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Actually, the current Mayor of Chicago is named Daley. You found his father who gave JFK Chicago in 1960 which some say is why JFK flew to Nixon rather than vice versa.

There was a question as to whether votes for Kerry were on machines before the polls opened in 2004. If you've been in this city you know that Unions only protect one ticket and either scare or beat up the other.
Philadelphia has a lot of things - a two party system isn't one of them.

What's most amusing about Democrat charges is that they try to blame Governor's or the Federal system whereas vote control occurs at the local level.
(And I won't even get into the NJSC replacing Torch with Lautenberg.)

http://www.command-post.org/archives/002978.html

Ya, maybe after the docs come out the US will move above Libya in terms of sales. Keep your fingers crossed!

Well it's already been established that they are operating under legal boundaries at this point and time, I've conceded that point. As far as the law here goes, to say the *AA doesn't make the law is technically correct but it seems to deny the fact that they have a great influence on the making of new laws related to their own interests, such as copyright enforcement.

On a related and scary note, it seems that in Iraq the RIAA (or their chief executive) actually is writing the laws. Link from 2003 here

I definitely agree with your point on artist compensation, and the best way I know of to do that short of wiring them money is to go to their concerts, buy a souvenier t-shirt, etc. Of course, buying a CD does support the artist in a way, but indy labels are probably more likely to favor the artist instead of some conglomerated company.

I have read loads of comments so far, but not seen anything on analysing the date in terms of numerical significance. Here some ideas.

Obviously it's the 7th of the 7th, and 2+0+0+5 = 7. And seven is an important number in pretty much *any* religion/worldview one cares to name.

Also: a year ago today the USS Cole trial opened, charging six Yemenis with the attack. At that time an Al Qaida unit also said that they were going to open up a third front on the US (the other two being Iraq and Afghanistan) in Jemen. A link is here: http://www.command-post.org/gwot/2_archives/013399 .html.

Anything else?

You mean, news repeating. Blogs are nothing more than a billion websites updating their content with links to other sites and other news stories, with occasional commentary on them. They're as much a "distributed form of newsgathering" as the local news stand. They don't generate *anything*. They just spew the same old thing over and over and re-distribute already distributed content. Bleh. Lame.

Bloggers like Salam Pax (an Iraq living in Baghdad during the war) weren't doing original reporting? You mean the hundreds of bloggers who were in the field for the recent US elections weren't doing original reporting? You mean the many current and former US soldiers who were or are in Iraq aren't doing original reporting?

There are plenty of blogs worldwide who do original reporting, nor are they any particular secret.

Actually, it's illegal to wear a mask in public in the state of Gerogia (excluding Halloween and 'special occasions'). http://www.command-post.org/2004/2_archives/016668 .html

I know replying to myself is in bad taste, but I just have to laugh at what a brainfart substituting "morning" for "browser" is. I left the thing open for three minutes, mistake clearly visible between the xterm trim, and never noticed before sending. To correct: "Alterate browser" is a search that'll actually get what you mean.

women were well treated

Um. No. Nobody in Iraq was well-treated except the inner echelon of the Baath party. It was a brutal, totalitarian state.

The US may be claiming that democracy is its goal, but few in the outside world believe that claim.

Twenty-six million Afghans believe it. According to Gallup, two out of three Iraqis believe it. We could give a shit about anybody else.

People see the occupiers as the 'bad guys' largely because they committed the supreme crime against international law - an unprovoked war of aggression.

1. What "international law" is that, exactly? You can't just make something up and call it "international law."

2. There was nothing unprovoked about it. If you believe that, you're ignorant of the period between 1991 and 2003.

3. There was nothing aggressive about it. Our military commanders wouldn't even let their subordinates fly American flags over secured areas.

Are the Iraqi resistance worse that the occupiers of Fallujah?

I don't recall any Coalition forces kidnapping people, torturing them and sawing off their heads, so I'm gonna say "yes."

No more lies, please. Speak truth or shut up.

The Command Post is a "newsblog collective", and has, last I saw, over 80 bloggers lined up for election night.

Their election page, http://www.command-post.org/2004/index.html has nearly 50 articles from all around the country so far, and that's just since 7pm tonight.

Excuse me ?

A popular saying during WW2 was, 'When the RAF flies, the Germans run for cover. When the Luftwaffe flies, the British run for cover. When the Americans fly, everyone runs for cover!'

You've got it the wrong way round.

And when you are done, why don't you guys try being honest with the public for once. After being bombarded with your flagrant lies to the American public, I am only encouraged to vote third party. Try being leaders instead of misleaders for a change. "I actually voted for the 87 Billion dollars before I voted against it." Yeah, and we all know the final approval for the bill in the Senate was a voice vote, that Kerry didn't even attend. Of the 6 senators that bothered to show up, Byrd was the only one to vote against it.

Here are a few websites that reference this situation:

UPI: breaking news

littlegreenfootballs.com

AllahPundit here and here and here.

indcjournal.com

cnsnews.com

command-post.org

hftp.blogspot.com

Yes, Kerry is quite the everyman, as opposed to those rich evil republicans:

http://www.command-post.org/2004/archives/networth .jpg

Well Mr AC, since you havn't watched the news at all or have a very short memory, here's a quick refresher: Trucks that are portable weapons labs . These are the trucks you conveniently forgot about. What other purpose are they for? I suppose a portable babyfood lab or something. As far as the pesticides, we aren't talking about your regular pesticide found in your garage, or even on a large farm for that matter. Heavy duty stuff. This isn't Raid or DDT, its a magnatude more potent than that. Again, why the pesticide with no agriculture for miles in any direction? Especially heavy duty stuff like they found. Why would legit pesticide be hidden so well also? It just doesn't make sense no matter how you try to justify it. According to your numbers, 15,000 iraqi civilian and military personnel are dead. You also mention he killed hundreds of thousands of iranians. That is quite a big difference. How many in mass graves have we found? There are countless thousands saddam killed we are just finding out about. Much more than 15,000. How many lives were spared by overthrowing this madman? The iraqi people's lifestyle will improve and they will not have to live in fear now. Saddam had to go.

It proves I can question when politics/power marries money, since both has what the other wants. If we apply your position evenly, we can't question Haliburton's motivation either, since their just a company looking for contracts and money, like any other. Just because you don't support free enterprise doesn't mean that's how things are done in this country. If you dislike that, go to Cuba or the DPRK.

My guess is your inconsistent with who you give the benefit of the doubt. You probably figure Cheney only serves the rich since he's a "have", how about this to put things in perspective about how much money Kerry really has. Then again, maybe Kerry isn't after money, perhaps he just wants brownies.

I've actually gone to all the cantidate's websites to see what their "solutions" are, and that's why I dislike Kerry. Compare, for example how they want to fix health care. Edwards' plan makes some sense, while Kerry's is a joke that could never possibly work, except at filling the coffers of insuranse companies.

For a rich discussion of that very issue, check this out. Turns out Saddam was a self-made vassal of the USSR. But since he was Stalin's biggest fan, that's no surprise.

It's not like they didn't try to convince the public thru the media that they were discovering WMD evidence during the aftermath. Remember the uncovering of barrels of 'poision' and "possible chemical weapons?".

Few of these stories had much followup to turn public opinion back. The excitement of the announcements were key to keeping skepticism low. Possibly part of a campaign to build up bits of evidence in peoples mind which balances the equation, Saddam==WMD.

By implication, you object to our freeing those people. Please explain why?

Under my logic, vigilantes provide a valuable neighborhood service when there is no police force, and the world (in spite of the pious blather of the UN) does not have a police force.

Consider... during the leadup to the Iraq war, the French intervened twice in Africa. Nobody attacked them for being vigilantes.

The freeing of Kosovo, which was done almost entirely with US military, was not a UN approved operation, but Europe didn't mind that operation. In fact, they begged us to come in and help. Again, nobody called us (or NATO) vigilantes.

There is clearly a double standard at work. When the US takes actions to defend itself, it is a vigilante and evil. But if it takes action to defend European interests, it is just fine. And the French, who have a brutal history of colonialism (which the US does not) catches nary a word of criticism for twice unilaterally intervening in Africa, while at the same time condemning the US's actions in Iraq.

Of course, since France the second largest supplier of weapons to Iraq in the period 1973-1900. USSR provided 57%, France 13%, China 12%, USA 1%. So don't give me your uninformed tripe about how the US armed those countries. In fact, the USSR was the greatest arms supplier to Arab dictatorship. Source is here.

And now you say our stance towards Israel is racism? How pathetic. When the US was far more racist, Jews were discriminated against (just like they are now starting again to be attacked in "sophisticated" Europe). The US did not support Israel until after the 1967 war, when it became clear that Israel was a useful ally to counterbalance the USSR's attempts to control the Persian Gulf through Arab allies.

But in one sense you are right. We do tend to favor people who believe in and practice democracy over those who believe in and practice dictatorship and murder.

Finally, the canard about Iraq and oil is so silly as to be hardly worth refutation. But I'll give you a few arguments anyway... Iraq has less than 1/3 the oil production of Saudi Arabia, about the same production as Venezuela. The total value of oil produced by Iraq in several years doesn't come close to paying our expenses in that war. If we wanted to wage war for oil, why not take Venezuela instead... it has an unpopular government and is much closer to us.

You say we changed our motivations on the Iraq war after we failed to find WMD's - thus implying a dishonesty about our intent. That Iraq had WMD's was assumed by almost everyone in the world, including Iraqi generals who we captured who stated that units adjoining theirs were armed with the weapons. Furthermore, anyone attacking the WMD thesis has to explain why Saddam tolerated 12 years of sanctions when they could have been easily ended by opening up Iraq to serious inspection, rather than blocking inspectors at every chance. Finally, we never claimed that WMD was the only reason to attack Iraq - there were many other reasons, but the critical ones were that Iraq had ties to many terrorist groups, had a history of misjudgement that had cost 1,000,000 lives (and hence represented a danger of providing WMD's to terrorists who would use them against the US), was a despotic regime, the demise of which could be hoped to put strong pressure on other despots - especially those supporting terrorists. But finally, the real issue, so easily glossed over by the nit pickers, is that the modern convergence of the technology of WMD's and suicidal terrorists with a stated aim of destroying the West represents a truly severe and deadly threat to the civilized world - one which Europe seems to imagine can be dealt with by placing ones head in the sand and ones rear in the air. For more facts, check out this, this,

See the graph on this page.

You said: "France, Russia, China, the USA, and Germany have all provided military equipment to Iraq. The USA has additionally outfitted Iran and several neighbours. The Russians, Germans, and French are owed money largely for infrastructure, electrical generators, sanitation equipment, and the like. But get this straight - no one is innocent in this, and the USA is certainly, far and away, the worst offender."

FUD! Lets get some numbers down. According to SIPRI USSR, France, China, and Czechoslovakia were the largest traders of conventional arms during the period you describe. In fact a nice table summarizes this and shows that the US contributed to about 1% of the arms trade to Iraq from 1973-1990. Looks like the certainly, far and away, worst offender is the USSR.

but apparantly, the U.S. is opposing a french site because France opposed the war in Iraq

Could it possibly be because France tends to sell all of their nuclear capability to the highest bidder (i.e. Iraq!). Who do you think provided Iraq with the reactor that the Israelis bombed? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know...the US sold Iraq weapons too. How about a graph to show you the truth. The US sold Iraq 1% of its weapons and France sold them 13% of all of their weapons. Oh course, Russia was Iraq's #1 supplier. No wonder Russia and France were so adamantly opposed to the war in Iraq (I'm not saying the war was a Good Thing, BTW). Russia and France wanted to get paid by Iraq and they were afraid a war an ensuing chaos would cause them to have to forgive Iraq's debt. The war wasn't a good thing -- I hate it. However, we must realize that France's and Russia's opposition to it was not an act of kindness, either -- it was about money. The only possible good guy in all of this was Germany, although Iraq also owes German firms a LOT of money for work done there (mostly civil engineering, public works, etc).

1. "Hundreds of thousands" might be a slight exaggeration.

Latest estimates put the numbers from mass graves, that's just mass graves, at 300,000.

2. All that went on with the blessing of the US, UK and the most of rest of the world

Hardly. It went on, but most certainly neither the U.S. or the U.K. put their blessing on such an event. By the standard you seem to hold, the fact that hit happened meant it went on with the "blessing" of ALL of the world.

You see, back then Saddam Hussein was a Good Guy (TM), because he was fighting those nasty Ayatollahs in Iran that gave the US such a bloody nose at the start of the 1980s. That he was a brutal dictator didn't matter then because he was the West's brutal dictator.

You accuse those who disagree with you of simplifying the issue ("Perhaps you should switch off Fox News, pick up a history book, blah blah...") when you do the exact same thing. Saddam was an ally of convenience. In spite of your assertions, the United States only provided Saddam with around 1% of his armaments during the period from 1973-1992.

He was not placed in power by the U.S. and the U.K. and he helped turn back the Ayatollah and, ultimately, the spread of Soviet influence in the Middle East. It was thinking just like yours that got us into the situation with Iran in the first place. Jimmy Carter, whose good intentions and blatant idiocy virtually destroyed our intelligence gathering capabilities during his presidency (gasp! We had dealings with unbecoming people!), got us into that mess in the first place.

For bonus points, find out where else this kind of oppression is going on and how long it's been ignored by the Western world.

Then what should have been done? Are you suggesting that we shouldn't have done anything in Iraq because bad things are going on elsewhere? I really don't why you take the position you have. It would be logically consistent to instead be petitioning for the removal of other murderous regimes such as in Sudan and Zimbabwe instead of bitching about the removal of Saddam.

Maybe it is you who should study history a bit better. I'll let Mr. Bush help you:

The roots of our democracy can be traced to England, and to its Parliament -- and so can the roots of this organization. In June of 1982, President Ronald Reagan spoke at Westminster Palace and declared, the turning point had arrived in history. He argued that Soviet communism had failed, precisely because it did not respect its own people -- their creativity, their genius and their rights.

President Reagan said that the day of Soviet tyranny was passing, that freedom had a momentum which would not be halted. He gave this organization its mandate: to add to the momentum of freedom across the world. Your mandate was important 20 years ago; it is equally important today. (Applause.)

A number of critics were dismissive of that speech by the President. According to one editorial of the time, "It seems hard to be a sophisticated European and also an admirer of Ronald Reagan." (Laughter.) Some observers on both sides of the Atlantic pronounced the speech simplistic and naive, and even dangerous. In fact, Ronald Reagan's words were courageous and optimistic and entirely correct. (Applause.)

The great democratic movement President Reagan described was already well underway. In the early 1970s, there were about 40 democracies in the world. By the middle of that decade, Portugal and Spain and Greece held free elections. Soon there were new democracies in Latin America, and free institutions were spreading in Korea, in Taiwan, and in East Asia. This very week in 1989, there were protests in East Berlin and in Leipzig. By the end of that year, every communist dictatorship in Central America* had collapsed. Within another year, the South African government released Ne

After all, the EU constitution has 230 pages. All it needs are a better plot, and some character development...

Funny, France and Russia are #1 and #2. Such principles...

Note that the nations who most supported him are the very ones that opposed the war.

More in the same vein

Iraqi weapons imports 1973-1990

There appears to be a new French Foreign Forces emerging.

No, they are not associated with the honorable French Foreign Legion.

Frances' policy of sharing foreign diplomatic and military information with foreign organizations/groups appears to imply a French government global political agenda of some sort.

The agenda may be to provide assistance to politico-religious leaders that justify murder in the name of god using the warriors of a false prophet/god to fight and in a Jihad (clandestine war) against an undeclared enemy (EU and US [sounds like in English]).

I am just not sure, ?HUM?, would the French government seek destruction of others more powerful and influential in global culture and international relations? Now that the Russian Bear has been bankrupted, maybe the French government is using the Panda Bear and Ali Bear to destroy the American Eagle, marginalize the Celt/Anglo-American cultures in EU affairs and then France can retry WW-2 with Germany (who ain't got nukes).

THEN: La France, La France, terminé toutes autre! EU knows well the tune ... sing along if you want and enjoy Jerry Lewis (dubbed or sub-titles) reruns forever, and forever, and forever, even the French Government will learn what hell can be for the US (dominated by French controlled Canada [I know very funny]) and the EU dominated by France. The French Government (not the people) has met the enemy Face to Face and it is them.

Related Story:

http://www.command-post.org/oped/archives/006 446.html

OldHawk777

Reality is a self-induced hallucination (even for the French).

You're lying

Prove it.

If the best you've got is the notion that Bush emphasized one aspect of the conflict on this day and emphasized a different aspect the next day, then let me be the first to tell you: you're full of shit.

how he has all these horrible (Made in the USA!) weapons.

Read this. Between 1973 and 1990, Iraq imported 57% of their weapons from the USSR, 13% from France, and 12% from China. Only 1% of their weapon imports came from the US.

Thank God I don't live in a country where the media is at the beck and call of the whitehouse.

I'm glad you're not an American, too. If you immigrated, the average IQ of the country would drop sharply.