White House photo. George W. Bush named national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state.Washington Post A few days later,Condoleezza Rice entered the hospital for minor surgery of an undisclosed nature.ReutersBush spared two Thanksgiving turkeys from death.Reuters “By virtue of an unconditional presidential pardon, they are safe from harm,” he said.White House The turkeys, named Biscuits and Gravy, were chosen by an Internet poll, beating out Patience and Fortitude.White HouseTexas prisoner Anthony Fuentes was executed.Houston Chronicle A buck was captured and euthanized after running through Chicago’s O’Hare AirportABC 7 Chicago, and a Texas website was …

After maintaining for three years that Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan, was so grave a threat to the United States that merely permitting him to meet with his lawyer would fatally compromise national security, the Bush Administration (having been told by Justice Antonin Scalia that “the very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive”) declined to defend its case against Hamdi in open court and announced that he will be stripped of his citizenship and released in Saudi Arabia.Boston Globe, …

A bovine idyll. Mad cow disease was discovered in the United States for the first time, in a Holstein cow that was too sick to walk but was nonetheless slaughtered and sold for meat. The mad Holstein’s brain and spinal column were sent to a rendering plant somewhere, possibly to be turned into dog or chicken food; there was no word on whether the cow’s blood was processed to be fed to young calves as a milk supplement. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Venemen, a former lobbyist for the beef industry, insisted that even meat from a mad cow is safe …

Israel raided the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and left 1,240 Palestinians homeless after demolishing up to 120 houses; Israeli officials said they had destroyed three tunnels used to smuggle weapons from Egypt. Eight Palestinians were killed in the operation, including two children.Associated PressAhmed Qurei, the new Palestinian prime minister, threatened to resign after Yasir Arafat refused to give him control over the Palestinian security forces.New York TimesTensions were beginning to surface publicly between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, over the creation of Rice’s Iraq Stability Group, which will oversee the chaos …

Attorney General John Ashcroft mocked librarians for their opposition to provisions of the USA Patriot Act that permit federal agents to seize citizens’ library records; Ashcroft said that the librarians were indulging in “baseless hysteria” and wondered why the FBI would care “how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel.” He did not make clear why the government needs access to library records, however,New York Timesand later said that no requests for such records had yet been made.New York TimesMembers of the House and Senate appropriations committees agreed to kill funding for the Pentagon’s Terrorist Information Awareness …

A British parliamentary report concluded that the Blair government did not intentionally lie in its controversial dossier on Iraq’s military threat; the report did criticize the government, however, and said that its false claim that Iraq was capable of launching weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was “unhelpful,” and that the dossier should have made clear that Iraq was not, in the opinion of the intelligence services, an imminent threat to Great Britain.BBCA new poll found that 70 percent of Americans believe, contrary to all evidence, that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks.New York TimesPresident Bush …

President George W. Bush refused to declassify the twenty-eight pages of Congress’s September 11 report that pertained to Saudi Arabia, despite calls to do so by members of Congress and by the Saudi government itself, which said it intended to rebut the contents.New York TimesAccording to those who have read it, the redacted section lays out far more financial connections between the September 11 hijackers, fifteen of whom were Saudi, and the Saudi government than had been previously revealed.The most specific allegations concerned Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi man who had provided funds and assistance to two of the hijackers in …

North Korea announced its intention to accelerate its program to build a nuclear deterrent and said that a U.S. naval blockade or embargo could lead to “all-out war“; a state-run newspaper said that “the Iraqi war proved that disarmament leads to war.Therefore it is quite clear that the DPRK can never accept the U.S. demand that it scrap its nuclear weapons program first.”Associated PressPresident Bush declared that the world will not tolerate nuclear weapons in Iran.”Iran would be dangerous,” he said, “if they have a nuclear weapon.”New York TimesThe Senate Select Committee on Intelligence made a deal to conduct a …

Sitting behind the “Resolute” desk in the Oval Office, George W. Bush addressed the nation on television in a speech laden with theological language and declared that his “work of peace” in Iraq had begun. He said that U.S. forces had fired about three dozen cruise missiles at “targets of opportunity” in Baghdad. President Bush warned Americans that his work of peace might be difficult and that it would require the sacrifice of many lives. Just before his speech began, Bush gave a little shake of his fist and said: “Feel good.” A coalition of nations, including Bulgaria, Mongolia, Micronesia, …

President George W. Bush went on television and gave Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq; the president recited a long list of Security Council resolutions that “the dictator” has failed to obey, and then he berated the Security Council for refusing to submit to his war agenda. Bush repeated the discredited charge that Iraq has armed and trained Al Qaeda terrorists, and he even mentioned the “poison factory” that, upon inspection, had no plumbing. Bush observed that “we are not dealing with peaceful men” and all but issued a declaration of war; he smiled and told …

Defying historical trends, the Democratic Party managed to lose control of the Senate during a midterm election. Richard Gephardt responded to his party’s catastrophic failure by announcing that he will not seek reelection as House minority leader; he will instead prepare for a presidential run in 2004. France and Russia, after weeks of dickering, voted in favor of a United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq after the United States agreed to change the word “and” to “or” and the word “secure” to “restore.” “This would be the 17th time that we expect Saddam to disarm,” said President George W. …

Former senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart warned in a new report that the federal government has done virtually nothing to secure the nation against terrorist attack. Power plants, refineries, and transportation infrastructure are still unprotected; local police, firefighters, and other emergency personnel are almost as unprepared for attacks now as they were in September 2001; almost none of the cargo containers entering the country are inspected; and the federal government has authorized only $92 million of the $2 billion needed to secure the nation’s ports. The FBI warned that terrorists might be planning an attack somewhere, possibly involving trains. …

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that President Bush had not yet decided whether to invade Iraq and that it was important for Americans to “engage in a somewhat elevated, thoughtful discussion about what free people ought to do given the circumstances of the 21st century.” Secretary Rumsfeld compared President Bush to Winston Churchill and said that Saddam Hussein was acting like Adolf Hitler. British historians begged to differ. “Churchill is the only Englishman any of them has ever heard of, with the possible exception of Shakespeare if they were hard-working at school,” said Ben Pimlott, warden of Goldsmiths College, London. …

Judge Gladys Kessler of Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Bush Administration has no right to withhold the identities of people it has detained as part of the September 11 investigation, and she gave the government 15 days to release the names. “The first priority of the judicial branch,” she said, “must be to ensure that our government always operates within the statutory and constitutional constraints which distinguish a democracy from a dictatorship,” and such oversight in this case is currently impossible. “Secret arrests are a concept odious to a democratic society,” she added, and “as of …

The House Appropriations Committee passed a measure authorizing the President to use force to free any American detained by the new International Criminal Court, which Tom DeLay, the majority whip from Texas, called a “rump” and a “rogue” court. After noticing that some members of the committee seemed ignorant of the court’s location, David Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin, pointed out that “we would be sending troops to invade the Netherlands.” The measure also bans military aid to countries that ratify the treaty creating the court (which President Bush “unsigned” last week) but specifically exempts NATO countries and other major …

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a preliminary finding that virtually every American living in the United States since 1951 has been exposed to nuclear fallout: “All organs and tissues of the body have received some radiation exposure,” the report said. The fallout, which resulted from both American and Soviet tests, could be responsible for more than 11,000 cancer deaths. The Texas veterinarian who first isolated the Ames strain of anthrax was fighting $9,000 in fines for burning the carcasses of anthrax-infected cattle, in violation of Texas air pollution rules. At the time of the offense, Texas preferred …

Attorney General John Ashcroft, offended at being repeatedly photographed in the Justice Department’s Great Hall with a large naked breast near his head, covered two partially nude Art Deco statues, the Spirit of Justice and the Majesty of Justice, with drapes. Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, insisted that the Afghan war prisoners, whom President Bush refuses to classify as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, were not being mistreated, even though the photographs that provide evidence of sensory deprivation and other psychological abuses were released by the Pentagon, a release, which Rumsfeld characterized as “probably unfortunate,” that in …

The Enron scandal continued to unfold. Arthur Andersen and Company, the big accounting firm that served simultaneously as consultant and auditor for the Texas energy company, admitted that it had destroyed thousands of Enron-related documents. President Bush told some lies about his relationship with Kenneth Lay, the chairman of Enron, and it was revealed that the company, which had more than 900 subsidiaries in tax-haven countries and is slated to receive a $254 million corporate tax refund under President Bush’s economic stimulus plan, paid no income tax at all in four of the last five years. Vice President Dick Cheney, …