``We try very hard not to kill anyone. We would prefer to capture the terrorists rather than kill them,'' Hilferty said.
``But in this incident, if noncombatants surround themselves with thousands of weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition and howitzers and mortars in a compound known to be used by a terrorist, we are not completely responsible for the consequences.''
mr ed - capture like saddams sons?


U.S. trade lawyer Clark McFadden questioned the administration's criterion for the contracts. "Is this going to set a precedent where national security can be used to justify limiting competition?" he asked.


With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," an American battalion commander in Iraq said recently. He was speaking from a village that had been virtually wrapped in razor wire after a series of attacks on U.S. troops. "This fence is here for your protection. Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot," a sign reads


In America, there is an inherent belief that an American life is worth more than other lives. Remember Vietnam? Two million plus dead Vietnamese (civilians included) could not match 58,000 dead Americans.


Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cautioned, however, that a recent decline in anti-coalition attacks in Iraq may be temporary. "It's a bit early to call it a trend," Rumsfeld said,
He and Myers said there are no plans to add to the 123,000 U.S. troops in Iraq or change the schedule for sending fresh replacement troops in next year.
That troop rotation will involve most of the Army: Four of the Army's ten divisions will be going home from Iraq, replaced by three divisions. Another Army division will rotate into Afghanistan.
"In the next four months, we're going to pull off a logistics feat that will rival any in history," Myers said.
Would the United States be ready to fight another war during or after that transition?
"That's an unqualified yes," Myers said.



The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston mortgaged its cathedral and seminary to finance a clergy sexual abuse settlement that has grown to nearly $90 million, a spokesman confirmed Tuesday.
One-third of the bank loans are also being guaranteed by an individual whom the church has declined to identify.




The U.S. military admitted Monday that it may not have succeeded in killing the Taliban suspect who was its target in an air assault on a village Saturday that left nine children and one man dead.
The U.S. military was, however, pressing ahead with military objectives, and announced Monday that it had 2,000 soldiers out on its biggest operation so far against Taliban and al Qaeda elements across a wide swath of the country.




Of the thousands of people referred by the FBI and other federal investigators to prosecutors in connection with terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, only a handful have been convicted and sentenced to long prison terms, according to an analysis of Justice Department figures published Monday.
But the FBI, in a statement issued Sunday, said the report's data was "taken out of context," because the authors used the terms "referred to prosecutors" and "recommended for prosecution" interchangeably


Wider checks of travelers near; industry fears delays at airports
A new federal program to fingerprint and photograph millions of arriving foreign travelers raises concerns about airport delays.


Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said failure to strictly follow Miranda rules in evidence cases "hasn't resulted in disaster, has it?"
"This tactic is bad for the police. It's bad for suspects. It's bad for courts. It has three strikes against it," said public defender Amy Bartholow, the lawyer for Seibert.


Grumpiness is a natural progression. You look at the world and realise it's in just as big a mess as when you started out to reform it, back when you were young and energetic. You get grumpy because, this time, it's too late.



Three retired military officers, two generals and an admiral who have been among the most senior uniformed officers to criticize the "don't ask, don't tell" policy for homosexuals in the military, disclosed on Tuesday that they are gay. the policy had been ineffective and undermined the military's core values: truth, honor, dignity, respect and integrityCol. Margarethe Cammermeyer was discharged from the Washington State National Guard in 1992 for being a lesbian. She was later reinstated.
Nearly 10,000 service members have been discharged for being gay under the policy
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said the Bush administration will not revisit the policy.
commanders have said they are concerned that forcing heterosexual members to live, and fight, side by side with gays will undermine the military's mission to win the nation's wars.
The Coast Guard is not under the authority of the Pentagon, but follows the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.


California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is being sued for libel by a stuntwoman who alleges that he groped her on a film set.
The news of the libel suit came on the same day that Mr Schwarzenegger announced that he was reneging on a promised investigation into the groping allegations made by 15 women in the final days of the gubernatorial election in October.
The libel suit involves an email that Mr Schwarzenegger's campaign spokesman Sean Walsh sent to reporters after Ms Miller made her groping allegations.
The email advised reporters to type the woman's name into a court website. Doing so produced a report of a lengthy criminal record, which was reported by some news organisations as belonging to Mr Schwarzenegger's accuser.
However, the Rhonda Miller with the criminal record is a different person. "He has apologised, and continues to be sincerely sorry for anyone he has offended, but also thinks the time has come to move on.



ASIO is monitoring more than 100 Australians whom it lists as suspects or "persons of interest" in the war on terror.
Despite the size of suspected support within the country, it was believed al-Qaeda had not established an operational cell within Australia.
"On the balance of probability, one could say - not with certainty - that al-Qaeda doesn't have the infrastructure within Australia to carry out terrorist operations," Mr Fergus said.
"But the several public threats to Australia made by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda must be, and have been, taken very seriously - they are not given to empty rhetoric.
the war on terror had made significant ground: 2000 al-Qaeda members, from a strength of 4000, had either been captured or killed since 2001.
French judicial officials were reported as saying that Brigitte, a Frenchman extradited from Australia on October 17, had organised survival training lessons in the Fontainebleau forest outside Paris.



A LANDMARK High Court ruling that persecuted homosexuals may be entitled to refugee status could help between 40 and 50 gay asylum-seekers each year.
Opposition Leader Mark Latham weighed into the debate yesterday, saying he understood why the court had made the decision.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said she wanted to read the judgment before commenting on the general issue of gay persecution being grounds for granting asylum.

A DOZEN SAS soldiers have been secretly awarded medals and honours for their courage during 42 days behind enemy lines in the Iraq war.
Army personnel are unaware who banned publication of the latest medals but are upset the soldiers' bravery has not been recognised publicly. The awards were not included in the list of 88 defence personnel recognised for the Iraq campaign late last month.


Mr Gore said he was backing Dr Dean because he was the only major Democrat presidential contender to oppose the Iraq invasion - and the only one to inspire the party's grassroots.
However, Mr Gore's call for unity went unheeded.
"We're not going to have a coronation," said rival candidate Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. "The Republicans have coronations. We have campaigns and elections." "I don't think the stakes have ever been as high in our lifetimes as they are in 2004," Mr Gore told a crowded hotel ballroom of cheering Dean supporters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Mr Gore hit at top Democrats who question whether Dr Dean, with his anti-war stance, commitment to repeal tax cuts and support for liberal causes such as gay marriage, will be easy prey for Mr Bush. Dr Dean's campaign, he said, had "the best chance to prove the cynics and pessimists wrong".



In a stunning blow to prosecutors in the Michael Jackson child abuse case, a document leaked yesterday confirms the pop star was cleared of having molested the same boy during an official investigation earlier this year.
mr ed: one question - presumably jacko knew of this earlier investigation beforehand - why not mention it?

In an amazing action, the Australian Capital Territory Parliament has passed legislation that could give the courts power to jail the prime minister for 25 years should a person be killed while working for a government organisation.
What it means, of course, is an enormous increase in the power of health and safety officers. There is no mention of an exemption for the defence forces. The same rule applies to officers of all employers in Canberra.
In its first term, the Victorian Government proposed similar legislation but realised it would make governing impossible so government was excluded.

The US Marine Corps lawyer assigned to Australian terror suspect David Hicks will mount a "zealous" defence, despite not knowing the criminal charges his client could face after two years of military interrogation.
"He needs to have explained to him his legal rights, the decisions he needs to make and the whole (military commission) process, which is very different to anything we've seen before," Major Mori said.
Neither lawyer can reveal publicly any details of meetings with Mr Hicks without authority from the US Defence Department.

Warnings, indeed, have become something of a tradition in the US since George Washington's final message to the American people in September 1796; its caveat concerning "the insidious wiles of foreign influence" makes it one of the urtexts of American isolationism: "Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities."

Since term limits institutionalised presidential retirement in the US, the most resonant parting shot has been that loosed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who achieved in his farewell address in January 1961 a power of phrase rather lacking from his presidency. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

the coulter doll:
"Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like Liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."
"Why not go to war just for oil? We need oil. What do Hollywood celebrities imagine fuels their private jets? How do they think their cocaine is delivered to them?"
"Swing voters are more appropriately known as the 'idiot voters' because they have no set of philosophical principles. By the age of fourteen, you're either a Conservative or a Liberal if you have an IQ above a toaster."
"At least when right-wingers rant, there's a point."

While the Toronto newspaper The National Post, established by embarrassing entrepreneur Conrad Black to express his wacky right-wing ideas and now owned by embarrassing television magnates the Asper family, might as well be called The Zionist Post, I have never noticed any extreme anti-Palestinian bias in The Globe and Mail.
To show how bad things are at the Globe, their book review editor actually writes that it is clear there was no massacre at Jenin, and calls Robert Fisk an anti-Semite because he continues to obsess that there was!
The Zionists should be very careful. By using the term anti-Semite to refer to people who are against crimes against humanity, they have completely changed the meaning of the word, and being called an 'anti-Semite' today is a compliment.
The world won't put up with this bad faith any more. Denying the massacre at Jenin is today's equivalent of denying the Holocaust, and Mr. Levin is presumably officially representing his paper when he does this. I won't ever read The Globe and Mail in the same way again.

Gore is no longer an establishment Democrat. His speeches make that clear. He's not siding anymore with the congressional Democrats (including candidates Kerry, Lieberman, Edwards and Gephardt) who have abandoned so many principles during the Bush years. They've collectively allowed the Republican Party to ram an assortment of radical policies down America's throat, including a contempt for civil liberties. They've collaborated on what will eventually be understood as the most reckless fiscal meltdown in history. About the only thing they've done as a party -- and this has been useful -- is to prevent confirmation of some extreme right-wingers as federal appeals judges.
I remember talking to Gore about the Internet in 1991, when he was a U.S. senator. He knew a lot more about it than I did

Gore didn't get it in 2000, that's for sure. Since then he has joined the board of directors at Apple Computer, which is threading the Net into everything it makes. More important, note who helped put together -- and promoted -- several of his recent speeches: MoveOn.org and its largely decentralized membership. Surely that was enlightening to Gore, who is too smart not to have seen the dynamism inherent in the multidimensional Net.
Dean's people have taken the notion much further.
Some of the political commentary had Gore playing Machiavelli in Tuesday's endorsement: arranging chess pieces for the 2008 presidential race, assuming a Dean defeat next year. I hope that's wrong -- that the former vice president is truly going with his gut and intellect to back a candidate who is trying something genuinely different.
Blending online and offline, Dean is bringing people into politics, many for the first time and others who had given up, in a way that could truly be the beginning of something new in American self-governance.

Sign up or renew your Newsmax subscription early with the form below and get the "Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure" FREE – that's a $35 value with shipping PLUS the hilarious "Deck of Hillary" Playing Cards – for a total FREE value of more than $50 with shipping!
Also: find out about our GREAT Free Offer that includes the Top Gun: George W. Bush Action Figure in his jumpsuit PLUS our Deck of Weasels that lampoons Hollywood's worst liberals!
mred - who on earth is financing this?

Jackson also told Bashir that he would sleep on the floor if a young houseguest wanted to sleep in his bed.
"I said, 'No, you sleep on the bed, I'll sleep on the floor,'" Jackson said in the documentary.

The nation needs a faster and better way to design and produce influenza vaccines. Experts knew back in March that a new, potentially formidable strain of the virus was circulating, yet practical difficulties forced them to stick with an obsolescent vaccine rather than press for a better formulation.

This turn of events is disturbing enough this year, when the virus has changed only a little and the current vaccine should work to some degree. The time constraints could be far more devastating should we encounter a major shift in the virus. Some experts want the process of detecting new strains, readying them for production and manufacturing a vaccine to be speeded up, in hopes of giving the experts more time to devise the best formulation. In an age of great advances in genetic engineering and high-tech manufacturing technologies, the current system feels like a horse-and-buggy approach to a potentially fearsome challenge.



mr ed-ive been wondering 'who's next?' - and all the pointers were in iran's direction, but i kept feeling that it was syria for some indeterminate reason. i think ive been asking the wrong question - perhaps it should 'who are next?' - 'simultaneuos' attacks.

The mutual fund whistle-blower has finally revealed herself: Noreen Harrington, a former executive of the investment arm of the billionaire Stern family.
The traders, managing money for a hedge fund set up by Edward J. Stern, would boast, she said, of how managers of various mutual funds would let them trade in and out of the funds long after the market day had ended for most of the funds' other investors.
"There was some chatter about putting trades through at 9 p.m.,"
Mr. Spitzer confirmed yesterday that it was a phone call from Ms. Harrington in May that had set in motion an ever-widening investigation by regulators into mutual fund trading - one that has emerged as the $7 trillion fund industry's biggest scandal.
"Because of her gutsy move, there will be dramatic reform in a sector that has the live savings of 95 million Americans," Mr. Spitzer said yesterday in a telephone interview.
"I brought up to Eddie that I didn't think late trading was legal," Ms. Harrington said, "and his first response was that if the regulators ever look at it, they'll go after the mutual funds."
Ms. Harrington has more than 20 years of experience on Wall Street, and was named to a 1997 list of the top 50 women in finance published by Euromoney, a trade magazine. She spent 11 years at Goldman, Sachs, where she was a managing director in fixed-income sales and trading, and two years at Barclays Capital, where she was co-head of bond trading.
While she said she had concluded from conversations she overheard in Mr. Stern's offices that the improper trading was widespread, "I had no concept of the breadth and the depth."
Ms. Harrington follows in a line of women who have informed on potential misconduct in their employers' operations. Sherron S. Watkins was an Enron vice president who warned top executives about the company's accounting problems months before its collapse. Cynthia Cooper, an internal auditor at WorldCom, uncovered a strategy of disguising billions of dollars of expenses as profit. The longtime FBI agent, Coleen Rowley, exposed the bureau's failure to heed evidence of terrorist plots before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. A former chief accountant for the European Commission, Marta Andreasen, challenged the parent European Union's accounting system.

mred - reading this article, i noticed that the whistleblower was a chick and that other chix were also whistleblowers, even before i got to the bit about watkins @ enron. i was unaware of the worldcom story, or the fbi story. but even b4 getting to that part of the story, i was wondering whether women were more likely to be whistleblowers. i wouldnt be surprised - men seem to be more permanently wired 'more more more' - i dunno if its the assets, or if theres an inherent hubris, or a buzz about being so powerful that u are an insider - and maybe one demonstration of power is the ability to rape others. *some* women seem to hit the point earlier where they say 'this is simply wrong and unjust - and it hurts others'. perhaps women are less interested in the incremental benefits - perhaps realising that theres little incremental advantage in having say $5m instead of $4m. or perhaps women dont ever expect to get the stupid runaway 'returns' that some of their male counterparts receive. for all the excesses of waksal or ebbers - the highest profile woman is martha stewart - a peripheral player in a deal worth virtually nothing. 50k was it? or .001% of her assets or something? compare that to the excesses of the grubmans and weills and welchs and many others. compare that to the vilification of say, martha lane fox. one wonders whether women are constitutionally protected against this sort of hubris. men dont seem to be as consitutionally conditioned to realise/care that irrelevant incremental gains in their asset base can actually be unfair to others. more is better. more is better. more is better. more is better. more is better. more is better.