Top-secret Iraqi intelligence documents, unearthed by the Toronto Star in the bombed-out headquarters of the dreaded Mukhabarat intelligence service in Baghdad, have established the first clear link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization.

The documents were found by correspondent Mitch Potter, the Star's Jerusalem bureau chief. Potter, who has been in and out of Iraq since the war began, was digging through the rubble of the Mukhabarat's Baghdad headquarters with his translator Amir when they uncovered the intelligence treasure trove.

Bin Laden's name appears three times in the handwritten Iraqi file, but each of the references was clumsily concealed with White-Out and then blackened with ink, "presumably by agents of the Mukhabarat," writes Potter, who was travelling with Amir and Inigo Gilmore of London's Sunday Telegraph.

In his dispatch, Potter details how his translator, sitting on the end of his hotel room bed today, carefully scraped away the White Out with a scalpel to reveal bin Laden's name hidden underneath.

And he writes of Amir's stunned reaction when the name became apparent: "It says Bin Laden! It says Bin Laden!" The full account will appear in tomorrow's Star.

The discovery of the document coincides with the Friday capture of Farouk Hijazi, an Iraqi spymaster the United States claims was the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Hijazi, according to U.S. allegations, met bin Laden prior to the Sept. 11 attacks during Hijazi's term as Iraq's ambassador to Turkey.

"The document in question is in every way possible entirely like the hundreds of others we've been poring over in our spare hours these many nights in the safety of our hotel room while intermittent gunfire pops away in the distance," Potter writes.

Spies from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, who scoured the building after it was bombed into rubble, apparently missed the document.

The presence of bin Laden's name on the document has been verified by four Arabic interpreters.

The Bush administration has moved to drastically scale down a French-backed U.N. proposal to send more than 250 U.N. peacekeepers to the former French colony of Ivory Coast, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.

At the time, Brett A. Bursey says, he seemed to be having a 60's flashback.

There he was at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport with his antiwar sign. There were the thousands of Republicans gathering to welcome a president. There were the police officers arresting him for trespassing.

The first time this happened was in May 1969, before a visit by Richard M. Nixon. The charges against Mr. Bursey were dropped after the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that if protesters were on public property - as the antiwar demonstrators were - they could not be charged with trespassing.

Last Oct. 24, 33 years later and about 100 yards away, the now graying Mr. Bursey was again arrested for trespassing, this time before a visit by President Bush. The charge was soon dropped.

But last month, the local United States attorney, J. Strom Thurmond Jr., brought federal charges against Mr. Bursey under a seldom-used statute that allows the Secret Service to restrict access to areas the president is visiting. He faces six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

...a 17-year-old in the BET audience told Mr. Powell that "the United States staged a coup in Chile on September 11th, despite the wishes of the Chilean populace against the coup and the populace in support of the democratically elected President Salvador Allende, the CIA, regardless, supported the coup of Augusto Pinochet and that resulted in mass deaths."
Mr. Powell lamely responded: "With respect to your earlier comment about Chile in the 1970s and what happened with Mr. Allende, it is not a part of American history that we're proud of."

The secretary might as well have been reading from an Oliver Stone script, blessing Castro's version of world history. Not only did he passively accept utter nonsense but he also suggested that the U.S. should regret its efforts to combat Soviet expansion in Latin America during the Cold War. That is a rather strange viewpoint given what we now know about the cruelty of communist repression.

...in the succeeding three years Allende would ruin himself by destroying the country. Chileans would drive him from power. The military had the idea to send him into exile but instead, according the Journal's crack reporter, Everett Martin, who interviewed Allende's doctor, he committed suicide. This has been disputed by Allende supporters but put to rest by reliable testimony....

The Pinochet dictatorship was difficult for everyone. Yet as Cuba shows it could have been far worse. Chileans went with the lesser of two evils, broadly supporting an unprecedented military coup to save their country, not only from economic ruin but also from the shackles of communist repression. That took courage. It doesn't seem very fair for Mr. Powell to suggest that the U.S. deserves the credit.

"So if Edwards' financial report doesn't show he's more popular, more effective, or better armed than Kerry, why should it overturn the race? Because it has given Edwards 'a bump to rise above the crowd' (GOP consultant Scott Reed), 'raised his standing' (Post), 'pumped new momentum into his presidential effort' (Roll Call), helped 'vault him into the major league' (Hartford Courant) and 'reposition him back in the top tier' (Brazile). It has 'dimmed' Kerry's image (Charlie Cook) and 'created a new political prism through which the campaigns are viewed, burnishing the image of some candidates while highlighting weaknesses of others' (AP). Bump? Pump? Vault? Dim? Prism? Burnish? Highlight? Weird metaphors like these are always a sign that the article you're reading has stopped explaining and begun evading."

It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly distribute, possess with intent to distribute, or offer or agree to distribute any obscene material or any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs for any thing of pecuniary value.

Alabama argues "a ban on the sale of sexual devices and related orgasm stimulating paraphernalia is rationally related to a legitimate legislative interest in discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex" and that "it is enough for a legislature to reasonably believe that commerce in the pursuit of orgasms by artificial means for their own sake is detrimental to the health and morality of the State."

This makes him look like an ultra-conservative prude and something of an odd duck. He may well be. However, it is important to note that the above quoted statement was issued in Pryor's official position as Alabama's Attorney General. It was his job to argue on behalf of his client, the state of Alabama, and as such the quote does not necessarily reflect his opinion.

In the recent Michigan Democratic gubernatorial primaries, opponents of then-Attorney General Jennifer Granholm (a Democrat) aired ads that claimed that she was an opponent of abortion rights. They based these claims on actions that now-Governor Granholm took as Attorney General to a Republican Governor and Republican-led legislature. She effectively argued in debates that she had no choice -- that her job was to represent the state of Michigan in court. She is in fact pro-choice.

If anything, the Pryor quotation indicates that the state of Alabama may be run by a bunch of ultra-conservative prudes. It, on it's own, does not say anything about the potential ultra-conservative prudishness of Mr. Pryor.

Under Alabama law, the AG does NOT have to appeal a decision of a U.S. District Court that is adverse to the State. Indeed, the AG does not HAVE to defend the constitutionality of any state law that he believes to be unconstitutional. But certainly he doesn't have to appeal, having lost at the District Court level. This may or may not be true in other states, but it's absolutely true in Alabama, where there is AL S.Ct. precedent making perfectly clear that the AG -- and no one else -- gets to decide what legal positions will be taken by the State and its agencies. Pryor has doggedly pursued the State's Right to ban vibrators because it fits within his vision of constitutional law and the good society, not because he "had to."

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks changed everything, including the Bush administration's thinking about the Middle East - and not just Saddam Hussein.

Senior officials decided that unless action was taken, the Middle East would continue to be a breeding ground for terrorists. Officials feared that young Arabs, angry about their lives and without hope, would always be looking for someone to hate - and that someone would always be Israel and the United States.

The Bush administration wanted to make a statement about its determination to fight terrorism. And officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect target.

An I.R.S. briefing paper on the new rules states that in 1999 the Treasury lost $8.5 billion to $9.9 billion by paying earned-income tax credits to filers who should not have received them. A separate analysis, by two Treasury Department specialists, says subsequent measures may have reduced these erroneous payments by $2 billion. By comparison, corporations managed to sidestep as much as $54 billion in 1998, by hiding about $155 billion in profits in tax shelters, according to a study by a Harvard economist, Mihir A. Desai.

Former Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a national Republican hero for her role in the 2000 presidential election, said Thursday she may jump into next year's U.S. Senate race in Florida.

Some in Congress say the plan is too big. Well, it seems like to me they might have some explaining to do. If they agree that tax relief creates jobs, then why are they for a little bitty tax relief package? If they believe tax relief is important for job creation, they ought to join us and join this administration and join many in Congress and have a robust package that creates enough work for the American people.

SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold -- Griswold was the contraceptive case -- and abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you -- this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong, healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality _

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos was to be a victor in Washington, at last triumphant in the long quest to sign a free-trade agreement with the United States. Instead, [U.S. Trade Representative Robert] Zoellick last week suggested that because Chile, as a member of the United Nations Security Council, had declined to support the U.S. position on Iraq, final congressional approval of a free-trade pact between the two nations would be delayed indefinitely.

In closing, I would say that I think this kind of Senator is not a great kind. He is sort of judgmental and also makes me want to barf. How is he going to enact all these No Dog Humping laws anyway? And what about cats? And stuffed animal dogs? And what about Triumph: The Insult Comic Dog? If I were gay, I'd be mad at this Senator. But if I humped dogs, I would be totally pissed off.

Army commanders said Wednesday that American military personnel had removed about $12.3 million from huge caches of U.S. currency that were found by fellow soldiers in recent days in an exclusive neighborhood once home to senior Iraqi officials.

Investigators have recovered all of the stolen money, officials said, and commanders have ordered soldiers not to search for more hidden cash in the area where they discovered about $656 million in boxes inside cottages on Friday. Civil affairs officers found an additional $112 million Tuesday inside kennels in the same area.

One commander said three galvanized aluminum boxes containing an additional $12 million found at the cottages were allegedly removed and hidden by five soldiers for several hours before being recovered by investigators Saturday morning.

Those three boxes of cash had not been reported to commanders. With that amount, a total of about $780 million has been found in sealed structures in a tree-lined Tigris River area at the edge of the sprawling Presidential Palace complex in central Baghdad.

The currency apparently was left behind by Baath Party and Republican Guard officials as they fled the U.S. invasion.

Two of the three stolen boxes, each originally containing $4 million in tightly wrapped bundles of $100,000, were still sealed when they were recovered in a stone-lined canal near a mansion, commanders said. The third, which had been pried open, was retrieved near the operating base of soldiers implicated in the thefts.

Dick Delguadio: "I've learned more about the court system than I ever wanted to learn."

Assistant State's Attorney Adam C. Rosenberg: "It certainly sends a message that you can't come into our city and take advantage of our children and take pictures of them."

Brother Eugene Delguadio: "It doesn't sound like him."

Farris Salman is one of the last victims of Mr. Hussein's rule. His speech is slurred because he is missing part of his tongue. Black-hooded paramilitary troops, the Fedayeen Saddam, run by Mr. Hussein's eldest son, Uday, pulled it out of his mouth with pliers last month, he said, and sliced it off with a box cutter. They made his family and dozens of his neighbors watch.

Commander Hazal al-Nasire, the chief of the secret police's special "151" division, knew how to test the mettle of his officers. Mr. Nasire delegated Saddam Hussein's orders to kill political and religious opponents of the regime. He promoted successful assassins and ordered investigations into the motives of those who dared refuse him.

As late as the second week in March, according to secret and signed documents uncovered by the Monitor in a two-story stucco home in Baghdad, Nasire was still giving his orders to kill Hussein's opponents. On the cover of one white folder is scribbled, "Names of officers who did not agree to execute people in the street."

Pregame phone calls from Uday Hussein, the powerful and cruel elder son of then-President Saddam Hussein, amounted to pep talks dominated by crude threats. If they lost, he warned, they would be imprisoned and tortured.

"The players would start crying," said Emmanuel Baba, 69, a former player who became a coach renowned throughout the Arab world, where he is known by his nickname, Ammo Baba. "They would tremble with fear.

"When they got out of prison, they would come to me and lift their shirts to show me the red stripes on their back. They had been beaten with a metal cable. Then the guards threw salt water at them, so the scars would stay for life."

After losing a competition, players and their retinue were taken to the Olympic Committee building, where they were harangued before being transferred to a prison, usually Radwaniya. They often had their heads shaved as a mark of shame and spent the first days in prison without food. Many said they were whipped on their backs, legs and arms by thick metal cables that hung from a wall in the prison and were named after snakes.

SANTORUM: …In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality --

AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.

SANTORUM: And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we're seeing it in our society.

AP: Sorry, I just never expected to talk about that when I came over here to interview you. Would a President Santorum eliminate a right to privacy -- you don't agree with it?

SANTORUM: I've been very clear about that. The right to privacy is a right that was created in a law that set forth a (ban on) rights to limit individual passions. And I don't agree with that...

Intel that indicates something exists is not necessarily intel on the thing's exact location. I know for a fact my Dad owns a shotgun and a real nice 30.06 rifle. But I don't know where in his house they are. In fact, for all I know, he moved them to the neighbor's house, or down the street to someone else's house.

That's what's happening with the WMD hunt. We know Saddam had the WMDs 12 years ago. Heck, we've got video of the stuff. And we know he didn't destroy his WMDs because neither he nor the UN inspectors ever provided evidence that his WMDs were fully eliminated and his WMD programs fully shut-down. Even Hans Blix says Iraq can't account for tons of the stuff. So we know it was there, and know it hasn't been destroyed. The only thing we don't know is where, exactly, it is right now.

Tom Daschle may no longer call himself a Catholic. The Senate minority leader and the highest ranking Democrat in Washington has been sent a letter by his home diocese of Sioux Falls, sources in South Dakota have told The Weekly Standard, directing him to remove from his congressional biography and campaign documents all references to his standing as a member of the Catholic Church.

This isn't exactly excommunication--which is unnecessary, in any case, since Daschle made himself ineligible for communion almost 20 years ago with his divorce and remarriage to a Washington lobbyist. The directive from Sioux Falls' Bishop Robert Carlson is rather something less than excommunication--and, at the same time, something more: a declaration that Tom Daschle's religious identification constitutes, in technical Catholic vocabulary, a grave public scandal. He was brought up as a Catholic, and he may still be in some sort of genuine mental and spiritual relation to the Church. Who besides his confessor could say? But Daschle's consistent political opposition to Catholic teachings on moral issues--abortion, in particular--has made him such a problem for ordinary churchgoers that the Church must deny him the use of the word "Catholic."

"I'm saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war. Saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country."
Tom Daschle, 3/18/2003

"The last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success. The first days after military victory indicate the pattern of diplomatic failure is beginning once again and threatens to undo the effects of military victory."
Newt Gingrich, 4/22/2003

South Central Los Angeles has been removed from the map of LA, in an effort to rid the area of its international image of gang violence and poverty.

Members of the Los Angeles City Council passed the move, which has taken many residents by surprise, unanimously.

In the future, the historically black suburb will be known as South Los Angeles. By taking the Central out of South Central, the local authority is hoping decades of negative images will be confined to the history books.

The Pentagon has produced plans to bomb North Korea's nuclear plant at Yongbyon, if the rouge state goes ahead with reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods that would yield enough plutonium for six nuclear weapons, according to a published report Tuesday.

So, here's the deal: I agree with a lot of this, in terms of suspicions of the Bush administration's motives. I don't think invading Iraq was a good next step in the war on terror. I don't think the "neocons in the DOD" care about the welfare of the Iraqis. I don't trust much of anything that the Bush administration does, and I'm dying for them to be kicked out of office.

However, I do believe that regime change in Iraq was a sound policy. So did Clinton, so does Tony Blair. So where I differ from J.L. is that I want to consider not the Bush administration's motives but the policy itself. And when I do that, I support it.

Plans to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel are being discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv and potential future government figures in Baghdad.

The plan envisages the reconstruction of an old pipeline, inactive since the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948, when the flow from Iraq's northern oilfields to Palestine was re-directed to Syria.

Now, its resurrection would transform economic power in the region, bringing revenue to the new US-dominated Iraq, cutting out Syria and solving Israel's energy crisis at a stroke.

"Marc Racicot, the Republican national chairman, said recently that [John] Kerry 'is going to have a hard time translating out of New England.' Another Bush adviser said of Mr. Kerry, 'He looks French.'"

In the spirit of true American patriotism, I'll see your "French" and raise it to "Freedom" (like the toast and the fries). And Kerry sure does look like freedom to me.

The State Department communications program failed during these five months to such a degree that 95 percent of the Turkish people opposed the American position. This fit in with a pattern of State Department communications failures as a result of which the South Korean people regarded the United States as more dangerous than North Korea and a vast majority of French and German citizens favored policies that opposed the United States.

Despite a pathetic public campaign of hand wringing and desperation the State Department publicly failed to gain even a majority of the votes on the UN Security Council for a second resolution. Opposing America and a world of progress had somehow become less attractive and more difficult than helping America eliminate the fear of Saddam’s wicked regime.

For two years, lawmakers, journalists and watchdog groups have complained that the Bush administration has been stingy with information on everything from energy policy to Iraq rebuilding. But the less-is-more communications approach reached its logical extreme in a pair of briefings in Texas on Thursday and Friday by deputy White House press secretary Claire Buchan. In an exchange of nearly 3,800 words, the spokeswoman managed not to answer about 75 questions.

President Bush's advisers have drafted a re-election strategy built around staging the latest nominating convention in the party's history, allowing Mr. Bush to begin his formal campaign near the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and to enhance his fund-raising advantage, Republicans close to the White House say.

The president is planning a sprint of a campaign that would start, at least officially, with his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, a speech now set for Sept. 2.

The convention, to be held in New York City, will be the latest since the Republican Party was founded in 1856, and Mr. Bush's advisers said they chose the date so the event would flow into the commemorations of the third anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

Muslims were upset that Franklin Graham, who had condemned Islam as evil, preached at the Pentagon last week. Now comes word that the White House held a private briefing for 141 evangelical Christian leaders March 27 to discuss the Iraq war and other subjects.

Those invited included Jerry Falwell, who apologized last year for calling the prophet Muhammad a "terrorist," and broadcaster Marlin Maddoux, who has proclaimed an "irrefutable connection" between Islam and terror. Also invited were the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is sending food to Iraq labeled "grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ," and Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who said Iraqis are "desperately in need of the gospel." Invited, too, was D. James Kennedy, whose ministry published an article calling Islam "one of the greatest challenges to Christianity."

A White House spokesman said Bush does not share these views and that similar briefings were held for groups such as veterans and think tanks.

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," Santorum said in an interview published on Monday by the Associated Press...
"All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family," Santorum continued. "And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution."

"An RNC spokesman said the chairman was "honored" to meet with HRC and to express "our party's commitment to tolerance and inclusion." Inclusion of what? Inclusion of views that are diametrically opposed to the stated principles of the Republican Party?...Some GOP leaders are so arrogant as to believe pro-family voters have nowhere else to go and that they will continue to vote for Republicans even while the RNC chairman holds secret meetings with the homosexual lobby. Well, pro-family voters do have somewhere else to go - home!

In a remarkable about-face, the Internal Revenue Service has restored the tax-exempt status of two groups whose political activity became the basis of the ethics case against former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga).

The decision to reinstate the tax-exempt status of the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation and the Howard H. Callaway Foundation — disclosed in two April 4 letters to the groups — has stunned tax experts who monitor the interaction of charitable and political organizations.

"This is an extraordinary decision," said Fran Hill, a University of Miami tax law professor. "The IRS does not go back and fix things like this. In a reasonable system of tax administration this would not happen. But we of course have a system of tax administration that from time to time is subject to political influence."

The action marks a complete turnaround by the IRS and came despite a U.S. Tax Court ruling dismissing a lawsuit filed by the two groups. IRS officials refused to comment on the matter, citing confidentiality concerns.

In the wake of a lengthy investigation by the House ethics committee that led to a formal House reprimand and $300,000 fine against Gingrich, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of the two groups in 1999.

At that time, the IRS said it was imposing its most serious sanction because the two groups operated on behalf of the private interests of the Republican Party and GOPAC, the political action committee once headed by Gingrich.

The activities of ALOF — a charitable organization that effectively operated as a bank account for GOPAC projects — constituted the heart of the ethics case against Gingrich and had been considered a clear-cut example of the kinds of political activities that are forbidden for tax-exempt organizations.

The IRS reversal has "enormous implications" for the future of charitable groups that want to engage in partisan politics, Hill said. "It’s open season for 501(c)3 groups to serve as political conduits," she said.

He plans to go to Iowa soon to do his first presidential campaign workday on a farm. The Graham family owns Angus cattle and sells bull semen. Graham, who in February had his aortic valve replaced with that of a Holstein cow, believes he has a natural connection to rural Iowa.

Ontario health officials are worried a SARS-infected health care professional who should have known better attended funeral and church services last week and may have infected "hundreds."

At a press conference on Monday morning, Dr. Hanif Kassam, York Region's acting medical officer of health, said the man, who displayed symptoms of severe acute respiratory syndrome, ignored quarantine advice and attended the services.

When public health contacted the man, who works at an unidentified downtown Toronto hospital, and told him he should have quarantined himself, he became "obnoxious, threatening and belligerent," Dr. Kassam said.

"You never had a subject like me!" she crows. "You never had an interview like this!"

"People like me are very brilliant and complicated."

There has been a systematic and persistent emphasis on the peripheral and negative aspects of this war in most of the media. Not only have the editorial office heroes fixed their attention on the little picture, they have accentuated the negative, such as collateral damage during the war and looting by civilians in captured cities...
The more remarkable the successes on the battlefield in Iraq, the more desperate much of the media have striven to find something — anything — to complain about. The more the polls have shown overwhelming support for the war and the president by the American people at large, the more the media cover antiwar demonstrations and provide a forum for those who organize them.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
Thomas Jefferson

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Few Americans...seem to care about stopping a conflict with a death toll larger than any since World War II. Why?

American interest in Africa is erratic, but there is a larger reason that few countries have put much effort into ending this war. Simply, Congo's current situation — Balkanized, occupied by rival armies, with no functioning central government — suits many people just fine. Some are heads of Congo's warring factions, some are political and military leaders of neighboring countries, and some are corporations dependent on the country's resources. The combination is deadly.

The scientist also told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990's, and that more recently Iraq was cooperating with Al Qaeda, the military officials said.

Snowe and Voinovich have said they will support only $350 billion of Bush's $726 billion proposal, and their critical votes in the closely divided Senate this month led to a deal aimed at limiting the tax cut to $350 billion. This raised the ire of the Club for Growth, an anti-tax advocacy group with a penchant for throwing political rocks at moderate Republicans.

The TV ads, which will run for 10 days in Maine and Ohio, recall France's opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They go on to say "some so-called Republicans," naming Snowe in the Maine ads and Voinovich in the Ohio ads, "stand in the way" of Bush's tax-cutting plans at home. Digitally inserted French flags flutter beside the senators' images.