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It’s disgusting to see people apologize for doing nothing wrong, especially to wrongdoers. On July 14, Miami-Dade County mayor Alex Penelas spoke at the NAACP’s national convention in Miami Beach and apologized for protests of Nelson Mandela during his June 1990 visit to Miami. Why did these protests occur? Maybe it had something to do with the former South African president’s affection for mass murderers. Sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1964 for armed resistance to the apartheid regime, Mandela was released in February 1990. In May he visited Libyan tyrant Muammar Qadhafi and received the “International Qadhafi Prize for...

6pmLeaked emails add to NY Times' woes Ciar ByrneThursday May 29, 2003The GuardianCan the headlines get any worse for the New York Times? Once a beacon of US broadsheet journalism, the Times has already been rocked by charges of plagiarism, and now its rival the Washington Post has heaped on fresh embarrassment by reporting an unseemly squabble between two senior journalists on the paper.According to leaked emails seen by the Washington Post, the Times' Pulitzer prize-winning Baghdad bureau chief, John Burns, was in high dudgeon when another Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, Judith Miller, filed an interview with Iraqi exile leader Ahmed...

The corrupt Saudi leadership has a vicious "tiger by the tail" named al-Qaeda, a beast that they assiduously cultivated without compunction. The heart of the matter is this - there is a palpable belief among many Americans that the ruling Saudi royals are a duplicitous bunch that cannot be trusted. And, despite Saudi Arabia's public relations endeavors, there's a sense that Saudi royals are profoundly entrenched in extremist ideology and in league with al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations as money trails have demonstrated. That said, even prior Saudi funding of al-Qaeda is indicative of complicity in heinous deeds, including the...

The Troika Of Duplicity By William A. Mayer Now that Saddam’s regime has been pounded back into the desert sand – brought about by what is likely the most stunningly effective use of military power in modern history - an awesomely updated lightning war - it is becoming clear that aside from ending Iraq’s participation in the Islamic terror network, the key prize that is emerging is intelligence - detailed and verifiable - on the inner workings of this nebulous, world-wide irregular army of fanatics, tacticians, planners, arms merchants and financiers. Indeed, hard copy evidence is now becoming available,...

"SPIEGEL-ONLINE" - SEARCH FOR EVIDENCE IN IRAQ Hunters of Dangerous Treasure While the USA searches for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, journalists are finding incriminating secret service documents completely by accident. Accordingly, Baghdad shall have sought contact to Al Qaida and France shall have informed Saddam about conversations with the USA after the attacks of September 11. AP/ San Francisco Chronicle The paper is real. US Soldiers found a lot of cash in stashes Berlin -- The sources are unclear and it can't be verified if the information is correct. Newspapers reports that incriminating documents shall have been found...

Does anyone have today's Times of London article which links the French to Iraq: Dossier reveals France briefed Iraq on US plans Matthew Campbell, Baghdad France gave Saddam Hussein's regime regular reports on its dealings with American officials, documents unearthed in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry have revealed If you can't post it, could you freep-mail it to me? Thanks.

FRANCE gave Saddam Hussein's regime regular reports on its dealings with American officials, documents unearthed in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry have revealed. The first Iraqi files to emerge documenting French help for the regime show that Paris shared with Baghdad the contents of private transatlantic meetings and diplomatic traffic from Washington. The information, said in the files to have come partly from "friends of Iraq" at the French foreign ministry, kept Saddam abreast of every development in American planning and may have helped him to prepare for war. One report warned of an American "attempt to involve...

NEWSPAPERS: DOCS SHOW IRAQ/AL-QAIDA LINK XXXXX FRANCE BRIEFED SADDAM ON PRIVATE MEETINGS WITH U.S. The SUNDAY TELEGRAPH is reporting that papers found by reporters at Iraq's bombed out intelligence service building provide evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida... An unidentified Western intelligence official describes the find as 'sensational' According to the papers, an al-Qaida envoy met with officials in Baghdad in March 1998 to create a relationship based upon a mutual hate of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. MORE///

FRANCE gave Saddam Hussein's regime regular reports on its dealings with US officials, The Sunday Times reported, quoting files it had found in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry. The conservative British weekly said the information kept Saddam abreast of every development in US planning and may have helped him to prepare for war. One report warned of a US "attempt to involve Iraq with terrorism" as "cover for an attack on Iraq", according to The Sunday Times. Another, dated September 25, 2001, from Naji Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister, to Saddam's palace, was based on a briefing from...

France briefed Iraq on war: report April 27, 2003 FRANCE gave Saddam Hussein's regime regular reports on its dealings with US officials, The Sunday Times reported, quoting files it had found in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry. The conservative British weekly said the information kept Saddam abreast of every development in US planning and may have helped him to prepare for war. One report warned of a US "attempt to involve Iraq with terrorism" as "cover for an attack on Iraq", according to The Sunday Times. Another, dated September 25, 2001, from Naji Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister,...

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Yesterday, the National Post's Sheldon Alberts quoted Foreign Minister Bill Graham congratulating himself on the fine diplomatic job Canada has done during the Iraq crisis. And you can see why he's proud of his work. Over the past few months, the Chrétien government has painstakingly manoeuvred Canada into a result that a) backs the United States while b) carefully ensuring that Canada can claim no thanks from the United States whatsoever. Nicely done, boys! For nearly 13 months, the Chrétien government has made it clear that Canada wanted no part of George W. Bush's Iraq policy. First it said it...

The self-serving French have made war inevitable and managed to raise US dislike for them to an all-time high, writes Ruth Dudley Edwards SADDAM Hussein dancing a triumphalist jig; Nato in mortal danger; the United Nations possibly in meltdown; the EU hopelessly split; and a peaceful resolution of the Iraq crisis now almost impossible: you certainly have to hand it to the French. But to be fair, they're consistent: you can always rely on them to let you down. Shortly, they'll be letting down the Germans and the Belgians. French foreign policy is notoriously visionary, daring and self-serving and its...

Let's try for a moment to see the world from France's point of view. For nearly half a century, the French have tried to recapture their former greatness by creating a united Europe with France in charge. The European Economic Community was headquartered from the beginning in Brussels, a predominantly French-speaking city. For a long time it excluded Britain, because -- unlike the guilt-ridden Germans -- the British refused to take orders from Paris .....

Tony Blair will today try to calm Labour Party anxiety over war in Iraq by insisting that Britain will not rush into an American-led conflict without seeking renewed United Nations backing. His message is designed to reassure party members, and an increasingly sceptical public, who do not believe the necessary proof has been found to justify risking British lives in a new Gulf war. Mr Blair came under more pressure yesterday to reassure the party and the public when Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, said it was Britain's "duty" to act as a restraining influence on Washington. Insisting that...

Tony Blair has told Washington that a war in Iraq could unleash a dangerous wave of anti-American feeling across the Muslim world unless it re-doubles efforts to secure peace in the Middle East. His comments were made public as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said he would hold telephone talks next week with senior Palestinian officials after an Israeli ban prevented them from attending a London meeting in person. "I am holding a telephone conference on Tuesday with senior members of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian civil society," Mr Straw said in a statement released by the Foreign Office. The...

Senate Democrats Leave on a Corporate Jet Plane By Thomas B. Edsall Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, July 13, 2002; Page A05 Right after voting yesterday morning to limit debate on legislation clamping down on corporate abuses, 16 Democratic senators flew on corporate jets from Washington to Nantucket, Mass., for a weekend retreat with 250 major campaign donors.

In a marked shift from his efforts three years ago to bottle up Clinton impeachment evidence, top Senate Democrat Tom Daschle called on Sunday for President Bush to release twelve-year-old records of his dealings with the Texas oil firm Harken Energy, files that several anti-Bush media outlets have suggested will reveal an insider trading scandal. "I think the president would do well to ask the SEC to release the file - release it all," Daschle told CBS's "Face the Nation." "Let everybody see just what is there." "There have been some real questions, I think, about what happened," the leading...