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These are the "birth pangs" of a "new Middle East," said Condi Rice last summer, as Israel pounded Lebanon. Unfortunately, the new Middle East may make us all pray for the return of the old. Hamas is today engaged in savage street-fighting with Fatah for control of Gaza. If Hamas prevails, it could convert this Palestinian enclave into a terrorist base camp between Israel and Egypt. In northern Lebanon, Islamic jihadists are battling the army for control of a Palestinian refugee camp. Scores are dead. On Wednesday, a seventh parliamentarian was assassinated with his son in a Beirut car bomb...

U.S. and British officials are circulating a proposal at the U.N. Security Council to end the U.N. inspectors' search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The proposal has already been the subject of staff meetings and officials have told The New York Times that permanent members of the Security Council seem ready to go along with the proposal to "terminate immediately the mandates" of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States froze the assets Friday of four Iranian companies, alleging they are involved in Iran's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Treasury Department named the companies as Pars Tarash (aka Pars Trash Company), Farayand Technique, Fajr Industries Group, and Mizan Machine Manufacturing Group. The action was taken under an executive order aimed at freezing the assets of proliferators of WMDs and their supporters, the department said in a statement. The Treasury is barring all transactions between the companies and any US person and freezes any assets the companies may have under US jurisdiction. "So...

American Bar Association Address American Bar Association Address by Hans Blix Hans Blix, Weapon of Mass Destruction Commission Chairman, was a luncheon speaker at the annual spring meeting of the American Bar Association Section of International Law. His topics included weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration, and Iraq. 5/4/2007: WASHINGTON, DC: 47 min.

South Korea wants to buy four Global Hawk UAVs, for about $50 million each. The United States wants to sell South Korea the UAVs. But Russia, and their lawyers, insist that the sale cannot be made. The Russians claim that, according to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Global Hawk can, in theory, be used as a delivery system for weapons of mass destruction. That makes Global Hawk a "Category I system", under the MTCR, and thus illegal for the United States to sell to a foreign country. Here's where it gets tricky. The MTCR was established twenty years...

Thursday, May 10, 2007 What George Tenet doesn't say about WMDs Posted: May 10, 2007 By Jack Cashill © 2007 I talked to Dave Gaubatz last week before he had a chance to read "At The Center of the Storm" by former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. But I can imagine what he might have said of Tenet's blanket claim that "we at CIA had been wrong in believing that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction." "Nonsense." And the fully apolitical Gaubatz is in a position to know. Upon retiring from the Air Force with most of his 20-year...

The mildly toxic chemical melamine is commonly added to animal feed in China,...

The resolution offered by the gentleman from Ohio reads sensibly. It alleges crimes high and low, misdemeanors galore -- all of them representing an effort to mislead the American people and take them into war. It is Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment directed at Dick Cheney. The vice president will, of course, deny being a liar. As long as Kucinich is at it, add that to the articles. The congressman's case is persuasive, although his remedy may be too radical. He calls for Cheney to be impeached by the House and tried by the Senate, just as Bill Clinton was...

Lost in all the coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy were the sobering words of Vice President Dick Cheney about a calamity facing America that will dwarf anything it has ever experienced as a nation. Characterizing it as "the greatest threat we face," Cheney once again raised the ugly specter of nuclear terrorism against the U.S. "It's a very real threat," he said, "something that we have to worry about and defeat every single day." Tying the warning to politicking over Iraq war policy, he said a precipitous withdrawal from that country by U.S. military forces would invite and encourage...

It's a familiar scene: A Clinton holdover writes a book attacking the Bush administration and is paraded around through the network newsrooms for partisan fun and his own profit. I'm talking about George Tenet's soon-to-be released book attacking Cheney and Rice, absolving himself of all error and making a puzzling claim about what he meant when he said the Iraqi WMD program was a "slam dunk" basis for justifying war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

This is a quite big deal that most of us totally missed last night: John Edwards doesn't believe there's a "global war on terror," at least not in the simple-show-of-hands sense. This is something a lot of Democrats say privately -- and something mainstream pols everywhere else in the world say publicly -- but it contests a Bush administration premise in a way very few American politicians have been comfortable in the last five and a half years. His stance -- though it doesn't seem to have been all that deliberate -- matches the recent comments of a prominent British...

As the Evidence Mounts, It's Hard to Deny That Saddam Hussein Had to GoYesterday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney, citing his role in deceiving the American public on the reason to go to war in Iraq and topple the Saddam Hussein government. Dennis Kucinich is the guy who always runs for President, so he is on the radar once every four years. Oh yeah, he is also the guy who pushes his way to the aisle to have his picture taken with President Bush at each State of the Union address. He...

WASHINGTON – A joint task force involving the military, Department of Homeland Security and police is set to begin a sophisticated and realistic drill today on how to respond to a terrorist nuclear bomb detonated on U.S. soil. Dubbed "Nobel Resolve '07," the series of tests are a follow-up to a similar operation last year called "Urban Resolve" and will run through Friday. The U.S. Joint Forces Command, which recently modeled every building in Baghdad in virtual space, is using that same technology in the Tidewater area of southern Virginia for this modeling and simulation project. Joining the command in...

I have written an article for this week’s Spectator magazine about Dave Gaubatz, a former USAF special agent who says that in 2003 he discovered four of Saddam’s WMD bunkers — only for the Iraq Survey Group to fail to excavate these sites, allowing the material to be looted by the Iraqis, Syrians and Russia and taken to Syria. If Mr Gaubatz is correct, it means two things: that the invasion of Iraq was more than justified on the grounds originally given, that Saddam was in breach of the terms of the ceasefire of the 1991 war and that he...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands: A Dutch appeals court is to begin hearing the case Monday of a businessman convicted of war crimes for selling chemicals to Saddam Hussein that the Iraqi dictator used in the mass killings of Kurds. Frans van Anraat, 64, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 2005 for selling tons of precursor chemicals that were made into mustard gas and nerve gas unleashed on Kurdish villages in northern Iraq in 1987-88. Van Anraat said he didn't know the chemicals — some of which were purchased in the United States — could be used for anything...

Earlier this week, Iran?s spiritual leader Ali Khamenei began preparing public opinion for Iran?s withdrawal from the nuclear-nonproliferation regime. Today we have reports that the Iranians detained 15 British seamen. These and other incidents appear to be unconnected ? but they may not be. The moment of truth in the Iranian nuclear standoff is drawing near. And the Security Council route nearly exhausted, so a big part of the standoff is about to go largely off-camera. Already, things are not what they seem. First of all: Don?t necessarily believe what the British say about what those sailors were up to...

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson wants to impeach President Bush. In arguing that point, he asked Fox News' Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday, "Have you seen the National Intelligence Estimate that was provided in October of 2002, in which the intelligence agency under the State Department said that Iraq was not building up a nuclear capability, that this whole story about the aluminum tubes (reportedly sought by Saddam Hussein in Niger) was completely off base?" I decided to re-read the NIE excerpts that the administration released. What does the report say? "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as...

House National Security Committee Military Procurement Subcommittee and Military Research and Development Subcommittee Clinton Administration's Response to the Threat Posed by Proliferation I believe today's hearing is one of the most important hearings we will have this year. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles that can carry them is clearly among the most significant challenges facing the United States in the postCold War world. Even the Clinton Administration has recognized this fact. In November 1994, the President declared a "national emergency" because of "the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy...

The troop “surge” in Iraq is also a signal to Iran—but stopping Tehran’s nukes for good will require a different kind of leverage. The world seems headed for a showdown in the Middle East within the next two years over the issue of Iranian nuclear capacity. The stakes are high. On the one hand, there is the emergence of a new nuclear power, whose rhetoric and revolutionary record seem to pose an existential threat to Israel and challenge centuries of Sunni dominance of Islam. On the other hand, there is an explosive set of potential military actions and economic repercussions,...

Hugo Chavez's power equation is based upon two main components: resources and strategy. For about five years this equation worked well, with both components on the rise. In the last year, however, his power equation has been weakening significantly. His objective of leading a global crusade against the U.S. had proven to be extremely costly. He is said to have spent one billion dollars in trying, unsuccessfully, to gain a seat in the United Nations Security Council. At this moment there are serious food shortages in Venezuela as he has increased government control over production and established unrealistic prices for...