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What are the political ramifications of "Memogate," (search) CBS's alleged exposé of President Bush's military records that turned out to be false? Was Kerry's campaign involved? We ask the experts: Geraldine Ferraro, former vice presidential nominee, and Dick Armey, former House majority leader.

Just How Bad Is Bush? By Robert S. McElvaine Mr. McElvaine is Professor of History at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss. mcelvrs@millsaps.edu The recent Republican National Convention presented George W. Bush's presidency as a triumphant success. Most professional historians take a radically different view. A significant number of historians, in fact, rank the Bush presidency as the most disastrous in American history. They're wrong. An informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by HNN found that eight in ten historians responding rated the current presidency an overall failure. Of 415 academic historians who expressed a view of President...

In July of 1950, during the first month of the Korean War, near the village of No Gun Ri, U. S. soldiers opened fire on a group of civilians gathered under a railroad bridge allegedly killing anywhere between 50 and 350 civilians. Over 50 years later, debate continues over what really happened. Watch host John Callaway as he welcomes to the Pritzker Military Library Charles Hanley, co-author of The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War, and Robert L. Bateman, author of No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, as they...

1 UNFIT FOR COMMAND, by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi. (Regnery, $27.95.) A negative appraisal of John Kerry's conduct in Vietnam. 2 AMERICAN SOLDIER, by Tommy Franks with Malcolm McConnell. (ReganBooks/HarperCollins, $27.95.) A memoir by the former head of the United States Central Command. 3 MY LIFE, by Bill Clinton. (Knopf, $35.) From Hope, Ark., to the White House: the autobiography of the 42nd president. 4 BUSHWORLD, by Maureen Dowd. (Putnam, $25.95.) A journalist's assessment of President Bush, based on her columns and articles in The New York Times. 5 EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES, by Lynne Truss. (Gotham,...

The New York Times, email notification to email subscribers only, reads for the Sunday Best-Seller List: "NEW ON THE BEST-SELLER LIST Hardcover Nonfiction #3) Unfit for Command By John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi A negative appraisal of John Kerry's conduct in Vietnam." ACTUAL PUBLISHED SUNDAY BEST-SELLER LIST LIST READS (see NYT link): "Hardcover Nonfiction #1) AMERICAN SOLDIER, by Tommy Franks with Malcolm McConnell. (ReganBooks/HarperCollins, $27.95.) A memoir by the former head of the United States Central Command. #2) MY LIFE, by Bill Clinton. (Knopf, $35.) From Hope, Ark., to the White House: the autobiography of the 42nd president....

The Israeli government has vowed to expel Yasser Arafat, calling him an "obstacle" to peace. But the 72-year-old Palestinian leader is much more than that; he is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades. Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I >>SNIPPED>> "I invented the hijackings [of passenger planes]," Arafat bragged when I first met him at his PLO headquarters in Beirut in the early 1970s....

<p>"Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason."</p> <p>"The myth of 'McCarthyism' is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of Sen. Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't hiding under the bed during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name."</p>

A recent survey by the Barna Research Group-which provides "information and analysis regarding cultural trends and the Christian Church"-asked "adults who do not consider themselves to be Christian" to give their impressions of the following categories of people: born-again Christians, Democrats, evangelical Christians, lawyers, lesbians, military officers, ministers, movie and TV performers, prostitutes, real-estate agents, and Republicans. Non-Christians, it turns out, have a low regard for evangelical Christians, whom they view less favorably than all the above-mentioned groups except one: prostitutes. The survey did not, however, reveal a general anti-Christian bias among the non-Christian population: ministers and born-again Christians ranked...

U.N. Oil-for-Food Programme Funding: The programme is funded exclusively with proceeds from Iraqi oil exports, authorised by the Security Council. In the initial stages of the programme, Iraq was permitted to sell $2 billion worth of oil every six months, with two-thirds of that amount to be used to meet Iraq’s humanitarian needs. In 1998, the limit on the level of Iraqi oil exports under the programme was raised to $5.26 billion every six months, again with two-thirds of the oil proceeds earmarked to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. In December 1999, the ceiling on Iraqi oil...

David Bloom is live on MSNBC now, with the news that captured soldiers have revealed to his battalion that Russians and French companies have been supplying NightVision goggles and that former Russian military officers are advising the Iraqis on how to fight American forces.

Dear colleagues, Please be advised that as a consequence of an eventual armed conflict in Iraq, museums may be subject of pillage and looting. Thus, we would be grateful if you could be vigilant with respect of art objects originating from Iraq offered for sale or reported to be stolen. Thank you in advance for your co-operation in this matter. Mounir Bouchenaki Assistant Director-General for Culture UNESCO - 1, rue Miollis - 75732 Paris cedex 15 Assistant Director-General for Culture Tel.: (33-1) 45 68 43 75 Fax: (33-1) 45 68 55 91 e-mail: m.bouchenaki@unesco.org ##### ##### ##### ##### Board of...

Resolution of the Board of Directors of the College Art Association http://www.collegeart.org/caa/advocacy/resolution03.html The following resolution was adopted by the College Art Association Board of Directors on February 23, 2003, in New York City: We artists, art historians, and art professionals of the Board of Directors of the College Art Association are deeply concerned about the threat to human life, cultural heritage, and freedom of expression in the name of patriotism and the war on terrorism, particularly as the prospect of war in Iraq gains momentum. The curtailment of civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad has a direct...

[RUSSERT PRESSES LANDRIEU ON TAXES:] MR. RUSSERT: Senator Landrieu, would you vote to make George Bush’s tax cut permanent? SEN. LANDRIEU: I will vote to make $1.3 billion of that tax cut permanent, and if we can make all of it permanent, Tim, I will. But let me say something about my opponent’s campaign. That is the first positive commercial she ran the entire campaign. Our own Republican governor said, “Her campaign was a cesspool.” Her opponent said that they won’t even support her because of the negative distortions of my record. And one thing on taxes I’d like to...

<p>NEW ORLEANS — The fight for the U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana may soon get as unruly as a Mardi Gras parade, as unpredictable as the bayou weather, as hot as a Cajun stew. The state won't be the battleground to determine which political party controls the U.S. Senate — a much-discussed possibility before Tuesday's Republican landslide — but it does offer its own kind of intrigue. Some predict that President Bush's popularity could propel the Republican candidate, Suzanne Haik Terrell, to an upset victory over incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu. Mr. Bush is expected to campaign here for Mrs. Terrell. But others point to the fact that some voters in Louisiana have expressed resentment toward the attempts of outsiders to influence the state's political affairs. Mrs. Landrieu ran against eight other candidates in Tuesday's election, collecting about 46 percent of the vote. Mrs. Terrell finished second, with 27 percent. Louisiana has a unique election system in which there are no primaries. If a candidate does not receive more than 50 percent of the vote on Election Night, a runoff is scheduled between the top two candidates, resulting in Mrs. Landrieu's facing off against Mrs. Terrell in the December 7 runoff. Compounding Mrs. Terrell's electoral chances, Republican Gov. Mike Foster on Thursday refused to support the Republican challenger in her bid to unseat Mrs. Landrieu. Also, Republican Rep. John Cooksey, who finished third with 14 percent in Tuesday's election, has said he will not provide assistance to Mrs. Terrell's campaign. Both men criticized the Republican National Senatorial Campaign for running a "smear campaign" through Terrell television ads. The governor even hinted that he might back Mrs. Landrieu in the race. "I was very put out on the tone of the last election, the negativism," Mr. Foster said Thursday. "If that's the best anybody can come up with," he said, "I'm certainly going to be on the other side. Whoever is the most negative? If it really gets like the last one, I can't be for that, no matter what the stakes are." "The night I conceded," Mr. Cooksey said, "I said I'd endorse [Mrs. Terrell] and that's it. I've done what I've done and that's it." Mr. Cooksey said Mrs. Terrell's election team had urged him to become co-chairman of her campaign for the December 7 runoff, in an attempt to unite the Republican Party faithful. He said he declined the offer. Mr. Cooksey said many Republicans are disenchanted with Mrs. Terrell's candidacy. "I don't even want to tell you what some of them are saying," Mr. Cooksey told the Baton Rouge Advocate. "They are not going to vote for Suzy. Some are going to vote for Mary." But on Friday Mrs. Terrell played down the significance of the defections of her fellow Republicans, saying endorsements don't mean that much. Some of the animosity among Louisiana Republicans was generated by the RNSC's decision to endorse Mrs. Terrell early in the campaign cycle, ignoring some of the other, more socially conservative, Republican candidates. The RNSC also spearheaded a bare-knuckled television campaign attacking Mrs. Landrieu right up to the closing days before Tuesday's election. The New Orleans Times-Picayune termed the TV ad campaign a "$3 million blitz." Silas Lee, a longtime New Orleans pollster, said he was not surprised by the governor's position. "He's always been an independent player," Mr. Lee said. "I'm sure the Terrell position now is, 'OK, if you won't endorse me, I'll call out some of my other friends, like George W. Bush.'"</p>

<p>The paper said half of the respondents in the survey felt that United States "deserved" the terrorist attacks of September 11, and that the U.S. war on terrorism was "a war against Arabs and Muslims."</p> <p>NICOSIA, Cyprus — While awaiting U.S. military action against Iraq, the Arab world feels increasingly vulnerable, frustrated and powerless, and criticism in the press and television is becoming more strident across the Middle East and North Africa, frequently bordering on hysteria.</p>

DOCUMENT: You’ll never guess who said this. 9/09 9:00 a.m. National Review Online Axis of Hypocrisy? Times have changed. Compiled by Steven Eros and Sherry W. Eros, M.D. http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document090902.asp QUESTION: Who made the following statements suggesting that the U.S. take unilateral military action against Iraq? The continued rule of Saddam Hussein poses a danger to the stability and security of the region. He has threatened his neighbors while doing everything possible to acquire weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of international law, even during the last several years, when subject to the most restrictive supervision in the history of...

<p>THOMAS J. BRAY writes in today's Wall Street Journal that we should be patient with the terrorists. We have lots of time. America does not to strike preemptively. We are above that. In democracies, we do not strike first. We wait to be struck. To strike first is not gentlemanly. Even if the Islamic maniacs and the nations in the Middle East which sponsor their terrorism are all acquiring weapons of mass destruction--nuclear, chemical and biological, we should wait until they strike first. Not us. Let them show how inferior they are. Let us show how superior we are.</p>

Our hero Barbara Olson who died while calling for advice and help in the crash into the Pentagon (we assume she must have been fighting to the last) is certainly the most prominent casualty of the September 11, 2001 terror attack. (By the way, I find it nauseating when people, and the networks in particular, refer to it as a "tragedy." In this context, "tragedy" might be appropriate to deaths due to an accidentally set fire, or a plane crashing due strictly to mechanical failure. It is not merely a tragedy when Arab fanatics turn airplanes into missiles, crash into ...

Did President Clinton's principal military supporter, retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, betray America and subject us to the anthrax threat and other bioterrorism attacks? In the most important piece of investigative journalism to date on the bioterrorism threat in general, and the anthrax attacks in particular, author and political scientist Edward J. Epstein (in a Wall Street Journal editorial article) attempts to trace the possible source of the anthrax which has killed several Americans, terrified a nation and cost billions of dollars. The trail leads Epstein to a tangled web ...

<p>Fox News and other news channels are showing the bin Laden tape, but commentators are neglecting the most important segment: bin Laden's account of dreams related to him by fellow terrorists. When one associate reports his dream anticipating the planes crashing into US buildings, bin Laden shushes him saying, if you have any more such dreams, keep them to yourself because they will endanger our plans. This shows that he knew in advance and was concerned that the plans would be exposed in advance by those have premonitory dreams.</p>