WASHINGTON (AP) – Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq concludes in a draft report due out soon.

According to people familiar with the 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find that Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.

Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.

As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned.

After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction – its chief argument for going to war and overthrowing the regime.

An intelligence official said Duelfer could wrap up the report as soon as this month, but noted it may take time to declassify it. Those who discussed the report inside and outside the government did so Thursday on the condition of anonymity because it contains classified material and is not yet completed.

Full Article:AP News

by Greg Moses
The morning after Texas district judge John Dietz ruled that the state’s school system fails to satisfy criteria set forth in the Texas constitution, I’m browsing some of the “top headline” sources on the internet to see how the fate of 4 million Texas schoolchildren rates on the national news scale.

…Maybe we can find the headline at CNN US? Nope. But if you look under local news from the US Southwest you will find this number one headline: “Former anchorman out of prison.” Or this headline, ranked second: “Henna tattoos cause family pain.” The Education page leads with a story about college affordability.

As the school buses pass my window here in Texas, taking kids to their unconstitutional destinations, I’m reading parts of the US Supreme Court decision in 1973 that set the precedent for not putting Texas education on the national agenda. The Rodriguez case, which was the first of the “Edgewood” cases to be filed–way back in the summer of ’68–set the Supremes to fidgeting over the prospects of “wealth equalization.” They said they could handle a lawsuit where folks were completely deprived of some good because of poverty, but the if the High Court started getting involved in cases where relatively poorer people were only relatively deprived of such things as education, well you know, the great black-robed scions might have to stop taking summer breaks!

Full Article:counterpunch.org
(more…)

by Douglas Jehl
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 – A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.

The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

“There’s a significant amount of pessimism,” said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments – concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts’ conclusions – included in the document.

Full Article: NY Times

by Mark Dunlea
…The daily pain has receded after three years. The anger has not.

Much of my anger comes from the manipulation of 9/11 by politicians and the media while both groups refuse to seek the truth to 9/11.

I am mad the 9/11 became an excuse to unleash American military forces in pursuit of a global American empire in support of corporate globalization, rather than as an opportunity to strengthen the rule of international law and promote a different vision of the world, one dedicated to peace and justice.

I am mad that the dark forces within the Bush administration used 9/11 to increase their power while the Democrats stood and cheered.

I am mad that so little effort has been made to hold accountable those who helped kill so many innocent people on 9/11.

A poll released by Zogby International last week found that half of New York City resident – and more than 40% statewide – believed that the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 terrorist threats beforehand but failed to take action to prevent it.

The real question is not whether the Bush administration allowed 9/11 to happen, but why? Was it criminal negligence? Stupidity?

Full Article:commondreams.org

Mark Benjamin
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (UPI) — Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports, according to military data reviewed by United Press International. The Pentagon said most don’t fit the definition of casualties, but a veterans’ advocate said they should all be counted.

In addition to those evacuations, 32,684 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan now out of the military sought medical attention from the Department of Veterans Affairs by July 22, according to VA reports obtained by UPI. The number of those visits to VA doctors that were related to war is unknown.

The military has evacuated 16,765 individual service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries and ailments not directly related to combat, according to the U.S. Transportation Command, which is responsible for the medical evacuations. Most are from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Full Article:UPI

Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time last night that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal.

Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN’s founding charter. In an interview with the BBC World Service broadcast last night, he was asked outright if the war was illegal. He replied: “Yes, if you wish.”

He then added unequivocally: “I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal.”

Mr Annan has until now kept a tactful silence and his intervention at this point undermines the argument pushed by Tony Blair that the war was legitimised by security council resolutions.

Mr Annan also questioned whether it will be feasible on security grounds to go ahead with the first planned election in Iraq scheduled for January. “You cannot have credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now,” he said.

Full Article:Guardian UK

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) – Saboteurs blew up a junction where multiple oil pipelines cross the Tigris River in northern Iraq on Tuesday, setting off a chain reaction in power generation systems that left the entire country without power, officials said.

Firefighters struggled to put out the blaze after the attack near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad. Crude oil cascaded down the hillside into the river. Fire burned atop the water, fueled by the gushing oil.

In Vienna, Iraqi Oil Minister Thamer al-Ghadhban said the country would try to keep up its production of more than 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, 2 million of which is exported daily, but he didn’t say how.

“I’m confident security will be improved,” al-Ghadhban said ahead of an OPEC meeting here Wednesday.

Full Article: AP News

by Rupert Cornwell
The Bush administration asked Congress yesterday to shift $3.5bn (£1.94bn) of funds earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction into short-term spending.

The aim is to bolster security and help oil production ahead of the Iraqi elections which, despite the continuing violence, the White House insists will take place in January.

The move came on the day that at least 59 people were killed in attacks by insurgents in Baghdad and the nearby town of Baquba. It is seen by critics as a change in US strategy and an admission that efforts to rebuild the country have failed.

Under the scheme, $1.8bn allocated for longer-term infrastructure projects will be redirected into an emergency effort to train and equip Iraqi police and security forces; $450m will go to help the oil industry; and $360m to meet the budgetary costs of forgiving virtually all Iraq’s outstanding $4bn pre-war debt to the US.

The shift reflects the belief in Washington that the insurgents who have turned some cities, especially north and west of Baghdad, into no-go areas are likely to keep up the attacks at least until the US elections – and maybe longer in an attempt to disrupt the Iraqi elections. Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said the change was “a de facto recognition that the neoconservatives’ goals for restructuring Iraq can never be achieved”, and amounted to the “Vietnamisation” of US military strategy. As Washington rushed in funds to create an Iraqi force capable of replacing US and British troops, American commanders had shifted to holding actions and surgical strikes.

Full Article: Independent UK

by Felicity Berringer
Every fall, after raising their young near Teshekpuk Lake and the Colville River, tens of thousands of geese and tundra swans leave the North Slope of Alaska for more southerly shores. Some end their journey at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the flatlands of North Carolina.

Both habitats could be transformed if current Bush administration initiatives come to pass. The birds would have oil rigs as neighbors in Alaska and be greeted by Navy jets simulating carrier takeoffs and landings in North Carolina.

That such projects could bracket the birds’ path is not surprising in light of the priorities of the administration. Over the last three and a half years, federal officials have accelerated resource development on public lands. They have also pushed to eliminate regulatory hurdles for military and industrial projects.

From the start, Bush officials challenged the status quo and revised the traditional public-policy calculus on environmental decisions. They put an instant hold on many Clinton administration regulations, and the debates over those issues and others are intensely polarized.

The administration has sought to increase the harvesting of energy and other resources on public lands, to seek cooperative ways to reduce pollution, to free the military from environmental restrictions and to streamline – opponents say gut – regulatory and enforcement processes.

In a recent interview, Michael O. Leavitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, summed up the Bush administration’s philosophy. “There is no environmental progress without economic prosperity,” Mr. Leavitt said. “Once our competitiveness erodes, our capacity to make environmental gains is gone. There is nothing that promotes pollution like poverty.”

The administration’s approach has provoked a passionate response. Asked about his expectations in the event of President Bush’s re-election, Senator James M. Jeffords, the Vermont independent who is the ranking minority member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, wrote in an e-mail message: “I expect the Bush administration to continue their assault on regulations designed to protect public health and the environment. I expect the Bush administration to continue underfunding compliance and enforcement activities.”

Mr. Jeffords concluded, “I expect the Bush administration will go down in history as the greatest disaster for public health and the environment in the history of the United States.”

Full Article: NY Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell reacted with guarded criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin’s new steps to consolidate his power over Russia’s political system, warning that the fight against terrorism should not become an excuse to move away from “democratic reforms of the democratic process.”

Full Article: NY Times

Ah please now don’t make me laugh…