Abassi Rochan evidently committed the offense of picking up the wrong passenger in his taxi — a mistake that eventually landed him "in a cage" halfway around the world in the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

AARP — the nation's most influential retiree lobby, with 35 million members — sold them out.
The law, pushed by President Bush.....

Yesterday, after British Airways had denied that account, the White House said the radio conversation actually took place between the British pilot and the control tower in London. The tower's response was apparently based on false flight plan information given to protect the secrecy of the trip.
A British Airways spokesman told The Associated Press that none of its pilots has come forward to acknowledge either making or overhearing the purported conversation.

Vice President Dick Cheney: "Iraq has now become the central front in the war on terror," "We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there, so we do not have to face them on the streets of our own cities." It's a line that generates applause. It's also a line that makes several military and intelligence analysts cringe.
"Militarily, their statements are almost absurd," said Anthony Cordesman, a national security and military intelligence expert for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There is no evidence of activity … by extremist terrorist groups affiliated with al-Qaida."
"It's a weak argument," he said. "There aren't that many in Iraq who are foreign fighters who are a threat to U.S. shores. I don't know if it's fear-mongering or false re-assuring."
"It doesn't prepare the American people for a war forced on us to fight, for its length, its intensity and risks," he said. "It's the kind of politics that gets you through two weeks."

"It's hard to trust George," said Dr. Julie Holland, a professor of psychiatry at New York University who has edited a book on Ecstasy and wants to test it in psychotherapy. She accused him of "playing games with his data" to win more federal grants by making the drugs look bad.
Dr. Richard J. Wurtman, a prominent clinician at Harvard and M.I.T. who has clashed with Dr. Ricaurte, accused him of "running a cottage industry showing that everything under the sun is neurotoxic."
He cited a recent German study showing that serotonin decreased only modestly and returned to normal within six weeks.

If it was a "shootout" with "guerrilla attackers" in "multiple ambushes" of American convoys, the tally of dead wouldn't be 46-0.
That's Jessica Lynch-level bulls**t. If it's 46-0, either the attackers weren't attacking, or the U.S. side is lying about one or both sides' casualties, or most likely a little of both.

Over the last year and a half, President Bush has staged more than a third of his major public events before active military personnel or veterans.

An American soldier has been reprimanded and will be discharged for taking a break from a foot patrol in Baghdad to marry an Iraqi woman, his lawyer said Monday.
The Army has not permitted Blackwell to see his bride since the wedding but recently allowed them to resume contact by telephone, McKee said.
Florida Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Ron Tittle said he had no word on disciplinary action against Blackwell or a second Florida guardsman, Cpl. Brett Dagen, 37, who married another Iraqi woman in a double ceremony during a break on the same patrol Aug. 17. Both women are physicians.

But I was surprised the following morning to hear 75 soldiers singing, shouting and screaming as they jogged down Main Street, passed our St. Joseph’s church, back and forth around town for an hour. It was 6 a.m., and they woke me up with their war slogans, chants like “Kill! Kill! Kill!” and “Swing your guns from left to right; we can kill those guys all night.” The screaming and chanting went on for one hour. They would march passed the church, down Main Street, back around the post office, and down Main Street again. It was clear they wanted to be seen and heard.

"The turkey has landed," ran the front-page headline in the London Daily Independent.
The conservative London Times also did not run an editorial but its front-page report called the visit "one of the most audacious publicity coups in White House history".
The editorial was headlined: "I came, I saw nothing, but I will conquer".

An economist visiting from outer space might take a very different view when considering the background to this latest US recovery.

Indeed, if any US or International Monetary Fund economist were to look at the trend of the US balance of payments (all flows of money in and out of the US) as a case study, not knowing it was the US, he or she would be advising very severe measures, which would not fit in too well with the presidential election timetable.
The fact of the matter is that the borrowing spree on which the US administration has embarked makes the Reagan balance of payments deficits look like child's play.

An Austrian trade union has claimed the repetitive playing of Christmas Carols in department stores is nothing short of "psycho-terrorism" for salespeople.

The boy, Marcus McLaurin, was referred to the school's behavior clinic, where he was ordered to write the sentence "I will never say the word `gay' in school again" over and over, the civil liberties group said.
"The school called me the day it happened and said Marcus was in trouble for using foul language, and behaving inappropriately," the boy's biological mother, Sharon Huff, said. "I didn't know what he'd said because the assistant principal said he didn't feel comfortable repeating it over the phone. He told me Marcus would bring home a note.
"I have concluded," he said, "that the discipline was related to ordinary student disturbances, which were hindering the classroom learning process and which were addressed in an appropriate fashion by the teacher and school administrator."
"To tell a 7-year-old boy that he can't talk about his family not only makes that child feel confused and hurt, it violates his constitutional right to free speech and equal treatment,"
The incident occurred when the class was lined up for recess and a classmate asked Marcus about his mother and father. Marcus responded that he had two mothers, not a mother and father. When the other child asked why, Marcus told him that it was because his mother was gay. The other child then asked what that meant, and Marcus explained, "Gay is when a girl likes another girl."

Police announced Tuesday that they had linked the shooting at school to shootings on nearby Interstate 270, including one that killed a woman.
Also on Wednesday, police said the Tuesday shooting of a driver and passenger traveling on the Ohio Turnpike in Milan, about 90 miles north of Columbus, was an isolated instance and not linked to the other shootings.

“We actually have 12 now with the school, and we’re comfortable collectively that those 12 are linked,” Martin said. He would not elaborate.
mred-this story is getting weirda

In late September, the White House learned that Hillary Clinton was going to Baghdad at Thanksgiving time.
The reporters laughed, according to the transcipt

I think he spent more time analyzing whether he should go to Baghdad than analyzing whether others should go to war. Isn't it interesting how having your own ass on the line concentrates the mind.

The scientific data on which Americans rely is being manipulated by the Bush Administration, according to a new report, Politics and Science, prepared for Representative Henry Waxman of California


President George W. Bush made his gutsy whistle-stop at the darkened Baghdad airport on Thursday.
mred - if something happens that is 'surprising', do u reckon it more likely that gwb is *surprisingly gutsy*, or more likely that karlrove is *surprisingly good* at this stuff? hats off, karl - u are very very very good.

A reader in Atlanta, for instance, wrote an apoplectic letter after he discovered that only six U.S. Senators were present on the floor when the $87 billion for Iraq was passed with a simple voice vote—no roll call—at the beginning of the month. “Those that supported the bill didn’t want to explain to their constituents why they supported it, and those that were against it didn’t want to be painted as unpatriotic,” wrote D.B. from Atlanta. “These soul-less, ball-less cowards don’t even want their votes recorded. How would you feel if you were in Iraq seeing your buddies die every day knowing that your leaders are too chicken-s—- to even say whether or not they support you?”

“As to the ‘Patriot Act,’ a piece of misnomenclature if ever I’ve heard one, you know the aphorism, ‘Man proposes, God disposes’? It may well come down to ‘Fed proposes, we shoot poseurs.’

Would the military actually fight guerrilla warfare in its own back yard, with its own friends and relatives? Government lacking the consent of the governed is apt to have poor longevity.”