~~~~~~~~

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,970331,00.html

The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further... In an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt... the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/corrections/story/0,3604,971436,00.html

A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz.

...He did not say that. He said, according to the Department of Defence website, "The difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil."

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/03/1054406190827.html

Islamist ruling parties in Pakistan's sensitive North West Frontier Province have ordered compulsory prayers for the population and will create a Taliban-style Department of Vice and Virtue to enforce their ruling. The provincial assembly's unanimous vote to introduce sharia, or Islamic law, fulfils an election promise... [and] is part of a campaign by fundamentalists to turn the whole of Pakistan into a Taliban-style state. Sharia will override all other laws in the local courts.

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http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_271057,0008.htm

The US Defence Department has recommended viewing India as a strategic partner and selling modern American technology and equipment to ensure inter-operability between the two countries... The report "Indo-US Military Relationship, Expectations and Perceptions," said the most promising areas for cooperation are the naval sector and the joint exercises in dense jungles and learning to flush terrorists out of their hideouts.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/03/1054406190833.html

The United States is said to be developing new plans for a war in North Korean that would bypass the demilitarised zone dividing the two Koreas and target the leadership in Pyongyang. The plan is based on the success of US-led forces in Iraq in quickly reaching the capital, Baghdad. US officials quoted by Reuters said the plan would involve the consolidation of the US and South Korean forces in two areas away from the demilitarised zone. If war broke out, the forces would skirt the demilitarised zone and head for Pyongyang.

...The recently announced $11,000,000,000.00 upgrade of the capabilities of US forces in South Korea would give them the ability to "take down" North Korea's heavy presence on the border within an hour of war breaking out. The report coincided with a visit to South Korea and Japan by the US Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz.

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http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1054416357905&p=1012571727169

North Korea and the US have only a brief "window of opportunity" to resolve their dispute over nuclear weapons and save the divided Korean peninsula from a devastating war, according to agroup of senior US congressmen who visited Pyongyang last week.

Congressman Curt Weldon, leader of the six-strong delegation, said a compromise must be found in "a very short period of time" because the "nuclear time clock" was ticking as North Korea developed more bombs. Mr Weldon said North Korean officials had admitted to his delegation that the state not only possessed nuclear weapons but had nearly finished reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods that would allow it to produce six to eight more bombs within a year.

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http://sify.com/news/international/fullstory.php?id=13162262

One day after US President George W Bush met with the new Chinese president and invited him to the United States... Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay... said the "one China" policy followed by the United States since the 1970s was "a diplomatic contrivance" that "unfortunately has been elevated by some to the status of 'doctrine.'

"The (People's Republic of China) is a backward, corrupt anachronism run by decrepit tyrants: old apparatchiks clinging to their dying regime," DeLay said in a speech before the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank here, where Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Richard Cheney, works as a senior fellow. "The notion that these oppressive and dangerous men could convince the United States that their murderous ideology should be imposed on a free and independent Taiwan is absurd. And refusing to say so, for fear of upsetting Beijing, is not tact: it is infantilism."

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http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0603/03attitudes.html

The war in Iraq has sent support for the United States to new lows in Muslim countries and significantly damaged the standing of the United Nations in those nations and elsewhere, according to a survey released Tuesday. The Pew Global Attitudes Project poll also found [that]... British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan instill more confidence than President Bush in non-Muslim countries. Even in the United States, Blair comes out ahead of Bush.

...Blair was the top-rated world leader in the United States with 83 percent saying they have "a lot" or "some" confidence in him to do the right thing, though U.N. Secretary General Annan came in first among the British with 72 percent... Annan finished first in Italy and Spain. In many countries with generally favorable attitudes about the United States such as Brazil, Russia, Spain, France and Germany only modest percentages have confidence in Bush.

...Majorities in seven of the eight Muslim countries surveyed said they think their nation will be attacked by the United States. In Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan, more than 70 percent of those questioned had this concern. Even in Kuwait... 53 percent voice at least some concern that the United States could someday pose a threat, the survey found.

In a previous Pew survey, negative feelings about the United States were confined to the Middle East and Pakistan but now they have expanded to Africa and Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. There, 83 percent had an unfavorable view of America, compared to 36 percent a year ago.

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http://www.latimes.com/la-060303pew_lat,0,6951887.story

The survey... also indicated that... there is a widespread view -- even among Israelis -- that the United States favors Israel too much. Of the 21 publics surveyed, pluralities or majorities in all but the United States believed that U.S. policy favored Israel too much. Among Israelis, 47 percent believe the United States favors Israel too much... and 11 percent think the United States favors Palestinians too much.

...76 percent of French, 57 percent of Germans, 62 percent of Spanish and 45 percent of the British believe Europe should become more independent from the United States.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF04Ak03.html

TEHRAN - The suspension of contacts between the United States and Iran... is the latest prism through which to view the differences between the government and the public on what political road [Iran] should be taking. Over the years, this debate has often been reflected in tussles over reformist laws... But in recent weeks, it is also being played out in issues dealing with the United States.

..."Foolish vanity" is how Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei describes the US warnings after it suspended a meeting with Iranian officials scheduled for May in Geneva. These contacts have been under way for more than a year now... How Tehran deals with the US government remains a point of contention between clerical conservatives like Khamenei, who is cool to the warming of ties, and reformist President Mohammad Khatami, especially as Washington ratchets up the pressure against Iran.

...[Ayatollah] Khamenei maintains the reformist camp is being intimidated by Washington's threats. Last week, he said, "Those who are intimidated by the enemy's demands will retreat step by step and finally surrender. But nobody has right to do so and the nation will not allow it." ...[President] Khatami told the Organization of Islamic Conference meeting on May 28 [that] "On the one side, terrorism and fanaticism have distorted the humane and freedom-speaking visage of religion and humanity; and on the other, resort to force, hegemony-seeking, and unilateralism have made a mockery of such respected concepts as freedom and democracy," Khatami said.

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http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=180846&n=36

Tehran, May 31 - Iran has completed the phase I of the project to transfer and process crude from Caspian states to its domestic refineries, the press reported here on Saturday. The Persian-language daily `Asia' reported that some 50,000 barrels of oil are pumped daily to Tabriz and Tehran refineries now that phase I of the three-phased project is complete... The total transfer of oil will reach to as much as 120,000 barrels in phase II and 370,000 barrels in phase III.

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http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2003/06/04/rtr990401.html

ALMATY, June 4 (Reuters) - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has signed a highly confidential Caspian Sea oil development programme and will present the plan in Canada in late June, a government official said on Wednesday. Kazakhstan, a mineral-rich Central Asian state the size of Westen Europe but populated by just 15 million, pins hopes for future prosperity on developing its giant hydrocarbon riches in the Caspian, already explored by a consortium of Western firms.

...The shallow Sea is already home to the mammoth Kashagan field, the largest oil find discovered in the last 30 years... Kazakhstan plans to become one of the world's top five oil producers by boosting its crude output to three million barrels per day in 2015.

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here are some oil maps forya.

north caspian sea: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/caspian_sea_n_rel01.jpg

south caspian sea: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/caspian_sea_n_rel01.jpg

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http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/caspian_sea_n_rel01.jpg

BAKU, June 5 (Reuters) - Caspian states should reform if they want to be able to compete with an emerging Iraq to attract Western firms' investment into their oil sectors, the United States and top western oil firms said this week... The Caspian Sea is squeezed between Iran and four ex-Soviet states, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan. All five states claim to have huge oil resources in their sectors.

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have attracted billions of dollars from some of the world's largest oil firms. The two states plan to export up to four million barrels per day by 2010 via Russia, Turkey and Georgia, including one million bpd from Azerbaijan and three million from Kazakhstan. These levels of supplies would make the region one of the world's five most important oil players, putting it on a par with Iran, OPEC's second biggest producer.

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http://www.interfax.com/com?item=Geor&pg=0&id=5641780&req=

Tbilisi. (Interfax) - The implementation in Georgia of projects connected with the East-West energy corridor will be at the center of attention during a two-day visit to Tbilisi by U.S. State Department special envoy to the Caspian region Stephen Mann, which begins on Thursday evening, a source in the Georgian government office told Interfax. During his visit Mann will meet with management from the Georgian fuel and energy complex. On Friday, he will also meet with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, at which it is planned to discuss issues connected with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline projects.

It is expected that possible energy cooerpaiton between Georgia and [Russian company] Gazprom, which is causing some worry in the U.S., will also be a theme for discussion... This cooperation includes transportation of gas and the restoration of Georgia's trunk pipelines; supplies of Russian gas to the republic, joint projects to sell gas on the domestic market and also the export of Russian gas through Georgia to Armenia and Turkey. U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Richard Miles last week voiced U.S. concerns over this turn of events.

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http://www.rosbaltnews.com/2003/06/03/62849.html

TBILISI, June 3. The US has not ruled out using Georgian aerodromes for part of its campaign against terrorism. This was announced by US Marines Commander Mike Hague at a meeting with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze in Tbilisi today. Mr Hague travelled to Georgia to assess the level of military reform in the country and to judge the progress of the US military programme whereby US military instructors are training four battalions of Georgian commandos, each numbering about three thousand soldiers.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF03Ak01.html

A Russian newspaper article last week accused the United States government of preparing for a military operation against Iran from the Caucasian states of Azerbaijan and Georgia. While the US ambassador in the Azeri capital Baku denied the accusation, the article reflected a growing concern about a possible US attack on Iran as Washington relentlessly raises its rhetoric against Tehran. The Russian report described the alleged operation as part of a broader US plan for a regime change in Iran.

...The date of such an operation, according to that report, was to be determined in a White House meeting last Friday. However, that meeting, tasked with drawing up a policy toward the Iranian government, has been reportedly postponed indefinitely because of policy disagreements within the George W Bush administration between the hawkish Pentagon and the more conciliatory State Department.

...Given Iran's huge size (1.6 million square kilometers), a successful military attack would require opening many fronts against the Iranians, for which Azerbaijan would be a potential candidate... The US domination of the Azeri oil industry, on whose revenue Baku hopes to build its country's prosperity, has consolidated Baku-Washington relations, while giving a growing influence to the Americans in Azerbaijan. Those relations have also had a military dimension since the conclusion of a few military/security agreements in early 2002.

...Washington's "war on terrorism" has expanded the US military presence in South and West Asia, including in the Caucasus, a region neighboring northern Iran, where Azerbaijan and Georgia are located. As a result, US military "advisors" are deployed in Georgia... Iran's practical encirclement by the US military stationed in the Persian Gulf countries, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan and in certain Caucasian and Central Asian countries makes a US military attack on Iran technically feasible.

...Tehran's two-decade history of hostile relations with Washington leaves no room for optimism for the Iranians, who should be preparing for the worst-case scenario. In such a situation, Iran should find strong incentives to close ranks with neighboring Russia. The two countries have extensive multi-dimensional relations and common views about many issues, including their opposition to a US-led unipolar international system and to a long-term US military presence in their proximity.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0604/p06s01-woeu.html

On his first official trip abroad, new Chinese leader Hu Jintao stopped first in Russia, where he and Russian President Vladimir Putin last week endorsed far-reaching cooperation between China and Russia in energy, space engineering, arms supplies, and regional security. Some experts believe the two seemingly mismatched giants are drifting into an embrace that could dramatically reshape world relations in coming decades - and present a possible counterweight to US global hegemony.

...During Mr. Hu's visit, he and Mr. Putin inked a deal to build a $2.5 billion oil pipeline from Siberia to the Chinese industrial center of Daqing, including a 25-year Chinese pledge to buy at least 5 billion barrels of Russian crude. The deal appears to have squeezed out, at least for now, a rival Japanese-backed proposal that would have sent Siberian oil to Japan and to North America's west coast. "This is more than just a commercial deal; it is a strategic choice," says Sergei Lusyanin, an expert with the Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Moscow. "Russia and China are being tied together by bonds of gas and oil."

...Last year China accounted for 55 percent of Russia's nearly $5 billion in arms exports. Russian and Chinese defense ministers met in Moscow last week and vowed to step up cooperation. Russian experts say the Russian military needs the money.

...Spurred by their shared opposition to the US-led war in Iraq, China and Russia have also moved to beef up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes Russia, China, and four ex-Soviet Central Asian nations, in hopes of turning it into a full-fledged security alliance in the future.

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from one year ago tomorrow

http://english.pravda.ru/cis/2002/06/07/29950.html

The summit of the countries that are included in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is also sometimes called the Shanghai Group of Six, took place in St.Petersburg. For the time being the SCO incorporates Russia, China, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan...

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back to now

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200306/06/eng20030606_117795.shtml

As President Hu Jintao has concluded his trip, analysts say this whirlwind of diplomatic activity has been a sign to the world, that the new Chinese leadership has hit the ground running... In Moscow, Hu Jintao attended the third summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The six­member group agreed to set up a secretariat in Beijing and stage joint anti­terror exercises later this year. Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "We stand for raising the efficiency of the mechanisms and instruments of the SCO. We think it is possible to provide for reliable global stability and settle local conflicts only on the basis of international legal norms." [but that's-- that's un-american! --mrs. h]

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who is hu jintao and how does george bush pronounce his name?

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030604-011246-9570r

China still has hundreds of millions of people who remember -- or who learned firsthand from their parents -- the sufferings of war, massacre, foreign conquest, famine and chaos that followed the collapse of the Manchu Empire in 1911, until China was unified under Mao Zedong in 1949. With this recent history still fresh, Chinese still regard the presence of powerful foreign forces, representing nations from halfway around the world, as potential threats to fragment them again, in which case the old nightmares could rapidly return.

...Before the al-Qaida terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, leading Bush administration strategists, conditioned by the habits of half a century of confrontation with the Soviet Union, had already singled out China as the rising superpower fated to challenge U.S. global dominance. And many Chinese military planners and diplomats, their patience long exhausted by endless American lectures on everything from the Three Gorges Dam to the Dalai Lama, believe the U.S. government in Washington manipulates all such protests like a spider manipulating its web... However, both China and the United States would pay a fearsome price for any drift into confrontation and conflict. And such a conflict is far from inevitable. The two great nations could settle their differences over Taiwan, as Britain led by Margaret Thatcher secured the future status of Hong Kong under Chinese sovereignty. Once that issue was out of the way, China could grow in power and influence for 50 or 100 years without coming into conflict with any significant U.S. interest in Asia.

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http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030605.ujapa0605/BNStory/International/

Within weeks, Japan's parliament is expected to give swift passage to three bills that will effectively alter the pacifist constitution that has guided the island nation since the end of the Second World War.

...Japan has 240,000 men and women under arms. Having spent nearly $50,000,000,000.00 a year on defence for each of the past five years, Japan has a force, at least in terms of funding, second only to the U.S.

...Japan has never fully admitted, let alone atoned for, the atrocities committed by its troops in China during the Second World War. Jap­anese government officials have consistently denied such barbarities as the 1937 Rape of Nanking or the use of biological weapons to kill as many as 250,000 civilians and 12,000 PoWs.

Although China is perceived as posing a long-term threat, the more immediate danger comes from a nuclear-armed North Korea. It was this threat that only last month led the Japanese parliament's lower house to pass three "war contin­gency bills." They allow the Prime Minister to put the nation on a war footing even when there is no more than "fear that such an attack may occur." As defence agency chief Shigeru Ishiba made clear during the parliamentary debate on these bills, this includes the possibility that Japan may launch a "pre-emptive strike" against any nation thought to be preparing to attack.

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http://www.pressaction.com/pablog/archives/000990.html

At the time of the first Persian Gulf War (1991), the United States’ military planners knew that Iraq’s water supply facilities were vulnerable to sanctions. They were also aware that Iraq’s vulnerability, owing to the lack of crucial imports of chemicals and equipment required for the purification of water, could cause deaths, diseases and epidemics. Yet planners went ahead with the imposition of sanctions... Declassified US government documents disclose planners’ complicity, foreknowledge and malfeasance in exploiting Iraq’s vulnerability in supplying clean water to its population.

Professor Thomas Nagy, who teaches at George Washington University’s Business School, uncovered several declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents outlining the US planners’ analysis of Iraq’s water treatment vulnerabilities and possible consequences of imposing sanctions. He published his findings in the September 2001 issue of the Progressive... Nagy found these declassified documents at the website of the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses.

...The document “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerability,” noted that “failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could result in increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease and to certain pure water dependent becoming incapacitated.” It also observed that “Iraq’s overall water treatment capability will suffer a slow decline, rather than a precipitous halt as dwindling supplies and cannibalized parts are concentrated at higher priority locations.” The planners knew that “no adequate solution exists for Iraq’s water purification dilemma” as long as sanctions remained in effect. The planners’ own assessment was that the “full degradation of the water treatment system probably will take least another six months.” That is what exactly happened.

...The Geneva Convention relating to “the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts,” known as Protocol I, clearly states and definitively forbids attempts to destroy public infrastructure, including water installation facilities and supplies. Article 54 explicitly and unequivocally states: “It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.”

...The violation of Geneva Convention is a serious charge. The deliberate destruction of a country’s capability of purifying and supplying clean water to its population by denying the importation of key chemical ingredients and water purification equipment from abroad can be regarded as a form of biochemical warfare on the population of a country.

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http://www.msnbc.com/news/921682.asp?cp1=1

Sick children filled the pediatric room of Usaybah Hospita... “The weather is hot,” sighed Hamdi al-Aloosh, the hospital’s director and a pediatrician, standing a few feet away. “The water is no good. If we do not fix it soon, many more will die.” The Iraqi city of Basra made headlines recently when a deadly wave of cholera swept the area. But it was only the first problem in a summer health-care crisis... Even before the war, water filtration plants across the nation were in a state of disrepair... The war delivered the coup de grace. Many of those that survived the bombing and the fighting—and quite a few didn’t—were crippled by looters after it. In recent days, as the heat has crept up into the low 100s, so has the reliance of locals in towns across the country on the ancient, sewage-choked waterways of the Tigres and Euphrates rivers.

The impact on Iraq’s children has been devastating... “There is no water except from the river and there is nobody to help me,” said Jossa Jamel as she sat with her infant son, who was stricken with diarrhea and started vomiting five days ago. “What should we do? There is no other way.” ... “Everything is destroyed and the pumps are 25 years old,” al-Aloosh explained. Lately, his doctors have begun to notice another disturbing trend: cases of typhoid, another deadly water-borne killer, may soon rise to epidemic proportions.

...Last month, UNICEF called for “urgent action” and released a study showing that acute malnutrition rates in children under 5 in Baghdad alone had reached 7.7 percent, nearly doubling since a previous survey in February 2002. UNICEF blamed unsafe water from disrupted services for the problem. More than one in 10 children were found to be dehydrated.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12476-2003Jun4.html?nav=hptop_ts

LONDON, June 4-Prime Minister Tony Blair failed today to quiet a roar of criticism... with the opposition leader declaring that "nobody believes a word now that the prime minister is saying." In a raucous House of Commons session punctuated by catcalls and cheers, Blair defended his prewar claims that then-President Saddam Hussein was hiding a dangerous arsenal.

...Blairtoday pleaded for patience as the newly formed Iraq Survey Group, consisting of 1,400 U.S., British and Australian agents, continues the search for Iraqi weapons. A Conservative lawmaker likened the prime minister to Hans Blix, the U.N. weapons inspector who kept pleading for more time to find what Hussein was said to be hiding. Blair called the comparison unfair.

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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=13029551&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=87%20WMD%20SITES%20ARE%20CLEARED

TROOPS hunting for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction have searched 87 "prime" sites in Iraq - and have found nothing. Nineteen were "highest-priority" zones identified by US Central Command, military sources revealed yesterday. But instead of chemical or biological weapons, searchers uncovered a training facility for Iraq's Olympic swimming and diving teams, a drinks distillery and a factory making car licence plates.

...The searchers were from the 200-strong, mainly US 75th Exploitation Group - made up of military personnel, the CIA, the Defence Intelligence Agency, the FBI, and a British contingent... The Al Hayat site, ranked 26th out of 87 and described as a possible Saddam-run Special Security Organisation facility, turned out to house a collection of vacuum cleaners.

...RAF wing commander Sebastian Kendall had the task of planning the hunt from the US and British land forces' HQ in Kuwait. He said he had focused on priority sites, where analysts had assessed there was a "high probability" of finding a link to WMD. Wing Cdr Kendall later admitted on April 20: "We started off with a list. It is true that the environment is changing based on reality."

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http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,970228,00.html

Tony Blair today rejected at least four calls - from the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and his own backbenches - for an independent judicial inquiry into the case for the Iraq war.

...He [also rejected] a highly specific request from his former cabinet colleague, Robin Cook, that the government now apologise for an allegedly fake accusation that there was a link between Iraq and uranium purchases from Africa... Tory leadership candidate Kenneth Clarke also threw back in the prime minister's face his claim that the reason for going to war without a second resolution was that the threat was so immediate it could not wait.

...The prime minister described as "completely and totally untrue" allegations that the claim about Saddam being able to deploy his weapons in 45 minutes were inserted into the ['intelligence'] dossier at Downing Street's request. Another former cabinet colleague, Clare Short, demanded point blank that Mr Blair "apologise to President Chirac for misleading all of us on the position of France on a second resolution"...Mr Chirac had not ruled out a second [UN] resolution [on 'disarming' iraq], but called for more time.

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http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-chemwar4jun04,0,4932034.story

BAGHDAD -- After three decades as one of Saddam Hussein's chief chemical warriors, Iraqi Brig. Gen. Alaa Saeed picks nervously at the kebabs on his plate as he talks about the deadly nerve gases and blister agents he once produced... He worries about his culpability for the sweeping documents he wrote declaring to the United Nations that Iraq was free of banned weapons.

...Saeed, perhaps the most senior weapons scientist to speak to a reporter since the war, says he would gladly accept a $200,000.00 reward U.S. officials here have quietly offered to anyone who can lead them to the poison gases, germ weapons and other illegal weapons that President Bush repeatedly insisted were secretly deployed in prewar Iraq. But Saeed said he cannot take them to what he insists no longer exists. "Their questions are the same as yours," he said. " 'Do you know of any documents or inventory of chemical agents? Any stockpiles? Any production programs? Any filled munitions? Do you have any idea where these weapons are?' I am ready to give them all the information I have. But the answer is always the same: 'No, no, no.'"

...A U.S. intelligence official in Washington said Tuesday that senior Iraqis in custody have provided little useful information. "The high-level folks are stiffing their interrogators," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

...Saeed insists that the combined blitz of allied bombing and intense U.N. inspections in the 1990s effectively destroyed Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear programs. U.N. sanctions, he said, stopped Baghdad from importing the raw materials, equipment and spare parts needed to secretly reconstitute the illegal programs, even after U.N. inspectors left the country in 1998.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/04/international/worldspecial/04IRAQ.html?ex=1055864115&ei=1&en=10cc28c92140b7d3

June 3 — A team of American military engineers began an intensive effort today to excavate the site of a bombing on April 7 that military officials still think may have killed Saddam Hussein... The surprise search for Mr. Hussein's remains comes as the number of American soldiers killed in a spate of attacks in Iraq climbed again today... Many Iraqis still believe that the deposed dictator is alive and in hiding.

...Why the excavation was begun now was unclear. Captain Gibb, a reservist from Utah whose units is providing much of the equipment for the dig, said he had no idea... American soldiers said they had no idea if Mr. Hussein's body lay somewhere in or around the 20-foot deep crater... The ruins themselves offered no clue... Inside the crater itself, the twisted remains of a white kitchen table appeared to be half buried... Iraqis who live near the site said they were skeptical that Mr. Hussein's remains would be found there.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0605/p06s01-woiq.html

BAGHDAD – Across from Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace, jobless Iraqi military officers wait in the sparse shade of a tree. Their ultimatum to US authorities inside: Reverse the decision to dismiss the Iraqi Army en masse or face organized resistance next week... "By next Monday, if we don't have results, we will form a new Iraqi army, called the Armed Front Against the Occupation," warns Maj. Assam Hussein Il Naem, who says he represents about 160 officers - all trained men who could make life difficult for the US and British soldiers here. "New attacks against the occupiers will be governed by us. We know we will have the approval of the Iraqi people."

..."We are demonstrating now because the Americans didn't fulfill what they promised in the pamphlets they dropped on the ground before the war," says Brig. Amer Abdul Ameer, a tall, tanned man in dark aviator sunglasses. If they don't reverse course, "I will be the first to carry out military attacks on the Americans."

The military is not the only institution that has been completely dissolved. Occupation authorities in Iraq will be putting about half a million Iraqis out of work when military and civilian employees are lumped together... US soldiers have been suffering almost daily attacks on their posts. The Iraqi Assistance Center, a wing of the coalition forces designated coordinate with humanitarian assistance and NGO projects, said in a briefing paper this week that they could expect "spectacular" attacks on coalition-related targets the next 30 to 45 days.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/05/wirq05.xml

A rumour is swiftly spreading in the eastern Iraqi city of Kut that 40 men alleged to have looted a local textile factory are to be executed by US Marines and their heads put on spikes at the city gates. "Don't tell them it isn't so," Lt Col Erik Grobowski of the Marines told staff of TV Kut... "We're here to kick ass and we don't want folks to think they can get away with murder, so let them think the Marines are prepared to top 'em all if they step out of line," he said. The Marines are helping a 12-strong team to establish a television station in Kut to disseminate information about post-war Iraq.

...But the project is proving to be a difficult balancing act... While the Iraqis are desperate for news, the US military are determined to control the way that news is delivered. [For example]... the TV Kut team were too busy installing a new computer in their office to notice a heated demonstration going on outside led by Shi'ite clerics calling for the troops to leave town. For most local TV stations the rowdy protest would be a lead item on the evening news, but Lt Col Bob Zangas, a civil affairs officer with the Marines, said it would be best to leave the event untouched. "Covering the demonstration doesn't really fit into our philosophy," he admitted... Lt Col Zangas, 43, who studied journalism at college, would rather his underlings exercise their new-found freedom on rather more simple and helpful items such as an amnesty call for arms to be handed into the military.

...Lt Col Zangas decided to go to work on the textile factory story... A four-man crew was dispatched with a 20-year old video camera to the factory. But after just half an hour of interviews, TV Kut got much closer to the truth of the story than the Marines wished. The military burst into the factory on a tip-off that Saddam's Ba'athists and Fedayeen fighters had been using it as a weapons and food dump. For more than four and a half hours they scoured the site, smashing down doors and breaking equipment including telephones and calculators. The resulting find was just a few Kalashnikovs owned by the factory guardsmen.

"There's no way we can broadcast this," a perturbed Lt Col Zangas, head in his hands, said as he stepped over broken glass. "This is systematic damaging of property by the Marines." ...The journalists had their story but were told by the Marines that it could not be broadcast. Instead they were sent back to base to continue the more mundane tasks of editing the Koran into manageable chunks and, as religious leaders have demanded, censoring images of naked flesh from the adverts.

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http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/06/04/iraq_media/index.html

The U.S.-led occupation authority is devising a code of conduct for the [occupied-iraqi] press... Coalition officials say the code is not intended to censor the media, only to stifle intemperate speech.

..."How can they say we have a democracy?" demanded Eshta Jassem Ali Yasseri, 25, editor of the new satirical weekly Habezbooz. "That's not democracy. It sounds like the same old thing." ...Editors at the new daily newspaper Al-Manar said U.S. soldiers turned up at its offices last week to tell them about a new media monitoring board and ask for their opinion. "They plan to set up a committee and some jerks will be on it," said Mohamad Jubar, the editor in chief. "I'll fight any attempt at censorship." ..."Is there a media code of conduct in the U.S. or U.K.? Why should there be such a thing here?" asked Hamid al-Bayati, a leader of the Iran-linked Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hsgulf043315998jun04,0,7891834.story?coll=ny-health-headlines

Children of veterans of the 1991 Gulf War are more likely to have three specific birth defects than those of soldiers who never served in the gulf, a government study has found. Researchers found the infants born to male veterans of the war had higher rates of two types of heart valve defects. They also found a higher rate of a genital urinary defect in boys conceived after the war to Gulf War veteran mothers. Also, Gulf War veterans' children born after the war had a certain kidney defect that was not found in Gulf War veterans' children born before the war.

The researchers said they did not have enough information to link the birth defects to possible exposures to poisonous substances... The study by the Department of Defense Naval Health Research Center and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined data from 1989-93.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$M4KKSJGQ0MFVLQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2003/06/05/wafg05.xml/

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, goes to Downing Street today... "The truth about Afghanistan is that the US and British strategy for stabilising and reconstructing that country will fail without major changes and soon," said a European ambassador in Kabul.

...Experts believe America's refusal or inability to take the lead in providing Afghans with greater security is pushing the country back to the anarchy and lawlessness that gave rise to the Taliban and allowed al-Qa'eda to base itself there. Regrouped Taliban are rocketing, bombing or ambushing United States and Afghan government forces in the south and east where humanitarian aid and reconstruction, which has barely started, are grinding to a halt... But Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said in Kabul last month that "the bulk of Afghanistan is permissive and secure" and declined to support an expansion of peacekeepers.

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http://www.latimes.com/la-na-missile05jun05,0,1488543.story

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's breakneck effort to field a rudimentary missile defense system by 2004 is moving so fast that the Pentagon may end up with unworkable hardware that needs to be redesigned at a steep cost, Congress' independent watchdog agency warned Wednesday... Administration officials argue that, facing a growing missile threat from North Korea and other countries, the Pentagon needs to deploy a basic system as soon as possible and then improve and expand it.

...The $9,000,000,000.00 weapons program... is by far the largest proposed by the Pentagon for the coming fiscal years... Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that they had "grave concern" about the report's findings. The report "clearly shows that the missile defense system the administration plans to field in 2004 will not be fully tested or proven to work under realistic conditions," Levin said.

...Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has argued that, even with limitations, the system is "better than nothing."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,970652,00.html

The screams echoed around the clinic yesterday as a woman brought her seven-year-old daughter in for treatment. She had been shot in the abdomen by an Israeli soldier... Israeli soldiers were raiding the refugee camp of Balata and the city of Nablus for the third day running... According to the Red Crescent, some 50 people have been treated for bullet and shrapnel wounds in two days.

Many in the West Bank were looking at their television in astonishment as their prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, met his Israeli counterpart, Ariel Sharon, and President Bush in the Red Sea resort of Aqaba. They felt the rhetoric was from another planet. Terms such as the road map and the peace process appeared fraudulent.

...Samir Abu Zarur, the head of the casualty department at Rafiah hospital in Nablus, said that his department treated 32 people injured by the Israeli army on Tuesday. Around half came from Balata refugee camp. "Twelve of the injured were children. One eight-year-old was shot in the face with a rubber-coated bullet. A young woman lost her eye and a young man lost a kidney. There are two or three still in a serious condition," he said.

According to witnesses, the Israeli army has been conducting a series of nightly raids in the camp, followed up by daytime patrols that invite stone-throwing attacks from the youth of Balata. The soldiers respond with tear gas, rubber-coated and regular bullets. The Israeli army announced yesterday that it had sealed off the refugee camp, a cramped ghetto housing some 30,000 people on the outskirts of Nablus.

Angela, a peace activist from New York who refused to give her surname for fear of arrest, said Balata had been under attack for three days. "This is the road map on the ground. They have been arriving at 2am with hundreds of troops and breaking into houses and using human shields to search property," she said. "Today we woke up to brand new roadblocks around the camp and on the way into Nablus. The supposed easing of restrictions is a farce."

A spokesman for the Israeli army said: "There are very serious security alerts in that area. We don't mean that there is actually a suicide bomber with a vest of explosives on but we have to increase our vigilance in that area."

Walid Khaled, a youth worker in Balata, said the activities of the army were antagonising young people who had spent much of the last two years confined to the camp which is less than a square mile in area. "The young people are facing the soldiers with only stones," he said. "They are not going to the soldiers, the soldiers are going to them. There are no more gunmen left here, yet the situation is getting worse, not better."

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=300656&contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

BEIT HANUN, Gaza - Ahmed Za'anin's house now looks like some 1,200 other Palestinian homes: a pile of rubble. On May 18, at about 7 P.M., IDF bulldozers knocked down four houses, one partially, which belonged to the extended Za'anin family, in Ezbat Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip. Usually, the IDF Spokesman's Office reports why a house was demolished... But this time, the IDF Spokesman's Office had no records of the demolition of the four houses, so it did not have any explanation for why the Za'anin homes were destroyed. "We don't demolish houses for no reason. Maybe there was shooting there, maybe there was involvement in terrorist activities," Haaretz was told. But the fact remains: The same force that sent a bulldozer or two and, as the homeowners watched, demolished their homes, did not find it necessary to report the action to the IDF Spokesman's Office.

To the same extent, there was no record of the Za'anin family having heard a nearby explosion, in a street controlled by tanks and armored personnel carriers, at around 6 P.M. that day. About 20 minutes later the family, which was sitting in the living room, heard the noise of the churning bulldozers... An officer and soldiers entered through a breach they opened in the wall of the house. They aimed their weapons at the family, and ordered them out. According to the family, they were not allowed to take anything with them. Not even the mother's head covering. The student daughter cried she didn't want to leave without her books and notebooks. Her parents said that they had to drag her away from "under the bulldozer."

...According to the Za'anin family, during the demolition, a goat shed was destroyed; some of the goats were crushed under the heavy machinery. Storehouses were demolished as well as some farm equipment, including a tractor. A well-preserved 1960 Mercedes was destroyed, as were beehives that were dragged and crushed, now scattered among the rubble. More than 50 people lived in the four houses, and now they are crowded in with relatives and neighbors. They cannot cross the street - not even the oldest among them - to reach the city. The tanks prevent that passage.

...Five Palestinians were killed by IDF fire on the first day of the Beit Hanun operation. Two armed men were killed when they tried shooting at the tanks. They were killed outside the city. Two youths, aged 15 and 16, who threw rocks, were killed inside the city. And 14-year-old Mohammed Za'anin was killed. He and his family didn't know that an IDF force had taken up a position in the next-door house. At the end of the first day of

the IDF takeover, the Za'anin family went up to a little bridge that connects two parts of their compound, to see what was going on around them. Mohammed, the son, was killed - shot in the head. On May 18, another boy, also 14, from the Jabalya refugee camp was killed. He apparently was one of those who threw stones at the tanks that besieged the city.

Children climb the ramparts beside the tanks. Some fly kites, others try a kind of Russian slingshot roulette: When will the tank fire back at their rock-throwing? Thus, in the first days of the operation, between 10-20 children were wounded every day, for throwing rocks at tanks and APCs.

On June 3, a Palestinian policeman was killed 400 meters west of Salah a-Din Street. A bullet hit him in the head as he stood at his post. His job was to prevent armed Palestinians from approaching Israeli positions.

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http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/300347.html

U.S. President George W. Bush warned after an Israeli-Palestinian summit on Wednesday that there were "killers lurking in the neighborhood" trying to throw the U.S.-backed peace "road map" off course.

...Relaxed and sipping a Diet Coke, Bush talked expansively in the conference room of his plane... Waving his arms, the president earlier told reporters his aim was to keep the process moving, like a cowboy on horseback herding cattle. "I used the expression 'ride herd.' I don't know if anybody understood it in the meeting today," he said.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15046-2003Jun4?language=printer

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in pre-summit talks with U.S. officials, resisted placing any language in his statement that would refer to the Jewish settlements... Sharon was instrumental in spearheading the creation of the settlement movement. At the summit, however, he relented and declared Israel "will immediately begin to remove unauthorized outposts." The word "settlement" was not spoken. Sharon drew a distinction between the remote outposts created by Jewish settlers -- mostly a few trailers on hilltops -- and those authorized by Israeli law.

...One phrase uttered by Sharon -- "territorial contiguity" -- has multiple interpretations. For Palestinians, this means a state that is not cut up into pieces by Israeli settlements and security zones. But Sharon in the past has suggested this could mean "territorial continuity" created by bridges and tunnels.

...Sharon and Abbas also avoided mentioning Jerusalem.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=300633&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

Around 20,000 settlers and their supporters rallied last night in Jerusalem's Zion Square to protest against the deal struck at the Aqaba summit between Israel and the Palestinians... Despite promises of support from Likud, National Union and National Religious Party ministers, as well as prominent MKs from the right, there were few political representatives.

...The Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District (Yesha Council) issued a statement calling the Aqaba summit "a humiliating ceremony in which the Israeli government celebrated its surrender to Palestinian terrorism."

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not a satire.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&ncid=584&e=1&u=/nm/20030605/pl_nm/usa_iraq_bush_dc

President Bush took a quick tour of Baghdad on Thursday -- from an altitude of 31,000 feet... on Air Force One, which flew by at a ground speed of 467 miles per hour.

It was a lot to soak up in a matter of seconds... "He showed a real familiarity with the sights of Baghdad, the topography of Baghdad," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said... "He was very interested in seeing Iraq," Fleischer said.

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the cost of blowing up Saddam's bunker

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0323/mondo1.php

Bush said he had to start the war early on March 20 so as to kill Saddam, his sons, and other top officials at a secret meeting in a bunker. According to reports last week, that bunker did not exist. But consider what it cost, according to estimates by an analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation:

Two stealth fighters, at $1,500 an hour each for three hours: $9,000

Two Navy Prowlers as escort, at $4,000 an hour. Total for three hours: $24,000

Two bunker-buster bombs, at $60,000 a pop. Total: $120,000

Two Tomahawk missiles, at $750,000 to $1 million each. Total: $2 million

The grand total? Somewhere between $1.6 million and $2.2 million to take out a nonexistent bunker. That might not seem like much, the way the Pentagon throws around money, but it would pay for at least 1 million school lunches (at $2.14 each) for kids from poor families.

[Meanwhile...] Tens of thousands of California teachers already have received layoff notices... In Colorado, schools are going to a four-day week to trim costs... Two-thirds of Florida's pre-kindergarten programs have been axed... A newly built library in Hawaii has no books... Half the school districts in Kansas have cut staff, and some now charge students to participate in extracurricular events. Elsewhere, more than 41 million people have no health insurance...Half of all women who get pregnant don't get prenatal care because they don't have the money. Half of the nation's personal bankruptcies occur because of medical debts.

...Some 3.5 million people now are homeless, but programs for low-cost housing are being cut. Prisons are bursting, from 1.2 million occupants in 2001 to about 2 million today. The price of natural gas, the clean fuel pushed by industry to replace dirty coal, was $1.58 per million BTUs [heat units] in 1990. By 2000, it was $4.08 per million BTUs. And last Friday it stood at $5.99.

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warning! warning!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,968375,00.html

"Some of you, many of you, are not going to like what you hear tonight," said Ted Koppel, the senior American news anchor as he introduced Arundhati Roy, the Indian novelist, activist and critic of US foreign policy, to his show shortly after September 11. "You don't have to listen. But if you do, you should know that dissent sometimes comes in strange packages."

The introduction, such as it was, told us less about Roy than it did about both Koppel and the mindset that has dominated the American media since the collapse of the twin towers. It reflects at best a reluctance, and at worst a downright refusal, to engage with views and voices opposed to George Bush's foreign policy.

..."This nation is now at war," said Peter Beinart, the editor of the liberal magazine New Republic. "And in such an environment, domestic political dissent is immoral without a prior statement of national solidarity." ...Views that offer an informed critical analysis of the Bush administration's foreign policy, particularly with regard to the Middle East, are not part of the national conversation in the United States. And until Americans can have that conversation with themselves they will not be equipped to converse with the rest of the world.

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and what does arundhati roy say, that her appearances warrant viewer warnings on tv? one teensy excerpt. mrs. henry urges YOU to read the original at

http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=16051

The US invasion of Iraq was perhaps the most cowardly war ever fought in history. After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, after making sure that most of its weapons had been destroyed, the "Coalition of the Willing" ...sent in an invading army.

...After the invasion of Iraq, Western TV channels' ghoulish interest in the mass graves they discovered evaporated quickly when they realized that the bodies were of Iraqis who had been killed in the war against Iran and the Shia uprising [instigated and not supported by george bush senior]. The search for an appropriate mass grave continues.

...In an article appropriately headlined "Feeding Frenzy Under Way, as Companies From All Over Seek a Piece of the Action," the [New York] Times notes without irony that "governments around the world and the companies whose causes they support have besieged Washington in a campaign to win a piece of the reconstruction action in Iraq." "The British," the article notes, "though their appeals are understated, offer what some Bush administration officials argue is the most convincing case: that they shed blood in Iraq."

Whose blood was shed has not been clarified. Surely they didn't mean British blood, or American blood. They must have meant the British helped the Americans to shed Iraqi blood. So "the most convincing case" for reconstruction contracts is when a country can argue that it is a co-murderer of Iraqis.

...Apart from staking their claim to contracts based on their status as co-murderers, the British delegation also invoked the their colonial past, again without irony, making the case that British companies "had a long and close relationship with Iraq and Iraqi business from the imperial days in the early 20th century until international sanctions were imposed in the 1990s." Glossing over, of course, that this meant Britain had supported Saddam Hussein through the 1970s and 1980s.

Those of us who belong to former colonies think of imperialism as rape. So you rape. Then you kill. Then you demand the right to rape the corpse. That's usually known as necrophilia. Extending this horrible analogy, Richard Perle said recently, "Iraqis are freer today and we are safer. Relax and enjoy it."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/05/national/05TERR.html?ex=1055836307&ei=1&en=616b2997f14599c0

At a forum on Capitol Hill, one immigrant after another told of the toll that they said the fight against terrorism had taken on them. After Sept. 11, 2001, the authorities questioned, jailed or deported hundreds of people who had no known ties to terrorism... Lawmakers and several hundred listeners heard from nine immigrants who maintained that they and their families had been victimized by the Justice Department's pursuit of terror suspects.

Nadin Hamoui, a Syrian-born woman who lives in Washington State, said she and other family members were jailed for months because the government was trying to deport them. Ms. Hamoui said she feared that her father, a former pilot in Syria who fled his homeland in 1992, would be killed if he was forced to return. "This is my home," Ms. Hamoui told the forum, sobbing as she spoke. "I've been here 11 years and will not be turned away because I am an Arab Muslim."

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http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=18585

A human rights group says it is considering legal action on behalf of immigrants rounded up following the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks after a Justice Department report found serious abuses in the way they were treated. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the findings in the 198-page report released Monday by the Department's Inspector General (IG) Glenn Fine, a "major scandal for the Bush administration".

"We are actively assessing claims that should be brought in light of this report," said Lucas Guttentag, director of ACLU's immigrants rights project in a statement. He noted that Department officials named in the findings -- including high-ranking political appointees -- have been encouraged to obtain legal counsel to defend against any litigation arising from information disclosed in the report.

The report confirms ACLU's long-held view that... the war on terror quickly became a war on immigrants.

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-06-05-ashcroft-critics-patriot-act_x.htm

"We have not violated the law," Ashcroft told the House Judiciary Committee. "If there are ways to improve the way in which we uphold the law, we will... I have some sympathy for the inspector general's desire to have us do a quicker job... But you have to remember, Ground Zero was still smoldering. The FBI was operating out of a parking garage."

...Ashcroft told the committee that prosecutors need more power. He said he wants Congress to give the department the authority to seek pretrial detention of terrorism suspects and to make it clear that anyone who attends a terrorism training camp can be charged with providing material support to terrorism. He also said he'd like Congress to strengthen penalties for terrorism crimes to include the death penalty... "I think we are working in the right direction," he said.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/03/politics/03VETS.html?ei=1&en=29cb17b03aa15b6f&ex=1055736248&pagewanted=print&position=

The Supreme Court declined today to hear a case that sought the free lifetime medical care that was promised to some veterans of World War II and the Korean War. Without comment, the justices refused to review a November ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. That court held that promises of... recruiters... were not valid, since the recruiters did not have the authority to make them. "While we are sympathetic to the plaintiffs' position and acknowledge the likelihood that plaintiffs believed these promises and relied on them, the government is not legally bound to abide by them," the circuit court ruled, 9 to 4, in an opinion written by Judge Paul R. Michel.

Grand promises by recruiters have been part of military lore [sic] for generations.

...In a dissent joined by three colleagues, Chief Judge Haldane Robert Mayer rejected as "pure sophistry" the notion that Congress did not know what recruiters were promising. "If Congress can appropriate billions for this aspect of national defense and not know how it is accounted for, then God Save the Republic," Judge Mayer wrote.

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http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/sperry/2003/06/02#a439

You may not have noticed, but another Orange Alert has come and gone. The latest one faded quietly away this weekend when the latest wave of al-Qaeda attacks failed to materialize... How can the lighthouse keepers know that the threat has abated in such a short time?

...The system was conceived as one kind of political instrument-- a post-9/11 means of assuring the public that the Bushmen were on top of a situation that they were patently not on top of-- [But] at the moment its main virtue is the ability to dictate the news cycle-- and thus bury other, less opportune stories at will-- and to change the tenor of the day's political dialogue, also at will. It will be one important source of political capital for the Bushmen in the summer and fall of 2004 if they don't wreck its credibility altogether between now and then.

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