July 2004 Archives

“You the American people — you can reject the tired, old hateful, negative politics of the past.” Republican leaders, said Edwards, are “doing all they can to take this campaign for the highest office in the land down the lowest possible road.”

These guys must have some large cajones if they think they can get away with this. I just have a few questions for Mr. Edwards...

Her name is Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed. She was stopped at McAllen Miller International Airport on July 19 headed to New York.

Eddie Flores of the U.S. Border Patrol office in McAllen, Texas tells FederalNewsRadio.com that a review of her papers raised some concerns.

"In looking at her documents, they did not find any entry documents in her passport where she was legally admitted into the United States," says Flores.

Ahmed produced a South African passport to the agents with four pages torn out, and with no U.S. entry stamps. Ahmed reportedly later confessed to investigators that she entered the country illegally by crossing the Rio Grande River. Ahmed was carrying travel itineraries showing a July 8 flight from Johannesburg, South Africa to London. Six days later, Ahmed traveled from London to Mexico City before attempting to travel from McAllen to New York.

Government sources tell FederalNewsRadio.com that capturing this woman could be comparable to the arrest of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11. It was revealed in court Tuesday that she was on a watch list and had entered the U.S. possibly as many as 250 times...

"The United States is showing off by threatening to use its wild dog, Israel," Revolutionary Guards Commander Seyed Masood Jazayeri was quoted as saying by the Iranian student news agency ISNA.

"They will not hesitate to strike Iran if they are capable of it. However, their threats to attack Iran's nuclear facilities cannot be realized. They are aware Tehran's reaction will be so harsh that Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth and US interests will be easily damaged," he warned.

The commander asserted that Iran would not initiate a conflict, but in retaliation to any attack has proved itself to be "harsh, assertive, hard-hitting and destructive," according to ISNA.

In a speech at the state House here, Kerry said, "We need to turn back some of the creeping un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are creeping into some of our politics." That's where the trouble began.

Colin McNickle, editorial page editor of the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, asked her afterward what she meant by "un-American activities." Kerry then accused him of putting words in her mouth, correctly denying that she ever said "activities." But she also denied saying "un-American," though recordings of her speech show she did say that.

Heinz Kerry walked away from McNickle, but returned seconds later to ask whom he worked for. After she found out he worked for the paper with which she frequently clashes, she told him "shove it."

A spokeswoman later told CNN that Heinz Kerry's reaction stemmed from "sheer frustration, aimed at a right-wing rag, that has consistently and purposely misrepresented the facts in reporting on Mrs. Kerry and her family."

The civil rights and ecological groups said Spain was selling light arms and munitions to the Sudanese government, according to an investigation by researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

The claims came as the US government called on the Sudanese government Friday to prosecute the predominantly Araba Janjaweed militia who are attacking defenceless civilians in the Darfur province...

...Amnesty and Greenpeace claimed Inland Revenue records between February 2003 and January this year showed Spain exported EUR 8,000 worth of small arms and munitions to Sudan, breaking the EU human rights embargo.

Both groups called on the Spanish government to accept responsibility for the sale of these arms and the breaking of the EU sanctions.

The government has not yet commented on the issue.

...In its warning of action against western forces, the previously unknown group said in a statement obtained by Reuters: "We have seen and heard of the American and British interference in Darfur and there is no doubt that this is a crusader war that bears no relation to the citizens of Darfur."

"We call upon you to speedily head towards Darfur and dig deep into the ground mass graves prepared for the crusader army," it added.

Witness said young Sudanese men were handing out the statements to worshippers at the central mosque in the capital, Khartoum...

...Third, Congress did not reorganize itself after the end of the Cold War to address new threats. Recommendations by the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress were implemented, in part, in the House of Representatives after the 1994 elections, but there was no reorganization of national security functions.The Senate undertook no appreciable changes. Traditional issues—foreign policy, defense, intelligence—continued to be handled by committees whose structure remained largely unaltered, while issues such as transnational terrorism fell between the cracks.Terrorism came under the jurisdiction of at least 14 different committees in the House alone, and budget and oversight functions in the House and Senate concerning terrorism were also splintered badly among committees. Little effort was made to consider an integrated policy toward terrorism, which might range from identifying the threat to addressing vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure; and the piecemeal approach in the Congress contributed to the problems of the executive branch in formulating such a policy.

Fourth, the oversight function of Congress has diminished over time. In recent years, traditional review of the administration of programs and the implementation of laws has been replaced by “a focus on personal investigations, possible scandals, and issues designed to generate media attention.” [emphasis mine - Sol] The unglamorous but essential work of oversight has been neglected, and few members past or present believe it is performed well. DCI Tenet told us: “We ran from threat to threat to threat. . . . [T]here was not a system in place to say,‘You got to go back and do this and this and this.’” Not just the DCI but the entire executive branch needed help from Congress in addressing the questions of counterterrorism strategy and policy, looking past day-to-day concerns. Members of Congress, however, also found their time spent on such everyday matters, or in looking back to investigate mistakes, and often missed the big questions—as did the executive branch. Staff tended as well to focus on parochial considerations, seeking to add or cut funding for individual (often small) programs, instead of emphasizing comprehensive oversight projects...

...Each of these trends contributed to what can only be described as Congress’s slowness and inadequacy in treating the issue of terrorism in the years before 9/11. The legislative branch adjusted little and did not restructure itself to address changing threats. Its attention to terrorism was episodic and splintered across several committees. Congress gave little guidance to executive branch agencies, did not reform them in any significant way, and did not systematically perform oversight to identify, address, and attempt to resolve the many problems in national security and domestic agencies that became apparent in the aftermath of 9/11...

In fact, Congress had a distinct tendency to push questions of emerging national security threats off its own plate, leaving them for others to consider. Congress asked outside commissions to do the work that arguably was at the heart of its own oversight responsibilities. Beginning in 1999, the reports of these commissions made scores of recommendations to address terrorism and homeland security but drew little attention from Congress. Most of their impact came after 9/11.

During 1995 and 1996, President Clinton devoted considerable time to seeking cooperation from other nations in denying sanctuary to terrorists. He proposed significantly larger budgets for the FBI, with much of the increase designated for counterterrorism. For the CIA, he essentially stopped cutting allocations and supported requests for supplemental funds for counterterrorism.

When announcing his new national security team after being reelected in 1996, President Clinton mentioned terrorism first in a list of several challenges facing the country.

This lesson was applied, using Tomahawk missiles, early in the Clinton administration. George H.W. Bush was scheduled to visit Kuwait to be honored for his rescue of that country in the Gulf War of 1991. Kuwaiti security services warned Washington that Iraqi agents were planning to assassinate the former president. President Clinton not only ordered precautions to protect Bush but asked about options for a reprisal against Iraq. The Pentagon proposed 12 targets for Tomahawk missiles. Debate in the White House and at the CIA about possible collateral damage pared the list down to three, then to one— Iraqi intelligence headquarters in central Baghdad. The attack was made at night, to minimize civilian casualties.Twenty-three missiles were fired. Other than one civilian casualty, the operation seemed completely successful: the intelligence headquarters was demolished. No further intelligence came in about terrorist acts planned by Iraq.

The 1986 attack in Libya and the 1993 attack on Iraq symbolized for the military establishment effective use of military power for counterterrorism— limited retaliation with air power, aimed at deterrence. What remained was the hard question of how deterrence could be effective when the adversary was a loose transnational network.

These procedures were almost immediately misunderstood and misapplied. As a result, there was far less information sharing and coordination between the FBI and the Criminal Division in practice than was allowed under the department’s procedures. Over time the procedures came to be referred to as “the wall.” The term “the wall” is misleading, however, because several factors led to a series of barriers to information sharing that developed.

The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review became the sole gatekeeper for passing information to the Criminal Division. Though Attorney General Reno’s procedures did not include such a provision, the Office assumed the role anyway, arguing that its position reflected the concerns of Judge Royce Lamberth, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.The Office threatened that if it could not regulate the flow of information to criminal prosecutors, it would no longer present the FBI’s warrant requests to the FISA Court.The information flow withered.

The 1995 procedures dealt only with sharing between agents and criminal prosecutors, not between two kinds of FBI agents, those working on intelligence matters and those working on criminal matters. But pressure from the Office of Intelligence Policy Review, FBI leadership, and the FISA Court built barriers between agents—even agents serving on the same squads. FBI Deputy Director Bryant reinforced the Office’s caution by informing agents that too much information sharing could be a career stopper.Agents in the field began to believe—incorrectly—that no FISA information could be shared with agents working on criminal investigations.

This perception evolved into the still more exaggerated belief that the FBI could not share any intelligence information with criminal investigators, even if no FISA procedures had been used...

Third, the successful use of the legal system to address the first World Trade Center bombing had the side effect of obscuring the need to examine the character and extent of the new threat facing the United States.The trials did not bring the Bin Ladin network to the attention of the public and policymakers...

...The law enforcement process is concerned with proving the guilt of per sons apprehended and charged. Investigators and prosecutors could not present all the evidence of possible involvement of individuals other than those charged, although they continued to pursue such investigations, planning or hoping for later prosecutions.The process was meant, by its nature, to mark for the public the events as finished—case solved, justice done. It was not designed to ask if the events might be harbingers of worse to come. Nor did it allow for aggregating and analyzing facts to see if they could provide clues to terrorist tactics more generally—methods of entry and finance, and mode of operation inside the United States.

Fourth, although the bombing heightened awareness of a new terrorist dan ger, successful prosecutions contributed to widespread underestimation of the threat.The government’s attorneys stressed the seriousness of the crimes, and put forward evidence of Yousef ’s technical ingenuity.Yet the public image that persisted was not of clever Yousef but of stupid Salameh going back again and again to reclaim his $400 truck rental deposit.

In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the ini tiative. In March 1998, after Bin Ladin’s public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin’s Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis. In 1998, Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which culminated in a series of large air attacks in December.

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides’ hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.

Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda—save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against “Crusaders” during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.

To protect his own ties with Iraq,Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad’s control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin’s help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam.There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.

With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request.55 As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections.

Three basic themes emerge from Qutb’s writings. First, he claimed that the world was beset with barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition he called jahiliyya , the religious term for the period of ignorance prior to the revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed). Qutb argued that humans can choose only between Islam and jahiliyya. Second, he warned that more people, including Muslims, were attracted to jahiliyya and its material comforts than to his view of Islam; jahiliyya could therefore triumph over Islam.Third, no middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslims—as he defined them—therefore must take up arms in this fight.Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction.

Bin Ladin shares Qutb’s stark view, permitting him and his followers to rationalize even unprovoked mass murder as righteous defense of an embattled faith. Many Americans have wondered,“Why do ‘they’ hate us?” Some also ask, “What can we do to stop these attacks?”

Bin Ladin and al Qaeda have given answers to both these questions.To the first, they say that America had attacked Islam; America is responsible for all conflicts involving Muslims. Thus Americans are blamed when Israelis fight with Palestinians, when Russians fight with Chechens, when Indians fight with Kashmiri Muslims, and when the Philippine government fights ethnic Muslims in its southern islands.America is also held responsible for the governments of Muslim countries, derided by al Qaeda as “your agents.” Bin Ladin has stated flatly,“Our fight against these governments is not separate from our fight against you.”14 These charges found a ready audience among millions of Arabs and Muslims angry at the United States because of issues ranging from Iraq to Palestine to America’s support for their countries’ repressive rulers.

Bin Ladin’s grievance with the United States may have started in reaction to specific U.S. policies but it quickly became far deeper.To the second question, what America could do, al Qaeda’s answer was that America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture: “It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind.” If the United States did not comply, it would be at war with the Islamic nation, a nation that al Qaeda’s leaders said “desires death more than you desire life.”

The details of what happened on the morning of September 11 are complex, but they play out a simple theme. NORAD and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11, 2001. They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never before encountered and had never trained to meet.

At 10:02 that morning, an assistant to the mission crew commander at NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector in Rome, New York, was working with his colleagues on the floor of the command center. In a brief moment of reflection, he was recorded remarking that “This is a new type of war.”

He was, and is, right. But the conflict did not begin on 9/11. It had been publicly declared years earlier, most notably in a declaration faxed early in 1998 to an Arabic-language newspaper in London. Few Americans had noticed it. The fax had been sent from thousands of miles away by the followers of a Saudi exile gathered in one of the most remote and impoverished countries on earth.

The NEADS commander told us he did not pass along the order because he was unaware of its ramifications. Both the mission commander and the senior weapons director indicated they did not pass the order to the fighters circling Washington and New York because they were unsure how the pilots would, or should, proceed with this guidance. In short, while leaders in Washington believed that the fighters above them had been instructed to “take out” hostile aircraft, the only orders actually conveyed to the pilots were to “ID type and tail.”231 In most cases, the chain of command authorizing the use of force runs from the president to the secretary of defense and from the secretary to the combatant commander.The President apparently spoke to Secretary Rumsfeld for the first time that morning shortly after 10:00. No one can recall the content of this conversation, but it was a brief call in which the subject of shootdown authority was not discussed.

At 10:39, the Vice President updated the Secretary on the air threat conference:

Vice President: There’s been at least three instances here where we’ve had reports of aircraft approaching Washington—a couple were confirmed hijack. And, pursuant to the President’s instructions I gave authorization for them to be taken out. Hello?

SecDef: Yes, I understand.Who did you give that direction to?

Vice President: It was passed from here through the [operations] cen ter at the White House, from the [shelter].

SecDef: OK, let me ask the question here. Has that directive been transmitted to the aircraft?

Vice President: Yes, it has.

SecDef: So we’ve got a couple of aircraft up there that have those instructions at this present time?

Vice President: That is correct. And it’s my understanding they’ve already taken a couple of aircraft out.

SecDef: We can’t confirm that. We’re told that one aircraft is down but we do not have a pilot report that did it.

As this exchange shows, Secretary Rumsfeld was not in the NMCC when the shootdown order was first conveyed. He went from the parking lot to his office (where he spoke to the President), then to the Executive Support Center, where he participated in the White House video teleconference. He moved to the NMCC shortly before 10:30, in order to join Vice Chairman Myers. Secretary Rumsfeld told us he was just gaining situational awareness when he spoke with the Vice President at 10:39. His primary concern was ensuring that the pilots had a clear understanding of their rules of engagement.

At the conference room table was White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten. Bolten watched the exchanges and, after what he called “a quiet moment,” suggested that the Vice President get in touch with the President and confirm the engage order. Bolten told us he wanted to make sure the President was told that the Vice President had executed the order. He said he had not heard any prior discussion on the subject with the President.

The Vice President was logged calling the President at 10:18 for a two minute conversation that obtained the confirmation. On Air Force One, the President’s press secretary was taking notes; Ari Fleischer recorded that at 10:20, the President told him that he had authorized a shootdown of aircraft if necessary.

Minutes went by and word arrived of an aircraft down in Pennsylvania.

Those in the shelter wondered if the aircraft had been shot down pursuant to this authorization.

The President remained in the classroom for another five to seven minutes, while the children continued reading. He then returned to a holding room shortly before 9:15, where he was briefed by staff and saw television coverage. He next spoke to Vice President Cheney, Dr. Rice, New York Governor George Pataki, and FBI Director Robert Mueller. He decided to make a brief statement from the school before leaving for the airport.The Secret Service told us they were anxious to move the President to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door.

Between 9:15 and 9:30, the staff was busy arranging a return to Washington, while the President consulted his senior advisers about his remarks. No one in the traveling party had any information during this time that other aircraft were hijacked or missing. Staff was in contact with the White House Situation Room, but as far as we could determine, no one with the President was in contact with the Pentagon.The focus was on the President’s statement to the nation.The only decision made during this time was to return to Washington.

The President’s motorcade departed at 9:35, and arrived at the airport between 9:42 and 9:45. During the ride the President learned about the attack on the Pentagon. He boarded the aircraft, asked the Secret Service about the safety of his family, and called the Vice President. According to notes of the call, at about 9:45 the President told the Vice President:“Sounds like we have a minor war going on here, I heard about the Pentagon.We’re at war . . . somebody’s going to pay.”206 About this time, Card, the lead Secret Service agent, the President’s military aide, and the pilot were conferring on a possible destination for Air Force One. The Secret Service agent felt strongly that the situation in Washington was too unstable for the President to return there, and Card agreed. The President strongly wanted to return to Washington and only grudgingly agreed to go elsewhere.The issue was still undecided when the President conferred with the Vice President at about the time Air Force One was taking off. The Vice President recalled urging the President not to return to Washington.Air Force One departed at about 9:54 without any fixed destination.The objective was to get up in the air—as fast and as high as possible—and then decide where to go.

At 8:55, before entering the classroom, the President spoke to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who was at the White House. She recalled first telling the President it was a twin-engine aircraft—and then a commercial aircraft—that had struck the World Trade Center, adding “that’s all we know right now, Mr. President.”184 At the White House,Vice President Dick Cheney had just sat down for a meeting when his assistant told him to turn on his television because a plane had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The Vice President was wondering “how the hell could a plane hit the World Trade Center” when he saw the second aircraft strike the South Tower.

Elsewhere in the White House, a series of 9:00 meetings was about to begin.

In the absence of information that the crash was anything other than an accident, the White House staff monitored the news as they went ahead with their regular schedules.

The defense of U.S. airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with preexisting training and protocols. It was improvised by civilians who had never handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disappear, and by a military unprepared for the transformation of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction. As it turned out, the NEADS air defenders had nine minutes’ notice on the first hijacked plane, no advance notice on the second, no advance notice on the third, and no advance notice on the fourth.

We do not believe that the true picture of that morning reflects discredit on the operational personnel at NEADS or FAA facilities. NEADS commanders and officers actively sought out information, and made the best judgments they could on the basis of what they knew. Individual FAA controllers, facility managers, and Command Center managers thought outside the box in recommending a nationwide alert, in ground-stopping local traffic, and, ultimately, in deciding to land all aircraft and executing that unprecedented order flawlessly.

Daniel Lewin was seated in first class when he saw two of the hijackers - group leader Mohammed Ata and Abdul Aziz al-Omri - getting up in order to enter the cockpit and take control of the plane, according to the report.

The Israeli tried to stop the two, but a third hijacker sitting behind him, identified as Satam al-Sukami, stabbed Lewin. It is not known whether he was killed or injured, but according to a telephone conversation from a stewardess aboard the plane, Lewin was badly wounded.

Lewin, 31, was a founder of the hi-tech company Akamai, based in Boston. He was born in the United States but immigrated to Israel at the age of 14 with his parents.

Lewin served in the Israel Defense Forces' elite Sayeret Matkal unit. The report said that Lewin had served as an IDF officer for four years. He is survived by his wife and two sons.

Lehman says that Clarke's original testimony included "a searing indictment of some Clinton officials and Clinton policies." That was the Clarke, evenhanded in his criticisms of both the Bush and Clinton administrations, who Lehman and other Republican commissioners expected to show up at the public hearings. It was a surprise "that he would come out against Bush that way." Republicans were taken aback: "It caught us flat-footed, but not the Democrats."

Clarke's performance poisoned the public hearings, leading to weeks of a partisan slugfest. Lehman says Republican commissioners felt they had to fight back, adding to the partisan atmosphere. "What triggered it was Dick Clarke," says Lehman. "We couldn't sit back and let him get away with what he wanted to get away with." He adds, "We were hijacked by a combination of Viacom and the Kerry campaign in the handling of Clarke's testimony."

But Lehman is proud of the unanimous final report released today. It reflects the more sober, behind-the-scenes work of the commission: "By and large it was nothing like you saw in those public hearings." Lehman calls the final report "very feisty," with significant forward-looking recommendations...

''It seems like there was supposed to be a party, but it turned out to be a private party," said the 51-year-old Pasquale, who was deluged with media attention yesterday as the 24-foot-long, 4-foot-high banner draped across the building started getting noticed. ''They have 30,000 prepared meals . . . I put my food against anybody, but you can't compete against a free meal."

Pasquale said he will vote for Bush again and said that if the Texan ever comes to Boston, he hopes the president makes Halftime Pizza, located at the corner of Friend and Causeway streets, one of his stops.

Pasquale said he once served Democratic nominee John F. Kerry some pizza years back, but never expected the Massachusetts senator would one day be running for president.

Pasquale said that his two sisters, both Democrats, are not happy about the sign and that they are also concerned there might be repercussions. Still, he won't take the sign down.

''I got it bolted into the brick," he said.

Pasquale, who lives on the North Shore, is not only skipping the convention; he is also skipping the country during his week off. He will be golfing in Canada.

At three seconds after 10 a.m., Mr. Jarrah is heard on the cockpit voice recorder saying: "Is that it? Shall we finish it off?"

But another hijacker responds: "No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off."

The voice recorder captured sounds of continued fighting, and Mr. Jarrah pitched the plane up and then down. A passenger is heard to say, "In the cockpit. If we don't we'll die!"

Then a passenger yelled "Roll it!" Some aviation experts have speculated that this was a reference to a food cart, being used as a battering ram.

Mr. Jarrah "stopped the violent maneuvers" at 10:01:00, according to the report, and said, "Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!"

"He then asked another hijacker in the cockpit, `Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?' to which the other replied, `Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.' "

Eighty seconds later, a hijacker is heard to say, "Pull it down! Pull it down!"

"The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them," according to the report, which seems to indicate that the hijackers themselves crashed the plane. "With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes' flying time from Washington, D.C," according to the report.

What he did not know as he labored through that long Thursday was that the same Archives employees who were solicitously retrieving documents for him were also watching their important visitor with a suspicious eye.

After Berger's previous visit, in September, Archives officials believed documents were missing. This time, they specially coded the papers to more easily tell whether some disappeared, said government officials and legal sources familiar with the case.

The notion of one of Washington's most respected foreign policy figures being subjected to treatment that had at least a faint odor of a sting operation is a strange one...

"Oh, do you mean Arab music?" inquired Angie, who answered Sycuan's phone. Yes, they had had an Arab act perform on July 1, an artist named Nour Mehana. Terry, Angie's supervisor at Sycuan, confirmed that he was there and that there was probably a backup band brought in, since there's no house band at Sycuan. In fractions of a second, Mr. Google found a website for Sycuan's event promoters, Anthem Artists, whose archive confirms Nour Mehana performed at Sycuan on 7/01/04.

And then I noticed something that was truly terrifying, something linking Nour Mehana to a figure of such repulsive evil that I felt a rush of prickly fear not unlike Jacobsen's: Just one week later, the same company that arranged Mehana's performance, also booked Carrot Top!

I talked to James Cullen of Anthem Artists who confirms that Nour Mehana's large band did arrive on Northwest Flight 327. Some of them came in from Detroit, and some from Lebanon. Cullen says they never said anything about a disturbance on the flight to him, even though "I stayed in the same hotel, they were nice, they stayed right above me." He said that they were fine musicians, put on a great show, and he would work with them again in the future.

Cullen did receive a follow-up e-mail from the Department of Homeland Security, asking him to confirm that the band had played their gig at Sycuan. He had read Jacobsen's article and concluded that some "people are just paranoid." A pilot himself, Cullen insisted that the patterns Jacobsen perceived wouldn't occur to him. "We should take pride in our system. We've got to trust our system." (Cullen made it clear that he opposes "this crazy Bush Iraq war sh*t," but it is important to bear in mind that Cullen also admitted to booking Carrot Top.)

Nour Mehana (a.k.a. Noor Mehanna, or Nour Mhanna, plus various permutations of those spellings) is, in fact, Syrian. He performs both "new-agey" hits and old sentimental Middle Eastern classics in a style called Tarab. In this catchy ten-minute video of Mehana on stage, (scroll down; the name is rendered Noor Mhanan this time ) you can see he has a rather large backup band helping him out. (The resolution is low, but Jacobsen might recognize some of the band members Mehanna is interacting with.) Followers of news from Iraq may have heard about the U.S. tour of the "Iraqi Elvis." Well, Mehana comes across not as an angry jihadi, but rather more like the Syrian Wayne Newton...

"We announce that we have taken two Kenyans, three Indians and one Egyptian captive," said one of the gunmen who appeared on the video with a group of presumed hostages.

He said their company should withdraw from Iraq and closes its offices there, threatening to kill a hostage every 72 hours if it does not.

The video showed an Egyptian who said his name was Mohammed Ali Sanad pleading with his company to leave.

The United States has persistently complained the Palestinians have failed to investigate fully the bombing of a U.S. diplomatic convoy but officials had not directly blamed Arafat for the handling of the probe before.

"There has been no satisfactory resolution of this case. We can only conclude that there has been a political decision taken by the chairman [Arafat] to block further progress in this investigation," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield told lawmakers.

A Palestinian Authority court in March ordered the release of four Palestinians who were charged with involvement in the October strike because of lack of evidence.

The attack strained relations already frayed by Washington's efforts to sideline Arafat and U.S. criticism of the Palestinian Authority's failure to crack down on militants who attack Israelis.

Satterfield's remarks at a congressional hearing on the Middle East conflict add pressure on Arafat, who faces the stiffest challenge to his leadership since Palestinians received a measure of self-rule from Israel a decade ago.

U.S. officials have called the bombing the first fatal attack to deliberately target Americans since the Palestinian uprising began in 2000. The convoy was driving to Gaza City to interview applicants for U.S. Fulbright scholarships.

The transfer was ordered by Peter Hansen, UNRWA commissioner general in Gaza, who is also responsible for the security of all the UN organizations operating in the strip. According to a Hansen spokesman, the transfer of the 20 was the result of "the security situation in the area of the Erez Junction and Beit Hanoun, where IDF forces are operating and which endanger the movement of UN people entering and leaving Gaza."

But other international groups operating in Gaza said that the real reason for the redeployment of the civilian foreigners is the deteriorating security in recent months, and particularly the events in Gaza last weekend when French aid workers were briefly kidnapped by armed Palestinians...

The sources said that a demonstration of thousands that took place during the IDF operation in Rafah was actually meant to reach a Gaza City compound where Roed Larsen was often located. During the march, 17 armed men managed to get inside the compound, and when they didn't find the Norwegian diplomat they demanded he make an appearance, and at the same time they began summoning the media. Roed Larsen refused to comply with their demand and eventually the armed men left. The UN subsequently learned the armed men planned to hold Roed Larsen hostage while they made demands...

...THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE ISSUED A SCATHING REPORT THIS MONTH ON THE FAILURE OF PREWAR INTELLIGENCE ON IRAQ. WOULD YOU HAVE VOTED TO GO TO WAR HAD YOU KNOWN WHAT WE KNOW NOW ABOUT THE FAULTY INTELLIGENCE? Yes, because I believe that Saddam Hussein, if he were still in power, would be attempting to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction...

The women singers stirred up racial hatred against black civilians during attacks on villages in Darfur and celebrated the humiliation of their enemies, the human rights group said.

"[They] appear to be the communicators during the attacks. They are reportedly not actively involved in attacks on people, but participate in acts of looting."

Amnesty International collected several testimonies mentioning the presence of Hakama while women were raped by the Janjaweed. The report said:"Hakama appear to have directly harassed the women [who were] assaulted, and verbally attacked them."

During an attack on the village of Disa in June last year, Arab women accompanied the attackers and sang songs praising the government and scorning the black villagers.

According to an African chief quoted in the report, the singers said: "The blood of the blacks runs like water, we take their goods and we chase them from our area and our cattle will be in their land. The power of [Sudanese president Omer Hassan] al-Bashir belongs to the Arabs and we will kill you until the end, you blacks, we have killed your God."

The chief said that the Arab women also racially insulted women from the village: "You are gorillas, you are black, and you are badly dressed."...

...Another human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, today publishes alleged Sudanese government documents showing that it was much more closely involved with the Janjaweed than it has so far admitted.

The documents, which Human Rights Watch said it had obtained from the civilian administration in Darfur and are dated February and March this year, call for "provisions and ammunition" to be delivered to known Janjaweed militia leaders, camps and "loyalist tribes".

One document orders all security units in the area to tolerate the activities of Musa Hilal, the alleged Janjaweed leader in north Darfur interviewed by the Guardian last week.

Peter Takirambudde, the executive director of Human Rights Watch's Africa division, said: "These documents show that militia activity has not just been condoned, it's been specifically supported by Sudan government officials."...

During a later phone conversation I had with Boettcher, he told me that based on his experience, it was his opinion that I was likely on a dry run. He said he's had many of these experiences and so have many of his fellow captains. They've been trying to speak out about this but so far their words have been falling on deaf ears.

According to Mark Bogosian, B-757/767 pilot for American Airlines, "The incident you wrote about, and incidents like it, occur more than you like to think. It is a â€ËÅ"dirty little secret' that all of us, as crew members, have known about for quite some time."

Rand K. Peck, captain for a major U.S. airline, sent the following email: "I just finished reading Annie Jacobsen's article, TERROR IN THE SKIES, AGAIN? I only wish that it had been written by a reporter from The Washington Post or The New York Times. My response would have been one of shock as to how insensitive of them to dare write such a piece. After all, citizens or not, don't these people have rights too?

But the piece was in The [Wall Street] Journal, a publication that I admire and read daily. I'm deeply bothered by the inconsistencies that I observe at TSA. I've observed matronly looking grandmothers, practically disrobed at security check points and five-year-old blonde boys turned inside out, while Middle Eastern males sail through undetained.

We have little to fear from grandmothers and little boys. But Middle Eastern males are protected, not by our Constitution, but from our current popular policy of political correctness and a desire to offend no one at any cost, regardless of how many airplanes and bodies litter the landscape. This is my personal opinion, formed by my experiences and observations."

This brings us to the heart of the matter -- political correctness...

In a vote of 431 to 62, the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA compared Israel's policies to those of South Africa and approved gathering data to support a selective divestment of holdings in multinational corporations doing business in Israel/ Palestine, a July 2 church release noted. The church's liaison to the Middle East, Rev. Victor Makari, noted after the vote that if nothing else seems to have changed the policy of Israel toward Palestinians, we need to send a clear and strong message.

In a letter to the church's leader Clifton Kirkpatrick, Anti-Defamation League interfaith affairs director Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor called the resolutions offensive and distressing.

To assert that there is a moral equivalency between the racist policy of apartheid and the efforts to protect the citizenry of Israel is unconscionable, Bretton-Granatoor wrote.

Whatever the cause, many main-line Protestant leaders have effectively been co-opted by the world-wide Jihad against Israel and against America and against infidels everywhere - without, of course, being aware of WHO has co-opted them, or how they are being used...

Palestinian deputy cabinet minister Sufyan Abu Zaida said Musa Arafat was considered one of most corrupt officials in the Authority, and the commander of the Palestinian naval forces submitted his resignation Sunday in protest.

But Musa Arafat said Sunday he would not resign, despite the protests.

Palestinians will not accept the nomination, and unrest in Gaza will only grow, Abu Zaida told Army Radio.

"This is infuriating," Abu Zaida said. "This shows disregard for people and their opinions. This is intolerable disregard, and in Gaza, thousands will rise up against this decision."

Juma Ghali, commander of the Palestinian navy, submitted his resignation to protest the appointment as well as the recent instability in Gaza, described Saturday by Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia as "unprecendented chaos."

Capping a weekend of crisis in the PA, dozens of Palestinian gunmen stormed an office of the Palestinian intelligence service early Sunday, opening fire on security guards inside, smashing furniture and burning down the one-story building, witnesses said.

The attack by the gunmen - who belong to an extreme offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement - was the latest round of violence in the Gaza Strip after a weekend of kidnappings, demonstrations and protests against reforms in the Palestinian Authority security forces...

"Finding operatives with U.S. [citizenship or legal residency] status would greatly facilitate al Qaeda's ability to carry out an attack within the United States," the bulletin said...

Wanted for defying an American ban on doing business with Yugoslavia in 1992, the onetime world chess champion was arrested by Japanese immigration officials Tuesday as he tried to fly out of Tokyo's Narita airport. Fischer, who was headed to the Philippines, stands accused by the Japanese of traveling on a revoked American passport.

The man often said to possess the world's most brilliant chess mind, and a great eccentric in a game that has many, sits in an airport jail facing deportation and subsequent arrest by US marshals as early as tomorrow.

Returning to the United States in handcuffs would mark a bitter homecoming for the Brooklyn-raised exile. In the 1960s and '70s, Fischer transformed chess from nerdy to sexy and became a Cold War-era hero by vanquishing Boris Spassky, the Soviet Union's best, in the strange but legendary world championship contest of 1972.

He has been a recluse almost since then. Now 61, Fischer has emerged in public only fitfully in recent years, usually to berate the US government for what he regards as its evil foreign policies and to cast himself the victim of persecution by ''world Jewry."

The prospect of a return to face trial on the 1992 charge, which could carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a $50,000 fine, looks increasingly probable...

They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.

They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".

The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun.

But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence.
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Iraq's Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib, is said to have looked on and congratulated him when the job was done. Mr al-Naqib's office has issued a verbal denial.

The names of three of the alleged victims have been obtained by the Herald.

One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners Dr Allawi had told those around him that he wanted to send a clear message to the police on how to deal with insurgents.

"The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them."...

In the Treasury Department's monthly budget statement, June income outpaced spending by $19.14 billion, slightly less than the government's June 2003 surplus of $21.23 billion.

"What we are seeing is the impact of a good economy, the impact of extraordinarily strong corporate profits, and likely the impact of more people being caught in the alternative minimum tax," Drew Matus, financial markets economist at Lehman Brothers in New York, said in response to the report.

"Surprisingly strong receipts are really helping out a great deal here. There is no reason to suspect, given the employment growth we have seen, that this trend will change any time soon," he said.

The June result exceeded Wall Street forecasts of a $16.50 billion surplus, as well as a $16 billion surplus projection from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office...

The court's main business was to order Israel to tear down the security fence separating Israelis from Palestinians. The fence is only one-quarter built, and yet it has already resulted in an astonishing reduction in suicide attacks in Israel. In the past four months, two Israelis have died in suicide attacks, compared with 166 killed in the same time frame at the height of the terrorism.

But what are 164 dead Jews to this court? Israel finally finds a way to stop terrorism, and 14 eminences sitting in The Hague rule it illegal -- in a 64-page opinion in which the word terrorism appears not once (except when citing Israeli claims)...

On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young son. Also on our flight were 14 Middle Eastern men between the ages of approximately 20 and 50 years old. What I experienced during that flight has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats...

"I think you would see us continue a very hard line on the nonproliferation issue and support for dissident elements inside Iran would pick up," a senior administration official said. He ruled out military action.

Added another Republican insider said, "My understanding is that this tough view is one that has been expressed by the president himself on a number of occasions lately."

Reflecting a different approach, Kerry foreign policy adviser Rand Beers told Reuters in an interview: "Yes, we would be prepared to talk to Iran."

He said the Democratic candidate is "not naive" and recognizes deep differences between the two countries. These include nuclear proliferation, the Arab-Israeli conflict and policy toward Iran's neighbor Iraq.

"But we do think there are some issues about which we can talk and can move forward and hopefully those issues would represent building blocks on which to base a broader degree of cooperation," Beers said...

When McKinney was unseated two years ago, her father, Billy McKinney, who lost his state legislature seat in the same election, spelled out just who he held responsible: " J-E-W-S." There were no objections or apologies from his daughter...

In a much-publicized 2001 incident, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani turned down a $10 million gift to the city from bin Talal after the prince implied that U.S. policy in the Middle East was to blame for the 9/11 attacks. Shortly thereafter, McKinney wrote a letter to bin Talal apologizing for Giuliani's actions and saying that she was "disappointed" that Giuliani had declined bin Talal's "generous offer."

When it comes to blaming America first, McKinney has few equals. In September 2001, she refused to join the U.S. delegation in walking out of the rabidly anti-American and anti-Semitic "World Conference Against Racism" in Durban, South Africa. Instead, she issued a press release calling her country's behavior at the conference "obnoxious."

McKinney has complained that "thousands of Muslims and Arab Americans . . . have been detained on secret evidence, no evidence, no charges," as a result of the War on Terror. She's also blamed American sanctions for causing "the death of over one million innocent Iraqis."...

"Terje Roed-Larsen's statement is not objective. As of today he is an unwelcome person in Palestinian territories," Nabil Abu Rudeineh told Reuters, referring to remarks by the envoy at the United Nations on Tuesday.

Larsen accused Arafat of giving "only nominal and partial support" to Egyptian efforts to support Palestinian security reforms demanded by the international community in an effort to end almost four years of Middle East violence...

"What? Did they rape you?"
"How dare you work with the occupation? Aren't you ashamed?"
"Are you Muslim?"
"You're a pretty girl. They will rape you. I heard that they rape Iraqi women on the street."

I left the Arab chat room and entered an Iranian one. These were a number of the replies I got after informing them of my exciting job:

"Really, that's cool"
"Great"
"Cool"
"I like America" These words came from an Iranian Turk who hates the Persians and wants America to invade his country so that Turks would get their rights in Iran!

I won't comment on the Arab replies because I'm sure you all know why I got them. But what made the Iranian youth who frequent those chat rooms react in such a different way than their Arab counterparts? Isn't Iran supposed to be one of America's enemies? Didn't these kids chant "death to America" every morning in their school lines? Didn't they sing the song that their religious rulers invented which includes a verse saying "the blood of Iran's youth is dripping from America's nails?" Why did I get such reactions? Why were they the only Muslims who voluntarily held vigils after 911...

Operation Give, the blogosphere's effort to help U.S. service members and Iraqi children, has had $30,000 (THIRTY THOUSAND) dollars stolen from it by a company in Atlanta!!!

We are horrified, we are angry, and we need your help.

Please. We have shipped tens of thousands of toys to Iraq, but now one shipping company has made off like bandits with enough money to buy a small house in some parts of the country. They took it as a deposit for shipping and did not return it or make good on it. Money you gave, money I gave, and toys you shipped to our warehouse have evaporated into thin air because a shipping company in Atlanta made off with money we gave them in good faith to pay for their shipping services.

This is big people. THEY FUCKING STOLE FROM US. They're in Atlanta. Please, if you have a weblog, link the Chief's story, and if you know anyone in law enforcement or with other legal means to help us figure out what's going on and to get that money back, please help us.

This isn't funny. This is money we gave to help Iraqi children and to help our brave and noble service members serving over there. WE GOT RIPPED OFF, AND WE NEED TO GET THESE PEOPLE AND GET THAT MONEY BACK.

This isn't funny, and it isn't minor. Please help if you can.

Sky News has gained access to a young people's camp in Gaza, where the only lesson taught is how to kill Israelis.

Sky's Middle East Correspondent Emma Hurd said the camp, at an undisclosed location, had been set up to drill children in the ways of war.

The recruits, some of whom are dwarfed by their AK-47 assault rifles, are taught how to carry out ambushes.

They are also made to do an obstacle course, crawling under barbed wire and leaping through hoops of fire while their instructors fire live bullets overhead.

Hurd witnessed one training session in which a militant, dressed as a Jewish settler complete with yarmulke skull cap, was ambushed in his car.Gunmen pulled the "settler" from his vehicle and Hurd was told if this had been real he would have been killed.

She spoke to two 10-year-old recruits.

One of them, Mustafa, said he wanted to shoot down Israeli aircraft and blow up tanks.

The camp is run by a group called the Popular Resistance Committee, which said the next generation of Palestinians needed to know how to fight the Israeli "occupation".

The boys even "graduate" at the end of their training, receiving a certificate from the camp commander.

The 23-year-old woman and her male companion were detained after police called them in to discuss the alleged attack, in which she said six knife-wielding youths of Arab and African origin had daubed swastikas on her stomach on a Paris train.

"She admitted to inventing the whole thing," the judicial source said.

The woman, identified only as Marie L., had alleged the attackers wrongly thought she was a Jew and also toppled a stroller carrying her 13-month-old baby.

When news of Friday's alleged attack emerged, Chirac and other leading French politicians condemned it.

But anti-racism group Mrap criticised officials for being too quick to blame youths of Arab and African origin.

"Mrap strongly condemns the irresponsible comments of people who took advantage of this invention to once more use anti-Semitism as a tool against a specific group of people," it said in a statement.

Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope told RTL radio a rising trend of anti-Semitic attacks was "a genuine evil" in France, even if the woman's case might not be real.

Whether the woman's account proved true or not, he said, has little bearing on France's need to act against growing intolerance toward minorities and the violence that stems from it.

"The explosion of the number of racist and anti-Semitic acts committed in our country in the last few years is a reality that we must combat," Cope said.

The Interior Ministry released figures last week showing that hate crimes had spiked in the first half of the year. There were 510 anti-Jewish acts or threats in the first six months of 2004 - nearly as many as in all of last year, 593...

Larsen also criticized Israel for failing to remove illegal settlement outposts and freeze settlement building.

"The PA, despite consistent promises by its leadership, has made no progress on its core obligation to take immediate action on the ground to end violence and combat terror and to reform and reorganize the Palestinian Authority," Larsen said in his monthly report to the Security Council on the situation in the territories.

In what is considered a rare attack on the Arafat ["the Arafat," I like that. -Sol], Larsen said: "Regarding the crucial area of security reforms, the president of the PA has lent only nominal and partial support to the commendable Egyptian effort aimed at reforming the ailing Palestinian security services.

"All those who yearn for peace have already and repeatedly argued President Arafat, in public and in private, [must] take immediate action to restore this diminished credibility," Larsen said...

Dear Ms. Cahill:

On Thursday your campaign hosted a fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall at which Sen. Kerry said, "Every performer tonight in their own way either verbally through their music through their lyrics have conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."

I called on your campaign to release the performance that Sen. Kerry said represented the "heart and soul" of America so that all Americans could see for themselves what John Kerry thinks represents the "heart and soul" of our country.

Do most Americans in their hearts, think that calling the President a "thug" and a "killer" represents the "heart and soul" of our nation? We don't think so, but we think voters should decide for themselves by watching the celebrities John Kerry said captured the "heart and soul" of America.

Your Senior Advisor Tad Devine said that you believed that releasing musical performances "might violate copyrights and licensing agreements for the entertainers who performed and allow the Bush campaign to use the tape in commercials against Kerry and Edwards"

I have been assured that "fair use" rules of copyright would allow you to release the tapes of these musical performances to the news media under 2 U.S.C. 107. To allay the other concern you relayed to the news media, Bush-Cheney '04 pledges to refrain from using audio, video or transcripts of the event for any television, cable, satellite or radio advertising. We look forward to seeing this spirited display.

Sincerely,

Ken Mehlman
Campaign Manager

Instead of taking his $26.9 million in earnings directly in the following four years, he paid himself a salary of $360,000 a year and took the rest as corporate dividends. Since salary is subject to 2.9% Medicare tax but dividends aren't, that meant he shielded more than 90% of his income. That's not necessarily illegal, but dodging such a large chunk of employment tax skates perilously close to the line...

...Mrs. Heinz Kerry's finances remain largely a closed book, since she has so far refused to release her tax returns. What we do know so far is that she has prepaid $750,000 in federal taxes on $5.1 million in income for 2003--an effective tax rate of 15%. That is because a significant portion of the income came from tax-free municipal bonds, which is perfectly legal.

Even so, her net income must be much higher. We know that since the death of her husband John Heinz in 1991, Mrs. Heinz Kerry has invested shrewdly and possibly even doubled her inheritance. Even if one takes a conservative estimate of her net worth, say $1 billion, an income of $5.1 million means a paltry return of just 0.5%. More likely, the majority of her investment income is sheltered within trusts so that tax is deferred until she or her family actually wants to spend it. Again, perfectly legal, but this is a luxury that the average middle-class professional working for a wage does not have. These are the non-rich who will pay the bulk of any Kerry tax increase...

The senator, in Boston for the day, hopped in his motorcade at the Four Seasons, drove around the Boston Public Garden and arrived at the memorial with his sizable entourage in tow.

Press were kept away but several family members, speaking privately, said they were miffed that Kerry arrived after most other pols - such as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Rep. Martin T. Meehan, and Attorney General Tom Reilly - had all left.

And Kerry stayed much longer than the other leaders, shaking hands, posing for photos before he left with just as much commotion.

``I bet he couldn't even name anybody on that wall,'' said the wife of one 9/11 victim, who spoke on the condition her name not be used...

"To bobbitt" is a new word in the English language, referring to amputation of the penis with a pair of scissors. John Bobbitt's male member was cut off by his wife, Lorena Bobbitt in 1993.

Da'or, who represented Israel in the recent Eurovision Song Contest, claimed the reference links his name with emasculation.

The Tel Aviv District Court approved the movie's withdrawal at Daor's urgent behest, and the distributors of the movie changed the sentence on Monday to "let's take a sword and castrate him," after which the film returned to the screens.

Shrek is big business. The movie has grossed about $420 million worldwide since its release two months ago.

Now, almost a decade later, Fox News Channel has left both CNN and MSNBC in the dust. There's no guarantee that this is permanent, of course. But it certainly has the left in a panic. They hated it that American conservatism had any voice at all, back when it was confined to a few radio talk shows--remember how everybody wanted to blame Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-radio hosts for the Oklahoma City bombing?

Now, though, to have Fox News Channel be the source for the largest portion of America's TV news junkies just sticks in their craw. How could such a thing happen? Scott Collins, author of "Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN," thinks he has the answer.

It's not what Fox claims--that the American news media have a pronounced and painful liberal bias, so that huge numbers of Americans had given up on TV news, only to return in droves when Fox News offered them a balanced, trustworthy source of information. No, it's that a large number of Americans believed that the news was biased. How they got this idea is that they were . . . hmmm . . . idiots? But no matter. Mr. Collins repeatedly states that the perception is what mattered, and by homing in on the audience dumb enough to think the media was biased, Fox News won the ratings race (but not, of course, the race for quality news coverage)...

...Burr became vice president, but Jefferson grew apart from him, and he did not support Burr's renomination to a second term in 1804. That year, a faction of New York Federalists, who had found their fortunes drastically diminished after the ascendance of Jefferson, sought to enlist the disgruntled Burr into their party and elect him governor. Hamilton campaigned against Burr with great fervor, and Burr lost the Federalist nomination and then, running as an independent for governor, the election. In the campaign, Burr's character was savagely attacked by Hamilton and others, and after the election he resolved to restore his reputation by challenging Hamilton to a duel, or an "affair of honor," as they were known.

Affairs of honor were commonplace in America at the time, and the complex rules governing them usually led to an honorable resolution before any actual firing of weapons. In fact, the outspoken Hamilton had been involved in several affairs of honor in his life, and he had resolved most of them peaceably. No such recourse was found with Burr, however, and on July 11, 1804, the enemies met at 7 a.m. at the dueling grounds near Weehawken, New Jersey. It was the same spot where Hamilton's son had died defending his father's honor two years before...

Inside Darfur, the same Janjaweed who razed the farming villages of refugees are now "guarding" concentration camps where those refugees are gathered. These camps have to be liberated. The people in them have to have food and medical care delivered to them. And then they have to be returned to their villages and protected while they revive their agricultural way of life.

There is no way to stop the Darfur genocide other than a humanitarian military intervention. In accord with the 1948 Convention on Genocide, the UN Security Council should pass such a resolution and invite a coalition of willing life savers to enter Darfur and rescue a million fellow human beings.

The Supreme Court of Israel recognized the unquestionable reality that the security fence has saved numerous lives and promises to save more, but it also recognized that this benefit must be weighed against the material disadvantages to West Bank Palestinians. The International Court, on the other hand, discounted the saving of lives and focused only on the Palestinian interests. By showing its preference for Palestinian property rights over the lives of Jews, the International Court displayed its bigotry...

"The British government has learned," Bush had said in his State of the Union address in January, "that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

A furor erupted over that statement when a CIA consultant and ex-diplomat named Joseph Wilson, who had gone to Niger in 2002 to look into the matter, publicly claimed that the charge wasn't true. The White House agreed that the line shouldn't have been in Bush's speech, but far from quelling the uproar, that admission only intensified it.

Within days, Howard Dean was making comparisons to Watergate, a group of left-leaning former intelligence officers were calling for the resignation of Vice President Dick Cheney (who had taken a close interest in the uranium evidence), and the Bush-is-a-liar shrieking reached fever pitch. The Democratic National Committee cut an ad accusing Bush of deliberately lying to the American people. And the press embarked on a classic feeding frenzy, turning loose a tidal wave of coverage on what had been, by any sober estimate, only a very small piece of the administration's case against Saddam.

Upshot: Bush's credibility took a blow, support for the war in Iraq was undermined, and the idea that Saddam's regime had tried to acquire refined uranium in Africa for use in nuclear weapons was dismissed as false.

But what if it was true?

"I heard a massive explosion and ran to the scene," said Hagit Cohen, who lives one block away from the bus stop. "I thought it was the end of the world."

The bombing was the first in Israel since March, when two suicide bombers slipped out of the Gaza Strip and killed 10 Israelis in the southern port of Ashdod.

Five of the wounded sustained moderate-to-serious injuries.

Israel Radio reported that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - the armed branch of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement - claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the bombing avenged "assassinations" of two top Brigades commanders and the killings of other Palestinians in IDF incursions in Gaza and the West Bank this year.

Following the attack, police closed off a large section of the street - a main thoroughfare in the city - and scoured the area for additional devices. Several Palestinians in the area who lack authorization to be in Israel were briefly detained.

"I heard a massive explosion and ran to the scene," said Hagit Cohen who lives one street away from the blast. "I thought it was the end of the world."

Shutters on the building adjacent to the blast were torn off and windows in shops, homes and a bus shattered over the sidewalk and street...

...Eyewitness Shlomi Ben-Amo told Israel Radio, "I was driving to work when I heard the boom. A female soldier flew in the air. There was hysteria and everything flew into the air."

Magen David Adom emergency services said most of the injured were only slightly wounded. Four people have been evacuated to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, five to the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon and three to the Tel Hashomer Medical Center in Ramat Gan.

According to one of the passengers aboard the bus, 25-year-old Yarden Brihon from Bat Yam, the force of the blast knocked several people to the floor.

"I saw a pregnant woman fall over; she was hurt," added Brihon. "The driver opened the doors and everyone managed to get off the bus. The blast happened a second after we pulled into the bus station."

Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim said that it was likely that Palestinians who planted the bomb slipped into Israel from the West Bank in places where the separation fence has yet to be constructed...

We have this information about the Bremer speech because Fadhil and his brothers are bloggers who file their own reports on the Internet (iraqthemodel.blogspot.com). I had never heard of "Iraq the Model," but Margie Wylie of Newhouse News Service produced a good story June 29 about Fadhil's blogging and Bremer's talk.

Word that Bremer actually gave the speech is something of a collector's item among American reporters. The Washington Post said Bremer left without giving a talk. The Los Angeles Times did worse. It missed the speech, then insulted Bremer for not giving it. A July 4 Times "news analysis" said: "L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian administrator for Iraq, left without even giving a final speech to the country -- almost as if he were afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year." This is a good one-sentence example of what readers object to in much Iraq reporting -- dubious or wrong information combined with a heavy load of attitude from the reporter...

A friend of mine who his relative work in the Iraqi army told me later that it was indeed a trap carried by units of the Iraqi National Guard against the terrorists in that area and that dozens of those thugs were killed and others were arrested. I didn’t really take that to be the exact truth since I didn’t hear or see anything in the local or foreign news to support this story and I’ve seen so many “eyewitnesses” on Al Jazeera and other channels tell stories that only a fool can buy and that appeared to be just lies or exaggerations.

It appeared that my doubts and what my friend told me was right as yesterday it was announced that it was a very well planned attack carried by the Iraqi national Guard and resulted in killing and capturing several terrorists. Here’s Al Sabah story:...

No doubt, some at the CPA volunteered because of their political beliefs, but I don't know of anyone who was hired because of them. Contrary to Krugman's fantasy, several of my colleagues were staunchly antiwar and had voted for Gore, yet held positions of considerable responsibility within the provisional government. They believed that, regardless of the past decisions that got us to that point, they could make a contribution to helping the Iraqi people. I admire each and every one of them and am proud to have served with them.

I question Mr. Krugman's implied premise that these were highly desirable jobs for which one needed political connections. He should try telling that to my friend and colleague Scott Erwin, who was ambushed several weeks ago returning from teaching a pro-democracy program he created at Baghdad University. Scott nearly died after having been shot multiple times. He is currently recovering from numerous surgeries and undergoing physical therapy...

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.

The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him...

...The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional...

... The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said...

...According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998...

One joke tonight shows how cynical he has become:

"George Bush is very happy about the Iraqi sovereignty -- now he can invade Iraq again".

Hahahahaha. Oh golly that is ... just ... SO NOT FUNNY!

Danger, ranting zone ahead ...

What the hell is the matter with these people? In New York of all places! Remember those burning, smoking piles of rubble piled 10 stories high, full of body parts and that smell that wouldn't go away? Right there where the World Trade Center used to be? Remember the people jumping to their deaths, preferring that to being burned alive? I'll bet they didn't plan on making that particular choice when they left the house for work that beautiful September morning. Remember the planes full of people like you and me just going about their business, then WHAM! slamming into a building and obliterating every person on board, right before the explosion that burned up everybody within a few floors in the building? Bad day for those folks, eh?[...]

The expulsion request was made Israel's security services, on the grounds that the member of the International Solidarity Movement posed a security threat.

The Tel Aviv court upheld the decision denying her entry into Israel and ordered her to leave the country within 24 hours, said her lawyer, Yael Berda.

Robinson-Petter has been held at Ben-Gurion International Airport in the holding cells reserved for people refused entry to the country.

She arrived two weeks ago for a 14-day visit with the intention of filming a video about a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor traveling the country and the territories, and to take part in demonstrations against the separation fence.

According to Shamai Leibowitz, Robinson-Petter's second lawyer, Petter was questioned for some 10 hours by security agents at the airport and refused to hand over information about other members of the Israeli-Palestinian organization.

She was denied entry to Israel on two grounds, says the report on her being questioned at the airport: "Her guaranteed participation in hostile sabotage activity," and belonging to "a leftist organization...

Forty-eight percent of 1,008 likely voters polled by Zogby from July 6-7 supported Kerry and Edwards and 46 percent back Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The two percentage-point margin is within the poll's 3.1 percentage point margin of error and matches the two point spread in a Zogby poll taken June 2-5...

1. The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.

2. Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel.

3. The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel. Both the Pentium-4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely designed, developed, and produced in Israel.

4. The Pentium microprocessor in your computer was most likely made in Israel.

5. Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.

6. Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.

7. The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.

8. According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry's most impenetrable flight security. US officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats.

9. Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined.

10. Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.

11. Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.

12. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin - 109 per 10,000 people -- as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.

13. In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the second largest number of startup companies after the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).

14. With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups, Israel has the highest concentration hi-tech companies in the world -- apart from the Silicon Valley, US.

15. Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the US.

16. After the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies.

17. Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the UK.

18. On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech startups.

19. Twenty-four percent of Israel's workforce holds university degrees -- ranking it third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland -- and 12% hold advanced degrees.

20. Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.

21. In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews at risk in Ethiopia to safety in Israel.

22. When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times.

23. When the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day -- and saved three victims from the rubble.

24. Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship -- and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 - in the world.

25. Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity.

26. Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."

27. Israel has the world's second highest per capita rate of publishing new books.

28. Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert.

29. Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.

30. In the field of medicine, Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.

31. An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in US hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes.

32. Israel's Givun Imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.

33. Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.

34. Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the US, over 70 in Japan, and fewer than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions, Israel places first in this category as well.

35. A new acne treatment developed in Israel, the ClearLight device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct -- all without damaging surroundings skin or tissue.

36. An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant (in southern California's Mojave desert).

37. Israel did all of the above while engaged in regular wars with an implacable enemy that seeks its destruction and an economy continuously under stress by having to spend more per capita on its own protection than any other country on earth.

Iranians inside Iran take to the streets for weeks every June and July, in order to defeat the fiendish forces that now also threaten the rest of the world; however not one western politico, speaking of freedom, human rights and democracy is willing to embrace these genuine, tireless and fearless movements in order to promote or even address what Iranians are now doing, literally for the safety of the world!

On June 17th, Hassan Abassi, head of the Revolutionary Guards' Center for Doctrinaire Affairs of National Security Outside Iran, stated that: “We [Islamic Republic of Iran] have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of the Anglo-Saxon civilization." However the West (and particularly the E.U.) continues depending on the dangerously under-qualified foreign policy of an apprehensive character such as Jack Straw, the current British Foreign Secretary who was Home Secretary in the Labour government of 1997-2001 and expected to become Transport Secretary after the 2001 UK general election. He was surprisingly appointed Foreign Secretary and was almost immediately confronted by the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack, having little or no experience in dealing with a menace of such magnitude. As the architect of the policy of dialogue and engagement with a state (Iran) that sponsors terrorism, Jack Straw fails to realize that in the eyes of the Mullahs, dialogue, engagement and forgiveness is a sign of weakness. In spite of threats such as Abbassi’s however, Mr. Straw chose yet again to employ soft diplomacy in handling the recent capture of British navy vessels from the Shat-al-Arab waterways by Iranian military. After the parading of the blindfolded British sailors on Iranian TV and the Mullah’s refusal to promptly return the naval equipment back to Britain, Jack Straw persistently refused to honor the wishes of several Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs who vociferously insisted that the Mullahs apologize or deal with the consequences.

Iranians have acted responsibly as citizens of the global village, in passing on 25 years worth of experiences with the Islamist cancer and their roving apparatchiks. This year again people in cities, towns and villages all over Iran will rise and in solidarity with them, Iranians outside Iran have organized demonstrations in 24 cities around the world and counting. Now if the west is completely unwilling to listen to facts and figures stated over and over again by Iranians, warning them of the terror that lurks in the heart of the Mullahs, it will have been no one’s fault but that of the western powers themselves.

The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran has received reports from inside Iran, stating that the Mullah regime, spearheaded by the 3 ruling clerics, Khamenei, Rafsanjani & Khatami has officially banned any gathering or demonstration. Plans for mobilizing thousands more troops and foreign mercenaries in order to quash any popular action or uprising have been in the works for months now. The governors of Esfahan and various other cities have declared their firm intention to oppose any and all action taken to ignite widespread demonstrations.

Reports from sources within the regime's revolutionary guards and ministry of information [who keep their jobs just so they can act as informants for freedom fighters], are stating that specific orders have been given to use lethal force against anyone opposing the Islamic State's directives. Hundreds of checkpoints have been created in every city and militiamen are ordered to search cars or arrest “suspicious-looking” residents under various charges in order to increase the popular fear. Also militiamen who pour into people’s homes by force are confiscating Satellite dishes and receivers around the country. Rumor's of a deal made by the regime with the Castro’s government in order to jam, once again, radio and TV programming by opposition or Iranian services broadcast from abroad into Iran is running rampant. Kamal Kharazi, IRI foreign minister who spent last week in Cuba was assigned to deliver this request to the Cuban authorities that organized that same level of interference during last year’s June/July demonstrations. This favor is of course repaid by promises of big economic incentives helping Castro's regime.

The parallax error is the incorrect representation of a situation due to not perceiving it from a straightforward and objective angle. Western societies have been built on the concept of broad-mindedness and tolerance and this is an approach that simply cannot be applied to the Iranian Mullahs’ way of thinking. Therefore, at some point the Western world must mend it’s ways, put things in perspective and act with self-preserving determination.

What I'm saying here, and the mistake I made was… In saying that there are people who are striving and working in the lower economic area, the people who are not holding up their end is quite obvious to me. And that happens to be those people who don't have a clue in terms of what education, learning standard English, math, and graduating from school, what that has for them in terms of empowerment. Many of them, after they drop out, they have to turn around and come all the way back in again. That's not bad for those who want to drop out and come back in again, but we want--I want more voices in the home challenging the child to not just stay in school, 'cause I've always been against saying to children, “stay in school”. I've always wanted to add “study” because that's a part of it.

I don't think that there's a greater high… I challenge any high--heroin, marijuana, booze or anything--that if you know your stuff and you go into an exam knowing that you know it, there's no better high. There's no better high than sitting down and then opening the booklet and reading your first question and saying to yourself, “Who made up this question? This person didn't-- You know, I'm ready to go.” There's no greater high than walking out after the exam and saying, “How did you answer?” Or being the second or third person out of there...

Allawi said he was fighting former dictator Saddam Hussein "when America was with him, when Britain was with him, when the world was with him."

"I thought he was a man who was committing crimes against the people of Iraq," Allawi said on ABC's "This Week."

"I stood against him. I fought bravely against him. I fought with honor against him. And this is not only me, but other political forces in Iraq. We earned [the right] to come back to Iraq to serve our people."...

...Allawi's Iraqi National Accord party was backed by U.S. and British intelligence agencies, but he insisted that neither he nor other members of the interim government -- many of whom are returned exiles like Allawi -- are puppets.

"We respect our relationship to the United States, but we are puppets to nobody," he said. "We are only answerable to the Iraqi people and to the interests of the Iraqis."

In one incident, Allawi suffered severe wounds when an Iraqi agent attacked him with an ax in his London bedroom.

The early Zionists wanted Israel to be a light unto other nations. The other day, it was.

"As in other times, Americans are serving and sacrificing to keep this country safe and to bring freedom to others," the Republican president said, recounting military successes against Afghanistan's Taliban and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

Bush described the United States as "the world's foremost champion of liberty" and said "terrorists" cannot be negotiated with. "We must be relentless and determined and do our duty!" he declared while pounding the podium.

"We will fear no evil and we will prevail."

In a state with a large number of military veterans, Bush lavished praise on the sacrifices of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the 989 killed and 5,726 wounded in both countries as part of his administration's war on terrorism...

Any favorable developments were overshadowed by a continued drumbeat of bad news from Iraq, however, including a seemingly endless stream of military deaths culminating in the reported beheading of a captured U.S. marine.

A spate of opinion polls showed Bush's job approval ratings scraping fresh lows and suggested the public was becoming increasingly skeptical about the value of the Iraq war and the administration's justification for the March 2003 invasion...

...Recent opinion polls suggest Kerry, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, could be gaining an edge over Bush in West Virginia, which controls five votes in the Electoral College.

West Virginia is home to two of the most prominent faces of the Iraq war: Jessica Lynch, the Army supply clerk elevated to fame by media reports of battlefield heroism that later proved false; and Private Lynndie England, charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

The president's arrival was delayed by the failure of one engine on Air Force One, discovered while it was still on the ground in Hagerstown, Maryland. The flight was delayed about 90 minutes as a second aircraft was flown in from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington.

That forced him to forgo a Sunday church with conservative evangelicals, a key Republican constituency.

"I am apt to believe," Adams exulted in a letter from Philadelphia to his wife Abigail, "that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance. . . . It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forevermore."

Who would think of greeting Iraqi autonomy with such jubilation? After all, as the papers and the TV talking heads keep instructing us, Iraq is beset by problems. Sovereignty or no sovereignty, insurgents' bombs daily claim new victims, power blackouts last for hours, oil production has been crippled by sabotage, and terrorists cross the border with impunity. So why would June 28 be anything to celebrate?

Well, why was July 4, 1776, anything to celebrate? Declaration of Independence or no Declaration of Independence, the American colonies were a godawful mess. American troops were ill-trained and poorly equipped, they were fighting a military superpower, the economy was a shambles, inflation was about to worsen into hyperinflation, and thousands of colonials loyal to the enemy -- Tories -- were taking up arms and committing sabotage in order to undermine the American cause...

The three-day visit, which begins Tuesday, follows a series of reports about nuclear activity involving Iran and Libya. It also follows calls for a tightening of the system of global controls preventing the spread of atomic arms.

With political tension on the rise in the Middle East, and with a burgeoning global black market that allows nations to acquire nuclear technology, ElBaradei has argued repeatedly that to avoid catastrophe, the nuclear option must be removed from the region.

And officials at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency say one key to such a development is Israel, which has not signed the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and which is the only state in the Middle East known to have a nuclear arsenal.

''As long as you continue to have countries dangling a cigarette from their mouth, you cannot tell everybody not to smoke with a high degree of credibility," Reuters quoted ElBaradei as telling reporters last Sunday in Moscow...

Some have suggested that the United States could impose travel bans on Janjaweed leaders and freeze their assets. But because none of those leaders is expected to travel to the United States, and none of their assets could be easily seized by authorities in Washington, this is an empty threat. Instead, the United States and the UN should impose immediate sanctions on the Sudanese leadership that is funding and supplying the Janjaweed.

Finally, the UN Security Council should authorize troops to deliver aid and protect refugee camps from the Janjaweed. Such troops have to be in addition to any forces authorized and equipped to implement the North-South peace agreement.

The crisis in Sudan is not occurring in a vacuum. It has a direct effect on our national security. Sudan is a country that was designated as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993 and was the target of cruise missile attacks in 1998 for its support of Al Qaeda. Sudan has been on the foreign policy agenda of both the Bush and Clinton administrations and is clearly a frontline in the war on terror...

Sadly, no one in the 9-11 Commission has bothered to raise such a question, perhaps out of fear of instant excommunication by colleagues and the media, just as was the case with Representative James P Moran, who dared to suggest at one point that the American Jewish community was pressing the White House to go to war in Iraq. Another question is, of course, if Moore could realistically afford to antagonize the Jewish population, not to mention the pro-Israel Hollywood executives who berated Mel Gibson openly in the New York Times for his "sin" of depicting a crucified Christ condemned by his Jewish community...