Shooty's News and Current events

Venezuelans began a three-day process to determine whether President Hugo Chavez should face a recall vote.

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The petition requires 2.4 million signatures — or 20% of the voter rolls — to force a referendum on Chavez's rule.

Activists say they delivered 3.4 million signatures in December, but elections officials validated only 1.9 million and said voters would have to confirm others.

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As leader of Iraq's interim government, Iyad Allawi will have to convince his countrymen that neither his long-ago membership in the Baath Party nor his longtime CIA connections will keep him from leading Iraq in just seven months to its first free elections.

Allawi, 58, who during decades in exile built a party of former Baathists and ex-military officers, was named to become interim prime minister Friday after receiving the backing of fellow Iraqi Governing Council members.

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In postwar Iraq, he fought U.S.-led efforts to disband the old army and purge Baathists from government. And when a Governing Council member was assassinated last year, Allawi moved to ban two Arabic-language satellite TV channels from covering government affairs, saying they had been "irresponsible."

But as an unflinching advocate of a strong Iraqi security service and a strong government, Allawi may be what Jordan's King Abdullah meant when he said recently that Iraq needed a "strong man" to guide it in the coming months.

"Iyad is somebody who is military-minded, wants a strong government, believes in a strong army," said one Iraqi observer, who asked not to be named.

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Founder of the Iraqi National Accord, an exile political party, Allawi has long been known for his close ties to the CIA. In fact, some Iraqis interpreted his elevation Friday to prime minister-designate as evidence that the CIA had trumped the Pentagon in the administration's internal war over which agency should shape Iraq.

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"As an old-time Baathist, he will be acceptable to many Sunni ex-Baathists, because he is pan-Arab and he is secular and they are pan-Arab and secular," said Amatzia Baram, an Israeli scholar at the United States Institute of Peace who has studied Iraq for decades. "The fact that he worked with the Americans for many years, they will forgive him."

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In 1996, Allawi's party, backed by the CIA, attempted a coup against Hussein that failed.

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Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals football player who died in April while a U.S. soldier fighting in Afghanistan, likely was killed by friendly fire, an Army investigation has concluded.

News of that finding was disseminated Friday to some members of Congress and some Tillman family members just as the Memorial Day weekend was to begin, including today's dedication ceremonies in Washington of the World War II Memorial.

"It does seem pretty clear that he was killed by friendly fire," said Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, which was alerted to the information by the Army's Legislative Liaison Office.

"This does not take away one iota from the heroic nature and courage of the man. The source of that fire is of little consequence in terms of heroism," Franks said. He said that after learning of the Army's conclusions, he made some follow-up inquiries and was satisfied the information was accurate.

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Officials at the Pentagon and at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, late Friday declined to provide more details of the investigation's findings.

But an e-mail circulated within the House Armed Services Committee from committee staff members said: "Army just called to give us a heads up. They have every reason to believe the 15-6 investigation shows Pat Tillman was killed as a result of friendly fire."

That same message continues, "The Army has notified his family, so it may come out in the media this weekend."

Army Regulation 15-6 is used as the basis for many investigations requiring a detailed gathering and analyzing of facts, from "fratricide accidents," or friendly-fire incidents, to other matters, including civilian shootings or injuries, accidental weapons discharges or allegations of misconduct.

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A Canadian journalist for the London Observer dyed his hair black, obtained a fake Iraqi ID, and left for Fallujah in the back seat of an Iraqi doctor's car.

Patrick Graham pretended to be the doctor's mentally ill brother, able only to mutter his pretend Iraqi name should anybody ask. Several did, sometimes at gunpoint.

It was "like slipping into a shark tank," Mr. Graham writes in a Harper's article titled "Beyond Fallujah: A year with the Iraqi resistance."

A resistance made up not of foreign fighters or al Qaeda terrorists. The Iraqis he lived among don't care for Osama bin Laden. As one observed, Osama is "not a good Muslim." They dislike Saddam Hussein even more, as all "good" Muslims should "hate" him.

So why are these "holy" Iraqis battling - and frequently killing - American troops?

"When we see the U.S. soldiers in our cities with guns, it is a challenge to us," says an Iraqi resistance fighter named Mohammed, a well-spoken member of his community and "a bit of a Texan," writes Mr. Graham, who once was invited into Iraqi homes and family celebrations.

"America wants to show its power, to be a cowboy," Mohammed says. "Bush wants to win the next election - that is why he is lying to the American people saying the resistance is al Qaeda. ... I don't know a lot about political relations in the world, but if you look at history - Vietnam, Iraq itself, Egypt and Algeria - countries always rebel against occupation.

"The world must know that this is an honorable resistance and has nothing to do with the old regime," he says. "Even if Saddam Hussein dies, we will continue to fight to throw out the American forces. We take our power from our history, not from one person."

Later, the Canadian found himself standing beside Mohammed as he prepared for five separate attacks against U.S. targets.

"Did you see the 'Braveheart?'" the Iraqi asked of the Mel Gibson movie. "They throw out the British and the corrupt nobles. It is about hope. The people in the movie want freedom, and so do we."

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He took the money. Sgt. Matt Novak admits that much. He and several fellow soldiers could not resist after discovering nearly $200 million in $100 bills sealed inside a gardener's cottage in a Baghdad palace complex last spring.

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A year after American soldiers discovered about $760 million of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's cash hidden in several cottages, the case still raises questions. U.S. Treasury Department officials are trying to determine whether Hussein got the money from illegal oil sales and kickbacks, even as the cash is being spent on the U.S. occupation and rebuilding effort.

For Novak, one of six soldiers accused of stealing seven-inch-thick bundles of $100 bills, the affair has been a bitter lesson in military justice. He confessed, named higher-ups and led investigators to millions he and others had tried to hide. He has since been kicked out of the Army and banned from nearby Ft. Stewart, while the five others implicated received administrative punishments - and two were promoted, Novak's lawyer said.

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There is one more thing troubling Novak: He says other soldiers have told him that several soldiers got away with stealing millions. According to these soldiers, Novak said, the money was buried at Baghdad University and in the desert outside the city. He said the soldiers noted the global positioning system coordinates and planned to return to recover the money.

Other soldiers scooped up cash hurriedly discarded by Novak and his confederates, he said, later spending $100 bills in stores in Hinesville. Novak said soldiers took photos of one another waving wads of cash.

While he was under investigation, Novak said, he twice took his allegations to Ft. Stewart's inspector general's office and was told to tell the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. He said he opted not to say anything more to the CID, which had investigated him.

A CID spokesman in Ft. Belvoir, Va., referred questions to Ft. Stewart. A base spokesman, citing privacy issues, said he could not discuss the case.

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After Novak implicated two higher-ranking soldiers, the division's commanders offered amnesty against criminal prosecution to soldiers who confessed and cooperated. The commanders "decided that they did not want a black eye for the Army," a division captain testified at Novak's administrative separation hearing in December. "Instead of focusing on prosecuting the soldiers for the crime, they decided to get the money back."

Novak's attorney, Capt. Bernard A. Quarterman Jr., said he "argued to the [administrative separation] board that the Army went after Sgt. Novak because he named names."

"The only person who really told the truth was Sgt. Novak," Quarterman said, "and he is the only one who was chaptered out" - drummed out of the Army.

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They spotted a similar cottage nearby. Novak said he, Spc. Jamal Mann and Pfc. Jeffrey Moyer used a tanker's crowbar to collapse the wall. Novak smashed a locked door with a brick, cutting his hand on window glass and splattering the cottage floor with blood.

Inside, the soldiers found dozens of sealed aluminum boxes. Novak said he pried one open and pulled out bundles of $100 bills wrapped in rubber bands. The soldiers all stared at one another, he said.

"Up to this point, it was all fun and games," Novak said. "Now it suddenly got serious."

In his statement to investigators, Novak wrote: "Many things went through my mind - my three children, my wife, my future not in the Army. When that first box was opened, I felt like everything was out of control."

Mann wrote in his CID statement: "The first thing I was thinking when I saw the money was maybe I could pay for school, help my family out and pay some bills."

In an instant, Novak said, the soldiers were grabbing stacks of cash and stuffing it into their uniforms. It was an impulse, he said - an opportunity seized reflexively, without regard to the consequences.

"To see all that money in one place put us in awe," Novak told his separation hearing board.

Mann wrote: "To me, it was like free money."

At one point, Novak said, two higher-ranking men entered the cottage: 1st Lt. Charles Greenley and 1st Sgt. Eric Wilson. Novak said he shouted to Wilson, "Aren't you retiring soon, first sergeant?" and tossed him a bundle of cash. Novak said he remarked to Greenley, "Hey, LT, you're senior," and tossed him a bundle.

After a second box was opened, Novak said, he panicked and decided to hide the cash. He said he, Mann and Moyer dropped two boxes into a nearby canal. They scooped up loose cash off the cottage floor and hid it in a tree, near a drain and in shrubbery along a narrow roadway.

Lt. Greenley's driver, Spc. Darnell Emanuel, told investigators that he, Mann and Greenley took another box and buried it near where their unit was based.

Commanders summoned to the cottage realized money was missing. Just as the commanders arrived, Novak said, he realized he still had a $100 bill in his pocket and he stuffed it into the grill of a parked truck.

The commanders searched the area and found $600,000 in the tree. Another $300,000 was found later in a cooler inside the truck that transported the cash for safekeeping.

Lt. Col. Philip deCamp, commander of the armored task force to which Novak's engineer company was attached, confronted Novak, Mann and Moyer and advised them of their rights.

Confined to barracks over the next few days, Novak said he was overcome by guilt and shame. "I was torn up, just distraught," he said. "If it wasn't for my wife and kids, I'd have blown my brains out."

He decided to write a statement, confessing to the thefts and naming Greenley and Wilson, the two higher-ranking soldiers.

Novak said he led CID investigators to the canal, where agents found the two boxes containing $8 million. They recovered another $178,000 in bundles and loose cash along the roadway.

Meanwhile, Mann confessed to mailing 12 envelopes, each stuffed with $600 to $700, to his mother and four other relatives in Newark, N.J. Postal agents in New Jersey intercepted the money and notes reading "I LOVE U."

On April 22, Emanuel led agents to a hole where he said he and Greenley earlier that day had reburied the box they had taken four days before, according to a CID report. About $3.8 million was recovered.

After the commanders' amnesty offer, a plastic Meal Ready To Eat spaghetti bag containing about $275,000 in $100 bills was found on the desk of the task force executive officer. With the cash was a note that read: "Rest went down sewer."

A CID report said Wilson told investigators: "That money was turned in during the amnesty period. Nobody was supposed to get in trouble." An analysis of Wilson's handwriting compared to the note was inconclusive.
Authorities at Ft. Stewart declined to specify punishments given to the five soldiers besides Novak, citing privacy issues. Because of the amnesty offer, none of the six was criminally prosecuted.

Quarterman said that except for Novak, the soldiers received nothing more serious than letters of reprimand and/or poor fitness reports. Moyer testified that he was promoted despite what he called "the incident." Novak and Mann said Emanuel also was promoted.

DeCamp said Greenley was stripped of his command and given a poor fitness report. He said Wilson was given a poor fitness report and assigned to lesser duties with no chance of promotion. "Justice was served" in the case, deCamp said.

He noted that all other soldiers who found cash turned it in, along with $6.1 million his soldiers recovered when they foiled a bank robbery in Baghdad the same week.

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A few days before Hussein's cash was discovered, several Americans in the elite neighborhood noticed that a cinderblock wall around a cottage had been smashed and the door broken. No one thought much of it until the $760 million was discovered. Only then did people speculate about the significance of several broken green Jordan National Bank seals on the cottage floor.

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The five Central American countries that participated in today's signing agreement were Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The ceremony was held in an ornate hall at the Organization of American States, while outside a small band of demonstrators paraded with signs saying "Make trade fair."
The island nation of the Dominican Republic reached agreement in March to join the Central American pact but it could not participate in Friday's signing ceremony because of U.S. rules requiring a 90-day notice period to Congress before the administration can sign trade deals.

When the pact is presented to Congress, it will include all six countries. It was uncertain, however, when the administration and Republican leaders will bring the pact up given strong opposition from Democrats and even some Republicans.

The administration is hoping that momentum generated by the Central American free trade deal will spur stalled negotiations to reach agreement on a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, which would create a free trade zone linking all 34 democracies in the Western hemisphere, excluding only Cuba. The FTAA is scheduled to be concluded by next January if wide differences over such issues as agriculture can be bridged by then.

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Rising interest rates are expected to add a layer of frost to an already cold investment market for suburban office properties.

Amid high vacancy rates and declining rents, the total value of suburban sales transactions plummeted more than 50 percent, to $231 million, during the first five months of the year compared with the same period in 2003, according to a report by real estate firm CB Richard Ellis Inc.

For the full year, the firm is predicting that total sales volume of suburban office properties will drop 20 percent to 30 percent from 2003, when total sales fell more than 30 percent, to about $771 million.

Adding to the chill: escalating interest rates, which could broaden the already wide gap between bid and ask prices, what buyers are willing to pay and sellers are willing to accept, especially on less desirable properties.

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JERUSALEM -- Israel's secret service released a British journalist Thursday after arresting him and searching his hotel room in connection with a documentary that he is making about nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu.

The detention Wednesday of Peter Hounam reflected Israel's fear of more leaks about its nuclear weapons program and received sharp criticism from journalists and others.

Hounam, 60, who had arranged a third-party interview with Vanunu, was released without charges or restrictions. He wrote a 1986 article in The Sunday Times of London revealing information and pictures from Vanunu on Israel's top-secret nuclear reactor.

Vanunu, a former technician at the Dimona reactor, was released April 22 after an 18-year prison sentence for espionage and treason. The Israeli government has barred him from talking to foreigners or journalists.

Authorities seized a copy of the videotaped interview at Tel Aviv airport.

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Authorities in Detroit searched a home Friday looking for clues into the greatest murder mystery in U.S. history - what really happened to Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa.

After one man confessed to killing Hoffa in 1975 at a Detroit home and following a Fox News investigation determined traces of blood in the house, Oakland County, Mich., investigators ripped up floorboards to do more analysis.

An undetermined amount of material was taken away.

Frank Sheeran - nicknamed "the Irishman' - was one of the handful of the FBI's suspects into Hoffa's murder. Sheeran was a local Teamsters president from Delaware who was close to Hoffa while at the same time he was the right-hand man to a power of a different sort - legendary mob boss Russell Bufalino.

Sheeran, who died last year, told Fox News that he was Hoffa's killer but he refused to make the confession on camera. 

"Frank Sheeran actually pulled the trigger," said Charles Brandt, one of Sheeran's lawyers. Brandt has written a new book called "I Heard You Paint Houses," which lays out Sheeran's story and which is set to be released in June.

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As part of its investigation, Fox News tried to find evidence of Hoffa's blood in the house and hired a forensics team of respected crime scene investigators. They took up tiles that had been put over the house's hardwood floor 15 years ago and sprayed the chemical luminol - used by investigators to find traces of blood at homicide - on the floor.

Seeming to match Sheeran's story precisely, the test results indicated possible blood in the hallway. The technicians found the greatest amount of blood strongest in the foyer where Hoffa was said to be shot. Another seven drops trailed down the long hallway toward the kitchen where the body presumably was removed.

The team of investigators hired by Fox News caution what they found may be too old for more tests but experts say the revelations are huge.

"I'm convinced without any question that this is the biggest break in the Hoffa case since Hoffa disappeared on July 30, 1975. There's no doubt in my mind about this," said Dan Moldea, author of "The Hoffa Wars: The Rise and Fall of Jimmy Hoffa."

Moldea, who spent four years researching and writing the book, believes Sheeran was involved in Hoffa's murder, but is skeptical if he actually fired the fatal shots.

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Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols met with World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines before he and Timothy McVeigh carried out their plot, investigative reporter Jayna Davis said Wednesday.

"Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef met personally in the Philippines on the island of Mindanao in the early 1990s to discuss, of all things, bombmaking," Davis told ABC Radio Network host John Batchelor.

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"Sources close to the defense have told me, and this comes from recorded conversations with his wife, Lana Padilla, that Terry Nichols is going to remain clammed up for the rest of his natural days on earth," Davis told Batchelor.

"He wants to protect his son Joshua from any retaliation," she added. Filipino police informant Edwin Angeles, who first detailed meetings between Yousef and Nichols, was assassinated in 1998.

Yousef's partner in the Bojinka plot, Abdul Hakim Murad, was apprehended by Filipino police in 1994 and taken to New York to stand trial. On the morning of the OKC bombing, Murad summoned his jailers to tell them he and Yousef were connected to the crime. Later that day Murad gave the FBI a written confession.

Just months before his own June 2001 execution for the crime, Timothy McVeigh referred to both Yousef and Osama bin Laden in a letter to Fox News Channel's Rita Cosby.

"Collateral Damage? As an American news junkie; a military man; and a Gulf War veteran, where do they think I learned that? (It sure as hell wasn't Osama Bin Laden!)," he wrote in April 2001.

In the next sentence, McVeigh mentioned Yousef.

"For all else, I would refer you to my enclosed paper 'Hypocrisy,' and to Ramzi Yousef's statement to the court just prior to his sentencing. I filter all labels and insults thusly."

In the Jan. 8, 1998, court statement to which McVeigh referred, Yousef proclaimed, "Yes, I am a terrorist and proud of it as long as it is against the U.S. government," before being sentenced to 240 years in prison.

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Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting
harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad Salem, should be used, the informer said.

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings that Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as being in a far better position than previously known to foil the February 26th bombing of New York City's tallest towers.

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Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian Army officer, was used by the Government [of the United States] to penetrate a circle of Muslim extremists who are now charged in two bombing cases: the World Trade Center attack, and a foiled plot to destroy the United Nations, the Hudson River tunnels, and other New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the second bombing case, but his work for the Government was erratic, and for months before the World Trade Center blast, he was feuding with th F.B.I.

Supervisor `Messed It Up'

After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an undated transcript of a conversation from that period, Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent about an unnamed F.B.I. supervisor who, he said, "came and messed it up." "He requested to meet me in the hotel," Mr. Salem says of the supervisor.

"He requested to make me to testify, and if he didn't push for that, we'll be going building the bomb with a phony powder, and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But since you, we didn't do that."

The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. Headquarters in Washington about the Bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent identified as John Anticev.

Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him,

"He said, I don't think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York Office to go to Washington, D.C."

Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute Mr. Salem's account, but rather, appears to agree with it, saying of the `New York people':

"Well, of course not, because they don't want to get their butts chewed."

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In my own books, I've documented the way the national press ignored the 1999 case of 21-year-old Richard Gable Stevens of Santa Clara, Calif., who left notes indicating he intended to rent a handgun at a local shooting range, kill everyone there and then "go out in a blaze of glory" as the nation's latest mass murderer.

Why have you never heard of Richard Gable Stevens? Because as he herded the three employees of the National Shooting Club out into the alley, one of them, who unbeknownst to Stevens had a .45-caliber pistol concealed under his shirt, shot him. No self-defense story there for professor Fabricius and his son to count, since America's press corps hardly ever covers stories where gun use prevents a killing spree.

I've also documented the case of 9-year-old Ashley Danielle and 7-year-old John William Carpenter, killed in 2000 by a home invader with a pitchfork in Merced, Calif., because a newly enacted state gun control law meant their older sister could no longer get at the family guns to defend them. That one also got no national coverage -- didn't serve to advance the victim disarmament agenda, did it?

Interestingly enough, John Lott's latest fine book, "The Bias Against Guns," documents the fact that newspapers and TV rarely cover defensive gun uses even when they learn about them -- the actual phenomenon professor Fabricius ended up measuring by counting his newspaper stories! John even found that when citizens with guns held killers at bay till police could arrive (as after the school shooting in Pearl, Miss.), America's newspapers inexplicably but almost invariably left out the fact that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens had been used to stop those killing sprees.

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Once you’ve killed a certain number of people, even with the best will in the world, it becomes awkward to make the cheerful admission, "I goofed." Halfway through his river of blood, Macbeth reflects that going back would be as tedious as going all the way across. Actually, it turns out that he hasn’t even gone halfway yet.

This is why President Bush will "stay the course" in Iraq. Forget oil, money, power, and even reelection: The deepest vested interest is guilt. Bush has done things he can’t bear to renounce, no matter how costly to America continuing them may yet become.

Now the pictures from Abu Ghraib - merry American girls teasing naked Arab men, Arab women forced to bare their breasts, and the rest of it - threaten to undo all the good will we’ve so painstakingly built up by bombing Arab cities and starving Arab children. Life is so unfair.

The photos have added obscene insults to ghastly injuries, but Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are trying to insist on a pettifogging distinction: that the injuries inflicted by war promote democracy and freedom, while the insults shown in the pictures are contrary to American "values."

Some churlish Arabs find this distinction hard to swallow. The values of today’s America are no longer the wholesome ones expressed by Walt Disney, Norman Rockwell, and Ozzie and Harriet; we now live in the land of Bill Clinton, Larry Flynt, and, by a natural extension, Lynndie England.

And the hell of it is, from Bush’s point of view, that the insults are proving more costly than the injuries. The desecration of the body, whether a dead American body in Fallujah or a live Muslim body in Abu Ghraib, is peculiarly inflammatory.

So with poor Nick Berg. His murder might have been taken in stride, had it been done by, say, a conventional bullet to the head. But the severing of his head arouses a revulsion so deep we can hardly express it - as it was meant to. Presumably his killers, among themselves, talk like our hawks of the air waves: "This is war! The enemy doesn’t play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, so why should we? The only thing those people understand is force."

Berg’s decapitation did give Bush a chance to step back into the pulpit of moral indignation the Abu Ghraib disclosures had made it awkward for him to occupy. Like Clinton clutching his Bible on the way to a tryst, Bush is most comfortable in his pose as champion of morality, intoning homilies about freedom, democracy, and terrorism. He assures us that there was "no justification whatsoever" for cutting off Berg’s head - as if the country were divided over the issue.

Only a man out of touch with reality could suppose that there remains any hope of charming the Arab-Muslim world with the talisman of American democracy now. It was a lost cause even before the Abu Ghraib revelations; now it’s less than a wistful hope - it’s a mad fantasy.

Yet Bush argues that the unfathomable rage his war has created in the Arab world justifies the war itself. Every new act of terrorism it provokes proves the need to finish the war on terrorism. "We will complete our mission," Bush says - an ironic comment on his own claim of a year ago: "Mission accomplished."

Berg’s murder, he says, shows the "nature" of the enemy. But the enemy thinks the war and the degrading tortures - "abuses," as Rumsfeld prefers to call them - show the nature of the American mission. It could hardly be clearer that the Arab-Muslim world sees Bush as anything but its deliverer. It sees him as the infidel writ large.

But our mission must continue, Bush insists: "Their intention is to shake our will." Now is the time for American "resolve." This is no time to admit a colossal mistake, let alone confess guilt. Public support for his war implicates everyone in the responsibility. That’s why Bush has to keep insisting that his cause is righteous, even if it never achieves its purpose. No wonder that, as this sinks in, public support is slipping.

In terms of its original stated goals, the Iraq war is a failure. Bush’s foreign policy might be clinically described as autistic - in its self-absorption, its social blindness, even its linguistic dysfunction. Fate has delivered enormous power to a very strange man.

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It amazes me when people volunteer information that could get them into trouble. Case in point: Robert McTeer, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

At the World Affairs Conference last week in Houston, McTeer was explaining how the Fed had learned from past mistakes and was getting better at containing recessions by turning on the money spigot.

"We won't make the tremendous errors in judgment that turned some of the past recessions into depressions," McTeer boasted.

Then McTeer told about one trick the Fed has used. His own words work best here: "I mean, look at what happened in 9/11. We just flooded the market with liquidity because of all the damage in New York.

"You know, all these New York banks and investment banks, they're receiving billions in payments every day and they're making billions in payments," he continued. "Just a hitch or two in that system can bring the thing down."

To remedy this, McTeer said, the Fed put a lot of money into the banking system. So far, so good.

Then he continued: "We decided to give credit for checks deposited with us on the next day, when it would normally be done, even though all the planes [carrying the checks] were on the ground.

"We couldn't collect the checks," he noted, "but we pretended we were collecting the checks and we gave credit for those checks, [and] created [an] enormous amount of float — which by law we're supposed to treat as a real cost to us." (My emphasis.)

"But since we're more a public institution than a private institution, we decided not to put our cost situation ahead of the public good," McTeer concluded.

OK, so maybe the Fed can be forgiven for breaking the law in a time of national crisis. But since McTeer claims the Central Bank learned a lesson from 9/11, just how often does it plan to use this newfound — and illegal — tactic?

Also, did the Fed eventually correct its intentional bookkeeping errors or did it just leave the extra money in the banks?

No wonder private accountants think they can fudge their numbers.

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A company behind a new technology promoting "brain fingerprinting" to fight crime and terrorism is considering Colorado for a training center that would employ up to 300 people.

Brain fingerprinting uses a headband with sensors to measure brain waves, which promoters say can help authorities determine the truth by detecting information stored in the brain.

[..]

Critics of the technology say it might fail if people forget details of a crime over time.

"If your memory isn't functioning [because] you're stoned when you commit the crime, you're certainly not going to remember it the next day, let alone years later," said J. Peter Rosenfeld, a psychology professor at the Institute for Neuroscience at Northwestern University in Chicago.

He said his tests of the process showed the results of brain fingerprinting were questionable.

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Two closed-door meetings are planned for families of the passengers and crew of the four aircraft used in the Sept. 11 attacks so they can hear tapes of phone calls from the planes and see other government evidence of what happened during the hijackings.

The invitation-only briefings will be held next Friday in Princeton, N.J., and July 14 in Boston, Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said. The Boston session also will be broadcast via closed-circuit hookup to sites for family members in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

Tom Roger, whose daughter was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Center, said the family members had requested access to the flight attendants' phone calls and other evidence after some of it was revealed during recent hearings of the independent commission investigating the attacks.

Roger, of Longmeadow, Mass., said many family members want to know as many details as possible about their loved one's final minutes.

"We've all sort of got our own version of what happened that day," he said. "It's important for people to get the facts."

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In addition, Roger said the letter he received indicated that prosecutors also would discuss other evidence related to what happened aboard the four aircraft.

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Nicky Stern, executive director of Families of Sept. 11, said some family members believe the government is withholding information from them and want a chance to judge for themselves if investigators have learned all they can from the tapes.

"A lot of family members feel that there might be a clue in these tapes as to what could have been done," said Stern, whose husband died in the World Trade Center. "You have to try to go further. Sometimes they are not right."

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Mike Unzueta, a deputy special agent with the Immigration and Customs Service, said the Hasan Saddiq Faseh Alddin (pictured, right), 34, was connected to two of the deceased 9/11 hijackers who lived in the San Diego area.

"Mr. Alddin was the roommate of an individual who was associated with two of the hijackers who were on the American Airlines flight that was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11," said Unzueta. "Mr. Alddin was arrested, and subsequently, we hope, will be deported on administrative immigration charges, not criminal charges related to the Pentagon ... investigation."

Immigration and Customs Services officials told NBC 7/39 that the Alddin, a Saudi national, was taken into custody outside his home, said officials.

Alddin came the area as a student and became a permanent resident by marrying a U.S. citizen, according to officials. His arrest on immigration charges resultied from two prior convictions for domestic violence, reported NBC 7/39.

(end of excerpt)

At least two of the terrorists identified by John Ashcroft as part of an 'Al-Qaeda cell' that is waiting to attack America this summer are already in jail.

A respected website that holds databases on terror suspects lists Amer El-Maati as 'incarcerated'.

Likewise, Aafia Siddiqui, a female former MIT student, was arrested in Pakistan over a year ago, according to NBC.

The 'cell' that these individuals are said to belong to doesn't even exist. The Abu Hafs al Masri group was described by the Boston Globe as a 'phantom organization'. Their researchers could find no evidence that the group was real.

Each time a new terror threat is announced or a terror suspect is 'captured,' we discover that they have either already been arrested or they have been dead for a year or more.

Furthermore, New York City and Los Angeles officials told Reuters that they had not been informed by the government of any terror threat, despite the fact that people like Ashcroft and Ridge are all over the media fearmongering about the inevitability of an attack before the election.

(end of excerpt)

A former Boston woman sought by the FBI for questioning about possible ties to the al-Qaida terror network is in custody in Pakistan, U.S. law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Aafia Siddiqui, 31, was detained by Pakistani authorities in the past few days and was being interrogated at an undisclosed location. She originally is from Pakistan.

(end of excerpt)

Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Ashcroft-Mueller news conference on Wednesday mistakenly led some to believe the nation's threat level had been increased.

He called it ``regrettable'' that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who made a round of television appearances Wednesday, did not join Ashcroft and Mueller.

``Their separate public appearances left the impression that the broad and close interagency consultation we expect - and which the law requires - may not have taken place in this case,'' Cox said.

[..]

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse reiterated Thursday that his agency has not seen any change in the ``steady stream of threat reporting.''

``We do not have any new intelligence or specific information about al-Qaida planning an attack,'' he said.

(end of excerpt)

Despite all that's gone wrong with "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (such as the lack of freedom for Iraqis), we still hear over and over that "the world is a better place with Saddam Hussein gone."

Is it really?

Everything in life has a price — even getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Any goal or result must be compared with the price to be paid — in order to determine whether the goal is, or was, worth it. No goal can be said to be worth any price.

In the case of Hussein, the price involves the tens of billions of dollars of our tax money that have been lavished on the task of driving one man from power and on cleaning up the mess that operation caused.

[..]

But, even more important, the price comes in the number of human lives that are snuffed out.

So we must ask ourselves:

How many human lives are a proper price to pay for the removal of Saddam Hussein?

Would you say removing Hussein would be worth it if a million people Americans and Iraqis had to die to achieve it?

If the answer is no, let's try a lower price. How about 100,000?

If that's too many, how about 10,000 lives being snuffed out to remove one man from power?

[..]

Would removing Hussein be worth it if the cost were just one human life but that life was yours?

Would you be willing to die to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq?

If the answer is no, then anything you have to say about the world being a better place now about collateral damage about the glory of soldiers sacrificing their lives for their country is meaningless. You're not willing to pay the price. You're like so many people who believe various government programs are wonderful provided someone else pays for them.

(end of excerpt)

A team of 20 "ghostbusters" is due to begin an investigation today at a Royal Navy base after decades of reports of paranormal activity.

Equipped with night vision cameras, sound recorders, dowsing rods, laser thermometers and detector sensors, the team will spend tonight and tomorrow night searching for evidence at the Devonport Naval Base in Plymouth, Devon.

The Royal Navy has invited the team in to try to "scientifically prove or disprove" whether the paranormal is at work. Reports of ghostly goings-on inside 18th century buildings at the South Yard have persisted for generations.

They include sightings of a young girl aged between five and 10, dressed in Victorian costume and seen playing with her toys in the Grade II-listed Master Ropemaker's House.

Naval security staff have seen lights going on and off in the house even though it has been empty for four years. A bearded 18th century sailor has also been seen.

Nearby, in the Hangman's Cell in the Ropery, where more than 100 men were executed, naval ratings have reportedly been unnerved by a "strange" atmosphere.

(end of excerpt)

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, have agreed on the nomination of Iyad Allawi as prime minister of a new Iraqi government, a member of the Governing Council said Friday.

Mahmoud Othman said Bremer and Brahimi had agreed to the council's choice of Allawi, a Governing Council member with long-time links to the CIA, as prime minister in the post-June 30 government.

"We had a meeting with Bremer and Brahimi and they both agreed and congratulated him and were happy about it," Othman told Reuters.

(end of excerpt)

``You definitely don't follow an unlawful order, and I'm sure they knew that treatment was unlawful,'' said Shoshana Johnson, 31. Just three days into Operation Iraqi Freedom, the convoy she was traveling with was ambushed and she and five other soldiers were taken captive.

Pictures of abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison caused a storm of protest from around the world and sparked a widespread investigation into military interrogation procedures. One soldier was sentenced to jail for a year for his role in the scandal and others face prosecution.

``They should take responsibility for what they did. My captors followed the Geneva Conventions and I was treated respectfully. I am appalled these soldiers did not do for the enemy what the enemy did for me,'' said Johnson, who was in Lowell yesterday to give a commencement speech at Middlesex Community College.

Johnson, who lives near Fort Bliss, Texas, was the first female POW in the war and the first African-American female POW in U.S. history. She was rescued by U.S. Marines.

(end of excerpt)

Rite Aid Corp.'s former chief executive, Martin Grass, was sentenced to eight years in prison for directing an accounting fraud that prompted the company to erase $1.6 billion in reported profit.

Grass, 50, was also fined $500,000 for conspiring to defraud investors and obstruct US investigations. He pleaded guilty last June and helped prosecutors unravel the fraud at Rite Aid, the number three US drugstore chain. Grass, one of six executives convicted in the case, apologized to Rite Aid and its shareholders and employees at his sentencing hearing.

"For the harm caused to them, I am truly sorry," Grass told US District Judge Sylvia Rambo in Harrisburg, Pa.

Grass faced up to 10 years in prison under a new plea agreement he reached with prosecutors this month. Rambo rejected an earlier agreement that set a maximum of eight years before she weighed a request for leniency based on his cooperation.

(end of excerpt)

An American Airlines jet flying from Dallas/Ft. Worth to Boston was diverted Thursday after a flight attendant found a note saying there was a bomb in the cargo hold.

Investigators examined a ``suspicious package'' taken from the plane that turned out ``a bag similar to a computer case,'' said Kelly Watson, spokeswoman for Nashville International Airport. ``The contents were nothing harmful or hazardous. It was cleared.''

Watson declined to identify the bag's contents.

The flight attendant found the note in one of the plane's lavatories. The 129 passengers were taken off the plane and were being rescreened by the Transportation Security Administration and FBI.

Flight 306 left Dallas/Ft. Worth at 1:46 p.m. CDT and landed in Nashville shortly after 3:30 p.m., said American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner. It was a full flight carrying two pilots and three flight attendants.

(end of excerpt)

Attorneys for a Saudi man accused of using his Web sites to foster terrorism rested their case Wednesday after presenting a single witness: an expert who testified the computer student never condoned terrorism.

Former CIA agent Frank Anderson testified that two Internet sites administered by Sami Omar Al-Hussayen did not foster terrorist activities.

One of the sites "has and has had since 2001 a clear, unambiguous, almost emotionally written condemnation of terror," he said.

The seven-week trial of Al-Hussayen, a University of Idaho graduate student, has pitted First Amendment guarantees against the government's efforts in the war on terrorism.

The federal government claims Al-Hussayen, a computer science student, used his skills to disseminate information to terrorists.

Prosecutors have argued he turned Web sites of the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Islamic Assembly of North America into an Internet network providing information to foster terrorism, particularly in the Middle East and Chechnya.

Anderson, a private security consultant and former CIA station chief in the Middle East, said one Web site was religious in nature, and another was a daily Internet magazine analyzing political events.

The government has sought to convince jurors that the latter Web site used news articles to help terrorist leaders strengthen their war chests and fill their ranks.

Closing arguments were scheduled to begin Tuesday.

(end of excerpt)

America's prison population grew by 2.9% last year, to almost 2.1 million inmates, with one of every 75 men living in prison or jail.

The inmate population continued its rise despite a fall in the crime rate and many states' efforts to reduce some sentences, especially for low-level drug offenders.

The report issued Thursday by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics attributes much of the increase to get-tough policies enacted during the 1980s and '90s, such as mandatory drug sentences, "three-strikes-and-you're-out" laws for repeat offenders, and "truth-in-sentencing laws" that restrict early releases.

Whether that's good or bad depends on whom is asked.

(end of excerpt)

A national political convention opens here this week but it won't get a lot of air time on the evening newscasts, cause traffic tie-ups or rack up big municipal bills for overtime pay for cops.

[..]

"They're Libertarians. Perhaps they didn't want any government assistance," joked Dan McLagan, the spokesman for Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue.

"We'll be paying for our convention solely with private, not taxpayer, funds," countered George Getz, the party's communications director. "The two older parties will be shaking down taxpayers for more than $75 million, which makes them nothing more than obscenely expensive, taxpayer-financed political ads."

Formed in 1971, the party stresses the rights of individuals over the power of government, and a foreign policy of noninterference. It claims nearly 600 elected officials nationwide, almost entirely in city or county positions, and has been on the presidential ballot in all 50 states for the last three elections.

[..]

The main event of the convention comes Sunday when the party will choose its nominee from a field of seven, only three of whom are seen as strong contenders: Gary Nolan, a talk radio personality who has won all the primaries; Aaron Russo, a former Hollywood movie producer who ran for governor of Nevada in 1998, and Michael Badnarik, a Texas software engineer.

Their campaigns are anything but free-spending. None of the three front-runners had raised more than $100,000 through the end of March, according to campaign disclosure reports.

All three want to repeal the Patriot Act and bring American troops home from foreign soil.

[..]

So far, the Libertarian Party is on the presidential ballot in 28 states, according to Richard Winger, who edits a newsletter and Web site called "Ballot Access News." But petitions have been filed with election officials in Maryland, West Virginia and Texas, and petition drives are still underway in Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Lawsuits will determine if the party gets on the ballot in Ohio and Oklahoma, he said.

[..]

University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato, however, isn't one of them.

"The Libertarians will contribute to the debate with their ideas, but they don't have a ticket that is likely to attract much attention in the fall," he said.

"They have literally no chance of being included in the debates, and that may be one of the only things going right for Georgia W. Bush. Libertarians tend to take more votes away from Republican candidates than Democratic candidates, and the Libertarian ticket just doesn't have the pizazz of Ralph Nader. He's the only significant candidate running in 2004."

(end of excerpt)

The first time they allowed Brandon Mayfield any visitors, he reached out toward the heavy glass partition and spoke into the telephone, trying to reassure his wife and mother:

"Even after the FBI had searched his house, carried away belongings and confiscated credit cards and checkbooks – without charging him with a crime - Mayfield told his family that he had faith in the system.

"'He said he believes in this system. He said it is the best system in the world,' AvNell Mayfield, 63, recalled. 'He knows he will be exonerated. He said no matter what transpires, just be patient, reassure the children and don't let the waiting get to you. He said, `This will all turn out alright.'"

And so it did - but not until John Ashcroft's Justice Department had done everything to keep him jailed, defenseless, and smeared as a "terrorist" in the eyes of the world.

Two weeks after the March 11 Madrid terrorist bombings, the FBI started watching the 37-year-old lawyer and Muslim convert 24/7. The ostensible reason was that a computer search matching up fingerprints found at the scene of the bombing matched his - along with 15 others. The FBI narrowed it down to three, and honed in on Mayfield because of his religion, his associations, and his political views. This is what one FBI official later described as "an absolutely incontrovertible match."

Using the power granted them by the "PATRIOT" Act, FBI agents broke into his house and conducted a search in his absence, rifling through his kids' Spanish homework, and leaving the doors double-bolted - which immediately alerted the Mayfield family that someone had been on the premises. Mayfield called 911 when it happened a second time, and he found a man's footprint on the rug. They couldn't pick up the phone without hearing an odd clicking. When the FBI finally swooped down on the Mayfields' home in a quiet suburb of Portland, Oregon, they burst in the door, trashed the place, and trundled him off in handcuffs without a word. He was jailed for weeks without charges: Ashcroft's goons told the media he was being held as a "material witness" to the Madrid bombings.

By mid-April, the Spanish authorities were saying there was no trace of Mayfield's presence in their country, and also disagreed with the FBI's contention that the prints found on a detonator bag matched Mayfield's. The Americans had seen only a computer-generated copy, not the original image of the prints. But the case against Mayfield didn't rest entirely on somewhat dubious physical evidence, as this news report details:

"The FBI pointed to Mayfield's attendance at a local mosque, his advertising legal services in a publication owned by a man suspected to have links to terrorism, and a telephone call his wife placed to a branch of an Islamic charity with suspected terrorist ties. They also noted that Mayfield represented a man in a child custody case who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to help al-Qaida and the Taliban fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan."

Another news report cites a U.S. official as saying:

"If that print had matched with some little old lady in Peoria, that would be one thing. But what are the odds it would be somebody with this background?"

Or, as Kent Mayfield, Brandon's brother, put it:

"I think the reason they are holding him is because he is of the Muslim faith and because he is not super happy with the Bush administration. So if that's a crime, well you can burn half of us."

More than half of us, if the polls are any indication.

(end of excerpt)

For the second time in a year, the nation's so-called paper of record, The New York Times, has admitted that the record was flawed.

But unlike the Jayson Blair scandal, in which the paper detailed how the reporter fabricated and plagiarized a string of stories, the note "from the editors" published in Wednesday's newspaper did not single out anyone at theTimes for blame. Instead, in an 1,100-word note, editors said it was "past time" the Times examined its reporting in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

The note called some reports about supposed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction "flawed" because they relied too heavily on now-suspect sources with insufficient corroboration. A major source was Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi exile (and former favorite of the Bush administration) who, along with others, had an interest in seeing the United States topple Saddam Hussein.

The administration then used the reports to help bolster the case for war.

The note said editors "fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight."

But, while some in the news industry praised the paper for coming clean, others said the note fell far short of full disclosure, that it was long overdue, and that its message was obtuse at best.

"The Times' exercise would leave any less-than-knowledgeable reader wondering what the hell they were talking about," says former Newsweek chief Osborn Elliot.

Others blasted the paper for not singling out and sanctioning Times reporter Judith Miller, whose reports - which often used unnamed sources, frequently Chalabi - have been widely challenged.

"Unlike Blair's deceptions, Miller's lies provided the pretext for war. Her lies cost lives. If only the Times had done the same kind of investigation of Miller's reports as it had with Blair," says Amy Goodman, author of The Exception to the Rulers, which takes Miller to task for her stories. "It's outrageous to have a simple editor's note buried on page A10, while their repetition of the administrations' lies was consistently given top billing on the front pages of the paper."

Miller could not be reached. Times' public editor Daniel Okrent says he plans to write about the note in his Sunday column, but would not discuss its content.

The reporting in question occurred under former executive editor Howell Raines, who lost his job after the Blair scandal. In a note posted on Jim Romenesko's media Web site Wednesday, Raines said he disagreed with the contention "that problems in the WMD stories came about because some editors felt pressured to get scoops into the paper before the necessary checking had taken place."

(end of excerpt)

The 155-mm shells containing sarin gas that exploded in Iraq May 17 were manufactured before 1991, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. That was a pre-Gulf War shell, a different category than the weapons being sought by the Iraq Survey Group, Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, the joint staff deputy director for operations, told a Pentagon news briefing.

(end of excerpt)

Six U.S. soldiers have been diagnosed by the military with permanent brain damage from an anti-malaria drug used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and health officials must reassess its safety, a U.S. senator said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, said the drug, called mefloquine, has "serious risks" that have not been adequately tracked by the Pentagon, the Peace Corps and other government agencies that distribute it.

"I ask that you work with the Food and Drug Administration to reassess the safety of mefloquine," Feinstein wrote Thompson in a letter dated May 24.

Feinstein told Thompson she is concerned that "six service members have been diagnosed with permanent brainstem and vestibular damage from being given this drug despite the fact that alternative drugs might have been chosen to prevent infection."

The FDA last year warned that the drug, also called Lariam, is linked to reports of suicide, though a connection has not been established. It also said some psychiatric and neurological side effects have been reported to last long after taking it.

[..]

The diagnoses appear to put the Pentagon, and particularly the Army, in an unusual position: Military health officials continue to insist the drug is safe and to prescribe it widely. Army Surgeon General James Peake told a House subcommittee in February that "we don't think it is as big a problem as has been made out."

Peake also dismissed any association between the drug and a string of murder-suicides at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the summer of 2002 by U.S. soldiers who took Lariam while assigned to units in Afghanistan.

"There was absolutely no statistical correlation between Lariam use and those suicides," Peake said.

(end of excerpt)

Dr. Tom Coburn, the plainspoken obstetrician from Muskogee, Okla., was back in Washington briefly last week. Republican senators greeted him with mixed emotions. He is their best hope for keeping an Oklahoma seat Republican in the closely divided Senate. The bad news is, he would be as prickly as he was during his six years in the House (1995-2000).

Coburn's problem is that he takes seriously the professed Republican agenda: limited government, entitlement reform and anti-abortion advocacy. He was a rare sincere GOP supporter of term limits, leaving the House after three terms as he promised to do. The result is scant support for Coburn from the Republican establishment.

That situation suggests the current realignment cycle in American politics is nearing an end after 36 years, with the Republican Party displaying symptoms of a nervous breakdown. The party's leadership, from President Bush on down, went out of its way to push the undependable Republican Sen. Arlen Specter to victory against a staunch conservative in the Pennsylvania primary because he was considered a stronger general election candidate. In contrast, dependably conservative Coburn gets no establishment support in the contested Oklahoma primary, though he is the best bet in November.

[..]

All this dates back a decade when Coburn came to Washington as a foot soldier in the Gingrich Revolution. By July 1997, Coburn had concluded that Speaker Newt Gingrich was no revolutionary. He was a leader in the unsuccessful coup attempt to replace Gingrich with then-Rep. Bill Paxon, now the only big-time Washington lobbyist who supports Coburn.

Coburn in the Senate can be expected to act much as he did in the House, when he constantly harassed the appropriators for spending the budget surplus. He would not follow the accepted freshman senator's model of spending his first two years listening and waiting. From day one, he would join John McCain in upbraiding colleagues over their insatiable appetite for pork. He would push immediately for Social Security and Medicare reform. He would make clear his unhappiness over the way the Department of Health and Human Services has been run under Republican management led by Secretary Tommy Thompson.

[..]

In his current campaign, Coburn spends two days a week practicing medicine.

In announcing his candidacy, Coburn took dead aim at professional politicians: ''I believe we have a deficit of moral courage in the United States Congress. We have many learned individuals who know what is right but have not the courage to stand against the moral corruption that is now attempting to undermine our republic.'' Tom Coburn is not running to be the most popular senator.

(end of excerpt)

Gen. Pervez Musharraf made the comments in an interview aired Thursday on Pakistan's private Geo television network. He did not elaborate on the men's role or say when they were caught, but said they will face a trial soon in a military court.

``Some of them are not even for any religious motivation. Some of them are for money,'' Musharraf said.

Musharraf, who has angered hardliners for supporting the U.S.-led war on terrorism, was the target of a Dec. 14 attack when a powerful bomb exploded moments after his motorcade passed over a bridge near the capital. No one was killed or injured.

Eleven days later, two suicide bombers tried to kill Musharraf again on the same road by ramming his motorcade with explosive-laden vehicles. The president was unhurt but 16 people, mostly policemen, were killed.

Asked if the suspects were directly involved in the assassination attempts, Musharraf said: ``For the bridge incident, yes.''

He said he was ``200 percent sure'' that no senior-ranking officers were involved.

``We know exactly who is involved. We know (the) entire picture of both the actions,'' he said.

In March, Musharraf said a Libyan member of al-Qaida was behind the attacks. But in the Thursday interview he said the mastermind was Pakistani and the only suspect still at large.

``The only person not there is this mastermind ... who planned it. That man is still at large. We will get him,'' the president said. ``We know exactly who he is.''

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan confirmed the arrests but offered few details.

``They were junior ranking people, and none among them was an officer,'' he told The Associated Press.

Sultan said the number of detainees was in single figures.

``These people are still being interrogated, and I cannot share other details with the media at this stage,'' he said.

(end of excerpt)

In its first official meeting yesterday, the president's commission investigating flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction heard from David Kay, the former Iraq weapons inspector whose criticism helped bring about the panel's creation.

Kay, along with about a dozen other experts, appeared before the commission in a closed seven-hour session to brief the nine commissioners as they begin sorting out the quality of US intelligence regarding the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

[..]

The panel also heard yesterday from current and former Iraq Survey Group officials and members of the National Intelligence Council. Commission spokesman Larry McQuillan declined to identify the other individuals.

The meeting focused primarily on Iraq, although the commission will be looking at the threat from other countries and terrorist networks, according to a statement from the commission chairmen, former senator Chuck Robb, a Democrat from Virginia, and Republican Laurence Silberman, a senior judge on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

(end of excerpt)

President Bush and Congress have so far provided $191 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and defensive military operations at home, and about two-thirds of the money has been spent or is owed, White House figures show.

The numbers show that since the Sept. 11 attacks, lawmakers have provided $61 billion for US military and reconstruction activity in Afghanistan, $119 billion for operations in Iraq, $10 billion for domestic military steps and $1 billion for other expenses such as rebuilding the damaged Pentagon.

Congress has enacted at least five bills providing money for the wars, covering the 2001 through 2004 government budget years. At each step, figures on the expenditures have been reported. But the numbers provided this week by the White House Office of Management and Budget represent the most comprehensive look at war spending that the administration has made available.

(end of excerpt)

A jury convicted Terry L. Nichols yesterday of 161 state murder counts, rejecting arguments that he had been an unwitting accomplice to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The jury, which deliberated for five hours, instead branded Nichols a full partner of executed bomber Timothy J. McVeigh. Next week, prosecutors will try to persuade the same 12 jurors to do what a federal jury would not do six years ago: sentence Nichols to death.

(end of excerpt)

Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told a news conference in Baghdad he understood that the U.S. military would respect the deal to end weeks of fighting with Shi'ite militiamen in Najaf, which entailed putting Iraqi police back on the street.

"There will be no vacuum of security in Najaf," Rubaie told a news conference in Baghdad. "Until that time coalition forces will suspend offensive operations, but will continue to provide security by putting out some patrols."

"I understand that the coalition will honor and respect this deal," he said, when asked whether the U.S. military had agreed to the truce. There was no direct confirmation of that from the U.S. military.

Earlier on Thursday, Rubaie, quoting a statement signed by Sadr, said the cleric was willing to pull members of his Mehdi Army who are not from Najaf out of the city and had demanded in return that a murder case for which he is wanted be suspended.

"To end the tragic situation in Najaf and the violation...of the holy places, I announce my agreement to the following: an end to all armed demonstrations, the evacuation of government buildings...and the withdrawal of all Mehdi Army fighters," the statement said.

The U.S.-led coalition has previously said it would not negotiate with Sadr and that to end the confrontation he must disband his militia and agree to face justice.

Iraq's most revered Shi'ite religious authority, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said through a spokesman that he had persuaded Sadr to make a deal to avert a wider U.S. onslaught on Najaf.

(end of excerpt)

The Sept. 11 commission's next hearing is being delayed a week because of scheduling problems with some witnesses, the panel's spokesman said yesterday.

The hearing in Washington on "national crisis management" had been planned for June 8-9 but now will be held June 16-17.

[..]

The hearing is expected to delve into how quickly the Federal Aviation Administration notified U.S. air defenses about hijacked planes on the day of the 2001 attacks. Officials of the FAA and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, are scheduled to testify.

Details of the 9/11 plot also will be examined, with testimony from intelligence and law enforcement officials.

Family members and critics long have charged that if military jets had been scrambled sooner after the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., they might have prevented American Airlines Flight 77 from crashing into the Pentagon more than 50 minutes later, killing 184 people.

At the commission's hearing on aviation safety last May, Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, a retired NORAD commander, acknowledged under questioning that the jets could have intercepted Flight 77 if they had been sent sooner.

Felzenberg said the June hearing will focus on tracing the timeline of the FAA's notification, as well as when President Bush delivered the order to NORAD to shoot down any hijacked planes.

In the days after the attacks, officials said NORAD had been notified of the hijacking of an American Airlines jetliner 12 minutes before it slammed into the Pentagon. Vice President Dick Cheney said Bush had authorized the Air Force after the World Trade Center attacks to shoot down any plane that entered and refused to leave Washington area airspace. Cheney left unclear whether Bush's decision came before the Pentagon was hit.

(end of excerpt)

Citizens can choose to buy the official line on the events of Sept. 11, 2001 - or they can ask questions about holes in that story as big as the crater at Ground Zero.

This week, at the unlikeliest of locations, the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in west-end Toronto, the International Citizens' Inquiry into 9/11 picks up where it left off in San Francisco in March.

Here, international authors, filmmakers, academics, military and intelligence experts as well as, yes, probably the occasional conspiracy theorist, are mixing it up with ordinary people who can't accept that all the systems simply failed on one terrible and tragic morning.

They're gathering to focus attention on why, still, nearly three years after two planes tore through the World Trade Center, one crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field, the White House still hasn't produced a plausible explanation for why so much went so wrong all at once.

"To ask questions and to ask them fearlessly," says Citizens' Inquiry director Barrie Zwicker. "This is the heart of this."

Indeed, a majority of Canadians doubt the line out of Washington. A poll conducted for the non-profit inquiry (http://www.911inquiry.org) this month shows that 63 per cent of us believe the U.S. government had "prior knowledge of the plans for the events of September 11th, and failed to take appropriate action to stop them."

[..]

Inquiry's unasked questions include: Why were fighter jets not scrambled in time to stop the planes from smashing into the buildings? Why did the U.S. chain of command - including the commander-in-chief Bush - not act when the hijackings were in progress? Why were so many warnings missed? And why did it take the Kean Commission - Washington's official 9/11 inquiry - so long to get going, and only after the bereaved families noisily lobbied for more than a year?

[..]

...by lumping 9/11 skeptics with whackos who pick up alien voices with their tooth fillings, the mainstream media can marginalize any and all questioners as "conspiracy theorists."

"The official story is a conspiracy theory: Osama bin Laden and his co-conspirators did it," Zwicker emphasizes. "It's a brilliant narrative, but upon examination of the evidence, it crumbles into dust, just like the dust of the World Trade Towers."

(end of excerpt)

The United States has "credible intelligence from multiple sources" that al-Qaida is determined to launch an attack in the United States in the next few months that could be linked to events such as an upcoming international economic summit and the summer political conventions, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday.

Speaking at a Justice Department news conference, Ashcroft said the intelligence, together with recent public statements attributed to al-Qaida, "suggest that it is almost ready to attack the United States."

"This disturbing intelligence indicates al-Qaida's specific intention to hit the United States hard," Ashcroft said.

In particular, Ashcroft said, seven people being sought by the United States "all present a clear and present danger to America. All should be considered armed and dangerous."

The warning was not accompanied by an increase in the U.S. terror alert status, however.

(end of excerpt)

A former deputy U.S. marshal and Marine Corps veteran who claims the CIA slipped LSD into his drink in 1957 as part of a mind-control project offered enough evidence to send his $12 million lawsuit to trial, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Chief U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in favor of Wayne Ritchie, citing an apparent admission from a former CIA operative.

"I drugged guys involved in about 10, 12 (instances)," former federal narcotics agent Ira Feldman, who worked for the CIA's Project MKULTRA, told Ritchie's lawyer in a sworn deposition in February 2003. "I didn't do any follow-up. ... You just back away and let them worry like this nitwit, Ritchie."

Ritchie, 75, believes he may have been a guinea pig for the CIA's MKULTRA project, in which LSD and other drugs were given to hundreds of unsuspecting Americans during the Cold War.

Ritchie believes his drinks at a 1957 office Christmas party attended by a federal agent involved in the project were spiked.

The government denies drugging Ritchie and accuse him of concocting the theory to cash in on publicity about MKULTRA, the subject of congressional hearings in the 1970s and a 1997 movie.

(end of excerpt)

A federal judge said yesterday he had significant doubts about whether the federal government has enough scientific evidence to show that the anthrax vaccine required for military personnel is either safe or effective.

US District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who will decide in coming weeks whether to halt the Defense Department's mandatory anthrax inoculations, also criticized the government's review of the vaccine as ''one of the most jumbled, confusing" processes he had ever seen.

Sullivan made his remarks in a hearing on a lawsuit filed in March 2003 by six anonymous members of the military who said the vaccine posed health risks that had not been sufficiently studied.

More than 1 million US troops have been given the anthrax vaccine since the program became mandatory in 1998, many of them in preparation for duty in Iraq. Hundreds have refused the vaccine out of concern for their safety amid complaints of harmful side effects and medical reports linking the vaccine to a few deaths.

(end of excerpt)

Such an attack could take place as early as this summer, according to several U.S. officials.

[..]

Attacks might take place before the November presidential election in an attempt to affect the outcome, the officials said.

For weeks, security officials have expressed concern about several upcoming high-profile events, including Saturday's dedication of the National World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington.

Other potential targets include the G8 economic summit on Sea Island, Georgia, Fourth of July celebrations, the Democratic convention in Boston, the Republican convention in New York, and the Olympics in Greece.

Although there is no specific target, time or date for the possible attack, the information is the culmination of intelligence that has been known and gathered over time -- and it is the assessment that is new, the sources said.

[..]

The FBI is likely to issue alerts for several individuals the bureau would like to locate in the coming days, two counterterrorism sources told CNN.

The sources would not describe who those persons are and why they are wanted now. One source said the bureau would be re-issuing alerts for some people already wanted.

[..]

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said his department had received "highly sensitive intelligence" as recently as Tuesday, and there was "nothing in that reporting to indicate a specific threat or looming attack against New York City.

"Nor have we been advised that terrorists are known to be in the United States actively plotting such an attack," Kelly said in a statement.

The Los Angeles and Boston police departments made similar comments.

An official with the Department of Homeland Security said the agency remains concerned about the general al Qaeda threat but had no new specific information.

"We are not aware of any new highly credible intelligence indicating a planned attack in the U.S. this summer," the official said. She added: "Nothing in the current intelligence is exceptionally specific."

(end of excerpt)

Dutch citizens and residents could be issued a national personal identification number by 2006 under which their personal details will be stored centrally and subsequently accessed by all central, provincial and local-government authorities - from hospitals to schools.

Introduced by Thom de Graaf, Dutch minister for government reform and kingdom relations, and approved by the cabinet several weeks ago, this proposal - with its possible Big Brother ramifications that would normally have provoked protests from privacy activists - has been passed largely unnoticed and without significant protest.

The new personal identification code will replace the so-called social and tax identification (SOFI) number with the innocuous-sounding "citizen service number" or BSN.

Notably, when the SOFI-number was originally approved by the Dutch parliament decades ago, the government of the day had to move heaven and earth to allay fears of misuse. Reassurances in the form of legal guarantees had to be given that the SOFI-number would not be used "universally", but restricted to tax and social-services administration.

The role of the SOFI-number was first broadened by the cabinet - in relative secrecy - in 2001, for use by several ministries, government authorities, insurance companies and pension funds.

Now, the new BSN could be another step towards broader and more intrusive measures in the Netherlands.

Once the fine print is read, it quickly becomes apparent that the minister has bigger things in store for the BSN. Although the SOFI-number will lose its name, the new BSN, content-wise, will be identical to its defunct cousin, digit for digit. In addition to its generic name, the BSN will also take on an application name - such as healthcare or education number, depending on whether it refers to a patient or student.

(end of excerpt)

Gloria Dion wants her money back after being subjected to what she calls the worst Jewel concert ever.

Dion, along with her two daughters Nicole and Kaitlin, went to last Saturday's 8 p.m. Jewel concert at the Hampton Beach Ballroom Casino. The singer performed two concerts that evening at the Casino. People who saw the first said Jewel was at the top of her game and said it was a "rocking show."

Those who had tickets to the second show saw something quite different, according to Dion.

"People were literally walking out of the show," she said. "As soon as she came out, she began to insult us. We thought she was joking at first because it was kind of weird."

Witnesses said Jewel went on a tirade of insults from poking fun at fat people to others with no teeth. At one point, she asked the audience to yell requests and then told them to "shut the hell up."

"I saw her live in Boston and it was the greatest show I've ever been to," Dion said. "I don’t know if she was having a nervous breakdown or what. She told everyone to stop looking at her teeth and look at her breasts."

Jewel was on stage for about an hour and played only four to five songs. Halfway through the show, Dion said Jewel began to talk about Zoloft and Paxil for about 10 minutes.

"I don't know what that was all about," said Nicole Dion, who came from Canada to see the show. "I don't know if she was on it or what. Maybe she didn’t take it."

(end of excerpt)

Top military managers insist that our all-volunteer Army isn't stretched too thin from this country's heavy and hazardous commitment to hot spots like Iraq and Afghanistan and cooler places in another 131 countries around Planet Earth. They spout positive numbers like carnival hucksters, hyping enlistment and re-enlistment rates they keep insisting are at an all-time high.

[..]

Except that's exactly 180 degrees out from what hundreds of soldiers have told me during the past few weeks.

It also doesn't square with the fact that the Army is currently extending 44,000 soldiers under stop-loss provisions - which, like a form of the draft, arbitrarily keep a soldier in service beyond the agreed-upon term of enlistment.

"Stop loss is not only a breach of contract, it's a form of slavery," railed a Special Forces senior noncommissioned officer. "There's a tidal wave of folks getting out. ... The number of senior SF NCOs leaving is amazing. Our battalion had three of five sergeant majors retire, and our sister battalion had two of five. The number of master sergeants was well into double digits. I predict that the exodus will devastate the senior NCO corps at a time when experience and stability are most needed."

Despite all the accentuate-the-positive spin coming out of the Pentagon, the anecdotal reports I've received - especially from Reserve and National Guard folks - agree with the SF sergeant and point to a mass exodus that will reach the hemorrhage point by mid-2005.

"Speaking off the record," writes a military wife, "my husband was supposed to come home from Iraq this week but has just been extended another 120 days. His old unit, 3rd Infantry Division, is already seeing an exodus of junior officers. Since their return from Iraq, 35 captains have left the Army for greener pastures. Several more - read: another 15-20 - are due to leave, but who knows whether or not they'll manage to do so before more stop losses and stop moves come down prior to their return to the desert ... Between separation from family, no guarantee of tour lengths, no clear mission and consistent pay problems, folks are pretty fed up. If they can get out, which is no small feat, they seem to be doing so while the getting is good."

"Don't use my name," writes a senior sergeant. "I believe we are going to have a massive attrition problem in the Reserve. I have 24 years in the Army Reserve, and this is my second time in the Gulf. They're talking about reservists having to deploy once every five years. I doubt our civilian employers and families are going to buy into that. I've got to get out when I redeploy if I want to stay married."

"We're stretched too thin," reports a sergeant. "Our CO [commanding officer] admitted this to us during our tour in Afghanistan. He also admitted that morale is down due to the extending of tours. Yet the Pentagon insists there's no problem with morale. We lost over 75 percent of our unit when we got back. I know other units are having the same problems. If this trend continues, we won't have enough people to defend this country when the need arises."

An Apache pilot in Korea says, "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the Army is going to be losing a lot of people as soon as they get the chance to vote with their feet."

(end of excerpt)

The author is Tom Clancy.

The hawkish master of such million-selling thrillers as "Patriot Games" and "The Hunt for Red October" now finds himself adding to the criticism of the Iraq war, and not only through his own comments.

His latest book, "Battle Ready," is a collaboration with another war critic, retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni. "Battle Ready" looks at Zinni's long military career, dating back to the Vietnam War, and includes harsh remarks by Zinni about the current conflict.

[..]

Zinni has openly attacked the war, but Clancy reluctantly acknowledged his own concerns. He declined repeatedly to comment on the war, before saying that it lacked a "casus belli," or suitable provocation.

"It troubles me greatly to say that, because I've met President Bush," Clancy said. "He's a good guy. ... I think he's well-grounded, both morally and philosophically. But good men make mistakes."

[..]

While the 57-year-old Clancy is tall and thin, with bony arms and round, sunken eyes, the 60-year-old Zinni has the short, stocky build of an ex-Marine. He served as commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000 and as a special Middle East envoy from 2001-2003.

But even as an envoy, Zinni spoke out against invading Iraq, regarding it as disastrous for Middle East peace and a distraction from the war against terrorism. On Monday, he said getting rid of Saddam Hussein was not worth the price.

"He’s a bad guy. He’s a terrible guy and he should go," Zinni said. "But I don’t think it’s worth 800 troops dead, 4,500 wounded - some of them terribly - $200 billion of our treasury and counting, and our reputation and our image in the world, particularly in that region, shattered."

In discussing the Iraq war, both Clancy and Zinni singled out the Department of Defense for criticism. Clancy recalled a prewar encounter in Washington during which he "almost came to blows" with Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser at the time and a longtime advocate of the invasion.

"He was saying how [Secretary of State] Colin Powell was being a wuss because he was overly concerned with the lives of the troops," Clancy said. "And I said, 'Look ..., he’s supposed to think that way!' And Perle didn’t agree with me on that. People like that worry me."

(end of excerpt)

The coalition has declared repeatedly that it will not negotiate with "militias and criminals." Nonetheless, a deal may be forthcoming with Sadr, said an official close to the talks. The coalition has previously said it wanted the cleric killed or captured.

If the deal pans out, it could bring to an end the seven-week conflict. The hope is that by engaging Sadr politically, the coalition can neutralize him militarily. His militia might also eventually be integrated into the Iraqi national security forces.

Such an accord would reverse previously held coalition strategies - much as happened in Fallujah. In that Iraqi city, the scene of intense fighting in April, militia including many of the same insurgents who were fighting the Marines are now in charge of keeping the peace.

For the coalition, ending the Sadr rebellion before the June 30 handover is critical to a proper transfer of power. As long as the fighting continues, Iraqi security forces will not have hold over the cities underscoring the fact that the coalition and not Iraqis are essentially in control of security.

As early as Tuesday, two representatives from Sadr's office will meet with two representatives of Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, says Adnan Ali, the head of the political bureau of the Dawa Party.

"If everything goes smoothly there will be an announcement between the two rivals within 24 hours," says Mr. Ali, who is also an aide of Governing Council member, Ibrahim al-Jaffari. Dr. Jaffari is one of the Governing Council members involved in the negotiations who also aspires to be part of the interim government after June 30.

The four-point agreement, which has already been agreed to by Sadr, according to Ali, calls for the Mahdi Army to become an unarmed political movement and requires the Mahdi Army to return all government property - such as police cars, buildings, and guns - to the state. Coalition forces agree to pull out of the holy cities immediately. The possible accord also obligates Sadr to be tried by an Iraqi court if he is asked to do so after the transfer of authority June 30th.

Iraqis say the negotiations offered the only possible hope of ending the fighting. "The military solution is not acceptable to the Iraqis. Not here and not in Fallujah," says Mohammed Fitnan, a Karbala resident close to the negotiations.

(end of excerpt)

Hunter S. Thompson's ESPN column was scrubbed of controversy late Monday afternoon when online editors worried the famed gonzo journalist had gone too far.

In a column entitled, "Let's Go to the Olympics," Thompson went off on the Abu Ghraib prison picture scandal, exclaiming: "Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these [Abu Ghraib] photographs did."

But after being linked to the DRUDGE REPORT, a top editor demanded the sentence be immediately edited --without Thompson's okay, according to an ESPN.com staffer.

"Hunter can go too far sometimes," the Bristol-based ESPN employee told the DRUDGE REPORT.

The cleansed paragraph now reads:

"These horrifying digital snapshots of the American dream in action on foreign soil are worse than anything even I could have expected. I have been in this business a long time and I have seen many staggering things, but this one is over the line.

As with the original, Thompson still concludes with the thought: "Now I am really ashamed to carry an American passport."

(end of excerpt)

In a motion filed Monday alleging misconduct, defense attorney Mark Geragos, is seeking sanctions against the prosecution in Peterson's double-murder trial, set to start June 1.

Peterson is accused of killing his pregnant wife, Laci, and their fetus on or around Dec. 24, 2002.

``Just last week the prosecution turned over reports disclosing an interview with a witness who saw Laci Peterson being pulled into a van by at least two men. This eyewitness, who has been a sworn peace officer, has apparently been known to the prosecution since December of 2002 yet he was only interviewed within the last week,'' the motion states.

``The witness confirmed his sighting of a woman he identified as Laci and her two abductors. However, the Modesto Police Department chose to ignore this former peace officer's report,'' Geragos wrote. ``This ... clearly establishes that the prosecution's conduct was undertaken in bad faith.''

Geragos has contended that authorities ignored other leads and focused solely on Peterson. Peterson claims he was fishing alone on San Francisco Bay the day his wife disappeared.

(end of excerpt)

Anti-American sentiment stirred up by media portrayals of U.S. actions in Iraq have increased the potential threat of terrorism against American nationals in Indonesia, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta warned at the weekend.

[..]

The U.S. Embassy cited "a convergence of local and international factors" which it said increased the potential threat.

Local factors included the detention and trials of high-profile terror suspects, a presidential election campaign and a recent surge of violence between Muslims and Christians in Maluku province.

In addition to those factors and the Iraq issue, the embassy said, "information gathered worldwide indicating that terrorist groups contemplate additional attacks against Americans or American interests."

(end of excerpt)

"Israelis have been to Abu Ghraib and other prisons (in Iraq)," says one source familiar with the U.S. operations.

It was explained that the Israelis involved have been assigned as "civilian contractors" to work with Coalition forces in interrogating Iraqi POWs.

The "contractors" are said to be veterans of Israel's domestic intelligence unit, Shin Bet, as well as the more famous, international intelligence agency, the Mossad.

"Who has better experience in dealing with the Arabs than Israel?" one source asked.

It was explained that several of the "interrogation" techniques used by U.S. forces in Iraq have in fact been used by Israel "for years."

The technique of stripping Arab prisoners naked, to embarrass and humiliate them, has been used by Israelis, according to Arab diplomats at the U.N.

[..]

Word in NYC diplomatic circles is that some of the "civilians" seen in recent Iraq prison photos are in fact Israeli nationals "advising" U.S. forces.

Neither U.S. nor Iraqi diplomatic officials in NYC or Washington were available for comment.

(end of excerpt)

The Supreme Court said today it will referee a modern-day fight over state control of alcohol that recalls the days of Prohibition.

The high court agreed to hear three cases involving state bans that prevent consumers from buying wine directly from an out-of-state supplier. The dispute pits states and an established network of alcohol wholesalers against independent wineries that want to sell their products over the Internet or by phone.

Both sides can point to the Constitution and recent court rulings for support.

The 21st Amendment that ended national Prohibition in 1933 also placed control of alcohol regulation in the hands of state governments, as opposed to the federal government or localities.

Another part of the Constitution, however, gives Congress the power to regulate commerce across state lines.

Federal courts have reached conflicting conclusions about whether direct shipments are legal and constitutional, and the Supreme Court stepped in to settle the question.

About half the states prohibit direct interstate shipment of wine to consumers, while others allow it with some restrictions.

(end of excerpt)

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos. downgraded the size of its proven oil and gas reserves today for the fourth time this year.

The company, which stunned shareholders in January when it announced its reduced confirmed oil and gas holdings by 20 percent, or 3.9 billion barrels, said that it was downgrading another 103 million barrels from "proven" to less certain categories.

It blamed the reduction on accounting changes involving "royalties paid in cash in Canada."

Combined with two other announcements since January, it brings the total of downgraded reserves to 4.47 billion barrels, the company said.

(end of excerpt)

Nearly a year after a red and swollen mosquito bite on her wrist signaled the onset of West Nile virus, Jean Lemon still suffers from crippling bouts of fever.

Her husband, Lowell, also caught the virus and must use oxygen sometimes because he has trouble breathing. He rarely sleeps at night because the virus intensified the pain he feels from arthritis.

``It's been a real slog,'' said Jean Lemon, a 68-year-old retired dietitian who lives with her 74-year-old husband in this western Colorado town. Even without a fever, she said, ``we both had feelings of being so hot, we'd be sitting still, drenched in sweat.''

The mosquito-borne virus, which has marched steadily westward since the first domestic case turned up in New York in 1999, is back for another season, carried afar by infected birds.

While the virus has killed more than 560 people in the United States over the past five years, it has left another trail of misery across the country - survivors like the Lemons paralyzed or in searing pain.

``The infection goes away, but if there's severe nerve damage only some of it - and sometimes none of it - is going to be reversible over time,'' said Dr. Frank Judson, 62, director of the Denver Public Health Department.

Researchers say nearly 80 percent of people infected with West Nile virus won't show any symptoms and most of the rest will have only mild flu-like problems.

About one in 150, however, will develop serious symptoms that include high fever, convulsions and paralysis. A very few will die from encephalitis or meningitis, both involving inflammations of the brain.

(end of excerpt)

As part of its high-profile probe of the 2001 terrorist strikes, the Sept. 11 commission has reviewed a series of Massachusetts Port Authority documents related to security measures and evaluations at Logan International Airport prior to the attacks.

[..]

The commission has probed the level of cooperation between the FBI, state police and Massport and the amount of intelligence the agencies had received or shared about possible security threats prior to the attacks, sources said.

The documents requested by the commission included the layouts of the terminals and specifics on the hijacked flights that departed Logan, according to Massport spokeswoman Barbara Platt.

Focusing on the years before the attacks, the panel also asked for documents related to security measures, knowledge of potential threats and pre-Sept. 11 security evaluations.

[..]

The commission also requested information on lessons learned post-Sept. 11 and security initiatives that were implemented at Logan Airport after the attacks.

[..]

Commission staffers toured Logan in August and returned to Boston in November to interview former Massport officials. Buckingham and Lawless met separately with the commission for several hours each in the Boston offices of Buckingham's lawyer, Joseph Savage. The panel also interviewed Aviation Director Thomas Kinton.

(end of excerpt)

The chatter was persistent--and alarming. In the weeks after the deadly March bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid by al Qaeda operatives, the supersecret U.S. surveillance network, Echelon, intercepted a number of messages from suspected terrorists suggesting planning for a massive, multipronged assault on the United States. When? Between this summer's political conventions and October, one month before the presidential election. The intelligence appeared to confirm information obtained from some seized al Qaeda computers and from several human sources, government officials say. Officials at the CIA and the National Security Agency, which runs the Echelon program, believe the information is credible but worry that the human sources were on the periphery of the now widely dispersed al Qaeda network. Nevertheless, the information pointed to two, perhaps three, targets, the sources say: New York, Washington, and Las Vegas. The objective of the suspected attack, the officials continued, would be not only to cause mass casualties and devastation of U.S. infrastructure but to roil the presidential race. The Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people and wounded 1,800, also toppled the Spanish government and triggered the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. "Since Spain," says a Bush administration official, "al Qaeda has had the feeling of 'We can do this. We can affect an election.' "

Washington is scrambling to react. Last month, U.S. News has learned, the CIA began a massive effort to pull operatives from around the world and redeploy them to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where al Qaeda's base of operations is still believed to be. "We think that's where the best effort can be made," says a U.S. counterterrorism official." The CIA declined to comment, but intelligence sources say the agency is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to recruit more Arabic and Pashto speakers; agency officials hope they will be able to corroborate signals traffic and intelligence from human sources with information from the al Qaeda computers and databases. "They want hard data," says an intelligence source familiar with the CIA's recruiting efforts, "and that's tough as hell to get."

[..]

Given the nature of the suspected threat, however, officials say, they're just going to have to live with such uncertainties. Analysts say the intelligence chatter about an attack on the United States has shown up in open Internet forums and is similar to message traffic that preceded the Madrid bombings. "It's not just the official [terrorist] websites but also the chat rooms and Web forums," says Gabriel Weimann, a scholar in residence at the U.S. Institute for Peace. "The picture is not looking very good."

(end of excerpt)

As part of an aggressive recruiting effort, Army and National Guard officials have warned inactive reservists that they could face being sent back to Iraq unless they re-enlist in the active reserves or join their local Guard units, according to a published report.

MariAnn Curta told the Chicago Tribune in a story published Sunday that a recruiter called her last weekend, saying her 22-year-old son Bill -- who recently completed a nine-month tour of duty in Iraq -- could be headed back there unless he enlisted in the Illinois National Guard.

"It's devious, it's deceptive, it's dishonest, it's valueless.," she said. "I can't believe they'd pull this kind of fast trick on kids who have already served."

Army Reserve spokesman Steven Stromvall told the newspaper that there has been a problem with misleading, inaccurate and intimidating retention efforts throughout the country in the past few weeks. He said the Army Reserve is moving quickly to fix the problem.

"They went a bridge too far," he said.

The telephone warnings have been concentrated in four areas: Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis and Louisiana, according to the newspaper. But Stromvall said National Guard recruiters heard about the tactic and began using similar techniques.

"It then spread through the country, with the exception of New England," he said.

(end of excerpt)

Most Canadians believe the U.S. Government knew that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were coming -- and did not act to prevent them, a poll released today indicates. When asked about the following statement, 63% of Canadians agreed that "Individuals within the U.S. Government including the White House had prior knowledge of the plans for the events of September 11th, and failed to take appropriate action to stop them".

Additionally, 16% of Canadians believe that individuals within the U.S. Government were involved in the planning and execution of the events of September 11th.

The country is more or less split on whether the Canadian Government was right in using the events of 9/11 to justify legislation which limits civil rights. While 50% support the governmentís actions, 44% of Canadians oppose this legislation.

The national poll of Canadians was commissioned by 911inquiry.org and was conducted by Maritz: Thompson Lightstone, a national survey research firm. 911inquiry.org is a Canadian public interest group which does not accept the U.S. Governmentís version of what happened on 9/11. This group is sponsoring the International Citizens Inquiry Into 9/11, being held in Toronto next week -- May 25 - 30.

Barrie Zwicker, Toronto-based Director of the 911inquiry.org group, said "These poll results show just how skeptical Canadians are of the official 9/11 story. And they are concerned about the effect the so-called War on Terrorism is having on civil liberties in our country. And we know that all of this arises out of 9/11."

"That is why we are conducting the Citizens Inquiry Into 9/11 in Toronto," Zwicker continued. "The wide range of speakers and panels at the Inquiry will fully air these important issues."

The Canada-wide poll was conducted between May 6 and May 11, 2004 with a national sample of 750 people. The poll is considered accurate to within 3.58 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

(end of excerpt)

Another result of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City has been health-related lawsuits -- a lot of them.

The Daily News reported that more than 1,700 firefighters and police officers are suing the city, claiming they were sickened by toxins from the World Trade Center wreckage. The newspaper reported that sicknesses named in the lawsuits include cancer, asthma and other breathing disorders.

One police officer won a ruling in Manhattan Supreme Court last month that his terminal tonsil cancer had been "exacerbated" by toxins from ground zero. The city was ordered to pay him a disability pension.

The fire department says more than 300 firefighters have retired since the terror attacks because of sicknesses and injuries related to the attacks.

(end of excerpt)

FRESH doubts were cast on the quality of Britain's pre-war intelligence on Iraqi arms last night, as it emerged that United States authorities are urgently seeking two former MI6 informants whose evidence has now "fallen apart".

US agents have been painstakingly reviewing the intelligence that led Western leaders including Tony Blair and the US president George Bush to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein was pursuing an illicit chemical and biological weapons programmes.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the CIA has established that information from two "supposedly senior" Iraqis who spied for MI6 had "fallen apart".

"Neither had direct knowledge of what they claimed. They were describing what they had heard," one US official said.

The revelation raises questions about the British government's now-infamous weapons of mass destruction (WMD) dossier, published in September 2002.

That dossier, compiled from MI6 reports, claimed that Saddam had an active, growing WMD programme and the ability to launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.

The source of that claim has never been identified, but evidence given during Lord Hutton's inquiry last year established that it came from a single individual who had defected from the Iraqi military.

It has also emerged the claim related to battlefield weapons, not long-range missiles. Ministers including Mr Blair have said they were unaware of that point even when the war began, and experts have cast doubt on whether even the source of the claim had been aware of the distinction.

Despite working closely on Iraq and sharing almost all of their reports, MI6 and the CIA could not agree on the assertion, which was at the centre of the political battle over the government’s case for war.

(end of excerpt)

The Northeast rail corridor is receiving heightened scrutiny from security officials over increasing concerns that the heavily trafficked commuter system is a prime terrorist target heading into this summer's political conventions, which will be held in Boston and New York.

On Thursday night two Acela Express trains, Amtrak's signature high-speed rail service, traveling from New York to Washington were stopped and searched by bomb-sniffing dogs, an Amtrak spokesperson told MSNBC.com. Nothing was found and the trains were allowed to continue after delays of about an hour, the spokesperson said.

The investigations were prompted by an anonymous tipster who called a local law enforcement office. The Amtrak spokesperson declined to identify the office.  Local police notified Amtrak and the two trains - one near Philadelphia and other near the Baltimore-Washington International airport - were then stopped and searched.

(end of excerpt)

The videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck.

The U.S. military says it is investigating the attack, which took place in the village of Mogr el-Deeb about five miles from the Syrian border, but that all evidence so far indicates the target was a safehouse for foreign fighters.

``There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration,'' Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday. ``There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too.''

But video that APTN shot a day after the attack shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered around the bombed out tent.

An AP reporter and photographer, who interviewed more than a dozen survivors a day after the bombing, were able to identify many of them on the wedding party video - which runs for several hours.

APTN also traveled to Mogr el-Deeb, 250 miles west of Ramadi, the day after the attack to film what the survivors said was the wedding site. A devastated building and remnants of the tent, pots and pans could be seen, along with bits of what appeared to be the remnants of ordnance, one of which bore the marking ``ATU-35,'' similar to those on U.S. bombs.

A water tanker truck can be seen in both the video shot by APTN and the wedding tape obtained from a cousin of the groom.

On Monday, a senior coalition military officer said ``we still don't believe there was a wedding going on'' and that intelligence showed that only legitimate targets were attacked. The survivors agree that the wedding festivities had broken up for the night when the attack began, but they insist that there were no foreign fighters or other combatants in their group.

The video shows the bride arriving in a white pickup truck and quickly being ushered into a house by a group of women. Outside, men recline on brightly colored silk pillows, relaxing on the carpeted floor of a large goat-hair tent as boys dance to tribal songs.

The singing and dancing seems to go on forever at the all-male tent set up in the garden of the host, Rikad Nayef, for the wedding of his son, Azhad, and the bride Rutbah Sabah. The men later move to the porch when darkness falls, apparently taking advantage of the cool night weather. Children, mainly boys, sit on their fathers' laps; men smoke an Arab water pipe, finger worry beads and chat with one another. It looks like a typical, gender-segregated tribal desert wedding.

As expected, women are out of sight - but according to survivors, they danced to the music of Hussein al-Ali, a popular Baghdad wedding singer hired for the festivities. Al-Ali was buried in Baghdad on Thursday.

Prominently displayed on the videotape was a stocky man with close-cropped hair playing an electric organ. Another tape, filmed a day later in Ramadi and obtained by APTN, showed the musician lying dead in a burial shroud - his face clearly visible and wearing the same tan shirt as he wore when he performed.

As the musicians played, young men milled about, most dressed in traditional white robes. Young men swayed in tribal dances to the monotonous tones of traditional Arabic music. Two children - a boy and a girl - held hands, dancing and smiling. Women are rarely filmed at such occasions, and they appear only in distant glimpses.

Kimmitt said U.S. troops who swept through the area found rifles, machine guns, foreign passports, bedding, syringes and other items that suggested the site was used by foreigners infiltrating from Syria.

The videotape showed no weapons, although they are common among rural Iraqis.

Kimmitt has denied finding evidence that any children died in the raid although a ``handful of women'' - perhaps four to six - were ``caught up in the engagement.''

``They may have died from some of the fire that came from the aircraft,'' he told reporters Friday.

However, an AP reporter obtained names of at least 10 children who relatives said had died. Bodies of five of them were filmed by APTN when the survivors took them to Ramadi for burial Wednesday. Iraqi officials said at least 13 children were killed. Mourners say the bride and groom were killed.

(end of excerpt)

Four Alaskans are filing a legal challenge Friday to the federal government's proposed new airline passenger-profiling plan, charging the program could prevent ordinary Alaskans from being able to travel to their state capital.

The complaint asks the court to prohibit the U.S. government from issuing a secret order compelling airlines to turn over passenger data to the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System, or CAPPS II. They said the order essentially would impose secret laws on Americans without giving them the right to challenge them in court.

[..]

The lawsuit, part of a campaign against the proposed profiling system, was filed in the United States District Court in Alaska on behalf of two Anchorage travel agents and two educators from the remote town of Unalakeet (population 800), which sits on the Bering Strait.

Under CAPPS II, passengers would be assigned a color code -- green, yellow or red -- denoting how much of a terrorism risk they pose. The program would assign the risk by checking passengers' personal information against databases owned by Acxiom and LexisNexis and against government watch lists of suspected terrorists and those wanted for violent crimes. A green score would result in no extra screening while a yellow score would lead to more intensive bag and hand-wand screening. A red score would alert the police to arrest or detain the passenger.

But CAPPS II has met a lot of opposition from privacy advocates and frequent travelers. On government websites seeking public comment about the program, CAPPS II has received thousands of critical comments, some of which can be found on the Department of Homeland Security's privacy office's homepage.

In addition, in the wake of lawsuits and bad publicity caused by revelations that major airlines including JetBlue, Northwest and American secretly turned over data to the government, the airline industry has made it clear that it will not participate in CAPPS II unless ordered to do so.

Out of frustration, Adm. James Loy, then head of the Transportation Security Administration, threatened in September to issue a secret directive to force hesitant airlines to share the data. If it follows through, the TSA would require airlines to forward all passenger information to the system, including date of birth, home phone numbers and addresses.

John Davis, the superintendent of the Bering Strait School District, joined the lawsuit both as a matter of principle and pragmatism.

"Ultimately what is offensive and objectionable is the development of regulations that will determine if I can fly in absolute secrecy, outside the purview of my legislators and outside my ability to address it in court if I were to be victimized by it adversely," Davis said.

Since Davis oversees a school district about the size of Minnesota, he spends about half the year traveling to schools, including some on islands just miles from the Arctic Circle.

"I live in environment where if I can't fly, I can't travel," he said. "I don't have access to an automobile, and even if I did, I couldn't take it anywhere outside of my community because there are no roads. I don't have any other option but to fly for business and to take care of serious medical problems."

For her part, Sally Huntley, who runs the Anchorage travel agency Frontier Travel, decided to sue out of indignation that the airlines would soon force her to share information about her clients with the government.

"These clients have become my friends," Huntley said. "This isn't about security, this is about a violation of our rights. And if they think they are going to set my customer base up for some bizarre thing like this, they are nuts. For someone up here to be flagged red and to live in Barrow or Nome, it's a jail sentence. Everybody here flies."

(end of excerpt)

Subway riders interviewed yesterday said they won't mind if MBTA officials conduct random identification checks this summer as long as the increased security measures don't become a substantial inconvenience or raise the specter of racial profiling.

"As long as it's quick and short, it doesn't bother me," said Tom Reardon, an accountant from Dorchester, at the JFK/UMass stop. "But I don't think they should deny anyone a ride. Anyone can forget their license."

Mea Johnson, 26, an African-American student, said she didn't want to be stopped "just because I'm a minority."

"But if there was a situation where it seemed appropriate, if there is a real threat, and not just them asking whenever they want," she said, "then sure."

Just when transit police will begin identification checks, and to what extent they will be asking riders to show driver's licenses or some other form of identification, remains unclear.

MBTA police officers have been training with State Police troopers from Troop F at Logan International Airport, who are experienced in identification checks, officials said. Some riders have reported that they were asked for identification while boarding trains at South Station as part of a training program.

MBTA officials, however, would not comment yesterday on particular facets of any security measures planned this summer.

Instead, in a statement issued yesterday, authority officials said only that transit officers working with State Police are being trained "to detect whether the actions of one or more individuals indicate any level of risk or threat to the transit system and, where necessary, take steps in response to the observed behavoir."

US Representative Stephen F. Lynch, a South Boston Democrat, said, to his knowledge, federal officials have issued only "vague" directives to transit agencies on conducting identification checks.

"I've heard it's one measure they're considering. But it's very general at this point," he said.

On Friday, Lynch filed legislation calling for an additional $4.5 billion to increase rail security nationwide, which he says is woefully inadequate.

He did, however, praise MBTA officials for "being ahead of the curve" in terms of security measures, noting that scores of transit officers are training with the State Police in preparation for this summer's Democratic convention.

Some non-citizens, including Alejandro Alcaras, 20, a Cambridge College student from Mexico, questioned whether they would need to start carrying passports with them on rides.

Other riders, however, said they always carry identification with them anyway and felt that it would be no bother to show it.

"We're over in Iraq now. Who's to say [a terrorist] won't come over here to cause havoc?" asked Bob Fuller, of Stoughton.

"It would be an inconvenience," said Mark Giglio, 16, of Newton. "But maybe a necessary inconvenience."

(end of excerpt)

Those who take the T have been hearing voices lately - somber announcers urging calm in the event of calamity, while stressing the need to speak up when things don't look quite right.

Now, more than two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and two months before the Democratic National Convention, MBTA police are preparing to conduct ID checks on the 1 million commuters who hop aboard trains and buses each day.

``Under this program, officers are trained to detect whether the actions of one or more individuals are an indication of any level of risk or threat to the transit system, and, when necessary, to take appropriate steps based on the observed behavior,'' said a statement released yesterday by MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo.

As for who will be stopped, where they'll be stopped and what they'll be expected to produce to satisfy law enforcement, the MBTA isn't saying - and that's not sitting well with riders.

``I come from Europe. I was born during World War II and this is what the Gestapo would do,'' a local college professor, who did not want to give her name, said yesterday at South Station.

``It's absolute nonsense,'' she said. ``They (don't) give enough details, which is a mistake. I take the T every day and it will be an incredible nuisance.''

Pesaturo confirmed transit cops have been learning from state police already skilled in questioning passengers at Logan International Airport. He would not say when the identity stops will begin.

``It's invasive, but whatever they have to do,'' said frequent traveler Courtney Smith of Boston. ``I think if anything, they take (security) too lax.''

Adam Davis, an ironworker from Plymouth who rides the MBTA daily, said, ``It would be a pain in the ass, but they're doing it for a good reason. The only thing is, it might be too late before they can do anything (about terrorism) anyway. It's kind of pointless.''

(end of excerpt)

MBTA transit police confirmed yesterday they will begin stopping passengers for identification checks at various T locations, apparently as part of new national rail security measures following the deadly terrorist train bombings in Spain.

Although officials would release few details about the initiative, the identity checks will mark the first time local rail and subway passengers will be asked to produce identification and be questioned about their activities.

Officers have been training for the security checks since May 11, transit officials said. MBTA Police Deputy Chief John Martino confirmed via e-mail yesterday that officers have been training with State Police at South Station this week.

T spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the State Police involved in the training were from Troop F at Logan International Airport, where such identification checks have been taking place since about a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Pesaturo wouldn't say where or when the identification stops would take place, or how long they would last.

"The training is part of the MBTA's overall plan for enhancing safety and security for the hundreds of thousands of people who use our system every day," Pesaturo wrote in the e-mail. "Law enforcement personnel are being trained to detect whether a person's or persons' actions are an indication of any level of risk or threat to the transit system . . . and to then take appropriate steps based on the observed behavior.

"If the MBTA did not do everything it can to protect transit users, it would be a dereliction of our duties and responsibilities as public servants," he added.

Ann Davis, Northeast regional spokeswoman for the federal Transportation Security Administration, refused to confirm that T's ID checks are part of a new national rail security program announced Thursday by federal officials. Those new security initiatives are scheduled to start tomorrow, in response to terrorist train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 and injured 2,000.

"We don't want to map out for potential terrorists how we intend to protect the rails," she said.

Concerns about threats to the nation's rail system have risen since ABC News reported a pattern of suspicious activities along the rail corridor between Washington, D.C., and New York. The report said New Jersey's attorney general is investigating at least seven instances in the last week of suspected surveillance along the New Jersey Transit commuter lines leading into Philadelphia, Trenton, and New York.

FBI agents in Philadelphia are also investigating the discovery of an infrared sensor concealed along the track bed of a Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority rail line.

The State Police officers based at Logan who are instructing T police have been trained in "behavior pattern recognition" in order to identify potential terrorists.

According to past interviews with Logan's primary security consultant, Rafi Ron, former head of security at Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel, such a program helps avoid accusations of racial profiling and is based on the behavior of those stopped. Logan was the first American airport at which the method was used.

Martino said "we do not racially profile and do not consider that someone is suspicious because they appear to be Middle Eastern or that they are not suspicious if they don't appear to be."

(end of excerpt)

For the nearly 20 surviving crew members of the USS Liberty, a gathering after 37 years was as much about the future as it was about the past.

The Liberty, an intelligence-gathering vessel, was attacked by Israel in June 1967 while cruising international waters off the Egyptian coast during the Six Day War. Israel was the war's victor, defeating the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan.

The attack was ruled accidental by U.S. officials. Emerging reports, including disclosures in the last year from some military officials, state the attack appeared to be deliberate - something that the crew members have suspected all along.

"We all believe we're finally getting to the point where the truth may be told and the world is ready to listen," said Cmdr. David Lewis, who oversaw intelligence on the ship and remembers most of the attack that left him with superficial burns and destroyed his eardrums.

Nearly 50 people honored the 34 sailors killed with a brief memorial service Friday, the second day of the three-day reunion in this southeast Nebraska city.

Crew member Moe Shafer, 57, said the attack was one of the largest cover-ups in history. He said Israel targeted the ship, hoping the United States would conclude the Arabs were responsible. The Americans then would have retaliated and ensured Israel's victory, he said.

Some military and government officials, along with the crew members, have said the attack was not only deliberate, but a cover-up by the American government.

"It was covered up at the highest level," Lewis said.

After reviewing documents earlier this year, a State Department official said the attack was due to negligence on the part of Israel, which has maintained it was a case of mistaken identity. The official said the United States was negligent for failing to withdraw the Liberty from the war zone.

(end of excerpt)

According to the latest opinion poll by CBOS, 74 percent of Poles are against Polish participation in the stabilization operation in Iraq. Moreover, over half of the responders (53 percent) express their objection very firmly.

There is a noticeable increase in the number of Poles who do not approve of Polish armed forces stationing in Iraq. Since April it has risen by 8 percent. According to CBOS, the main reason for such tendency is death of two Polish journalists and two Polish soldiers in May, as well as information about abusing Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

22 percent of Poles support the Polish presence in Iraq (decrease by 7 percent since April). The majority of responders want Polish soldiers to come back home as soon as possible.

The survey was conducted on 7-10 May 2004 on the representative group of 1006 Poles.

(end of excerpt)

A suicide attacker exploded a car bomb outside the home of a deputy interior minister Saturday, killing at least three police and one civilian. The blast hurled two cars onto the front lawn of the house, and police fired shots to disperse distraught bystanders who scuffled with them.

Abdul-Jabbar Youssef al-Sheikhli, the deputy minister in charge of security, was slightly injured in the forehead and right arm, said Hassan Hadi, a Health Ministry official.

[..]

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the bombing was carried out by a suicide driver and that al-Sheikhli's guards fired on the vehicle before the blast. Kimmitt said the dead included three of al-Sheikhli's police bodyguards and a woman neighbor in addition to the bomber.

Al-Sheikhli is a member of the Shiite Muslim Dawa party, which lost a prominent member this week in another fatal car bombing - also claimed by al-Zarqawi's group. The president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Dawa member Izzadine Saleem, was killed Monday along with at least six other people near the headquarters of the U.S.-run coalition in the capital.

(end of excerpt)

Accusing top Pentagon officials of "dereliction of duty," retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni says staying the course in Iraq isn't a reasonable option.

"The course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it's time to change course a little bit or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course," he tells CBS News Correspondent Steve Kroft in an interview to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, May 23, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

The current situation in Iraq was destined to happen, says Zinni, because planning for the war and its aftermath has been flawed all along.

"There has been poor strategic thinking in this...poor operational planning and execution on the ground," says Zinni, who served as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000.

Zinni blames the poor planning on the civilian policymakers in the administration, known as neo-conservatives, who saw the invasion as a way to stabilize the region and support Israel. He believes these people, who include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense, have hijacked U.S. foreign policy.

"They promoted it and pushed [the war]... even to the point of creating their own intelligence to match their needs. Then they should bear the responsibility," Zinni tells Kroft.

In his upcoming book, "Battle Ready," written with Tom Clancy, Zinni writes of the poor planning in harsh terms. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption," he writes.

Zinni explains to Kroft, "I think there was dereliction in insufficient forces being put on the ground and [in not] fully understanding the military dimensions of the plan."

(end of excerpt)

The Washington Post, in a story first released on its Web site Saturday night, said a military lawyer stated at an open hearing April 2 that Capt. Donald J. Reese told him that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of the abuse at the prison.

The military lawyer, Capt. Robert Shuck, is assigned to defend Staff Sgt. Ivan L. ``Chip'' Frederick II of the Army Reserve's 372nd Military Police Company. Frederick is one of seven members of that company facing criminal charges for abusing Iraqi inmates. Reese is the company commander.

The Post said a transcript of the April hearing at Camp Victory in Baghdad shows Capt. John McCabe, the military prosecutor, asking Shuck, ``Are you saying that Captain Reese is going to testify that General Sanchez was there and saw this going on?''

``That's what he told me,'' Shuck replied, according the transcript cited by the Post. ``I am an officer of the court, sir, and I would not lie. I have got two children at home, I'm not going to risk my career.''

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the senior military spokesman in Iraq, told the Post that Sanchez was unavailable for comment Saturday night but would respond later.

(end of excerpt)

Appearing on CNN this morning, E&P Editor Greg Mitchell renewed his call in a recent column (see When Will First Major Newspaper Call for a Pullout in Iraq?) that newspaper editorials strongly consider advocating a phased U.S. pullout from Iraq, or at the minimum begin a "healthy debate" on this subject.

MItchell cited a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll which found that 47% of the respondents said they favored withdrawing some or all troops from Iraq. This was up from 37% a month ago. "So it's odd," he said, "that the largest newspapers are seemingly not even taking this position seriously."

Asked why he thought that was, he replied that newspapers, until now, have considered this a "fringe" position, adding "a lot has changed in the past month, with the soaring U.S. casualties and now the prison abuse scandal in Iraq."

In light of recent events, Mitchell predicted that in the coming month at least one leading paper will call for a phased withdrawal "and this could snowball from there." As he did in his column, he mentioned Walter Cronkite's famous statement to CBS network viewers in 1968 in which he revealed that he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that the Vietnam War was unwinnable and that the U.S. should begin withdrawing.

(end of excerpt)

Thirteen members of the House of Representatives have asked the General Accounting Office to investigate electronic voting and the security and reliability of voting machines.

In a letter sent today to Comptroller General David Walker, the members write that the topic concerns "a critical aspect of American democracy — the ability of Americans to have confidence that the votes they cast in an election will be counted accurately and fairly."

The letter touches on security concerns that some computer scientists have raised about direct recording electronic (DRE) machines, which are made by several companies. Voters using DREs record their votes by touching the screen. Some computer scientists and legislators worry that the machines could record incorrect information, whether through accident or malevolent intent, but many election officials and vendor officials dismiss the concerns.

Eight Republicans are among the 13 signers, as what had been a largely Democratic issue becomes increasingly bipartisan.

Government Reform Committee chair Tom Davis (R-Va.) and ranking minority member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), signed the letter, as did Judiciary Committee chair F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wisc.) and ranking minority member John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.)

The other signers are:

William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.)
John Larson (D-Conn.)
Doug Ose (R-Calif.)
Todd Russell Platts (R-Pa.)
Adam Putnam (R-Fla.)
Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.)
Robert Scott (D-Va.)
Christopher Shays (R-Conn.)
Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio)

(end of excerpt)

New claims have emerged this afternoon about the veracity of a number of Iraq-related stories stretching back to 2002. According to sources on several newspapers, executives are now wondering whether stories they have published are true in the wake of yesterday's "shock" announcement that the Daily Mirror's wee-gate photographs were fakes.

"Publicly, the Sun and the Evening Standard are saying nothing, but behind the scenes they are very concerned about stories they published on 24th September 2002, stating that Britain was just 45 minutes away from attack by Saddam's WMD," said media commentator Douglas Ramsbottom. "I think they're now moving towards the opinion that they may have been hoaxed."

The Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, warned that if the claims were hoaxes then British soldiers had been put in unnecessary danger. "Images of our troops invading Iraq with the Americans were broadcast throughout the Arab world, acting as a recruitment sergeant for al Qaeda," he said. "We were against the war in the first place but if it turns out that the 45-minute claim was a hoax then all of this will have been for nothing and that would be very serious indeed."

A search is now underway to find the source of the 45-minute claim, with some opponents of the war urging prosecutions should the culprits be found. Alastair Campbell was unavailable for comment.

(end of excerpt)

Well-off Israeli soldiers are paying off poor peers to do the military service in their place in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and occupied Jerusalem, an Israeli newspaper reported Tuesday, May 18.

The rich soldiers are also bribing some of their commanders to change their names in the rotation lists to steer clear from confrontations with the Palestinians, Maariv said.

Some of those soldiers said in an investigation that they only wanted to escape the fire of "Palestinian saboteurs," the paper added.

It said the phenomenon opened out in a unit called "Prophet Jacob" in occupied Jerusalem following the Jewish Passover.

A large number of the unit’s soldiers were absent without leave during the feast.

A rich soldier pays an average of 15 dollars for a service in ordinary days and between 50 and 100 dollars in public holidays.

The rich soldiers are further offering backbites to avoid night shifts in cold nights, according the paper.

[..]

An Israeli reservist revealed last month in an interview with IOL that the number of Israeli colleagues who refused to do their military service in the occupied Palestinian territories were on the rise due to the illegal army practices.

Twenty-seven reserve and active duty airmen also signed a letter last September addressed to Premier Ariel Sharon, refusing to carry out "immoral and illegal" raids on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

They warned that the occupation of Palestinian territories was eating at the moral fabric of the state of Israel.

Also last November, four former heads of the Israeli Shin Beth interior security services warned of the "disastrous" consequences of Israel's continued occupation of the Palestinian territories.

(end of excerpt)

In a single, awful day in the Middle East on Wednesday, Israeli forces killed unarmed Palestinian protesters and Arab news reports claimed that a U.S. Army helicopter killed 40 people at a wedding party in Iraq.

Other than the calendar, there was no connection between the two events, and the facts of the second one are very much in dispute. American officials acknowledge that some 40 people died near Iraq's border with Syria but said American forces had attacked suspected foreign fighters, not a wedding party.

In much of the Islamic world, however, three facts may help transform two mistakes into the "clash of civilizations" so desired by Osama bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists: Christian or Jewish troops killed Arabs, they used American-made weapons and the attacks were reported on television.

As a result, many ordinary Arabs are likely to see the events in Gaza and Iraq as one, helping fuel perceptions that Islam is under attack from the West, Middle East experts said.

The United States took the rare step Wednesday of not vetoing a United Nations Security Council vote condemning Israel's tactics in Gaza, and President Bush has said repeatedly that the "global war on terrorism" isn't a war against Muslims.

Nevertheless, the failure of the U.S. occupation to bring stability to Iraq, the Iraq prison abuse scandal and Bush's past support for Israel's tactics against Palestinians have led many Arabs to question that.

"The way we are going is leading us toward the very thing we say we want to be against, which is (a) clash of civilizations," said Edward Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt and now president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

While surveys indicate that most Americans don't see such a conflict, "an increasing majority of Muslims are beginning to see the world as a clash between Muslim civilization and Western civilization," said Husain Haqqani of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

"Every incident of the use of force against Muslims, justified or unjustified, is interpreted as a manifestation of that clash," he said.

One result of U.S. actions, Haqqani said, is that "moderate voices are being less and less heard in the Muslim world."

Those moderate voices are the West's natural allies in the Muslim world, and the Islamic radicals' mortal enemies.

"It took Israel 55 years to create the hatred and enmity with the Arab world. But it took Bush one year to create the same level," said Imam Husham al Husainy of the Karbala Islamic Education Center in Dearborn, Mich.

(end of excerpt)

A leaked memo from Britain's foreign ministry blasts "heavy-handed tactics" by the U.S. military in Iraq and soldiers' abuse of prisoners, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.

Britain has been Washington's most staunch ally throughout the conflict, but the paper said the memo "blows apart" Prime Minister Tony Blair's public insistence that there are no differences between Britain and the United States over strategy.

The paper reported the memo said under the heading "Problems" that "heavy-handed U.S. military tactics in Falluja and Najaf some weeks ago have fuelled both Sunni and Shiite opposition to the coalition and lost us much public support inside Iraq."

It added: "The scandal of the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib (prison) has sapped the moral authority of the coalition, inside Iraq and internationally."

The Foreign Office refused to comment on the report. The government has repeatedly denied London and Washington differ on Iraq policy.

But, Blair has told his ministers he would never publicly air disagreements with Washington over policy in Iraq for fear it would damage troop morale.

(end of excerpt)

A witness who told ABCNEWS he believed the military was covering up the extent of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison was today stripped of his security clearance and told he may face prosecution because his comments were "not in the national interest."

Sgt. Samuel Provance said in addition to his revoked security clearance, he was transferred to a different platoon, and his record was officially "flagged," meaning he cannot be promoted or given any awards or honors.

Provance said he was told he will face administrative action for failing to report what he knew at the time and for failing to take steps to stop the abuse.

"I see it as an effort to intimidate Sgt. Provance and any other soldier whose conscience is bothering him, and who wants to come forward and tell what really happened at Abu Ghraib," said his attorney Scott Horton.

(end of excerpt)

With a parrot that had escaped the Israelis perched on his shoulder, and a kangaroo crouching in the corner of the room, Mohammed Juma contemplated the little that was left of the zoo he had spent five years creating. "This was my life," he declared. "I watched my dream being destroyed."

The first bulldozer, he said, had come, escorted by a tank, at 2am on Thursday morning. Between then and when Israeli soldiers left the zoo at dawn yesterday, he had watched as the army killed birds and animals, uprooted shrubs, trees and grass, destroyed pens and cages, and then dumped much of the debris and wreckage into the zoo's swimming pool.

The despoliation of the zoo at the Brazil refugee camp may seem insignificant after 41 Palestinian deaths in Rafah this week and the trail of destruction left by the Israelis elsewhere in the Al Salaam and Brazil camps - the Israelis demolished an estimated 43 homes in Brazil, reducing them to rubble still awaiting clearance yesterday - but it is a potent symbol of the much wider havoc wrought in the two camps and a third, Tel Sultan, since the Rafah incursion began on Monday.

The zoo, the only one in the Gaza Strip, was perhaps the only attraction for children in a town almost entirely without public amenities. Admission cost just one shekel - about 12p. The destruction betrayed a wantonness that went beyond anything that could be deemed militarily necessary to hunt down militants or find tunnels used to smuggle explosives. Although soldiers commandeered the top floor of one of the three buildings for sniper positions, it was much more difficult to explain the damage to the harmless recreation space below their vantage point.

Mr Juma insisted that he had watched with his own eyes as the Israeli bulldozer drivers broke into a cage containing 40-45 Macaw parrots and put them into the cabin of one of the bulldozers before taking them away. "It looked as though the drivers knew about animals," he said.

According to Mr Juma, 40, the Army also released some 80 animals, including monkeys, a fox, a non-poisonous snake and - adding yet another danger to those already faced by the residents of the Brazil camp - seven jaguars. Mr Juma held a sickly looking raccoon in his arms, betraying a deep gash under its hind legs, and pointed to a long row of feathers on the ground indicating a dead ostrich buried beneath the debris.

The Israeli Army claimed last night that it had been forced to pass through the zoo because explosive devices had been planted in the roads and that it had made "every effort not to harm any of the animals". But Mr Juma said: "I believe they planned to do this. I can't call the Israelis animals because animals are beautiful."

(end of excerpt)