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Newly released documents from the Bush administration show that a former member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle has resurfaced inside the new Iraqi government, bringing charges of corruption, bribery and bid-rigging. As a result, millions of U.S. aid dollars and billions in Iraqi government funds have disappeared in an ongoing scandal that is poised to engulf Baghdad and Washington. Worse still, a leading candidate for the top elected post in Iraq has also been implicated in the report as having taken "payoffs" in order to rig a major government cell phone contract. According to a May 2004 U.S. Defense Department...

President Bush is thought to have ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq in order to secure control of that country's vast oil fields for his friends and contributors in the oil industry, especially Vice President Cheney's former company Halliburton. This is taken as an article of faith among many, especially for many in our universities, our cultural industries, and in our press. Hundreds, if not thousands, of essays, articles and reports have been circulated in the past 3 years about the motivations of President Bush when it comes to Iraq. Typical examples of the genre can be found daily...

The time limit for a majority government in a two-party system is now usually 10 to 12 years. After that, it is living on borrowed time. Neither major party in the United States has held the White House for more than 12 years since Franklin Roosevelt's time, and only the Margaret Thatcher-John Major combination made it past the 12-year mark in Britain in the past half-century. It certainly hasn't happened in Canada in the past 50 years, and it looks like this time will be no exception. Six months after Jean Chretien stepped down from 10 years as prime minister,...

When news first broke last week that former PM Jean Chretien had amassed a secret multi-million-dollar fund known as the "national unity reserve," it conjured up intriguing cloak-and-dagger images. After all, the fund dated back to the darkest days of Quebec separatism - perhaps even, as new PM Paul Martin insisted, to the post-Meech Lake era of Brian Mulroney. Surely it was some kind of top-secret strategic war chest, to be used only in the event of, say, a Yes vote in a Quebec referendum? Alas, the truth is far more mundane. While former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau was all...

Beijing — Less than two months after stepping down as prime minister, Jean Chretien is moving quickly to forge a relationship with China's wealthiest and most powerful business conglomerate. Making a surprisingly speedy entrance onto the global business stage, Mr. Chretien will arrive in China this weekend with a team of Power Corp. executives to meet some of China's most influential business leaders. The visit, his first major overseas trip since his retirement, is being kept hush-hush. Neither the Canadian embassy in Beijing nor his law office in Ottawa is revealing any details of the visit, insisting that it is...

December marked a small but significant victory in the war on terror, as Jean Chretien stepped down from his post as Canadian prime minister after ten years of casual indifference regarding the terrorist threat permeating within Canada's borders. Chretien's ignorance on matters relating to the security of not only Canadians, but also all North Americans, was mind-boggling for a head of state in the post-9/11 world. It was Chretien who announced shortly after 9/11 that no terrorist cells existed in Canada, only to have Canadian-intelligence sources inform the media that, in fact, the country was host to 50 such cells....

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Paul Martin became Canada's 21st prime minister on Friday and immediately announced sweeping reforms, declaring a wish to bring in "a new agenda of change and achievement" ahead of an election expected for next May. Martin, a 65-year-old multimillionaire businessman, replaced the man his supporters effectively drove from office, fellow Liberal Jean Chretien. The majority of Chretien's ministers lost their jobs. Martin, pledging to "restore the tone" of ties with the United States, created a new cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations and appointed a special parliamentary secretary to help smooth dealings with Washington. He also promised to...

Residents of Ontario are experiencing a large wave of what is called buyer’s regret. That’s the sinking feeling you get after you submit the winning bid on ebay for an item you could get faster and cheaper at the local mall. The joy of winning for the sake of winning quickly passes and reality can hit hard. What Ontarians would like to take back however is their vote for a Liberal provincial government. Only days after winning a massive majority, Dalton McGuinty started doing his best to convince everyone that the negative ads run against him in the campaign were...

OTTAWA -- U.S. President George W. Bush is grateful for help in the war on terrorism and is ''working'' to include Canada in hefty contracts to help rebuild Iraq, he said in a farewell phone call to retiring Prime Minister Jean Chretien. ''He thanked me for what we're doing in Afghanistan and for the offer of money in the reconstruction of Iraq,'' Chretien told a news conference Thursday. ''As for the news in the newspapers stating that Canada would be excluded from economic activities in Iraq, the president assured me that this was not the case, and that he would...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian government, under increasing pressure over allegations it ignores the plight of citizens jailed abroad, came under ferocious attack on Thursday from a businessman who said Ottawa had abandoned him when he was on death row in Saudi Arabia. William Sampson savaged officials at both the Canadian foreign ministry and the embassy in Riyadh, saying they had made clear to him from the start that they considered he was guilty of setting off a bomb that killed a Briton. "Throughout my incarceration I consider the activities of the embassy officials fell well short of anything that...

OTTAWA-- Prime Minister Jean Chrétien will accept a job with the United Nations, a move that could hasten his retirement plans, according to published reports. Jean Chrétien According to the Montreal newspaper La Presse, Chrétien was offered a foreign post, most likely with an African development agency. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also invited Chrétien to sit on an advisory council to promote institutional reform. Chrétien spokesman Steven Hogue would neither confirm nor deny the story. "His plans will be known when the time is right," Hogue said. Chrétien has expressed an interest in serving with the United Nations....

Chretien's handshake So here we have President Bush who applies his values and stands squarely against what the Malaysian Prime Minister said in his rambling and distorted diatribe against Jews. Mr. Bush told him of his views on the topic in no uncertain ways. Contrast that to our feeble minded and embarrassing Prime Minister Chretien. I quote from the newspaper: "He was there and I shook hands with him like with everybody else." If it was not so pathetic, it would almost be laughable. Was it not some 2 years ago at the Francophonie Conference in Beirut Lebanon that Mr....

PM meets Malaysian leader, says nothing about his notorious anti-Semitic speech BANGKOK -- Prime Minister Jean Chrétien failed yesterday to join the international outrage over Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's public pronunciation that Jews "rule this world by proxy" and that Muslims should rise against them for a "final victory." Mr. Chrétien shook Mr. Mahathir's hand and said nothing about the controversy when the two men met yesterday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit of 21 world leaders. "He was there. I shook hands with him like with everybody else," said Mr. Chrétien. The prime minister repeatedly sidestepped offering an...

BANGKOK -- Prime Minister Jean Chretien got only stony silence yesterday after his request for a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush during the two-day APEC summit. The two were expected to bump into each other during the summit of 21 world leaders, but U.S. officials shrugged off a Canadian request for a formal meeting between the two. "We told them that if we can, we should sit down," a senior Canadian official, who requested anonymity, said. "If not, we'll meet in pull-asides (informal meetings)." Bush has already met with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, Chinese President Hu Jintao,...

BANGKOK - Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has dismissed reports that his government recklessly misspent millions of taxpayers dollars. According to Auditor General Sheila Fraser's report, the Chrétien government misspent $100 million on Bombardier jets, spent money on advertising firms with Liberal connections and misused money for partisan polling. Some of the findings of Fraser's next report, which isn't due until late next month, were leaked to The Globe and Mail on the weekend. Meeting with reporters at the APEC summit in Bangkok, Chrétien said he doesn't comment on leaks but defended the purchase of the jets. "We wanted to have...

BANGKOK—He scratched at the door, but White House officials weren't letting Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in yesterday. Chrétien has requested a formal one-on-one meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush during the two-day APEC summit here that starts today — but the demand so far has met with nothing more than silence. Chrétien and Bush were expected to bump into each other several times during the summit of 21 world leaders, but U.S. officials shrugged off a Canadian request for a formal bilateral meeting between the men, who have never had a close personal relationship. "We told them that if...

Prime Minister Chretien of Canada has been replaced as leader of the Liberal Party by Paul Martin. Still Chretien is not leaving office till next year. He continues to travel the world at taxpayers' expense although he has visited almost every city in the world at least three times.

Jean Chretien prime minister of Canada, is hanging onto his top job with his fingernails though his replacement has already been chosen. He has appointed everyone who is anyone in Canada for the past ten years. They, of course, make the decisions he likes. Click here for Canadian poetry that should be read

On the second anniversary of 9/11, Jean Chretien was on vacation in Quebec. Neither he nor the Liberal party organized any official ceremony. Instead, Stephen Harper, the opposition leader, organized a ceremony. Though he made a quickie phone call to Pres. Bush, Jean Chretien didn't bother to show up. Two days later, a woman writing a puff piece in the Ottawa Citizen made the comment that "seeing Canadians flying American flags in a misplaced show of solidarity" sends her into a "huff." That was it. I went to my computer and wrote a letter to the editor. Here's the text:...