Smoking More Hazardous than Thought

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, making no mention of the prisoner-abuse scandal that has led to calls for his ouster, told a cheering crowd of graduating cadets Saturday that they will help win the global fight against terrorism.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter last week, WBIE senior vice president Jason Hall revealed that his company is now using review-aggregation sites such as GameRankings.com to determine royalty rates from publishers licensing properties based on Warner Bros. movie, television, or other media. If the game does not achieve an average 70-percent rating, the publisher will have to pay a penalty in the form of higher royalties.

"An escalating royalty rate kicks in to help compensate us for the brand damage that's taking place," Hall told the Reporter. "The further away from 70 percent it gets, the more expensive the royalty rate becomes. So, frankly, if the publisher delivers on what they promised--to produce a great game--it's not even an issue."

"I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein."—Washington, D.C., May 25, 2004

A soldier initially listed as killed in action while riding in the same doomed convoy as former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch actually had been captured by Iraqi fighters before he was killed, the Oregon National Guard said Thursday.

More than a year after the March 23, 2003, ambush, the military released new details to the family of Sgt. Donald Walters of Salem, Ore.

The Pentagon investigated his death after his mother filed Freedom of Information requests, believing the Army had not given her son credit for actions first attributed to Lynch, such as fighting until his ammunition had run out.

Walters "was held separately from his fellow soldiers and killed while in custody," according to a news release from the National Guard.

"He was executed - shot twice in the back," Guard spokesman Maj. Arnold Strong said in a telephone interview Thursday. "An Iraqi ambulance driver witnessed six fedayeen rebels standing outside a building guarding him while he was still alive. That same witness evacuated his dead body to a hospital."

Defense investigators confirmed the account by matching Walters' DNA to blood splatter on the wall where he was executed, Strong said. He died from two gunshot wounds to the back, fired from more than 20 feet away, according to Strong's account of the investigation findings.

Courtney Glowczewski has a small right arm and leg because of cerebral palsy, a disability that her teachers say has not kept her from working hard in school and being a good student.

"I do really good in my classes. My teachers tell me, 'Good job,' and, 'You're doing very good,' and 'Excellent girl,'" said Glowczewski.

But her physical appearance has made her a target of taunting and of physical attack, which she said has never been addressed by the administration at Martin Luther King Middle School. Last week, she said the bullying got worse when she said she was threatened and assaulted by a seventh grade boy.

"He pulled out a knife, a silver knife, a pocket knife, and then he said 'What!?' So I was scared and didn't know what to do," said Glowczewski.

As she walked to her seat she smelled smoke and one of her classmates was patting her hard on the back.

"I looked and there was a black spot on the back of my shirt. And then I saw some black hair falling from my hair," said Glowczewski.

7NEWS discovered that while Glowczewski was sent home, her alleged attacker is still in school, even though administrators confirmed he had a knife.

The principal has now admitted her staff did not call police, did not interview potential witnesses, and did not conduct a proper investigation.

At issue is the seal designed by the late Supervisor Kenneth Hahn that contains a tiny cross symbolic of the Catholic missions that are so much a part of the county's history.

In a letter to the supervisors, ACLU Executive Director Ramona Ripston says the cross is unconstitutional and has given them two weeks to act.

Antonovich responded with an irate letter that accused her of trying to rewrite history.

"Rewriting our historical roots is, to use an analogy, like eating a sandwich wrapped in a paper bag — it loses its taste," Antonovich wrote.

The genesis of the spat began with a controversy about the city seal of Redlands, which contained a cross. Last February, two Redlands residents complained to the ACLU that the cross was a religious symbol. ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner wrote to the city that the U.S. Supreme Court had declared such symbols on government logos and seals unconstitutional.

Redlands capitulated when faced with a lawsuit and ordered the cross removed from every city logo.

The ACLU then got calls that pointed out that the Los Angeles County seal also contained a cross.

Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering.

The Independent has found that mothers as young as 13 - the victims of multiple rape by militiamen - can only secure enough food to survive in the sprawling refugee camp by routinely sleeping with UN peace-keepers.

Testimony from girls and aid workers in the Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp in Bunia, in the north-east corner of Congo, claims that every night teenage girls crawl through a wire fence to an adjoining UN compound to sell their bodies to Moroccan and Uruguayan soldiers.

The trade, which according to one victim results in a banana or a cake to feed to her infant son, is taking place despite a pledge by the UN to adopt a "zero tolerance" attitude to cases of sexual misconduct by those representing the organisation.

Mubarak has previously defended the absence of a vice president by saying there is nobody qualified to fill the position.

One thing to whine about will be the fate of Israel. Without American safeguards that nation is certain to be militarily attacked. To judge by previous Israeli wars, in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982, the result will be serious headaches for Israelis as the Knesset furiously debates the status of Jewish settlements outside Damascus and on the west bank of the Euphrates.

A record year for political advertising has brought with it a hail of televised exaggerations, omissions and mischaracterizations that pollsters say seem to be leaving voters with mistaken impressions of Senator John Kerry and President Bush.

The degree to which the advertisements push the facts, or go beyond them, varies by commercial. But both campaigns are being criticized as frequently going beyond the bounds of truth.

In three of its advertisements, Mr. Bush's campaign has said Mr. Kerry would raise taxes by at least $900 billion in his first 100 days in office. Mr. Kerry has no such plan.

In an advertisment for Mr. Kerry, an announcer said, "George Bush says sending jobs overseas makes sense for America." Mr. Bush never said that.

A report to Congress by his top economic adviser said cheaper production of goods overseas had long-term benefits but did not make the plain case that domestic job losses were a good thing.

President Bush's campaign contends that in order to pay for all of the new programs Sen. Kerry has proposed, he would have to raise $900 billion. Kerry's proposed tax hikes on the rich and program cuts are reportedly insufficient to pay for all of the new programs.

A FEW YEARS AGO Michael Moore, who's now promoting an anti-President Bush movie entitled Fahrenheit 9/11, announced he'd gotten the goods on me, indeed hung me out to dry on my own words. It was in his first bestselling book, Stupid White Men. Moore wrote he'd once been "forced" to listen to my comments on a TV chat show, The McLaughlin Group. I had whined "on and on about the sorry state of American education," Moore said, and wound up by bellowing: "These kids don't even know what The Iliad and The Odyssey are!"

Moore's interest was piqued, so the next day he said he called me. "Fred," he quoted himself as saying, "tell me what The Iliad and The Odyssey are." I started "hemming and hawing," Moore wrote. And then I said, according to Moore: "Well, they're . . . uh . . . you know . . . uh . . . okay, fine, you got me--I don't know what they're about. Happy now?" He'd smoked me out as a fraud, or maybe worse.

The only problem is none of this is true. It never happened. Moore is a liar. He made it up. It's a fabrication on two levels. One, I've never met Moore or even talked to him on the phone. And, two, I read both The Iliad and The Odyssey in my first year at the University of Virginia. Just for the record, I'd learned what they were about even before college. Like everyone else my age, I
got my classical education from the big screen. I saw the Iliad movie called Helen of Troy and while I forget the name of the Odyssey film, I think it starred Kirk Douglas as Odysseus.

We define diversity as widely as possible - including, for example, age, ethnicity, economics, geography, sexual orientation, education and language.

French ideas, French beliefs and French actions form a sort of lodestone for humanity. A moral compass needle needs a butt end. Whatever direction France is pointing -- toward collaboration with Nazis, accommodation with communists, existentialism, Jerry Lewis, or a UN resolution veto -- we can go the other way with a quiet conscience.

Well, I'm speaking, of course, about the U.S. taking a new direction. I have here a list of active-duty personnel by country, which the Security Council alone has 6.2 million. If you subtract the United States, you still have nearly 5 million from the Security Council. From the Middle East, you have a total of 2.8 million troops. I mean, it's clear that the United States would have to take a new direction, away from unilateralism and away from pre-emption and away from away from the failed policies of this administration.

President fell off bike today... Kerry told reporters in front of cameras, 'Did the training wheels fall off?'... Reporters are debating whether to treat it is as on or off the record... Developing...

There had not been any threats or complaints about the campus wall, Vasich said.

California, famous for tanned bodies and year-round sunshine, will be the first state to restrict teenagers under 18 at artificial tanning booths if a bill passed yesterday by the Assembly becomes law.

Lawmakers, citing a rise in skin cancer cases in California and across the nation, voted 42-26 to add artificial tanning to the list of teenage no-no's. The bill requires teenagers to have a doctor's prescription before tanning indoors. Right now, California is among 27 states that require permission from a parent or legal guardian for teens ages 15 to 18 to use tanning salons. Children 14 and younger must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Teens like to visit tanning salons before proms, vacations and weddings, according to the tanning industry, which employs 160,000 people nationally and generates $5 billion a year. California is estimated to have 1,500 tanning salons.

But backers of the bill, including the California Society of Dermatology and Dermatologic Surgery, blame tanning salons, in part, for the 1 million new cases of skin cancer diagnosed every year in the United States. The group said 7,400 people die annually from melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

"There is a big difference between going to the beach and a tanning salon," said the bill's author, Assemblyman Joe Nation, D-San Rafael. "When kids go to the beach they put on sunscreen."

Vitamin D Deficiency Called Major Health Risk

Many Americans, particularly African Americans, may be suffering from unrecognized deficiencies of a key nutrient -- vitamin D -- that increase the risk of bone problems and perhaps a host of other diseases, a growing number of scientists say.

Pediatricians scattered around the country have been surprised to see children suffering from rickets, a bone disorder caused by vitamin D deficiency that had been largely relegated to a bygone era. A few doctors have come across adults who were disabled by severe muscle weakness and pain, sometimes for years, until they were treated for undiagnosed vitamin D deficiency. And recent studies suggest low vitamin D may be putting the elderly at higher risk for the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis and life-threatening falls and fractures.

But beyond bone and muscle problems, some evidence suggests a dearth of vitamin D may be associated with an array of more serious illnesses, including many forms of cancer, high blood pressure, depression, and immune-system disorders such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.

In response, many scientists have begun pushing to sharply boost the official recommendations for how much vitamin D everyone should get daily, either by taking supplements, by eating more food that contains the nutrient or from the sun -- a major source of vitamin D. [emphasis added]

A wooden baseball bat, no longer than 8 inches and visible through a car window, spurred Diamond Hill-Jarvis High School officials to call sophomore Cory Henson out of class Monday so they could search his vehicle.

Under the Fort Worth school district's zero-tolerance policy, Henson was immediately suspended, pending a conference with administrators Thursday. Officials will decide whether the bat is considered a weapon that would merit punishment, including placement in an alternative school or expulsion for up to a year. It was described as no bigger than the souvenir bats available at professional ballgames.

Sheila Henson said her son never gets in trouble. The 16-year-old plays junior varsity baseball at the school. Because of his suspension, he was not able to attend the end-of-the-year sports banquet this week.

"Why did it have to go to that level?" she asked.

What's more confounding to Henson is that it was the small bat, and not the full-sized aluminum bat that was in the trunk with other baseball equipment, that was confiscated as a weapon.

Kerry said he has voted in favor of "any number of judges who are pro-life or pro-something else that I may not agree with," some of whom were nominated by Republican presidents. "But I'm going to make sure we uphold what I believe are Constitutional rights and I'm not going to pick somebody who's going to undermine those rights."

"Do they have to agree with me on everything? No," Kerry said. Asked if they must agree with his abortion-rights views, he quickly added, "I will not appoint somebody with a 5-4 Court who's about to undue [sic] Roe v. Wade. I've said that before."

So we should vigorously pursue a "grand bargain" in which, among other elements, Iran maintains its freeze on uranium enrichment and we establish diplomatic relations and encourage business investment, tourism and education exchanges.

"What would destroy the conservatives [in Iran] would be a money flood" of American investment, says Hooshang Amirahmadi, the president of the American Iranian Council. "In just a few years, the conservatives would be finished."

Recently, over dinner, a slender, beautiful, young, intelligent. educated, securities sales woman employed by one of the big New York investment banks shared with me her concerns following the break-up of her long-term relationship with a wealthy young Southern California male. After reviewing with her the various criteria she had established for a future replacement main squeeze, we together did some quick probabilistic calculations of the type those in or close to the securities business are prone to perform during their more intimate moments. The calculations took into account, for example, the fact that there was absolutely no chance that she would be interested in even the best looking, most congenial fireman one could imagine. Nor was she interested in "poaching" on the already-married or near-equivalent. Gay was no-go, of course. Etc. After some fast work on a note pad and calculator thoughtfully provided by the restaurant (whose napkins were of the expensive damask variety not suitable for scribbling except for the most aggressive) we determined that there are, perhaps, eight men now located in the United States who would make suitable mates.

My charming dinner companion passed on dessert. [emphasis in original]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - There is a 50 percent probability that the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season will have above-normal activity, the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) said in its outlook.

If laboratory tests confirm the presence of sarin, that finding may not tell us much about whether Saddam Hussein retained a hidden chemical arsenal after supposedly destroying it.

The dwindling band of die-hards who remain convinced that Mr. Hussein squirreled away stockpiles of illicit weapons worry that insurgents may use them against American forces. But finding some residual weapons that had escaped a large-scale destruction program would be no great surprise — and if the chemicals had degraded, no major threat.

Iraq never declared any binary 155mm artillery shells. In fact, they never claimed any filled with sarin at all in the UNSCOM Final report (Find on "Munitions declared by Iraq as remaining"). Not declared as existing at the end of the Gulf War, not having been destroyed in the Gulf War, not having been destroyed unilaterally. The only binary munitions claimed by the Iraqis were aerial bombs and missile warheads. Not in an artillery shell.

As the energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, correctly noted yesterday, "The reserve is not there to simply try to change prices." In fact, the law calls for it to be tapped only in the event of supply disruptions. And even if Washington wanted to alleviate rising fuel costs, the reserve is not a very effective instrument for doing so, as President Bill Clinton learned in the fall of 2000. Experts estimate that at most, turning on the spigot now would knock only a few cents off a gallon.

Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, knows this, of course, and he demeans the seriousness of his own candidacy when he suggests that President Bush could single-handedly bring down fuel costs. Senator Kerry has urged the administration to stop buying oil for the reserve, as if that would make a difference. Fortunately, some residue of shame has kept him from joining the other Democrats calling for the reserve to be raided. The government's oil purchases have taken place at a time of higher prices, but they are not a major cause of the increase.

Bill Cosby was anything but politically correct in his remarks Monday night at a Constitution Hall bash commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. To astonishment, laughter and applause, Cosby mocked everything from urban fashion to black spending and speaking habits.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal," he declared. "These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.' . . .

"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English," he exclaimed. "I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' . . . And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. . . . Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. . . . You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"

The Post's Hamil Harris reports that Cosby also turned his wrath to "the incarcerated," saying: "These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"

When Cosby finally concluded, Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and NAACP legal defense fund head Theodore Shaw came to the podium looking stone-faced. Shaw told the crowd that most people on welfare are not African American, and many of the problems his organization has addressed in the black community were not self-inflicted.

The extension needed 60 votes to pass in the Senate, and 12 Republicans made sure the final tally was 59-40, with only one absentee, presidential candidate Kerry.

At least one Republican senator, Elizabeth Dole (N.C.), was prepared to switch to a “no” vote to make sure the measure was defeated even if Kerry returned to cast his vote, a Democrat charged.

Even if Dole had stood firm, observers on both sides believe the GOP leadership would have been able to turn other Republicans to ensure defeat.

But by calculating the vote to a nicety, the GOP managed to make Kerry appear to be responsible for the defeat because he was a no-show.

The Democrats say they suspect the Republicans engineered the one-vote margin, and the incident underlines how both parties are expected to use the legislature to tarnish their opponents.

High School Honor Awarded Half a Century Later

EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) — A woman whose stolen kiss in a long-gone era kept her out of the National Honor Society will be inducted 51 years late.

Catherine Peters Wagner, 69, of the Shaw High School class of 1953, will be inducted Friday.

Wagner said she was reprimanded after being caught giving a quick kiss to a boyfriend as they passed in a school stairwell during their senior year. She suspects that is why her name was left off a list of new honor society members posted a short time later.

"There was a character issue there, apparently," Wagner said. "I had the point average. I had the activities. Both of my sisters had been inducted with the same grades and activities. Same with my classmates."

Wagner, who now lives in Reynoldsburg near Columbus, went to Ohio State University on a music scholarship and played the cello with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra (search) for 29 years.

Last year she toured Shaw during a 50-year reunion and Gerald Dougherty, vice president of the honor society in 1953, heard her story and asked the school to get involved. Principal Clarence Bozeman arranged the induction.

As for Robert Wagner, the long-ago boyfriend she kissed in the stairwell: She married him and they'll celebrate their 48th anniversary this year.

Deep in remote northern Darfur, the Sudanese rebel fighters are gathering to talk tactics in the face of genocide. At this desert rendezvous, in the punishing terrain of the Sahara, we are 120 miles from the nearest settlement and 75 miles from the closest reliable water supply, a large reservoir.

There is little to mark Wadi Hawar as a hideout: the "camp" has no huts or tents. Rebels from throughout northern and western Darfur choose to meet here because they know that the brutal Janjaweed - the mounted Arab militia whose men are systematically "cleansing" western Sudan of its 80 black African tribes - will never find them.

It is 47C and the air ripples with heat. The dust creates a persistent, arid fog. The only shade comes from the scrubby trees, their branches stripped of leaves, and the rebels' 25 pick-up trucks. The commanders shelter under the thicker twigs; their men lie out in the sun.

Tattered and filthy, a boy moves among them, bringing water and tea, shying away from any adult who approaches. Aged just 12, Adam Erenga Tribe has more reason than most to shrink from grown men.

A month ago, Adam came home from school to find the government-backed Janjaweed burning his village in western Darfur. He watched more than 20 armed militiamen spur their horses through the inferno, slaughtering any who refused to leave and rounding up their cattle.

Running home, Adam found his two older brothers lying dead in the dirt outside the family's straw shelter. Inside were the bodies of his mother and father, who had been shot in the neck and the stomach.

"They killed my whole family," Adam remembers, shaking as he speaks. "Lots of girls were captured. I lost control and started screaming and crying. And then the Janjaweed snatched me and took me away on horseback. They made me their slave."

"We can make them (Americans) use their rifles against us or we can make them build our country, it's your choice," Latif told a gathering of more than 40 sheiks, city council members and imams in an eastern Fallujah suburb.

Latif, speaking in Arabic to the sheiks, defended the Marines and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

"They were brought here by the acts of one coward who was hunted out of a rathole — Saddam — who disgraced us all," Latif said. "Let us tell our children that these men (U.S. troops) came here to protect us.

"As President Bush said, they did not come here to occupy our land but to get rid of Saddam. We can help them leave by helping them do their job, or we can make them stay ten years and more by keeping fighting."

Latif also told the insurgents to "stop doing stupid things."

"Those bullets that are fired will not get the Americans out, let them finish their job here so that they can return to their country," Latif said.

"Our country is precious, stop allowing the bad guys to come from outside Iraq to destroy our country."

THE tape was shocking. In the medical clinic at Abu Ghraib prison, nine Baghdad merchants were shown undergoing surgery to remove their healthy right hands on the orders of Saddam Hussein.

It wasn't hard to track the men shown in the video. The incident was well known in Baghdad and the tape had been widely circulated to terrorize other merchants who might dare to deal in foreign currency.

Nothing could more dramatically illustrate the depth of cruelty and inhumanity of Saddam's regime. Iraqis often say, "Cruelty is the tryant's art." And Saddam should take his place among history's cruelest tryrants.

I went looking for the men in the video. Of the nine who lost their hands in 1995, six were still in Baghdad, one had died, one escaped to Germany and one to Holland. I tracked them down and proposed I make a documentary incorporating the brutal amputation scenes, while telling their story to the world. They agreed.

FORMER chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said that a shell containing sarin nerve gas used in an attack in Iraq was most likely a stray weapon possibly from the first Gulf War.

Blix said today that the discovery of the nerve agent was not a sign that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction before the war last year.

Saddam: "Uh, officer that's not my artillery shell."

Officer: "Not yours?"

Saddam: "No. was walking down the street and this guy asked me to hold it for him."

Officer: "What did the guy look like?"

Saddam: "Uh, well, I didn't really get a good look at him."

Officer: "Was he tall? Short?"

Saddam: "He was tall...but kinda short. And he was fat, but skinny. Oh, and he had a beard."

Officer: "Do you usually accept artillery shells when someone hands you one?"

Saddam: "...yeah...well...I didn't want him to just drop it on the ground..."

But, in keeping with the ideology of his social set, they are his thoughts, not those of the Iranian people. To be sure, he quotes Iranians — he's astonished to discover that they do not fear being named — including some senior ayatollahs, to demonstrate the contempt of the people for the regime. Ayatollah Taheri calls the ruling mullahs "society's dregs and fascists who consist of a concoction of ignorance and madness...(and) those who are convinced that yogurt is black."

Kristof's trip was worth the expense for that one quote alone. But instead of following the logic of the Iranian people's enmity to the Islamic Republic — will the "Arab street" not be influenced by the utter failure of Islam in the region's largest and most powerful country? — he lapses into politically correct dithering: "There's a useful lesson here for George Bush's America as well as for the ayatollahs' Iran: when a religion is imposed on people, when a government tries too ostentatiously to put itself 'under God,' the effect is often not to prop up religious faith but to undermine it."

Huh? Islam has failed in Iran, so utterly and dramatically that even the most senior religious leaders are attacking the theocracy. Has anything of the sort happened in America? No. Is religion "imposed on people" in America? No, indeed the opposite takes place; religion is banished from the public square and the faithful are disparaged as ignorant rednecks. Moreover, in America church and state are separate, while Iran is a theocracy. The two systems have nothing in common, except the New York Times's party line, that religion is a bad thing and religious people are dangerous.

The administration, in trying to see its way through both the phony crossfire and the real one, has been rattled by the fake war. Someone in the White House needs seriously to stiffen the Bush rhetoric. When the president talks about ''staying the course'' and ''bringing to justice'' the killers, he sounds like Bill Clinton, who pledged to stay the course in Somalia and bring to justice the terrorists, and did neither. Bush has to go back to speaking Rumsfeldian, not Powellite: He has to talk about winning total victory, hunting down the enemy and killing them.

He also needs to promise himself that he'll never again apologize to some Arab despot -- even relatively benign ones, like the king of Jordan -- for events in Iraq. If he feels the need to apologize, he should apologize to the American people for apologizing to the Arab world. This isn't just because what went on in Abu Ghraib is a picnic -- well, a Paris Hilton video picnic -- compared to what goes on every day in the prisons of our Arab ''allies.'' More important than that, the Bush apology buys into one of the most fetid props of the region's so-called stability -- ''pan-Arabism.'' If U.S. troops ''humiliated'' some Portuguese prisoners, the president wouldn't apologize to the king of Norway or the prime minister of Slovenia. So why, when U.S. troops humiliate Iraqi prisoners, would he apologize to Jordan's King Abdullah or Egypt's thug-for-life? ''Pan-Arabism'' is one reason why the region's a sewer. If Iraq succeeds, it will be by breaking with regional solidarity.

Wallace: I guess what I'm asking you is, as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, this was announced to the world. I agree it wasn't a big story, but I remember reading about it. That there were allegations and investigations of abuse starting in January of 2004. Then they announced two months later that they were bringing charges against six people. As the ranking Democrat on the committee that oversees the Pentagon, what did you do about it? Did you call for hearings? Did you get in contact with the Pentagon?

Levin: The very tiny little press release that was issued by Central Command in January of '04 in no way signified the depth of the abuse. It just simply stated that there are allegations of abuses at a prison that are being investigated. That makes it sound very routine, not extensive -- and these were extensive abuses -- in many prisons, starting a year before, which we had no knowledge. And we do not know what actions the Central Command took, if any, during that year. But the first evidence of any kind that we had was that little press release issued by the Central Command in early '04. That is not a notification of extensive abuses at all to anybody.

It is astonishing and inspiring that after all the bloodshed of history this land should house in fellowship a hundred religions and a hundred doubts. This is with us an already ancient heritage; and because we knew such freedom of worship from our birth, we took it for granted and expected it of all mature men. Until yesterday the whole civilized world seemed secure in that liberty. But now suddenly, through some paranoiac mania of racial superiority, or some obscene sadism of political strategy, persecution is renewed, and men are commanded to render unto Caesar the things that ar Caesar's, and unto Caesar the things that are God's.

Increasing production capacity takes even longer than replacing old cars. Also, major new discoveries of oil have become increasingly rare (although in my last column on the subject, I forgot about two large fields in Kazakhstan, one discovered in 1979, the second in 2000).

But this manipulative attempt to establish a moral equivalence between the gruesome execution of Mr. Berg and the torture of Iraqi prisoners is now being mimicked by some hard-core supporters of the American war in Iraq. They are cynically trying to use the images of Mr. Berg to wipe away the images of Abu Ghraib, turning the abhorrence for the murderers into an excuse for demonizing Arabs and Muslims, or for sanctioning their torture.

AT TIMES, I've had a fantasy about my generation as the last brigade parading for reproductive rights under a banner of "Post-Menopausal Women for Choice." After all, those of us who remember when birth control was illegal and when 10,000 American women a year died from illegal abortions don't have to imagine a world without choices. [emphasis added]

I bring this up because of a recent column I wrote on the March for Women's Lives. I referred to the bad old days when 10,000 women a year died of illegal abortions. Ka-boom. The number – 10,000 deaths – produced a mother lode of e-mails insisting it was a lie, propaganda or an "urban legend." Many said the figure came from Bernard Nathanson, formerly pro-choice and now pro-life, who has claimed responsibility for the bunk he now debunks.

Well, as someone who is both pro-choice and pro-facts, I went back into the deep, dark numeric archives with guide Stanley Henshaw, who, poor soul, actually is writing a paper on all this for the Guttmacher Institute.

I will spare you the details, but the 10,000 figure didn't come from Mr. Nathanson, it came from Frederick Taussig, circa 1936. In 1930, abortion was the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women. But "official" wasn't the whole story. Though data admittedly was skimpy by today's standards, Mr. Taussig's research estimated 8,000 to 10,000 deaths.

After all, those of us who remember when birth control was illegal and when 10,000 American women a year died...[emphasis added]

Over the decades, the numbers shrank to hundreds and then dozens because of penicillin, because doctors began performing abortions and because abortion became legal in critical states such as New York. By 1972, the year before the Roe vs. Wade decision, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 39 women died from illegal or self-induced abortions. [emphasis added]

Kofi Annan was at pains in his recent "Meet the Press" interview to stress that he sees the U.N. as a "unique organization," one "that can bring the whole world together." To bring the whole world together, given how the world really works, requires in too many cases the sacrifice of precisely the integrity, freedom and decency that the U.N. was meant to serve.

The lesson is that not finishing the job in Afghanistan and invading Iraq with no good rationale gave Al Qaida and similar groups time to catch their breath, reorganize, and direct their efforts against a conveniently near target -- Iraq. This is the neocon "flypaper" theory in all its glory. It's working. The neocons WANTED it this way.

And they got it. Congratulations.

And in the process, the killing of thousands of innocent men, women and children by errant American bombs, artillery shells, mortars, and bullets have swelled the recruiting offices of every militia and terrorist organization in the Mideast, in and out of Iraq. Congrats with that as well. You can't have flypaper if you don't have an enemy shooting at you. So we energized our existing enemies and gave rise to new ones who didn't seem to understand that "collateral damage" is acceptable in war.

And the abuse of Iraqi prisoners -- up to 90 percent of which could be innocent according to the Red Cross -- just added fuel to the fire.

So no, the prison abuse didn't cause Berg's horrific murder. Bush's (inept) War, in all its glory, did. The Neocon agenda, in all its folly, did. The war cheerleaders now trying to use this for propaganda purposes, in all their idiocy, did.

Congrats. Your war spirals ever out of control. Good luck trying to wash the blood out of your hands.

Wait 'til it comes out on video, then don't see it.

A video posted Tuesday on an Islamic militant Web site showed the beheading of an American civilian in Iraq, and said the execution was carried out by an Al Qaeda affiliated group to avenge the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

The video showed five men wearing headscarves and black ski masks, standing over a bound man in an orange jumpsuit — similar to a prisoner's uniform — who identified himself as Nick Berg (search), a U.S. contractor whose body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday.

"My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Susan," the man said on the video. "I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah. I live in ... Philadelphia."

After reading a statement, the men were seen pulling the man to his side and putting a large knife to his neck. A scream sounded as the men cut his head off, shouting "Allahu Akbar!" — "God is great." They then held the head out before the camera.

David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, which has published two stories about the prisoner abuse written by Seymour M. Hersh, defended the use of the images.

"In this instance, I don't think you want to go out of your way to protect the tender sensibilities of the reader," Mr. Remnick said. "You don't aim to be gratuitous, but to weaken the power of these images in a story where the photographs are at the center of things would be an editing mistake in my judgment."

BROWN: But let's talk about whether or not if we know something -- in this case, clearly we did -- we know pictures will be damaging to the effort in some respect, will be damaging to the national interest in some respect -- and I think we can fairly argue these are -- should we then withhold them and -- that's easy -- here it gets harder -- if we do, where do we stop?

GOLDBERG: Well, first of all, I'm not advocating anything remotely like a new standard. This is a standard that photo editors and producers have struggled with for decades, when to show pictures and when not to show pictures. I'm not talking about censorship either.

I do think that, you know, one standard that you could have is, does it actually report news? And there is very little evidence that this was reporting actual news. This story was out. "The New York Times," CNN had reported on this already. Another standard would be, would releasing the pictures stop abuse that is actually going on at the moment? And, again, there is no evidence that I have seen that that is the case. This in many respects was purely sensational. And on Friday night, I know that you mentioned that, you know, that pictures increase our understanding of things. And I think that's often the case. But we don't use that as a standard to show pictures all the time. For example, one of the most raging national debates now is partial-birth abortion. I've never seen a partial-birth abortion live on television before, and for a pretty good reason.

We stopped seeing the pictures from 9/11 of Americans jumping off of the World Trade Centers. Within 48 hours, the major news networks in this country decided to stop showing it because they decided it was too disturbing. I saw so much context after 9/11 from Peter Jennings, especially, when Palestinians were celebrating in the streets after the 9/11 attack, and Peter Jennings went out of his way to call these isolated incidents, don't make a big deal out of it.

We got nothing like that from the media. We got full feeding frenzy with these pictures. And I think that the point is if -- there is real damage. And I'm just sort of shocked that I'm the only person who thinks this is a legitimate point to debate right now.

Just trust us, John Ashcroft said, as he demanded that Congress pass the Patriot Act, no questions asked. After two and a half years, during which he arrested and secretly detained more than a thousand people, Mr. Ashcroft has yet to convict any actual terrorists. (Look at the actual trials of what Dahlia Lithwick of Slate calls "disaffected bozos who watch cheesy training videos," and you'll see what I mean.)

In 2000 and 2001, a group of Muslim extremists in the Washington, D.C., suburban area trained to become mujahideen engaged in violent jihad. Some of them hoped to die "shaheed" - that is, as martyrs - while waging violent jihad.

In furtherance of the conspiracy, these individuals engaged in paramilitary training on secluded land in Northern Virginia to simulate actual combat. Evidence entered at trial showed that as part of their preparation for violent jihad, the organizers and recruits purchased AK-47-style rifles as well as hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

The group also met covertly in Northern Virginia suburbs to hear inflammatory lectures on violent jihad. They were told that it was appropriate for Muslims to take up arms in jihad against American soldiers and to kill civilians during jihad.

One of the defendants convicted today, Khan, was found in possession of "The Terrorist Handbook," a document containing instructions on how to manufacture and use explosives and chemicals as weapons.

In all, seven of the defendants traveled overseas to Lashkar-e-Taiba camps for training in the use of machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft guns. The evidence presented at trial showed that four of the defendants left the United States for the camps just days after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Each of the three individuals convicted today face up to life in prison. [emphasis added]

Just trust us, George Bush said, as he insisted that Iraq, which hadn't attacked us and posed no obvious threat, was the place to go in the war on terror. When we got there, we found no weapons of mass destruction and no new evidence of links to Al Qaeda.

Just trust us, Paul Bremer said, as he took over in Iraq. What is the legal basis for Mr. Bremer's authority? You may imagine that the Coalition Provisional Authority is an arm of the government, subject to U.S. law. But it turns out that no law or presidential directive has ever established the authority's status. Mr. Bremer, as far as we can tell, answers to nobody except Mr. Bush, which makes Iraq a sort of personal fief. In that fief, there has been nothing that Americans would recognize as the rule of law. For example, Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's erstwhile favorite, was allowed to gain control of Saddam's files — the better to blackmail his potential rivals.