June 2004 Archives

Saddam Hussein was "visibly nervous" when he was transferred to Iraqi legal custody, the head of the Special Tribunal set up to try him has said.

"He was nervous, very nervous, because he did not know what was happening," Salam Chalabi told ABC television.

Mr Chalabi said Saddam Hussein had lost weight and no longer had the bushy beard he was seen with in a video after his capture in December, last year...

...Mr Chalabi told American television that the handover was "a surreal experience".

He said Saddam Hussein was not shackled when he appeared before the judge.

He said Saddam Hussein's appearance had changed since the world saw him undergo a medical inspection on a video following his capture.

"We first saw Saddam Hussein and he had lost weight. He was not the towering figure that one used to see on TV before. He was nervous, very nervous, because he did not know what was happening.

Mr Chalabi said Saddam Hussein was wearing Arab dress and that his hair was "a bit long" and "black, not grey", as it appeared in the video.

Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, was among 11 other former members of Saddam Hussein's regime who were handed over for trial at the same time.

"He looked very scared. He was shaking," said Mr Chalabi.

Dear Donors and Friends,

With our own Independence Day approaching I’m happy to have news that the support you’ve provided to Iraq’s independence is producing some very meaningful results.

1. At the bottom is a great message from Major Holden Dunham of the Marines in Al Anbar. It is an example of synergy in the work we are supporting in Iraq. One of the TV stations equipped by Spirit of America used its new gear to produce a news story about the ribbon-cutting opening ceremony of a women’s sewing center. We donated the 50 sewing machines that made the opening of the center possible. We expect to get video of the newscast and will post it on the Web when we do. Even though I don’t speak Arabic this will be the best “must see TV” I’ll have watched all year. The opening of the center and the TV coverage of such progress on the local news are very, very good things. Both of these involve courageous Iraqis working hard to advance the country at great personal risk. The support these brave men and women get from the Marines, Spirit of America and you, the American people, is invaluable. I know that if we persist we can multiply success stories like this one.

2. In my last message about my trip to Iraq I mentioned we were looking for donations for sewing machines to help women in Ramadi improve their standard of living. With your support the sewing center is already up and going. We are now expanding this effort. A photo of the sewing machine delivery is below and you can find more photos and read about it here.

3. Also on our site is another message from Maj. Dunham that provides a station-by-station status update of the Al Anbar TV equipment project. Equipping the stations and training the staff have proceeded more slowly than we hoped back in April. The terrorist violence against the US and the Coalition (and against the Iraqis that cooperate with them) has understandably slowed things down. But as you can see above there is progress. Click here to read Maj. Dunham’s update.

We are supporting work in Iraq that is more difficult and dangerous than we expected. It is also more important than we expected. The support of the American people is a key factor to Iraq’s future. We’re here to provide focus and direction to that support through the ups and the downs. I hope that someday as the Iraqi people celebrate their Independence Day we can all take pride in knowing that we did our part – that we did what we could, small or large – to make it work.

Onward and upward.

Jim Hake and the Spirit of America team

-----Original Message-----
From: Dunham Maj Oliver H
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 6:12 AM
To: Jim Hake
Cc: Lutkenhouse LtCol John F; Chandler Maj Thomas E
Subject: sewing center

Dear Jim,

The local TV station we have been supporting with your donated media gear did a news spot on the new sewing center that opened in Ramadi. The station did a 14 minute segment set to music, with interviews of different people interspersed throughout the segment. The center has actually been expanded into what the Iraqis are calling a "Women's Center" (the sign reads in English below the Arabic, "The Organization of Creative Women in New Iraq"). The Iraqis will be planning use profits generated from the sewing to fund women's education (English, computer skills, etc). This is huge and is exactly the direction we are trying to drive things as it runs counter to the agenda of the extremists who are fighting to keep this part of the world mired in the dark ages. During the segment, they panned to new furniture (purchased by us), school-type desks and new computers (I believe provided by CPA), and of course, the sewing machines set up on tables, each one being its own sewing station. They are saying that 900 families will be supported by the center though I think that may be a little bit of an overstatement as locals here are sometimes apt to do.

That said, the Iraqis had a true ribbon cutting ceremony. There was a darling little girl who was holding one end of the ribbon while a man cut the ribbon. One of the Iraqis interviewed (I believe he is the director of the center) thanked the Governor for the assistance that made the center possible. Because we are approaching the transfer to sovereignty there was no Coalition involvement in the opening of the center. Thus, though the Coalition was not mentioned; we still see this as a win. Any time the interim government gets credit for something that benefits local people, it increases support for the interim government. Support for the interim government means greater stability, which is what we need to get Iraq through the transition period.

There is still a fight here, but we are making progress.

Thanks again for the help.

Holden

..."Studies in Theology: Tradition and Morals, Grade 11, (2001) pp. 291-92 ...This noble [Qur'anic] Surah [Surat Muhammad]... deals with questions of which the most important are as follows: 'Encouraging the faithful to perform jihad in God's cause, to behead the infidels, take them prisoner, break their power, and make their souls humble - all that in a style which contains the highest examples of urging to fight. You see that in His words: "When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly. Then grant them their freedom or take a ransom from them, until war shall lay down its burdens.'"

"Commentary on the Surahs of Muhammad, Al-Fath, Al-Hujurat and Qaf, Grade 11, (2002) p. 9 …When you meet them in order to fight [them], do not be seized by compassion [towards them] but strike the[ir] necks powerfully.... Striking the neck means fighting, because killing a person is often done by striking off his head. Thus, it has become an expression for killing even if the fighter strikes him elsewhere. This expression contains a harshness and emphasis that are not found in the word "kill", because it describes killing in the ugliest manner, i.e., cutting the neck and making the organ - the head of the body - fly off [the body].' "...

In 1912 Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare-book dealer, made the find of a lifetime in the library of a Jesuit college near Rome: a manuscript some 230 pages long, written in an unusual script and richly illustrated with bizarre images of plants, heavenly spheres and bathing women. Voynich immediately recognized the importance of his new acquisition. Although it superficially resembled the handbook of a medieval alchemist or herbalist, the manuscript appeared to be written entirely in code. Features in the illustrations, such as hairstyles, suggested that the book was produced sometime between 1470 and 1500, and a 17th-century letter accompanying the manuscript stated that it had been purchased by Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1586. During the 1600s, at least two scholars apparently tried to decipher the manuscript, and then it disappeared for nearly 250 years until Voynich unearthed it.

Voynich asked the leading cryptographers of his day to decode the odd script, which did not match that of any known language. But despite 90 years of effort by some of the world's best code breakers, no one has been able to decipher Voynichese, as the script has become known. The nature and origin of the manuscript remain a mystery. The failure of the code-breaking attempts has raised the suspicion that there may not be any cipher to crack. Voynichese may contain no message at all, and the manuscript may simply be an elaborate hoax...

...One of the letters was from Archbishop Andrea Cassulo, the Vatican's nuncio, or ambassador, in Romania. It was sent July 21, 1943, to Cardinal Luigi Maglione, the Vatican secretary of state.

In it, Cassulo writes that the "overwhelming portion" of paperwork going through the Vatican Embassy in Bucharest related to requests for information about the fate of "people of the Hebrew race."

Cassulo writes that "some people" had told him that it was "inopportune for the offices of the Holy See to give this type of preference to Jews."

One of those who had complained to the Vatican Embassy was the Roman Catholic bishop of Timisoara, whose surname was Pacha. His first name was not given in the letter.

Writing in Latin to Cassulo, Pacha complained that the great majority of the faithful in his diocese were ethnic Germans who were "indignant."

He said his faithful were "publicly and openly accusing the church of having a good relationship with the Jews, enemies of the German people."...

...Before major combat operations were over, [WaPo Baghdad bureau chief] Chandrasekaran was already quoting Iraqis proclaiming the American operation a failure. Reading his dispatches from April 2003, you can already see his meta-narrative take shape: basically, that the Americans are clumsy fools who don’t know what they’re doing, and Iraqis hate them. This meta-narrative informs his coverage and the coverage of the reporters he supervises, who rotate in and out of Iraq.

How do I know this? Because my fellow Marines and I witnessed it with our own eyes. Chandrasekaran showed up in the city of Al Kut last April, talked to a few of our officers, and toured the city for a few hours. He then got back into his air-conditioned car and drove back to Baghdad to write about the local unrest.

"The Untouchable 'Mayor' of Kut," his article's headline blared the next day. It described a local, Iranian-backed troublemaker named Abbas Fadhil, who was squatting in the provincial government headquarters. He had gathered a mob of people with nothing better to do, told them to camp out in the headquarters compound, and there they sat, defying the Marines of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade....

On June 28, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns opened a U.S. liaison office in Tripoli, Libya, reestablishing direct diplomatic relations after a near quarter-century break. The move caps a months-long effort to improve relations. In December 2003, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi announced that he would dismantle his weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. On April 23, 2004, the White House announced that the U.S. would ease its economic embargo against Libya.

President Bush has expressed his enthusiasm for the process. Speaking in the East Room of the White House on March 12, Bush noted the release Libyan dissident Fathi El-Jahmi, and said, "You probably have heard, Libya is beginning to change her attitude about a lot of things."

Well, maybe Libya has changed her rhetoric, but not her attitude. Speaking in Cairo on March 24, Saif Islam Qaddafi, the Libyan strongman's son, lectured Arab governments about democracy. "Instead of shouting and criticizing the American initiative, you have to bring democracy to your countries," Saif said. But, as Saif spoke, Libyan security forces surrounded the home of El-Jahmi, shortly thereafter arresting him, his wife, and his son. Libyans interpret the move as a signal from Qaddafi that Bush is insincere and weak.

As Burns legitimized Qaddafi with a new State Department office in Tripoli, I sat down with Husayn Shafei in a conference room at the American Enterprise Institute. Just as Burns has not met with El-Jahmi or made his arrest a stumbling block in Foggy Bottom's drive to reestablish ties with Tripoli, State Department officials have not sat down with Shafei. His story might be inconvenient, but he will repeat it today at 10 A.M. at the Washington office of Freedom House...

Late on the night of June 24th-25th there was an "accident" in southeastern Iran, near Zahedan, in that fascinating area of "Iranian Baluchestan" down where Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan merge. According to Agence France Press, quoting local Red Crescent sources, a fuel truck "lost control and crashed into a police post, with the explosion engulfing other trucks, cars and buses."

But the pictures of the incident are not those of a truck out of control. It all took place at a border crossing, at a customs inspection station. At the time of the explosion there were eleven trucks parked there, and several of them were carrying explosives for the construction of bombs. They were headed for Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they would be delivered to the forces of Gulbadin Hekhmatyar, the terrorist chieftain who has long killed on behalf of the mullahs.

The explosion engulfed the entire column, which is why — as some of the pictures show — the columns of the customs building were shattered. Friends of mine in Iran insist that the trucks were deliberately blown up by Iranians hostile to the regime. In any event, the next day — the 25th — Pakistani border police arrested some 18 men trying to sneak into Pakistan. Fifteen of them were traveling on false Bangladeshi passports; the other three were Iranian agents. All are currently being interrogated by Pakistani authorities.

Meanwhile, Iraqi authorities have rounded up eight Iranian intelligence officers in Najaf, and one other — a high-ranking officer in the Revolutionary Guards — was caught while attempting to sabotage an oil pipeline.

As you see, the Iranians are frantically increasing their efforts to drive Coalition forces out of Iraq, to wreck the Iraqi economy — and especially to inflate oil prices, which the mullahs hope will bring down the Bush presidency — and to destabilize the fragile Karzai government in Afghanistan. They, and their Syrian and Saudi allies, are doing this because the liberation of Iraq is indeed threatening the authority of the remaining terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riadh. The entire region is bubbling from the heat of democratic revolution, and you can see the fears of the terror masters as they steadily increase the repression of their own people. Syrians can now listen to accurate news broadcasts and calls for freedom from the new radio station launched by the Syrian Reform Party, which has prompted new crackdowns from the Assad regime. And in Iran, despite the unfortunate claim of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage that the mullahs preside over a democracy, one international organization after another has exposed the monstrosities carried out daily by the murders who govern the Islamic Republic. Hands of Cain, an organization fighting capital punishment everywhere, awarded the People's Republic of China its award as top executioner for 2003, with Iran solidly in second position. Hands of Cain noted that 98.7 percent of all executions in the world last year were carried out by dictatorial, illiberal, or authoritarian states.

Just as in the case of terrorism, if you want to win the war against the world's leading executioners, you must fight for the spread of freedom...

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush? You closed down a friggin' weekly newspaper, you great giver of freedom and democracy! Then all hell broke loose. The paper only had 10,000 readers! Why are you smirking?...

… There is a lot of talk amongst Bush's opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess? I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end"

Excited about Fahrenheit 9/11? It's the Palme d'Or-winning and soon-to-be Oscar-winning documentary from average blue-collar multi-millionaire Michael Moore, and it opens in Britain next week. I saw it over the weekend on my side of the Atlantic, with an audience comprised wholly of informed, intelligent sophisticates.

I knew they were informed, intelligent sophisticates because they howled with laughter at every joke about what a bozo Bush is. They split their sides during the patriotic ballad – eagles soaring, etc – composed and sung by John Ashcroft, the famously sinister US Attorney-General. Moore reveals – and if you feel that knowing the plot would spoil the movie, please skip to the next paragraph – that Bush is a privileged simpleton under the control of war-crazed Big Oil interests who arranged to have the 2000 election stolen for him. I hadn't heard that before, had you?...

No Iraqi poet will sit down to write stirring poetry in celebration of yesterday's transfer of sovereignty from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. No jihadist, it must be conceded, will see in the drama that has played out in Baghdad reason to call to a halt the campaign of holy terror let loose on Iraq's cities. That fabled "Arab street," we know, will insist that this is a quisling Iraqi government doing the bidding of the Pax Americana.

But the unadorned, brief ceremony that saw the American regent, L. Paul Bremer, to a C-130 at the Baghdad airport had a dignity and a power all its own. There had never been an American design to dominate and rule the Iraqis. This was not a charade that has just been pulled off in Iraq. We are eager to come out well from this expedition to Iraq, and the transfer of authority marks the beginning of a new relationship between Iraqis and their American liberators.

--

To be sure, it is not "normal" sovereignty that has come to Iraq. A country with 160,000 foreign soldiers on its soil cannot be said to be wholly free. It is idle to pretend that the American ambassador, John Negroponte, will run a standard diplomatic mission. He will dispose of a vast reconstruction package, and a formidable military presence will underscore his authority. But freedom can't be a fetish. There are the needs of Iraq, and they are staggering. There is the nemesis of Iraq's freedom, an insurgency drawing its fury and pitilessness from the forces of the old despotism, and from jihadists from neighboring lands who have turned Iraq into a devil's playground. We should be under no illusions about this insurgency. Its war against the new Iraq will not yield. For their part, the jihadists have a dreadful animus for the "apostates" within the world of Islam who ride with the infidels...

...Did the Arab media cry "massacre" and "ethnic cleansing" just like it does when Israel kills 5 Palestinians in a single day? No. Did the Arab press publish gruesome pictures of dead bodies? No. Ops, I didn't know that a Muslim corpse is worth more when it has an Israeli or an American bullet in it! Terrorists in Iraq killed more civilians than Israel did in the 4 years old Palestinian uprising. What are we hearing from the Arab media? An ugly hush, and an uglier attempt to explain the daily carnage just to avoid shifting the Americans to the "good guys" column...

...I am beginning to feel real sick from the overdose of "Arab opinion" I get everyday. The hypocrisy just chokes me.

I hear some grumbling Arab telling me "but America never cared about elections. It supported dictators in the region for the past 60 years." I don't care about the past. Bush was born on September 11, 2001...

...100 dead and over 300 badly injured. The scenes of bloody bodies of Iraqi policemen are painful and heartrending, and there is absolutely NO justification for this. I swear if someone says there is I would be glad to strangle him with my own hands and drink from his blood. I cannot express the rage I am feeling now in words. I did not blog about it yesterday because I would have said some very nasty things, and I am still struggling to restrain myself now from doing so. What kills me is that not one of the assailants were killed or captured in the attacks, I just can't possibly understand how a group of armed men can enter and hold several police stations, kill everyone inside and leave without a scratch. How are they supposed to secure the country in a few days from now if they can't even protect their own police stations?...

GO IRAQ GO.... It’s a great day for all the freedom lovers. No doubt is left now that we’re winning while the forces of darkness and evil are losing a key round in this war. With great delight we received th news. this is the right and important step to build the free Iraq and It’s a painful strike for terrorism and its allies. They really missed this surprising and brilliant timing. And I guess they’re deeply shocked right now. their luck couldn’t help them to scar this glorious day with a crime of theirs.

Most Iraqis met this news with happiness and hope about the new government’s performance and who walks in a Baghdad now can feel relaxation in the atmosphere.
What happened this morning will have a deep effect on the future of Iraq and the region as well. It has confirmed that America is serious regarding the handover and the creation of a democratic example in the ME through the change in Iraq.
It also confirms the readiness and will of Iraqis to take their part in rebuilding Iraq as fast as possible.

We, the people of Iraq, see and feel the active and potential dangers that threaten our country and the time has come for us now to stand side by side with our government to go through the coming period.
Our hope and our goal is to see the day when we can elect our representatives freely and more important is to be aware that the process is moving as we wish and there will be no room for those who dream of bringing back the past.

I can see only one bright road and I believe that going to the end is worth the sacrifice and we’ll never be discouraged by the dark pictures shown by the evil propaganda machines.
To me, we didn’t get rid of a military occupation today as I never considered the coalition’s presence as an occupation even if the whole world told me that I’m wrong.
Today we were freed for ever from the fear that a man and his family might once again control Iraq.

We believe that we have common interests and it’s necessary to keep a high level coordination between the US and Iraq and anyone who thinks that we can reach our goals without this coordination is totally wrong. We’re surrounded by a some neighbors who don’t want to see the change succeed and we’re being watched by angry eyes that will not let this newborn democracy grow easily. That’s why a strategic alliance between our countries is an important factor for stability and will provide the necessary protection for the new model.

Iraq didn’t seek to have enemies after the liberation but it’s the others who targeted Iraq and made her their opponent not because Iraq doesn’t have a strong army right now nor because they have ambitions in Iraq but obviously because the found a great danger in the new idea and the new Iraq that threatens the core of their ideology which today’s step has made its end closer.
A big greeting to the courageous and noble man; Mr. Bremer whom we saluted this morning. He proved that he’s the right man for the tough times. He struggled together with his Iraqi brothers to overcome the hardships in a critical era for this country and the whole world. I’m going to miss his presence and so are many other Iraqis because we feel that who left today is one of Iraq’s sons.

A big greeting to the men who decided to bear the responsibility of Iraq’s safety and Iraq’s future.
They needed courage and faith to decide to work for Iraq in this hard time. May God help them guide this country with wisdom until the day when elections come.

It’s hard to appreciate the efforts of all those who helped us to get our freedom and rebuild our country. We will never forget them. We will keep them in our hearts.
God bless Iraq and her people.
God bless America and her people.

God bless all the coalition forces who supported operation Iraqi freedom.
May God bless the souls of all those who sacrificed their lives to free Iraq.

By Mohammed.

THAT WHICH HAS BENEFIT FOR PEOPLE

This is a famous Arabic verse of divine Wisdom; the eloquence and resonance of the sentence cannot be translated but the meaning is as follows:

“As for the scum, it will go (disappear) in vain (uselessly); and as for that which has benefit for people, it will stay in the earth.”

One man of the people is asked by an MBC (An Arab network) reporter what he thinks about the new government. He answers very simply in that spontaneous genuine manner of simple folk: “aren’t these men better than the riffraff who used to govern us?” Truer words have never been said.

This day, this modest ceremony, no elaborate celebrations, no fanfare; yet surely this is a “Mother of Days” for Iraq, and history will remember this day.

Likewise, I am not going to say anything grandiose today, rather in the same style of today’s ceremonies. All I can say is that almost everybody here has hope, great hope. Personally I am confident of the future because “That which has benefit for people will stay in the earth”.

Hail our true friends, the Great People of the United States of America; The Freedom giving Republic, the nation of Liberators. Never has the world known such a nation, willing to spill the blood of her children and spend the treasure of her land even for the sake of the freedom and well being of erstwhile enemies. The tree of friendship is going to grow and grow and bear fruit as sure as day follows night. And the people deep down at the bottom of their hearts, they appreciate. Make no mistake about that. The people have voted today, the pulse of the street is clear, without any hesitation I would give 90% of all Iraqis are hopeful and supportive of the new government, and this is a tacit indirect yes to the U.S. which has been the prime mover of all these events. This is what the foolish fail to understand. Why is this a different situation from that for example of a Vietnam? The answer is very simple: Because, the U.S. has achieved something very popular around here; which is the removal of the Saddam regime. Those who are really against the U.S. from amongst the Iraqis have been and remain a small minority; all other forms of resentment are simply disappointment and disgruntlement resulting from the discomfiture of the present situation and will simply disappear with progress and gradual improvement.

As for the enemy, he will not reap but failure and the bitter taste of defeat.

Glory and honor to the U.S. and Allied men and women whose blood is irrigating the tree of freedom in this land; and their sacrifices, suffering, and toil is laying the foundation for a future renaissance of the Mesopotamian People. Hail soldiers of freedom and enlightenment. Do not be dismayed by the trouble and turbulence of the present, for the future generations will remember and appreciate.

And last but not least; Hail, Great El Bush, a leader not only of the U.S. but a true hero of mankind. And Hail Mr. Blair and the other Leaders of the Free World.

God Bless the New Republic of Iraq; God Bless America.

Wa Al Salaam Alaykum Wa rahamutu Allahi Wa Barakatuh

(Peace be upon you and the mercy of God and his blessings.

Saddam & other Killers

The handover of the above mass killers will happen in the next few days.
We need to see Saddam and Tali Chemical and their thugs in a TELEVISED trial direct on air. Our wounds will not hell without seeing Saddam and his thugs in that long awaited trial. Hurry it; let the souls of the victims of mass graves, Halabja and others rest in peace.

Update

The Iraqi interim government has just sworn now while writing this! Good luck and cut the sources of the terrorists.

The good thing is Paul Bremer directed his letter of ending the occupation to the Head of the Justice in Iraq and not to the PM. The law is above every one!
Good luck to Paul Bremer in his next carrier. Stay our friend Paul.

Breaking News

The handover of power completed in an official ceremony in Baghdad two days before the expected date.

Paul Bremer handed the official papers to the new interim Iraqi PM including a letter from President George W Bush about resuming the dipolmatic relationship between the two countries. This indicates that the Iraqis are indeed ready to take over.

The handover is a surprise for the enemies of the free and democratic Iraq. The terrorist may have been planned a major attack on the 30 July 2004. The earlier handover may have been aborted such an action.

Good luck for Iraq and the civilized people the friends of Iraq.

God bless Iraq and America and their friends and allies...

Great moments ,great time ,here in Iraq , The transfer of power to Iraq sovereignty has been completed 2 days in advance ,this was ,a great news for the Iraqis .

From this moment we started to celebrate ,and people ,all over here conciliation each other ,this is a great moments ,I resaved calls from all over the world greeting me for this happy moments .

Thank you Mr. . primmer ,for being great president for Iraq all this time, Thank you for great job you did for Iraq ,we will never forget you , you will be always in our minds and harts.

Thank you united state of America for your great Job you done here .

Thank you coalitions forces for you brave work and supporting good.

Thank you all Brave mans ,who lost there life here ,your bloods will be the river of hope for us .

Thank you all good friends out there ,thank you for being with us all the way , minute by minute ,day by day ,living our sadness and happiness ,standing beside us ,encouraging us

Supporting us ,worry about us ,we always felt that you are there beside us ,with us .

Thank you all brave Iraqis who stand out there to fight for better future and freedom.

I will go now to celebrate with all people for this happy moments ,it has been long time since we celebrate .

Bye for now.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Dogs sniffed for explosives, mobile phones were impounded and U.S. officials bombarded reporters with contradictory orders and scant information just moments before Iraq (news - web sites) formally regained sovereign powers.

Journalists had been hastily summoned for what was billed as U.S. administrator Paul Bremer's last news conference before a handover not due until Wednesday, but the confusion and tight security suggested that something extraordinary was afoot.

Two days early, Bremer was to dissolve the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), end more than 14 months of U.S.-British occupation and turn over control to an Iraqi interim government led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

An explosion echoed over Baghdad about 90 minutes before the ceremony in the heavily fortified Green Zone compound, which contains CPA headquarters and some Iraqi government offices.

There in a small room sat Allawi, Interim President Ghazi al-Yawar, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih and Iraq's top judge, Medhat al-Mahmoud, sipping tea or coffee with Bremer and his deputy, British special representative David Richmond.

On a table between Bremer and Allawi, both in dark suits, stood the Iraqi flag, inscribed 'Allahu Akbar' (God is Greatest) in Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s handwriting, along with a vase of flowers.

"This is a historic day, a happy day, a day that all Iraqis have been looking forward to," said Yawar, wearing traditional Arab robes, in the first of several brief speeches.

Allawi said his government now felt "in control of the situation, in control of the security situation."

"EX-ADMINISTRATOR"

Bremer, apologizing for his lack of Arabic, read a short letter noting the demise of the coalition authority he headed for 13 months, the end of occupation and the assumption of "full sovereign authority" by Allawi's government.

"We welcome Iraq's steps to take its rightful place with sovereignty and honor among the free nations of the world. Sincerely, L. Paul Bremer, ex-administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority," he concluded, to laughter and applause.

Smiling officials rose to their feet as Bremer handed the letter to Mahmoud, the judge, who then handed it to Yawar.

U.S. media officials had dropped some obscurely worded hints that the transfer of power might take place before June 30 -- "Game day will be in the next few," said one email Sunday.

But the timing was known only to half a dozen senior coalition officials the night before, a senior official said.

Bremer said Allawi had asked for the transfer of power to be brought forward because Iraqis were ready to take control. But surprising anti-U.S. insurgents who have staged a bloody campaign of bombings, assassinations and other attacks before the handover was also a motive in the change of plan...

Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim said Sunday that terrorist infiltrations had been reduced to "zero" in areas in which the West Bank separation fence had been built.

Boim was speaking ahead of a cabinet meeting Sunday to discuss construction and evaluation of the barrier.

He said 200 kilometers of the barrier along the Seam Line border with the West Bank had been operating for 10 months. "It has gone from a situation of 600 terrorist operations and criminal activities a year, to zero. It saves lives, and creates quality of life."

On Wednesday the sovereignty of Iraq will be restored, and the Iraqi people will take their first major steps toward a free and prosperous future, after more than three decades of tyrannical rule, repression, wars and sanctions. This will be an important milestone for Iraq, the region and indeed the whole world, endorsed by the unanimous approval of the U.N. Security Council in Resolution 1546 earlier this month. As Iraqis, we thank the coalition for the sacrifices made by its soldiers and its people for the liberation and rebuilding of Iraq, and for the contributions by all the countries, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations that have braved the risks to help Iraq in its time of need. We hope for the continued support of the global community, as we Iraqis take the crucial steps in assuming responsibility for our own future.

The members of my recently named interim government are among the brightest and most capable of Iraqi men and women, representing our unique mix of ethnic, religious, geographical and political perspectives, all united in a common patriotic purpose. Our government's policies will be based on four interrelated objectives...

MORNAY, Sudan -- There are tents here that no parent wants to visit. They are called feeding centers, shady rectangular units where children fight death. Sitting on a mat and holding his son's frail hand, Mohammed Ishaq and his wife, Aisha, have been here five days, nursing 9-month-old Zohar on drops of water from a large pink cup, praying that somehow he will survive.

Zohar spits up the water. His cough is rough, and his thin skin clings to his ribs. His withered left arm is connected to an IV. He is suffering from malaria, complicated by malnutrition. Near him, other parents rock, nurse and pray for their babies, who are passed out or moaning, their eyes rolled back as they vomit emergency rations of corn and oil.

Six hundred miles to the east in the capital, Khartoum, Mustafa Osman Ismail, the foreign minister of Sudan, stretched back in his plump leather chair in an air-conditioned office overlooking the Nile.

"In Darfur, there is no hunger. There is no malnutrition. There is no epidemic disease," he said in an interview. Yes, he conceded, there is "a humanitarian situation." But the hunger, he said, was "imagined" by the media.

Both hunger and denial are weapons in Sudan, according to U.N. officials and international aid workers. After accusing the government of imposing a policy of forced starvation on the people of Darfur, they now say that official attempts to conceal the crisis are endangering efforts to prevent famine among an estimated 1.2 million people...

...As of June 14, Bremer had issued 97 legal orders, which are defined by the U.S. occupation authority as "binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people" that will remain in force even after the transfer of political authority. An annex to the country's interim constitution requires the approval of a majority of Allawi's ministers, as well as the interim president and two vice presidents, to overturn any of Bremer's edicts. A senior U.S. official in Iraq noted recently that it would "not be easy to reverse" the orders.

It appears unlikely that all of the orders will be followed. Many of them reflect an idealistic but perhaps futile attempt to impose Western legal, economic and social concepts on a tradition-bound nation that is reveling in anything-goes freedom after 35 years of dictatorial rule.

The orders include rules that cap tax rates at 15 percent, prohibit piracy of intellectual property, ban children younger than 15 from working, and a new traffic code that stipulates the use of a car horn in "emergency conditions only" and requires a driver to "hold the steering wheel with both hands."

Iraq has long been a place where few people pay taxes, where most movies and music are counterfeit, where children often hold down jobs and where traffic laws are rarely obeyed, Iraqis note...

...Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who specializes in Iraq, said the appointed electoral commission's power to eliminate political parties or candidates for not obeying laws would allow it "to disqualify people someone didn't like."

He likened the power of the commission to that of religious mullahs in Iran, who routinely use their authority to remove candidates before an election. "In a way, Mr. Bremer is using a more subtle form than the one used by hard-liners in Iran to control their elections," Cole said.

...Most regimes in the region are committed to holding elections in one form or another, abandoning the claim that only informal consultation is acceptable in Islam.

Perhaps more important, words and phrases that denote democratization are being heard in conversations and read in newspapers: opening, dialogue, participation, consent, pluralism, separation of powers, rule of law, due process, free enterprise, civil society, good governance, human rights, gender equality, accountability, and transparency.

Cynics might suggest that all this is nothing but the tribute that vice pays to virtue. The despots may talk of democracy as a tactic to weather the storm created by the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq, but they will revert to their traditional methods of rule by violence and bribery. And there is, of course, no guarantee that any elections they hold will not be "fixed" to confirm the power of the rulers. Whether the cynics are right depends largely on what happens in Afghanistan and Iraq in the coming months.

The Afghans are scheduled to hold their first-ever free elections in September, followed by the Iraqis, who will go to the polls in January 2005. To be held under international supervision, the Afghan and Iraqi elections could produce the first accurate picture of opinion in two key Muslim countries. As things stand, there is every chance that both elections will be won by moderate conservatives who recognize the importance of power sharing and popular participation in decision-making.

Success in the Afghan and Iraqi elections could help bring Muslim politics out of the palaces, army barracks, mosques, and streets, and direct it into new channels such as political parties, parliaments, and law courts. The tepid message from Sea Island, then, is not the end of the story.

Transforming the greater Middle East from an area of despotism and darkness into one of democracy and development requires the same vision and determination that led the Free World to victory over the Soviet "Evil Empire" less than a generation ago.

The same people who laughed at Ronald Reagan for believing that communism could be defeated now dismiss Bush's call for democratization in the Middle East as another sign of American naiveté. Professional anti-Americans shudder at the thought that "someone like George W. Bush" might actually not only win the war on terror but also help the Muslim nations join the mainstream of global human development. President Bush should trust his instinct and remain committed to helping the Middle East take the path of democratic change.

...In social studies we are lectured every day about how President Bush has failed us. When we recently studied Islam, the instructor discussed the current Israel-Palestine conflict which was irrelevant to what we were studying. She of course only showed us the side of the Palestinians and eventually asked the Jewish people in the class to raise their hands. Still trying to figure this one out, is she thinking of organizing a mock suicide bombing against the Jews in our class?

In Language Arts, people who have a brain simply call it English, we have been reading two books. One of the books is a fiction book about segregation against people of color in the 1960's and the other is also a fiction book about a socialist utopian community and how good it is...

...You might think this is all but now we have music. Our instructor composed a brilliant song entitled, "Children of the World" which I will copy and paste.

"George Bush's decisions are really, really bad
What he's doing in Iraq is making me so sad
Many innocent people are getting killed each day
War is not the answer, there is another way

Children of the world, we sing for peace
With one voice we offer this song of love.

Our economy is diving right off the high board
People drowning, living lives they just can't afford
We've got to work together and try not to drift apart
Let's be one big family, coming from the heart

Children of the world......

There weren't many cows in the Middle East
Until we helped the cow population increase
All of us united, as we took a stand
Then we wrote this song and formed a way cool rockin band

Children of the world......"

Does anyone have any ideas what the cow part means?

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat on Saturday told foreign diplomats he was committed to an "Olympic truce" during the international games set to take place this August in Athens, Greece.

Arafat's comments came amid Egyptian efforts to mediate a total ceasefire between Israel and Palestinians that would allow for a smooth withdrawal of Israel Defense Forces troops and the evacuation of settlements in the Gaza Strip.

"On the occasion of lighting the Palestinian Olympic torch, I declare our respect and commitment for an Olympic truce," Arafat said.

He expressed the hope that the declaration would "help to revive the old Greek ritual of creating a generation that enjoys peace."

But a senior Israeli official Saturday dismissed Arafat's remarks. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, accused Arafat of being behind the killings of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics.

"Arafat's Olympic torch is a torch of death. There is a big difference between what Arafat says and what he does," the official said.

In May, Arafat ordered all factions under his control to prevent any "isolated" attacks on this summer's Olympic Games...

''I'm here today because this march is a march celebrating racism and apartheid in Palestine, where I'm from," said Lana Habash, a member of the committee.

Asked about her reaction to the bombed bus, she said Palestinians had tried work strikes, protests on the streets, and other methods to decry the taking of their land and acts of violence against them.

''I think when you've tried everything else, there is an international human right to resist," said Habash...

Al Qaeda-connected terror chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search) and other terrorists are apparently trying to recruit Iraqi weapons of mass destruction experts and resources for possible future attacks against the U.S.-led coalition, the head of the Iraq Survey Group (search) told FOX News Thursday.

In an exclusive interview with FOX News’ Brit Hume, Charles Duelfer (search) — whose ISG is leading the hunt for weapons of mass destruction — said terrorists in Iraq are “trying to tap into the Iraqi WMD intellectual capital.”

“When we have investigated certain labs and contacted certain former experts in the WMD program, we have found that they are being recruited by anti-coalition groups,” Duelfer told FOX News. “They are being paid by anti-coalition groups. We’re seeing interest in developing chemical munitions.”

The same process seems to be happening in Afghanistan, he said.

He also told Fox News that about 10 or 12 sarin and mustard gas shells have been found in various locations in Iraq.

The shells are all from the first Gulf War era and thus weakened, though intelligence sources say they’re still dangerous.

That old well-meaning cliché "never again" may be due for retirement. It is what we tell ourselves after every massive slaughter, whether the Holocaust or Cambodia or Bosnia or Rwanda. Now, with a new wave of genocide building in Sudan hard on the heels of the tenth anniversary of Rwanda — which brought pious expressions of regret that more wasn't done to stop the killing at the time — we are about to prove ourselves perfectly ready to accept "again."...

..."The U.S. has done more than anyone else in Darfur, and the Bush administration has done more than any other administration about Sudan," says Nina Shea of the human-rights group Freedom House. The U.S. has pledged nearly $200 million in aid to the region. The European Union so far is kicking in a little more than $10 million — from all 25 countries in the EU combined. It is the U.S. that is pushing hard for a tough Security Council resolution that will call on the Sudanese government to end its support for violence and allow aid to flow into Darfur. This is consistent with the administration's history of involvement in Sudan.

Negotiations between the North and South had been bumping along ineffectually for years, until Bush appointed former senator John Danforth — now the U.S. representative to the U.N. — as his special envoy to the country. High-level Bush officials were engaged in the peace talks on a daily basis, and finally a ceasefire was forged this May. The Sudanese government has repeatedly proven itself susceptible to international pressure over the years, which is why there is hope for Darfur — if only the world can be bothered to create the pressure.

There is as yet no "CNN effect" — the sense of urgency that comes from international media attention — in Darfur. The press has mostly been AWOL, with the exception of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose searing reports have made him a one-man call-to-action. The Muslim world has reserved its outrage for the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, even though a spoonful of the same condemnation applied to Sudan could help save hundreds of thousands of Muslim lives. As for the U.N., it recently welcomed Sudan onto the U.N. Human Rights Commission, where, with China and Cuba, it will have lots of nasty company.

Unfortunately, Sudan doesn't fit comfortably into the Bush-bashers' international-relations categories, or we might hear more about the issue. For the president's critics the word "diplomacy" means one thing: strong-arm Israel. And "multilateralism" tends to mean only appeasing France. So the administration's diplomatic achievement in Sudan might as well not exist, and its effort to muster other international actors — from the U.N. to Europe — behind a multilateral diplomatic and humanitarian-aid initiative in Darfur is ignored. And even though China is obstructing diplomatic pressure on Sudan because of its oil business there, there are, unsurprisingly, no cries of "blood for oil." ...

...When we got to Faneuil Hall, the ceremony had ended and the new citizens were coming down the stairs in waves. In groups of 5, 10 and 20 they came down from the hall above where flashbulbs recorded the occasion. Ghanans, Indians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Turks, Russians, Chileans, Irish, Pakistanis, Taiwanese, Brazilians. We were seeing the rainbow of the human race flow by us as a stream. They walked from the hall clutching their new certificates of citizenship into the bright sun of a June Boston afternoon. In the very hall where our founders had debated their plans for independence, they had just taken an oath and were now also a part of the same noble experiment. It choked me up. As they walked past and our eyes met, I just smiled at them and said “Congratulations!”, and the new citizens smiled back at me...

...Neither Christian nor Jew cares much about the logic of salvation. The soul stands in fear and trembling, sick unto death - which is the same as sin - and reaches out for grace. The Jews do this as a kinship community (Blutgemeinschaft), in Franz Rosenzweig's phrase; Christians must do so as individuals, because as Christians they abandon the doomed ties of kinship, and instead join the assembly (ecclesia) that calls them out from among the nations.

The remnants of Christian state religion rot and stink on the dying continent of Europe. Christianity cannot persist except as a continuing revival, a recurring conversion - as a sequence of singular events, rather than as an orderly process. Awaiting execution in Hitler's prisons, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that in a world come of age, the Christian religion no longer could exist as organized practice, but only as an expression of individual conscience.

America was created for precisely this purpose, to replace state religion on the European model with a religion of individual conscience. Such a religion must be schismatic, multi-sectarian, short on doctrine but long on inspiration. America's kaleidoscope of Protestant denominations, so bewildering to Europeans, constitutes the only type of milieu in which Christianity yet may flourish. Although Christian communities are burgeoning throughout the world, they will succeed only in emulation of the American version.

With right the Vatican may defend the record of the Spanish Inquisition, but it alters not a jot or tittle of the awful sentence - oblivion - that history has passed upon European Christianity.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It's not every day that a top CIA counterterrorism official -- still serving in the government -- is allowed to publish a book that blasts the White House.

But that's precisely what has happened.

The book is titled "Imperial Hubris." The author is a veteran of the CIA for more than two decades, and is identified only as "Anonymous."

Sources say he ran the hunt for Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999.

Among his charges:

-- That Saddam Hussein posed no immediate threat to the United States.

-- That the war in Iraq undermined the overall war against terror and actually played into bin Laden's hands.

-- That the United States is now losing that war on terror.

"Anonymous" also predicts that al Qaeda will attack the continental United States and that it will be even more damaging than the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

He says the biggest mistake made after 9/11 was that top intelligence community leaders were not fired.

Sen. Bill Nelson, who serves on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, says he agrees with the author's assessment:

"As we try to prepare ourselves in this new era of terrorism, we have to just assume that we're going to have an attack. And the only way that we prevent it is to have accurate and timely intelligence."

...There is the charge that, under Bush, the United States has qualified for most-hated-nation status. Maybe so. But it is not entirely clear why this should be so decisive in measuring the accomplishments or failures of the administration. President Reagan was also unpopular internationally back in his day. Nor is Israel an especially popular country. But that's no argument for Israel to measure itself according to what Jordanians or Egyptians think of it...

...So here is one aspect of this insanity: no sense of proportion. For Mr. Blumenthal, Fallujah isn't merely like Stalingrad. It may as well be Stalingrad, just as Guantanamo may as well be Lefertovo and Abu Ghraib may as well be Buchenwald, and Mr. Bush may as well be Hitler and Hoover combined, and Iraq may as well be Vietnam and Bill Clinton may as well be Franklin Roosevelt.

The absence of proportion stems, in turn, from a problem of perspective. If you have no idea where you stand in relation to certain objects, then an elephant may seem as small as a fly and a fly may seem as large as an elephant. Similarly, Mr. Blumenthal can compare the American detention infrastructure to the Gulag archipelago only if he has no concept of the actual size of things. And he can have no concept of the size of things because he neither knows enough about them nor where he stands in relation to them. What is the vantage point from which Mr. Blumenthal observes the world? It is one where Fallujah is "Stalingrad-like." How does one manage to see the world this way? By standing too close to Fallujah and too far from Stalingrad. By being consumed by the present. By losing not just the sense, but the possibility, of judgment...

...A hand is there on the ground, shredded flesh trailing it like a horror-movie zombie's clothing - except it isn't cloth, it's flesh. Is this a Halloween prop someone forgot to clean up? No, it is real. A man is slumped over in his seat, struck dead on the spot. You can see his sneakers and bare leg...it's warm in Jerusalem, after all. Do the relatives recognize the pieces? Who's cell phone is that on the ground? Did the owner survive? Will he come looking for it, or was he talking on it nearby when the bomber performed for his people's accolades? Is that a child's school work blowing in the breeze?

I watch the cameraman walk slowly around the site and imagine that he looks down and sees he's standing on a piece of flesh. You wouldn't even know - so easy to mistake for a bit of debris blown out by the explosion. That's how bad it is...

...Apart from campaign finance reform, on which McCain is a standout, his record on a number of critical social and civil rights issues, including judicial nominations, places him firmly in the Republican Party's right-wing camp. It was McCain, for example, who lined up with fellow Republicans in supporting President Bush's ideologically far-out nominees to the federal appeals courts. Moreover, McCain has:

• Voted against a bill declaring the third Monday in January a federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

• Voted to cut off federal assistance to public schools that prohibit prayer in school.

• Voted to strike provisions of the Racial Justice Act that would prohibit the death sentence in state and federal cases if a defendant could prove with statistical or other evidence that the race of the victim played a role in sentencing.

• Voted against a 1996 bill to prohibit job discrimination based on sexual orientation.

• Voted against measures to increase the minimum wage, against a woman's right to choose, and with Bush 91 percent of the time last year.

What's more, in wooing McCain, Kerry sought to put on the Democratic ticket a GOP senator who voted for articles of impeachment that would have sent President Bill Clinton packing from the White House.

So why did Kerry pursue McCain?

The Massachusetts senator obviously feels a need to compensate for his liberal voting record. What better way to do that, I suppose, than to tap a conservative budget hawk such as McCain who also appeals to mainstream, suburban independent and Republican voters?...

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran will resume some nuclear activities related to uranium enrichment that it had suspended, a top official said Saturday in a new show of defiance in the face of U.N. censure.

Among the measures to be resumed are the building of centrifuge parts needed for enrichment, said Hasan Rowhani, the country's top nuclear official.

Iran is considering resuming actual uranium enrichment but will not do so immediately, he said. Resumption of enrichment could provoke a deep crisis.

Rowhani pledged to continue cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, while adding that Iran will inform the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency soon on how it would proceed.

"Iran will reconsider its decision about suspension and will do some uranium activity in the coming days," Rowhani said. "Whether we are going to resume enrichment — meaning injecting gas into centrifuges — we haven't decided yet. Perhaps we will continue suspension of injecting gas into centrifuges for some time, but we will end suspension of some other measures in the coming days."

Rowhani also said Iran had specified to European nations in October that its suspension of uranium enrichment would last anywhere from one day to a maximum of one year. It may be a matter of only four months before Iran resumes enrichment activities.

Rowhani's remarks came a day after a European-drafted resolution passed by the IAEA said it "deplores" that "Iran's cooperation has not been as full, timely and proactive as it should have been."

The resolution also noted that after almost two years since Iran's program came to light, many questions remained.

The censure was a product of days of diplomatic maneuvering and attempts by Iran to tone it down at a meeting of the IAEA 35-member board of governors. The board did not hand down sanctions.

Rowhani said Iran's decision to reconsider its suspension of uranium activity was in response to failure of Britain, Germany and France to help close Iran's nuclear dossier at this week's IAEA's meeting. In February, according to Rowhani, the three European powers promised to work toward closure by June if Iran stopped making centrifuges. It did so in April.

"The European side failed to respect its promise. Their explanation for keeping Iran's dossier open is not acceptable. The promise was broken by the Europeans. Therefore, we can't be committed to our promise," he said...

...Alarmed by the spread of Islamist extremism in Europe, France's new Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, who was the former Foreign Minister, asked the "Renseignments Generaux," the French equivalent of the FBI's counter-intelligence branch, for a report on what goes on in the country's mosques.

Eighty percent of the imams in the 1,000 mosques surveyed by RG are foreigners; 20 percent French nationals, but only 2 percent born in France. Most of the imams said they are unpaid volunteers dependent on collection plates. In 40 percent of the mosques, imams admitted they were "self-proclaimed" or "improvised" with no theological credentials. Only the Turks could prove they had undergone religious training.

A little over one tenth of the imams surveyed said they were "self-taught" and were getting their religious training on the Internet. Asked to show what web sites they were consulting, they were all pro-al-Qaida. France's domestic intelligence agency also reported a steady increase in inflammatory sermons from Brest to Marseilles. Their attacks on French discrimination against Muslims -- female scarves banned from state schools -- paled next to anti-U.S. diatribes.

The Saudi royals detained over 1,000 imams after last year's bombings in May and November. They were warned they would go straight to jail if they so much as mentioned the word jihad (holy war) in their Friday prayers. The Saudi billionaire, speaking not for attribution, said there are 40,000 mosques in Saudi Arabia, and the warnings go largely unheeded.

...But now technocratic decisions having to do with these elections are threatening to undercut the durability of any democracy in the country. There are two ways to hold direct elections: by party slates, with each party gaining representation according to its portion of the vote, or by single-member constituencies, somewhat like our own congressional districts. On June 4 Carina Perelli, head of the U.N. electoral advisory team in Iraq, endorsed party slates.

When I was a roving CPA political adviser, I lived outside the Green Zone and interacted not only with Iraqi politicians but also with ordinary people. Voting was the topic of conversations at teahouses and mosques. Islamist parties tended to favor a party-slate system. Advocates of an Iranian-style Islamic republic were blunt: "The first article in a democracy is the rule of the majority over the minority," Sayyid Hadi Modarresi, one of Karbala's most influential clerics, told the Arabic daily Al-Hayah.

Liberal Iraqis favor constituency-based elections. The Transitional Administrative Law calls for a 275-member National Assembly, which translates into each district's member representing approximately 87,000 people. Contests would occur not between parties but between individuals, who would be accountable to local residents rather than party bosses. Former Governing Council members condemned as irrelevant by CPA administrator L. Paul Bremer could win some districts. Raja Khuzai, an outspoken Shiite advocate for women's rights, is popular in her home town of Diwaniyah. Residents of Khadimiya favor Iraqi National Congress head Ahmed Chalabi. A religious party leader, Abdul Aziz Hakim, is popular in Najaf. Less successful would be uncharismatic, corrupt or abusive party hacks who hope to win power on the coattails of party bosses.

Older Iraqis also favor constituencies. Distrust of political parties is deeply rooted. One recent poll indicated that political parties have only a 3 percent favorability rating. Pensioners remember the 1960s as a time of pitched street battles between adherents of leftist and nationalist parties. Younger generations view parties through the lens of the Baath Party experience, in which employment depended on a party membership card. Distrust of parties extends to Iraqi Kurdistan, where I taught in the 2000-01 academic year. With few exceptions, my students associated local Kurdish parties with corruption, abuse of power and nepotism.

Even Perelli, the U.N. official, acknowledged Iraqi ill feeling toward political parties. "The anti-political party feeling of the population is extremely high," she told journalists in May. But at her news conference this month, Perelli explained her rationale for abandoning the accountability of single-member constituencies in favor of pursuing party-slate elections. "There are a lot of communities that have been broken and dispersed around Iraq," she said, "and these communities wanted to be able to accumulate their votes and to vote with like-minded people."

With that one sentence, Perelli would set Iraq on the slippery slope to the failed Lebanese-style communal system. According to an Iraqi electoral commission member, Bremer agreed to a party-slate system to bypass the tricky question of who votes where, thereby trading Iraq's long-term health for short-term expediency...

Frustrated by evidence that Iran is still hiding elements of its nuclear program, the International Atomic Energy Agency rebuked the Tehran government yesterday for failing to cooperate fully with international investigators.

The United Nations agency's 35-member board declared unanimously that Iranian authorities had broken their promises of complete disclosure and called on Iran to act "on an urgent basis" to answer questions about its atomic ambitions and achievements.

Bush administration officials, convinced that Iran is developing nuclear weapons in defiance of international demands, claimed the sharply worded IAEA resolution as a victory. The measure does not, however, provide for any penalties, deadlines or guarantees that the matter will be referred to the U.N. Security Council, as the White House had wished.

Instead, the resolution comes amid growing doubts among U.S. officials and foreign allies about their ability to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Diplomats and U.S. officials say that without a workable military option or an international consensus to punish Iran, their goal is to slow Iran's progress while searching for a change in Tehran's thinking.

A senior White House official, asked this week whether the administration can realistically expect to halt Iran's nuclear program, said, "I don't think we know the answer." The official declined to be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"We want Iran to renounce its nuclear ambitions," said a European diplomat who focuses on Iran. "We're all equally clear that there's no prospect of that happening, at least in the near term."...

....In the past 18 months, inspectors have uncovered an escalating series of contradictions in Iranian statements, along with evidence that nuclear experts consider strongly suggestive of a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

"The Iranians are serious about this nuclear weapons program," Robert Einhorn, a Clinton administration proliferation specialist, said yesterday. "They've been at it over 18 years. They've expended a vast amount of energy and financial resources to make it work. They're not going to abandon it lightly."

IAEA inspectors contend that Iran has repeatedly misstated details about its nuclear program and pursued enrichment technology in violation of pledges made to European foreign ministers in October. They accused Iran of offering contradictory evidence and often admitting details only when presented with undeniable evidence.

Even as the board met, the IAEA was investigating satellite images that suggested to U.S. government analysts that Iran was concealing nuclear activities in Tehran. U.S. diplomats, who favor a harder line than other countries, said the latest report showed Iran violating international obligations.

The IAEA board used strong words in the diplomatic world, saying it "deplores" the limits of Iran's cooperation. Iranian cooperation, the board said, had not been "as full, timely and proactive as it should have been."...

...In a private meeting at the Brookings Institution in early May, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Javad Zarif, delivered a sharp message to influential Republicans and Democrats: We can make life easier for you in Iraq if you give Iran's nuclear program a pass.

Zarif's suggestion took several participants by surprise. It also demonstrated Iran's belief that it has greater leverage now that the United States is preoccupied with Iraq, home to Muslim Shiites with close ties to Iran...

THE FUROR OVER "offshoring" of jobs to countries such as India, so pronounced during the Democratic primaries, seems to have faded. With good reason: Last week the Labor Department published the first government effort to quantify the impact of offshoring, which tentatively suggested that it may be responsible for just 2.5 percent of the job losses in the first quarter of this year.

Moreover, job creation, which appeared surprisingly weak a few months ago despite strong economic growth, is now healthy -- and statistical revisions suggest that it was robust as far back as March and respectable in January -- just when the gloom from the Democratic primaries was at its fiercest. After suffering a net loss of 2.7 million jobs between March 2001 and August 2003, the economy has gained 1.4 million jobs.

Now comes the next round of political gloom-mongering. Sen. John F. Kerry, the victor in the Democratic primaries, has been telling voters this week that although job creation may have recovered, wages are the real problem. "In the last year, wages have gone down, and prices have gone up," the candidate told an audience on Tuesday. Actually, hourly wages for non-supervisory workers have risen this year by 2.2 percent as of May, so they kept pace with consumer price inflation. Precise statements about whether the new jobs being created pay more or less than average are not possible, because it takes months for these data to be assembled. But it is possible to say that new job creation, which in the early stages of the recovery was concentrated at low-paying employers such as restaurants, has now broadened to include manufacturing and other sectors where wages are higher than average.

If Mr. Kerry's message seems exaggerated now, it will seem even less convincing soon. Job markets recover in three phases: As the economy picks up, employers ask workers to put in extra hours; when they've exhausted that option, they hire new workers; when new workers become hard to find, labor scarcity pushes wages upward. We are now well into the second stage and may be entering the third.

In any case, there is not much that President Bush -- or a President Kerry -- can do to influence this process. On Friday, Mr. Kerry proposed an increase in the minimum wage, and this could help; but it would only reach workers at the very bottom, and if this policy were pushed too far, it could slow new job creation.

Mr. Kerry has clearly decided that voters want him to feel their pain, and he's willing to deliver what his audience expects from him. This may be sound politics, but it distracts from the serious criticisms of Mr. Bush's record that an opponent should be making. Mr. Bush's tax cuts have created a fiscal crisis far bigger than the nation appears to understand. Fixing it will require a style of leadership that faces tough choices -- which is not what Mr. Kerry is providing.

BOSTON -- I confess that I was a teensy bit relieved when the Supreme Court found a way to avoid ruling on the underlying issue of the Pledge of Allegiance case. Having pledged before and after the "under God" clause was added, I didn't think those two words were any big deal. But I did suspect they were unconstitutional.

So I figured that the court dodged a bullet in the culture wars. But now I'm afraid it only provided arms for the custody wars.

The court dismissed the case on the grounds that Michael Newdow, the biological father, didn't have the standing to bring the case to court. His kind of father -- without full legal custody -- didn't have the parental right to speak for his child.

As one wag put it, the justices found it easier to separate parent and child than to separate church and state...

...WHAT'S ON THE TAPE [WARNING: THIS IS GRAPHIC]

According to Senate sources, this four-minute video, comprised of several clips, came to be after several verbal and written inquires were made to the Defense Department at the start of 2004. It is an edited version of several different tapes, totaling between one and two hours, discovered after the regime's collapse. The translations of the words heard on the tape were provided by the Department of Defense.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."

The first film clip opens with the camera showing a man standing in a bland, mostly empty room. The camera pans down to show his right hand. Folded rugs are visible in the background. The clip jumps to footage of scrub-clad "surgeons" with rubber surgical gloves severing the man's hand at the wrist. First the skin is peeled away with surgical knives and tweezers; ligaments, tendons, muscle, and bone underneath are exposed. Then the gloved hands wielding the knives begin to slice, shredding through the sinews, slashing muscle, breaking bone, until the hand is ultimately detached and plopped onto a green cloth, as yellow, pulpy tissue spills forth...

The 9/11 Commission's staff has come down decidedly on the side of the naysayers about operational ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. This development is already being met with unbridled joy by opponents of the Iraq war, who have been carping for days about recent statements by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that reaffirmed the deposed Iraqi regime's promotion of terror.

The celebration is premature. The commission's cursory treatment of so salient a national question as whether al Qaeda and Iraq confederated is puzzling. Given that the panel had three hours for Richard Clarke, one might have hoped for more than three minutes on Iraq. More to the point, though, the staff statements released Wednesday — which seemed to be contradicted by testimony at the public hearing within minutes of their publication — raise more questions than they answer, about both matters the staff chose to address and some it strangely opted to omit.

The staff's sweeping conclusion is found in its Statement No. 15 ("Overview of the Enemy"), which states:

Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States[Emphasis mine. - Sol].

Just taken on its own terms, this paragraph is both internally inconsistent and ambiguously worded. First, it cannot be true both that the Sudanese arranged contacts between Iraq and bin Laden and that no "ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." If the first proposition is so, then the "[t]wo senior Bin Laden associates" who are the sources of the second are either lying or misinformed...

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr sent his fighters home on Wednesday in what may mark the end of a 10-week revolt against U.S.-led forces that once engulfed southern Iraq and Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines.

With the formal end of U.S.-led occupation just two weeks away, Sadr issued a statement from his base in Najaf calling on his Mehdi Army militiamen to go home.

``Each of the individuals of the Mehdi Army, the loyalists who made sacrifices...should return to their governorates to do their duty,'' the statement said.

That call came a day after President Bush said the United States would not oppose a political role for Sadr -- only weeks after branding him an anti-democratic thug.

Dan Senor, spokesman for the U.S.-led administration in Iraq, suggested Sadr caved in to U.S. military pressure and moderate Shi'ite clerics who brokered a truce between his militia and American forces.

``He is seeking to save face. Iraqi political leaders are working out agreements with him. He has expressed his support for the interim government, which was unheard of many weeks ago,'' he told CNN.

Sadr's ragtag fighters, mostly from the slums of Baghdad and impoverished southern villages, had launched an uprising on April 4, overrunning police stations and public buildings in several towns in a bold challenge to U.S.-led forces.

This month the unpredictable young cleric agreed a truce with the U.S. military and Iraqi authorities after weeks of fighting in the Shi'ite shrine cities of Najaf and Kerbala.

Sadr's office sent a letter to the Shi'ite religious establishment on Wednesday, saying Iraqi police would be welcome back in his stronghold of Kufa, near Najaf, where he has frequently delivered fiery anti-American sermons..

June 16, 2004 -- THE video only lasts four minutes or so — grue some scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over.

Some who stayed wished they hadn't. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade — all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises.

Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader.

But these awful images didn't show up on American TV news.

In fact, just four or five reporters showed up for the screening at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which says it got the video via the Pentagon. Fewer wrote about it.

No surprise, since no newscast would air the videos of Nick Berg and Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl getting decapitated, or of U.S. contractors in Fallujah getting torn limb from limb by al Qaeda operatives.

But every TV network has endlessly shown photos of the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib. Why?

Experts gathered in Paris on Wednesday to find a common approach to combatting the proliferation of racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic propaganda on the Internet, believed to be a chief factor in rising numbers of hate crimes.

Officials from more than 60 countries were attending the two-day conference aimed at finding ways to keep racist information off the Web without compromising free speech and freedom of expression.

The dilemma is all the more acute because the Internet is both global and tough to regulate, as shown by the widespread and illegal sharing of music online that has confounded record companies. Terror groups have also used the Internet to plot attacks.

Officials in countries like France, which has experienced a surge in anti-Semitic violence in the past several years, are pushing for tougher regulations to curb online hate speech.

"We are at a particular, 'hinge' moment in our common fight against intolerance," French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said in opening remarks to the conference.

"Our responsibility is to underline that by its own characteristics _ notably, immediacy and anonymity _ the Internet has seduced the networks of intolerance," he said.

France has noted a "clear relationship" between racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic propaganda and hate crime, he said.

US Assistant Attorney General Dan Bryant acknowledged the American approach differs from that of other countries.

"We believe that government efforts to regulate bias-motivated speech on the Internet are fundamentally mistaken," Bryant said. "At the same time, however, the United States has not stood and will not stand idly by, when individuals cross the line from protected speech to criminal conduct."

Bryant said the United States believes the best way to reduce hate speech was to confront it "head on" by promoting tolerance, understanding and other ideas that run counter to racism...

In a recent public debate, so I was told, an American officer referred to the Abu Ghraib scandal as a "moral Chernobyl." You might think that this was overstating matters, even if in one important sense—because Chernobyl was morally an accident, albeit in some ways a "systemic" one—it is actually understating them.

But get ready. It is going to get much worse. The graphic videos and photographs that have so far been shown only to Congress are, I have been persuaded by someone who has seen them, not likely to remain secret for very long. And, if you wonder why formerly gung-ho rightist congressmen like James Inhofe ("I'm outraged more by the outrage") have gone so quiet, it is because they have seen the stuff and you have not...

In today’s column, Paul Krugman of the New York Times argues that John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in U.S. history. He states:

First, there's the absence of any major successful prosecutions. The one set of convictions that seemed fairly significant — that of the "Detroit 3" — appears to be collapsing over accusations of prosecutorial misconduct.

This echoes a similar allegation in a May 11 column, where Krugman wrote:

After two and a half years, during which he arrested and secretly detained more than a thousand people, Mr. Ashcroft has yet to convict any actual terrorists.

[...]

The Bush administration has been right in recent weeks to focus attention on Iran--but not because of the threat that Iran might build nuclear weapons. Iran is the source of a much more powerful weapon of mass destruction that has already been unleashed against the West: the ideology of Islamic theocracy, with its tactic of state-sponsored terrorism.

And we must confront this threat now because we have an opportunity to strike at the very heart of Iran's regime by supporting its repudiation by its own citizens.

Iran has long been the leading ideological and material source of terrorism. The Ayatollah Khomeini was the first to develop a systematic theory of modern Islamic theocracy--a totalitarian fusion of mosque and state that is nearly identical to the philosophy later espoused by Osama bin Laden. Under the theocracy founded by Khomeini, Iran has been a systematic exporter of the ideas and methods of terrorism, backing international terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Most important, Iran was the first Islamic regime to strike systematically at the United States, from the seizing of our embassy in Tehran in 1979--to the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983--to the kidnapping of Americans in Lebanon through the 1980s--to Iran's probable involvement in the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996--to its sheltering of al Qaeda leaders responsible for the latest anti-American bombing in Saudi Arabia. For almost a quarter of a century, Iran has been at war against the United States of America...

...Dambruoso flatly confirms what I wrote in December 2002: "Our investigations permit us to establish that the country of the Ayatollahs is the preferred springboard for militants headed for Iraq." Dambruoso lays it out in some detail. Zarkawi had already organized groups of fighters before the liberation of Iraq, and they operate alongside the remnants of Saddam's killers. The European network is used to recruit new bodies for the jihad in Iraq, and they enter from Iran in groups of three to five, with phony passports and usually pretending to be businessmen (or, I can add, journalists). They rent or buy small apartments in Baghdad, Tikrit, and Ramadi, where they organize larger cells, and then move into the battle area. Zarkawi himself entered Iraq by this method, along with one of the leading ideologues of the jihad, Abu Masaab (a Syrian).

Dambruoso seems to believe that the relationship between Zarkawi and Osama bin Laden is ambiguous, having seen some evidence (primarily the famous letter captured by U.S. special forces late last year) that Zarkawi was unhappy about the lack of support from al Qaeda. But whatever their tactical and personal disagreements (and these can be feigned), they share a common strategy for Iraq: kill members of the Coalition and any Iraqi who cooperates, and provoke internal conflicts among the various ethnic and religious communities. That tracks with my own analysis, which is that we are dealing with several different groups, supported by the various terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riadh, in a joint operation within the overall matrix of Hezbollah — which of course means Iran...

Even as the Islamic Regime of Iran accelerated the number of arrests, tortures, and death sentences it carried out, on May 29, the World Bank awarded it with two loans totaling $369 million. As justification for granting the loans, the World Bank claims they were awarded to help the people of Iran. "In many countries we have enfranchised civil societies," the Bank's president, James D. Wolfensohn said at a luncheon. "Should we stop doing that and wait until we had perfect countries before we lend?"

Wolfensohn added: "The easiest thing for me, for the Bank, would be to say, just wait until these countries are democratic, but that is impracticable. The bank is not the United Nations. Its goal is economic development. Sometimes this must go hand in hand with democratic development."

These are fair points, but surely Wolfensohn is aware that in Iran, 70 percent of non-oil revenue and 50 percent of the economy is controlled by the "tax-exempt organizations" (bonyaads), which are accountable only to the Supreme Leader. The people of Iran, in other words, will not benefit from these loans.

Since May 2000, Iran has borrowed $801 million from the World Bank and another $276 million has been approved for two more projects.

Based on information provided by the Bureau of International Information Programs of the U.S. State Department, the U.S. has always opposed World Bank's assistance to Iran, but has been unsuccessful to block the approval of the loans to that country in recent years, mainly because other large Bank shareholders have sought to increase their engagement with Iran.

"I want to assure you that the Treasury Department and the U.S. Executive Director at the World Bank, while not fully successful, have consistently and actively sought to block all proposals for World Bank Group assistance to Iran," Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury William Schuerch said in his October 29 testimony before a panel of the U.S. House of Representatives...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush repeated his administration's claim that Iraq was in league with al Qaeda under Saddam Hussein's rule, saying Tuesday that fugitive Islamic militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ties Saddam to the terrorist network.

"Zarqawi's the best evidence of a connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda," Bush told reporters at the White House. "He's the person who's still killing."

U.S. intelligence officials have said al Qaeda had some links to Iraq dating back to the early 1990s, but the nature and extent of those contacts is a matter of dispute.

Critics have accused the president and other administration officials of falsely inflating the links between Iraq and al Qaeda in the months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Monday in Florida, raised eyebrows by reasserting claims that Saddam "had long-established ties with al Qaeda."...

...Western leaders must not attack Islam; to take sides against any religion runs counter to the traditions of religious tolerance upon which the United States was founded. But they must denounce the use of force to propagate religion, and make it clear that they will match force with force. The enemy is not "terrorism", but any form of violence, including conventional warfare, in the service of religious expansionism.

What does that mean in practice? First of all it changes the subject and shifts the battleground. The issue is not whether Middle Eastern governments will adopt democratic reforms - that is not within the power of the West to dictate - but whether Muslims will employ violence in the service of territorial irredentism in the Kashmir or Palestine. There simply is no more room for the jihadist dogma that Muslims may not abandon a square meter of the Dar al-Islam. Violence to reclaim lost territory is a characteristic of radical Islam and the hallmark of an enemy of the West. The first step should be to remove Yasser Arafat to exile in some inaccessible locale.

Further steps should be action - not protests - to protect Nigerians, Indonesians, or Sudanese against violent attempts to further the Islamic cause. Black Sudanese are the victims of genocide encouraged by the radical Islamic regime in Khartoum. Washington should send them not only food, but also weapons and Special Forces advisers. Stern warnings, backed if necessary by a reduction in foreign aid, should be delivered to US clients in the Middle East that jihadist rhetoric on the part of government newspapers and government-sponsored clerics simply will not be tolerated.

Enemy is radical Islam
In short, the West must give the Islamic world a clear choice as to who is with it, and who is against it - words that President Bush has used but with muddled meaning. That would change the character of the intelligence war utterly. It may be harder to define who is friend and foe today than it was in 1981, but by the same token, it will be far easier to tell friend from foe once the West carves its criteria in stone.

The bane of US intelligence in the Middle East from Somalia to Iraq has been its inability to know whom it can trust. Victory has many fathers, while defeat is an orphan, although sometimes attended by paternity suits. The unseemly public exchange of charges between the CIA and the Pentagon over Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi is the most flagrant example. The CIA has placed stories in the press claiming that Chalabi is an Iranian provocateur, heatedly denied by Chalabi's friends in the Pentagon civilian establishment. This removes all doubt that America's intelligence effort is an orphan. The only question is, whose?

It would be convenient if US universities trained prospective spies in Middle Eastern and South Asian language skills and culture. But the United States can obtain all the spies it wants with all required skills: it simply has to persuade Muslims to join its cause. Once the US determined to win the Cold War, enough Russians and Eastern Europeans switched sides to give the US the winning hand. Existential despair is the result of the West's tragic encounter with the Islamic world, but it can cut two ways; it has produced suicide bombers, but it also can produce radical reformers who repudiate their own culture in favor of the West...

BOSTON - A top Massachusetts Republican on Tuesday called on Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) to resign from the Senate while he seeks the presidency, a vacancy that would allow the GOP to fill the seat.

Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey argued that Kerry, the state's four-term senator, has missed too many roll call votes and has done a poor job of representing his constituents. Of the 112 Senate votes this year, Kerry has voted just 14 times, according to an Associated Press tally.

"It's not fair, it's not right and the public is not being well-served," said Healey, who said she was speaking on behalf of Republican Gov. Mitt Romney. "I'm calling on John Kerry to resign so that we can fill that office with someone who is 100 percent devoted to the job of representing the people of Massachusetts." ...

ORLANDO, Florida (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that Saddam Hussein had "long-established ties" with al Qaeda, an assertion that has been repeatedly challenged by some policy experts and lawmakers.

The vice president offered no details backing up his claim of a link between Saddam and al Qaida...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army revealed on Monday a redesigned combat uniform with a digital camouflage pattern that looks strikingly different from soldiers' current battle dress uniforms.

It marks the first major change in the Army uniform since 1981, said Brig. Gen. James R. Moran, who modeled the uniform for reporters at the Pentagon. He said recruits will be issued the redesigned uniform starting October 2005, and the entire Army will be outfitted by December 2007.

The uniform is being produced in a single, universal pattern to replace the two camouflage versions in current use: tan-brown for desert use and green-brown-black for woodland settings.

The pattern for the new camouflage coat and trousers is a mix of light green, tan and gray. Moran said it was designed to allow soldiers to blend into urban, desert and forest environments; it is similar to the Marines' digital camouflage uniform except that it has no black in the pattern.

Soldiers also will get a new, no-shine, tan combat boot, and the current black boots will be discontinued.

The new uniform makes more use of Velcro, and the coat fastens in front with a zipper instead of buttons. Cuffs and pockets are fastened with Velcro, and the coat collar can be turned up and fastened Mandarin-style. The uniform is roomier and made with a no-wrinkle fabric.

The coat-trousers combination costs $88, compared with $56 for the current battle dress uniform.

The new uniform was designed in part to accommodate the new Interceptor body armor that soldiers are getting in Iraq and Afghanistan for partial protection from bullets as large as 7.62mm. The Mandarin-style collar, for example, shields the neck from the Interceptor vest collar.

Moran said the Army will offer soldiers extra protection with add-on armor for the underarm area, which is not covered with protective plates in Interceptor vests. The deltoid protection will increase the weight of the armor vests from 16 pounds to 22 pounds...

On July 1 Virginia takes a big step backward, into the shadow of Jim Crow.

I do not write those words lightly or rhetorically. Although I'm an advocate of same-sex marriage, I have taken care not to throw around motive-impugning words such as bigotry, hate or homophobia. I have worked hard to avoid facile comparisons between the struggle for gay marriage and the struggle for civil rights for African Americans; the similarities are real, but so are the differences.

Above all, I have been careful to distinguish between animus against gay people and opposition to same-sex marriage. No doubt the two often conjoin. But millions of Americans bear no ill will toward their gay and lesbian fellow citizens, yet still draw back from changing the boundaries of society's most fundamental institution. The ban on gay marriage in 49 states (Massachusetts, of course, being the newly minted exception) may well be unfair and unwise, as I believe it to be. Yet people of good conscience can maintain that although all individuals are equal, all couples are not.

If I seem to be splitting hairs, that is because Virginia -- where my partner and I make our home -- is not splitting hairs. It has instead taken a baseball bat to civic equality, thanks to the so-called Marriage Affirmation Act.

The act -- really an amendment to an earlier law -- was passed in April, over Gov. Mark R. Warner's objections, and it takes effect July 1. It says, "A civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges and obligations of marriage is prohibited." It goes on to add that any such union, contract or arrangement entered into in any other state, "and any contractual rights created thereby," are "void and unenforceable in Virginia."...

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog has found indications Iran wanted to equip thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges, enough to produce bomb-grade material for several warheads per year, diplomats said on Thursday.

The United States is certain to treat this revelation as further proof that Iran's nuclear programme is a front for developing an atom bomb. Iran insists its programme is aimed solely at the peaceful generation of electricity.

At a closed-door meeting on Iran, a senior inspector from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told the agency's governing board a private Iranian company had expressed interest in "tens of thousands" of magnets for advanced P-2 centrifuges from a European intermediary, said a diplomat who attended.

The IAEA said last week in its latest report on Iran that the company had expressed interest in 4,000 magnets from a European intermediary -- enough for 2,000 centrifuges -- and had added it might buy in "higher numbers" to get a lower price.

Iran said it only bought 150 sample magnets from an Asian firm. But one diplomat told Reuters "tens of thousands" meant the Iranian firm was considering buying at least 20,000 more.

Since two magnets are required for a single centrifuge, which purifies uranium for use as fuel for power plants or weapons by spinning at supersonic speeds, this would have been enough for at least 10,000 P-2 centrifuges, diplomats said.

"This could produce a significant amount of weapons grade uranium," said one diplomat, adding that it would be enough for at least several nuclear warheads a year...

IRAN DISMISSES U.S. "MISUNDERSTANDINGS"

The IAEA's other major unanswered question concerns traces of enriched uranium found on domestic and imported centrifuge parts. The Iranians have said the traces were all due to contaminated centrifuge parts purchased from Pakistan, though the IAEA no longer finds this explanation plausible.

Diplomats who attended Thursday's meeting said the IAEA has found multiple levels of enriched uranium on centrifuges, which could indicate that Iran has been enriching uranium itself to levels close to what is useable in an atomic bomb.
One diplomat said the Iranian delegation had also told the IAEA board that Tehran was cooperating fully with the agency.

But Pierre Goldschmidt, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's deputy and head of the inspection programme, "corrected the Iranians for the record... He said cooperation had not been 100 percent", the diplomat said.

After the meeting, Iran's top delegate played down U.S. concerns about Iran's programme.

"The U.S. has some misunderstandings about our nuclear programme which we corrected," senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official Amir Zamaninia told reporters after the meeting.

Zamaninia said the United States' misunderstandings were about the P-2 centrifuges and the uranium traces. Washington says Iran's failure to cooperate with the IAEA's attempt to resolve these two issues is proof it is hiding a bomb programme.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, Kenneth Brill, said it was no misunderstanding and the new IAEA report showed Iran had misinformed the U.N. about its P-2 programme.

"I did not hear anything that corrected (what the IAEA wrote in its report)...although I did hear an effort to try to explain it away," said Brill. "Many states, including the United States, believe that Iran is trying to hide a programme they don't want brought to light."

To Boston Red Sox outfielder Darren Lewis, the pitch he swung at on a September evening six years ago was merely a foul ball, one he lined over his team's dugout while batting against Detroit Tigers pitcher Brian Powell.

But to Jane Costa of Stoughton, sitting some 20 rows behind the dugout at Fenway Park, it was a rocket that slammed into her face. The blur of a baseball fractured bones, bloodied her nose and mouth, and made her black out for what she later said seemed like an eternity.

Anyone who has watched a baseball game knows a foul ball can cause serious injury. But in a personal-injury lawsuit against the Red Sox, Costa said she hadn't been to Fenway since she was 8 and didn't even know what a foul ball was. She said the club should have issued more explicit warnings, beyond the fine print on the back of her ticket.

Yesterday, in the first ruling in 54 years by a Massachusetts appellate court involving a spectator hit by a baseball, a state Appeals Court panel sided with the Red Sox and said a judge was right to block the suit from going to trial.

The three-member panel said that even someone with scant knowledge of baseball should realize that "a central feature of the game is that batters will forcefully hit balls that may go astray from their intended direction."

"It is not disputed that, while passively watching the game, the plaintiff's life was forever changed by this tragic event," the panel said. Nonetheless, the Red Sox "had no duty to warn the plaintiff of the obvious danger of a foul ball being hit into the stands," the panel said.

Thomas J. Ostertag, senior vice president and general counsel in the commissioner's office agreed with the essence of the ruling.

"While we, of course, very much regret that the plaintiff was injured, the decision is consistent with opinions of courts in similar cases all over the country," he said.

After her injury, Costa, who is now 40, had to undergo reconstructive surgery that installed eight plates in her face, according to her lawyer James R. Burke. She has severe headaches and permanent nerve damage, and must take medication daily. Her lawsuit listed lost wages and medical expenses totaling $486,909...

After a suicide car bombing killed Iraqi Interim Governing Council President Izzedine Salim and eight others on May 17, one Iraqi put that act of terror into a larger perspective for those who wonder if democracy can work in Iraq. His name is Omar, one of the new Iraqi "bloggers," and he wrote on his Web log: "We cannot . . . protect every single person, including our leaders and the higher officials who make favorite targets for the terrorists--but we can make their attempts go in vain by making our leadership 'replaceable.' "

Exercising his newfound freedom of speech via the Internet, Omar addressed what he sees as the terrorists' fundamental misunderstanding about where Iraq is going. Terrorists--whether Saddamists or foreigners--"think in the same way their dictator-masters do," failing to grasp that the idea of leadership by an indispensable strongman applies to totalitarian regimes--not democracies.

That understanding of the stability of representative government was confirmed when council member Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawar assumed the Governing Council presidency. This orderly transfer of leadership showed that the rudiments of a democratic process are already at work in Iraq. The hope for a new Iraq, in which freedom is protected by democracy and the rule of law, rests in such processes.

This hopeful vision is what the enemies of a new Iraq fear the most. Fighting on even after the capture of Saddam Hussein last December, the murderers and torturers of his regime and their terrorist allies, with their perverse ideology of evil, have been seeking with death and destruction to prevent the emergence of a new and free Iraq. In a letter that coalition forces intercepted in January, one of the most notorious of these terrorists, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, wrote to his al Qaeda associates in Afghanistan that democracy in Iraq brings the prospect of "suffocation" for the terrorists, the prospect of Iraqis fighting in their own defense. When the army and police are "linked to the inhabitants of this area by kinship, blood and honor," Zarqawi asks, "how can we fight their cousins and their sons and under what pretext after the Americans pull back? . . . Democracy is coming, and there will be no excuse thereafter."

President Bush recently outlined a five-step plan for helping Iraqis move beyond occupation to a fully constitutional government, a government that rejects weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, preserves Iraq's territorial integrity and lives peacefully with its neighbors. The plan involves five interdependent phases to build Iraqis' capacity to manage their own affairs successfully...

...We are being asked by Irene Khan to believe that against the backdrop of forty post-war years of hideous violations of human rights throughout the USSR and its zone of influence, of the auto-genocide in Cambodia, the tortures practised for years in Chile and Argentina, and the 'disappearances' there, ethnic cleansing, torture and murder in former Yugoslavia, the genocide in Rwanda in which nearly a million people died within a few short months, the systematic torture and murder of political opponents for more than two decades in Iraq, including mass slaughters of genocidal proportions against the Kurds and the Shia, the assault against the East Timorese by Indonesia with its thousands upon thousands of victims, the further thousands and thousands gruesomely killed in Algeria, the routine practice of torture in jails in Egypt, Syria, apartheid South Africa, present-day Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia, the murderous brutalities of Idi Amin in Uganda, the ferocities of the civil war continuing for years now in Sudan and the practice of slavery there, the nightmare treatment of the populace in the shadowlands of North Korea - we are asked to believe, against this blood-soaked backdrop, that legislative measures taken by America and other liberal democracies since September 2001 in the war against terrorism amount to a greater attack on human rights principles and values than anything we have seen in the last 50 years. The imbalance, the grotesque lack of proportion, in this judgement cries out for explanation itself, which explanation is perhaps to be found in the influence of political considerations which are outwith AI's proper (and irreplaceably important) remit...

A myth has developed that Iraqis aren't grateful for their liberation from Saddam. So it's worth noting that the leaders of Iraq's new interim government have been explicit and gracious in their thanks, not that you've heard this from the U.S. media.

First in Arabic and then in English, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in his inaugural address to the Iraqi people last Tuesday that "I would like to record our profound gratitude and appreciation to the U.S.-led international coalition, which has made great sacrifices for the liberation of Iraq." In his own remarks, President Ghazi al-Yawer said: "Before I end my speech, I would like us to remember our martyrs who fell in defense of freedom and honor, as well as our friends who fell in the battle for the liberation of Iraq."

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the U.N. Security Council much the same thing last Thursday: "We Iraqis are grateful to the coalition who helped liberate us from the persecution of Saddam Hussein's regime. We thank President Bush and Prime Minister Blair for their dedication and commitment."

We thought our readers might like to know.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council voted 15-0 on Tuesday to adopt a U.S.-British resolution that formally ends the occupation of Iraq on June 30 and authorizes U.S.-led troops to keep the peace.

In a packed council chamber, the 15-nation body endorsed a "sovereign interim government" in Iraq, following weeks of negotiations and a last-minute addition by the United States and Britain on military policy that France and Germany had demanded.

"With today's vote, we acknowledge an important milestone. By June 30, Iraq will reassert its sovereignty, a step forward on the path toward a democratically elected government," said U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, who will become ambassador to Iraq at the end of the month.

His British colleague, Emyr Jones Parry, told the council "The promise is great -- a stable, federal, democratic, pluralistic and unified Iraq where there is full respect for human rights -- a stark contrast to the past." ...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials declared Tuesday that the interim government has assumed full control of the country's oil industry ahead of the June 30 handover of sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation administration.

"Today the most important natural resource has been returned to Iraqis to serve all Iraqis," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said. "I'm pleased to announce that full sovereignty and full control on oil industry has been handed over to the oil ministry today and to the new Iraqi government as of today."

The announcement came as Allawi and Oil Minister Thamir Ghadbhan toured the al-Doura oil refinery in southern Baghdad.

After meeting and shaking hands with the refinery workers, the two ministers thanked oil sector workers.

"We are totally now in control, there are no more advisers," Ghadbhan said. "We are running the show, the oil policies will be implemented 100 percent by Iraqis."

Allawi said the handover of the oil ministry before June 30 reflects "our full confidence in the oil minister. It's evidence that oil ministry has worked perfectly."

Referring to the former regime of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), Allawi said that "in the past, Iraqi oil was used in building palaces, buying weapons to achieve one person's goals."...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq (news - web sites)'s new prime minister announced an agreement Monday by nine political parties to dissolve their militias, integrating some of the estimated 102,000 fighters into the army and police and pensioning off the rest to firm up government control ahead of the transfer of sovereignty.

The plan does not cover the most important militia fighting coalition forces — the al-Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — or smaller groups that have sprouted across the country since the collapse of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime in April 2003.

Nevertheless, the announcement by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is seen as a significant step toward extending the control of the central government that will take power at the end of the month. The agreement, if it works, would also significantly reduce the threat of civil war after the U.S.-led occupation formally ends.

Previous attempts to abolish the militias failed, but the current drive may have a better chance of succeeding because of the reintegration plan for the fighters and the fact that most are controlled by groups that are part of the new government.

"We want to disband the Badr Brigade and to enable its members to join the new Iraqi army and police forces and serve the new Iraq," said Dr. Haitham al-Husseini, a top official in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which controls the 15,000-strong Badr Brigade, a Shiite group.

Jassim al-Hilfi, a member of the central committee of the Iraqi Communist Party, said his group was willing to disband its armed components because "we want to be part of the new Iraq."...

Do you know what I felt while watching D-Day celebrations on CNN today? You won’t imagine my feeling. Well, ummmmmm, I felt nothing.

The lavish celebrations looked like a huge fake show with those heads of states playing the roles. Only those brave veterans were the true thing today. It is time for Americans to divorce the idea that they are one and united with Europe because of their so-called shares values. Politicians want us to believe that shared values make friends. That is far from the truth. Friendship is only created out of shared enemies.

60 years ago, America and Europe shared a single enemy called Nazism and Fascism. They got together and defeated this enemy. After 1945, they found another enemy: the Soviet Union’s communism. America and the terribly weakened Europe stood one more time beside each other to bring the Berlin Wall down. Today there is no such common enemy.

I hear someone asking “hey what about terrorism?” Sorry, Europeans do not consider Islamist terrorism as their main enemy. 911 was hatched up in Europe which is still a safe haven to the world’s most dangerous men. If a European country was attacked, it will be because of its support for US. Does Madrid ring a bell? You’ll always find code red alerts in Britain and Italy. Nevertheless, it is true that western civilization as a whole and certain Arab/Muslim regimes are the prime targets of terrorists, however it is quite apparent that they are currently singling out the US since it is currently the leader of the Western world...

In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth -- a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.

At the time, I never imagined that three years later, I would be in the White House telling this story to the president. When he summoned some of his staff to hear what I had said, I understood that there had been much criticism of Reagan's decision to cast the struggle between the superpowers as a battle between good and evil.

Well, Reagan was right and his critics were wrong.

Those same critics used to love calling Reagan a simpleton who saw the world through a primitive ideological prism and who would convey his ideas through jokes and anecdotes. In our first meeting, he told me that Soviet premier Brezhnev and Kosygin, his second-in-command, were discussing whether they should allow freedom of emigration. "Look, America's really pressuring us," Brezhnev said, "maybe we should just open up the gates. The problem is, we might be the only two people who wouldn't leave." To which Kosygin replied, "Speak for yourself."

America has launched a secret war against Islamic terrorists across the southern Sahara after it discovered that a group linked to al-Qaeda bought heavy weapons using the proceeds of a ransom deal with the German government.

The realisation that a new Islamic fundamentalist force was building what officials call "garrisons in the sand" on the border of Algeria and Mali has led America to launch a new anti-terror campaign across a swathe of Africa's harshest and most sparsely populated terrain.

The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat has spent about £4 million, which it received in return for releasing 17 European tourists kidnapped last year, on surface-to-air missiles, heavy machine-guns and mortars.

It also bought satellite positioning equipment to enable it to conceal and later return to weapons caches buried in the sands of the Sahara...

...The US Army plans to spend $125 million (£72 million) over the next five years on its Trans-sahara Counter Terrorism initiative, aimed at preventing groups allied to al-Qaeda from establishing a foothold in the region.

American special forces are being deployed discreetly in the region - which covers eight countries and thousands of miles of desert - to train, advise and equip pro-US government troops.

In a significant breakthrough in March, the US military helped orchestrate the ambush and capture in western Chad of Amari Saifi, the Salafist group's leader.

Brahim Tchouma, for the Movement of Democracy and Justice, the pro-US rebel group that is holding Saifi, told The Telegraph that they were prepared to hand the former Algerian paratrooper to America or its allies.

"They were only lightly armed and travelling in two groups in areas controlled by our movement after a fight with the Chad army. We have them and will hand them over. We want nothing in return."...

...The group is also believed to have a terrorist presence in Europe. Its members have been arrested in Italy, Spain and Germany for suspected terrorist activity.

Governments in the Sahara region were furious when Germany approved payment of a €6 million (£4 million) for the hostages, who included Germans, Austrians and Swedish tourists.

Berlin has never officially acknowledged the deal, but it is widely believed that the government of Mali paid the ransom in return for a promise of additional aid from Berlin.

A Western diplomat said: "This sum was equivalent to 25 per cent of the defence budget of Niger last year. That gives the extremists a huge boost, an advantage which they can exploit to destabilise these governments.

"Once al-Qaeda-linked groups can cause instability, or preferably chaos in a country, they have the ability to operate freely within it."

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- A United Nations human rights report credited the U.S.-led coalition Friday with ending years of systematic violations by Saddam Hussein's regime, but also cited concerns about prisoner abuse by coalition forces.

The report by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said the coalition's invasion of Iraq "removed a government that preyed on the Iraqi people and committed shocking, systematic and criminal violations of human rights."

But the report added that "after the occupation of Iraq by coalition forces there have, sadly, been some violations of human rights, committed by some coalition soldiers."

"Governmental leaders of the countries concerned have, at the highest levels, condemned these violations and have pledged to bring those responsible to justice and to uphold the rule of law. It is imperative that this be done, with accountability to the international community," the report said...

CAEN, France (Reuters) -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder paid an historic visit to Normandy on Sunday, joining Germany's erstwhile enemies for the first time in a tribute to those killed on both sides of the pivotal World War Two battle.

Schroeder, an infant when the Allies stormed French beaches in the D-Day landings 60 years ago that hastened the war's end, kept a low profile before a Franco-German ceremony late in the day but wrote it was good Germany lost the battle and the war.

"The Allies' victory was not a victory over Germany, it was a victory for Germany," Schroeder wrote in a contribution for Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "It was a triumph over the criminal Nazi regime that had turned murder into an industrial process."

Schroeder's appearance was not without controversy -- both at home, where conservatives attacked him for avoiding a major German cemetery, and among Allied veteran groups, who questioned the wisdom of inviting the leader of the enemy they fought.

But Schroeder, two months old at the time, deflected the criticism, saying it proved the postwar era was finished...

SEOUL (Reuters) - The United States plans to cut its troops in South Korea (news - web sites) by a third by the end of next year, part of a worldwide shift to use of higher technology in defense, the two countries said Monday.

Although communist North Korea (news - web sites)'s 1.1-million-strong armed forces dwarf the U.S. contingent of 37,500 troops, any reduction is closely watched because its symbolic deterrent value outweighs its numerical strength. Ally South Korea has 690,000 troops.

"U.S. officials told us last night that under their Global Defense Posture Review they are planning to reduce the number of U.S. troops here by 12,500 by the end of December 2005," Kim Sook, head of the ministry's North America bureau, told reporters.

That would include 3,600 U.S. soldiers already earmarked for deployment to Iraq (news - web sites) from South Korea.

A statement released by United States Forces Korea (USFK) confirmed the details of the proposed redeployment plan, although a USFK spokeswoman declined to comment further.

Washington announced late last year that it aimed to transform its forces deployed worldwide using advances in military technology and smaller more mobile units to better respond to different types of security needs...

When I was in junior high school long ago, a touring arts program visited schools in New York state. One performance consisted of a celebrated actress reciting Emily Dickinson's poetry onstage for 90 minutes or so. I defy any audience to listen attentively to 90 minutes of Dickinson without showing the strain, and my school definitely wasn't having any.

A few minutes into the show, the auditorium was alive with student chatter, so loud a buzz you could barely hear the performance. Being a poetry-lover, I devoted myself to setting an example of rapt attention for, maybe, five minutes, at which point I threw in the towel and joined the mass murmur.

The actress manfully completed her performance. When it was over we gave her a stupendous ovation. We were glad it was finished and (more important) knew perfectly well that we had behaved like pigs and intended to make up for it by clapping and roaring and shouting. But the performer wasn't having any. She gave us a cold curtsy and left the stage and would not return for a second bow.

I have always admired her for that: a more memorable declaration than anything Dickinson ever wrote. And today's endless ovation for World War II vets doesn't change the fact that this nation has behaved boorishly, with colossal disrespect. If we cared about that war, the men who won it and the ideas it suggests, we would teach our children (at least) four topics:

The major battles of the war...

The bestiality of the Japanese...

The attitude of American intellectuals...

The veterans' neglected voice...

O'er surf and sand and crumbled stone,
Freedom's youth so far from home,
Threw their bodies, tore their flesh,
Suffered wounds in ways no man can guess...
Their futures' gone, their voices still,
And yet...
They plead with us, "Don't you forget!"

Thousands of Iranians ready for suicide raids Sat 5 June, 2004 14:09 By Parinoosh Arami

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Thousands of Iranians have signed up for suicide attacks on Israel, U.S.-led forces in Iraq and British author Salman Rushdie, a recruiting group said on Saturday.

Shi'ite Iran has strongly condemned the occupation of Iraq and voiced its outrage at damage to shrines in the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala.

The father of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, condemned Rushdie to death in 1989 for alleged blasphemy in his novel "The Satanic Verses".

"Some 10,000 people have registered their names to carry out martyrdom operations on our defined targets," said Mohammad Ali Samadi, a spokesman for the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign.

But he said the group would need the green light from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to launch the attacks.

The independent group said it started to register Iranian men and women prepared to carry out the attacks after Friday prayers last week and sent forms to religious universities.

"Our targets are mainly the occupying American and British forces in the holy Iraqi cities, all the Zionists in Palestine, and Salman Rushdie," he said.

"It is not our fault that the Zionists have brought their wives and children to the occupied territories and have turned them into shields for themselves," he added, when asked about the killing of civilians.

"Salman Rushdie is the only non-military target for us, because we believe his attack against Islam was much worse that a military assault," the spokesman said.

Hardline cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati urged worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran to attack U.S. and British interests.

"It is the duty of every Muslim to threaten U.S. and British interests anywhere," he said.

Although Iran's reformist President Mohammad Khatami said in 2001 the death sentence against Rushdie should be seen as lifted, hardliners still occasionally call for his murder.

What the hell? What the [expletive deleted] hell? To quote Adrian Belew, "What in the world Has happened to the world?" Look, I believe that women and men should be treated equally in society and under the law, believe that someone's sexual preferences are their personal business, that the government doesn't belong in religion, or bedrooms, or looking over the shoulder of a physician. I reject discrimination in any form. I love freedom, maybe a part of this is because my Dad (the Curmudge) is the first guy in a long line of people not to have been born under tyranny. Ditto for my maternal Grandparents. No one chased the Curmudge into a jail, or worse, just because he's a Jew. That can't be said of his father. No one came to my door when I was 18 and marched me into the army at gun- and swordpoint or killed my sister and mother because they were Jews in the wrong place at the wrong time. That can't be said of two of my great-uncles...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 5 — Fighters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite radical who fashioned an army from the discontented of Iraq's slums, began to withdraw Saturday from the centers of Najaf and Kufa, where they have been battling American forces since April.

At the same time, Mr. Sadr met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, according to widespread reports. The meeting suggested that Mr. Sadr was being given a face-saving gesture by appearing with Ayatollah Sistani, whose prestige across Iraq far exceeds that of Mr. Sadr.

Shiite leaders and American officials said the armed followers of Mr. Sadr, known as the Mahdi Army, had cleared out of many parts of Najaf, and seemed to be getting ready to leave altogether. The Shiite leaders said American forces, who encircled the city in recent weeks, had also cleared out of the city center and areas near the Imam Ali Shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam.

The withdrawal, coupled with the reported meeting of the rival clerics, gave rise to hopes that Mr. Sadr's two-month-long rebellion may be ending...

IF YOU LOOK closely at the Los Angeles County official seal -- preferably through a magnifying glass -- you will see, among other things, a tiny image of a cross. But not for long. Last week the county Board of Supervisors voted to remove it under threat of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU claimed that the cross, meant to symbolize the churches and Catholic missions that are such a large part of the county's history, represented "an impermissible endorsement of Christianity by the county government" and thus violated the constitutional prohibition on the establishment of religion. The seal, adopted in 1957, will be changed at huge public expense.

While I am disturbed by recent attempts to turn "secularism" -- the principle that religious beliefs should not be imposed on public policy -- into a dirty word, this is precisely the kind of thing that gives secularism a bad name.

To be fair, the argument that the cross stands for historical heritage rather than religious belief has also been used to defend far more dubious intrusions of religious symbolism into the public square, most notably the case of the Ten Commandments monument installed by former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore at the Alabama State Judicial Building last year. But there are some crucial differences.

Under existing legal precedent, for instance, an image of the Ten Commandments in a court building is acceptable as long as it is accompanied by other images. A figure of Moses with the two tablets is part of a frieze at the US Supreme Court building -- along with the figures of other historical lawgivers, including Confucius and Hammurabi. The Ten Commandments sculpture in the Alabama courthouse stood alone.

By this standard, the cross on the offending seal certainly should have passed muster. The largest and central image on the seal is that of Pomona, ancient Roman goddess of gardens and fruit trees. As some have caustically pointed out, no one has claims that her depiction endorses paganism...

Jean Caze walked into an Army recruiting office downtown yesterday with some questions for the man in uniform at the desk. But the unemployed 24-year-old from Somerville did not want to know about the dangers of serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. He asked about the pay, training, and how the recruiting officer had made his way through the Army. A half hour later, the recruiter was smiling: Caze had agreed to join.

Despite a litany of US casualties and extensions of duty abroad, military recruiters say they are continuing to fill their monthly goals for enlisting men and women in the Army, Navy, and Marines. But the recruiters acknowledge it takes more reassuring and explaining to recruit the same numbers than before the nation was at war...

...It's working: The Army is on track to reach its national goal of recruiting 77,000 to active duty this fiscal year, including 21,200 reservists, according to the US Army Recruiting Command. The targets vary with retirements and routine discharges. But reenlistment numbers are also strong, officials said, with many soldiers taking advantage of bonuses of up to $10,000 for reenlisting.

"A lot of people thought that because of the extended tours of duty, not many people would be reenlisting, but they are," said Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Childress, an Army public affairs officer.

The Navy and Marines also report steady recruiting and reenlistment, but they say they haven't increased marketing.

The Navy is signing up 60 to 80 recruits a month, said Daniel Day, a public affairs officer. Since February 2002, the Navy has exceeded its goals every month, he said.

At the Marine Corps, it's "business as usual," said Major David Griesmer, a public affairs officer with the Marine Corps Recruiting Command in Quantico, Va. "You don't change recruiting because something is going on in the world," Griesmer said. "It's a very steady, systematic process."

U.S. businesses hired hundreds of thousands of additional workers last month, the Labor Department reported yesterday, a pace of job growth that if sustained would erase all the job losses of the recession by the end of the year.

The brightening labor market drew an additional hundreds of thousands of job seekers to look for work last month. Because the number of new hires roughly matched the additional number looking, the unemployment rate remained at 5.6 percent in May -- unchanged from April, but down from the recent peak of 6.3 percent last June.

Employers added 248,000 jobs in May across a variety of industries, and the department raised its previous estimates of job growth for March and April by a combined 74,000. That meant an average gain of more than 315,000 jobs in each of the past three months -- a booming pace after six weaker months...

More good economic news, for everyone but the Bush-haters: The U.S. economy added some 248,000 jobs in May, according to government figures. The Associated Press reports:

Payrolls swelled by almost 1 million in the last three months alone, the Labor Department said Friday. Employment figures for March and April were revised up to reflect the addition of 353,000 and 346,000 jobs respectively.

On his campaign Web site, John Kerry promises to create 10 million new jobs during his four-year term as president. That's a rate of 625,000 every three months, or only 66% of the past three months' performance under President Bush. Can we really afford to elect someone who sets his sights so low?

America has gone from being the victim to the perpetrator in the war on terror and the pictures of prison abuse prove it, billionaire political activist George Soros said Thursday.

Seeing pictures of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners was a "moment of truth" for America, Soros said during a conference sponsored by the liberal-leaning Campaign for America's Future. "I think those pictures hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself," Soros said, adding that it is a "very tough thing to say."

"There is, I'm afraid, that connection with those two events because the way President Bush conducted the war on terror converted us from victims into perpetrators," Soros said.

The war on terror has taken more innocent victims than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Soros said.

"I think the American public now sees they have been misled," he said...

To former prime minister Jean Chretien:

Like many Canadians, I recently learned of your coming visit to Iran as a representative of a Calgary-based oil company. It is reported that the purpose of your trip is to conclude a deal with the Iranian government on behalf of this firm.

I write to congratulate you.

Your failure to ensure justice was served in the case of my mother, Zahra Kazemi -- who was murdered by the Iranian regime while you were prime minister -- has apparently paid off: You are now most welcome in Tehran.

Last June, my mother was arrested without cause by agents of the Iranian government, who then beat and tortured her to death. No doubt, you remember the case and so are well-informed of the systematic violations of human rights that take place in Iran, as well as the circumstances that surround the killing of my mother.

And yet, knowing this, you are off to shake hands with representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the executioners who less than a year ago had my mother murdered.

I can only thank you for doing this now, Mr. Chretien -- for you are demonstrating clearly what a charade Canada's fervent defence of human rights is. Despite your speeches about human rights when you were at the head of our government, you are now conferring your personal prestige on Iran's regime, and by extension its crimes against humanity.

Bravo, Mr. Chretien. I knew I could count on you to take the veil off your government's hypocrisy. The politics that you practice now show how your government favours "business as usual" before human rights. Congratulations.

Stephan Hachemi, Montreal.

The United Nations and Red Cross have been providing cover for terrorists -- literally. And American taxpayers are footing some of the bill.

Last week, an Israeli television station aired footage of armed Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an ambulance owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on May 11. The footage shows two ambulances with flashing lights pull onto a street. Shots and shouts ring out during the nighttime raid. A gang of militants piles into one of the supposedly neutral ambulances, clearly marked "U.N." with the agency's blue flag flying from the roof, which then speeds away from the scene.

AccessMiddleEast.org, a nonprofit global news monitoring service, posted the video (shot by a Reuters TV cameraman) on its Web site last week. To date, Access Middle East managing director Richard Bardenstein in Israel informs me, not a single U.S. television news station has expressed interest in showing the footage to American viewers.

Why should we care? Because since 1950, the U.S. has provided UNRWA with $2.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies -- about one-third of the relief agency's total budget. And because instead of investigating this latest black eye-inducing scandal, the U.N. is blasting American troops for defending themselves against such outrageous tactics -- now being emulated by Iraqi guerrilla warriors sniping at our men and women from ambulances in Fallujah.

RECENT actions by Tehran have led to questions about whether Iran was trying to play the Shiite card in Iraq's post-Saddam power game.

Tehran's state-controlled media have launched a campaign to incite Shiites in Bahrain against the kingdom's reform process. And Iran has ordered its clients, notably the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah, to step up disruptive activities to make the transition from occupation to Iraqi sovereignty as difficult as possible.

All this has led to suspicions against Shiites in several Arab countries. That is unfortunate.

The present Iranian regime is based on the ideology of Khomeinism - which is as far removed from Shiism as it is from other mainstream "ways" of Islam.

The first victims of that ideology have been Shiites. The Khomeinists have executed over 100,000 Iranians, mostly Shiites. They also caused the deaths of almost a million other Shiites in the eight-year long Iran-Iraq war. Over 3.5 million Iranians, most of them Shiites, have gone into exile.

Democratic senator - and certain presidential nominee - John F. Kerry gave the middle finger to a Vietnam veteran at the Vietnam Memorial Wall on Memorial Day morning, NewsMax.com has learned.

Ted Sampley, a former Green Beret who served two full tours in Vietnam, spotted Kerry and his Secret Service detail at about 9:00 a.m. Monday morning at the Wall. Sampley walked up to Kerry, extended his hand and said, "Senator, I am Ted Sampley, the head of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, and I am here to escort you away from the Wall because you do not belong here."

At that point a Secret Service officer told Sampley to back away from Kerry. Sampley moved about 6 feet away and opened his jacket to reveal a HANOI JOHN T-shirt.

Kerry then began talking to a group of schoolchildren. Sampley then showed the T-shirt to the children and said, "Kerry does not belong at the Wall because he betrayed the brave soldiers who fought in Vietnam."

Just then Kerry - in front of the school children, other visitors and Secret Service agents - brazenly 'flashed the bird' at Sampley and then yelled out to everyone, "Sampley is a felon!"

Kerry was referring to an incident 12 years ago when Sampley confronted Sen. John McCain's chief aide, Mark Salter, in a Senate stairwell after McCain repeatedly offended POW families at a Senate POW hearing. Sampley, whose father-in-law at that time was MIA in Laos, followed Salter into the stairwell and, when they emerged, Salter had a bloody lip and a broken nose.

Sampley's group, Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, has garnered huge national attention and has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post and on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country." Tens of thousands of Vietnam vets have registered their opposition to Kerry through Sampley's group.

Clearly Sampley has gotten under Kerry's skin once again.

Interviewer: But the incident [Abu Ghraib] nevertheless seriously damaged America's standing. What to say to Polish people after the death of several more of our soldiers?

Edelman: But they died fighting for their freedom. How many thousands of people died in the Warsaw Uprising [in 1944]?

Interviewer: But those people then were fighting for their country.

Edelman: They were fighting for their world. Free and democratic. Just like those who died during the martial law [in Poland in 1981-3]. Did they die only for Poland? No. They died for the freedom of the whole Europe, for the freedom of all those enslaved behind the Iron Curtain.

Interviewer: But the Spanish withdrew their troops from Iraq after the terrorist attack in Madrid.

Edelman: Please don't tell me what the Spanish did. So what? Do you seriously think that it will save them from further attacks? No. The weak just get punched in the head. Pacifism lost a long time ago.