bin Laden’s thugs haven’t realized they are supposed to be reeling from the crushing U.S. victory in Iraq which was somehow related to our war against them.

far from accepting the judgment of the intelligence services, Downing Street rejected an intelligence dossier about Iraq because it failed to establish that Saddam posed a growing threat.

did the British have any “decisive” input into a Pentagon intelligence report that concluded there was “no reliable information” that Iraq had chemical weapons? It was leaked on Friday, but it was drawn up last September, at the time Blair was telling the public that intelligence assessments had “established beyond doubt that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons”.

In a move that is likely to trigger an outcry from Iraqi parties, politicians and scholars as well as international human rights advocates, the U.S.-led occupation administration said Thursday, June 5, it would outlaw any "incitement" against the Anglo-American forces in Iraq even inside mosque.

There was another American soldier 40 metres away who was busy losing hearts and minds. "Tell them to get the fuck out of here," he told a private, pointing at a group of teenagers. Then he turned to a middle-aged man sitting on a chair on the pavement. "You stand up and I'll break your neck," he screamed at him.

In a staggering attack on the OSP, former CIA officer Larry Johnson told the Sunday Herald the OSP was 'dangerous for US national security and a threat to world peace', adding that it 'lied and manipulated intelligence to further its agenda of removing Saddam'.
Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.

Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said a congressional investigation of how intelligence was used in the run-up to the war is premature. "There's a little tad bit of politics being played here," Roberts, R-Kan., told CNN's "Late Edition." "I think it's very, very counterproductive."

Greg Thielmann, a recently retired State Department analyst who could not believe that Bush would use ''that stupid piece of garbage'' to make his case, told Newsweek, ''There is a lot of sorrow and anger at the way intelligence was misused.''

President George W. Bush had deemed Padilla so grave a threat to national security that he ordered him held incommunicado until the war on terrorism was over. If he never gets his day in court, it will mean any American could be jailed for life, without the chance to defend himself, on the president's say-so.

I explained to the students that the political risk was so great that, to me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these statements if he didn't have damn solid intelligence to back him up.

Perhaps, in a postmodern world that is increasingly comfortable with irony, ambiguity, relativism and doubt, we simply no longer believe it's possible to distinguish fiction definitively from fact, lies from truth.

Indeed, the most striking thing about fabrications at the New York Times or skepticism about Bush's as yet unproven claims about Iraq may be how little those things actually surprise or disillusion the public.

"We need for the law to make it clear that it's just as much a conspiracy to aid and assist the terrorists, to join them for fighting purposes, as it is to carry them a lunch or to provide them with a weapon," ashcroft told a House committee.
The treatment documented by the inspector general is bad enough in its own right, but is made even more offensive by its pointlessness. Of the 762 detainees, only one, Zacarias Moussaoui, has been charged in connection with terrorism.

Professor Francis Fukuyama, former head of the state department's policy planning staff, argued that hypocrisy was necessary for the conduct of foreign policy.

Asked whether "most people can be trusted," 53 percent of Americans agreed in 1964. That dropped to 49 percent in 1971, 44 percent in 1980, 39 percent in 1991 and 35 percent in 2002, the most recent poll in 2003

Seems no one can trust us as far as we can throw them over.

"Australia, the main wheat supplier to Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, is outraged at allegations its exporters overcharged the Iraqis, and that some of that money may have ended up in the accounts of Saddam Hussein's family. " with friends like the americans....