PUBLIC MARKS with tags bush & middle-east

Ahmadinejad mind-map bullet points: - Holocaust denier - US/Israel “soon to be destroyed” - “one bomb” will destroy Israel - North Koreans assisting Iran’s nuclear program - Israel very quiet recently - Israel political will and military resources to attack Iran unilaterally? - 2nd U.S. carrier group en route Persian Gulf - U.S. defend Iraq’s Iran / Syrian borders in response? - 2009 term limit, Parliament shortened Ahmadinejad’s term? - ‘Hojjatieh’ ultra-conservative Shia believer of the 12th Imam/Mahdi - Ahmadinejad wants his administration to ‘pave way for 12th Imam’s return - His administration politically weaker; forcing his hand? - Inflation, unemployment, building opposition to his policies - Ahmadinejad even scares Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - Ayathollah’s recent overtures (”goodwill”) to U.S. via Saudi King - Sec. of State - Condi Rice - making trip to Riyadh next week

Most of the corpses in Baghdad's mortuary show signs of torture and execution. And the Interior Ministry is being blamed.

The Iraq that exists in President Bush’s imagination and the real Iraq, the one in which 160,000 U.S. troops occupy a nation sliding into civil war, have never seemed further apart.

Did Bush deliberately deceive the American people to justify the war in Iraq? I don't know...and neither do you. But here's what we do know: The president doesn't think we should be asking in the first place. And that might be the biggest scandal of all.

Saying "No" to King Herod

Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs: Interrogated General's Sleeping-Bag Death, CIA's Use of Secret Iraqi Squad Are Among Details

Jim Lobe: the man who has, in my opinion, done better reportorial work on the neoconservatives and the Bush administration than any other reporter around: TomDispach

Daniel Ellsberg: 'I wrote Bush's war words — in 1965'

In attacking liberals' reaction to Sept. 11, Bush's senior advisor once again resorts to McCarthy-style tactics.