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WASHINGTON, July 19 (AP) A Pentagon official has told Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that questions she has raised about how the United States would withdraw from Iraq feed enemy propaganda. The stinging wording of the message, from Under Secretary of Defense Eric S. Edelman, was unusual, particularly because it was directed at a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Mr. Edelman’s July 16 message, in response to questions Mrs. Clinton raised in May, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. “Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,� he wrote, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the...

David Ward said his daughter told him that while the picture was meant to be private, her unit is happy their message is getting across. "When they saw and heard what Kerry said, they were just furious and they were sitting around and one thing led to another," he said. The elder Ward said he completely approves of his daughter's message. Kerry is a preening peacock and the best way to respond to him is with humor," he said. Ward said his daughter was particularly incensed by Kerry's comments because her résumé is nothing like the "stuck" soldier the senator...

What's the price of Iraqi lives? We have witnessed enough to know that the US military is behaving more like Barbarian hordes than a well-trained army. Eyewitnesses, who insisted that Marines went on a rampage killing innocent Iraqi civilians to avenge the loss of their friend, have been proved right.   By Linda S. Heard , Special to Gulf News  Does man's inhumanity to man know no bounds? Last November, an IED (improvised exploding device) planted at a roadside near the Western Iraqi town of Haditha took the life of a US Marine. An official report of his death...

Michele Naar-Obed knows she will not stop the war in Iraq by walking the streets of Baghdad, unarmed and unguarded, calling for an end to the violence, but she considers it her duty to try. She is 49 years old, a mother, a wife, a pacifist who can't stand to be passive. Soldiers put their lives on the line for their country; she will risk hers too, in pursuit of peace. Four of her colleagues in the pacifist movement were kidnapped in Baghdad late last month. The men — fellow members of Christian Peacemaker Teams — have been threatened with...

CINDY Sheehan, the campaigning American mother who lost her soldier son in Iraq, is to visit the UK before the end of the year.

Controversy and intrigue have swirled around Venezuela's Hugo Chavez ever since he was elected president seven years ago and established himself as a leftist force. Chavez's rising influence in Latin American politics, his country's role as a major supplier of crude oil for U.S. refiners and his close ties to Cuba's Fidel Castro have alarmed policymakers in the Bush administration. Last month, on his television show, the Rev. Pat Robertson actually went so far as to suggest the United States should assassinate the 51-year-old Chavez. (Robertson later apologized.)While Chavez was in New York last week for the gathering of world...

Are you a hater? Do you consider yourself to be superior based on your race, religion, sexual orientation? Are you a self-righteous blowhard? If you are reading this, then you most likely are one. What makes you so superior? Because of your religion? What about all the Islams who are acting just as self-righteous and oppressive and "RIGHT" as you?? Moslems and Homosexuals aren't the scourge of the world. Intolerance, judgmentalism, and vice-pointing (i.e. You're going to hell because you do this or that, or don't believe exactly what I believe). You've got it all wrong as far as I'm...

Transcript for Part I: Question from audience: You mentioned a little bit ago, ‘Why did it take a bunch of Arabs to do what you all should have done a long time ago,’ that’s my question. And as a white man standing here in your midst from a fairly liberal/conservative/middle of the road background—and I tell people I’m so far left I’m coming up on the rigt—and I’d like you to respond to, why shouldn’t we do something and how could we move so they don’t see us coming? Churchill: I’m gonna repeat that, tell me if I got that...

New York judge orders former Bosnian U.N. ambassador extradited

Egyptian government spokesman Magdy Rady linked the terror attacks against resorts packed with Israelis in Sinai to the Israeli military operation against the Palestinians in the neighboring Gaza Strip, where 84 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli offensive that began on September 29 to stop terrorists from firing Kassam rockets into Israel. "I think the explosions are very related to what is going on in Gaza," Rady told AP. It is very unlikely they happened by chance." Rady added that Egypt "condemns these attacks, which have harmed many people." Egyptians also were in the midst of a long holiday...

The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) confirmed in a television interview that his group employs Hamas members in Gaza. "I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime," UNRWA head Peter Hansen told Canada's CBC television Sunday. Hamas has been declared a terror organization by the US and Canada, as well as the European Union. "Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against...

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian cleric based in Qatar and often described as a moderate has ruled that it is a religious duty for Muslims to fight Americans in Iraq, including U.S. civilians, his office director said Thursday. But Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi said that two French journalists kidnapped in Iraq should be freed immediately. Qaradawi gave his opinion at a meeting Tuesday evening at the Egyptian journalists' syndicate in Cairo. "All of them (U.S. military personnel and civilians) are invaders who came from their country to invade our country and fighting them is a duty," said his office director Essam...

<p>Welcome, Republicans. You're proud Americans who love your country. In your own way, you want to make this country a better place. Whatever our differences, you should be commended for that.</p> <p>But what's all this talk about New York being enemy territory? Nothing could be further from the truth. We New Yorkers love Republicans. We have a Republican mayor and governor, a death penalty and two nuclear plants within 30 miles of the city.</p>

Reacting to last month's repeated news items regarding theoretical Israeli-Syrian negotiations, London's Al-Quds Al-Arabi (January 16) declared that terrorism ("Palestinian armed resistance") is the Arabs' best tool for effective and productive peace negotiations. This echoed the Omani Al-Watan newspaper of the same day, which reacted to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's remarks to the effect that the peace process would not continue unless Israel received assurances against terrorist operations. "For a start, the resistance against foreign occupation is not terrorism except in the eyes of imperialist countries and others that strive to oppress other people," the Gulf newspaper declared. In...