Reuben Gant

Biased yes, but transparent. It is clear that they are against the death penalty, torture, detaining prisoners of conscience, etc. Why should America be so thin-skinned when they skewer most nation-states in their international report? Let's stand with China and Burma to root out this bias?

The anger at the Gulag comment has me thinking. The whole problem with Gitmo is that it is not well defined. It is not a POW camp or it would be under Geneva Rules. It is not a prison in the strict sense because nobody is charged with a crime. Does anybody have a clear definition of what it is beyond detention camp?

wow, I have a friend that used to work for CIA and now works for Amnesty. You might be right. But I think they, better than most, know how the world works. They report nastiness everyday, so much so that the pie-in-the-sky dreamers rarely last very long because it is too discouraging. Imagine if you keep investigating the nastiness that China does, and even if no news outlet is interested, they keep at it.

With good cause. He is constantly warning against encroachment of the executive branch into the legislative. If you think it is the KKK that defines Byrd, well then, either you hate him or think he would make a groovy grand dragon. Personally, I think the guy is great on CSPAN, he talks about the Peloponesian War and an Omnibus bill in the same breath. Can't say I know his voting record, but I did once work a political campaign in West Virginia and it was damn spooky from start to finish. Death threats, race baiting, union plots, and being ex-KKK is not a liability in W.Virginia, for half the state it just means your Daddy was protestant and Christian because none of them had seen a black man until they got a TV around 1980. Believe me, Byrd represents the moderate middle in West Virginia, and I think he links most of his speeches to history so his constituents don't know what the hell he is talking about.

how could they. OSI and Bionic man were running into that thing all the time. Eventually, even Oscar Goldman believed.

Of course there was also Strom "Who's Your Daddy" Thurmond in 1957. I think the Dems and Rep of yesteryear are nearly unrocognizable today. Republics were social liberals, Democrats the social conservatives for about a 20 year period. It was the Civil Rights Legislation that probably destroyed the Democratic power hold on the Old Solid South. Anywho: US New and World Report 5-16-05 with a little Fillibuster ex- with fair use: "Filibusters were used repeatedly by southerners seeking to block civil rights legislation in the 1950s and '60s. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina still holds the record for the longest single speech, when he railed for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Unlike Long, he kept his speech relevant to the subject matter--reading from legal tracts, which made it unbearably dry. The tactic has been used in a variety of other ways as well. Abe Fortas was President Lyndon Johnson's choice for chief justice of the United States, and after a group of conservative senators filibustered his confirmation, he withdrew. Now, senators often filibuster in an attempt to get press attention. In 1994, as New York Sen. Alfonse D'Amato kept his colleagues up overnight by denouncing spending provisions of a crime bill, he played to the cameras, holding up a big picture of a pig as he talked about pork. Though he did not succeed in killing the bill, he and the pig did get their mugs on national television."

I saw that, I am sure he meant to say Saddam Hussein. He blew it.

Just curious, where would you suggest people get their news from?

Good Post: I think it was in the mid seventies they changed the rules from 67 needed to stop a fillibuster to just 60. The rule change many would like to see is to 51.

I really love #4. that is great!!

The article seems to have a four pronged focus: 1. The influence America had in the past generation is waning 2. American diplomacy has not been very effective. Rice has her hands tied. 3. Iraq didn't go down too well in the world 4. Bush is not very popular worldwide: seems not to care about world opinion BTW this would have hit Japanese kiosks on the week of the aniversary of their Constitution (written by MacArther) in which they have the annual debate about their relationship with the US. **revised, actually the holiday of the line of emperors, which was un-diefied by the post-war constitution

I learned in the scouts that auto-eroticism was bad. But this is really bad.

Whoooaa!! she failed because you never helped her!!! Missed that.

I often read Anne Coulter and wonder if she believes her own excrement, or has she just found a niche product that sells? I think it is the latter. anywho... CJR take on the footnotes: http://cjr.org/issues/2002/6/slander-scherer.asp

Or in this case: people who probably can't read Newsweek, kill people.

They did seem to protect the Kurds. Residual effects of sanctions were bad, but the goal was containment, and that was the main thrust of my comment. Anyway if anyone has the time or inclination to look into how prewar claims matched reality- the US senate report isn't too bad. The commitee was highly critical of the sources for most of the terrorism link claims. Concluding that most were largely hypothetical in senarios of cooperation, in the case that the US did invade. Contacts were reasonable, but cooperation questionable. It is a large document, so if you have the inclination, and bandwith, have a lookie... also parts of it are heavily redacted. In PDF: http://www.cfr.org/pdf/iraqreport2.pdf

Texas fullback Roosevelt Leaks Always good for two yards of pure electricity!!! Good to see he got in.

Cook described the US - British intelligence sharing relationship as one of near full transparency. And had suggested that their human intellegence assets appeared to be even better than America's - (which seems to ring true in hindsight). "Therefore it is often difficult when you look at intelligence assessments to spot which raw data originated in the (US or Britian" His own words: "The United States and the United Kingdom have a unique intelligence relationship, which has probably never existed in any period of history, in which on our side we have full transparency and we strive to secure full transparency on their side. Therefore, it is often difficult when you look at intelligence assessments to spot which raw data was originally gathered by the United Kingdom and which was originally gathered by the United States. As a rough rule of thumb, and it is very rough, we tend to be rather better at gathering human intelligence; and, although we have an excellent GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) station, the Americans are even more formidable in technological ways of gathering intelligence. That said, neither of us really had much human intelligence inside Iraq. The Americans were drawing heavily on exiles who were inside America.’ We conclude that it appears likely that there was only limited access to reliable human intelligence in Iraq, and that as a consequence the United Kingdom may have been heavily reliant on US technical intelligence, on defectors and on exiles with an agenda of their own.”

facts do suck: but I aint gonna convert anyone, I am just pissed off that two members of my family have gone off to war and one just aint the same. Were we duped by the INC, I think we were, so I am not all that irrational, secondly, yes the sactions killed kids, but they were designed to stop proliferation, and albiet ugly, they contained Saddam. From Columbia Jounalism Review: In a chapter entitled "Saddam Hussein’s Support for International Terrorism," the White House paper claimed that, "Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility in Iraq known as Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations." This allegation came from two INC-supplied defectors, Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami, a former Iraqi army captain, and Brig. Gen. Abu Zeinab al Quairy, the purported commander of the training facility. Both men were rejected as unreliable by U.S. intelligence professionals. Nevertheless, the White House published their claims. Their claims, including suggestions that the September 11 hijackers may have been trained at the alleged facility, also appeared in the American and British media. After the invasion, the only training facility found at Salman Pak was determined by U.S. officials to have been used by Iraqi counter-terrorism units. We could cite other examples of exaggerated and bogus INC-supplieddefector claims appearing in official U.S. government materials and American and international news media. Chalabi and his organization insist that they did their best to check the backgrounds and claims by defectors before passing them on to American officials. That may well be true. But Chalabi is wrong to suggest that the Silberman-Robb report absolves him or the INC of responsibility for the dissemination of erroneous or fabricated information about Iraqi weapons programs and ties to terrorism that some officials in the Bush administration used in making their case for pre-emptive war. Knight Ridder stands by its reporting on pre-war intelligence, and we will continue to report on the subject.

Lets see: no stockpiles, no delivery system, no enriched uranium, no program in progress.... no intent that is traceable to a scintilla of evidence. The embargo worked. The no-fly zones worked. This guy had no ability to project power throughout his country let alone upon neighbors.

Is it really? Robin Cook, British secretary of State had the same info as Colin Powell, and resigned, saying there was absolutely nothing there.

All based on the majority reports from intel. The senators had it wrong. The real question is why were the minority reports suppressed. Even if there were WMD Saddam had shown no intent to use them on us. He didn't use them in 91. It would have been suicide.

NOPE.

I think that Edwards almost always has the Jets overacheiving. Really it is a limited team. I think the Jets would be nuts to get rid of him.

I told you, that damn Lollipop Guild had it coming.