President Bush's reelection campaign is distributing a letter from retired Colonel William Campenni, who served with Mr. Bush in the Texas Air National Guard. After defending Bush's service, Campenni argues that Bush did more to defend the U.S. than John Kerry did in Vietnam, earning three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star.


Now we know about Rice and Hadley, her deputy. But how about Zelikow? He's a former NSC official from the first Bush administration and a close associate of Rice's. The two of them even wrote a book together.
He was in the key meetings where the warnings -- seemingly ignored -- about al Qaida came up. He seems like someone you'd want to talk to to find out what they were warned about and why they didn't take the warnings more seriously.
Well, you don't have to look far to find him. He runs the 9/11 Commission. Zelikow is the Executive Director of the Commission, which means he has operational control of the investigation under the overall management of the two co-chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton.


TAIPEI: China put its army on combat alert, ready to strike if the dispute over Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian's narrow election victory intensified, a Hong Kong newspaper reported yesterday.
China could use its newly revised state constitution to declare a state of emergency over Taiwan, paving the way for a military attack, the South China Morning Post quoted unidentified sources on the mainland as saying.

Mr Chen polled 50.11 per cent of the vote against 49.89per cent for Mr Lien. More than 13 million votes were cast in a turnout of 80 per cent. More than 337,000 votes were declared invalid by the Central Election Commission, compared with between 120,000 and 130,000 in the island's previous two elections.

safire: In Iraq, we mourn our losses this past year, which now approach 2 percent of U.S. casualties in the Korean conflict. Many Iraqis died, too, but literally tens of thousands are alive today because Saddam did not have the power to torture and execute them — as mass graves tell us he did every year of his savage misrule.
mred - um - its a lie to suggest that ten of thousands were killed every year. and the lie is particularly egregious when he adds 'literally'

Syria's sullen Bashar al-Assad is feeling the heat. He benefited most from Saddam's corruption, probably provided a hiding place for Iraqi weapons and a route of entry into Iraq for Qaeda killers. His troops illegally occupy Lebanon; he supports Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists in rocket attacks and suicide bombings. His so-called intelligence sharing has been singularly unproductive.