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Arabs hail shoe attack as Bush's farewell gift by Salam Faraj Salam Faraj 14 mins ago BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraq faced mounting calls on Monday to release the journalist who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush, an action branded shameful by the government but hailed in the Arab world as an ideal parting gift to the unpopular US president. Colleagues of Muntazer al-Zaidi, who works for independent Iraqi television station Al-Baghdadia, said he "detested America" and had been plotting such an attack for months against the man who ordered the war on his country. "Throwing the shoes at Bush...

Kerry: Iraq a Great Failure of Judgment Associated Press WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Wednesday called the situation in Iraq "one of the greatest failures of diplomacy and failures of judgment that I have seen in all the time that I've been in public life." "Where are the people with the flowers, throwing them in the streets, welcoming the American liberators the way Dick Cheney said they would be?" Kerry said in an interview with American Urban Radio Networks. "Since I fought in Vietnam, I have not seen an arrogance in our foreign policy like this."

"Today Show" host Katie Couric apparently just can't resist giving deposed Iraqi mass murderer Saddam Hussein an occasional compliment. During an interview with Senators Joe Biden and John McCain on Monday, she said that while the Butcher of Baghdad may have been "deplorable," at least he "kept the Sunnis and the Shiites apart and from killing each other?" Actually, Couric's party right - though she failed to mention how Hussein accomplished his amazing peacekeeping miracle: by exterminating the Shiites who dared to rise up against him, including the father of the Iraqi imam who's currently leading the latest insurgency. Last...

Kennedy: Bush lied Mass. senator issues stinging rebuke that accuses president of deceiving the public, compares his actions to those of Richard Nixon BY WASHINGTON BUREAU April 6, 2004 WASHINGTON - Shifting his ongoing criticism from Iraq to domestic issues, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) yesterday took President George W. Bush to task for what he called misleading the American public on everything from Medicare to education. "This president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon," Kennedy said in a speech at the Brookings Institute, a think tank in Washington. "He has broken the basic bond of trust...

OCEANSIDE - Leo Diaz, a young Marine from Texas based here at Camp Pendleton, went to Iraq full of faith in the president who sent him. Today, he is burdened by the horror of what he saw and shocked at what he calls President Bush's ``frat boy'' mentality in starting the war. ``I show up. I'm proud. I'm looking forward to do my part,'' said Diaz, 22, whose father, uncle and grandfather served in the military. ``Turns out, we find no weapons of mass destruction. People hurt, killed.'' Diaz voted for Bush in 2000. But now he plans to vote...

<p>At the Brookings Institution in Washington on Feb. 25, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton charged that, with Saddam Hussein gone, there have been "pullbacks" in the rights Iraqi women enjoyed under his rule. Not even such bellicose critics of the war as Sen. Ted Kennedy have claimed that the regime change has cost women in Iraq the leading defender of their rights.</p>

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has strongly criticised George Bush and Tony Blair for waging an unnecessary war to oust Saddam Hussein based on "lies or misinterpretations". The 2002 Nobel peace prize winner said Mr Blair had allowed his better judgement to be swayed by Mr Bush's desire to finish a war that his father had started.

Media Panels: Fear of Seeming Unpatriotic Prevented Critical Iraq Reporting Mar.19, 2004 By Mielikki Org/ Associated Press Writer BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - Competitive pressures and a fear of appearing unpatriotic discouraged journalists from doing more critical reporting during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, according to reporters and others at a conference on media coverage of the war. The journalists on the panels at the University of California at Berkeley this week blamed the Bush administration for leaking faulty information, but said the media also has itself to blame for not being more skeptical about the case for war....

James Carville, looking none-too-happy, and alone, in cab after a FReeping by Kristinn and Doctor Raoul Last night Kristinn and Doctor Raoul had a little fun outside the site of the Gridiron Club Dinner. Doctor Raoul was in his Saddam costume and holding a sign that read, "Save me - Vote Democrat." Kristinn held a sign that read, "I'm not Fonda Hanoi John Kerry."Passers-by and arrivals to the dinner, as well as limo drivers, cabbies, and others, enjoyed the messages.

Former US attorney general urges “just” trial for Saddam Baghdad, Iraq Press, December 27, 2003 – Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark wants to see a “just” court to try the ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. US troops have captured Saddam Hussein after an eight-month hunt and Clark believes the current Iraqi interim officials will not administer a “just trial because the America has handpicked them.” In a telephone interview, Clark also expected a rise in attacks against US troops occupying the country. “I believe anti-American operations will continue,” despite the arrest of Saddam Hussein, he said. In the nearly two...

One of the leading “America bashers” on the political scene today has endorsed John Kerry for president. Speaking to reporters after a February 27 Washington press conference to rally support for Haiti’s Marxist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Ramsey Clark said he’s voting for Kerry because he would take U.S. foreign policy in a new direction. This is certainly the case. Kerry told the New York Daily News editorial board that he would have intervened “unilaterally” with U.S. troops if necessary to save Aristide’s corrupt regime from a popular rebellion. Aristide, who developed a reputation for brutalizing and killing his political opponents,...

The fact that the President is now on the defensive over the war in Iraq is both puzzling and ominous. The Democratic attack on the credibility of the Commander-in-Chief has gone on relentlessly for more than ten months, ever since the liberation of Baghdad in April of last year. This ferocious attack would be understandable if the war had gone badly or been unjust; if Saddam Hussein had unleashed chemical weapons on the coalition armies, or had ignited an environmental disaster, or if the war had resulted in tens of thousands of coalition casualties, or become an endless quagmire, or...

JERUSALEM -- I turn on CNN, and I see people being grilled -- Bush and Blair. What did you know, and when did you know it? If you had known then what you know now, would you have done what you did? Or did you already know it, and pull a big hoax on all of us? The War on Terror is barely two years old, and already the two statesmen mainly responsible for waging it are in the dock. The grim media interrogators, our self-appointed "representatives," fire questions at them. The opposition parties sling mud at them. And one...

BARMY BBC bosses have banned reporters from calling tyrant Saddam Hussein a former dictator. Instead, staff must refer to the barbaric mass murderer as “the deposed former President”. The astonishing edict was seized on by MPs last night as more proof of a Left-wing bias inside the BBC against the Iraqi war. Labour MP Kevan Jones, of the Commons Defence Select Committee, said: “This shows the crass naivety of the BBC. Such political correctness will be deeply hurtful to many of our servicemen serving in Iraq. “It amply demonstrates elements of the BBC have got a clearly anti-war and anti-Government...

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N.Y. Times Paints Hussein Capture as Bush Vendetta If you believe that the capture of Saddam Hussein was an important step forward in the war against terrorism you are wrong: it was just a case of the Bush family settling old scores, according to the New York Times. The "capture of Mr. Hussein in his earthen hiding place was the sweetest kind of vindication for a president who has earned worldwide skepticism and criticism — along with substantial praise — for his Iraq policy," wrote the Times' Todd S. Purdum. Note that the president "has earned" all that "worldwide skepticism...

We Got HimDate: Sunday, December 14 @ 07:31:19 Topic War on Terror Saddam Hussein in U.S. custody December 14, 2003 As Americans awoke Sunday morning, news came from Baghdad that the Fourth Infantry Division had captured Saddam Hussein in a rural farmhouse near Tikrit. Here's the announcement from Iraqi ambassador L. Paul Bremer. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. Saddam Hussein was captured Saturday 13 December at about 2030 local, in a cellar in the town of al-Dawr which is about 15 kilometres south of Tikrit. Prophetic Message? This article comes from Focus on Freedomhttp://www.gohotsprings.com/focus/ The URL for this...

Found this on LGF...This guy indicates that these people deserved what they got... Iraqi mass graves don't justify war MARK GERYIn the past few months the graves of thousands of civilians have been unearthed in war-torn Iraq. Not surprisingly, the White House wasted no time in declaring the dead to be prime examples of Saddam Hussein's brutality and a further justification for the US-led invasion. But a check of the historical record on this matter reveals yet another calculated distortion by the US administration and its supporters. At the end of the 1991 Gulf War legions of Shia radicals –...