PUBLIC MARKS with tag iraq

You can keep spinning just so long before you fall flat on your face. The administration's insistence that things are on track and all it must do is stay the course is beginning to grate. US efforts to reshape the world through a policy of pre-emption have been buttressed by an attempt to remould reality through the power of assertion. Since Vice-President Dick Cheney claimed that the insurgency was "in its last throes" 77 American soldiers and about 600 Iraqi civilians have died. His tortured explanation, late last week, that "if you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a violent period", adds insult to injury.

WHAT Americans needed to hear from President Bush were more clearly defined goals and an exit strategy for what increasingly appears to be a quagmire in Iraq. What they received last night was a pep talk and more ambiguity.

Key parts of his speech, however, were driven by spin, rather than a frank effort to warn the American people of the sacrifices necessary to win and the risks involved. The end result was to mislead in ways that could come back to haunt the administration and reduce longer-term public support.

Very slowly, and after an embarrassing gap of silence from the news media, the American people have come to hear about the Downing Street Minutes. This document, once confidential but leaked by a British version of Deep Throat, describes in plain language the manner in which the Bush and Blair administrations planned to manipulate their way into an invasion of Iraq. The Minutes describe how intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of invasion, and that a pretense for war had to be manufactured in order to paint a veneer of legitimacy over what everyone involved knew was a patently illegal military action.

Shows Bush fabricated reasons to invade Iraq.

But now the US politician who led the campaign to change the name of french fries to "freedom fries" has turned against the war. Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no justification".

Le Sun tente de battre le record du pire torchon ? Saddam Hussein en prison et en slip en couverture, on pourra difficilement faire pire.

Did you know that Saudi Arabia treats its women one barely noticeable notch above that of the brutal Taliban? Saudi women cannot vote. They are not allowed to drive. They cannot be admitted to a hospital or examined by a doctor or travel abroad or leave the house without the express permission and/or company of an immediate male family member, and of course they must, at all times, be covered from head to toe in black sackcloth and if they dare venture outside or break the fashion code in any way they could very well be arrested and jailed indefinitely and beaten and even killed, no questions asked. Political prisoners in Saudi Arabia are regularly tortured.

Norman Coleman -- not quite a genius, from the Guardian. VIdeo-Real Audio Audio-Mp3 Video-WMP

British MP George Galloway has told US senators who accused him of profiting from Iraq oil dealings their claims were the "mother of all smokescreens".

Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent.

Who Forged the Niger Documents?

Iraq, politics

The plan for Iraq.

The Baghdad Blogger's view of the US presidential elections

The text of the Tenent's speech