Major Iraq assaults on hold until after US election

Attacks on Iraq’s rebel-held cities will be delayed, officials say. But that could make it harder to allow wider, and more legitimate, Iraqi voting in January.  

This lull by the US gives the insurgents time to rest, regroup, rearm, and plan new tactics. Thus, it guarantees pitched bloody battles with numerous US deaths once the elections are over. Not that Bush actually cares about US deaths and casualities, as this cynical manipulative move clearly shows.

And on the home front: Soldier sues to remain at home

A second California Guardsman challenges the military’s ’stop-loss’ program, which extends enlistments to meet needs in Iraq.

The California National Guard soldier, identified as “John Doe” in a lawsuit filed Oct. 1 in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, contends that the military’s controversial “stop-loss” program to involuntarily extend enlistments is illegal when applied to National Guard soldiers, about 40,000 of whom are deployed in the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Also, there are reliable reports that many soldiers are refusing to report for service to Iraq, and that their numbers are growing.

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From the BBC, no less

A bulge in the back of President George W Bush’s suit jacket during the first TV debate with John Kerry has triggered rumours that he was wired to get help.

The rebuttals from the Bush camp are so lame they merely add to the suspicion.

“People have been spending too much time dealing with Internet conspiracies. It’s ridiculous,” Bush campaign manager Scott Stanzel was quoted as saying.

Which, of course, is a classic non-denial denial.

Another campaign official said it was nothing more than a question of tailoring.

“It was most likely a rumpling of that portion of his suit jacket, or a wrinkle in the fabric”

President Bush’s tailor later said that the bulge was nothing more than a pucker along the jacket’s back seam.,

Nonsense. Look at the photo. That’s not a fabric crease. Nor is it along the fabric seam.

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From the always excellent SmartMobs

Following up on the Indymedia server story, the Indymedia collective is running an updated FAQ in response. They also released a press release a few days ago.

These are useful documents for this story. Additionally, this entire story is an example of collective action, as various people response to the FBI’s move. So far we can see comments threads as aggregations of popular reaction, along with the diffusion of the above documents. Indymedia is also describing its lack of information, which could be a plea for updates from the world:

Indymedia does not know whether Rackspace was ordered to provide information on the servers, or the hardware (servers or disks). Apparently the hardware was handed over. Indymedia does not know if Rackspace is under a gag order, or what legal restrictions were imposed requiring them to act this way, or whether their legal department had enough time to study the request.

What else is going on in this story?

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