President Bush’s principal adviser Karl Rove is to be questioned again over the improper naming of a CIA official. Mohamed ElBaradei, accused by the American right of being insufficiently aggressive, wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his stalwart work at the helm of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Pentagon official Larry Franklin pleads guilty to passing on classified information to Israel. Just a normal week in politics. But there is a thread linking these events and it is Iraq.

Politicians tell us they acted in good faith on the road to war, and maybe they did, but that leaves a prickly question: who was so keen to prove that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat that they forged documents purporting to show that he was trying to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger to develop nuclear weapons? The forgery was revealed to the Security Council by ElBaradei. That was not an intelligence error. It was a straightforward lie, an invention intended to mislead public opinion and help start a war.

At the beginning of 2001, a few weeks before George Bush took office, there was a break-in at the Niger embassy in Rome. Strangely, nothing of value was taken. Months later came 9/11 and a month after that, as George Bush wondered how to get back at the terrorists, a report from the Italian security service (Sismi) reached the CIA: Iraq was seeking to buy uranium.

Disappointingly for the neocons, the CIA sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to check the story: he reported that it was nonsense. When the story was repeated by Bush, Wilson went public. His wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, was then outed by the White House. Hence Rove’s predicament.
informationclearinghouse.info

AUSTIN, Tex. – The Home Depot became the nation’s largest home improvement chain by figuring out how to make hardware friendly to consumers and how to put everything from plumbing fixtures to petunias under one roof.

But the company is facing a knotty problem figuring out where to put one important part of the home-improvement business: the dozens of day laborers who gather outside its stores here and across the nation.

Morning after morning in city after city, contractors as well as homeowners needing an extra hand or two drive up to a Home Depot and hire laborers to paint walls, nail down roofing or trim branches, usually for $8 to $10 an hour. Not only has this caused friction between the stores and neighboring businesses and homeowners who do not want the men around, but it has also thrust the company into the nationwide debate about what to do about these workers, the majority of them illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

In Illinois, several Hispanic groups are angry with the company because 40 day laborers have been arrested in recent months, accused of criminal trespassing at a Home Depot in Cicero. One Hispanic shopper was arrested by mistake.

In California, a group called Save Our State has held protests at numerous Home Depots, asserting that the company has aided illegal immigration. But in Los Angeles, a city councilman has proposed requiring all new large home-improvement stores to build shelters that would provide day laborers with basic amenities like toilets and drinking water.
nytimes.com

GUATEMALA CITY – Guatemalan officials said they would abandon communities buried by landslides and declare them mass graveyards as reports of devastation trickled in from some of the more than 100 communities cut off from the outside world after killer mudslides.

Guatemala’s death toll from torrential rains last week associated with Hurricane Stan stood at 652; 384 were missing.

The worst-hit communities will be abandoned and declared graveyards, officials said, after they stopped most efforts to dig out increasingly decomposed bodies.
news.yahoo.com

Morocco’s authorities have said they will begin flying hundreds of illegal West African migrants to Senegal.
The flights are due to take off from near the Algerian border where migrants had been left after being expelled from Spanish enclaves in North Africa.

Humanitarian groups have criticised the expulsions and accused Morocco’s security forces of being heavy handed.

Spain’s foreign minister is visiting Morocco to discuss the crisis as it reviews its deportations policy.

Senegal has still to confirm a flight is expected on Monday.

A government official in the Melilla enclave said no more deportations were planned at the moment.

The aid agency, Medecins Sans Frontieres, said on Friday it had found more than 500 migrants abandoned by Moroccan police in the Sahara desert without food or water, some of whom had been illegally expelled by Spanish police.

The migrants who remain in Melilla say their treatment at the hands of the Moroccan security forces was appalling, the BBC’s Chris Morris in Melilla says.

They have appealed to Spain not to deport anyone else back across the border.

Spain and Morocco have taken a tougher line against the migrants in the last few days, after thousands of people tried to storm the high razor wire fences which surround Melilla and Ceuta.

Hundreds of migrants made it across, but at least 11 were killed.
bbc.co.uk

Hurricane Katrina thrust racial disparities onto the nation’s political agenda and top civil rights leaders, fueled by outrage over the disaster, are heading to Washington. The occasion is the 10th anniversary of Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March, a long-planned event that now is shaping up as a stage for black America to respond to the devastation in New Orleans.

“Because Katrina put it out there, no one can play the pretend game any more that there isn’t poverty and inequality in this country,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. “The Millions More Movement — Katrina gives it added significance.”

Though Farrakhan has long stirred controversy — and lately he has speculated that New Orleans’ levees were bombed to destroy black neighborhoods — his event will unite a wide array of prominent social justice advocates. The guest list for Saturday’s event includes members of Congress, hip-hop artists, civil rights activists, media pundits, academics and business leaders. Muslim and Christian religious figures will also participate.
news.yahoo.com

…The APTN tape shows an officer hitting the suspect, Robert Davis, at least four times in the head Saturday night outside a French Quarter bar. Davis appeared to resist, twisting and flailing as he was dragged to the ground by four officers.

Another of the officers then kneed Davis and punched him twice. Davis was face-down on the sidewalk with blood streaming down his arm and into the gutter.

Then a fifth officer ordered APTN producer Rich Matthews and the cameraman to stop recording. When Matthews held up his credentials, the officer grabbed the producer, leaned him backward over a car, jabbed him in the stomach and unleashed a profanity-laced tirade.

“I’ve been here for six weeks trying to keep … alive. … Go home!” shouted the officer, who identified himself as S.M. Smith.

In addition to Smith, the other officers charged were identified as Lance Schilling and Robert Evangelist. Smith is an eight-year veteran of the force, while Evangelist and Schilling have served three years each.

“The incidents taped by our cameraman are extremely troubling,” said Mike Silverman, AP’s managing editor. “We are heartened that the police department is taking them seriously and promising a thorough investigation.”

Police said Davis, of New Orleans, was booked on public intoxication, resisting arrest, battery on a police officer and public intimidation. He was treated at a hospital and released into police custody.

A mug shot of Davis, provided by a jailer, showed him with his right eye swollen shut, an apparent abrasion on the left side of his neck and a cut on his right temple.

Davis, who is black, was subdued at the intersection of Conti and Bourbon streets. Three of the officers appeared to be white, and the other is light skinned. The officer who hit Matthews is white. Defillo said race was not an issue.

Two of the officers in the video appeared to be federal officers.
news.yahoo.com

NEW YORK (AFP) – The United States recently debated launching military strikes inside Syria against camps used by insurgents operating in neighboring Iraq, a US magazine reported.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice successfully opposed the idea at a meeting of senior American officials held on October 1, Newsweek reported, citing unnamed US government sources.

Rice reportedly argued that diplomatic isolation was a more effective approach, with a UN report pending that may blame Syria for the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri.
nws.yahoo.com

THE huge mushroom cloud soared skywards, the captain was gripped by fear, believing his plane was about to be engulfed by the fall-out from a nuclear explosion. After declaring mayday and ordering his crew to don oxygen masks, the experienced pilot had the presence of mind to record that the cloud measured an estimated 200 miles in diameter and was tipped by an eerie light, like nothing he had seen before. Eventually, it soared harmlessly into the atmosphere, leaving the passenger jet to continue safely on its journey from Anchorage, in Alaska, to Tokyo.

But far below, a fleet of fishing boats trawling the sea between Japan and the Soviet Union was drenched by a violent but short-lived downpour before the weather suddenly cleared. Nuclear tests and volcanic activity were later ruled out but scientists concluded that this was not a natural phenomenon. More than two decades later suspicion still exists that the stunned airline crew and fishermen in 1973 were witnessing a sinister Cold War experiment, in which water from the Sea of Japan was blown into the air to create clouds and rain.

British government papers, just released by the National Archives, show that throughout the Seventies there was deep mistrust between the two superpowers over environmental warfare. The documents reveal that both the US, which led the field, and the Soviet Union had secret military programmes with the goal of controlling the world’s climate. “By the year 2025 the United States will own the weather, ” one scientist is said to have boasted.
globalresearch.ca

PILAR, Paraguay, Sept 26 (Reuters) – An American army reservist in fatigues clutches a stethoscope as she readies to check the blood pressure of a woman in this dusty Paraguayan city where U.S. soldiers offer basic medical treatment to the poor.

The troops’ presence is part of joint military exercises being carried out by U.S. and Paraguayan soldiers.

But the sight of the American soldiers has fanned fears of greater U.S. military intentions among some Paraguayans, made South American neighbors uneasy and sparked media speculation of ulterior American motives.

Among them: establishing a military base here to monitor natural gas reserves in neighboring Bolivia where leftists could soon take power. Others charge U.S. financial interest in a nearby fresh water reserve, one of the world’s largest.

The rumors highlight the tense relations Washington has with its “backyard” as Latin Americans grow critical of U.S.-pushed market reforms and the Iraq war. Decades of U.S. intervention, from Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup in Chile to Central American wars in the 1980s, have added to the unease.
alertnet.org

The governor of Basra province has accused British forces of destabilising security following the arrest of 12 people over attacks against UK troops.

The men, some of whom are police officers, are still being questioned.

…The 12 detainees, some of whom are accused of supporting radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, are thought to include the director of Basra’s state-run electricity company Odai Awad.

Employees of the company are threatening a strike unless he is released within 24 hours.

Mr al-Waili told the Associated Press news agency: “The British troops are responsible for destabilising security in the province.

“Recent random raids and arrests conducted by British forces…should have been co-ordinated with the Iraqi security forces and the governor.”
bbc.co.uk

Iran denies British attacks link
…An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman denied the charge, saying it was a “lie” and accusing Britain of fomenting unrest in Iraq.

Speaking on Iranian TV, Hamid Reza-Asefi said: “This is a lie. The British are the cause of instability and crisis in Iraq.

“By drafting such scenarios they are trying to find a partner in their crimes.”

He added: “From the very beginning, we have stated our position very clearly – a stable Iraq is in our interests and that is what the Iraqi authorities have said themselves on many occasions.”