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It may sound unreal, given the daily images of carnage and chaos. But for a certain plucky breed of businessmen, there's good money to be made in Iraq. Consider Iraqna, the leading mobile-phone company. For sure, its quarterly reports seldom make for dull reading. Despite employees kidnapped, cell-phone towers bombed, storefronts shot up and a huge security budget—up to four guards for each employee—the company posted revenues of $333 million in 2005. This year, it's on track to take in $520 million. The U.S. State Department reports that there are now 7.1 million mobile-phone subscribers in Iraq, up from just...

It's Official: Media Body Burning Story is Bogus Posted by Greg Sheffield on November 27, 2006 - 13:25. The news that six Sunnis were captured by Shiites, doused with kerosine and burned alive, was too sensational to not be picked up by the mainstream media. But it turns out that the event never happened. Furthermore, the Iraqi "spokesman" relied on to give all information regarding this event is as fictional as the story itself. Jamil Hussein, the man news reports called "police Capt. Jamil Hussein," was the source for all information regarding the burning. Although he is mentioned by USA...

In a stunning and historic trip under the utmost secrecy, a delegation of families of fallen U.S. troops have traveled to Iraq to counter critics of the war effort, just days before the Nov. 7 midterm elections. The delegation of “Gold Star Families” agreed to provide the Sacramento Union with an exclusive account of their trip to Iraq based on the assurance that news of their mission would not be published until they had safely left Amman, Jordan. So secret is their trip that even members of the Bush Administration were kept in the dark about their planned activities. They’ve...

A posting of an unredacted instant message sessions between Rep. Mark Foley and a former congressional page has apparently exposed the identity of the now 21 year-old accuser... ABC RELEASED TRANSCRIPT OF ONE CHAT BETWEEN FOLEY AND A MAN WHO WAS 18 AT THE TIME OF THE INSTANT MESSAGE EXCHANGE.... NETWORK STATED THE MESSAGE WAS TO 'UNDER AGE' TEEN... DEVELOPING... ABC ONLINE GLITCH LEADS TO IDENTITY OF FOLEY ACCUSER; FEATURED IM EXCHANGE WAS WITH 18 YEAR OLD

WASHINGTON -- The last time the Dow Jones industrial average closed at a record high, America was living in a giddy economic era when good times and budget surpluses seemed as if they might continue indefinitely. It was Jan. 14, 2000, the start of another year, another century and another millennium. The economy was roaring along. The jobless rate was a low 4 percent. The "new economy" of young entrepreneurs energized markets with new tech companies that didn't turn a profit. Nobody seemed to care, and excesses piled on top of excesses.

When I first saw this article this morning, I asked my daughter to pinch me. But, it was still there. I then asked her to slap me. No change. Finally, smelling salts. Alas, it was still on my computer screen, and from the Washington Post no less: “The Redder They Are, The Harder They Fall; Republicans More Damaged by Scandals.”

On his radio show yesterday (Thursday, September 21, 2006), host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Thomas B. Edsall, who up until recently was a senior political reporter for the Washington Post. He had been with the paper for 25 years. Through precise and direct questioning by Hewitt, Edsall admitted something that is rarely heard from a liberal these days. In a shocking admission, Edsall articulated that the biases of the mainstream media are "overwhelmingly to the left." He also proposed that Democratic reporters outnumber Republicans "in the range of 15-25 to 1"!In the interview, as Hewitt and Edsall discussed the rise of...

Yesterday evening, I received a call from my column syndicate, Creators Syndicate. The Associated Press had phoned my editor to inform her that it would be sending a response to my column yesterday about detained AP photographer Bilal Hussein. (Funny how quickly they respond now. Where have they been the past five months? Oh, right: Busy covering up the news about Hussein's April 12 capture by the military at a Ramadi apartment with an alleged al Qaeda leader and a weapons cache.) The AP last night asked my editor to supply its corporate communications office with my newspaper client list...

However Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, and Markoff's boss seems to be willing to let by-lines be bygones. He gave the keynote speech at Patricia Dunn's induction into the Bay Area Business Hall of Fame last night according to this blurb.

Arrested Pulitzer Prize winning Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who took the infamous pictures of a terrorist execution on Haifa Street in Baghdad, and is notorious in the blogosphere for his collusion with jihadis as they tried to kill Americans, is the subject of a very lengthy attempt by the AP to whitewash his acts: U.S. holds AP photographer in Iraq 5 mos. (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.) The AP spins furiously and buries it in the middle, but here’s some interesting information from the US Army: The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an...

The author of The Path to 9/11 is going to be LIVE, in-studio on The John Ziegler Show at 8pm Pacific. You can listen live ONLINE or if you're in Southern CA, tune in to KFI at 640AM. From John Ziegler.Com: If you want to tell ABC to not cave to Clinton's demands in the editing of "The Path to 9/11," call 818-460-7477. If you want to complain about the movies lessons plans being dropped by "Scholastic," go to this link for contact information. http://www.scholastic.com/aboutscholastic/offices/index.htm

ABC toned down a scene that involved Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, declining to give the order to kill bin Laden, according to a person involved with the film who declined to be identified. "That sequence has been the focus of attention," the source said. The network also decided that the credits would say the film is based "in part" on the 9/11 panel report, rather than "based on" the report, as the producers originally intended.

What threat would be sufficient for the country as a whole to finally come together and present a united front? Will it take another 9/11? We all remember the day the president stood on the pile of rumble once known as the World Trade Center and addressed the nation. We were ready to do whatever it took to punish the attackers and send a signal to the world that we would not sit back and allow anyone or any government to threaten our safety. So much has changed in five years. Of course, those five years have been chock full...

by Mark Finkelstein September 4, 2006 - 09:11 Talk about your Dubious Distinction Awards. In his recently-released videotape, Adam Gadahn, né Pearlman, a nice boy from California turned Al-Qaeda spokesman, names Sy Hersh as a “sympathetic” personality, along with British MP George Galloway and Brit journalist Robert Fisk. As per the Counterrorism Blog, Gadahn "asks . . . Hersh to 'reveal more' than what was published in a New Yorker article on the war." The New Yorker article in question was one of a series Hersh has written, critical of the Bush adminstration's Iraq policy. In a speech last year...

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 - Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said Saturday that he has received promises that two abducted Fox News journalists would not be harmed, hours after a deadline passed for their captors' demands to be met. 'There is a progress made on the issue of the journalists, and there are also promises not to be harmed,' Haniya told journalists in Gaza. Reporter Steve Centanni, a US citizen, and cameraman Olaf Wiig of New Zealand were seized August 14 by unidentified gunmen. On Wednesday, a previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad brigades claimed responsibility and demanded to swap...

KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip — It's blazing hot every day; the electricity comes and goes. And when there's no electricity, there's no water. Nobody has any money, but everyone, it seems, has a weapon. The Israelis left the Gaza Strip last fall. But now they seem to be everywhere at once — on the ground, in the air and even on the other end of the telephone as a voice warning civilians in accented Arabic of impending missile strikes. There's no way out. The borders are closed for months at a time to all but foreign passport holders and those...