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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FC24Df05.html
It featured all the trappings of a glorified video game. Thousands of Pakistani army and paramilitary troops played the hammer. Hundreds of US troops and Special Forces, plus the elite commando 121, were ready to play the anvil across the border in Afghanistan. What was supposed to be smashed in between was "high- value target" Ayman al-Zawahiri, as Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf enthusiastically bragged - with no hard (…)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/opinion/23KRUG.html From the day it took office, U.S. News & World Report wrote a few months ago, the Bush administration "dropped a shroud of secrecy" over the federal government. After 9/11, the administration’s secretiveness knew no limits - Americans, Ari Fleischer ominously warned, "need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Patriotic citizens were supposed to accept the administration’s version of events, not ask awkward questions.
But (…)

(CBS) In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his then top anti-terrorism adviser to look for a link between Iraq and the attacks, despite being told there didn’t seem to be one.
The charge comes from the adviser, Richard Clarke, in an exclusive interview on 60 Minutes.
The administration maintains that it cannot find any evidence that the conversation about an Iraq-9/11 tie-in ever took place.
Clarke also tells CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl that White House (…)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke on Tuesday rejected White House charges that he is playing election-year politics by attacking President Bush’s record on fighting al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
A day after a furious White House attempt to discredit him as a disgruntled former employee who has ties to the presidential campaign of Democrat John Kerry, Clarke hit the television airwaves to fight back.
"I’m not doing this because I’m (…)

Julian Borger in Washington talks to former White House insider Richard Clarke about US’s vulnerability to al-Qaida before the September 11 attack.
Tuesday March 23, 2004
JB: Condoleezza Rice wrote today in response to your book - that the Bush administration did have a strategy for eliminating al-Qaida and that the administration worked on it in the spring and summer of 2001? Is that true?
RC: We developed that strategy in the last several months of the Clinton administration and it (…)

An estimated 130,000 people all over Japan took to the street to demonstrate their renewed anti-war resolve, joining the March 20 international anti-war action, the first anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Preliminary checks tell us that peace action was held in 120 places across the country by citizens¡Ç peace group coalitions, NGOs, labor unions, and other groups.
In Tokyo, 30,000 people gathered at Hibiya Park in an anti-war rallyheld by the coalition of broad citizens¡Çgroups, (…)

On Saturday, March 20, millions of people around the world came into the streets as part of the Global Day of Action to "Bring the Troops Home Now" and "End Colonial Occupation from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti and everywhere."
In the United States - one of more than 60 countries that held protests - demonstrations took place in over 300 cities, including major regional actions of 100,000 in New York City, 50,000 in San Francisco, 20,000 in Los Angeles and 10,000 in Chicago. The (…)

Direct Action to Stop the War Newsroom: 415-305-5345
SAN FRANCISCO - March 19 - Over 500 Bay Area residents marked the anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by taking direct action at the headquarters of the Bechtel corporation to protest their exploitation of the Iraqi people and misuse of U.S. tax dollars. Two marches converged on Bechtel’s offices, one led by teachers holding a banner reading "Education Not Occupation," and one led by healthcare workers marching with banners (…)

March 22, 2004 Tel-Aviv
GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 -
www.gush-shalom.org/
[] Uri Avnery on the assassination of Sheikh Yassin [] Translation of Gush Shalom press release - sent out early morning [] Our call to join today’s Peace Now protest
[] Uri Avnery on the assassination of Sheikh Yassin
Avnery: "It is Worse than a Crime, it is Stupid!"
"This is worse than a crime, it is an act of stupidity!" commented Gush Shalom activist Uri Avnery on the assassination of Sheikh (…)

Yesterday, I took my small sign — "Lies!" — out onto the streets of New York City for several hours. If you’re not a cop in a copter looking down on a demonstration, or a journalist covering it from the sidelines, or a spectator watching it flow by, a march is invariably like a neighborhood in some city whose horizons are beyond sight. All you get to see is your own block or two as you’re swept along. I was, like any marcher, "embedded" yesterday, though of my own sweet choice, unlike our (…)