Obituary backs 'removal of Bush'
Woman 'thought he was a liar'

"She'd always watch CNN, C-SPAN, and you know, she'd just swear at the TV and say 'Oh, Bush, he's such a whistle ass!' She'd just get so mad," Bettilyon said.

wouldn't it be wonderful if every activist brought a whistle to their protest?

no mr. bush, it's not "us versus them".... it's "you versus the us"

so today, 3 british soldiers are killed in basra. hmmm, first they were saddam loyalists. then "they" were ba'athist remnants. THEN "they" became terrorists. what's next? "they" becoming plain iraqi citizens? how long, how many more of our fine men & women in uniform must die and shed their limbs, before this administration admits: "THEY" do not want us in iraq?

i can think of a whole bunch of these "many Americans"
DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "Paying attention to the environment is different. It requires an attention span. It requires people to recognize they are only a blink on the planet's timeline. It requires people to care about what happens beyond the near future - something many Americans have difficulty doing."

Bush Revises Views On 'Combat' in Iraq (washingtonpost.com): "'We've got about 10,000 troops there, which is down from, obviously, major combat operations,' he said. 'And they're there to provide security and they're there to provide reconstruction help. But both those functions are being gradually replaced by other troops. Germany, for example, is now providing the troops for ISAF [International Security Assistance Force], which is the security force for Afghanistan, under NATO control. In other words, more and more coalition forces and friends are beginning to carry a lot of the burden in Afghanistan.'
In fact, the 10,000 troops in Afghanistan represent the highest number of U.S. soldiers in the country since the war there began. By the time the Taliban government had been vanquished in December 2001, U.S. troops numbered fewer than 3,000 in Afghanistan. And three months later, in March 2002, when the last major battle against remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda took place in eastern Afghanistan, about 5,000 U.S. troops were in the country. "

Davis to OK rights for same-sex couples / No position yet from top GOP recall rival: "Gov. Gray Davis pledged Saturday to sign a domestic-partners bill that would give thousands of same-sex couples many of the same rights as married couples -- including community property, child support and access to divorce court -- and would thrust California to the forefront of the national debate over gay rights.
The bill would put registered domestic partners in California on a par with members of civil unions in Vermont, the only other state with a comparable law, "

it's not the soldiers' bravery in killing the enemy i most admire, but their stamina in holding up in the hell this president sent them to.
DesMoinesRegister.com | OpinionBaghdad, Iraq - You'd think bullets, bombs and mortars would be enough for American soldiers to worry about in this troubled, dangerous nation.

Now comes word that a half-dozen American soldiers, including a 31-year-old Iowan, have died here in the past week because of Iraq's mind-baking 130-degree heat.

I've been in the region a month, and I'm still trying to deal with, even comprehend, life in what simply must be one of the hottest places on Earth.

Here's what it's like:

A can of Coke blew up in the tent I was sleeping in the other evening in Baghdad. Nothing unusual about that when it tops 130 degrees every day - in the shade - and there's not an air conditioner in sight.

You work up a sweat tying your shoes or brushing your teeth. Or doing nothing. You drip even at night, when it gets down to 95 or so, in what's called the cool of the evening.

Your first day in this hideous heat, you learn when to use - and, more importantly, not to use - the porta-potties. Morning or evening is the time to grab the roll of toilet paper and take the walk. Never, if one can persuade one's body to cooperate, make the trip between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Take a seat during the middle of the day, and you burn your bottom, literally, on the plastic seat.

Sorry to be crude, but life gets pretty basic when you're living in a tent up against a heat index of 150 degrees-plus.

Soldiers work through the day in it and, if they get an hour off in the afternoon, collapse on their scorching canvas cots and fall asleep.

They dream of ways for people back home to get an idea what it's like to spend a summer in Iraq.

They suggest turning the oven on low for an hour or so, to maybe 130 degrees. Then stick your head in there for eight or 10 hours. Or park your car outside in the sun when it's 90 degrees and roll up the windows. Wait a while, then go sit in there for eight hours with the heater turned on full blast. And throw sand in your face, to get the effect of the occasional sandstorm.

Or find the biggest, baddest, hottest blow dryer in the house, turn it on high, and hold it to your face all day. This last one came to me while I was riding in the back seat of a Humvee. No doors. Sixty-five miles an hour. One hundred thirty-five degrees.

It took a couple of nights to figure out a sleeping trick. You're lying on top of your sleeping bag and end up in a puddle of sweat. So you cool yourself by raising your body off the cot, then lying back down in the sweat. It works for a minute or so. Trust me.

My Mennen Speed Stick deodorant has turned the consistency of cake frosting. It's a dip-the-fingers-and-moosh application. Want peanut butter on a cracker? It pours like molasses.

I put a little bottled drinking water in a cup the other afternoon, sat it in the sun for a few minutes and made hot tea.

Your body craves water - you can't drink too much - and a gallon a day isn't nearly enough. But you get tired of water, so you mix up powdered Gatorade or Kool-Aid and enjoy a warm summer drink.

Sometimes you can find ice, but you have to be careful. If it's out of the Tigris or Euphrates you're looking at some very serious health problems, like dropping dead from the crud.

If somebody scores a bag of clean ice cubes - it actually happened one day last week - well, you'd think they were handing out hundred-dollar bills.

Soldiers walked into the tent one at a time with their little cups, each waiting for a turn at three or four cubes.

A 58-year-old master sergeant, savoring the moment, sat down with his cup and watched the ice melt. Then he sucked on a piece and spit it back in the cup and watched til it was gone. He said it reminded him of sitting on his deck at home.

I understood perfectly, and I've only been here a few weeks.

You can't let your bare skin touch anything metal during the day. For soldiers that would mean, oh, weapons, for instance, which they are required to carry everywhere they go. They tape up their helmet snaps to keep the metal from burning their faces.

Forget saving an orange from breakfast for a snack later. Unless you like baked orange. There's no place to keep it cool.

Last Sunday in Baghdad may have been the worst. The temperature was said to be well over 140 degrees.

I lucked out and was invited into an air-conditioned office downtown to relax for a few minutes that day. It was the first real air-conditioning I'd felt in more than two weeks, and it was glorious for about 10 minutes.

Then I had to get back outside, into the heat. I couldn't stand the cold. I was shivering. The thermometer said it was 78 degrees in the room. A young American soldier returned from a week of emergency leave in Illinois and talked about home, where the temperature was in the upper 80s.

"I had to wear a jacket," she said. "I froze. I couldn't get used to 80- or 90-degree weather there."

Others repeated similar stories.

Good Lord, I thought. My body is actually adjusting to this. My insides expect to be cooked every day.

Soldiers tell stories of dizziness and of passing out face-down into their baked beans in the dining hall.

Medics at one unit report treating a dozen cases of kidney stones a day. It's because of dehydration.

An MP told me nine soldiers in his unit provided escort duty for a convoy driving from central Iraq to Kuwait, about 400 miles. Every minute of it was in long sleeves, long pants, helmet and flak vest - probably 20 pounds of gear - mandatory for every soldier who travels through Iraq. Every one of the nine MPs had to receive intravenous fluids by the time they got to Kuwait.

On Saturday, the day before I thought the pavement would melt in Baghdad, an American soldier died because of the heat. Overall, Pfc. David Kirchoff of Anamosa and five other soldiers have died.

I've sweated through it a few weeks. Soldiers have dealt with the heat all summer and will until it lets up in the next month - meaning when it gets back to a more bearable 115 degrees.

They make jokes or try to ignore it.

Like the Army major I had dinner with the other night, who nodded as I moaned about a couple of blisters I got on my arm when I leaned on the hood of a Humvee.

"Right," he said, sweat dripping off his nose into his roast beef, potatoes and gravy.

"It's pretty bad. Could be worse, though. We could be in the jungle. Talk about hot."