DAMFA

December 13, 2003 -- THE Times got another big-time snub from President Bush yesterday - just a few hours after its Washington Bureau Chief, Philip Taubman, boasted on C-SPAN that more than 100 copies of the "well-read" newspaper are delivered daily to the White House.

"I don't read those editorials," Bush told a reporter who asked a question specifically about a Times editorial that ran yesterday. "Maybe you ought to ask the question not in that context but in another context."

At the end of the session, Bush said more diplomatically, "I didn't mean to diss the New York Times editorial page, but I just didn't - I'm not reading it a lot these days."

He quickly added: "Or anybody else's for that matter."

This leak," Daniel Ellsberg replied, "is more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers." The exposure of the memo, he said, had the potential to block the invasion of Iraq before it began: "Truth-telling like this can stop a war."

Katharine Gun's truth-telling did not stop the war on Iraq, but it did make a difference. Some analysts cite the uproar from the leaked memo as a key factor in the U.S.-British failure to get Security Council approval of a pro-war resolution before the invasion began in late March.

A forceful proponent of the war, Sen. Joe Lieberman, said Dean is in a "spider hole of denial,'" a reference to Saddam's ignominious hideout and Dean's assessment of the capture's impact.

President Bush scored a major political victory with the capture of Saddam Hussein, but it won't give him a break from Democratic rivals who continue to argue that he mishandled the war in Iraq.

With all respect, this is narrowed down to a choice between Howard Dean and me.

"If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would be in power today, not in prison."

Mr. Milosevic, whose trial began in February 2002, is facing 66 charges, including genocide, stemming from his role in those wars, which left more than 200,000 people dead, destroyed villages and towns, and drove more than a million people from their homes. General Clark will be a witness for the prosecution. ...

General Clark faces direct cross-examination by Mr. Milosevic, who conducts his own defense and usually demands as much time to question a witness as the prosecution. Frequently, he is given more time.

the Bush administration has demanded the right to edit videotapes and transcripts of the sessions before they are made public. ...

Closed sessions are routinely held at the United Nations tribunal that deals with Balkan war crimes, but usually to protect witnesses's safety. The conditions of General Clark's appearance are new. ...

Among the 280 witnesses who have already testified at the trial, there have been many high-profile witnesses and many senior military officers from other nations. Only France is known to have insisted that its top military officers testify behind closed doors.

Rochester has the fourth-best "knowledge-based economy" in the world.

So says Robert Huggins Associates, a think tank based in the United Kingdom that ranked 125 regions for its 2003-04 World Knowledge Competitiveness Index.

The report defines a knowledge economy as "the capacity and capability to create and innovate new ideas, thoughts, processes and products, and to translate these into economic value and wealth."

Rochester beat out better-known regions such as Seattle; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Tokyo; London; Hong Kong; and Ontario, Canada. ...

... The Huggins index ranked Rochester first in the world for patents per capita, first in instrumentation and electrical engineering employment per 1,000 inhabitants, fourth in expenditures on primary and secondary education, 15th in labor productivity and 18th in gross domestic product per capita.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has named James Brown, the so-called "Godfather of Soul," to a new and unusual, but apparently fictitious, senior diplomatic position, the State Department said.

Spokesman Richard Boucher confirmed Monday that Powell had indeed appointed Brown to be the first US "secretary of soul and foreign minister of funk" but said the job description for the post had not yet been drawn up.

Over a typical 20-year life span of a solar cell, a single produced watt should cost as little as $0.20, compared with the current $4.

The new solar cells would even be able to compete with electricity generated by burning fossil fuels such as oil and gas, which costs about $0.40 per watt, said Salvo Coffa, who heads ST's research group that is developing the technology.

"This would revolutionize the field of solar energy generation," he said.

"What I did hear was, that Dean and Gore told the cabbie to 'take us to Harvard,' and he dropped them off in Harlem instead," Rangel said.

Clark refused to be drawn into discussions about Dean and his lead over the eight other candidates, preferring to stick to "what's wrong with George Bush and his policies."

He accused the president of supporting a policy of "perpetual war," and proclaimed himself "the person to face down the commander in chief."

Rangel agreed, saying: "In times of war, we need a warrior."

Q. But Iraq now says, over the weekend, that it will not accept tougher rules for inspection. Doesn't that make the case now for the administration?

GOV. HOWARD DEAN, D-VT: Not quite yet. There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies. The question is, is he an immediate threat? The president has not yet made the case for that.

The Pentagon officials said the Halliburton subsidiary involved in Iraq reconstruction work, Kellogg, Brown & Root, also submitted a proposal for cafeteria services that was $67 million too high. The officials said the Pentagon rejected that proposal.

The defense officials said they had no reason to believe the problems were anything other than "stupid mistakes" by Halliburton.

Q. But Iraq now says, over the weekend, that it will not accept tougher rules for inspection. Doesn't that make the case now for the administration?

GOV. HOWARD DEAN, D-VT: Not quite yet. There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies. The question is, is he an immediate threat? The president has not yet made the case for that.

Senior Bush political managers have been ordered to curb their cockiness but many of them privately say President Bush has drawn the opponent of his dreams in Dean - a left-leaning Democrat they contend can be tarred as a latter-day George McGovern.

"The best thing Bush has going for him is that Dean is a weak Michael Dukakis," a key Bush official told the Daily News. "Dukakis won 10 states. Unless things turn very bad for Bush, I don't see Dean winning more than five." ***

A second prominent campaign adviser echoed: "We are extraordinarily happy today."***

As early as last August, Bush political aides were silently cheering on Dean's candidacy from the sidelines.

"We can't say this publicly," one aide said then, "but we love that Dean's coming on. Never in a million years did we think there was a chance we'd get Dean."

The price of fuel sold in Iraq, set by the government, is 5 cents to 15 cents a gallon. The price is a political issue, and has not been raised to avoid another hardship for Iraqis.

An e-mail found in a collection of files apparently stolen from Diebold Elections Systems' internal database recommends charging Maryland "out the yin-yang" should the state require Diebold to add paper printouts to the $73 million voting system it purchased.

Doctors say the troops quietly knew the turkey was plastic, but did not dare contradict their Commander in Chief's orders to "Have some Turkey."

"I knew I should have said something, but when the president speaks, a true patriot should never question it," says private first class Ryan Earhardt of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who also ate the largest portion of the mercury based paint covering the plastic bird.

You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force - force, pride and saving face."

"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," Colonel Sassaman said.

As noted earlier, the Democrats' brain-trust is heavily populated with lawyers and professors, while the GOP draws its talent from the marketplace - from commerce and advertising. Thus the Democrats are inclined to approach the electorate as if they were in a courtroom or a seminar room. The Republicans treat the voter as if s/he were walking on to a used car lot. The result? The Democrats win the arguments, and the Republicans win the elections.

The Democrats have a rich assortment of issues, and that very variety could prove to be counter-productive. So they must pick the hottest items, simplify the message, and repeat and repeat and repeat. About the time that the candidates get sick and tired of repeating "the same-old-same-old," is the time the public may begin to "get it."

To the Coalition for a Just Cincinnati, a black activist group that Friday sent letters to President Bush and all of the Democratic presidential candidates urging a federal investigation, Jones was "mercilessly beaten to death" by Cincinnati police officers in a "modern day lynching."

Contrast that with the opinion of one white caller to a local radio talk show, who remarked: "I won't say he got what he deserved. But I'll say he got what he started."

The Civil War left a trail of blood and bitterness that twisted its way through successive generations and set the stage for a frenzy of so called mob justice that killed thousands of men, women and children, most of them black. And between the years 1880 and 1905, a period of twenty five years, not one person was ever convicted of any crime associated with these killings. Lynchings are, in effect, the most extensive series of unsolved murders in American history.

Undoubtedly, the real numbers were much higher for lynchings were often unreported by local authorities. *** By 1932, lynchings had decreased to a new low of ten incidents and during the entire decade only 88 blacks were lynched.

CUNNINGHAM: Alan, from the get-go Nathaniel Jones was completely in charge of what happened to him. Nathaniel Jones was responsible for weighing 200 pounds overweight.

LAWSON (Jones family lawyer): No.

CUNNINGHAM: Too many purchase Big Boys, too many Krispy Kreme doughnuts, too many Sliders from White Castle.***

HANNITY: Mr. Lawson, this is about money now, isn't it? This has become -- You're going to sue the city for millions, aren't you?

CUNNINGHAM: He's a multimillionaire.

LAWSON: Can they give me his life back?

CUNNINGHAM: He's a multimillionaire because of this.

LAWSON: Well, you're damn right I'm going to sue them for money. Can they give him his life back? Can they give him his life back?

CUNNINGHAM: If we keep incentivizing them, you're going to be a millionaire.

LAWSON: Can they give him his life back?

COLMES: We've got to go.

CUNNINGHAM: No I'm sorry he's dead, but you're a billionaire.

"At some point, you've got to hold Mr. Jones accountable," Webster said. "These police officers are not responsible for his death."

That is when the officer is at his most dangerous. He would wade through a pile of corpses to emerge alive at the end of the encounter. Professional officers exercise prudence in determining the amount of force necessary to maintain law and order, and then they act swiftly.

Occasionally, officers succumb to the temptation to manhandle a suspect just to show who is the boss. It is that needless extra whack that defines the line between necessity and a malicious intention to harm.

__________@aol.com wants off of the spamfa victim list, she's a pregnant republican!!

Take me off this list and don't send me anymore of this crap Thanks

please don't send me anymore emails. Thanks.

nearly 74 percent of respondents said they'd be amenable to receiving information from PR pros, with a caveat: nearly half say they would post a negative review if they don't like the product or service being pushed.

A mere 13.4 percent of respondents run ads in their blogs, while 50.6 percent are not open to doing so. Of those who don't carry ads, 43.5 percent said they simply "don't want to." However, 15.7 percent of respondents noted that they "want to, but... do not know how" - trumping the number of bloggers who believe that blogs and advertising don't mix (15 percent).

After ordering at the drive-thru April 23, Nolan became angry when she was told the restaurant's cheeseburgers didn't come with mayonnaise. Witnesses said she threw the burger back through the drive-thru window.

The manager offered her another burger but Nolan then complained about her french fries and drink.

When she couldn't pacify her customer, the manager called police and was told to take down the woman's license plate number. When she went outside, Nolan hit her with her car.

Nolan testified she was startled by a car horn, accelerated and accidentally hit Jenkins.

Did you feel you were blindsided by Dean's success?

Well, not blindsided. I mean, when I voted for the war, I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, "I'm against everything"? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did.

French Magazine says 1700 US military quit Iraq.

PARIS, Dec 04, 2003 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- One thousand and seven hundred U.S. soldiers have deserted their posts in Iraq, with many of them failing to return to military duty after getting permission to go back to the United States, according to the French weekly magazine Le Canard Enchaine.

The magazine, known for its satires and exposes, said the French intelligence agency obtained the information from what it described an "American colleague."

Citing a senior French official posted in Washington, the magazine also said that 7,000 U.S. soldiers have left Iraq allegedly due to psychological troubles and other illnesses.

Some 2,200 others sustained serious injuries including the loss of limbs, it said.

Abel did say that Capt. Steve McAlpin of the 401st influenced the Army's decision to clarify its deployment policy. His concerns about the legality of deploying soldiers before their "dwell time" was up caused a national media stir, which "had something to do with" the Army's clarification.

"Dean: First let's kill all the big media congloms"

During an appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" [Monday], Dean said one of his goals as president would be to "break up giant media enterprises" because he is concerned about the influence media companies have over American communities. ... He then proceeded to contradict his earlier statements by saying that media conglomerates "can't be as big as they are today" - but that "I don't think we actually have to break them up."

Officials changed their version of radio contact during the flight and one of the most published photos from the trip had a shade of deception. The picture showed the commander-in-chief apparently passing around turkey on a platter when the bird was reportedly only for decoration.

A deal the city made with the Justice Department and black activists was intended to help prevent the kind of struggle that preceded Jones' death. The agreement reached last year was part of a collaboration that ended a racial profiling lawsuit and a Justice Department investigation of police practices.

It called on police to institute non-aggressive measures to help prevent repeats of several cases in which black men died in custody or while being arrested.

They included the 1997 shooting of a mentally ill man who threatened to throw a brick at officers; the 2000 death of a man who suffocated after being handcuffed; and the 2001 shooting of a man who ran from officers who tried to arrest him.

The latter case sparked three days of riots that ended only when a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed.

"We are concerned about what seemed like excessive force," the Rev. Calvin Harper, president of the Baptist Ministers Conference of Greater Cincinnati and Vicinity said Tuesday night.

"We also are concerned that there seems to be a rush to exonerate the police and an attempt to assassinate the character of Nathaniel Jones before all of the facts are in."

Some people in the mostly black audience of 300 cried as they watched videotapes of the confrontation Sunday between six officers and Nathaniel Jones, 41. A video camera in a police cruiser showed that Jones swung at an officer, and that officers hit him repeatedly with nightsticks.

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume called police behavior "well outside the norm for subduing an unarmed suspect. ... No one wants to second-guess the police, but it's hard not to be sickened at the sight of the police beating this unarmed man."

"I didn't like it at all," Anna Gary said. "I was just thinking, 'What if it were my brother, or my son?' It could have been my dad. I just wouldn't want to see that again happen to anybody."

You've been seeing a lot of that videotape where a 400-pound suspect who was high on cocaine PCP starting fighting with Cincinnati police officers. Most people are calling it a police beating. But SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY agrees with the mayor of Cincinnati that the use of force was justified. So, we will not be calling this a police beating. We'll be calling it resisting arrest.

Where has there been lynching of black men in Cincinnati? I'd love to hear of an example, if there is one.

May I cite the Rodney King rule? A black man being beaten by white officers on the ground cannot be expected to put his hands behind his back when clearly, his life is at stake.

what kind of medical distress actually causes one to throw punches at a police officer?

The peak effect is reached in 15 to 30 minutes after smoking the drug and abusers report that they stay "loaded" for 4 to 6 hours, then feel normal in 24 to 48 hours. ... While some users experience mild to intense euphoria, others feel threatened and because of fear, anxiety, or panic - can behave violently. The drug may also release hidden emotional or mental problems.

"Police talked about Skip like he was an animal," said Jones' grandmother, Bessie Jones.

"But he was wasn't. Skipper was just a good, old, fat, jolly fella."

The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity. People tend to take to the streets because they want to consume more, not less. Given a choice between a new set of matching tableware and the survival of humanity, I suspect that most people would choose the tableware.

Grudges, in any event, do not play well in a small state where leaders and voters rub elbows daily in the grocery store, the post office or while pumping gas. Instead, partisan discord often is resolved in spirited hockey games featuring Democrats versus Republicans.

Dean was known on the ice for his "cut and thrust" technique, said Willard Sterne Randall, a professor at Vermont's Champlain College. The same determination marked his style as governor, Randall said.

"apparently the White House put together its own group of people to accompany the president on this trip, and [Raven's] real interested to learn their reasons for doing that."

If convicted of manslaughter, he could face up to 10 years in prison, as well as a House ethics committee investigation.

Under the committee's rules, any representative convicted of a crime that carries two or more years in prison should refrain from voting in the chamber until his or her record is cleared, or until re-elected.

Other leading physicists, in Baghdad interviews, said the hope for an Iraqi atomic bomb was never realistic. "It was all like building sand castles,'' said Abdel Mehdi Talib, Baghdad University's dean of sciences.

Seven months after a U.S.-British invasion toppled Saddam's Baath Party government, Iraqi scientists have grown more vocal in countering Bush administration claims, used to justify the war, that Baghdad had "reconstituted'' nuclear weapons development, and that it once was a mere six months from making a bomb.***

"Iraq's Nuclear Mirage,'' a chronicle of years of secret weapons work and of a final escape into exile, is part of this senior scientist's emergence from a low profile in Canada -- intended to refute what he calls a "massive deception'' in Washington that led the United States into war.

Months of searching by hundreds of U.S. experts have found no trace of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, just as U.N. inspectors found none before the war. No Iraqi scientists have confirmed the programs were revived in recent years.

Bush administration officials still speak, nonetheless, of a threat from such weapons -- of Baghdad's ``robust plans'' for them, as Vice President Dick Cheney puts it -- in defending last March's U.S. invasion of Iraq. They offer no hard evidence, however.

When challenged in a question period after his address, Wolfowitz said he was "astonished" the credibility of the United States was being called into question given Saddam's track record.

"The real issue is, can you trust Saddam Hussein?" he asked. "And it seems to me the record is absolutely clear that you can't ... we are trusting our security in the hands of a man who makes ricin, who makes anthrax, who makes botulinum toxin, who makes aflatoxin, and who has no compunctions whatsoever about consorting with terrorists. Who do you want to trust?"

A product that might interest you: Saddam Hussein's race to make a nuclear bomb

``I think the country has to understand: we're not winning the war on terror. We are not winning the war on terror,'' Clark said. ``This administration took us into Iraq. It's a world-class bait and switch.''

``We are not winning the war on terror.''

About two weeks ago, he said, soldiers being redeployed at the 401st were asked to sign a waiver of Title X rights, a provision of the U.S. Code since 1953. Most of the officers refused to sign and all but four of the enlisted personnel called to redeploy agreed to sign, said McAlpin.

"If an officer said to sign something, you signed it -- that's what I did as a kid," said McAlpin of his own 12 years as an enlisted man. "Now I'm a little older, a little wiser and my mouth is a lot bigger."

The waiver -- "totally inappropriate," said McAlpin -- was created by Col. Guy Sands, commander of the 401st's parent unit, the 360th Civil Affairs Brigade based in Fort Jackson, S.C. Both units fall under the command of the 352nd Civil Affairs Command at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Officer: Clark Indirectly Involved in Waco

involved in the planning or execution of the Waco operation in any way, shape, form or fashion,'' says retired Army Lt. Gen. Horace Grady ``Pete'' Taylor, who ran the Fort Hood military base 60 miles from the site of the Waco siege.

Waco ``was a civilian operation that the military provided some support to'' and ``any decisions about where the support came from were my decisions, not General Clark's,'' Taylor said this week.

``Clark's totally innocent in this regardless of what anybody thinks about him,'' says Taylor, Clark's former commander. ``He played no direct role in this activity nor did any of us.''