TERRORISM NEWS

Site Updates

My apologies for the lack of site updates recently . I am currently out of town and I will not be returning until next weekend (17/18th November)

The other contributors may well pop through and put up an article or two but failing that, this site will not be updated for at least a week. Please take advantage of the quiet here and go take a look at some of our links and friends.

Breaking : Rumsfeld 'resigns'

President George Bush has just announced the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. A senior administration official confirmed the news and said that Rumsfeld had already written out his resignation.

Senior military officials were briefed on the president's decision to accept Rumsfeld's resignation just fifteen minutes before the press briefing was scheduled to start today.

Progress already...

Election information sources (open thread)

Just a few random sources and video links that are able to keep all the number crunching data from the US elections up to date...

CNN Election special
MSNB LIVE: Decision 2006
New york times election 2006
Daily Kos
Think progress
Real clear politics
America Votes on BBC Radio 4

Feel free to add any interesting election or related links to the comment thread. If your site has a scoop then feel free to link it here. What sites have the best coverage ? let us know...

We are of course also interested in your opinion of the election in general and the results once we have them.

Early CNN Senate Exit Polls

ThinkProgress has obtained CNN’s early Senate exit polls. Early exit polls are highly unreliable, but information needs to be free.

Ad Wars

Mark Fiore is back with his latest animation.

You can watch it here.

People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing : Walter Judd.

Go out and make yourself heard...

Elections Or Electrons

What If Anything Will Count Your Vote

By Dom Stasi

There’s been a lot - not enough, but a lot - of hoopla recently about the fealty of the new electronic voting systems with which we’ve been gifted this election season. It is fitting to see these machines as having spread across our land like the robotic monsters of the 1897 H.G. Wells novel, The War Of The Worlds. The science fiction metaphor collapses, however, when one realizes that these invasive machines bring a lot more fiction to the voting process than they do science.

But let’s face it. The gadgets themselves are but an abuse, a visible target, salt in an already open and festering wound, a wound to the heart of American democracy. The real monsters remain hidden from our view. The real monsters are alive and among us, their dreams of conquest perhaps the closest thing to reality we’ll see manifest this day.

So, as the hours before the midterm elections of 2006 wane, we should look back, not far, just enough to see where we’ve been. It will tell us where we’re going and why the only thing that should surprise us when Wednesday dawns, is truth.

Think of what follows here as you enter the voting booth. I know I will.

Continue reading Here

US-Iraq 1980s

A brief history of US Interventions in Iraq

Here

1984

Saddam Hussein sentenced to death

Saddam Hussein has been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging.

The former Iraqi president was convicted by a Baghdad court for his role in the killing of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail in 1982. His half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar were also sentenced to death.

Former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan got life in jail and three others received 15 year prison terms. Another co-defendant, Baath party official Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki hailed the conviction in a televised address, saying that the sentence was "not a sentence on one man, but a sentence against all the dark period of his rule".

In the Shia district of Sadr City there was jubilation on the streets, with people driving around in cars, sounding their horns. There were also jubilant scenes in the holy city of Najaf.

Immediately after the sentencing, violence reportedly broke out in the mainly Sunni Azamiya district of Baghdad, with machine guns and mortars being fired. Three nearby provinces, including Salahuddin, which contains Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, are also under curfew.

Thousands of people also defied the curfew in Tikrit - but there it was to voice support for Saddam Hussein and to denounce the verdict. Sunnis in Tikrit marched through the city, chanting "We will avenge you Saddam."

Almost three years since Saddam Hussein was captured, soaring sectarian violence has brought Iraq to the brink of civil war.

Source and further details Here

Neo Culpa

As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.

Here

British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il

America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published today that reveals just how far the country's reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.

Carried out as US voters prepare to go to the polls next week in an election dominated by the war, the research also shows that British voters see George Bush as a greater danger to world peace than either the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, or the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both countries were once cited by the US president as part of an "axis of evil", but it is Mr Bush who now alarms voters in countries with traditionally strong links to the US.

Read the full article Here