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Operation Chokepoint and it's constant expansion for instance.

You might have a point if not for the fact that Operation Choke Point was ended in August 2017 and had absolutely nothing to do with any kind of speech and everything to do with fraud.

Operation Chokepoint was used to go after legal but politically incorrect businesses. In practice, it never stopped.

https://www.nysun.com/new-york...

it would be pretty bad if banks started booting customers who said things they didn't like.

That may be where we are headed.

I thought it was a standard operating procedure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://www.nysun.com/new-york...

You can think Jimmy Carter for giving the world Robert Mugabe.

No, really, you can.

In April of 1979, the first fully democratic election in Zimbabwe history's occurred. Of the eligible black voters, 64% participated, braving the threat of terrorist attacks by Mr. Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party, which managed to kill 10 people. Prior to the election, Mr. Mugabe had issued a death list with 50 individuals he named as "traitors, fellow-travelers, and puppets of the Ian Smith regime, opportunistic running-dogs and other capitalist vultures." Nevertheless, Bishop Abel Muzorewa of the United Methodist Church emerged victorious and became prime minister of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, as the new country was called.

Yet the Carter administration, led by the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, would have none of it. Mr. Young referred to Mr. Muzorewa, one of the very few democratically elected leaders on the African continent, as the head of a "neo-fascist" government. Mr. Carter refused to meet Mr. Muzorewa when the newly elected leader visited Washington to seek support from our country, nor did he lift sanctions that America had placed on Rhodesia as punishment for the colony's unilateral declaration of independence from the British Empire in 1965.

We need to stop telling the rich to pay their fair share and start telling the freeloaders to pull their fair share.

Nice try, however it is the Left that has allied with the Islamists. The GOP is violently allergic to Islamism.

"Over the past year, multiple international conferences have featured leaders of the anti-global left and Islamist groups working together. Go to any anti-war or anti-globalization demonstration in the West and chances are you will see the flags of Hezbollah and Hamas waved by people wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. And at some of these meetings, members of such radical Islamist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah have enjoyed starring roles."

Whooh...the injection of facts is surely inconvenient. Ouch!

As is common in this matter, you have things badly confused. Israel did nothing to Iran to deserve they way the new Iranian government turned on them. If you think otherwise, please provide a list. One hint to reduce the chances of you going down the wrong path again: the Palestinians are not Iranian, and the Iranians are not Arabs.

As to "untermenschen," that would be the view of post-revolution Iranian government, and many Arabs living in Palestine.

Reading Mein Kampf in Tehran

On Monday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry held an international conference. Nothing unusual in that: Foreign ministries hold conferences, mostly dull ones, all the time. But this one was different. For one, "Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision" dealt with history, not current politics. Instead of the usual suspects — deputy ministers and the like — the invitees seem to have included David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader; Georges Theil, a Frenchman who has called the Holocaust "an enormous lie"; and Fredrick Toeben, a German-born Australian whose specialty is the denial of Nazi gas chambers.

The guest list was selective: No one with any academic eminence, or indeed any scholarly credentials, was invited. One Palestinian scholar, Khaled Mahameed, was asked to come but then barred because he holds an Israeli passport — and also perhaps because he, unlike other guests, believes that the Holocaust really did happen.

In response, Europe, America, and Israel expressed official outrage. The German government, to its credit, organized a counter-conference. ...

Hamas video: Killing Jews is 'worship that draws us close to Allah'
The Jews Were Brought to Palestine for the Great Massacre

As to the rest, you should catch up on some reading and get back to me.

UN agency stops aid imports to Gaza, cites Hamas 'thefts'
Looters strip Gaza greenhouses
Gazans seethe over taxes and blackouts
Sewage flood causes Gaza deaths
Hamas Bulldozes UN-Designated Historical Site to Make Room for Terrorist Training Camp
In Gaza, Hamas rule has not turned out as many expected
Rights watchdog accuses Hamas of torture, abuse of Palestinians
Hamas accused of routine torture of detainees in Gaza Strip
Palestinian Authority: Still Stealing "Hundreds of Millions," Hamas Taking Over
NY Times ignores Gaza's millionaires, hypes poverty, blames Israel (natch)

According to reports in the Arab press, a thriving smuggling economy in Gaza has produced no fewer than 600 millionaires. Hundreds of tunnels to Egypt have become bustling export and import conduits -- with the ruling Hamas elite siphoning off milli

Muslims like Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Eric Rudolph?

The phrase you are looking for is "pressure cooker bomb." It is a technique taught by and identified with Al Qaida and affiliates.

Fixed your bigoted American exceptionalism for you.

You don't know what you're talking about. And that is really quite astonishing since the information has been widely available for some time.

The Future of Terrorism: What al-Qaida Really Wants

If you think this is ultimately about anything America has done, you're uninformed. If you think it will stop if America is destroyed, you're willfully blind. Ultimately they will come for Europe and the rest of the world as they believe they are both entitled and destined to rule every nation.

And the kicker is that they will have help:

The Leftist-Islamist Alliance in Pictures
The Left's Unlikely Alliance with Islam
Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Leftist's Ironic Unholy Alliance with Islamists
A dangerous alliance: Faux liberals and Islamists
Islamist-Left Alliance A Growing Force

Please read the following. While Saddam was not involved with 9/11 (I never said he was), he was *heavily* involved with financing, arming, supporting, and giving a based for terrorist operations (which is what I said when I said 'exporting'):
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/report-details-saddams-terrorist-ties/72906/
I trivial Google search would have found this information and many like it - but you couldn't even be bothered to check your facts. Instead you lazily assume that of Saddam was not involved in 9/11 then he never supported terrorism. Ridiculous and false. Please consider yourself shamed and do your research next time. The war against Saddam was justified for many reasons, and this is one of them!

Hi.

A rather extraordinary claim, do you have a citation for this?

There are plenty of references, eg:
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/report-details-saddams-terrorist-ties/72906/
What people are confused about is whether Saddam was complicit in 9/11. The answer to that is no, so people take that as Saddam not being involved in terrorism at all - which is patently untrue. The countries of Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria pretty much all had the same policy: harbor jihadis and export them. If they ever try make trouble on your soil - be absolutely ruthless (eg. the complete destruction of Hama in Syria in 1982). Saddam was the same, slaughtering the Kurds and then the southern Shia on a scale vastly greater than the 66 thousand casualties from the US invasion and aftermath (note: the Coalition caused about 66 thousand casualties [see wikipedia for the official, and best estimate - along with some wild speculation from armchair critics]; hundreds of thousands more were killed by the warring Sunni and Shia militia). So, my point is correct, Saddam was a major supporter and exporter of terrorism.

Can you expound upon the ideology of Islam? There are just as many Mulims as Catholics in this world (just over a billion). If they as a group truly wanted to "destroy the infidels", they would have more damage than WW2 by now. Don't confuse the extremists with majority...just as you would not consider the IRA representative of all Catholics nor the Branch Davidians as representative of all Protestants.

First thing. Most Muslims are good people. The correct analogy is that in the 1940s most Germans were also good people, it was the ideology of National Socialism (Naziism) that was evil. Germans were good *despite* the teachings of Naziism, but that doesn't make Naziism less evil. Similarly the Muslims may be good human beings *despite* the teachings of the totalitarian political ideology called Islam. It is *mainstream* Islam that requires able males to wage jihad against unbelievers (that's you an me). The whole "narrative" about it only being extremists who want to impose the Islamic political/social order on the globe is simply wrong - it is lie that the Islamists and their allies on the political Left perpetuate. The left-leaning media are either too ignorant or complicit in using the term "extremist" when in fact it is mainstream Islam that is supremacist and seeks world domination. This is easy to see for yourself, look for Islamicist statements not intended for consumption by Westerners (Islam mandates they lie to us to advance Islam, a doctrine called 'taqiyya'). Look for what the Muslims say for the consumption of other Muslims (eg. the racist and genocidal statements the Palestinians say in Arabic; the continual talk about the blood of Westerners they wish to spill to bring about the conquest of the whole world by Islam).

What is important to know is the Islamic doctrine of "abrogation". This means that all the early, nice verses of the Qur'an (the oft quoted "there is no compulsion in religion") have been replaced by the later and much, much more violent passages, such as the notorious "Verse of the Sword": Sura 9:5 and surrounding verses. These violent verses are the last words of Mohammed, and have not been abrogated by any other verses (but do abrogate the nicer verses). Anyone who brings out the "There is no compulsion in religion" quote is either ignorant of Islamic doctrine (particularly the core of abrogation, which means you must question their judgement about the rest of their Islamic knowledge), or they are lying to you (practicing 'taqiyya' to lull you into a false sense of security).

Another major lie (particularly from the political Left) is that if we show tolerance and appease Muslims they will show similar tolerance and the result will be two communities living peacefully side-by-side. This shows a criminal ignorance o

Al Jazeerah is BBC . . . It was formed when BBC closed it Arabic division. Those folks went and started Al Jazeerah.

That makes perfect sense.

Electing a New People: The Leftist - Islamic Alliance
Islamist-Left Alliance A Growing Force

(BBC Director General) Mark Thompson: “There was massive left-wing bias at the BBC”
The BBC's Left-wing bias isn't in its news coverage; it's in everything else that it does
BBC bias - The BBC has managed to flabbergast even those Israelis who hadn’t expected minimal fairness from it.
More absurd anti-Israel bias from BBC MidEast editor
For once, there is no ambiguity: the Today programme's report on Gaza this morning was totally and utterly biased

First: price stability is bad, not good.

The policy of trying to keep prices stable is flawed by design. USA had falling prices over the 19th century as dollar gained value by the factor of 2, by the beginning of 20th century USA became largest creditor because it became largest manufacturer and exporter.

The Fed was instrumented in 1913 (almost 100 years back now), and in the beginning it wasn't allowed to monetize debt! In fact it implemented a stronger gold standard than was used in commercial banks of the time, it had more reserves. By 1917 the Congress changed the policy, allowed the Fed to monetize the Treasury debt (originally SCOTUS only judged Fed to be legal because it wasn't allowed to monetize debt, but that's how all laws start, little by little, slippery slope, camel's nose under the tent, etc.)

By 1917 they changed the rules, allowed the Fed to monetize the debt, but they understood that this is inflation, so they introduced the infamous 'debt ceiling', which was raised every time when Congress hit it, so it's not a ceiling, the real ceiling will be imposed by the lenders (otherwise it's like allowing you to raise your maximum credit on your credit card indefinitely, why would you ever work again?)

As productivity increased over the 19th century, prices fell, no price is "set" to anything, it's always discovered by the market. Prices fall as productivity increases and efficiencies allow more to be produced with less cost, but the business grows and occupies more market as it provides lower and lower prices (compare to the computer and cell phone markets, you'll understand what I mean).

Total amount of gold mined is completely irrelevant of-course. Even if you take a theoretical country that has no gold (0 ounces) for all of its people, not only government, it does not mean that they cannot trade!

They can trade by selling something else for gold, they can trade in other metals as well. The issue is not gold itself, it is the ability not to be constrained by the artificial monstrous creations of the central banks and governments that are fiat currencies.

In fact in a free market you are free to issue your OWN currency, you can base it on anything you like! Why not? You can make a currency out of shares of your company. You can make currency out of some product that you release, it's up to the people whether to accept your currency and take it as payment. Clearly government shouldn't be preventing you from doing it, yet government calls it terrorism.

Government clearly hates competition in money, it wants to be the only issuer.

The free market allows for hoarding of resources, and because gold does not lose value due to spoilage, there is no pressure to sell.

- you do not understand business and you do not understand money.

Of-course there is pressure 'to sell', it's the pressure to invest. That's the reason why USA had deflation in 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, yet it became the largest manufacturer (and thus exporter and creditor) in the world.

The very reason not to hoard money is PROFIT. If you hold your money underneath your mattress, that is fine, but it does nothing to grow your money.

What you should be worried about is INFLATION, not real money.

Inflation is what makes people 'hoard' real money and not use it, because to make a return that is worth the investment, you have to account for inflation as well, and since inflation is huge (11 to 15% AFAIC, but it's 8% if you just go by the annualized and compounded CPI) so to make, say a 6% real return on your investment (which is always a risky proposition), you have to make easily 15-21% nominal yearly return! That's very hard, that's what makes people 'hoard' their money rather than invest it.

The

China is the most dangerous country in the world today. And the information about how horrible the Chinese, despite them getting MUCH worse given the economic situation, the information flow has been nearly shut down since 2007 timeframe. There were big 60 minutes type exposes in 2007 but since then the Police State has seen that information regarding our forced consumption of Chinese Walmart Plastic with Federal Reserve Notes remains in place.

China tires bad:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118278927863547228.html

The organizing committee of Beijingâ(TM)s Olympic games has promised to investigate charges that official merchandise is being manufactured using child labor.

The PRC Chinese poison dog food:
http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20070523/chinese_protein_export_scandal-id-104033.html

The PRC Chinese poison toothpaste:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/02/us/02toothpaste.html?ex=1181620800&en=d26dab8b2bd85303&ei=5070

The PRC Chinese poison Children's Toys:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070614/thomas_recall_070614/20070614?hub=CTVNewsAt11
http://blogs.eastbayexpress.com/92510/2007/06/thomas_why_hath_thou_forsaken.php

Chinese Seafood Detained for Safety
http://www.topix.com/forum/food/TFSGN6836LFM2QFV7

Melamine put into milk formula, dog food, etc.
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/got-melamine-53000-chinese-children-did-in-their-milk.html

- Cow milk so inundated with antibiotics you can not make Yogurt from it.

- Pigs force-fed waste water.

- Lard made from separating fats from sewage.

Made in China: tainted food, fake drugs and dodgy paint
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2118920,00.html

China Jails 2 Protestant Church Leaders
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/china-jails-two-protestant-leaders/58150/

The PRC Chinese government has murdered countless people:
"DEATH BY GOVERNMENT: GENOCIDE AND MASS MURDER"
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.FIG1.GIF

Given modern industrial process and productivity, I don't even see how using Chinese slave labor saves that much in the face of having to crate up and ship the goods from china to consuming markets.

The bean counters saved maybe 10% at best making product, and now with the price of shipping goods going up due to petrol, they are probably paying more to have it made in China.

The only real reason it may never come back to the US is a host of states (NY, CA) and The Fedzilla / US government that have a long list of anti-business laws making a return to the US difficult.

You want Made in the USA? Tell state and federal congress to stop doing everything to drive up the cost of business compared to China and India (the only two competitors that matter); stop buying Chinese crap where possible.

Slave Labor rented at a PREMIUM with low quality results is still apparently cheaper than coming back her

The problem areas in the American fiscal environment are pretty well known. I don't think anyone would seriously try to blame Muslims for them as it would be obvious nonsense.

FDR knew that the funding mechanism for Social Security had to change long term, and it has never been done. And please spare us from nonsense about wars and defense spending being the problem, because they aren't. Rapidly increasing social welfare spending mixed with soaring debts, and an economy that is frozen by government meddling (such as helped create the housing and mortgage meltdown) and unable to produce jobs, growth, and income, is what will push the United States over the edge, if anything.

Chart of the Week: Federal Spending on Defense vs. Entitlements

What Happened to the $2.6 Trillion Social Security Trust Fund?
Who doesn’t pay taxes, in eight charts
Public-Employee Unions Gone Wild,
The Path to Economic Disaster

And lets not forget the Euro crisis - if Europe collapses, it might very well drag down the US. Once again, it would be pretty clear what happened.

If there is a new "Hitler", he is very unlikely to come from conservative America.

Bad socialist habits coming to America: Obama's Creepy Cult of Personality

America's 'Fascist Moment'

. . . . contemporary liberalism descended from the ranks of 20th-century progressivism, and "shares intellectual roots with European fascism."

When Mr. Goldberg uses the term "liberal fascism," he is not offering a right-wing version of the left's smears. He knows it is a loaded term. What he is talking about is the historical idea of fascism: a corporatist and statist social structure that creates a deep reliance of its subjects on the government and engenders a sense of community and purpose. In American politics, this tendency toward statism has always been much more at home on the left than on the right.

It is impossible in a short review to do justice to the rich intellectual history of American liberalism that Mr. Goldberg offers to his readers. He has read widely and thoroughly, not only in the primary sources of fascism, but in the political and intellectual history written by the major historians of the subject.

Readers will learn that the very term "liberal fascism" came from the pen of H.G. Wells, the famed socialist author who delivered a speech at Oxford University in 1932 that included hosannas to both Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany. "I am asking," Wells told the students, "for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis." Democracy, he argued, had to be replaced with new forms of government that would save mankind, producing a "'Phoenix Rebirth' of liberalism" that would be called "Liberal Fascism." Like the activism, experimentation, and discipline that made the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany new dynamic societies, the West too could reach such a plateau by adopting the new soft fascism that suited it best.. . . .

Indeed, America, as Mr. Goldberg writes, certainly had a "Fascist moment." It was not, however, during the current presidency, but one that extended from progressivism through the New Deal. Mr. Goldberg traces the American roots of liberal fascism to the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who saw i

The real threat from sea level rise is zero. It would take a long, long time for all of that ice to melt; generations most likely. People will just naturally move inland as the water level rises. It's not like you're going to wake up in your seventh floor apartment one morning and find out that your balcony would now make a good dock.

There's a lot wrong with this. It doesn't require a full melt for the sea level to rise a few feet. Even a two or three foot rise could have devastating consequences. My parents have a small house in a small town in New England. There house is on a hill and so is pretty safe. But many of the other houses in the area are only a few feet above the high-tide line. If the sea level went up 2 or 3 feet, then when the sea gets really high during storms there would be real damage. Furthermore, some buildings have foundations that go down far which would then lead to problems with the foundations. It doesn't take water up to your balcony window to make the building have problems, that will happen well before that. What do you think will happen to a building with a basement that is partially below the water table? And relocating people takes a massive amount of economic resources and destroys national heritage ("Yes, children, much of where Paul Revere road through you've never heard of. It has been uninhabitable for 30 years." Do you want to have to tell kids that?) And New England isn't the only area that will have problems. New York City right now to keep the subways functioning on dry days pumps out around 13 million gallons of water. http://www.nysun.com/new-york/inside-the-mtas-fight-against-subway-flooding/35672/ And that's just the subways, that's not counting all the other pumps in NYC. Do you realize how much worse that will be from just a 1 or 2 foot increase in water level? Then add to this list a lot of cities in Florida. And that's just the more obviously impacted areas of the US.

And even this ignores the problem in less well-off countries. For example, many people live on small islands in the South Pacific. Consider Tuvalu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu which is not at all well off, and is so small that there's no part of it higher than about 15 feet above sea level. If sea level increases by 2 feet, then most of the island will become inhabitable. That's it. An entire country gone. They lack the money and area to relocate if the worst happens. And not surprisingly, they are a bit pissed off that our failure means that they might have to move. And they aren't the only example. There are literally hundreds of small islands in the Pacific which will suffer from sea level rise. And this isn't the only part of the world that will have trouble. Many South American countries have a lot of people on the coasts.

Then there's also all the secondary environmental problems. Many areas which are now fresh water will become much more saline. Fresh water fish will have problems. Water supplies currently used for drinking water will need to add all sorts of expensive desalinization equipment. Environmentally stressed areas like the Florida Everglades will run into even more problems.

So yeah, there's a serious threat here. And it doesn't require water going that high up. Only a few feet can have devastating economic, environmental and social consequences.

Regarding risk of being sued: why do you think that medical malpractice insurance is so high?

My friend's wife is a doctor (OB/GYN), specializes in at-risk pregnancies and neonatal care in rural settings. By "gross earnings" she makes around $200k/year (remember, rural = not rich people, so she can't charge as much). After you take out taxes, the hospital's cut, the insurance company kickbacks and "reductions", and malpractice insurance she's lucky to clear 60k in a good year. Oh, and remember that to make that much she's now paying back on a few hundred thou in student loans built up through the getting of a medical doctorate followed by time spent in residency in order to get licensed.

Admittedly anecdotal evidence. But she seems fairly representative of her field. Someone working urban might gross 1/3 more than she does but there's a corresponding increase in the hospital's take, insurance "adjustments", and malpractice insurance cost on that anyways.

Saddam Hussein didn't like Al Quidea - it's very, very unlikely that he would have had anything to do with them at all. AQ moved into Iraq filling the power vacuum when the government fell.

Nonsense.

Report Details Saddam's Terrorist Ties

WASHINGTON — A Pentagon review of about 600,000 documents captured in the Iraq war attests to Saddam Hussein's willingness to use terrorism to target Americans and work closely with jihadist organizations throughout the Middle East.

The report, released this week by the Institute for Defense Analyses, says it found no "smoking gun" linking Iraq operationally to Al Qaeda. But it does say Saddam collaborated with known Al Qaeda affiliates and a wider constellation of Islamist terror groups.

The report, titled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents," finds that:

The Iraqi Intelligence Service in a 1993 memo to Saddam agreed on a plan to train commandos from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Anwar Sadat and was founded by Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In the same year, Saddam ordered his intelligence service to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia." At the time, Al Qaeda was working with warlords against American forces there.

Saddam's intelligence services maintained extensive support networks for a wide range of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations, including but not limited to Hamas. Among the other Palestinian groups Saddam supported at the time was Force 17, the private army loyal to Yasser Arafat.

Beginning in 1999, Iraq's intelligence service began providing "financial and moral support" for a small radical Islamist Kurdish sect the report does not name. A Kurdish Islamist group called Ansar al Islam in 2002 would try to assassinate the regional prime minister in the eastern Kurdish region, Barham Salih.

In 2001, Saddam's intelligence service drafted a manual titled "Lessons in Secret Organization and Jihad Work—How to Organize and Overthrow the Saudi Royal Family." In the same year, his intelligence service submitted names of 10 volunteer "martyrs" for operations inside the Kingdom.

In 2000, Iraq sent a suicide bomber through Northern Iraq who intended to travel to London to assassinate Ahmad Chalabi, at the time an Iraqi opposition leader who would later go on to be an Iraqi deputy prime minister. The mission was aborted after the bomber could not obtain a visa to enter the United Kingdom.

The report finds that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who is wanted by the FBI for mixing the chemicals for the 1993 World Center Attack, was a prisoner, and not a guest, in Iraq. An audio file of Saddam cited by the report indicates that the Iraqi dictator did not trust him and at one point said that he thought his testimony was too "organized." Saddam said on an audio file cited by the report that he suspected that the first attack could be the work of either Israel or American intelligence, or perhaps a Saudi or Egyptian faction.

The report also undercuts the claim made by many on the left and many at the CIA that Saddam, as a national socialist, was incapable of supporting or collaborating with the Islamist al Qaeda. The report concludes that instead Iraq's relationship with Osama bin Laden's organization was similar to the relationship between the rival Colombian cocaine cartels in the 1990s. Both were rivals in some sense for market share, but also allies when it came to expanding the size of the overall market. .... read more.....

Christopher Hitchens debates Iraq with Reagan Jr.

Saddam Hussein didn't like Al Quidea - it's very, very unlikely that he would have had anything to do with them at all. AQ moved into Iraq filling the power vacuum when the government fell.

Nonsense.

Report Details Saddam's Terrorist Ties

WASHINGTON — A Pentagon review of about 600,000 documents captured in the Iraq war attests to Saddam Hussein's willingness to use terrorism to target Americans and work closely with jihadist organizations throughout the Middle East.

The report, released this week by the Institute for Defense Analyses, says it found no "smoking gun" linking Iraq operationally to Al Qaeda. But it does say Saddam collaborated with known Al Qaeda affiliates and a wider constellation of Islamist terror groups.

The report, titled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents," finds that:

The Iraqi Intelligence Service in a 1993 memo to Saddam agreed on a plan to train commandos from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Anwar Sadat and was founded by Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In the same year, Saddam ordered his intelligence service to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia." At the time, Al Qaeda was working with warlords against American forces there.

Saddam's intelligence services maintained extensive support networks for a wide range of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations, including but not limited to Hamas. Among the other Palestinian groups Saddam supported at the time was Force 17, the private army loyal to Yasser Arafat.

Beginning in 1999, Iraq's intelligence service began providing "financial and moral support" for a small radical Islamist Kurdish sect the report does not name. A Kurdish Islamist group called Ansar al Islam in 2002 would try to assassinate the regional prime minister in the eastern Kurdish region, Barham Salih.

In 2001, Saddam's intelligence service drafted a manual titled "Lessons in Secret Organization and Jihad Work—How to Organize and Overthrow the Saudi Royal Family." In the same year, his intelligence service submitted names of 10 volunteer "martyrs" for operations inside the Kingdom.

In 2000, Iraq sent a suicide bomber through Northern Iraq who intended to travel to London to assassinate Ahmad Chalabi, at the time an Iraqi opposition leader who would later go on to be an Iraqi deputy prime minister. The mission was aborted after the bomber could not obtain a visa to enter the United Kingdom.

The report finds that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who is wanted by the FBI for mixing the chemicals for the 1993 World Center Attack, was a prisoner, and not a guest, in Iraq. An audio file of Saddam cited by the report indicates that the Iraqi dictator did not trust him and at one point said that he thought his testimony was too "organized." Saddam said on an audio file cited by the report that he suspected that the first attack could be the work of either Israel or American intelligence, or perhaps a Saudi or Egyptian faction.

The report also undercuts the claim made by many on the left and many at the CIA that Saddam, as a national socialist, was incapable of supporting or collaborating with the Islamist al Qaeda. The report concludes that instead Iraq's relationship with Osama bin Laden's organization was similar to the relationship between the rival Colombian cocaine cartels in the 1990s. Both were rivals in some sense for market share, but also allies when it came to expanding the size of the overall market. .... read more.....

Christopher Hitchens debates Iraq with Reagan Jr.

I don't think you understand what was happening when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.

even though Southern Rhodesia declared independence shortening it's name to Rhodesia in '65 or so, the entire world still recognized English colonial rule over it until 1980 or so when England finally release claim on it. England maintained it wouldn't release it's claim to it (and all their colonies) until they were governed under a majority rule. Anyways, in 78-79 a biracial party was formed to govern and the Lancaster house agreement placed it back under British colonial control.

An election was held, someone other then Mugabe was elected (Abel Muzorewa), And now enters the Carter administration.

Carter didn't have to invade. All he had to do is support the democratically elected leaders of the country instead of imposing his own desires on it by blocking UN action and supporting Mugabe knowing he was wanting to create a single party communist state.

The Carter Administration played a lead role in why Mugabe was not removed from power, why the rightful people elected wasn't allowed to stay in power, and why the world recognized Mugabe as the leader..In fact, People from Carter's administration, was toasting Mugabe as late as 2001 when they were attacking whites for their land.

"The only thing that frustrates me about Robert Mugabe is that he is so damned incorruptible," Andrew Young, Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the United Nations

In the unlikely case that you were not: Show me any evidence from a reputable source that Ayers wrote DOMF and that refutes all the statements to the contrary (see 1 or 2 for instance). Tell me why a part-time university lecturer, who in his other job is a State Senator and is campaigning for the US senate needs do scholarly publication (something that is usually of necessity only for full-time tenure-track positions).

Well, there is heavy suggestion from the structure of the writing that it was Ayers: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/breakthrough_on_the_authorship_1.html And, of course, he admitted it. http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2009/10/bill-ayers-admits-he-wrote-dreams-of-my-father.html

Also, since you seem less-than-well-informed about student writing in the HLR: The president of the HLR is also editor-in-chief, and as such contributes as well. The president is selected from the editors, so any president has done some writing before. Most if not all student writing in HLR takes the form of Notes, Recent Cases, Recent Legislation, and Book Notes. The _articles_ in HLR are by professors, judges, and law practitioners, so it is entirely unsurprising that neither Obama nor any of his other sophomore classmates have published any articles in HLR.

He would have published, either before or after, because he is a lawyer. A Juris Doctorate is a doctorate level degree. He is an academic, and law students (promising ones, at least) do write law review articles -- and sign them. Obama didn't so any of the things that a law review editor does -- he didn't write or even cosign on any articles, he's never published as an attorney, and he didn't even get a Supreme Court clerkship like most HLR editors. He has every appearance of someone who just spending time and checking off boxes on a resume.

Actually, we don't know any of this about Obama. We know that he didn't graduate Columbia with honors, because they said so. Both he and Harvard have refused to release his transcript. There's very good evidence that he didn't write Dreams of My Father and that Bill Ayers did. His HLR time is moot, because he didn't actually do any work and as President of HLR left all that to the other 80 editors of HLR. His time as a lecturer (which was originally claimed as professor, until it was proven without a doubt that he was never any kind of professor) and on HLR weren't particularly productive, in that he has never published any sort of law article at any time. Ever. Authored: 0. Obama might be smart. He might not. He's got lots of empty credentials and puffery. Real accomplishments, though, are pretty thin.

At first I thought you were sarcastic... Compliments to the quality of your trolling.

In the unlikely case that you were not: Show me any evidence from a reputable source that Ayers wrote DOMF and that refutes all the statements to the contrary (see 1 or 2 for instance). Tell me why a part-time university lecturer, who in his other job is a State Senator and is campaigning for the US senate needs do scholarly publication (something that is usually of necessity only for full-time tenure-track positions).

Also, since you seem less-than-well-informed about student writing in the HLR: The president of the HLR is also editor-in-chief, and as such contributes as well. The president is selected from the editors, so any president has done some writing before. Most if not all student writing in HLR takes the form of Notes, Recent Cases, Recent Legislation, and Book Notes. The _articles_ in HLR are by professors, judges, and law practitioners, so it is entirely unsurprising that neither Obama nor any of his other sophomore classmates have published any articles in HLR.

Nope. Doesn't say a thing about working when the phone is off.

Furthermore, back in 2003, (the date this Ardito bugging went down) we would be talking about a Razr most likely. When Razrs (like all phones) are off they have no radio's running.
(That's the law).

So Ardito never turned his phone off. Its a lot easier when the subject of surveillance dutifully charges your bug's battery every night.

  http://www.nysun.com/new-york/buster-ardito-hunts-for-bugs/34885/

In that case, I was told that only a fool thinks moonshine is the answer, at least with current biofuel technology.

Malpractice suits don't even help. MDs are insured and only have to spend a few days in court if some one calls them out on it then if they are proven wrong the Hospital insurance takes the fall and all our costs go up while the MDs pay stays the same. What we really need to do is hold each physician criminally responsible for what they say and do in a clinical setting

Actually, the profit margins for many Doctors and specialists are getting smaller over time due to the increased insurance premiums. Google shows this as an example. http://www.nysun.com/new-york/rising-insurance-rates-put-city-doctors-out/57934/. Other articles claim the Insurance premiums have risen %130 in the last 10 years, and Doctors salaries not kept pace with inflation as a result.

I won't t argue about the competence of Doctors in general, but I do feel they are under a lot of pressure to diagnose correctly while keeping costs down. I recognize that it's a tough job, and it's statistically guaranteed that some small percentage of patients will get misdiagnosed or receive an incorrect treatment. Surgical errors will still happen, particularly since the shear number of surgeries performed in the US is rising and the media is eager to publicize any errors.

Of course, half of the Doctors out there are below average performers. (yes that was a joke)

Back in the 1980's, Margaret Thatcher, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain took great pride in the fact that she only had 4 hours sleep/night and took cat-naps during the day. Now, she suffers from Alzheimers/dementia.

Going without a decent number of hours sleep is not something I would wish to risk.

New York Sun, July 2007:

China loses between 100 and 200 million tons of coal a year -- a significant fraction of its production of 2.26 billion tons -- to mine fires, according to Holland's International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation. This results in carbon dioxide emissions in a range of between 560 and 1,120 million metric tons, equaling 50% to 100% of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline.

Googling for "coal seam fires" seems to yield enough corroborating evidence to indicate that this isn't just a crackpot talkin'.

You are correct but there is still a big problem with scientology: it enjoys rights that no other religions in the USA enjoy via secret deals its made with the IRS that we are not privy to. This is a source of concern given its history of governmental infiltration & espionage.

http://www.nysun.com/national/judges-press-irs-on-church-tax-break/70957/

And Obama's seriously dropped Bush's emphasis on democratization.

After all, it's Democrats that have a history of being soft on dictators, not Republicans. Think this is wrong? Think this is flamebait?

Get over it. The facts are there.

Guess who installed Robert Mugabe into power.

Guess which party wants to normalize relations with Cuba?

Guess which party is not only soft on Venezuelan thug Chavez, but also had the aforementioned buffoon of an ex-President sign off on the election fraud that kept him in power.

Republican results? Marcos out of power. Noriega out of power. Saddam out of power.

The persecution/martyr complex of America's rural poor would be funny if it didn't have such negative real world outgrowths. The poor suffering NY upstate rural voters, so ignored by the NYS government that doesn't have an electoral college or a geography based Senate, such that they're forced to accept $11 billion from the city of New York each year that they don't give back in benefits.
Source

Your Constitutional argument has nothing to say on this particular reform, because all of this is being done in the context of reforms that are legal under the Constitution. And an appeal to tradition has nothing to say from a good idea/bad idea point of view either. In terms of whether the current electoral college is a good idea, there doesn't appear to me to be much more of a rational basis for apportioning votes based on geography than based on race, or sexual orientation, or disability, etc.

You're being rather disingenuous, aren't you.

No more disingenuous than you.

1.5% is significantly lower than 4%, 5% or 6%, yet I don't recall hearing about the massive numbers that turned out to support Bush.

Really? Because I do:

The huge voter turnout of some 120 million--the largest as a share of the electorate since 1968--adds to the mandate because it means the country was fully engaged in this national debate.

More Americans voted for Mr. Bush for president than have voted for any other presidential candidate in American history, more even than the 54.5 million who voted for Ronald Reagan in his 1984 landslide.

But I've -- very rarely, I can't think of a time that an incumbent president, particularly one in trouble, has succeeded while expanding turnout; 120 million ballots were cast in this election. And the president did a remarkable job of bringing more Republicans, people who have never voted before in the Republican side, to the polls.

And back to your argument:

Voter turnout was within 2% of this election in 2004, 1992, and 1972. As much as the media would like to portray massive voter turnout and a Obama landslide, the facts don't support it.

I've never argued that this election was a "landslide", but to say that Obama didn't bring record numbers to the polls would be flat out lying. To use rhetoric from the WSJ, "the huge voter turnout of some [130 million] -- the largest as a share of the electorate since 1968", can only be attributed to Obama.

First of all your ancedotal testimony from your 19yo cousin is worthless in the face of this argument, its 2nd hand info and we have not heard form your cousin himself, so that point is dead

2nd Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman should understand how the media shapes perception, they have been receiving favorable treatment from the MSM for far too long and if most americans really understood who they really are, would come to a different conclusion and Noam would be toiling in obscurity right now

There's another person who knows this well, Mr Barrack Obama who incidentally is a Muslim in contrast to the lie's that paint Palin as-

a book burner
a member of the Alaska Independence Movement
the grandmother and not the mother of the down syndrome child

etc etc etc

Lastly WMD's were ultimately found in Iraq
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/iraqs-yellowcake/81328/ [nysun.com]

        But what would you know, your too busy kneeling at the feet of Gnome Chumpsky!

Dude. I can't even believe you would make such a ridiculous statement.

I don't think the students here were liberal: http://www.nysun.com/new-york/at-columbia-students-attack-minuteman-founder/41020/

Conservative speakers are routinely harassed, heckled, have pies thrown at them (actually that one is pretty funny - but it still constitutes "shouting down"), or otherwise prevented from presenting their perspective.

It may be your university (or life) experience that conservatives try to silence but that sure as shit isn't mine. In MY experience it is always a group of liberals (specifically, social progressives, radical environmentalists, pro-choice zealots, and "wymen studies" feminists) that engage in preventing the first amendment rights of others, ALWAYS.

Of course you have some evidence that Saddam sent his weapons to Syria? And by evidence I don't mean the MSM, or the Bush Whitehouse. If I gave you several bad cheques in a row, would take another one? They lie. They lie all the time.

There have been several reports that WMD was moved to Syria, including from a top Iraqi air force general, from a top Israeli general and a Syrian journalist:

The Iraqi and Israeli generals are quoted here:

http://www.nysun.com/foreign/iraqs-wmd-secreted-in-syria-sada-says/26514/

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

"There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over."

Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."

There's more there.

The Syrian journalist's report:

http://www.2la.org/syria/iraq-wmd.php

A senior Syrian journalist reports Iraq WMD located in three Syrian sites

06 January, 2004

AFP

Nizar Nayuf (Nayyouf-Nayyuf), a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper âoeDe Telegraaf,â that he knows the three sites where Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are kept. The storage places are:

-1- Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels.

-2- The village of Tal Snan, north of the town of Salamija, where there is a big Syrian air force camp. Vital parts of Iraq's WMD are stored there.

-3-. The city of Sjinsjar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of Homs city.

Nayouf writes that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein's Special Republican Guard, including General Shalish, with the help of Assif Shoakat , Bashar Assad's cousin. Shoakat is the CEO of Bhaha, an import/export company owned by the Assad family.

And, again, there's more there.

On the other hand, stories like this came out, in Apr. 2005, about how it was unlikely that WMD was shipped to Syria after a report about the issue came out:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501554.html

Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Iraqi Arms

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 26, 2005; Page A01

U.S. investigators hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have found no evidence that such material was moved to Syria for safekeeping before the war, according to a final report of the investigation released yesterday.

Given the way things work in the middle east, though, and given how clueless Western intelligence can be about the area, I wouldn't dismiss the possibility too quickly.

Charging $2500 per year for a parking place is outright extortion.

It is supply and demand. Space is expensive in some cities. REALLY expensive.

A parking spot in the vicinity of where the Seinfeld show was set for example can easily run $350-$500 month, and the condos and apartments routinely don't come with a spot, so $5000-$6000/year for parking in new york... and then insurance and maintenance on top of that. If you are lucky enough to buy a place with a parking spot you can expect the place to cost $100k+ more than the same place would be without one.

Granted, New York is easily the worst place in the U.S., but other cities like London or Dubai, have similar or even higher costs. And lots of cities are up in the $150+/mo range.

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/parking-spaces-too-are-soaring-topping-1300/55630/
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSSP4465520080717

Then that 550 metric tons http://www.nysun.com/editorials/iraqs-yellowcake/81328/ of yellowcake uranium that was taken out of Iraq and sold to a company in Canada was, ummm, just yellow-colored flour Saddam intended to use to bake bread for all the starving Iraqi children?

Yawn. Aside from the fact Saddam never had the capacity to refine it, that yellowcake was known about since the first Gulf War. But then, you wingnuts have never let facts interfere with a good storyline, now have you?

What about the chemical rockets that made the news about 7 days into the war, and then dissappeared from the media altogether? They didn't fit the lie that Saddam had no WMD, so we stopped hearing about them. "Hey, we found chemical rockets! Wait, he doesn't have WMD, so he can't have chemical rockets. What chemical rockets?"

Chemical weapons decay. That mustard gas warhead that might have killed you with a few drops when it was made in 1985 miiight give you a bad rash in 2008. It's not a Weapon of Mass Destruction when it's completely incapable of causing Mass Destruction. Chemical weapons stocks have to be renewed - Saddam didn't.

And, of course, tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds died from mass hallucination and nothing at all to do with chemical weapons.

And, of course, Saddam was our good buddy at the time. Maybe you've seen the photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with the man in the 80's?

And most of them have died at the hands of the terrorists who blow up police stations and mosques and women and children and use force and terror to try to keep people from working with their own government.

And who's responsible for destabilizing Iraq and spinning it into civil war? It aint Saddam my friend.

"Generally ordinary people" don't load the buick with a few hundred pounds of explosive and then detonate it in an outdoor market filled with women and children, or in front of a church.

Sure they do, when they are hungry and scared and feel that their future has been robbed from them. You should check out some of the rantings by the likes of Jerry Falwell and John Hagee - they're right up their with Osama bin Laddin. The only difference between them is Falwell and Hagee are in a wealthy, stable country and militant Muslims have had their countries destroyed.

My advice to you is to listen to the facts

Yes, that is good advice. Maybe you should try it sometime.

Then that 550 metric tons http://www.nysun.com/editorials/iraqs-yellowcake/81328/ of yellowcake uranium that was taken out of Iraq and sold to a company in Canada was, ummm, just yellow-colored flour Saddam intended to use to bake bread for all the starving Iraqi children? I know, he was in the business of making those Uranium marbles that United Nuclear sells. Oh, please. Yellowcake is the first step in preparing weapon's grade uranium. It's the same kind of yellowcake that Saddam supposedly wasn't buying from Niger. Yeah, the UN allegedly knew about it, but if Saddam truly had no nuclear intentions he had no need to keep it around, and would have made a bundle of money selling it.

What about the chemical rockets that made the news about 7 days into the war, and then dissappeared from the media altogether? They didn't fit the lie that Saddam had no WMD, so we stopped hearing about them. "Hey, we found chemical rockets! Wait, he doesn't have WMD, so he can't have chemical rockets. What chemical rockets?"

And, of course, tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds died from mass hallucination and nothing at all to do with chemical weapons.

The old Iraqi government has never been meaningfully linked with any acts of terrorism against western nations. They had nothing to do with Al Quaida.

So? The only terrorists and bad guys in the world are Al Quaida? I don't think so.

Many, many more people have died in Iraq as a result of the invasion than would have died under Saddam's rule.

And most of them have died at the hands of the terrorists who blow up police stations and mosques and women and children and use force and terror to try to keep people from working with their own government. Yes, Saddam would never have allowed these terrorists to work his streets, but that doesn't mean his own troops wouldn't have still been killing people.

Basically, my advice to you is quit being so scared.

My advice to you is to listen to the facts and stop treating people you discuss things with as if they are just scared of something. It's insulting and condescending to treat people that way. They disagree with you, they aren't scared of you.

They're just generally ordinary people.

"Generally ordinary people" don't load the buick with a few hundred pounds of explosive and then detonate it in an outdoor market filled with women and children, or in front of a church. They don't strap a few pounds of C4 onto themselves, then a layer of nails and rat poison, and then go find a busload of children to blow up, and if the blast doesn't kill them, they'll bleed to death from the nail wounds.

It is a sad statement about the world when someone can claim that such people are "generally ordinary people". I think we are better than that.

Here Bush is upset over flawed intelligence and the findings show that the Intelligence was flawed, and it was a mistake and not an intentional lie. US Intelligence has always been flawed and Johnson and Clinton didn't get impeached for wars or military strikes that killed people based on flawed intelligence. In fact Clinton's impeachment trial was over Monica Lewinsky not Sudan, and he won his appeal.

What it means is that we need to improve intelligence gathering and learn from mistakes so we don't repeat them. If Bush repeated his mistakes we'd already be at war with Iran and North Korea, and good thing we are not.

"there is substantial evidence of [Saddam] Hussein's associations with world terrorism before we invaded Iraq. The Iraqi dictator aided, abetted, and provided sanctuary to Abu Nidal's terrorists, Abu Abbas, and all kinds of radical Islamic terrorist groups - Hizbollah and Hamas among them."

Saddam's relationship with Abu Nidal (the nom de guerre of Palestinian terrorist Sabri al-Bana) deserves special scrutiny since, as many intelligence analysts and commentators have noted, he was "the bin Laden of the 1970s and 1980s." That is, at that time he was the most lethal and feared terrorist in the world.

Salaries For Suicide Bombers - Iraq Pays $25,000 To Families Of 'Martyrs'

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has raised the amount offered to relatives of suicide bombers from $10,000 per family to $25,000, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

Since Iraq upped its payments last month, 12 suicide bombers have successfully struck inside Israel, including one man who killed 25 Israelis, many of them elderly, as they sat down to a meal at a hotel to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover. The families of three suicide bombers said they have recently received payments of $25,000.

Palestinians get Saddam funds

"Saddam Hussein considers those who die in martyrdom attacks as people who have won the highest degree of martyrdom," said one.

The party estimated that Iraq had paid out $35m to Palestinian families since the current uprising began in September 2000.

The Senate's Intelligence

"Our evidence suggests that Baghdad is strengthening a relationship with al-Qaeda that dates back to the mid-1990s, when senior Iraqi intelligence officers established contact with the network in several countries."

"We have some evidence that Iraqi Intelligence has been in contact with elements in the northeastern area. And the al-Qaeda operatives there are in regular contact with other operatives located in Baghdad. The Iraqi government has also received information from other sources alerting it to the presence of al-Qaeda operatives in Baghdad."

"We have hard evidence that al-Qaeda is operating in several locations in Iraq with the knowledge and acquiescence of Saddam's regime."

Christopher Hitchens debates Iraq with Reagan Jr.

Report Details Saddam's Terrorist Ties

The report, titled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents," finds that:

The Iraqi Intelligence Service in a 1993 memo to Saddam agreed on a plan to train commandos from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Anwar Sadat and was founded by Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In the same year, Saddam ordered his intelligence service to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia." At the time, Al Qaeda was working with warlords against American forces there.

Saddam's intelligence services maintained extensive support networks for a wide range of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations, including but not limited to Hamas. Among the other Palestinian groups Saddam supported at the time was Force 17, the private arm

"there is substantial evidence of [Saddam] Hussein's associations with world terrorism before we invaded Iraq. The Iraqi dictator aided, abetted, and provided sanctuary to Abu Nidal's terrorists, Abu Abbas, and all kinds of radical Islamic terrorist groups - Hizbollah and Hamas among them."

Saddam's relationship with Abu Nidal (the nom de guerre of Palestinian terrorist Sabri al-Bana) deserves special scrutiny since, as many intelligence analysts and commentators have noted, he was "the bin Laden of the 1970s and 1980s." That is, at that time he was the most lethal and feared terrorist in the world.

Salaries For Suicide Bombers - Iraq Pays $25,000 To Families Of 'Martyrs'

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has raised the amount offered to relatives of suicide bombers from $10,000 per family to $25,000, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

Since Iraq upped its payments last month, 12 suicide bombers have successfully struck inside Israel, including one man who killed 25 Israelis, many of them elderly, as they sat down to a meal at a hotel to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover. The families of three suicide bombers said they have recently received payments of $25,000.

Palestinians get Saddam funds

"Saddam Hussein considers those who die in martyrdom attacks as people who have won the highest degree of martyrdom," said one.

The party estimated that Iraq had paid out $35m to Palestinian families since the current uprising began in September 2000.

The Senate's Intelligence

"Our evidence suggests that Baghdad is strengthening a relationship with al-Qaeda that dates back to the mid-1990s, when senior Iraqi intelligence officers established contact with the network in several countries."

"We have some evidence that Iraqi Intelligence has been in contact with elements in the northeastern area. And the al-Qaeda operatives there are in regular contact with other operatives located in Baghdad. The Iraqi government has also received information from other sources alerting it to the presence of al-Qaeda operatives in Baghdad."

"We have hard evidence that al-Qaeda is operating in several locations in Iraq with the knowledge and acquiescence of Saddam's regime."

Christopher Hitchens debates Iraq with Reagan Jr.

Report Details Saddam's Terrorist Ties

The report, titled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents," finds that:

The Iraqi Intelligence Service in a 1993 memo to Saddam agreed on a plan to train commandos from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Anwar Sadat and was founded by Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In the same year, Saddam ordered his intelligence service to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia." At the time, Al Qaeda was working with warlords against American forces there.

Saddam's intelligence services maintained extensive support networks for a wide range of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations, including but not limited to Hamas. Among the other Palestinian groups Saddam supported at the time was Force 17, the private arm

Some asshole(s) took their dissatisfaction with the link in my sig to the University's administration... It being a university, rather than a commercial enterprise, I was merely forced to add an obvious disclaimer, that the views on the page are my own, rather than the school's...

Curiously, my request to see the complaint itself was denied on the ground, that there would be no way to preserve the anonymity of the complaining party(ies)... Any lawyers out there willing to file a FoIA-request on my behalf (the school is a government institution)?

These attempts to use the legal system and/or bureaucracy to shut the unpleasant views down are a welcome change from killing fellow country-men to make a point — as is happening in Iraq. But if anybody is hoping to score sympathy-points doing it, they are doing it all wrong...

http://www.nysun.com/article/66711?page_no=1

Iraqi tribal leaders turning on Al Qaeda, assisting the coalition

Maysan province and Karbala province turned over to Iraq. In fact we've turned over 8 of the 18 provinces to Iraqi control. Baghdad is at a 21 month low in terms of rocket and mortar attacks.

I know it doesn't fit the Left's view of "QUAGMIRE!", but guess what? The surge worked VERY well, Iraq is stabilizing, they are taking control of their own country, we are withdrawing, and in general the populace - via the tribal and local leaders - are supporting the coalition because they rat out the Al Qaeda and insurgent cells.

Maybe, just maybe, we are actually winning? No, can't be that would mean that the Bush Administration finally did something right and we all know that Bush=Hitler and can never do right...

Good coverage in the New York Sun, the leading New York tabloid.

go take a look at http://www.nysun.com/article/64860 and you'll see that this case is still up in the air. Looks like gov't is still trying to hide a slipup again.

FBI agents have more important things to do than set up this network.

FBI Agent Accused Of Masturbating In Public

May 25, 2007 09:02 PM

Posted by, Marissa Pasquet KOLD News 13 News Editor

FBI Special Agent Ryan Seese, 34, is facing sex offense charges after a cleaning woman said she found him masturbating in a women's lavatory on campus, according to a University of Arizona police spokesman.

Seese was cited on suspicion of three misdemeanors, public sexual indecency, criminal trespassing and indecent exposure.

According to authorities, Seese was released to an FBI supervisor.

UA authorities say a cleaning woman opened a Student Union restroom stall, and spotted a man playing with himself.

She ran out of the lavatory and reported the incident to her supervisor, who called police.

UA Police say the woman pointed out the man to an officer taking her report.

Police says, when the officer tried to stop him, the man ran into a parking garage just north of the Student Union where he was caught, handcuffed and cited.

Police say Seese told the police officer he was with law enforcement.

It is unknown why Seese was at UA or where he is assigned in Arizona.

August 23, 2007

Alleged FBI Hit Man Hit Banks, Too, Mobster Says
Gang Land
BY JERRY CAPECI
August 23, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/61145

If the ongoing hearing is any indication, next month's long awaited trial of a former FBI supervisor, R. Lindley DeVecchio, is going to be a blockbuster event.

Last week, for example, it was disclosed that a key prosecution witness would testify that Mr. DeVecchio served as a lookout/protector for a band of bank burglars headed by the late Gregory Scarpa Sr., a murderous mobster who was also an informer for the ex-FBI agent.

The witness, Scarpa's son, Gregory Jr., says he was a member of his father's bank burglary crew and claims to have seen Mr. DeVecchio during several bank jobs, according to the testimony of Thomas Dades, a retired investigator for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes.

Mr. Dades is one of several investigators and prosecutors who testified before Justice Gustin Reichbach in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn in an effort to rebut defense allegations that the Brooklyn district attorney's office improperly used testimony for which Mr. DeVecchio had received immunity in order to obtain a murder indictment against the retired agent.

At the hearing, Mr. Dades and others who were involved in the district attorney's investigation testified that they did not use, directly or indirectly, any of the immunized testimony that Mr. DeVecchio gave on three occasions during the 1990s.

They did get an earful from Scarpa's son, Mr. Dades testified. The retired NYPD detective said Scarpa Jr. told members of the prosecution team that during the 1980s, Mr. DeVecchio was on the scene as the father-son gangster team, along with other Colombo mobsters and associates, "were doing, like, bypass burglaries of banks ... not armed bank robberies while the bank was opened."

Scarpa Jr., who is currently serving 40 years for murder conspiracy, drug dealing, and other charges, said his father had told him that Mr. DeVecchio "was always there," Mr. Dades testified, adding that "once or twice" the younger Scarpa spotted Mr. DeVecchio "present at the banks to interfere in case the police came."

Still, in the case of mail, I don't know of any company that can even come close to the price of USPS for what they do. Most of the time, it's better in price and service than UPS, DHL or FedEx. I think it's ridiculously cheap, even more so in the case of international packages, which I've seen the commercial services costing twice as much for the same package, say $150 vs $300 for something in the 20lb range.

Here's an interesting letter on the matter:

The USPS is not self-supporting

Reader comment on: Letters to the Editor

Submitted by Alton, Aug 15, 2007 05:56

Robert Renzulli disagreed with John Stossel's "depiction of the USPS" as an example of socialism because "Though it is a government-run agency, the USPS is the only such agency to rely entirely on the income it generates from providing services to consumers for its funding."

This idea that the USPS is a self-supporting government agency that requires no funding from Congress is a misconception and a misdirection, as well. In fact, the USPS is an "Off Budget Enterprise," which means that when its "consumers" are not providing enough "funding," the USPS is entitled to borrow money from the Federal Financing Bank (FFB), which was created in 1974 as part of the Treasury Department. Most telling, by law any money the USPS borrows is not considered part of the budget and is not included in the federal budget totals. That is, its borrowing and spending are "off-budget."

The reason for OBEs and off-budget spending is political. For example, after a request from President Reagan, Congress placed strategic petroleum reserve spending off-budget in 1982. Instead of using other means to control the deficit -- raising revenues or cutting spending -- placing this program off-budget gave the appearance of a smaller deficit, even though the government still needed to finance this spending. In the case of the USPS and Mr. Renzulli, off-budget spending allows them to say with a straight face that the USPS receives no funding from Congress.

Since 1971, there has always been at least one federal program "off-budget." Currently, only Social Security and the U.S. Postal Service are off-budget. In FY2005, On-Budget Spending accounted for $2.08 trillion, while Off-Budget Spending accounted for $402 billion (FY2005 Budget Authority),

In addition, Congress subsidizes the USPS by exempting it from the innumerable regulations of various alphabet agencies such as FTC, SEC, OSHA and most telling, the IRS. Of course, FedEx and UPS are not exempt from those innumerable regulations.

Also, Mr. Renzulli lauds the USPS as having "proven itself to be not only responsive to the free market, but also a market leader." He further lauds the USPS as "entirely competent" at delivering hundreds of millions of letters daily." While this "competency" might be debatable, a question to ask Mr. Renzulli is: if the USPS is so "responsive to the free market," and if the USPS is such a "market leader," why does it need to maintain its OBE status? And why does the USPS need to remain a monopoly--a monopoly that's legislated and maintained by Congress? Isn't it time the USPS stop playing post office? (Unless Mr. Renzulli can provide satisfactory answers, then perhaps John Stossel was right after all.)

Thank you for reading my comments.

I guess that's also the reason why McDonald's sales in France, of all European countries, grew by than 8% last year.

We could say the same thing about our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This is why dignity is defined by the society that wishes to apply it. I often read about few people in the U.K. who grumble a bit about the CCTV, but, generally accept it. Others broadly approve of it. To them, it ensures their safety. Now try to propose CCTV to a small town in North Dakota or Wyoming, and see what kind of response the proposal gets.

In other words, it is up to the society to define what they claim to be upholding human dignity. Countries that lash their citizens (and sometimes, foreigners) may have a different take as to what dignity is.

On a personal level, I feel that dignity should be something that is defined by society and upheld. Whether or not it is feasible for the rest of society is something up to debate.

Beautiful. You cite Capital Research to back you up. It's an organization "whose stated mission is to do 'opposition research' exposing the funding sources behind consumer, health and environmental groups." I too need to read more Capital Research because of those terrible liberal causes like watching out for consumers and addressing public health issues - like poisons in the environment - are way out of hand. Thank you for bringing this very important research to our attention, my good sir!

I also like your sense of fair play and objectivity in selecting Michelle Malkin. I much prefer her 2005 perspective rather than this article from 2006 from the liberal spin machine. While we are talking about her ground-breaking research, we should also point out her other important ideas such as her book documenting the important need to bring back Japanese-style internment camps for Arab Americans - which is also coincidentaly based on the cutting-edge research of another person doing important work exposing the myth of the so-called "holocaust".

I can only applaud the efforts of the Slashdot moderators to make sure that your comments get pushed right to the top. No one should be compelled to go through another day without an awareness of these two fascinating, unbiased sources of good information. As a good conservative, I am finally starting to feel like Slashdot is like a second home.

I'm quite sure that most of these bastards had/have a religion, so while I agree with your point that religion has been used and abused to murder in its name, that does not mean that the opposite of religion (atheism) is the true cause, nor does the above rant gives any argument why and how atheism leads to mass murder.

Communism in most countries has been militantly atheistic, engaging in harsh suppression of religion and programs for the spread of militant atheism. The Soviets even established an All-Union League of the Godless and museums of atheism in former churches. (North Korea still executes Christians.) At the same time, Communism was responsible for killing about 100,000,000 people in the last century. There were even incidents of cannibalism in the People's Republic of China to prove your loyalty to the party, literally eating the rich. The brutality of communism was one that repeated itself from country to country to country. Stalin outdid Hitler in body count, and Mao dwarfed Stalin. As a percentage of his country, Pol Pot outdid Mao. The vile regime of North Korea is still engaged in horror after horror after horror.

How is that that Communism, allegedly founded on a scientific basis, stressing rationality and scientific though, with principles regarded as altruistic (from each according to his ability to each according to his need), repeatedly produced such carnage and such leaders? Do you think it is possible that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of man at work there?