From the Wheel of Fortune, it seems he doesn't have a clue.

More of this Theo van Gogh stuff. The same tired dribble that aqua ducted out of Andrew Sullivan's mouth a few days back. (Best summary & response here)

There’s another possibility; one that seems crazy on the surface, but does provide an explanation for the silence, and is also in keeping with the political climate in Hollywood. Is it just possible that there are those who are reluctant to criticize an act of terror because that might somehow align them with President Bush, who stubbornly clings to the notion that these are evil people who need to be defeated? Could the level of hatred for this President be so great that some people are against anything he is for, and for anything he is against?

As nutty as it sounds, how else can you explain such a muted reaction to an act that so directly impacts creative people everywhere? Can you conceive of a filmmaker being assassinated because of any other subject matter without seeing a resulting explosion of reaction from his fellow artists in America and around the world?

Oh yeah Pat, no one in Hollywood (what the fuck does that mean anyway?) condemns terrorists or violence because they don't want to be seen agreeing with Bush in anyway and they secretly hope that all evil people win. Because the hedonistic life style of a Hollywood player is really congruent with the fundamental head cases trying to kill us all.

My turn to be outraged, why hasn't anyone officially condemned Liam Foster? He tortured a baby to death. Can I take it by the silence on the matter that everyone who didn't condemn Liam is pro-torturing babies to death? Why hasn't Pat Sajak spoken out on this? Why doesn't he do a "Bob Barker" at the end of his show? Instead of asking folk to help control the pet population he should say "I am against the sadistic murder of babies and you should be too." just so we can be sure.

Till then I'm going to tell everyone I know, and I encourage you to pass it on, Pat Sajak and Andrew Sullivan have no problem with baby torture.

No, not really but someone is saying so.

Secretary Colin Powell, the State Department and the CIA – not Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld – are responsible for the chaos that has grown out of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, says Richard Perle, the former chairman of Pentagon's Defense Policy Review Board.

Appearing on Fox News' "O’Reilly Factor" Monday night, Perle said the U.S. made a most serious mistake after Iraq was liberated and the "keys" were not handed over immediately to Iraqis to run their own country.

For those of you who may have missed the Perle predication of premature jubilation from September 22, 2003, "A year from now I'd be surprised if there's not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush."

I bet he was so surprised his eyes popped out of his head and spun around making woo-woo-woo noises until they exploded into a shower of tiny stars.

At any rate Colin is just as culpable as Rumsfeld for the debacle, who cares what order they eat each other in?

Speaking of eating Bush is having a big dinner at the Museum of Civilization tonight, it's pretty much shut down downtown and it sounds like the set of "Apocalypse Now" with all the helicopters and black unmarked sedans parked across the street recording everything I type.

The cool thing is a bunch of buddies who worked downtown got the day off today and probably tomorrow.

Woot! Bush has a use! Send him down here next May and August and make it a Friday and or Monday.

This is neat:

How-To Turn your iPod in to a Universal Infrared Remote Control

I'm toying with the idea of getting one because... well everyone else is and my Nomad is going wonky and it doesn't work with Windows XP very well.

This guy got fired because he messed with John Kerry? Oliver Willis has some of the details:

Swift Boat Liar Gardner Back In The News

He's crying because his lying butt got canned, according to this boo-hoo column in the Chicago Sun Times. The usual suspects are handing out collection plates for one of their boys. Steve Gardner is a party to one of the worst smear jobs in the history of U.S. politics.

You reap what you sow. Karma is a bitch.

If this were flipped and it was someone trashing Bush who got fired would Will be all reapy and Karma?

The whole Swift Boat thing was vile but what the hell has it got to do with Gardern's job? If the story is true, and I have yet to find anyone saying it isn't, then a man was fired for participating in U.S. politics and that should scare the shit out of everyone. That's just not right no matter who it happens to.

So Oliver if you got fired from your day job because of your blog would you be as equally cavalier?

I'm hoping Willis is in a minority on this.

Bad News:

Looks like the majority is getting ready to shut out the minority:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) Iraq's neighbors, worried about low Sunni Arab turnout in the country's upcoming elections, are mounting a behind-the-scenes push to persuade the interim government to meet with opposition leaders in what they call a reconciliation effort.

The Iraqi soldiers and cops aren't secure how can they secure anything?

MOSUL, Iraq -- Iraqi police and national guard forces, whose performance is crucial to securing January elections, are foundering in the face of coordinated efforts to murder and intimidate them and their families, say American officials in the provinces facing the most violent insurgency.

Yesterday's car bombing (civilian target)

A suicide bomber blew up a car at a police checkpoint in western Iraq today, killing seven government security force members and injuring nine.

US forces immediately sealed off the road after the attack in Baghdad, 120 miles from of the capital.

Today's car bombing (civilian target):

BAIJI, Iraq (Reuters) - A car bomb has exploded in a crowded market in a town north of Baghdad, killing at least seven people and wounding 20, underlining Iraq's severe security problems with elections just two months away.

Today's car bombing (military target):

BAGHDAD, Iraq Nov 30, 2004 — A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives next to a U.S. convoy on Baghdad's dangerous airport road on Tuesday, and several casualties were seen lying next to a damaged vehicle, witnesses and authorities said.

War makes people sick:

LONDON (Reuters) - War in Iraq (news - web sites) has caused a public health disaster that has left the country's medical system in tatters and increased the risk of disease and death, according to a report released Tuesday.

Oil money choked:

Between August and October, Iraq lost $7 billion dollars in potential revenues due to sabotage against the country's oil infrastructure, according to Assem Jihad, spokesman of the Oil Ministry.

Good News:

Violence is dropping.

Yet Allawi said on Monday that the general level of violence had dropped since the insurgency's main bastion had been reconquered.

Oh wait, that's not good news, that's an outright lie that only small children and neo-cons would believe. Sorry it's pretty much the closest thing to good news that you can squeeze out of Iraq of late.

The helicopters! That, so far, has been the second biggest annoyance of the Bush visit. Yesterday there was a chopper orbiting around downtown and guess who was trying to design a logo right under its flight path? What the hell happened to all those stealth helicopters that Blue Thunder and Air Wolf promised us? At least my coffee wouldn't rattle off the table every three minutes.

The worst is that every moronic morning DJ (I know, goes without saying) is trying their hand at political satire. They're so cringe inducing they make me and my Bush jokes look like Tom Tomorrow meets Jon Stewart.

Made me wish I had a DVD player in the car on my drive in this morning.

If I get all my deadlines done (chance would be a fine thing) I'm going to head out to the later protest and see if I can get some snap-shots.

Or, most likely, I'll just yell stuff out from my window partly because it's freaking cold out there but mostly because it looks like they're going to do their level best to make sure he doesn't hear a negative thing and Bush just isn't worth frostbite.

Please tell me that this isn't a DVD player for your car that attaches to the dash.

Well you can't because that's exactly what it is.

Great, so when I get plowed into by the r-tard distracted by Kirsten Dunst's nipples in Spiderman I'll know who to sue back to the stone age.

Because really the 8 hours of television isn't enough, we need to be entertained 24 hours a day.

Coming soon the on-dash combination BBQ and Rock'em Sock'em Fighting Robots followed soon by the in-dash petting zoo and circus.

Oh gawd when is the mothership coming Bill? I've had enough. Someone is going to die because someone needed to watch Matrix: Revolution for the 2,064 time while going down the street for a loaf of bread.

Newly re-elected Alberta Premier Ralph Klein decision to compare his party's political fortunes to the death and life story of Jesus Christ has landed him in hot water.

Following last week's election, Klein told The Sun newspaper that his political travails were not dissimilar to those described in the Bible.

"I know the Liberals have said they are going to crucify me. Well, you know what? Christ was crucified and he was resurrected, according to the New Testament, and you're going to see a resurrection."

I would like to volunteer to nail Ralphie up if he's serious.

How much like Jesus is Ralph?

Telling the crowd that he suspected some people were abusing a guaranteed income program for the severely handicapped, he described an encounter with two women, "yipping about AISH payments."

"They didn't look severely handicapped to me, I tell you that for sure," the premier told the crowd. "They both had cigarettes dangling from their mouth and cowboy hats."

He later offered a grudging apology.

Ralph was just re-elected for the 10th time and this is some pretty mild Klein-time, his peak was when he got good and liquored and had his chauffeur drive him to a homeless shelter, wacky hilarity ensued:

Premier Ralph Klein has offered an apology to a men's homeless shelter after making a strange, unannounced midnight visit and arguing with residents.

"I thought, 'What's Ralph Klein doing here?' " Shea said. "Lo and behold, there he was in the middle of six or seven guys, yelling at them at the top of his lungs."

Klein was slurring, according to Shea. And he said the premier was shouting outrageous things as he leaned on his driver, telling the residents of the shelter to get jobs.

A worker at the centre, who requested anonymity, said he spoke to two other employees who said they witnessed the incident. They verified Shea's version of events.

The centre maintains a daily incident report. The worker said Wednesday's entry says Klein was swearing and yelling at the mento get jobs.

He said it also stated Klein threw some cash on the foyer floor on his way out the door.

"But I wasn't drunk," he said. "I was in good spirits."

No Ralph you were and are a drunken asshole as opposed to your natural state of sober asshole.

Once again if he needs any help being nailed to something I have my Canadian Tire Mastercraft Maximum Hammer all ready to go.

Wrong.

I am agog with shock.

"If we allow Jewish soldiers to put an Arab violinist at a roadblock and laugh at him, we have succeeded in arriving at the lowest moral point possible. Our entire existence in this Arab region was justified, and is still justified, by our suffering; by Jewish violinists in the camps."

I once asked in Hebrew school why we got Israel from the Arabs because the Germans killed a lot of us.

I just got a glare for an answer.

I've asked the question a few times and have yet to hear an answer that makes a lick of sense.

See, the way I see it we should have gotten a chunk of Germany as the Jewish State.

I've heard the argument that it belonged to the Jews X many years ago. I have to wonder if the Native Americans could use that argument to hoof my white ass into a refugee camp someday.

But it's nice that more Israelis are starting to see the parallels that many of us noticed awhile back.

I first became aware of it when I was actually in Israel. I had gone to the Holocaust museum and amongst the artifacts on display were the various bits of ID that Jews had to carry with them, they ran the gamut from documents with yellow stars to just the big yellow star.

A few days later I stumbled across a photo ID by a pay phone. I showed it to my Israeli guide who told me he'd give it to the first police or soldier that we saw because someone would be really screwed without it.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's a Palastinian ID card." he replied.

"Oh, why would he be 'really screwed'?" I asked.

"Well he can't be around here without it, soldiers or police will probably arrest him."

"Um do you have an ID card that you have to carry around or you'll be arrested?"

I just got a glare for an answer.

I spent the whole summer there and came home with the conclusion that pretty much everyone there was mad with hate. I even saw graffiti talking about how they hadn't "forgotten the Inquisitions" on a wall in the Christian bit of the Old City.

Keerist, can you get over that at least? How many hundreds of years ago was that? The guys who did it are dead, not really a lot more can be done.

The whole trip left me with such a bad taste in my mouth for religion of all flavors and a burning contempt for fundamentalists and their angry sky gods.

Which was really ironic considering I had to give a slide show of the trip and a talk on how the journey to the Holy Land strengthed my Jewish faith at the Temple when I got back.

It went... poorly.

Can't catch bin Laden, can't bring Iraq to heel, can't face the Canadian Parliament but Dubya can take out a turkey with one hand and a steely-eyed gaze.

Happy weird ass late American Thanksgiving to 49% of all Yankees!

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites)'s re-election insures that more federal money will flow to abstinence education that precludes discussion of birth control, even as the administration awaits evidence that the approach gets kids to refrain from sex.

snip

"We don't need a study, if I remember my biology correctly, to show us that those people who are sexually abstinent have a zero chance of becoming pregnant or getting someone pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted disease," said Wade Horn, the assistant secretary of Health and Human Services (news - web sites) in charge of federal abstinence funding.

We do need a study to figure out how far Wade Horn's (excuse me porn star name much?) head is up his ass if he thinks the best way to get teenagers to make the correct choices is to have a teacher tell them what to do.

And what kind of an education does this sort of thing promote?

"You have been lied to, lied to by the media, lied to by celebrities," Ed Ainsworth told the 120 squirming eighth-graders at Smylie Wilson Junior High School. "Will this condom protect your heart?" he asked, flashing a glossy Trojan ad on a giant screen. "Will this condom protect your reputation? Go ahead and use a condom. You'll still be known as a slut."

But not if, y'know, you're a guy, only women folk can be sluts. Guys just get trapped into sex by treacherous snake women. IT'S IN THE BIBLE PEOPLE!!!

This is sex education, Texas-style, where the only safe sex taught since 1995 is no sex outside marriage. That is when George W. Bush, who was then governor, signed a law making Texas the third state requiring schools to follow an abstinence-only sex education curriculum.

Now President Bush is promoting abstinence-until-marriage programs nationwide, a shift in health policy that has sparked an emotional debate over how to keep young people healthy. Abstinence-only proponents say that teaching young people about birth control is simply inviting them to have sex; advocates for comprehensive sex education say that withholding detailed information leads to dire medical consequences. Lubbock's situation illustrates the limitations of abstinence-only programs.

In the seven years since their schools began teaching abstinence-only, young people here have been anything but abstinent. Teen pregnancy rates in the state remain above the national average, and Lubbock County consistently has one of the highest rates in the state. In addition, the number of Texas youths with sexually transmitted diseases has risen steadily.

How to tell if something is a genuine Bush Policy:

1. It doesn't work or does the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do
2. Idiots say it works despite number 1 being obvious

From foreign to domestic if it sounds stupid, does damage you know you're deep in Jesusland.

The torture of a few dozen prisoners in Abu Ghraib, for example, received far more attention than the restoration of the Marsh Arabs’ homeland.

(Fascinating. In the same breath the r-tard who wrote this stuff acknowledges that it was in fact torture [and not frat boy hi-jinks] but doesn’t understand why the press would report on it so much. I guess the irony of the U.S. invading because of WMD to free the Iraqis from torture by torturing Iraqis isn’t newsworthy to some.)

But we’ve seen that a squillion times and we’ll see it a squillion more, what’s far more interesting is the Marsh Arabs reference. Remember them? One of the big triumphs of the Iraq invasion was the Marshes were saved and now the press is ignoring the bit of good news in favor of the daily bombings.

Well no, not really, CNN did a piece a few weeks ago: (search engines are hard to use!)

(CNN) -- Some have called it the Garden of Eden. At one time, the lush marshes of southern Iraq nourished a thriving array of wildlife and half a million people known as the Marsh Arabs.

And the Marshes, they've been restored?

Forty percent of the marshes are now inundated with water," Alwash said. "Some areas have recovered very well, and other areas are doing very poorly."

But Richardson said the local population needs humanitarian aid before an ecological reserve can be established.

"What is really desperately needed is health care for these people, clean drinking water, agricultural stabilization, and then look at the marshes as a refugium and try to restore certain areas," he said.

So the Marshes, hardly Iraq's most pressing problem, even in the Marshes. You think maybe that's why the media doesn't talk too much about it?

The northern mountains and southern marshes are off-limits now because the roads out of Baghdad are lined with bombs and gunmen.

Oh yeah... the whole place being a giant death trap, forgot about that. But I did find one more Marsh Arab bit:

The tribes of Marsh Arabs who now live in desperate poverty have turned car theft into a cottage industry, stealing vehicles, then selling them back to their owners.

Ah.

Well Mission Accomplished all around. Stupid press, I bet they haven't even tried to film some Close-Ups of Dogs Using a Wide Angle Lens...WEARING HATS! in Iraq.

(If you don't get that reference go here and download Quest For Ratings the new South Park episode)

A laboratory for the manufacture of chemical weapons has been found in Falluja, an Iraqi minister said today.

"Soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons," Minister of State Kassim Daoud told a news conference

"They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax."

Holy crap! Bombs! Poisons! Anthrax!

But they said there was no indication the lab was used to produce chemical weapons.

Holy crap! No indi..

Oh.

Never mind...

KABUL -- Two U.S. soldiers died and another was injured when a bomb ripped through their patrol in southern Afghanistan yesterday. The troops were attacked near Deh Rawood, a town 400 km southwest of Kabul where the military has clashed repeatedly with Taliban militants. "We're sorry to say that two U.S. soldiers were killed and one U.S. soldier was injured," American Maj. Mark McCann said. The wounded soldier was in stable condition.

snip

There is concern Afghan militants are learning from their Iraqi counterparts. The widespread use of roadside bombs and the Oct. 28 kidnapping of three foreign election workers are insurgent tactics that have been widespread in Iraq.

The United Nations and aid groups said security would have to improve if they were to press ahead with the task of rebuilding a country ravaged by more than two decades of war and increasingly dominated by a booming drug trade.

Afghanistan... it sounds familiar... oh yeah it's the war that was finished or something... why else would the U.S. start another one?

Say if they U.S. had poured the resources that went into Iraq into Afghanistan I wonder how things would be going... better or worse?

WASHINGTON - The Army, which has been hard pressed to find enough soldiers to man the rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, may soon be faced with an urgent request to find another 5,000 to 7,000 troops to increase the number of boots on the ground in Iraq.

Commanders there have been quietly signaling an immediate need for at least that many more soldiers to add to the 138,000 Americans already there. This, they say, is the minimum number needed to allow them to pursue the offensive against the insurgents in the wake of the taking of Fallujah.

Far from breaking the back of the insurgency, the capture of Fallujah only served as a signal for the enemy to launch its own offensive in cities across the Sunni triangle and in Baghdad itself. The fighters and leaders who fled Fallujah before the Americans launched their attack simply moved to other cities and went straight to work sowing havoc.

The daily number of attacks and incidents in Iraq is now running more than 100 per day, or double what it was before the Fallujah offensive began.

how are we going to get out of this hole?

KEEP DIGGING!

Good plan.

But not y'know, too much:

DONA ANA ARMY CAMP, N.M. - Members of a National Guard battalion preparing for deployment to Iraq said this week that they are under strict lockdown and being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers at their remote desert camp.

Even more troubling, a number of the troops said, is that their training is so poor and equipment shortages so prevalent they fear their casualty rate will be needlessly high. "We are going to pay for this in blood," one Guard member said.

More of Clinton and Kerry's fault no doubt.

off to Halifax!

WASHINGTON (CP) - President George W. Bush will avoid a potentially hostile reception in Parliament and travel to Halifax next week after his first official trip to Ottawa, White House sources said Wednesday.

Bush's side trip to thank Canadians who helped out after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will come after a working visit Tuesday with Prime Minister Paul Martin and a dinner reception with hundreds of prominent Canadians. American officials involved in planning the trip were worried about a cranky audience on Parliament Hill, sources said.

"We didn't see the need and, frankly, we didn't want to be booed. There are other, better venues," said one U.S. official.

Poor little Georgie, couldn't one of his lackeys just tell him "Oh no sir, they're not saying Boo! They’re saying Booush! Booush!"? It's not like he's hard to fool or anything.

Looking around town I can see flyers for the various protests to meet Dubya, he's going to get heckled, either here, there or the points in-between. I wonder if they’ll try and make the city an “UnFreeSpeech Zone”. I’m sure the secret service is floating the idea right now;

“So we lock up anyone who refuses to cheer.”

“Uh… that’s kind of against the law here eh.”

“Well it’s against the law back in the U.S. too but it’s never stopped us before… fine we’ll just deport them to Syria.”

How the heck does Bush enjoy his reputation as some sort of tough guy? He can't even stand in front of a pack of Canadian politicians, arguably the epitome of "mostly harmless", and take a few catcalls. He doesn’t have to have a witty comeback, I know that he’s incapable of that, but he can’t even stand there with any sort of dignity. He can’t look them in the eye and take it?

Run away! The Canadians might say bad things at me! Ahhhhhhh!

Let’s not forget that the Chickenhawk in Chief refused to address the EU parliament because they wouldn’t guarantee him a standing ovation.

But you know anything that keeps a Bush state visit short is good and Halifax could use the excitement.

This is a great site that allows people to send stuff to soldiers overseas. It lists items that the troops could use, from practical (sunscreen being number one) to entertainment (GameBoys and books). To make it even more productive it has a search engine that's hooked into a database of requests from the soldiers themselves.

OTTAWA - The number of Canadians using marijuana appears to have doubled over the past decade, according to the first major study of drug and alcohol use in the country in 10 years.

But remember it's the Crack-Cocaine of marijuana we have here!

As he ran onto the roof, one of the sniper's bullets hit his helmet, bouncing off.

He kept going, and did not leave until he had shepherded all his men down.

He was killed by the second bullet. It got him in the back, just below the flak jacket, as he jumped down the stairwell.

He must have thought he was home free.

One factor contributing to violence is entertainment media products such as violent video games. Years of research have shown that viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children. Research on violent interactive media indicates that it has a strong and more lasting effect on violent behavior.

Yeah "years of research" that's been debunked by minutes of common sense. (on their front page they claim "1,000 studies confirm this link.")

We encourage parents to exercise their power as consumers and hold retailers accountable for the way that violent video games are marketed and sold. Parents can visit retailers and find out how they display the games and how stores enforce the current ratings system. They can urge retailers to stop selling violent games or at the very least separate them from child-friendly ones. They can advocate by writing to companies and letting them know their concerns about the marketing of violent entertainment media.

snip

Finally, we wish to name several games whose scenes of violence, gender and/or racial stereotyping are such that we would urge parents to avoid purchasing them. Some of the best-selling games of special concern are all versions of: Grand Theft Auto; Halo; Half-Life; Doom; Manhunt; and Hitman.

Yeah I can't get over the demon / zombie / alien stereotyping in Half-Life, Halo and Doom. Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt and Hitman portrays all criminals as bad people! When will the madness end?

"In the coming days, we will be conducting a multitude of very focused raids aimed at capturing or killing insurgents in our area. It is surgical rather than sweeping in nature," Nevers said. "It's characterized by precision, patience and persistence -- the keys to a successful counter-insurgency."

Hmmm... precision, patience and persistence.. the three ps I guess.

The Reader's Digest version of this:

Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare

Thirty years after the signing of the January 1973 Paris peace agreement ending the Vietnam War, the United States finds itself leading a broad coalition of military forces engaged in peacemaking, nation-building, and now counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq. A turning point appeared in mid-October 2003 when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's memo on the future of Iraqi operations surfaced. His musings about whether US forces were ready for protracted guerrilla warfare sparked widespread debate about US planning for counterinsurgency operations.

It's a fascinating read, this sort of stuck out, a chart of action and reaction between insurgent and counterinsurgent:

• Limited resources/power: Insurgents have got plenty of gun thanks to looting various unguarded ammo dumps
  
• Solicit Government Oppression: From Abu Ghraib to Martial Law to Mosque shootings they've got that covered.
  
• Wage war for minds of population: Well hopefully this isn't all lost but I can't imagine there's been any gains in the last year.
  
• Use time to develop cause: Safe to say that they have.|
  
• Disperse; use limited violence widely: Dispersed and violent all over the place
  
• High return for investment: In their twisted mines I'm sure.
  
• Sole asset at beginning is cause or idea: Drive the Americans out would be my guess

And from the other column:

• Preponderance of resources/power: Not enough troops, armor and support, the Powell whatterine?
  
• Show that insurgency is destabilizing: Well the ones blowing themselves up are destabilizing but I don’t think that’s what they mean. I guess someone read this bit and that's why we get the whole desperate deal.
  
• Wage war for same, and to keep legitimacy: Yeah, not so much
  
• Always in reactive mode: kind of slow to react to Fallujah.
  
• Maintain vigilance; sustain will: I hope so for the first bit the second one I'm not so sure anymore. Once again; not enough troops?
  
• Sustained operations carry high political/economic burden: You’d think but not so far, in fact 51% of America doesn’t mind spending billions on this succesful catastrophe.
  
• Defeat root of cause or idea: Yeah good luck with that. The invasion was the root cause, the methodology to defeat it employed by the U.S. is to keep re-invading. Catch 22 much?

Case in point:

They said, in interviews with The Independent, that as well as deaths from bombs and artillery shells, a large number of people including children were killed by American snipers. US forces refused repeated calls for medical aid for injured civilians, they said.

Another win in the Insurgent's column.

Surveying the rubble of six demolished police stations on Monday, one U.S. officer said it would probably be months before any new police stations were standing, let alone filled with reliable, competent police officers.

"We're just hoping that the next bunch of guys are better than the last, otherwise we really are wasting our time," said Lieutenant Noel Rodriguez, a Stryker Brigade platoon leader.

U.S. authorities spent millions of dollars and many man hours setting up, training and supplying Mosul's 4,000-strong police force over the past year, only to have 80 percent of it desert the moment insurgents threatened.

A multi-million-dollar police academy full of computers, weapons, first aid equipment and other supplies was attacked and looted during the rampage and is now smashed up and deserted.

A few days before it was attacked, several of the U.S. military's top generals in Iraq had visited the centre to praise the effectiveness of the recruiting and training.

The U.S. suspicion of the Iraqi police is now so deep that even those that remain on the job are considered a risk.

Let me see if I get this, the Mosul police force collapsed, Christmas came early for the Insurgents and things are worse because the U.S. can't really work with the Iraqis without the whole sleeping with the enemy vibe that's pretty much permanent?

But what about the good news in Iraq? Here's a list of it, doesn't really compare to the bad but it does talk a lot about the Iraqi police force training.

And don't you forget it!

And it's nothing like this, or this, or this.

Dear Trolls (not that I actually get enough hits to earn one but just in case)

No I'm not calling Bush a blood thirsty dictator who's murdered millions in his relentless and ruthless quest for power. I'm just pointing out that it's usually blood thirsty dictators who murdered millions in their relentless and ruthless quest for power that have images and propaganda in that style. And yes I can see that it wasn't "authorized" by Bush or his people but funny story; whenever Saddam (or his mouthpieces) were asked about all the portraits of Saddam all over Iraq they'd sigh and say "President Hussein asks them not to but they love him so." (or something like that).

It's just a tad creepy and very unAmerican is all.

A new one:

Travelling in Iraq is no more dangerous than taking a road-trip through parts of Tanzania or Zambia, according to Foreign Office travel advice for Britons.

Hmmm

The Foreign Office warns against "all but essential travel" to areas of Tanzania near the country's 280-mile border with Burundi. A spokesman from the Tanzanian High Commission in London described this as a "joke".

He said the frontier area was "completely safe", adding: "Placing this in the same category as Iraq sounds ridiculous to me. In Iraq, there is fighting every minute of the clock."

The Foreign Office awards its highest risk category to northern Ecuador, explaining that "kidnapping and crime" are rife in the provinces of Sucumbios and Orellana. A spokesman for Ecuador's embassy in London said that classifying them as riskier than Iraq was "absurd".

"I will ask the Foreign Office to change this immediately," he said.

Well let's do a Google News test:

Iraq:

Influential Sunni cleric killed in Iraq

Bomb found on Iraq commercial flight

Police battle rebels in central Iraq town

Roadside bomb, mortar rounds kill one, injure three in Iraq's ...

Tanzania

Tanzania: Foreign Minister Signs Dar Es Salaam Declaration

Tanzania counts cost of 'white skin'

Mozambique and Tanzania Discuss `Unity Bridge'

Tanzania, Mozambique urged to strengthen cooperation

Tanzania : Fight against malaria get boost - Super Mosquito Nets ...

Tanzania eyes German-speaking tourists

Zambia (a bunch of stuff about football and AIDS)

Ecuador (a bunch of stuff about football and Bush Sr.'s light brush with death)

So, the British Foreign office is saying that Iraq isn't as dangerous as third world nations recovering from various wars.

And they're wrong.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Malnutrition among Iraq's youngest children has nearly doubled since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq despite U.N. efforts to deliver food to the war-ravaged country, a Norwegian research group said Monday.

Saddam's in jail, who cares?

"Renew America" your one-stop spot for the ramblings, rantings of the stupidest wingnuts in America. These are the conservatives that embarrass conservatives.

Without Hyperbole, who does the following r-tard right think is "one of the most evil and destructive figures in the 20th Century."

Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Hillary Clinton?

No, Alfred Kinsey of course! Yes they're getting quite foamy at the mouth over this guy, who apparently was some sort of mad scientist:

At the feet of Alfred the Hoosier we may lay tens of millions of abortions, a culture of porn, NAMBLA's organized pedophilia, the media's "homosexual chic" cause, and countless, endemic cases of spiritual, relational, and psychological harm.

Jumpin' Jebus Alfred was quite the busy bee, I'm surprised he didn't get around to inventing herpes, Hooters and the "no fat chicks" t-shirt.

What is it about sex that seems to scare the shit out of these people? Maybe if they tried it they'd relax a little. However after reading this next bit it's obvious that the author is clenching so hard his proctologist would need the Jaws of Life just to get his pants off.

You see, when one is defending the harmful practices of sin, against those who uphold the way life may be enjoyed from beginning through end, he must portray the wholesome as the ones aberrant.

Sex: God's most evil creation.

Keyes got like 10% of the vote and I was thinking "Well what kind of an idiot would vote for such a freak show?"

This kind!

How and why Dr. Keyes won in Illinois

"That," I inform them, "was a loss for Illinois, and for the Republican Party, and for the country as a whole, not for Dr. Keyes." And though this may sound — coming from an avowed Keyester — like sour grapes, it is not.

Avowed Keyester? Is that anything like a complete ass?

You have got to be shitting me. (via Antiwar.com)

Today, Schneider walks with a limp, on his artificial leg. But even though he was injured while on a mission in a war zone – and even though he’ll receive the same benefits as a soldier who’d been shot - he is not included in the Pentagon’s casualty count. Their official tally shows only deaths and wounded in action. It doesn't include "non-combat" injured, those whose injuries were not the result of enemy fire.

"It's a slap in the face. Although it was through no direct hostile action, I was on a mission that they’d given me in hostile territory. Hostile enough that we had to have a perimeter set up at the time of my accident to prevent from an ambush or an attack," says Schneider. "For those of us that were unfortunate enough to get injured. Whether it was hostile action or not, we're all paying the same price."

Nice.

Speaking of bullshit and Iraq, remember "It's as dangerous as Chicago or Los Angels or New York!" the warfloggers would say in their best "Ripley's Believe it or Not!" voice:

The average monthly death toll for US soldiers in Iraq is 55.6 deaths per month while the average reported murders per month in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City are 48.7, 51.9 and 49.3 deaths per month respectively. The murder stats in the US cities are for hostile deaths only -- whereas the death toll in Iraq includes both hostile and accidental deaths (apprently not). This makes our own murder rate in Los Angeles even more staggering. Yet there is not an equivalent amount of reporting or mourning in spite of comparable death.

---

The newest numbers, released by the Army's 1st Infantry Division, reveal that over the past three months, murders and other crimes in Baghdad are decreasing dramatically and that in the month of October, there were fewer murders per capita there than the Big Apple, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

The Bush administration and outside experts are touting these new figures as a sign that, eight months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, major progress is starting to be made in the oft-criticized effort by the United States and coalition partners to restore order and rebuild Iraq.

Anyone crunch those numbers lately?

And this is a fave of mine:

After a few months, I suspect Baghdad will be every bit as safe as Los Angeles and Chicago.

(Via Today in Iraq reader Cloned Poster)

As they say; read it all but this is the vital bit:

Che Guevara stressed in his book Guerrilla Warfare that the most important factor in a guerrilla campaign is popular support. With that, victory is almost completely assured.

The Iraqis already have many of the main ingredients of a successful insurrection. Not only do they have a seemingly endless supply of munitions and weapons, they have the advantage to blend into their environment, whether that environment is a crowded market place or a thickly vegetated palm grove.

The Iraqi insurgent has utilized these advantages to the fullest, but his most important and relevant advantage is the popular support from his own countrymen.

What our military and government needs to realize is that every mistake we make is an advantage to the Iraqi insurrection. Every time an innocent man, woman or child is murdered in a military act, deliberate or not, the insurgent grows stronger.

Even if an innocent civilian is slain at the hands of his/her own freedom fighter, that fighter is still viewed as a warrior of the people, while the occupying force will ultimately be blamed as the responsible perpetrator.

See this is why killing an unarmed Insurgent in a Mosque is a bad thing.

Let's be clear, no one (with any sense) is blaming the Marine, he's trying to do his job and get himself and his buddies home in one piece.

The fault of this whole debacle lies at the doorstep of the idiots that launched this madness. Not enough resources to do the job, how many times does it need to be said? How much more proof do you need? No one to secure prisoners so a Marine has to make a life or death split second decision that he wouldn't have had to make if he had the the needed backup.

But now the images are out there, along with the prison torture and who knows what, being used by al Qeada as a powerful recruitment tool.

The Bush administration once again proves that they are the best thing to happen to terrorism since the invention of plastic explosives.

But thank your god homos can't get married or then we'd all be in real trouble.

You thought 9-11 was important?

WASHINGTON - Angry relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks denounced Congress on Sunday for not enacting broad intelligence reforms aimed at thwarting further terrorist assaults.

''These guys are going to have blood on their hands,'' said Beverly Eckert, of Stamford, Conn., whose husband was killed when hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. ``It's reprehensible when partisan politics interferes with the safety of the American people.''

Hello Gloomy Gus! 9-11 was so long ago I can’t even remember the details; something hit something, in New York, a few people died? I know Iraq had some sort of connection; it was Clinton and Kerry’s fault anyway, they got the memo but went on vacation then voted against it.

For Pete’s sake, that bin Laden guy’s (he was President of Iraq?) Q has dropped so low his last video didn’t even survive 3 news cycles. Hell, Corey Haim / Feldman can get more screen time that the al Qeada has-been.

This whole “Terrorism! Terrorism! Terrorism!” thinking is sooooo November 1st anyway. Didn’t you get the message? It’s not about that anymore; it’s about fags getting married, Bible banning and other issues of deep morality. 51% of America said so!

That’s far more important than making sure that… well whatever they were trying to do. Sounded boring anyway, ports, shipping containers, security lapses, welcome to yawn city, enjoy your stay if you can keep your eyes open.

Presidential yachts, now that’s vital stuff.

So take your big sad crying widowed eyes and go watch “Desperate Housewives”, maybe give you an idea of what to do with your spare time now that America has (finally!) moved on. Y'know hire a gardener or something.

Terrorism is like the disco of the new millennium, sure we were all boogying for a bit but man it’s hard work, you have to admit mistakes, spend money, not invade Iraq… fuck that noise, in fact we need bumper stickers saying “Intelligence Reform Sucks” to make it official or perhaps even “The Terrorist Haven’t Won, We Just Don’t Give a Shit”.

Well that's for sure, the blood is there but still no oil:

IRKUK, Iraq (AFP)
Firefighters extinguish an oil well at the Al-Khabbaza oilfields west of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk

Saboteurs set ablaze another well in Iraq's northern oilfields overnight, bringing to six the number firefighters are trying to extinguish in the region, security guards said.

"Saboteurs exploded a bomb, setting oil well number 20 on fire," said Lieutenant Colonel Hammudi Ali, of the security force operating for the state-owned North Oil Company.

Back again... not not Eminem, it's the Neo Con's con man, the man with the plan (mostly for Iran), the puppet master of this disaster, the pied piper leading the rats of war into the soup, one time SotU VIP box seat guest but might not get a return invi