Authorizing Pravda Fox to violate a confidence on the day of Clarke's testimony, giving the (clearly forewarned) Republicans on the commission a cudgel to beat him with versus not authorizing Robert Novak to release the name of the person who outed Valerie Plame;

Seeking to declassify Clarke's 2002 testimony versus going all the way to the Supreme Court to keep secret who was on Cheney's energy task force three years ago; and

Sending Condi Rice to every news outlet she can find to peddle demonstrably false claims about what the administration was doing in 2001 versus refusing to permit her to testify under oath, even in closed session, on the same subjects.

Stringent security measures being planned by the gardai will ensure that protesters, including overseas demonstrators planning to travel from all over Europe, will be kept at least a mile away from the president during the short visit.

In a highly unusual move, key Republicans in Congress are seeking to declassify testimony that former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke gave in 2002 about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Friday.

Frist said the intent was to determine whether Clarke lied under oath — either in 2002 or this week — when he appeared before a bipartisan Sept. 11 commission and sharply criticized President Bush's handling of the war on terror.

A class action lawsuit was filed today in Dane County Circuit Court accusing 24 downtown Madison taverns and the Madison-Dane County Tavern League of conspiring to fix prices on beer and liquor.

"Kerry's behavior, of course, is part of a long leftist tradition of siding with our totalitarian enemies."

"Tell us a bit about why the Left is now so excited with siding with the bin Ladens and Husseins of this world. As always, it admires the tyrants that extinguish all supposed sacred leftist values themselves. Give us an insight into the psychology here."

HANSON: "It's not so much that they prefer such monsters per se -- after all a Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore are not dying to move to Haiti, Syria, or the West Bank. Rather they start with the premise that what America does is probably wrong, and therefore its enemies de facto can claim the moral high ground. Lately this deductive anti-Americanism is becoming laughable. Look at the rogues' gallery of our dethroned opponents -- the Grenada thugs, Noriega, Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam are hardly national liberationists ..."

GLAZOV: "Fair enough. But Mr. Hanson, I disagree with you when you say that the Left does not prefer monsters. ... It is not just a coincidence that leftists venerate every despot that opposes the United States."

Moderate Republicans are often fiscal conservatives but social liberals -- in many ways, the exact opposite of this administration. They believe in balanced budgets, environmental conservation and a foreign policy that's strong without being needlessly belligerent. They see themselves as the heirs of former President Teddy Roosevelt, the avid conservationist and trustbuster, and former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, the philanthropist, statesman and governor of New York. The party they joined was staid and dignified. It was the other party that seemed shrill and radical.

We're so unified, the DLC has given a lifetime membership to Howard Dean....We're so unified, until their wives found out about it, Al Sharpton and Joe Lieberman were on their way to San Francisco for a marriage license.

A Post editorial attacking (rightly so) the year-old political arrests in Cuba through which Fidel Castro is "attempt[ing] to destroy a pro-democracy civil society that had been peacefully emerging."

Newt Gingrich, who argues that "we must transform our health care system to a consumer-directed model ..." -- translation: a face-lifted version of the GOP's medical savings accounts, which would offer virtually no help to the working poor.

George Will, who snidely remarks that "high-quality popular culture ... is a far cry from hip-hop."

.... and, last but not least, Richard Cohen, who happens to complain in today's column that on some mornings National Public Radio makes him "gag" because it airs "yet another in-depth piece proving once again that life is unfair and that many poor people live in poverty."

Last night I saw Terry McAuliffe speaking to a Democratic Party MeetUp at Lucky Bar here in Washington. He was, as one would expect, highly critical of George W. Bush's leadership. He managed, however, not to mention the war on terror at all in the course of his presentation, focusing instead on jobs, health care, and education. This was a bad strategy when it was first unveiled for the 2002 midterms; it's been a bad strategy ever since, and it's an absolutely awful strategy for this week.

I'm all for point scoring, but I just don't think all this blather about whether we took al-Qaeda seriously before 9/11 is meaningful... It's what happened after 9/11 that should be getting more attention.

"I said they needed to pay attention to al-Qaida and counterterrorism. I said we were going to be struck again. They never once asked me a question, nor did I see them having a serious discussion about it ... I agree with Dick that they saw those problems through an Iraqi prism. But the evidence, the intelligence, wasn't there."

AHG was a small, Ohio-based organization just a few years ago, but since then it has spread to 22 states and it now serves 2,800 young girls. This organization actually does what many parents thought the Girl Scouts were supposed to do - teach girls lessons about leadership, character, and love of country from a Christian perspective. If your daughter is currently enrolled in Girl Scouts, consider sending her to American Heritage Girls instead.

When Newdow, a physician who also has a law degree but has no appellate court experience, said "under God" is "divisive," Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist saw an opportunity to trip up a novice.

"Do we know what the vote was in Congress . . . to adopt the 'under God' phrase?" Rehnquist asked, feigning ignorance of the fact that it passed unopposed in 1954.

When Newdow acknowledged as much, the chief justice pounced: "Well, that doesn't sound divisive."

But Newdow would not be ambushed. "That's only because no atheist can get elected to public office," he countered, evoking spontaneous laughter and a sound rarely, if ever, heard at oral argument in Rehnquist's tightly run courtroom -- applause.

Rehnquist restored order with a threat to clear the room.

"... used as political ammunition to berate Jefferson's character. Political enemies petrified of a republican government and priests fearful of Jefferson's advocacy of freedom of religion and deistic beliefs fought diligently to prevent a non-traditional Christian from ascending to power in the United States. William Linn, a fiery New England preacher, founded his attack against Jefferson's bid for the presidency "singly upon [Jefferson's] disbelief of the Holy Scriptures; or, in other words, his rejection of the Christian religion ..."

President Bush opened his 10-minute remarks to the gathering with a reference to what he referred to as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "favorite show" on television. Those anticipating an "Apprentice" punch line -- the Donald, after all, was only a few yards away -- guessed wrong.

"Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," Bush said, generating a roomful of laughter. "My Cabinet could take some pointers from watching that show. In fact, I'm going to have the Fab Five do a makeover on [Attorney General John] Ashcroft."

From there, Bush went on to poke at his own malapropisms before unveiling a slide show titled "White House Election Year Album" that had the crowd chuckling. Yes, there were a few jabs at the Democrats, including a couple of shots taken at Democratic challenger John Kerry. Bush described a picture of himself doing what looked like the shuffle in the Oval Office in front of Condoleezza Rice as "here I'm trying to explain John Kerry's foreign policy to Condi." He also faked a phone conversation between Kerry and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. "Hey, John," he said. "Kim Jong Il here. Just wanted to let you know, you're my guy."

Mostly, though, he put up dorky-looking pictures of himself. A recurring joke involved photos of the president in awkward positions -- bent over as if he's looking under a table, leaning to look out a window -- accompanied by remarks such as "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere!" and "Nope, no weapons over there!" and "Maybe under here?"

Observing Sean Hannity "work a room" is like watching someone welcome a good friend into his home.

There is no glad-handing, no feigned interest in what his guest is saying, no forced smile.

Rather, there is a warm handshake, meaningful conversation, deep appreciation for the individual and that unmistakable Hannity charm.

In a word, Sean Hannity is ... adorable.

There, I said it. Might as well get right out there in the open for all the world to read.

Sean is intelligent, genuinely kind, correct on the issues ... and drop-dead gorgeous.

And what red-blooded conservative woman thinks otherwise?

You can tell a lot about a person - especially a famous one - by the way he treats both the famous and the average. He looks each person directly in the eye as if they're the only one in the room for that moment, listens intently to what they have to say and graciously accepts both compliments and criticism.

We spoke briefly. Suddenly embarrassed that I had introduced myself, I said goodbye and ran back to the water's edge. Hoping he was still watching from the boardwalk, I did what any self-respecting young woman in my situation would do:

I set a trap.

Still in my sundress from touring through the hot, dusty July summer day, I took off my shoes, and strolled through the gentle surf. Every so often I would daintily pick up a small pebble and toss it into the waves.

Step back a minute and look at who has left this administration or blown the whistle on it, and why. Clarke enumerates a half-dozen counterterrorism staffers, three of whom were with him in the Situation Room on Sept. 11, who left because they felt the White House was placing too much emphasis on the enemy who didn't attack us, Iraq, and far too little on the enemy who did.

But that only begins the list. There's Paul O'Neill, whose recent memoir recounts his ongoing and unavailing battle to get the president to take the skyrocketing deficit seriously. There's Christie Todd Whitman, who appears in O'Neill's memoir recalling her own unsuccessful struggles to get the White House to acknowledge the scientific data on environmental problems. There's Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, who told Congress that it would take hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to adequately secure postwar Iraq. There's Richard Foster, the Medicare accountant, who was forbidden by his superiors from giving Congress an accurate assessment of the cost of the administration's new program. All but Foster are now gone, and Foster's sole insurance policy is that Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress were burnt by his muzzling.
(snip)
The revolt of the professionals poses a huge problem for the Bush presidency precisely because it is not coming from its ideological antagonists...The common indictment that these critics are leveling at the administration is that it is impervious to facts. That's a more devastating election year charge than anything John Kerry could come up with.

Justice Souter's question for Dr. Newdow was whether, even assuming that schoolchildren were being asked "as a technical matter" to make a personal religious affirmation, the recitation had become in practice "so tepid, so diluted, so far, let's say, from a compulsory prayer that in fact it should be, in effect, beneath the constitutional radar." Was it the case, Justice Souter asked, that by "the way we live and think and work in schools and in civic society in which the pledge is made, that whatever is distinctively religious as an affirmation is simply lost?"

[COMMISSION MEMBER TIMOTHY] ROEMER: Were you frustrated by this process?

CLARKE: I was sufficiently frustrated that I asked to be reassigned.

ROEMER: When was this?

CLARKE: Probably May or June. Certainly no later than June.

And there was agreement in that time frame, in the May or June time frame, that my request would be honored and I would be reassigned on the 1st of October to a new position to deal with cybersecurity, a position that I requested be created.

ROEMER: So you're saying that the frustration got to a high enough level that it wasn't your portfolio, it wasn't doing a lot of things at the same time, it was that you weren't getting fast enough action on what you were requesting?

CLARKE: That's right.

My view was that this administration, while it listened to me, didn't either believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem.

And I thought, if the administration doesn't believe its national coordinator for counterterrorism when he says there's an urgent problem and if it's unprepared to act as though there's an urgent problem, then probably I should get another job.

Isn't that just like a liberal? The chair-warmer [Clarke] describes Bush as a cowboy and Rumsfeld as his gunslinger – but the black chick is a dummy. Maybe even as dumb as Clarence Thomas! Perhaps someday liberals could map out the relative intelligence of various black government officials for us.

Did Clarke have the vaguest notion of Rice's background and education? Or did he think Dr. Rice was cleaning the Old Executive Office Building at night before the president chose her – not him – to be national security adviser?

It is, according to one UN official, the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world right now. Some 810,000 African tribes- people in the Darfur region of western Sudan have fled their homes. They're trying to escape what may be a campaign of ethnic cleansing by Arab militias, which are apparently backed by Sudan's government. They're struggling through blazing days and frigid nights in hilly terrain at the edge of the Sahara.

Yet, even as Darfur's warring parties agreed this week to start peace talks, it's not clear how the international community can respond to the ongoing humanitarian crisis. The issue is particularly poignant, observers say, because the 10th anniversary of Rwanda's genocide - and the world's weak response to it - is just two weeks away.

[edit]

All this is perhaps why the United Nations coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, is ratcheting up calls for help. "It's an organized campaign to rid an entire area of a group of people," he says speaking to the Monitor by phone from Khartoum, and that means "it fits the definition of 'ethnic cleansing.' " It's a dramatic term that hasn't been applied to Darfur before. Furthermore, he says, "The government has a close knowledge of what's going on - and can influence the militia."

Dr. Kapila adds that the militia's tactics - regular rape and brutal killings - are reminiscent of Rwanda's genocide in 1994. "The lesson we learned from Rwanda is to take note of these things early and to act to stop them," he says. Clearly, the scale is different, however. Some 800,000 to 1 million were killed in Rwanda. The UN estimates 10,000 civilians have died in the Darfur conflict so far. Some 110,000, meanwhile, have fled into neighboring Chad.

"I hope you resolve that credibility problem, because I hate to see you shoved aside in the presidential campaign as an active partisan trying to shove out a book," said John Lehman, the former Navy secretary who now is chairman of J.F. Lehman & Co., a private equity firm.

"ROEMER: You were running around saying something spectacular is going to happen. You were worried about this. You were on record from 1998 on saying you're at war with Al Qaida.

But why wasn't the United States government more concerned about those attacks on the United States?

TENET: Congressman Roemer, I'd ask you this afternoon when you get Mr. Clarke here, who was the chairman of the CSG, to go through the process of what they were looking at, actions they were tasking, how they thought about this problem. I wasn't sitting in that room.

I'd ask you to think about asking him how we dealt with this in this time period and find out what that response is.

ROEMER: So you're saying that it is the responsibility of the National Security Council...

TENET: Well, the CSG...

ROEMER: ... to develop the policy to go after the terrorists...

TENET: Sir, the CSG is a mechanism where all of these issues come into play every time it meets. What is the threat? What actions do we take?

It's a focal point for the way this government has organized itself around terrorism for years.

ROEMER: So you're saying it's them, not the CIA, that should have been attentive to this?

TENET: Well, the CIA is in the CSG meeting as well. I mean, everybody's at the table. The FBI is there, the NCS is there, CIA is there, domestic agencies are there.

Throughout this time period -- I don't have access to the minutes and recordings of what happened -- what actions were they tasking, how were they thinking about this?

ROEMER: They're going through a bottom-up review...

KEAN: Congressman, we've got to move on. We have run out of time. We've got one more commissioner.

ROEMER: OK. "

The Supreme Court took up this year’s major healthcare case Tuesday in a dispute that pits the compassionate conservatism of Texas Gov. George W. Bush versus the pro-business stand of the Bush administration.

[snip]

In 1997, then-Gov. Bush signed into law the Texas Health Care Liability Act, the first state law that gave patients the right to sue HMOs for denying them “appropriate and medically necessary” treatment.

It was a piece of legislation he boasted about during his campaign for the presidency four years ago. “If I’m president … people will be able to take their HMO insurance company to court. That’s what I’ve done in Texas and that’s the kind of leadership style I’ll bring to Washington,” he said during the final debate with Vice President Al Gore.

But during Tuesday’s arguments, Bush administration lawyers joined the insurance industry in urging the high court to void the right-to-sue provision in the Texas law and to block state lawsuits against HMOs for denying benefits.

These state claims “are subject to complete preemption” by the federal law and must be dismissed, said lawyers for the U.S. solicitor general. Allowing patients to sue their HMO will increase the cost of healthcare and add an extra burden on employers, they said.

In one of two cases heard Tuesday, the Cigna insurance company told Ruby Calad of Sugar Land, Texas, that she would have to leave a hospital just one day after a complicated hysterectomy and surgical repairs. Her doctor objected, but she was discharged, only to return days later after complications arose.

A White House spokesman said Tuesday that the president’s position in the HMO case is “compatible” with his position as governor. “The president’s principles are for allowing patients a fair process for challenging the decisions of health insurers without needlessly driving up healthcare costs,” said Trent Duffy, deputy White House press secretary.

The issue of suing HMOs was featured in the third debate between Gore and Bush on Oct. 17, 2000.

When Gore said that he, unlike the governor of Texas, supported a national patient’s bill of rights and allowing patients to sue HMOs, Bush objected.

“It’s not true. I do support a national patient’s bill of rights,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to do just that in the state of Texas to get a patient’s bill of rights through. We’re one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for denying you proper coverage,” he said, promising to do the same in Washington.

Current Special Counsel Scott Bloch, appointed by President Bush... has ordered references to sexual orientation removed from the agency's website and training manuals. This move runs counter to the radical agenda that the homosexual movement is trying to impose upon our society, which is to expand federal law to benefit certain people merely because of their choice of sex partner. Our hats are off to Mr. Bloch for his courage to enforce, rather than rewrite, laws passed by our elected representatives.

The Bush-Cheney campaign Wednesday unleashed its most famous Democratic booster, Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, to make the case that presidential candidate John Kerry advocates policies inconsistent with some of history's most popular Democratic presidents.

[edit]

Miller also criticized Kerry's view that more diplomatic channels should have been explored through the United Nations before moving almost unilaterally.

"I cannot imagine the great Democratic Party leaders of past generations waiting with their hands in their pockets while a bunch of dithering diplomats decided the future of the world," Miller said. "That is the worst kind of indecisiveness. That is the wrong kind of leadership at this critical moment in our history."

Shaking off its hangover from the nasty partisan scandalmongering of the late 1990s, the House ethics committee has finally begun an investigation into Rep. Nick Smith's allegation that a member of the House leadership tried to bribe him into supporting the Medicare drug bill. According to Roll Call, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the matter, too. But a Kalamazoo talk-radio host whose scoop made it impossible to sweep Smith's allegations under the rug is out of a job.

Kevin Vandenbroek, formerly of WKZO radio, should have gotten a raise for his contribution to the Smith story, which was picked up by Slate and subsequently by just about every other national publication covering the Medicare bribe. Instead, Vandenbroek was fired last month, apparently for political reasons.

[edit]

A smoking gun was needed, and Vandenbroek provided it: a taped Dec. 1 interview in which Smith said he'd been offered "$100,000-plus" for Brad's campaign. Since the WKZO tape surfaced, Smith has revised his story yet again, but he still can't offer a plausible explanation as to why he would have mentioned a $100,000 offer to Vandenbroek if no such offer had been made. (The latest and most ridiculous iteration is that Novak's erroneous reporting of the $100,000 figure popped inexplicably into his head and he blurted it out unthinkingly.) More than anything else, it is this glaring deficiency in Smith's recantation that makes further investigation an obvious necessity.

Vandenbroek did himself no particular good at WKZO by providing evidence that the House GOP leadership may harbor a felon. "While there are some people at the station who seem to be quite proud of my coverage of Nick Smith," Vandenbroek told Chatterbox, "I think there were others that might have been uncomfortable that it was focusing on a member of the Republican Party." There was no blowback on Smith, but soon afterward, a Vandenbroek broadcast pointing out a few dubious claims in President Bush's Feb. 8 Meet the Press interview prompted a complaint to the station from the local Republican Party headquarters. The Bush broadcast "made the owner of the station very uncomfortable," Vandenbroek said. "I got called in and told to stay away from politics." Strike 3 was a mildly intemperate e-mail Vandenbroek sent to the Christian right author Jefferson Scott after Scott declined to appear on Vandenbroek's show to discuss Be Intolerant: Because Some Things Are Just Stupid. Be Intolerant is a manifesto Scott co-authored with Ryan Dobson, son of James Dobson, chairman of the powerful Christian right organization Focus on the Family. "The straw that broke the camel's back was their contention that I violated e-mail policy," Vandenbroek explained.

Conspiracy to Murder is the story of how that genocide was planned. It reveals how, from as early as 1990, the political, military and administrative leadership of Rwanda became involved in planning the complete extermination of the Tutsi population. A vicious hate campaign filled the media, urging Hutus to kill; a network of roadblocks was devised to prevent any escape; civil-defense groups were established throughout the country, with eventually every third Hutu being armed; half a million machetes and other agricultural tools were imported, and 85 tons of munitions distributed country-wide, in the year leading up to the genocide.

In an outstanding example of investigative journalism, Linda Melvern reveals the full story behind the conspiracy, detailing the involvement of world governments whose responses ranged from complicity to apathy. She shows how the killers outmanoeuvred the Security Council and led UN peacekeepers into a deadly trap; how the French military trained the killers and how their "humanitarian intervention" in June 1994 enabled many of those killers to escape justice; how the John Major government ignored warnings and then proceeded to mislead the British Parliament about what was really happening; how the US is still withholding wiretap and satellite evidence showing that the genocide had begun; and how significant was the knowledge of the then Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Drawing on a vast range of new material gathered in Kigali, Paris, New York, Brussels and London, and using interviews with those caught up in the genocide, this book provides a compelling account of one of the last century’s greatest crimes. The author has had exclusive access to a wealth of fresh sources, including an extraordinary collection of documents abandoned by the conspirators when they fled Rwanda and a full confession from the prime minister in the government that presided over the genocide.

"Some say Kagame and his rebel movement shot down the plane to spark a war that would enable the Tutsis to seize power ... Others say the astonishing speed with which the genocide started after [the plane was downed] reflected months of planning. Within hours of the attack on the plane, Hutu militias set up roadblocks and broadcast radio diatribes rallying Hutus to kill Tutsis."

"For Habyarimana, it was true that the Arusha Accords amounted to a political suicide note. Hutu Power leaders cried treason ...

"Four days after the (accords) signing ... a new radio station funded by members and friends of [Hutu Power], and devoted to genocidal propaganda, began broadcasting from Kigali ... its reach was virtually ubiquitous in radio-saturated Rwanda ..."

"... has been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. He suspects it is for their extermination. Example he gave is that in twenty minutes his personnel could kill up to a thousand Tutsis."

"A military agreement signed in 1975 between France and Rwanda forbade the involvement of French troops in Rwandan combat, combat training or police operations ? (but) throughout the early 1990s, French officers and troops served as Rwanda auxiliaries, directing everything from air traffic control and the interrogation of RPF prisoners to frontline combat.

"... when (in 1991) the United States ambassador to Rwanda suggested that the [Hutu-majority] government should abolish ethnic identity cards, the French ambassador quashed the initiative. Paris regarded Francophone Africa as 'chez nous,' a virtual extension of the motherland ..."

The first zone, Before Genocide, is a dimly lit passageway with images dating from 1894-1994; the emphasis is on images rather than text since many visitors are likely to be illiterate. These show one of Belgium's more obscure colonies at the turn of the century, independence in the 1960s and life continuing much as before in a small, unremarkable country in central Africa. There is just one ominous note: the Belgians' use of taller, lighter-skinned cattle-owning Tutsis to reign over the shorter, darker peasant Hutus - divide and rule that poisoned ethnic relations.

The second zone, Warnings, shows how the horror was avoidable. Here are a copy of the fax sent by Romeo Dallaire, the UN peacekeeper commander, asking his superiors in vain for permission to seize weapons caches, and the quote from Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, Rwanda's alleged Himmler, vowing to prepare an "apocalypse". At the top of a stairwell is a stained glass window depicting dark, brooding clouds of midnight blue. Made by an Auschwitz survivor, Roman Halter, and his son Ardyn, both based in Britain, the stairwell window represents Rwanda's lost chance to escape its fate had the international community responded to the warnings.

The third zone, Genocide, is a passageway of harrowing stills and film clips showing just how fast events moved on April 7 1994. Within hours, road blocks sprang up around Kigali, trapping inhabitants. Images deemed too graphic to broadcast a decade ago show people being decapitated, bodies twitching on the road, the wounded struggling to rise. Some survivors involved with the memorial wanted to include simulated sounds of clubs crushing babies' skulls, but they were overruled. Instead there is a glass case displaying machetes, clubs and guns, and survivors talking to camera about being raped and mutilated. One interviewee is in silhouette not because she is embarrassed, says Smith, but because she did not want to give her attackers, some of whom are free and may visit the exhibition, the satisfaction of seeing the effect of a shotgun blast to her lower face.

The fourth zone, Responses, tries to lift spirits somewhat by focusing on the heroism of those who hid fugitives, resisted death squads and retained their humanity at a time of depravity. That is followed by a section called Aftermath - its name changed from "reconciliation" after survivors said today's peaceful co-existence should not be mistaken for forgiving and forgetting. There are exhibits about refugee camps, reunited families, the impact of HIV/Aids, self-help groups and the rounding up of thousands of alleged killers.

[edit]

On the top floor there is a raw, minimalist exhibit of dozens of photographs of children with brief captions. One girl gazes from a cot wearing a white dress and an uncertain smile. All we are told is that her name was Irene Mutoni, she was two years old, her farvourite food was banana and rice, her favourite toy was a stuffed dog, her first word was daddy and she died drowning in boiling water.

You said on "60 Minutes" that you expected "their dogs" to be set on you when your book was published, but did you think that the attacks would be so personal?

Oh yeah, absolutely, for two reasons. For one, the Bush White House assumes that everyone who works for them is part of a personal loyalty network, rather than part of the government. And that their first loyalty is to Bush rather than to the people. When you cross that line or violate that trust, they get very upset. That's the first reason. But the second reason is that I think they're trying to bait me -- and people who agree with me -- into talking about all the trivial little things that they are raising, rather than talking about the big issues in the book.

Why did you write the book now? That's a question they raise. Did it occur to you that this would be an election year and it would be especially controversial because of that, and that these commission hearings were coming up?

I wanted the book to come out much earlier, but the White House has a policy of reviewing the text of all books written by former White House personnel -- to review them for security reasons. And they actually took a very long time to do that. This book could have come out much earlier. It's the White House that decided when it would be published, not me. I turned it in toward the end of last year, and even though there was nothing in it that was not already obviously unclassified, they took a very, very long time.

Were you seeking to make a political impact, in the way that the White House spokesmen have accused you of trying to do?

I was seeking to create a debate about how we should have, in the past, and how we should, in the future, deal with the war on terrorism. When they say it's an election year, and therefore you're creating not just a debate but a political debate, what are they suggesting? That I should have waited until November to publish it, waited until after the election? I don't see why we have to delay that debate, just because there's an election.

Vice President Cheney told Rush Limbaugh that you were not "in the loop," and that you're angry because you were passed over by Condi Rice for greater authority. And in fact you were dropped from Cabinet-level position to something less than that. How do you respond to what the Vice President said?

The vice president is becoming an attack dog, on a personal level, which should be beneath him but evidently is not.

I was in the same meetings that Dick Cheney was in, during the days after 9/11. Condi Rice and Dick Cheney appointed me as co-chairman of the interagency committee called the "Campaign Committee" -- the "campaign" being the war on terrorism. So I was co-chairing the interagency process to fight the war on terrorism after 9/11. I don't think I was "out of the loop."

The vice president commented that there was "no great success in dealing with terrorists" during the 1990s, when you were serving under President Clinton. He asked, "What were they doing?"

It's possible that the vice president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn't know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States, through military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States, through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert action program against al-Qaida; it also launched military strikes against al-Qaida. Maybe the vice president was so busy running Halliburton at the time that he didn't notice.

First Bush invades my home turf, then he takes my pals, then he makes fun of the way I talk -- probably. Now he steals my right to raise a disobedient, smart-alecky son! Well, that's it!

Conservative anger at a Denver district judge reached the boiling point Thursday with a proposed resolution calling for the impeachment of Judge John Coughlin.

Joint Resolution 1007, introduced by Republican Rep. Greg Brophy, was immediately criticized by two key Republicans, Senate President John Andrews and Gov. Bill Owens, who called it "inappropriate, excessive and uncalled for."

Brophy, a corn and watermelon farmer from Wray, accused Coughlin of "malfeasance in office." He said he wants the judge impeached for a ruling last year that ordered a Denver woman to shield her adopted daughter from "homophobic" religious teachings.

The ruling was issued in a contentious custody dispute between two former lesbian partners who shared the child's upbringing.

If successful, Brophy's effort would result in the first impeachment in Colorado since 1938.

The ruling that so incensed Brophy and some other social conservatives came last April. Coughlin ordered Dr. Cheryl Clark, who had committed herself to Christianity and renounced homosexuality, to "make sure that there is nothing in the religious upbringing or teaching that the minor child is exposed to that can be considered homophobic."

Brophy said at a Capitol news conference that Coughlin's ruling was an attack on some of the major pillars of Western civilization, including the right to choose one's religion and to direct the upbringing of a child.

"His blatant disregard for Colorado law, as well as the Colorado and U.S. constitutions, forces us to impeach him," Brophy said.

Chuck Gosnell, president of the Christian Coalition of Colorado, who attended the news conference, said he supported the effort and wanted to "defend the family from liberal judges legislating from the bench."

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any state, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and woman.

"Mr. Clarke, to get back to him for a moment, is saying that actually if we would just take some more time and talk to these people, understand why they hate us, we might be able to forge some kind of peace with them."

"Is not it sometimes better to give in a little to terrorism rather than being so ideological about opposing it? .... One, the United States will never accept terrorism as a legitimate means of political activity. Two, the United States will never tolerate any terrorism at any level. Three, the United States will always be energetic at rooting out terrorism. Four, the United States will adopt, adapt, adjust, and seek to stay ahead of terrorists. Five, the United States will never appease terrorism or make concessions to terrorists."

For the first time Monday, Hamas threatened the United States and suggested it might seek outside help in carrying out revenge attacks.

"The Zionists didn't carry out their operation without getting the consent of the terrorist American administration and it (the United States) must take responsibility for this crime," Hamas said in a statement. "All the Muslims of the world will be honored to join in on the retaliation for this crime."

The presidential jet, in which the late Rwandan leader, Juvenal Habyarimana was boarding, on April 6, 1994, was hit by lieutenant Frank Nziza.

According to an inquiry report of a French Judge, Jean-Loius Brugiere, Nziza hit the presidential plane, which carried Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira, when they were on their way back to Kigali from Dar es Salaam in 1994.

The first missile shot by a Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) soldier, Eric Hakizimana, missed its target to the presidential plane.

RPF gunmen were stationed 50 kilometers from the Kigali International Airport, awaiting the arrival of the late President Habyarimana on April 6, 1994, from Dar es Salaam where he was taking part in the Great Lakes regional summit on Rwandan peace.

[edit]

It names RPF leaders who were infiltrated into the late HabyarimanaÂ’s army as Alex Kanyarengwe and Theoneste Lizinde.

Others include Abdul Ruzibiza and their top leader who is the current Rwandan Brigadier General-cum- Presidential Advisor on National Defense, Charles Kayonga.

The report adds that at least 3,000 RPF gunmen had infiltrated Kigali to organise chaos just after the hitting of the presidential jet.

[edit]

In 20 minutes, an estimated 1,000 persons were already slaughtered in the start of genocide in Rwanda on April 6, 1994, the report said.

"Democracy means more than elections. It means respecting the rule of law and supporting a vibrant, robust civil society."

"... Florida's own courts have repeatedly told the Governor he may not take away the civil rights of Florida citizens who committed crimes in other states, served their time and had their rights restored by those states. People from other states who have arrived in Florida with a felony conviction in their past number 'clearly over 50,000 and likely over 100,000,' says criminal demographics expert Jeffrey Manza of Northwestern University. ... 80 percent arrive with voting rights intact, which they do not forfeit by relocating to Florida. Nevertheless, agencies controlled by (then-Sec. of State Katherine) Harris and Bush ordered county officials to reject attempts by these eligible voters to register ..."

"I have a couple of devious plans if this thing passes."

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you. Do you have any comment about the charge in the book that Secretary Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, said that there`s no reason to attack Afghanistan, because Afghanistan didn`t have any good targets, whereas Iraq does have good targets? Is that something that happened or it didn`t happen?

WILKINSON: Chris, I wasn`t in the room. But I again want to go back to the book. If you read the book, Clarke also talks about his belief that bin Laden may be somewhere chanting and exerting mind control over American leaders. This is really some strange stuff, "X Files" type stuff that we`re seeing in some of these writings.

[A]ppear on several morning talk shows to rebut the accusations by Richard Clarke, who quit as the top counter-terror official at the White House last year.

"Dick Clarke just does not know what he is talking about"

and

"I really don't know what Richard Clarke's motivations are, but I'll tell you this: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction, and he chose not to."

When John Ashcroft took over, fighting terrorists was the Justice Department’s number one priority. Ashcroft took it off the priority list completely—even though he personally stopped flying commercial airlines before 9/11 because of warnings about terrorist activity.

After 9/11, Ashcroft cut the FBI’s request for counterterrorism funding by two-thirds.

Since then, he’s spent his time—and our money—putting curtains over naked statues at the Department of Justice [good images in this part of the ad] and writing songs that he forces Justice Department employees to sing every day [more good video].

Of course, maybe we’re better off when Ashcroft isn’t paying attention to national security. Even Republicans admit his spying on Americans under the PATRIOT doesn’t protect us from terrorism [image of Republican Senators with quotes opposing extension of P.A.].

John Ashcroft: can we afford to let people like this run our country for another four years?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book. Certainly let's look at the politics of it. His best buddy is Rand Beers, who is the principal foreign policy advisor to Senator Kerry's campaign. The Kerry campaign went out and immediately put these comments up on their website that Mr. Clarke made.

If friendship is basis for recusal (as it assuredly is when friends are sued personally) then activity which suggests close friendship must be avoided. But if friendship is no basis for recusal (as it is not in official-capacity suits) social contacts that do no more than evidence that friendship suggest no impropriety whatever.

Osama bin Laden narrowly escaped capture by French troops working with American forces in Afghanistan, perhaps several times, the head of France's armed forces said Monday.

French soldiers are determined to capture the fugitive head of the al-Qaida network by the end of the year, Gen. Henri Bentegeat said Monday.

"Although the economy grows in response to tax reductions (because of higher consumption in the short run and improved incentives in the long run), it is unlikely to grow so much that lost revenue is completely recovered by the higher level of economic activity."

The percentage of Mexicans who reported having a "bad" or "very bad" opinion of the United States:

When asked in 2000 ......... 22%
When asked in 2003 ......... 58%

“I have to say campaigning is a little bit different than that first one, in 1978,” Mrs. Bush told the crowd. “These days we get to travel in a very nice airplane instead of an old Chevy Cutlass.”

American Heritage Girls was founded in 1995 by a Cincinnati-area woman and her friends who were unhappy that the Girl Scouts accepted lesbians as troop leaders, banned prayer at meetings and allowed girls to substitute the word “God” in the oath.

[snip]

In 1993, in an effort to be more inclusive to girls of all faiths, the Girl Scouts decided to allow youngsters to say “Allah” or another word instead of God in the oath: “On my honor, I will try to serve God and my country, to help people at all times and to live by the Girl Scout law.”

The Girl Scouts also does not have “a discrimination policy,” meaning the organization is open to all, including gay Scout leaders and girls.

"[President Bush] never thought it was important enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject, or for him to order his national security adviser to hold a Cabinet-level meeting on the subject. ...Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation (about possible 9/11 links to Iraq) left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this."

Richard Clarke, the Bush administration's former counter-terrorism coordinator, quotes from CNN's website are taken from Clarke's March 21, 2004 interview on CBS's "60 Minutes."


"Everybody knew at every step of the way that [the yellowcake uranium allegations] were false?until they got to the Pentagon, where they were believed."

A former CIA official, quoted by Seymour Hersh in "The Stovepipe," New Yorker, Oct. 27, 2003.


"Everyone in the intelligence community knew that the White House couldn't care less about any information suggesting that there were no WMDs or that the UN inspectors were very effective."

Greg Thielman, former director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence & Research, quoted by author Sidney Blumenthal, writing in the Australian newspaper The Age, Feb. 6, 2004.


"There's a catfight going on about [the Bush administration's allegation] right now. On one side you have most of the experts on gas centrifuges. On the other you have one guy sitting in the CIA." ... (quoting a colleague) "The administration can say what it wants and we are expected to remain silent."

David Albright, a physicist and former UN weapons inspector who heads the Institute for Science and International Security, commenting on the Bush admin.'s assertion that aluminum tubes ordered by Iraq were destined for use to produce WMDs. Quoted by Julian Borger in The Guardian (U.K.), Oct. 9, 2002.


"The analysts at the C.I.A. were beaten down defending their assessments. And they blame George Tenet for not protecting them. I've never seen a government like this."

A former CIA official, explaining how analysts were met by Bush officials with hostility when analysts' assessments failed to produce the findings sought by the administration. Quoted by Seymour Hersh in "The Stovepipe," New Yorker, Oct. 27, 2003.


"Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably."

Ray McGovern, former CIA intelligence analyst and co-founder of VIPS -- a group of ex-CIA analysts who are critical of efforts to manipulate intelligence data. Quoted by Andrew Gumbel, The Independent (UK), Nov. 9, 2003.


"The FBI has been pounded on to make this (Iraq-9/11) link."

A source close to the FBI's investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attack, quoted by Julian Borger in The Guardian (U.K.), Oct. 9, 2002.


"The accountability for this war in Iraq does not lie with (CIA director) George Tenet and the intelligence community. It resides with the president of the United States and his war Cabinet advisers."

Joseph Wilson, the former State Department official who was the last U.S. official to meet with Saddam Hussein before the Iraq invasion and whose wife was "outed" as a CIA agent by an administration source. Wilson, an appointee of the first President Bush, was quoted by MSNBC?s Martin Wolk in a post to the network's website, Feb. 9, 2004, 3:03 p.m. EST.


"[Vice-President Cheney and Lewis Libby, his chief of staff] looked disapproving, questioned [our] reports and left an impression of what you're supposed to do. They would say: 'You haven't looked at the evidence'. The answer would be, those reports (from Iraqi exiles) aren't valid. The analysts would be told, 'You should look at this again'. Finally, [CIA analysts] gave up. You learn not to contradict them."

Patrick Lang, a former senior intelligence analyst at the CIA, quoted by author Sidney Blumenthal, writing in the Australian newspaper The Age, Feb. 6, 2004.


"Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level (Bush administration) pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA."

Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA head of counter-intelligence, quoted by Julian Borger in The Guardian (U.K.), Oct. 9, 2002.


Top Bush advisers "dismantle[d] the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. ... They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information."

Kenneth Pollack, former National Security Council expert on Iraq and author of the book "The Threatening Storm," quoted by Seymour Hersh in "The Stovepipe," New Yorker, Oct. 27, 2003.


"The administration's assertion that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program appears to be its weakest claim .... The legitimacy of the two chief pieces of evidence the administration provided of an ongoing Iraqi nuclear program was undermined significantly before the war even began."

Paul Kerr, a research analyst with the Arms Control Association, a non-partisan organization that promotes understanding of arms control issues, quoted in an article posted on ACA's website, July/August 2003.


"I added that it would prove paradoxical and absurd if 250,000 troops were to invade Iraq and find very little (weapons of mass destruction)."

Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, explaining what he told President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a meeting on Feb. 20, 2003, shortly before the Iraqi invasion was launched, quoted by Reuters, March 6, 2004.


"... there is no evidence that a strategic partnership came out of [bin Laden-Iraq meetings in the 1990s]. I'm unaware of any evidence of Saddam pursuing terrorism against the United States."

Bob Baer, a former CIA agent who monitored al Qaeda's rise, quoted by Julian Borger in The Guardian (U.K.), Oct. 9, 2002.

French authorities had a hand in Rwanda's 1994 genocide by helping train soldiers of the Hutu regime in power at the time, a new book by a French journalist says.

"Soldiers from our country trained, under orders, the killers in the Tutsi genocide," Patrick de Saint-Exupery wrote in his book "L'Inavouable, la France au Rwanda" (Unspeakable: France in Rwanda), which is to be released Thursday.

He said he started to investigate France's involvement after a 1994 meeting in southwest Rwanda with a French military unit.

A French soldier, wearing a Rwandan army jacket over his uniform, admitted to him that "last year, I trained the Rwandan presidential guard," which was accused of leading killers to their victims, Saint-Exupery wrote.

On his return to Paris, he met other French soldiers who "were relieved to talk", and set out some of what he found in the pages of Le Figaro newspaper.

According to his research, between 1991 and mid-1994, successive French governments sent significant military aid to French-speaking Rwanda. By 1992, several hundred French soldiers had trained up to 50,000 Rwandan soldiers, and several million euros in arms had been delivered.

The goal, for France and in particular the president at the time, Francois Mitterrand, was to pursue the "desire for empire," he wrote.

"In those countries over there, genocide is not too important," he claimed Mitterrand told aides in 1994.

At least 800,000 and as many as one million people were massacred, most of them by the then Hutu army and extremist militias.

DIRECTOR RIDGE: But I'm here to say only one part of that strategy. Today the President is putting in place two additional elements that are just as important. First, the administration is extremely pleased that Dick Clarke has agreed to serve as Special Advisor to the President for Cyber Security. This position and its mission is vitally important.

[edit]

Dick Clarke is the right man for the job. He is one of our nation's leading experts on cyber security, appointed as the first national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counter-terrorism in May of 1998. In his long career of government service, he has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence under President Reagan, and as Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs under President George Herbert Walker Bush.

In his new role, he will be the President's principal advisor on all matters related to cyber security. He will serve as chairman of a government-wide board that will coordinate the protection of critical infrastructure systems. The President is expected to sign an executive order, establishing the board shortly. You know Dr. Rice and I are anxious to be working with him in our capacities as well.

"Now [the president] never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this."

"At one point the president became somewhat impatient with us and said, 'I'm tired of swatting flies. Where is my new strategy to eliminate al Qaeda?' "

Government troops backed by helicopter gunships fought fierce battles with rebels in northern Uganda, killing more than 50 insurgents, the army spokesman said Sunday.

Thus while there is tangible horror at the activities of the LRA, the lack of distinction between the ‘rebels’ and ‘abductees’ generates intense confusion. As one informant said, “A ‘rebel’ who is killed in battle may have only just been abducted one hour ago. If you are killed you are a rebel, if you are abandoned or escaped you are an abductee.”

The day began with the president on his way to Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., to promote his education bill, known as No Child Left Behind. White House staff members had redecorated a second-grade classroom, moving furniture and mounting banners for the benefit of the television cameras recording the event, Principal Gwen Rigell said.

The arrival of the presidential motorcade was marked by a cacophony of cellphones: staffers at the White House calling colleagues on the trip with news of the first plane crash into the World Trade Center. Within seconds, aides had informed the president.

At the Dec. 4, 2001, town-hall meeting in Orlando, Mr. Bush said, "I was sitting outside the classroom, waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly myself, and I said, 'Well, there's one terrible pilot.' " Several weeks later, he said essentially the same thing at another public event in Ontario, Calif.

Actually, no scenes of the first plane hitting the Trade Center were broadcast on television until late that night, when amateur video footage became available. The TV in the room where Mr. Bush waited wasn't even plugged in, according Ms. Rigell, the principal. "It's just a mistaken recollection" on the president's part, his spokesman, Mr. Bartlett, said in an interview. "There were lots of things going on fast at the time."

Just after 9 a.m., Mr. Bush took a seat in front of students, most of them from a poor neighborhood. He listened as teacher Sandra K. Daniels pointed to an easel, and the second-graders read aloud lists of words.

Then, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card strode into the classroom, leaned down and whispered in the president's ear, "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack," Mr. Card has recounted.

Both Republican and Democratic commissioners have said they are focusing closely on what happened next -- and whether mere minutes could have affected the outcome on Sept. 11. The panel's investigators are looking at questions such as the timeliness of presidential orders about intercepting the jet that at 9:37 a.m. plowed into the Pentagon.

In a CNBC television interview almost a year later, Mr. Card said that after he alerted Mr. Bush, "I pulled away from the president, and not that many seconds later, the president excused himself from the classroom, and we gathered in the holding room and talked about the situation."

But uncut videotape of the classroom visit obtained from the local cable-TV station director who shot it, and interviews with the teacher and principal, show that Mr. Bush remained in the classroom not for mere seconds, but for at least seven additional minutes. He followed along for five minutes as children read aloud a story about a pet goat. Then he stayed for at least another two minutes, asking the children questions and explaining to Ms. Rigell that he would have to leave more quickly than planned.

WALLACE: Senator Lieberman, what do you make of Clarke's charges? He says he thinks it's outrageous that President Bush would run for reelection on what he did for terrorism, because in those first crucial months in 2001 he says that they largely ignored it.

LIEBERMAN: Well, this is a very important moment. And I think John made a comment this week that he got some criticism for, attention for, but he was absolutely right. As this campaign goes on, we've got to be careful, one, that, while we disagree with one another across party lines, that we not lose civility.

And part of that means that we not discourage people from actually coming out and voting. But we also remember that we're all Americans, and that the Republicans and Democrats each want to win this election this November. There is a higher interest than our partisan interest in victory and that is the national interest in victory over terrorism.

And that relates to the comments that Mr. Clarke apparently made. Obviously, it's important to get all the facts out. He's going to testify before the September 11th commission, which John McCain and I fought so hard to create, because we want to find out every fact we can about how that happened so it never happens again.

But the thought - the charge, if I hear it correctly, that Dick Clarke has made, that the Bush administration was more focused on Iraq in the days after September 11th, than on September 11th and getting back at the terrorists, I see no basis for it. And I think we've got to be careful to speak facts and not rhetoric, and not to go about what happened in the past so totally that we divide ourselves in doing what I think all - both parties want to do, and certainly both presidential candidates want to do: win the war on terrorism and succeed in stabilizing and democratizing Iraq.