President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.

The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford.

The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders. [Emphasis added.]

Mr. President, it is one thing for Dr. Rice to dissemble in front of the media. But if she lied under oath to a commission that derives its authority from the United States Congress, it is a far more serious matter. As I mentioned, the intelligence committee is seeking to have President Bush's 8/6/01 daily briefing declassified so as to permit an examination of the two different accounts. Loyalty to any Administration will be no defense if it is found that Dr. Rice has lied before the 9/11 commission.

The Senate Education Committee Thursday questioned a Des Moines gay activist who's been nominated to the state school board, asking Jonathan Wilson if he'd try to push a homosexual agenda if appointed.

[snip]

Some Senate Republican leaders have refused to approve the nomination of Wilson, who was defeated in his run for re-election to the Des Moines school board in 1995 after he announced in January of that year that he was gay. He had served 12 years on that board.

[snip]

"Is it education or is it something else? I think my record answers that better than I can. I served on the [Des Moines] school board for 12 years," Wilson said.

"No one denies his right to live the way he wants to, but he doesn't have to impose it on the rest of us," Sen. Neal Schuerer (R-Amana) said.

From AP: Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was taken to a hospital early Friday after several people called police saying he was pulling on their clothes and accusing them of being FBI agents, a police source told The Associated Press.

Police found Skilling at 4 a.m. at the corner of Park Avenue and East 73rd Street and determined he might be an "emotionally disturbed person," said the source, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Police did not charge Skilling with a crime. They took him to New York Presbyterian Hospital for observation. Hospital officials did not immediately return calls for comment.
...
Skilling was at two bars in Manhattan – American Trash and The Voodoo Lounge – where he allegedly ran up to patrons and pulled open their clothes, the source said.

"He was shouting at them 'You're an FBI agent and you're following me,"' the source said.

Skilling allegedly did the same thing to people on the street, the source added. He was with his wife at the time.

Skilling was described as being intoxicated and highly uncooperative when he was approached by police, the source said.

Question: President Clinton, the lack of intervention in Rwanda. Can you tell us why the US didn't intervene?

Clinton: I think that the people that were bringing these decisions to me felt that the Congress was still reeling from what happened in Somalia. And by the time that I started focusing on this, reading news reports coming out about it, it was too late to do anything about it. And I feel terribly about it because I think we could have sent 5-10 thousand troops in there and saved a couple hundred thousand lives. I think we could have saved about half of them.

This is a store that sells every product under the sun at low, low prices to ordinary folks. Wal-Mart is gloriously, unashamedly, star-spangledly American. I hope it's not too McCarthyite to suggest that those who despise Wal-Mart are the very ones who may not be so crazy about the United States tout court.

Fifty percent of those get it through the company, according to a spokesman; the rest get it through their parents (they may be teenagers), through Medicare or some previous employer's plan (they may be semi-retired), through their spouses — wherever. The point is, they're covered.

Kerry supported higher taxes over 350 times? No.

Kerry supported a 50 cent a gallon gas tax that is going to cost the average family $657 a year? No.

Kerry plans to raise taxes by $900 billion dollars in his first hundred days in office? No.

Kerry opposed providing body armor, higher combat pay and health care for our troops? No.

Law enforcement: Clinton's weak policy of targeting individual terrorists. Example: That's actually where we've had the biggest change. The president doesn't think of this as law enforcement. He thinks of this as war.

Hunting down terrorists one by one: Bush's strong policy of targeting individual terrorists. Example: Under his leadership, the United States and our allies are disrupting terrorist operations, cutting off their funding and hunting down terrorists one by one.

Diplomacy: Clinton's impotent pleas to foreign governments. Example: We were continuing the diplomatic efforts. But we did want to take the time to get in place a policy that was more strategic toward al-Qaida, more robust.

Strong messages: Bush's potent pleas to foreign governments. Example: Within a month of taking office, President Bush sent a strong private message to President Musharraf, urging him to use his influence with the Taliban to bring Bin Laden to justice and to close down al-Qaida training camps.

There is a concept in criminal law called constructive knowledge. It means that a corporation, or even an individual, can be held responsible for knowing everything that the different people and branches under him know. You add the different pieces together, and even if there is no one person who knew everything, the boss and the company can still be held responsible.

I used to hate the doctrine of constructive knowledge when I was representing banks...Don't blame us, I used to argue, we didn't know. The thought of putting someone in prison for what they didn't know seems to many quite unfair.

But as far as corporations go, how else do you enforce accountability? The job of a leader, after all, is to make sure people do know, and act accordingly.

As far as governments go, how else can you measure effectiveness?

Of course, had Dr. Condoleezza Rice or her boss, the president, known all the facts that added up to the Sept. 11 attack, they would have acted. No one doubts that.

What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is that President Bush and his administration had constructive knowledge of the imminent threat from Al Qaeda, including the possibility of hijacking airliners, the fact that cells were operating in the United States, even that there was an agent in flight training school -- even if they did not always communicate, discuss, remember or share that knowledge.

But the bureaucracy does not act unless it is pushed at the top, and it wasn't, in this case.

"Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States," the Aug. 6 Presidential Daily Briefing said. The CIA analyst who wrote that was trying to send a warning.

Rice cannot remember briefing the president about cells operating in the United States. It can hardly have been a major issue.
...
Earlier in her testimony, Rice defended the administration, saying: "Dick Clarke was shaking the trees. The director of Central Intelligence was shaking the trees. The director of the FBI ..."

But she wasn't, and neither was her boss -- and plainly, in her own words, that is what it would have taken. In certain circumstances, what you could have known and should have known is what you can be held responsible for knowing.

To quicken trials for those accused of lower-level crimes, Rwanda has introduced a system of traditional courts known as gacaca, which means "under a tree."

Some Democrats said that should Mr. Kerry lose in November, he might well remember this month as the time when he seriously undermined his hopes of defeating Mr. Bush.

President Bush spent the second straight day out of public view on his ranch in Crawford, Tex.

[edit]

This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency.

Dear Senator X,

I am asking that you reject the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) as it only serves to undermine and attack families that are different.

The fact is that anti-gay activists are attempting use the issue of marriage as a weapon against gay and lesbian people as an election year strategy. Many anti-gay activists have openly admitted that their goal is to try divide Americans and make heterosexual people uncomfortable with the gay and lesbian neighbors.

This effort to attack gay and lesbian families cannot stand! My partner and I are state residents and have been together for five years. We are valuable members of our community and do not pose a threat to other people's marriages or their families. For anyone to imply or say differently is not a message of love or tolerance-- it is hate. [note-- change this part to describe yourself, family, friends as appropriate]

Please stand strong and fight to prevent anti-homosexual activists from imposing their personal political agendas and intolerance for others on the American people.

"... I think that Dr. Rice's testimony today, and she did a very good job, basically corroborates what I said. She said that the president received 40 warnings face to face from the director of central intelligence that a major al Qaeda attack was going to take place and she admitted that the president did not have a meeting on the subject, did not convene the Cabinet.

"She admitted that she didn't convene the Cabinet. And as some of the commissioners pointed out, this was in marked contrast to the way the government operated in December of 1999, when it had similar information and it successfully thwarted attacks. So I don't see that there are a lot of factual problems with what Dr. Rice said.

"There are one or two other minor points here or there that I think are probably wrong, but overall I think she corroborated what I said. She said it was inefficient to bring the Cabinet members together to have them work to stop the attacks that they had been informed were coming."

While working with Environmental Protection Agency officials to write regulations for coal-fired power plants over several recent months, White House staff members played down the toxic effects of mercury, hundreds of pages of documents and e-mail messages show.

While the panel members said the changes did not introduce outright errors, they said they were concerned because the White House almost uniformly minimized the health risks in instances where there could be disagreement.

"What they are saying is not scientifically invalid on its face," said Alan Stern, a New Jersey toxicologist who served on the panel.

The rule drafted by the EPA:
"Upon further review of the record, EPA recognizes that it could not have reached such a conclusion based on the record before it in December 2000. That record supports only a finding that [mercury] and [nickel] pose hazards to public health."

What the rule said after White House officials recommended edits:
"Upon further review of the record, EPA recognizes that it could not have reached such a conclusion based on the record before it in December 2000. That record supports only a finding that emissions of [mercury] and [nickel] warrant regulation."

[T]he Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control.

"There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: 'bring them on.' We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.

"Of course we want other countries to help us. Great Britain is there. Poland is there. Ukraine is there, you mentioned. Anybody who wants to help, we'll welcome to help. But we got plenty tough force there right now to make sure the situation is secure. ... But make no mistake about it, and the enemy shouldn't make any mistake about it, we will deal with them harshly if they continue to try to bring harm to the Iraqi people."

"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."
Proverbs 16:18

"CHRIS DODD'S LOTT MOMENT?" [KJL]
In Roll Call (sub required)

It looks like Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) got a little carried away with a tribute speech last week upon the occasion of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) casting his 17,000th vote in the chamber.

"The RPF uses the genocide in much the same way that the Bush administration wields the emotional power of 9/11 to justify its actions and paint its critics as unpatriotic. In Rwanda, if you question political oppression, if you criticize the widely disputed elections of August 2003, or if you inquire about the massacres the RPF itself carried out in western Rwanda and in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the wake of the genocide, you are labeled a genocidaire. Consequently, Rwandans are afraid to speak their minds."

Exactly how many [Quick] killed is a matter of dispute. But whatever the number, some Indians do not want to see a monument bearing his name returned to the spot where it stood for 108 years.

The 9-foot zinc obelisk was vandalized by someone with a sledgehammer in 1997. Plans to reinstall it were halted in 1999 after 200 Indians and others protested in front of the courthouse...

"This is Mayberry," Town Council President Matthew Osterberg said. "In no way have we ever intended to offend anyone."

"Lynchings in the South were part of history, too, so are we going to start putting up monuments to the grand wizards of the KKK?" said Chuck Gentle Moon Demund, interim chief of the Lenape Nation. "This is a monument to a serial killer, a guy who wanted to wipe out a whole race of people."

Supporters of re-erecting the marker contend that it is part of the town's and the nation's past, and that erasing history for the sake of political correctness is irresponsible.

"We're being portrayed as Indian haters, which is completely wrong," said Lori Strelecki, a curator with the Pike County Historical Society. "As a historian, I don't want someone's sanitized version of history."

The inscription on the monument reads in part: "Maddened by the death of his Father at the hands of the savages, Tom Quick never abated his hostility to them until the day of his death, a period of over forty years."

Town officials decided to add a plaque to ease hurt feelings. It reads in part: "This is a gravesite and should be respected as such. This monument and its inscriptions reflect a dialogue and mindset of the era in which it was first erected. ... Many stories have been written about Tom Quick but there is not enough documented evidence to separate truth from fiction."

According to most reports, Quick swore revenge on the entire Indian nation after he saw Indians kill and scalp his father in 1756. Accounts over the years draw him as a psychopath who bragged about his sadistic exploits, a vigilante who spent his life avenging his dead father, or a nasty drunk who exaggerated his crimes to impress people.

According to one gruesome story, after Quick killed an unarmed Indian family, he remarked that the children "squawked like young crows" as he buried a hatchet in their heads. He defended the killing of a baby by saying that "nits make lice."

"It is possible he killed maybe six Indians, which of course is bad enough," said Pike County's official historian, George Fluhr. "But there's no proof that he killed anywhere near 99. It's ridiculous."

"The American people do not want to see their sons and daughters sent into harm's way for a cause that we don't have the resolve and determination and courage to follow through to its appropriate conclusion. The appropriate conclusion is creating a democracy in Iraq."

"Should we wait until the people inside Iraq who are ready to help us give up hope? Or should we wait until Saddam Hussein finishes preparing weapons of mass terror -- weapons that will further endanger our troops, or which he can use on the Iraqi people as he has in the past? Those very weapons are the source of our concern."

Civilians from other countries abducted in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- At least a dozen civilians from other countries have been kidnapped in Iraq, and one set of abductors has threatened to burn three hostages alive if its demands go unmet, according to government and media reports.

The resolution states that the "biases and prejudices of a less-enlightened age in the history of the state of Illinois caused untold hardship and trauma for the community of Latter-day Saints by the distrust, violence and inhospitable actions of a dark time in our past ..."

It also describes members of the LDS Church as "a people of faith and hard work" and asks them to forgive "the misguided efforts of our citizens, chief executive and the General Assembly in the expulsion of their Mormon ancestors" from Nauvoo.

Alaska again led the nation with $808 per capita ($524 million), or 26 times the national pork average of $31.

$1,073,000 for research on seafood harvesting, processing, and marketing

$568,000 for research into alternative salmon products

$1,100,000 for an alcohol interdiction program designed to investigate and prosecute bootlegging

$5,000,000 for the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). Initially designed to capture energy from the aurora borealis (northern lights), HAARP is now being configured to heat up the ionosphere to improve military communications.

$800,000 for the Bering Sea Fisherman's Association

$150,000 for fish passage adjacent to railroads in Alaska

$100,000 for the Alaska Sea Otter Commission

$1,400,000 to replace a working dog kennel at Elmendorf Air Force Base

$950,000 for North Pole roads lighting

$450,000 for the Alaska statehood celebration

The court-appointed investigator who has been seeking for more than three years to determine the finances of an Indian trust fund administered by the Interior Department resigned on Monday. He said the government had routinely allowed energy companies to shortchange Indians on royalties from oil, gas, timber and other leases on Indian land.

The investigator, Alan Balaran, accused the department of a persistent effort to impede his work and said he had found a "systemic failure to properly monitor" the activities of energy companies acquiring oil and gas from Indian land.

[snip]

"The agency's motivation is clear," Mr. Balaran wrote. "In recent months, I have reported evidence of a practice ? abetted by Interior ? of energy companies routinely paying individual Indians much less than they pay non-Indians for oil and gas pipeline easements across the Southwest."

Mr. Balaran also said he had discovered that the department had "destroyed valuable trust information" and that it had "significant problems with its appraisal and record-keeping practices."

The department said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Balaran "seeks to absolve himself of any responsibility for his actions by concocting preposterous charges of a government conspiracy against him," adding, "Mr. Balaran's theory is based entirely on innuendo, supposition and baseless speculation."

"I'm not buying this 'Iraqis are on the American side' right now," Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly said on the Tuesday night broadcast of "The O’Reilly Factor." The leading conservative commentator repeatedly called the current conflict a "second war in Iraq." O'Reilly added, "I think Rumsfeld has got a lot of explaining to do here. There's a lot of mistakes that are now killing American soldiers."

Fellow conservative pundit and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough of MSNBC was even more critical in his broadcast Tuesday. Scarborough: "Do we need more troops in Iraq? Hell, yes, we do. ... Should June 30 handover date to the Iraqis be extended? You can bet your life on it ... because creating this false deadline in time for a presidential election is no way to win a war."

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry called the administration's June 30 deadline "arbitrary" in an NPR interview broadcast Wednesday. He also accused President Bush of not providing "Americans with a thorough understanding of exactly who we are turning the authority over to and precisely what the consequences of that will be."

"Never in the history of the American press has one tiny enterprise gotten so much free publicity," O'Reilly told his TV audience on Friday. "The reason, of course, is that the elites want liberal bomb throwers to embarrass and defame people with whom they disagree. It's like hiring hit men and women."

(snip)

"Guess how many articles the New York Times has done on us? Zero."

"Guess how many stories the Times has done on the libs?" he added. "Ten - four more than their entire station base."

A summary of her testimony follows:

Lie, lie, distortion, half-truth, pander, manipulation, pseudo-intellectual bombast. Dodge, dodge, feint, lie, dodge, avoid, subject change, lie, slander, pretentious generalization, character assassination, bald-faced lie.

Oversimplification, undersimplification, condescension, insult, insult, lie, avoidance of responsibility, avoidance of question about avoiding responsibility, cheap political point, utter, malicious lie.

Grimace, slither, dodge, lie, deliberate misinterpretation of history, nonpartisan character disparagement, narrative designed by public-relations experts to create maximum “connection” with American public. Appearance of professionalism, resoluteness, capableness, preparedness. Major omission of lie to create partial truth. Lie for political convenience. Lie for partisan gain. Lie to protect the economic interests of an incredibly small number of people. Reception of flattery. Dispersal of flattery. Abuse of good will afforbed by ten people who are trying to gather evidence without partisan bias. Backhanded dismissal of all criticsism. Denial of any responsibility in orchestrating what will almost certainly become the most tragic and bloody war of this generation.

Rinse and repeat.

HANNITY: We turn now to domestic politics where yet another book has been released, criticizing President Bush as being more secretive, more dangerous than Richard Nixon. Joining us now, President Nixon's former White House counsel, author of the book "Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush."

You said worse than Watergate, I thought it was Bill Clinton lying under oath. It was a shock to see the other thing.

I've known you a long time. This is disappointing for me.

JOHN DEAN: "WORSE THAN WATERGATE": Well, it's disappointing you're disappointed, because you're the kind of person who should really understand what I'm trying to say, particularly given the books you've just written.

HANNITY: Because this I put in the genre of just another Bush-hating book. You blame the president and the administration for exploiting 9/11. When I hear that from the left, when they accuse the president of knowing about 9/11 ahead of time, they accuse him of preplanning 9/11 before Iraq, replanning Iraq before 9/11, that's exploitation.

DEAN: This book is an effort to draw attention to a very crucial issue. It's not a partisan issue. It's a good government issue, secrecy. I can't imagine you would advocate secrecy as being normal in any democracy.

HANNITY: Here's -- but you knew this book would hurt the president. That's the point. You know your words...

DEAN: Wait a minute.

HANNITY: You know this is going to hurt him.

DEAN: When does it ever hurt to have a good, open debate about what's happening in government? When does it hurt to tell a president he's making a mistake?

HANNITY: I've got to ask you. You're entitled to say it. I've gone back and I've looked a lot -- I've done a lot of research on you today. I've got to ask you a tough question here, because...

DEAN: Ask it.

HANNITY: You wrote in your last book, it was called "Blind Ambition."

DEAN: That wasn't my last book but go ahead.

HANNITY: One of your books, OK. It was back awhile; it was in the 1970's.

And you had to admit under oath you didn't write the book. You admit -- "The Washington Times" characterized it this way. Now Mr. Dean says he didn't write key portions, nor did he even read the entire book. I've gone through this book, cover to cover...

DEAN: That is some good old -- let me tell you something...

HANNITY: It's sworn depositions that have been obtained by "The Washington Times." Mr. Dean said key elements were pure speculation, reasonable conjecture and distortion.

Now Gordon Liddy wrote in his book quoting your book when it was published that you said, quote, "I prepared for the writing of 'Blind Ambition' the same way I prepared to testify before the Irvin (ph) committee or special prosecutors.

DEAN: Let me tell you something...

HANNITY: Here's my point: did you write this book?

DEAN: Absolutely. Every word of it.

HANNITY: But you didn't write the last one, even though you...?

DEAN: Every word of it.

HANNITY: So you lied under oath?

DEAN: No, I did not. You are misquoting, as the "Washington Times" did.

HANNITY: Did you write that last book?

DEAN: Which book?

HANNITY: The first...

DEAN: The "Blind Ambition" piece?

HANNITY: Right.

DEAN: I had a co-author with it. Where do you think the material came from?

HANNITY: Did you say under oath -- wait a minute, did you say under oath you didn't even read key portions of the book?

DEAN: You have to have the context of the question. Yes, listen to the context. They asked me if I had read the final. I had read galleys. I had read proof sheets, I'd read page proofs...

HANNITY: But did you write it?

DEAN: Did I read the book after it was finished from cover to cover, no? I knew everything that was in it. Why would I do that? Do you read your book over and over?

HANNITY: Yes, actually.

DEAN: I have better things to do.

For those who are bored by "history" -- like pre-9-11 -- and would prefer to know what is being done to prevent terrorist attacks now, a recent Time magazine was a must-read. Among other things, it featured one of the funniest photographs I've ever seen -- of Wyoming fire department personnel in their haz-mat suits, bought by Homeland Security in case terrorists decide to strike at the vital center of Casper.

According to Time, $61 per citizen is being spent in Wyoming, compared to $14 per citizen in California. Alaska got $58 per citizen, and New York got less than $25.

There needs to be a law passed where any person who disrespects the "Office of the Presidency" by making false accusations and spreading deliberate rumors about the president, should be charged with a felony or at the very least a high misdemeanor. President Bush has been falsely accused (with nothing concrete to back the accusations up), from being negligent in stopping the 9/11 attacks, to making up fraudulent reasons to go to war in Iraq.

All of the accusations against President Bush are of an offensive nature and so far, just vicious attacks for political gains.

[snip]

When a 17 year old expresses the desire to kill the president and his family and blow up the White House in an email, this shows an unsettling trend that seems to be engulfing our society. Teaching political hatred seems to be gaining ground and should not be tolerated. But when young pliant teens see people such as Senator John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Richard Clarke, etc., administering dishonorable and ambidextrous motivational charges against the president, trying to make political headway and galvanize or provoke ant-Bush hatred, this is not healthy, and it could present a national security problem and could put the life of the president in jeopardy and great danger.

"New fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan has opened a new chapter of tragedy in Sudan's troubled history. The Sudanese Government must immediately stop local militias from committing atrocities against the local population and must provide unrestricted access to humanitarian aid agencies. I condemn these atrocities, which are displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and I have expressed my views directly to President Bashir of Sudan.

For more than two and one half years, the United States has been working closely with the Government of Sudan and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) to bring peace to Sudan. This civil war is one of the worst humanitarian tragedies of our time, responsible for the deaths of two million people over two decades. Achieving peace, and reaching a just and comprehensive agreement, must be an urgent priority for both sides.

The United States will move toward normal relations with the Government of Sudan only when there is a just and comprehensive peace agreement between the Government and the SPLM. All parties must also ensure that there is unrestricted access for humanitarian relief throughout Sudan, including Darfur, and the Government of Sudan must cooperate fully in the war against terrorism.

I continue to hope for peace for the people of Sudan and for normalization of relations between Sudan and the United States. However, the Government of Sudan must not remain complicit in the brutalization of Darfur. I renew my call to Khartoum to bring the peace process with the SPLM to a just conclusion and to bring peace and justice to Darfur."

Sudan began direct talks with rebels fighting a yearlong insurgency, as President Bush and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on the government Wednesday to give humanitarian aid agencies unrestricted access to western Sudan.

Sudanese government officials and members of two rebel groups met face-to-face late Tuesday for the first time since talks mediated by Chad and the African Union began March 31, officials said Wednesday.

U.S. researchers are challenging the conventional view that the 1994 massacre of some 800,000 Rwandans was a "genocide", drawing an angry response from the government who accused them of insulting survivors.

An aide to Rwandan President Paul Kagame said the research was a "malicious" attempt to distort the truth just days ahead of memorials on Wednesday to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the killings.

The research also questioned the commonly held view that the majority of victims were from Rwanda's ethnic Tutsi minority, rather than the Hutu majority, in another challenge to a government dominated by Tutsis.

"People simply have the basic facts wrong, and worse, many don't even appear interested in assembling the necessary information," said Christian Davenport, a political science professor from the University of Maryland who carried out the study.

"We consider this more of a totalitarian purge, a politicide, rather than ethnic cleansing or genocide," Davenport said in a statement.

[edit]

Davenport agrees that the killings began with an organised cadre of Hutu militiamen, but argues that they quickly cascaded into an ever-widening circle of violence, with both Hutus and Tutsis playing the role of victims and aggressors.

"Our research strongly suggests that a majority of the victims were Hutus -- there weren't enough Tutsis in Rwanda at the time to account for all the reported deaths," said Davenport, who worked with an associate, Allan Stam, from Dartmouth College.

"Either the scale of the killing was much less than is widely believed, or more likely, a huge number of Hutus were caught up in the violence as inadvertent victims. The evidence suggests the killers didn't try to figure out who everybody was. They erred on the side of comprehensiveness," Davenport said.

By most accounts, there was 650,000 Tutsi in the country in 1994. By most accounts, there were 150,000 Tutsi that survived (one survivors' organization - Ibuka - estimates that this figure is doubled). When one considers how individuals were targeted, how individuals were mobilized and the brutal manner in which they were killed, it is clear that this is genocide (the majority of Tutsi were killed). The question remains: what do we do with others that were killed when we classify the event in this manner? One estimate (Human Rights Watch) identifies that 500,000 individuals were killed. In this context, the event would exclusively be genocide. Another estimate (The Rwandan Ministry of Youth, Culture and Sport) identifies that 834,283 individuals were killed. In this context, approximately 500,000 Tutsi were killed and the remaining 334,283 would be Hutu (and/or Twa). Yet another estimate (The Rwandan Ministry of Local Administration) identifies that 914,989 individuals were killed. In this context, approximately 500,000 Tutsi were killed and the remaining 414,989 would be Hutu (and/or Twa). Others estimate that the number of victims exceeded a million. This compels yet another conclusion.

On-Line Resources

Remembering Rwanda - The Rwanda 10th Anniversary Memorial Project

Bystander to a Genocide - A chronicle of the US response, or lack thereof

Triumph of Evil - PBS documentary

Ghosts of Rwanda - PBS documentary

A Woman's Work - New York Times Magazine profile of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko

Leave None to Tell the Story - Report from Human Rights Watch

Photos from James Nachtwey - Freelance war photographer

The National Security Archive - The US and the Genocide in Rwanda - Government documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act

100 Days of Rwanda

Books

We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

Season of Blood

Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

Eyewitness to a Genocide

A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

The United States and the Genocide Convention

Organizations

Human Rights Watch

Genocide Watch

The International Committee of the Red Cross

Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres

Aegis Trust

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

The White House has refused to provide the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with a speech that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was to have delivered on the night of the attacks touting missile defense as a priority rather than al-Qaida, sources close to the commission said Tuesday.

[snip]

...the White House has so far refused on the grounds that draft documents are confidential, the sources said.

The Washington Post, citing former U.S. officials who have seen the Rice speech, reported last week that the speech was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy. It said the speech included no mention of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups

"It looks like Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) got a little carried away with a tribute speech last week upon the occasion of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) casting his 17,000th vote in the chamber.

In words that Republicans believe sound awfully similar to the comments that knocked Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) out of the GOP leadership, Dodd said, 'It has often been said that the man and the moment come together. I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great Senator at any moment. Some were right for the time. Robert C. Byrd, in my view, would have been right at any time.'

Despite the charges of racial insensitivity that have been lobbed at Byrd over the years, Dodd added that his colleague 'would have been right during the great conflict of Civil War in this nation' and at other key times. 'I cannot think of a single moment in this nation's 220-plus-year history where he would not have been a valuable asset to this country,' said Dodd. 'Certainly today that is not any less true.' "

"What a perfectly Canadian irony," human rights activist Gerald Caplan noted in the Toronto Globe and Mail. "Our own Romeo Dallaire is the genuine article, a world-class hero, and everyone in the world knows but him."

A new poll shows President Bush's approval ratings in California have plummeted, even in the state's most GOP-dominated conservative areas...[T]he poll by the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University released Monday puts Bush's state approval ratings at just 38 percent, while 50 percent disapprove.

[P]erhaps the "single most damning problem" for Bush is results on the question: Generally speaking, do you believe that what President Bush tells the American people is true?

More Californians, 48 percent, said no to the question -- and 42 percent said yes...In two GOP strongholds, Bush got barely passing marks: in the Central Valley, 50 percent said they believe what the president says is true, and 37 percent said they did not; in the Southern California GOP strongholds, 50 per cent said they believed the president, and 43 percent did not.

The U.S.-Canadian task force said its seven-month investigation uncovered evidence that the industry's attempt at self-policing the reliability of the power grids is inadequate and could spawn another blackout.

There was a clear understanding long before the blackout that the Ohio region where the line problems began was highly vulnerable to grid instability, said the task force. Had FirstEnergy Corp., the Ohio utility whose lines initially failed, and the grid monitoring organization in the Midwest followed industry-recommended standards, they would have been better prepared to deal with the situation, the report said.

Something as simple as shutting off 200 megawatts of power an hour before the blackout might have kept the problem from spreading, investigators said.

Investigators said they found at least seven violations of industry-sponsored North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) reliability rules linked to the blackout. The report also said NERC was too closely tied to industry and dependent on it for funding."

The federal government cannot afford to pay for the increased security needed to protect U.S. ports from terrorists, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Monday.

"We need to talk to the private sector," Ridge said. "We don't have enough public money to do everything that needs to be done."

Ports and shipping companies are facing a July 1 deadline to have security programs in place for their docks and vessels or face potential fines. The programs are based on regulations developed by the Homeland Security Department and the Coast Guard under the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002.

The federal government plans to spend nearly $3 billion on security programs this year but Ridge said "we can't go around using public money for every private sector need."

The Treasury Department analyzes John Kerry's tax proposals and the numbers quickly find their way to the Republican National Committee. The Health and Human Services Department spends millions on ads promoting President Bush's prescription drug plan. The House Resources Committee posts a diatribe against Kerry's "absurd" energy ideas on its Web site.

With friends like these — all operating at taxpayer expense — who needs a re-election campaign?

[edit]

Bush is flying Air Force One to battleground states at a clip that eclipses even that of President Clinton, known as a particularly political president. His Cabinet secretaries are covering additional ground to spread good news about the Bush administration. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, who insists "I don't do politics," has chimed in to cast Kerry as a flip-flopper on jobs and to question his claim that some world leaders quietly prefer the Democratic candidate over Bush.

With the House and Senate both in Republican hands, Bush gets plenty of help from Congress, too. The last president to have that advantage at re-election time was Jimmy Carter, and he was hardly a favorite of Democrats in Congress.

This year, congressional committees have posted anti-Kerry commentary on their Web sites. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was out front in attacking the credibility of Richard Clarke, the former Bush administration official who criticized the president's terrorism policies. And House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., regularly uses his daily chats with reporters to critique "John Kerry & Co."

Paul Light, a professor of government at New York University, finds it ironic that Bush, who rarely passes up a chance to rail against government waste, is so adept at getting help from those on the federal payroll.

"Few presidents in history have exploited government as much as President Bush to get re-elected, yet few presidents have made government more the object of derision," he said.

The final policy paper on national security that President Clinton submitted to Congress — 45,000 words long — makes no mention of al Qaeda and refers to Osama bin Laden by name just four times.

The scarce references to bin Laden and his terror network undercut claims by former White House terrorism analyst Richard A. Clarke that the Clinton administration considered al Qaeda an "urgent" threat, while President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "ignored" it.

Emerging threats to our homeland by both state and non-state actors may be more likely in the future as our potential adversaries strike against vulnerable civilian targets in the United States to avoid direct confrontation with our military forces. Such acts represent a new dimension of asymmetric threats to our national security.

Ten years ago this week, Rwandan Hutu extremists embarked on a genocidal campaign in which they murdered some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus — a genocide more efficient than that of the Nazis.

On this anniversary, Western and United Nations leaders are expressing their remorse and pledging their resolve to prevent future humanitarian catastrophes. But as they do so, the Sudanese government is teaming up with Arab Muslim militias in a campaign of ethnic slaughter and deportation that has already left nearly a million Africans displaced and more than 30,000 dead. Again, the United States and its allies are bystanders to slaughter, seemingly no more prepared to prevent genocide than they were a decade ago.

The horrors in the Darfur region of Sudan are not "like" Rwanda, any more than those in Rwanda were "like" those ordered by Hitler. The Arab-dominated government in Khartoum has armed nomadic Arab herdsmen, or Janjaweed, against rival African tribes. The government is using aerial bombardment to strafe villages and terrorize civilians into flight. And it is denying humanitarian access to some 700,000 people who are trapped in Darfur.

[edit]

President Clinton has said that one of the greatest mistakes of his presidency was not doing more to prevent the Rwandan genocide. When he visited Rwanda in 1998, he tried to explain America's failure to respond: "It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family, but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror."

Today, roughly 1,000 miles north of Rwanda, tens of thousands of Africans are herded onto death marches, and Western leaders are again sitting in offices. How sad it is that it doesn't even seem strange.

Although not all cases of HIV/AIDS among rape survivors can be traced to the sexual violence they survived, the mass rape during 1994 contributed significantly to the spread of the virus in Rwanda, particularly as rates of HIV transmission during sexual violence are believed to be high.

[edit]

For some of these women, the killing has yet to claim its last victims. AVEGA, an association for genocide widows, carried out a study in 2000 of 1125 women who survived rape during the genocide and found that 66.7% had HIV. AVEGA also estimates that 80.9% of survivors of violence during the genocide remained traumatized in 1999. According to a UN report, at least 250,000 women were raped during the genocide, a large number of whom were subsequently executed. Of the survivors, 70% are estimated to have been infected with HIV.

As I said during my trip to Rwanda in 1998, "We did not act quickly enough after the killing began. We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become safe haven for the killers. We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide."

We need to improve our intelligence-gathering capabilities, increase the speed with which international intervention can be undertaken and muster the global political will required to respond to the threat of genocide wherever it may occur.

It happened in October of 2000, when 300 million gallons of coal slurry - thick pudding-like waste from mining operations - flooded land, polluted rivers and destroyed property in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. The slurry contained hazardous chemicals, including arsenic and mercury.

[edit]

Spadaro says the investigators discovered the spill was more than an accident -- it was an accident waiting to happen.

[edit]

The investigators were going to cite the coal company for serious violations that would probably have led to large fines and even criminal charges.

But all that changed when the Bush administration took over and decided that the country needed more energy -- and less regulation of energy companies. The investigation into Massey Energy, a generous contributor to the Republican Party, was cut short.

[Spadaro complained to the Labor Department's inspector general]

So what will happen to Spadaro? “He is absolutely getting his life ruined,” says Smith.

Last year, government agents entered Spadaro's office, went through his files, and locked him out. “They changed the locks on my door and still have not allowed me to return to my work place,” says Spadaro, who spends his days at home.

The government says he was removed from his job primarily for abusing his authority, failing to follow procedures, and also for using his government credit card without authorization. Spadaro denies all the charges.

[edit]

Spadaro is now back -- sort of. MSHA officials recently told Spadaro that he's not being fired. Instead, he's being demoted and taking about a $35,000 pay cut. He's also being transferred to the agency's Pittsburgh office, far from his family in West Virginia. But Spadaro says he has no plans to go anywhere, except perhaps to court -- to sue the government.

"Congress has failed in its first duty, to protect the people and the Constitution from lawless judges."

"Judges are making law and destroying the Constitution, and Congress is watching the courts do it and doing nothing about it," Jauregui said.

"We have had a Republican majority in Congress since 1994, and the problem is getting worse."

"'Suddenly, I got the strength to go through with it. They handed me a hoe and she turned face-down on the ground. As she prayed, I hit her once on the left side of the head. 'Hit her again,' people screamed. I hit her again, and she was dead.'"

A census carried out by Rwanda's Ministry of Youth, Culture and Sports found that 937,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutus died during the 1994 genocide, an official announced on Thursday.

"These are the people who died during the 100 days [April-June 1994] of mayhem and who we were able to find out their names, age and their places of birth," Robert Bayigamba, the minister for youth, culture and sports, said at a news conference in the capital, Kigali.

Government officials in Rwanda are expressing dismay and disappointment that only one head of state from a Western nation has accepted their invitation to attend Wednesday's national ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

Rwandan officials say they had issued an open invitation for all world leaders to come to Rwanda as the country remembers April 7, the day the genocide began a decade ago.

But the Rwandan minister for youth, sports and culture, Robert Bayigamba, whose ministry is in charge of organizing commemorative events this week, says the only Western leader who has accepted the invitation is Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. Rwanda was a Belgian colony for nearly 50 years in the last century.

Mr. Bayigamba says his government has not received explanations from other Western leaders as to why they cannot attend.

President Bush made clear at a dinner with Prime Minister Tony Blair nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks that he wanted to confront Iraq, the former British ambassador to the United States reportedly told a magazine.

The president raised Iraq at a White House meeting on Sept. 20, 2001, Christopher Meyer, the former envoy, told Vanity Fair. The magazine, published in New York, released an advance copy of its story to The Associated Press on Sunday.

"Rumors were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq," Meyer, who attended the dinner, reportedly said. "On the one hand, Blair came with a very strong message — don't get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the Taliban."

"Bush said, 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq,'" Meyer said, according to Vanity Fair.

On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2½-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism.

Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.

Toomey said he and his wife have the state's smartest children and want more, but feared out-of-control lawsuit awards could mean they would have to go out of state to have another baby delivered, if they conceive.

John Dean, Richard Nixon's legal counsel who was jailed for his part in the Watergate scandal, has accused the Bush administration of trumping even the Nixon regime in secrecy, deception and political cynicism.

In the latest book to attack the conduct of the current United States administration, Mr Dean says that it has created potentially the most corrupt, unethical and undemocratic White House in history.

Former White House counsel John W. Dean III was charged with obstruction of justice and spent four months in prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up. Now an investment banker in Beverly Hills, Dean is the author of the Watergate memoirs "Blind Ambition" and "Lost Honor, " as well as a book on Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

"I knew John Ehrlichman well," Liddy said Monday. "He was a good and decent man. He went to jail, in my opinion, in large measure because of perjury at his trial by John Dean. I shall miss him and pray for him."

Liddy was convicted for his role in the Watergate break-in, for conspiracy in the Daniel Ellsberg case and for contempt of court, spending about four and a half years in prison. In 1986, a federal appeals court found Liddy liable for $20,499 in back taxes on Watergate slush-fund money, rejecting his claim that his benefits did not exceed $45,000. As one of the White House "plumbers," Liddy spent about $300,000 engineering political dirty tricks and the Watergate break-in.