All but Fox News Viewers Realize 2004 Election Was Stolen

Poll: 2004 Election Was Stolen; according to viewers of all news networks except Fox News

Who are these Fox viewers. OpEdNews gives you the details. In the first poll of its kind, (using First choice of TV news network as a demographic variable)OpEdNews.com, in the second OpEdNews/Zogby People's poll has learned that except for viewers of right wing news show, Fox News, poll respondents believe that the 2004 presidential election was stolen. Overall, the poll of Pennsylvania residents found that 39% said that the 2004 election was stolen. 54% said it was legitimate. Shortly after the election, the NY Times suggested that a few fringe extremists and bloggers were concerned about the theft of the election. But let's look at the demographics on this question. Of the people who watch Fox news as their primary sourc of TV news, one half of one percent believe it was stolen and 99% believe it was legitimate. Among people who watched ANY other news source but FOX, more felt the election was stolen than legitimate. The numbers varied dramatically: Here are the stats by network listed as first choice by respondent and whether the respondent thought the election was stolen or legitimate. Network Stolen Legitimate ABC 56% 32% CBS 64% 31% CNN 70% 24% FOX .5% 99% MSNBC 65% 24% NBC 49% 43% Other 56% 28% The poll asked people which was their favorite source of TV newst. Among the 689 people in the poll who answered this question, 37% watched Fox news, more than any other single network. CNN came in second with 21% with MSNBC third, with 13%. It makes sense for these three 24/7 news networks to be the top in this category, since the others air news for limited parts of the day. A lot more information on Fox News viewers : After Fox news, the second choice for news network among Fox viewers is ABC 38% and MSNBC 37%, followed by CNN with 27%, NBC with 19% and CBS with 6%. 74% of it's viewers are married. 15% are single and 10% are divorced, widowed or separated. Whether they are fair and balanced, is up for debate. But they appear to be THE family channel, at least for Republicans. 64% have children. 85% of them come from non-union families. Among churchgoers, half go to church, temple or mosque rarely, never or just holidays. But for Fox News Viewers half go frequently. Among NBC viewers, 67% go most frequently. NBC has the most religious viewers. More born-agains watch NBC; 54% to 46%, and Born Agains are least likely to watch ABC: 95%/5%, MSNBC 78%/22%, CBS 76% to 24% and CNN 65%/35%. More Catholics, Protestants and Born-agains watch Fox news than any other news network. 82% of people who identify themselves as conservative and 80 of those who consider themselves very conservative watch Fox News. Zero liberal or progressives watch Fox News as their first choice, and 42% of moderates chose FOx news as their first choice. The first choice of progressives (very liberal) is Other, assumingly C-Span and the like. The first choice of Liberals is CNN. Fox news is the favorite of suburban, small city and rural dwellers. CNN is the first choice of large city dwellers. Among immigrants Fox news is the top favorite. 46% of men and 30% of women watch Fox news. Less than 2% of Democrats favor Fox news, while it's the favorite for 75% of Republicans and 34% of independents. For Republicans and independents, Fox is the network that is first choice. CNN is viewed as first choice by Democrats, with 38% choosing it. The OpEdNews.com/Zogby People's Poll, with 42 questions, also found that the PA US Senate Race, with Rick Santorum, is not at all like other polls have reported. While Casey Has a 47-37% lead. He has spent millions of dollars to get it. His opponents Chuck Pennacchio and Alan Sandals are both within similar range, with 45% and 43% with Pennacchio having spent under $100,000 and Sandals having spent under $500,000. Both the current and a previous OpEdNews/Zogby people's poll found, that after respondents were given position information on the candidates, that Casey's lead disappears and he pulls a smaller percentage than either Pennacchio or Sandals. We are waiting on further crosstab analysis of the data. We believe that we will find that if you pull out Fox viewers, the rest of America has a far different view of America and the Bush Administration This poll was run May 9th through 10th, in Pennsylvania, by the Zogby organization. Methodology statement from Zogby: Zogby International conducted interviews of 707 likely voters online. Panelists who have agreed to participate in Zogby polls online were invited to participate in the survey. The online poll ran from 5/9/06 through 5/10/06. The margin of error is +/- 3.8 percentage points. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups. Slight weights were added to party, age, race, religion, and gender to more accurately reflect the population.

OpEdNews

Log in Please

Federal Court Orders Logs Produced on May 10, 2006 "Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that Judge John Garrett Penn of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered the United States Secret Service to produce White House logs detailing the visits of corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff to the White House. The logs are to be produced to Judicial Watch without redactions or claims of exemption by May 10, 2006".

When George Bush was asked about Abramoff he replied, "I don’t know him". But now it's revealed that Abramoff visited or made contact with the White House over 200 times in Bush's first 10 months in office, so that's hard to believe. But then, why would George Bush lie? Hats off to Judicial Watch. I guess they're trying to make up from their Larry Klayman days.

Florida: Jihadist prof. gets additional 18 months in jail

Sami Al-Arian

Although the United States government lost most of its case last year against Sami al-Arian, the former computer science professor it once identified as the lynchpin in a terrorist organization, a federal judge sentenced him today to an additional 19 months in prison before he is deported. The case against Mr. al-Arian, a Palestinian born in Kuwait, stemmed from a decade-long investigation that resulted in a 2003 indictment, charging him with being the leader of a domestic cell of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group that claims responsibility for terrorist acts. Mr. al-Arian, who had been under surveillance by American intelligence officials since 1991, was accused of raising money for suicide bombings in and around Israel. The six-month trial, a centerpiece of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts that attracted the intense interest of legal experts around the country, ended in December when the anonymous jury acquitted Mr. al-Arian of 8 of the 17 federal charges against him, deadlocking on the rest. Rather than face a retrial, the two sides agreed last month to a plea bargain in which Mr. al-Arian pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of aiding members of the militant Palestinian group and agreed to be deported. But any hope Mr. al-Arian might have had of being deported quickly evaporated today in the courtroom of United States District Judge James S. Moody Jr. In a surprise move, the judge sentenced Mr. al-Arian to the maximum allowed under the sentencing guidelines, more than even the prosecution requested, and chided him for acts even the jury had rejected as Mr. al-Arian's. The government had asked for the low end of the guidelines. "I find it interesting that you praise this country in public," Judge Moody said, "the one you called Great Satan." He continued to upbraid Mr. al-Arian, who he called a "master manipulator" for his connections to the Palestinian group, leading Mr. Al-Arian's wife to leave the courtroom in tears. Describing horrific bombings in Israel, Judge Moody said: "Anyone with even the slightest bit of human compassion would be sickened. Not you, you saw it as an opportunity to solicit more money to carry out more bombings." The judge added, "The only connection to widows and orphans is that you create them." Paul Perez, the United States attorney for the Middle District of Florida, called Mr. al-Arian a "dangerous human being" and said he had no regrets about the way the case was prosecuted. His court appearance today was his first in the case in four years. He painted the outcome as a victory for the government, because it "identified and dismantled a cell that al-Arian helped establish." Nonetheless the jury verdict, which embarrassed prosecutors who devoted considerable resources to the case, underscored the complexities of obtaining convictions under the Patriot Act and other recent laws that criminalized aiding organizations that the United States has deemed to be based on terror. For example, in the 30 previous attempts to convict a defendant of conspiring to contribute money to a terrorist organization — one of the charges against Mr. al-Arian — 28 were dismissed, according to the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas. "This case almost reached the level of seditious conspiracy," said Brent Smith, director of the center. "And historically, we have been very unsuccessful at trying those cases." The outcome of the case against Mr. al-Arian did little to resolve the conflicting portraits of his life. His supporters described Mr. al-Arian as a political scapegoat who merely aided women and children who had been harmed in the Middle East. They said he was a thoughtful advocate for Palestinians who was unaware or unwilling to accept the violent acts of organizations he assumed were simply providing aid to countrymen. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft and local officials described him as a supporter of terror whose motives and beliefs were elucidated through his own words and deeds. Prosecutors said he had helped finance such activities as a suicide bombing at an Israeli bus stop in 1995 that killed 19 people. In brief remarks before the court today, Mr. al-Arian painted himself as a patriot who was pleased to have raised five children in the United States, and grateful to its legal system. "This process affirmed my belief in the true meaning of the democratic society," he said, as his wife, dabbing her eyes, looked on from the courtroom. The judge's words were denounced after the sentencing by Mr. al-Arian's supporters, who had lined up before the hearing for a space in the courtroom. They included clergy members from both Christian and Muslim groups, family members and advocates for Islamic causes. "I have been visiting with Sami al-Arian every week in the jail for the last 14 months," said Warren Clark, the pastor of the First United Church of Tampa. "I will tell you that the Sami al-Arian that I know is very different from the Sami al-Arian the judge described." When deported, it is unclear what country would agree to take Mr. al-Arian, who was reared in Egypt but spent the last 30 years in the United States. He has remained in jail since his indictment.

Bush administration practicing `selective secrecy'

"Early in President Bush's first term, Andrew Card, then the White House chief of staff, summoned a group of new staffers to a West Wing office to thank them for coming aboard and to stress the importance of secrecy. "He said very clearly that the president wants the right to announce things first, and that he also has a right to have information managed and he doesn't want people freelancing," one staffer recalled. "It was very clear that it was a cardinal sin to leak and that you'd better not." One year later, Bush himself authorized the release to selected reporters of "relevant" portions of a once-classified National Intelligence Estimate to rebut criticism of the Iraq war, according to court documents. The assertion, which the administration has declined to address, is contained in a filing by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that cites testimony from former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby. This double approach - clamping down on unauthorized disclosures while releasing documents on carefully chosen occasions - illustrates how the White House has attempted to manage closely held government information since the terrorism of Sept. 11 made Bush a wartime president. "It's selective secrecy for political control," said Tom Blanton, director of the independent National Security Archive at George Washington University. "Secrecy puts power in the hands of officials who then can abuse it. It also covers up the abuse."

...continued here...

Phil Angelides

Steve Westly looks like the candidate from Central Casting. California's controller, who is currently the front-runner in the state's June 6 Democratic primary for governor, has tousled hair, a toothpaste-ad smile and a photogenic family. The state's voters don't know a lot about Westly -- public service in Sacramento is one of the nation's highest forms of invisibility -- but apparently, they like what they've seen. What they've seen are a whole lot of very skillful ads that Westly -- a onetime Stanford University business professor who went to work at a Silicon Valley start-up called eBay and made himself a fortune -- has funded out of pocket. The ads tout Westly's environmentalism, his work at eBay (one big business that people genuinely like), his -- well, his good looks. And they've worked. In the most recent Field poll, Westly opened a lead of 37 percent to 26 percent over his rival, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, whose financially outmatched campaign is only now back on the air after nearly a month of going dark. Angelides is an impassioned wonk who looks every bit the part. Gangly, voluble, brilliant and not shy about showing it, Angelides was a developer who served as the state Democratic Party chairman in the early 1990s and who's just wrapping up his second term as the state's chief financial officer, and probably the country's most powerful proponent of socially responsible capitalism. As a guiding force on the boards of California's public employee retirement funds -- the largest investment funds in the nation -- Angelides has steered millions of dollars to inner-city development, small businesses and renewable energy technology. He's also used the power of these funds to alter boardroom behavior (he was the first official, for instance, to demand that the New York Stock Exchange take back the platinum parachute it gave to departing chief executive Richard Grasso). More than any other California Democrat, Angelides has opposed, from the start, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. While the Governator was trying unsuccessfully to balance the budget by underfunding schools and cutting back admissions to the state's universities, Angelides countered by proposing to raise taxes on California's wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers -- a proposal he's not backing away from now that he's a candidate. When I interviewed Westly last weekend (coincidentally but not inappropriately in the boardroom of an investment firm), he took issue with Angelides's economics, arguing that by closing some loopholes and doing a better job of collecting taxes, he could close the deficit and fund the schools -- and only then, if necessary, consider raising taxes on the rich. "I'm progressive on social issues and fiscally moderate," he said. "Phil's not. If voters want a candidate who will raise $10 to $15 billion in taxes, they should vote for the other guy." Angelides (whom I also interviewed last weekend, coincidentally but not inappropriately as he was about to address a union audience) counters that "no one thinks you can close a $4 billion budget hole through efficiencies. Westly says we ought to consider rolling back the tax breaks on the rich as a last resort. When's that? We're 43rd out of the 50 states in per-pupil spending. Should we wait until we're 50th? Enough is enough. "The right has stigmatized common-sense investment in the economy," Angelides said. "I'm proposing a smaller tax hike than what Pat Brown, Pete Wilson and Ronald Reagan all asked Californians to do." Seven weeks before the primary, millions of California Democrats remain undecided, but Angelides acknowledges his is an uphill climb. What might save him would be a massive independent expenditure campaign from California's unions, particularly the Service Employees International Union and the California Teachers Association, which last year provided most of the cash that helped defeat Schwarzenegger's special-election ballot measures. Precisely because they spent so heavily last year, however, the unions don't have that much money in the till right now. As well, they need to save some resources to help the eventual Democratic winner take on Schwarzenegger in the fall -- and they may not want to antagonize Westly, whose campaign is plainly in a groove that Angelides's has not reached yet. For liberals, the prospect of Angelides and New York gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer running America's two largest blue states would be a dream come true: The Democrats could use two chief executives willing to take on the excesses of big business in an age of big-business excess. Whether Angelides can make it past the primary, though, is not at all clear. For his service as state party chairman and his fidelity to progressive causes, he may be, as Lenin said of Bukharin, the rightful favorite of the party. Then again, after Lenin died, it wasn't Bukharin who made it to the top. The American Prospect

The Untold Story of Israel's Bomb

On Sept. 9, 1969, a big brown envelope was delivered to the Oval Office on behalf of CIA Director Richard M. Helms. On it he had written, "For and to be opened only by: The President, The White House." The precise contents of the envelope are still unknown, but it was the latest intelligence on one of Washington's most secretive foreign policy matters: Israel's nuclear program. The material was so sensitive that the nation's spymaster was unwilling to share it with anybody but President Richard M. Nixon himself. The now-empty envelope is inside a two-folder set labeled "NSSM 40," held by the Nixon Presidential Materials Project at the National Archives. (NSSM is the acronym for National Security Study Memorandum, a series of policy studies produced by the national security bureaucracy for the Nixon White House.) The NSSM 40 files are almost bare because most of their documents remain classified. With the aid of With the aid ofrecently declassified documents , we now know that NSSM 40 was the Nixon administration's effort to grapple with the policy implications of a nuclear-armed Israel. These documents offer unprecedented insight into the tense deliberations in the White House in 1969 -- a crucial time in which international ratification of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was uncertain and U.S. policymakers feared that a Middle Eastern conflagration could lead to superpower conflict. Nearly four decades later, as the world struggles with nuclear ambitions in Iran, India and elsewhere, the ramifications of this hidden history are still felt. Israel's nuclear program began more than 10 years before Helms's envelope landed on Nixon's desk. In 1958, Israel secretly initiated work at what was to become the Dimona nuclear research site. Only about 15 years after the Holocaust, nuclear nonproliferation norms did not yet exist, and Israel's founders believed they had a compelling case for acquiring nuclear weapons. In 1961, the CIA estimated that Israel could produce nuclear weapons within the decade. The discovery presented a difficult challenge for U.S. policymakers. From their perspective, Israel was a small, friendly state -- albeit one outside the boundaries of U.S. security guarantees -- surrounded by larger enemies vowing to destroy it. Yet government officials also saw the Israeli nuclear program as a potential threat to U.S. interests. President John F. Kennedy feared that without decisive international action to curb nuclear proliferation, a world of 20 to 30 nuclear-armed nations would be inevitable within a decade or two. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations fashioned a complex scheme of annual visits to Dimona to ensure that Israel would not develop nuclear weapons. But the Israelis were adept at concealing their activities. By late 1966, Israel had reached the nuclear threshold, although it decided not to conduct an atomic test. By the time Prime Minister Levi Eshkol visited President Lyndon B. Johnson in January 1968, the official State Department view was that despite Israel's growing nuclear weapons potential, it had "not embarked on a program to produce a nuclear weapon." That assessment, however, eroded in the months ahead. By the fall, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul C. Warnke concluded that Israel had already acquired the bomb when Israeli Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin explained to him how he interpreted Israel's pledge not to be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region. According to Rabin, for nuclear weapons to be introduced, they needed to be tested and publicly declared. Implicitly, then, Israel could possess the bomb without "introducing" it. The question of what to do about the Israeli bomb would fall to Nixon. Unlike his Democratic predecessors, he and his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, were initially skeptical about the effectiveness of the NPT. And though they may have been inclined to accommodate Israel's nuclear ambitions, they would have to manage senior State Department and Pentagon officials whose perspectives differed. Documents prepared between February and April 1969 reveal a great sense of urgency and alarm among senior officials about Israel's nuclear progress. As Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird wrote in March 1969, these "developments were not in the United States' interests and should, if at all possible, be stopped." Above all, the Nixon administration was concerned that Israel would publicly display its nuclear capabilities. Apparently prompted by those high-level concerns, Kissinger issued NSSM 40 -- titled Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program -- on April 11, 1969. In it he asked the national security bureaucracy for a review of policy options toward Israel's nuclear program. In the weeks that followed, the issue was taken up by a senior review group (SRG), chaired by Kissinger, that included Helms, Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson, Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard and Joint Chiefs Chairman Earle Wheeler. The one available report of an SRG meeting on NSSM 40 suggests that the bureaucracy was interested in pressuring Israel to halt its nuclear program. How much pressure to exert remained open. Kissinger wanted to "avoid direct confrontation," while Richardson was willing to apply pressure if an investigation to determine Israel's intentions showed that some key assurances would not be forthcoming. In such circumstances, the United States could tell the Israelis that scheduled deliveries of F-4 Phantom jets to Israel would have to be reconsidered. By mid-July 1969, Nixon had let it be known that he was leery of using the Phantoms as leverage, so when Richardson and Packard summoned Rabin on July 29 to discuss the nuclear issue, the idea of a probe that involved pressure had been torpedoed. Although Richardson and Packard emphasized the seriousness with which they viewed the nuclear problem, they had no threat to back up their rhetoric. Richardson posed three issues for Rabin to respond to: the status of Israel's NPT deliberations; assurances that "non-introduction" meant "non-possession" of nuclear weapons; and assurances that Israel would not produce or deploy the Jericho ballistic missile. Rabin, however, was unresponsive except to say that the NPT was still "under study." Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir would have to address the nuclear issue when they met in late September. Perhaps the most fateful event of this tale was Nixon's one-on-one meeting with Meir in the Oval Office on Sept. 26, 1969. In the days before Meir's visit, the State Department produced background papers suggesting that the horse was already out of the barn: "Israel might very well now have a nuclear bomb" and certainly "already had the technical ability and material resources to produce weapon-grade material for a number of weapons." If that was true, it meant that events had overtaken the NSSM 40 exercise. In later years, Meir never discussed the substance of her private conversation with Nixon, saying only, "I could not quote him then, and I will not quote him now." Yet, according to declassified Israeli documents, since the early 1960s, Meir had been convinced that "Israel should tell the United States the truth [about the nuclear issue] and explain why." Even without the record of this meeting, informed speculation is possible. It is likely that Nixon started with a plea for openness. Meir, in turn, probably acknowledged -- tacitly or explicitly -- that Israel had reached a weapons capability, but probably pledged extreme caution. (Years later, Nixon told CNN's Larry King that he knew for certain that Israel had the bomb, but he wouldn't reveal his source.) Meir may have assured Nixon that Israel thought of nuclear weapons as a last-resort option, a way to provide her Holocaust-haunted nation with a psychological sense of existential deterrence. Subsequent memorandums from Kissinger to Nixon provide a limited sense of what the national security adviser understood happened at the meeting. Kissinger noted that the president had emphasized to Meir that "our primary concern was that the Israeli [government] make no visible introduction of nuclear weapons or undertake a nuclear test program." Thus, Israel would be committed to conducting its nuclear affairs cautiously and secretly; their status would remain uncertain and unannounced. On Feb. 23, 1970, Rabin told Kissinger privately that he wanted the president to know that, in light of the Meir-Nixon conversation, "Israel has no intention to sign the NPT." Rabin, Kissinger wrote, "wanted also to make sure there was no misapprehension at the White House about Israel's current intentions." Kissinger informed Nixon that he told Rabin that he would notify the president. And with that, the decade-long U.S. effort to curb Israel's nuclear program ended. That enterprise was replaced by understandings negotiated at the highest level, between the respective heads of state, that have governed Israel's nuclear conduct ever since. That so little is known today about the tale of NSSM 40 is not surprising. Dealing with Israel's nuclear ambitions was thornier for the Nixon administration than for its predecessors because it was forced to deal with the problem at the critical time when Israel appeared to be crossing the nuclear threshold. Yet, even as Nixon and Kissinger enabled Israel to flout the NPT, NSSM 40 allowed them to create a defensible record. As was his typical modus operandi, Kissinger used NSSM 40 to maintain control over key officials who wanted to take action on the problem. Politically, the Nixon-Meir agreement allowed both leaders to continue with their old public policies without being forced to openly acknowledge the new reality. As long as Israel kept the bomb invisible -- no test, declaration, or any other act displaying nuclear capability -- the United States could live with it. Over time, the tentative Nixon-Meir understanding became the foundation for a remarkable U.S.-Israeli deal, accompanied by a tacit but strict code of behavior to which both nations closely adhered. Even during its darkest hours in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel was cautious not to make any public display of its nuclear capability. Yet set against contemporary values of transparency and accountability, the Nixon-Meir deal of 1969 now stands as a striking and burdensome anomaly. Israel's nuclear posture is inconsistent with the tenets of a modern liberal democracy. The deal is also burdensome for the United States, provoking claims about double standards in U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy. It is especially striking to compare the Nixon administration's stance toward Israel in 1969 with the way Washington is trying to accommodate India in 2006. As problematic as the proposed nuclear pact with New Delhi is, it at least represents an effort to deal openly with the issue. Unlike the case of Iran today -- where a nation is publicly violating its NPT obligations and where the United States and the international community are acting in the open -- the White House in 1969 addressed the Israeli weapons program in a highly secretive fashion. That kind of deal-making would be impossible now. Without open acknowledgment of Israel's nuclear status, such ideas as a nuclear-free Middle East, or even the inclusion of Israel in an updated NPT regime, cannot be discussed properly. It is time for a new deal to replace the Nixon-Meir understandings of 1969, with Israel telling the truth and finally normalizing its nuclear affairs. Washington Post

Rice & Rumsfeld-Revisionist Liars

“Iraq Can’t be Compared to Post-World War II” "In the past three years the Bush administration has vigorously made comparisons between reconstruction in Iraq and post-World War II Germany and Japan. Many of the administration’s analogies have been forced, at best. A variety of historians, political scientists, and even former government officials have suggested that the comparisons are rather tenuous. But a new report by the Congressional Research Service has essentially demolished the administration’s analogies. Condoleeza Rice, as National Security Advisor, gave a speech to the American Legion convention in 2003 in which she made comparisons between Iraq and German reconstruction. She cautioned, “There is an understandable tendency to look back on America’s experience in postwar Germany and see only the successes, 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable. SS officers engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them – much like today’s Baathist.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went even farther at the convention. He told the audience, “Nazi regime remnants…plotted sabotage of factories, power plants, rail lines. They blew up police stations and government buildings. Does this sound familiar?” The only problem with these comparisons is that they’re false"...continued

Shiites in Kirkuk

Control of Iraqi city has long been in dispute "Hundreds of Shiite Muslim militiamen have deployed in recent weeks to this restive city -- widely considered the most likely flash point for an Iraqi civil war -- vowing to fight any attempt to shift control over Kirkuk to the Kurdish-governed north, according to U.S. commanders and diplomats, local police and politicians. Until recently, the presence of the militias here was minimal. U.S. officials have called the Shiite armed groups the deadliest threat to security in much of the country. They have been blamed for hundreds of killings during mounting sectarian violence in central and southern Iraq since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in February. The Mahdi Army, led by firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, has sent at least two companies, each with about 120 fighters, according to Thomas Wise, political counselor for the U.S. Embassy's Kirkuk regional office."

Lieberman - "Republican-lite"

"The Kiss: Too Close for Comfort"

"Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, who once occupied the lofty No. 2 spot on his party's presidential ticket, is too Republican for some Democrats. The three-term lawmaker, a strong advocate of the Iraq War, proponent of some GOP policies and recipient of a kiss from President Bush, has frustrated several national Democrats and angered enough in his home state to draw a primary challenger. "I think it's a challenge for Lieberman to reconnect to the rank-and-file of the party and prove he is an authentic Democrat," said John McNamara, chairman of the New Britain Democratic Town Committee. Bumper stickers spotted in Connecticut read, "Anybody but Joe — I want a real Democrat in '06." Campaign buttons show Bush and Lieberman in an embrace, with the words, "The Kiss: Too Close for Comfort." In February 2005, after Bush's State of the Union speech, the president hugged Lieberman and planted a kiss on his right cheek. Call it the buss that launched a challenge. Ned Lamont, a wealthy Greenwich businessman, is trying to snatch the Democratic nomination from Lieberman, arguing that the 64-year-old senator is "Republican-lite."

It's way past time for Democrats in Connecticut to send Joe Lieberman packing. He's nothing but a Yankee Zell Miller.

Bin Laden Pops Off

NY Times - Osama bin Laden purportedly said in an audio tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television Sunday that the West's decision to cut off funds to the Palestinians proved that the United States and Europe were at war with Islam. He also said the West was supporting what he called a "Zionist crusader war against Muslims." "The blockade which the West is imposing on the government of Hamas proves that there is a Zionist crusader war on Islam," the speaker on the tape said. The authenticity of the tape could not immediately be verified. It was the first new message purportedly from bin Laden since Jan. 19. That tape was posted in full on a Web site a month later and included a vow by the terrorist chieftain never to be captured alive.

Each time bin Laden pops off like this it is just another reminder of how strategically stupid our decision to invade Iraq actually was. The war on terror was not in Iraq.