CIA-Linked Former Exile Picked as Iraqi Premier

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iyad Allawi, a former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party who worked with the CIA to topple him, was chosen as prime minister of Iraq Friday.

Charged with taking over from U.S.-led occupation authorities on June 30 and leading his country to its first free elections next year, Allawi's nomination emerged by consensus at a meeting of the 25 U.S. appointees on Iraq's Governing Council.

The United Nations, called in by Washington to help shape the new interim government, was caught off guard when the Governing Council announced Allawi had been chosen, but said it respected the decision.

"It's not how we expected it to happen," chief U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.

"(U.N. envoy Lakhdar) Brahimi respects the decision and is prepared to work with this person on the selection of the other posts in this interim government," said Eckhard.

An official in President Bush's administration said: "We thought (Allawi) would be an excellent prime minister. ... I think that this is going to work."

Meanwhile the BBC is reporting...

Former exile Iyad Allawi has been chosen to head an interim Iraqi government after sovereignty is handed back on 30 June.
Mr Allawi - a Shia Muslim - was endorsed unanimously by the Governing Council, member Mahmoud Othman said.

-----snip---snip----
But the BBC's Jon Leyne at the UN in New York says Mr Allawi was evidently not Mr Brahimi's first choice and the UN's response has been most confused.

The UN says that Mr Brahimi was not even in the room when Mr Allawi was named by the IGC.

Alright, so did Brahimi select this guy or was it the governing council.
He does have a sketchy past. Allawi is a former member of the Baath party. He later became a founding member of the Iraqi National Accord, a group of exiles backed by US and British intelligence that included many former military officers opposed to the Baghdad regime. He is also said to have worked with the CIA to topple Saddam.

Also, from the Econimist..

Mr Allawi, who has strong links with senior Iraqi military officers, has been busy picking up the remnants of the old Baath Party, building links to Iraqi trade unions and seeking good relations with the Sunni minority that dominated the country under Saddam. In recent months he has also been busy creating a new version of the secret police. Though Iraq is bound to need a counter-insurgency force, Mr Allawi's rivals have accused him of recruiting former torturers to man a new apparatus of oppression.

Poland denies troop abuse claims

Poland today denied that its troops in south central Iraq had mistreated Iraqi prisoners after overnight claims threatened to draw it in to the detainee abuse scandal.
The Associated Press reported that investigations into allegations of abuse by US troops at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, had raised questions about the behaviour of forces from other countries.

Records of interviews by US army criminal investigation division agents, obtained by AP, include allegations that forces, including Polish personnel, had beaten prisoners before turning them over to US authorities.

Sergeant Antonio Monserrate, a US army interrogator, told the US army criminal investigation division that two detainees at Abu Ghraib had been "injured by the Polish army".

Sgt Monserrate referred to the inmates by their prison identification numbers, but did not provide further details. Other civilian and military workers at the prison also mentioned claims by detainees that they had been beaten by "coalition forces" before arriving at the US-run prison.

Shifting the blame or does the abuse scandal widen?

Fallujah Update
Islamic mini-state in Falluja may be the face of the new Iraq

FALLUJA, Iraq - With U.S. Marines gone and central government authority virtually nonexistent, Falluja resembles an Islamic mini-state -- anyone caught selling alcohol is flogged and paraded in the city. Men are encouraged to grow beards and barbers are warned against giving "Western" haircuts.

"After all the blood that was shed, and the lives that were lost, we shall only accept God's law in Falluja," said cleric Abdul-Qader al-Aloussi, offering a glimpse of what a future Iraq may look like as the U.S.-led occupation draws to a close. "We must capitalize on our victory over the Americans and implement Islamic shariah laws."

The departure of the Marines under an agreement that ended the three-week siege last month has enabled hardline Islamic leaders to assert their power in this once-restive city 50 kilometres west of Baghdad. Some were active in defending the city against the Marines and have profited by a perception -- both here and elsewhere in Iraq -- that the mujahedeen, or Islamic holy warriors, defeated a superpower.

Will the US accept an Iraq that is ruled by clerics under Shariah Law? Probably not. Here's to un-ending occupation.

via Atrios

OMG! This is Hilarious
Why you should never put your picture on the Internet ...

BushIn30Seconds.org - Top 150 Ads
Check out these ads. They're amazing.
My vote goes to "In My Country"

Media Matters Asks Rumseld to Remove Limbaugh from Taxpayer- Funded American Forces Radio
That's right. Your taxes paying for Rush "The Idiot" Limbugh's drug habit.

Media Matters for America President and CEO David Brock today sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld requesting that Secretary Rumsfeld consider removing radio host Rush Limbaugh from the American Forces Radio and Television Service (formerly known as Armed Forces Radio).

Limbaugh, whose program is broadcast for one hour per day to U.S. troops overseas, has spent the past four weeks condoning and trivializing the abuse, torture, rape and possible murder of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. guards at the Abu Ghraib prison -- gross misconduct that Rumsfeld has described as "fundamentally un- American."

Limbaugh's show is broadcast for one hour per day on the American Forces Network, at taxpayer expense, to nearly 1 million U.S. troops stationed in more than 1,000 outlets in more than 175 countries and U.S territories, including Iraq.

"It is abhorrent that the American taxpayer is paying to broadcast what is in effect pro-torture propaganda to American troops," Brock wrote to Secretary Rumsfeld. "I ask you to consider removing Mr. Limbaugh from the radio network to protect our troops from these reckless and dangerous messages."

Its hard to believe that people actually listen to this IDIOT..

The controversy surrounding Limbaugh's comments began when he said on May 4, "This is no different that what happens at the Skull & Bones initiation ... I'm talking about people having a good time. These people -- you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of needing to blow some steam off?"

Limbaugh has continued his irresponsible commentary as recently as May 21, the most recent show he has hosted, by suggesting ways to capitalize on the torture photos..."The media ought to start making some money off these pictures and videos, not just publishing them free. We need some prison torture, you know, bubble gum cards ... You know, like I say, we got baseball cards and bubble gum. Now, let's have terror cards -- only, let's show our prison abuse photos instead of the terrorists and who they are and what they do. We could go coins. We could go medallions."

Brock also noted in his letter to Rumsfeld that a May 2 Media Matters for America report, Meet the New Rush, Same as the Old Rush, documented recent racially charged and sexist remarks made by Limbaugh on his broadcast. For example, Limbaugh said on April 26 that women who protest sexual harassment "actually wish" to be sexually harassed. And on March 26, Limbaugh said, "A Chavez is a Chavez. These people have always been a problem." Noting the "importance of troop morale and unity during this time of conflict," Brock asked Secretary Rumsfeld to "review whether it is appropriate for the U.S. government to broadcast such messages, which may sow seeds of discord in the ranks."

His comments definitely condone prisoner abuse and torture. He can say whatever he wants but I don't want my taxes funding his prescription drug habit.

Troops 'tried to kill Musharraf'

President Pervez Musharraf says junior army and air force personnel were involved in assassination attempts on him last December.

General Musharraf said that several military servicemen had been arrested and would soon be tried.

The president said that those involved held "junior ranks."

General Musharraf survived two attempts on his life in December. Observers questioned how the attackers could have known his travel plans.

On both occasions he was traveling in a motorcade. In March he accused al-Qaeda of being involved.

What would happen is he was assassinated and an Islamic fundamentalist government got control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons?

The Only Reality Show Worth Watching...
Republican Survivor.

U.S. military arrests war's 'bargaining chips' aka Hostages
So do the Geneva Conventions apply in Iraq or not?

A Link For the President
How Do You Pronounce "Abu Ghraib"?

Member of the "Axis Od Evil" Duped Hawks?
Wouldn't this be ironic amongst other things like scary, pathetic, unfortunate, etc.

The Times and Iraq
NYTimes admits that it used questionable sources and intelligence in some of its articles leading up to the war in Iraq. Judith Miller's name wasn't mentioned.

In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.

Are they saying that NYTimes was also duped by Chalabi?

On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently verified.

On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last week that American officials took that defector — his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri — to Iraq earlier this year to point out the sites where he claimed to have worked, and that the officials failed to find evidence of their use for weapons programs. It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers.

Will anyone be reprimanded for this? I think not.

The Marine's tale: 'We killed 30 civilians in six weeks. I felt we were committing genocide'

During 12 years in the US Marines, including three years putting new recruits through boot camp, Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey hardly questioned his role. But what he saw in Iraq changed that.

"In a month and a half my platoon and I killed more than 30 civilians," Mr Massey said. He saw bodies being desecrated and robbed, and wounded civilians being dumped by the roadside without medical treatment. After he told his commanding officer that he felt "we were committing genocide", he was called a "wimp".

Mr Massey, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and depression, left the Marines in November. Back home in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, he says the cause of the uprising in Iraq is that "we killed a lot of innocent people".

His 7th Marine Weapons Company, armed with machine guns and missiles, was one of the first into the country in March last year. "We would take over villages and control checkpoints," he said. "My men and I would fire warning shots at oncoming vehicles. But, if they didn't stop, we didn't have any qualms about loading them up."

Listen to his interview on Democracy Now.

The FCC Song
via Atrios

More Good News For the White House
White House's Medicare Videos Are Ruled Illegal

WASHINGTON, May 19 - The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Wednesday that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and disseminating television news segments that portray the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly.

The agency said the videos were a form of "covert propaganda" because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets. The agency also expressed some concern about the content of the videos, but based its ruling on the lack of disclosure.

--snip---snip---

The General Accounting Office said that a specific part of the videos, a made-for-television "story package," violated the prohibition on using taxpayer money for propaganda.

Homosexuals not Allowed.
Polygamous Heterosexual Men Practicing Unprotected Sex, Come On In.
F.D.A. to Limit Sperm Donors

Men who acknowledge having had homosexual sex within the previous five years will not be allowed to make anonymous sperm donations under new rules that the Food and Drug Administration is expected to announce today.

New York State already bars gay men from donating sperm anonymously, and most of the nation's sperm banks have similar restrictions because of concerns over transmission of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

Because only gay men can get HIV and AIDS? Are these people nuts? I thought I had come across some ancient archived news item from the 40s.

Ex-Guantanamo General Says He Was Pressed

BRISTOL, R.I. (AP) - The general who commanded the Guantanamo Bay prison for seven months in 2002 says he was under constant pressure from military intelligence officers to bend his ``by-the-book'' rules on how to treat al-Qaida and Taliban suspects.

In interviews with The Associated Press, Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus said military intelligence wanted him to make the suspects' lives less comfortable to get them to cooperate with interrogators.

Baccus said he could not go into detail about everything military intelligence wanted. But he said it generally involved ``putting the detainees in isolation, or in different locations. They thought that by throwing them into a whole new set of circumstances that it might cause them to be a little more forthcoming.''

He said they were always pressing: ``Why are they getting two showers and two exercise periods a week instead of one? Where did all these books come from? Why are you doing this?''

Pentagon officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Baccus's remarks.

Baccus, an activated Rhode Island National Guard commander at the time, left the naval base in Cuba in October 2002 amid complaints from some interrogators that his approach made their job more difficult. Baccus and the Pentagon said the departure was a routine rotation of command.

Within days of his return to Rhode Island, Baccus was fired from his National Guard job by its adjutant general, Reginald J. Centracchio, and placed on standby reserve. Centracchio has declined to explain why.

Question: Would anyone find out if someone at Guantanamo dies during an interrogation?
Answer: Probably not.

US officials have now identified the dead Iraqi who was in the latest abuse pictures. They claim that he died from head injuries sustained in a struggle with Navy Seals during his arrest. Funny how this incident was never mentioned until the abuse pictures showed up.

Both the Defense Department and the CIA's inspector general are investigating whether there was wrongdoing and if so by whom, U.S. officials said.

Great! The alleged wrongdoers investigating if there was wrongdoing.

Israel ignores UN and world outrage

Israeli forces have killed five Palestinians in Rafah as Israel threatens to continue demolitions despite a sharp rebuke from the UN Security Council.

Reacting to Wednesday's Security Council resolution that criticised it for the death and destruction in Gaza, Israel vowed to continue to do whatever it considers appropriate.

Passed overwhelmingly after a US abstention, the UN Security Council resolution had earlier condemned the killing of Palestinian civilians in the southern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Rafah.

It also called on Israel to halt house demolitions, which are in violation of international humanitarian law.

Maybe this is the reason why they don't think its horrible that civilians are getting killed...

Settler Rabbi: Killing innocent people in war is allowed if saves lives

Rabbi Dov Lior, chairman of the settler’s rabbinical council ruled that killing civilians during warfare is permitted if it will save lives.

The IDF are allowed to hurt so called innocent civilians during warfare, Chairman of the Yesha rabbinical council (Judea, Samaria and Gaza Strip), Rabbi Dov Lior, said in a Halachic (Jewish law) ruling made public Wednesday.

"The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them. This is the real moral behind Israel's Torah and we must not feel guilty due to foreign morals," Lior said.

This of course doesn't reflect the view of all Israelis. How can we achieve peace when there are radicals on both sides?

I Think This Might be a Rhetorical Question

I wonder if it was this Cardinal that put up the sign?
U.S. Cardinal Accuses Bush of Moral Failure in Iraq

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A senior American cardinal in the Vatican has accused the U.S. administration of "moral failure" and deception in Iraq and warned the war had severely compromised future relations with the Arab world.
In an interview due to be published in the June edition of "Inside the Vatican" magazine, Cardinal James Francis Stafford also said the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was the work of "barbarians." An advance copy was made available to Reuters.

---snip----snip----

Stafford, who is close to Pope John Paul, said he feared the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. military would have long-term consequences on relations with Arabs and Muslims.

Sergeant Says Intelligence Directed Abuse

Military intelligence officers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq directed military police to take clothes from prisoners, leave detainees naked in their cells and make them wear women's underwear, part of a series of alleged abuses that were openly discussed at the facility, according to a military intelligence soldier who worked at the prison last fall.

Sgt. Samuel Provance said intelligence interrogators told military police to strip down prisoners and embarrass them as a way to help "break" them. The same interrogators and intelligence analysts would talk about the abuse with Provance and flippantly dismiss it because the Iraqis were considered "the enemy," he said.

The first military intelligence soldier to speak openly about alleged abuse at Abu Ghraib, Provance said in a telephone interview from Germany yesterday that the highest-ranking military intelligence officers at the prison were involved and that the Army appears to be trying to deflect attention away from military intelligence's role.

And as the cover-up continues....

Provance was interviewed by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay -- who is looking into the military intelligence community's role in the abuse -- and testified at an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a pretrial hearing, for one of the MPs this month. But Provance said Fay was interested only in what military police had done, asking no questions about military intelligence.

The MPs will be the scapegoats.

And The Coalition Makes More Friends in Iraq
US fire 'kills 40 Iraqi wedding guests'

A US helicopter fired on a wedding party in western Iraq today, killing more than 40 people according to Iraqi officials.
Lt Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramad, west of Baghdad, said between 42 and 45 people were killed in the attack, which took place in the early hours in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said the dead included 15 children and 10 women.

Dr Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramad, put the death toll at 45. The US military said it had no reports of such an incident.

OK. Now This Is Really Troubling
The BBC is reporting that Israeli soldiers had called on loudspeakers for all males aged 16 or over to come out carrying white flags or risk the demolition of their family homes.

The bloodshed came shortly after reports that thousands of Tel Sultan residents had complied with an Israeli demand that they surrender.

Twenty-four Palestinians have already died in Tel Sultan during an operation dubbed "Operation Rainbow" by the Israeli army.

Soldiers had called on loudspeakers for all males aged 16 or over to come out carrying white flags or risk the demolition of their family homes.

Israeli commanders later told journalists they only wanted militants to come out.

Israeli actions have raised an international outcry after army chief Lt Gen Moshe Yaalon said troops would flatten rows of homes in Rafah camp to widen a patrol road along the border with Egypt.

In mean while, Bush says that this is "troubling".

U.S. Soldier Sentenced to Prison in Iraq Abuse Trial

Specialist Jeremy Sivits, the first U.S. soldier court-martialled over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Iraq, received on Wednesday the maximum penalty of one year in prison, a reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge.

Sivits, who took pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated at Abu Ghraib prison, pleaded guilty earlier in the day. He told the court he saw one U.S. soldier punch one Iraqi in the head and other guards stomp on the hands and feet of detainees. He also recounted that prisoners were stripped and forced to form a human pyramid.

Expected to get a relatively light sentence and then testify against others, Sivits was found guilty of mistreating detainees, dereliction of duty for failing to protect them from abuse, cruelty and forcing a prisoner "to be positioned in a pile on the floor to be assaulted by other soldiers."

How convenient. He gets a light sentence for testifying against the others and saying that the higher-ups didn't know what was going on.
More interestingly, he claims that one of the other abusers told him that military intelligence told them to keep doing what they were doing. He remembers the details of the abuse but very conveniently doesn't remember who said this.

Sivits quoted one of the other six accused soldiers, whom he did not identify, as saying guards were "told to keep doing what they were doing by military intelligence." He added, however, that he did not believe the soldier.

UPDATE: As this goes on... NYTimes is reporting that the army tried to curtail Red Cross inspections after they reported abuses.

Army officials in Iraq responded late last year to a Red Cross report of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison by trying to curtail the international agency's spot inspections of the prison, a senior Army officer who served in Iraq said Tuesday.

After the International Committee of the Red Cross observed abuses in one cellblock on two unannounced inspections in October and complained in writing on Nov. 6, the military responded that inspectors should make appointments before visiting the cellblock. That area was the site of the worst abuses.

Israeli Attack on Gaza Protest Kills at Least 12

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, May 19 -- An Israeli tank and helicopter fired on rock-throwing Palestinian demonstrators Wednesday, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens of others, according to witnesses.

Many of the injured were young teenagers and young people, the Associated Press reported from the scene.

It was the second consecutive day of death and injury in this densely populated area of the Gaza Strip. At least 19 Palestinians were killed Tuesday as Israeli forces went street by street and house by house seeking to root out Palestinian fighters and weapons.

The Israeli army issued a statement saying its forces fired warning shots to disburse the crowd, the AP reported. The statement said a helicopter fired a missile away from the crowd and machine guns and a tank directed its fire at an abandoned building. "It is possible that the casualties were a result of the tank fire on the abandoned structure," the statement said. "The details of the incident continue to be investigated."

Great! Using tanks and helicopters to "disperse" rock throwing demonstrators. Sounds like a great idea.

Kahmis Shaer, who was in the protesting crowd, said everyone was in a state of shock. "I saw a guy with his head chopped off and another with his arm off and another hit in the stomach."

Witnesses said that while the crowd was shouting slogans, they heard no warning before the tank opened fire.

Reuters, NBC Staff Abused by U.S. Troops in Iraq

U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said Tuesday.

The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

An Iraqi journalist working for U.S. network NBC, who was arrested with the Reuters staff, also said he had been beaten and mistreated, NBC said Tuesday.

Two of the three Reuters staff said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anus and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths, particularly humiliating in Arab culture.

It only keeps getting worse....

Dear God, Please save me from all your followers.

Good ol' girl who enjoyed cruelty

POINTING crudely at the genitals of a naked, hooded Iraqi, the petite brunette with a cigarette hanging from her lips epitomised America's shame over revelations US soldiers routinely tortured inmates at Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad.


Lynndie England, 21, a rail worker's daughter, comes from a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, which locals proudly call "a backwoods world".

She faces a court martial, but at home she is toasted as a hero.


At the dingy Corner Club Saloon they think she has done nothing wrong.


"A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq," Colleen Kesner said.


"To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way girls like Lynndie are raised.


"Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you're hunting something. Over there, they're hunting Iraqis."


In Fort Ashby, in the isolated Appalachian mountains 260km west of Washington, the poor, barely-educated and almost all-white population talk openly about an active Ku Klux Klan presence.


There is little understanding of the issues in Iraq and less of why photographs showing soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company, mostly from around Fort Ashby, abusing prisoners has caused a furore.

..................

A colleague of Lynndie's father said people in Fort Ashby were sick of the whingeing.


"We just had an 18-year-old from round here killed by the Iraqis," he said.


"We went there to help the jackasses and they started blowing us up. Lynndie didn't kill 'em, she didn't cut 'em up. She should have shot some of the suckers."

Wanna visit West Virginia?

Video: "He's wounded, Hit Him"
US army helicopter killing three Iraqis, one of them wounded

Photo from Albasrah of Iraqi woman apparently being raped by soldiers WARNING: Censored but graphic content.
Not sure if those images are fake. The US has decried them and asked for a retraction in the Egyptian press.

CAIRO — The U.S. Embassy demanded a retraction Wednesday over photographs published in the Egyptian press that it said were faked pictures of American soldiers sexually abusing female prisoners in Iraq.

"We have done a thorough investigation of the origin of these photos and have conclusive evidence that they originated on a pornographic website," the embassy said in a statement. "They are clearly staged photos, done by actors, as the site itself states. Their publication needlessly inflames an already heated atmosphere."

If these aren't fakes, I wonder if Rush Limbaugh thinks this is a college a prank. (See post below)

UPDATE: They might be fakes. See the comment on Politics in the Zeros.

Rush Limbaugh is an IDIOT
On Tuesday (I think), after a caller remarked that the "stack of naked men" was "like a college fraternity prank.", this is what Rush had to say.

Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?

Cuba is next.....
Watch today's White House Press briefing.

4 Minute Mile
50 years ago, on May 6th, 1954, Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile barrier. Since then the mile record has been broken several times. The current world record for the mile, held by Hicham El Guerrouj, is 3min 43sec.
Here is an excerpt from an earlier Gaurdian interview.

"While the four-minute mile was important to me once," Bannister says, "it's now in the back of my mind. The real result turned out to be the wonderful, lifelong friendships I had with Brasher and Chataway (Bannister's pacemakers). They were formed in the fire of passion and effort, and sustained amid the reverses we all had. So the race taught us we could do most things we turned our minds to in later life. And it made us friends. I shall think of that more than anything next week."

And a rather funny phone interview by Nick Harper.

U.S. troops battle insurgents inside holy city

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. troops fought with insurgents after rolling into the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Thursday and taking over the provincial governor's office.

The soldiers took over the office without any resistance, but later, insurgents in nearby alleys and rooftops fired at the troops, said CNN Baghdad Bureau Chief Jane Arraf, who is traveling with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

U.S. troops have been massed outside the city in recent weeks, after the uprising by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, but they had not entered the town.

Al-Sadr, who is wanted by an Iraqi court in connection with the killing of a rival cleric, is believed to be holed up in Najaf.

Insurgents? Aren't Muqtada al-Sadr's people local Shiites?

Oh God! This is Hilarious..
You might not want to view this at work...

OOOOWWWWWW
This looks sooooo painfullllll.....

And Now, A Letter to Bush

Sixty former U.S. diplomats have signed a letter to President Bush contending that his "unabashed support" for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is costing the United States "credibility, prestige and friends."

The letter expresses deep concern over Bush's April 14 endorsement of Sharon's proposal to pull out of Gaza but keep some Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

And why Bush will most likely ignore it.

Shame Of Abuse By Brit Troops
This is absolutely disgusting.