From the Evening Standard : US secretary of state Colin Powell is the main candidate to be the next American ambassador to London, the Evening Standard has learned. Mr Powell is widely expected to step down from his current post after the presidential elections in November. It is understood President Bush, if re-elected, may use the offer of the ambassadorship, one of the most sought-after diplomatic postings, to ease the departure of Mr Powell, 67. Kind of a demotion, isn't it?

From 365Gay.com (headline from Morons.org , sort of): During the program, a rambling sermon by Swaggart who is trying to rehabilitate himself after an arrest for soliciting a prostitute, the televangelist turned to the subject of gay marriage. According to a transcript of the program, Swaggart said: "I'm trying to find the correct name for it ... this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. ... I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be...

From the Associated Press : Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee said Monday he plans to support his party in November but may write in a candidate instead of voting for President Bush. Chafee has opposed the administration's push to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and has criticized Bush's handling of the postwar reconstruction of Iraq ... He said he's "not OK" with the conservative platform from the Republican convention. Republicans deserve a better leader than Bush.

From Yahoo News : NEW YORK - Staking out new ground on Iraq, Sen. John Kerry suggested Monday that he would not have overthrown Saddam Hussein had he known what he knows now, and accused President Bush of "stubborn incompetence," dishonesty and colossal failures of judgment. Bush said Kerry was flip-flopping. Daring or disastrous? I have no idea. What do you think, JoeUsers?

From http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6271844 : LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's foreign secretary and senior officials warned Prime Minister Tony Blair a year before invading Iraq that chaos could follow the toppling of Saddam Hussein, a newspaper said Saturday. The Daily Telegraph said that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sent a letter marked "secret and personal" to Blair in March 2002 warning that no one had prepared for what might happen afterwards. Lately, I ...

From the Seattle Times : WASHINGTON — It was the first public allegation that CBS News used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's National Guard service — a highly technical explanation posted within hours of airtime citing proportional spacing and font styles. But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought. Instead, it was the work of Harry MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes and ...

Lately, I've been posting links instead of writing articles. While I think that's probably a lot more useful for you folks out there, I do miss putting sentences together. Also, I want to draw some themes out of what I'm posting. Today I posted three articles: Most Senior Officers Say Iraq 'Graver than Vietnam , Protesting Mother Arrested, Crowd Callous About Her Dead Son , and Soldiers Threatened with Iraq Duty to Coerce Re-enlistment . So what themes are there? Well, I guess the...

From the Associated Press : COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) - Soldiers from a combat unit at Fort Carson say they have been told to re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq, the Rocky Mountain News reported Thursday. Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last week, two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity told the newspaper. "They sa...

From the Associated Press : A woman wearing a T-shirt with the words "President Bush You Killed My Son" and a picture of a soldier killed in Iraq was detained Thursday after she interrupted a campaign speech by first lady Laura Bush. As shouts of "Four More Years" subsided, Niederer, standing in the middle of a crowd of some 700, continued to shout about the killing of her son. Local police escorted her from the event, handcuffed her and put her in the back of a police van. I think what I...

This is from the Guardian : Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale. 'Bring them on!" President Bush challenged the early Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then, 812 American soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Almost every day, in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with bravado about how he is "winning" in Iraq. "Our strategy is succeeding," he boasted to the National Guar...

From the New York Times : A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday. The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms. ...

From the Center for American Progress : The question lingers: Could the $144.4 billion spent on Iraq been better used to protect the American people from terrorist threats? The Center for American Progress offers this answer. * $7.5 billion to safeguard our ports. The Coast Guard estimates that $7.5 billion is needed over 10 years to implement the requirements of the 2002 Maritime Transportation Security Act, which aims to protect America's ports and waterways from a terrorist atta...

From the BBC News Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican described the rebuilding effort in Iraq so far as "beyond pitiful". "It's beyond embarrassing, it's now in the zone of dangerous," he said. Bush is dangerously incompetent.

From the Barna Update : Multiple divorces are also unexpectedly common among born again Christians. Barna’s figures show that nearly one-quarter of the married born agains (23%) get divorced two or more times ... Bible scholars and teachers point out that Jesus taught that divorce was a sin unless adultery was involved So why isn't anyone pushing a Constitutional Amendment against divorce?

From the Guardian : It was the deadliest single incident in the Iraqi capital for six months, but there was nothing unique about the explosion; it took place a few hundred metres from Haifa Street, a well-known centre of resistance to the American occupation and the scene of heavy fighting on Sunday. It was embarrassingly close to the green zone and the US embassy. But it reveals a grim truth about the nature of Iraq's evolving insurgency: Iraqis are killing Iraqis. In recent months, a...