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WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion. An indictment in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary. In exchange, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil. The lawmakers are not mentioned but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and...

(CNN) -- Chilling scenes from a videotape made by insurgents show the work of snipers in Iraq, targeting and killing American troops, taking them down with a single bullet from a high-powered rifle. The graphic video of 10 sniper attacks was obtained by CNN -- through intermediaries -- from the Islamic Army of Iraq, one of the most active insurgent organizations in Iraq. The deadly tactic is one the U.S. military also uses to take out insurgents. Retired Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin was one of the top U.S. Marine Corps snipers in Iraq and has written a book about his...

Once more the spoiler. Despite the earnest persuasion of the White House to preserve a useful weapon in the war against the terrorists, the New York Times has revealed the workings of a covert surveillance program, indisputably within the law, to use administrative subpoenas to examine, through a Belgian financial consortium known by the acronym SWIFT, the financing of international terrorism. Once the story was out, the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal covered it as well. Now the program is damaged, perhaps severely so, and the financing of terror is harder to track. This is another unnecessary leak,...

Board has plan to oust ROTC from S.F. schools Members want to cut program over 'Don't ask, Don't tell' Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, May 23, 2006 The San Francisco Board of Education appears poised to kick the military's Junior ROTC programs out of the city's public schools, saying the Pentagon's refusal to allow openly gay service members is deplorable and not in line with the school district's anti-discrimination policy. School board members are scheduled to introduce a resolution tonight outlawing the JROTC because of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rule. The resolution calls that policy an "unjust,...

Bill Would Have Prevented State Aid From Going To Cities And Counties That Declare 'Safe Haven' For Illegal Immigrants FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Erica Warren (619) 596-3136 SACRAMENTO ---- The Senate Public Safety Committee today killed SB 1767 by State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth (R-Murrieta) on a straight party-line vote. The bill aimed at combating illegal immigrant “safe haven” declarations by denying state aid to those cities and counties that prohibit their employees, including law enforcement, to inquire about one’s legal residency. These sanctuary policies - that prevent law enforcement from doing their jobs and encourage massive illegal immigration - have...

Daschle Calls for Troops Pullout by 2008 Thursday November 3, 2005 12:01 AM By MARY CLARE JALONICK Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle says all U.S. troops ought to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2007. The South Dakota Democrat, defeated for re-election last November, made the comment in a foreign policy speech set for delivery in Chicago on Wednesday, three days before a planned visit to politically pivotal Iowa. Daschle has raised his public profile in recent weeks and has not ruled out a presidential run in 2008. In an advance...

The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to keep paying $25,000 annually for a nonprofit group's effort to use water stations to prevent illegal border crossers from dying in the desert. Republican Ann Day became the first supervisor to oppose the annual payment since the board first approved it in 2001. Day said she's now is questioning whether payments to Humane Borders put the county in conflict with U.S. immigration policy and could encourage illegal immigration. "I feel there is a lot of ambiguity and unanswered questions," Day told the board. After the vote, she said board members...

U.S. says they're stoking false hopes ARIVACA, Ariz. – Andy Sellers anxiously drives the woman north in a dusty 1992 Nissan Pathfinder dubbed "the Desert Rat." Just 12 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, he passes the first of five U.S. Border Patrol vehicles. He can't help but think of the two colleagues arrested weeks earlier on charges of transporting illegal immigrants – just what he was doing. Mr. Sellers, 23, is one of hundreds of volunteers with the humanitarian group No More Deaths. Their goal: to aid lost, abandoned or injured illegal immigrants. "I was a little nervous when I...

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 8 - Like a live hand grenade brought home from a distant battlefield, the 34-year-old antiwar documentary "Winter Soldier" has been handled for decades as if it could explode at any moment. Now, the 95-minute film - which has circulated like 16-millimeter samizdat on college campuses for decades but has never been accessible to a wide audience - is about to get its first significant theatrical release in the United States, beginning on Friday at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. (Other bookings, including Chicago, Detroit, Hartford and Minneapolis, can be found at www.wintersoldierfilm.com.) Its distributors say...

Is it just me or is there a definite connection between the media and terrorism. Just an observation here. The democrats and the media were typically criticizing the Bush administration and the progress in Iraq up to the elections. After the elections the media and the democrats all had words of praise and promise and hope, along with the Bush administration. During this quiet time when the media and the democrats were not criticizing the Bush administration and were actually praising the progress, the terror attacks all but stopped. After a short time the criticism cranked up again...low and behold...

Two days ago it was Tom Daschle's birthday; today is the birthday of John Kerry who was born on December 11, 1943. Birthday wishes, comments, and gloating are welcome.

CANONSBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has called the invasion of Iraq "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" and said his goal was to withdraw U.S. troops in his first White House term. Under pressure from some Democrats to change the subject from national security -- regarded by many as President George W. Bush's strongest issue -- Kerry tried to focus exclusively on the economy and other domestic topics at a neighbourhood meeting but supporters raised Iraq. The Massachusetts senator, who has said he would have voted to give Bush the authority...

BERLIN, Dec. 11 — A judge surprised a Hamburg courtroom today by ordering the release of a Moroccan man accused of aiding the Sept. 11 hijackers, after the German police said they had seen evidence that a witness had testified to American interrogators that only four people from the Hamburg cell knew of the attack. The man who was freed, Abdelghani Mzoudi, had been on trial on charges of being an accessory in the deaths of more than 3,000 people in the attacks in the United States. But Judge Klaus Ruehle expressed doubt today that the defendant had knowledge of...

ELI SANDERS reports from the Gaza Strip on the death of Olympia's Rachel Corrie--Evergreen student, anarchist, activist, and accidental martyr. RAFAH, GAZA STRIP--At first, the doctor did not want to see me. I had come by dirt road to his small pharmacy in this dingy town along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt because I wanted to ask about the young woman from America--the one who died defending his house. He did not want to talk about her. He was tired of talking to journalists. He now required appointments to be made in advance. I didn't know about...

There it is! It's done... Too late now to prosecute her for AIDING AND ABETTING the sniper-pair while she was staying in the DC area ... ... ... Mother of accused sniper deported     The mother of accused sniper John Lee Malvo has been deported to Jamaica, federal authorities confirmed yesterday.     Una Scion James, 38, was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officers on Tuesday after deciding not to appeal a pending Nov. 19 deportation order by a federal immigration judge. She initially filed a petition with INS requesting special protection as a battered...