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The commander of American reinforcements to Iraq, General John Keane, was in London on Wednesday to talk about the progress of the counterinsurgency campaign and its prospects. America, he said, had adopted the wrong strategy to deal with the disorders at the outset. It tried to solve the problem by conventional military methods, using force against force in an attempt to defeat the insurgency by killing those who were waging it, when what was needed was something more like police action, providing Iraqi cities with security, so that citizens could resume their normal lives with a reasonable assurance that they...

RIYADH, 31 December 2002 — Saudi Arabia denied yesterday reports of a secret promise by Riyadh to make its airspace and bases available for use by the United States in the event of war against Iraq. “This report is untrue. The Kingdom’s position on this issue has been very clear from the start,” Prince Abdul Rahman, deputy minister for defense and aviation told Okaz daily. Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told reporters during a visit to Sudan: “The truth is what I said, not what the newspaper reported.” Prince Saud was shown making the remarks on Al-Jazeera television while referring...

Why did the Bush administration immediately suspect that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks when there was no evidence of any connection, as Richard Clarke and other Bush critics maintain? Maybe it was because there was indeed evidence, very dramatic evidence, in fact - in the form of warnings in the state-run Iraqi press that such an attack was coming, along with praise for Osama bin Laden and his kamikaze hijackers in the days after the World Trade Center was destroyed. Less than two months before 9/11, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper "Al-Nasiriya" carried a column headlined, "America, An Obsession Called...

<p>The Iraq war pushed the number of journalists killed on the job last year to 36, up sharply from the 19 killed in 2002, according to a report by an organization that monitors international press freedom.</p> <p>"It was quite a discouraging year," said Ann Cooper, the director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. But 2003 was considerably better than 1994, the worst in the past decade, when 66 newsmen and women were killed.</p>

Once again it is awards season in Hollywood, where hardware is handed out and acceptance speeches filled with the ramblings of elites who forget to pay homage to those who truly are responsible for their immense wealth and success, the regular Joe’s and Jane’s who pay to see them on the big and little screens. Oft times these award events are used as pulpits for the political rants and diatribes against our current administration, policies, and Americans who are supportive of them. In honor of this award giving season I will now announce my first annual “Foot in Mouth” awards,...

French photographer wins World Press Photo 13 February 2004 AMSTERDAM — French photographer Jean-Marc Bouju was named on Friday as the winner of the World Press Photo competition. The international jury of the 47th annual World Press Photo, which is run from Amsterdam in the Netherlands, chose a colour image from Bouju that shows an Iraqi man comforting his 4-year-old-son at a Prisoner of War centre near Najaf, Iraq.The picture was taken on 31 March 2003 and can be viewed at http://www.worldpressphoto.nl/index.jsp. Some 4,176 professional photographers from 124 countries participated in this year’s contest, the premier annual international competition...

If someone misled the American people about Saddam having "weapons of mass destruction," who might that have been? POTUS Bush? VPOTUS Cheney? Sec. Powell? Look at the following:

Democratic presidential hopeful Gen. Wesley Clark insisted Wednesday morning that he's been against the Iraq war going all the way back to the 9/11 attacks - even though he told reporters just four months ago that he "probably" would have voted for the Oct. 2002 Iraq War resolution. "I was consistently against this since from the time the guys from the Pentagon told me two weeks after 9/11 that we were attacking Iraq," Clark told ABC's "Good Morning America." "It didn't make any sense to me. I've been very, very consistent on this." Not exactly. It turns out that as...

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...

PHOENIX - The family of a soldier killed in Iraq (news - web sites) had harsh words Wednesday for the network that aired footage of her, bloody and bruised, in an Iraqi hospital bed shortly before she died. AP Photo   The footage, aired Tuesday on "NBC Nightly News," shows Lori Piestewa and Jessica Lynch — Army privates and best friends — at a hospital where they were taken after a March 23 ambush. Lynch was rescued April 1. Airing the tape — which NBC said was filmed but never broadcast by Iraqi television — created a sense of fear,...

The Thunder Run'Are you kidding, sir?': Fewer than 1,000 soldiers were ordered to capture a city of 5 million Iraqis. Theirs is a story that may become military legend.By David ZucchinoNine hundred and seventy-five men invading a city of 5 million sounded audacious, or worse, to the U.S. troops assigned the mission outside Baghdad last April 6. Ten years earlier, in Mogadishu, outnumbered American soldiers had been trapped and killed by Somali street fighters. Now some U.S. commanders, convinced the odds were far better in Iraq, scrapped the original plan for taking Baghdad with a steady siege and instead ordered...

Saddam is talking, but he isn't cooperative. New details on his capture and his first interrogation Saddam Hussein was captured on Sunday without a fight. But since then, according to a U.S. intelligence official in Iraq, the fallen dictator has been defiant. “He’s not been very cooperative,” said the official, who read the transcript of the initial interrogation report taken during the first questioning session. After his capture, Saddam was taken to a holding cell at the Baghdad Airport. He didn’t answer any of the initial questions directly, the official said, and at times seemed less than fully coherent. The...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former President Clinton praised the capture of Saddam Hussein and said the ousted Iraqi president finally will answer "for decades of tyranny and murder." "I am glad he was captured alive so he can be brought before the bar of justice," Clinton said Sunday in a statement. Clinton saluted U.S. troops, who found the bearded and disheveled former dictator in an underground hide-out on a farm near his hometown, Tikrit. Clinton also congratulated his successor in the White House. "Saddam Hussein's capture is a tribute to the skill and bravery of our troops and the good...

Dec 14, 2003 List of 55 Most Wanted Iraqis and Their Status The Associated Press The 55 most-wanted Iraqis and their status, according to U.S. Central Command. Thirty-nine are in custody, 13 remain at large, two have been confirmed killed and one has been reported killed. -No. 1: Saddam Hussein, president. Captured Dec. 13. -No. 2: Qusai Hussein, Saddam's son. Killed July 22. -No. 3: Odai Hussein, Saddam's son. Killed July 22. -No. 4: Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, presidential secretary, Saddam's cousin. Taken into custody June 17. -No. 5: Ali Hassan al-Majid, presidential adviser, Revolutionary Command Council member. Also known...

Saddam's arrest won't end resistance: HamasThe arrest of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein will not end Iraqi resistance against US-led forces, the leaders of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas and Islamic Jihad (Holy War) said on Sunday, UPI reports. The two organisations had asked the Iraqi people to continue their resistance "until the end of this occupation of Arab and Muslim territory." Islamic Jihad leader Nafez Azzam said by arresting Saddam, "the United States had achieved a very simple symbolic triumph." "But we are certain that this would never end the Iraqi people's resistance against the American occupation that is...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's former Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, in U.S. custody for seven months, helped to confirm the identity of Saddam Hussein after his capture, an official with the U.S.-led administration said Sunday. "He was identified with the help of Tareq Aziz," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. He did not elaborate. The fugitive dictator was dusty, bearded and apparently exhausted when he was found in a narrow hiding hole during a raid on a farm near his home town Tikrit late Saturday. Aziz, who surrendered to U.S. forces after the Iraqi president was...

................................ Saddam Capture 'Painful' for Arabs For many ordinary Palestinians, the TV footage of a dishevelled Saddam obediently submitting to a medical exam by his US captors was painful to watch: it sealed the defeat of the one Arab leader they felt always stood by them. Saddam should have put up a fight or committed suicide, they said, and his surrender is a stain on Arab honour. “It is a big defeat for all Arabs and Muslims,” said Raji Hassan, 29, watching TV with friends in a Gaza City coffee shop. The Palestinian Authority declined official comment. While Palestinian leader...

Having been awakened by a phone call that Saddam had been captured, the first thing that jumped into my mind was "City Line Avenue". It was payback time for all the left wing looney tunes for their snarky remarks and unfounded wacko charges. At about 9 am, I took up my position outside the local NBC affiliate and across from the ABC affiliate there on City Line Avenue. That the stations were there was just a bonus, the main reason is that the intersection sees thousands of cars per hour. It's a main traffic artery west from Philadelphia to the...

Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist. Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively...

Just before dawn, at 5:14 am (1014 GMT), US President George W. Bush got the telephone call he had been hoping for: final word that the bearded man US forces had captured in Tikrit was Saddam Hussein. White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice delivered the message minutes after hearing the news herself from the US civilian overseer for Iraq, Paul Bremer, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. The US president, who had ordered a strike aimed at killing Saddam in the first minutes of the war in Iraq, "believes this is very good news for the Iraqi people. He...