Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge

Pulling the Mule.

Chaos continued to rule Iraq; a suicide bomber killed at least 13 people when he attacked a convoy of civilian contractors in Baghdad, whereupon a mob descended on the wreckage and set it on fire under the watchful eyes of Iraqi policemen; on the same day other bombs killed eight people.¹ At least 35 Iraqis were killed and 145 were wounded in a suicide car bombing at an army recruiting office in Baghdad; elsewhere six people were killed in another bombing.² Oil exports from Iraq's main oil terminal were shut down because of two explosions, at least one of which was caused by a bombing. Officials said that the cost of the shutdown could reach $1 billion.³ President Bush said that "life is better" in Iraq.⁴ Prime Minister Iyad Allawi asked the United States to please hand over all its prisoners, including Saddam Hussein, by June 30, as required by international law, and he also asked the Americans to please return the Republican Palace, which they were planning to use as part of the huge new American embassy complex.⁵ American officials said that they would probably keep Saddam Hussein anyway, along with about 5,000 other prisoners.⁶ Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he personally ordered that an Iraqi prisoner be concealed from the Red Cross, a practice that Gen. Anthony Taguba has described as "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law." Seven months later, the "ghost" prisoner had still not been interrogated, aside from a cursory session when he first arrived at Camp Cropper.⁷ President Bush said: "I'm never disappointed in my secretary of defense."⁸ The president held a news conference and said that Afghanistan represents the "first victory in the war on terror"; meanwhile, heavy fighting with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other forces continued, an official from the Ministry of Refugees and Rehabilitation was assassinated outside his home,⁹ Al Jazeera broadcast what it said was an Al Qaeda training video recently shot at an Afghan camp, and a¹⁰ remote-controlled roadside bomb in Kunduz hit a NATO vehicle, killing four people, including two schoolchildren.¹¹ The Vatican announced that the Inquisition wasn't really all that bad.¹²

The 9/11 commission released two staff reports concluding that there is no credible evidence that Iraq ever entered into an alliance with Al Qaeda; the commission also detailed for the first time the surprising level of confusion and miscommunication among top administration officials on the day of the attacks.¹³ "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," said President Bush at a news conference.¹⁴ Dick Cheney responded to the reports by attacking the New York Times, and¹⁵ said that he "probably" had access to better intelligence information than the 9/11 commission; the commission chairmen then called on Cheney to provide them with any documents that could substantiate his claims.¹⁶ The CIA classified most of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the agency's failures and mistakes leading up to the invasion of Iraq.¹⁷ Moktada al-Sadr told his fighters to disarm and go home and said that he planned to enter Iraqi politics.¹⁸ A civilian contractor from North Carolina who worked for the CIA was indicted for beating a detainee to death in Afghanistan, and¹⁹ U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan criticized the United States for seeking to extend immunity for American peacekeeping troops from the International Criminal Court.²⁰ Saudi militants beheaded an American hostage, and²¹ White House council Alberto Gonzales testified before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame affair.²² Sinn Fein won a seat in the European Parliament.²³ Protesting power workers cut off President Jacques Chirac's electricity.²⁴ President Bill Clinton published a memoir, and it²⁵ was discovered that California ground squirrels heat up their tails to intimidate snakes.²⁶

Attorney General John Ashcroft, perhaps worried about his recent bad press, announced that the FBI has a new terrorist in custody, a Somali man who was arrested in November, and said that he planned to blow up a shopping mall in Ohio. The purported terrorist was linked to another purported terrorist who allegedly planned to cut the cables on the Brooklyn Bridge.²⁷ In Los Angeles, an intruder cut off the head of Robert Lees, a 92-year-old former screenwriter (of Abbot and Costello comedies), then ran next door, head in hand, and fatally stabbed a neighbor.²⁸ The Senate refused to increase penalties for companies that overcharge for work done in Iraq, and it²⁹ agreed to expand the federal definition of hate crimes to include those committed because of "sexual orientation, gender or disability" but defeated a measure that would have eliminated funding for research into "bunker busting" mini-nukes.³⁰ A team of British scientists applied for permission to clone human embryos for stem-cell research.³¹ In South Africa, a man testified in court that he had killed an interior designer because she "did not make any nice comments about my place, so I went to my garage and fetched an axe."³² Two separate teams of scientists reported that they had successfully teleported individual atoms a fraction of a millimeter.³³ New strains of Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria were found in eight countries; Vancomycin is considered the antibiotic of last resort.³⁴ Scientists concluded that men are less sensitive than women and that testosterone is to blame, and a³⁵ Japanese inventor unveiled a new invisibility cloak using a material made of thousands of tiny beads called "retro-reflectum."³⁶ The USDA reclassified frozen French fries as "fresh vegetables."³⁷