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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Rat dog micro-cap picks... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bucky Katt who wrote (11561)	4/11/2003 12:58:52 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 48461

FROM THE MOUTHS OF "AUTHORITIES" : Columnist and television host Chris Matthews on Aug. 25, 2002, "This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe." Eric Alterman, writing in the Nation magazine just days before Iraqis began celebrating in the streets, "Is Wolfowitz really so ignorant of history as to believe the Iraqis welcome us as their 'hoped-for liberators'?" Former NBC correspondent Peter Arnett, "Clearly the American war planners misjudged the determination of Iraqi forces. And I personally do not understand how that happened, because I've been here many times and in my commentaries on television I would tell the Americans about the determination of the Iraqi forces. ... But me, and others who felt the same way, were not listened to by the Bush administration." Nelson Mandela, "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care for human beings. ... One power with a president who has no foresight and cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust." Columbia Professor of Anthropology Nicholas DeGenova, "The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," and added that he hoped to see "a million Mogadishus." Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., "I am saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war; saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country." On April 2, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, "The appropriate action right now to spare the lives or our men and women who serve, to spare the lives of innocent Iraqis, is for the U.N. to come in, the U.S. to step back ..." Robert Wright in the online magazine Slate, "As more civilians die and more Iraqis see their 'resistance' hailed across the Arab world as a watershed in the struggle against Western imperialism, the traditionally despised Saddam could gain appreciable support among his people. So the Pentagon's failure to send enough troops to take Baghdad fairly quickly could complicate the postwar occupation to say nothing of the war itself." Yes? I'd love to hear from you on thid.

To: Bucky Katt who wrote (11561)	4/11/2003 1:06:20 PM
From: backman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 48461

can't tell you how many times MSFT upgrades have been topping indicators over the last 6 months....but Wednesday's upgrade by SG Cowen's takes the prize this time...of course, those high RSI closes on AMZN and EBAY back on 3/21, with gaps and lite volume weren't bad as early indicators

To: Bucky Katt who wrote (11561)	4/11/2003 1:49:11 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 48461

CNN: The News We Kept to Ourselves By EASON JORDAN NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL April 11, 2003 ATLANTA — Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff. For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk. Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers. We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails). Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed. I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us. Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would "suffer the severest possible consequences." CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad. Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home. I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely. Eason Jordan is chief news executive at CNN.

To: Bucky Katt who wrote (11561)	4/11/2003 2:28:37 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 48461

76 percent of Americans believe the United States made the right decision when it went to war with Iraq to bring down the government of Saddam Hussein ............................................................... Fifty-one percent said it would be necessary to kill or capture Saddam Hussein in order to be able to declare victory. The Hate-America Firsters will always find a reason to complain. From anti-war to anti-occupation News24 ^ \| April 11, 2003 \| News24 Washington - Far from celebrating the presumed quick end to the war in Iraq, US peace activists say they are outraged at the prospect of a lengthy military occupation there and are gearing up for more protests. Massive rallies had been planned across the United States and in major cities around the world this weekend to call for an end to the US-led war. Now organisers say the rallying cry of those protests will be an end to the impending occupation of Iraq by coalition forces. "It's more urgent and more important than ever that there be a mobilisation," said Sara Flounders, co-director of the New York-based International Action Centre who is helping to organise the demonstration. She insisted that despite the fast-changing events in Iraq, this weekend's world-wide protest "is absolutely going forward - if anything with greater determination and greater clarity. "Only now the focus is, 'No' to colonial occupation," said Flounders. The weekend's protests are organised by the Answer coalition, a confederation of anti-war and social action groups that was a key organiser of many of the massive demonstrations held in the weeks before the start of the war. Flounders said protests are planned in San Francisco, Washington and several other US cities and in some 40 countries including Britain, Italy, Japan and Korea. The protesters, however, represent a minority view. According to a new opinion poll by the Pew Research Centre, 76 percent of Americans believe the United States made the right decision when it went to war with Iraq to bring down the government of Saddam Hussein and rid Baghdad of its suspected weapons of mass destruction. Fifty-one percent said it would be necessary to kill or capture Saddam Hussein in order to be able to declare victory. But peace activists remain undaunted. Some said they will continue to protest lest Iraq be just a first US conquest, to be followed by other states whose governments Washington disapproves of. Other organisers say they are pushing for the United Nations to take the lead in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq. Medea Benjamin of the San Francisco-based Global Exchange group said protests will lambaste US-led efforts "to privatise humanitarian aid instead of using more traditional channels like the Red Cross and NGOs, or non-governmental organisations. "We would like to see the UN take charge of the transition, which would strengthen the rule of law, not the rule of force," she said, adding that, "if the Iraqi people are to have a chance for...a better life, he US model "is not going to lead them there." Organisers in California plan a teach-in on Friday at Stanford University north of San Francisco, a rally and march in the city on Saturday, and a demonstration at oil giant Chevron's northern California base on Monday. On Sunday, several San Franciso area yoga studios will offer "Yoga for Peace" classes, with proceeds to benefit British aid group Oxfam. The Education for Peace in Iraq Centre (Epic) this week launched another online petition drives calling on their supporters to flood Congress with e-mail urging legislators to keep Iraq humanitarian and reconstruction money away from the US military. "The State Department, in partnership with the UN and our allies, is the appropriate authority for US funds related to post-war Iraq," Epic told supporters. Anti-occupation activists have attacked the man picked to head an interim government in Iraq, retired three-star US general Jay Garner, under fire for his links to the defence industry and strong support of Israel. Garner, 64, has directed several major Defence Department programs including the Patriot anti-missile system, and is a personal friend of US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. But peace activists said none of his credentials qualify him to set up a peaceful Iraqi interim government.