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The Iraqi Survey Group also found that supposed "humanitarian" imports under Oil-for-Food gave Saddam the ability to restart his biological and chemical warfare programs at a moment's notice. Spertzel said what scared him the most in Iraq was the discovery of secret labs to make deadly weapons like the nerve agent, sarin, and the biological poison, ricin, in spray form. "If that were released in a closed [area], such as Madison Square Garden or, even some, some of your smaller closed malls, shopping malls, it would have a devastating effect … killing hundreds or thousands," Spertzel said. But Spertzel believes...

John Kerry attends Thompson's blowing-up.

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) - Hunter S. Thompson's body was found in a chair in the kitchen in front of his typewriter with the word "counselor" typed in the center of the page, according to sheriff's reports. The word was typed on stationery from the Fourth Amendment Foundation, which was started to defend victims of unwarranted search and seizure, according to reports released Tuesday. It was not immediately known what, if any, significance the word had to the founder of "gonzo" journalism or to his family. Juan Thompson found his father dead Feb. 20 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the...

Irish rock star and campaigner Bob Geldof, a driving force behind the 1985 Live Aid appeal for Ethiopia, urged Tuesday that Africa's debt problems stay a priority despite the Asian tsunami disaster. "The tsunami must be dealt with, it is an act of God, an act of nature," he told BBC radio, voicing concern the disaster would sideline chronic issues elsewhere. "Africa's an act of man. Millions die each year completely unnecessarily and that can be adjusted ... The issue is one of poverty and debt and it need not be," Geldof added. He said the government should seize the...

BASRA, Iraq, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Masked gunmen assassinated a senior judge in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Saturday, a Reuters witness and doctors said. Video footage showed the body of the judge, Taha al-Amiri, lying in a hospital mortuary following the attack. Witnesses said his vehicle was stopped by four masked gunmen as he drove through the centre of Basra, Iraq's second largest city, in the far south of the country. Two of the gunmen got out and opened fire, killing the judge instantly. His driver was wounded in the attack. It is the second assassination...

On the fringe of the headlines It is not very often that I can say this, but over the past few days I have been on the fringe of a news story that was being reported around the world. A few days ago, on 27th September, the Croatian daily newspaper Jutarnji published a story speculating that Kim Jong Il’s grandson, Kim Han Sol, had enrolled in the United World College in Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina). The story was quickly picked up by news media around the world, including AsiaOne in Singapore, Chosunilbo (South Korea), The Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Associated Press...

The Justice Department has backed away from a court battle over its authority to classify and restrict the discussion of information it has already released, handing a local advocacy group a victory by granting it explicit permission to publish letters written by two senators that contain the contested information. The case was considered a potential test of limits to the government's power to restrict access to information in the public domain on national security grounds. Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft had strongly defended the practice in this case by likening it to putting "spilt milk" back in a jar...

ON the morning of Saturday, Feb. 26, a day before the Academy Awards, the actress Carrie Fisher woke up in her Beverly Hills home next to the lifeless body of a gay Republican political operative named R. Gregory Stevens. Thus ended one of the more improbable friendships that Hollywood and Washington have known - and a globe-trotting, adventurous, but ultimately debilitating existence that might be fodder for a Tinseltown thriller, if it only had a satisfying resolution. Before its abrupt end, Mr. Stevens's journey had taken him from the beaches of San Clemente, Calif., and the slopes of Sun Valley,...

1. Ahmad Abu Adass In 2005, the last year of his life, Ahmad Abu Adass was 22 and still living with his parents in Beirut, Lebanon. He was kind and liked people, his friends later told investigators, but none of them thought he was very sophisticated. The best way to describe him was simple, one said. He was generous and a little naïve. He was very weak, physically. A Sunni Muslim of Palestinian descent, Adass had become interested in religion and now spent many hours at the Arab University Mosque near his home. It was there, after a prayer session,...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Authorities found two bodies at the home of a federal judge Monday night, and Chicago police and the FBI were investigating. The bodies were found at the home of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow, but the judge was uninjured, police spokesman Patrick Camden said. He declined to elaborate. FBI agents were assisting police but would provide no details.

Former State Dept. employee Lawrence C. Yontz, 48, pled guilty before a U.S. magistrate to illegally accessing hundreds of passport files, including those of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He didn’t access Sarah Palin’s passport file, presumably because she obtained a passport for the first time last year. According to the Justice Dept.: In pleading guilty, Yontz admitted that between February 2005 and March 2008, he logged onto the PIERS database and viewed the passport applications of approximately 200 celebrities, athletes, actors, politicians and their immediate families, musicians, game show contestants, members of the media corps, prominent business...

Friday, Feb. 25, 2005 6:47 a.m. ESTHillary Rebuked by Iraqi Leader New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has caused an international incident after she criticized Iraq's leading candidate to become prime minister as a result of last month's historic election, prompting a sharp rebuke. "Hillary Clinton, as far as I know, does not represent any political decision or the American administration, and I don't know why she said this," Dr. Ibrahim Jafari, who is expected to become prime minister, told the Times of London on Thursday. "She knows nothing about the Iraqi situation," he added. During an interview last Sunday,...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An upstate New York doctor was found guilty on Thursday of illegally sending millions of dollars to Iraq, in violation of U.S. sanctions, authorities said. Rafil Dhafir was convicted of 59 out of 60 charges ranging from conspiracy to money laundering to Medicare fraud after a 15-week federal trial in Syracuse, N.Y., prosecutors said. Dhafir, an oncologist, used an unregistered charity named "Help the Needy" to solicit some $4 million in contributions in the United States and then launder much of it to Iraq through bank accounts in Jordan, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said he began sending...

WASHINGTON — Jeremy Bird, the architect of the grass-roots and online organizing efforts that powered President Obama’s presidential campaigns from Chicago, is advising a similar operation in Tel Aviv. But this time it is focused on ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. His consulting work for the group V15 — an independent Israeli organization that does not support specific candidates but is campaigning to replace Israel’s current government — has added yet another political layer to the diplomatic mess surrounding Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to address a joint meeting of Congress next week on Iran. The White House has argued...

A large number of US troops were observed leaving Fallujah on Tuesday, with speculation that the withdrawal was due to Sunday night's attack by Mujahideen who reportedly fired rockets loaded with Sarin gas at a nearby US base. Dozens of US vehicles loaded with American troops were seen leaving Fallujah on Tuesday morning, heading for the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. In a report filed at 4:25pm Mecca time Tuesday afternoon, the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported from International Highway 1, saying that hat he had witnessed more than 90 US vehicles including tanks, and armored vehicles, being transported on giant...

I know. Foreign policy has been largely an afterthought in the presidential campaign. Iraq, for all intents and purposes, is off the radar screen entirely -- except as a Democratic talking point, Bush's misbegotten war that Obama allegedly "ended." So a post on the plight of a rather obscure Iraqi politician -- and the merits of the Kurdish region he now calls home -- amounts to so much spitting in the wind, right? Probably. On the other hand this week's news - rampaging anti-American mobs across the Arab world, skyrocketing U.S.-Israeli tensions - has brought into sharp relief one of...

With the midterm elections fast approaching, the panic over Iraq seems more intense than ever. That country, the thinking goes, is a hopeless mess, and there could be a precipitous American withdrawal, especially if the Democrats win. But doing so would leave the silent majority of Iraqis hostage to the most vicious extremists, abandoning those Iraqi leaders who have championed liberal democratic values. One of them is Mithal al-Alusi, a 53-year-old Sunni Arab who won a seat in parliament last December after having served as director general of the National Commission on de-Baathification. Mr. al-Alusi ran on a platform of...

WASHINGTON // A Pakistani immigrant who hosted fundraisers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is being sought by the FBI on allegations that he funneled illegal contributions to Clinton's political action committee and to Sen. Barbara Boxer's 2004 re-election campaign. Authorities say Northridge, Calif., businessman Abdul Rehman Jinnah, 56, fled the country shortly after being indicted on charges of engineering more than $50,000 in illegal donations to the Democratic committees. A business associate charged as Jinnah's co-conspirator has entered a guilty plea and is scheduled to be sentenced in Los Angeles next week. ...The case has transformed Jinnah from a political...

Interesting.... This muslim Cleric visited london EXACTLY one year ago from the date of the attacks, July 7, 2004 CNSNews.com) - London Mayor Ken Livingstone's previous support of a Muslim cleric who advocates suicide bombings may cause him some embarrassment as he now must speak for the city in the wake of Thursday's terrorist bombings. Livingstone condemned the Thursday attacks as "mass murder," and added that "this was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners." Yet Livingstone has in the past...