
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
demur - you're straightway dangerous - ,
and handled with a Chain - ."
[Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American Poet]
I'm the kind of girl you wanna fuck, but then you don't want to tell your friends." [Courtney Love - Page Six]

Juan Cole - Professor of History at the University of Michigan
(2-25-2005) The hundreds of thousands of protesters who came out throughout the world on Saturday were demanding a US and British withdrawal from Iraq.
The protesters are right that we have to get US ground troops out of Iraq. The issue is not the rights and wrongs of the war. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was no nuclear program, and the mushroom clouds with which Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice menaced us were figments of their fevered imaginations, no more substantial than the hateful internal voices that afflict schizophrenics ... The Bush administration deliberately hid the crucial information (that al-Qaeda had refused to cooperate with Saddam Hussein) from the American people, and puzzled US intelligence officials who knew about it were astounded to see Cheney and others continually go on television and assert that Saddam and Bin Laden were in cahoots in the build-up to the war ... That US soldiers are dying in Iraq, with the number approaching 2,000, is a tragedy.
But (these are not reasons) to get the ground troops out now. Click:
Informed Opinion Blog
According to a report over the weekend, the fund has collected all of $600 so far ... Iraq Support ... The public's reluctance to contribute much more than the cost of two iPods to the administration's attempt to offer citizens 'a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq' has been seized on by critics as evidence of growing ambivalence over that country. The Guardian
Bwwwaaahahaha!! They were expecting 20,000 people and they got 400. That probably is everyone left in America who still supports the war. 12th Harmonic
WHAT IF PRO-FOOTBALLER TURNED SPECIAL FORCES HONCHO PAT TILLMAN HAD VOTED FOR KERRY?!
A report in The San Francisco Chronicle not only strengthens the evidence that the Pentagon deliberately covered up Tillman's death from friendly-fire to better exploit him as a PR tool, it reveals that ... Tillman was an independent-minded, outspoken Bush critic who planned to vote for John Kerry. SF GATE
FRIST & TORTURE: WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?
Time magazine yesterday revealed new allegations of systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees made by a “decorated former Captain in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.” For months, the Captain says, U.S. soldiers were directed “to conduct daily beatings of prisoners prior to questioning.” In one instance, “a soldier allegedly broke a detainee’s leg with a metal bat.” Other prisoners had “their faces and eyes exposed to burning chemicals.”
The Captain revealed this abuse to Human Rights Watch in July 2005. He also reported his charges to “three senior Republican senators,” including Majority Leader Bill Frist and Sen. John McCain. The torture, he said, was due primarily to “chronic confusion over U.S. military detention policies and whether or not the Geneva Convention applied.”
On July 27, the same month the Captain came forward, Sen. Frist single-handedly derailed a bipartisan effort — led by Sen. McCain — to clarify rules for the treatment of enemy prisoners at U.S. prison camps. In what news reports at the time described as an “unusual move,” Frist “simply pulled the bill from consideration” before it could be debated.
Bill Frist needs to come clean: Was his office told of the “systematic abuse” in the 82nd Airborne before he torpedoed the new detainee laws? THINK PROGRESS
John McCain said Sunday that abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, alleged anew in a report and under investigation again by the army, is hurting the country’s image abroad ...Landover
SENATOR BILL FRIST IS ALL UPSIDE DOWN!
The Senator from Tennessee - in whose mouth butter wouldn't melt - the gentle leader who would seek to be the Christianist nominee for POTUS in '08 - has it all upside down:
1) He thought Terri Schiavo could SEE!
2) He thought his personal financial trust was BLIND!
RANT, REV:
The anti-war movement is too important to let it be co-opted by the usual orgs on the far-left. We who know how harmful this war is for our country (and for Iraq) must be careful about cozying up to someone as loopy as Cindy.
As of today, I believe Cindy Sheehan has jumped the shark. Looking at the glee on her face as she was arrested yesterday confirms a creeping feeling I've had for a while -- she's enjoying her celebrity just a little too much.... she is not an organizer, a politician, an activist or anything else we need now. She's a broken-hearted mom, a symbol of what's wrong with the war. She's changed, the country has changed and it's time to move on. Thank you for all you have done, Cindy. Please step aside. Patridiot.com
FAITH-BASED APOCALYPSE NOW! AANEWS
(DUBYA's scheme for) reconstructing much of the Gulf Coast area along ideological lines that mesh with Bush's religious vision, a social tapestry wistfully described by columnist Kathleen Parker as:
"(A) beautiful landscape of ante-bellum Habitat for Humanity-built porches filled with happy voucher-educated African American children
giggling on joggling boards in two-parent homes headed by an entrepreneurial father and a stay-at-home mother..."
An undetermined number of "chaplains" have been sent into the disaster areas -- at public expense -- in order to "minister" to victims and even bless corpses. Newsweek magazine (September 26, 2005) exposed a FEMA mandate that requires contractors engaged in recovery of bodies from Hurricane Katrina to provide chaplains to bless the corpses. The story quoted an unidentified FEMA spokesperson who, when queried about the troubling First Amendment aspects of this new policy, glibly responded: "A prayer is not necessarily religious. Everybody prays."
Reports from local news outlets provide an equally disturbing picture
of how the emergency on the Gulf Coast is rapidly becoming a
convenient excuse to effectively suspend the Establishment Clause of
the First Amendment ...
And there's more:
Official chaplains operating with National Guard units have hurried down to the Gulf Coast region - at public expense - armed with prayer literature and Bibles as part of their "ministry."And there is the more over-the-top outburst by (slimy toad-preacher) Rev. Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention who reported that while standing amid debris in the town of Gulfport, Miss., he heard God
address him through a small, mangled doll he picked up off the street (Baptist Press, 9/20/05).Welch told the SBC Executive Committee, "I'm willing to say dolls can't talk, but I'm also willing to acknowledge that God was able to use mules and roosters and everything else to get the word across ... and it was like this little doll was saying to me, 'Don't you see? Disasters don't discriminate.' "Welch used the alleged incident to justify a policy of mixing spiritual proselytizing with material aid, adding "We must seize this opportunity. We must not discriminate. We must not leave one crowd and go to another... don't forget those back home - they need the same Gospel!"Referring to the hundreds of thousands impacted by Hurricane Katrina, Welch concluded: "Give them Jesus. Give them Jesus. Give them Jesus! You may run out of water, you may run out of beans, you may run out of chow, but you won't run out of Jesus! Give them Jesus!"
