I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
frist..............
buck fush!
It was announced in the Daily News about a month ago. I suspect that they were too expensive given that the Rittenhouse, an actual luxury hotel, was right across the park.
Liddy Dole is a wet spot on the sheets of the senate.
OT:
Did you know: Saddam offered to surrender before the war?
Guardian United: Saddam's desperate offers to stave off war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/
S...1079769,00.html
New York Times: Iraq Said to Have Tried to Reach Last-Minute Deal to Avert War
http://www.commondreams.org/head...s03/1106-
02.htm
Commentary by George Monbiot
Dreamers and idiots : Britain and the US did everything to avoid a peaceful solution in Iraq and Afghanistan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
commen...1082250,00.html
dKos diary here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/20...4/8/231839/
2192
My wife works at the Sheraton in Towson, MD. She said that they went up to Philly last Tuesday and got alot of kitchen equipment, chairs and other stuff to use at the hotel in Towson.
Let me try this again:
Good morning everybody. Beautiful day here in the NW. Unfortunately, crazy people are still running the country.
Iraqi Shiites in mass Baghdad protest
8 minutes ago World - AFP
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr demanded US troops leave Iraq and called on God to cut off their necks in a fiery speech to tens of thousands in Baghdad on the two-year anniversary of the city's fall to the Americans.
AFP Photo
"Oh God, cut off their necks, the way they are cutting off our necks and terrorising us. Know that in our unity today, you have proven to the entire world that you are against the occupation and all dictatorships one after the other," Sadr said Saturday in a speech delivered by one of his aides.
Heeding the firebrand cleric's call, protestors had converged from all corners of Iraq on central Baghdad's Firdos Square where US troops helped haul down a statue of Saddam two years ago.
With the crowds spilling out from the square that symbolised the all too brief euphoria over Saddam's downfall in the spring of 2003, Sadr railed against US forces in what was perhaps the largest Iraqi demonstration since the invasion.
Police cars blocked off main roads in central Baghdad and two major bridges across the Tigris River that cuts the capital in half as thousands marched through the street, chanting: "No, no USA, no, no America, no, no to the occupation."
Men paraded with cardboard cut outs of Saddam, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair with bloodied fangs and the writing 'international terrorist'.
"In our unity, you have cut off the tongues of all the people who are saying if the occupation left there would be civil war," Sadr said in his speech, delivered to the crowd by his representative Sheikh Nasir al-Saaidi.
"There will be no peace and no security until the occupation leaves."
It was an implicit jab at Iraq's designated prime minister Shiite Islamist Ibrahim Jaafari and vice president Sunni Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar who have warned if US troops leave the country now there would be rampant bloodshed.
Sadr verbally skewered America's president to the segregated crowd of men and women, waving Iraqi flags and red and green banners of Islam.
"Bush, you said the world is safer now. Bush I tell you maybe America is safer but the rest of the world is more dangerous. Why are you dismantling the weapons of our resistance and you permit Israel to have nuclear arms.
"Why are you waging war against Islam, and at the same time supporting the Jews. We don't want your security. We don't want anything good or bad from you, we want you to leave us alone."
Sadr followers vowed the rally was the first of many to pressure the new Iraqi government to demand that US troops withdraw, but they stressed Sadr was not calling for a resumption of armed struggle against the US military.
"We've organised ourselves now to continue these demonstrations until we force the government and national assembly to take our demands seriously and carry them out," Moayad al-Khazrajy, a senior aide to Sadr, told AFP.
"We've received strict orders from Sayed Moqtada not to carry weapons and even if we're fired at by occupation forces not to respond. For the time being, our position is peaceful."
Khazraji read Sadr's demands to the crowd which included a quick trial for Saddam; the Iraqi government make Thursday the second day off in the week not Saturday, due its association with the Jewish Sabbath; the Iraqi government strengthen border security; and the government respect the resistance and bring it into the political process.
Many of the protestors were dressed in black, the uniform of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, and some were fighters hailing from Najaf, Nassiriyah and Basra, as thousands were bussed up from the south for the rally.
For the past two weeks, Sadr has called for his legions to descend on Firdos Square.
Dressed in the colours of the Mehdi Army, Ali Hussein from Sadr City, 30, said: "We don't believe their promises about reconstruction. We do not believe they came here to help Iraq; they came here for their own benefit. We denounce the occupation; we ask them to leave our country."
With a few exceptions, the protest was mostly a Sadr affair despite a call from Sunni clerics from the Committee of Muslim Scholars, which organized a boycott of historic January elections, to followers to join the protest.
"All of Iraq is united against the occupation," said Adnan Hamoud, 45, from the restive Sunni city of Samarra north of Baghdad.
Some Christians paraded around the square with banners reading: "We support Sayed Moqtada's call for national unity."
About a hundred university students also demonstrated against US troops in Ramadi, west of the capital.
Sadr rocketed to prominence in the power vacuum after the fall of Saddam two years ago. He quickly founded his thousands-strong Mehdi Army militia and delivered vitriolic sermons demanding US forces leave Iraq.
A year ago, he tapped discontent among the urban poor and led a mass uprising across central and southern Iraq against US forces that saw his men take over the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala.
grytpype - yes! I remember this clearly. Was it that buried in the noise machine at the time. Am I the only one?
I think Will Bunch @ attytood blogged about the Sheraton's demise a few weeks back.
Iraqi Shiites in mass Baghdad protest
8 minutes ago World - AFP
The headline for this story at the StarTribune is:
Yankee go home, thousands chant in Baghdad
I don't know how long the headline will last, saved it for posterity... click homepage for a link to the image.
If Tracy Davidson doesn't say "check it out," then it's not newsworthy.
A friend of mine stayed there once and thought it was neither cheap nor very nice. It used to be residential and frankly, Eligere thinks that's probably its best use.
mena, check out my diary (link above), it's coming as news to a lot of people.
Given the 100% collapse of the WMD case, I think this would be a good time to widely publicize the fact that Bush and Cheney turned down many offers for peace in the months proceeding the invasion.
One of the early offers was to admit thousands of US troops to search for WMD, and internationally-monitored elections in two years. Later offers were even sweeter.
The only good things to come out of the war have been 1) confirmation of no WMD, and 2) elections in two years.
We could have had those things for free -- no deaths, injuries, billions -- if Bush had flat-out accepted the peace offer Saddam was making.
Widely publicizing that fact might put Bush and Cheney in such a position that they have to explain why they chose war when Saddam actively sought peace and offered them virtually everything they could want. And I think that would devestate their support.
Speaking of Philadelphia, how about those Phillies?!
Christ on a pogo stick...
Oh, I'm happy for condo conversion. the more housing the better. Was just trying to find out more about it.
They've been downsizing for a while in preparation for this. It was covered in the chess press, since the U.S. Open was scheduled there, but they stopped taking reservations early since they "wouldn't have the staff" or somesuch.
The only good things to come out of the war have been
==
What? You say yourself we would have had the things you mention anyway.
NOTHING good has come from this crime, nothing good was intended.
I'm not trying to pick a fight with you, and I hope you're right about publicizing this info now. But even if you are, I'm afraid it's cold comfort. It means that many, many thousands of people had to die horribly so that America could recognize a lie. A really stupid, transparent lie.
Maybe it's not too late to go back to bed.
Is the same hotel that's next to that drive-in theater that shows the porno films? This was several years ago that I stayed there but I thought it was quite a unique arrangement. Guys who had rooms on the other side would congregate at the stairwells with a beer to catch the visuals.
What? You say yourself we would have had the things you mention anyway.
Yes, I agree with you but I may have expressed myself poorly originally.
What I meant to say was, viewed in the most favorable possible light, two arguably good things happened as a result of the war. But we didn't need the war to get those things, Saddam was offering them to us and Bush turned him down in favor of an all-out invasion.
And I think Bush needs to be forced to explain why he made that choice, that's why I'm trying to get the blogosphere buzzing about the surrender offers.
The first breakthrough I'm looking for is when the wingbloggers deny the offers ever happened.
Yeah! And the Top Dog in the UCity Sheraton's been gone forever. Now where is anyone supposed to listen to crappy music and try to watch a game on TV while surrounded by people with big hair? This town's going to shit.
Sheraton announced it at the beginning of the year. I don't think the hotel fit much of the normal hotel molds -- not really a business hotel, not really a tourist hotel. Lots better options in the immediate vicinity.
It's ashame though, in that the Sheraton was an "environmental hotel" with various energy saving and clean air initiatives.
I understand what you're saying grytpype. You're talking about managing perception, like a good, thoughtful realist, and you're not wrong. I'm talking about the fact that this was all staring people in the face, at the time, that the choices were painfully obvious and morally stark, at the time, that all the strings were showing, at the time, for anyone to see who wanted to look, and people, like water, chose their own level. Something deeper going on here than what either of us is talking about, I suspect. But there's no way to look at it that isn't depressing.
I stayed at that Sheraton a few years ago. An odd place, cobbled together from several buildings. The rooms are quite large but with a lot of wasted space and strautural pillars in inconveninet places. The service was good, though. The space will probably work better as housing if they get a decent architect.
scott robinson, izzat you?
Saw ya plundering down Spruce St. yesterday afternoon. wanker.
You stunk that neighborhood up when you moved in. Liar. Hypocrite.
wow. I lived in that building 12 years ago when it was all rental. I loved living on Rittenhouse Square. Everyone thought I was nuts to move to Philly in the first place and even more so to live in Center city.
Couldn't be the conservative media....could it?
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I suspect that they were too expensive given that the Rittenhouse, an actual luxury hotel, was right across the park.
actually, they weren't too terrible, and also, I think, they were an explicitly green hotel. (I don't *think* I'm mixing them up -- I think I put people here for my wedding.) so that would be a sad loss, but perhaps, with the market and tax abatements being what they are, the owners just couldn't refuse the condo builder offer....
Wow, lots of Philly folks jumping on this post!
I was there just a few weeks ago! There was a conference there that at the last minute go changed to the DoubleTree down the street.
It's not suprising- it was dour, dated, and dead. No one else was there. And it claimed to be an 'eco-hotel.' Which meant, as far as I could tell, that there wasn't much smoking going there. Well, nothing was going on there.
Too bad. They had broadband at least.
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