contributions

Looters unleashed last year by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq overran a sprawling desert complex where a bunker sealed by U.N. monitors held old chemical weapons, American arms inspectors report.
Charles Duelfer’s arms teams say all U.N.-sealed structures at the Muthanna site were broken into. If the so-called Bunker 2 was breached and looted, it would be a new case of restricted weapons being at risk of having fallen into militants’ hands.
Separately, Human Rights Watch said Saturday it (…)

by MIKE FRANCIS
Six months after the fall of Baghdad, a vast Iraqi weapons depot with tens of thousands of artillery rounds and other explosives remained unguarded, according to two U.S. aid workers who say they reported looting of the site to U.S. military officials.
The aid workers say they informed Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the highest ranking Army officer in Iraq in October 2003 but were told that the United States did not have enough troops to seal off the facility, which (…)

by Tom Engelhardt
Looked at realistically Osama bin Laden’s intervention in our presidential election was undoubtedly an act of immediate organizational weakness, not strength. Had he had been capable of orchestrating the bringing down of another American tower or its equivalent, he certainly would have done so, but it was no less ingenious for that. His last major intervention, his self-scripted action-adventure film in real time, The Humiliation of America, cost his organization hundreds (…)

by Tisha Steyn
London - Cherie Blair, wife of the British Prime Minister, has criticised the policies of the US President George W Bush, attacking his stance on terrorist prisoners and gay rights, according to media reports here on Sunday.
Blair, a lawyer on a lecture tour of the United States, was condemned by supporters of the US President after a speech to Harvard law students in Massachusetts which contained a stinging rebuke to Bush, the Scotland on Sunday newspaper reported on its (…)

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Francis Elliott
Tony Blair has sent one of his closest advisers on a secret peace mission to mend relations with John Kerry, the United States presidential challenger, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
News of the confidential meeting comes as the campaign enters its final 48 hours, with the candidates running neck and neck. Mr Blair is concerned that he will appear isolated if George Bush loses in Tuesday’s poll, because of his support for the (…)

Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it. Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians...
by URI AVNERY
Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it.
Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the (…)

by Peter Dale Scott
In 1991, after the Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush proclaimed, "The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula." But the specter he and the Pentagon had feared for over a decade, of a devastating shrinkage of U.S. influence following a military withdrawal, had always been a phantom.
That "specter," of defeat in Vietnam, proved in time to be as harmless as a Halloween ghost. Asia did not tip as predicted toward the (…)

TEHRAN (MNA) — Only four days before the U.S. presidential election, suddenly a suspicious tape of Osama bin Laden is mysteriously “dropped off” at the Aljazeera office in Pakistan, warning of another September 11.
As the Republicans have been dogged by criticism of the futile attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, the disappearance of hundreds of tons of explosives in Iraq, and rising speculation about the possibility of vote-rigging, the airing of the videotape by the Aljazeera network seems (…)

by Anthony Harwood In Boston GEORGE Bush and John Kerry were tied in polls last night, suggesting Osama bin Laden’s terror tape had not swung voters.
One Republican strategist labelled the tape "a little gift" for Mr Bush for focussing voters’ minds on terrorism - the party’s strongest issue.
"Anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush," he said. But polls yesterday put support for the rivals at 46 per cent each - the same as last Sunday.
In the tape, (…)

It’s not too soon to talk about the problems the winner of Tuesday’s election will face. One of the biggest is the hemorrhaging cost of the war in Iraq.
The Bush administration, which got an early $25 billion down payment for the new fiscal year with the certainty of asking for more, has left the 2005 war budget’s bottom line conveniently blank until after the voters have spoken. But the estimates already circulating say that the president will have to ask for as much as $70 billion more (…)