Yahoo! News - Report for CIA Foresaw an Al Qaeda Plane Attack Despite White House avowals that it would have been impossible to conceive before Sept. 11 of a hijacked plane being used to attack U.S. targets, a 1999 report for the CIA envisioned a very similar threat.

BBC News | NEWSNIGHT | Is truth a victim? One of America's foremost newscasters, Dan Rather of CBS, says the US media has stopped asking tough questions of the Bush administration since 11 September.

Report: India, Pakistan Were Near Nuclear War in '99 (washingtonpost.com) Pakistan was preparing to possibly fire nuclear weapons during a 1999 border conflict with India, moving the countries closer to nuclear war than was commonly known at the time, according to a new article by President Bill Clinton's chief White House adviser on South Asia.

Global Village Idiocy What's frightening him, he added, is that there is an insidious digital divide in Jogjakarta: "Internet users are only 5 percent of the population — but these 5 percent spread rumors to everyone else. They say, `He got it from the Internet.' They think it's the Bible."

Israeli Ruling Party Says No to Palestinian State (washingtonpost.com) Israel's ruling Likud Party passed a resolution on Sunday saying it would never agree to an independent Palestinian state, a victory for former Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Terrorism Case Puts Judge in Quandary (washingtonpost.com) The federal judge who must decide whetherZacarias Moussaoui can fire his attorneys and represent himself in his terrorism conspiracy trial could face a stark choice, legal analysts say: allow an alleged terrorist to use his defense as a political platform or find him mentally incompetent and cancel the trial.

BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Thousands rally for peace in Tel Aviv Tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets of Tel Aviv to demand the immediate withdrawal of the Israel army and settlers from Palestinian territories.

BBC News | SOUTH ASIA | Al-Qaeda arms dump destroyed A giant arms horde in Afghanistan thought to have been abandoned by al-Qaeda fighters has been destroyed by British Royal Marines.

Indecision hampers US policy on Mideast | csmonitor.com After two weeks of talks with key Mideast players, the Bush team has yet to stake out a clear course.

Yahoo! News - Suicide Attack Kills 16 in Israel A pool hall popular with Israeli teen-agers became the latest Palestinian target Tuesday when a suicide bomber set off nail-studded explosives and killed 16 people. It was the first such attack in more than three weeks, and the first since the Israeli army began pulling out of the West Bank's main cities.

The Atlantic | May 2002 | Tales of the Tyrant | Bowden What does Saddam Hussein see in himself that no one else in the world seems to see? The answer is perhaps best revealed by the intimate details of the Iraqi leader's daily life.

Fear Can Turn Us All Into 'Good Germans.' We Must Resist It There is nothing different about the World War II Germans. What happened to them could happen to anyone. It could happen to us. We are no better than them.

BBC News | HEALTH | Bio-attack 'could kill a million' A single biological attack on the US could cause 10 times more deaths than a nuclear strike, claims a report from an influential think-tank.

BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Controversy over 'execution' pictures Eleven photographs taken by an amateur photographer from his window in east Jerusalem have caused outrage in the Arabic media, which allege they show the summary execution of a Palestinian militant.

Adbusters Culture Jammers Headquarters Activists in Israel have confirmed that these images are real. The Israel Defence Forces have claimed that the detainee was carrying a bomb. The photos show otherwise.

Yahoo! News - Plane Hits Milan Skyscraper, Terror Ruled Out A small plane smashed into a Milan skyscraper Thursday, killing at least three people and injuring dozens in what Italian officials called an accident and not a repeat of the September 11 suicide attacks.

U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight (washingtonpost.com) The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

Yahoo! News - U.S. Bombing Accidentally Kill Canadian Soldiers Four Canadian soldiers were killed and eight wounded in Afghanistan on Wednesday when a U.S. F-16 warplane dropped one or two 500-pound bombs on them during a training exercise with U.S. forces, Canadian officials said.

Should History Record the Unvarnished Bush? (washingtonpost.com) At a speech in Bridgeport, Conn., President Bush declared that he wanted each American to volunteer for "4,000 years," a variation of his usual call for "4,000 hours" that produced guffaws in the audience.

Christian right steps in on Mideast | csmonitor.com A strong, new pro-Israeli voice muscles into the traditional Jewish-Arab political dynamic in Washington.

'They Forced Me to Hate' Residents of the Jenin refugee camp speak of the viciousness of the Israeli attack.

Yahoo! News - Israeli Forces Move Back Into W.Bank City Tulkarm Israeli armor rumbled back into Tulkarm early on Tuesday a week after pulling out of the West Bank city, in what Israeli military sources called a limited operation to arrest Palestinian militants.

Yahoo! News - Rumsfeld: Bin Laden Tape Clips Are Not New The most recent tape featuring Osama bin Laden that was aired by the Arabic-language television station al-Jazeera appears to be a compilation of old video clips of bin Laden, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Monday.

Yahoo! News - Bin Laden Appears in New, Undated Video Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden was shown in an undated videotape excerpt aired on Monday, sitting silently alongside a top aide who praised the September 11 attacks on America as a "great victory."

The San Francisco Examiner - Imagining the unimaginable For the time being, the Bush administration's recently leaked Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) has vanished from the nation's front pages, replaced by the news of the moment. But Americans should be clear what the consequences will be if it ever becomes official policy, and what developing a new generation of nuclear weapons will mean for the fragile web of treaties that presently keep the unimaginable at bay.

DigitalIsrael.com - Treasury DG: economy on brink of crisis The State of Israel is on the verge of an economic crisis, Finance Ministry Director General Ohad Marani said today. He said that more than a NIS 10 billion cut in government spending was needed to offset the growing deficit inflated by surging defense costs.

A New Disconnect With Europe (washingtonpost.com) Europeans are accustomed to the insecurity of their geography and history. A decade after the Cold War ended, they feel more secure from the direct threat of war and annihilation than they have in centuries. At the same moment, Americans have had the security blanket of oceans and distance yanked away in particularly brutal fashion.

Yahoo! News - Powell Seeks to Put Out Fires in Lebanon, Syria After scant progress on the Israeli and Palestinian stops on his peace trip, Secretary of State Colin Powell heads to Lebanon Monday, where attacks on Israel by Hizbollah guerrillas have sparked fears of wider conflict.

Yahoo! News - Court: Israel Must Hand Over Bodies Israel's Supreme Court told the army Sunday that it must give the Palestinians the bodies of those killed in Jenin's refugee camp, a move that could help clear up the escalating dispute over how many Palestinians died in the fierce fighting.

Yahoo! News - Arafat: Israel Must Withdraw First Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rebuffed Secretary of State Colin Powell's demand Sunday for a halt to violence, saying Israel first must withdraw its troops from the West Bank.

CNN.com - Arafat, Palestinian statement transcript - April 13, 2002 A partial translation of the statement issued Saturday by Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian leadership:

FOXNews.com - Saudi Telethon Raises Over $100 Million for Palestinians More than $100 million has been collected in a telethon that ended Saturday to raise money for the Palestinians and also allowed Saudis to vent their anger against Israel and the United States on state-owned television.

West Bank Atrocities | csmonitor.com The trip to Israel and the West Bank by Secretary of State Colin Powell should not be only for peace. It must also hold both sides to account for atrocities.

Yahoo! News - Israelis Storm Into More Villages Israeli troops charged into several more West Bank villages and arrested about 40 suspected militants Saturday, while Palestinian civilians picked through the rubble in towns hard-hit by Israel's ongoing incursion.

Yahoo! News - Powell, Arafat Talks on Again After U.S. Demand Met Secretary of State Colin Powell rescheduled a meeting with Yasser Arafat for Sunday in which he is expected to push for cease-fire as a first step toward reviving talks on a final peace settlement.

DallasNews.com | Dallas-Fort Worth | Killer of gas clerk gets death penalty A Dallas County jury handed the death penalty Thursday to a Dallas man who claimed that a series of shootings last fall that killed two immigrants and maimed another were retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

FOXNews.com Senior U.S. officials confirmed Thursday night that the Bush administration is monitoring negotiations intended to secure the release of two American missionaries who have been held hostage by Abu Sayyaf rebels in the Philippines for nearly a year.

BBC News | BUSINESS | Terror funds war 'only just beginning' The war against terrorist finance is only just hotting up, according to US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

Reuters | Breaking News from Around the Globe Most Americans believe the United States should halt or reduce economic and military aid to Israel if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon does not immediately withdraw troops from Palestinian areas, according to a Time Magazine/CNN poll released on Friday.

CNN.com - Army to conduct mock aerial chem-bio attack - April 12, 2002 The U.S. Army will drop hundreds of pounds of clay dust and egg whites off the Florida coast next week, part of a four-day mock aerial terrorist attack.

Democrat Implies Sept. 11 Administration Plot (washingtonpost.com) Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) is calling for an investigation into whether President Bush and other government officials had advance notice of terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 but did nothing to prevent them.

Ha'aretz - Peres calls IDF operation in Jenin a 'massacre' Foreign Minister Shimon Peres Peres is very worried about the expected international reaction as soon as the world learns the details of the tough battle in the Jenin refugee camps, where more than 100 Palestinians have already been killed in fighting with IDF forces. In private, Peres is referring to the battle as a "massacre."

Trails of Destruction, Tales of Loss (washingtonpost.com) Many refugees who had fled to town to escape the camp's dusty streets and cinder-block hovels where the bloodiest fighting unfolded said their homes had been pulverized. They described bodies lying in the streets.

Yahoo! News - Powell Calls Off Arafat Meeting Secretary of State Colin Powell called off his Saturday meeting with Yasser Arafat late Friday night after a new suicide bombing spread out before Powell's eyes the carnage he had come to Israel in hopes of ending.

Yahoo! News - Suicide Blast Kills 6 in Jerusalem A Palestinian woman blew herself up Friday in a crowded outdoor market in Jerusalem, killing six shoppers, wounding dozens and further complicating Secretary of State Colin Powell's difficult peace mission.

War criminals face new court | csmonitor.com The UN's vision for a standing international criminal court comes true today, despite US criticism.

Don't bother bombing Afghanistan | csmonitor.com On Sept.12, Tamim Ansary, an Afghan American who lives in the Bay Area, listened with dismay as men and women phoned in to a talk radio show, calling for the US to bomb his homeland "back to the Stone Age."

Child soldiers a growing concern on foreign battlefields From half a globe away, Peter Dak can see familiarity in the hollow eyes of the 14-year-old boy who used an AK-47 assault rifle to kill Fort Lewis Green Beret Sgt. Nathan Chapman, the first American soldier killed in combat in Afghanistan.

INS tightening rules for visitors The Immigration and Naturalization Service yesterday announced far-reaching changes to rules that govern foreign visitors and students, including one proposal that could limit millions of foreign visitors to 30-day stays in the United States.

Defiant Sharon Losing Support in White House (washingtonpost.com) Israel's continued defiance of President Bush's demand for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities and towns is eroding support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon inside the White House, administration sources said yesterday.

Israel Rejects Demands to Withdraw Troops (washingtonpost.com) On the eve of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's arrival in Jerusalem, a suicide bombing that killed eight Israelis and wounded 14 stiffened the Israeli government's resolve to continue its bloody military offensive in the West Bank in the face of mounting U.S. and other international criticism.

Wayne Madsen: Anthrax and the Agency Now that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has officially put the anthrax investigation on a back burner, it is time for Americans to think the unthinkable: that the FBI has never been keen to identify the perpetrator because that perpetrator may, in fact, be the U.S. Government itself.

Yahoo! News - Palestinian Suicide Bomber Kills 8 on Israeli Bus A Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least eight people when he blew himself up on a bus near the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Wednesday, Israeli police said.

TIME.com: Why Suicide Bombing Is Now All The Rage Among Palestinians, dying to kill has become a noble calling. Here's how the practice went from extreme to mainstream.

Wired 10.04: Peace Is War It's not that terror bombs make good weapons. It's that space-based communication and surveillance make other modes of attack obsolete.

Among the Bourgeoisophobes Why the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way, hate America and Israel.

The Scotsman - Opinion - George Kerevan: Democracy is the key THE route to a possible solution in the Middle East may lie with the lessons of a rather stern and egotistical son of Scotland, in Asia a few years before Israel was founded in 1948: US General Douglas C McArthur.

Yahoo! News - Israeli Diplomat Grilled at U.N. Frustrated U.N. Security Council members grilled the Israeli ambassador Monday on why Israel had defied repeated demands for an end to increasingly deadly attacks on Palestinian cities.

Plugging a Very Porous Northern Border (washingtonpost.com) Since Sept. 11, More Agents, Technology Patrol Stretches of Long-Neglected 4,000-Mile Line.

Bomb explodes near Afghan minister A bomb exploded Monday near a convoy carrying Afghanistan’s defense minister, killing four bystanders and injuring 16 others.

How Two Lives Met In Death Special report: Suicide bombings have driven the conflict in the Mideast to new and dangerous levels. This is the story of two teens whose paths tragically intersected: an innocent Israeli and the Palestinian girl who became a walking weapon of terror.

Forbes.com: Saddam's Oil Fit It's not the first time that the Iraqi strongman has sought to use his huge oil reserves--the world's second-largest proven reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)--for political leverage. But his gambit is a misguided attempt that will certainly backfire.

Yahoo! News - Iraq Suspends Oil Exports to Support Palestinians President Saddam Hussein of Iraq Monday announced an immediate month-long suspension of all Iraqi oil exports to protest Israel's incursion into Palestinian areas of the West Bank.

Yahoo! News - U.S. Calls Limited Israeli Pullout 'A Start' Hours after President Bush (news - web sites) issued a stern new call on Monday for Israel to withdraw swiftly from Palestinian areas, troops prepared to pull out of two West Bank towns in what the White House called "a start."

The New Republic Online: After Peace The Arab-Israeli conflict is over half a century old, and the struggle over the precious, punishing land between the river and the sea is over a century old, but what we are now witnessing, with perfectly appropriate horror, is the first Palestinian-Israeli war.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | New US paper aims at Afghan war truth A newspaper aimed at providing news of the war in Afghanistan is to be launched this month. Its editors argue that the mainstream media in the US are not providing a full picture of the war and its effects.

Yahoo! News - Bush Derides Clinton's Mideast Work President Bush says the Mideast summit sponsored by former President Clinton resulted in a "significant intefadeh," or uprising, repeating an accusation his press secretary got in trouble for uttering.

Bush Mideast role dangerously naive Could the same president who has wisely and resolutely led this nation in its own war on terrorism possibly be so naive as to believe that the answer to the wave of suicide bombings in Israel is for Israel to stop its military actions in the West Bank?

Mercury News | 04/05/2002 | Bush finally steps up Mideast involvement IN a dramatic and encouraging shift, President Bush has decided to throw the full weight of his administration into the increasingly bloody Middle East conflict.

Rules in Mideast's Wild West This is the world that U.S. investigators have been trying to better understand since the bombing nearly 18 months ago of the U.S. destroyer Cole in the port of Aden.

Yahoo! News - Israel Should Withdraw 'Without Delay' - Powell Secretary of State Colin Powell urged Israel on Friday to withdraw military forces from Palestinian areas "without delay" and not use the days before his trip to the region this weekend as a reason to continue incursions that have fed an explosion of violence.

Promises but Never Peace (washingtonpost.com) Arafat's response has redundantly proved his harshest critics right. There was never any honest intent on the Palestinian part for peaceful coexistence with Israel, any more than there was ever any honest intent to establish a government in Gaza that would function toward that end and toward the creation of a decent life for the Palestinian people.

Israel launches offensive in Nablus Israel launched a new invasion in its six-day offensive aimed at crushing Palestinian militias in the West Bank by rolling into Nablus late Wednesday, Palestinian witnesses said.

Yahoo! News - Saddam Raises Bomber Pay to $25,000, Rumsfeld Says Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) has raised the amount offered to relatives of suicide bombers from $10,000 per family to $25,000, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

Yahoo! News - In Shift, U.S. Stresses Political Issues in Mideast In a policy shift apparently designed to mollify Palestinians, the White House suggested on Wednesday President Bush was open to discussing the political aspects of a Middle East peace deal before there is a cease-fire on the ground.

Bush Clarifies 'Terror Doctrine' (washingtonpost.com) President Bush now admits that the one-size-fits-all "Bush doctrine" on terrorism in fact doesn't fit Yasser Arafat.

The Bulletin > News > Stories > Kissinger: What America can do : For now, the United States should avoid pressure for a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement and help both sides agree on attainable goals, writes Henry A. Kissinger.

IndyMedia Center - An Open Letter to American Jews ...When I understood that the government had lied to me in order to sell me this war, I turned from 'center-rightist' to 'leftist'. Sadly enough, it has taken me almost 20 more years, in a slow and painful process, to understand how deeply the lies and self-delusion are rooted in our collective perception of reality.

Yahoo! News - Israeli Army Expands Clampdown in West Bank The Israeli army advanced into more Palestinian self-rule areas of the West Bank early on Tuesday in a campaign against suicide bombers and a top Palestinian security official said his compound was under siege.

Afghanistan braces for broad changes Afghanistan’s ex-king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, will return from exile April 16 and convene a grand council in June to decide the future of Afghanistan — a future that will usher in a new government including at least 160 women among more than 1,500 members, the organizing commission announced Sunday. Only six seats are guaranteed for Islamic scholars.

Taiwan quake damages buildings An earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale rocked Taiwan on Sunday, causing several buildings to collapse and forcing a shutdown of the capital’s subway system, officials and witnesses said.

CNN.com - Gunbattle at Arafat HQ - March 31, 2002 Israeli and Palestinians exchanged gunfire on Sunday at the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Israel and the Bush Doctrine When Daniel Pearl’s throat was slit because he was a Jew, that was applied Arafatism.

Arabs vent rage over Israeli incursion As Israeli forces tightened their grip on Yasser Arafat’s compound in the West Bank, the Arab world reacted Saturday with angry protests and a dire warning from Jordan, one of three Arab countries with diplomatic links to Israel. Huge crowds of protesters took to the streets, chanting “Death to Israel!” and denouncing the siege of Palestinian cities.

Arafat Calls World Leaders for Help Israeli troops backed by tanks swarmed into Yasser Arafat's headquarters Friday, punching holes in walls and fighting room to room as the Palestinian leader huddled in a windowless office and made frantic appeals to world leaders by cellphone.

We won't give Omar to US: Musharraf - The Times of India Pakistan's military ruler Pervez Musharraf reportedly told the US ambassador in Islamabad that he would rather hang Sheikh Omar Sayeed, key accused in the Daniel Pearl murder, himself rather than extradite him, one of many instances of backsliding that has called into question Pakistan's credibility as a frontline state in the war against terrorism.

Paper says it got bin Laden e-mail An Arabic newspaper said Wednesday it had received an e-mail claiming to be from Osama bin Laden, attacking a Saudi peace plan for the Middle East and urging the region’s Muslims to revolt against their leaders.

The New Yorker - THE GREAT TERROR In northern Iraq, there is new evidence of Saddam Hussein's genocidal war on the Kurds—and of his possible ties to Al Qaeda.

U.S. maintains the upper hand "Aghast" is the word, for what we are witnessing looks like joint preparations by the Palestinian Authority, Syria, its Lebanese client, Iraq, and Iran, for war on a regional scale, against both Israel and U.S. interests. I fear we may face a major, sudden, external assault on Israel, meant to precede U.S. action against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, and indeed prevent the U.S. from going there by enmiring it in the defence of Israel.

Suicide Bomber Kills 16 in Israel A suicide bomber burst into a hotel dining room and blew himself up Wednesday just as Israelis dressed in their holiday best were sitting down to a Seder meal celebrating the Jewish Passover. At least 16 Israelis were killed and more than 100 wounded.

CNN.com - Operations shift after bin Laden reports - March 26, 2002 The U.S.-led coalition battling al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan is shifting its focus farther south, military officials said Tuesday, responding to unconfirmed reports that Osama bin Laden had been seen in southeastern Afghanistan.

How Will Israel Survive? Israel still has the strongest military in the Mideast, but the threat now comes from within.

FBI probes ‘martyrdom letter’ A Virginia man was discovered to be carrying a document described as a “martyrdom letter” after he and another man were refused entry into Israel and flown back to the United States, the FBI said in court documents unsealed Tuesday. Agents said Israeli officials may have prevented a suicide attack.

Boston Globe Online / Nation | World / Food drops found to do little good The Bush administration's much publicized food ration airdrop in northern Afghanistan - hailed by the Pentagon as a way to feed starving residents while winning their loyalty - achieved neither goal in many targeted areas, military experts, aid workers, and a report by retired US special forces officers now conclude.

CNN.com - Afghan quake death toll may be unknown for weeks - March 26, 2002 Afghan officials said Tuesday that an accurate death count may be weeks away after a devastating earthquake in the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan, where early reports indicated the town of Nahrin may have been destroyed.

From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad (washingtonpost.com) Violent Soviet-era textbooks complicate Afghan education efforts.

School year opens in Afghanistan Girls in bright red dresses and transparent green headscarves took center stage at a ceremony Saturday marking the first day of the school year in Afghanistan, where thousands of girls returned to the classroom for the first time in years.

Report ties Sept. 11 hijacker to anthrax A Florida doctor who treated one of the alleged Sept. 11 hijackers last June for a dark lesion on his leg said after reviewing his notes weeks after the attack that the lesion was consistent with anthrax, The New York Times reported Saturday.

CNN.com - Half brother says bin Laden is alive and well - March 19, 2002 A half brother of Osama bin Laden says the terrorist's family has its own information that bin Laden is alive and that he does not have kidney disease requiring dialysis.

From Afghanistan 1 [Scott Carrier] Sights, sounds and stories; a photo-audio-essay, with excerpts from Carrier's Harper's article and ambient recordings of the streets, songs and prayers of the Afghan people.