AIDS Activists Jeer Senior Bush Health Official
Wed July 30, 2003 05:09 PM ET
By Paul Simao
ATLANTA (Reuters) - The Bush administration's second-ranking health official on Wednesday advocated making abstinence a key pillar of HIV prevention programs for young Americans, prompting sharp criticism from AIDS activists.

"Encouraging young people and young adults to abstain is the only appropriate initial strategy," Claude Allen, deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, told delegates at the end of the 2003 National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta.

"Delaying sexual debut is the first message they should hear," said Allen, a leading proponent of abstinence-only sex education and a former aide to conservative icon and former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms.

While acknowledging that condoms could sometimes stop the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases, Allen said their use should not take priority over messages that stressed abstinence and monogamy to young people.

Allen's comments prompted jeers from hundreds of activists at the conference in Atlanta and came just days after the federal government reported that the number of AIDS cases had risen in 2002 for the first time in nearly a decade.

An estimated 850,000 to 950,000 Americans have the AIDS virus. AIDS killed 16,371 people across the nation last year.

"Allowing Claude Allen, a man with such hostile viewpoints on the basic tenets of HIV prevention, to close the conference speaks volumes about the Bush administration's true agenda on these issues," said Terje Anderson, executive director of the National Association of People with AIDS.

Many activists have criticized the White House for adopting a new AIDS prevention strategy in April that they say is skewed toward programs that focus on testing and counseling people who already have the disease.

Anderson and others fear that the new approach could cut funding for many community-based programs that emphasize condom use and other safe-sex practices for those not infected with the disease

Regarding "Trouble is you can't put them on trial" (Views, July 25) by Sandra Mackey: In emphasizing the Iraqis' "deep-seated need for revenge" in her opinion piece on the killings of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Sandra Mackey betrays a blind spot to the revenge that motivates this Bush administration in Iraq.
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For President George W. Bush, who is the son of a former enemy of Saddam Hussein's, this is obviously a conflict of great personal significance. What characterizes these killings as revenge, rather than justice, is that there was no due process of law, no calling to account for terrible and perverse crimes.
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If assassination is justice, it is frontier justice. As for parading the corpses of Uday and Qusay in the international media, it is the modern-day equivalent of displaying your enemy's head on a stake.
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Ian Kilroy, Boston
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The killing of Saddam Hussein's sons, in keeping with America's culture of violence and revenge, may bring joy to President George W. Bush, but it looks to me like homicide perpetrated to divert attention from legitimate questions challenging the his administration. I suspect the fog of aggressive disinformation and intimidation will return.
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John Otranto, Grosshelfendorf, Germany
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Japan's role in the world
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Regarding the report "Challenges for Japan: Grappling openly with military role" (July 23):
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The article states that some Japanese wish to become a "normal nation, one armed and able to fight wars" - yet look at all the suffering and waste that "normal nations" have caused. By renouncing war, Japan should be seen as a model of how a mature society can operate successfully without the crutch of military might. To change the constitution and extinguish this example would be a step backward for all humanity. It is the other "normal nations" that should be following Japan's lead, not vice versa.
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Derek Seklecki, Geneva
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Palestinian prisoners
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Regarding the report "Mideast prisoner-release talks stall" (July 24):
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Both the Israelis and the Palestinians accepted with hesitations the road map initiated by President George W. Bush and supported by the UN and Europe. Many have doubts about the effectiveness of its methods. But for sure there is not a single word in the plan that relates to the release of terrorists from Israelis prisons. Release of terrorists by the government of Israel is a goodwill gesture, nothing more, nothing less.
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Reuven Eiland, Kfar Hess, Israel Regarding "Trouble is you can't put them on trial" (Views, July 25) by Sandra Mackey: In emphasizing the Iraqis' "deep-seated need for revenge" in her opinion piece on the killings of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Sandra Mackey betrays a blind spot to the revenge that motivates this Bush administration in Iraq.
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For President George W. Bush, who is the son of a former enemy of Saddam Hussein's, this is obviously a conflict of great personal significance. What characterizes these killings as revenge, rather than justice, is that there was no due process of law, no calling to account for terrible and perverse crimes.
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If assassination is justice, it is frontier justice. As for parading the corpses of Uday and Qusay in the international media, it is the modern-day equivalent of displaying your enemy's head on a stake.
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Ian Kilroy, Boston
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The killing of Saddam Hussein's sons, in keeping with America's culture of violence and revenge, may bring joy to President George W. Bush, but it looks to me like homicide perpetrated to divert attention from legitimate questions challenging the his administration. I suspect the fog of aggressive disinformation and intimidation will return.
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John Otranto, Grosshelfendorf, Germany

Editorial: The tragic cost of a rash Iraq war



British scientist David Kelly should be alive today. But like thousands of others, he has become a casualty of the American/British rush to make war on Iraq. The defence ministry microbiologist and former United Nations weapons inspector killed himself last week after being sucked into a nasty fight between the government and the media.

Kelly committed suicide after being named as the source for a British Broadcasting Corp. report that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government had "sexed up" intelligence presented to Parliament to strengthen the case for war to a public that opposed it. The BBC reported that the government overplayed a claim that Saddam Hussein could launch chemical and biological weapons on just 45 minutes' notice. Kelly denied saying as much, but committed suicide after a parliamentary grilling.

Blair has ordered a judicial probe of this tragedy, seeking to absolve his government of blame. But he already has lost the public's confidence. Two in three Britons think he has not been trustworthy over the threat posed by Saddam. And there have been calls for him to resign, along with Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell. The public feels duped and angry.

In Washington, U.S. President George Bush is also under siege for exaggerating Saddam's nuclear ambitions to justify war. His support is fading.

There is a savage irony in this postwar blame game. Tragic as his death is, Kelly is just one victim of Bush's obsession with "regime change" in Baghdad, and Blair's eager compliance. Some 275 American and British troops have also died, along with more than 8,500 Iraqi civilians and military. They are the other casualties in Bush's drive to "save" the world from weapons of mass destruction that Washington has yet to produce.

The American taxpayer, meanwhile, is on the hook for more than $60 billion for the war and $1 billion a week since. Some 150,000 U.S. troops are hunkering down for a long, shambolic occupation. And after going to war without U.N. sanction, Bush may now request a Security Council resolution authorizing peacekeepers to help stabilize the country.

This is a mess, and a fearsome price for a war that U.N. inspectors cautioned against from the start. They loathed Saddam's vicious regime. But they believed, rightly, that sanctions were working. That Baghdad was contained. That there was no need to rush to war. They were right.

Canada and most of the world chose not to support this folly. But Bush and Blair couldn't be reasoned with. Now they are paying the price in shattered credibility and public disaffection. Still, they are paying nothing like the price that Kelly and thousands of others have

Heads on spikes








I do not mourn the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons, but I am ashamed at the callousness with which their bodies were displayed by the Bush administration. It is the photographic equivalent of putting their heads on spikes, a primitive gesture of arrogance and insensibility to common decency that will come back to haunt us.
American law enforcement long ago abandoned the practice of putting slain criminals such as Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger on display. But even in the 1930s, the gruesome "trophies" of lawful violence were generally cleaned of gore before being exhibited in storefront windows or news photos.
In releasing the photos of the Husseins, the administration excused itself from the international traditions of military courtesy by citing the need to convince Iraqis (and Americans) that they were indeed dead.
The American news media have lost moral currency by distributing the photographs. Remember the outcry in this country when al Jazeera, the Arab TV network, broadcast images of American soldiers killed in the war? What leg do our news media have to stand on now that they have done the same thing?
It seems that when fighting an undeclared war for a flimsy reason, the administration will grasp at any straw to convince the public that America is winning. The elimination of two Third World criminals in what appears to be Mr. Bush's personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein will be nothing more than a footnote in the sorry history of this administration.

John Serfustini
Price

Report Raises More Questions About 9/11

By David Corn, The Nation
July 25, 2003

The attacks of September 11 might have been prevented had the U.S. intelligence community been more competent. And the Bush Administration is refusing to tell the public what intelligence the president saw before 9/11 about the threat posed by Al Qaeda.


These are two findings contained in the long-awaited, 800-page final report of the 9/11 joint inquiry conducted the Senate and House intelligence committees, which was released on July 24. As is traditional in Washington, the contents of the report were selectively leaked before it was officially unveiled. And several news outfits noted that the report contained "no smoking guns" and concluded, as the Associated Press put it, that "no evidence surfaced in the probe...to show that the government could have prevented the attacks." Those reports were wrong � and probably based on information parceled out by sources looking to protect the government and the intelligence community.


In the report's first finding, the committees note that the intelligence community did not have information on the "time, place and specific nature" of the 9/11 attacks, but that it had "amassed a great deal of valuable intelligence regarding Osama bin Laden and his terrorist activities," and that this information could have been used to thwart the assault. "Within the huge volume of intelligence reporting that was available prior to September 11," the report says, "there were various threads and pieces of information that, at least in retrospect, are both relevant and significant. The degree to which the [intelligence] community was or was not able to build on that information to discern the bigger picture successfully is a critical part of the context for the September 11 attacks." One Congressional source familiar with the report observes, "We couldn't say, 'Yes, the intelligence community had all the specifics ahead of time.' But that is not the same as saying this attack could not have been prevented."


The final report is an indictment of the intelligence agencies � and, in part- -of the administrations (Clinton and Bush II) that oversaw them. It notes, "The intelligence community failed to capitalize on both the individual and collective significance of available information.... As a result, the community missed opportunities to disrupt the September 11 plot by denying entry to or detaining would-be hijackers; to at least try to unravel the plot through surveillance and other investigative work within the United States; and, finally, to generate a heightened state of alert and thus harden the homeland against attack. No one will ever know what might have happened had more connections been drawn between these disparate pieces of information.... The important point is that the intelligence community, for a variety of reasons, did not bring together and fully appreciate a range of information that could have greatly enhanced its chances of uncovering and preventing Osama bin Laden's plan to attack the United States on September 11, 2001."


The committees' report covers many missed � and botched � opportunities. It shows that warnings and hints were either ignored or neglected. Some of this has been covered in interim reports released last year and in media accounts. But the final report does contain new information and new details that only confirm an ugly conclusion: A more effective and more vigilant bureaucracy would have had a good chance of detecting portions of the 9/11 plot. "The message is not to tell the intelligence community," said the source familiar with the report, "that you didn't have the final announcement of the details of the September 11 attacks and therefore you could not prevent it. We have to have an intelligence community that is able to connect dots and put the pieces together and investigate it aggressively."


An example: The FBI had an active informant in San Diego who had numerous contacts on 2000 with two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. And he may also have had more limited contact with a third hijacker, Hani Hanjour. In 2000, the CIA had information that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar � who had already been linked to terrorism � were or might be in the United States. Yet it had not placed them on a watch list for suspected terrorists or shared this information with the FBI. The FBI agent who handled the San Diego informant told the committees that had he had access to the intelligence information on al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, "it would have made a huge difference." He would have "immediately opened" an investigation and subjected them to a variety of surveillance. It can never be known whether such an effort would have uncovered their 9/11 plans. "What is clear, however," the report says, "is that the informant's contacts with the hijackers, had they been capitalized on, would have given the San Diego FBI field office perhaps the intelligence community's best chance to unravel the September 11 plot. Given the CIA's failure to disseminate, in a timely manner, the intelligence information on...al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, that chance, unfortunately, never materialized." (The FBI's informant � who is not named in the report � has denied any advance knowledge of 9/11, according to the report, but the committees raise questions about his credibility on this point, and the Bush Administration objected to the joint inquiry's efforts to interview the informant.)


The CIA was not the only agency to screw up. So did the FBI. In August 2001, the bureau did become aware that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were in the United States and tried to locate them. But the San Diego field office never learned of the search. The FBI agent who was handling the informant in San Diego told the committees, "I'm sure we could have located them and we could have done it within a few days." And the chiefs of the financial crime units at the FBI and the Treasury Department told the committees that if their outfits had been asked to search for these two terrorists they would have been able to find them through credit card and bank records. But no one made such a request.


The final report notes that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were never able to develop precise intelligence that would have allowed a US attack on bin Laden before 9/11. And it reveals that there were even more warnings than previously indicated that Al Qaeda was aiming to strike at the United States directly. In an interim report released last year, the committees provided a long list of intelligence reports noting that Al Qaeda was eager to hit the United States and that terrorists were interested in using airliners as weapons. The new material in the report includes the following:



A summer 1998 intelligence report that suggested bin Laden was planning attacks in New York and Washington.



In September 1998 Tenet briefed members of Congress and told them the FBI was following three or four bin Laden operatives in the United States.



In the fall of 1998 intelligence reports noted that bin Laden was considering a new attack, using biological toxins in food, water or ventilation systems for US embassies.



In December 1998 an intelligence source reported that an Al Qaeda member was planning operations against US targets: "Plans to hijack US aircraft proceeding well. Two individuals...had successfully evaded checkpoints in a dry run at a NY airport."



In December 1999 the CIA's Counterterrorism Center concluded that bin Laden wanted to inflict maximum casualties, cause massive panic and score a psychological victory. To do so, it said, he might seek to attack between five and fifteen targets on the millennium, including several in the United States.



In April 2001 an intelligence report said that Al Qaeda was in the throes of advanced preparation for a major attack, probably against an American or Israeli target.



In August 2001 the Counterterrorism Center concluded that for every bin Laden operative stopped by US intelligence, an estimated fifty operatives slip through, and that bin Laden was building up a worldwide infrastructure that would allow him to launch multiple and simultaneous attacks with little or no warning.


Despite these warnings, the intelligence bureaucracy did not act as if bin Laden was a serious and pressing threat. A CIA briefing in September 1999 noted that its unit focusing on bin Laden could not get the funding it needed. In 2000 Richard Clarke, the national coordinator for counterterrorism, visited several FBI field offices and asked what they were doing about Al Qaeda. He told the committees, "I got sort of blank looks of 'what is al Qaeda?" Lieut. Gen. Michael Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, said that in 2001 he knew that the NSA had to improve its coverage of Al Qaeda but that he was unable to obtain intelligence-community support and resources for that effort.


According to the report, an FBI budget official said that counterterrorism was not a priority for Attorney General John Ashcroft prior to 9/11, and the bureau faced pressure to cut its counterterrorism program to satisfy Ashcroft's other priorities. (The report did not state what those other priorities were.) In a particularly damning criticism, the report notes, "there was a dearth of creative, aggressive analysis targeting bin Laden and a persistent inability to comprehend the collective significance of individual pieces of intelligence."


One crucial matter is missing from the report: how the White House responded to the intelligence on the Al Qaeda threat. That is because the Administration will not allow the committees to say what information reached Bush. The Administration argued, according to a Congressional source, that to declassify "any description of the president's knowledge" of intelligence reports � even when the content of those reports have been declassified � would be a risk to national security. It is difficult to see the danger to the nation that would come from the White House acknowledging whether Bush received any of the information listed above or the other intelligence previously described by the committees. (The latter would include a July 2001 report that said bin Laden was looking to pull off a "spectacular" attack against the United States or US interests designed to inflict "mass casualties." It added, "Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning. They are waiting us out, looking for a vulnerability."


It is unusual � if not absurd � for an administration to claim that the state of presidential knowledge is top-secret when the material in question has been made public. But that's what Bush officials have done. Consequently, the public does not know whether these warnings made it to Bush and whether he responded.


The White House also refused to release to the committees the contents of an August 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief (PDB) that contained information on bin Laden. In May 2002 National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed this PDB only included information about bin Laden's methods of operation from a historical perspective and contained no specific warnings. But the joint inquiry appears to have managed to find a source in the intelligence community who informed it that "a closely held intelligence report" for "senior government officials" in August 2001 (read: the PDB prepared for Bush) said that bin Laden was seeking to conduct attacks within the United States, that Al Qaeda maintained a support structure here and that information obtained in May 2001 indicated that a group of bin Laden supporters were planning attacks in the United States with explosives. This is quite different from Rice's characterization of the PDB. Did she mislead the public about it? And presuming that this "closely held intelligence report" was indeed the PDB, the obvious question is, how did Bush react? But through its use � or abuse � of the classification process, the Administration has prevented such questions from inconveniencing the White House.


The committees tried to gain access to National Security Council documents that, the report says, "would have been helpful in determining why certain options and program were or were not pursued." But, it notes, "access to most information that involved NSC-level discussions were blocked...by the White House." Bush has said, "We must uncover every detail and learn every lesson of September the 11th." Just not those details about him and his National Security Council.


One big chunk of the report that the Administration refused to declassify concerns foreign support for the 9/11 hijackers. Of these twenty-seven pages, all but one and a half have been redacted. The prevailing assumption among the journalists covering the committees � and it is well-founded � is that most of the missing material concerns Saudi Arabia and the possibility that the hijackers received financial support from there. Is the Bush Administration treading too softly on a sensitive � and explosive � subject? "Neither CIA nor FBI officials," the report says, "were able to address definitively the extent of [foreign] support for the hijackers globally or within the United States or the extent to which such support, if it exists, is knowing or inadvertent in nature. Only recently, and at least in part due to the joint inquiry's focus on this issue, did the FBI and CIA strengthen their efforts to address these issues.... [T]his gap in US intelligence coverage is unacceptable." At one point in the final report, the committees reveal that a July 2002 CIA cable included a CIA officer's concerns that persons associated with a foreign government may have provided financial assistance to the hijackers. "Those indications addressed in greater detail elsewhere in this report obviously raise issues with serious national implications," the report notes. But these "indications" are not addressed elsewhere in the report. The Administration would not declassify the material.


The report does include a list of quotes from unnamed US officials each of whom says that Saudi Arabia has been reluctant to cooperate with the United States on matters related to bin Laden. "In May 2001," according to the report, "the US government became aware that an individual in Saudi Arabia was in contact with a senior al Qaeda operative and was most likely aware of an upcoming operation." The following sentences � which likely cover how the United States responded to this intelligence and what the Saudis did or did not do � is deleted from the report, thanks to the Bush Administration.


It's a pity that the committees were, on a few matters, rolled by the White House, and that Bush has gotten away with concealing from the public what he knew and when, and what he did (or did not do) about a serious threat to the nation. But for seven months, the joint inquiry has been engaged in trench warfare with the Administration over the declassification of this report. It is a credit to the joint inquiry and its staff director, Eleanor Hill, that the committees squeezed as much out of the Administration as they did. The joint inquiry has done far better in this regard than the average Congressional intelligence committee investigation.


The report is a good start in establishing the historical record. It reads at times like tragedy, at other times almost as farce. The signs were there. Few paid attention. Two, if not more, of the hijackers were within reach of US law enforcement, but nobody saw that. Five days after the attacks, Bush said, "No one could have conceivably imagined suicide bombers burrowing into our society." And in May 2002, Rice said, "I don't think anyone could have predicted these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." Actually, the report has proof that the attacks of 9/11 were foreseen. Not in terms of date and time. But intelligence reporting indicated and terrorism experts warned that Al Qaeda was interested in mounting precisely these types of attacks. Yet the US government � the Bush II and Clinton administrations � did not prepare adequately. The attacks were far less outside the box than Bush and his aides have suggested. Thwarting them was within the realm of possibility.


The Administration has yet to acknowledge that � let alone reveal how � Bush responded to the intelligence he saw. The joint inquiry's work provides a solid foundation for the 9/11 independent commission, which is now conducting its own inquiry. Perhaps that endeavor will be able to learn even more and address the questions the Bush Administration did not allow the committees to answer

(CBS/AP) The Congressional report on intelligence before Sept. 11 contains intriguing hints about the Bush and Clinton administrations' approaches to terrorism before the attacks, but much detail has been kept secret, a newspaper reports.

Parts of the report refer to the warnings President Bush received about a possible attack and secrecy cloaking budget decision on anti-terrorism funds, The Washington Post reports. Some areas of Clinton-era policy were also kept secret.

The 900-page report released Thursday, a result of the 10-month investigation last year by the House and Senate intelligence committees, found that U.S. intelligence agencies had no "smoking gun" � no single piece of evidence that pointed specifically to the impending Sept. 11 attacks.

But it also concluded that important clues had been ignored, information had not been shared among agencies and inadequate attention was paid to the likelihood of a major domestic terrorist attack.

According to the report, the "best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot" was lost because intelligence agencies failed to let the San Diego FBI office know that two men were suspected terrorists � and would later turn out to be among the hijackers.

But it also opens important questions on the White House role.

One tidbit concerns President Bush's Aug. 6, 2001 daily briefing. Previously, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the briefing was "analytic," profiling Osama bin Laden, and not a warning.

But the report released Thursday indicates the briefing included information "acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of Bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives." It referred to an al Qaeda support base in the United States, and FBI "judgments about patterns of activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks."

The CIA and White House refused to make the briefing paper itself available. The White House Office of Management and Budget, meanwhile, declined to reveal who in the administration was responsible for not increasing the nation's counterterrorism budget.

Much of the report's information about whether the Saudi government offered any help to the hijackers was also kept secret. But the report included criticism of Saudi cooperation in fighting terrorism. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, responded in The Post: "It is unfortunate that false accusations against Saudi Arabia continue to be made by some for political purposes despite the fact that the kingdom has been one of the most active partners in the war on terrorism."

As CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports, the report raises many "what if" scenarios involving the CIA, FBI, INS and other government departments.

Some of the strongest clues centered on two hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.

They were identified after attending an al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, but information about them was not widely shared in the intelligence community. They were not placed on a State Department watch list until weeks before the attacks and, until then, were able to freely enter and leave the United States.

The two men had "numerous contacts" with an FBI informant in San Diego, but the agent responsible for the informant did not know they were suspected terrorists.

The agent told congressional staff that if he had known "we would have done everything. We would have used all available investigative techniques. We would have given them the full-court press."

Also, FBI and Treasury financial crime officials said they would have been able to locate the two hijackers in August 2001 through credit card and bank information.

Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi received "considerable assistance" from Omar al-Bayoumi, who is identified as having ties to al Qaeda and also was identifed by one of the FBI's best sources as likely an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or a foreign power.

The report said that in May 2001, the suspected mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was identified in an intelligence report as seeking recruits to travel to the United States for terrorist activities. Those individuals would be expected to make contact with "colleagues" already there, it said.

The report also detailed intelligence reports that warned of possible al Qaeda attacks. One warning received in December 1998 said "plans to hijack U.S. aircraft proceeding well" and two individuals "had successfully evaded checkpoints in a dry run at a NY airport." The source of the warning was not identified.

�MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

July 24, 2003 / 8 p.m. ET
Seeing dark energy�s shadow: Dark energy � a repulsive property of the universe that has been compared to �antigravity� � is one of the scientific world�s biggest cosmic mysteries. Physicists believe it makes up more than two-thirds of the matter-energy content of the universe, and yet they have no idea what it is or how it works.
Until recently, the only hints that it existed at all have come from the study of distant supernovae � but researchers are now reporting independent evidence for its existence, based on a "shadow" of dark energy that has been spotted within the afterglow of the Big Bang.
The shadow is barely perceptible, and emerges only after a statistical analysis of two ground-breaking sky surveys: maps from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or SDSS.
The WMAP readings show temperature variations in the cosmic background radiation, an all-sky glow that dates back to just 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The photons recorded for those readings have traveled billions of miles, and along the way, some of them were influenced gravitationally by concentrations of galaxies and dark matter, in accordance with Einstein's theory of general relativity.
Here's where it's useful to think of the space-time continuum as a two-dimensional rubber sheet -- with mass creating sloping indentations, or "gravitational wells," in the surrounding space-time. As photons roll through space-time and pass along the edge of the indentations, they first go down the slope and pick up energy. Then they roll up the other side of the slope, losing that energy again.
Sometimes it takes millions of years for those photons to travel from one side of a galaxy cluster's gravitational well to the other. If dark energy counteracts the influence of gravity, the well becomes shallower during that time. Thus, in getting out of the well, the photon doesn't expend all of the energy that was added as it went in. There's a little bit of surplus energy left over.
This phenomenon, which could happen many times during the photon's passage through the cosmos, is known as the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. The effect is very slight -- less than one part in a million -- but it shows up in the WMAP and SDSS data.
"It's the combination of those two brand-new massive data sets that allows us to look for this very weak signal," said Bob Nichol of Carnegie Mellon University, a member of the research team. "If we look in the directions of large lumps of galaxies, by this effect, we should see a slightly hotter microwave background. ... Statistically, we find that the microwave background is slightly hotter."
That's what Nichol calls the shadow of dark energy.
"Actually, it's a pretty bad analogy," he admitted. "In fact, a shadow is darker, but here it would be brighter. What I was trying to do there is to illustrate the physical process, in that you have light streaming in from a window, and you put something in the way, and that casts a shadow on the radiation coming through. In this case, the shadow is actually a brightening of the microwave background rather than a darkening."
There's an important assumption behind the researchers' conclusion that they've seen the shadow: The universe has to be geometrically "flat" -- that is, it behaves like Euclid thought it did, with parallel lines never meeting. Most physicists believe this to be the case, thanks in large part to WMAP's earlier findings.
So what does it all mean? Primarily, it means that physicists are on the right track with a theory that seemed unbelievable just five years ago, said Lawrence Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University who is the author of "The Physics of Star Trek."
Krauss said the findings also illustrated that the frontiers of cosmology were no longer the province of lone physicists like, say, Albert Einstein -- but rather were being settled by large collaborations like the scores of scientists behind the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
"The age of big astronomy is well upon us," he observed.
The case of the not-so-dark shadow also illustrates how fast the pace of cosmological research has become. Nichol said the research paper has been submitted to Physical Review Letters for publication, but "this is such a hot subject right now that the refereeing process can't keep up."
If you want to know more about the shadow and its implications, check out the SDSS news release. You can also check out our Science Mysteries of the Universe archive for a more background on the "dark side" of the universe. Meanwhile, there are some physicists who say we don't have to believe in dark energy at all -- instead, all you have to do is tweak Einstein's equations.

THESE REVELATIONS are not the subject of the congressional report�s narratives or findings, but are among the nuggets embedded in a story focused largely on the mid-level workings of the CIA, FBI and U.S. military.
Two intriguing � and politically volatile � questions surrounding the Sept. 11 plot have been how personally engaged Bush and his predecessor were in counterterrorism before the attacks, and what role some Saudi officials may have played in sustaining the 19 terrorists who commandeered four airplanes and flew three of them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
To varying degrees, the answers remain a mystery, despite an unprecedented seven-month effort by a joint House and Senate panel to fully understand how a group of Arab terrorists could have pulled off such a scheme. The CIA refused to permit publication of information potentially implicating Saudi officials on national security grounds, arguing that disclosure could upset relations with a key U.S. ally. Lawmakers complained it was merely to avoid embarrassment.





� Hill's 9/11 probe finds multiple failures
� A history of missed connections
� Excerpts From the Report of the Joint Congressional Committee on the Sept. 11, 2001, Attacks





The White House, meanwhile, resisted efforts to pin down Bush�s knowledge of al Qaeda threats and to catalogue the executive�s pre-Sept. 11 strategy to fight terrorists. It was justified largely on legal grounds, and Democrats said the secrecy was meant to protect Bush from criticism.
And while the report contains extensive details about counterterrorism policy and operations under President Clinton, it also leaves out substantial material deemed classified. The panel took testimony from former senior advisers to Clinton and Bush but did not interview either president.

ROAD MAP FOR PROBE
Still, the report offers bits of new information about both presidents and the Saudis, and lays out a possible road map for the independent commission charged by Congress to pick up the investigation of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. It also offers pointed criticism of both Bush and Clinton, concluding that neither �put the government or the intelligence community on a war footing before September 11� � despite ample evidence of al Qaeda�s dangerous designs.
With respect to Bush, the congressional panel indicated that it tried to determine �to what extent the President received threat-specific warnings during this period� � but obtained only limited information.
Among the only clues cited in the report about Bush�s knowledge of al Qaeda�s intentions against the United States is an Aug. 6, 2001, President�s Daily Briefing (PDB) � described in the report only as a �closely-held intelligence report� � that included information �acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of [Osama] Bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives.�
The PDB also said �that Bin Laden had wanted to conduct attacks in the United States for years and that the group apparently maintained a support base here.� It cited �FBI judgments about patterns of activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks,� according to the report.
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In a May 16, 2002, briefing for reporters, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the PDB was a historical look at bin Laden�s methods dating to 1997. She characterized the briefing as an �analytic report� that summed up bin Laden�s methods of operation. �It was not a warning,� she said. �There was no specific time or place mentioned.�
The CIA declined to declassify the PDB, and the White House, which had the authority to release it, declined to do so, citing �executive privilege.� Executive privilege allows the president to withhold from public disclosure all advice and communications he receives from advisers so that they feel free to offer frank advice without fearing that it will become public.
The Aug. 6 PDB came amid a barrage of intelligence reporting indicating that al Qaeda was planning attacks, somewhere, against U.S. interests. The intelligence community has said its focus was on possible attacks overseas.
Deputy national security adviser Steve Hadley, who refused to testify before the panel but submitted written responses to questions, told the panel that the National Security Council held four deputy committee meetings between May and the end of July 2001 in an effort to adopt a more aggressive strategy vis-a-vis al Qaeda. The review was finalized Sept. 4, 2001. Bush had not reviewed the proposal before Sept. 11, Hadley wrote the panel.
The committee also unsuccessfully sought budget information from the Office of Management and Budget to determine where in the Bush administration the decision was made not to provide more funding for counterterrorism activities.

�NEVER GOT TO FIRST BASE�
CIA Director George J. Tenet said in a closed-door session on June 18, 2002, that he had told other members of the administration that his counterterrorism budget would be as much as $1 billion short each year for the next five years. �We told that to everybody downtown for as long as anybody would listen and never got to first base,� Tenet told the panel.
On the issue of Saudi Arabia, the report cited a CIA memorandum that said connections between some hijackers and some Saudis living in the United States amounted to �incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists� from Saudi officials.
This section of the report refers only to �foreign support.� Officials from various branches of the U.S. government said those two words refer to Saudi Arabia.
On the other hand, the report said, further investigation of these allegations �could reveal legitimate, and innocent, explanations for these associations.�
The report makes no accusation that it was ever the policy of the Saudi government to support terrorism. Rather, the questionable activity involved Saudi citizens, some of whom worked for the Saudi government.
The panel also took the FBI to task for not aggressively pursuing allegations against Saudi individuals, including a network of businessmen and religious figures in San Diego who, together, provided two key hijackers with seemingly unlimited money, an interpreter and other support.
The report said that because Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally, �the United States had not established heightened screening for illegal immigration or terrorism by visitors from Saudi Arabia.�
One U.S. official told the panel �he believed the U.S. government�s hope of eventually obtaining Saudi cooperation was unrealistic because Saudi assistance to the U.S. government on this matter is contrary to Saudi national interests.�
Yesterday, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, issued a statement refuting the criticism of his country. �It is unfortunate that false accusations against Saudi Arabia continue to be made by some for political purposes despite the fact that the kingdom has been one of the most active partners in the war on terrorism,� he said.
Members of the panel offered differing assessments of the impact of the administration�s efforts to keep secret certain politically sensitive subjects.
�We were never able to get much of the material we requested from the National Security Council,� said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), former ranking member of the House intelligence committee. �The nation was not well-served by the administration�s failure to provide this critical information.�
Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, said he doubted Bush was complacent about warnings he received. �The intelligence community was providing him information. He wasn�t AWOL,� Goss said. �In hindsight, it might take on a little more significance . . . but it�s a huge stretch to say the president had information he should have acted on.�

The Lost City vent system is an assemblage of craggy columns of minerals, sitting 2,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The circular inset shows accretion of vent-building carbonate.


By Robert Roy Britt
SPACE.COM

July 24 � In a new study, researchers speculate that a towering undersea hot-water chimney laden with microbes is just the sort of place that might have spawned life on Earth or even other planets.







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THE HYDROTHERMAL VENT SYSTEM discovered two years ago has now been found to have endured for 30,000 years. Researchers said similar setups � on Earth and possibly on other worlds � might last millions of years and could have been incubators for the first life.
The Lost City, as it has been named, is a craggy column of minerals and microbes sitting 2,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. It is 180 feet (55 meters) tall, higher than any other known underwater vent system and more than twice as tall as most.

UNIQUE SYSTEM
Underneath the structure, seawater seeps down into the fractured crust of Earth. There, the decay of one mineral forms another, called serpentine, and releases heat in the process. This process of serpentinization lifts warm water laden with minerals back into the ocean, building the structure.






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Because the precious light and nutrients needed to support life are scant on the seafloor, hydrothermal vents are typically hubs of microbial activity.
The Lost City is potentially significant because it is the only known hydrothermal vent system that relies on chemical reactions to warm the water, not volcanic activity. The structure sits near but not on an area of volcanism.
If hydrothermal venting can occur without volcanism, the scientists involved in the study say, it greatly increases the number of locations on the seafloor of early Earth where microbial life could have started.
�It�s difficult to know if life might have started as a result of one or both kinds of venting,� said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer who worked on the study. �But chances are good that these systems were involved in sustaining life on and within the seafloor very early in Earth�s history.�
Scientists do not know how or where life on Earth began, however.

POTENTIALLY COMMON
Kelly said there may have been many vents built from serpentinization on the early Earth, because the planet�s mantle, now an inner layer, had yet to be covered over with crust, putting it in contact with seawater and making the process possible. For serpentinization to occur today, there must be fractures in the crust.

Location of the Lost City

The 18-story system, which is about 30 feet (9 meters) wide, is similar to other hydrothermal vents in other ways. Water circulates beneath the seafloor, picking up heat and organic compounds and rising buoyantly back into the ocean. Warm fluids mix with cold seawater, chemicals separate from the vent fluids and solidify, and mounds, spires and chimneys of minerals are created.
Microbes love this stuff. Unlike plants, they don�t need sunlight. Instead, vent microbes use chemicals, such as hydrogen sulfide or methane, for energy. Around some vent systems, larger life forms congregate and feed off the microbes.
Other vents that operate just like Lost City may exist and await discovery, the scientists say.

SUPPORTING ET?
The newfound venting process might have occured on other planets, too.
The key material that interacts with seawater at Lost City is called peridotite, which is abundant on other planets in our solar system, said Jeff Karson, a geologist at Duke University.
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�Peridotite can be exposed by tectonic processes or by major cratering events,� he said. �This means that Lost City-type venting could occur, or has occurred, in oceans on other planets, and such venting would have the potential to support microbial systems.�
While Mars and the other rocky planets are ocean free, moons of Jupiter are thought to harbor oceans beneath their frozen crusts. Other researchers have previously speculated that vent systems on the Jovian satellite Europa, for example, might support life.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and is detailed in the July 25 issue of the journal Science. The paper�s lead author is Gretchen Fr�h-Green of Switzerland�s Institute for Mineralogy.

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THE TRADITIONAL Values Coalition, which bills itself as a Christian advocacy group representing 43,000 churches, has mailed to the districts of several conservative House Republicans this sharply disputed warning: Legislation to allow the importation of U.S.-made pharmaceuticals from Canada and Europe might make RU-486, called the �abortion pill,� as easy to get as aspirin.
The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) portrays its campaign as a moral fight for the �sanctity of life.� Documents provided to The Washington Post, however, show that drug lobbyists played a key role in crafting its argument and in disseminating the information to lawmakers. Pharmaceutical companies oppose the legislation � which would legalize the reimportation of U.S.-made prescription drugs that sell for less in Canada than in the United States � not over abortion but because it would erode their profits.





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The bill, likely to be voted on this week, is popular with many lawmakers seeking to reduce the cost of medicine for older Americans without relying on government subsidies. Opponents say it would open the door to unsafe and less regulated drugs and drain profits that companies use, in part, to research and develop new medicines.
A recent TVC letter sent to Congress was signed by the coalition�s executive director, Andrea Sheldon Lafferty. It was originally drafted, however, by Tony Rudy, a lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies and a former top aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), computer records show. Lafferty also circulated a memo � linking the legislation to RU-486�s availability � that was drafted by Bruce Kuhlik, a senior vice president at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a trade group funded by the nation�s biggest pharmaceutical firms.

FUNDS FOR DIRECT-MAIL
A Republican close to TVC said Rudy also helped arrange funding for the group�s direct-mail campaign, which targeted nearly two dozen Republicans even though they generally oppose abortion rights. Several Republicans said pharmaceutical companies, through their lobbyists, contacted other conservative groups, including the Christian Coalition, about waging a similar campaign against the reimportation measure. The Traditional Values Coalition was the only taker because several abortion opponents questioned the accuracy of the drug industry�s argument, according to lawmakers and conservative activists.
PhRMA, one of Washington�s most influential lobbying groups, has long paid other organizations � often those with friendly-sounding names such as the United Seniors Association � to promote legislation favored by Pfizer Inc., Eli Lilly and Co. and other leading drugmakers. The idea is to make the campaigns appear driven by seniors, who spend the most on medicines, or, in this case, Christian activists. Government watchdog groups say such campaigns, which generally do not have to disclose their financing, are deceptive and misleading. In the legislative fight over imported drugs, the United Seniors Association is warning lawmakers and voters of the �dangers of imported drugs.�
In a letter to lawmakers, Lafferty said the reimportation bill would create new �avenues� for buying abortion drugs and would �effectively repeal� the law that prohibits the sale of abortion products through the mail. Proponents of the bill say it would do nothing to make RU-486 more available, because patients would still need a doctor�s prescription.
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With the House vote expected to be close, PhRMA is trying to peel off supporters one by one, tailoring its argument to individual lawmakers� concerns. In this case, the TVC mailings to abortion opponents included a picture of a baby and asked whether the targeted lawmakers will �miss an opportunity to protect the sanctity of human life.�

�UNACCEPTABLE TACTICS�
House Republicans were so offended by the mailings that they recently barred the TVC and its leader, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, from attending future meetings of the Values Action Team, an umbrella group of socially conservative Republicans. �We stand united in opposition to the unethical and unacceptable tactics you have employed to force pro-life members of Congress to support your views,� Rep. Joseph R. Pitts (R-Pa.) said in a letter to Sheldon.
Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), an abortion opponent who was targeted by the TVC mailings, said in an interview: �It makes me so angry I could spit.�
It is unclear who paid for the direct-mail campaign, although several Republicans said drug companies were behind it. Rudy, whose clients include PhRMA and Eli Lilly, declined to comment for this story.
Lafferty said she promised the House �leadership� she would not talk to reporters about the matter. She neither confirmed nor denied that the TVC received money from Alexander Strategy Group, which is headed by Rudy and former DeLay chief of staff Ed Buckham. PhRMA spokesman Jeff Truitt would not comment.
Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) and several other conservatives are blaming the drug companies for the mailing campaign, though they offered no specific evidence linking the mailing to PhRMA or individual companies.
�I do not understand . . . how a religious organization can be manipulated by the pharmaceutical industry to do this sort of thing,� Burton said. �They are supposed to be moral people. And yet I am confident, in fact I am dead sure, that the Traditional Values Coalition did not have the money to mail this kind of trash out to congressional districts all across the country.�
The National Review, a conservative magazine, reported last week that other socially conservative groups were offered money to spread the message that the legislation could lead to more abortions. Since then, several GOP lawmakers have called on Sheldon to disclose who paid for the campaign.
DeLay, an ally of the drug companies, vowed yesterday to defeat the legislation, which he called �horrible policy

Holocaust Museum Sends Gay Exhibit To Home Of Homophobe Legislator
by Steph Smith
365Gay.com Newscenter
Chicago Bureau



Posted: July 22, 2003 11:29 a.m. ET


(Minneapolis, Minnesota) An exhibition of the atrocities the Nazis perpetrated on German and Polish gays is coming to Minneapolis, the home of a state legislator who claims gays made up their victimization during the Holocaust to gain sympathy.

Last March state Rep. Arlon Lindner during debate on two bills he had brought forward to repeal gay rights laws in the state, said gays were lying when they cited thousands of homosexuals who were exterminated or sent to concentration camps by the Nazis.

"It never happened," Lindner told the House.

"I was a child during World War II, and I've read a lot about World War II," he said. "It's just been recently that anyone's come out with this idea that homosexuals were persecuted to this extent. There's been a lot of rewriting of history."

The remarks shocked the legislature, but attempts to censure him failed. (story)

Lindner also refused an invitation to visit the National Holocaust Museum, just outside Washington, where an exhibit of gays in the Holocaust was on display.

So, when the museum announced it was sending the exhibit on a tour of the US, Minneapolis gay and Jewish groups seized on the opportunity to offer both Lindner and the community a history lesson.

They scrambled to bring the exhibit to Minnesota before the end of the legislative session, but could not get the exhibit that quickly.

But, on August 4, five months after Lindner's explosive remarks, the exhibit will open. Linder, however, won't say if he will visit it. "I'm going to try to make it," is all he would say on the subject Monday.

The exhibit's stop in Minneapolis is sponsored by the Steven J. Schochet Center for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies at the University of Minnesota, OutFront Minnesota, Jewish Community Action, the YWCA of Minneapolis and the national museum.

In 1933, the year Adolf Hitler assumed power, an estimated 1 million gay men lived in Germany. Nazi policy asserted that homosexuals carried a "degeneracy" that threatened the "disciplined masculinity" of Germany. As gays were believed to form self-serving groups, the emergence of a state-within-the-state that could disrupt social harmony was also feared.

Additionally, the Nazis charged that homosexuals' failure to father children was a factor in Germany's declining birth rate, thus robbing the nation of future sons and daughters who could fight for and work toward a greater Reich.

"The exhibition explores why homosexual behavior was identified as a danger to Nazi society and how the Nazi regime attempted to eliminate it," says exhibition curator Edward Phillips. "The Nazis believed it was possible to 'cure' homosexual behavior through labor and 're-education.' As their efforts to eradicate homosexuality grew more draconian, gay men became subject to castration, institutionalization, and deportation to concentration camps."

Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality, and of these, approximately 50,000 were sentenced for the crime. Most of these men spent time in regular prisons. An estimated 5,000 to 15,000 were sent to concentration camps, where an unknown number of them perished.

After more than two years in development, "Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945" is the first major exhibition on the subject for English-speaking audiences. The exhibit draws on materials from more than 40 archives and other repositories in eight countries.

Lindner will have plenty of time to see the exhibition, even if he doesn't make to the opening. It will be in the city until Sept 26

White House intensifies damage-control effort on Iraq war intelligence flap
By Tom Raum, Associated Press, 7/21/2003 20:01
WASHINGTON (AP) The Bush administration stepped up its efforts to reframe the debate over the Iraq war on Monday, sharing intelligence documents with the GOP congressional leadership and urging Republicans to emphasize positive aspects of the war.

The administration is eager to move the national debate away from the flap over Bush's use of since-discredited intelligence on Iraq and Africa in his State of the Union message. President Bush's job approval ratings are slipping in the latest polls and Democrats are increasing their criticism of his Iraq policy.

White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett met on Monday with top GOP House and Senate staff members to essentially provide ''talking points'' for countering Democratic attacks, officials said.

The administration wants to try to shift the focus to the broader war on terrorism, and to some of the positive aspects of overturning Saddam Hussein's regime, including humanitarian gestures and the freeing of the Iraqi people.

Other aggressive efforts are expected by the administration in the days ahead to try to regain control of the message, including a possible speech on the issue by Vice President Dick Cheney in the coming days, administration and congressional GOP aides said.

Cheney's own role in the lead-up to the war has been challenged by administration critics.

At the heart of the latest debate are 16 words in Bush's Jan. 28 State of the Union address in which he cited a British report suggesting that Saddam Hussein was actively seeking to buy uranium from Africa.

The claim based on an allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in the west African nation of Niger has subsequently been challenged by U.S. intelligence officials. Top-level White House aides, including Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, have said the words should not have been in the speech.

Bush himself has said the phrase had been cleared by intelligence agencies. Bush has sidestepped questions on whether he felt personally responsible for the tainted information, although CIA Director George Tenet has apologized for not raising objections to it ahead of the speech.

The White House last week began an offensive to try to stem the criticism, including putting out newly declassified portions of an October 2002 report to the president by the U.S. intelligence community that reflected widespread concern that Iraq was in fact in pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Still, release of the material raised additional questions about the rationale use by the administration and reflected deep divisions within the intelligence community.

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Monday that Bartlett's trip to Capitol Hill was an attempt to touch base with congressional allies on the subject and go over what the administration views as ''misinformation.''

How Bush Misleads Himself

Monday, Jul. 21, 2003
George W. Bush ducked the first question he was asked during a joint press conference with Tony Blair after the British Prime Minister's brilliant speech to Congress last Thursday. The question had two parts. Did he take responsibility for the false claim in his State of the Union message that Iraq had recently sought to buy uranium in Africa? And why were the allies having so much trouble finding other countries to help us in Iraq? The President � who seemed a mite tetchy, as he often does when things aren't going well � glowered: "I take the responsibility for making the decision...to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein, because the intelligence...made a clear and compelling case [that Saddam] was a threat to security and peace."

Right, but that wasn't the question, and one wonders why Bush didn't simply say, "Yep. My fault. Some hard-working guy at the National Security Council got a little overenthusiastic and stuck in that sentence. I didn't take it out. Won't do that again." End of story. Instead, we have the two-week spectacle of Bushies on the run and the President undermining his reputation as a straight shooter by forcing his CIA director, George Tenet, to take the fall. Clint Eastwood would never do that.

Why has the uranium story puffed up so huge? It wouldn't have been a very big deal without the deepening crisis in Iraq. But it also has ballast because it clarifies an aspect of George W. Bush's essential character � specifically, the problem he has with telling the truth. I am not saying Bush is a liar. Lying is witting: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." This is weirder than that. The President seems to believe that wishing will make it so � and he is so stupendously incurious that he rarely makes an effort to find the truth of the matter. He misleads not only the nation but himself. Every worst-case Saddam scenario just had to be true, as did every best-case post-Saddam scenario. Bush's talent for self-deception extends to domestic and economic policy. He probably believes that he's a compassionate conservative, even though he has allowed every antipoverty program he favors to be eviscerated by Congress. This week's outrage is the crippling of AmeriCorps, which he had pledged to increase in size. He probably believes that his tax cuts for the wealthy will help reduce the mammoth $455 billion budget deficit (which doesn't include the cost of Iraq), even though Ronald Reagan found that the exact opposite was true and had to raise taxes twice to repair the damage done by his 1981 cuts. And Bush probably believed, as the sign said, that the "mission" had been "accomplished" in Iraq when he landed on the aircraft carrier costumed as a flyboy. He may even have believed that he was a flyboy.

But the country can no longer afford the President's self-delusions. He is entering the most crucial six months of his presidency. As a team of experts hired by the Pentagon reported last week: "The window for cooperation may close rapidly if they [the Iraqis] do not see progress." Which brings us back to the second part of the question the President didn't answer last week: Why is no one helping us in Iraq? A simple answer: Why on earth should they? The situation is a mess, in large part because of American arrogance. We insisted on doing the reconstruction on our own (only 13,000 of the 148,000 troops on the ground are British). It seems plain now that going it alone isn't working. Even Donald Rumsfeld came very close to admitting that on Meet the Press a few weeks ago. Asked if we should turn Iraq over to the United Nations, he said, "At some point, I think that�" and then he caught himself and said, "They're already playing an important role."

In fact, the current military situation is extremely dangerous, not just to the troops on the ground but to our national security in general. We are pinned down in Iraq and will be for years. We don't have the forces to meet another challenge � in North Korea, or Afghanistan, or anyplace else. We don't even have the forces necessary to relieve our tired troops in Iraq. Last week India made clear � as France and Germany have � that it won't help us without the U.N.'s imprimatur. And now there is serious talk within the White House about going back to the U.N. and asking for help.

Help will not come easily. "You can't have burden sharing without power sharing," a diplomat told me. The U.N. was humiliated, and its weapons inspectors denigrated, by the Bush Administration before the war. Some public groveling from the President may now be in order. Indeed, Bush also owes the American people a speech explaining just how difficult the situation is, how long it's likely to remain that way and how much it will cost. Last week he took "responsibility" for the war. Now he must take responsibility for the peace.

Joe Klein, time online edition

THE GREEN LEADERS agreed on a call for the House of Representatives to impeach President Bush for �making false statements to Congress� in order to win support for the invasion of Iraq, for �squandering the resources of the American people to serve the interests of transnational corporations� and for �war crimes,� including the use of cluster bombs in Iraq.
The Greens also called for Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, and the Philippines by Christmas.
They may be unorthodox in their views and relatively few in number � 2.8 million Green votes cast for president in 2000, compared to 100 million for the two major party candidates � but the Greens are likely to play a significant role in next year�s elections.

Pre-emptive war calls for the simple truth

This story was published Sunday, July 20th, 2003


The White House these days looks less like a place where the buck stops and more like an automatic bumper on a pinball machine.

While the focus for the moment is on 16 words in the State of the Union speech, there is a much larger question: Did President George Bush lead the United States into a pre-emptive war on the basis of flawed -- or false -- information?

Polls last spring showed that two-thirds of American adults accepted war with Iraq because they believed Iraq helped with the attacks of 9/11. Where did they get such an idea? Without question, it was from the White House and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Smoke was still rising from the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania when Rumsfeld told his aides, according to CBS News, to begin thinking about Iraq. What they lacked in evidence, apparently they made up for with zeal.

Recent polls indicate half of Americans think the administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq in order to justify the war. And 40 percent do not believe it was worth the American lives lost.

The Bush administration has tried to settle on CIA Director George Tenet as the culprit for Bush's State of the Union claim that, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The CIA, when the matter was first suggested for use to support the war against Iraq, warned the White House that it was of doubtful origin. Other administration experts even earlier had pronounced them bogus.

A haggling session ensued, in which the final 16 words received a less-vigorous rejection by the CIA. The responsibility for a State of the Union speech by the president thus was laid off on British intelligence. Instead of determining who pressed so hard to get the material into the speech, the administration's entire focus was on discovering who didn't keep it out.

It's like blaming an embassy sentry for a diplomatic blunder.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, addressing Congress last week, insisted that he believes the intelligence. It is a lonely belief, shared by a decided minority of his own countrymen and disputed by every American intelligence agency.

Blair made the case again that Saddam was a dangerous leader capable of the most horrifying atrocities. It is true. "If we are wrong," he said, "we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhumane carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive."

No one doubts Saddam is a monster. But that is not how Bush justified going to war with Iraq. He said Saddam was an imminent threat to the United States.

The current focus on the 16 words distracts the public somewhat from elements of the Bush arguments for war. He stressed a connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden that no evidence has ever shown to exist. He said Saddam had "horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons" -- which have yet to show up. A link between 9/11 and Iraq was asserted but never proved.

The American people deserve facts, not cheerleading, when asked to support a war. It is their sons and daughters who do the dying.

This is not a political question. It is bigger than politics, at least in the Democrat versus Republican sense.

America went from being a dangerous country to attack to being a dangerous country to disagree with. Trust in the presidency is diminishing.

Americans may accept the need for secrecy in military activities and other sensitive areas, but not about such great questions as war or peace.

When the president asks the nation for such sacrifice, he is bound by history, tradition and decency to tell the truth.

And, if he said something that is not true, he would be better served to own up to it -- to let the buck stop with him -- rather than try to evade responsibility by blaming subordinates.

The most recent in a flurry of explanations is that the president "is not a fact-checker."

For pre-emptive war, the American people, and the countries we have long called allies, deserve facts rather than evasions.

Today the situation is changed. Hussein is alive but in hiding, and his alleged stocks of chemical or biological weapons or agents have not been found. Meanwhile, the president and other leaders have yet to mention publicly the intelligence assessment that Hussein may be a potentially bigger threat now than before the United States attacked.

WASHINGTON -- The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say.
The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by President Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week. Bush attributed the claim to the British government, but in a "Global Message" issued Sept. 26 and still on the White House Web site, the White House claimed, without attribution, that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given."
The claim is at the center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide of David Kelly, who had questioned the government's use of the allegation.
A senior White House official did not dispute that the CIA was not consulted about the claim, saying presidential remarks such as radio addresses are typically "circulated at the staff level" within the White House only.

3712209Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs

White House Enemies List
Smear Campaign Targets Gay ABC Journalist



by Paul Johnson
365Gay.com Newscenter
Washington Bureau Chief


Posted: July 20, 2003 12:02 a.m. ET


(Washington, D.C.) An ABC news report in which US soldiers in Iraq criticized the military has earned reporter Jeffrey Kofman a place at the top of a new White House Enemies list.

The administration was so outraged by Kofman's story, broadcast last Tuesday on World News Tonight, that a White House staffer called cyber journalist Matt Drudge in an attempt to smear Kofman.

The White House communications department employee told Drudge that he should know two things about Kofman: He is gay, and he is a foreigner (Kofman is Canadian).

Drudge followed up the call with a headline on his website: "ABC News Reporter Who Filed Troops Complaint Story � Openly Gay Canadian." Rather than linking to Kofman's ABC news report, the link took readers to a 2001 Advocate interview with Kofman.

The White House 'officially' condemned the call, but many journalists within the Beltway believe the White House is compiling an enemies list of journalists that it intends to discredit. The Nixon administration used a similar list in a futile attempt to silence reports about the Watergate break-in that eventually led to Nixon's downfall.

The offending story featured soldiers in the Iraqi capital asking when they would be sent home. "If Donald Rumsfeld was here, I'd ask him for his resignation," volunteered Spc. Clinton Deitz.

Drudge told the Washington Post's Lloyd Grove that he was unaware of the ABC story until "someone from the White House communications shop tipped me to it" along with a profile of Kofman in the Advocate.

Since the smear campaign against Kofman began he has been the target of right-wing radio talk shows and characterized as disloyal and untrustworthy because of his sexual orientation and citizenship.

That Kofman is gay and Canadian has never been a secret. His ABC office is filled with Canadian memorabilia and he has been out since he was a cub reporter at Toronto's Global television. He later went on to report for the country's national television network, the CBC, before being picked up by CBS and then moving on to ABC.

In his 2001 Advocate interview, Kofman talked about covering the war in Afghanistan and about being out in the network news business.

�I am aware that part of my responsibility in this job is to be a role model,� he said. �It�s important to me because when I was a young reporter there were no role models. I didn�t know that it would be possible for me to be openly gay and do what I�m doing.�

Kofman has won several Canadian journalism awards, including the National Human Rights Award for a 1987 CBC documentary on AIDS discrimination. He was also a co-founder of the Canadian affiliate of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.

ABC TV called the attempts to discredit him based on his sexual orientation or place of birth "outrageous."

"This is a reporter who has done an outstanding job for us, his report was fair and accurate and reflected the truth of what soldiers are feeling," said ABC spokesperson Jeffrey Schneider.

Kofman said Saturday he was willing to believe the White House's denial of involvement in the incident. "I'm going to take the White House at face value and accept the comments that they made, which is that this is the first that they've heard of it and if it did happen then it was totally inappropriate."

�365Gay.com� 2003

3712209British Police Confirm Suicide of Weapons Expert
VOA News
19 Jul 2003, 17:09 UTC


British police have confirmed that a Defense Ministry weapons expert embroiled in a controversy over intelligence about Iraq took his own life. Police in London said 59-year-old David Kelly died after slashing his left wrist. His body was found Friday near his home, with a knife and an open package of a prescription painkiller nearby. Police said there was no indication any other person was involved.

Saturday, police gave reporters a statement from the Kelly family urging all those involved in his death to "reflect long and hard" on their roles in making his life "intolerable."

The British government, members of parliament and the British Broadcasting Corporation have all come under criticism for their treatment of Mr. Kelly. In Tokyo, British Prime Minister Tony Blair declined to answer a blunt question about whether the death weighed on his conscience and whether he or any members of his government might resign. He called the death a terrible tragedy and begged the media and politicians to end speculation and allow a judicial inquiry to take its course.

Tuesday, Mr. Kelly denied, under intense questioning by British lawmakers, to being the source of a controversial BBC report that the government had exaggerated intelligence about Iraqi weapons to strengthen its case for war. His wife said Mr. Kelly had been under intense stress since that questioning. Mr. Kelly did admit having met BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, who aired the report.

Mr. Gilligan appeared before the lawmakers Thursday, but refused to name his source. Members of Parliament said he retracted some of his allegations, but he denied that, saying the grilling he was given amounted to an ambush.

The original report generated a sharp political dispute between the BBC and the British government, which accused the broadcaster of setting aside its standards of impartiality because of an anti-war agenda. BBC says it stands by its report.



Some information for this report provided by AP and AFP.

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By LARRY McSHANE
Associated Press Writer

July 19, 2003, 2:19 PM EDT


NEW YORK -- This was no stage production, and there was no happy ending.

David Hampton, the ersatz son of Sidney Poitier whose pursuit of the glamorous life inspired the award-winning play "Six Degrees of Separation," died last month in a decidedly desolate fashion: alone in a Manhattan hospital bed, friends confirmed Saturday.

"David, like many of us, had a real need to be somebody important and special," said attorney and close friend Susan Tipograph. "He did stuff to be somebody in his mind _ somebody important, somebody fabulous.

"To me, he was fabulous."

The black teenager earned notoriety by charming his way into the white upper crust of New York life, presenting himself in 1983 as the Oscar-winning Poitier's son and a Harvard University student. The scam inspired John Guare's acclaimed play and a movie starring Will Smith.

The reality was quite different: Hampton came from a middle-class home in Buffalo, a city he once dismissed as lacking anyone "glamorous or fabulous or outrageously talented." His father was an attorney, not an actor.

Hampton, 39, died at Beth Israel Hospital, Tipograph said. He had been living in a small room at an AIDS residence, and was trying to start work on a book about his life.

Hampton was glib, charming, funny _ the skills of the consummate con man. He talked his way into the homes of several prominent New Yorkers, including the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the president of public television station WNET.

Once there, he reveled in the posh surroundings and fancy meals. He accepted money and clothes and regaled his hosts with stories about his famous "father."

"David took a great joy in living the life he lived," said attorney Ronald Kuby, who knew Hampton for more than a decade. "It was performance art on the world's smallest possible stage, usually involving an audience of only one or two."

After he was taken into custody in October 1983, police said Hampton had six previous arrests in New York and Buffalo. Hampton, just 19, pleaded guilty to attempted burglary and was sentenced to 21 months in prison.

Playwright Guare, inspired by the bizarre tale, opened his play in 1990 to immediate critical praise. It won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, an Obie and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

But on the day the play was nominated for four Tony Awards, a court order was issued telling Hampton to stay away from Guare, who said he'd been threatened.

Hampton felt entitled to a cut of the cash generated by his "work," and he sued _ unsuccessfully _ for a $100 million piece of the play's profits in 1992. There was victory in the defeat: It introduced him to another of Manhattan's bright lights, radical lawyer William Kunstler.

Hampton was later arrested for leaving this message on Guare's answering machine: "I would strongly advise you that you give me some money or you can start counting your days." A jury acquitted him of harassment.

"I think he felt used by Mr. Guare," said Tipograph. "I'll let history judge that."

The 1993 movie version of the play earned Stockard Channing an Oscar nomination for best actress. Channing recreated her stage performance as a wealthy Manhattanite taken in by the scam artist.

In recent years, Hampton kept in touch with friends and stayed in trouble: He faced charges of fare-beating and credit-car theft. One alleged victim told The New York Times that Hampton, using the name David Hampton-Montilio, duped him out of more than $1,400 in October 2001.

"When pretending to be somebody else, he dazzled people," Kuby said. "For an evening or a couple of days, he mesmerized people by bringing them into his totally fictitious world of stardom."


Copyright � 2003, The Associated Press

CBS/AP) A British weapons expert suspected of telling the BBC that the Blair government hyped intelligence about Iraq�s alleged weapons of mass destruction apparently killed himself by slashing his left wrist, police say.

The death of David Kelly plunges British Prime Minister Tony Blair into a deeper political crisis over the intelligence used to justify war in Iraq, reports CBS News reporter Charles D'Agata. Many hold his administraition responsible for driving Kelly to suicide by making him testify before a Parliamentary committee earlier this week.

"Events over recent weeks have made David's life intolerable, and all of those involved should reflect long and hard on this fact," his family said in a statement read to reporters by police.

Police said they found a knife and painkillers near Kelly's body, which was discovered Friday in woods not far from his home in the village of Southmoor, 20 miles southwest of Oxford.

�The cause of death was hemorrhaging from a wound to his left wrist,� acting superintendent David Purnell of Thames Valley Police told reporters in Wantage, near Southmoor.

�Whilst our inquiries are continuing, there is no indication at this stage of any other party being involved,� he said. The painkiller found at the scene was coproxamol, which often figures in overdose deaths in England.

The New York Times reports that Kelly gave no sign he was depressed in a e-mail message sent to a reporter hours before he disappeared. The message referred to "many dark actors playing games" � an apparent reference to members of Britain's intelligence and military communities with whom he had often argued over interpretations of intelligence reports.

Another associate who got an e-mail message from Kelly shortly before he disappeared said the message was combative and showed a determination to get through the scandal enveloping him and an enthusiasm about returning to Iraq, the Times reports.

Kelly, a Defense Ministry expert and former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, was suspected of being the source of news reports that the government "sexed up" a dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

His wife said he felt enormous pressure when he was called before a Parliamentary committee, where he denied being the source the government was trying to smoke out.

Blair, appearing at a news conference Saturday in Hakone, Japan, with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, stood rigid and stony-faced and said nothing when a journalist asked: �Have you got blood on your hands, prime minister? Are you going to resign over this?�

Earlier, Blair reminded reporters that he had ordered an inquiry into Kelly's death, saying, �I think we should make our judgments when we get the facts.�

Called before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, Kelly denied being the source of a British Broadcasting Corp. report that accused Blair's communications director of adding dubious claims to an intelligence dossier published in September.

Janice Kelly reportedly said her husband was stressed and �very, very angry� about being caught up in a public controversy. She reported him missing Thursday night when he failed to return from an afternoon walk.

Blair described Kelly as �a fine, public servant who did an immense amount of good for his country in the past, and I'm sure would have done so again in the future.�

Opposition Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith has urged Blair to return to London. �There are very many questions that will need to be asked over the coming days,� Duncan Smith said.

The death was a sensational development in a controversy threatening the government's credibility.

The big issue is whether the prime minister misled the country about Iraq's weapons. But the spotlight recently has been on a highly personal feud between Blair's communications chief, Alastair Campbell, and BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan.

A headline in The Independent on Saturday called Kelly �a casualty of war.� The Daily Telegraph said �Death of the dossier fall guy,� while the Daily Mail ran photos of Blair, Campbell and Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon under the headline, �Proud of Yourselves?�

Labor lawmaker Glenda Jackson, a vehement critic of the war in Iraq, called on Blair to resign. �I don't see how the government is going to be able to function adequately,� she said Saturday in a radio interview.

The furor started with a May 29 BBC report that an unidentified intelligence source had said a government file on Iraq was �sexed up� to make a more convincing case for military action.

Gilligan quoted his source as saying the government insisted on including a claim that Iraq could deploy some chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes, despite intelligence experts' doubts.

The reporter later said his source had accused Campbell of insisting the claim be included. The communications chief denied that before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, and demanded an apology from the BBC.

Kelly told the committee on Tuesday that he had met Gilligan, but did not think he was the source of the report.

Asked if he believed Campbell had interfered in drafting the dossier, the soft-spoken scientist responded: �I do not believe that at all.�

The BBC refused to reveal its source. Hoon � Kelly's boss � said the weapons adviser had come forward to say he had had an unauthorized meeting with the BBC reporter but had not mentioned Campbell.

The BBC has not denied that, but also said its source did not work for the Ministry of Defense.

Kelly, 59, an Oxford-educated microbiologist, had been the senior adviser to the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat in the Ministry of Defense for more than three years.

He was a U.N. inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 and was in Baghdad briefly in June, where he met with troops involved in the weapons hunt. He was scheduled to return to Baghdad for a posting with the Iraq Survey Group, a Pentagon-led effort taking over the search for suspected weapons of mass destruction.


�MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

3712209

Iraq rebuilding in trouble, experts say

07/18/03

David Wood
Newhouse News Service


Washington - The U.S. effort to stabilize and begin reconstruction of Iraq is headed for failure without significantly more money and dramatic new steps to reach out to Iraqis with security, jobs and basic social services, a Pentagon advisory group of experts reported yesterday.

The group, sent to Iraq by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to assess the situation three months after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, said the Pentagon-led reconstruction effort is hobbled by excessive U.S. bureaucracy in Baghdad, where officers have difficulty talking to each other, let alone communicating with Iraqis outside heavily guarded American compounds.


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"The next 12 months will be decisive," the experts reported to Rumsfeld.

They added that the U.S. civilian command in Baghdad "will have to dramatically and expeditiously augment its operational capacity" in Iraq to achieve real change while the security situation is manageable.

The experts said the United States must quickly mobilize more international support for the work that must be done.

Also, they said, it must take immediate action to absorb tens of thousands of former soldiers into Iraq's economy and mount "an intense" marketing campaign on the virtues of democracy.

At the Pentagon yesterday, military officials said the United States is considering a plan to train a private Iraqi security force and make it responsible for guarding pipelines, government buildings and hundreds of other sites in Iraq.

The new private force, to be composed primarily of former Iraqi soldiers armed with small weapons, would take over the guard duties at as many as 2,000 sites, the New York Times reported, quoting the military officials.

The report to Rumsfeld said stronger efforts are needed to counter ploys by Saddam loyalists such as yesterday's release of a tape purporting to be the deposed Iraqi strongman himself.

On the audiotape, broadcast repeatedly by Arab news media, a man claiming to be Saddam urges a "holy war" against occupation forces.

The voice on the tape said it was recorded three days earlier to commemorate yesterday's 35th anniversary of the Baath party coup, the Associated Press reported.

In the restive city of Fallujah, just west of Baghdad, a crowd of about 100 people waved rifles to celebrate the coup that led to Saddam's rise to power 11 years later. Iraq's new Governing Council banned the holiday as one of its first actions.

Postwar attacks on the 148,000-strong U.S. occupation force are growing in intensity and sophistication.

Yesterday, the Pentagon raised the number of U.S. personnel killed in combat since the start of the Iraq war on March 20 to 147 - equaling the total killed in combat during the 1991 Gulf War.

Of that number, 30 members of the U.S. occupying force of 160,000 have been killed in anti-American assaults since President Bush declared an end to major hostilities in Iraq on May 1, the Associated Press reported.

One worrisome factor in the occupation, U.S. officials have acknowledged, is the growing frustration and anger on Iraqi streets because life has not improved and in some cases has worsened since the war, eroding support for the Americans.

"We are in a closing-window situation in Iraq, where there are high expectations and growing public impatience" that things have not improved, said Frederick Barton, a veteran U.S. and U.N. officer.

Barton was one of five senior U.S. specialists in postwar reconstruction assembled by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and sent to Iraq at the Pentagon's request.

He said the United States had underestimated the size of the task of stabilizing Iraq, which has been torn by looting, lawlessness and partisan fighting since Bush declared the war over. The report was the second blow to the U.S. occupation effort this week. On Wednesday, the commander of all U.S. forces in the region, Gen. John Abazaid, characterized Iraqi resistance to the occupation as a "guerrilla-type campaign," not the sporadic and random violence that Rumsfeld and other administration officials have described.

"American prestige and national security are on the line in Iraq - this thing has to go right," said Robert Orr, a former State Department and White House official, who was also in the Center for Strategic and International Studies group.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz arrived in Baghdad yesterday for a five-day tour of Iraq to assess the Bush administration's successes and shortcomings in the postwar reconstruction effort, the New York Times reported.

Over the next several days, Wolfowitz will crisscross the country, meeting with allied troops, Iraqi politicians, U.S. occupation officials and others, to get a sense of what, if any, course corrections are needed in the postwar strategy, the Times reported.

The CSIS group, which also reported to L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. civilian administrator in Baghdad, talked to U.S. officials, military officers and more than 250 Iraqis individually and in focus groups. They were in Iraq for 11 days in June and early July. According to Barton, Bremer welcomed the assessment, saying, "Tell me what we need to do better."