"There's only one thing worse than a lie detector that doesn't work, and that's a lie detector that does work," said physicist Robert Park, a longtime polygraph critic. "It's the last invasion of privacy that you can imagine, and it frightens me that we seem to be almost able to do it."

Australia's premier intelligence analysis agency told the Federal Government that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction threat was not the prime motive for the United States going to war against Iraq, a former intelligence officer said yesterday.

The debunking of the Bush administration's pre-war certainties on Iraq gathered pace yesterday when it emerged that the CIA knew for months that a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida was highly unlikely.

Before the war, Lord Goldsmith said that despite the absence of a second United Nations resolution, an attack was covered by existing international law. His reasoning was based on the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq which were a clear threat to the UK.

the government's presentation of a report on Iraqi arms was mishandled and promising that "far greater care" would be taken with files in the future so as not to discredit the spy agency's work,

In recent polls, the number of people responding that the war was justified even if the US does not find conclusive evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction has grown from 38 percent at the outset to 56 percent, according to a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, May 30-June 1, 2003.
"You have to have enough interest and even anger in the general public to sustain this type of inquiry, and it's not there. Americans do not like to look their victories in the mouth."

"The Arabic-language document is noteworthy because it tracks closely with the chaos that has since descended on Iraq, with daily ambushes of U.S. soldiers and mass anti-American demonstrations by Muslim groups. " who'd had fucking thought! the level of detail seems to indicate to me that they are trying too hard to prove its veracity

Even beyond the violent and repressive reactions of the American government, the most unsettling consequence of the WTC attacks has been the nearly total collapse of the minds of most Americans.

Hedges observes that "[s]tates at war silence their own authentic and humane culture" and, in so doing, "erode the moral fabric" of a society. He adds: "[w]ar breaks down long-established prohibitions against violence, destruction, and murder," and leads to a situation in which "the domination and brutality of the battlefield is carried into personal life." "War," he goes on, "fills our spiritual void," and helps to erase "unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation" in our lives. In words that reflect the disquieting climate in which we live, Hedges observes "a growing fusion between those in the state who wage war...and those who believe they understand and can act as agents for God."

"What we found is that in the disease of schizophrenia, the ability to identify odors was highly related to the low social drive," added Malaspina, whose study is published in the June issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Muhammad Ali was supposedly visiting ground zero when someone asked a barbed question: How did Ali, the most famous Muslim in the world who is not a terrorist, feel about sharing his religion with Osama bin Laden? The champ shot back, ``How does it feel to share yours with Hitler?''

All along the way, Hitler would propose or actually promulgate regulations that sliced away at German citizens' freedoms -- usually aimed at small, vulnerable sectors of society (labor unionists, communists, Jews, mental defectives, et al.) -- and few said or did anything to indicate serious displeasure. In the early days, on those rare occasions when there was concerted negative reaction, Hitler would back off a bit. And so the Nazis grew bolder and more voracious as they continued slicing away at civil society. Many Germans (including some of Hitler's original corporate backers) were convinced Nazism would collapse as it became more and more extreme; others chose denial. It was easier to look the other way.
What should I say to the judge who asked, 'You wear a swastika armband and say that you do not want to. Then why do you wear it?'"

What one can blame them for, and what shows their terrible collective weakness of character clearly for the first time during the Nazi period, is that this settled the matter. With sheepish submissiveness the German people accepted that, as a result of the reichstag fire, each one of them lost what little personal freedom and dignity was guaranteed by the constitution; as though it followed as a necessary consequence."

"It is said that the Germans are subjugated. That is only half true. They are also something else, something worse, for which there is no word: they are 'comraded,' a dreadfully dangerous condition. They are under a spell. They live a drugged life in a dream world. They are terribly happy, but terribly demeaned; so self-satisifed, but so boundlessly loathsome; so proud and yet so despicable and inhuman. They think they are scaling high mountains, when in reality they are crawling through a swamp. As long as the spell lasts, there is almost no antidote."

One last point: the Bush administration's determination to see what it wanted to see led not just to a gross exaggeration of the threat Iraq posed, but to a severe underestimation of the problems of postwar occupation.

As Milton Friedman once put it, if you cut taxes without cutting spending, you aren't really reducing the tax burden at all. In fact, you're just pushing it off yourself and onto your kids.

All this is the real reason that the American economy has surged ahead of its European competitors in the past two decades. It is not about efficiency. It is simply that Americans work more. Europeans take longer holidays and retire earlier; and many more European workers are either unemployed or on strike.
What clinches the Weber thesis is that Northern Europe's declines in working hours coincide almost exactly with steep declines in religious observance.
In the recent Gallup Millennium Survey of religious attitudes, 49 percent of Danes, 52 percent of Norwegians and 55 percent of Swedes said God did not matter to them. In North America, by comparison, 82 percent of respondents said God was "very important."

i was waiting for the kicker in this article - right at the bottom - lovely : "The unanimity of the ruling today, along with the fact that the appeals courts other than the Ninth Circuit were still requiring direct evidence, "illustrates how much more conservative the lower courts are these days than the Supreme Court,""

LONDON (Reuters) - A British man who was hanged for murder had his conviction quashed Tuesday, 53 years too late.

Saddam has $1.3 billion in cash taken from the Central Bank on March 18, is bent on revenge and believes he can "sit it out and get the Americans going," said Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress.
"He also has many critics who are opposed to anyone ruling Iraq after spending so many years abroad and who oppose his "business dealings" in Jordan." - yeah - that and the convictions...