Caught in the Web. The Labor Department reported that the economy created a mere 96,000 jobs last month, thus failing to keep pace with the expansion of the nation’s work force and confirming that George W. Bush has the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover. The White House reacted to the bad news by declaring that the poor job numbers prove that the president’s tax cuts have been working.New York TimesThe Iraq Survey Group issued its final report and concluded that Saddam Hussein dismantled his nuclear weapons program in 1991 and did not attempt to revive …

Caught in the Web. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testified publicly and under oath before the commission investigating September 11; Rice acknowledged that President Bush had received a classified CIA briefing on August 6, 2001, entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,” though she characterized the report as “historical information based on old reporting.” She also acknowledged that the report mentioned the existence of Al Qaeda sleeper cells in the United States but “there was no recommendation that we do something about this.” Rice also admitted that Richard Clarke, whose book on the Bush Administration’s antiterrorism failures …

Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism official who has criticized the Bush Administration for its poor efforts at fighting terrorism and its misguided invasion of Iraq, appeared before the commission investigating September 11 and apologized for the government’s and his own failure to prevent the attacks. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice have all refused to testify publicly before the commission.ReutersBush Administration operatives were working very hard to discredit Clarke, and Condoleezza Rice agreed to speak with the 9/11 panel once again but not publicly and not under oath.ReutersRice did appear publicly on 60 Minutes and …

Former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide accused the United States of overthrowing him in a coup. “I was forced to leave,” he said. “Agents were telling me that if I don’t leave they would start shooting and killing in a matter of time.”Associated PressState Department officials claimed that the U.S. had simply declined to protect Haiti’sdemocratically elected president from the advancing rebel mob.New York TimesAristide called for a restoration of democracy and for peaceful resistance against the foreign occupiers.GuardianTwo hundred seventy-one Shiite worshipers were killed in simultaneous bombing attacks on mosques in Baghdad and Karbala; international telephone service was knocked out …

The British government declined to prosecute Katharine Gun, the linguist who leaked a United States National Security Agency memo asking British intelligence to spy on United Nations diplomats before the invasion of Iraq; there was speculation that the government was trying to avoid another embarrassing debate about the legality of the war.New York TimesClare Short, a Labor member of parliament who resigned from the Blair cabinet over Iraq, charged that British agents had spied on United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan just before the invasion of Iraq, and said that she had seen transcripts of Annan’s conversations.IndependentAnnan was said to …

Ariel Sharon, a known war criminal, was elected prime minister of Israel; Sharon declared that the peace process was dead and that the Palestinians must submit to Israeli domination before negotiations could resume. Palestinians set off a car bomb in Jerusalem; Israeli soldiers shot and killed a teenage Palestinian goatherd. United States Secretary of State Colin Powell defended President George W. Bush’s plans to deploy the national missile defense system despite its technical and political flaws: “I don’t consider it as being an arrogant position,” he said. “Or one where we are trying to force anything on the rest of …

Peru’s dictator Alberto Fujimori stopped in Japan on his way to an economic summit, decided he liked it there, and quit his job, via fax; Peruvians were generally pleased with the development, and within days Fujimori was named in a corruption investigation.Slobodan Milosevic was reelected president of the Socialist Party of Serbia.Madeleine Albright asked to meet with Serbia’s new president, Vojislav Kostunica, at a meeting in Vienna; she was snubbed.Jean-Bertrand Aristide (promising “Peace in the Head. Peace in the Belly.”) was reelected president of Haiti in an election boycotted by major opposition parties, who said it was rigged.The United Stateselection …