Global Hoax

The kool-aid drinking liberals protesting in New York say they are against the war..the FACT is they are pro genicide, pro dictatorship, pro rape, etc. etc.....They would love to have Saddam Hussein back in power...killing anyone who disagreed with him. That is FACT...not GLOBAL HOAX!

S.A. Kleinheider

Tens of Thousands in NYC Protest War

Apr 29, 5:29 PM (ET)

By DESMOND BUTLER


NEW YORK (AP) - Tens of thousands of protesters marched Saturday through lower Manhattan to demand an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, just hours after this month's death toll reached 70.

Cindy Sheehan, a vociferous critic of the war whose soldier son also died in Iraq, joined in the march, as did actress Susan Sarandon and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

"End this war, bring the troops home," read one sign lifted by marchers on the sunny afternoon, three years after the war in Iraq began. The mother of a Marine killed two years ago in Iraq held a picture of her son, born in 1984 and killed 20 years later.

One group marched under the banner "Veterans for Peace."

(AP) Danielle Mazur, left, and her mother Betty Mazur take a break at Foley Square in downtown Manhattan...
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The demonstrators stretched for about 10 blocks as they headed down Broadway. Organizers said 300,000 people marched, though a police spokesman declined to give an estimate. There were no reports of arrests.

"We are here today because the war is illegal, immoral and unethical," said the Rev. Al Sharpton. "We must bring the troops home."

Organizers said the march was also meant to oppose any military action against Iran, which is facing international criticism over its nuclear program. The event was organized by the group United for Peace and Justice.

"We've been lied to, and they're going to lie to us again to bring us a war in Iran," said Marjori Ramos, 43, of New York. "I'm here because I had a lot of anger, and I had to do something."

Steve Rand, an English teacher from Waterbury, Vt., held a poster announcing, "Vermont Says No to War."

"I'd like to see our troops come home," he said.

The march stepped off shortly after noon from Union Square, with the demonstrators heading for a rally between a U.S. courthouse and a federal office building in lower Manhattan.

The death toll in Iraq for April was the highest for a single month in 2006. At least 2,399 U.S. military members have died since the war began. An Army soldier was the latest victim, killed Saturday in a roadside explosion in Baghdad.

That figure is well below some of the bloodiest months of the Iraq conflict, but is a sharp increase over March, when 31 were killed. January's death toll was 62 and February's 55. In December, 68 Americans died.

Volkswagen Rabbit Springs into New York - Just in Time for Easter 10 April 2006

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - In a surprise move, Volkswagen of America, Inc. announced today that its all-new fifth generation Golf, which debuted at the 2006 Chicago Auto Show, is going back to its roots with the original Rabbit nameplate for the U.S. and Canadian markets. The Rabbit will hop into the market in early summer, after its official introduction at the New York International Auto Show on Wednesday, April 12, 2006, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

"The Rabbit was always exclusive to the U.S. and Canadian markets; while the rest of the world had the Golf, we had the iconic Rabbit," said Volkswagen's Director of Brand Innovation, Kerri Martin. "The reintroduction of the Rabbit represents Volkswagen's commitment to this market and is a nod to the passionate North American enthusiasts who have an emotional connection with the Rabbit name."

"Volkswagen customers want a relationship with their cars. Names like The Thing, Beetle, Fox, and Rabbit support this," Martin added.

The Rabbit goes on sale this summer in both two and four-door versions, with pricing starting at $14,990 for the two-door. Standard features include an advanced ABS braking system, traction control, active front head restraints, front side airbags, air conditioning and anti-theft alarm system with remote locking. Always known for its value, this latest Rabbit is no exception, offering a high level of standard features and equipment at an attractive starting price.

The Rabbit was the first Volkswagen produced in the United States and its appeal grew rapidly, with sales of over 1.3 million in its 10-year lifespan. The Rabbit's popularity can be credited to the wide array of standard features it offered at an attractive price. The 2006 Rabbit promises a return to the high-value, iconic status of the original.

"The Rabbit's return to Volkswagen's family is not an attempt to recreate the original car; today's Rabbit is manufactured at our Wolfsburg production facility alongside the all-new GTI." The Rabbit, or Golf as it is well known throughout the rest of the world, is the world's best seller with over 25 million cars sold over five generations. This latest generation has already won more than 25 awards in more than sixteen countries. Martin adds, "Even the name 'Rabbit' dramatizes the enhanced performance, playing off the car's clever design, efficient size, agility and nimbleness. The Rabbit is back."

The 2006 Rabbit benefits from its laser-welding production process, class-leading fit and finish, heightened body strength, crash protection, driving dynamics, and reduced interior noise.

Drivers of the Rabbit will benefit from it's fully independent suspension system that uses a multi-link rear and optimized front axle, and will enjoy the new optional six-speed automatic transmission with Tiptronic® (five-speed manual standard). A new powerful engine with a larger displacement of 2.5 liters and five-cylinders generates 150 horsepower.

Also among the most impressive new driving advancements are a standard electro-mechanical steering system, and an optional advanced Electronic Stabilization Program (ESP). The Rabbit also promises more interior room than ever with a large rear hatch opening. Legroom has also increased in this new version.

For added assurance, the Rabbit will come with 24-hour Roadside Assistance for four years with unlimited mileage and new vehicle warranties including:

* Five-year/60,000 mile (whichever occurs first) Powertrain Limited Warranty
* Four-year/50,000 mile (whichever occurs first) New Vehicle Limited Warranty
* 12 year unlimited mileage Limited Warranty against corrosion perforation

Founded in 1955, Volkswagen of America, Inc. is headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany. Volkswagen is one of the world's largest producers of passenger cars and Europe's largest automaker. Volkswagen sells the Rabbit, New Beetle, Jetta, Passat, Touareg

By archaeoacoustics I mean the recovery of sounds from the time before the invention of recording. This implies that such sounds would have been recorded inadvertently, while intending to do sometring else. Not much has been written about this subject and only very few experiments have been made, but I find the subject fascinating enough to dare the deep waters of the unproven and often scorned.

So far no ancient sound has been heard, and the experiments conducted have been attempts to reproduce the conditions at which such recordings would have been produced, successful attempts, according to the papers published.

The Woodbridge experiments

What is probably the first publication on the subject appeared in 1969, when Richard G. Woodbridge, III related four experiments in a letter in the Proceedings of the IEEE1. In the first experiment, he could pick up the noise produced by the potter's wheel from a pot, using a hand-held crystal cartridge (Astatic Corp. Model 2) with a wooden stylus, connected directly to a set of headphones. The second experiment yielded 60 Hz hum from the motor driving the potter's wheel. More interesting were the following experiments, with a canvas being painted while exposed to sounds. In the third experiment the canvas was painted with a variety of different paints while exposed to martial music from loudspeakers. Some of the brush strokes had a striated appearance, and "short snatches of the music" could be indentified. For the fourth experiment, the painter spoke the word "blue" during a stroke of the brush, and after a long search the word could be heard again when stroking the canvas with the stylus.

The Kleiner - Åström experiments

Years later, similar experiments were made in Gothenburg, Sweden, by archaeology professor Paul Åström and acoustics professor Mendel Kleiner2.

Their experiments were dedicated to the analysis of the forces acting on a stylus or its equivalent (feather, vane etc.) while working on a soft surface, and to the actual recording of sound on a clay cylinder that was subsequently fired.

The results are rather encouraging for those who wish to hear the sounds of antiquity. The stylus analysis showed that the maximum force on a possible stylus (in this case a feather used to decorate a pot) would occur at high frequencies, those carrying the consonants of speech and thus the maximum information.

The actual recording also gave a fairly good result. A clay cylinder was formed on a dictaphone mandrel and a 400 Hz signal was recorded with an electrical cutting head giving a lateral modulation. After firing the cylinder, it could be fitted on the mandrel again after some filing, and the signal could be both heard and measured. The noise level at 400 Hz was about the same as the signal level, but at 1-2 kHz it measured considerably lower, which would make it easier to make out any recorded voices.

But, really?

So, experiments have shown that sound can be recorded in paint on a canvas and on a clay surface - that is, if you actually intend to record a sound. But if we want to recover sounds from hundreds of years back, we would then have to look for objects on the surfaces of which sounds have been recorded unintentionally. Then we would have to have some idea about where to begin. What we need is:

1. A surface soft enough to recieve an imprint of the low energy of the sound, yet it has to solidify before this imprint is smeared beyond recognition.
2. This surface would have to be formed during movement, as we need a time axis along which to search for the recorded sound.
3. Transversely to this time axis, there must be a movement produced by the sound vibrations. This could be a movement of the tool used to work the surface - as in the case of the potter's wheel - or of the surface itself - as in the case of the painter's canvas.
4. The surface would also have had to withstand the ravages of time in a more or less pristine condition if we are to make out anything at all through the noise. Nor must it have been covered with any substance that smooths the surface markings.

All this leaves us with precious few objects to try our luck on, for the recorded surface would also have to be old for our search to make any sense. From the last 100 years or more, we have intentional recordings of a quality and duration that we cannot hope to equal in archaeoacoustics.

One object often mentioned in the newspapers as a possible source of sound is Leonardo da Vinci's 500 year old painting Mona Lisa (La Gioconda). It does not seem to give any possibilities of hearing either Leonardo's or Mona Lisa's voice, however, as it is painted on wood, a material probably too stiff to vibrate enough for our purposes.

Christer Hamp, 1999

1. Acoustic Recordings from Antiquity, by Richard G. Woodbridge, III (Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 57, No. 8, August 1969, pp. 1465-1466).

2. The Brittle Sound of Ceramics - Can Vases Speak? by Mendel Kleiner and Paul Åström (Archaeology and Natural Science, vol. 1, 1993, pp. 66-72, Göteborg: Scandinavian Archaeometry Center, Jonsered, ISSN: 1104-3121).

This is an interesting story on the origins of Diamond Mind Baseball. Here is the story as told by the creator of DMB...

What a coincidence! A few days ago, I was browsing my hard drive for something else and stumbled across a transcript of that interview. (At least, I'm pretty sure it was the same one.) The original was quite long, so I've lopped off some stuff at the end. Remember, this was done almost 11 years ago, so some of the time/age references need to be adjusted.

Can you tell us about your general background?

I was born (in 1958) in a north-eastern suburb of Toronto called Agincourt and lived there through high school. I'm the oldest of four kids, and the only one who turned out be nerdy instead of artistic. We lived on the outskirts of town, and there weren't any other kids my age to play with, so I spent a lot of time inventing probability-based games using dice and ordinary playing cards. My mother worried about me a great deal, since I seemed to prefer having only numbers to keep me company. She was afraid that my social skills wouldn't develop as fast as they should.

After high school, I studied math at the University of Waterloo, which is located in a small town of the same name about an hour's drive southwest of Toronto. I took my share of hard-core math courses (calculus, algebra), but I found other subjects to be more interesting: statistics, computer science (including computer simulation), and operations research (queuing theory, scheduling theory, optimization). I also studied business and accounting.

After graduating from Waterloo in 1981, I moved back to Toronto to work for IBM Canada as a systems analyst and programmer of financial software for big mainframe computers. Two years later, I moved to Boston to get my MBA at Harvard Business School. I didn't have any plans to stay in the Boston area after graduation, but the best job opportunity turned out to be just down the street, and I've been here for 12 years. I'm a Canadian citizen and plan to stay that way, though I'm now a permanent resident of the US.

I married my wife, Jodi, on the day the Blue Jays (my team) won the 1992 World Series. Some of my friends were quite surprised when they learned that I had agreed to schedule my wedding during the series. It could have been a disaster: game seven would have been televised while we were at 30,000 feet on our honeymoon.

Jodi and I are very busy raising our daughter Alison, who's 20 months old now. Jodi is also in the software business, but has no interest in baseball. I was able to persuade her to take a family trip to Phoenix for Spring Training when Alison was only seven weeks old, but that had a lot more to do with escaping the cold weather than it did with baseball.

What has been your involvement in sports as a participant over the years?

I've played a little of everything. Hockey came first, of course. We played lots of pickup hockey on schoolyard and backyard rinks. When there was no ice, we played street hockey all the time. I joined an organized ice hockey league for two years, but gave that up when it conflicted with my bowling league. Hockey remained my favorite spectator sport through the early 1970s, and I remember telling my mother when I was about seven years old that I wanted to be the official statistician for the National Hockey League when I grew up.

When I was eight years old, I began playing organized baseball. It wasn't called Little League in Canada, but it was pretty much the same thing. My first team ended the season with a record of 0-20, including a 41-2 loss. I was batting 9th that day and was at the plate for the first time when a runner was thrown out trying to advance on a short passed ball. That play ended the inning, and the game was called on account of darkness before I even got to swing the bat. Despite that dismal season, I enjoyed baseball enough to keep playing.

I started playing soccer as an eight-year-old. For a while, I was able to juggle baseball and soccer, but I was forced to choose when my schedules collided one season. The choice was easy. From the time I first stepped onto a soccer field, it has been my favorite sport. For me, the pain of the baseball strike in 1994 was largely offset by the opportunity to attend the soccer World Cup.

In high school, I played soccer, ran cross-country, and started at point guard on the basketball team. My basketball career came to an abrupt halt when I stopped growing (at 5'6") and found myself trying to guard players who were nine inches taller. At college and grad school, I played intramural football, soccer, volleyball, basketball, softball and ultimate frisbee. For a few years after college, I played a lot of squash and a little racquetball and tennis. Today, I play on a slow-pitch softball team and two soccer teams.

How did you get your start in sports gaming, board and computer (that is, assuming you are also a gamer as well as programmer)?

I purchased my first set of Strat-O-Matic cards in 1970. I had just turned twelve and saw an ad on the back of a comic book. The game sounded too good to be true, so I couldn't wait to order it. The ad talked about players performing just as they do in real-life. Believe it or not, I had a mental image of little plastic men moving around the board, making diving catches, and throwing the ball. When the box arrived with just cards and dice, I was very disappointed, so I tossed the whole thing in the closet. A year later, I was a little more curious, so I dug it out and played a game or two. This time around, I was hooked in short order. For the next few years, I spent most of my spare time rolling dice and compiling stats. I even built a big scoreboard for my bedroom wall so I could keep the standings and league leaders on permanent display. My mother heard me swear for the first time when I finally got fed up waiting for Bobby Tolan to start hitting like he did in real life.

After starting college in 1976, I had much less time for SOM, but I still played on occasion. I remember thinking that someone ought to put this on computer, because it took at least as long to compile the stats as it did to play the games. Doing the stats by hand was fun, up to a point, but there were times when I wished it would happen automatically. And I came to dread playing out those late-season games involving the last-place teams.

In 1981, I was working at IBM when the first IBM PCs were produced. Supplies were very short in those days, so our office had to wait several months to get one. When it arrived, I wanted to learn how to program it, so I spent my evenings and weekends designing a baseball game and the user interface. After a few months, I showed it to some co-workers, and they went nuts over it right away. So I finished it off and we began a six-team office league. When I left IBM in 1983 to go to business school, I put the computer game aside for the most part. We had a couple of baseball parties at school, but I didn't work on the game at all.

After I graduated, I found myself living in downtown Boston, with few friends and interests to fill my spare time. I decided to rewrite the game completely and see if anyone might want to buy it. A year later, I met the people from Pursue the Pennant. I had seen the board game a few weeks earlier and was very impressed with the design. I thought it was better than SOM and APBA, and liked the idea of teaming up with the new kid on the block. They were looking for a computer game to add to their product line, so we entered into a license agreement to have PTP market my game as the PTP computer version. I didn't change the game design in any way, but we made a few cosmetic changes in the user interface to make the games a little more compatible.

What is the character, again assuming you are an active gamer, of your involvement in sports sims? Which sports do you prefer? Stock replays or draft/fantasy leagues?

Unfortunately, my work on the baseball game gives me no time to use simulation games from other sports and very little time for baseball simulations. I occasionally look at the leading games in other sports because they can provide some good ideas for my game. I buy every new release of a baseball game and will spend a few hours with each just to see what the competition is doing.

Right now, I'm playing in a couple of fantasy leagues, which is ok but not nearly as much fun as playing in simulation-oriented leagues. I am also playing in an Internet-based PTP league that has been a lot of fun. We held our draft using Internet Relay Chat, which is much less costly than paying for a conference call. For most of us, it costs nothing. We use e-mail for announcements, waiver notices, trade discussions, and general conversation. Stats, boxscores, and scoresheets are uploaded after every series. This is the first time I've been able to find the time to play in a league, and I've learned a lot about how to make the drafting and Import/Export functions much easier to use for league members and the commissioner.

One of my favorite ways to use the game is to forecast the upcoming season. As the off-season progresses, I'll keep the rosters up to date as real-life players are released, traded, and signed, and I'll periodically play out the new season to see how good the teams appear on paper. It's fun to listen to some real-life general managers talk about how they're only one or two players away from contending, even if it's a dreadful cellar-dwelling team. Sometimes I'll test their theories by adding a couple of great players to their rosters and playing out a few seasons. More often than not, the team finishes around .500, making it clear that there are more than one or two holes to fill. I don't believe simulations can predict the future, because there's no good way to tell who's going to get hurt, who'll come back from a serious injury, or which players are going to have career years. But they can provide useful information if you work with reasonable assumptions and understand these limitations.

How did you get started with computer programming?

I took a few programming courses at Waterloo, starting with COBOL, FORTRAN, and Pascal, then moving on to more advanced topics. I was not a computer science major, but accumulated a little more than half the credits that a CS major would end up with. After graduating, I spent two years with IBM Canada. They gave me access to dozens of computer-based and classroom courses in programming, data communications, and database design. I spent every idle minute in the library working through these courses.

Tell us about Pursue the Pennant and the transition from board to computer game and onward.....

As I mentioned earlier, there really wasn't a transition from board to computer game. Mike Cieslinski designed the board game in the early 1980s, and PTP began shipping it in 1984. I began designing the computer game several years before I had ever heard of PTP. But it turned out that Mike and I had independently reached similar conclusions on how a game should be done, so it wasn't hard to combine the two into a single product line.

In some ways, the games came closer together over the years. For example, we integrated the process of assigning player ratings for those ratings categories where the two games operated in fundamentally the same way. But the games also diverged as we added more and more features to the computer game.

I understand that some big changes are taking place. Can you tell us about them?

Starting September 1, 1995, PTP will no longer be marketing the computer game. I have formed a new company called Diamond Mind, Inc., that will take over all development, marketing, sales and technical support activities that were previously split between Tippett Software (my development company) and PTP. Because the former name is still owned by PTP, the game is now called Diamond Mind Baseball.

Edited by: DMBTom at: 4/26/06 9:39 am

President Clinton surrounded himself with crooks, thieves, liars, cheats, and adulterers during his eight year tenure in office. Can anyone really be surprised that another one of his cronies is crooked?

S.A. Kleinheider



CIA Officer Is Fired for Media Leaks
The Post Was Among Outlets That Gained Classified Data

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 22, 2006; A01

The CIA fired a long-serving intelligence officer for sharing classified information with The Washington Post and other news organizations, officials said yesterday, as the agency continued an aggressive internal search for anyone who may have discussed intelligence with the news media.

CIA officials said the career intelligence officer failed more than one polygraph test and acknowledged unauthorized contacts with reporters. The "officer knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information" with journalists, the agency said in a statement yesterday.

The CIA did not reveal the identity of the employee, who was dismissed Thursday, but NBC News reported last night she is Mary McCarthy. An intelligence source confirmed that the report was accurate.

McCarthy began her career in government as an analyst at the CIA in 1984, public documents show. She served as special assistant to the president and senior director for intelligence programs at the White House during the Clinton administration and the first few months of the Bush administration. She later returned to the CIA. Attempts to reach her last night were unsuccessful.

The CIA's statement did not name the reporters it believes were involved, but several intelligence officials said The Post's Dana Priest was among them. This week, Priest won the Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting for articles about the agency, including one that revealed the existence of secret, CIA-run prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate intelligence committee in February that the agency was determined to get to the bottom of recent leaks, and wanted journalists brought before a federal grand jury to reveal their sources. Regarding disclosures about CIA detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects at secret sites abroad, Goss, the former chairman of the House intelligence committee, said that "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission."

The CIA has filed several reports to the Justice Department since last fall regarding the publication of classified information and has launched its own internal inquiries which include administering polygraphs to dozens of employees. The intelligence agency is sharing its findings with the Justice Department but is continuing to pursue some avenues of investigation on its own.

"It's up to the Justice Department to decide whether they want to pursue investigations separately," an intelligence source said.

The Justice Department is conducting several leak inquiries, including one into reports last December in the New York Times about a secret domestic surveillance program by the National Security Agency. Officials said it is possible the department could file criminal charges in connection with that investigation and others, but it is unclear whether the department is also investigating the disclosures about CIA-run prisons.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse declined to comment yesterday. "We do not confirm investigations on intelligence-related matters," he said, because of the information's sensitivity.

Intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the dismissed officer identified by others as McCarthy has not been charged with any crime and is not believed to be the subject of a Justice Department investigation.

The officer's employment was terminated for violating a secrecy agreement all employees are required to sign when they join the agency. The agreement prohibits them from sharing classified information with unauthorized individuals.

The CIA said the firing was the result of an internal investigation initiated in late January of all "officers who were involved in or exposed to certain intelligence programs."

"Through the course of these investigations a CIA official acknowledged having unauthorized discussion with the media" and was terminated, the CIA statement said.

Priest, who also won the George Polk Award and a prize from the Overseas Press Club this week for her articles, declined to comment yesterday.

Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said people who provide citizens the information they need to hold their government accountable should not "come to harm for that."

"The reporting that Dana did was very important accountability reporting about how the CIA and the rest of the U.S. government have been conducting the war on terror," Downie said. "Whether or not the actions of the CIA or other agencies have interfered with anyone's civil liberties is important information for Americans to know and is an important part of our jobs."

In an effort to stem leaks, the Bush administration launched several initiatives earlier this year targeting journalists and national security employees. They include FBI probes, extensive polygraphing inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.

The effort has been widely seen among members of the media, and some legal experts, as the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, and has worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House.

Dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI's Washington field office. Others have been prohibited, in writing, from discussing even unclassified issues related to the domestic surveillance program. Some GOP lawmakers are also considering tougher penalties for leaking.

Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who chairs the Senate intelligence panel, welcomed the CIA's actions. In a statement, he said leaks had "hindered our efforts in the war against al Qaeda," although he did not say how.

"I am pleased that the Central Intelligence Agency has identified the source of certain unauthorized disclosures, and I hope that the agency, and the [intelligence] community as a whole, will continue to vigorously investigate other outstanding leak cases," Roberts said.

Staff writer Spencer S. Hsu and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

US colonel offers Iraq an apology of sorts for devastation of Babylon

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
17 April 2006

In an act of at least partial contrition, an officer in charge of the US military occupation of Babylon in 2003 and 2004 has offered to make a formal apology for the destruction his troops wrought on the ancient site.

Colonel John Coleman, former chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, said yesterday that if the head of the Iraqi antiquities board wanted an apology, "if it makes him feel good, we can certainly give him one".

For more than a millennium, Babylon was one of the great cities of antiquity. It reached its greatest glory in the early 6th century BC, as the capital of Nebuchadnezzar II, builder of the celebrated Hanging Gardens.

Babylon declined and fell into ruin after it was conquered by the Persians under Cyrus the Great in around 538BC. But no devastation seems to have matched that inflicted by US troops and their Polish allies after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Saddam himself had not helped. He had much of the ancient site rebuilt and developed as a tourist site as part of efforts to portray himself as Nebuchadnezzar's modern successor and turn Mesopotamia once more into a regional superpower. He built a contemporary ziggurat-shaped palace nearby and carved out an underground car park among archeological deposits.

But after entering Babylon in April 2003, coalition forces turned the site into a base camp, flattening and compressing tracts of ruins as they built a helicopter pad and fuel stations. The soldiers filled sandbags with archeological fragments and dug trenches through unexcavated areas, while tanks crushed slabs of original 2,600-year-old paving.

"All of these things have combined to do a lot of damage to what is one of the most important, sensitive archeological sites in the whole world," John Curtis, curator of the British Museum's Near East department, said last year.

Col Coleman's repentance was qualified. "If it wasn't for our presence," he told the BBC, "what would the state of those archeological ruins be?" - a repeat of the US claim that had its forces not occupied ancient Babylon, the site would have been laid waste by looters.

"Is there a price for the presence? Sure there is," he declared. "I'll just say that the price, had the presence not been there, would have been far greater."

After US and Polish troops left in 2004, the first restoration plans for Babylon were drawn up. Last November Unesco, the United Nations' cultural and scientific organisation, said it would be carrying out some initial repair work, and setting up a photographic registry of the site.

The work, in which France, Britain, Poland, the US, Iraq, Japan, Italy and the Netherlands are also involved, is being co-ordinated by the German Archaeological Institute, under the direction of the Iraqi authorities and Unesco.

But Babylon is not the only point of archaeological controversy in a country with an estimated 10,000 sites. In a separate complaint, the Iraqi Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities has demanded that US troops pull out of the city of Kish, which dates back 5,000 years, accusing American forces of damaging the precious archaeological site.

It accused the soldiers of preventing anyone from entering the city to assess damage. There has been no comment from the US military.

* At least six Iraqi policeman died and up to 39 others were missing yesterday after insurgents ambushed a police convoy near a US base, officials said. Separately, a suicide car bomber outside Basra wounded four British soldiers at the Shuaiba military base, and killed at least one civilian.

Archaeological cost of invasion

* US Marines from the First Expeditionary Force first set up camp in Babylon in April 2003

* Soldiers filled protective sandbags with sand containing ancient artefacts

* 2,600-year-old pavements were crushed by heavy military vehicles

* Landing helicopters caused structural damage to some of the city's ancient buildings and sandblasted fragile bricks in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar

* Archaeologists say gravel brought in to build car parks and helipads has contaminated key sites

* US troops have also been accused of causing damage to the 5,000-year-old city of Kish by the Iraqi Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities

There's an easy fix for "Missing HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," and several other fatal startup errors.

By Fred Langa, InformationWeek
April 16, 2006
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=185301251

It usually takes a lot to stop XP in its tracks. Even in those rare cases when the operating system is badly damaged, you'll usually at least have the option of booting into the "Last Known Good" configuration, or to Safe Mode. But sometimes, especially after major hardware failures or part swaps (e.g. moving the operating system to a new hard drive), or after problems with dual- or multi-booting software, you may encounter seemingly intractable errors such as "Missing or corrupt HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," or "Windows could not start..."

These problems can seem hard to get past. For example, the first time I got a "Cannot find \Windows\System32\hal.dll" error message, I thought I'd be clever and replace the missing file via a simple Copy command from the Recovery Console. I booted the PC, switched to the \Windows\System32 folder, and there it was: The HAL.DLL was already there. It wasn't missing at all. Why couldn't the operating system find it?

I tried copying a fresh version of the file to \Windows\System32. No dice. I tried renaming it all uppercase and then all lowercase. Nothing. I put a copy in the root directory. No effect. I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked.

Then--doh!--I stopped thrashing and did what I should have done initially: I dug into the Microsoft Knowledge Base and learned about XP's built-in Rebuild command. It can often easily fix "Missing HAL" and similar problems in just a minute or two. If you know about this command and how to use it, you can potentially save yourself hours and hours of manually reinstalling or rebuilding a failed operating system.

The Rebuild command--technically a software "switch" used with XP's Bootcfg tool--automatically searches a hard drive for valid startup information and files, letting you choose the correct ones. This has the effect of removing and repairing any references to whatever invalid, missing, or corrupt startup information was preventing normal booting.

As is true of so many technical topics, this one actually takes far longer to describe than to implement, so please don't be put off by any seeming complexity in this discussion. Once you know the process, it's actually quite straightforward and takes only a minute or two to run to completion.

For example, if you already have some knowledge of the commands involved, many "Missing or corrupt HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," or "Windows could not start..." problems can be fixed with these five shortcut steps:

* Boot from your XP Setup CD and enter the Recovery Console
* Run "Attrib -H -R -S" on the C:\Boot.ini file
* Delete the C:\Boot.ini file
* Run "Bootcfg /Rebuild"
* Run Fixboot

It really can be as simple as that!

But the first few times you try this repair, it makes sense to use the slightly longer but more certain "official" method, as outlined by Microsoft in a number of separate Knowledge Base articles. To save you time, we'll concatenate the instructions here.
Enter The Recovery Console
The safest, surest way to resolve problems such as "Missing or corrupt HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," or "Windows could not start..." is to boot the PC from an XP Setup CD and use the pristine, uncorrupted files and tools there to effect repairs. The one catch is that if your setup CD is significantly older than your current Windows version, you may have file compatibility problems. For example, you can hit snags if you use an original or SP1 XP Setup CD to try to repair an XP SP2 installation. You'll get a message to the effect that the version you're trying to upgrade is newer than the version on the CD.

The solution here is to use a "slipstreamed" setup CD, which adds the newer files to your original setup CD. This kind of updated setup CD can be used on just about any XP installation. It's a good idea to have an up-to-date, slipstreamed setup CD available in any case, as it simplifies all future installs and CD-based repairs.

Once you have a startup CD with the same version of system files as the PC you're working on, configure your PC to boot from CD if it isn't already set up that way. (You may need to enter the BIOS setup tool to configure the PC to boot from the CD.)

Start your PC with the XP Setup CD in the drive. When you see the "Press any key to boot from CD..." prompt, do so and let the CD-based boot process begin.

When the Recovery Console option is offered ("Press R to start the Recovery Console"), do so. You may be asked which Windows installation to enter, in which case type the number of the Windows installation you wish to work on (usually "1").

When prompted, enter the Administrator's password for that Windows installation.

At the command prompt, type "Bootcfg /Rebuild" (without the quotes) and hit enter. Windows will then scan the hard drive, looking for valid Windows installs and startup information.

The exact verbiage will depend on your setup, but after a few moments you'll see a prompt that says something like:

Total Identified Windows Installs: 1
[1] C:\Windows
Add Installation To Boot List?

Assuming the information you see is correct, enter "Y" for yes, and Bootcfg will start the process of rebuilding the boot list to include the indicated Windows installation. Along the way, it will repair most "Missing or corrupt HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," "Windows could not start...," and similar errors.

After a moment, you'll be asked to "Enter Load Identifier." This is the name of the operating system that will appear in boot menus. For consistency with the standard nomenclature used by Microsoft, enter "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" or "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" without the quotes and hit enter.

Next you'll be asked to "Enter OS Load Options." For normal installations, enter "/Fastdetect" (without the quotes) and hit enter.

In most cases, that's all it will take. You can type "Exit" to leave the Recovery Console and reboot the PC, which should then start normally.

But if you wish, or in cases where you suspect a problem with the boot sectors on the hard drive (as with problems in a dual- or multi-boot system that's become unstable, or where a third-party boot manager may have run amok), you can run Fixboot from the command line (without any parameters) prior to exiting the Recovery Console. This will write a new partition boot sector to the default drive, undoing any changes caused by dual-, multi-, or third-party boot processes. (You can reactivate those alternate boot methods later if you wish, but running Fixboot now simplifies the boot process and removes nonessential boot variables, which in turn helps ensure that the repaired XP installation will have the best chance of successful booting.)

After running Fixboot, type "Exit" to leave the Recovery Console and reboot the PC, which should then start normally.
Additional Options
A version of Bootcfg can also be run from inside Windows. Type "Bootcfg /?" (minus the quotes) in the Start/Run line to see the commands available that way. Note that the /Rebuild command isn't available from inside Windows; you can only run that from within the Recovery Console. (That makes sense because you only need to totally rebuild the boot information when Windows won't start normally.)

A /List command is also available only from within Recovery Console. It simply lists the entries already in the boot list, which can be useful for checking or as a learning tool.

You can also see entries already in the boot list from within Windows. Right-click on My Computer, then select Properties/Advanced/Startup and Recovery/Settings. The entries are shown in the System Startup portion of the dialog, and you can directly edit the Boot.Ini file by clicking the Edit button there.

You can also view and edit the startup entries via the Msconfig tool. Enter "Msconfig" on the Start/Run line, and you'll see numerous options for modifying the Boot.Ini and related files. The XP help system explains each option pretty well.

But none of these "edit from within Windows" options is available when Windows won't boot, which is why the Recovery Console's little-known Bootcfg /Rebuild command is so important and useful. If you know about this command and how to use it, you can potentially save yourself literally hours and hours of manually reinstalling or rebuilding a failed operating system!

More Info
If you'd like more information on Bootcfg, or if you'd like to explore additional boot options, the following will help:

* Microsoft's Recovery Console overview
* Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
* How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP
* A discussion about the Bootcfg command and its uses
* Description of the Bootcfg command and its uses
* How to edit the Boot.ini file in Windows XP
* Google re: Bootcfg
* Recovering Windows XP using the Recovery Console
* XP Rebuild/Recover (via Google)
* Fixboot (from Microsoft)
* Fixboot (from Google)

Here's additional information on slipstreaming:

* From Google
* From WindowsIT Pro
* From HelpWithWindows.com
* From Petri.co.il
* Specific discussion of "Missing HAL.DLL"
* Microsoft on starting the computer in Safe Mode

To discuss this column with other readers, please visit Fred Langa's forum.

St. Louis baseball stadiums

From Sportsman's Park to Busch Stadium, the city's baseball team - whether it was called the Browns, the Perfectos or the Cardinals - has had many homes.

1871: St. Louis' first baseball team, the Reds, plays before stands erected west of downtown, where Compton Avenue crossed the Missouri Pacific railway. It later becomes Stars' Park, home of the Negro League team of that name.

1880: The Sportsman's Park and Club Association builds a ballpark at North Grand Boulevard and Dodier Street, erecting a grandstand and bleachers, plus a fence to keep out all but paying customers.

1893: The team, now called the Browns, moves to New Sportsman's Park, at Natural Bridge and Vandeventer avenues.

1899: The Browns change their name to the Perfectos, and New Sportsman's Park is renamed League Park. A year later, the unpopular Perfectos name gives way to one inspired by the team's bright red uniforms: the Cardinals.

1902: An American League franchise from Milwaukee moves to St. Louis, reviving the "Browns" name and playing at the original Sportsman's Park.

1911: League Park is renamed Robison Field, honoring owner Matthew Stanley Robison, who died that year, and his brother and co-owner, Frank DeHass Robison.

1917: New owners rename Robison Field. It becomes Cardinal Field.

1920: The Cardinals abandon Cardinal Field and become tenants of the Browns, who had built a new stadium at Grand and Dodier and kept the Sportsman's Park name.

1953: Anheuser-Busch buys the Cardinals and Sportsman's Park, renaming the latter Busch Stadium. The St. Louis Browns move to Baltimore and become the Orioles.

May 12, 1966: A new ballpark, Busch Memorial Stadium, opens downtown.

Dec. 8, 2005: Crews finish tearing down Busch Stadium.

April 10, 2006: The new Busch Stadium hosts its first opening day.

- Compiled by Post-Dispatch news researcher J. Stephen Bolhafner

BY RICHARD LINDZEN
Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m.

There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.

To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.

If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.

So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.

All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.

Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.

And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.

Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.

M. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Bob Carter (Geologist)
(Filed: 09/04/2006)

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?

Since the early 1990s, the columns of many leading newspapers and magazines, worldwide, have carried an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as "if", "might", "could", "probably", "perhaps", "expected", "projected" or "modelled" - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense.

The problem here is not that of climate change per se, but rather that of the sophisticated scientific brainwashing that has been inflicted on the public, bureaucrats and politicians alike. Governments generally choose not to receive policy advice on climate from independent scientists. Rather, they seek guidance from their own self-interested science bureaucracies and senior advisers, or from the IPCC itself. No matter how accurate it may be, cautious and politically non-correct science advice is not welcomed in Westminster, and nor is it widely reported.

Marketed under the imprimatur of the IPCC, the bladder-trembling and now infamous hockey-stick diagram that shows accelerating warming during the 20th century - a statistical construct by scientist Michael Mann and co-workers from mostly tree ring records - has been a seminal image of the climate scaremongering campaign. Thanks to the work of a Canadian statistician, Stephen McIntyre, and others, this graph is now known to be deeply flawed.

There are other reasons, too, why the public hears so little in detail from those scientists who approach climate change issues rationally, the so-called climate sceptics. Most are to do with intimidation against speaking out, which operates intensely on several parallel fronts.

First, most government scientists are gagged from making public comment on contentious issues, their employing organisations instead making use of public relations experts to craft carefully tailored, frisbee-science press releases. Second, scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research. Third, members of the Establishment have spoken declamatory words on the issue, and the kingdom's subjects are expected to listen.

On the alarmist campaign trail, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is thus reported as saying that global warming is so bad that Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century. Warming devotee and former Chairman of Shell, Lord [Ron] Oxburgh, reportedly agrees with another rash statement of King's, that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism. And goodly Archbishop Rowan Williams, who self-evidently understands little about the science, has warned of "millions, billions" of deaths as a result of global warming and threatened Mr Blair with the wrath of the climate God unless he acts. By betraying the public's trust in their positions of influence, so do the great and good become the small and silly.

Two simple graphs provide needed context, and exemplify the dynamic, fluctuating nature of climate change. The first is a temperature curve for the last six million years, which shows a three-million year period when it was several degrees warmer than today, followed by a three-million year cooling trend which was accompanied by an increase in the magnitude of the pervasive, higher frequency, cold and warm climate cycles. During the last three such warm (interglacial) periods, temperatures at high latitudes were as much as 5 degrees warmer than today's. The second graph shows the average global temperature over the last eight years, which has proved to be a period of stasis.

The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 per cent of the last two million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.

The British Government urgently needs to recast the sources from which it draws its climate advice. The shrill alarmism of its public advisers, and the often eco-fundamentalist policy initiatives that bubble up from the depths of the Civil Service, have all long since been detached from science reality. Intern-ationally, the IPCC is a deeply flawed organisation, as acknowledged in a recent House of Lords report, and the Kyoto Protocol has proved a costly flop. Clearly, the wrong horses have been backed.

As mooted recently by Tony Blair, perhaps the time has come for Britain to join instead the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), whose six member countries are committed to the development of new technologies to improve environmental outcomes. There, at least, some real solutions are likely to emerge for improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution.

Informal discussions have already begun about a new AP6 audit body, designed to vet rigorously the science advice that the Partnership receives, including from the IPCC. Can Britain afford not to be there?

• Prof Bob Carter is a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research

By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 09/04/2006)

The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, claims an investigative writer with high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts.

President George W Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran's hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as "the new Hitler", says Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad: 'The new Hitler'

Some US military chiefs have unsuccessfully urged the White House to drop the nuclear option from its war plans, Hersh writes in The New Yorker magazine. The conviction that Mr Ahmedinejad would attack Israel or US forces in the Middle East, if Iran obtains atomic weapons, is what drives American planning for the destruction of Teheran's nuclear programme.

Hersh claims that one of the plans, presented to the White House by the Pentagon, entails the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One alleged target is Iran's main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, 200 miles south of Teheran.

Although Iran claims that its nuclear programme is peaceful, US and European intelligence agencies are certain that Teheran is trying to develop atomic weapons. In contrast to the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there are no disagreements within Western intelligence about Iran's plans.

This newspaper disclosed recently that senior Pentagon strategists are updating plans to strike Iran's nuclear sites with long-distance B2 bombers and submarine-launched missiles. And last week, the Sunday Telegraph reported a secret meeting at the Ministry of Defence where military chiefs and officials from Downing Street and the Foreign Office discussed the consequences of an American-led attack on Iran, and Britain's role in any such action.

The military option is opposed by London and other European capitals. But there are growing fears in No 10 and the Foreign Office that the British-led push for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear stand-off, will be swept aside by hawks in Washington. Hersh says that within the Bush administration, there are concerns that even a pummelling by conventional strikes, may not sufficiently damage Iran's buried nuclear plants.

Iran has been developing a series of bunkers and facilities to provide hidden command centres for its leaders and to protect its nuclear infrastructure. The lack of reliable intelligence about these subterranean facilities, is fuelling pressure for tactical nuclear weapons to be included in the strike plans as the only guaranteed means to destroy all the sites simultaneously.

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings among the joint chiefs of staff, and some officers have talked about resigning, Hersh has been told. The military chiefs sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran, without success, a former senior intelligence officer said.

The Pentagon consultant on the war on terror confirmed that some in the administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among defence department political appointees.

The election of Mr Ahmedinejad last year, has hardened attitudes within the Bush Administration. The Iranian president has said that Israel should be "wiped off the map". He has drafted in former fellow Revolutionary Guards commanders to run the nuclear programme, in further signs that he is preparing to back his threats with action.

Mr Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official told Hersh. "That's the name they're using. They say, 'Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?' "

Despite America's public commitment to diplomacy, there is a growing belief in Washington that the only solution to the crisis is regime change. A senior Pentagon consultant said that Mr Bush believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy".

Publicly, the US insists it remains committed to diplomacy to solve the crisis. But with Russia apparently intent on vetoing any threat of punitive action at the UN, the Bush administration is also planning for unilateral military action. Hersh repeated his claims that the US has intensified clandestine activities inside Iran, using special forces to identify targets and establish contact with anti-Teheran ethnic-minority groups.

The senior defence officials said that Mr Bush is "determined to deny Iran the opportunity to begin a pilot programme, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium".

Cooler Heads Needed on Warming
By George Will

So, "the debate is over." Time magazine says so. Last week's cover story exhorted readers to "Be Worried. Be Very Worried," and ABC News concurred in several stories. So did Montana's governor, speaking on ABC. And there was polling about global warming, gathered by Time and ABC in collaboration.

Eighty-five percent of Americans say warming is probably happening, and 62 percent say it threatens them personally. The National Academy of Sciences says the rise in the Earth's surface temperature has been about one degree Fahrenheit in the past century. Did 85 percent of Americans notice? Of course not. They got their anxiety from journalism calculated to produce it. Never mind that one degree might be the margin of error when measuring the planet's temperature. To take a person's temperature, you put a thermometer in an orifice or under an arm. Taking the temperature of our churning planet, with its tectonic plates sliding around over a molten core, involves limited precision.

Why have Americans been dilatory about becoming as worried -- as very worried -- as Time and ABC think proper? An article on ABC's Web site wonders ominously, "Was Confusion Over Global Warming a Con Job?"

It suggests there has been a misinformation campaign implying that scientists might not be unanimous, a campaign by -- how did you guess? -- big oil. And the coal industry. But speaking of coal . . .

Recently, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer flew with ABC's George Stephanopoulos over Glacier National Park's receding glaciers. But Schweitzer offered hope: Everyone, buy Montana coal. New technologies can, he said, burn it while removing carbon causes of global warming.

Stephanopoulos noted that such technologies are at least four years away and "all the scientists" say something must be done "right now." Schweitzer, quickly recovering from hopefulness and returning to the "be worried, be very worried" message, said "it's even more critical than that" because China and India are going to "put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with conventional coal-fired generators than all of the rest of the planet has during the last 150 years."

That is one reason why the Clinton administration never submitted the Kyoto accord on global warming for Senate ratification. In 1997 the Senate voted 95 to 0 that the accord would disproportionately burden America while being too permissive toward major polluters that are America's trade competitors.

While worrying about Montana's receding glaciers, Schweitzer, who is 50, should also worry about the fact that when he was 20 he was told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling. Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age." The Christian Science Monitor ("Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect," Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers "have begun to advance," "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" and "the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool." Newsweek agreed ("The Cooling World," April 28, 1975) that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said "may mark the return to another ice age." The Times (May 21, 1975) also said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" now that it is "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950."

In fact, the Earth is always experiencing either warming or cooling. But suppose the scientists and their journalistic conduits, who today say they were so spectacularly wrong so recently, are now correct. Suppose the Earth is warming and suppose the warming is caused by human activity. Are we sure there will be proportionate benefits from whatever climate change can be purchased at the cost of slowing economic growth and spending trillions? Are we sure the consequences of climate change -- remember, a thick sheet of ice once covered the Midwest -- must be bad? Or has the science-journalism complex decided that debate about these questions, too, is "over"?

About the mystery that vexes ABC -- Why have Americans been slow to get in lock step concerning global warming? -- perhaps the "problem" is not big oil or big coal, both of which have discovered there is big money to be made from tax breaks and other subsidies justified in the name of combating carbon.

Perhaps the problem is big crusading journalism.
georgewill@washpost.com

(c) 2006, Washington Post Writers Group

Fri Apr 7, 11:21 AM ET

In a tale reminiscent of the last Wallace and Gromit movie, furious villagers in northeast England have hired armed guards to protect their beloved communal vegetable gardens from a suspected boll weevil.

Leeks, Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots have all been ripped up and devoured by the mystery were-weevil -- prompting the 12 allotment holders in Felton, north of Newcastle, to hire two marksmen with air rifles and orders to shoot to kill.

"It is a massive thing. It is a monster. The first time I saw it, I said: 'What the hell is that?'" the Northumberland Gazette newspaper quoted local resident Jeff Smith, 63, as saying on its website (www.northumberlandtoday.co.uk).

He claims to have seen the black and brown boll weevil -- with one antennae bigger than the other -- about two months ago, and at least three fellow allotment holders say they have seen it as well.

"I have seen it and it is bigger than a normal boll weevil. It's eating all our crops and we grow the best stuff here," said retired miner George Brown, 76, quoted by the domestic Press Association news agency.

Smith could not be reached for comment Friday, but his mother told AFP that the weevil-raising story is true -- and no less an authority than the British Boll Weevil Council said it was credible.

"Certain breeds do grow very big, like the Continental Giant" which can be 66 centimetres (26 inches) in length or more, a spokesman for the Nottinghamshire-based council, which represent boll weevil breeders, told AFP.

The giant Asian hornet (Vespa mandarinia) has earned the nickname “yak killer” from local villagers. At nearly 2 inches long, they’re the world’s largest hornets. Victims describe their quarter-inch-long stingers as feeling like a hot nail. The stinger delivers a lethal venom that dissolves human tissue, and, as the name implies, can kill a yak.

3 victims plunged 21 feet into fissure on Mammoth Mountain
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:47 p.m. ET April 7, 2006

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. - Three members of a ski patrol team died Thursday when they fell into a volcanic fissure at the Mammoth Mountain resort, officials said.

Whether they were killed by the 21-foot fall or were also affected by gases seeping from the cavity was not immediately clear.

The victims were part of a four-man team inspecting the mountain after heavy snowstorms and fencing off the gap in the rock, officials said.

Mammoth Lakes Mayor Rick Wood said heat from hot rocks had hollowed out the snow and two ski patrol members fell into the fissure on the 11,053-foot peak in the Eastern Sierra.

A third patrol member attempted a rescue and perished as well, and the fourth was injured, he said.

Additional rescue efforts were conducted by other ski patrol members and local firefighters and paramedics. Resort spokeswoman Joani Lynch said several rescuers were overcome by gas and suffered minor injuries.

The role that gas might have played in the three deaths was uncertain, but the mayor said a police detective told him that “the level of carbon monoxide inside this cavity was extremely high.”

None of the victims’ names was immediately released.

The mountain, about a six-hour drive north of Los Angeles, is popular with skiers from Southern California. The peak towers over a dramatic landscape in a volcanically active region.

The region has been quiet of volcanic activity for six years, said Dave Hill, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park.

The accident was not related to any volcanic activity, he said.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© 2006 MSNBC.com

The Sun is more active than it has ever been in the last 300 years

Climate changes such as global warming may be due to changes in the sun rather than to the release of greenhouse gases on Earth.

Climatologists and astronomers speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia say the present warming may be unusual - but a mini ice age could soon follow.

The sun provides all the energy that drives our climate, but it is not the constant star it might seem.

Careful studies over the last 20 years show that its overall brightness and energy output increases slightly as sunspot activity rises to the peak of its 11-year cycle.

And individual cycles can be more or less active.

The sun is currently at its most active for 300 years.

That, say scientists in Philadelphia, could be a more significant cause of global warming than the emissions of greenhouse gases that are most often blamed.

The researchers point out that much of the half-a-degree rise in global temperature over the last 120 years occurred before 1940 - earlier than the biggest rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

[ image: Ancient trees reveal most warm spells are caused by the sun]
Ancient trees reveal most warm spells are caused by the sun
Using ancient tree rings, they show that 17 out of 19 warm spells in the last 10,000 years coincided with peaks in solar activity.

They have also studied other sun-like stars and found that they spend significant periods without sunspots at all, so perhaps cool spells should be feared more than global warming.

The scientists do not pretend they can explain everything, nor do they say that attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be abandoned. But they do feel that understanding of our nearest star must be increased if the climate is to be understood.

Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil



Frank Völkel

January 9, 2006 11:00

Dousing Your Athlon FX-55 With Eight Gallons Of Cooking Oil?

Common sense dictates that submerging your high-end PC in cooking oil is not a good idea. But, of course, engineering feats and science breakthroughs were made possible by those who dared to explore the realms of the non-conventional. Members of the Munich-based THG lab are only too happy to confirm this fact. And not only did we find that our AMD Athlon FX-55 and GeForce 6800 Ultra equipped system didn't short out when we filled the sealed shut PC case with cooking oil - but the non-conductive properties of the liquid coupled created a totally cool and quiet high-end PC, devoid of the noise pollution of fans. The PC case - or should we say tank - also offered a new and novel way to display and show off your PC components.

Remember our Record Attempt: The 5 GHz Project when we went to cooling extremes with liquid nitrogen, Build Your Own XGA Projector! or the PC that manages with just 37 Watts of power? And don't forget the Espresso machine in the PC case . And now? Many hours of work along with preparation time coupled with numerous glitches are behind our new one-of-a-kind specimen.
Remember our Record Attempt: The 5 GHz Project when we went to cooling extremes with liquid nitrogen, Build Your Own XGA Projector! or the PC that manages with just 37 Watts of power? And don't forget the Espresso machine in the PC case. And now? Many hours of work along with preparation time coupled with numerous glitches are behind our new one-of-a-kind specimen.

Technically, our attractive high-end PC can keep up with the best of the crop as far as performance goes - minus the noise, of course, associated with an extremely loud standard 08/15 case. Indeed, the large volume of liquid guarantees absolutely silent operation - no fans are running. And even under maximum load the three major building blocks remain sufficiently cool: processor, graphics card and chipset.

How would you like to be chased by a 7-ft tall turkey? That would be a sight!

S.A. Kleinheider

By BROCK VERGAKIS, Associated Press Writer
29 minutes ago

Fossils discovered in southern Utah are from a new species of birdlike dinosaur that resembled a 7-foot-tall brightly colored turkey and could run up to 25 mph, scientists said Tuesday.

Fossils of the meat-eater's hand-like claw and foot were found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument near the Arizona border, giving paleontologists reason to believe some dinosaurs known as raptors roamed from Canada to northern New Mexico about 75 million years ago.

Much smaller variations of the dinosaur had been found previously in Montana, South Dakota and the Canadian province of Alberta.

"This is the southernmost occurrence of this group, and it's about two times the size of the ones up north," said Lindsay Zanno, a doctoral student at the University of Utah who named the dinosaur Hagryphus giganteus, or giant four-footed, birdlike god of the Western desert.

The dinosaur had a strong toothless beak, powerful arms and formidable claws that made it capable of eating animals and plants. Large feathers grew on its hind end, giving it a resemblance to a turkey, Zanno said.

Scientists are not sure what purpose the feathers served, but it was not for flying. "It's quite different from modern birds," she said.

Mike Getty, collections manager at the university's Museum of Natural History, found the fossils in 2001. Scientists needed several years to excavate the fossils and publish their findings, he said.

The dinosaur was named in a paper published in December by the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. It was the first new dinosaur from the national monument to receive a name.

"This is the last great, unexplored dinosaur bone yard in the lower 48 states," said Scott Sampson, the museum's chief curator who wrote the journal article with Zanno.

Three other dinosaurs discovered at the monument are expected to be named soon, Sampson said, including a meat-eating tyrannosaur, a horned dinosaur and a duckbilled dinosaur with a 7-foot-long head.

___

On the Net:

Utah Museum of Natural History: http://www.umnh.utah.edu

Yes...Jesus could have walked on ice...but he walked on WATER! This is the ultimate GLOBAL HOAX story! Pseudo science is used to discredit one of Jesus' miracles! This is ridiculous!

S.A. KLEINHEIDER

Sara Goudarzi
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.comTue Apr 4, 2:00 PM ET

Rare conditions could have conspired to create hard-to-see ice on the Sea of Galilee that a person could have walked on back when Jesus is said to have walked on water, a scientist said today.

The study, which examines a combination of favorable water and environmental conditions, proposes that Jesus could have walked on an isolated patch of floating ice on what is now known as Lake Kinneret in northern Israel.

Looking at temperature records of the Mediterranean Sea surface and using analytical ice and statistical models, scientists considered a small section of the cold freshwater surface of the lake. The area studied, about 10,000 square feet, was near salty springs that empty into it.

The results suggest temperatures dropped to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-4 degrees Celsius) during one of the two cold periods 2,500 –1,500 years ago for up to two days, the same decades during which Jesus lived.

With such conditions, a floating patch of ice could develop above the plumes resulting from the salty springs along the lake's western shore in Tabgha. Tabgha is the town where many archeological findings related to Jesus have been found.

"We simply explain that unique freezing processes probably happened in that region only a handful of times during the last 12,000 years," said Doron Nof, a Florida State University Professor of Oceanography. "We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account."

Nof figures that in the last 120 centuries, the odds of such conditions on the low latitude Lake Kinneret are most likely 1-in-1,000. But during the time period when Jesus lived, such “spring ice” may have formed once every 30 to 60 years.

Such floating ice in the unfrozen waters of the lake would be hard to spot, especially if rain had smoothed its surface.

"In today's climate, the chance of springs ice forming in northern Israel is effectively zero, or about once in more than 10,000 years," Nof said.

The findings are detailed in the April 2006 Journal of Paleolimnology.
How Ice Melts: Longstanding Mystery Solved Photos Show It's True: No Two Snowflakes Alike Ice Ages Blamed on Tilted Earth New Phase of Ice Might Exist

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Scientists disagree about the risks of TCE. But residents near a former air base are dead certain.
By Ralph Vartabedian
Times Staff Writer

March 30, 2006

SAN ANTONIO — On nearly every block surrounding the former Kelly Air Force Base, small purple crosses sprout from front lawns, marking the homes where cancer has struck.

The residents call their neighborhood the "toxic triangle," alleging that the Air Force poisoned it with an industrial solvent, trichloroethylene, or TCE. It was casually dumped at the base for decades and spread for miles through a shallow aquifer under 22,000 nearby houses.

Texas health authorities have found elevated rates of liver cancer among residents, as well as higher-than-normal rates of birth defects. Though state health officials say it is impossible to prove that TCE causes the sickness here, this blue-collar community has little doubt about the connection.

"We are dying day by day," said Robert Alvarado Sr., who has lived in a small clapboard home for 36 years that sits about 14 feet over the TCE plume. "I have kidney failure, my wife has thyroid cancer, my neighbor just died of breast cancer."

What's happening in this neighborhood of modest low-slung homes, crisscrossed by railroad tracks and dominated by aircraft hangars on the horizon, has been playing out for years at other cities that are home to military bases, industrial plants, nuclear weapons laboratories and NASA centers.

Hundreds of communities with major TCE contamination have waited more than a decade for scientists to explain the cancer risks created by exposure to TCE. The clear solvent used to take grease off metal parts is officially branded as a probable carcinogen by half a dozen state, federal and international agencies. It is most often linked to liver and kidney cancer, as well as birth defects and childhood leukemia.

But scientists representing major polluters, particularly the Department of Defense, have successfully delayed action on scientific assessments that TCE is a far graver threat to public health than recognized by federal standards. When the Environmental Protection Agency drafted a TCE assessment in 2001, finding that it was far more toxic than originally believed, the issue was wrested from the EPA's control.

A panel of elite scientists organized by the National Academy of Sciences will issue a report this summer that is supposed to shape government policy on TCE. The report is all but certain to intensify the battle — no matter what it says.

If the academy endorses the view that TCE is a big risk, it would lay the groundwork for stricter cleanup standards across the nation and probably lower permissible levels of TCE in the environment. If it rejects the EPA's earlier research, it will trigger a political rebellion by exposed communities.

"If the national academy comes out with some kind of a weaker standard, it is going to ignite this all over again," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who has fought regulatory delays along with other Democrats and Republicans in Congress. "We are headed for a battle."

The national academy has been working on its report for more than a year and is now as much as six months behind schedule. One member of the group, Harvard University professor Thomas J. Smith, said the group was dealing with many missing pieces of a difficult puzzle and many bits of data that don't seem to fit anywhere. "It is a complicated picture," Smith said.

Even after the national academy issues its report, the matter will go back to the EPA for another risk assessment that could take another two years. Any further regulatory action to reduce public exposure to TCE could take several more years. The EPA first began amassing scientific data in the mid-1990s and began assessing the risks in 1997.

It is a pace that has left TCE exposure victims disheartened and angry.

Anne Elizabeth Townsend died a month ago in Moscow, Idaho, the result of liver disease and TCE exposure, according to her death certificate and a liver biopsy.

She was married to Tom Townsend, a former major in the Marine Corps who was based at highly polluted Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, after returning seriously injured from combat duty in Vietnam in 1965.

The Townsends lived at the Paradise Point housing complex, which was served by a base water-supply system that carried 1,400 parts per billion of TCE, a later investigation by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry would disclose.

The current EPA limit on TCE in drinking water is 5 ppb. The standard might have dropped to 1 ppb had the risk assessment conducted by the EPA in 2001 been adopted, experts say.

In 1967, the Townsends had a son born with cardiovascular birth defects. He lived only three months.

"We had an autopsy done and there wasn't a system in his body that wasn't screwed up," said Townsend, a retired college administrator and a former city councilman. "That autopsy report had 10 pages of findings. It was a mercy that he didn't last.

"They wiped out two members of my family," Townsend, 75, added. "I am proud that I served in the Marines, but there are some days I want to forget that I did."

The Marine Corps was alerted to the TCE contamination in 1980, but did not disclose the pollution or make any changes to its water system until 1985. It was a five-year period in which thousands of Marines were exposed.

At the request of Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), the Government Accountability Office is investigating whether the Marine Corps covered up the TCE problems at the base.

"Nearly 20 years have elapsed since the last contaminated well was closed at Camp Lejeune, and we are still unable to address the related concerns of former residents," Dole wrote in 2004.

"We have an obligation to provide them with definitive answers to their questions regarding the circumstances and extent of the contamination as well as the likely adverse health effects."

Among Dole's concerns is the slow pace of a study by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A still-incomplete study of 12,598 children born at the base from 1968 to 1985 found 103 cases of cancer and birth defects, including 22 cases of leukemia, double the national average. No studies have been conducted of the adult men or women who drank the base water.

Jerry Ensminger, a former Marine drill sergeant, lived at the base in the 1970s and his wife gave birth to a daughter in 1976. Their daughter, Janey, died of leukemia at age 9.

He has been fighting to force the Marine Corps to notify tens of thousands of Marines, their families and civilian employees exposed to TCE. He formed a group, "The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten," — along with a website (www.tftptf.com) — to reach out to Marine families.

"The Marine Corps has done everything in its power to not notify the people who were exposed," Ensminger, 53, said. "There is something wrong with our government."

TCE is the most widespread water contaminant in the nation, present at 1,400 Defense Department pollution sites, according to Air Force documents.

The Defense Department contends that scientific evidence that TCE causes cancer is weak and that the EPA needs to conduct more studies before tightening its standards or ordering tougher cleanups.

Certainly, not all TCE contamination was caused by government agencies. It is estimated that at least hundreds, perhaps thousands, of current and former industrial sites across the nation have TCE pollution.

When the National Academy of Sciences held a public hearing at UC Irvine last year, Amanda Evans showed up carrying an urn with her father's ashes. Gary Evans died of liver cancer in 2002, after working as a vice president at a View-Master factory in Beaverton, Ore., owned by Mattel Inc. The company acquired the manufacturing plant in its 1997 merger with Tyco Toys and closed the factory in 2001.

The plant used TCE extensively to degrease metal parts for the stereoscopic viewers produced there, though TCE use had ceased long before Mattel acquired the plant. The TCE was released into the soil, where it contaminated an aquifer that supplied the plant's drinking water. A later government investigation found the aquifer had TCE levels of 1,670 ppb.

As many as 25,000 workers were exposed to TCE at the plant since the mid-1960s, according to a 2004 report by the Oregon Department of Human Services. Based on a list of about half of those workers, the study found nearly triple the expected rate of kidney cancer and double the expected rate of pancreatic cancer.

Evans, who works in the entertainment industry, founded Victims of TCE Exposure and hopes to produce a documentary on TCE. When she showed up in Irvine with her father's ashes and what she calls the "Wall of 300 Victims at View-Master," national academy officials refused to allow her to set it up.

"I told them I don't have a PowerPoint presentation, I have this wall," Evans said. Campus police were called but declined to take any action.

Evans said she was suing Mattel, but the matter must first go through a workers compensation claim. Donald Stewart, a former U.S. senator from Alabama representing Evans, acknowledged that such toxics litigation was complex and not always successful. "But you have good people on juries who recognize that these substances do cause harm," Stewart said.

Civil suits involving TCE have typically wilted because it is difficult to prove that illnesses result directly from exposure.

In "A Civil Action," author Jonathan Harr recounted the prodigious efforts of an attorney from a small Boston law firm who tried — but largely failed — to prove two major U.S. corporations had caused health havoc in a New England town after releasing TCE into the water supply. The story was later made into a movie starring John Travolta as attorney Jan Schlichtmann.

In San Antonio, the former Kelly Air Force Base ranks among the nation's largest TCE sites, with contamination that migrated several miles past the base boundary.

So far, the Air Force has spent more than $300 million on the cleanup and expects to spend another $155 million over the next 15 years. Residents want the cleanup completed much sooner, though Air Force officials say the plume is shrinking.

The community that lives over the contaminated water has about double the expected rate of liver cancers, said Melanie Williams, senior cancer epidemiologist at the Texas Department of State Health Services. A twofold rate of excess cancer is "not a huge margin," Williams said, but she noted that the excessive cancers have continued for 10 years.

"The consistency is a concern," she said.

Despite the huge petrochemical industry in Texas and all of the environmental health issues that go with it, Kelly is one of the highest-priority toxics sites in the state, Williams said.

In addition to cancer, the department has found excessive rates for three types of birth defects involving the heart, stomach and lungs, according to Peter Langlois, a birth defects epidemiologist at the department. The birth defect rates range from two to three times higher than expected.

But Williams and Langlois said they could not establish any definitive link to the TCE contamination in the community. Kelly was a major repair depot for the Air Force and used TCE to clean oil and grease from metal parts. Giant tanks of TCE were drained directly into the ground, former workers have said.

The TCE contaminated a shallow aquifer about 14 feet below the surface. The aquifer is not used by the city and little proof has surfaced that the TCE-tainted water ever penetrated down to the 1,000-foot-deep water drawn for the municipal drinking supply, said Dr. Fernando A. Guerra, director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District.

Mark A. Weegar, senior project manager at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said it was impossible for the contaminated water to migrate from the shallow aquifer into the city's water supply.

But residents say Guerra and Weegar have consistently underestimated their exposure. Dozens of unauthorized shallow wells were sunk into the TCE-contaminated water and used for drinking, bathing and gardening, according to residents and federal officials. The Air Force has capped 75 such wells in the last decade.

"We know that people used the wells in the shallow aquifer for drinking water," said George Rice, a hydrologist who has studied the neighborhood's problems. "You have to assume that people used those wells to water their lawns, wash their cars and the children used those hoses the way kids use hoses."

The Air Force also dumped TCE and other chemicals into open pits on the base for years, which periodically flooded during heavy Texas rainstorms and sent the overflow through surrounding neighborhoods that lacked storm drains, said Yolonda Johnson, a community activist who lives a few blocks from the base boundary. Johnson's daughter and two of her granddaughters have kidney disease.

No air monitoring tests inside homes have been conducted for TCE, even though the contamination is in a shallow aquifer. Soil tests for vapors indicated there was no cause for concern, Texas authorities concluded.

Outside health experts say the shallow contamination alone should have prompted air monitoring tests long ago.

Adam G. Antwine, the civilian who manages the local cleanup for the Air Force, suggested that some "pathways" might have potentially exposed the community to TCE.

"I don't know that we want to totally dismiss any potential pathways," he said.

"This is a low-income minority population and that raises concerns of environmental justice."

The base shut down in 2001 after 80 years of operation. Because the latency period for many cancers is 10 years or more, higher TCE levels long ago might only now be causing illness.

Former Kelly workers describe conditions inside the base during its heyday as an abysmal toxic nightmare.

Mary Lou Ornelias, a frail 59-year-old woman, worked in the Kelly plating shop for 18 years.

With her bare hands, she would dip cotton cloths into buckets of TCE and then wipe grease from aircraft parts. The air in the plating shop was a steamy, solvent-rich brew that turned the walls yellow and had a stench that made visitors wince, she said. The exposure made her dizzy and caused outbreaks of scaly rashes.

"I would scratch and scratch the sores," recalled Ornelias, who has no claims or suits against the government.

The sores would not be her last or biggest problem. Ornelias tires easily, looks gaunt and sometimes falls down — all part of her life with liver cancer.

"In 2002, I started throwing up blood," she said.

Outside the plant, community activists have pushed for a faster cleanup, but say progress has been slow and the problems have festered.

"Living in this contamination area is a miserable burden," said Armondo Quintanilla, a former employee at Kelly who has spent most of his life in the neighborhood. "It is shameful. People deserve better."

U.S. Experts Wary of Military Action Over Nuclear Program

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 2, 2006; A01

As tensions increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its nuclear sites by deploying its intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide.

Iran would mount attacks against U.S. targets inside Iraq, where Iranian intelligence agents are already plentiful, predicted these experts. There is also a growing consensus that Iran's agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, they said.

U.S. officials would not discuss what evidence they have indicating Iran would undertake terrorist action, but the matter "is consuming a lot of time" throughout the U.S. intelligence apparatus, one senior official said. "It's a huge issue," another said.

Citing prohibitions against discussing classified information, U.S. intelligence officials declined to say whether they have detected preparatory measures, such as increased surveillance, counter-surveillance or message traffic, on the part of Iran's foreign-based intelligence operatives.

But terrorism experts considered Iranian-backed or controlled groups -- namely the country's Ministry of Intelligence and Security operatives, its Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah -- to be better organized, trained and equipped than the al-Qaeda network that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Iranian government views the Islamic Jihad, the name of Hezbollah's terrorist organization, "as an extension of their state. . . . operational teams could be deployed without a long period of preparation," said Ambassador Henry A. Crumpton, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism.

The possibility of a military confrontation has been raised only obliquely in recent months by President Bush and Iran's government. Bush says he is pursuing a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but he has added that all options are on the table for stopping Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Speaking in Vienna last month, Javad Vaeedi, a senior Iranian nuclear negotiator, warned the United States that "it may have the power to cause harm and pain, but it is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wants to pursue that path, let the ball roll," although he did not specify what type of harm he was talking about.

Government officials said their interest in Iran's intelligence services is not an indication that a military confrontation is imminent or likely, but rather a reflection of a decades-long adversarial relationship in which Iran's agents have worked secretly against U.S. interests, most recently in Iraq and Pakistan. As confrontation over Iran's nuclear program has escalated, so has the effort to assess the threat from Iran's covert operatives.

U.N. Security Council members continue to debate how best to pressure Iran to prove that its nuclear program is not meant for weapons. The United States, Britain and France want the Security Council to threaten Iran with economic sanctions if it does not end its uranium enrichment activities. Russia and China, however, have declined to endorse such action and insist on continued negotiations. Security Council diplomats are meeting this weekend to try to break the impasse. Iran says it seeks nuclear power but not nuclear weapons.

Former CIA terrorism analyst Paul R. Pillar said that any U.S. or Israeli airstrike on Iranian territory "would be regarded as an act of war" by Tehran, and that Iran would strike back with its terrorist groups. "There's no doubt in my mind about that. . . . Whether it's overseas at the hands of Hezbollah, in Iraq or possibly Europe, within the regime there would be pressure to take violent action."

Before Sept. 11, the armed wing of Hezbollah, often working on behalf of Iran, was responsible for more American deaths than in any other terrorist attacks. In 1983 Hezbollah truck-bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241, and in 1996 truck-bombed Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. service members.

Iran's intelligence service, operating out of its embassies around the world, assassinated dozens of monarchists and political dissidents in Europe, Pakistan, Turkey and the Middle East in the two decades after the 1979 Iranian revolution, which brought to power a religious Shiite government. Argentine officials also believe Iranian agents bombed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 86 people. Iran has denied involvement in that attack.

Iran's intelligence services "are well trained, fairly sophisticated and have been doing this for decades," said Crumpton, a former deputy of operations at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. "They are still very capable. I don't see their capabilities as having diminished."

Both sides have increased their activities against the other. The Bush administration is spending $75 million to step up pressure on the Iranian government, including funding non-governmental organizations and alternative media broadcasts. Iran's parliament then approved $13.6 million to counter what it calls "plots and acts of meddling" by the United States.

"Given the uptick in interest in Iran" on the part of the United States, "it would be a very logical assumption that we have both ratcheted up [intelligence] collection, absolutely," said Fred Barton, a former counterterrorism official who is now vice president of counterterrorism for Stratfor, a security consulting and forecasting firm. "It would be a more fevered pitch on the Iranian side because they have fewer options."

The office of the director of national intelligence, which recently began to manage the U.S. intelligence agencies, declined to allow its analysts to discuss their assessment of Iran's intelligence services and Hezbollah and their capabilities to retaliate against U.S. interests.

"We are unable to address your questions in an unclassified manner," a spokesman for the office, Carl Kropf, wrote in response to a Washington Post query.

The current state of Iran's intelligence apparatus is the subject of debate among experts. Some experts who spent their careers tracking the intelligence ministry's operatives describe them as deployed worldwide and easier to monitor than Hezbollah cells because they operate out of embassies and behave more like a traditional spy service such as the Soviet KGB.

Other experts believe the Iranian service has become bogged down in intense, regional concerns: attacks on Shiites in Pakistan, the Iraq war and efforts to combat drug trafficking in Iran.

As a result, said Bahman Baktiari, an Iran expert at the University of Maine, the intelligence service has downsized its operations in Europe and the United States. But, said Baktiari, "I think the U.S. government doesn't have a handle on this."

Because Iran's nuclear facilities are scattered around the country, some military specialists doubt a strike could effectively end the program and would require hundreds of strikes beforehand to disable Iran's vast air defenses. They say airstrikes would most likely inflame the Muslim world, alienate reformers within Iran and could serve to unite Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, which have only limited contact currently.

A report by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks cited al-Qaeda's long-standing cooperation with the Iranian-back Hezbollah on certain operations and said Osama bin Laden may have had a previously undisclosed role in the Khobar attack. Several al-Qaeda figures are reportedly under house arrest in Iran.

Others in the law enforcement and intelligence circles have been more dubious about cooperation between al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, largely because of the rivalries between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Al-Qaeda adherents are Sunni Muslims; Hezbollah's are Shiites.

Iran "certainly wants to remind governments that they can create a lot of difficulty if strikes were to occur," said a senior European counterterrorism official interviewed recently. "That they might react with all means, Hezbollah inside Lebanon and outside Lebanon, this is certain. Al-Qaeda could become a tactical alliance."

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Government in secret talks about strike against Iran
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 02/04/2006)



The Government is to hold secret talks with defence chiefs tomorrow to discuss possible military strikes against Iran.

A high-level meeting will take place in the Ministry of Defence at which senior defence chiefs and government officials will consider the consequences of an attack on Iran.

It is believed that an American-led attack, designed to destroy Iran's ability to develop a nuclear bomb, is "inevitable" if Teheran's leaders fail to comply with United Nations demands to freeze their uranium enrichment programme.

A high-level meeting will take place in the Ministry of Defence

Tomorrow's meeting will be attended by Gen Sir Michael Walker, the chief of the defence staff, Lt Gen Andrew Ridgway, the chief of defence intelligence and Maj Gen Bill Rollo, the assistant chief of the general staff, together with officials from the Foreign Office and Downing Street.

The International Atomic Energy Authority, the nuclear watchdog, believes that much of Iran's programme is now devoted to uranium enrichment and plutonium separation, technologies that could provide material for nuclear bombs to be developed in the next three years.

The United States government is hopeful that the military operation will be a multinational mission, but defence chiefs believe that the Bush administration is prepared to launch the attack on its own or with the assistance of Israel, if there is little international support. British military chiefs believe an attack would be limited to a series of air strikes against nuclear plants - a land assault is not being considered at the moment.

But confirmation that Britain has started contingency planning will undermine the claim last month by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that a military attack against Iran was "inconceivable".

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, insisted, during a visit to Blackburn yesterday, that all negotiating options - including the use of force - remained open in an attempt to resolve the crisis.



Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from US navy ships and submarines in the Gulf would, it is believed, target Iran's air defence systems at the nuclear installations.

That would enable attacks by B2 stealth bombers equipped with eight 4,500lb enhanced BLU-28 satellite-guided bunker-busting bombs, flying from Diego Garcia, the isolated US Navy base in the Indian Ocean, RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and Whiteman USAF base in Missouri.

It is understood that any direct British involvement in an attack would be limited but may extend to the use of the RAF's highly secret airborne early warning aircraft.

At the centre of the crisis is Washington's fear that an Iranian nuclear weapon could be used against Israel or US forces in the region, such as the American air base at Incirlik in Turkey.

The UN also believes that the production of a bomb could also lead to further destabilisation in the Middle East, which would result in Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia all developing nuclear weapons programmes.

A senior Foreign Office source said: "Monday's meeting will set out to address the consequences for Britain in the event of an attack against Iran. The CDS [chiefs of defence staff] will want to know what the impact will be on British interests in Iraq and Afghanistan which both border Iran. The CDS will then brief the Prime Minister and the Cabinet on their conclusions in the next few days.

"If Iran makes another strategic mistake, such as ignoring demands by the UN or future resolutions, then the thinking among the chiefs is that military action could be taken to bring an end to the crisis. The belief in some areas of Whitehall is that an attack is now all but inevitable.

There will be no invasion of Iran but the nuclear sites will be destroyed. This is not something that will happen imminently, maybe this year, maybe next year. Jack Straw is making exactly the same noises that the Government did in March 2003 when it spoke about the likelihood of a war in Iraq.

"Then the Government said the war was neither inevitable or imminent and then attacked."

The source said that the Israeli attack against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 proved that a limited operation was the best military option.

The Israeli air force launched raids against the plant, which intelligence suggested was being used to develop a nuclear bomb for use against Israel.

Military chiefs also plan tomorrow to discuss fears that an attack within Iran will "unhinge" southern Iraq - where British troops are based - an area mainly populated by Shia Muslims who have strong political and religious links to Iran.

They are concerned that this could delay any withdrawal of troops this year or next. There could also be consequences for British and US troops in Afghanistan, which borders Iran.

The MoD meeting will address the economic issues that could arise if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president - who became the subject of international condemnation last year when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" - cuts off oil supplies to the West in reprisal.

Iran factfile

There are thought to be at least eight known sites within Iran involved in the production of nuclear materials, although it is generally accepted that there are many more secret installations.

Iran has successfully tested a Fajr-3 missile that can reach Israel, avoiding radar and hitting several targets using multiple warheads, its military has confirmed.

A Brief History

559 BC: The Achamenides empire is founded by Cyrus the Great.

549 BC: Cyrus the Great unifies Persia and Babylonia into the Persian Empire.

639 AD: The Arab invasion brings Islam to the region.

1203: Genghis Khan leads the Mongol invasion.

1585: Height of the Safavid dynasty; the nationalistic Shi'ite sect of Islam is established in the region.

1722: Afghan forces occupy central parts of the country, and the Safavid dynasty falls.

1736: Afghanistan secedes from Persia.

1802: Persia goes to war with Russia. Georgia secedes as a result.

1826: Persia goes to war with Britain and Armenia secedes.

1857: At war with Britain again.

1883: Diplomatic relations with America begin.

1907: A constitution is introduced, limiting the royal totalitarianism of the ruling dynasty and establishing a Parliament called the Majlis. Russia and Britain create spheres of influence.

1909: Mohammed Ali Shah is deposed.

1914: The First World War begins. Persia remains neutral.

1921: Reza Khan, a military commander, seizes power.

1923: Reza Khan becomes prime minister.

1926: Coronation is held for Reza Shah Pahlavi following a parliamentary vote, beginning the Pahlavi dynasty. Mohammad Reza, the Shah's eldest son, is proclaimed Crown Prince.

1935: Iran is formally adopted as the country's name.

1941: Anglo-Russian occupation. The Shah is deposed in favour of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

1950: Ali Razmara is made prime minister.

1951: Razmara is assassinated and succeeded by the nationalist, Mohammad Mossadeq. The nationalisation of the oil industry compromises the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and Britain boycotts imports of Iranian oil.

1952: The Shah and Mossadeq become locked in a power struggle.

1953: The Shah, backed by western allies, overthrows Mossadeq in a coup staged by Gen Fazlollah Zahedi.

1971: Diplomatic ties with Iraq are broken as the country occupies several Iraqi islands in the Gulf.

1978: Civil war looms as Ayatollah Khomeini leads Shi'a opposition towards the Shah. Although in exile, he transmits his message through music cassettes, smuggled into Iran in small numbers and duplicated on a massive scale.

1979: The Shah flees and Khomeini returns. Hundreds of the Shah's supporters are executed. The Islamic Republic is chosen by referendum on a new constitution. Students storm the American embassy and take hostages in response to the Shah's admission into America.

1980: Abolhassan Beni Sadr becomes president. A land dispute leads to an Iraqi invasion.

1981: The US embassy hostages are released after America agrees to export military equipment to Iran. Beni Sadr is forced out of office by Khomeini and flees to France where he forms the National Council of Resistance with militant organisation Mujahidin-e-Khalq.

1982: The Iraqi forces are driven out, but the conflict continues.

1983-1988: America attempts to free hostages held by Lebanese terrorists with Iran ties by secretly providing Iran with arms, resulting in the Iran-contra scandal.

1988: On July 20, the two countries sign a ceasefire agreement.

1989: Khomeini issues a Fatwa, or religious decree, denouncing the British author Salman Rushdie, as a reaction to the way Islam is presented in his book The Satanic Verses. Khomeini dies shortly afterwards. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is elected president and relations with the West improve.

1990: More than 35,000 die in an earthquake in the Caucasian region.

1990-91: Iran condemns the Iraqi invasion in Kuwait and the allied forces' actions towards Iraq.

1995: America imposes trade and oil sanctions, claiming Iran is sponsoring terrorism.

1997: Mohammad Khatami becomes president by a huge majority.

1998: Iran sends troops to the Afghanistan border after the Taliban kills diplomats in Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan.

1999: Teheran University students protest at the closure of the reformist newspaper Salam. A week of riots result in more than 1,000 arrests. In co-operation with Russia, work begins on Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr.

2000: Khatami supporters win 170 of the 290 seats in the Majlis elections, giving Liberals control of parliament for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Senior clerics issue a religious decree allowing women to lead congregations of women worshippers.

2001: A security accord is signed with Saudi Arabia to combat terrorism and organised crime. President Khatami is re-elected for a second term.

2002: US President George Bush uses his first State of the Union address to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil".

2003: The country suffers its worst air disaster when a military aircraft crashes in the south-east of the country, killing 302 people. Under pressure from the United States and European countries, the International Atomic Energy Agency gives Teheran an ultimatum to prove that it is not building an atomic bomb. An earthquake destroys the ancient city of Bam, killing up to 45,000 people.

2004: Hardline conservatives win the parliamentary elections which are widely regarded as flawed, rendering reformist President Khatami virtually powerless.

2005: Iranians elect the ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as their new president. Reformers fear Ahmadinejad, who defeated former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the final round of voting, will seek to create a more authoritarian and Islamic state. The new president vows to push ahead with his country's nuclear programme, and snubs negotiations with EU states as relations between Iran and the US sour.

Tehran rejects a series of EU proposals aimed at resolving the nuclear stand-off, and completes the reactivation of its uranium conversion plant in defiance of international pressure.

Reports suggest that terrorists working for the radical Islamic regime in Iran have been responsible for the deaths of at least nine British soldiers in neighbouring Iraq.

An IAEA report severely criticises Iran for producing tons of chemicals for uranium enrichment in defiance of international demands.