Shah said two Chechens were killed trying to break through a military cordon Sunday.

The three Moroccans were implicated in the 11 March bombings by a piece of plastic, snapped off from a SIM card when it was inserted into the mobile phone found in the single rucksack bomb that failed to go off 10 days ago. This allowed investigators to trace the mobile back to the Nuevo Siglo (New Century) phone shop owned by the men.

But last month, a new and more central role was suggested for him. It emerged in a letter, written allegedly by Zarqawi to senior al-Qaeda leaders, and leaked to the New York Times.
Eleven pages long, much of it dedicated to a rambling denunciation of the US, Zarqawi's central point was this: if the handover of sovereignty was succesful in Iraq on 30 June, radical Islamist fighters in Iraq would lose their raison d'etre to wage war.

eyewitness accounts from survivors of the massacre in Madrid indicate the bombs were left behind by terrorists who got off the trains before they exploded.

That raises at least two questions for investigators. Could it mean their repression of al-Qaeda and its allies in Europe has been so effective that the terrorists now feel a need to conserve their human resources? Or is it simple pragmatism: why sacrifice a trained jihadi when a bomb can be detonated remotely?

If it is the latter, then the implications are chilling. Future bombers, like those who struck in Madrid, will be in a position to strike again.


The El Pais newspaper reported Friday that police searching the telephone services shop where Zougam and Bekkali worked found a piece of a cell phone used in a backpack bomb that failed to explode during the Madrid attacks.


"SECRETARY POWELL: Well, one, we didn't put together just the coalition of the willing. A coalition is always a coalition of the willing. And this particular coalition of the willing now has 47 nations; 47 nations are openly members of the coalition, and have asked to be identified with this effort. And there are many other nations that for a variety of reasons don't want to be publicly identified, but are also a part of the coalition of the willing. "

mred: they say this at the same time they blast kerry for not mentioning which foreign leaders (or 'more leaders' if u buy the mistranslation story) are on his side. can we at least have some rules here?

and then this, for fun: "In a morning meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Bremer warned the Iraqi leaders that they risked isolating themselves and their country if they continued to snub the United Nations." (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/18/international/middleeast/18COUN.html?ex=1080190800&en=3214ed4da4292de4&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE)

make it stop.