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amazing geeky detective work!

http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/blair.htm

Richard M. Smith (rms@computerbytesman.com), June 30, 2003 - Microsoft Word documents are notorious for containing private information in file headers which people would sometimes rather not share. The British government of Tony Blair just learned this lesson the hard way.

Back in February 2003, 10 Downing Street published a dossier on Iraq's security and intelligence organizations. This dossier was cited by Colin Powell in his address to the United Nations the same month. Dr. Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, quickly discovered that much of the material in the dossier was actually plagiarized from a U.S. researcher on Iraq.

...Blair's government made one additional mistake: they published the dossier as a Microsoft Word file on their Web site. When I first heard from Dr. Rangwala about the dossier, I decided to try to learn who had worked on the document.

I downloaded the Word file containing the dossier from the 10 Downing Street Web site (http://www.number-10.gov.uk/) and found the... revision log in the file... Most Word document files contain a revision log which is a listing of the last 10 edits of a document, showing the names of the people who worked with the document and the names of the files that the document went under.

Revision logs are hidden and cannot be viewed in Microsoft Word. However, I wrote a small utility for extracting and displaying revision logs and other hidden information in Word .DOC files. It is easy to spot the following four names in the revision log [detailed in the original article --mrs.h] of the Blair dossier: P. Hamill, J. Pratt, A. Blackshaw, M. Khan. In addition, the "cic22" in the first three entries of the revision log stands for "Communications Information Centre," a unit of the British Government.

Back in February, I passed along these 4 names to Dr. Rangwala, who then provided them to a number of reports in the UK. One reporter quickly identified the four individuals as: Paul Hamill - Foreign Office official; John Pratt - Downing Street official; Alison Blackshaw - The personal assistant of the Prime Minister's press secretary; Murtaza Khan - Junior press officer for the Prime Minister [in other words, blair's denial that his office sexed up the dossier was false --mrs.h].

...The Blair government learned its lesson well with regard to publishing Microsoft Word documents. Another report on Iraq that was published in June 2003 was only available as a PDF file. PDF files do not contain revision logs or hidden author information.

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hooray for geeks!

http://business.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/07/04/website_turns_tables_on_government_officials?mode=PF

Annoyed by the prospect of a massive new federal surveillance system, two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are celebrating the Fourth of July with a new Internet service that will let citizens create dossiers on government officials. The system will start by offering standard background information on politicians, but then go one bold step further, by asking Internet users to submit their own intelligence reports on government officials -- reports that will be published with no effort to verify their accuracy.

"It's sort of a citizen's intelligence agency," said Chris Csikszentmihalyi, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab. He and graduate student Ryan McKinley created the Government Information Awareness (GIA) project as a response to the US government's Total Information Awareness program (TIA).

Revealed last year, TIA seeks to track possible terrorist activity by analyzing vast amounts of information stored in government and private databases, such as credit card data. The system would use this information to analyze the actions of millions of people... News of the plan outraged civil libertarians... The Defense Department then renamed the program Terrorist Information Awareness.

...The GIA system [is] partly based on technology used to create Internet indexes such as Google. Software crawls around Internet sites that store large amounts of information about politicians. These include independent political sites like opensecrets.org, as well as sites run by government agencies. McKinley created software that ferrets out the useful data from these sites, and loads it into the GIA database. The result is a one-stop research site for basic information on key officials.

The site also takes advantage of round-the-clock political coverage provided by cable TV's C-Span networks. McKinley and Csikszentmihalyi use video cameras to capture images of people appearing on C-Span, which generally includes the names of people shown on screen. A computer program "reads" each name, and links it to any information about that person stored in the database. By clicking on the picture, a GIA user instantly gets a complete rundown on all available data about that person.

The GIA site constantly displays snapshots of the people appearing on C-Span at that moment. If there's a dossier on a particular person, clicking on the picture brings it up. A C-Span viewer watching a live government hearing could learn which companies have contributed to a member of Congress's reelection campaign, before the politician had even finished speaking.

...The site will allow the public to submit information about government officials, and this information will be made available to anyone visiting the site. No effort will be made to verify the accuracy of the data... [Which] raises the possibility that people could post libelous information, or data that unreasonably compromises a person's privacy.

...On a page of the GIA website, at opengov.media.mit.edu, McKinley and Csikszentmihalyi give their answer to questions about the legitimacy of their actions. "Is it legal?" the site reads. "It should be."

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geek o rama!

http://billmon.org/archives/000320.html

With Friday's release of the June employment numbers -- or rather, lack of employment numbers -- we have payroll figures for the first 29 months of Bush's term in office. During that time, the U.S. economy has shed almost 2.5 million jobs, a percentage loss of slightly under 1.9%.

...The Labor Department has been counting total nonfarm civilian jobs since 1939, allowing us to look at the full record of every president since Harry Truman, plus the 3rd and 4th terms of President Roosevelt -- the last of which was cut short by his untimely death in April 1945... How do we to account for the fact that different presidents have ruled for different periods of time? One way to equalize them would be to convert their job creation (or in Shrub's case, destruction) numbers into annualized rates.

Annualizing is a trick we use in the investment business for comparing rates of returns on different assets over different periods. It essentially involves calculating the annual return (also known as the geometric average) that would be required to produce a given cumulative return over a given period of time. So, for example, an asset that increased in value by, say, 100% over 10 years would have an annualized return of 7.18%. (Not 10%, even though 10x10=100. You have to leave room for compounding.)

Anyway, by annualizing the job creation records of the last 12 presidents, we arrive at this... Roosevelt (last 2 terms), 4.7%; Johnson, 3.8%; Carter, 3.1%; Clinton & Truman 2.4%; Kennedy & Nixon, 2.3%; Reagan, 2.1%; Ford, 1%; Eisenhower, 0.9%, Bush I, 0.6%; Bush II, -0.8%. [That's a negative job-creation rate for the current "president." -mrs.h]

...Let's take look at just the first 29 months of the last 12 presidents: Roosevelt (3rd term), 9.3%; Carter, 4.7%; Johnson, 4.3%; Clinton, 2.8%; Kennedy, 2.3%; Truman 2.1%; Nixon, 1.1%; Ford, 0.9%; Eisenhower, 0.5%, Bush I, 0.4%; Reagan, -0.5%; Bush II, -0.8%... As you can see, Shrub is still huddled down in the cellar, but Reagan is definitely crowding him. Note, however, that the partisan alignment -- Dems on top, Republicans on bottom -- hasn't changed a bit.

[a blogger comments:]... "There was a president in this century worse on the jobs creation record --- Herbert Hoover. I saw the numbers on one of the other blog sites, somewhere around -7.8% annual average. Of course that is not counting the remaining 16 months of Shrub we have to endure. He may actually outdo Hoover, given the way the economy is spiraling downward more and more quickly."

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http://www.sundayherald.com/35128

THEY are the first letters to see the outside world from the 21st century's Devil's Island -- the US military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

These 10 letters in neat, cramped handwriting from Moazzam Begg to his family back home in suburban Birmingham [England] tell exactly what life is like inside the world's most feared prison -- Camp X-Ray. Begg, who is 35, has been detained without charge since January 2001... On Thursday, 4 July (American Independence Day and the day before Begg's birthday), President Bush ordered that Begg and five other men, including another Briton -- Feroz Abbasi, 23, from London -- would be the first detainees to face military tribunals.

...[Guantanamo] detainees are kept in wood and steel mesh cages, partially exposed to the elements. The world was shocked when the first pictures of Camp X-Ray emerged, showing detainees bound hand and foot and wearing blacked-out goggles... Begg, detainee number JJJEEHH 160, says in his letters that he mostly writes at night, 'which is usually when I cannot sleep because of thinking and worrying all the time, and the heat and the bright lights'... In one letter to his wife, Begg writes: 'These past few weeks have been more depressing than usual, especially since the birth of our son ... time is dragging on so slowly ... I still don't know what will happen with me, where I will go and when -- even after all this time.'

...Begg's father, Azmat, insists his son is not a terrorist... According to Azmat, a retired bank manager, his son was moved by the plight of the Afghani people and in 2001 travelled to Kabul with his family to start a school for basic education and provide water pumps. When the allied attack on Afghanistan began in October 2001, Begg and his family moved to Islamabad in Pakistan for safety. It was there that he was seized in January 2002 by Pakistani police and CIA officers, bundled into a back of a car and taken back to Kabul, where he was held in a windowless cellar at Bagram airbase for nearly a year. His family insist it's a case of mistaken identity. Intelligence agents targeted Begg because his name appears on a photo-copy of a money transfer found in an al-Qaeda training camp.

Begg maintains his innocence in his letters home, saying: 'I believe that there has been a gross violation of my human rights, particularly to that right of freedom and innocence until proven guilty. After all this time I still don't know what crime I am supposed to have committed.'

...All of Begg's letters show that he rarely gets correspondence from his family, although he writes to them regularly... Although he appears reluctant to worry his family, he does write about some of the more unpleasant aspects of life in Camp X-Ray. 'The camel spider is the only 10-legged spider in the world, and, I believe, it is not an arachnid (technically not a spider). But it grows to bigger than the human hand-size, moves like a race-car and has a bite that causes flesh to decay if untreated. In the summer there were plenty here, running into cells and climbing over people; one person was bitten and had to be treated. Apart from that there is the usual melee of scorpions, beetles, mice and other insects.'

...His last letter in January this year ends: 'I don't know what is going on about my case, but I think it won't be resolved any time shortly. I am mostly kept in the dark and nobody seems to know. Please write back.' ...Azmat and the rest of the family have been refused visas to travel to America in order to ask questions about their son's case. He also accused the [British] Foreign Office of failing to help. 'I feel now he will comply with whatever he is told,' said Azmat. 'In his most recent letter he said that he will 'make a decision which will affect the entire family'. We cannot guess what he means, but I am afraid he could do anything -- he has nothing in him left.'

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-07-09-man-challenge-ecstatus_x.htm

PEORIA, Ill. (AP) — Attorneys for a Qatari man accused of aiding al-Qaeda are challenging his designation as an enemy combatant. Bradley University graduate Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, in federal custody since January 2002, was placed under military control June 23 after President Bush said he was an al-Qaeda sleeper agent. The designation strips him of the right to counsel and allows the government to detain him indefinitely.

...Al-Marri was awaiting trial on charges of credit card fraud and lying to the FBI when he was designated an enemy combatant. He graduated from Bradley University in 1991 with a computer science degree and was living in West Peoria when he was taken into custody. His wife and five children have since left the country.

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http://www.reuters.co.uk/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=334394&basket=UK_WORLDNEWS_PKG&item=PackageComponent

Retiring U.S. General Tommy Franks... in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" show from U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida... has repeated a taunt made by President George W. Bush... Franks said he agreed with the president's controversial message last week for Iraqi militants attacking U.S. troops. "Absolutely," said Franks, adding: "Bring 'em on."

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http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030711/1/3chho.html

US Secretary of States Colin Powell admitted there was no certainty how many foreign troops were going to Iraq to help US and British forces, in an indication that US efforts to enlist international assistance in pacifying the country may have hit a snag. "I can't give you the exact number of nations or how many troops are going to be committed," Powell said, appearing on CNN's "Larry King Live" program.

The statement starkly contrasted with recent upbeat assessments by top Defense Department officials, who have insisted that foreign aid to battle-weary American soldiers was well on the way.

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http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_303502,00050006.htm

The United States has agreed to increase the number of peacekeepers in Congo by 2,100 to 10,800 to replace the French-led force in the northeastern part of the country. The increased force would give US a robust mandate to prevent fighting.

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creative ways of supporting the troops: ignore the scary bits!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28712-2003Jul8.html

July 8 -- The combat engineers inside the tan Humvees had traversed the Wedding Island Bridge dozens of times to fetch their translator. It was a routine trip, soldiers in the unit said. Cross the narrow bridge. Pick him up. Drive back over the bridge to complete their assignment for the day. But today... a bone-rattling explosion punched the vehicle several feet into the air and spewed an orange fireball and a cloud of black smoke. The Humvee fell back to the bridge, its left wheels touching down and bouncing back up before the right side, propelled higher by the blast, smashed into the ground. Shrapnel and flying asphalt shattered the windshield and dented the vehicle's body. After the Humvee stopped, the driver appeared to pause for a split second before restarting the engine and flooring the accelerator, swerving to the left and right as he sped off the bridge and veered onto a connecting road. The explosion, which military investigators say they believe was caused by a land mine planted on the side of the bridge, was witnessed by a Washington Post correspondent who was less than 30 yards away.

...Because the blast did not result in a death or serious injury, it was not mentioned to reporters by the U.S. military's public information office. But military officials acknowledged that such non-fatal attacks are more widespread than daily casualty figures reflect... [They are] estimated by officials at more than a dozen a day in Baghdad.

..."This kind of attack is good for the Iraqi people," insisted Khudier Abbas, 39, a food vendor along the Tigris. "The Americans have been here for four months. What have they done for us?" He stuck his hand into his pocket and fished out some candy -- a piece of yellow butterscotch and pink bubblegum. "This is all the Americans have given me," he said with a harrumph. "They think this will make us happy?"

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editorial in the Army Times!

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8262/view/print

June 30, 2003 ...Talk is cheap -- and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately. For example, the White House griped that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful and unnecessary -- including a modest proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day.

Similarly, the administration announced that on October 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones.

...As Bush and Republican leaders in Congress preach the mantra of tax cuts, they can't seem to find time to make progress on minor tax provisions that would be a boon to military homeowners, reservists who travel long distances for training and parents deployed to combat zones, among others. Incredibly, one of those tax provisions -- easing residency rules for service members to qualify for capital-gains exemptions when selling a home -- has been a homeless orphan in the corridors of power for more than five years now.

...Bush's $9.2 billion military construction request for 2004... was set a full $1.5 billion below this year's budget on the expectation that Congress, as has become tradition in recent years, would add funding as it drafted the construction appropriations bill. But Bush's tax cuts have left little elbow room in the 2004 federal budget that is taking shape, and the squeeze is on across the board. The result: Not only has the House Appropriations military construction panel accepted Bush's proposed $1.5 billion cut, it voted to reduce construction spending by an additional $41 million next year.

...Money talks -- and we all know what walks.

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rumors!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3049300.stm

I arrived in Baghdad at night. The city was plunged into darkness. It has been like this for weeks... "Power cuts are the Americans' greatest failure," the driver told me... He then added: "You know what, I think they are punishing us because of the continued attacks on their soldiers."

..."The Americans," an Iraqi worker in Al-Rashid district told me, "drove around in a Baghdad suburb announcing in a loudspeaker 'security for us in return for electricity for you'".

...An Iraqi shop owner in A-Karrada district, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, squatted on the pavement outside his shop after giving up hope that his air conditioner would ever work again. "The Americans are behind the power cuts and the ensuing chaos," he said with a confident tone, "because this will give them a pretext to stay in Iraq for ever."

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heck!

http://64.224.42.246/weblog/dannylog.cfm

Tired of Iraq? President Bush may be. He is off to five countries in Africa... The president told Charlie Cobb of AllAfrica.com and three other Africa specialists yesterday that "We come as a nation that believes in the future of Africa. We've got great relations with leaders and countries on the continent of Africa which will not only enable people to realize their dreams, but also make the world more safe."

Notes Cobb: "But Bush brushed off reports suggesting that support for the United States has nosedived in Africa following the war with Iraq... "’Obviously,’ President Bush said, ‘there needs to be an education program" in Africa because there has been ‘a kind of an attachment’ between the words "America" and "war". They are going to find out the words 'freedom' and 'America' are synonymous... If there's a constant effort to describe America as a non-caring country, then people are going to have a bad attitude about us. I think people, when they know the facts, will say, "Well, this is a great country."’

"Asked to respond to the accusation that U.S. oil interests drive Washington's Africa policy, Bush was even more dismissive: ‘That's one of the most amazing conspiracies I've heard. Heck, no one has ever made that connection,’ he said, going on to outline the varying engagement his administration had pursued with African countries. ‘We've been talking about Africa since I was sworn-in as President,’ he said. [see original at http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200307040009.html]

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http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen07042003.html

A Washington insider familiar with Liberia revealed that a major reason for Bush to go into Liberia is oil. Liberia's flag flies on most of the world's supertankers. "Look, the United States is about ready to start moving massive supplies of Iraqi oil on supertankers. With Liberia, the major flag of convenience for those tankers in a state of upheaval, Bush has to go in with troops. Forget human rights, that's not the issue, the Liberian Internatonal Ship and Corporate Registry must have a stable government to nurture it," the insider said.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/bush_africa_anger_dc

GOREE ISLAND, Senegal (Reuters) - President Bush made an eloquent speech but did not win many friends during his brief visit to Goree Island off Senegal on Tuesday. "We are very angry. We didn't even see him," said Fatou N'diaye, a necklace seller watching dignitaries file past to return to the mainland at the end of Bush's tour. N'diaye and other residents of Goree, site of a famous slave trading station, said they had been taken to a football ground on the other side of the quaint island at 6 a.m. and told to wait there until Bush had departed, around midday.

Bush came to Goree to tour the red-brick Slave House, where Africans were kept in shackles before being shipped across a perilous sea to a lifetime of servitude. He then gave an eloquent speech about the horrors of slavery... The cooped-up residents were not impressed. "It's slavery all over again," fumed one father-of-four, who did not want to give his name. "It's humiliating. The island was deserted."

White House officials said the decision to remove the locals was taken by Senegalese authorities. But there was no doubt who the residents blamed. "We never want to see him come here again," said N'diaye.

As the sun rose over Goree before Bush's arrival, the only people to be seen on the main beach were U.S. officials and secret service agents... Normally, the island teems with... all the expected trappings of a tourist hot-spot in one of the world's poorest countries. On Tuesday, shutters on the yellow and red colonial-style houses remained shut. The cafes were closed and the narrow pier deserted, apart from security agents manning a metal detector, near the sandy beach. A gunship patrolled offshore.

"We understand that you have to have security measures, since September 11, but to dump us in another place...? We had to leave at 6 a.m. I didn't have time to bathe, and the bread did not arrive," the father-of-four said. "We were shut up like sheep," said 15-year-old Mamadou.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3055924.stm

AS US President George W Bush proclaims his commitment to Africa during this week's five-day trip, his Republicans in Congress are planning on cutting back the money allocated to his much-vaunted plans to tackle HIV/Aids and encourage development... Representative Jim Kolbe, chairman of the subcommittee on foreign operations, said that in his view Congress would be unlikely to allocate the full amount because neither initiative will be fully operational by the time the fiscal year begins. The amounts "assume you have full-blown programmes up and running on October 1, and that's not the case," he said.

...Jamie Drummond, executive director of Data, a pressure group set up to campaign for debt relief and African aid... said it would be ironic that, while Mr Bush was in Africa, "the House foreign operations subcommittee was actually deciding to slash those promises, to break them if you like".

And he warned that there should be no cutbacks in other programmes to fund these new initiatives, nor restrictions on contributions from other nations.

Aid experts say that it may be difficult for many African countries to meet the strict conditions that the US has set for receiving funds from the new [program], which requires nations to adhere to strict standards of openness and democracy. It may be that as few as four or five African nations would qualify for the first wave of assistance under this programme.

...Meanwhile, experts are concerned about the lack of progress in negotiations over trade in agricultural products, which could offer more real benefits to African economies than any aid programme. Robert Shapiro of the Brookings Institution points out that while many African countries have a per capita income of $1 per day, in Europe the agricultural subsidy per cow is $2 per day... Mr Shapiro said that African income from exports of agricultural products could triple from $10bn to $30bn if subsidies were reduced. But with trade talks between the US and the EU over agriculture deadlocked... there is little hope.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen07042003.html

What does Bush turn around and do to some of his "coalition of the willing" partners? He cuts off military aid to them. Because some 35 nations refused to sign treaties with the United States exempting U.S. war criminals from prosecution by the International Criminal Court... The Baltic nations, who supported Bush's idiotic adventure in Iraq, are cut off. So are other coalition partners--Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bulgaria. Bush gave waivers to Uganda and Rwanda, two nations that use American military aid to maintain a brutal genocide in a fractured Congo.

And what of the Solomon Islands, which were added to the White House coalition list even though the country's Prime Minister said he was unaware of his nation's participation? Bush's troll-like partner, Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, recently announced that Australian troops would occupy the civil war-ridden Solomon Islands and mete out justice a la Iraq. Never mind the fact that American small arms companies have been caught smuggling arms into the island group to help foment civil war. Howard also reserves the right to invade and re-colonize any other Pacific "failed state" he thinks might have the potential to harbor terrorists.

...With Howard threatening to invade Pacific islands, no wonder Indonesia feels it can brutalize the secessionist provinces of Aceh and West Papua, especially when Western corporate interests (oil and copper, respectively) are involved... There's [also] oil in the Timor Sea.

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matrimonial terrorism in lawrence, kansas!

http://www.ljworld.com/section/stateregional/story/137465

Federal authorities have charged 13 people in connection with a marriage fraud case. Four of the defendants are charged with conspiracy to arrange sham marriages between Pakistani citizens and citizens of the United States, U.S. Atty. Eric Melgren announced Wednesday. Nine others, all citizens of Pakistan who live in the Kansas City area, are charged with marriage fraud.

The marriages took place over a period of nearly two years in Wyandotte and Johnson counties... Officials believed the activities were part of a local operation and not terrorist activities...[FBI Agent Jeff] Lanza said, "Clearly, in this case, there were fraudulent means to get into the United States."

...If convicted, each defendant faces a maximum of five years in federal prison without parole.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4025.htm

Sunday Express [UK] AMERICA'S top spy catcher, Paul Redmond, has suddenly resigned in the middle of his secret investigation into how Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden allegedly obtained US computer software, the SUNDAY EXPRESS claimed this weekend. The software is said to enable the two most wanted men in the world to avoid capture because it can pinpoint every move in the global manhunt. Redmond's departure last week was accepted "without discussion" by President Bush, the man who had brought the spy catcher out of retirement to conduct the investigation.

Hours after Redmond had cleared his desk, Bush ordered a $25,000,000.00 bounty on Saddam's head. He wants Saddam "dead or alive" and the same goes for bin Laden. Already Bush has agreed to either man forgoing a trial and being shot after interrogation.

...Documents obtained by the respected International Currency Review, a London-based newsletter for the financial community, allege that the software was provided for Saddam on the authority of President Bush's father when he was in the White House - a time when relations between Iraq and Washington were close during Baghdad's war with Iran. The Review's publisher, Christopher Story, a former financial adviser to Lady Thatcher, said: "The documents are extremely sensitive and raise some very serious questions."

...Shortly after the documents reached Washington on the eve of the war with Iraq, President Bush brought Paul Redmond out of retirement... He was told to investigate how Robert Hanssen, the renegade FBI computer specialist who was a longtime Soviet agent, had handed over a copy of the software - known as Promis - to his KGB controllers for $2 million. Hanssen, now serving a life sentence, has yet to reveal all he knows about how the KGB sold on a copy of the software to Osama bin Laden for $4 million shortly before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. "But until Redmond's abrupt resignation, increasingly the documents relating to Saddam's use of Promis - and his relationship with President Bush's father - were what Redmond had begun to focus on", said a source close to the departed spy catcher.

Originally developed by a small company in Washington called Inslaw, there are now a number of versions of the software... William Hamilton, president of Inslaw, said that top Bush aides and FBI director Robert Mueller had met to discuss the "implications" of Redmond's investigation... Like Mr Story, Mr Hamilton did not want to elaborate. But both men conceded that Redmond's investigation could have caused embarrassment to President Bush and his family.

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new york times editorial

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/09/opinion/09WED1.html?pagewanted=print&position=

The Bush administration, long allergic to the idea of investigating the government's failure to prevent the Sept. 11 terror attacks, is now doing its best to bury the national commission that was created to review Washington's conduct. That was made plain yesterday in a muted way by Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey governor, and Lee Hamilton, the former congressman, who are directing the inquiry. When these seasoned, mild-mannered men start complaining that the administration is trying to intimidate the commission, the country had better take notice.

In a status report on its work, the commission said various agencies — particularly the Pentagon and the Justice Department — were blocking requests for vital information and resources. Acting more like the Soviet Kremlin than the American government, the administration has insisted that monitors from various agencies attend debriefings of key officials by investigators. Mr. Kean is quite correct in objecting to this as a thinly veiled attempt at intimidation. Meanwhile, the clock is running for the commission to complete a full report to the nation by next May.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/09/1057430281780.html

North Korea has conducted 70 high-explosive tests linked to nuclear weapons development, South Korea's spy chief was quoted as saying last night... A senior source in Seoul said that Ko Young-Koo, a National Intelligence Service director, had told parliament: 'We have also noticed high-explosive tests being conducted in Yongdok district in Gusong City in [the north-western province of] North Pyongyang and we have been keeping track of the movement." He also said that North Korea had apparently begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods, a program that could yield enough plutonium for half-a-dozen atomic bombs within months.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/11/1057783354653.html

The Bush Administration appears to be gearing up for more high stakes adventures, this time on the high seas... Washington's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), unveiled by President George Bush in a speech in Poland in May, aims to assemble a coalition of countries... to "search planes and ships carrying suspect cargo and to seize illegal weapons or missile technologies"... Officials from 11 nations meeting in Brisbane this week agreed to begin joint military training exercises under the initiative. Exercises could begin within months.

...North Korea's 1400-kilometre land border with China poses another challenge to would-be blockaders, says Professor James Cotton, of the University of New South Wales' campus at the Australian Defence Force Academy. "A lot of Korean exports go via Chinese railheads and ports. Without Chinese participation, this kind of interdiction is a waste of time," Cotton says. With a seat on the UN Security Council, China is also well placed to block any move to strengthen interdiction powers under the Law of the Sea. The convention, which came into force in November 1994, guarantees free passage of properly flagged ships, except those suspected of drug running, unauthorised broadcasting, or piracy. "There's nothing in the Law of the Sea Convention that would allow a country to intercept a vessel in international waters on suspicion that it's carrying arms or weapons of mass destruction," says Professor Anthony Bergin, also of UNSW's ADFA campus, and one of Australia's leading authorities on the convention.

...If North Korea resorts to relying solely on its own flagged ships, its weapons shipments will be virtually untouchable, as are US arms shipments which account for almost 30 per cent of the world's armaments trade.

...In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy took control of the seas around Cuba when it was revealed Soviet ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads had been installed on the island. In military parlance, a naval blockade is an act of war, so Kennedy described US action to interdict Eastern bloc shipping on the way to Cuba as a "quarantine" action.

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http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=253929&lang=e&dir=news

Israel accused Syria Friday of possessing an assortment of lethal gases along with a missile arsenal that put the existence of the Jewish state in peril and pose a grave to the security of the entire Middle East. The charge was made by Israel's Chief-of-Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon in remarks given to a French magazine. "This is a disaster (to Israel) because the Syrian government is irresponsible and terrorist," Israel's top soldier was quoted as saying. Yaalon also threatened to wage an "all-out war" against the Palestinians if armed groups resume bombing attacks against Israeli targets. He described Palestinian President Yasser Arafat as a "master terrorist who deserves death or banishment." Nevertheless, he made it plain Israel had no plans at the moment to assassinate Arafat or deport him to another Arab country. "We're not going to make a martyr out of him."

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http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/07/11/liberia.rebels.reut/

Liberia's main rebel faction has warned that any peacekeeping force that was deployed before President Charles Taylor stepped down would have to be prepared to fight it... Taylor says he will only go once a force arrives. "While we hope for the best we are braced for the worst; therefore any troops deployed before the departure of Taylor must be prepared for a fire-fight," said a statement Friday from the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0711/p11s01-coop.html?entryBottomStory

President Bush repeatedly highlighted the importance of democracy, peace, and security during his African tour this week. But, administration mismanagement of the war on terror has deeply undermined stability across Africa in the past year. In its African incarnation, that war has managed to produce almost exactly the opposite of what was intended. The administration has allowed African partner regimes to crack down on a wide range of Muslim groups over the past 18 months, creating enemies where they previously didn't exist. The majority of Muslim leaders in Africa abhor violence as a response to government repression and coercion. They have little or nothing in common with Al Qaeda. Yet US foreign policy in Africa has inspired radicalism, discredited moderate African Muslims, and fomented political instability in key nations.

...Mr. Bush touted $100,000,000.00 in new funding to fight terrorism in Africa. Yet the administration appears oblivious of the effect of US policy on African Muslims. This is perhaps because few US government analysts speak local languages or have direct field experience in Africa. But if the US doesn't closely monitor how governments use this new funding, it's likely to increase political instability in a dozen African nations.

...If this new infusion of money into the war on terror in Africa is handled in the same way it has been, recent violence in Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Kenya, and Uganda will be just the opening shots of a longer, bloodier series of wars - struggles in which several important African nations may fracture along religious lines.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=316875&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

The coalition that brought U.S. President George W. Bush to power consists mostly of devout white Protestants, Christian evangelicals and slightly

less devout white Protestants. Together, these three groups made up three-quarters of Bush's voters in 2000. One of their prominent representatives, Gary Bauer, attended an intelligence briefing yesterday on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv.

When he returns home... he will be able to present facts supporting his claims against what he calls "the widening gap" between Bush's vision from his speech on June 24 last year and U.S. policy as reflected in the road map, at the Aqaba summit, and in trips to the region by Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and John Wolf. "Politely but firmly, we shall see to it that the president corrects the flaws in American policy," says Bauer.

...[Bauer] predicts ("I'm optimistic") that "in a month you'll be able to see the difference" in the U.S. policy. Bauer wants to stop the custom of officials "sitting in their comfortable offices in Washington [who] think they have a right to tell Israel what it should do." He will not tolerate even a hint of coercion or American pressure on Israel.

Bauer served as the domestic policy adviser for former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, and contended for the 2000 Republican Party presidential nomination against Bush. He tried to make use of his power as the representative of the evangelicals, who make up about a quarter of the American population. Although he did not come close to victory, he proved he can raise funds and give an interesting performance on TV talk shows... He backs Israel for "theological and political" reasons.

..."Developing the road map without consulting Israel was a grave mistake," Bauer says. "Israel is an ally, and we should have sat with it and decided together what the best plan for it was." But then, he is asked, won't you lose your position as an "honest broker?" Bauer laughs. This does not matter to him. "Terror is a joint enemy of Israel's and the U.S.'s." He believes the United States must stand by its allies, and not mediate between them and the enemy.

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http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.07.11/news3.html

Prime Minister Sharon has no plans to rebuke a senior minister in his Cabinet who publicly lambasted President Bush's Middle East policy in a New York briefing this week... The minister, Effi Eitam of the National Religious Party, slammed Bush's Middle East "road map" Monday in a talk to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, declaring that the president's plan was "worse than the Oslo accords." According to attendees, Eitam told the 30 communal leaders present that Israel could never accept a Palestinian state, a key element in Bush's "vision" for the Middle East.

Moreover, attendees said, Eitam declared that he had been encouraged to fight the road map by no less a figure than Richard Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory panel. Perle, in an interview... said, "I find this very puzzling. That is much too crude a statement for me to make." [to be continued undoubtedly -mrs.h]

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