Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says Australian companies will get a share of the contracts to help rebuild Iraq after the war.
Gazi George is certain that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction, because he used to be one of the people hiding them.
Two decades ago, while he was employed by the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, George says he hid 39 rods of enriched uranium -- enough to build two nuclear bombs -- in a hastily converted swimming pool near the grounds of the Osirak nuclear power plants at Tuweitha.
If I could get my hands on one of those lamps, my first wish to the genie would be for the guys at The National Review to come clean about their motives for denouncing Lew Rockwell and those whose writing appear on LRC as un-American. If they did, everything would come crashing down around them and the hoax would be over. Because The National Review, like Saddam Hussein, is not what it appears to be.
About 30 Iraqi troops, including a general, surrendered today to US forces of the 3rd Infantry Division as they overtook huge installation apparently used to produce chemical weapons in An Najaf, some 250 kilometers south of Baghdad.
A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the [Jordan] border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."
Right now, the state's Guard and reserve troops are being called up at more than double the national rate. More than 4,000 have been called so far.
About 3 percent of the guardsmen mobilized for war with Iraq are Mississippians, though the state has 1 percent of the U.S. population.
Other areas, including North and South Dakota, Delaware and Washington, D.C., also have given more than their share to the mobilization. Hawaii, New York and Michigan are among those bearing proportionately far less of the burden.
"I think it's unfair Mississippi has to contribute more than other states," said the Rev. James Cameron, pastor of Greater Mount Calvary Baptist Church.
Over the past year, Cameron has watched empty spots appear in his Jackson congregation as choir members and youth group leaders became soldiers.
"What really bothers me is to know that this is just one church, and there are more churches all over facing the same thing," he said. "Have they got a personal grudge against Mississippi?"
 I taste like Bread.I am a staple in almost everyone's diet. Friends like me are a complement to any other friends I get on with almost everyone, remaining mostly in the background, but providing substance when it would otherwise be lacking. What Flavour Are You? |
His friends call him Abu Amin, 'the father of honesty'. At 43, he is one of Iraq's most highly decorated intelligence officers: a special forces veteran who organised killings behind Iranian lines during the first Gulf war, who then went on to a senior post in the unit known as 'M8' - the department for 'special operations', such as sabotage, terrorism and murder. This is the man, Colonel Muhammed Khalil Ibrahim al-Ani, whom Mohamed Atta flew halfway across the world to meet in Prague last April, five months before piloting his hijacked aircraft into the World Trade Centre.
Evidence is mounting that this meeting was not an isolated event. The Observer has learnt that Atta's talks with al-Ani were only one of several apparent links between Iraq, the 11 September hijackers and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Senior US intelligence sources say the CIA has 'credible information' that in the spring of this year, at least two other members of the hijacking team also met known Iraqi intelligence agents outside the United States. They are believed to be Atta's closest associates and co-leaders, Marwan al-Shehri and Ziad Jarrah, the other two members of the 'German cell ' who lived with Atta in Hamburg in the late 1990s.
The Food and Agricultural Organization study, for example, contains an estimate by the Iraqi Ministry of Health that 109,000 people died annually due to sanctions, though the ministry admitted it had no objective method to confirm this figure.
Saddam Hussein rejected the (rather generous) proposal as an imposition on Iraqi sovereignty, preferring instead to press for a complete removal of sanctions — despite his failure to comply with the U.N. plan he had agreed to follow.
A master of propaganda, Hussein has many convinced that were it not for the sanctions, his people would be living in health and prosperity. He has given a perverse twist to Potemkin Village tours, showing journalists and sympathizers the "effects" of sanctions. But even while his people starve, Hussein and his inner circle are getting the best food, housing, and medical care available. Make no mistake: Resources are available in Iraq.
In fact, Kurds protected by the no-fly zone have contravened Hussein's public-relations efforts by actually using the oil money for food and medicine, rather than new altars to the Iraqi leader.
The "chicken hawk" argument is a fine debating point as far as it goes, but as a matter of substance it's pretty dumb. If taken literally, only those who've served in uniform can ever speak authoritatively about foreign policy, which is not exactly what the founders had in mind when they devised civilian control of the armed forces. Just as advocating tough anti-crime policies puts more policemen in harm's way, I see no reason why I should be soft on crime because I've never been a cop
.
Nevertheless, not a day goes by where I don't receive an e-mail saying something to the effect of "What do you have to say to the brave men and women risking their lives for a war you wanted? This is the easiest answer of them all. To the brave men and women who've voluntarily decided to defend the United States of America and risk their lives in the process, I say in all sincerity: Thank you, you make me proud and I am grateful. Thank you, a thousand times, thank you.
Five Democrats voting in favor of drill: The two Daniels of Hawaii: Inouye and Akaka, Louisiana's duo of John Breaux and Mary Landrieu, and DINO Zell Miller of Georgia
The eightspineless wondersRepublicans voting against helping the US obtain energy independence: The Weak Sisters of Maine: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, RINO Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Mike DeWine of Ohio, ingrate Norm Coleman of Minnesota, "maverick" John McCain of Arizona, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois.
Of Sarandon's anti-Bush activism, Tomalin said: "That's a given. That's the way she thinks. That's what Hollywood thinks. We don't agree, but I respect her -- more than she does me." But surely, we suggested, Tomalin's 56-year-old eldest child respects her mother's opinions. "Wanna bet?" Tomalin scoffed. Sarandon's office didn't respond yesterday to our detailed message and fax.
"When I visit Susan, I tread on eggs," Tomalin said. "The most difficult time was during the election of 2000. I live in Florida, and I was a Republican poll-watcher in Polk County. Afterward, I was sitting at the breakfast table with Jack Henry, my then-13-year-old grandson, and he looked over at me, with the sweetest little smile on his face, and said, 'I hear you voted for Bush.' I looked up at Susan, who's standing at the sink, and she says, 'All he wants to know is: How could you have voted for Bush?' And I thought, 'I'm not going to discuss my politics with a 13-year-old who has been brainwashed!' But I just let it go -- even though I have never been as rabid as I have been during the past few years."
Let's recap here, boys and girls. Tyner was fond enough of Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove to give him $1,000 in campaign funds in 1999, but he's running against Barbour for the chance to unseat Musgrove in 2003.
Wonder what's different today — other than Musgrove's 2002 decision to back tort reforms opposed by trial lawyers like Tyner who in 1999 were his largest block of campaign contributors?
(10) Bush is seeking a new American empire. This is a favorite accusation of Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, the man who once recited the Gettysburg Address in Donald Duck's voice. I'll let Secretary of State Colin Powell answer this one. When hectored by a former archbishop of Canterbury on this subject recently, he said: "We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last 100 years . . . and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in." Well said.
The people of Iraq will only get the things they need when Saddam is six
feet under the sand. He is the problem, he is the cause of the misery
the Iraqi people are going through.
I did not even hear the words Saddam Hussein come out of your mouth, how
can you be so blind? The Iraqi people’s problems didn’t start with the
American embargo or even the first Gulf War. They started when Saddam
came to power.
