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POPSThe Democrats' Fairy Tale
And the improvements in Anbar could never have been sustained without aggressive American military efforts — efforts that were more effective in 2007 than they had been in 2006, due in part to the addition of the surge forces. Last year’s success, in Anbar and elsewhere, was made possible by confidence among Iraqis that U.S. troops would stay and help protect them, that the U.S. would not abandon them to their enemies. Because the U.S. sent more troops instead of withdrawing — because, in other words, President Bush won his battles in 2007 with the Democratic Congress — we have been able to turn around the situation in Iraq. And now Iraq’s Parliament has passed a de-Baathification law — one of the so-called benchmarks Congress established for political reconciliation. For much of 2007, Democrats were able to deprecate the military progress and political reconciliation taking place on the ground by harping on the failure of the Iraqi government to pass the benchmark legislation
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POPSTape Recording Reveals Vile Rants Of British Mullah Now Choudary —who once called for the Pope to be executed and described the September 11 hijackers as "magnificent martyrs" — could face arrest under anti-terror laws for his evil ranting on the tape, which was passed to the News of the World. Terrorism expert and author Neil Doyle said: "There is no doubt whatever this a rallying cry to would-be British terrorists. "And this is the evidence from his own mouth. There's no doubt that the message he's preaching will eventually convince some impressionable people they should start planning 7/7-type atrocities. "He's certainly becoming the most high-profile cheerleader for al-Qaeda in the UK." When we spoke to Choudary he refused to discuss our recording but admitted he WAS on a recruitment drive. He ranted: "I would like to recruit enough to turn the whole country into an Islamic state within a month...by tomorrow. "You can put that down. I'm trying to recruit 5,000 a week."
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POPSMcCain Hits Obama On Iraq, Outlines Afghanistan Plan some of whose members have national restrictions on where their troops can go and what they can do. This is no way to run a war.” The Arizona senator touted the Afghan army as a “great success story” and said it needs to be expanded. He added that the global community should share the cost of doubling the size of the Afghan army. “We must convince Pakistanis that this is their war as much as it is ours. And we must empower the new civilian government of Pakistan to defeat radicalism with greater support for development, health and education,” McCain said. “Sen. Obama has spoken in public about taking unilateral military action in Pakistan. In trying to sound tough, he has made it harder for the people whose support we most need to provide it,” he added. “I will not bluster, and I will not make idle threats. But understand this: When I am commander in chief, there will be nowhere the terrorists can run, and nowhere they can hide.”
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POPSVoters Give Congress Nine-Percent Approval Rating Last month, 11% of voters gave the legislature good or excellent ratings. Congress has not received higher than a 15% approval rating since the beginning of 2008. The percentage of Democrats who give Congress positive ratings fell from 17% last month to 13% this month. The number of Democrats who give Congress a poor rating remained unchanged. Among Republicans, 8% give Congress good or excellent ratings, up just a point from last month. Sixty-five percent (65%) of GOP voters say Congress is doing a poor job, down a single point from last month. Voters not affiliated with either party are the most critical of Congressional performance. Just 3% of those voters give Congress positive ratings, down from 6% last month. Sixty-three percent (63%) believe Congress is doing a poor job, up from 57% last month. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/congressional_performance/congressional_performance
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POPSDefinition Of Patriotism: "Happiness When The US Defeats The Enemy" They have lost their supposedly divine endorsement; why would Allah have called them to action, just to see them destroyed by the infidels? The sheer bloodthirstiness of their actions in Iraq have exposed them as drug-driven demons, not righteous jihadists. While Barack Obama and the Democratic party run around shouting to every microphone they can find that “Al-Qaeda is stronger today than it was on 9/11″ have challenged the core assumptions of Al-Qaeda’s motivating philosophy, that Allah is on their side and they cannot fail, and in doing so have crushed the spirit of Al-Qaeda’s followers and assured that recruiting into “Allah’s army” is far more difficult that it would have been if otherwise. Al Qaeda itself is telling a different story. Al-Qaeda leaders admit: 'We are in crisis. There is panic and fear' http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3346386.ece
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POPSWhy The Brits Are Setting Terrorists Free It is surely no accident that this failure to grasp the true dimensions of the Islamic terrorist threat is so pronounced among the British elite. For these are the people whose education and careers embody the key attribute of Britain's liberal society – the belief that the world is governed by rational agents acting in their rational self-interest. The British ruling class just doesn't get religious fanaticism. That is why its judges and politicians are finding it so difficult to fight Islamic terror. Not just Britain but the whole world is less safe as a result.
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POPSDemand The U.S. House Censure Rep. Delahunt NOW! Also, more action alerts include: Tell YOUR Rep. to Co-Sponsor the "Affordable Gas Price Act" As usual, the government doesn't have a solution to the problem -- the government IS the problem! House bill H.R. 2415, short-titled the "Affordable Gas Price Act," was introduced on May 21, 2007. The official title of the bill states its purpose: "To reduce the price of gasoline by allowing for offshore drilling, eliminating Federal obstacles to constructing refineries and providing incentives for investment in refineries, suspending Federal fuel taxes when gasoline prices reach a benchmark amount, and promoting free trade." So for over a year now, Congress has had available to them legislation that reduces gas prices by reforming government polices that artificially inflate the price of gas. And not one of them has even had the guts to sign on as a co-sponsor.
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POPSDelahunt Is Glad Addington Is Al-Qaida Target Congressman Delahunt's response was, "I'm glad they finally have a chance to see you." Mr. Delahunt now denies he meant what he said. But what he clearly said was "I'm glad they finally have a chance to see you." Al Qaeda now knows the face of one of the men who relentlessly pursues its henchmen and deals with their interrogations. Mr. Addington volunteered for public service, not a death sentence with Congressional encouragement. Delahunt is both a vile liar and a cowardly lion willing to roar down at Mr. Addington while encouraging terrorists to do his dirty work in a war he has been ineffective at stopping. Congressman Delahunt's email address is william.delahunt@mail.house.gov. Congressman Delahunt can be reached at 202-225-3111 and by fax at 202-225-5658 Or, you can ask Barack Obama yourself at (866) 675-2008 http://youtube.com/watch?v=AEDR7ghl7AU
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POPSSome Iraqi News Not Reported By "The Media" Meanwhile Bill Roggio reports that a released Gitmo detainee is back to the front and is responsible for attacks inside Iraq : The detainee, Abdullah Salih al Ajmi, drove a armored truck packed with explosives into a Iraqi army base and detonated it, killing 13 Iraqi army soldiers and wounding 42. http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/06/released_guantanamo.php Just the tip of the iceberg I’m afraid after our courts release a large chunk of these guys. Al Qaeda in Iraq, through its puppet organization the Islamic State of Iraq, released its latest propaganda video on June 23. The video contains a montage of attacks throughout Iraq, and features two Kuwaiti al Qaeda operatives who conducted strikes in Mosul. One of the operatives was released from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Islamic State of Iraq used footage taken at Combat Outpost Inman by this reporter in Mosul in March of this year.
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POPSBin Laden's Right-Hand Man Out On Bail He was also banned from associating with a long list of named people, including Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Rachid Ramda, who was convicted in France of masterminding a series of bombings in 1995. Abu Hamza, another firebrand preacher convicted of inciting hatred at a London mosque, was also named. Abu Qatada won a lengthy appeal against his extradition from Britain to Jordan in April and at the time, the Home Office Minister, Tony McNulty, pledged the ruling would be appealed and he would not be released. Described by SIAC as a "truly dangerous individual" who has played a central role in major terrorist activities associated with al-Qaeda, Abu Qatada has, in his absence, been convicted twice in Jordan for conspiracy to carry out bomb attacks on two hotels in Amman in 1998 and for providing finance and advice for bomb attacks in Jordan planned to coincide with the millennium.
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POPSObama's Plan For Defeat But Obama and the Democrats would forfeit every one of these successes to a declared policy of fixed and unconditional withdrawal. The disconnect between what Democrats are saying about Iraq and what is actually happening there has reached grotesque proportions. Obama will keep pulling out his 2002 speech opposing the war. But McCain's case is simple. Is not Obama's central mantra that this election is about the future not the past? It is about 2009, not 2002. Obama promises that upon his inauguration, he will order the Joint Chiefs to bring him a plan for withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months. If McCain cannot take to the American people the case for the folly of that policy, he will not be president. Nor should he be.
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POPSWhat Phase Two Senate Intelligence Report Says About Saddam's Hospitality Postwar information supports prewar assessments and statements that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad and that al Qaeda was present in northern Iraq. But now, even in a partisan report designed to attack the Bush administration's credibility, the Senate Intelligence Committee has admitted that Bush and his officials were right to argue that Saddam was harboring al Qaeda fugitives. Both prewar and postwar intelligence assessments confirm their view. And while the Senate Intelligence Committee got this issue right, it got many others wrong. The report is not even internally consistent and the committee simply ignored numerous pieces of information that got in the way of some of its conclusions. Iraq and al Qaeda did not have a cooperative relationship. ommittee ignored the best evidence-Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in postwar Iraq.
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POPSEat Crow, liberal Iraqi war skeptics If Democrats had won the White House in 2004, the jihadists might have succeeded. The idiotic liberals are still for retreat in the face of victory. The US decision to "stay the course" in the Iraq war, which was also widely mocked and criticized, served to thoroughly demoralize the jihadist movement. Another example of why liberals are unfit to run this country, unless you want to run it into the ground.
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POPS D-Day In Context Perhaps that's because it would draw parallels between those who stormed the coast of France in 1944 and those who are fighting now -- and winning -- a war against radical Islam. Unlike those who braved their way into Hitler's Fortress Europe, the young Americans fighting today's battles reap few accolades from the potentates of the press or the liberal "leadership" in Washington. A recent editorial warned about Iraq: "Don't look now, but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war." And it took to task those who comprise "the 'this-war-is-lost' caucus." The victories over al-Qaida and the Shiite militias in Iraq, against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's remnant in Afghanistan, have been won by U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines -- and the new allies in these countries. Those who landed on the beaches of Normandy 64 years ago were American heroes. So are those who serve today.
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POPS9/11 Architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Make Me A Martyr It has declared Mohammed and other al-Qaeda accused to be "illegal enemy combatants", stateless individuals who should not be afforded the usual protections given to prisoners of war. Joining him (Khalik Sheikh Mohammed) at the long-awaited hearing were Ramzi Binalshibh, who is said to have been the main intermediary between the hijackers and al-Qaeda leaders; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew and lieutenant of Mohammed; Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, al-Baluchi's assistant; and Waleed bin Attash, who allegedly selected and trained some of the 19 hijackers who turned planes into missiles in the attacks. BROUGHT up in Kuwait in a family whose roots lie in the Baluchistan region of Pakistan, Mohammed developed extremist Islamic beliefs as a teenager. He claims to have joined the Muslim Brotherhood at 16 and to have fallen for violent jihad. Of beheading Mr Pearl, he said: "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew."
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POPSKerry: On September 11, 2001 We Were At Peace May 30, 2008 UPDATE: Responding to Kerry's claim, RNC spokesman Danny Diaz said: "It’s absolutely critical that the next Commander in Chief understands the challenges America faces. Yet it’s clear that Barack Obama has a thin understanding of history and fails to grasp the threat of terrorism." "After a week’s worth of examples demonstrating Obama’s lack of preparedness to serve as president, his campaign is understandably desperate to shift the focus. Considering it’s now been 873 days since Obama visited Iraq, any suggestion that he even understands what’s happening on the ground is laughable."
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POPSAn Al Qaeda Mastermind Questions Terrorism Lawrence Wright “Do they now have fax machines in Egyptian jail cells?” he asked. “I wonder if they’re connected to the same line as the electric-shock machines.” This sarcastic dismissal was perhaps intended to dampen anxiety about Fadl’s manifesto—which was to be published serially, in newspapers in Egypt and Kuwait—among Al Qaeda insiders. Fadl’s previous work, after all, had laid the intellectual foundation for Al Qaeda’s murderous acts. On a recent trip to Cairo, I met with Gamal Sultan, an Islamist writer and a publisher there. He said of Fadl, “Nobody can challenge the legitimacy of this person. His writings could have far-reaching effects not only in Egypt but on leaders outside it.” Usama Ayub, a former member of Egypt’s Islamist community, who is now the director of the Islamic Center in Münster, Germany, told me, “A lot of people base their work on Fadl’s writings, so he’s very important. When Dr. Fadl speaks, everyone should listen.” Lawrence Wright, "The Looming Tower"
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POPSPakistan, Islamic Militants Agree To Peace Deal The North West Frontier Province's government is led by a Pashtun nationalist party which is a junior partner in the federal coalition and a key player in the peace effort. The ruling parties blame the more forceful tactics of President Pervez Musharraf, a stalwart U.S. ally, for stoking Islamic extremism and the spread of militant religious movements to previous peaceful area, such as Swat. But Western officials have expressed concern that any deals will be poorly enforced and simply allow Taliban and Al Qaeda militants to execute more attacks in Afghanistan and plot terror strikes in the West.
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POPSAnti-Jihad 'University': Bringing Insurgents In From The Cold While I was not permitted to talk privately with detainees, I visited both Camp Cropper, near Baghdad International Airport, and remote Camp Bucca, near Basra in southern Iraq. A major tipping point in the program, say officers, was when detainees began volunteering for the classes being offered. Although al-Qaida detainees and the Takfiris (another group of religious extremists) pressured fellow Iraqis against participating in the very popular religious discussions, over 3,000 detainees have done so. “After Iraqis here learn how to read and write, they can read the Koran themselves for the first time,” says Sheikh Ali, a Sunni who counsels detainees and who, like most of the Iraqis working in the program, declined to have his surname used and must live in an American-guarded compound to avoid reprisals. “I’ve seen detainees break down and cry when they realize that the conduct they thought was sanctioned by God is actually a sin.”
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POPSCensoring Iraq Michael Yon went to Iraq initially at the behest of military friends who insisted that what Americans were seeing on the news wasn't an accurate reflection of the reality on the ground. Two of my friends died on consecutive days. When the charred remains of American contractors were strung from a bridge in Falluja, I put aside a book I was writing to attend the funerals. In Colorado we laid to rest a Special Forces friend who'd been killed in Samara; then on to Florida for the funeral of the friend who'd been murdered and mutilated in Falluja. A photo of the dang ling corpses won a Pulitzer. I purchased and borrowed the equipment required for the journey. Camera, satellite phone, laptop, body armor, helmet, and so on. Like most of the people who would later be called "alternative media," I bore these expenses myself, including the flights to Kuwait.
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POPSUPDATE: Al Qaeda in Iraq: al-Masri Captured: US Military Yet To Comment "The police raided this house and arrested him. During the primary investigation, he confessed that he is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Now a broader investigation of him is being conducted," he said to Iraqiya. If confirmed, the arrest would represent a major blow to Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has been on the run for the past year following a shift in alliances by Sunni tribesmen in western Anbar province, and elsewhere, and an influx of thousands of U.S. troops. "The commander of Ninevah military operations informed me that Iraqi troops captured Abu Hamza al-Muhajir the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq," al-Askari told The Associated Press by telephone. He did not have any further details nor did he say when the Al Qaeda leader was arrested. According to unconfirmed reports he was caught Thursday evening in the Tayran area in central Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
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POPSMark Steyn: Grandma Got Over At The Press Club as the real deal. With less impressionable types, such as voters, Senator Obama is having a tougher time. The Philly speech is emblematic of his most pressing problem: the gap — indeed, full-sized canyon — that’s opening up between the rhetorical magic and the reality. That’s the difference between a simulacrum and a genuinely great speech. The gaseous platitudes of hope and change and unity no longer seem to fit the choices of Obama’s adult life. Oddly enough, the shrewdest appraisal of the Senator’s speechifying “magic” came from Jeremiah Wright himself. “He’s a politician,” said the Reverend. “He says what he has to say as a politician… He does what politicians do.” The notion that the Amazing Obama might be just another politician doing what politicians do seems to have affronted the senator more than any of the stuff about America being no different from al-Qaeda and the government inventing AIDs to kill black people.
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POPSHow We'll Know When We've Won: Frederick W. Kagan Certainly, the American people have a right to insist that our government operate with a clear vision of success and that it develop a clear plan for evaluating whether we are moving in the right direction, even if no tidy numerical metrics can meaningfully size up so complex a human endeavor. As shown here, supporters of the current strategy do indeed have a clear definition of success, and those working to implement it are already evaluating American progress against that definition every day. It is on the basis of their evaluation that we say the surge is working. http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.,pubID.27890/pub_detail.asp
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POPSThe Axis of Evil: An Idiot's Guide: David Frum Joseph Cirincione, the man most widely identified as Obama's top nuclear-affairs adviser, last September pooh-poohed as "far-right" "nonsense" the early rumors that the Syrian nuclear facility was indeed a nuclear facility. Cirincione wrote on the Foreign Policy blog: "This appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a pre-existing political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the U.S.-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria." Cirincione seems to have been so determined to avert what he regarded as the threat of U.S. over-reaction--so eager to promote dialogue with Syria--that he blinded himself to the reality of a nuclear threat.
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POPSHow al Qaeda Will Perish Al-Sahab, media arm of al Qaeda urgent call for recruits. "We call on the fathers and mothers not to become a barrier between their children and paradise." No less significant is that the rejection of al Qaeda is not a liberal phenomenon, in the sense that it represents a more tolerant mindset or a better opinion of the U.S. On the contrary, this is a revolt of the elders, whether among the tribal chiefs of Anbar province or Islamist godfathers like Sayyed Imam. They have seen through (or punctured) the al Qaeda mythology of standing for an older, supposedly truer form of Islam. Rather, they have come to know al Qaeda as fundamentally a radical movement -- the antithesis of the traditional social order represented by the local sovereign, the religious establishment, the head of the clan and, not least, the father who expects to know the whereabouts of his children. It would be a delightful irony if militant Islam were ultimately undone by a conservative style reaction.
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POPSSaddam's Terror Links It's true that the Pentagon report found no "smoking gun," i.e., a direct connection on a joint Iraq-al Qaeda operation. Supposedly this vindicates the view that Iraq's liberation was launched on false premises. But the Administration was always cautious, with Colin Powell alleging merely a "sinister nexus" in his 2003 U.N. speech. If anything, sinister is an understatement. The main Iraq intelligence failure was over WMD, but the report indicates that the CIA also underestimated Saddam's ties to global terror cartels. The Administration has always maintained that Iraq is just one front in the war on terror; and the report offers "evidence of logistical preparation for terrorist operations in other nations, including those in the West." In 2002, an IIS memo explained to Saddam that Iraqi embassies were stockpiling weapons, while many of the terrorists trained in Fedayeen camps were dispatched to London with counterfeit documents, where they circulated throughout Europe.
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POPSWhy Winning In Iraq Is So Critical It is in Europe, not in post-Iraq Kansas, where a Turkish prime minister announces to Muslim expatriate residents that they must remain forever Turks and assimilation is a crime; it is in post-Iraq Europe, not Los Angeles, where politicians and churchmen talk of the inevitability of Sharia law; and it is in post-Iraq Europe, not the United States, where honor killings and Islamic rioting are common occurrences. Why? A number of reasons, but despite all the misrepresentation and propaganda, the message has filtered through the Middle East that the United States will go after and punish jihadists — but also, alone of the Western nations, it will risk its own blood and treasure to work with Arab nations to find some alternative to the extremes of dictatorship and theocracy. Europe, in contrast to its utopian rhetoric, will trade with and profit from, but most surely never challenge, a Middle Eastern thug. ...Read the whole thing.
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POPSAl Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology: War Without Clausewitz The poison of the radical Islamic fantasy ideology is being spread all over the Muslim world through schools and through the media, through mosques and through the demagoguery of the Arab street. In fact, there is no better way to grasp the full horror of the poison than to listen as a Palestinian mother offers her four-year-old son up to be yet another victim of this ghastly fantasy. The fantasy ideologies of the twentieth century were plagues, killing millions and millions of innocent men, women, and children. The only difference was that the victims and targets of such fantasy ideologies so frequently refused to see them for what they were, interpreting them as something quite different, as normal politics, as reasonable aspirations, as merely variations on the well-known theme of realpolitik, behaving, tragically enough, no differently from Montezuma when he attempted to decipher the inexplicable enigma posed by the appearance of the Spanish conquistadors.
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POPS"Gadahn The American" Death Rumors Continue To Surface Speculation about Gadahn's death surfaced immediately after the airstrike, as Pakistani sources told US and Pakistani news agencies that Gadahn had not been seen or heard from since the strike. Gadahn was purportedly attending the meeting chaired by Laith, who was planning al Qaeda's 2008 campaign in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has been quick to lionize the death of its leaders, for propaganda and recruiting reasons. Laith's death was announced on a jihadi Internet forum within three days of the airstrike in North Waziristan.
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POPSMcCain To Obama: Al-Qaeda Is In Iraq TYLER, Texas Republican presidential hopeful John McCain mocked Barack Obama's view of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the Democratic contender responded that GOP policies brought the terrorist group there. The exchange Wednesday underscored that the two consider each other likely general election rivals, even though the Democratic contest remains unresolved. McCain said he had not watched Tuesday night's debate but was told of Obama's response when asked whether as president he would reserve the right to send U.S. troops back into Iraq to quell an insurrection or civil war. Obama didn't say whether he'd send troops but said: "As commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al-Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad."
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POPS Democrats Juggle Iraq, Economy (continued) there is also less pressure on them to back a withdrawal from Iraq, Republicans say. While Democrats say they plan to keep the pressure on the Bush administration to change course in Iraq, they are now emphasizing the economic impacts resulting from the war’s costs. Their base appears to be resigned to the fact that Congress won’t be able to force a change in military strategy this year and is instead planning a series of ads to make Republicans pay for their war support at the polls. The coalition, which calls itself the Iraq/Recession Campaign, is seeking to tie the downturn in the economy to the war costs, and plans also to target Republican senators up for reelection, including Susan Collins (Maine), John Sununu (N.H.), Norm Coleman (Minn.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). The coalition includes MoveOn.org, the Service Employees International Union and the Center for American Progress.
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POPSPurported Al Qaeda Video Shows Prisoners Burned Alive I swear by God almighty that we will have no mercy on them," he continues. "Allahuakbar, Allahuakbar." According to the summary — in Arabic and German — included in the nearly 15-minute video posted on Google, many of the clips were found in Diyala, Iraq. The makers of the film say that the originals were "passed to us by others." video on Turkish news site: WARNING:VERY DISTURBING IMAGES
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