The "Paper Of Treason," the New York Times does its best to spin their poster boy’s latest America-hating remarks:

Kerry and G.O.P. Spar Over Iraq Remarks

By DAVID STOUT
October 31, 2006

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — Debate over the Iraq war seemed to reach a new intensity today, with Republicans accusing Senator John Kerry of insulting rank-and-file American troops and Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, lashing back at some of his tormentors as “assorted right-wing nut jobs.”

The latest flap, over what Mr. Kerry said on the West Coast on Monday, was another example of the heated rhetoric surrounding the war issue as the Congressional elections approach. President Bush said Monday that a Democratic triumph in the races for the House and Senate would amount to a victory for terrorists.

Mr. Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate who is believed to be considering another run for the White House in 2008, set the stage for bitter back-and-forth as he addressed a gathering at Pasadena City College in California. The senator opened with several one-liners, joking at one point that President Bush had lived in Texas but now “lives in a state of denial.”

Then, Mr. Kerry said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Those remarks were denounced first by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and, like Mr. Kerry, a veteran of the Vietnam conflict. “ Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country’s call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education,” Mr. McCain said today.

Mr. McCain said any suggestion that only the poorly educated would agree to serve in Iraq is “an insult to every soldier serving in combat.”

The White house spokesman, Tony Snow, went further, asserting that Mr. Kerry’s speech “sort of fits a pattern” of criticizing American troops in Iraq. “This is an absolute insult, and I’m a little astonished that he didn’t figure it out already,” Mr. Snow said. “If I say something stupid, I apologize as quickly as possible.”

But if anyone should apologize, Mr. Kerry said, it is President Bush and his administration officials who started the ill-conceived war, Mr. Kerry said. He called the criticism directed at him the work of “assorted right-wing nut jobs and right-wing talk show hosts.”

“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement. “ I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.”

“ I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed-suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq,”

Mr. Kerry went on. “ It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.” …

You see, The Times has explained it. It was just a joke. (Which, coincidentally, is what Kerry’s handlers are all now claiming.)

Mr. Kerry didn’t mean it at all. He would never disparage our brave fighting men.

Perhaps because he was such a poor student all of his life, and he ended up in Vietnam, Mr. Kerry believes a similar fate awaits everyone else.

But Mr. Kerry could have just as easily have said, "if you don’t do well in school you could end up marrying a string of rich women and never having to work a day in your life."

Instead, he attacked the people who are risking their lives to protect our country — much to his chagrin. And to add add insult to injury, Kerry has now gone on to add:

It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

Yet it seems like only yesterday Senator Kerry was pronouncing this from the floor of the Senate:

Speech of John F. Kerry

February 27, 1992
Page S2479 Congressional Record

…What is missing and what cries out to be said is that neither one group nor the other from that difficult period of time has cornered the market on virtue or rectitude or love of country…

We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways. Someone who was deeply against the war in 1969 or 1970 may well have served their country with equal passion and patriotism by opposing the war as by fighting in it…

Are we now to descend, like latter-day Spiro Agnews, and play, as he did, to the worst instincts of divisiveness and reaction that still haunt America? Are we now going to create a new scarlet letter in the context of Vietnam? Certainly, those who went to Vietnam suffered greatly…

But while those who served are owed special recognition, that recognition should not come at the expense of others; nor does it require that others be victimized or criticized or said to have settled for a lesser standard. To divide our party or our country over this issue today, in 1992, simply does not do justice to what all of us went through during that tragic and turbulent time….

Of course back then Mr. Kerry was campaigning for the draft-dodger Bill Clinton, so his words can’t be used against him today.

But who on earth has "lied and distorted" the record of our military more than John Kerry?

Lest we forget, it was libeling our troops in Vietnam that made Kerry famous and started him on his brilliant career.

And he hasn’t let up since. In fact, it was only a few months ago Kerry called our troops in Iraq "terrorists."

Mr. Kerry hates our country and our military so much he almost makes John Murtha seem patriotic.

Almost.

From Portland Maine's TV station WCSH6:

Attorney Dressed As Osama Arrested In South Portland

10/31/2006

Attorney Tom Connolly was arrested by South Portland police Tuesday morning, after motorists reported a man with a gun near Interstate 295. It turns out the gun was part of a Halloween costume, but it looked real enough to passersby and police.

Connolly was dressed in an Osama Bin Laden costume and holding a fake gun and a sign that said "I love TABOR".

Officers raced to the scene and drew their weapons on Connolly. They say Connolly didn't immediately respond to their commands. He was taken into custody a few minutes later.

"The officers ordered him to drop the weapon and lay on the ground. He still walked toward the officers, dropping what appeared to be hand grenades onto the roadway. He finally complied with the request of the officers and laid the weapon down and laid down on the ground himself and he was subsequently arrested," said George Berry from South Portland Police.

Connolly, who's been charged with criminal threatening, is a well-known attorney. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1998. In 2000, Connolly tipped the media off to a 1970's DUI arrest by presidential candidates George W. Bush.

In a news conference held by South Portland Police, Chief Ed Googins said Connolly's actions redefine the word 'stupid.' He also displayed the fake gun and the costume Connolly was wearing.

At least the article got around to mentioning that Mr. Connolly is the same party hack "political activist" who trotted out Bush's DUI arrest as the October surprise for the 2000 elections. But note that they still didn't mention his political affiliation.

Maybe they thought it was unnecessary to spell out that Connolly is a rabid Democrat. What else would someone whose "actions redefine the word stupid" be?

There is a video clip of this dramatic arrest at the link.

From Iran’s biggest fans at the DNC’s Associated Press:

Iran Offering Cash to Travel Agents for American Tourists

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has said it would offer cash incentives to travel agencies to encourage Western tourists to visit the country, giving a premium for Americans, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Tuesday.

The proposal is Iran’s latest bid to reach out to ordinary Americans in an attempt by the Islamic Republic’s political leadership to show that its quarrel is with the U.S. administration — not U.S. citizens.

It came as the United Nations Security Council deliberates a draft resolution that would impose sanctions on Iran for its disputed nuclear program.

"Iran’s tourism department will pay US$20 per person to those who attract European or American tourists to the country," the agency quoted Mohammed Sharif Malakzadeh, deputy head of the department, as saying.

Visitors from other countries would earn travel agents US$10 a tourist, Malakzadeh said…

They must be running low on hostages and want to stock up.

From the DNC’s Al Jazeera:

Pakistanis rally after air raid on school

Tuesday 31 October 2006, 15:42 Makka Time, 12:42 GMT

Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, has said that the 80 people killed in a air raid on a religious school near the Afghan border were all undergoing military training.

"They were militants doing military training. We were watching them for the last six or seven days – we knew exactly who they are, what they are doing," Musharraf told a security conference in Islamabad on Tuesday.

"They were all militants using weapons doing military training within the compound."

Almost 10,000 Pakistanis attended protests held in Khar, the main town in the northwestern tribal Bajaur district, where military helicopters fired five missiles into an Islamic religious school, known as a madrasa, on Monday.

As loudspeakers broadcast songs in the local Pashto language, protesters gathered in a field to denounce what they described as an attack that killed innocent students and teachers.

Addressing the rally, Maulana Roohul Amin, a local Islamic cleric, said: "We will continue our jihad. We will take revenge for the blood of our martyrs.

"The infidels are trying to erase us from existence."

Scores of pro-government tribal police were deployed throughout Bajaur, blocking roads with large rocks in an attempt to prevent political activists and journalists reaching Khar and Chingai, a local government official said.

Many local politicians and regional cabinet ministers have resigned in protest over the attack.

"Islamabad is acting against its own citizens who profess loyalty, promise to maintain peace and to eliminate foreign militants," a Pakistan daily, The Nation, said in an editorial column.

Ali Dayan Hasan, a representative for Human Rights Watch, accused Pakistani authorities of "persistent use of excessive and disproportionate force in pursuing counter-terror operations".

The planned signing of a peace deal between tribal leaders and the military was cancelled in response to the air strike.

The attack led to claims of US collusion with Pakistan in attacking and destroying the madrasa.

Pakistani and US military officials have denied American involvement in the attack, which occurred 3km from the Afghan border, saying it was purely a Pakistani operation.

Among those killed was Liaqat Hussain, a fugitive cleric who ran the attacked madrasa.

The raid was carried out after Hussain rejected government warnings to stop using the school as a training camp for fighters heading to Afghanistan, the military said.

Faqir Mohammed, who Pakistan also described as a ‘terrorist’, left the madrasa 30 minutes before the strike, intelligence officials said.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, a Pakistani political leader, said he would lead a convoy of cars from the northwestern city of Peshawar to Khar and Chingai in protest on Tuesday.

"They killed 80 teenagers who were students of the Quran," Ahmed said. "This is a very cruel joint-activity [between the US and Musharraf governments]."

It’s hard to believe that there aren’t the resources available to hit this area again.

The planned signing of a peace deal between tribal leaders and the military was cancelled in response to the air strike.

More good news.

Addressing the rally, Maulana Roohul Amin, a local Islamic cleric, said: "We will continue our jihad. We will take revenge for the blood of our martyrs. "The infidels are trying to erase us from existence."

One hopes so.

From a disheartened Reuters:

Tribesmen gather near the bodies of those killed during a Pakistan army air strike in Chenagai in the Bajaur tribal region bordering Afghanistan, October 30, 2006.

Pakistan army kills up to 80 at Qaeda-linked school

Mon Oct 30, 2006
By Anwarullah Khan

KHAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani army helicopters killed around 80 suspected militants on Monday in a dawn attack on a religious school run by a pro-Taliban commander wanted for harboring al Qaeda fighters, a military spokesman said.

The army said the religious school or madrasa in Chenagai, 10 km (six miles) north of Khar, the main town in the Bajaur tribal region bordering Afghanistan, was being used as a militant training camp.

The strike killed almost everyone present in the madrasa, although at least three wounded were taken to hospital in Khar.

"The compound has been destroyed," Major-General Shaukat Sultan told Reuters.

"According to our local sources, up to 80 deaths have been confirmed," he said. No ground troops were sent in to mop up.

Residents said they had seen three or four army helicopters flying over Chenagai at around 5 a.m..

No prominent militant was believed to be in the compound when it was attacked, Sultan said. Security officials said one of those killed was Maulana Liaqatullah, the pro-Taliban commander who ran the madrasa.

Sultan said there were no women or children present.

Some villagers said there were young children among those killed, but Maulana Faqir Mohammad, a militant commander at the target site, told Reuters Television that the dead were aged between 15 and 25.

Bodies covered with white sheets lay in rows as Mohammad addressed hundreds of gunmen gathered by the ruined madrasa, declaring his support for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar.

"May Allah protect Sheikh Osama. May Allah protect Mullah Omar," the long-haired, bearded militant leader said.

Thousands of tribesmen rallied in Khar chanting "Down with America," "Down with Bush" and "Down with Musharraf".

The leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s most influential Islamist party, condemned the attack as "barbaric" and claimed it was carried out by U.S.-led forces from across the border.

"This alien attack… is tantamount to a declaration of war on Pakistan," Qazi Hussain Ahmed told a news conference, while a senior minister from his party resigned in protest from the provincial government in North West Frontier Province…

Monday’s attack came two days after 3,000 militants held a rally near Khar, chanting support for bin Laden and Omar.

Talks between tribal elders and militants to reach a peace deal along the lines of the one struck in North Waziristan last month appeared to have failed, local clerics said…

Yes, it is beginning to look like the reports that Pakistan signed a separate peace deal with the Taliban may have been somewhat exaggerated.

Monday’s attack came two days after 3,000 militants held a rally near Khar, chanting support for bin Laden and Omar.

What a crying shame this attack didn’t come two days earlier.

From those terrorist enablers at Reuters:

Spc. Eric Leon, a U.S. soldier from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, mans a machine gun while providing overwatch security for Iraqi soldiers who are searching houses for weapons in Diwaniya, 112 miles south of Baghdad.

Iraq asks troops to stay as U.S. death toll spikes

Mon Oct 30, 2006

By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The killings of two Americans took the monthly U.S. death toll in Iraq on Monday to over 100 for the first time in nearly two years, just a week before elections that could cost President George W. Bush's Republicans control of Congress.

Pressure has mounted ahead of the November 7 congressional poll to extract U.S. troops from the bloody turmoil afflicting Iraq since Bush ordered the invasion three and a half years ago. But the Iraqi government, despite open friction with Washington this past week, said it wanted their U.N. mandate extended by a year.

Speaking shortly after a bomb killed 28 people in a Baghdad Shi'ite slum on a day that saw at least 70 Iraqis killed across the country, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters: "The presence of the Multi-National Force is indispensable for the security and stability of Iraq and of the region at the moment."

Iraq has become central to the congressional election campaign and Bush is rallying his Republic supporters, defending his policy and accusing opposition Democrats of lacking a plan:

"The Democratic goal is to get out of Iraq. The Republican goal is to win in Iraq," he told a rally in the state of Georgia. "This election is far from over."

A marine killed on Sunday in western Anbar province, where troops are fighting Sunni insurgents, and an unidentified member of the military police shot dead by a sniper in east Baghdad took the U.S. military death toll to 101 so far in October.

It was 71 last month, and last passed 100 in January 2005. In all, 2,814 Americans have died in the Iraq conflict.

Commanders say October's increase is partly due to attacks in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Since militants released a video during last week's festival for the end of Ramadan showing U.S. soldiers being shot, apparently by snipers, the military has also been looking more closely at shooting incidents…

Despite mounting suspicion among the dominant Shi'ite Islamists about Washington's rapprochement with the minority Sunnis dominant under Saddam Hussein, Maliki has set no deadline for U.S. troops to leave. When he took office six months ago, he spoke of reviewing the terms on which they were in Iraq.

But his foreign minister, Zebari, made clear Baghdad was now about to ask the U.N. Security Council to extend by a year the mandate, which runs out on December 31 : "At the same time, the Iraqi government is … willing to take more security responsibilities from these forces to do its part."

He also said Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem had agreed to visit Baghdad, possibly in November. Washington accuses Syria of fomenting rebellion in Iraq.

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington warned the United States against leaving Iraq abruptly.

"Since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited," Prince Turki al-Faisal said after a Washington speech.

He added that any nothing of dividing Iraq would result in "ethnic cleansing on a massive scale". …

If the US were to leave Iraq at this point, the media would never stop harping about how we "cut and ran" and left so many who had depended upon us to a horrible fate.

This is not conjecture. The media said exactly the same thing after the US left Iraq at the end of the First Gulf War.

Though all of those articles have been scrubbed from the internet and apparently everyone's memory.

Speaking of memories:

[The Iraqis want the presence of US troops under] their U.N. mandate extended by a year.

Our media and their DNC bosses tend to forget that we are in Iraq under a United Nations mandate.

Here is a partial transcript from an interview done by Steve Kroft for CBS' 60 Minutes George Soros on December 20, 1998:

George Soros Interview On 60 Minutes

When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros' father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.

(Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)

KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros' friends and neighbors.

(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)

KROFT: (Voiceover) You're a Hungarian Jew…

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.

KROFT: (Voiceover) …who escaped the Holocaust…

(Vintage footage of women walking by train)

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.

(Vintage footage of people getting on train)

KROFT: (Voiceover) …by–by posing as a Christian.

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.

(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)

KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.

Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made.

KROFT: In what way?

Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and–and anticipate events and when–when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a–a very personal experience of evil.

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that's–that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Mr. SOROS: Not–not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't–you don't see the connection. But it was–it created no–no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: For example that, 'I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.' None of that?

Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c–I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was–well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets–that if I weren't there–of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would–would–would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the–whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the–I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.

Of course most of us here are already aware of Mr. Soros' highly questionable actions during the Nazi occupation. (Though the public at large undoubtedly has a different perspective, if they know anything about his earlier days at all.)

But the statements he made in this interview to my mind are quite chilling. He forgives himself everything. He says that if he hadn't done it somebody else would have.

All of which would seem to indicate that Mr. Soros has no conscience. A lack of conscience is said to be a common symptom of sociopaths.

From the Sun Herald:

Activists can’t validate soldiers’ names

Sat, Oct. 28, 2006

By DAVID GIALANELLA
SUN HERALD WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON – A group claiming earlier this week to represent 65 "active-duty" troops opposed to the war in Iraq acknowledged Thursday it cannot validate the number or the authenticity of all the names it claims to have gathered.

The group attracted widespread media attention on Tuesday after it put out a statement claiming that "for the first time" since the war began, "active-duty members are asking" Congress to end the "occupation of Iraq."

The following day the group said the number of soldiers signing on had risen to 219. Organizers have thus far declined to provide a list of names.

"We’re trying to figure out a validation process," said David Cortright, an organizer of the Appeal for Redress movement and president of Indiana-based peace-activism group Fourth Freedom Forum. The group is operating the Web site appealforredress.org, where soldiers can go to electronically "sign" the petition to Congress, which legally they are entitled to do as long as they speak only for themselves and not the U.S. military.

"I’m quite convinced that it (the tally) is legitimate," Cortright told the Sun Herald on Thursday after several news outlets reported as fact the numbers provided during a telephone news conference Wednesday with three individuals who said they were participating soldiers.

The name of the Indiana-based group was not given in the initial press statements. The Sun Herald turned up the group by researching the registry of Web site domain names.

A spokesman from Fenton Communications, the firm handling the public relations for appealforredress.org and also for the liberal MoveOn.org, said during a telephone conference call Wednesday that the initial 65 entries had jumped to 219 in 48 hours, with 125 of those being active-duty soldiers.

The unconfirmed count was up to 713 by midday Thursday, according to Cortright.

Cortright said that the entries are being validated "by hand," with less than 10 percent that "look fishy" so far, and said a more accurate report should be available in a day or two.

He estimated that the number of valid entries must be at 500 or 600, if not all of the 713 signatures are legitimate. When filling out the form online, signatories are able to provide ranks and service branches, but are only required to provide a name, nonmilitary e-mail address and a home zip code.

"It’s a protected site," Cortright said, adding that Fourth Freedom Forum may be legally required to protect the names per a nondisclosure statement on the electronic form. Some involved said promising this kind of privacy is the only way to get members of the military to come forward.

"Its culture is that you don’t get involved (in politics)," said a servicewoman who called in to Wednesday’s news conference, wishing to remain anonymous for concerns of reprisal. "Anyone who’s served in the military knows there are informal punitive measures," she said. "It’s not just paranoia."

Members of the U.S. military are legally allowed to appeal to their congressmen and speak about doing so under the Military Whistle-Blower Protection Act, as long as they are off-duty and off-base at the time. But those who have spoken out have been criticized.

"To me, these folks are completely out of order," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Emmett "Mickey" Walker. Walker was the first and only National Guard Bureau Chief to hail from Mississippi, holding that post from 1982 to 1986. "I grew up under the instruction of my daddy to respect my president."

Walker said that the last war the United States military truly won and did not walk away from early was World War II.

"That gives us a hell of a name," he said.

Other military sources have called publicizing the movement so close to Election Day a political maneuver.

According to an organizer, the list of names will be made public when it is given to Congress on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January.

How come this interesting fact about George Soros’s latest efforts to undermine our war effort has to come to us from an Australian news outlet?

(Of course that’s a rhetorical question. We know why.)

From France's AFP:

'Free Saddam or else…'

29/10/2006

Amman – Saddam Hussein's defence team has drafted a letter to US President George W Bush warning of dire consequences if an Iraqi court issues a verdict against the ousted Iraqi president for crimes against humanity.

In a copy of the letter received by AFP in Jordan on Sunday, lead Iraqi lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi also urged Bush to set free Saddam and put an end to the trial which he described again as illegal and a farce.

"We believe that it is necessary to stop this farcical trial and set free President Saddam Hussein, and all the prisoners, because this is the only solution for your troops and your difficult position in Iraq," Dulaimi said.

"This is also the best way for the future of Iraq, the region and the world," he added.

He warned that a verdict by the Iraqi High Tribunal against Saddam and seven co-defendants over the killing of 148 Shi'ite villagers in the Iraqi village of Dujail could plunge Iraq and the region into violence. The villagers were executed after a 1982 attempt to kill Saddam.

"This decision will set ablaze anew the country and plunge the entire region into the unknown…," he said.

The Iraqi lawyer, who heads the Amman-based defence team, said the verdict due by the court was timed to coincide with US Congressional elections.

"There is an unfair decision that has already been taken by the court to eliminate President Saddam Hussein in time with the US Congressional elections, through which the US administration seeks to safeguard its position," he said.

Dulaimi also told Bush: "You will risk your troops who have lost control over Iraq and you will place in danger your interests and the security of the region."

Let’s see, we must free Saddam or else the Shiites and the Sunnis will really start killing each other.

What a joke.

I think I detect the liver-spotted hand of Ramsey Clark behind this latest cheesy threat.

From the UK's Times:

Italy’s rebel woman MP fears fatwa

October 29, 2006
John Follain

The Italian feminist politician Daniela Santanche has been given 24-hour police protection after her strident views on the Muslim veil drew an apparent death sentence from an imam.

On a television chat show, Santanche, 45, an MP for the right-wing National Alliance party, clashed with Ali Abu Shwaima, the imam of a mosque near Milan.

“The veil isn’t a religious symbol and it isn’t prescribed by the Koran,” she said. “And in our country there is a law which forbids – for reasons of terrorism – people going around with masks on.”

Shwaima, an Italian national, retorted: “The veil is an obligation required by God. Those who do not believe that are not Muslims.

“You’re an ignoramus, you’re false. You sow hatred, you’re an infidel.”

The interior ministry, interpreting Shwaima’s insults as the equivalent of a fatwa — a religious edict calling for her murder — swiftly gave Santanche an armed bodyguard.

However, Shwaima insisted that he had never pronounced a fatwa, saying that the row over their debate had been “artfully created to cast a negative light on Islam”. He claimed that he was the one who needed protection, as critics had accused him of backing terrorism and his home address had been published in the newspapers.

Santanche had already created a stir in the Muslim world with her book, Woman Denied, which criticised Muslim women’s way of life and argued that they wore the veil only because their husbands, fathers or brothers forced them. The book was denounced by Iranian television and several Islamic websites.

Public debate over the wearing of the veil is a novelty for Italy, which has 1.2m Muslims, fewer than 5% of whom go to mosques.

Romano Prodi, the prime minister, was cautious this month when asked about the British debate over the issue. He said it was fine for women to wear a veil but “common sense” demanded that they should not conceal their faces.

Santanche is used to controversy. Last year she notoriously raised a middle finger to young people protesting at the government of Silvio Berlusconi, the then prime minister; she also proposed a “porn tax” to be levied on income derived from pornography. On her website she gives an account of the collapse of her first marriage and a guided tour of her home including the bathroom.

In a rare show of unity, Santanche’s left-wing political opponents are rallying to her support. “I want Mr Shwaima to know that threats, intimidation and condemnations are not acceptable in Italy,” said Barbara Pollastrini, minister for equal opportunities in the centre-left government.

Leaders of Italy’s Muslim community also expressed solidarity with Santanche. Souad Sbai, who heads the Union of Moroccan Women in Italy, called Shwaima “pseudo-religious”.

Santanche remains defiant: “You don’t imagine I’m going to give in? If I speak out it’s because Muslim women have asked me to. It’s time to turn our backs on the politically correct, it’s a question not of religion but of human rights,” she told The Sunday Times.

Of course she was afraid, she said, for herself and for her family. They now lived with bodyguards round the clock and she had been forced to give up using her bicycle: “But what I’m going through is nothing compared to the suffering of millions of women who are massacred, trampled on and pelted with stones.”

She was stunned to hear her 10-year-old son Lorenzo ask her what “condemned to death” meant. Perhaps he had heard the expression on the television news, she thought. “People talk like this in films,” she told him.

“So we’re in a film, mummy?” Lorenzo asked.

“Yes,” his mother had replied.

“I told him that because mummy is in politics, there are some people who don’t always agree with her. Having these guards with us just makes everything safer.”

If the Italian police believe that her life is in danger, shouldn't they lock up the Imam who they think is doing the threatening, rather than putting the victim in jail–at least figuratively?

In a rare show of unity, Santanche’s left-wing political opponents are rallying to her support.

How is it that the left never opposes the Muslims in our country? There is nothing, not even "women's rights," that they will not throw out the window to support our enemies.

They hate the US more than they ever loved any of their noble causes. In fact their noble causes often seem only to be convenient excuses for them to attack this country.

Once again this thread is for our readers to post news items that might have not gotten enough attention during the week. Of course articles that fit under the topic of a fairly recent thread should be posted as comments there.

Please don’t post articles from hugely popular sites like Drudge, since most people will presumably see such material elsewhere. Also, avoid material from blogs and editorials unless they are truly newsworthy in their own right.

In order to make the articles as readable as possible, try to stick to the format described in the first of these weekly threads here.

Always provide a link to the original source and EXCERPT ONLY THREE OR FOUR PARAGRAPHS from the article at most. (Just use simple ellipses … at the end of paragraphs to show your cuts.)

We should do this out of fairness to the media outlets, but also to keep these threads from become too resource intensive.

From France’s AFP:

Iraqi women’s rights champion murdered

Sat Oct 28, 7:24 AM ET

KIRKUK, Iraq (AFP) – Gunmen broke into the house of an Iraqi women’s rights campaigner and shot her dead in front of her three children, police have said.

Human rights activists say the lives of women in Iraqi society have worsened dramatically since the US-led invasion of March 2003, amid a general break down in law and order and the rise of conservative Islamist militias.

Captain Imad Khudhir of the Kirkuk police said Saturday 38-year-old Halima Ahmed Hussein al-Juburi was killed late on Friday by 10 unidentified attackers who broke into her home in the northern town of Hawijah.

"We do not know the motive behind the crime," he said.

Juburi was the head of the Human Rights organisation of Maternity and Childhood in Hawijah, a lawless town in an area plagued by violent Sunni insurgent groups.

Her husband was not at home at the time of the attack.

Professional women and rights campaigners are often targeted by conservative Islamist groups who adhere to a strictly traditional view of women’s role in society and use violence to drive women out of public life.

More of the famous Muslim regard for women on display.

How horribly sad.

Human rights activists say the lives of women in Iraqi society have worsened dramatically since the US-led invasion of March 2003…

Naturellment.

We knew it had to be Bush’s fault.

An objective and unbiased selection of books on Iraq from the foreign policy experts at the DNC's in-house magazine Newsweek:

Sampling on Iraq

To explain the situation in Iraq requires writers ranging from soldiers to statesmen to scholars to reporters to a 24-year-old out-of-work computer programmer.

Local residents try to extinguish a fire in the center of Fallujah in the early morning of Oct. 12, 2004 following a U.S. airstrike. A U.S. warplane destroyed a popular restaurant that the U.S. command said was a meeting place for members of Iraq's most feared terrorist organization.

(Bilal Hussein, AP)

Oct. 27, 2006 – Just one of the frightening things about Iraq is how fast the publishing industry has responded with a ballooning shelf of books on the war and related subjects. To help you cut through the chaff and get to the truly essential books on the subject, here’s a selection suggested by NEWSWEEK staffers:

The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End by Peter W. Galbraith (Simon & Schuster) A U.S. diplomat argues that the invasion effectively destroyed the idea of a unified Iraq and that the U.S. should now devote its efforts to brokering autonomy—geographical and governmental—for the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

 

 

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks (Penguin) A stunning recounting of how the mission has lacked a strategy from the very beginning. The best account of the dysfunction and disregard in Washington, as well as the admitted mistakes of the military in Iraq—and its laudable (and often thwarted) attempts to fix things on the ground. Meanders a bit in the last third of the book.

 

 

 

Generation Kill by Evan Wright (Putnam) Wright, a reporter for Rolling Stone, doesn't pull any punches describing the chaos and mayhem he went through while embedded with a Marine recon unit during the "Thunder Run" to Baghdad in 2003. Detailed and insightful, this book is an excellent account of the videogame generation at war.

 

 

 

My War: Killing Time in Iraq by Colby Buzzell (Putnam) A first-person account from a young soldier (and self admitted skate punk and wise ass) who was based in Mosul with a Stryker brigade. This book pulls together dispatches from Buzzell's blog, also called My War, which got him into a lot of trouble with Army superiors. A gritty, obnoxious and often hilarious account of what many soldiers go through on a daily basis in Iraq.

 

 

Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor (Pantheon) Invading Iraq, the U.S. military fought a war on two fronts: against Saddam Hussein and against the suits and ideologues in Washington. Gordon, a New York Times reporter, and Trainor, a retired Marine lieutenant general, do a superb job of narrating the invasion, including pointing out that some of the heaviest opposition came from insurgent forces, much of it foreign, from the very beginning.

 

The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) The top “what went wrong” book about the invasion and the ideological underpinnings of the war, it approaches the limit of what any American can truly understand about Iraq.

 

The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind (Simon & Schuster) A clunky and melodramatic write, but some of the best reporting on the true and the overrated threats post 9/11, as well as the illegal wiretapping program.

 

 

 

 

State of Denial: Bush at War Part III by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster) Going back for a third look at the Bush administration’s prosecution of the Iraq war effort, the Washington Post’s senior investigative reporter finds much more to criticize this time around.

 

 

 

Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn (Crown) Reporters for NEWSWEEK and The Nation, respectively, Isikoff and Corn identify and diagram all the bogus evidence used to push the U.S. into Iraq—from phony Nigerian yellowcake to Mohammed Atta’s nonexistent meetings with Iraqi intelligence—but their most devastating evidence illuminates a governmental culture where people who knew better were silenced, marginalized or ignored.

 

 

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Knopf) The history of Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, written by the Washington Post’s Baghdad bureau chief, is a devastating indictment of the U.S. effort to pacify Iraq.

 

 

 

The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq by Rory Stewart (Harcourt) Appointed a regional governor by the Coalition government 2003, Stewart writes with wit, shrewdness and self-deprecation what it was like to navigate a world full of clan leaders, Islamic militants, bureaucrats and intelligence agents, all of them jockeying for power and influence.

 

 

Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer (Times Books) The New York Times reporter puts it all in context: a century’s worth of highhandedness has resulted in a less stable world and a world where the United States rarely got what it sought in the long run.

 

 

Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives and Corporate Greed in Iraq by T. Christian Miller (Little, Brown) Halliburton may have gouged the taxpayer on the way to delivering goods and services to U.S. troops in Iraq, but at least it delivered, which is more than Los Angeles Times reporter Miller can say for most of the contractors servicing the war. How did the country that created the Marshall Plan screw this up so badly? Miller doesn’t have a clear answer, but he has a sickening list of stories about how greed and incompetence have triumphed.

 

 

Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq by Riverbend (Feminist Press at CUNY) A few months after the U.S. toppled Saddam’s regime, a 24-year-old woman writing pseudonymously as Riverbend began blogging in Iraq. A former computer programmer whose family was comparatively well off, she supplies an endless entertaining and educational look at life in the fractured nation. Often furious, always fascinating on daily Iraqi life. There is also a “Baghdad Burning II,” more of Riverbend's blog postings.

 

The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs and the Iraqis in Iraq by Fouad Ajami (Free Press) One of the world’s foremost authorities on Middle East politics, Ajami looks at Iraq both before and after the U.S. invasion and creates a beautifully informed picture of a region exhibiting both old and new stress lines and fractures.

 

 

 

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr (Norton) Nasr, professor of Mideast and South Asian politics at the Naval Postgraduate School, lucidly lays out the schisms and fault lines in the Islamic world, concentrating on how the reconfiguration of power after the U.S. invasion of Iraq decidedly affected the powers of the Shiite population, although they only compose 15 percent of the worldwide Muslim population.

 

Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid (Holt) One of the few books that focuses on the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Shadid, a Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer for his Iraq coverage, offers a touching street-level portrait of the impact of the war. A fine counterpoint to many of the wonky tomes about Iraq that have flooded bookshelves.

 

What an objective presentation of the war in Iraq, huh?

You may recognize the name of the Associated Press photographer, Bilal Hussein, credited for that picture from Falujah at the top. As we have noted previously, Mr. Hussein is in the news for being held by the US military forces in Iraq due to being a terrorist his close ties to terrorism.

Of course the other contributors Newsweek applauds don't have to worry about such things. Being for the most part US citizens, and journalists at that, their efforts to help our enemies are risk free. Indeed, they are applauded and highly paid for their treason.

Just as Mr. Hussein will be for his noble work, once he gets out of custody and signs his book deal.