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Top al-Qaeda aide captured May 09, 2005 IRAQ says security forces have captured a key aide to the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A government statement today said Amar al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Abbas, was captured three days ago in Baghdad. It said he helped plan an attack on Abu Ghraib prison in April in which up to 60 insurgents attacked a US base with suicide car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, wounding at least 20 US troops and 12 detainees. Zubaydi was also involved in a string of car bombings in Baghdad in April, the...

DEAR GOD. Look what I just figured out! (It took me over an hour to figure this out - feel free to check out my work, I certainly could've made a mistake, but I don't think so!) Comparing Bush's percentage of the vote, 2000 to 2004, the red states got redder - and the blue states got redder! Only ONE exception, and it's NOT New Hampshire! AL: 2000 - 56% 2004 - 63% +7% AK: 2000 - 59% 2004 - 62% +3% AZ: 2000 - 51% 2004 - 55% +4% AR: 2000 - 51% 2004 - 54% +3% CA: 2000...

Discussion thread for anyone who likes Farscape, and has watched the first half of what we've been dealt as the Series Finale tonight. What'd you think? Personally, I expected it to be awesome, and found that I underestimated it. I'm VERY impressed. Of course, this is with the caveat that the science in this particular science fiction is about as soft as scifi can get - ludicrous, really - but the plots and character development are top notch as usual. Why SciFi ever cancelled this phenomenal show is beyond me.

Sorry for another vanity, but I thought this should get a thread of it's own, because I haven't seen even one person think of this idea, and it really may be the ONLY WAY I can think of that CBS could salvage it's reputation. A question for everyone: If CBS fired Dan Rather, and put Bernard Goldberg (author of "Bias") in as the anchor of CBS Evening News... would you "give them another chance"? Would you watch? I can honestly say that I would. I know Bernie would give it to us straight. And I haven't watched CBS News for...

I haven't seen anyone else, here or on any blogs mention this. I figured it out myself, but I don't have a blog, so here it is. As most people know, one of the single most damning criticisms of the memos is the perfectly centered address headers of the May 4, 1972 and August 1, 1972 memos. Liberals have attempted to rebut this with the highly improbable possibility that this centered address was a -letterhead- that someone had gone through tremendous trouble to do and then duplicate. Highly improbable, but certainly not impossible, so they feel this point has been...

Did anybody see this? I believe he was pretty specific about "the vets who served on the swift boat with him", so let's not count fellow commanders from other boats or anything like that. He claimed every vet who was still alive who served with Kerry on a swift boat would be on stage supporting him tonight. From what I've heard, this should be -easily- refutable. And the transcript showing the blatant lie on CNN shouldn't be impossible to get a hold of, I'd assume all convention coverage will have transcripts eventually. Can we nail this vet as the blatant...

It looks to me like they are depicting Bush -eating a child-. I feel sick. If there were any Nazi propaganda that was actually -this- visceral, I never saw it. This can only be the product of an insanely twisted mind. Never mind that they should at least have more respect for the OFFICE of the Presidency, REGARDLESS of who was in it. But even if you subtract that out, even if it's just about the man himself... this kind of demonization is flatly insane by -any- sane moral calculus. This is -so- beyond the pale. I seriously feel sick....

"The authorities also executed numerous inmates at Abu Ghraib, al-Makasib, and other prisons, including long term untried political detainees and convicted prisoners. Some were apparently tortured first. Relatives reported that the body of 'Abd al-Wahed al-Rifa'i, hanged in March after two years in detention without trial, bore marks of torture when they collected it on March 26 from the General Security Directorate in Baghdad. Thirteen Abu Ghraib detainees, including students, were executed in August, and twenty-one prisoners convicted by special courts of killing several security agents were executed in October, including Falah Ahmad Hussain, Muhsin Yassin Kadhim, and Baqer Jassim...

Yemen has re-arrested two militants, suspected of masterminding the bombing of a US warship in October 2000. Jamal al-Badawi and Fahd al-Qusaa are accused of planning the attack which killed 17 on the USS Cole. The two men were detained after a shoot-out, when security forces stopped their car in Abyan province. The pair are the last of 10 escapees to be recaptured, after a prison break-out last May which was an embarrassment to the Yemeni authorities. Mr Badawi is the highest-profile detainee in Yemen and, like most of the other suspects in the USS Cole case, he is believed...

For some decades now, it has been axiomatic to say that the two American political parties have become increasingly polarized along ideological lines – the Republicans becoming more conservative and the Democrats more liberal. I think I've even said it myself. Conservative voters in the south and among the blue-collar workforce throughout the country were turning to the Republican Party, while the descendents of the liberal Republican bastions in New England and elsewhere were becoming Democrats. Thus each party was being deprived of its minority wing, and as a result moving away from the center, leading to much bitterness and...

Request to fellow Freepers, needed badly for another website. In recent days I am positive that in one thread I saw someone post five or six pictures of Saddam and Kofi Annan meeting, shaking hands, sitting and smiling together. I didn't bookmark it (should have), and have spent over an hour running searches trying to find them with no success there or on the internet. Can someone please help? I'm trying to fight the good fight and get some truth out on some liberal-choked websites and this is a big one. I can shred someone's arguments with 'em. Qwinn

http://www.iraqcp.org/ Scroll down (for me the slider comes up on the left) until you see the bit in English that says: "Iraq's Communist Party says it wants U.S. troops out soon, plans political comeback" Click on it. Holy crap, huh? Qwinn

<p>The New York Times Book Review (search) is considered the industry bible of what’s hot and what’s not in books. But the publication is coming under increasing fire for what some authors are calling a liberal bias.</p> <p>“I think a paper that says ‘All the News That’s Fit to Print’ has a responsibility of covering most things,” said Doug Dutton, manager of Dutton’s bookstore in Los Angeles. “But I think it would be disingenuous to say that the New York Times doesn’t have a leftist slant.”</p>

I don't know if this has been posted already or not, my guess is it probably has, but even so, it's worth seeing twice. It's a long download unless you have high speed - 7 megs. But it's incredibly moving. http://www.company71.org/wtc.htm Mirror sites listed at: http://www.powforum.org/wtc/ From the creator: "This has been a work-in-progress and began the day after the attack at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. I survived the attack itself by being late to work that day, but I lost many people who were not so lucky. I created the page to honor those I lost, those...

<p>Nov. 14 — It’s a small thing, but I find it really grating. Republicans refer to their Democrat colleagues, pointedly dropping the suffix that makes it an adjective, and grammatically correct. I’m waiting for the day when Democrats refer to Republic senators. It’s so silly, but it’s a symptom of the deep-seated partisanship that drives so much of politics today.</p>

This morning, we know for sure: the Senate Republicans are serious about President Bush’s judicial nominees. There had been some question. Up until 6 PM last night, all the Majority Leader Bill Frist and his staff had to offer was talk. We heard from the Senator’s senior advisor that Frist had an “itchy trigger finger” to get something done about the nominees being filibustered by his Democrat colleagues. Months ago, they told us to “get ready for hardball.” Even before that, it was “Anything is possible, nothing is off the table.” And so when Frist’s staff told us last week,...

Note: Some content may be objectionable to some readers Since today is my 39th birthday, I've decided to celebrate it by doing something nice. I'm going to apologize for an article I wrote last week, which was critical of the campus diversity movement. Of course, anyone who reads my columns realizes that I criticize the diversity movement every week. But last week I really crossed the line and upset a number of feminist readers by making remarks critical of a play called The Vagina Monologues. The criticisms of my article have been two-fold. First, I stand accused of unfairly referring...

The true history of the Republican and Democrat parties: 1854 The New Republican Party is formed from former Democrats and Whig Party members in opposition to the extension of slavery into the US Territories. James Fremont becomes the Party's first Presidential candidate in 1856. 1860 Abraham Lincoln becomes the first Republican elected as President of the United States. 1862 A presidential order abolishes slavery in the District of Columbia as a prelude to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. 1864 The Republican National Convention makes the abolition of slavery a plank in its platform. 1865 Lincoln's assassination leaves Vice President Andrew...

Just saw this on the bottom of the screen during a Hardball debate between Matthews and Clark. This must be the single most moronic statement I have ever heard. Has -anyone- ever suggested that Saddam was BEING attacked by terrorists?! Qwinn

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3146042998 This guy is a little, uh, high strung. But he's funny as hell. Qwinn