aljaz: The hotel, neighbouring buildings and several cars were ablaze, and rescuers said many people were trapped under the rubble. The blast sent a column of flame and smoke into the night sky. Eight cars were on fire, and one vehicle was hurled by the blast into a store.
mred - note no mention of burning trees

MR. RUSSERT: Will you testify under oath in public about September 11?
Condi: Tim, this is not a matter of preference; this is a matter of principle. It has long been a legal and constitutional principle that assistants to the president, the presidential staff, do not testify before legislative bodies. But this is not a matter of preference. ... as a matter of principle, we cannot breach this wall between the legislature and the executive.

fisk: When a Nato plane bombed a train on the Gurdulice bridge in Serbia, up he popped with a camera-video of the bomb - too late to abort because of the speed with which the train approached the bridge - without mentioning that the film had been speeded up and, much more damagingly, that after the train stopped, the pilot went on to bomb the bridge again.

safire: Now, thanks to evidence of systematic thievery on a huge scale, discovered by free Iraqis in Baghdad, the whole rotten mess of 10 percent kickbacks on billions in contracts is coming to light. In detailed accounts, Susan Sachs in The Times, Therese Raphael in The Wall Street Journal, and Charles Laurence and Inigo Gilmore of London's Daily Telegraph have flipped over the flat rock of corruption.

Flames and heavy smoke shot skyward, igniting trees, nearby buildings and at least eight cars - one of which was hurled by the blast into a store. The explosion blew bricks, air conditioners, furniture, wires and other debris hundreds of yards from the hotel.


When the Bush campaign unveiled an ad called "100 Days," it was a shot across the press' bow: if we put up an ad with an utter fabrication in it, will you call us on it? They got a clear answer: NO. Bush and Kerry both now understand that the press has given them permission to lie
The Bush ad claims that Kerry wants to "raise taxes by at least $900 billion." A credulous viewer would hear this claim and conclude that John Kerry wants to raise taxes by at least $900 billion. But the claim is, simply put, a lie. Not an exaggeration, not a misrepresentation, but a lie.

According to the journalists, "already in the morning, EFE learned about the existence of a cellphone configured in Arabic, the van found in Alcala de Henares and [knew] that one of the dead was one of the terrorists. But the information designating Islamist radical terror was expressly forbidden." Those journalists are now calling for the resignation of the news director responsible for the censorship. Spanish and European journalists are talking about a "coup d'etat using information".
But the plot thickened when Spanish police said that Algerian Said Arel, a resident of Barcelona, coordinated the preparation of the bombings, under the general supervision of none other than the alleged al-Qaeda operative, Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
A Moroccan political leader - who asked to remain anonymous - told the website IslamOnline.net that "all the talk about Moroccans being arrested is suspicious ? I smell a clear Zionist plot ? Who has a catch here? International Zionism is the answer. Implicating Arabs and Muslims in such horrific acts serves to add credibility to the Zionist project."

Arnold Beichman, writing in The National Review Online, proclaimed that the attack "reminds the world that there's a war out there," a phrase echoed in Secretary of State Colin Powell's remark on Fox News Sunday that the bombings "show that there is a war on terror that must be fought." Condoleezza Rice expressly linked this point to electoral politics on Meet The Press, predicting that "we are going to have a debate about whether we are at war."