The U.N. Security Council voted on Friday for a U.S.-drafted resolution that threatens to impose sanctions on Sudan in 30 days if it does not disarm and prosecute marauding militia in Darfur.

The 13-0 vote, with abstentions from China and Pakistan, came after the United States deleted the word "sanctions" and substituted a reference to a section of the U.N. Charter permitting punitive measures to gain more support.

The Article 41 provision allows the "interruption" of economic, transport, communications or diplomatic measures, which amounts to sanctions.

[edit]

The resolution places an immediate weapons embargo on all armed groups in Darfur, where government forces and Arab Janjaweed militia have been battling a rebellion from some African tribes. But Sudan security forces, accused of protecting the Janjaweed, are excluded from the arms ban.

Ridge, 58, has explained to colleagues that he needs to earn money to comfortably put his two children, Tommy Jr. and Lesley, through college, officials said. Both are now teenagers. Ridge earns $175,700 a year as a Cabinet secretary.

[edit]

Ridge has spent decades in public service and has relatively little savings from his lengthy career in government. When Ridge left Pennsylvania as governor, where he served from 1995 to 2001, he was earning $138,316 each year.

Ridge owns an $873,000 home in Bethesda, Md., with his wife, Michele, which they bought last year with a $784,800 mortgage, according to property and banking records. Ridge's most recent financial disclosure reports, filed in early 2003, showed that he owned between $122,000 and $787,000 in stocks and funds, including modest ownership in The Walt Disney Co., General Electric, Nike, Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp.

It's never fun being second-guessed, even when you're in the business of second-guessing. And the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is being second-guessed in no uncertain terms these days by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the term just ended, the 5th Circuit had a perfect record - six cases argued before the high court, and six cases reversed.

[edit]

Last month in a case involving a Texas death row inmate, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor accused the 5th Circuit of "paying lip service to the principles" of the appellate process. In another Texas death penalty case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the 5th Circuit was too tolerant of prosecutorial misconduct. Speaking for an 8-1 majority, she said prosecutors had permitted state witnesses to lie during the capital trial of a Texarkana man, and that the 5th Circuit had allowed the state to hide the misconduct.

[edit]

In January, the court ruled unanimously that the 5th Circuit erred when it allowed the state of Texas to renege on a settlement involving health care for rural children. Last month, the court - again unanimously - overturned a 5th Circuit decision that would have allowed states to control HMOs.

In the HMO case, Justice Clarence Thomas summed up his impression of the 5th Circuit ruling: "The Court of Appeals came to a contrary conclusion for several reasons, all of them erroneous." In his opinion on a Texas civil case that involved a question of citizenship of the parties, Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed the 5th Circuit opinion as having "no basis or logic."

Peace Is Patriotic

War Is Not the Answer

Repeal the Patriot Act

Saddam = Pancakes

"We have it in our power to change the world, but only if we're true to our ideals -- and that starts by telling the truth to the American people. As president, that is my first pledge to you tonight. As president, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.”

"We are frustrated because people are dying and we have been through this same situation of endless debates and politicking while bodies are piling up on the ground," Karegeya told Reuters in Kigali on Friday.

Alabama AG Troy King issued a statement saying the 11th Circuit had "done its duty."

According to the Alabama trial judge's review of sex laws, only Georgia and Texas also have bans on sex toys. Alan I. Begner, an Atlanta lawyer who represents sex shops, said Georgia's ban is "nearly identical" to Alabama's law.

"On the face of it, sex toys are illegal to sell," Begner said, but he said shops can survive prosecution if they can prove their products are "for novelty use only."

The laws do not affect the use of Viagra or similar drugs, the 11th Circuit decision stated.

Begner added that in Georgia a physician may prescribe the use of a sex toy, but the allowance does not apply to a therapist who has only a Ph.D.

Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 23. (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

[edit]

Article 24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

The former director of the New Hampshire Republican Party pleaded guilty to jamming Democratic phone banks on Election Day 2002. Chuck McGee was accused of arranging to have hundreds of hang-up calls made to phone lines that were installed to help voters get rides to the polls.

Among the contests decided that day was the close Senate race in which Republican Rep. John E. Sununu beat Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.

McGee pleaded guilty to conspiring to make anonymous calls with the intent to annoy or harass. The offense carries as many as five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He will be sentenced Oct. 29.

A key overseer of the Bush administration’s unsuccessful efforts to create a more comprehensive screening process for airline passengers resigned in disgrace four years ago from the New Hampshire Supreme Court to avoid prosecution over his conduct on the bench.

W. Stephen Thayer III, who left New Hampshire’s high court in 2000 under a deal with prosecutors, is now serving as deputy chief of the Transportation Security Administration’s Office of National Risk Assessment.

Thayer resurrected his public career with a stint at a conservative political group in Washington before landing the job last summer where he oversees the administration’s Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System. The project (CAPPS II) encountered such technical difficulty and so much resistance from privacy advocates that it was sent back to the drawing board earlier this month.

... The administration’s selection of Thayer -- made with no fanfare last summer -- has raised some eyebrows. "To appoint someone who had to resign in public disgrace in lieu of being indicted is incredibly offensive," said Charles Lewis, executive director the Center for Public Integrity, a private ethics watchdog. CAPPS II has been "one of the most sensitive projects in the U.S. government" ... "The people in charge have got to be beyond reproach in every way."

... Thayer’s fast-moving legal career -- U.S. attorney at 35, state supreme court justice at 40 -- came to an abrupt halt March 31, 2000, when he resigned from the state’s highest court in a deal with New Hampshire Attorney General Philip McLaughlin.

In return for Thayer’s resignation, McLaughlin agreed to drop plans to indict him. In a public report, McLaughlin criticized Thayer for participating in deliberations on a case he was recused from. He also said he would have sought felony or misdemeanor charges against Thayer for allegedly trying to influence the choice of a judge to hear his wife’s appeal of their divorce and threatening fellow justices if they allowed his conduct to be reported to judicial oversight groups.

... When asked about his qualifications to supervise CAPPS II, Thayer said [last fall] he had been executive director of a nonprofit group that reviewed privacy rights in post-Sept. 11 legislation and was a lawyer and former U.S. attorney. He made no mention of his 14 years on New Hampshire’s highest court.

While Gov. Jeb Bush reassures Floridians that touch screen voting machines are reliable, the Republican Party is sending the opposite message to some voters.

The GOP urged some Miami voters to use absentee ballots because touch screens lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote."

That's the same argument Democrats have made but which Bush, his elections director and Republican legislators have repeatedly rejected.

"The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," says a glossy mailer, paid for by the Republican Party of Florida and prominently featuring two pictures of President Bush. "Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today."

Democrats waited about a nanosecond to retaliate against Republicans for releasing a photo of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) looking like a goofball in a space suit at Cape Canaveral, Fla. Democratic operatives Tuesday unearthed a 1990 videotape of President Bush — then merely a trust-fund rancher and baseball team mogul — at Nolan Ryan’s “300th win” Texas Rangers game. “A deep, long pick,” is how one Democratic operative described what Bush was doing in the video.

"It was the rawest expression of humanity I've ever seen. You ask yourself, is this planet earth?"

[edit]

"Nothing prepares you for the incredible heat," Mr Costello said by telephone last night immediately after his visit.

"The camp stretches for five kilometres and it's utterly exposed. As far as the eye can see there are people under small humpies with five or six people crowded underneath -- it's absolutely mind-blowing."

Republicans think they've found the ideal person to explain in detail the Democratic presidential candidate's evolving position on the war in Iraq -- John Kerry himself.

Using video clips of Kerry discussing Iraq on various talk shows, the Republican National Committee has put together an 11-minute video that traces how Kerry struggled with the issue of Iraq through 2003 and early 2004 as he competed for -- and finally won -- the Democratic presidential nomination.

Republicans publicly unveiled the video Wednesday morning and sent it by e-mail to about 8 million supporters.

... In the video clips, Kerry gradually shifts from harsh anti-Saddam Hussein rhetoric in 2001 and 2002 to more cautious comments about Iraq in late 2003 and then to anti-war comments by early 2004.

... The video reminds that Kerry voted in October 2002 to authorize President Bush to use force. Through 2003 and early 2004, Kerry became more cautious and talked against the war, as problems grew in Iraq ...

As for the pretty girls, I can only guess that it's because liberal boys never try to make a move on you without the UN Security Council's approval. Plus, it's no fun riding around in those dinky little hybrid cars. My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie-chick pie wagons they call 'women' at the Democratic National Convention.

In this case we are called on to determine whether a cow is an uninsured motor vehicle under appellants’ insurance policy. We hold that it is not.

There appears to be no dispute that there was a collision; the cow was not insured at the time of the collision; and that the cow caused the collision. The dispute in this case is whether the cow was a ‘land motor vehicle’ as defined in the policy. While a cow is designed for operation on land, we do not believe a cow is a ‘motor vehicle.’ The policy at issue does not separately define ‘motor vehicle;’ therefore we must look to the common, ordinary meaning of this term.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines ‘motor vehicle’ as, ‘a self-propelled, wheeled conveyance that does not run on rails.’ Id. at 817. A cow is self-propelled, does not run on rails, and could be used as a conveyance; however, there is no indication in the record that this particular cow had wheels. Therefore, it was not a motor vehicle and thus was not a ‘land motor vehicle’ as defined in the policy. The trial court properly found that appellants were not entitled to uninsured motorist coverage.

My opinion would have recited the facts in a single paragraph and then held, “Hello? It’s a cow.”

THERE'S good news from the forgotten front of the War on Terror: The first-ever public opinion poll in Afghanistan shows that people there are optimistic about the future and excited about upcoming elections.

But you wouldn't know it from the mainstream press, which received the poll with a level of skepticism usually reserved for Yeti sightings and money transfers originating in Nigeria. The most coverage given to the poll so far: a five-sentence news brief in The Washington Post.

Perhaps some folks worry that the news is a bit too convenient for President Bush.

The international relief group Medecins Sans Frontieres has announced it is pulling out of Afghanistan after 24 years because of security concerns and frustrations with the U.S. military.

MSF -- or Doctors Without Borders -- blamed the Afghan government for failing to catch and prosecute attackers who killed five MSF workers earlier this year.

It also blamed the Taliban, who have specifically threatened its aid workers, and the U.S.-backed coalition, which MSF said had "blurred" the image of aid workers as the coalition attempted to "win hearts and minds."

[edit]

The Nobel Prize-winning group suspended its Afghanistan operations in June after its workers were shot dead in an ambush in the worst attack on the aid community since the fall of the Taliban.

[edit]

More than 30 aid workers have been killed since the beginning of the year, she said.

VOTING RECORDS
% of Votes That Female Senate Democrats
Supported the "Liberal" Position

Stabenow (Mich.) …. 97
Boxer (Calif.) …........ 96
H. Clinton (N.Y.) ….. 95
Mikulski (Md.) …..... 94
Murray (Wash.) …… 92
Cantwell (Wash.) ….. 90
Feinstein (Calif.) ...... 86
Landrieu (La.) ...…... 84
Lincoln (Ark.) …....… 82.5

An internal investigation into Arizona's election of a GOP national committeeman has found ballot fraud.

However, the Republican Party will be content to let the fraudulent results stand unless someone files suit.

In a letter to state Republican Party Chairman Bob Fannin, the party's general counsel. Timothy Casey, validates several instances of fraud in the election in which Tucsonan Mike Hellon lost his 12-year hold on the national committeeman post.

 Casey substantiated claims that some delegates voted more than once using other delegates' credentials, a violation of the party's bylaws. 

 "I think it makes it look very, very bad, and it frankly has the appearance of corruption," Hellon said. "Democrats in Chicago do this stuff. Republicans don't."

The scale of the crisis that we're trying to respond to here is absolutely massive - they lack food; they lack shelter; they lack medicine. And OXFAM specializes in these emergency situations in providing clean water and sanitation facilities. That's absolutely essential to prevent the spread of disease, like cholera, like typhoid and other life threatening illnesses."

Mr. McIntyre says there are a number of humanitarian agencies working at capacity in Darfur, but unable to keep up with demand.

Over the next 20 years, it's expected to get at least $2 billion, boosting national revenues by 50 percent, according to the World Bank. But unlike other African nations, Chad is committed to spend 80 percent of oil revenues on schools, clinics, roads, and other basic needs. Five percent goes to a fund for future generations. Another 5 percent goes to develop the southern oil region, near the Cameroon border. And 10 percent is socked away in case oil prices fall.

Most of the cash is held by the World Bank in a London account to avoid "leakage." And a citizens committee, with four members from nonprofit groups and five from government, must approve all oil- revenue expenditures.

The picketers bore signs that were clearly intended to be read by motorists approaching from both sides of the entrance. It is readily foreseeable that passing motorists attempting to read the signs or simply distracted by the presence of the picketers so close to the roadway would slow down considerably from the posted 55 m.p.h. speed limit and pay attention to the picketers rather than the roadway and other traffic. . . . The police chief’s unchallenged testimony sums up the potential for harm: "When you have picketers] alongside the road . . ., if [motorists are] gawking off and looking off to the side, someone stops in front of them, . . . you have a bad accident there."

Cheryl Utley, 43, of Lowell, Mich., would seem to be exactly the kind of voter Kerry is targeting this week. Utley, a restaurant worker, is an independent living in a battleground state. She is leaning toward Bush even though she has supported Democrats more often than she has Republicans. "I have more of a sense of where he stands on things than Kerry," she said.

Utley wants Kerry and the Democratic Party to talk about domestic issues, specifically education and "what they plan on doing about health care for middle-income or lower-income people."

"I have to face the fact that I will never be able to have health insurance, the way things are now. And these millionaires don't seem to address that," she said.

After the RPF victory, the UNHCR sent a three person mission headed by Robert Gersony to find ways to speed the repatriation of the nearly two million refugees who had fled the country since April ... Although he and his team did not set out to gather information on RPF abuses, they became convinced in the course of the work that the RPF had engaged in "clearly systematic murders and persecution of the Hutu population in certain parts of the country."

[edit]

Gersony himself reportedly estimated that during the months from April to August the RPF had killed between 25,000 and 45,000 persons, between 5,000 and 10,000 persons each month from April through July and 5,000 for the month of August.

[edit]

Annan, apparently at Boutros-Ghali’s direction, reportedly informed the Rwandan prime minister that the U.N. would do its best to minimize the attention given to Gersony’s findings because the international community understood the difficult context in which the new government was operating.

[edit]

U.S. officials were aware of the U.N. decision not to make the report public and agreed with it.

[edit]

The substance of Gersony’s findings was leaked to the press. Rwandan officials reacted with new denials and by unleashing renewed attacks on the U.N. In New York, Boutros-Ghali ensured that there would never be a written document to call into question the efficacy of the U.N. presence or the behavior of the Rwandan forces. Gersony was told to write no report and he and his team were directed to speak with no one about their findings. The UNHCR produced a confidential note of some three and a half pages for internal use, but even this minimal statement was not shared with the special rapporteur on Rwanda of the Human Rights Commission. He received a shorter two and a half page statement. When the representative of the special rapporteur tried in April 1996 to obtain more information about Gersony’s findings from the UNHCR, he received a curt reply stating: "We wish to inform you that the ‘Gersony Report does not exist.'"

"... on homeland security, Democrats tried to double the number of containers at ports and airports checked for weapons of mass destruction. It cost a billion dollars. It would have been paid for under [the Democratic] bill by asking the 200,000 millionaires in America to cut their tax cut by $5,000. Almost all 200,000 of us would like to have done that, to spend $5,000 to make all 300 million Americans feel safer. The measure failed. Why? Because the White House and the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives opposed it. They thought our $5,000 was more important than doubling the container checks at our ports and airports."

Severe cargo congestion and labor shortages at American seaports are creating long delays in delivering goods and potential threats to national security, dockworkers and security experts say.

The problems are particularly acute at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's busiest, handling roughly a third of the nine million cargo containers that arrive in the United States each year.

David Arian, president of Local 13 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which works the Los Angeles waterfront, said the facilities and work crews here could not keep up with the volume of incoming freight. Mr. Arian said that as a result some new port regulations from the Department of Homeland Security were not being followed.

"The specific regulations for checking seals to ensure integrity of containers and cargo in them are presently not being enforced," Mr. Arian said in a telephone conference call on Thursday. "In terms of checking people coming into the terminals, the only people they're checking are longshoremen. We've been down there 70 years, and we're the most secure part of the work force. The truckers they don't check at all."

... Jim McKenna, president of the Pacific Maritime Association, operator of the major West Coast seaports, sharply disputed Mr. Arian's contentions about enforcement.

... Security and intelligence experts have identified the nation's 361 seaports and the 60,000 mostly foreign-flagged ships that sail in and out of them each year as prime targets for a potential terrorist attack. But ships and seaports have received only a small fraction of the attention given the aviation system since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, they said.

Stephen E. Flynn, a retired Coast Guard commander and a maritime security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, contends that cargo containers will one day be used as "the poor man's missile" to deliver devastating weapons to American shores. "The question is when, not if," said Mr. Flynn ... He said overcrowding and outmoded transportation and cargo-handling systems made the American ports an easy target for theft and terrorism.

The Bush campaign has gotten particularly good mileage out of a National Journal analysis of roll call voting in 2003 that ranked John Kerry of Massachusetts as the No. 1 liberal in the Senate and John Edwards of North Carolina as the fourth-most-liberal senator.

Yet the senators' ratings are misleading because of the large number of votes each man missed. Mr. Kerry, for example, attended so few votes on social and foreign policy that his composite score in 2003 was based only on economic policy. Even then he was not the single most liberal senator on economic issues; it was a distinction he shared with six other senators, including Bob Graham of Florida.

So where do the Democratic nominees really fit along the left-right spectrum? Well, you get a different answer if your calculations are based on nearly all votes cast by the candidates in their Senate careers. Using this measure, we have arrayed Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards from left to right in the above figure based on their voting history in the Senate. For comparison's sake, we also have included Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, John McCain of Arizona, and the parties' median senators. We even have scores for President Bush (from his announced positions on roll call votes while president) and Vice President Dick Cheney (based on the votes he cast when he represented Wyoming in the House of Representatives from 1979 through 1988).

Assertions that the Democrats' presumptive nominees are extreme liberals fall flat. True, Mr. Kerry's voting history places him to the left of today's median Senate Democrat (Tom Daschle of South Dakota). But he is closer to the center of the Democratic Party than he is to the most liberal senators, including Mr. Kennedy. John Edwards falls just to the right of the median Democrat. In fact, he is nearly indistinguishable from Mr. Lieberman, the Democrats' vice presidential candidate in 2000.

On the other side of the partisan divide, Mr. Bush -- like Mr. Kerry -- is more extreme than his party's median senator (Richard Shelby of Alabama). He is also noticeably more conservative than his primary challenger in 2000, John McCain. So any assertion that the Democratic candidates are out of the mainstream might easily be applied to the Republicans as well. In fact, if any of the four candidates on the national party tickets this year is out of the mainstream, it is Mr. Cheney, who in his last full term in the House was on the right flank of roughly 90 percent of his Republican colleagues.

All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?

Yes, worth fighting, STRONGLY 34%
Yes, worth fighting, SOMEWHAT 10%
No, not worth fighting, SOMEWHAT 12%
No, not worth fighting, STRONGLY 42%

On another subject, all in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?

Yes, worth fighting, STRONGLY 36%
Yes, worth fighting, SOMEWHAT 13%
No, not worth fighting, SOMEWHAT 11%
No, not worth fighting, STRONGLY 37%

Although Senate Republicans blocked some of President Clinton's liberal nominees to the judiciary during his eight years in office, Democrats have held up dozens of Bush nominees, some for years. And while 99 percent of the judges nominated have been rated "qualified" or "well-qualified" by the American Bar Association, 25 candidates have still received no hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The question that imposes itself truly is: Why the hurry? Why didn't those concerned about Darfur wait until the end of the three months to which we are committed in our agreement with the U.N. secretary-general? After that period the results can be evaluated to decide whether we have succeeded or failed. Then each side can judge based on facts and not mere speculation. There is ... a deliberate distortion of our capacity as a state to shoulder our national responsibilities.

However, the total number of abused prisoners is likely to be considerably higher. The report, for example, counts multiple incidents of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad as a single case.

Among the speakers presenting the Democratic platform at their national convention today will be Bill Lann Lee, former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, a man whose civil rights agenda was so radical he was never confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

It's one [issue] that brings a lot of moderate voters and blue-collar voters over to the Republican side, people who aren't sure about the economy or not sure about the war.

There's always been confusion about how you determine who's rich, middle class or poor. There's rich and super-rich. There's lower, middle and upper middle class. There's working class, working poor and poor.

Finally, President Bush weighed in on Tuesday to clarify things with a broad, new definition. Speaking to a campaign crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Bush warned that John F. Kerry was going to blather endlessly about how he was only going to soak the rich to pay for trillions of dollars of new spending.

"In the campaign, you'll hear, we're only going to tax the rich," Bush said. "That's what you'll hear. Now, this from a fellow who has promised about $2 trillion of new spending thus far. And only taxing the rich, first of all, creates a huge tax gap, which means buyer beware.

"You see, if you can't raise enough by taxing the rich, guess who gets to pay next?" Bush asked. "Yes, the not-rich. That's all of us."

So it turns out that Bush, unlike your typical grandsons of senators, sons of presidents and graduates of fancy prep schools, Yale and Harvard business school, is just another "not rich" guy, a regular working stiff. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average annual wage for the Cedar Rapids area is $34,600. So that crowd was clearly "not rich."

But who else are the "not rich"? Well, Bush last year reported an income of only $822,000, and his assets were worth as much as $19 million. That includes his 1,583-acre ranch in Crawford, Tex.

Clearly not rich.

But Bush didn't define the minimum wage and assets needed to be considered rich. Would Vice President Cheney be in that class? Cheney reported income of almost $1.3 million and had assets in 2002 worth between $19.1 million and $86.4 million. Surely close, but not quite there.

These class divisions are, by definition, subjective and arbitrary. So let's set the standard: Rich means a yearly income of at least $2 million, assets of more than $100 million and ranches larger than 2,000 acres. Everyone else is "not rich."

That would mean that "fellow," Sen. Kerry, would be trying to raise those trillions from a relative handful of people, including his own wife. Absolutely impossible. So all of us "not rich" better beware, we're gonna get hammered if Kerry wins.

Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions.

Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation. (Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of Americans have already come to these conclusions on their own.)

... in addition to separating the job of C.I.A. director from the overall head of American intelligence, we must also place the C.I.A.'s analysts in an agency that is independent from the one that collects the intelligence. This is the only way to avoid the "groupthink" that hampered the agency's ability to report accurately on Iraq.

It is no accident that the only intelligence agency that got it right on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department -- a small, elite group of analysts encouraged to be independent thinkers rather than spies or policy makers.