friedman: " I don't believe Mr. Chirac ever intended to go to war against Saddam, under any circumstances. So history will record that all three of these leaders were probably stretching the truth — but with one big difference: George Bush and Tony Blair were stretching the truth in order to risk their own political careers to get rid of a really terrible dictator. And Jacques Chirac was stretching the truth to advance his own political career by protecting a really terrible dictator."

"By risking their own political careers, George Bush and Tony Blair have, indeed, given Iraqis the gift of freedom. But it is not the freedom to simply shout about what they oppose. That is anarchy. Freedom is about limits, compromise and accepting responsibility. "

"I hope we don't hear any more chants from Iraqis of "Death to Saddam.""
mred - just from americans.

And Paris Hilton outgunned President Bush in a prime-time shootout between Fox and ABC.
Americans are the best-informed people in the history of the world.

By now, we've become accustomed to the fact that the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — the principal public rationale for the war — hasn't become a big political liability for the administration. That's bad enough. Even more startling is the news from one of this week's polls: despite the complete absence of evidence, 53 percent of Americans believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, up from 43 percent before his capture.

Does anyone remember that Dick Cheney voted against a resolution calling for Nelson Mandela's release from prison? As recently as 2000 he defended that vote, saying that the African National Congress "was then perceived as a terrorist organization."

CPA officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, think Mr Hussein would not be tried until July at the earliest, setting up the possibility of a televised trial of Saddam Hussein in the final months of the US presidential contest in 2004.

A few hours after the blast I made a second visit to the intersection to check out a claim by US military officials that the explosion had been a tanker accident rather than a bomb - a claim that they yesterday withdrew, conceding that it had been a bomb.

Ousted Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, was betrayed by a relative who served as his personal bodygyard and who led US troops to the former leader's secret hideout after drugging him, a Jordanian newspaper reported Thursday

Pressed to explain why his administration had asserted Saddam possessed weapons, when at best fragmentary evidence of programmes had been found, Mr Bush replied: "So what's the difference?

Sneddon is now asking us to believe that beginning on the day after the special aired, and while the investigation was taking place, Jackson decided to commit seven lewd acts upon the boy. It’s possible, but it seems implausible.