] U.S. forces refused to arrest former Iraqi Information
] Minister Mohammed al-Sahaf, who tried to turn himself in,
] [according to] the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat.

Nope, this isn't satire, this is a real report. As for whether it's true, I'm not believing anything I hear about Sahaf, ever again. But if it *is* true: LOL!

Report: US forces refuse to arrest al-Sahaf

] "Since 1997, 352 journalists have been killed at the rate
] of nearly five per month, many of them in the most
] appalling of circumstances."
 . . .
] Between January 1, 1997 and April 19, 2003, 43
] journalists were killed in Africa, 109 in the Americas,
] 76 in Asia, 85 in Europe and 39 in the Middle East and
] North Africa, the IPI said.

Which doesn't mean that it's open season on journalists, since a lot of them do routinely put themselves in harm's way, so a lot of other people were dying around them when many of those journalists were caught in the crossfire.

I found these numbers interesting though, as I continue surfing and looking for more information on the deaths of the journalists in Baghdad a few weeks ago. It's a story that I don't want to let fade, and I do want to find out the truth of just what happened that day.

Statistics on Journalist deaths

Detroit Free Press database of coalition war casualties, including POWs. You can search by name, home state (or country, since the British casualties are included as well), branch of service, or cause/location of death, and get a picture and paragraph bio of each individual lost.

War Casualties

] The new anti-spam statute (SB 1139/HB 2290) now gives
] law enforcement the ability to bring felony-level
] prosecutions against spammers who use AOL's
] Virginia-based email servers to send spam to AOL members
] in violation of Virginia's Computer Crimes Act. Other
] companies whose email servers are located or based in
] Virginia - such as Verizon, RoadRunner, and UUnet - will
] be able to benefit from the tough anti-spam provisions of
] the new law and also refer cases for criminal
] prosecution.

AOL's lawyers prove themselves useful every so often.

Virginia Law Makes Spamming a Felony

] An American citizen detained for more than a month as a
] material witness in a terrorism case in Oregon was
] charged today with plotting to fight against American
] soldiers in Afghanistan.
]
] The American, Maher Hawash, a 38-year-old software
] designer in Portland, was accused of conspiring with a
] group of six others who had already been charged with
] trying to provide material support to Al Qaeda and the
] Taliban.

I'm glad he's no longer in "material witness" limbo!

Having read the 41-page affidavit (http://www.freemikehawash.org/hawashaff.pdf) that was issued by the FBI on Monday (4/28/2003), the "material witness" charge does make more sense now. The case against him isn't completely solid, but there's definitely enough information to plant more than a reasonable doubt in my own mind as to what he was doing. Aside from his association with this "Portland 6" group (traveling with them on their way to fight in Afghanistan, and being occasionally mentioned in their conversations and correspondence), the main points that stick out to me are:

- The "Portland 6" group does indeed have a ton of solid evidence against it including being caught with guns, making anti-American statements, having lots of Islamic fundamentalist texts, and there are plenty of documented sources who said they heard members of the group talking about how they wanted to fight or kill Americans.

- The Portland 6 were trying to get into Afghanistan to fight against the U.S., and had heard that there was a way in to Afghanistan via Bangladesh. There's lots of documentation in the affidavit that they traveled from the U.S. to Hong Kong to China, but then couldn't all get travel permits to enter Bangladesh, and eventually most of them gave up and came back to the U.S.

- Hawash followed the same travel route from the U.S. to Hong Kong to China, staying in the same hotels as the Portland 6 (sometimes the same room).

- Hawash, who had been laid off from his job as a software engineer at Intel in August 2001, told his wife that he was traveling to China to look for software business. Then while in China, he called and told her he was looking into the possibility of importing light bulbs to Jordan from China.

- Hawash told his mother-in-law that he went to China to establish an import/export business making handheld microphones.

- There were no records of any types of business transactions in China. No phone calls, no Emails, no contacts with business authorities in China (that the FBI could find).

- One of the leaders of the "Portland Six" group, Battle, described Hawash pretty clearly as being a member of the group: A Palestinian man, married to an American, traveling with the "third wave" of fighters from their home location in Oregon. The dates, itinerary, and description all match up.

One key factor in all this, in my opinion, would be Hawash's level of cooperation with the FBI. Since the FBI had documented proof of Hawash's travels and associations, and especially because Hawash had been literally staying in the same hotel room with someone who was on their way to fight in Afghanistan, did Hawash cooperate when the FBI asked him questions about the trip? Or did he try to deny that he was there, and deny that he talked to any of the "Portland 6" individuals? What it's sounding like, is that he tried to play innocent, and got caught in a lie, which is why he was finally picked up on the material witness charge. But that's just a guess on my part.

Anyway, I look forward to learning more about the case!

Hawash Charged With Plotting to Fight U.S. in Afghanistan

This is the transcript of a wide-ranging interview between NBC's Tom Brokaw and President Bush. Subjects covered range from Iraq to the Palestinian-Israeli situation to the economy to al-Sahaf and the Dixie Chicks.

I found the interview very interesting, not just for the policy stuff, but also to hear in Bush's own words what it was like to give the order at the beginning of the war, and what the decision-making process was like as last-minute changes were made in the war plan. I recommend this link highly for a better understanding of how decisions are made at his level.

President Bush Interview: April 24, 2003

] Weapons scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory said
] Tuesday that they had built a plutonium pit for a W-88
] warhead for a Trident nuclear missile. The production
] took eight years and ultimately will cost $1.5 billion
] when the pit is fully certified by the Energy Department
] in 2007, Los Alamos officials said.
]
] "It is a sign that after a long period of decline, the
] weapons complex is back and growing," said Jon Wolfsthal,
] deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for
] International Peace and a former Energy Department
] weapons expert. "To the average U.S. citizen, it would be
] accurate to say we have restarted the production of
] nuclear weapons.

And we need them why?

U.S. restarts production of plutonium parts for bombs

] Some experts divide the opposition into three categories:
] the moustaches, the beards, and the clean-shaven.

Aka the former generals (and this article includes the "disappeared from Denmark" Khazraji on that list); the Islamic groups; and the pro-Western businessmen/diplomats.

Gulf News Online: Iraqi opposition groups jockey for position, categorized by facial hair

] In March 2002, the Saudi government daily Al-Riyadh published a
] blood libel authored by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King
] Faysal University in Al-Dammam, Saudi Arabia, that included a
] graphic description of how Jews supposedly murdered non-Jewish
] youths to obtain blood for pastries for the Purim holiday
 . . .
] The newspaper's editor, Turki Al-Sudeiri, a member of the Saudi
] royal family, published an apology for the article and fired its
] author. In his apology, Al-Sudeiri wrote: "I checked the article
] and found it not fit for publication because it was not based on
] scientific or historical facts, and it even contradicted the
] rituals of all the known religions in the world, including
] Hinduism and Buddhism."
]
] "The information included in the article was no different from
] the nonsense always coming out in the 'yellow literature,' whose
] reliability is questionable. The understanding of this serious
] mistake escaped Ms. Al-Jalahma, as did the understanding that
] Jews everywhere in the world are one thing, while Jews belonging
] to the Zionist movement that acts to annihilate the Palestinians
] are something else, and completely different. In Israel itself
] there are moderate Jews . . .

This is in a collection of other translations by MEMRI, profiling how various Arab papers and governments are dealing with anti-semitism. Some are denouncing it, whereas in other places there are still gatherings and conventions of "holocaust-deniers", but at least there's a growing amount of internal debate in the Arab media (according to MEMRI), with some intellectuals denouncing the anti-semitic stands as unhelpful to dealing with the real issue of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

MEMRI concludes:

] Over the last two years, there has been a change in the attitude
] of some shapers of Arab public opinion towards antisemitic
] statements. This change may reflect the impact of translating
] material from the Arab media into Western languages. This
] exposure of the material in the Western media, and the resulting
] criticism in the West, particularly the U.S., in the media,
] government, and Congress, induces shapers of Arab public opinion
] to back down from their antisemitic stances – or at least to
] refrain from making antisemitic statements.

Saudi Editor Apologized for Anti-Semitic Column

] ... a thoroughgoing system to make repression pay was
] meticulously documented. In the last days before the city
] fell, the party attempted to remove the paperwork,
] filling a truck container (disguised with Red Cross and
] Red Crescent stickers) with incriminating materials. But
] there was nowhere to run, and now the contents spill into
] the courtyard, where looters and scavengers pick through
] the debris

Caution: This can be a disturbing article to read, with detailed descriptions of torture, executions and other atrocities.

The Saddam Files