May 2003 Archives

Just in case you visit this page, I want to let you know we’ve been faxing, writing, emailing and calling your agent Ari Emanuel, your media people, your production company and you to request an interview with you—to date, nobody has called back. I’d really like to get your side of the story—seriously, no tricks, no bait-and-switch! We just want to sit down and hear why you do what you do. If you’re interested, see the contact page. Otherwise, you might end up looking like Roger Smith (you know, that famous, rich guy who avoided that poor but passionate guy with a camera and editing suite). I think we know how it turned out for him…

The IDF will start redeploying from several Palestinian city centers in the West Bank and from the Gaza Strip, gradually easing the closure imposed on these cities.

A statement released by Prime Minister Sharon's office said the measures would be taken immediately, but added that the measures were conditioned upon the Palestinians' actions to "decisively to stop terrorism, dismantling terror organizations, arresting terrorists, confiscating illegal weapons, stopping incitement and creating an atmosphere of peace."

Israel will also allow more Palestinians to enter the country for work purposes, and the navy will expand the area off the Gaza coast that Palestinians can use for fishing. [...]

In an interview in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited bureaucratic reasons for focusing on Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal.

''The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason,'' Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a Pentagon transcript of the interview.

Vanity Fair provided a slightly different version in the article: ''For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.''

In the interview, Wolfowitz cited one outcome of the war that was ''almost unnoticed, but it's huge'': It removed the need to maintain American forces in Saudi Arabia as long as Hussein was in power. Vanity Fair interpreted Wolfowitz to say that the withdrawal of US troops from Saudi Arabia was a major reason for going to war, rather than just an outcome.[...]

The effort to retrospectively discredit the Iraq war takes a number of forms--the claim that the special forces' rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch was a fraud, CBS News' recent story asserting that a bunker bombed by the U.S. at the beginning of the war in an effort to kill Saddam Hussein never existed, and so on. But the left has fastened most gleefully on the alleged failure to find weapons of mass destruction. The claim that "no such weapons have been found" is repeated constantly in the press. While that claim is untrue--some such weapons have in fact been found--it certainly appears to be true that so far, these discoveries have been less substantial than expected. Whether this is because the weapons were destroyed at the outset of the war, or were moved to Syria, as Debka File says, or are still in Iraq and simply haven't been found yet, is unclear. In the meantime, however, the left is doing all it can to use the absence of definitive WMD discoveries to discredit the war and to cast doubt on the motives of the American and British governments.[...]

I read that article with a twinge of nostalgia. Here we are, together again. Our three names were grouped to-gether for the first time by Timothy Garton Ash in his widely acclaimed essay nearly two decades ago. If I recall correctly, Havel and I were doing jail time then, and Konrad’s books were banned from print in Hungary. Even though we did not meet very often, we maintained a common ground in our reflections on the worlds of values and of politics. We were united by a dream of freedom, a dream of a world infused with tolerance, hope, respect for human dignity, and a refusal of conformist silence in the face of evil.[...]

[...]I remember my nation’s experience with totalitarian dictatorship. This is why I was able to draw the right conclusions from Sept. 11, 2001. Just as the murder of Giacomo Matteotti [leader of Italy’s United Socialist Party] revealed the nature of Italian fascism and Mussolini’s regime; just as the great Moscow trials showed the world the essence of the Stalinist system; just as “Kristallnacht” exposed the hidden truth of Hitler’s Nazism, watching the collapsing World Trade Center towers made me realize that the world was facing a new totalitarian challenge. Violence, fanaticism, and lies were challenging democratic values.

This is not the place to analyze the ideology that, while disfiguring the religion of Islam, creates a crusade against the democratic world. Saddam Hussein takes part in this just as Hitler and Stalin did before him. He asserts that in the holy war with the “godless West” all methods are permitted. Waiting for this sort of regime to obtain weapons of mass destruction would be plain recklessness.

This logic is accused of leading to the idealization of the United States, of not leaving room for critical reflection on American policies. In answer to this, I guarantee that I have not forgotten about the U.S. intervention in Vietnam or the American support of despotic, anticommunist regimes in Latin America—the perpetual argument of the intellectuals of the Western European left. However, I also have not forgotten that the American defeat in Vietnam resulted in the North’s armed conquest of the South and a wave of terrible repression. I also realize that while condemning the dictatorships of [Rafael] Trujillo or [Augusto] Pinochet, I should remember the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Brutal power is equally repugnant whether executed under a red banner or a black one. The belief that there was no rightist or leftist torture, no progressive or reactionary torture, was a fundamental principle we lived by. It led us to reject the hypocrisy of the Western left, which proclaimed that even bad communism was better than good capitalism because it was the former and not the latter that led to a bright future.

What, then, is our betrayal? Today we reject the notion of equality between a regime that belongs to the democratic world—even if it is conservative and disagreeable—and a totalitarian dictatorship, whether its colors are black, red, or green. This is why we will never again say that Chamberlain is no better than Hitler, Roosevelt no better than Stalin, and Nixon no better than Mao Zedong, even if we do condemn Roosevelt for Yalta, Chamberlain for Munich, and Nixon for Watergate.

We do not like Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon because of his brutality and his primitive demagogy, but we would not equate him with the Hamas leaders who openly call for barbarian suicide attacks. George W. Bush may not be our hero, but he is the one we will support in the war with Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein.[...]

America was not meant to be like this. We are no longer ourselves. The bad weather will not end until we face this cold truth and change it.

The dispute underlined the power struggle between Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the prime minister he grudgingly appointed under international pressure, as efforts to move forward on a new peace plan intensified.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) had been set to hold talks Wednesday on implementing the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan — their second meeting since Abbas assumed office in April.

But at a meeting of the PLO executive committee, Arafat said he wanted to review Israeli proposals on security arrangements before approving another summit — raising the possibility of a delay, a member of the committee said on condition of anonymity.[...]

Inside Iraq, there are thousands of Iranian agents at work: radical Iraqi mullahs who were trained in Iranian mosques since the early 1980s, top officers of the Revolutionary Guards, various thugs and killers, and even the head of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, Ali Panahi, who was dispatched to Karbala to organize the anti-American demonstrations after the fall of Saddam, and then to Baghdad. The new American in charge of Iraq, Jerry Bremer, was so alarmed at what he saw in Iraq that he has been peppering the intelligence community for more information on Iranian operations ever since he arrived.[...]

The find is the result of a large-scale sky survey undertaken by University of Florida astronomers, Professors Richard Elston and Elizabeth Lada. The husband and wife team presented their findings during a news conference earlier today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Nashville.

"These people are using newer techniques with longer wavelength ranges, and that means you are going to see phenomena that we haven't really seen before," commented Dr Michael Burton, an astronomer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "Therefore, it's perhaps not surprising you see some new characteristics."

The planet-forming discs are about 1,000 light-years away - about four times further away than most known discs. Composed of giant clouds of gas and dust that surround infant stars, they are the largest yet observed.[...]

Tell me, do you see the Islamist-Pinko-"Secularist" axis demanding the return of the Northern Territories and PoK to mainly-Hindu India...? Why not? Because, even when grabbed illegally, it's irreversible, a fait accompli...?

In which case, Israel, too, is a fait accompli. Besides which, the Jews are a nation since Biblical times; for over 3,300 years, Jerusalem -- founded by King David -- has been their capital. Jews pray facing Jerusalem; Arabs pray with their backs to it. There was no such thing as "Palestinian" before 1967, when Syrians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Lebanese and Saudis living in Israel began identifying themselves as "Palestinian." Why should Indians -- if, indeed, they are only Indian -- seek Israel's destruction...?

Europe's Jews went like lambs to Hitler's death camps, I never could understand why. But when they finally rose from their inertia, boy, how the lambs roared! I have unadulterated admiration for Israelis and groups like the AJC, and no bullshit angle of "communal harmony" can shake that. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of Israel. On May 15, the War of Independence against the armies of Egypt, Syria, Tranjordan, Lebanon and Iraq began. On July 20, 1949, the war was formally ended -- with the Arabs winding up with less territory than before. For a tiny country to crush the surrounding Islamic nations, face internal jihad, and yet become developed -- it's an unparalled achievement. India yet can't surmount Pakistan alone. Guess, thanks to which ideology...

Sharon overcame opposition to the plan by far-right cabinet ministers and members of his own rightist Likud party by a vote of 12-7 with four abstentions after a stormy six-hour debate, a government spokesman said.

The cabinet approval set the stage for a possible Israeli-Palestinian summit attended by President Bush (news - web sites), who had pushed Sharon hard to accept the most ambitious Middle East peace plan in years.

Israeli opponents of the proposal noted its acceptance formally committed Israel for the first time to the establishment of a Palestinian state, envisaged in the plan by 2005.

"The most important thing now is for Israel to implement (the road map) in its entirety," Palestinian cabinet minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said after the Israeli vote. "Israel has to stop collective punishment and settlement expansion."

The Palestinians, who began an uprising for statehood 32 months ago, have embraced the road map. Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said Israeli approval would be followed by talks Monday between Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Sharon.

"The time has come to divide this piece of land between us and the Palestinians," Sharon said in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily before the cabinet vote, without indicating how much occupied territory Israel would be willing to relinquish. [...]

"The government is pushing for the meeting sometime in June after a summit with Japan to discuss North Korean issues," a Unification Ministry official said.

He was referring to a forum involving foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan and the United States, known as the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group.

North Korea said late on Saturday it would agree to U.S. demands to hold multilateral talks over its nuclear program that included South Korea and Japan, but only if Pyongyang and Washington held bilateral talks first.

South Korea's presidential spokeswoman Lee Ji-hyun said the statement by the north's foreign ministry showed that Pyongyang had the "intention to talk," but nothing was firmed up yet.

A Japanese foreign ministry official in Tokyo welcomed the North Korean statement, saying it reflected Pyongyang's stance of seeking continued dialogue with countries concerned about the nuclear issue, Kyodo News Agency said.

The summit between South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is scheduled for June 7 in Tokyo.

On Friday, Koizumi and President Bush warned of "tougher measures" against North Korea if the communist country escalated a crisis over its nuclear weapons program.

The two leaders also said they believed a peaceful solution was possible and Bush suggested that poverty-stricken North Korea could receive "help" if it gave up its nuclear ambitions.

The nuclear crisis erupted in October when Washington said North Korea had admitted to a secret program to enrich uranium for nuclear arms, in addition to a plutonium program frozen under a 1994 U.S.-North Korea pact.

"It is one of the results of the embargo," Dr. Ghassam Rashid Al-Baya told Newsday on May 9, 2001, at Baghdad's Ibn Al-Baladi hospital, just after a dehydrated baby named Ali Hussein died on his treatment table. "This is a crime on Iraq."

It was a scene repeated in hundreds of newspaper articles by reporters required to be escorted by minders from Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information.

Now free to speak, the doctors at two Baghdad hospitals, including Ibn Al-Baladi, tell a very different story. Along with parents of dead children, they said in interviews this week that Hussein turned the children's deaths into propaganda, notably by forcing hospitals to save babies' corpses to have them publicly paraded.

All the evidence indicates that the spike in children's deaths was tragically real - roughly, a doubling of the mortality rate during the 1990s, according to humanitarian organizations. But the reason has been fiercely argued, and the new accounts by Iraqi doctors and parents will alter the debate.

Under the sanctions regime, "We had the ability to get all the drugs we needed," said Ibn Al-Baladi's chief resident, Dr. Hussein Shihab. "Instead of that, Saddam Hussein spent all the money on his military force and put all the fault on the USA. Yes, of course the sanctions hurt - but not too much, because we are a rich country and we have the ability to get everything we can by money. But instead, he spent it on his palaces."

The U.S. government and others long have blamed Hussein's spending habits for the poor health of Iraqis and their children. For years, the Iraqi government, some Western officials and a vocal anti-sanctions movement said UN restrictions on Iraqi imports and exports were at fault.

"Saddam Hussein, he's the murderer, not the UN," said Dr. Azhar Abdul Khadem, a resident at the Al-Alwiya maternity hospital in Baghdad.[...]

Pick up any newspaper and the day's bombings, killings, and terror are most likely to have occurred somewhere in the Islamic world. The big, silly lie — Jews caused 9/11, the U.S. used atomic weapons against Iraq, Americans bombed mosques — has been a staple of Middle East popular culture. The hatred of Jews is open, unapologetic, and mostly unrivaled on the world stage since the Third Reich.[...]

Britain’s sovereignty will be signed away with a new EU Constitution, a blueprint for a United States of Europe. The PM has vowed to oppose many proposals.

But here is The Sun’s guide to 20 changes planned by Valery Giscard d’Estaing, head of the Convention on the Future of Europe, which would see 1,000 years of British history consigned to the dustbin.[...]

The starting point is at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). It was there that the Muslim Student Organization (MSO) decided to establish two Islamic centers, each appropriately within arms length of the school.

Three FAU professors would take key roles in the creation process. Imad Mahgoub would become president of the Assalam Center, and Khalid Hamza and Bassem Alhalabi would be co-founders of the Islamic Center of Boca Raton (ICBR).

Today, both Islamic centers are looking to expand and have purchased large tracts of land to this effect. If they get what they want, they will have two multi-faceted mosques, in the heart of Boca Raton, within blocks of each other… and of course, the university. One will be a huge 27 thousand square foot facility; the other will be built to resemble the Al-Aqsa mosque which sits on top of Judaism’s holiest site in Jerusalem, a city that the ICBR says on its website Jews have no right to and prays Allah will cleanse it of its Jewish inhabitants immediately.

Local residents have questioned why there is a need for two mosques of near identical backgrounds in such close vicinity to one another. That’s certainly a good question, but when you look at several of the people involved in the undertaking of these centers, and when you look at some of the individuals that they have associated with, this question becomes one of many.[...]

The victimized terrorists are variously thought to be directing their anger against Western-induced poverty; the Western-supported rise of Israel; or the Western imperialism that displaced the Ottoman Empire.

Many writers cite the unarguably tragic fate of Palestinian refugees after the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948 as the motive for acts of terrorism against civilians in Israel and elsewhere, including New York and Washington. And Islamic extremism is alleged to be a product of poverty and hopelessness in the Arab world, which are in turn blamed on U.S. hegemony and capitalist globalization. Similarly, opponents of the war in Iraq told us that military action to remove Saddam Hussein would further aggravate Arab and Muslim frustrations, spawning more suicide terror.

However, certain persistent facts undermine these claims. To begin with, no Palestinians participated in the attacks of September 11. Apart from the ideological godfather of Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzamm, who was killed in Pakistan in 1989, few people from Palestine or Jordan have joined al-Qaida. And Azzam himself turned to “Islamist” extremism in disgust with the Marxist, class-driven ideology of Yasir Arafat, al- Fatah, and the Palestine Liberation Organization.[...]

Why are we pursuing their interests for them?

If the Palestinians want a state, let them earn it.[...]

His effort began in 1950, at a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he announced he had a list of 205 covert communists working in the State Department. [...]

I wanted to see what "ending settlement activity" looked like up close, on the bloody ground, in places like Hebron and Kiryat Arba — where the people say no to it, and are petitioning their government for permission to expand their "settlements." So I went back to Hebron to look around, and to ask: Why now?[...]

[...]Is the Left right? Are these people "fanatics?" If you equate being a believer with being a fanatic, you can put aside the fact that most wear ordinary clothes and work at ordinary jobs, and call them all fanatics. Many so-called "settlements" are home to secular as well as religious Jews; Hebron is not. Only believers live here, because the don't-know-much-about-history crowd calls this "Arab land" and insists that Jews have no future here. That's the wisdom of the moment, but 3,800 years of history say otherwise. Abraham, the first Jew, bought this land and its cave from Ephron the Hittite then, and Jews have prayed here ever since, with only a few interruptions. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are buried here, beside their wives. David was crowned king here. He made it his first capital, and when the Romans razed Israel's second capital and drove the Jews from Jerusalem in 70 A.D., Hebron's Jews were still praying at Abraham's tomb. Life got harsher when Byzantine Greeks conquered their land in the 4th century, but a remnant hung on, and when the armies of the Prophet Mohammed conquered it in the 7th century, life improved. Jews didn't regain their sovereignty, but they retained the right to live and worship here in peace, mostly. Crusaders drove the Jews and Arabs out in the 12th century, but Mamluks expelled the Crusaders in the 13th, and the Jews returned.

Life was more precarious under Muslim rule the second time around — the old Arab respect for Jews as "People of the Book" had faded away. Still, they hung on, and when Ottoman Turks conquered the land in the 16th century, life improved again. It remained tolerable, mostly, until the Turks lost this land to the British in 1917. Still, Hebron's Jews managed to live peacefully with their Arab neighbors until a sudden massacre in 1929 decimated the community. They regrouped, came back in 1931, and held on until 1936 when, in response to renewed Arab attacks, the British forced them out. Jordan ruled next: No Jews allowed. When Israel defeated Jordan and the other attacking Arab armies in 1967, the Jews came back again, and here they remain — still practicing their religion in the place where it was born, as their forebears did through all the centuries before them. Call it fanaticism, if you like. I call it faith.[...]

Foreign Service sneering at a president is nothing new, of course, but such open disrespect for a commander-in-chief hasn't existed since Foggy Bottom's diplomats decried Ronald Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." But at least then-Secretary of State George Schultz was able to keep something of a handle on his lieutenants and foot soldiers. Colin Powell has not.

Consider an example with deep policy ramifications. On March 31, representatives of the North Korean government told State Department officials, for the first time, that they were reprocessing plutonium, a key step in developing nuclear weapons. The Pentagon and the White House did not learn of this stunning announcement until Pyongyang told them during previously scheduled talks with North Korea in China on April 18. The State Department intentionally withheld this vital piece of information, fearing that, if the White House knew, officials there might call off the meeting. The White House was reportedly furious about this deception, but it has done nothing concrete to make sure it doesn't happen again. A White House official laments, "We always get really worked up, but then we don't do anything." [...]

The protest erupted two hours after Israeli troops withdrew from this Gaza town, following a five-day takeover during which they flattened orchards, demolished 15 homes, knocked over garden walls, tore up streets and damaged the sewage, water and electricity systems.

The Israeli military said much of the destruction, especially of homes and orchards, was aimed at depriving militants firing rockets of cover.

In an unusual protest, about 600 Beit Hanoun residents blocked a main thoroughfare with trash cans, rocks and burning tires to show their anger at the militants and Palestinian Authority officials.

"They (the militants) claim they are heroes," said Mohammed Zaaneen, 30, a farmer, as he carried rocks into the street. "They brought us only destruction and made us homeless. They used our farms, our houses and our children ... to hide."[...]

After further investigation of this incident, I concluded that it was a deliberate setup. If the Wahhabi thugs objected to my presence, they had many weeks, since it was announced, to bring it up with the mosque leadership. They did not do so. Rather, it is clear they hoped for the worst.[...]

But Arafat has retained serious clout over diplomatic and security matters and Israeli officials believe he has been maneuvering to prevent Abbas consolidating the power needed to crack down on militants who have sworn to wreck the peace plan.

Israel accuses Arafat of inciting violence, a charge he denies, and its cabinet has repeatedly discussed exiling him. It did so again Sunday after a suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem, before shelving the idea "for the moment," Mofaz said.

But, addressing a security affairs symposium, he said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's rightist government would seriously consider the option if it perceived Arafat to be actively undermining a peace drive by Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen.

"If we see that in the future Arafat continues to be a main obstacle to the peace process, and Abu Mazen is ready to fight terror and sit at the negotiating table, then there will be no alternative but to think about steps to deport Arafat," he said.[...]

Initial indications were that Omar Sharif, 27, drowned but foul play was not ruled out, security sources said.[...]

Speaking a day before the country's federal election, Verhofstadt called the lawsuit an abuse of a controversial law that allows Belgian courts to try foreigners for war crimes and other human rights violations.

"The law leaves open the possibility of sending back the complaint to the United States and that is what I...aim to do," he said in an interview with local VTM television. "Next week, I will call for a cabinet meeting and...undo this abuse."[...]

My own view is that it was right to fight the ACW and that it was a war against slavery even before the Emancipation Proclamation was announced. From the founding of America in 1776 until about 1860 the issue of slavery had been handled by a series of compromises. The US Constitution was more or less neutral toward slavery although it did say that...

"I thought it was more pro-Palestinian, but it turns out he's more anti-Jew. Had I known that before, it might've changed my decision on whether to run it or not. But if anyone should apologize, it's him. I've made public statements saying I'm sorry for the hurt it caused, but I'm not sorry I printed it because it is protected speech."

Note the shift from it (the article) to him (the author). When an article is written by a white-supremicist it is racist. When the same words are written by a non-white supremicist it is not racist. The identity of the author determines meaning and not the ideas the article advances.[...]

[...]Lady Thatcher warned that America and Britain faced “a pervasive culture of anti-Westernism" that needed to be challenged. "There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it."[...]

You're as phony as you are unprofessional. And you have the nerve to criticize me, or Fox News, and by extension, News Corporation?[...]

I am quite certain he exists. That isn't the scandal. He has a family and a history and even a real-life name. But without compromising sources, and thus endangering lives, including Salam's own, one may discover a great deal about him from carefully reading his blog, and following obvious leads from there.

Salam is the scion of a senior figure from Iraq's Baathist nomenclature. He was brought up at least partly in Vienna, which is the OPEC headquarters; his father was therefore an oilman, and possibly a former head of Iraq's OPEC mission. Another clue is a hint that his grandfather was an Iraqi tribal chief, from which I infer that his father was one of the Iraqi tribal chiefs that Saddam Hussein rewarded for loyalty, outside the Tikrit clan.[...]

When asked if he believed Saddam Hussein had tortured his own people as alleged, Clark said the charges amounted to a "demonization" of Hussein. He said in America today, people who don't say anything bad about Louis Farrakhan or Fidel Castro are themselves labeled "bad."

"I don't believe demonization is very helpful," Clark said. "I don't even believe in demons."

Clark defended his role as legal advisor to former Yugoslavian dictator Slobodan Milosevic before a U.N. war crimes tribunal, insisting that "everyone needs his own lawyer.[...]

Saudi authorities believe there is a direct connection between the Riyadh attack and a gun fight between 19 al Qaeda operatives and police on May 6. Authorities ended up seizing a large weapons cache but failed to catch the men.

The 19 include 17 Saudis, a Yemeni and an Iraqi with Kuwaiti and Canadian citizenship.

The Canadian was identified by Saudi officials as Abdul-Rahman Mansour Jabarah, 23, a former resident of St. Catharines, Ont. He immigrated to Canada from his native Kuwait in 1994.[...]

Graham, D-Fla., a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he agreed with the assessment of administration officials that the bombings that claimed at least 29 lives Monday in Saudi Arabia were probably the work of Al-Qaeda operatives.

Graham, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said he also believed that Monday's bombing in Chechnya also was the work of Al-Qaeda. Both the Saudi and Chechen attacks involved the use of truck bombs.

"If Al-Qaeda is able to mount terrorist operations in Chechnya and Saudi Arabia on the same day, that's an indication that they are a substantially rebuilt organization with very significant capabilities," Graham said.[...]

Now that coalition forces are arresting looters in the streets, the mosque's leaders say their story can be told: Contrary to widespread belief, the antique books of Iraq's National Library were not stolen by thieves last month but were removed for safe keeping by self-appointed guardians of Iraq's cultural heritage.

Inside a cavernous room at the Al Hak Mosque in the newly named Revolution City, roughly 400,000 manuscripts, biographies, religious works, and graduate-school theses are stacked to the 12-foot ceiling and gathering dust in the dry, 95-degree heat.

In the Judaica-Hebrew section -- a small pile against the southern wall -- one history book about Jews in Iraq dates to 1872, and a Talmudic text to 1880. There are newspapers recording the revolutionary days of July 1958, when the British-installed monarchy was overthrown and replaced by the republic. One book of folklore was largely indecipherable to the men at the mosque, but they said it was almost 500 years old.

''We had to protect the Islamic and Arabic heritage, so we acted before Baghdad fell to chaos,'' said Mohammad al-Jawad al-Tamimi, the mosque's imam. ''These books, it concerns the whole country.''

On April 15 the National Library was looted and set ablaze, compounding the agony of many who cherish Iraq's role as an early, important civilization, and those mourning the loss of precious antiquities from the National Museum. At the time, the media reported that the library was forsaken.[...]

Two Apache attack helicopters were illuminated by lasers in early March by a weapon that had the characteristics of a Chinese laser gun, an indication that North Korea has deployed a new and potentially lethal weapon.

Lasers focus concentrated beams of light on a target and are used in some guidance systems. The Chinese laser gun, however, is a weapon that can cause eye damage at ranges up to three miles.[...]

"It should be as many other countries as you can bring in, especially Central Europeans," he argues. The Central Europeans can be especially helpful because they have recently been liberated from communist regimes and can assist the Iraqis in making a transition.

Asked about the status of Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, who is often seen as a political favorite of Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives, the Pentagon official said this: "We ought to be supporting everyone who can do something useful. I think the decision has been made to support democracy and a big tent."

If this has been Wolfowitz's war in terms of its strategic goals, then it's clearly far from over. To judge by his comments, the Pentagon's leading planner isn't thinking about future conflicts against adversaries such as Syria and Iran but about making sure that America has truly won this war in Iraq.

Nuclear weapons may protect the mullahs against an invasion, but they will not protect the Islamic Republic against their own people, which is the greatest threat to their tyrannical rule. Paradoxically, the more we believe that Iran is on the verge of a nuclear breakthrough, the more we should be inclined to act in accordance with President Bush's oft-repeated (most recently last week in South Carolina) message that the United States supports the Iranian people's desire to be free.

To be sure, many of our finest Iran-watchers, including the great Bernard Lewis, believe that any future Iranian government, even a democratic one, is likely to continue the nuclear program. That may be true, although we should remember that once South Africa became a democracy it abandoned nuclear weapons. But even if it is true, a democratic Iran will not be inclined to commit hara-kiri by launching a nuclear first strike against Israel, nor will it likely brandish its bombs against the United States.

The Iranian people have shown themselves to be the most pro-American population in the Muslim world, but the Iranian regime is arguably the most anti-American on earth. Let's support the people, and help them bag the regime.[...]

So reads the beginning of an Associated Press story last week that passes for objective but betrays the kind of insidious bias that permeates most mainstream news reports from Israel. This particular story is certainly no worse than many, and may in fact be better than most, which makes it useful as an example of what's wrong with the usual reportage.

Our first clue that the story suffers from a biased subtext are the words "peace camp." Unencumbered by scare quotes, they imply that all those on the Israeli side willing to make peace with the Palestinians belong to this group. You can almost hear them now, singing "Kumbaya" and "Michael Row the Boat" from around their peace-camp campfire.

Meanwhile, huddled in a garrison on the outskirts, waiting to sabotage the peace, are the warmongering bad boys who prefer to kill for no reason. They're led, of course, by Ariel Sharon, Israeli's "hardline" prime minister, as the story's fifth paragraph calls him — again, without scare quotes. But according to the report, Labor's next leader may himself be more of a hardliner, leading to the possibility that the party could rejoin Sharon's governing coalition.[...]

"It has possessed me like a disease," she continued. "It rises up in my throat like acid reflux…" Drabble was referring to her loathing of America. Her list of American horrors, apart from the war in Iraq, was standard issue. "I detest," she wrote, "Disneyfication… Coca-Cola… burgers… American infantilism... American imperialism..." and so on.

Countering the arguments Drabble advanced to justify her pathology is easy. The lady is a fine fiction writer, but when it comes to facts or ratiocination, she should be put in care. The sight of the faces painted on the noses of American planes bombing Iraq led her to the conclusion that "a nation that can paint those faces on death machines must be insane".

There are 26,000 entries alone on the first search engine I went to on the web for "nose art", which is what aviation art is called. It appears to have been first used by the Italians in 1913, but its golden age was the Second World War, when the Germans and British, as well as Americans, used it to keep up morale.

The key to understanding Drabble's lunatic rant is her reaction to what she says she saw on CNN celebrating the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war. She describes an old, shabbily dressed Vietnamese man bartering for dollars. The horror of this moment - an "elderly, impoverished" Vietnamese man wanting that terrible currency, American dollars, for heaven's sake - just put the lid on it for Drabble. She writes: "The Vietnamese had won the war, but had lost the peace."

Well no, Miss Drabble. The Vietnamese fought the war for communism and they won communism. That, indeed, is why the old man is impoverished, shabbily dressed and bartering for dollars. In your deliberate obtuseness, you become blind to the most self-evident conclusions and an apologist for the appalling regimes that are so far removed from your ostensible values.[...]

"In an age of global terror and weapons of mass destruction, what happens in the Middle East greatly matters to America. The bitterness of that region can bring violence and suffering to our own cities. The advance of freedom and peace in the Middle East would drain this bitterness and increase our own security...."

This may be Bush's clearest statement yet linking the Middle East's political dysfunctionality with American security. Note that the word "freedom" comes before "peace." Bush seems to have realized that it is the lack of freedom in the region that fuels radicalism, which in turn produces the hatred both of Israel and America. The Arab-Israeli conflict is an element of the problem; tyranny is its facilitator and root cause. [...]

Millions of Germans claiming Sudeten-German descent today marched peacefully into the Czech Republic and declared a Nazi State there. The German government had been keeping them in squalid camps ever since the expulsion of all Sudeten-Germans from their homes at the end of World War 2. Over the decades, making cynical use of the original refugees’ grievances, the failed and tyrannical German state has fed them and their descendants a relentless diet of Nazi propaganda in which all their suffering, and the myriad ills of German society as a whole, has been blamed on the Czech government and people. In four major wars and a non-stop terrorist campaign, Germany has tried unsuccessfully to reconquer the Czech Republic.[...]

The mask featured bold swaths of scarlet and gold around the eyes and jaw, and a long fringe at the back of the head. The Great Sasuke, who wore such a mask in his campaign for a seat in the Iwate Prefectural Assembly, has no plans to reveal his face.

''Without a mask, there would be no Sasuke,'' the wrestler, whose legal name is Masanori Murakawa, told reporters Tuesday after attending his first assembly session. He was otherwise dressed conservatively in a dark suit. ''I have absolutely no intention of taking it off, no matter how much opposition there is.''

The howls of protest could be heard all the way to Tokyo, 290 miles to the south.

Japan's predominantly male politicians are typically attired in black suits, and their hair is closely cropped. Their dress is so nearly uniform that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi caused a stir when he was elected two years ago because of his stylish suits and his wavy mane.

Now comes a renowned veteran pro wrestler who ran for office under his ring name while wearing his trademark mask. He shuns his legal name, even in his native town of Iwate, where he is the founder and president of a wrestling organization.

The Great Sasuke, 33, has not retired from professional wrestling, which has a wide following in Japan, despite a career in which he has cracked his skull twice and has undergone major knee surgery. Standing 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 180 pounds, the wrestler says he won his seat on the strength of his mask. ''To take it off would be breaking promises'' to his voters, he said.

The Great Sasuke has pledged to push education reform and to increase public interest in assembly meetings. He was the leading vote getter among 12 candidates for 10 open seats.

Iwate Prefecture is a conservative district. Local law requires assembly members to respect the assembly's integrity. It prohibits them from wearing hats, coats, and scarves to meetings, or from carrying canes and umbrellas inside the meeting hall. There is no prohibition against masks.[...]

THEY come from all over the world. Their supposed mission is to help the people of Iraq. Their concerned frowns and even their clothes all proclaim the message: "We're the good, caring people . . . and you're not."

But if actions speak louder than words, then many of the international charitable organizations called NGOs (non-governmental organizations) here are less interested in doing good works than in moral posturing and haranguing the army that won a war most of them opposed.

Ask any soldier who patrols this city, and you'll hear the same thing: The NGOs have been here for weeks, but they're not out in the streets. They cite "security concerns" - though journalists and soldiers alike move around the city, using common sense and taking precautions.

(This absence is also true of the United Nations, which has a fleet of $65,000 SUVs sitting uselessly in the sun outside its headquarters at the Canal Hotel. One U.N. program is active - the food program - but on its first day on the job, one of its workers was caught looting and arrested by the U.S. Army.)

TO catch the NGOs in "action," you must go to the daily meeting at 1700 hours at the palazzo occupied by CMCC - that's the Civilian Military Coordination Center. (It used to be CMOC - the civilian military operations center - but the NGOs complained that the name implied that they were operating together with the military!)

At the meeting are NGO representatives, officials from the U.S. Organization for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid (ORHA) and Army officers from headquarters around Baghdad.

At the head of a long table in the middle of the room sits an army "facilitator," Maj. Tony Coleman - a man with the patience of Job. On rows of gilt chairs on all sides of the table sit about 30 civilians and a sprinkling of soldiers.

A few of the civilians are Iraqis. The rest are international bureaucrats, most of them shiny with privilege, all of them bursting with self-righteousness.

Army officers stand all along the walls. Compared to the aid workers (with their new clothes and expensive haircuts), they look dirty and tired.

The soldiers must doff their rifles and sidearms before they enter the area because the NGO folk - who depend on these men and women for their protection - object to the presence of firearms.

Many other complaints follow the lines of: I was over there yesterday. You said it was safe but I heard a shot. [...]

What concerns the spymasters is that Mazen may not try to root out terrorist organizations, as the map requires, but merely reach a cease-fire with them for a few months. Such a truce, and a temporary halt in homicide-bomb attacks, might force Israel to cease its 'round-the-clock counteroffensive against Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the like and enable the terror networks to regroup - and reload.

"Abu Mazen is keeping close and dangerous ties to Hamas," one intelligence operative at the party told The Post.

Despite such concerns, the party's mood was cheerful, even optimistic.

"Powell's visit to Abu Mazen in Ramallah could serve as the occasion to give him a final warning about such ties, and that it's time to really move against the terrorists," one operative said.

Julian Petley, the chairman of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, called on the commission to act against Fox News.

"The commission has set a precedent by revoking Med TV's licence, so I don't see how it can't have Fox taken off [Sky] as well.

"I'm not in favour of censorship but Murdoch would like to do with British television news what he has done with newspapers, which is to force people to compete on his own terms.

"So if we allow into Britain the kind of journalism represented by Fox, that would bring about a form of censorship by narrowing the range of views and a coarsening of the level of debate."

If that's not enough to send your irony detector into the stratosphere, the Guardian also supports forcing Fox off the air. "We don't want biased news over here," reads the editorial.

I have to lie down for a while.

"When we talk of housing disparities, education problems ... many [immigrants] don't think that affects them," said William Spriggs, executive director of the National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality.

"Black politicians ... haven't been able to get [black immigrants] to buy into what white America is all about, about what white privilege is. Immigrants don't come here with that understanding. We have to change our language to let them know that these are their problems."

Many immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean do not wish to be classified as black, because black leaders here have failed to reach out to the immigrants and identify their concerns, said members of the panel, which was composed primarily of representatives from the liberal black establishment.[...]

The lawsuit, filed April 30 in U.S. District Court in Tucson, claims federal border policy forced the immigrants to enter the country through the treacherous area southwest of Tucson known to have little water. Border Patrol agents found the immigrants on May 23, 2001 in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

The 14 are among hundreds of undocumented immigrants that have succumbed to the 100-degree temperatures in the desert region since October 2001, according to Border Patrol statistics.

The lawsuit also alleges the department could have prevented the deaths if it hadn't blocked the humanitarian-aid measures of a group called Humane Borders. Two months prior, the human rights organization was refused permission to place a water station "in the exact area" where the crossers died, according to the suit. [...]

The reason is uncomplicated: As long as Yasser Arafat wields power, there can and will be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In 2000 the most dovish Israeli government in history presented Arafat with the most generous offer the Palestinians have gotten from anyone -- a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank, with its capital in a shared Jerusalem. Arafat, intent on getting land without peace, responded by starting a now 31-month-old bloodbath.[...]

In a way, this episode is a test for Britain. American journalists covering the Dalyell story say the same comments would be a career-ender in Washington - much as Republican Trent Lott's expression of nostalgic sympathy for racial segregation recently cost him his place at the helm of the US Senate. Admittedly Dalyell does not hold leadership rank in Labour, but it seems Britain's intolerance for intolerance is not quite as advanced as America's. [...]

State Rep. Cory Atkins, wife of former U.S. Rep. Chester G. ``Chet'' Atkins, drew a private rebuke from one of her fellow liberal Democrats after the speech late Tuesday night, sources said.[...]

Part of the war on terror is learning how America’s enemies work. It was found that terrorists like to use computer terminals in our libraries to communicate and do research. Soon after the attack on September 11, 2001, the Houston Chronicle reported, "Visitors and library employees in Delray Beach and Hollywood remember seeing some of the men who are suspected of carrying out the attacks." As a result, "FBI agents have subpoenaed library records in south Florida as they attempted to piece together where the suspects went and whom they communicated with in the months leading up [to] the assaults on the World Trade Center and Pentagon."

With this in mind, the elected representatives are paid to protect us added Section 215 to the USA PATRIOT Act.

Section 215 merely reworks Title V of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and states that if the FBI believes terrorist activity is going on, it may make an application to a judge who can grant an order for the production of a patron's records.

The idea is simple; terrorists use things like airliners against us. Now, we make it harder for them to do that by federalizing airline checkers, and putting marshals on planes and beefing up airline security in general. The Feds want to do the same for terrorists that use our libraries.

While the people at the airlines and airports, flight attendants and pilots have chosen not to protest and fight the increased security where they work, the librarians have decided to take a stand against American security in the name of "freedom" - for terrorists. The librarians say they will not break the "sacred" trust between a patron and a librarian. The American Library Association seems to view this bond as literally sacred.[...]

In one huge room in the flooded basement of the building, American soldiers from MET Alpha, the "mobile exploitation team" that has been searching for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in Iraq for the past three months, found maps featuring terrorist strikes against Israel dating to 1991. Another map of Israel highlighted what the Iraqis thought were the locations at which their Scud missiles had struck in the Persian Gulf war of 1991. The strikes were designated by yellow-and-red paper flowers placed atop the pinpointed Israeli neighborhoods.

Team members floated out of the room a perfect mock-up of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, as well as mock-ups of downtown Jerusalem and official Israeli buildings in very fine detail. They also collected a satellite picture of Dimona, Israel's nuclear complex, and a female mannequin dressed in an Israeli Air Force uniform, standing in front of a list of Israeli officers' ranks and insignia.[...]

'Israeli Agents Looted Baghdad's Museums and Banks'

A visitor to the site asked Mansour what Israel gains from the wars it wages on the Arabs, the most recent of which is the war in Iraq. Mansour replied, "…The first benefit is the shattering of the great military power that Iraq possessed, which posed a danger to the Israeli entity. Second, Israel will enjoy normal relations in various spheres with its surrounding [neighbors] because of American power, and thus will not need military power to implement its historic goal of establishing the State of Israel from the Euphrates to the Nile. It will also benefit from the appearance of ethnic states in the region – as it seems that one of the Americans' first aims is to shatter the region and establish small states. Thus, Israel will become one ethnic state among a great number of ethnic states in the region, and it will no [longer] be an unusual entity."

"To this must be added the economic benefits that began before the war, when the American administration gave Israel $9 billion in aid and guarantees, and the benefits it will derive from its contracts for rebuilding Iraq and from the cheap oil it will get. We should also note what Israel has already done, by sending agents as soon as the American forces entered Baghdad; they looted the museums, information banks, and financial banks. It turns out, therefore, that Israel will reap great economic benefits [from the war in Iraq] – and let us not forget the possibility of the renewal of the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to the port of Haifa which was cut off after the 1948 war…" [...]

Michael White, political editor
Tuesday May 6, 2003
The Guardian

The Labour MP Tam Dalyell yesterday scornfully brushed aside accusations of anti-semitism but stood by the allegation that has landed him in political trouble, that "there is far too much Jewish influence in the United States" and one over-influential Jew in Tony Blair's entourage.

Faced with threats to take "inflammatory remarks" to the commission for racial equality, the MP for Linlithgow raised the stakes significantly by criticising Lord Levy, the music mogul turned Blair fundraiser and tennis partner, whose in timate contacts across the region have made him No 10's envoy to the Middle East.

"I believe his influence has been very important on the prime minister and has led to what I see as this awful war and the sack of Baghdad," said Mr Dalyell, who has long been a critic of Israeli expansionism and insists that many Jews are also "desperately unhappy about it'.'

The father of the Commons, an MP for 41 years and a pillar of the "awkward squad" for most of them, Mr Dalyell qualified his criticisms only to the extent of saying he was not attacking Jewish influence as such, but what he called the "Sharon-Likudnik agenda" of the hardliners - led by Ariel Sharon's Likud party - who dominate Israeli politics.

After Mr Dalyell was indirectly reported by Vanity Fair magazine as criticising "a cabal of Jewish advisers" driving US-UK policy towards Iraq - and now Syria - there were protests, and Professor Eric Moonman, a Labour MP 20 years ago, started legal consultations over a complaint to the CRE.

But Mr Dalyell may be the MP least likely to buckle to pressure. Questioned on Radio 4's World at One, he said: "The cabal I referred to was American," and named seven hawk ish advisers to President George Bush - six of them Jewish - as urging a strike against Syria.

"It's the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs combined with neo-Christian fundamentalists. I think a lot of it is Likudnik, Mr Sharon's agenda, and when it comes to an attack on Syria this is a very serious matter."

Pressed further, the MP conceded he had "picked out one person [in Britain] about whom I am extremely concerned and I have to be blunt about it. That is Lord Levy, Mr Blair's official representative in the Middle East. This has two questions: first, should not this be done by the Foreign Office; second, are special representatives to be accountable or not?"

Downing Street has often been forced to defend Lord Levy, both over aggressive fundraising and as an envoy - welcome in Arab capitals, including Damascus, as well as Tel Aviv - who cannot be questioned by MPs.

Mr Dalyell's career includes a close alliance with the late Richard Crossman, a passionate Zionist who believed that all gentiles - including himself - are anti-semitic at some level. The claim won him the friendship of Chaim Weizman, a president of Israel.

Prof Moonman, president of the Zionist Federation, said: "I do not believe Tam is anti-semitic," but said his "old friend" had used language which could support that view.

Whatever the extent of Lord Levy's influence, Mr Dalyell and his detractors yesterday appeared to make no acknowledgement of the defence lodged by Mr Blair's allies.

They constantly point out that No 10 has helped persuade the White House to promote the latest "road map" version of the Middle East peace plan in the teeth of Israeli opposition.

That is all over now.

"I was kicked out [of Palestine] with my mother and father 55 years ago - now I've been kicked out [of Iraq] with my wife and children," said Ahmed Kadoura, 60, sitting in the shade of one of many tents pitched on a soccer field in Baghdad.

Like hundreds of other Palestinians in Iraq, Kadoura is facing the wrath of an Iraqi population that sees the Palestinians in Iraq as collaborators with the regime of Saddam Hussein.

"We're going in circles," said Kadoura, whose neighbor stabbed him twice with a long knife to encourage him to leave his Baghdad home. "It's pointless to stay in an Arab country."

Hussein created a militia devoted to liberating Jerusalem for the Arabs. He sent thousands of dollars to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, allowed Palestinian militant groups to operate training camps in Iraq and recruited many for his security services, and he gave many ordinary Palestinians in Iraq free housing while paying their unwilling Iraqi landlords as little as $5 per year in compensatory rent. As the only Arab head of state to attack Israel in recent decades - in 1991 - he was a hero to many Palestinians. The moment Hussein fell from power, the Palestinians lost one of their most important and influential allies.[...]

Senior Defense officials told Fox News they are "confident" the vehicle was used to manufacture biological or chemical weapons agents. The vehicle contained fermenting tanks and dryers, such as those used to make the powder form of anthrax (search). Initial tests on the interior of the vehicle, which appeared to have been thoroughly cleaned, turned up negative results, but officials said tests were ongoing.

"There are a number of tests going on right now in a number of different locations in regards to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction," officials told Fox News.

The vehicle resembles an 18-wheeler Secretary of State Colin Powell (search) said in a Feb. 5 presentation before the U.N. Security Council was a mobile weapons lab that had been moved around to elude weapons inspectors.[...]

On Friday we cited a Reuters dispatch from Havana on a group of "intellectuals" who had signed a statement of support for Cuba's communist tyranny. The author of the Reuters dispatch was Marc Frank.

So we're just wondering: Is it the same Marc Frank who wrote a piece of pro-Castro, anti-American propaganda called "TV Marti vs. the Cuban People"? Is this the same Marc Frank who wrote the 1993 book "Cuba Looks to the Year 2000," and who, according to this article from Communist Voice, "has spent a number of years in Cuba as the correspondent for the Soviet revisionist CPUSA's [Communist Party USA] newspaper People's Daily World"?

Ultimately, there won't be peace until the Palestinians collectively want it. Until now they've claimed to want peace, but the only peace they'd actually accept would come through total victory over Israel. It will only be when they want peace more than victory that peace will become possible. I think it will happen, but not because of this roadmap. It will happen as part of our larger effort to try to straighten out the larger problem of Arab failure over the course of the next 30 years. Until then, the roadmap is a useful way to force the Palestinians to begin to implement reforms, and to keep the Europeans and Russians and UN entertained. But will the "roadmap" process actually lead directly to peace? No; not until other larger events help to manipulate the situation to force the Palestinians to give up the struggle. You can't plan peace unless both sides actually want peace, and right now the Palestinians still don't.

First, Israel is not a “foreign colonial” occupier. Its claim to the land is Biblical and antedates the founding of Islam by about 2,000 years. There is no mother country to which the Israeli “colonizers” can return. Second, the statement that there are no other people on the planet who consider themselves occupied is ludicrous. What about the Lebanese, who are occupied by Syria; the Tibetans, who are occupied by China; the Chechens, who are occupied by Russia; the Kurds, who are occupied by Turkey; the Basques who are occupied by Spain; the Saharawis, who are occupied by Morocco? The list goes on . . . .

We have tried every possible means to achieve our human and national aspirations. From the first intifada to the Madrid conference to the Oslo peace process to the Wye River memorandum to the Sharm el-Sheikh conference to the Camp David talks, Palestinians have pursued every possible avenue to live in peace and provide the children of our region a promising future.

The violent first intifada is a rather bizarre example of a Palestinian effort to live in peace with Israel. And what about the Palestinians' pledge to resolve their conflict with Israel peacefully, which they made as part of the Oslo accords and then abandoned in favor of negotiation through terrorism after Yehud Barak offered to give up virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza and share sovereignty over Judaism's most holy city? The Palestinian school curriculum that teaches hatred of Jews and that the Israelis are vicious occupiers who have no right to a Jewish state in any part of “Palestine” hardly seems calculated to prepare Palestinian children to live in peace with Israel, either.[...]

Ironically, Mr. Mailer seems to see everything in the world in terms of black and white, except of course, good and evil.[...]

National landmark crumbles, apparently from natural forces

By Jenna Russell, Globe Staff and Peter Demarco, Globe Correspondent, 5/4/2003

FRANCONIA, N.H. - The Old Man of the Mountain, the beloved granite formation that symbolized the rugged independence of New Hampshire, has crumbled, leaving the Granite State to mourn ''The Great Stone Face'' immortalized by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

A rock slide, which appeared to have been caused by natural geological forces, stripped Cannon Mountain of the famous rocky profile admired by Daniel Webster, Henry David Thoreau, and generations of White Mountains leaf-peepers. Of the five separate granite ledges that together resembled a head, only two remained in place yesterday.

The massive boulders that composed the Old Man's prominent forehead and nose, their absence first noticed yesterday morning by state park employees, had tumbled toward Profile Lake, 1,200 feet below, stopping short of the water.

New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson announced the immediate formation of a task force to examine the possibility of resurrecting the symbol.[...]

By Anne Barnard and Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff, 5/4/2003

BAGHDAD -- Munir Mahmoud Hamid charged down the street, pounding his fists on the trunk of a car as it pulled away. ''You know what you did!'' he shouted. The man inside was Alaa Maki, Hamid's former boss and a close associate of Saddam Hussein's son, Uday.

Breathing hard and sputtering, Hamid, a television sound engineer, turned to a crowd of former colleagues from Uday Hussein's Youth TV channel who had gathered near their bombed-out offices. And then he told his story: In 1995, he edited a song recorded in Uday's honor by a Jordanian pop singer. Because Hamid took $10 rather than work for free, he said, Maki informed authorities that he ''did not respect Uday.''

Guards shaved Hamid's head and forced him to to sit at the office door as passing co-workers spat on him. Then, he said, he spent three months in prison, and Maki visited to ensure daily beatings.

As several colleagues nodded to confirm that they had been forced to spit, Hamid, 31, looked up with an air of relief.

''I kept it secret before,'' he declared. ''Now I feel that I am free to say it. And to get revenge on the people who were unjust to me.''

Hamid's experience is one tiny chapter among volumes of stories being told out loud for the first time across Iraq, less than a month after the fall of Saddam Hussein broke through the country's carapace of fear and silence -- or at least dented it.

Tales of torture and humiliation pour out, on the streets, in family rooms, in mosques, at the headquarters of political parties that have sprung up in buildings taken over from the former government. Sheaves of dusty files were dragged from security offices to the Tigris River villa of the Committee of Free Prisoners, newly founded by former inmates who until recently were afraid to be seen together.[...]

1. A map with the coordinates of the pits holding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

2. Surrender of Saddam’s most senior insiders who fled to Aleppo and Latakiya. After DEBKAfile blew the whistle on April 3, the group staying at the Cote D’Azur De Cham Resort in Latakia was whisked away leaving their families comfortably ensconced there.

3. Handover of the two senior Al Qaeda members now in Damascus. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources say their names and whereabouts were uncovered by US intelligence units in Iraq.

4. An explanation of Syrian motives in allowing two British terrorists, Assif Hanif, who blew himself up in Tel Aviv on April 30, and Omar Khan Sharif, who ran away, to transit Damascus en route to Israel. (One of the duo spent four months of preparation in the Syrian capital with the Hamas operations officer and associate of Hizballah Imad al-Alami, as reported exclusively by DEBKAfile.)

5. An immediate stop to the military-terrorist activities of the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Syria and Lebanon. Failure to do so, Powell explained, will result in a painful tightening of economic pressure on Syria, after the loss of $1b in oil revenues from Baghdad. [...]

And yet, in truth, no one should have been shocked. Last week's incident is not even the first example of Britons being involved in attempted suicide attacks. On the basis of their interrogation of members of al-Qaeda, officers from India's Intelligence Service believe that there was a plot to hijack a British Airways plane on September 11 and crash it into the Houses of Parliament. That plot only failed because by the time the plane the terrorists had chosen to hijack was scheduled to take off (5.30pm), news of the destruction of the World Trade Center had echoed around the world, and airport authorities grounded all flights.[...]

But you won't see much of this on TV or read about it in the papers. To an amazing degree, the Baghdad-based press corps avoids writing about or filming the friendly dealings between U.S. forces here and the local population--most likely because to do so would require them to report the extravagant expressions of gratitude that accompany every such encounter. Instead you read story after story about the supposed fury of Baghdadis at the Americans for allowing the breakdown of law and order in their city.

Well, I've met hundreds of Iraqis as I accompanied army patrols all over the city during the past two weeks and I've never encountered any such fury (even in areas that were formerly controlled by the Marines, who as the premier warrior force were never expected to carry out peacekeeping or policing functions). There is understandable frustration about the continuing failure of the Americans to get the water supply and the electricity turned back on, though the ubiquity of generators indicates that the latter was always a problem. And there are appeals for more protection (difficult to provide with only 12,000 troops in a city of 6 million that has not been placed under strick martial law). But there is no fury. [...]

Said Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewiczs: "This is a fresh responsibility for my country, but we are ready to share it."

In Poland, officials said they expected to send no more than 2,000 troops to a zone in the north of Iraq, and were looking to finance the mission with the help of other nations.[...]

Although Mr. Powell gave no details and Syria provided no immediate confirmation, a senior State Department official said that Syria had shut down the offices of three organizations that the United states considers terrorist. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified them as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Syria has long maintained that the groups only kept information offices in Damascus. The State Department official also said that Syria was taking steps to ensure that members of the groups would limit their television appearances from Damascus.

Also of concern to the United States is Syrian support for Hezbollah, the radical Shiite Muslim group that is powerful in southern Lebanon.United States intelligence officials have also said that Syria allowed Hezbollah members to pass through to Iraq during the war. It has lobbed missiles into Israel in the past, but the border has been quiet recently.

"We have emphasized strongly our concern about continuing terrorist activities of Hezbollah in the region and around the world," Mr. Powell said. He called on Lebanon to send its army to the border with Israel and "end armed Hezbollah militia incursions." [...]

A senior State Department official traveling in the region said Mr. Assad responded by saying Syria had helped track down members of Al Qaeda and refused entry to fleeing Iraqi officials. The official said the talks lasted nearly three hours and paraphrased Mr. Powell as telling Mr. Assad, "The president sent me to bring you our concerns in the strongest terms."

The official said the Syrians displayed "some willingness to cooperate," but added, "whether relations improve or deteriorate really depends on performance."

Before meeting Mr. Assad, Mr. Powell said he wanted to see "specific action and performance" from Syria reflecting the new reality. "That will be taken into account as we decide on our future strategy."[...]

Speaking to reporters in Damascus earlier today, Mr. Powell sought to reassure a jittery Syria that it would not end up in a sequel to the Iraq war. "I'm here to pursue diplomacy and mutual political efforts that both sides can be taking," he said. "So the issue of war hostilities is not on the table."

But on this trip, Mr. Powell dropped a reminder of Washington's displeasure, noting on Friday that Syria failed to live up to its promise to stop smuggling in Iraqi oil through a pipeline outside of the United Nations oil-for-food program. "I will always have that in my background software and on my hard drive," he said.

In Lebanon today, where Syria maintains more than 20,000 troops who remained under an agreement to end the civil war, Mr. Powell made another pointed reference, saying the United States supports a Lebanon "free of all, all foreign forces."[...]

Throughout Arba’in, small bands of militants, some freshly arrived from Iran, were posted at the entrance of streets leading to the two main shrines. They carried placards and posters calling for an Islamic republic and shouted anti-American slogans. But it soon became clear that few pilgrims were prepared to join them.

All the pilgrims that this reporter could talk to expressed their "gratitude and appreciation" to the US and its British allies for having freed them from the most brutal regime Iraq had seen since its creation in 1921.

Needless to say, however, most television cameras were focused on the small number of militants who had something "hot" - that is to say, anti-American - to say.

After days of talking to Shiites in Karbala and Najaf, it is clear that there is virtually no undercurrent of anti-Americanism in the heartland of Iraqi Shiaism. Even some clerics who have just returned from exile in Iran were keen to advertise their goodwill towards the US. All that, however, could quickly change.

The advent of liberty has unleashed energies that could both create and destroy. Here you have millions of people, mostly aged below 25 and never allowed to take the smallest decision without the fear of political authority, who suddenly feel no-one is in charge.

"We have been freed from a despotic father and feel like orphans: both happy and terrified," says Mahdi Khadhim, a Karbala schoolteacher, expressing a widely held sentiment. [...]

Given the antics of Belgium with its wild criminal courts and anti-American rhetoric, it is a cruel joke to house NATO in Brussels. Better to move the headquarters to Warsaw or perhaps Rome. France should decide whether it is in or out of the alliance, but it can no longer be both. They, not we, have nearly destroyed NATO by abusing their own quasi-relationship, and that too must end. They will soon see that the end of the Soviet Union gives us as many options within NATO as it provides them. So as the alliance wanes — and all such leagues do, without common enemies — we should carefully establish bilateral relationships with those Europeans who know something of the history of the 20th century. It might be wise also to lift all quotas on skilled Europeans who wish expedited American citizenship — both for our own good, and to discover how many talented people might prefer leaving a creeping socialism.

Reform at the U.N. should be a centerpiece of our new policy. There is no reason why a billion people of a nuclear, democratic India, an increasingly confident Japan, or a vast country like Brazil should not be represented as permanent members of the Security Council. In addition, we must move to require democratic government for participation in the General Assembly; it makes no sense to give despots the privileges they don’t extend even to their own people. Let the U.N. become an assembly of free peoples, and allow Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba to form their own United Tyrannies.[...]

“Not once have I been mistreated or racially harassed or abused in any way,” he recalled. “They were very kind and accepting toward me. If the equivalent of what happened in New York on Sept. 11 had happened here, I don’t believe that our people would have shown the same self-restraint and patience toward the Western expatriates living here that the American people have shown toward the Arabs and Muslims living there.”

One young man, who wanted to be called Yousuf, complained of an inability to relate to Saudi people.

“Here, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” he said. “People have no respect for creativity, no respect for original thought.”

Yousuf studied in the US for years and was hoping to gain some work experience there before returning to Saudi Arabia and working for his family. All that changed after Sept. 11.

“Everything here is segregated — men from women, rich from poor, and foreigners from locals. This is a land of segregation. The majority of people try to justify this, but I feel that we should focus on integration, not segregation.”

Yousuf said there was a contradiction in the behavior of many Saudis. “When people are outside the country, they go wild. When they are inside, they go to the other extreme.”

“I am very angry at my people,” he added. “They have this terrible habit of blaming the world for their own faults.”[...]

Latin American Nobel laureates Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel and South African writer Nadine Gordimer, also a Nobel prize winner, have signed a declaration of support, Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez said.

U.S. singer Harry Belafonte and U.S. actor Danny Glover are also among the personalities who have signed the two-paragraph declaration "To the Conscience of the World" so far, Gonzalez announced to a May Day rally in Havana.

"A single power is inflicting grave damage to the norms of understanding, debate and mediation among countries," the declaration says, referring to the United States and the war in Iraq.

"At this very moment, a strong campaign of destabilization against a Latin American nation has been unleashed. The harassment against Cuba could serve as a pretext for an invasion," it continues.

President Fidel Castro's government has come under unprecedented international criticism from friends and foes after sentencing 75 dissidents to long prison terms last month, and executing three men who hijacked a ferry in a failed bid to reach the United States.[...]

"Dr. Zeidan talked about the expected ecological disaster from releasing thousands of flies known as chrysomya bezziana, nicknamed screw worm, which were bred by the Nuclear Authority to be used as biological farming insecticides. The flies were released by the looters and were expected to harm animals in Iraq and neighboring countries. These flies were to be released after being sterilized. However, the flies that were actually released in large quantities were not sterilized."[...]

In recent months, three years into the bloody Palestinian assault on Israel that the Oslo peace process became, the same dynamic has once again been in play, as international diplomats and government officials have scrambled to take advantage of the anticipated defeat of Saddam Hussein by pushing forward their preferred solutions. President Bush himself predicted in late February that "success in Iraq could . . . begin a new stage of Middle Eastern peace," while England and other European nations, keen to demonstrate their good faith to the Arab world, have gone much farther. In the very first week of the war, the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, complaining about an alleged double standard when it came to "injustice against the Palestinians," equated U.N. resolutions concerning Saddam Hussein's threats to international peace with those condemning Israel on a range of less significant matters.

A more evenhanded view underlies the latest diplomatic initiative to address the Israel-Palestinian dispute. This is the famous "road map" prepared by the "quartet" of the United States, the European Union, the U.N. and Russia. The road map, released earlier this week, proposes a two-state solution to the conflict, to be reached in three phases.[...]

"As soon as I heard the names, my heart sank," he said. "I did not need to see the picture, but when the picture came, they are there."

Hanif and Sharif returned to Israel to carry out the attack on a tourist bar called Mike's Place, close to the American embassy, early on Wednesday.[...]

Most of the activists, who come from Europe, Canada and the United States, belong to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

Their goal is to act as "human shields" for Palestinian individuals and houses during IDF incursions into Palestinian towns, and they have often been involved in confrontations with IDF soldiers. They also try to help Palestinians pass through IDF roadblocks.[...]

The IDF charges that many of the self-proclaimed peace activists are "provocateurs" and "riot inciters" who deliberately interfere with the IDF's work, with the goal of blackening Israel's image. Army sources noted that in one case, they discovered a wanted terrorist being hidden by ISM activists in Jenin. The sources said the activists received training overseas in how to deceive border control officials at Ben-Gurion International Airport in order to be allowed into the country.[...]

Wednesday's bombing in Tel Aviv, which was committed by two men who entered Israel on British passports, added a new reason to the authorities' desire to clamp down on the foreign activists - fear that other terrorists from overseas might enter the country under the guise of peace activists. [...]

Of course it is an appalling sacrifice of life. But if you ask me whether it was a price worth paying to remove Saddam, and a regime that killed and tortured hundreds of thousands, then I would say yes. What do you see now when you walk past Iraqi electrical stores, which are opening with more confidence every day? You see satellite dishes, objects forbidden under Saddam. One man told me he had sold ten in the last four days, at between $200 and $300 a go.

Snooty liberals, and indeed many Tories, will say that this is vulgar and tawdry, and make silly, snooty jokes about the poor Iraqis now being subjected to Topless Darts and Rupert Murdoch. What such anti-war people don’t understand is that the Iraqis are not only being given their first chance to learn about other countries. They can now learn about their own. They can now watch channels not wholly consecrated to the doings of Saddam.

There have been terrible mistakes in this campaign, though those who followed the cataclysm at the Baghdad Museum may be interested to know that, when I went there, three big boxes of artefacts were being handed over, having been recovered from the looters. I suppose that, with 170,000 objects stolen, there was a slight glut in the market for cuneiform seals, no matter how old.

As George Bush gave his speech on Tuesday night, I happened to be watching it with three Iraqis. When he said that ‘the windows are open in Iraq now’, meaning that people could talk without fear for their lives, they laughed and banged the table. I can imagine the anti-war lot in Britain, with their low opinion of Bush, also laughing at his folksy rhetoric. But when I asked the Iraqis what they thought of the speech, I found I had completely misunderstood their laughter.

‘We agree with Bush 100 per cent,’ said one, and they all passionately agreed. Really? I said. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We are free now.’ Iraq has huge problems, including colossal debts. It is barely governable. It would be unthinkable for America and Britain to pull out. But he says that his country is now free, and that, to me, is something that was worth fighting for. Saddam may be a ghost, but that is all.

The reoccupation came after a wave of suicide bombings by militants, who have rejected the road map and vowed continued attacks on Israel.

If it's the latter, what does he think would be more effective?

In his Tuesday inaugural, Mazen emphasized "the importance of the question of refugees … we are speaking of millions of Palestinian refuges around the world." He added that a "solution to the refugee problem consistent with international law (particularly U.N. Resolution 194) will be the basis of peace and coexistence."

That's a reference to the "right of return" which is code for the destruction of Israel by demographic means. Under Resolution 194, "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date."

If Israel were to accept that, there would be an influx of — as Mazen says — "millions of Palestinian refugees" demanding Israeli land and citizenship. Israelis would become a minority in their own country. Israel would cease to be a Jewish state — and, in fact, would cease to exist.

It's unlikely that Abu Mazen will have a difficult time persuading the U.N., the European Union, and Russia — three of the four members of the "Quartet" that is meant to orchestrate the peace process — to support this formula. None of those entities have been anything but hostile toward Israel for years. (Significantly, they've been decreasingly cordial to the U.S. as well.)

But it is impossible to imagine Ariel Sharon or any other Israeli leader regarding Abu Mazen's proposal as anything but surrender — not least because roughly half Israel's people are Mizrahis, Jews (or the children of Jews) who fled oppression in the Arab countries they had called home for centuries.

According to early reports, the "Road Map" presented Wednesday to Abu Mazen and Sharon does not mention Resolution 194. Nevertheless, it would useful if President Bush were to make clear to Abu Mazen and the Quartet that if they see Arab immigration into Israel as the path to "peace," they are heading for a dead end.

Let me briefly describe some of the events that took place on the day of our conference: Indict’s office in London received a telephone call threatening that everybody would be killed. Simultaneously, the British police received a warning that "everybody in the [Paris] conference will be dead by the end of today." [...]