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US activists call for release, pardon of Iraq shoe-thrower Dec 29 03:52 PM US/Eastern US activists on Monday urged Baghdad to release the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush, insisting that his gesture was meant to insult, not harm the US leader. "This was a form of insult... If he had wanted to hurt George Bush, he would have chosen a different weapon," Medea Benjamin of the Codepink peace activism group told AFP at a rally of about a dozen people outside the Iraqi consulate in Washington. Zaidi, 29, threw his shoes at Bush...

The Iraq Study Group says the private army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr could be 60-thousand fighters strong. Al-Sadr's Mahdi army is one of the concerns highlighted in the Iraq Study Group's report, released yesterday. It's one of many factions undermining U-S efforts to help Iraq's democracy gain control. The study group says many of al-Sadr's followers are planted throughout the security forces that protect Iraqi government institutions. And more worrisome than their numbers, which stood at ten-thousand in 2005, is al-Sadr's organizational ability. One terrorism expert says cell phones, Internet communications and other technology gives the Mahdi army an...

WASHINGTON (AP) - There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush's justification for going to war. The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war. It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or...

Allies in Afghanistan Italy Netherlands Italian soldiers from the 9th Alpine Regiment, aboard a 'Puma' armored vehicle, patrol the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Tomas Munita) Helicopters, engineers and armoured infantry are helping make the commander of Dutch troops in southern Afghanistan confident of success in their mission in Uruzgan, where now only an handful of special forces are taking on the Taliban.(AFP/File/Shah Marai) Australia United Kingdom Australian Special Forces task group soldiers take part in live-fire range practice in the Bagram region of Afghanistan. (REUTERS/The Australian Defence Force/Handout) British troops are seen at Camp Bastion, in the southern province...

Translated Text of an Iraqi Document Concerning Kuwait POWs As the opening date of Operation Freedom neared, Qusai Saddam Hussein-one of Saddam’s bloodthirsty sons, made arrangements to move captured Kuwaiti prisoners into critical locations, to serve as “human shields”. There were 448 Kuwaitis, captured during the First Gulf War ,when Saddam made his infamous incursion into Kuwait. By the terms of the UN Cease Fire agreements –signed by Iraq on 3/03/91- all Kuwaitis were supposed to have been freed and repatriated without delay. Clearly,this never happened ; and sadly,the ultimate fate of these 448 helpless captives is unknown. CMPC-2003-012666 Republican...

One-third of Americans say they believe President Bush should be impeached, according to a new survey – a figure that mirrors the number of people who say the United States cannot win a military victory in Iraq. Scott Rasmussen of the polling firm Rasmussen Reports said his survey found an even higher percentage of respondents believe Vice President Dick Cheney also should be removed from office.

Mortensen Defends Bush Criticism The Lord Of The Rings star Viggo Mortensen refuses to apologize for his recent attack on President George W. Bush - maintaining the political leader is a "beast." The outspoken actor hit out at Bush after his controversial handling of Hurricane Katrina, but also disagrees with the President's Iraq policies, gossip site The Scoop reports. He fumes, "I'm not anti-Bush; I'm anti-Bush behavior. In other words, I'm against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration. Cindy Sheehan (peace activist whose son was...

''One anecdote from Mosul," said General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the National Defense University earlier this month. ''There was a police recruiting station. Forty young men lined up to sign up to become Iraqi policemen. A vehicle-borne IED explodes -- kills or badly injures 12 of them. The next day, the 28 remaining return to the same spot to sign up to be policemen. ''And that kind of courage," the general told his audience, ''is being shown across Iraq by literally thousands and thousands of Iraqis who want to serve their country." But...

-- If the Bay State senators could hang an ornament on the Pentagon Christmas tree, it would be pink. A pink slip, that is, for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry called for Rumsfeld's resignation last week, following a speech at John Hopkins University in which Rumsfeld defended the war in Iraq and critiqued the mainstream media's war coverage. "We've arrived at a strange time in this country where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press," Rumsfeld said. As an example, Rumsfeld later pointed...

WASHINGTON – Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, never known to mince words, today told a San Antonio radio station the U.S. cannot win the war in Iraq. The "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Dean predicted on WOIA.

WASHINGTON – In accusations about American troops reminiscent of what the young John Kerry said to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, the senator and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee told CBS "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer there was no reason for U.S. soldiers to continue "terrorizing" Iraqi children. "And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the – of – the historical customs, religious customs," Kerry said Sunday. "Whether...

Who's funding the insurgents in Iraq? The list of suspects is long: ex-Baathists, foreign jihadists, and angry Sunnis, to name a few. Now add to that roster hard-core Euroleftists.

In the Iraq war so far, the U.S. military has deposed a dictator who had already used weapons of mass destruction and would have used them again. As we now know, Saddam Hussein was working with al-Qaida and was trying to acquire long-range missiles from North Korea and enriched uranium from Niger. Saddam is on trial. His psychopath sons are dead. We've captured or killed scores of foreign terrorists in Baghdad. Rape rooms and torture chambers are back in R. Kelly's Miami Beach mansion where they belong.

This is the nasty professor who went after this female freshman for inviting Scott Rutter to speak at their local community college. The professor went on to say that our soldiers should execute their commanding officers in Iraq. Rebecca Beach, the student involved, told her side of the story today in New York on Kevin McCullough's show. She is slated to be on Hannity and Colmes tonight .

Always remember this: "Tolerance – the great "virtue" of the American left today – never applies to those who do not share their opinion." Also remember this: "Jerky college professors who are intolerant of others always believe themselves superior to everyone else." Picture your college-age daughter working hard in extracurricular activities to bring a much respected war hero to her college campus to speak to students about his experiences. When she innocently invites faculty to attend, she receives a reply that not only threatens her, but proceeds to suggest that America's fighting men and women commit treason and execute their...

When Rebecca Beach, a freshman at Warren Community College in New Jersey e-mailed faculty announcing a campus program yesterday featuring decorated Iraq war hero Lt. Col. Scott Rutter, the response she got from one English professor took her aback. English professor John Daly replied: "Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors." Daly added that he would ask his students to boycott the event and also vowed "to expose [her] right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like [Rebecca’s] won’t dare show their face on a college campus."

The elephant in the room concerning the Wilson-Plame leak scandal and the Able Danger firings is that the very agencies charged with protecting our country have turned inward, practicing their dark craft to unseat a duly elected President in a time of war. Unfortunately, the inside-the-beltway intelligence community, the DC military establishment, and their allies in the press are not the only ones trying to subvert the policies of our wartime leaders. A Time Magazine article published in September shows that the deceptions and dangerous power plays even extend to at least some of our military intelligence personnel in the...

With the latest world events--fighting in Fallujah, gun battles in southern Thailand, and an attack on the diplomatic quarter of Damascus--attention is turning even more intently to radical Islam. In March, after the Madrid train bombings, Beliefnet talked with Michael Sells, a renowned comparative religions scholar whose specialty is Saudi Salafism, also known as Wahhabism, about the state of play in global Islam and terrorism. We are reprinting it today because his comments are, if anything, more accurate now than they were a few weeks ago. What does this mean for the landscape of worldwide Islam? If it’s true that...

Here is a quote from a military/defense forum I also post on. I normally post on the Navy portion of that forum with a few other Americans, but this is from a poster in their World Armed Forces Forum who linked to a disturbing insurgent propoganda film about their use of IEDs against American and Iraqi forces. Insurgent propoganda video about IED attacks against Americans (Choose free download and then look for doanload message at bottom of next page) Be warned, the film is disturbing...but it is also a huge mistake by the insurgents because there is tremendous intelligence that...

Former television talk-show host Phil Donahue became involved in a heated shouting match last night with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly over continued U.S. involvement in Iraq. However, much of America was not able to see the verbal wrestling match, as breaking news of the landing of a crippled JetBlue flight in Los Angeles pre-empted a portion of "The O'Reilly Factor" during its live feed.