President Bush gave his first "exit interview" to ABC Word News' Charles Gibson, and among the revelations: He was "unprepared" for the 9/11 attacks and regretted the WMD intelligence that led him to the Iraq War. He said, "I think was unprepared for war. In other words, I didn't campaign and say, 'Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack.' In other words, I didn't anticipate war. Presidents-- one of the things......

Congressman Anthony Weiner sounded the call for cities to be reimbursed for employees fighting in the Iraq War. Like he did last year, Weiner cites the fact that civil servants, like cops and firefighters, still get paid by the city when their military salaries are less. And since many don't send their military salaries to the city, Weiner says NYC has lost "$65.6 million since September 11, 2001," per the Sun. Weiner said, "While it......

Photograph of soldiers in the 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment studying a map during a house search in Baghdad by Anja Niedringhaus/AP Five years ago today, the United States became involved with the Iraq War. While many Americans are unhappy with the war, per the Washington Post, "For the Bush administration, however, it is the first anniversary of an Iraq strategy that it believes has finally started to succeed." Today President Bush......

"The Blue Wall of Violence" courtesy of MoCADA Yesterday, The Daily News printed an article that began, "A cop-bashing art exhibit at a taxpayer-funded museum in Brooklyn portrays the city's Finest as trigger-happy racists who have put bull's-eyes on the backs of black New Yorkers." The exhibit is a retrospective of the artist Dread Scott's work called "Welcome to America," and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) is calling the paper out......

A total no-brainer: The family of 17-month-old boy who was shot in the arm by an off-duty police officer has filed a notice of claim against the city. The Porcellini family will also pursue action against the NYPD and 24-year-old police officer Patrick Venetek. Last week, Venetek's service pistol fired through his Brooklyn apartment floor - right above the Porcellini's. The bullet passed through the Porcellini's ceiling and through the left forearm of little Jonathan,......

Photograph of Kathy Bates and AMPAS President Sid Ganis announcing the nominations by Chris Pizzello/AP While the writers' strike continues and prospects of an awards ceremony are unclear, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences went ahead and announced the contenders for their 80th annual back-slapping ceremony. Oscar-winning friend of the academy Kathy Bates was on hand to announce this year's golden picks. From Bob Dylan to Michael Clayton, many of the nominations......

At last night's ABC News/Facebook debate in New Hampshire, both parties' candidates held debates. After the Thursday's Iowa results presented Barack Obama as a winner and Hillary Clinton as a disappointing (to her campaign) third place, some interesting things transpired during the Democratic debate. Obama and Iowa runner-up John Edwards apppeared to team up against Clinton. The NY Times called it an "allegiance of convenience" and noted that the defining moment was when Clinton......

A sparkling new 700-pound ball, tons of confetti, and over a million people helped ring in the New Year from Times Square last night/early today. Mayor Bloomberg and police Police Academy valedictorian Karolina Wierzchowska, who also served in the Iraq War, hit the switch that brought the famous Times Square New Year's ball down. The Daily News called it a "shimmering pole dance," and it was the 100th time Times Square has had a......

Yesterday was the city's day to honor and remember veterans of the U.S. armed forces. The 88th annual Veterans Day Parade started with the Eternal Light Monument Ceremony in Madison Square Park, followed by a parade up Fifth Avenue to 56th Street. An estimated 20,000 gathered for the parade, and there were veterans from World War II, Korean War, and the Iraq War. Mayor Bloomberg said, "You should know that 70 New Yorkers have given......

The best part of Mayor Bloomberg's maybe, maybe-not presidential aspirations is that we can debate about whether they are going to happen until the Democratic and Republican conventions next year! The NY Times now reports that the "excitement seems to have fizzled" about the idea of Candidate Bloomberg. It's a bit more detailed that Dan Rather's August proclamation that the Mayor would not run for president. Why? Mainly because of the "mayor’s unorthodox approach to......

Rudy Giuliani replaced his lead fundraiser. Anne Dunsmore joined the Giuliani campaign in May, and her credentials as the California finance director during President Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections prompted Giuliani to create a special position for her - deputy campaign manager for finance. Dunsmore was leading the drive to raise more than $100 million; she told the Washington Post's The Fix last May, "When you have $100 million situation hitting or missing by 10......

The Brave One (directed by Neil Jordan) As city dwellers and city lovers, we know living in New York can be scary. We just don't usually get reminders of how perilous our home is when we go for entertainment at the movie theater. Irish director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), with the help of one of our best and most revered American actors Jodie Foster, have constructed a randomly violent and morally ambiguous New York......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

We're less than a week away from the Times Square Kiss-In! Every year on the anniversary marking the end of World War II, the Times Square Alliance invites couples (though strangers would be more appropriate) to come make out in the same spot this nameless couple did just 62 years ago. The nurse eventually outed herself in the '80s, once she was a safe distance from the more "dignified" times. That day there were 750,000......

300 (directed by Zack Snyder) As digital technologies get more savvy, it seems as though the line between video game and movie gets even more blurry. A prime example is the adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.E. 300, which is out on DVD this week. Everything about this movie is overblown and over-the-top from the "brave few against the demonic many" plot line to the actors' chiseled......

Even though a Sunni insurgent group claimed yesterday that two captured U.S. soldiers had been killed, one of the soldiers' mothers hoping that her son is still alive. Maria Rosario Duran spoke to reporters outside her Corona, Queens home. She said, "I can't even imagine that he's not going to return alive, that I will never see him again." The insurgents, who have been linked to Al Qaeda, allegedly captured Duran's son, Specialist Alex Jimenez,......

The Iraq Veterans Against the War, dressed in full uniform, engaged in a series of street theater actions around the New York City area yesterday. Actual veterans of the Iraq war played American service members and local volunteers played the civilians. The event was treated like a military operation with squad patrols, searches, detentions, and crowd control. An IVAW member, Adam Kokesh, said, "By reenacting what we've been through in Iraq, we hope to......

President Bush is taking his No Child Left Behind Act education platform to Harlem today, with an afternoon visit to the Harlem Village Academies charter school on West 144th Street today. Yes, that's what all the traffic and security is for- as well as the lack of garbage cans. The school and Department of Education are proud that Harlem Village Academy was selected; founder Deborah Kenny tells the Sun, "We take in kids that are......

The prolific journalist and author David Halberstam died yesterday in a car crash outside of San Francisco. Halberstam, a New Yorker, was traveling in a car that was broadsided while trying to make a left turn. Two other cars were involved in the crash, none of the drivers were seriously injured. The NY Times obituary notes that Halberstam "was killed doing what he had done his entire adult life: reporting," as he was on his......

A look at some noteworthy television programs this week: Nature: Dogs That Changed The World: The Rise of the Dog (Sunday, 8:00 p.m. WNET 13; Wednesday, 9:00 p.m., WLIW 21) The first of a two part look at man's best friend, the dog. Part one looks at the origins of domesticated dogs and inquires about the theory that links domestication to human's trash. A behind the scenes podcast looking into the challenges of filming dogs......

If you're down by Ground Zero tonight, don't be surprised if you see some two-hundred foot tall anti-war projections. The Glass Bead Collective is bringing their tricked out 100,000 lumen projector van into the city for an art-protest: Rather than a sit-in or a march, one group has decided on a luminous statement about the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War. A group calling itself the Glass Bead Collective is planning to project images......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Iraq War Begins: Four Years Later (Monday, 9 a.m. MSNBC) MSNBC's looks back on their coverage of the start of the Iraq War all day. Dancing With the Stars (Monday, 8:00 p.m. WABC 7) This year's D-List celebs trying to defibrillate their careers by dancing are: Laila Ali, Billy Ray Cyrus, Clyde Drexler, Joey Fatone, Shandi Finnessey, Leeza Gibbons, Heather Mills, Apolo Anton Ohno, Paulina Porizkova, John......

After the fun of seeing the 1993 Rudy Giuliani vulnerabilities study on The Smoking Gun, the Post asks if Giuliani's "woman problems" will hurt his chances. Not only was Giuliani married for 14 years to his second cousin, his marriage to Donna Hanover publicly crumbled during his second term as mayor. And he was seeing current wife Judi Nathan before he was formally divorced from Hanover! Luckily for Giuliani, most pundits believe his marrying ways......

THEATER: It’s “go time� for The Butane’s Group’s Operation Ajax, which ingenuously sets the CIA’s 1953 overthrow of Iran’s first democratically-elected government in the context of a casino. “Constructed from no less than 25 text sources (memoirs, documentaries, plays, poetry, novels, films, reality tv shows), the densely-layered performance explores how the addiction to risk and gambling has become a potent metaphor for U.S. foreign policy.� (For an enhanced theater experience, explore the show’s thorough bibliography,......

Yesterday, a couple hundred Columbia students walked out to protest the war, and CTV News has video, and you'll see protesters chanting for troops to be removed as they march on and around campus (apparently there was free hot chocolate during the cold day). Interestingly, the Columbia College Democrats removed their support for the walk out "in part because of disagreements over whether to call for divestment," according to the NY Sun. However, there......

In unsurprising but still headline-generating news, Senator Hillary Clinton has declared herself in the 2008 presidential race this morning. She posted a message on her website, HillaryClinton.com. Here is some of her statement:I'm in. And I'm in to win. Today I am announcing that I will form an exploratory committee to run for president. And I want you to join me not just for the campaign but for a conversation about the future of......

For politicians, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was busy as they made the rounds at a number of city events. Governor Spitzer, Lieutenant Governor Paterson, Mayor Bloomberg, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and Representative Charles Rangel all appeared at the Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network's House Justice and also the Brooklyn Academy of Music's celebration. Paterson and Rangel emphasized that the Iraq war would have been opposed by King. Spitzer mentioned meeting the family......

A few days after Saddam Hussein was hanged, he became the subject of an art exhibit. And who does Hussein share the canvas with? None other than Donald Rumsfeld. Back when Rumsfeld was Special Envoy to the Middle East under the Regan Administration, he and Hussein met to discuss the Iran-Iraq War. Oh yeah, and oil (see sections 18-19 on pages 15-17 of this then-confidential report). Two years ago, Jonathan Podwil began a series......

A look at some noteworthy programs this week: 60 Minutes (Sunday, 7:00 p.m. WCBS 2) George W. Bush is interviewed days after his announcement of the Iraq War escalation . 24 (Sunday, 7:00 p.m. WNYW 5) Yet another season of 24 starts with the first two hours of its new season tonight. Jack's back, but does anyone still care? Nature - The Best of Nature: 25 Years (Sunday, 7:00 p.m. WNET 13) A 90 minute......

In the wake of President Bush's Wednesday night address to the country, when he announced that he will send thousands of more soldiers to Iraq, hundreds of people protested the plan. They convened at the tiny island in the middle of Times Square in front of the U.S. Armed Forces recruiting station, with signs like "Stop the funding, stop the war" and "When government lies, Democracy dies" with drivers passing by honking their horns.......