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Female GIs reporting rapes by U.S. soldiers Women say response lacking within military, some even threatened MILES MOFFEIT AND AMY HERDY Denver Post Posted on Sat, Jan. 24, 2004 Female troops serving in Iraq are reporting an insidious enemy in their own camps: fellow American soldiers who sexually assault them. At least 37 female service members have sought sexual-trauma counseling and other assistance from civilian rape-crisis organizations after returning from war duty in Iraq, Kuwait and other overseas stations, women's assistance and advocacy organizations say. "We have significant concerns about the military's response to sexual assault in the combat zone,"...

WMD sceptic will head search team By David Usborne and Patrick Cockburn 23 January 2004 A former senior member of the United Nations weapons inspection team has been appointed by the US government to lead more than 1,000 scientists combing Iraq for evidence that Saddam Hussein produced illegal weapons. The choice of Charles Duelfer, reported last night by ABC television, appears surprising. Earlier this month, he asserted that the claims about weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war in Iraq would never be substantiated. "I think it's pretty clear right now that they're not going to find existing...

Boob tube: Ex-safety boss spent $17G on TV By Jack Meyers Tuesday, January 20, 2004 Former Secretary of Public Safety James P. Jajuga, currently a focus of the burgeoning federal probe into misuse of grant money, spent $17,000 in anti-terrorism funds to buy a 60-inch plasma screen television for his office, records show. The acquisition was made in June 2002 while the Legislature was struggling to bridge a $2 billion deficit, and current public safety officials cannot justify the big screen TV's use in anti-terrorism efforts. ``I've only seen it used as a regular TV . . . or for...

US weapons hunter won't return to Iraq: report David Kay, the chief United States weapons hunter in Iraq, has told the CIA he will not return to his post, a US government source said today. "He has told the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet) that he doesn't want to go back, they have been trying to get him to stay," the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity. It was unclear whether the CIA had had any success in persuading Mr Kay, who came back to the United States for the Christmas holidays, to stay on the job,...

I believe in conspiracies John Laughland says the real nutters are those who believe in al-Qa’eda and weapons of mass destruction Believing in conspiracy theories is rather like having been to a grammar school: both are rather socially awkward to admit. Although I once sat next to a sister-in-law of the Duke of Norfolk who agreed that you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, conspiracy theories are generally considered a rather repellent form of intellectual low-life, and their theorists rightfully the object of scorn and snobbery. Writing in the Daily Mail last week, the columnist Melanie Phillips even...

With U.S. reliant on Chinese lending, two economies deeply linked BY JOHN SCHMID Milwaukee Journal Sentinel WASHINGTON - (KRT) - When an American buys a house, there's a decent chance the Chinese bankrolled a chunk of the mortgage. In fact, the People's Republic of China finances more consumer and government spending than any foreign lender other than Japan. Beijing's central bank, the People's Bank of China, buys mortgage-backed bonds from both U.S. home-lending agencies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to the tune of $48.6 million on average every workday. In that way, the central bank lends its vast dollar reserves,...

<p>Tests by Danish, British and U.S. experts have been inconclusive in determining if mortar shells unearthed last week in southern Iraq contain a blister agent, a Danish army spokesman said Wednesday.</p> <p>The 36 shells, discovered last week by Danish troops, are believed to be from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.</p>

How Paleo and Fusionist Conservatism Differ By Daniel Larison, Albuquerque Having already read Mr. Francis' article, I appreciated your thoughtful response. Though I cannot speak for anyone at Chronicles, and I certainly cannot claim to be a greater authority on paleoconservatism than the gentlemen who run that magazine, my sense is that paleoconservatism is principally distinct from "fusionist" conservatism in three things: paleoconservatism possesses a greater, overt hostility to Enlightenment assumptions about human nature and social organization; it takes a much more critical view of the culturally coarsening effects of commercialism and the market; arguably, while it does not deny...

Maybe Bush is Hitler -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: January 12, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com In 1934, four years before Germany annexed his native Austria in the Anschluss, the economist Ludwig von Mises left Vienna for the safety of Geneva. The great enemy of socialism – his damning critique, "Socialism," was published in 1922 – had seen clearly how the winds were blowing with the rise of the National Socialists. In 1940, he emigrated to the United States, where he warned of the rise of quasi-socialist statism in his 1944 book, "Bureaucracy." Unlike Mises, most people are taken by complete...

Real Message of The Bush Amnesty by Pat Buchanan If George Bush’s amnesty for between 8 million and 14 million illegal aliens is enacted, you can kiss the old America goodbye. Consider what the president is saying with his amnesty. He is telling us that he cannot or will not do his constitutional duty to defend the states from invasion. He is saying that he simply cannot or will not protect our borders or enforce our immigration laws. He is saying he will no longer send illegal aliens back. Not long ago, this would have produced calls for impeachment and...

Hollinger scandal engulfs great and the good By Stephanie Kirchgaessner in New York Published: January 5 2004 4:00 | Last Updated: January 5 2004 4:00 This week, a cast of political and business luminaries will find themselves in the Hollinger hot seat, after the unsealing of a law suit filed by an investor that contains new information about how the newspaper publisher's independent directors allegedly routinely approved millions of dollars in payments to executives and other related party transactions. The lawsuit, filed by Connecticut-based Cardinal Capital, paints a picture of a group of highly respected former politicians, including former Illinois...

Autonomy profits from US battlefront James Rossiter, Evening Standard 5 January 2004 SOFTWARE company Autonomy profited from America's war on terrorism and corporate fraud today with a landmark deal with one of the world's largest data firms. Sybase of San Francisco, which claims its systems power more than half the trades on Wall Street, has signed up one of the Cambridge firm's key information retrieval products to make its customer support run more efficiently. One of Autonomy's products will be used to back up Sybase's systems, which include the Sybase PATRIOT-compliance Solution, tailored for fraud detection in financial services firms....

Saddam's in the slammer, so why are we on orange? --------------------------------------------------------- Posted: December 30, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 David H. Hackworth Almost daily we're told that another American soldier has sacrificed life or limb in Iraq. For way too many of us – unless we have a white flag with a blue star in our window – these casualty reports have become as big a yawn as a TV forecast of the weather in Baghdad. Even I – and I deal with that beleaguered land seven days a week – was staggered when a Pentagon source gave me...

Conservativism, Chronicles and Paleoconservativism Thomas Fleming, the brilliant editor of the self-styled paleoconservative magazine, Chronicles, deserves much of the blame for the founding of ConservativeBattleline. Months ago, he published an editorial proclaiming the "fusionist" conservatism of old National Review was dead and that no one under 60 years old adhered to its principles any longer. In the most recent issue, leading columnist Samuel Francis makes the same damning indictment, adding, fusionism "died childless." Being over sixty myself, it was hardly apt to respond to the editor--this would merely confirm his charge. Besides, the truth hurts. I was afraid he was...

Blair under fire again for WMD claims GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN CLAIMS that weapons inspectors have uncovered massive evidence that Saddam Hussein had a network of clandestine laboratories have landed Tony Blair in trouble for the second time in a month after they were rubbished by the United States’ top man in Iraq. Paul Bremer, unaware the claims had been made by the Prime Minister, said the comments sounded like a "red herring" put about to undermine the coalition by someone opposed to military action. Once Mr Bremer realised the remarks were Mr Blair’s, he softened his criticism, but it was too...

The Christmas Truce By Robin Oliver December 23, 2003 Eighty-nine years ago this Christmas, just eight kilometres from the Flemish city of Ypres, an extraordinary event occurred between German and British troops in the narrow and perilous strip of no-man's land separating their trenches. Here on Christmas Eve on the British side of a muddy landscape, with the bodies of soldiers killed in the first Battle of Ypres two months earlier still lying where they fell, could be heard the sounds of Germans singing. It was thought they had been drinking. Alcohol was barred in the British front lines but...

Monday December 22, 3:02 PM US Republicans signal readiness to resume Iraq weapons probe US Senate Republicans have signaled their readiness to resume a probe into pre-war charges that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which was halted more than six weeks ago amid bitter partisan bickering. "I think we will have, hopefully, some public hearings by February," announced Pat Roberts, chairman of the US Senate intelligence committee, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" program. "We will get those questions out." US President George W. Bush and other top administration officials had accused Iraq of secretly producing chemical and biological...

<p>An article of faith among most Arab policymakers is that the U.S. gave Saddam Hussein a yellow-to-green light to invade Kuwait in 1990. Some of them will concede, albeit off the record, the yellow light was probably inadvertent and a reflection of inept diplomacy. Others state flatly, also off the record, that it had switched from yellow to green and that it was deliberate.</p>

Kay Plans to Leave Search for Iraqi Arms Members of Survey Group He Heads Being Diverted to Fight Against Insurgents By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A42 David Kay, the head of the U.S. effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has told administration officials he plans to leave before the Iraq Survey Group's work is completed and could depart before February, U.S. military and intelligence officials said. The move comes as more of Kay's staff has been diverted from the weapons hunt to help search for Iraqi insurgents,...

December 11, 2003 MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS FROM: WILLIAM KRISTOL & ROBERT KAGAN SUBJECT: Contracts for Iraq: Reverse the Pentagon's Decision President Bush, we suspect, is going to overrule the Pentagon's attempt to exclude from the bidding for Iraq reconstruction contracts certain countries that have opposed U.S. policy in Iraq. He might as well do it sooner rather than later, so as to minimize the diplomatic damage done by the Pentagon's heavy-handed and counterproductive action. We hold no brief for the Chirac, Schroeder, or Putin governments. We are also very much in favor of finding ways to work more closely...