 When U.S. leaders decided it was time to despise Saddam Hussein, he made the perfect villain. He was cocky and cunning. He looked dangerous and deranged standing at rallies firing a gun into the air, conduct unbecoming a head of government. He was Hitler Lite, or as the first President Bush put it, "Hitler revisited," lacking the endless armies, but close enough for U.S. purposes. He had a history of atrocities. His black mustache heightened the aura of menace. America's quarter-century entanglement with the Iraqi leader ended Friday at the gallows. His hanging closed the books on a man who dealt with and benefited from the United States, then defied it, then ran like a rabbit into a hole in the ground, reduced to his own army of one. ...
http://abcnews.go.com
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Editor - 14:52:00 12-30-06
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 President takes cover during tornado scare |
President Bush and first lady Laura Bush were moved to an armored vehicle on their ranch Friday when a tornado warning was issued in central Texas, the White House said.The vehicle was driven to a tornado shelter on the ranch at 1:30 p.m. CT, and the president, the first lady and their two Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley, sat inside until the weather cleared, deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel said. They were never moved into the shelter, he said. The shelter is a few hundred yards away from the president's house on the ranch."He was in the vehicle for about 10 minutes and then he went back to the house," Stanzel said, adding that other members of the staff at the ranch were sheltered as well.About an hour later in Groesbeck, roughly 60 miles east of Crawford, a man was killed when a tornado struck an assisted living facility for veterans, emergency management officials said....
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/12/29/bush.tornado.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us
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Editor - 11:26:00 12-30-06
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| Taliban commander: Execution will spur jihad Top official says Saddam Hussein’s hanging will increase opposition to U.S. |
A top commander of Afghanistan’s Taliban said on Saturday that the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would galvanize Muslim opposition to the United States. Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, a former Taliban defense minister and top insurgent commander, also said Saddam’s execution on the Eid al-Adha Muslim festival marking the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca was a provocation. “Saddam’s hanging on the day of Eid is a challenge to Muslims,” Obaidullah told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location. “His death will boost the morale of Muslims. The jihad in Iraq will be intensified and attacks on invader forces will increase,” he said. “Thousands of people will rise up with hatred for America.” The Taliban intensified their war against the Afghan government and the U.S., British and other Western troops supporting it this year. That brought the most intense violence since U.S.-led troops ousted the hard-line Islamists in 2001, and the Taliban have vowed to step up ...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12784359/
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Editor - 10:05:00 12-30-06
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| Saddam Defiant To The End |
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging after three years in U.S. custody before dawn Saturday in Iraq, which was just before 10 p.m. Friday EST. He was convicted of murder in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from an Iraqi town where assassins tried to kill Saddam in 1982. Saddam struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners. CBS News correspondent Randall Pinskton reports that he was shouting, 'long live Islam' and 'down with the West' and he showed no remorse. But as his final moments approached, he grew calm. He clutched a Quran as he was led to the gallows. In one final moment of defiance, he refused to have a hood pulled over his head before facing the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power. Although Saddam carried a Quran with him, senior Brookings Institution fellow Michael O'Hanlon told the The Saturday ...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/30/iraq/main2316465.shtml?source=RSSattr=World_2316465
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Editor - 09:40:00 12-30-06
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| Ethiopian tanks roll on Somali Islamist call to arms |
Ethiopian tanks rumbled south from Mogadishu to attack Somali Islamists on Saturday after the religious movement's leaders called on fighters and residents in the port city of Kismayu to cast off a foreign "occupation." Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, whose forces fled the Somali capital on Thursday, urged thousands of people gathered at a Kismayu stadium for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha to defend their nation and faith from Somali government troops backed by armor, soldiers and jet fighter planes from mostly Christian Ethiopia. "Our country is under occupation so we have decided to fight," he told the crowd as Islamist troops on trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns stood guard outside. Ahmed said his Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) remained ready to negotiate with the interim government, but that the Ethiopian soldiers backing it must leave. He said the Courts were set up to restore stability in a nation that has been mired in anarchy, torn to pieces and squabbled over ...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061230/ts_nm/somalia_conflict_dc
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Editor - 09:37:00 12-30-06
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| Snowstorm eases in Denver; tornado warnings in Texas |
Denver's second big snowstorm of the holidays eased in the area Friday afternoon but continued to buffet the Plains as it moved east.The storm had grounded scores of flights in the Colorado capital Friday during one of the busiest travel periods of the year and blanketed streets that never got plowed the last time.At Denver International, the nation's fifth-busiest airport, the major airlines canceled 15 percent to 20 percent of their flights Friday -- nearly 300 departures -- to ease congestion.But officials were optimistic they would avoid a rerun of the pre-Christmas blizzard that unloaded 2 feet of snow and shut down the vaunted "all-weather" airport for two days, stranding 4,700 passengers and snarling holiday travel around the country....
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/12/29/severe.weather.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us
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Editor - 09:32:00 12-30-06
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