http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/ins/usdojig060203rpt.pdf http://www.plastic.com/article.html?sid=03/06/03/19432254

Well, so much for those of us who thought there was more to it an that. The Guardian quotes Paul "Bombers" Wolfowitz as: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,970334,00.html Update Thu Jun 5 10:53:51 EDT 2003: From the gulfwar-2 list:

...Guardian appears to have yanked the story - and for good reason. What Wolfowitz actually said, available via the transcript at DefenseLink, is substantively different: "Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different."

What makes The Guardian's actions even worse is that they ran the AP version days earlier:

"The primary difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options in Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil,'' he said."

The Defense Department's "Most Wanted" playing cards of Iraqi war criminals was a huge public relations success. It was only a matter of time before someone (like the Ruckus Society) turned the idea into anti-establishment agitprop.

In 1965, the the Infrastructure Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation Structure (ICEX) or "Phoenix" Project was created by the CIA as an effort to disrupt the Viet Cong infrastructure through a series of civilian assassinations and systemic torture. They build torture facilities in all 44 provinces of South Vietnam, murdered disruptive citizens, and blackmailed or extorted information from South Vietnamese citizens to root out Viet Cong sympathizers. The CIA's responses to Freedom of Information Act requests suggest that they would prefer to forget the whole thing. They would prefer that everyone else forget it, as well: after Saigon fell, most of the Phoenix documents were destroyed. The only remaining documents are now safely ensconced at Langley. Fortunately, Neil Brickham was responsible for a good part of the program, and saved all of his material. Douglas Valentine (who's writing a book on the subject, and seems dedicated to implicating the Department of Homeland Security in the matter) got his hands on Brickham's library and passed it on to the good people at the Memory Hole, who have posted the documents for all to see.

WorldCom was fined $500 million by the SEC for inflating its worth by about $9 billion. That might sounds like a big fine, but it's about a week's revenue. In any case, the company was doing so poorly that it went bankrupt, and left thousands of investors out to dry. They even changed their name back to MCI, since the WorldCom name was so tainted. Strangely, someone forgot to tell the General Services Administration. The GSA continues to spend about $1 billion a year with MCI, and just days after the SEC fine, awarded MCI the Iraq telephony contract. For those keeping score at home, MCI defrauded investors to the tune of $176 billion, resulting in $3 billion in lost pensions. The Bush Administration was so impressed that they fined MCI $500 million, and then promptly handed them a license to print Iraqi dinars. It's enough to make you want to boycott MCI. Too bad you can't boycott the GSA.

The reports are new, and the circumstances are sketchy, but the US has captured Abu Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Liberation Front and "mastermind" of the Achille Lauro hijacking. He was apparently in a house on the outskirts of Baghdad when Special Forces grabbed him. CNN is reporting that he's already tried to enter Syria where he was turned back. Expect a lot of arguing as to whether this helps the Bush Administration's policy or not. They will treat this as vindication of their "Iraq support terrorism" argument, which had been weak. The opposition will say that Abu Abbas isn't a member of Al-Qaeda, so they haven't vindicated anything.

A burly 39-year-old man named Qifa, assigned by Mr. Hussein's Information Ministry to keep watch on an American reporter, paused at midmorning, outside the inferno that had been the headquarters of Iraq's National Olympic Committee, to ask the reporter to grip his hand. The building, used to torture and kill opponents of Mr. Hussein, had been one of the most widely feared places in Iraq. "Touch me, touch me, tell me that this is real, tell me that the nightmare is really over," the man said, tears running down his face.

http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20030407-055713-8345r

To sate our insatiable appetite for war coverage, we've been combing the Internet for any English-language Middle Eastern media outlets we can find. We stumbled upon Arab News, which is published in English in Saudi Arabia, and has a number of reporters embedded with the US military. Many of the Arab News articles seemed a little, you know, tainted, so we poked around. Before long, we found them accusing Israel of launching the 11 Sep 2001 attacks in December 2002. That made them obnoxious, but we'll write that off to the general post-attack hysteria. A little more poking around, and they surpass "obnoxious", reaching "intellectually bankrupt". Here's a well-considered piece of reporting accusing the whole of the US media of being in the pocket of Israel. I like to think of the author, Hassan Tahsin, as their Thomas Freidman... except, you know, crazy. That gem also contains the OnePeople Quote of the Day:

"Moreover, as Zionism is surviving on lies, it exploits every opportunity to target Islam and this is evident following the September attacks on the US. Therefore, the US media that are controlled or dominated by Zionists continue attacking Islam, Muslims and Arabs taking advantage of the fact that the prime suspects in the attacks are Arab or Muslim."

Incidentally, the parent company of Arab News is H.H. Saudi Research and Marketing Ltd (SRM), chaired by Prince Faisal Bin Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. You can watch him duck important questions about the Saudi regime and Wahhabism in this interview on PBS' NewsHour.

Sunday: PRAY that the President and his advisors will seek God and His wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding.
Monday: PRAY that the President and his advisors will be strong and courageous to do what is right, regardless of critics.

That's "A Christian's Duty", from the good people at In Touch Ministries. The Australian ABC is reporting that the pamphlet was distributed to US troops in Iraq. It's unlikely that the government had anything to do with it, but it's also unlikely that a quarter million copies of Harper's would reach the troops.