Washington Post

"But ad rates are set by circulation figures: As circulation drops, so too will the amount papers can charge advertisers. / The result can be a vicious cycle. As advertising declines, newsrooms find it more difficult to afford overseas bureaus, extensive national operations and other editorial additions that help produce an authoritative daily report. As they cut back, they risk sending readers elsewhere for news, leading to further circulation declines and lower ad rates." [more]

"Tuesday's attack on civilians was just one of many, and anti-government rebel groups are growing more violent and numerous. From Bosnia to Sierra Leone, the world has a painful history of putting peacekeepers into situations where there is no peace to be kept. Darfur may be one more." [more]

"Nothing from the package has been spent on construction, health care, sanitation and water projects. More money has been spent on administration than all projects related to education, human rights, democracy and governance." [more]

Angry Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Ashcroft to provide the document, saying leaked portions that have appeared in news reports suggest the Bush administration is reinterpreting U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture. [more]

Friday, with 20 of its 23 members present, the Governing Council unanimously endorsed Allawi. There were no other candidates. [more]

Font, [his lawyer], told jurors the soldier believed that "because he had become a conscientious objector, he would not be required to serve in Iraq anymore." [more]

The US administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, acknowledged Friday that mistakes had been made in the occupation of the country and invited former Iraqi army officers who served under ousted president Saddam Hussein to help establish a new national force. [more]

"The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that the deadly insurgency that flared this month is 'a symptom of the success that we're having here in Iraq' and an effort to undermine the country's transition to self-government." [more]

"The Sunni-Shiite divide, already narrower in Iraq than in some parts of the Muslim world, is by all accounts shrinking each day that Iraqis agree their most immediate problem is the occupation. Many here say that, whatever value there was in deposing Saddam Hussein, the Americans have exhausted their goodwill and fueled suspicions by staying too long and producing too little progress." [more]

"All the elements are in place for a series of Supreme Court rulings this spring that will define the power of the commander in chief during wartime — and bring an election-year climax to the national debate over civil liberties and public safety that has been simmering since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." [more]

"Unlike the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which was established by a congressional resolution, the executive order creating the intelligence commission does not mention subpoena power or the authority to take testimony under oath or even hold public hearings." [more]

"The dispatch of soldiers to Iraq has jarred the national psyche. No Japanese soldier has fallen — or killed an enemy — since the surrender to the United States in 1945." [more]

"It's worth noting that the announcement came from an anonymous official, The Associated Press reported, a sign that the Pentagon wants its backpedaling to be done with as much secrecy as the American citizen gets inside the voting booth." [more]

" 'So much is being done in the name of New York, we are saying don't use our name to infringe on people's rights,' said Glenn C. Devitt, an organizer with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee." [more]

"After a series of lower-court rulings, the government convinced a federal appeals court in Richmond that the military — and not the courts — had the sole authority to wage war and that courts should defer to battlefield judgments. More than 100 law professors and other legal experts weighed in on Hamdi's side, arguing that no U.S. citizen can be held without a lawyer." [more]

"A consensus — based on false facts, outright lies and exaggerated fears — took over the nation ... More than 500 Americans and thousands of Iraqis have died for a mistake. Peace has not been brought to the Middle East and America is not only no safer than it was, it may well be in even greater danger. This was no mere failure of intelligence. This was a failure of character." [more]

"The decision to put the graphic five-minute, 38-second video on the Israeli Foreign Ministry Web site just hours after the Thursday morning explosion, which killed 11 people and the bomber, has unleashed an emotional public debate. Many Israelis are weary of a conflict that has turned buses, cafes and streets into targets and are increasingly frustrated with political leadership on both sides that has not stopped the violence." [more]

"The Pentagon plans to begin operation of a national missile defense system this summer, putting the first missile interceptors on alert weeks ahead of a previous autumn deadline." [more]

"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, invoking emergency powers, has authorized the Army to grow temporarily by 30,000 troops above its congressionally approved limit of 482,000 to facilitate a restructuring of forces severely strained by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and counterterrorism missions elsewhere." [more]

"Pentagon adviser Richard N. Perle, a strong advocate of war against Iraq, spoke last weekend at a charity event that U.S. officials say may have had ties to an alleged terrorist group seeking to topple the Iranian government and backed by Saddam Hussein." [more]

Top officials of the Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay told a military judge in Florida that the prison's Muslim chaplain, Army Capt. James Yee, would soon be charged with mutiny, sedition, espionage, spying and aiding the enemy — crimes that could lead to his execution. But authorities never charged him with any of those offenses. [more]

"A military defense lawyer for an Australian detainee expected to be the first man tried before a military tribunal denounced President Bush's rules for the special courts yesterday, saying they are skewed against defendants and could result in proceedings that resemble political trials in authoritarian Third World countries." [more]

"Sami Omar Hussayen, a doctoral candidate in computer science in a University of Idaho program sponsored by the National Security Agency, is accused of creating websites and an e-mail group that disseminated messages from him and two radical clerics in Saudi Arabia." [more]

"Investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones." [more]

"Suicide attackers carried out four coordinated car bombings Saturday outside the bases of U.S.-led forces in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing six soldiers from Bulgaria and Thailand as well as seven Iraqis, according to military officials." [more]

"The number of U.S. service members killed and wounded in Iraq has more than doubled in the past four months compared with the four months preceding them, according to Pentagon statistics." [more]

"The United States has backed away from several of its more ambitious initiatives to transform Iraq's economy, political system and security forces as attacks on U.S. troops have escalated and the timetable for ending the civil occupation has accelerated." [more]

"A presidential advisory board has concluded that a questionable claim about Iraqi efforts to obtain nuclear materials resulted from a desperation to show an active nuclear-weapons program." [more]

"The split decision by a three-judge panel in San Francisco raised the possibility that all the approximately 660 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay jail for alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters could also be given their first habeas corpus hearings in a U.S. court." [more]

"This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, 'President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended,' to insert the word 'Major.' " [more]

"A federal appeals court ruled today that the Bush administration overstepped its authority by detaining Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen seized in Chicago ... [and] said the administration has no inherent constitutional power to sidestep the normal procedures required to imprison a U.S. citizen seized on American soil." [more]

"Any trial of Hussein would be a hugely complicated undertaking, especially for an Iraqi justice system that barely exists eight months after U.S. forces captured Baghdad. Human rights organizations raised questions today about the credibility of a still-unformed Iraqi tribunal that would operate with U.S. backing." [more]

"As soon as [the governor] resigned, the local representative of the U.S. occupation authority appointed a former Iraqi air force officer as acting governor. To the protesters, that was unacceptable. The new governor, they insisted, should be chosen not by an American but by Iraqis — through an election." [more]

"The Bush administration has authorized creation of an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government." [more]

"During the past two months, more than 100 people have been killed in car bombings and other explosions targeting U.S. and allied forces, foreign diplomats and aid workers, and Iraqi security forces cooperating with the occupation authorities." [more]

"A flurry of terrorist attacks over the past several days, as well as the deaths of nine children Saturday in a U.S. air assault on a village where a lone Taliban terrorist was said to be hiding, have cast a jittery pall over preparations for an historic constitutional assembly scheduled to begin Wednesday." [more]

"The decision to demolish houses suspected of sheltering insurgents resembles a tactic long in use by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to punish the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Like the Israelis, troops with the 4th Infantry have also flattened wide swaths on roadsides to inhibit the laying of bombs." [more]

"With no public evidence or open court hearing in Abu Ali's case, the degree to which he may have been involved in terrorism remains a mystery. Neither Saudi nor U.S. authorities will say publicly whether charges have been filed against him or tell his family what alleged acts led to his lengthy detention. His rights as a U.S. citizen offer him no legal protection while he is in Saudi custody. And U.S. law enforcement officials appear content to leave him where he is." [more]

Homeland Security spokesman Bill Strassberger and other officials said a new border-control effort set to begin Jan. 5 ... will play a similar role in monitoring visitors. The program will use photographs and fingerprints to log entries and exits at major U.S. airports and seaports." [more]

"The CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert." [more]

"The Supreme Court intervened for the first time in the war on terrorism, announcing today that it will review the legal status of the 660 suspected terrorists currently being held in near-total secrecy in a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." [more]

"Arar said his prison cell 'was like a grave, exactly like a grave. It had no light, it was 3 feet wide, it was 6 feet deep, it was 7 feet high ... It had a metal door. There was a small opening in the ceiling. There were cats and rats up there, and from time to time, the cats peed through the opening into the cell.' " [more]

"In tactical terms, yesterday's action was troubling but unlikely to result in major changes in how the U.S. military operates on the ground and in the skies over Iraq. But the latest round of attacks in Iraq, and especially yesterday's deaths — which amounted to the biggest single day of losses since last spring's conventional war — may prove more significant in strategic terms." [more]

"Despite prewar claims, it is now clear Iraq had no active program to build a nuclear weapon." [more]

"[Ebadi] criticized U.S. military intervention in Muslim countries. Asked about Iraq and Afghanistan, she said in English, 'In Iraq and Afghanistan — especially in Iraq — people do not have water and electricity. And it is very important for people. How can we talk about human rights and freedom?' " [more]

"Mansour and others associated with the Northern Alliance said the group has no intention of threatening violence against Karzai or of disrupting national elections, whenever they are held. But they said several recent moves by Karzai to weaken their power had made them 'rethink' their support for his government." [more]

"The Israeli attack on an alleged terrorist camp inside Syria yesterday helped punctuate a message the Bush administration has been sending to Syria for months — stop supporting terrorist organizations. But analysts said it could also lead to a widening of the Arab-Israeli conflict, thus threatening the administration's efforts to stabilize Iraq and foster peace between the Israelis and Palestinians." [more]

"Americans are a mystery to many Iraqis, and Baghdad was awash in stories that reflected Iraqi ambivalence toward their new overlords. In Mansour, almost everyone thought the Americans had dropped a tactical nuclear bomb on the Saa restaurant in the effort to get Hussein." [more]

"Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark helped an Arkansas information company win a contract to assist development of an airline passenger screening system, one of the largest surveillance programs ever devised by the government." [more]

"The Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist," with the intent of intimating others from speaking out about the intelligence scandal. [more]

"Leaders of the House intelligence committee have criticized the U.S. intelligence community for using largely outdated, 'circumstantial' and 'fragmentary' information with 'too many uncertainties' to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda." [more]

"The Bush administration has decided to pursue a 16-year-old effort to deport two Palestinian activists who as students distributed magazines and raised funds for a group the government now considers a terrorist organization, despite several court rulings that the deportations are unconstitutional because the men were not involved in terrorist activity." [more]

"The master watch list will be tapped by thousands of federal law enforcement officers and many others ? from small-town cops making traffic stops to airport workers screening passengers to personnel managers checking on applicants for jobs at nuclear plants." [more]

"The order comes after months of concern inside and outside the Army that an over-reliance on Guard and Reserve forces by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism could adversely affect retention and recruiting. Some officials have expressed concern that this could break the Guard and Reserve system, which augments the active-duty force with critical engineering, military police, civil affairs and psychological operations specialists." [more]

"The death of [Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim], the most influential Iraqi cleric openly allied with the U.S.-led occupation, dealt a severe blow to U.S. efforts to build a representative postwar government ... [it] left a panorama of misery and devastation unparalleled since the fall of Hussein's government on April 9. The brick facades of shops were sheared away. Cars were flipped and hurled onto the sidewalk. Burned, mangled and dismembered bodies littered the street, trampled as others ran in confusion and panic for safety. " [more]

"Ashcroft has always been one of the Bush administration's most controversial figures ... but now the attorney general finds himself at odds with some fellow Republicans from Idaho to Capitol Hill who are troubled by the extent of his anti-terrorism tactics and angered by his unwillingness to compromise." [more]

"The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations." [more]

"The EPA inspector general said the agency was persuaded by the White House to omit cautionary language about the possible hazards from air pollutants such as asbestos, cadmium and lead after the World Trade Center towers fell. In addition, the report said the EPA omitted from early public statements guidance for the professional cleaning of indoor spaces, leading some people to return to their homes before they had been properly cleaned." [more]

"Classified spending next fiscal year will reach about $23.2 billion of the Pentagon's total request for procurement and research funding. When adjusted for inflation, that is the largest dollar figure since the peak reached during President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup 16 years ago." [more]

"The extraordinary move to recruit agents of former president Saddam Hussein's security services underscores a growing recognition among U.S. officials that American military forces — already stretched thin — cannot alone prevent attacks like the devastating truck bombing of the U.N. headquarters this past week." [more]

"Bush ... made the peaceful transformation of the Middle East the main justification for war in Iraq. With the failure to find forbidden weapons in Iraq, Bush and his aides have said the invasion of Iraq will allow it to become the linchpin of a stable and democratic Middle East. As a result, continued violence in Iraq and the Middle East would deprive the administration of another key justification for the war." [more]

"The description of active combat in Iraq was one of several statements Bush made in the interview that differed with earlier administration positions." [more]

"If the Bush administration had been wrong only about the Niger purchase, it would have indicated carelessness. But the references to nuclear weapons, taken as a whole, indicate dissatisfaction with the truth of the matter and a disregard for inconvenient facts." [more]

"The barrier will leave 300,000 Palestinians on the 'Israeli' side of the wall. Twenty thousand Palestinian residents of Jerusalem — Israelis in the eyes of Israeli law — live outside the fence, denied virtually all municipal and governmental services." [more]

"Recently, U.S. English [a group for which Schwarzenegger sits on the board of advisors] has come under the scrutiny of watchdog groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center for its hiring of [James] Lubinskas in March. [He] has long ties to right-wing nationalist groups, such as American Friends of the British Nationalist Party. The Summer 2000 edition of the AFBNP newsletter describes a meeting in which Lubinskas shared a stage with former Louisiana Klansman David Duke." [more]

"[The US Treasury] has been contacting an undisclosed number of protesters who placed themselves in harm's way before the war, warning them that they face $10,000 fines for violating U.S. sanctions that forbade most travel to Iraq and commerce with Saddam Hussein's regime. If they don't pay, the human shields face up to 10 years in prison." [more]

"According to knowledgeable U.S. and overseas sources, experts from U.S. national laboratories reported in December to the Energy Department and U.S. intelligence analysts that Iraq was manufacturing copies of the [missle]. Not only [its] alloy, but also its dimensions, to the fraction of a millimeter, matched the disputed aluminum tubes." [more]

" 'I don't believe that anyone who's wearing a uniform in this country in a public forum should be critical of the chain of command. Period,' [one] general said." [more]

"The system enables investigators to find patterns and links among people and events faster than ever before, combining police records with commercially available collections of personal information about most American adults. It would let authorities, for instance, instantly find the name and address of every brown-haired owner of a red Ford pickup truck in a 20-mile radius of a suspicious event." [more]

"A legal advocacy group filed papers yesterday in federal court in Los Angeles challenging the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act, the broad antiterrorism law that has come under increasing attacks in recent weeks in the courts and Congress. " [more]

"[National security adviser Condoleezza] Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz are the leading candidates to replace [Secretary of State Colin] Powell, according to sources inside and outside the administration. Another dark horse is former House speaker Newt Gingrich." [more]

"Kandahar police also say they feel demoralized and targeted. In July alone, one district police chief was shot to death on his way home from work and another was killed along with five of his officers when a band of about 20 armed men stormed their compound, police officials said. This past week, five or six government officials were ambushed and killed along the same isolated road where a Red Cross water engineer was executed in late March." [more]

"The administration is not seeking a second resolution because it is satisfied with the financial and peacekeeping assistance it is getting from other countries willing to participate without a broader U.N. mandate." [more]

"A Bush aide outlined a long-term strategy in which the United States would spread its values through Iraq and the Middle East much as it transformed Europe in the second half of the 20th century. As outlined, the U.S. commitment to Iraq and the Middle East would be far more expansive than the administration had described to the public and the world before the Iraq war." [more]

"So far, the United States has discovered no undisputed physical evidence that Hussein had stocks of chemical or biological weapons or was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program." [more]

"With little public notice outside immigrant communities, the government is moving to deport the largest number of visitors from Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries in U.S. history." [more]

"Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operation, the military officials said. Continuing casualties ... are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive." [more]

Funds "would go toward highway and school construction, other infrastructure initiatives, police training, beefed-up development of the Afghan national army, education projects and programs to help women enter the workforce." [more]

"John Brady Kiesling may have a promising future as a trivia question. But for one brief, undiplomatic moment, his resignation from the Foreign Service crystallized the opposition to the Iraq war." [more]

"With more than 60 percent of the Army's active-duty combat force deployed in Iraq, Army planners were forced to abandon six-month tours for most overseas deployments in favor of year-long assignments to sustain a force of that size. The last time the Army used year-long deployments was Vietnam, except for one peacekeeping rotation in the Balkans in 1995." [more]

"The information ... significantly alters the explanation previously offered by the White House. The CIA warned the White House early on that the charge, based on an allegation that Iraq sought 500 tons of uranium in Niger, relied on weak evidence." [more]

"For organizations that opposed the war, these are busy days. Not since hundreds of thousands of people across the country marched in antiwar rallies in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion has the rationale for the preemptive war come under such fire." [more]

The report "shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States." [more]

"The point is not that an apology is in order, though it plainly is. The point is that ... the vice president dismissed [contradictory] information out of hand and disparaged its source. He did not, however, refute it. Refutations plunge you into the realm of facts, where this administration is exquisitely uncomfortable." [more]

"U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that Iraqis loyal to former president Saddam Hussein may be organizing guerrilla operations against occupation forces and financing them with money set aside before the war, according to senior commanders and field officers here." [more]

" 'Sure, Bush is coming to visit our AIDS clinic — and he will be here for a whole four hours,' said Walfula Oguttu, editor-in-chief of Uganda's independent newspaper. 'But we all know it all has to do with fighting terrorism. His AIDS money is trying to buy Africa.' " [more]

"The administration that had 100 percent certainty that there were weapons of mass destruction has zero percent certainty as to where they are now. The White House and the president's defenders have reverted to their fall-back humanitarian position — that the removal of Hussein was justification enough for the war." [more]

"Military officials are worried that a barrage of non-fatal attacks — estimated by officials at more than a dozen a day in Baghdad — will sap troop morale and cause people to reevaluate official pronouncements that armed resistance to the U.S. occupation is small and militarily insignificant." [more]

"An investigation reveals that Pvt. Lynch — still in the hospital after 67 days — suffered bone-crushing injuries in a crash during the ambush." [more]

"The focus on Iraq has robbed domestic security of manpower, brainpower and money, [the counterterrorism adviser] said. The Iraq war created fissures in the United States' counterterrorism alliances, he said, and could breed a new generation of al Qaeda recruits. Many of his government colleagues, he said, thought Iraq was an 'ill-conceived and poorly executed strategy.' " [more]

"On Monday, officers recalled the assault as sophisticated and organised. 'They were definitely not some kids with pistols. It was well planned and well executed. They knew where we were in the building. They had done reconnaissance,' said Major George Pitt." [more]

"Bush spoke of Iraq's weapons program, rather than its weaponry, and referred to it in the past tense. Asked to clarify Bush's remarks, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush did not intend to make a distinction between weapons and weapons programs. 'The president, in saying programs, also applies that to weapons,' the spokesman said. Fleischer also said Bush believed Iraq had weapons when the war began." [more]

"The U.S. occupation authority has decided to handpick between 25 and 30 Iraqis to serve on an interim political council to advise U.S. officials on day-to-day governance issues rather than convene a large assembly where Iraqi delegates would debate the form and membership of their transitional administration, a senior U.S. official said today." [more]

"The report found that 54 of the 762 detainees were held for more than three months, despite objections from officials in the former Immigration and Naturalization Service that they should be released with 'reasonable dispatch.' " [more]

"Veteran senators from both parties, expressing some of the strongest congressional concern to date about the civil disorder in Iraq, appealed to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday to quickly bring the situation under control." [more]

"As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country." [more]

"Last month, [Arcata] joined the rising chorus of municipalities to pass a resolution urging local law enforcement officials and others contacted by federal officials to refuse requests under the Patriot Act that they believe violate an individual's civil rights under the Constitution. Then, [it] became the first in the nation to pass an ordinance that outlaws voluntary compliance with the Patriot Act." [more]

"This looks like America's moment. History should give us pause." [more]

"This is nation-building, Republican-style, with huge contracts awarded in secret to politically connected companies." [more]

"Most Americans are satisfied with U.S. and British efforts to restore civil order in Iraq, and they now rank humanitarian needs as the top priority there." [more]

"The Pentagon said yesterday that it has no plans to determine how many Iraqi civilians may have been killed or injured or suffered property damage as a result of U.S. military operations in Iraq." [more]

"In the months leading up to the Iraq war, U.S. scholars repeatedly urged the Defense Department to protect Iraq's priceless archaeological heritage from looters, and warned specifically that the National Museum of Antiquities was the single most important site in the country." [more]

"Ten days into the invasion of Iraq, the political imperative of waging a short and decisive campaign is increasingly at odds with the military necessity of preparing for a protracted, more violent and costly war, according to senior military officials. Top Army officers in Iraq say they now believe that they effectively need to restart the war." [more]

"A shuddering sense of outrage at President Bush and the United States fell over the Arab world today as television networks and newspapers reported a U.S. air assault that Iraqi officials said killed 58 people at a vegetable market in Baghdad." [more]

"The Army's senior ground commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, said today that overextended supply lines and a combative adversary using unconventional tactics have stalled the U.S. drive toward Baghdad and increased the likelihood of a longer war than many strategists had anticipated." [more]

"As they prepare to head across the border, U.S. military commanders fear that Iraq will become consumed by "rolling civil strife" erupting all around advancing troops, confronting them with the dilemma of how and whether to intervene. Senior U.S. officers, basing their predictions on intelligence and past experience, said they fear thousands of Iraqis could die." [more]

"As the U.S. attack on Baghdad gets underway, the military strategy dubbed 'Shock and Awe' by Pentagon war planners is emerging as a lightning rod for criticism in the international online media." [more]