More Bad News Dept: We all know that the printer companies have tried to turn their businesses into razor-blade schemes by selling printers at a loss and profiting from expensive supplies. You can almost buy a new printer for the same price as some replacement ink cartridges. It didn't take China long to figure out that money can be made selling replacement cartridges, which soon flooded the market, much to the chagrin of printer makers.

So they took the next step and added a proprietary chip to the cartridges to prevent unauthorized replacements. Soon after, chips were invented that could fool printers. In fact, a North Carolina company called Static Control Components is being sued by Lexmark for making cartridge clone chips. Lexmark is using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as leverage, saying these clone chips violate the act by bypassing copy protection. Lexmark should win merely by having more lawyers and going through civil instead of criminal courts.

As Hiawatha Bray writes in The Boston Globe: "You can see the future. Already some auto parts have chips embedded in them. Imagine a day when you can only replace a Ford headlamp with another Ford headlamp, or the car will stop running. Or imagine buying a house with nothing but Whirlpool appliances, designed so that a Kenmore fridge won't work."

It may actually be illegal, according to this law, to discuss any of this.

The declarations from the "new" Europe are freebies. Their positions are not quite as craven as the Turks, openly selling war support as if it were rugs in the bazaar (presumably "new" Europe, Turkey is acting very "old"), but they all expect a pay back.

Meanwhile, they are paying back France, Germany and Russia. To know the history of Eastern Europe is to understand why its nations would take glee in opposing almost anything that was simultaneously supported by Russia and Germany. Snubbing France doesn't bother them either.

Most of these nations were carved out of Russian and German empires after World War I, lost independence to Russians and Germans again in World War II and won it back with the collapse of the Soviet Union. They have scores to settle that have nothing to do with Iraq. Chirac is right that they missed a good occasion to shut up.

[S]o it seems that Turkey wasn't really haggling about the price, it just wouldn't accept payment by check or credit card. In return for support of an Iraq invasion, Turkey wanted ? and got ? immediate aid, cash on the barrelhead, rather than mere assurances about future help. You'd almost think President Bush had a credibility problem.

And he does.

The funny thing is that this administration sets great store by credibility. As the justifications for invading Iraq come and go -- Saddam is developing nuclear weapons; no, but he's in league with Osama; no, but he's really evil -- the case for war has come increasingly to rest on credibility. You see, say the hawks, we've already put our soldiers in position, so we must attack or the world won't take us seriously.

But credibility isn't just about punishing people who cross you. It's also about honoring promises, and telling the truth. And those are areas where the Bush administration has problems.

Consider the astonishing fact that Vicente Fox, president of Mexico, appears unwilling to cast his U.N. Security Council vote in America's favor. Given Mexico's close economic ties to the United States, and Mr. Fox's onetime personal relationship with Mr. Bush, Mexico should have been more or less automatically in America's column. But the Mexican president feels betrayed. He took the politically risky step of aligning himself closely with Mr. Bush ? a boost to Republican efforts to woo Hispanic voters -- in return for promised reforms that would legalize the status of undocumented immigrants. The administration never acted on those reforms, and Mr. Fox is in no mood to do Mr. Bush any more favors.

When newspaper headlines suggest that Washington's resolve may be wavering, anxiety sets in.

"Are they changing their mind?" Goli Afshar, a 23-year-old student, asked as she alternately tightened and loosened her grip on a mug at a cafe on Gandhi Street. "Can they hurry up with Iraq already, so they can get on with attacking us?"

Right. That's a stupid comment. But what really was meant here is the American policy. It's a figure of speech. Death to Israel means death to the system. It's like saying death to the occupation.

One of the essays is written by Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor who was fired because he appeared on the Fox News Channel show, The O'Reilly Factor. Al-Arian is typical of the people who find themselves under fire in the war against terrorism: he has no links to any of the 9-11 terrorists, and he denounced all terrorist attacks on innocent civilians without reserve. Yet because of his past criticism of Israel, and his guilt-by-association links to Palestinian terrorists, Al-Arian was deemed too dangerous to teach computer science.

The University of South Florida (USF) at first claimed ludicrous grounds for Al-Arian's firing: that he violated his contract as a tenured professor by appearing on a talk show without distancing himself from the university, and that he could be fired solely for receiving death threats which "disrupted" the university. A university where any professor can be fired for getting a death threat is neither safe nor free.

After being denounced even by conservative groups and Bill O'Reilly, USF on August 21, 2002 announced a change in tactics: Al-Arian would now be fired for his "terrorist" activities a decade earlier, even though he had never been charged with any crime despite extensive investigations, and a USF report had cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Technically, firing a tenured professor for his speeches and conference criticizing Israel is an even clearer violation of academic freedom, which is why USF avoided making this argument at the start. But in the wave of hysteria surrounding the war on terror, anyone labeled a "terrorist" can be fired without good reason. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush wanted Al-Arian fired, and his self-appointed Board of Trustees pressured USF to fire Al-Arian on any grounds.

The Al-Arian case poses an enormous threat to academic freedom: any professor can be fired for terrorist acts by anyone who works for an organization he founded, or even if a future terrorist attends a conference he organizes. Any professor can be fired for raising money for humanitarian causes if any of the money goes to a relative of a terrorist, even if it is done without his knowledge.

The Times' Nicholas Kristof fell for Al-Arian's line of malarkey as though he were one of the dopey girls on "Joe Millionaire." Kristof's ludicrous column of March 1, 2002, describes "Professor Al-Arian" as "a rumpled academic with a salt-and-pepper beard who is harshly critical of Israel (and also of repressive Arab countries) - but who also denounces terrorism, promotes inter-faith services with Jews and Christians, and led students at his Islamic school to a memorial service after 9/11 where they all sang 'God Bless America.' "

The act of singing "God Bless America" proves someone is innocent of conspiring to commit acts of terrorism?

Eric Boehlert of Salon.com expressed outrage that the Fox News Channel had taken out after Al-Arian. He described Al-Arian as an "innocent professor" and added that "media giants, eagerly tapping into the country's mood of vengeance and fear, latched onto the Al-Arian story, fudging the facts and ignoring the most rudimentary tenets of journalism in their haste to better tell a sinister story about lurking Middle Eastern dangers here at home."

The key issue for Kristof and Boehlert had to do with academic freedom - the principle that unpopular or controversial opinions deserve special protection at universities. In September 2001, after an appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor," the University of South Florida began proceedings to fire Al-Arian from his tenured position.

To Kristof and others, that notion was beyond the pale. The case, Kristof wrote, "is less about Professor Al-Arian than it is about ourselves: what kind of universities we desire, how much dissent we dare tolerate and how we treat minorities in times of national stress."

Yet this fact was well-known long before Kristof wrote that his column: Al-Arian was using the university as a means of organizing and fund-raising for a terrorist group.

It's a matter of public record that Al-Arian started a so-called "think tank" at the University of South Florida (USF) and hired as its director a man named Ramadan Abdullah Shallah. Shallah wasn't contacted by a headhunter and offered the job at Islamic Jihad one day out of the blue. He'd already been working for it for years. Which means he was working for Islamic Jihad under USF's auspices.

The university knew all about Sami Al-Arian for years. And officials there essentially closed their eyes and let him continue. Why? Precisely because of "academic freedom." But after 9/11, their dereliction of duty became a matter of public record - and after years of refusing to act, the university's new president finally chose to do something. Yet the American Association of University Professors actually threatened to remove USF's accreditation should it proceed with Al-Arian's dismissal.

This is madness. "Academic freedom" does not include the right to plan and execute a conspiracy to murder hundreds of people, including two American citizens - not under any concept of academic freedom known to any rational being.

We managed to reach some of the stars of the show, including Reverend Jesse Jackson, the self-styled champion of American civil rights. One of our group, Salima Kazim, an Iraqi grandmother, managed to attract the reverend's attention and told him how Saddam Hussein had murdered her three sons because they had been dissidents in the Ba'ath Party; and how one of her grandsons had died in the war Saddam had launched against Kuwait in 1990.

"Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people about my life?" 78-year old Salima demanded.

The reverend was not pleased.

"Today is not about Saddam Hussein," he snapped. "Today is about Bush and Blair and the massacre they plan in Iraq." Salima had to beat a retreat, with all of us following, as the reverend's gorillas closed in to protect his holiness.

The bottom line is that President Bush was dead right last month to offer $1.7 billion to boost hydrogen technology, although it would help if the White House also promoted high-mileage hybrid cars for the present. The government could also do more, by deregulating commercial power supply by fuel cells and by encouraging fleet purchases of hydrogen vehicles.

What does any of this have to do with Iraq?

Hydrogen cars are a reminder that there is more than one way to ensure our supplies of energy in the years ahead, even if invading Iraq and investing in hydrogen address the issue on very different time horizons. Nonetheless, I have to say that waging war seems a reflex, pushing toward a hydrogen economy a vision.

French public opinion has hardened against going to war on Iraq, according to a poll out on Monday.

By far the most common reason given for opposing the use of force was hostility to the United States' role in the crisis. A U.N.-mandated intervention would win majority support, however.

...

Offered a choice of three reasons to best explain why they opposed going to war, 76 percent of the anti-war camp said they "dislike they way the United States is behaving in the crisis".

Just nine percent said the were mainly against military action because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was not a threat to international security and 13 percent chose to explain their view by saying the crisis did not affect France's interests.

Opposition to war was rather stronger among left-wingers than among conservative supporters of President Jacques Chirac, 79 percent of whom favoured France supporting, with troops or at least indirect help, any eventual U.N.-backed military action.

There are two possible explanations for the great trans-Atlantic media divide. One is that European media have a pervasive anti-American bias that leads them to distort the news, even in countries like the U.K. where the leaders of both major parties are pro-Bush and support an attack on Iraq. The other is that some U.S. media outlets ? operating in an environment in which anyone who questions the administration's foreign policy is accused of being unpatriotic ? have taken it as their assignment to sell the war, not to present a mix of information that might call the justification for war into question.

So which is it? I've reported, you decide.

Couric: In this month's edition of The Atlantic Monthly, James Fallows writes, ‘Clinton had the worst beginning of an ex-Presidency since Richard Nixon flew to San Clemente in 1974; Certainly you did ignite a firestorm of criticism, with your pardon of Mark Rich. Had you the opportunity to do it over again, would you have pardoned him

Former President Bill Clinton: No. I would have waited and let President Bush do it. Because Vice President Cheney's a -- chief of staff was his main lawyer. And there would have been no media firestorm, and he wouldn’t be being investigated. That only happened to us. There’s a double standard there. It’s been two years now, and the Justice Department has not charged him.

So, if I was wrong, and they're right, why don't they charge him, and get the taxpayer's some money? I'm still waiting.

It is a chilly Monday in late March, just less than a year ago. I am at Princeton University. My host is Prof. Peter Singer, often called -- and not just by his book publicist -- the most influential philosopher of our time. He is the man who wants me dead. No, that's not at all fair. He wants to legalize the killing of certain babies who might come to be like me if allowed to live. He also says he believes that it should be lawful under some circumstances to kill, at any age, individuals with cognitive impairments so severe that he doesn't consider them ''persons.'' What does it take to be a person? Awareness of your own existence in time. The capacity to harbor preferences as to the future, including the preference for continuing to live.

At this stage of my life, he says, I am a person. However, as an infant, I wasn't. I, like all humans, was born without self-awareness. And eventually, assuming my brain finally gets so fried that I fall into that wonderland where self and other and present and past and future blur into one boundless, formless all or nothing, then I'll lose my personhood and therefore my right to life. Then, he says, my family and doctors might put me out of my misery, or out of my bliss or oblivion, and no one count it murder.

The U.S. Strategic Command has prepared a "Theater Nuclear Planning Document" listing Iraqi targets for a nuclear strike, according to The Los Angeles Times. Asked about the report, top administration officials growled in deep, macho voices that they were keeping all options on the table.

To his credit, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday seemed to dampen the wild talk. He said that "we will not foreclose the possible use of nuclear weapons if attacked," but added that "we can do what needs to be done using conventional capabilities."

The equivocation is well intended; it's meant to dissuade Saddam Hussein from using chemicals against us. But Bruce Blair, a former Minuteman launch officer who is better known as the president of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, notes that by publicly lowering our threshold for using nuclear weapons, we're sending a dangerous signal to other countries.

[Robert Bell, senior director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council] also dispelled the published report that the PDD expands U.S. nuclear options against a chemical or biological weapons attack. "This PDD reaffirms explicitly, virtually verbatim, the policy of this administration as we stated it the last four or five years, including during the extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT], the negotiation of the CTB [Comprehensive Test Ban] and the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention," he said.

Specifically, the PDD reaffirms the 1995 statement on negative security assurances issued by Secretary of State Warren Christopher on behalf of President Clinton at the time of the indefinite extension of the NPT. This statement reiterated in a slightly more restrictive form the 1978 statement on the non-use of nuclear weapons issued by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on behalf of President Carter.

In this context, Bell explained that it is U.S. policy not to use nuclear weapons first against any state except in three cases. First, "if a state that we are engaged in conflict with is a nuclear-capable state, we do not necessarily intend to wait until that state uses nuclear weapons first?we reserve the right to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict whether its CW [chemical weapons], BW [biological weapons] or for that matter conventional [weapons]," he said. Under the second scenario, Bell said the United States reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first "if a state is not a state in good standing under the Non-Proliferation Treaty or an equivalent international convention." Finally, he said if a state attacks the United States, its allies or its forces "in alliance" with a nuclear-capable state, then the United States reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first, even if that state is not a nuclear-capable state and is in good standing under the NPT. Because these three exceptions have existed for some time, Bell said "there is no policy change whatsoever in this PDD with respect to fundamental U.S. position on no first use of nuclear weapons."

As a part of contingency planning, the United States has, in my adult lifetime, always had contingency plans to do a variety of things. And it seems to me that if one looks at our record, we went through the Korean War, we went through the Vietnam War, we've gone through the war on terror, and we've not used nuclear weapons. That ought to say something about the threshold with respect to nuclear weapons.

Surely nukes won't be used in Iraq. But by noisily weighing their options, officials are undermining the taboo against such arms.

But Powell said though a spokesman today that he only urged that sanctions be allowed to work while that was administration policy and that from December 1990 on he was preparing for war and that he never gave any advice to the contrary to Carl Levin or anyone else. The vote on the Gulf War resolution came in January 1991.

[G]eorge W. Bush's admirers often describe his stand against Saddam Hussein as "Churchillian." Yet his speeches about Iraq -- and for that matter about everything else -- have been notably lacking in promises of blood, toil, tears and sweat. Has there ever before been a leader who combined so much martial rhetoric with so few calls for sacrifice?

Or to put it a bit differently: Is Mr. Bush, for all his tough talk, unwilling to admit that going to war involves some hard choices? Unfortunately, that would be all too consistent with his governing style. And though you don't hear much about it in the U.S. media, a lack of faith in Mr. Bush's staying power -- a fear that he will wimp out in the aftermath of war, that he won't do what is needed to rebuild Iraq -- is a large factor in the growing rift between Europe and the United States.

Why might Europeans not trust Mr. Bush to follow through after an Iraq war? One answer is that they've been mightily unimpressed with his follow-through in Afghanistan. Another is that they've noticed that promises the Bush administration makes when it needs military allies tend to become inoperative once the shooting stops -- just ask General Musharraf about Pakistan's textile exports.

The US is the biggest trading partner of Pakistan, and in the last year the volume of two-way trade stood at $2.43 billion, followed by EU countries with annual trade volume of over $2.4 billion. Pakistan currently exports a total of $1.9 billion worth of apparel and textiles annually to the United States and is the fourth-largest supplier of these goods. The US government as stated above is in agreement that Pakistan textile should be given more accessibility in the US market, however they are also facing pressures from different lobbies and US textile industry against permission of more space to Pakistan products in the US market. The pressure against Pakistan or other country products is due to economic recession in the aftermath of September 11 events in the United States.

But more broadly, they may have noticed something that is becoming apparent to more and more people here: the Bush administration's consistent unwillingness to take responsibility for solving difficult problems. When the going gets tough, it seems, Mr. Bush changes the subject.

Last week's budget is a perfect example. The deterioration in the long-run budget outlook is nothing short of catastrophic; at this point a fiscal train wreck appears inevitable once the baby boomers retire in large numbers. Should we be reconsidering those tax cuts? Should Mr. Bush tell the American people how he plans to cut Social Security and Medicare?

I hope this satisfies readers who, when I criticize bogus arguments for privatizing Social Security, demand to hear my answer to the crisis. There isn't any crisis: the system looks good for 40 years, and with a bit of extra resources can survive indefinitely.

The White House has an easier solution. First, it has conveniently decided that budget deficits are not a bad thing after all. Second, it has stopped making long-run projections, and now looks only five years ahead. And even those projections don't include any allowance for the cost of an Iraq war.

The Europeans don't think so. In fact, they view Mr. Bush's obsession with invading Iraq as a demonstration of why he can't be trusted to deal with what comes next.

In the United States it is taken as axiomatic that America is a country that really faces up to evildoers, while those sniveling old Europeans just don't have the nerve. And the U.S. commentariat, with few exceptions, describes Mr. Bush as a decisive leader who really gets to grips with problems. Tough-guy rhetoric aside, this image seems to be based on the following policy ? as opposed to political ? achievements: (1) The overthrow of the Taliban; (2) . . . any suggestions for 2?

Meanwhile, here's how it looks from Paris: France was willing to put ground troops at risk ? and lose a number of soldiers ? in the former Yugoslavia; we weren't. The U.S. didn't make good on its promises to provide security and aid to post-Taliban Afghanistan. Those Americans, they are very brave when it comes to bombing from 10,000 meters, but they expect other people to clean up the mess they make, no?

And French officials have made no secret of their belief that Mr. Bush wants to invade Iraq not because he is truly convinced that Saddam Hussein is a menace, but because he'd rather have an easy victory in a conventional war than stick to the hard task of tracking down stateless terrorists. I'm not saying they're right; I have no idea what Mr. Bush is really thinking. But you can understand their point of view.

In the days ahead, as the diplomatic confrontation between the Bush administration and the Europeans escalates, remember this: Viewed from the outside, Mr. Bush's America does not look like a regime whose promises you can trust.

MEMRI's report has identified the main characteristics of Saudi Arabia's education system, raising many questions for the Saudi government to answer. Their initial response is commendable for its acknowledgement of the need to reform the Saudi education system. But for the most part these statements have been presented to the Western world in English, not to the Saudi people, and certainly not to the larger Arab-Muslim world. At the same time, however, statements in Arabic by Saudi government officials have consistently defended the religious teachings associated with jihad and hatred of Jews and Christians which have been a cornerstone of the Saudi education system and the controversy surrounding it.

Since the attack, I have seen, heard, and read thoughts of such incredible and surpassing stupidity that they must be addressed. You've heard them too. Here they are:

1) "We're not good, they're not evil, everything is relative."

Listen carefully: We're good, they're evil, nothing is relative. Say it with me now and free yourselves. You see, folks, saying "We're good" doesn't mean, "We're perfect." Okay? The only perfect being is the bearded guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The plain fact is that our country has, with all our mistakes and blunders, always been and always will be the greatest beacon of freedom, charity, opportunity, and affection in history.

If you need proof, open all the borders on Earth and see what happens. In about half a day, the entire world would be a ghost town, and the United States would look like one giant line to see "The Producers".

2) "Violence only leads to more violence."

This one is so stupid you usually have to be the president of an Ivy League university to say it. Here's the truth, which you know in your heads and hearts already: Ineffective, unfocused violence leads to more violence. Limp, panicky, half-measures lead to more violence. However, complete, fully thought-through, professional, well-executed violence never leads to more violence because, you see, afterwards, the other guys are all dead. That's right, dead. Not "on trial," not "reeducated," not "nurtured back into the bosom of love." DEAD. D-E --Well, you get the idea.

3) "The CIA and the rest of our intelligence community has failed us."

For 25 years we have chained our spies like dogs to a stake in the ground, and now that the house has been robbed, we yell at them for not protecting us. Starting in the late seventies, under Carter appointee Stansfield Turner, the giant brains who get these giant ideas decided that the best way to gather international intelligence was to use spy satellites. "After all," they reasoned, "you can see a license plate from 200 miles away." This is very helpful if you've been attacked by a license plate. Unfortunately, we were attacked by humans. Finding humans is not possible with satellites.

You have to use other humans. When we bought all our satellites, we fired all our humans, and here's the really stupid part. It takes years, decades to infiltrate new humans into the worst places of the world. You can't just have a guy who looks like Gary Busey in a Spring Break '93 sweatshirt plop himself down in a coffee shop in Kabul and say "Hiya, boys. Gee, I sure would like to meet that bin Laden fella". Well, you can, but all you'd be doing is giving the bad guys a story they'll be telling for years.

4) "These people are poor and helpless, and that's why they're angry at us."

Uh-huh, and Jeffrey Dahmer's frozen head collection was just a desperate cry for help. The terrorists and their backers are richer than Elton John and, ironically, a good deal less annoying. The poor helpless people, you see, are the villagers they tortured and murdered to stay in power. Mohammed Atta, one of the evil scumbags who steered those planes into the killing grounds (I'm sorry, one of the "alleged hijackers," according to CNN - they stopped using the word "terrorist," you know), is the son of a Cairo surgeon. But you knew this, too. In the sixties and seventies, all the pinheads marching against the war were upper-middle-class college kids who grabbed any cause they could think of to get out of their final papers and spend more time drinking. At least, that was my excuse. It's the same today.

Take the Anti-Global-Warming (or is it World Trade? Oh-who-knows-what-the-hell -they-want demonstrators) They all charged their black outfits and plane tickets on dad's credit card before driving to the demonstration in their SUV's.

5) "Any profiling is racial profiling."

Who's killing us here, the Norwegians? Just days after the attack, the New York Times had an article saying dozens of extended members of the gazillionaire bin Laden family living in America were afraid of reprisals and left in a huff, never to return to studying at Harvard and using too much Drakkar. I'm crushed. I think we're all crushed. Please come back. With a cherry on top? Why don't they just change their names, anyway? It's happened in the past. Think about it. How many Adolfs do you run into these days?

Shortly after that, I remember watching TV with my jaw on the floor as a government official actually said, "That little old grandmother from Sioux City could be carrying something." Okay, how about this: No, she couldn't. It would never be the grandmother from Sioux City. Is it even possible? What are the odds? Winning a hundred Powerball lotteries in a row? A thousand? A million? And now a Secret Service guy has been tossed off a plane and we're all supposed to cry about it because he's an Arab? Didn't it have the tiniest bit to do with the fact that he filled out his forms incorrectly -- three times? And then left an Arab history book on his seat as he strolled off the plane? And came back? Armed? Let's please all stop singing "We Are the World" for a minute and think practically. I don't want to be sitting on the floor in the back of a plane four seconds away from hitting Mt. Rushmore and turn, grinning, to the guy next to me to say, "Well, at least we didn't offend them."

SO HERE'S what I resolve for the New Year: Never to forget our murdered brothers and sisters. Never to let the relativists and bleeding-heart liberals get away with their immoral thinking. After all, no matter what your daughter's political science professor says, we didn't start this. Have you seen that bumper sticker that says, "No More Hiroshimas"? I wish I had one that says, "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."

McCain, Republican maverick, former POW and Vietnam War hero, cracked in his speech that if "Washington is a Hollywood for ugly people," then, considering the remarks coming out of Tinseltown about Iraq, "Hollywood is a Washington for the simpleminded."

Speaking before Powell's speech to the world body, Mandela said chief UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei were the only ones with the authority to determine whether Iraq was complying with U.N. resolutions.

"We are going to listen to them and to them alone. We are not going to listen to the United States of America. They are not telling us how they got that information," Mandela told reporters.

The administration identified five areas to which more resources would be devoted to stem tax cheating: abusive corporate tax shelters; unreported income among higher-income taxpayers; failure by employers to turn over taxes withheld from paychecks or even to withhold them; misuse of trusts and offshore accounts to hide income; and "tax denial" schemes that are based on claims that the tax code does not apply to most Americans.

The proposal is a first step toward reversing a long decline in enforcement of the tax laws. It could bring in billions of dollars owed to the government and would also help the states, which rely on Internal Revenue Service enforcement much more than on their own audits.

Jubeir, the Saudi spokesman, bristled at suggestions yesterday that the Saudis had failed to assist law enforcement in the Marri case. "The idea that someone would say we are not cooperating is simply not true. There is full cooperation," he said.

Mandela had a great opportunity to lead a democratic revolution in Africa, but he never even gave voice to cries for freedom for all Africans. Indeed, he lavished grotesque praise on many of the world's dictators, from Castro to Khadaffi, and repeatedly failed to intervene decisively at major potential turning points in countries like Zaire and Zimbabwe. Even now, an elderly retiree, he cannot bring himself to demand the removal of the mad tyrant Robert Mugabe, and he continues to genuflect before the dictators who supported the ANC in the bad old days.

Now he has unburdened himself of the accusation that President Bush is a megalomaniacal racist, about to unleash a new holocaust on the Arabs, and opposed to any U.N. role because Kofi Annan is a black man. He'd have done better to lambaste his own designated successor, President Mbeke, for his insane proclamations that AIDS is not caused by HIV, thereby justifying the government's failure to provide timely or adequate treatment to South Africa's AIDS victims. And he'd have done well to praise President Bush for being willing to commit huge amounts of American taxpayers' money to save Mandela's own infected people. No. He posed for the brain-dead anti-American crowd instead.

It's a pathetic spectacle, but entirely in keeping with the monumental failure of a man who could have been a great leader and world figure. Instead, he's failed his own country and his own destiny. He's become yet another African loudmouth, giving moral lessons to the world and tolerating corruption and misery on his own continent.

There are legitimate differences of opinion as to how to deal with the menace of Saddam Hussein, but your criticisms of President Bush and America are inappropriate and offensive. To accuse the U.S. of having racist motives in its determination to see the U.N. take strong action is to wrongly inject a theme which clearly has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

And to attack America, which has been the leader in bringing freedom to so much of the world, as a "country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world" and that doesn't care for human beings is grossly unfair, prejudicial, and simply wrong.

We who have admired you for so long do not believe these comments serve the goals of a freer, safer world, toward which the U.S. and South Africa are working. We hope that you will see fit to clarify your remarks.

As I wrote in April 2001: "In the hospitals one sees kids too small for their age, with hollow eyes and skin stretched tight across their faces. They wear blue-and-white striped pajamas, like the children in Hitler's Auschwitz."

While Western critics denounced President Bush's decision to include North Korea in the axis of evil, the long-suffering people of North Korea cheered it. I know; refugees have told me. They know how Ronald Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" was an early and important step toward its collapse. Moreover, the axis-of-evil remark proved prescient after North Korea's confession that it had a large, covert nuclear-weapons program. More and more high-ranking defectors have told us that Kim Jong Il's government is in a desperate situation, much closer to collapse than the outside world knows. This, they say, is why he needs the fear of nuclear annihilation to win concessions from the West, prop up his regime, and subjugate his own people.

I won't tell you my salary at either Princeton or the Times. But they are both very nice. Combined with royalties on my textbook with Maury Obstfeld, International Economics, which is in its 6th edition - it's the leading textbook in the field - and my wife's salary (she also teaches at Princeton), I am definitely comfortable. Hey, it's OK to make money as long as it's not based on exploiting insider status, and as long as you pay your proper share of taxes. My wife and I hope to be even more comfortable when the principles textbook we're writing starts to yield royalties. [emphasis added]

"We are happy that it broke up," government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi said.

"God wants to show that his might is greater than the Americans. They have encroached on our country. God is avenging us," he said.