IRAQ - Death of a Dictator - The Rise and Fall of Saddam Hussein

Published: Monday | January 1, 2007

AT THE START OF GULF WAR - January 1991: When the deaths and dead mount for them, the infidels will leave and the flag of Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest) will fly over the mother of all battles.

DURING GULF WAR - February 1991: We will chase Americans to every corner at all times. No high tower of steel will protect them against the fire of truth.

ON THE 9/11 ATTACKS - September 2001: The United States is reaping the thorns its rulers have sown in the world.

ON U.S. THREATS OF WAR: August 9, 2002: The forces of evil will carry their coffins on their backs, die in disgraceful failure, taking their schemes back with them, or digging their own graves.

ON IMMINENT U.S. ATTACK - January 17, 2003: They will commit suicide on the walls of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities ... The entire nation will rise up in defence of its right to life, of its role and of anything it holds sacred.

ON NOT LOSING SLEEP ABOUT WAR - January 20, 2003: Put your minds at ease that I rarely find it difficult to sleep ... I fall asleep as soon as I put my head on the pillow. I don't need sleeping pills, unlike some officials we hear about, and I don't get insomnia like some people do.

ON FIRST DAY OF U.S.-LED INVASION - March 20, 2003: The criminal little Bush has committed a crime against humanity.

SADDAM ON THE RUN - July 2003: Addressing the Iraqi people in an audiotape: I urge you to protect the heroic resistance fighters and not to give the infidel invaders or their aides any information or help ... Now that all has been revealed, I would like you, Iraqis, to ask the invaders: Where are the weapons that you claimed Iraq was hiding and which you used as a pretext to wage war and aggression on our country?

ON HIS CAPTURE - December 2003: My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq, and I want to negotiate.

DURING HIS TRIAL - December 2005: Even if they put me in hellfire, God forgive me, let them put me in fire with the firewood that wanted to burn Abraham and I would say, 'Fine, for the sake of Iraq.' And I will not cry, for my heart is full of belief.

DUJAIL TRIAL - March 2006: During his trial for the killing of 148 Shi'ites from Dujail and the razing of their farmland and mass deportations, Saddam said he acted after an attempt on his life as he drove through the town during a visit in July 1982: So where is the crime?

AHEAD OF EXECUTION - December 2006:

Here I offer myself in sacrifice. If my soul goes down this path (of martyrdom) it will face God in serenity.

Whitney Houston Has A New Fan - Osama Bin Laden

Published: Tuesday | August 22, 2006

Kola Boof, Osama bin Laden's former sex slave, claims in her new book that he was obsessed with the troubled 'How Will I Know' singer.

She revealed to Harpers Bazaar magazine: "He told me Whitney was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

"He said that he had a paramount desire for her and although he claimed music was evil, he spoke of someday spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting."

Kola, who until recently wrote for US soap opera The Days of Our Lives, also says Osama wanted to shower her with gifts and convert her to Islam.

The 37-year-old explained: "He said he wanted to give her a mansion he owned in a suburb of Khartoum.

Brainwashed

"He would say how beautiful she is, what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is, but is just brainwashed by American culture and by her husband - Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have women's husbands killed."

Kola added: "He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his colour rule and make her one of his wives."

A 27,000-year-old human skeleton found in western France

AP Sunday, June 04, 2006

AN ancient cave discovered in December in western France contains a rare find: a 27,000-year-old human skeleton in a painted room and a drawing of a human face, experts announced Friday after months of study.

It was only the second time that a human body from the upper Paleolithic period had been found placed in a cave with decorations, the Culture Ministry said.

An image released by the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs shows a drawing of a human face, experts announced Friday after months of study of an ancient cave discovered in December in western France. A single painted face found in the cave could be among the oldest graphic representations of a human face, said Jean-Yves Baratin, archaeology curator for the Poitou-Charentes region.

The state took over ownership of the cave in the Vilhonneur forest on May 12, a ministry statement said.

A crude representation of a human face found in the cave could be among the oldest ever discovered, said Jean-Yves Baratin, archaeology curator for the Poitou-Charentes region.

The face is "represented in the most elementary way, using an anomaly of the wall," Baratin said.

Two pieces of calcite that split are used to form the hair with two black horizontal strokes depicting the eyes. A vertical stroke forms the nose and another horizontal stroke the mouth.

Cavers exploring part of a grotto once used to dispose of animal carcasses discovered the cave in December. It dates to the upper Paleolithic period roughly 25,000 years ago, like the skeleton.

Its discovery was announced in February but it was not until Friday that precise information about some of the finds was divulged.

Baratin underscored the significance of the human skeleton, a young male, placed on the ground inside a decorated room. The only other instance in which a body was known to have been found in a decorated room of a cave is in the hamlet of Cussac, a grotto that experts have said was as important for engravings as paintings are for the famed Lascaux caves.

The archaeologist said two rib bones were analysed at a Miami, Florida, laboratory, dating the skeleton at 27,000 years.

The Vilhonneur cave features a series of decorations, including a negative imprint of a right hand, surrounded in black, on a wall, made by blowing colour onto the area once the hand has been placed there, experts said.

Five skeletons of young hyenas were found in another room. The famed Lascaux Cave in Montignac, in the southwest Dordogne region, has long been considered one of the finest examples of cave paintings. However, that art dates to 13,000 years, making the Vilhonneur art much older.

Another cave, Chauvet, discovered in the mid-1990s in southeast France, features some 300 examples of Paleolithic animal art, some dating back 31,000 years. Experts plan to secure the Vilhonneur cave and carry out research likely to last several years.