Modern Crusader

Iranian lawmakers chant slogans including 'Death to America' as they stand up to show their 'yes' vote to approve the outline of a bill that requires the government to resume uranium enrichment - an issue of national pride that provides a rare point of agreement between conservatives and reformers in Iranian politics - in parliament, in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Oct. 31, 2004. (AP Photo)

TEHRAN, Iran - To shouts of "Death to America," Iran's parliament unanimously approved the outline of a bill Sunday that would require the government to resume uranium enrichment, legislation likely to deepen an international dispute over Iran's nuclear activities.

MR. KERREY: Well, there was a lot to praise in the Afghan War. A lot to praise in the Afghan War. And it's been--you know, John Kerry and I and all of us, George Bush included, were changed by 9/11.

MR. RUSSERT: Saddam Hussein was not a terrorist?

MR. KERREY: No, Saddam Hussein was not a terrorist.

MR. RUSSERT: But he sent the homicide bombers, paid for them in Israel.

MR. KERREY: Yeah.

Despite their manifest anger towards him, most Christian conservatives will turn out in force to support President Bush on November 2nd. They will do so for a mixture of reasons, but above all what keeps so many Christian conservatives on the Republican reservation is the ‘War on Terror.’ There is a belief, widespread among Christian conservatives, that the ‘War on Terror’ is really a ‘Clash of Civilizations.’ Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, although himself a conservative Jew, summed up the views of many Christian conservatives quite succintly in one of his articles posted on the Internet. He wrote, "It is time that I said in print what I have long felt in my heart: I not only support President Bush, I revere him. At a time when so many other world leaders want to paint Sept. 11 as a terror attack, President Bush saw it for what it was: a clash of civilizations, a war to the death between two systems – one open, democratic and respectful of human life, the other oppressive, tyrannical and deeply contemptible of human life."

The ‘War on Terror’ then is not just about keeping the borders of the United States secure. It is not simply about preventing future terrorist attacks. Rather, the ‘War on Terror’ is the ultimate showdown of Christianity (and Judaism) versus Islam. It is a fight to the finish, and George W. Bush is our Richard the Lionhearted, leading the armies of the Cross, allied with those of the Star of David, to glorious victory.

In this apocalyptic setting, the vast majority of Christian conservatives are backing President George Bush because they sincerely believe that, "Something must be done about the Muslim threat!" To these religious conservatives, George Bush is willing to go on the offensive and strike back in the name of God and country. They fear that John Kerry will surrender to the Muslims, and allow Western Civilization to be overrun a la Constantinople in 1453.

"Forget all of Bush’s flaws," Christian conservatives bellow, "At least he’s willing to fight!"

So, is our glorious president leading the Christian World in a great struggle against the Muslim hordes? If he were, then a reasonable outcome of this ‘Clash’ would be that the position of Christian (and Jewish) populations worldwide would be in the process of becoming more secure.

This is, alas, absolutely not happening. In fact, the current policies of the Bush administration are threatening to absolutely devastate ancient and pious Christian communities whose blood will be on all our heads. To deal with the subject honestly, it must be acknowledged that it almost appears as if President George Walker Bush were waging a global war against Christians.

Lisa Dupler, a 33-year-old from Columbus, held up a rainbow-striped John Kerry sign outside the Nationwide Arena on Friday, as Republicans streamed out after being rallied by George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A thickset woman with very short, dark hair, Dupler was silent and barely flinched as people passing her hissed "faggot" into her ear. An old lady looked at her and said, "You people are sick!" A kid who looked to be about 10 or 11 affected a limp wrist and mincing voice and said, "Oh, I'm gay." Rather than restraining him, his squat mother guffawed and then turned to Dupler and sneered, "Why don't you go marry your girlfriend?" Encouraged, her son yelled, "We don't want faggots in the White House!"

The throngs of Republicans were pumped after seeing the president and the action hero. But there was an angry edge to their elation. They shrieked at the dozen or so protesters standing on the concrete plaza outside the auditorium. "Kerry's a terrorist!" yelled a stocky kid in baggy jeans and braces. "Communists for Kerry! Go back to Russia," someone else screamed. Many of them took up the chant "Kerry sucks"; old women and teenage boys shouting with equal ferocity.

... Dave, a 54-year-old electronic technician, said that if Kerry wins, "I'm going to leave the country and go to a Third World nation and start a ranch." His wife, Jenny, laughed and accused him of hyperbole, but he insisted he's been studying Portuguese, the language of Brazil, "so we'll have an escape route." Sitting near him was Greg Swalley, a blond electrical contractor. "I think Kerry is the anti-Christ," he said, only half-joking.

Kerry is a liberal Democrat, but in this campaign he is running as a reactionary: one who wants to reverse course -- to go back to the attitudes and practices that guided US policy when Clinton and the elder George Bush were in office. The younger Bush may be a Republican, but he is running this year as a radical. Profoundly transformed by 9/11, he sees the old playbook as feckless and is set on a revolutionary new course.

Kerry's words confirm his Sept. 10 mindset. Asked by The New York Times this month how 9/11 changed him, he replied: "It didn't change me much at all."

The far left hates George W. Bush with a raging fury. So does al-Qaeda. Was it really so shocking that the rhetoric of the former would eventually be taken up by the latter?

No, this tape should cause many on the left to stare into the mirror for a long time and ask, “What have I turned into? How did I become so reflexively partisan, so blinded by rage, so intemperate in my rhetoric that my own arguments are being echoed by a man who planned and enjoyed the mass murder of Americans?”

“How the hell did I reach the point where I agree with Osama bin Laden on Bush?”

UPDATE: I'm not going to go looking for too many "Well, now I agree with Osama" comments from lefties. But I had these comments by Daily Kos readers forwarded to me: "He couldn't believe that Shrub stayed in a classroom reading a book about a goat to kids while his country was being attacked. SMACKDOWN from OBL." Another one: "well I guess I have to agree with the man. Although it pains me. on a side note. Is Amazon shipping F911 to Afgan addresses?"

The documents — which actually LOOK like they came from the 1970s and not from a Microsoft Word program — were found at the Vietnam Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock and reproduced from captured communist records. These documents have been PROVEN 100 percent authentic BEFORE their release, unlike those 60 Minutes National Guard documents that CBS refuses to investigate. They show that Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the Viet Cong provisional governor of South Vietnam at the Paris Peace Talks, delivered a plan from Le Duc Tho — Ho Chi Minh’s second in command — for American anti-war activities that anti-war protesters followed to the letter.

These documents are available at www.worldnetdaily.com or www.wintersoldier.com and show anti-war protesters not only received approval from the communists in North Vietnam, but also their direction. One of the documents states, “The spontaneous antiwar movements in the U.S. have received assistance and guidance from the friendly (i.e. communist Vietnamese) delegations at the Paris Peace Talks.”

Another article at www.nysun.com/article/3756 also reflects on the North Vietnamese anti-war coordination with protest groups.

By the way, Madame Binh subsequently became the Minister of Information for the People’s Republic of Vietnam after Saigon fell. You know what “Minister of Information” means in communist countries, right?

Of these organizations, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the communist organizations Peoples Committee for Peace and Justice and National Peace Action Committee were represented at the talks. Some representatives of these groups had their airfare covered by the United States Communist Party.

Shortly after Kerry returned from the talks he delivered Madame Binh’s peace proposal through a press conference on July 22, 1971. He did so with veterans’ families around him, a tactic that was suggested by the communists. However, he said he only attended the peace talks because he was on his honeymoon in Paris.

There are two problems, Hanoi John met twice, and possibly thrice, with communist officials in Paris. Also, his honeymoon was spent at the Jamaica home of the Pershing family with then (other) heiress wife, Julia Thorne, in 1970. I suppose Paris was a second honeymoon.

Kerry had also met illegally with Binh in 1970 while he was still a Naval officer on inactive reserve status, and in fact, all his meetings were under the six-year window of the term of his enlistment. This precludes him from even running for elective office, much less president, but nobody is mentioning it for some reason. Amendment 14, Section 3 states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-president, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, [who has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Other documents show the Hanoi plan for war protests, which was basically accepted and carried out by PCPJ, NPAC and VVAW and other protest groups, which eventually forced a vastly superior military force to capitulate to a sniveling gang of thugs because of propaganda and lies.

It was John Kerry’s finest hour.

DUBAI, Oct 30 -- Following are excerpts from a speech by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden addressing the American people in a video tape, parts of which were aired by Al Jazeera television on Saturday, as translated by Reuters.

"O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results.

"Security is an important foundation of human life and free people do not squander their security, contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not attack Sweden for example.

Jewish congregations in Sweden have noted a sharp increase in "harassment, threats and attacks by Arabs and Muslims against Jews in Swedish society during the last few years," the report states. "The problem is furthermore aggravated by the almost complete silence which surrounds this form of Jew-hatred. If anti-Semitism among Arabs and Muslims in Sweden is discussed at all in Swedish media, it tends to be in the form of trivializations or denials of the problem."

The report's authors say anti-Semitism was once "only found among marginalized groups at the extreme right and left. That is not the case anymore. During the last decade, another form of anti-Semitism has started to spread in the suburbs of large Swedish towns: a Jew-hatred often imported from the Middle East and not seldom presented under an Islamic flag which also wins adherents among groups of Arabs and Muslims in Sweden."

Teachers in Swedish suburbs report widespread hostility against Jews among Arab and Muslim students. Several Internet Web sites in Swedish report on Muslim political and religious topics and at the same time spread anti-Semitic propaganda in this fashion: the Holocaust is dismissed as a Zionist fiction, an event that never happened. Then comes another declaration, this one full of admiration for Adolf Hitler and regret that he didn't live long enough to complete his extermination campaign.

I actually think Sweden is leading the race to be the worst dhimmi-nation of the Western world. As a Scandinavian myself, I expect to get refugees across the border any time soon. Yesterday, one of the parties in Sweden proposed to ban “Islamophobia” BY LAW. Sweden has pretty much done this already, anyway, but why not make it formal? Two Swedish girls were sent home from school by their headmaster for the crime of showing up wearing sweaters that showed some tiny Swedish flags. (flag=nationalism=racism=Nazism, according to leftist, multicultural logic). At the same time, Swedish Universities are discussing whether burkas should be allowed on campus (not hijab, Taliban-style burkas).

Swedish national radio is broadcasting an Islamic sermon - in Swedish - every morning. Some city councils have suggested major Islamic holidays should be public holidays. At the same time, one of the anti-immigration parties in Sweden has asked for UN observers to monitor the Swedish elections, as they are attacked with molotov cocktails by ultra-lefties, denied ads in major newspapers, get their voting slips stolen etc., etc. Maybe Sweden will need international monitors, just like fellow banana republics such as Zimbabwe? Swedish mosques, of course, openly incite violence and even genocide of Israelis and Jews.

Most Swedish newspapers have closed their readers’ discussion forum on the internet, after one paper was convicted of racism as a couple of anti-Muslim immigration comments were allowed on their forum. Swedes who want to discuss what is happening in their country have to visit forums in Norway or Denmark.

The legal age for marriage in Sweden is 18. However, immigrant girls (read: Muslims) have been “allowed” BY LAW to marry at the age of 15. Some would call that apartheid, but hey, everything for multiculturalism. That’s only the beginning, though. It gets worse: Swedish authorities have allowed that young immigrant girls can be sent off to their parents’ country to be married even BEFORE they are 15 years old. If they are pregnant when they return, the father will automatically earn a residency permit to Sweden (and by extension the EU) for “family reunion”. All a Muslim male has to do to get into Sweden - legally - is to have sex with a CHILD. Is that disgusting or what?

Sweden's third-largest city, Malmø, according to the Swedish Aftonbladet, has become an outpost of the Middle East in Scandinavia: "The police now publicly admit what many Scandinavians have known for a long time: They no longer control the situation in the nations's third largest city. It is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslim immigrants. Some of the Muslims have lived in the area of Rosengård, Malmø, for twenty years, and still don't know how to read or write Swedish. Ambulance personnel are attacked by stones or weapons, and refuse to help anybody in the area without police escort. The immigrants also spit at them when they come to help. Recently, an Albanian youth was stabbed by an Arab, and was left bleeding to death on the ground while the ambulance waited for the police to arrive. The police themselves hesitate to enter parts of their own city unless they have several patrols, and need to have guards to watch their cars, otherwise they will be vandalized."

"It is known that those who hate freedom do not possess proud souls like those of the 19, may God [sic] rest their souls. We fought you because we are free and because we want freedom for our nation. When you squander our security we squander yours.

"I am surprised by you. Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened.

"God [sic] knows it did not cross our minds to attack the towers but after the situation became unbearable and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine [sic] and Lebanon, I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed -- when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet.

"In those difficult moments many emotions came over me which are hard to describe, but which produced an overwhelming feeling to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the unjust.

"As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way (and) to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.

"We had no difficulty in dealing with Bush and his administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half by the sons of kings ... They have a lot of pride, arrogance, greed and thievery.

"He (Bush) adopted despotism and the crushing of freedoms from Arab rulers and called it the Patriot Act under the guise of combating terrorism.....

"We had agreed with the (the Sept. 11) overall commander Mohammed Atta, may God [sic] rest his soul, to carry out all operations in 20 minutes before Bush and his administration take notice.

"It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American forces (Bush) would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone at a time when they most needed him because he thought listening to a child discussing her goat and its ramming was more important than the planes and their ramming of the skyscrapers. This had given us three times the time needed to carry out the operations, thanks be to God [sic]...

"Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic presidential candidate John) Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe."

"In addition, the infidel George Bush is outsourcing America's future with tax cuts to the wealthy. Where are the 1.6 million jobs? The infidel Bush is the first infidel since the infidel Herbert Hoover to lose jobs! Awake from your slumber, America! The infidel John Kerry has a plan. You can do better, Insha'Allah!"

"Let me tell you, I spoke to the infidel Christopher Reeve a week ago, and if the infidel John Kerry is elected President, Insha'Allah, the infidel Christopher Reeve will walk again!"

"Are you infidels aware that the infidel John Kerry killed infidels in a war of imperialist infidel aggression in Southeast Asia?"

"The infidel Mary Cheney is a lesbian."

Brokaw: This week you've been very critical of the president because of the missing explosives in Iraq. The fact is, senator, we still don't know what happened to those explosives. How many for sure that were there. Who might have gotten away with them? Is it unfair to the president, just as you believe he's been unfair to you, to blame him for that?

Kerry: No. It's not unfair. Because what we do know, from the commanders on the ground, is that they went there, as they marched to Baghdad. We even read stories today that they broke locks off of the doors, took photographs of materials in there. There were materials. And they left.

Brokaw: The flip side of that is that if you had been president, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. Because you...

Kerry: Not necessarily at all.

Brokaw: But you have said you wouldn't go to war against him...

Kerry: That's not true. Because under the inspection process, Saddam Hussein was required to destroy those kinds of materials and weapons.

Brokaw: But he wasn't destroying them...

Kerry: But that's what you have inspectors for. And that's why I voted for the threat of force. Because he only does things when you have a legitimate threat of force. It's absolutely impossible and irresponsible to suggest that if I were president, he wouldn't necessarily be gone. He might be gone. Because if he hadn't complied, we might have had to go to war. And we might have gone to war. But if we did, I'll tell you this, Tom. We'd have gone to war with allies in a way that the American people weren't carrying the burden. And the entire world would have understood why we were doing it.

Brokaw: Someone has analyzed the President's military aptitude tests and yours, and concluded that he has a higher IQ than you do.

Kerry: That's great. More power. I don't know how they've done it, because my record is not public. So I don't know where you're getting that from.

According to the United Nations, prior to the invasion of Iraq up to 5,000 Iraqi children were dying of privation each month. Walter Russel Meade highlighted this estimate in an opinion piece prior to the war:

Based on Iraqi government figures, UNICEF estimates that containment kills roughly 5,000 Iraqi babies (children under 5 years of age) every month, or 60,000 per year. Other estimates are lower, but by any reasonable estimate containment kills about as many people every year as the Gulf War -- and almost all the victims of containment are civilian, and two-thirds are children under 5.

Mr. Mead went on to argue that, if an invasion would bring an end to the UN's economic sanctions, it could actually result in a net savings of Iraqi lives. Now there are some including Iraqi doctors who, now free to speak their minds, will tell you that it was Saddam's perverse spending priorities and not the sanctions that were responsible for all of the premature mortality. But even the doctors seem to accept the fact that thousands upon thousands of Iraqis had died.

Since the end of the war the UN's economic sanctions have been lifted and, from what I can tell, Iraqis are no longer dying from privation or any humanitarian crises arising from the war. And since Iraq is crawling with both international and domestic journalists as well as NGO types making assessments, I have little doubt that if Iraqis were continuing to die in such large numbers we'd have heard about it by now. You may recall that there were early reports of a small outbreak of cholera near Basra shortly after the war's end. That crisis in the making was nipped in the bud but the fact that the illnesses (not even deaths) were picked up by the media tells me that they are unlikely to have missed a humanitarian disaster on the scale of what reportedly occurred under Saddam's regime.

So if the UN's estimate was accurate - and if it wasn't where's the outcry that those who opposed the sanctions on humanitarian grounds were lying - and there is no evidence that Iraqis continue to die of privation, then, by my calculations, the war has already resulted in a net savings of well over 15,000 [Now over 100,000] Iraqi lives after accounting for those killed in the war using figures compiled by Iraq Body Count. By rights the odometer-style counters should be running in reverse subtracting 5,000 Iraqi deaths per month.

In effect, what has been found in this paper is nothing. Nada. Zip.

Except of course that one of the two leading medical journals in the world has published a piece of shoddy research four days before the US elections with the obvious motive of influencing them. Sad, that, and my apologies as an Englishman that it should be one of my countrymen who did such a thing.

Perhaps the largest October surprise in Germany is the BILD newspaper’s endorsement of President George W. Bush. BILD, which has the widest circulation of any newspaper in Europe, lists the following 10 reasons why Bush should be re-elected:

Update: The list we had up earlier was an abbreviated summary of the 10 reasons. We have now translated BILD’s list of reasons in their entirety. Here they are:

1. Bush has clear priorities. He sees the inhuman Islamic fundamentalism and the murderous mullahs as the largest danger for the Western world.

2. Bush has learned the lessons of history. Military strength, not pleasant talk, is the only thing that helps against violent fanatics. And with Bush — unlike with Kerry — there is no doubt about this.

3. Under Bush, the US, as a superpower, will continue to bear the financial, military and casualty burden in the fight against terrorism in a “holy war” which Islamic fanatics unilaterally declared. [It’s ultimately about the cash-flow, Damen und Herren. —ed.]

4. Along with fighting terror and the terrorists, a re-elected Bush will do everything he can to prevent nuclear proliferation. That is especially true with regard to the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.

5. Bush has learned that America can defeat every country in war, but needs allies in peace. Thus, his second term will be characterized by cooperation with international partners. But he will not depend on how Syria or Libya vote at the UN.

6. Bush knows that Europe and Germany don’t have the military at their disposal to become involved in any further foreign military engagements. Therefore he won’t ask them for help. Kerry will do exactly that — and will further burden already damaged German-American relations.

7. Under Bush, America will remain a reliable partner for Israel in its fight for survival. That must especially be in our German interest.

8. Republicans have always been stronger supporters of free trade than Democrats. That is also true of Bush when compared to Kerry. And that is good for Germany as an export nation.

9. Every new American administration makes mistakes. Bush has already made his. Kerry, on the other hand, has of yet held no (executive) position in the government. He would be worse prepared than most Presidents preceding him.

10. With Bush, we know what to expect. With Kerry, nobody knows what he stands for and where he wants to lead America — and the world.

Sen. John McCain, the well-respected Republican from Arizona, recently described what's at stake for every American in the first presidential election since Sept. 11, 2001:

"So it is, whether we wished it or not, that we have come to the test of our generation, to our rendezvous with destiny. ...

"All of us, despite the differences that enliven our politics, are united in the one big idea that freedom is our birthright and its defense is always our first responsibility. All other responsibilities come second."

If we waver now, McCain said, "we will fail the one mission no American generation has ever failed - to provide to our children a stronger, better country than the one we were blessed to inherit."

For McCain and for millions of other Americans, the global war against terrorism is the defining issue of this election.

In this context, we believe President George W. Bush will best lead a bolder, more proactive, more focused struggle against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and rogue governments and groups that shelter, finance or otherwise support terrorists.

In contrast, Sen. John Kerry has said any attack against America will be met with "a swift response," but that pre-emptive strikes must meet "a global test."

In other words, Kerry would play defense, much like previous administrations did after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, the USS Cole, and U.S. embassies abroad.

We can no longer live in a pre-Sept. 11 world. We must remain on the offensive. "The United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past," President Bush said. "We cannot let our enemies strike first."

The list of those whose world could be truly rocked on Tuesday is just too long and too rich to be ignored. If you think for a moment about those who would really be upset by a second Bush term, it becomes a lot easier to stomach.

The hordes of the bien-pensant Left in the universities and the media, the sort of liberals who tolerate everything except those who disagree with them. Secularist elites who disdain religiosity except when it comes from Muslim fanatics. Europhile Brits who drip contempt for everything their country has ever done and long for its disappearance into a Greater Europe. Absurd, isolationist conservatives in America and Britain who think the struggles for freedom are always someone else’s fight. Hollywood sybarites and narcissists, self-appointed arbiters of a nation’s morals.

Soft-headed Europeans who think engagement and dialogue with mass murderers is the way to achieve lasting peace. French intellectuals for whom nothing has gone right in the world since 1789.

The United Nations, which, if it had its multilateral way, would still be faithfully minding a world in which half the population lived under or in fear of Soviet aggression. Most of Belgium.

Above all, of course, Middle Eastern militants. If your bitterest enemies are the sort of people who hack the heads off unarmed, innocent civilians, then I would say you are probably doing something right.

This may sound petty. It is not. This constellation of individuals, parties and institutions has very little in common other than the fact that it has contrived to be wrong on just about every important issue of my adult lifetime.

And so, perhaps for the wrong reasons, perhaps less because he has been right and more because those who hate him so much have been so wrong, I want this President re-elected.

Go on America. Make Their Day.

Bush Rebounds, Now Ahead in 5 States (FL, MI, MN, NM, NV); Kerry Leads in 4 States (CO, IA, OH, WI); Tie in Pennsylvania at 47% Each

The latest Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll shows President George W. Bush with 48.9% of the vote and Senator John Kerry with 46.9%

PARIS, Oct. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- France will be always on the side of the Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier declared Thursday.

"France, as I told you (Arafat) in Ramallah on June 30, will be always on your side to back your effort in favor of a just and negotiated peace," Barnier said.

"It is with concern and sympathy that I keep informed of the development of your health," said Barnier.

"I wish to express my most sincere wishes for your recovery, hoping that you can return rapidly to your place to lead the Palestinian [Terrorist] Authority," he said.

Palestinian [Terrorist] leader Yasser Arafat [yimach shmo ve-zichro] is to be taken to Paris for treatment as concern grows over his health, his doctors have said. A picture of a smiling Arafat surrounded by his doctors was released as they prepared to fly him to [Nazi] France tomorrow.

Oct. 27, 2004 — Iraqi officials may be overstating the amount of explosives reported to have disappeared from a weapons depot, documents obtained by ABC News show.

The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control.

But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.

But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over three tons of RDX were stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.

“The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

The claim that "there is no partner," which has formed the basis of Israeli foreign policy over the past four years and justified the refusal to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, would depart together with him.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan would lose the central justification for its existence - the lack of a Palestinian partner.

Only one day after the Knesset approved the disengagement plan and the dramatic schism took place in the Likud leadership, all the circumstances appear to be suddenly changing.

One can already hear Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom navigating a compromise proposal: postponing disengagement until a new and stable Palestinian leadership is formed that would take over the Gaza Strip by agreement.

Shalom supported the "disengagement with a partner" from the beginning, and now it can be used to bring Benjamin Netanyahu, Limor Livnat and their supporters back to their chairs and to calm down the rebellion in the party.

Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has vowed to challenge Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the next Likud Party primary and return to the premiership, according to a Channel 1 report on Wednesday. This follows his late-Tuesday ultimatum to quit the cabinet if Sharon does not agree to a referendum within two weeks.

"If there will be an election, I will be Likud chairman," Netanyahu was quoted as saying.

Canadian soldiers attached to the Afghan National Army (ANA) have stirred up a hornet's nest in Kabul by being too efficient.

They've "discovered" a huge Soviet ammunition dump a few kilometres from Camp Julien with the potential of obliterating the camp, as well as most of Kabul.

That may sound like hyperbole, but I was with the Canadians who discovered the cache -- soldiers (mostly Princess Pats and combat engineers) who are training and working with the ANA and consider themselves to have the best job in the army.

In the dusty foothills, 10 minutes drive from Camp Julien (population 2,000), 82 buried bunkers, each 20-metres long, housed thousands of Soviet FROG missiles (one step down from Scud missiles), and every variety of rocket and mortar shells.

Some of the FROG missiles were still in their original cases. Some heaped in the open. Some stacked to the roof in the unlocked, open bunkers. Much of the ordnance had warheads removed to collect the explosive for homemade bombs -- or for blasting at a nearby quarry.

"Unbelievable!" was Maj. Brian Hynes' reaction when he saw them. "We (troops of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)) have been here some two years, and no one knew this was at our back door. Unbelievable."

In truth, the Soviet bunkers were well-known in an area supposedly under control of the Afghan Militia Force (AMF) -- not to be confused with the ANA. The AMF is paid by various warlords and so their loyalty is to them.

The hero of the discovery was combat engineer Sgt. Mike Mazerolle of New Brunswick, who has run the observation post for eight days with ANA soldiers. They watch the valleys leading to Kabul.

He saw people to his rear so he investigated and found the 82 bunkers "loaded with ordnance, and here I am sleeping next to a FROG!"

He informed his boss, Maj. Hynes and -- eureka -- the cache was discovered.

Many of the rockets, missiles and shells had been pried open for the explosives, which are used peacefully to blast mountain rock into gravel, and by those who want to make bombs that disrupt Kabul.

"These bunkers have been known for two years but no one bothered to check them," said Maj. Hynes.

"To me, that's incompetence."

"To me it's criminal," said Sgt. Power, who works with the major in training the ANA.

I've never seen anything like it. The feeling is that AMF soldiers were selling access to the dump or permitting friends to enter it.

Littered with burned out Soviet military vehicles, the whole area is a junk pile strewn with every sort of live ammunition, fuses, unexploded shells, rockets, etc., all supposedly under the authority of Belgian troops (at the moment), who ignored it.

In the midst of examining the bunkers and taking photos, a Swedish UN guy, a French major and a German colonel arrived to make a fuss and order the Canadians to leave. The French major insisted his government had a deal with the Afghan government for the area, and ISAF had no business being there.

There is probably some perfectly plausible reason why a Swedish UN functionary, a French major and a German Colonel -- one civilian, two officers, three nationalities, none of who would be in the same chain of command -- should show up at precisely the moment a Canadian officer discovers a large number of surface to surface missiles lying around unguarded, but it escapes me.

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."

Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloguing the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.

The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.

The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.

FALLUJAH, Iraq (CNN) -- A convoy of vehicles carrying Russian diplomats and journalists came under fire Sunday as it headed out of Baghdad, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. ...

Alexander Minakov, who works with Rossiya TV (formerly RTR), said in a telephone report that he was in one of eight cars that set off from Baghdad at 11:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. ET), bound for the Syrian border. The vehicles carried 25 Russian diplomats, including Russia's ambassador to Iraq, and journalists who were trying to flee the country.

In a Monday morning telephone call to Putin, Bush raised his concerns over reports that Russians are actually on the ground in Iraq teaching Iraqi forces how to use prohibited hardware like night vision goggles, GPS jammers and anti-tank guided missiles, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

"We have concerns. Those concerns have been expressed at the highest levels, and these concerns have been expressed repeatedly over the last -- quite some little while," Fleischer added.

A source told Fox News the GPS jammers in particular had slowed the bombing of Baghdad as the military has taken extra care to avoid hitting civilian targets.

WASHINGTON -- US officials have found evidence corroborating White House allegations that Russian companies sold Saddam Hussein high-tech military equipment that threatened US forces during the invasion of Iraq last March, a senior State Department official said yesterday.

The official said the United States has found proof that Russian companies exported night-vision goggles and radar-jamming equipment to Iraq, the official said. The evidence includes the equipment itself and proof that it was used during the war, according to the official. Such exports would violate the terms of United Nations sanctions against Iraq.

"We have corroborated some of that evidence," the official told a group of reporters.

While insisting that the matter is "now in the past," he said that the Bush administration "never received entirely satisfactory explanations" of its charges, and that the issue "is still a sensitive one in the relationship."

"It's an issue that, shall we say, did not do much for strengthening trust," the official added. ...

During the war, US military sources gave differing accounts on how much the Russian-made equipment affected US forces. Some military officials were quoted as blaming jamming gear for sending missiles off course and into Iran and Saudi Arabia, and as contending that Russian made Kornet antitank missiles destroyed at least two American M-1 A-1 tanks, the first time such tanks had been destroyed in battle.

DOHA - Among the many surprises that awaited the invading forces in Iraq was their enemy's ability to knock out the U.S. Army's most advanced battle tank.

Defense analysts believe the three -- perhaps five -- M1-A2 Abrams tanks which have been disabled so far appear to have been hit by a weapon far more potent than the decades-old RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade.

Instead, it seems the Iraqis -- who say they have knocked out dozens of U.S. tanks -- may be using the Kornet-E, an export version of a Russian laser-guided missile which can destroy tanks fitted with explosive reactive armor.

"We're pretty sure they do have them," said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons. "It is a nasty surprise (for U.S. forces) and they will have to adapt their tactics. But it won't be a showstopper and it is no cause for huge alarm."

Where Iraq might have procured the Kornet-E in the face of a U.N. ban on weapons sales to the country is not clear.

The Interfax news agency said on Tuesday the Ukrainian foreign ministry had denied reports that Ukrainian firms had supplied several hundred such anti-tank missiles to Iraq.

According to the Web Site www.army-technology.com, the tripod-launched Kornet-E system has been sold to the Syrian army.

Last week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, serving a blunt warning to Damascus, said Washington had information that night vision goggles and other military equipment was crossing from Syria into Iraq.

Shortly before dawn on Aug. 28, an M1A1 Abrams tank on routine patrol in Baghdad “was hit by something” that crippled the 69-ton behemoth. Army officials still are puzzling over what that “something” was.

According to an unclassified Army report, the mystery projectile punched through the vehicle’s skirt and drilled a pencil-sized hole through the hull. The hole was so small that “my little finger will not go into it,” the report’s author noted.

Likud “rebel” leader Uzi Landau Wednesday challenged Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s loyalty to the Likud, accusing him of creating a situation which could lead to elections and the end of the party.

Sharon carried out his threat and immediately fired Landau as cabinet minister and dismissed Michael Ratzon from his post as deputy minister after they cast their ballots against the Prime Minister’s proposal to unilaterally remove 25 Jewish communities from Gush Katif and northern Samaria.

Landau termed the Knesset vote in favor of the plan “kosher, but it stinks.” He admitted that Sharon had won the first battle, but “the major war is ahead of us. Our group of Likud MKs against disengagement brought a clear victory” in the party referendum several months ago in which Sharon’s forces suffered a lopsided defeat, he said in a press conference. “We are not a faction within the Likud. We are the real Likud. We prevented the great danger of the Labor party entering the coalition government.” The Likud central committee this summer formally voted against such a coalition.

More than half of the 40 Likud Knesset members have said they are against Sharon’s plan, although only 18 voted against it Tuesday night. Ratzon claimed that five others, including Finance Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Education Minister Limor Livnat, will join anti-Sharon forces in the next round of voting on the bill if the Prime Minister does not agree to a national referendum.

Landau’s unprecedented sharp and direct criticism of the Likud Prime Minister exposed the deep rift within the party. He said he tried to reach a compromise with Sharon, whom he accused of mocking Likud policy positions. Sharon is trying “to get the National Religious Party out of the government and force the entry of the Labor party into the government,” he added.

Palestinian [sic] officials and doctors rushed to the Mukata in Ramallah Wednesday evening amid reports that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was seriously ill.

A senior PA official told The Jerusalem Post that Arafat, who has been ill for nearly two weeks, was facing difficulties breathing.

The official refused to confirm or deny reports that Arafat, 75, had lost consciousness. CNN quoted sources as saying that Arafat has been unable to keep food down for the past ten days and has been vomiting repeatedly.

Yasser Arafat's latest health problems come at a time of unprecedented political and security instability in the West Bank [sic] and Gaza Strip, raising fears that his death could trigger a bloody power struggle among the top brass of the Palestinian [sic] leadership.

In the last week before the election, ABCNEWS is holding a videotaped message from a purported al Qaeda terrorist warning of a new attack on America, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11. "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead. Further claims: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda.

ABCNEWS strongly denies holding the tape back from broadcast over political concerns during the last days of the election.

The CIA is analyzing the tape, a top federal source tells the DRUDGE REPORT.

ABCNEWS obtained the tape from a source in Waziristan, Pakistan over the weekend, sources tells DRUDGE.

"We have been working 24 hours a day trying to authenticate [the tape]," a senior ABCNEWS source said Wednesday morning, dismissing a claim that ABC was planning to air portions of the video during Monday's WORLD NEWS TONIGHT.

The terrorist's face is concealed by a headdress, and he speaks in an American accent, making it difficult to identify the individual.

US intelligence officials believe the man on tape may be Adam Gadhan - aka Adam Pearlman, a California native who was highlighted by the FBI in May as an individual most likely to be involved in or have knowledge of the next al Qaeda attacks.

According to the FBI, Gadahn, 25, attended al-Qaida training camps and served as an al-Qaida translator.

The disturbing tape runs an hour -- the man simply identifies himself as 'Assam the American.'

WASHINGTON - Nine years ago, U.N. weapons inspectors urgently called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to demolish powerful plastic explosives in a facility that Iraq's interim government said this month was looted due to poor security.

The chief American weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, told The New York Sun yesterday that in 1995, when he was a member of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, he urged the United Nations' atomic watchdog to remove tons of explosives that have since been declared missing.

Mr. Duelfer said he was rebuffed at the time by the Vienna-based agency because its officials were not convinced the presence of the HMX, RDX, and PETN explosives was directly related to Saddam Hussein's programs to amass weapons of mass destruction.

Instead of accepting recommendations to destroy the stocks, Mr. Duelfer said, the atomic-energy agency opted to continue to monitor them.

By e-mail, Mr. Duelfer wrote the Sun, "The policy was if acquired for the WMD program and used for it, it should be subject for destruction. The HMX was just that. Nevertheless the IAEA decided to let Iraq keep the stuff, like they needed more explosives."

Last week, JTF noted that there are no Arab "moderates." The universal goal of the Arab world is the destruction of America, Israel and Western civilization. The clever Arabs who pretend to be "moderate" when speaking to naive Christians and Jews are far more dangerous than the less clever Arabs who honestly and openly proclaim their Nazi genocidal goals. JTF proved the point by exposing the truth about the ultimate representative of the Arab "moderates," the late Egyptian Muslim Nazi dictator Anwar el-Sadat, yimach shmo ve-zichro (may his name and memory be obliterated). See JTF's October 20, 2004 article, Arab "Moderates" Are More Dangerous Than Openly Extremist Arabs (Part 1) .

In his notorious autobiography, In Search of Identity, published in the United States in 1978, Sadat revealed that he had always been a devout Muslim. He explained that aside from emulating his lifelong hero Adolf Hitler, he also sought to emulate his other hero, the terrorist Muslim "prophet" Mohammed.

In 1972, two years after becoming Egypt's Muslim Nazi dictator, Sadat gave a speech celebrating Mohammed's birthday. In the speech, Sadat explained the Islamic attitude toward Jews:

"The most splendid thing the prophet Mohammed did was to drive them [the Jews] out of the whole Arabian peninsula.... They are a nation of liars and traitors, contrivers of plots, a people born for the deeds of treachery.... I promise you ... we shall send them back to their former status ... as the Koran said of them 'condemned to humiliation and misery.'"

Imitating the vicious trickery of both Mohammed and Hitler, Sadat planned a surprise attack on little Israel to be staged on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in 1973, when the unprepared Jews would be fasting and praying in their synagogues.

Imitating the vicious trickery of both Mohammed and Hitler, Sadat planned a surprise attack on little Israel to be staged on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in 1973, when the unprepared Jews would be fasting and praying in their synagogues.

The evil Israeli Government of Marxist Prime Minister Golda Meir knew about the Egyptian plans to attack. However, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a self-hating Jew, warned Israel not to strike preemptively against the Arab armies as the Jewish state did so successfully in the 1967 Six Day War. Kissinger and President Nixon demanded that Israel absorb the blow of a full-scale Arab attack rather than smash the invading Arab forces preemptively.

If Israel strikes first, Kissinger warned Golda Meir, "not a dogcatcher in the country will support Israel."

Tragically, Israel gave in to the Nixon-Kissinger Administration pressure, and as a result, the outcome of the 1973 Yom Kippur War was very different from the glorious and miraculous triumph in the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel wisely defied U.S. pressure not to strike first.

All of the self-hating and cowardly Jews who insist that the Jew-hater Richard Nixon was a friend of Israel ignore the fact that Israel would not have lost almost 3,000 heroic Jewish soldiers if not for Nixon's pressure on the Jewish State not to strike first.

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on two different fronts on Yom Kippur, the most sacred of all Jewish holidays.

The Marxist Labor Party Government in Israel was fatally overconfident about Israel's ability to withstand the Arab attack. After winning so decisively in 1967, the Israeli Government and the Israeli army felt that Israel could easily repulse any Arab invasion. They were so certain of victory, they did not even mobilize the Israeli army reservists.

Nor did they bother to warn the brave Jewish soldiers who were guarding Israel's border that they were about to be attacked by huge Arab armies.

Along the Suez Canal, 500 Jewish soldiers were attacked by over 80,000 Egyptian Muslim Nazi soldiers. The hopelessly outnumbered Jews were completely unprepared for the massive Arab attack. Resisting with incredible courage, the vast majority of the 500 Jewish defenders were slaughtered holding back the Arab invasion while Israel mobilized her army reservists.

The vile traitors Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan explained at the time that they intentionally left Israel completely unprepared so that no one would doubt that the Arabs were the attackers.

In other words, in order to score a few public relations points, the Israeli Government knowingly allowed many heroic Jewish soldiers to be unnecessarily slaughtered.

This policy of willfully sacrificing the precious lives of innocent Jews to appease Jew-hating world opinion continues to this day as Israeli Bolshevik dictator Ariel Sharon deliberately allows hundreds of Jews to be murdered by Arab Muslim Nazi terrorists.

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel miraculously turned the tide after initially suffering enormous losses. Within two weeks, Israel's valiant little army had surrounded the invading Egyptian forces, and the Israelis could easily have captured or destroyed all of them.

However, just as Israel was about to win her most decisive victory ever, the Nixon-Kissinger Administration demanded that the Jews accept a premature ceasefire that rescued the Egyptian army and that robbed the Jewish State of a final victory.

Despite all of this, Jews still describe the Jew-hater Nixon and the self-hating Jew Kissinger as "friends" of Israel. Not for nothing did Rabbi Meir Kahane often express amazement at how the same Jews who are so brilliant in science, art, literature and medicine, are so incredibly stupid when it comes to their own survival.

The hopelessly evil Israeli Government again gave in to U.S. pressure by allowing the surrounded Egyptian invaders to escape justice and thus preventing Israel from winning a decisive victory.

The self-hating Jews who control Israel never learn that each time they give in to U.S. pressure, it always leads to catastrophe for the Jewish State. And each time that they show Washington that they are willing to give in to U.S. pressure, it always leads to far more U.S. pressure.

Israel's submission to the Nixon-Kissinger Administration pressure before, during and after the 1973 Yom Kippur War was the beginning of the terrible decline of the Jewish State that we have witnessed to this day.

What is most striking are the results achieved by a clever Arab Nazi like Sadat versus the results achieved by a less clever Arab Nazi like Sadat's predecessor, Gamal Abdul Nasser.

Nasser's open calls for genocide against Israeli Jewry brought the Arabs nothing but disaster. Israel's greatest triumphs were achieved when the Jews had no doubt that their Muslim enemies were united in seeking to destroy the Jewish people. Furthermore, Nasser's Nazi rantings greatly reduced U.S. and international pressure on Israel to commit suicide. It was difficult to demand that Israel make suicidal concessions to Arabs who were openly proclaiming even to Westerners that they were irreversibly committed to exterminating the Jewish people.

On the other hand, Sadat's strategy of playing "moderate" when speaking to Westerners but continuing to call for Israel's annihilation when speaking to fellow Muslims, brought the Arabs many achievements in their relentless quest to destroy Israel. When the Jews were convinced that perhaps some of their Muslim Nazi enemies were "moderate," it psychologically crippled Israel's ability to wage war effectively. Instead of seeking decisive military victories against a Muslim world determined to destroy the Jewish State, the Jews started seeking "peace" with the Muslim Nazis through suicidal concessions.

Additionally, by telling Westerners that he wanted "peace," Sadat greatly increased U.S. and international pressure on Israel to commit suicide. The world wants Israel to self-destruct, and it is much easier to demand suicidal Israeli concessions when the Muslim Nazis are claiming that they want "peace" when they speak to Western "infidels."

In future articles, JTF will expose how Sadat got the "right-wing" Likud Government of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon to willingly retreat from the entire Sinai - the worst mistake in Israel's history.

Throughout his lifetime, Sadat never stopped explaining to the Arabs that they must seek Israel's extermination in stages through the use of more clever and deceptive tactics.

Responding to the PLO terrorist call to "push the Jews into the sea," Sadat said on April 12, 1975:

"We do not differ with the PLO on principles. We sometimes differ on tactics and methods."

Thus, the PLO "principles" of total Muslim Nazi genocide against the Jewish people were identical to Sadat's "principles." The only difference was that Sadat - following in the footsteps of his idols, Mohammed and Hitler - sought to more cleverly achieve his genocidal goal through more deceptive and effective "tactics and methods."

This made Sadat the most dangerous Muslim Nazi leader whom Israel ever confronted.

I was serving as a [identifying information removed by the Kerry Spot] staff member during the time in question. The Commander on the site had complete real time intelligence on what to expect and possibly find at the Al-QaQaa depot. The ordinance in question was not found when teams were sent in to inspect and secure the area. When this information was relayed, Operational plans were adjusted and the unit moved forward. Had the ordinance in question been discovered, a security team would have been left in place.

The Iraqi government reported an estimated 350 tons of missing explosives Oct. 10 to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. monitoring group that last inventoried the facility in January 2003.

During that visit, the U.N. inspectors counted the munitions and equipment and tagged them with IAEA seals that indicate they are "dual use," or have conventional-weapons applications. These munitions were generally permitted to remain in Iraq. In contrast, "single use" munitions with nuclear applications were destroyed or rendered harmless.

The IAEA returned to the site two months later, in March 2003, and confirmed the equipment it had tagged was still there.

However, coalition forces found no evidence of the weapons in question when they first arrived at the sprawling Al-Quaqaa facility, 30 miles south of Baghdad, about April 10, 2003, according to a defense official.

The troops searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings, finding some weapons and explosive material, but nothing close to the quantity reported missing by the Iraqi government, and none with IAEA seals, he said.

Three months earlier, during an inspection of the Al Qaqaa compound, the International Atomic Energy Agency secured and sealed 350 metric tons of HMX and RDX. Then in March, shortly before the war began, the I.A.E.A. conducted another inspection and found that the HMX stockpile was still intact and still under seal. But inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound.

According to a State Department transcript, Powell told Phoenix: "There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy."

That was a departure from the U.S. government's longtime "one China policy," a purposely fuzzy approach that merely "acknowledges" people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait agree there is one China. Washington also insists differences should be settled peacefully and in recent years has emphasized that the Taiwanese people should have a say in the matter.

Taiwan is highly sensitive to any kind of language — especially from Washington — that might suggest their democratic island is part of the communist mainland. Taiwanese view China's government to be repressive and have spent decades resisting rule by Beijing, which occasionally threatens to use force to bring the island under its sway.

Rebuking Powell without mentioning him by name, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian told visiting former South Korean President Kim Young-sam on Tuesday that the island is a separate nation.

"Taiwan is absolutely a sovereign, independent nation. It's a great nation, and it absolutely does not belong to the People's Republic of China. That is the present situation, that is the reality," Chen said.

Using the island's official name, Republic of China, Chen said no country had the right to tell Taiwan it isn't independent.

"Other countries, whether they have official diplomatic relations with our country or not, have no way of influencing or deny the present situation and the fact that the Republic of China or Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation," Chen said.

Taiwanese Premier Yu Shyi-kun made a terse response to Powell's comment. "Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation. This is reality," Yu told reporters Tuesday.

The Knesset approved the Gaza Disengagement Plan: 67 in favor; 45 against; 7 abstentions. After a last-minute Knesset drama in which senior Likud ministers absented themselves from the first round of voting, Ministers Netanyahu, Livnat, and Katz voted in favor of the Gaza Plan. Naveh absented himself from the Knesset plenum. The Arabs abstained in the vote.

Likud Minister Uzi Landau voted against the plan and is likely to receive tonight a letter of dismissal from the Prime Minister.

Minutes before the Knesset vote on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Disengagement Plan, National Religious Party (NRP) Minister Zevulun Orlev came out of Sharon’s Office with a document, telling the press that the NRP has given Mr. Sharon 14 days to decide if he will hold a national referendum on the Gaza Disengagement Plan.

Orlev explained the terms of the NRP entail a stipulation that tonight’s Knesset vote on the plan would be contingent on the outcome of a national referendum. In addition, if the prime minister agrees to a referendum, the NRP commits to remain in the government coalition until the end of the administration’s term, which for now is 2006. This commitment is not contingent on the outcome of the referendum.

Should the prime minister fail to agree to a national referendum within the 14 day hiatus period, the NRP will then leave the government, a move that may plummet the coalition into a crisis that would lead to early elections. Orlev refused to describe his move this evening as “an ultimatum.”

The letter was signed by NRP officials, Yesha Council Rabbis Nachum Rabinowitz, Tzafanya Drori, Motti Elon, Eitan Eisman, Shabbtai Shabato, Shlomo Aviner, and Shar Yashuv HaCohen.

Prime Minister Sharon has said that he will present any minister who votes against his plan with a letter of dismissal.

News of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode.

Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of 60 MINUTES, said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on October 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold..."

Elizabeth Jensen at the LOS ANGELES TIMES details on Tuesday how CBS NEWS and 60 MINUTES lost the story [which repackaged previously reported information on a large cache of explosives missing in Iraq, first published and broadcast in 2003].

The story instead debuted in the NYT. The paper slugged the story about missing explosives from April 2003 as "exclusive."

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

It is not clear who exactly shopped an election eve repackaging of the missing explosives story.

The LA TIMES claims: The source on the story first went to 60 MINUTES but also expressed interest in working with the NY TIMES... "The tip was received last Wednesday."

CBSNEWS' plan to unleash the story just 24 hours before election day had one senior Bush official outraged.

"Darn, I wanted to see the forged documents to show how this was somehow covered up," the Bush source, who asked not to be named, mocked, recalling last months CBS airing of fraudulent Bush national guard letters.

Sent to me by a source in the government: “The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

(For the record, I don’t reveal my sources so if that means I end up sharing a cell at Sing-sing with Judy Miller, so be it.)

WASHINGTON - The co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 587 caused the November 2001 crash that claimed the lives of 265 people, the staff of the nation's airline safety agency reported Tuesday.

Investigator Robert Benzon of the National Transportation Safety Board staff said the copilot's response to turbulence, just seconds after the Airbus A300-600 plane took off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, was "unnecessary and aggressive."

Given the U.S. government’s record of preferring not to call a terrorist act by its rightful name – and especially its shameful reluctance to do so in the case of EgyptAir 990, brushing aside the truth in deference to Egyptian sensibilities – I have had my suspicions about the accidental nature of AA 587’s crash. When Al-Qaeda on a website in May 2004 claimed the plane’s fall as an attack, however, I paid it little attention, for just about anyone can claim just about anything on a website.

But now comes a wisp of evidence to suggest that AA 587’s demise was in fact not an accident but an operation carried out by Al-Qaeda. This information has a complex pedigree:

*It is recounted in a top secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service report written in May 2002 and made public on Aug. 27, 2004 by Stewart Bell in Canada’s National Post.

*Its source is Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a 22-year-old from St. Catharines, Ontario, said to be of “unknown reliability.”

*Jabarah in turn is reporting on what he heard from Abu Abdelrahman (a Saudi Al-Qaeda member who worked for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the organization’s highest ranking operatives). KSM’s information has usually turned out to be reliable.

So, the information that follows is not exactly rock-hard, but it is a real lead.

And this is it: Abu Abdelrahman told Jabarah who told CSIS that

the 12 November 2001 plane crash (btb American Airlines flight 587) in Queens, New York was not an accident as reported in the press but was actually an AL QAIDA operation. Abu Abdelrahman informed Jabarah that Farouk the Tunisian conducted a suicide mission on the aeroplane using a shoe bomb of the type used by Richard Reid.... “Farouk the Tunisian” was identified from newspaper photographs as being identical to Abderraouf Jdey, a Canadian citizen who had resided in Montreal.”

Jabarah claimed Jdey used his Canadian passport to board Flight 587 but Jdey was apparently a master of aliases (they include Abd Al-Rauf Bin Al-Habib Bin Yousef Al-Jiddi, Abderraouf Dey, A. Raouf Jdey, Abdal Ra'Of Bin Muhammed Bin Yousef Al-Jadi, Farouq Al-Tunisi, Abderraouf Ben Habib Jeday), so one really has no idea what name he might have flown under that day. Jdey, 39, had emigrated from Tunisia to Canada in 1991, becoming a citizen in 1995. Shortly thereafter, he decamped to Afghanistan where he trained with some 9/11 hijackers and recorded a “martyrdom” video that coalition forces in Afghanistan later found. He did not join the 9/11 mission but was to be part of a second wave of suicide attacks. He remains on the loose, with a worldwide alert for him. The FBI has a “seeking information” notice out for him “in connection with possible terrorist threats in the United States.” Of course, if he went down in AA 587’s fiery crash, there is little chance of finding him.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, speaking before the announcement of the 78 deaths, said the protesters were weak because of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan which started on October 15.

"It is normal that their bodies could not handle it. It is not about someone attacking them," Thaksin told reporters.

The protests were sparked by the arrest of six Muslim men accused of handing guns to rebels in Muslim-majority southern Thailand, where an insurgency has left 414 dead this year. Police said some of the crowd on Monday tried to storm the police station but were stopped by the 1,000-strong security force.

The detainees were lined up face down on the ground in a row, with their hands tied behind their backs before being taken away in trucks.

Thai forensic scientist Pornthip Rojansunan told a press conference in Pattani province that 80 percent of the victims died because they could not breathe.

"We didn't find any dead bodies with broken arms or legs, but between two or three of them had broken necks which may have been caused from the transportation," she said.

Government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair said earlier that "fasting and possible drug consumption" were the major factors behind the deaths.

But tonight, NBCNEWS reported: The 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were already missing back in April 10, 2003 -- when U.S. troops arrived at the installation south of Baghdad!

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

"The U.S. Army was at the site one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone," a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.

It is not clear why the NYTIMES failed to report the cache had been missing for 18 months — and was reportedly missing before troops even arrived.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

John Kerry has spoken many times of his agonized presence at Game 6 of the 1986 World Series:

"I was 30 yards away from Billy Buckner in that famous Shea Stadium game in '86." (Cite: ESPN Page 2)

"Talking baseball on the plane, he reminisced, "I was at Shea Stadium, 30 yards from Bill Buckner," recalling the error that many consider cost the Sox the 1986 World Series." (Cite: "Sox Detour for Kerry", New York Daily News, 7/26/2004)

"The Bay State senator says he....watched in anguish as the ball rolled through Bill Buckner's legs in the 1986 Series against the Mets." (Cite: "Bogus Bosox Fan", New York Post, 9/19/2004)

"I was about 30 yards away from Billy Buckner when that ball wiggled away" (Cite: Kerry tries to rejuvenate his campaign, USA Today 11/24/2003)

Game 6 of the 1986 World Series was held in New York City, on the evening of October 25, 1986.

According to the Boston Globe, John Kerry was at a banquet in Boston on the evening of October 25, 1986.

Just thinking out loud, but: If what the Times says is right, isn’t that implicitly an indictment of UNSCOM and further proof that the President was right to remove the monstrous Saddam regime?

The Times reports that the missing materiel includes “380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons.” It also asserts that “United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years.” The undertone is obvious: the inspections were working--as the Kerry campaign claims (at least sometimes), and Bush, in addition to losing weapons, was bull-headed to invade in the first place.

But not so fast. Let’s take a look at Security Council Resolution 687 (April 3, 1991), which imposed the terms that ended the Gulf War. (All italics are mine.) As I read it, Iraq was required, among other things, to “unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of . . . [a]ll ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres and related major parts, and repair and production facilities[.]” One might think that what the Times describes as “powerful conventional explosives--used to … make missile warheads” were a fairly “related major part” of ballistic missiles.

In addition, with respect specifically to nukes, Iraq was required “not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material or any subsystems or components[,]” and, to the extent it had such items, present them for “urgent on-site inspection and the destruction, removal or rendering harmless as appropriate of all items specified above.” Again, a detonator would seem to be a fairly important component of a nuclear bomb.

The Times’s suggestion here is obvious: it invokes the image of missing powerful explosive components for missile warheads and detonation of nukes to portray Bush as incompetent, as if he were supposed to have stood guard over them himself. But, if the weaponry is as frightening as the Times suggests and Saddam actually had it--that is, if it had not been destroyed, removed or rendered inert in the decade or so during which the inspectors were “monitoring” it--how effective were the inspections?

Deep into its story, the Times lamely reports that “None of the explosives were destroyed, arms experts familiar with the decision recalled, because Iraq argued that it should be allowed to keep them for eventual use in mining and civilian construction.” Great monitoring, huh? Is that what they would take us back to: a process that would have left this kind of weaponry in the control of someone like Saddam (despite the apparently not very effective “monitoring”of inspectors) had we not acted?

That may be part of the explanation why Joe Lockhart, in the letter K-Lo posted earlier this afternoon, contented himself with mentioning “deadly explosives” and wisely avoided the Times-like hyperbole of missile warheads and nukes. Naturally, in dwelling on the one-pound of explosive used in the Pan Am 103 bombing during the Reagan administration, Lockhart also deftly resisted reminding voters of, for example, the 1400 pound explosive detonated in New York City at the World Trade Center in 1993, as well as any toting up of poundage in the bombs detonated at Khobar Towers, the U.S. embassy in Kenya, the U.S. embassy in Tanzania, and the harbor of Aden at the hull of the U.S.S. Cole--all during the Clinton years.

It is never a good thing to lose track of munitions--although, as Mark Levin notes, these are the kinds of things that happen in a war. Still, the Times plainly wants to have it both ways, and it shouldn’t be able to. So which is it: was Saddam a threat who needed to be removed, or is the Times’s story this morning an overblown account of the seriousness of the lost weaponry, which editors transparently placed on page one to help the Kerry campaign?