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Yep, the USA government has been caught out yet again.
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No proof links Iraq, al-Qaida, Powell says.
Chief weapons inspector reportedly about to quit.
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell reversed a year of administration policy, acknowledging Thursday that he had seen no ???smoking gun [or] concrete evidence??? of ties between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.
Powell, speaking at a news conference at the State Department, stressed that he was still certain that Iraq had dangerous weapons and needed to be disarmed by force, and he sharply disagreed with a private think tank report that maintained that Iraq was not an imminent threat to the United States.
???I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I do believe the connections existed,??? he said.
Powell???s observation marked a turning point in administration arguments in support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq last spring. The assertion that Saddam and the terrorist network led by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden were working in concert was a primary justification for the war.
As recently as September, President Bush declared that there was ???no question??? that Saddam had ties to al-Qaida.
Powell himself made the case most strongly in February, when he urged the U.N. Security Council to back U.S. military action in Iraq. ???Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al-Qaida,??? Powell said then. ???These denials are simply not credible.???
Powell defended those comments Thursday, even as he cast doubt on their conclusions. He said that at the time, he was referring specifically to the presence of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Baghdad for medical treatments.
The United States has accused al-Zarqawi of being a close associate of bin Laden???s, but intelligence agencies in France and other European countries that opposed the U.S. war argued that al-Zarqawi was an independent operator.
???I'm confident of what I presented last year,??? Powell said. ???The intelligence community is confident of the material they gave me. I was representing them. It was information they presented to the Congress. It was information they had presented publicly, and they stand behind it. And this game is still unfolding.???
Kay said to be quitting inspection team
Since the U.S. victory in Iraq, U.S. and U.N. teams have been scrubbing the country for the chemical and biological weapons the administration insisted the Baghdad government had been hiding.
That effort, which has failed so far to find any such weapons, could soon be severely hampered. Senior U.S. officials told NBC News on Thursday that David Kay, head of the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group hunting for weapons, was planning to resign, without issuing a final report.
Kay???s team, which has been scaled back since it began work last year, has found illegal missiles but no stockpiles or ongoing production of chemical or biological weapons, sources told NBC???s Andrea Mitchell. Only a rudimentary nuclear program, which had not started, has been found, they said.
???I think Mr. Kay and his team have looked very hard. I think the reason they haven???t found it is it???s probably not there,??? Charles Duelfer, former deputy chairman of the U.N. weapons inspection agency, said in an interview.
Report says policy misguided
Powell came under intense questioning at his news conference Thursday about a new report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which accused the administration of systematically misrepresenting the weapons threat from Iraq.
???It is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed, hidden or sent out of the country the hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles and facilities engaged in the ongoing production of chemical and biological weapons that officials claimed were present without the United States detecting some sign of this activity,??? said the report, prepared by Carnegie President Jessica T. Mathews, Joseph Cirincione and George Perkovich.
Powell responded that Saddam obviously had, and used, destructive weapons in the late 1980s and then refused for a decade to reassure the world that he had gotten rid of them.
???In terms of intention, he always had it,??? Powell said. Of Carnegie???s finding that Iraq posed no imminent threat, Powell said: ???They did not say it wasn???t there.???
Years of U.N. inspections to determine whether Saddam was harboring weapons of mass destruction were working well, the report said, and the United States would be better advised to set up a permanent system with the United Nations to guard against the spread of dangerous technology.
NBC???s Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC.com???s Alex Johnson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3909150&p1=0
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Iraqis Claim U.S. Troops Killed Civilians Near Tikrit
Police Request U.S. Military Investigation of Highway Shooting
Jan. 9, 2004 -- The shooting deaths of four Iraqi civilians on a highway near Tikrit have stirred anger in the city and shaken efforts to build residents' trust in Iraqi police working with U.S. commanders. Tikrit police are convinced American soldiers -- though not locally based -- fired the fatal shots, but the U.S. military says it has no record that its troops were involved. NPR's Emily Harris reports.
http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1590043.html
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U.S. Friendly Fire Kills at Least Nine in Iraq
Sept. 12, 2003
U.S. forces accidentally open fire on Iraqi police apparently involved in a high-speed car chase, killing at least eight Iraqis and a Jordanian hospital worker. The incident occurs in Fallujah, a hotbed of resistance to U.S. forces. Two U.S. soldiers are killed in a separate incident in a nearby town. Hear NPR's Emily Harris.
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1429442
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More and more evidence is popping out.
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U.S. Marine charged with lying about killing two Iraqis
ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press Writer
(01-09) 15:44 PST LAS VEGAS (AP) --
A Marine has been charged with making false statements after he said he shot an Iraqi soldier twice in the back of the head and killed another following a grenade attack on his comrades in Baghdad last year.
Gunnery Sgt. Gus Covarrubias, 39, of Las Vegas, will face an Article 32 hearing in which a senior military officer could decide to proceed with a court martial or dismiss the charges.
The charges stem from statements Covarrubias made to military officials while being questioned about a story he told a reporter, military officials said in a statement released by the Marine Forces Reserve Public Affairs Unit in New Orleans.
Covarrubias, who was charged Thursday, remains on active duty, Marine spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool said Friday from Naval Support Activity, New Orleans.
Covarrubias is stationed at a Las Vegas reserve training center with Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines. The unit is part of the 4th Marine Division. He said he joined the Marines in 1983.
Efforts to reach Covarrubias through his unit on Friday were unsuccessful, and his home phone number has been changed. It was not known if Covarrubias had hired a lawyer.
Military officials with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service launched an inquiry after Covarrubias described the alleged shootings in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal shortly after he returned from Iraq in April.
The uncorroborated tale led investigators to suspect that Covarrubias might have committed a war crime.
"I'm not vindictive, and I might get in trouble for telling you this, but I take it very personally when you do that to my family," Covarrubias told the newspaper. "The Marines are my family."
Covarrubias recounted an intense battle in Baghdad on April 8, when he said he hunted down an Iraqi Republican Guard soldier who fired a rocket-propelled grenade at his unit. The blast injured several U.S. soldiers, including Covarrubias, who said he received a concussion.
Covarrubias told the paper he found the Iraqi soldier with the grenade launcher, shot him twice in the back of the head, then killed another Iraqi soldier who tried to escape. He also said he had served as a sniper, registering more than 30 kills during the first Gulf War.
All of Covarrubias' statements will be examined at the Article 32 hearing, Pool said.
Review-Journal Editor Thomas Mitchell said the newspaper made efforts to check the story and was satisfied based on the inquiries that Covarrubias was credible. "We had no reason to disbelieve it," he said.
He acknowledged there were no witnesses and the story was based on Covarrubias's account.
Mitchell said it's not clear what specific statements Covarrubias has been accused of lying about.
"At this point, we're going to report the story like everyone else" and wait for the results of the hearing, he said.
No date has been set for the hearing, which will take place at the Marine Corps Air/Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif., Pool said.
At the hearing, Covarrubias is guaranteed the right to counsel. He may present evidence, call defense witnesses and cross-examine government witnesses, military officials said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/01/09/national1844EST0786.DTL
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No Saddam, al-Qaeda link: report
From correspondents in Washington
January 9, 2004
IRAQ posed no imminent threat to the United States and there was no solid evidence that President Saddam Hussein was cooperating with the al-Qaeda terror network, a private think tank maintained today.
The administration systematically misrepresented a weapons threat from Iraq, and US strategy should be revised to eliminate the policy of unilateral preventive war, said Jessica Mathews, Joseph Cirincione and George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"It is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed, hidden or sent out of the country the hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles and facilities engaged in the ongoing production of chemical and biological weapons that officials claimed were present without the United States detecting some sign of this activity," the report said.
Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled and there was no convincing evidence it was being revived, the report said.
And the US-led war on Iraq in 1991 combined with UN sanctions and inspections "effectively destroyed" Iraq's ability to produce chemical weapons on a large scale, the report said.
The real threat was posed by what Iraq might have been able to do in the future, such as starting production of biological weapons quickly in the event of war, Carnegie said.
Also, Iraq apparently was expanding its capability to build missiles beyond the range permitted by the UN Security Council, the report said.
"The missile program appears to have been the one program in active development in 2002," it said. Years of UN inspections to determine whether Saddam was harbouring weapons of mass destruction were working well, and the United States should set up jointly with the United Nations a permanent system to guard against the spread of dangerous technology, the report said.
It recommended that consideration be given to making the job of CIA director a career post instead of a political appointment.
Mathews is president, Cirincione is director of the proliferation project, and Perkovich is vice president for studies at Carnegie, an independent research group.
Citing the CIA and other US intelligence offices, the Bush administration claimed before attacking Iraq that Saddam had potent caches of weapons of mass destruction and plans to produce more of them.
The Carnegie report said the US intelligence process failed on Iraq and that Bush administration officials dropped qualifications and expressions of uncertainty presented by US intelligence analysts.
Several US allies, including France, Germany and Russia, sought continuation of UN weapons searches and tried to avert war. But President George W Bush went ahead with the war that toppled Saddam and thrust the United States into trying to steer the oil-rich country through reconstruction and toward democracy.
In the weeks before the war, the administration also intensified its allegations of links between Saddam and the al-Qaeda terror network headed by Osama bin Laden and believed responsible for a series of attacks on the United States, including those against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
But "there was no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam's government and al-Qaeda", the report said.
And, Carnegie said, "there was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD (weapons of mass destruction) to al-Qaeda and much evidence to counter it".
Since May, when Bush declared an end to major combat, 357 US service personnel have died in attacks on them and in accidents.
The Associated Press
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8356508%255E1702,00.html
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At last the USA is admitting that there never were any "WMDs"...
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US pulls out Iraq arms search team
Thursday 08 January 2004, 16:57 Makka Time, 13:57 GMT
The United States has pulled out its 400-strong team looking for illegal weapons in Iraq even though another group searching for weapons of mass destruction remains in the country.
"They picked up everything that was worth picking up," a US official told The New York Times on Thursday, referring to the Joint Captured Material Exploitation Group.
Headed by an Australian brigadier, the team's task included searching weapons depots and other sites for missile launchers that might have been used with illicit weapons.
Some military officials are viewing the pullout as a sign that the US has given up hope of finding chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, the daily said.
However, a team tasked with disposing of chemical or biological weapons remains part of the 1400-member Iraq Survey Group that has been searching for weapons of mass destruction since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, a member of the survey group said.
However, he told the paper the team, known as Task Force D/E, for disablement and elimination, was "still waiting for something to dispose of".
No WMDs found
An interim report by Iraq Survey Group leader David Kay in October said his search had yielded no weapons of mass destruction, which the US had cited as justification for the war against Iraq.
The Washington Post on Wednesday said interviews with Iraqi scientists and investigators indicated that Saddam's regime concealed arms research that never went beyond the planning stage, although it engaged in "abundant deception" about its ambitions.
"The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date," said the Post, "suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not posess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armoury on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Gulf War."
Despite mounting evidence Iraq lacked weapons of mass destruction, the US government insists the search for banned weapons in Iraq is not over and points to thousands of seized documents that it says may yet lead to a hidden jackpot.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2B072930-26B4-4262-B32E-82DB1D96EFB1.htm
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Yep, Bush's family was in league with the NAZIs. Of course it's all just business.
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???Bush - Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951??? - Federal Documents
By John Buchanan and Stacey Michael
from The New Hampshire Gazette Vol. 248, No. 3, November 7, 2003
After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen "enemy national" relationships that continued until as late as 1951, newly-discovered U.S. government documents reveal.
Furthermore, the records show that Bush and his colleagues routinely attempted to conceal their activities from government investigators.
Bush's partners in the secret web of Thyssen-controlled ventures included former New York Governor W. Averell Harriman and his younger brother, E. Roland Harriman. Their quarter-century of Nazi financial transactions, from 1924-1951, were conducted by the New York private banking firm, Brown Brothers Harriman.
The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Although the additional seizures under the Trading with the Enemy Act did not take place until after the war, documents from The National Archives and Library of Congress confirm that Bush and his partners continued their Nazi dealings unabated. These activities included a financial relationship with the German city of Hanover and several industrial concerns. They went undetected by investigators until after World War Two.
At the same time Bush and the Harrimans were profiting from their Nazi partnerships, W. Averell Harriman was serving as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's personal emissary to the United Kingdom during the toughest years of the war. On October 28, 1942, the same day two key Bush-Harriman-run businesses were being seized by the U.S. government, Harriman was meeting in London with Field Marshall Smuts to discuss the war effort.
Denial and Deceit
While Harriman was concealing his Nazi relationships from his government colleagues, Cornelius Livense, the top executive of the interlocking German concerns held under the corporate umbrella of Union Banking Corporation (UBC), repeatedly tried to mislead investigators, and was sometimes supported in his subterfuge by Brown Brothers Harriman.
All of the assets of UBC and its related businesses belonged to Thyssen-controlled enterprises, including his Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart in Rotterdam, the documents state.
Nevertheless, Livense, president of UBC, claimed to have no knowledge of such a relationship. "Strangely enough, (Livense) claims he does not know the actual ownership of the company," states a government report.
H.D Pennington, manager of Brown Brothers Harriman and a director of UBC "for many years," also lied to investigators about the secret and well-concealed relationship with Thyssen's Dutch bank, according to the documents.
Investigators later reported that the company was "wholly owned" by Thyssen's Dutch bank.
Despite such ongoing subterfuge, U.S. investigators were able to show that "a careful examination of UBC's general ledger, cash books and journals from 1919 until the present date clearly establish that the principal and practically only source of funds has been Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart."
In yet another attempt to mislead investigators, Livense said that $240,000 in banknotes in a safe deposit box at Underwriters Trust Co. in New York had been given to him by another UBC-Thyssen associate, H.J. Kouwenhoven, managing director of Thyssen's Dutch bank and a director of the August Thyssen Bank in Berlin. August Thyssen was Fritz's father.
The government report shows that Livense first neglected to report the $240,000, then claimed that it had been given to him as a gift by Kouwenhoven. However, by the time Livense filed a financial disclosure with U.S. officials, he changed his story again and reported the sum as a debt rather than a cash holding.
In yet another attempt to deceive the governments of both the U.S. and Canada, Livense and his partners misreported the facts about the sale of a Canadian Nazi front enterprise, La Cooperative Catholique des Consommateurs de Combustible, which imported German coal into Canada via the web of Thyssen-controlled U.S. businesses.
"The Canadian authorities, however, were not taken in by this maneuver," a U.S. government report states. The coal company was later seized by Canadian authorities.
After the war, a total of 18 additional Brown Brothers Harriman and UBC-related client assets were seized under The Trading with the Enemy Act, including several that showed the continuation of a relationship with the Thyssen family after the initial 1942 seizures.
The records also show that Bush and the Harrimans conducted business after the war with related concerns doing business in or moving assets into Switzerland, Panama, Argentina and Brazil - all critical outposts for the flight of Nazi capital after Germany's surrender in 1945. Fritz Thyssen died in Argentina in 1951.
One of the final seizures, in October 1950, concerned the U.S. assets of a Nazi baroness named Theresia Maria Ida Beneditka Huberta Stanislava Martina von Schwarzenberg, who also used two shorter aliases. Brown Brothers Harriman, where Prescott Bush and the Harrimans were partners, attempted to convince government investigators that the baroness had been a victim of Nazi persecution and therefore should be allowed to maintain her assets.
"It appears, rather, that the subject was a member of the Nazi party," government investigators concluded.
At the same time the last Brown Brothers Harriman client assets were seized, Prescott Bush announced his Senate campaign that led to his election in 1952.
Investigation Investigated?
In 1943, six months after the seizure of UBC and its related companies, a government investigator noted in a Treasury Department memo dated April 8, 1943 that the FBI had inquired about the status of any investigation into Bush and the Harrimans.
"I gave 'a memorandum' which did not say anything about the American officers of subject," the investigator wrote. "(Another investigator) wanted to know whether any specific action had been taken by us with respect to them."
No further action beyond the initial seizures was ever taken, and the newly-confirmed records went unseen by the American people for six decades.
What Does It All Mean?
So why are the documents relevant today?
"The story of Prescott Bush and Brown Brothers Harriman is an introduction to the real history of our country," says L.A. art book publisher and historian Edward Boswell. "It exposes the money-making motives behind our foreign policies, dating back a full century. The ability of Prescott Bush and the Harrimans to bury their checkered pasts also reveals a collusion between Wall Street and the media that exists to this day."
Sheldon Drobny, a Chicago entrepreneur and philanthropist who will soon launch a liberal talk radio network, says the importance of the new documents is that they prove a long pattern of Bush family war profiteering that continues today via George H.W. Bush's intimate relationship with the Saudi royal family and the bin Ladens, conducted via the super-secret Carlyle Group, whose senior advisers include former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III.
In the post-9/11 world, Drobny finds the Bush-Saudi connection deeply troubling. "Trading with the enemy is trading with the enemy," he says. "That's the relevance of the documents and what they show."
Lawrence Lader, an abortion rights activist and the author of more than 40 books, says "the relevance lies with the fact that the sitting President of the United States would lead the nation to war based on lies and against the wishes of the rest of the world." Lader and others draw comparisons between President Bush's invasion of Iraq and Hitler's occupation of Poland in 1939 - the event that sparked World War Two.
However, others see an even larger significance.
"The discovery of the Bush-Nazi documents raises new questions about the role of Prescott Bush and his influential business partners in the secret emigration of Nazi war criminals, which allowed them to escape justice in Germany," says Bob Fertik, co-founder of Democrats.com and an amateur 'Nazi hunter.' "It also raises questions about the importance of Nazi recruits to the CIA in its early years, in what was called Operation Paperclip, and Prescott Bush's role in that dark operation."
Fertik and others, including former Justice Department Nazi war crimes prosecutor John Loftus, a Constitutional attorney in Miami, and a former Veterans Administration official, believe Prescott Bush and the Harrimans should have been tried for treason.
What Next?
Now, say Fertik and Loftus, there should be a Congressional investigation into the Bush family's Nazi past and its concealment from the American people for 60 years.
"The American people have a right to know, in detail, about this hidden chapter of our history," says Loftus, author of The Secret War Against the Jews. "That's the only way we can understand it and deal with it."
For his part, Fertik is pessimistic that even a Congressional investigation can thwart the war profiteering of the present Bush White House. "It's impossible to stop it," he says, "when the worst war profiteers are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who operate in secrecy behind the vast powers of the White House."
---
John Buchanan is a journalist and magazine writer based in Miami Beach. He can be reached by e-mail at jtwg@bellsouth.net.
Stacey Michael is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of Religious Conceit. His most recent book is Weapons of Mass Dysfunction: The Art of "Faith-Based" Politics, due in early 2004. He can be reached by email at staceymichael@religiousconceit.com.
http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2
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Prior to WW2, NAZI Germany passed laws which forbade the mingling of Jews and "Germans". Now, once again, Israel is doing what the NAZIs did.
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'Please don't sleep with Israelis'
From correspondents in Jerusalem
December 24, 2003
AN Israeli company has required thousands of Chinese workers to sign a contract promising not to have sex with Israelis or try to convert them, a police spokesman said today.
According to the document, male workers cannot come into contact with Israeli women - including prostitutes - become their lovers or marry them, spokesman Rafi Yaffe said.
The spokesman said there was nothing illegal about the requirement and no investigation had been opened against the company.
The labourers are also forbidden in the contract from engaging in any religious or political activity. Those who violate the agreement will be sent back to China at their own expense.
About 260,000 foreigners work in Israel, having replaced Palestinian labourers during three years of fighting.
When the government first began to allow the entrance of the foreign workers in the late 1990s, ministers warned of a "social time bomb" caused by workers assimilating with Israelis.
More than half the workers are in the country illegally. Israeli police have increased efforts to deport those working without permits in light of high Israeli unemployment, which has reached 11 per cent in recent months.
Israeli advocates of foreign workers - who come also from Thailand, the Philippines and Romania - say they are held by employers in nearly slave-like conditions, and their bosses frequently take their passports and refuse to pay them.
The Associated Press
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8249433%255E1702,00.html
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Libya to give up WMD
Libya's leader Colonel Gaddafi has said his country sought to develop weapons of mass destruction capabilities but will dismantle this programme completely.
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the decision and called it "an historic one and a courageous one and I applaud it".
Colonel Gaddafi had told him the process of dismantling the programme would be "transparent and verifiable", the prime minister said in a statement from Durham Cathedral.
The range of all Libya's missiles would be restricted to "no more then 300km", he added.
The US and its allies have long suspected that Libya had secret chemical and bio-weapons programmes, however Libya always denied such allegations saying it had only facilities for pharmaceutical or agricultural research.
In 1995 the country reportedly reopened its Rabta phramaceutical plant, at Qabilat az Zaribah, which prior to its 1990 closure had produced up to 100 tons of chemical weapons.
But chemical weapon production at Libya's undergorund Tarhuna facility is thought to have been suspended following intense public scrutiny.
US President George Bush said Colonel Gaddafi had agreed "immediately and unconditionally" that international weapons inspectors could enter Libya.
"Colonel Gaddafi's's commitment, once fulfiled, will make our country more safe and our world more peaceful," President Bush said.
"Leaders who abandon the pursuit of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them will find an open path to better relations with the US and other nations."
Mr Blair said Britain had been engaged in talks with Libya for nine months.
"Libya came to us in March following successful negotiations on Lockerbie to see if it could resolve its weapons of mass destruction issue in a similarly cooperative manner," he said.
The decision entitled Libya to rejoin the international community, Mr Blair said.
Colonel Gadaffi's decision would "make the region and the world more secure", Mr Blair said.
"It shows that problems of proliferation can, with good will, be tackled through discussion and engagement, to be followed up by the responsible international agencies.
"It demonstrates that countries can abandon programmes voluntarily and peacefully.
BBC world affairs editor John Simpson said Libya had not been at the centre of the war on terror.
But it had always been regarded as a "friend of terrorists" and had, for example, helped the IRA in the 1970s.
Simpson suggested that Colonel Gaddafi had been heavily influenced by a visit from Nelson Mandela, at a time when he was shunned by the rest of the world.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3335965.stm
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Yep, they were dumb enough to actually smile for the camera while doing it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5365.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1/iraqiwar.rm
Bureaucrats are the bane of all life. Bureaucracy. I hate it.
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Flaming fools kill forest giant
By Simon Benson
December 11, 2003
IT'S a sad day for trees. The biggest, most robust hardwood in Australia - 350 years old - is dead.
El Grande in happier times / File
At 79m and with a girth of 20m, El Grande stood alone in a patch of cleared forest in the Tasmanian wilderness.
Yesterday, the tree was officially declared dead - a victim of stupidity and mismanagement.
Those that killed it, Forestry Tasmania, finally admitted to responsibility for its death through an "accidental burning".
"I guess this is a learning experience," operations manager Kim Creak said.
"We are pretty disappointed we lost the tree. What we've learned from this mistake is that single trees cannot be adequately protected in open harvested areas.
"Procedures have been developed for all the taller forests, so giant trees will be protected in groups and stands with natural vegetation buffers."
But few people involved in trying to save the tree believes this.
Conservationists who have campaigned tirelessly to protect the hardwood forests of this region - which boast the world's biggest hardwood trees - are outraged.
"Forestry has now finally confessed," Wilderness Society campaign manager Geoff Law said.
"They have always tried to avoid responsibility but they killed it through mismanagement.
"Their failure to protect this one tree shows we can no longer entrust these hardwoods trees to Forestry. We need the Federal Government to step in to protect these areas."
Conservationists issued a death certificate in May - claiming the tree had been "cooked" in the regeneration burn - while Forestry Tasmania was waiting until spring to see if the tree would regenerate.
"Forest scientists have conducted an assessment of the condition of the tree," Mr Creak said.
"Unfortunately, it is deceased."
The Daily Telegraph
Source.
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