mred - the beeb is now telling the story that 50 ams were injured in an attack - but it was relegated to story number 5 or something. interestingly, the beeb's report about that story was almost entirely about injured locals.

ok - so ive just seen the russia 'tourist' interview again - and caught the caption - the guy is alexander machevsky - kremlin information officer. who'd have thunk?

But the truth of the matter is, Bush doesn't want any old democracy in Iraq. He only wants a so-called democracy if he can pick the head of the new government .
That's why he's resisting the call from Iraq's leading Shiite cleric to hold popular elections in June.The Bush Administration fears that a direct election would bring a Shiite to power whom Washington might not be able to push around. That leader could align with Iran, or renationalize industries, or order the U.S. troops out. And Bush wants none of that.
Bush's first excuse was that there isn't a decent census yet of Iraq's voting population, and there couldn't be one anytime soon. When people pointed out that the U.N. had such a census for the distribution of food rations, the Bush Administration pooh-poohed that.

Then it turned out that the Iraqi Ministry of Planning actually drew up a plan for a thorough census that could be completed by September 1, but somehow that plan was not distributed to all the members of the Iraqi Governing Council, as The New York Times reported on December 4. The U.S. pooh-poohed this plan, too.

On its corporate Web site, under a page titled "A Fresh Start for Iraqi School Children," Bechtel Group showcases sparkling new classrooms filled with happy, young Iraqi students.
But the reality is far different, according to Army investigators.
According to Iraqi education officials, Bechtel budgeted about $20,000 per school for repairs.
During repairs, "reports started coming in about poor quality," said 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion Maj. Linda Scharf, who was responsible for the schools in question, and who started fielding calls from concerned teachers and headmasters. "So I asked one of my teams to go verify the rumors," Scharf said. "They took their digital camera, and the reality turned out to be worse than the rumors."
In response to the complaints, the Army looked into 20 of Bechtel's schools. In the Oct. 11 memo, it found that nine schools were left in "poor" condition, with no electricity or bathrooms at the start of the school year.

"Bechtel was working just for its image, not for the benefit of the students," Mohammed said. Beyond the paint everywhere, Mohammed said students had to pick up their broken desks from the courtyard before classes could begin.

-A confidential investigation by Los Angeles police and child welfare officials concluded earlier this year that allegations Michael Jackson sexually abused a cancer-stricken boy were "unfounded," according to an internal government memo obtained by The Smoking Gun.
While not specifically named in the DCFS memo, the 45-year-old Jackson is referred to repeatedly as "the entertainer."

The children's mother told investigators that Jackson was "like a father to the children and a part of her family." While acknowledging that her son "has slept in the same room as the entertainer," the woman claimed "they did not share a bed. The entertainer would sleep on the floor," according to the November 26 memo.
The joint probe by DCFS and the Los Angeles Police Department ran from February 14-27 and, the memo states, the "investigation by the Sensitive Case Unit concluded the allegations of neglect and sexual abuse to be unfounded both by the LAPD-Wilshire Division and the Department."

The Osbourne accident nearly coincided with a story last weekend on the Los Angeles Times Web site reporting a claim by Osbourne that he was prescribed excessive amounts of powerful anti-psychotic and tranquilizing drugs by a Beverly Hills physician.

Monroe County District Attorney and judge-elect Mark Pazuhanich was charged Friday with groping a 10-year-old girl at a teenage pop star concert last weekend in a downtown theater.
The charges were filed on the same day Pazuhanich's lawyer, Marshall Anders of Stroudsburg, disclosed Pazuhanich had checked himself into an alcohol rehabilitation center. The disclosure followed news accounts that Pazuhanich had not shown up for work in the district attorney's office and no one in his office knew his whereabouts.
Lupas also said a person's occupation doesn't really matter in a prosecutor's eyes.

Pazuhanich's legal problems came at what should have been the peak of his career.
Last month, he won a hard-fought three-way race to become Monroe County's sixth judge. On the eve of the May primary, members of the Monroe County Bar Association gave Pazuhanich generally low marks for integrity, compared to the ratings they gave to his two opponents.


"It's a virtual certainty that sometime in the near future we will see a SARS-like event in the United States, a highly communicable infectious disease that will require mass quarantine or isolation," Dr. Iton said.