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For starters, he trumpets the oft-stated mistake that there is no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda

Check your sources, to say that that memo is misleading is to be fawningly polite. The truth is its bullshit.
Bush has yet to give a coherent argument about why we needed to invade Iraq, but not invade Syria or Saudi Arabia or Iran or Jordan or etc, because all those other countries have had minor or low level connections with terroists organizations too, but we aren't attacking them. This is the problem: even if it was true in a technical sense (low level connections may have existed), it wasn't true in a fundamental or practical sense because:

• Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.
• Hussein was extremely suspicious of the radical Islamists, he himself was a secular nationalist, not a religious nut. Within Iraq he actively suppresed Islamic fundamentalism.
• Removing Hussein did *not* hurt Al Queada in any way. Al Queda was in Afghanistan, but they had no known presence in Iraq (for the reason given above) until we removed Hussein and the Iraqi army which allowed the terrorists to infiltrate into Iraq.
• Americans are now more threatened by Al Queda than ever before, because AQ has about 300,000+ convenient US targets in Iraq now to go after, a substantial population to hide within, and a real, *genuine* resistance movement (anti-West Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq) to complicate attempts at stopping AQ. Had we kept our presence to just Afghanistan, we would be now in a much better situation.

Next, he brings out the ridiculous draft claim. First, re-enlistment rates are at record highs.

No, they aren't. The military, for the most part, for most units, is meeting its own targets for retention, but that doesn't make them records. Second, the big exception is the National Guard, which is dramatically failing to meet its retention goals nationwide, and because half the troops in Iraq are reservists, this is a serious problem. (If Bush plans more of these wars, the Army may be forced to abandon the concept of integrating the Guard into the full-time military units). Third, we don't know yet what the full effect of multiple, back-to-back, year-long deployments are going to do in the long run to the Army. If the Army can end those long deployments soon, it may have no effect, but if they can't stop it because of a chronic lack of combat troops, it could start to have a bad effect. Fourth, the longer the Army uses "stop loss" orders (Bush's stealth draft) to keep people from going home after serving their time, that will have a negative impact on people too (particularly the Guard). Finally, it depends on who you ask, many units aren't having major problems with retention, but some definitely are.

Second, there will not be a draft. Bush has stated that he doesn't want a draft

I believe the whole issue in dispute here is whether we can trust Shrubby anymore. I believe this about as much as I believed his father's "no new taxes" pledge.

Of course we will first dismantle the army and reassemble it -- the first one wanted to kill us (baathists) and the second one is our ally!

You need to get in touch with the troops. Its high ranking officers in the military that are the ones admitting we should have kept the Iraqi military force structure intact (this doesn't mean keeping the politically appointed officers, nor does it mean keeping units like the Republican Guard). I'm pretty sure even Rummy has conceded this. This was

I agree with this thread about 80%. The current system of checks and balances will at least somewhat broken unless better when different parties control different branches of government. If Bush is elected, there will be a Republican lock on presidency, house, senate, and (with up to four nominations coming up) supreme court. Decisions will be made not by balancing the left and right, and ending up somewhere in the middle, but by balancing the needs of republican moderates and republican wingnuts like the ones that wrote the Taxes GOP platform. And instead of decisions between 37% and 39% taxes on the top 1%, we'll be deciding between flat taxes or national sales taxes, and debating whether or not to return to the gold standard. And who knows where we'll end up.... I think if Kerry gets in, there country will keep going forward more or less as it has - there's no way he can push an extreme liberal agenda even if he wanted too, with a republican house and senate to pull him back. If Bush is re-elected, tho, we're going to make a sharp turn right of center, and any correction will be a long time coming.

Someone actually studied the pictures and published a quasi-analysis of the scenario. The "Mystery Object" in the pictures is actually Bush's Scottish Terrier Barney. Remember when he dropped Barney?

There's an easy way to get the no-reg archive link so why link to a podunk newspaper when it's totally unnecessary?

Good to see that the advertising worked on you.

Before you Slashdot about "port knocking", please
send your text through a spellchecker.

"implimenting" should read "implementing".

Remember, the "President"
was AWOL

Regards,
Kilgore

Various blogs have been talking about this recently. It seems too early to say who's right here --- the original authors have issued a vigorous interim rebuttal [pdf] of the charges, so it's hard to say what's happening. But let's not let that get in the way of a good bit of enviro-sensationalism, eh?

South Korea's Ohmynews(not in english yet) has thousands of contributers whose stories are ranked and polished by seasoned editors. The internet played an important role in electing their progressive president in the last election.

There is a future for independent original news on the web. For now, though, it will remain the province of armchair pundits who sift through dozens, or hundreds, of articles and put them in a context that Google news could never do (maybe with the purchase of Pyra Labs . . . ) They may have other jobs but if they are successful enough to elicit 10,000 people to contribute $5, they are on their way towards financial independence as well.