Special edition Monopoly games came with literal “get out jail free” cards (in the form of silk maps, miniature files for cutting bars, and real money mixed in with fake bucks) for some POWs locked up in Germany during World War II, according to a fascinating new report.

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During a press conference this morning, President George W. Bush said he didn’t have all of the information he now has when he made the statement about Iran and World War III back in August. Still, he did not say he was irresponsible for prematurely raising the possibility of war.

Yesterday’s National Intelligence Estimates indicated “with high confidence” that Iran “halted its nuclear weapons” four years ago, in the fall of 2003.

Concurrently, Bush argued that “nothing has changed” — that Iran is still just as dangerous as ever. “To me it’s a way to continue to rally our partners,” he said.

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After a speech last night at the University of Colorado, former Attorney General John Ashcroft took questions from an audience of skeptical students, professors and several war protesters. The first question, Think Progress recalls, came from a woman who asked if Ashcroft would be willing to be subjected to waterboarding. “The things that I can survive, if it were necessary to do them to me, I would do,” Ashcroft is quoted as replying.

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Bill Clinton is again making questionable statements while on the campaign trail for his wife. This time around, he appears to be rewriting history when it comes to whether he supported the Iraq war from the beginning.

“Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning,” Clinton said on the trail yesterday, according to news reports, “I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers.”

But a transcript from a speech Clinton delivered during 2003 commencement at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi he’s quoted as saying the following: “I supported the president when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

This misstatement is the latest in a series of gaffes from President Clinton. In recent weeks, he took credit for the failure to reform health care while in office, inadvertently drawing more attention to his wife’s role in that situation, and, to much criticism, he has responded to Barack Obama’s questions about Hillary Clinton’s age and honesty.

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“I hope that with this apology, I will become as insignificant as I should be, and that we can return to the issues that do divide us, but that we can resolve in a better fashion,” Rep. Pete Stark said yesterday in response to criticism of remarks he made last week regarding President Bush’s handling of domestic issues and the war.

Related: A Very Special Media Madness List!

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Turkish newspapers are printing gruesome pictures of Iraqis killed by U.S. soldiers in response to American political efforts to label the country as having committed genocide. The headline on this page, “Soykırım diyene bak,” is translated directly into English as, “look who is talking about genocide,” and it links to several graphic photos.

The Turkish press closely followed a U.S. Congressional committee meeting last night, during which a resolution describing the 1915 slaughter of Armenians as a genocide was voted through. House leader Nancy Pelosi has long supported the measure, and it’s believed a majority of the House does, too.

It’s a move the White House predicted would severely damage relations with Turkey. “This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings,” George Bush told reporters just hours before the House Foreign Affairs Committee met to consider the measure. The president is desperate to keep Turkey as an ally.

Anti-war protesters, too, are angry that the U.S. government is focusing on foreign killings from decades ago, rather than definitively trying to end the war in Iraq.

More Turkish media presentations of the “shock and awe” after the jump: Read more…

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Related: A Very Special Media Madness List!

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School teacher Deborah Mayer says her world has been “devastated” by four words she uttered in an Indiana classroom four years ago: “I honk for peace.” Read more…

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“When a SWAT guy and the horse went after my daughter and assaulted her, she started screaming,” Tina Richards, an activist with Grassroots America whose son returned from Iraq suicidal, told Big Head DC soon after her recent run-in with the Capitol police.

“I put my head out the window to yell at them to leave my daughter alone and they closed the window on my head,” she recalled. “I told the transport officer of the injury, but she said, ‘I’m sure you’d like people to believe that.’” Read more…

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