However, the major question remains: why is the Republican-owned media continuing to give Howard Dean multi-million dollar media attention? That's the question no one's asking.

The controversy began when the White House said Air Force One was spotted by a British Airways plane but the president's pilots told the dubious British Airways pilots by radio that they were flying a Gulfstream V. The White House later said there was no British Airways plane involved and the conversation took place between British air traffic control and another plane while Air Force One was "off the western coast of England."
As it happens, Air Force One was flying across the North Sea, off the eastern coast of England, when it was spotted by the mystery plane, a German charter jet. But that's being picky.

Stars and Stripes is blowing the whistle on President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, saying the cheering soldiers who met him were pre-screened and others showing up for a turkey dinner were turned away.

Prospect, the controllers union in the United Kingdom, says the flight broke international regulations, posed a potential safety threat and exposed a weakness in the air defense system that could be exploited by terrorists.

Luxton said that by identifying itself as a Gulfstream V instead of the much larger 747, Air Force One could have put itself and other airplanes in danger. The Gulfstream can climb faster and maneuver more nimbly than a 747, which means controllers could have assumed the president's plane was capable of a collision-avoiding maneuver that it couldn't actually do. And the "wake vortex" of a 747, much larger than a Gulfstream's, could jeopardize smaller planes that were told by unsuspecting controllers to follow in the mislabeled plane's wake.

In a departure from recent practice, Mr. Powell did not designate Mr. Armitage as acting secretary of state. But Mr. Armitage, a close friend of the secretary, has been empowered to sign documents and otherwise preside over the department in Mr. Powell's absence.

Sources have indicated that Saddam may have instructed his closest bodyguards to rat him out and lead U.S. forces to his hiding place. When U.S. forces dug through the spider hole, they found Saddam face down, a man resigned to his fate, a gun in his lap, but he did not even reach for it.

mred - saddam instructed his bodyguards to rat on him...? saddam was found face down with a gun in his lap?


Peter Carter QC, chairman of the Bar's human rights committee, said that the Americans and the Iraqi provisional council had guaranteed Saddam access to a lawyer, the right to be tried within a reasonable period and adequate facility to prepare his own defence. "As a prisoner of war they can only interrogate him for the purposes of a specific crime. I'm not sure that under international human rights laws they can even ask him about the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction," said Mr Carter.

The advert, aired in the crucial primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, mingles sinister music, a close-up of Osama bin Laden's eyes, and a series of slogans flashed up on the screen: Dangerous World, Destroy Us, Dangers Ahead, No Experience. "Americans want a president who can face the dangers ahead," an announcer says. "But Howard Dean has no military or foreign policy experience. And Howard Dean just cannot compete with George Bush on foreign policy."

Berlusconi throws down gauntlet with 'dictatorial' decree
Showdown over media ownership as Prime Minister rejects President Ciampi's decision to veto bill that would benefit his empire tighten on media ownership

Beirut, Updated 30 Jul 03, 11:56
Time quoted a U.S. military official in Baghdad as saying the United States was not interested in any of Saddam's wives or his daughters because the U.S. has no reason to believe that they know anything about his current whereabouts. "If they come here, I will serve them tea," the official was quoted as saying.

"You've got the Chinese saying they're interested -- we don't want them to beat us to the moon."
Republican Senator Sam Brownback (December 2003)

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources reveal that Washington and Dr. David Kay, senior US and coalition WMD hunter in Iraq - far from groping in the dark for Saddam’s prohibited weapons, as conventionally believed – have a very good idea of where they are hidden.
The search has narrowed down to a section of the Syrian Desert known as Dayr Az-Zawr in Syria’s 600 sq. mile Al Jazirah province
DEBKAfile’s intelligence experts evaluate the situation thus:

If the ex-dictator continues to prevaricate instead of giving straight answers to questions, the US president has two options:
1. To bring crushing leverage to bear on the Syrian president and force him to order his engineering corps to dig up the hiding places marked on his charts and quietly hand over the wanted weapons to the Americans. For the present, Assad is tossing off any such demands with complete nonchalance.
2. To let American military and engineering units loose on the targeted miles and burrow until the weapons are found.
That course could bring American and Syrian armies into a major collision, a development that would rock the Middle East no less than the American invasion of Iraq.

But there is a third option. It is that Saddam hand over to his American interrogators the details of the arrangements he worked out with the Syrian president for the transfer of the weapons of mass destruction to their present hiding places.
For now, the captured Iraqi dictator holds the means to fully vindicate President Bush in going to war against his regime in Baghdad.