Ch Soyara’s Chantilly Lace JC
Breed: Borzoi
Sex: Bitch
AKC: HM 76323403
Date of Birth: December 19, 1997
Breeder: Prudence G Hlatky & Sabrina Rhodes
Sire: Ch Rossak Of Enfield
Dam: Ch Soyara Misleading Lady Essar
Owner: Prudence G Hlatky & Dr Gregory G Hlatky

Congrats to to the Hlatkys.

(2004-02-11) -- Wesley Clark will reportedly announce Wednesday he’s abandoning his White House bid. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, a vocal supporter of the Clark candidacy, immediately issued a statement calling the former Army general "a deserter." However, Democrat National Committee (DNC) chairman Terry McAuliffe said that Mr. Clark would be honorably discharged from his commitment to seek the nomination. Mr. Clark’s campaign released the following statement:

"General Clark has always said that if you begin a campaign under false pretenses, with little understanding of the consequences of your actions and then spend millions of dollars of other people’s money only to wind up in a quagmire, you need to cut and run. He’s a man of integrity, and it’s time to retreat."

Rumsfeld: I suppose we may never know why Saddam Hussein made the choices he made, but we do know this. He chose war. If he had chosen differently, if the Iraqi regime had taken the steps Libya is now taking, there would have been no war.

Q: How should Americans -- as this debate about military service broadly emerges, how should Americans look back at military service in combat in Vietnam and military service in the National Guard?
Myers: And I can only do it from a narrow perspective of an Air Force pilot. And when I graduated from pilot training, there were several choices, and one was to go fly for, I think, what we called in those days Air Defense Command. I believe it was still called ADC in those days. And there were other options. And I took an option that -- took an airplane and went to Europe. And other people took the Air Defense Command option. What’s interesting is the National Guard -- a large part of their mission then and today is the air defense of this country, which I think is a noble mission. So I mean, people just kind of went with the airplane type and the mission type they thought they’d like. And I think that was the extent of the thought of it.

Rumsfeld: At my confirmation hearing, I was asked what kept me up at night in this job, what would keep me up, and I answered, "Intelligence." This is three years ago, in early January, right after the Congress came back. Why did I say that? I said it because I’ve been around long enough to know that in a big, complicated world with closed societies, people determined not to have you know something, and with the growing lethality of weapons and the increasing availability of those increasingly lethal weapons, your margin for error is less. We’re living in a time of surprise. Where it is possible to be surprised. And we were surprised on September 11th, and 3,000 people lost their lives.

It is -- you -- the question was to the effect was I -- am I satisfied or I’m -- do I feel good about it or something like that? No, I haven’t felt good about what I know most of my life. I always want to know more, and you always are hoping and praying that the -- that you’re going to be able to do that enormously difficult task of connecting those dots before something happens. Look at how -- look at the trouble these commissions and committees are having trying to connect the dots after the fact! Think how much harder it is before the fact, when you don’t have the leisure of doing it over a period of months, when you simply have to do it and establish priorities and weigh things continuously, not one thing, but a dozen things like that.

"[O]ne thing NATO might do," Rumsfeld said, "would be to do a better job of seeing that the intelligence capabilities of the respective countries are brought together and that the people in NATO and the capitals of NATO countries are kept tuned into those threats and the kinds of capabilities that we as free people face. We’re much more likely to get a faster common understanding to the extent we have a reasonably similar perspective with respect to what the facts are."

"is something that we all, collectively, individually, are going to have to think through. ... What we’ve seen in the press is a ... private network in some instances ... moving around weapons of mass destruction and the abilities to produce them. If that’s happening ... one has to say, we know there’s an appetite on the part of terrorists to kill people. They’re training. People are being trained in schools to do that. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that at some point these private networks and these terrorist networks are going to connect, and at that moment people are going to have to face up to the realities of the 21st century."

"The United States needs to ... continue to work on it, Europe needs to ... continue ... working on it, but in the last analysis, a lasting solution in that part of the world is going to come because people are exasperated, exhausted and tired of seeing their opportunities for prosperity go down the drain and tired of listening to people shoot off their mouths and ... weapons and fire bullets and no one deliver a ... thing for the people."

Q: [Palestinian general]: Mr. Secretary, You talked about countries that were trying to produce weapons of mass destruction. You talked about Iraq and you talked about Iran and North Korea. I have a question, a direct question to you. What are you doing with Israel? As far as Israel is concerned, Israel has more atomic weapons in the region than any other country. Why do you remain silent in regard to Israel? I think it’s important to answer this question because this has to do with the world, the strategy that we are pursuing today. I think that if the position towards Israel were different then the situation would be different in the Near East, and this is a great problem.
And Rummy hands him his head:
Rumsfeld: You know the answer before I give it, I’m sure. The world knows the answer. We take the world like you find it; and Israel is a small state with a small population. It’s a democracy and it exists in a neighborhood that in many -- over a period of time has opined from time to time that they’d prefer it not be there and they’d like it to be put in the sea. And Israel has opined that it would prefer not to get put in the sea, and as a result, over a period of decades, it has arranged itself so it hasn’t been put in the sea. Thank you very much.

• Ambassador Bremer today began meeting with members of the Iraqi Governing Council to make available to them the full copy of the Zarqawi al Qaeda memo. It is a 17-page memo, in Arabic, and he is beginning the process of allowing Governing Council members to read it closely.
  
• Yesterday afternoon two U.S. soldiers were killed and five wounded near Sinjar when confiscated enemy ammunition was being moved to a demolition point. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded, killing one soldier instantly and wounding five others. A second soldier died en route to the 61st Combat Support Hospital. Three soldiers are in stable condition at the 61st, and two other soldiers have been returned to duty.
  
• Yesterday Navy divers recovered the remains of an Iraqi policeman lost on 25 January while patrolling the Tigris River with U.S. soldiers. The remains have been positively identified and returned to Iraqi authorities, and the search continues for the lost U.S. soldiers.
  
• A coalition patrol observed 10 men armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers north of Mukadiyah (ph) on the evening of February 9th, apparently establishing an ambush position. In the ensuing firefight, coalition soldiers killed 10 enemy and recovered five AK-47 assault rifles, four rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 2 RPK machine guns, two hand grenades, and a pair of night-vision goggles. The remains of those killed have been turned over to Iraqi officials.
  
• Additionally, 2,040 persons in 66 buses crossed back into Iraq at the Arar crossing site as they returned from the Hajj. To date, 5,357 persons have returned from Saudi Arabia through this region.
  
• Yesterday morning, 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers conducted a cordon and search in Ul Walium (ph) to kill or capture anti-coalition forces. The operation resulted in the capture of six enemy personnel, including three of the primary targets. Also confiscated were small arms weapons, five doorbells, six car-phone kits, phones, wire, identification cards and miscellaneous documents indicating that they were attempting to construct remote-controlled improvised explosive devices.
  
• Yesterday, 50,000 Iraqis gathered peacefully in An Najaf in preparation for the election of the next Imam of the Ali Shrine on 17 February. The event was peaceful and concluded without incident.
  
• Well, first of all, today was a tragic day for the Iraqi police service. They lost a number of police officers in the line of duty. I would like to report that this is the first day I’ve had to stand up here and say that; it is not. Nuri Badran has said that over 300 of his police officers have been killed since last April. Yet they continue to come back to work every day. They continue to get larger and larger; they continue to grow. We have approximately 70,000 persons in the police service right now. And I think the greatest compliment and the greatest credit to the Iraqi police service is that despite the fact that this is an almost daily event that they are attacked, threatened, terrorized, they still come back to work. And the overall number of the Iraqi police service gets larger and larger every day. And so we don’t think that after repeated attacks and repeated bombings directed against the Iraqi police service that the recruiting efforts will be swayed by this one event today, since they’ve had so many others before this.
  
• At approximately 21:45 last night, military forces were -- reported that there was an explosion outside of Sheikh Antar’s (sp) house in Ar Ramadi. The suicide bomber was a male between 22, 27 years of age. He apparently was wearing a black male dress with a tan jacket. He had -- the bomb was strapped to his body in a vest around his waist. As you might expect, the suicide bomber has -- was killed, and the civilian authorities have taken four additional persons that were wounded in that event to the hospital. So we had a total of five persons injured from that explosion, and Sheikh Antar (sp) was not injured in that event.