistic elite would rather just go away. In the aftermath of Reuters' admission that one of its photographers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated two war images from Lebanon after bloggers smoked out his crude Photoshop alterations, and all 920 of his Reuters photos were pulled, evidence of far more troubling photo staging and media deception in the Middle East continues to pour in. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) calls it "fauxtography." Reuters on Sunday withdrew an image of smoke rising from burning buildings after an Israeli air strike on the suburbs of Beirut on...

The first Photoshop war Lebanon war's doctored photos could be harbinger of photojournalism crisis Gal Mor The photo of an apparently new Mickey Mouse doll, resting on a ruined street in the Lebanese town of Tyre following an Israeli Air Force attack, took me back to a British TV show called "Drop the Dead Monkey," which aired in Israel about 15 years ago. One of the journalists in Channel 4's satirical show used to hang around battle zones with a teddy bear in his trunk and place it at disaster zones a short time before cameras began shooting, in order...

Many of the mainstream media apologists have conceded – and they had little choice but to do so – that many of the photographs of the Israelis’ response to Hez b’Allah’s act of war, were staged. The evidence of staging and Photoshopping is too public. The media allowed itself to be used to defame Israel, stir up sympathy for Lebanon and halt the advance into Lebanon. But the concessions of wrongdoing stop short with digital alterations. Media spokesmen are still in denial about the biggest media fraud of all: the dramatic dead baby display at Qana. EUreferendum has not given...

When Reuters was forced to sever ties with free-lance photographer Adnan Hajj and remove more than 900 of his photos from its database earlier this month, long-whispered questions about the reliability of Arab stringers and freelancers came to the forefront. But while the widespread use of Arab locals in covering the Middle East raises many legitimate concerns, the Palestinian propaganda machine has enjoyed tremendous success over the years hoodwinking supposedly sophisticated Western journalists. And Hezbollah appears to have done the same over the past month. In short, almost nothing that is purported to happen in the Arab world can automatically...

Thanks to some intrepid digging from commenters Lancelot and Harris at EU Referendum, another video of the events at Qana has been found. This is one that I have never seen before and really shows what was going on that day. It is truly a must see for anyone that believes that the photos at Qana were staged. It completely debunks the "our photographers do not set up photos" and "the rescuers were not holding up the children for photos" claims. Believe it or not, it is a link from Wikipedia of all places. Here's the direct link to the...

He initiated uproar that exposed ethics breach The furor over a photograph began in such a quiet, ordinary way. Mike Thorson, a Janesville artist and part owner of a tool distribution company, was sitting at his computer on a Saturday, checking a few news sites after looking at his e-mail. On Yahoo, he came across a Reuters photograph purporting to show the smoky aftermath of an Israeli air raid on the Beirut suburbs. "As soon as I saw it something looked very strange," said Thorson, 39. What he found led to a story that raced around the globe and resulted...

Lebanese rescuer 'Green Helmet' injured A civil defense worker who has drawn controversy for holding up the bodies of children killed in Lebanon said Tuesday he was lightly injured fighting a weekend fire sparked by an Israeli bomb. Salam Daher, dubbed the Green Helmet for the color of his civil defense headgear, said he was hit by debris Sunday when a bomb or missile fell on a building while he was helping to battle a fire at a gas station in the port city of Tyre. "I fell over when the bomb hit, and I got some scratches from debris...

Ray Robison has yet another example of staged photojournalism from Lebanon, a car with verses from the Koran strategically placed for propaganda effect: Al-AP at it again with staged photos. Ray comments: Notice this car has a wall-hanging positioned on the door. An Arabic reader tells me this board has verses from the Koran on it. Because Islam does not allow for images of the Prophet Mohammed, Muslims use verses to adorn their homes the same way some Christians use paintings of Jesus. If you want to make the argument that this wall-hanging got where it is by chance, then...

Fox is now showing the German TV video of Qana showing Green Helmet Guy posing a dead child Click here to watch the Fox News video Here is the original FR post Here is the original video on YouTube: Green Helmet the movie director [Germany's NDR busts him in the act]

The recent discovery that a Lebanese freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated pictures he took for Reuters has raised questions about the standards of photojournalism at a time of widespread digital photography. The case also increased pressure on news photo editors, who select and edit thousands of photographs under deadline pressure each day, to detect digital alterations. "The Soviets had to have a whole department to doctor pictures," said David Friend, an editor at Vanity Fair and a former director of photography for Life magazine. "Now all it takes is a swipe of a mouse, and the kid down the...

AP Circles the Wagons Around Green Helmet Guy It’s utterly surreal. The Associated Press does a full court press, supporting the man they now call Salam Daher with a multimedia presentation packed full of distortions and outright lies: A Grueling Task in Lebanon. Watch the AP presentation here: A Grueling Task in Lebanon

Kopel: Were front-page photos staged? Images from Qana raise issue of whether media were manipulated. If you see a news photograph of the war in Lebanon, shot from within Hezbollah territory, can you be confident the picture and caption are accurate? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Earlier this week, Reuters fired photographer Adnan Hajj and withdrew his portfolio of 920 pictures after Little Green Footballs, The Jawa Report, and many other weblogs provided evidence that Hajj had used digital editing and other techniques to fake numerous photos of the Lebanon war. On July 31, the News and Post ran the...