Washington has agreed that Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO commander and a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, can testify in the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic. But the Bush administration has demanded the right to edit videotapes and transcripts of the sessions before they are made public.

Throughout the meeting, Mr. Hussein was calm but often used foul language. Mr. Pachachi said he looked "tired and haggard." Mr. Bremer and General Sanchez, they said, did not speak, though Mr. Chalabi said Mr. Hussein was "deferential and respectful to the Americans."

Because the area to be searched was large, it was unclear on Sunday night whether soldiers from the Fourth Division or Task Force 121 had discovered Mr. Hussein's hiding place

The bedroom was cluttered with new clothes, including T-shirts and socks, some still in their wrappers, leading General Odierno to estimate that Mr. Hussein had been at the site perhaps only an hour or so.

"When we were asking him difficult questions and throwing accusations, reminding him of his crimes, he was looking at Ambassador Bremer and General Sanchez, as if he was asking the Americans to protect him," Rubaiye told Reuters.

Hollinger invested in Trireme Partners, a venture capital firm run by Richard Perle, a member of the Defense Policy Board who serves on the Hollinger board. Henry A. Kissinger, another Hollinger director, had served as an adviser to Trireme.

Because the manufacture of influenza vaccine is entirely in the private sector in the United States, market forces determine the amount produced.
One reason for the gap between supply and demand this season is the perennial lack of response to pleas from health officials for most Americans to get flu shots. That consumer response forced manufacturers to discard 12 million of the 95 million doses produced last season at a loss of millions of dollars. So manufacturers produced 83 million doses for this season.
The time when the three strains are chosen is critical to vaccine production. One reason is that it takes tens of millions of chicken eggs to produce each season's vaccine, and they must be bought months in advance. Once production is complete, additional doses cannot be made without reducing the amount that could be produced for the next influenza season, Dr. Gerberding said.
Soon after the swine flu episode in 1976, the government began drafting a plan for its response to a real pandemic. Then in 1993, it created a panel to come up with the plan.

The United States Supreme Court said today that it would hear arguments from the Bush administration about why it should not be required to turn over information about Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force

Although it was American soldiers who unearthed Mr. Hussein, it was the intelligence community, including the Central Intelligence Agency and its military counterparts, that set them on the right path, beginning with a new analytical effort begun in late November to draw up a list of just who might be hiding him.
mred - can someone explain to me why this list wasnt a good idea 9 months ago?

George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, were nowhere to be seen. But Mr. Bush himself used his televised address in part to praise what he called "the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country."
C.I.A. officers have played a major part in the supersecret military Special Operations teams, including Task Force 121


News of Mr. Hussein's arrest, announced Sunday after being kept secret for 18 hours. Pentagon officials said Mr. Hussein's identity had been confirmed by old bullet wounds and by other Iraqis who saw him.

The Army raid on Mr. Hussein's hide-out was organized in the space of a few hours, after officers received information about his whereabouts about 11 a.m. Saturday from a person with ties to Mr. Hussein's family, General Odierno said.
General Odierno said his troops had to move swiftly to seal off the area around the remote farm, situated near the village of Ad Dwar about nine miles southeast of Tikrit, because Mr. Hussein had been believed to be changing hiding places as frequently as every three hours.
Some people wept publicly, pulling out worn photographs of relatives who they said were executed during the waves of political repression. But many simply stayed home as the news spread and darkness fell over the city.

According to reports in today's New York Times, the public relations mission was codenamed "HVT1" - for High Value Target No 1 and was devised by the Pentagon during the summer and approved by President Bush.
It said that Iraqis should have a role in the announcement and that the images should be broadcast around the world as quickly as possible to guard against conspiracy theories spreading through Iraq.

"The image of him undergoing a physical examination for lice in the hair and having his tongue pushed down with a tongue depresser is about as routine as it gets, which showed basically that he was an ordinary mortal, was not superhuman, that he was no longer a threat," said Mr Thatcher.

He claimed that showing the pictures of Saddam undergoing examination were not in breach of international law because he had not been formally charged.

WHEN darkness fell, the Americans moved into position, 600 of them, from infantrymen to elite special forces.

The soldiers waited for darkness on Saturday and launched what they called Operation Red Dawn.
At about 9:15pm a helicopter whisked Saddam away

He described to reporters how soldiers peering down into the shaft with weapons and bright lights, with orders to kill Mr. Hussein if he put up a fight, held back when they saw he carried no body belt bomb or gun and appeared to be pleading for his life.
mr ed - they could tell in the dark?

It was more cramped and airless than it appeared in photographs released by the Army on Sunday. Its concrete entrance at ground level was barely large enough for a burly man like Mr. Hussein, who is close to 6 feet tall and was believed to have weighed about 200 pounds before he went on the run, to squeeze through.

The only traces of its former inhabitant that remained after an American military sweep were several used cotton swabs and an empty black plastic bag.
mred - im sure there was a beebtv report shown where there eggshells and choc wrappers and stuff?

Americans learned from an interrogation of one of Mr. Hussein's relatives barely three hours earlier that he could be found in the area

He said troops mounting the raid on Saturday had pounced on two other houses in a target area about half a mile wide and a mile and a half deep
On the first sweep, the troops found nothing.
But after the troops involved in the Saturday raid cordoned off the area and conducted a more detailed search, one of the Special Operations soldiers noticed an edge of a fabric-backed rubber mat peeking through soil edging the concrete floor in the home's courtyard, tugged on it and swept the earth away


Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had surgery today to remove what an aide said was a localized prostate cancer, and doctors said the procedure — scheduled months ago but kept secret until today — had gone well.
Mr. Powell is expected to remain hospitalized for several days, then to continue recuperating at home before being "fully back on the job by early in the new year," the chief State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said. President Bush was told of plans for the surgery two weeks ago.
mred - hmmm - the secret was kept from his boss till 2 weeks ago...? btw boss - im taking 3 weeks off. u dont need me do u?

Mr. Boucher had few details of the surgical procedure, which was pointedly not described as an "emergency,"


According to Mr McClellan, Mr Bush watched the early morning news briefing in Iraq at which Saddam's capture was announced. "The President was particularly moved to see the outburst of joy from the Iraqis during the briefing - the Iraqi journalists," he said.

And when the Economic Policy Institute compared the average wage of industries that are creating jobs with those that are losing jobs, analysts found a big discrepancy. The jobs lost paid about $17 an hour, compared with $14.50 an hour for those being created.

Leonard Levine, a defense attorney who specializes in sexual assault cases, said Sneddon's decision to press ahead suggests the district attorney has strong evidence he has not yet released.
Criminal charges are usually announced soon after an arrest, but Sneddon did not immediately file a formal complaint after Jackson's November 20 booking. He said officials needed until this week to set up a Web site they would use to distribute the charging documents to hundreds of news organizations following the case.
mred - the world has gone bananas. im totally speechless.