The Iraqi parliament voted unanimously to extend the country’s state of emergency, and President George W. Bush, who declared himself a “realist,” disavowed a leaked White House memo that suggested that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was either dumb, weak, or a liar. Maliki responded by canceling a dinner date with the president.New York TimesCybercast News Service and New York TimesInternational Herald TribuneIran’s supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that “the continuation of Iraq’s occupation is not a mouthful that Americans can swallow.”Breitbart.comMarine Corps intelligence in the Sunni Triangle determined that U.S. forces were “no longer capable of militarily defeating …

Caught in the Web, 1860. President George W. Bush, apparently worried that John Kerry was beating him in recent opinion polls, appeared on a Sunday morning talk show. Bush defended his decision to conquerIraq, and although he admitted that his stated reason for invading was false, he also suggested that weapons of mass destruction might still be found. The president said that he had total confidence in the CIA but suggested that he had been misled by incorrect intelligence. “Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons,” Bush said. “I believe it …

President George W. Bush signed a $400 billion Medicare bill that will provide a prescription-drug benefit to elderly Americans; the bill permits private insurance companies to compete with Medicare, which many think will destroy the program, but bans policies that would cover gaps in the drug benefit on the theory that people with good prescription coverage take too many pills and drive up medical costs.Associated Press, New York TimesThomas Scully, the federal official who runs Medicare, was preparing to take a job in the private sector, probably with a company that will directly benefit from the new bill, which he …

Iraq delivered its 12,000-page weapons declaration to the United Nations, and American officials said they will be ready to mount an invasion by next month. General Amir al-Saadi, one of Saddam Hussein’s closest advisers, challenged the United States to come up with proof that Iraq has resumed nuclear-, biological-, or chemical-weapons programs. “We don’t understand the rush to judgment,” the general said. “A superpower should study and take its time in judging, especially as everyone is looking on as it prepares for a huge military campaign, for an aggression against Iraq. It should behave wisely.” President Bush said that America …

The Taliban surrendered Kandahar, the last Afghan city under its control, to a loose confederation of warlords, who immediately began fighting among themselves and looting stores. Afghan refugees, particularly children, were dying in great numbers; Uzbekistan finally agreed to allow humanitarian aid to cross its border at the “Friendship Bridge.” The CIA asked Pakistan for help in finding Osama bin Laden, whose mother told a Saudi newspaper that she was disappointed in her son. Mullah Omar was still at large. The White House issued a holiday terror-strike warning. Attorney General John Ashcroft testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which had …

President Bush, who has taken to using the phrase “the Bush doctrine” to describe his war on terrorism, collected $1 donations from American schoolchildren to help feed starving Afghan refugee children. He praised a young girl from Virginia who raised $45 by feeding chickens. “One way to fight evil is to fight it with kindness and love and compassion,” he said. “Winter arrives early in Afghanistan. It’s cold, really cold, and the children need warm clothing and they need medicines. And thanks to the American children, fewer children in Afghanistan will suffer this winter.” That day, at least one American …

America and Britain fired cruise missiles and dropped bombs on targets in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden taunted the United States in a televised statement and said, “America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Mohammad, peace be upon him.” A suicidetruck bomb killed 26 people at the Legislative Assembly of Kashmir. Islamic radicals in Indonesia were roaming around looking for Americans to kill. Islamic rebels in the Philippines attacked the capital city of the island of Basilan. Philippine military officials said they had found the decapitated …

Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor told a New York audience that “we’re likely to experience more restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country.” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer denounced television personality Bill Maher for saying that firing cruise missiles at targets 2,000 miles away was perhaps more cowardly that flying a plane into a tall building: “There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.” “Watch what they say,” which …

Terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and damaged the Pentagon using hijacked commercial airliners. Bodies rained down on the streets, soon followed by tons of concrete, marble, and steel. The Bush Administration abandoned the White House. The President was hiding out in an undisclosed location. In Manhattan, five thousand people were feared dead, including 350 firefighters. Two hundred sixty-five people died in the hijacked airplanes, including one that crashed in Pennsylvania, possibly after passengers struggled with the terrorists. One hundred eighty-eight died at the Pentagon. President Bush pledged “to hunt down and to find those folks …

Bush Administration officials contradicted previous statements that they would let China build up its nuclear arsenal if Beijing would simply drop its objections to the missile-defense boondoggle. Russia was beginning to approach the subject with a certain irony. “If they have the money to build the most excessive response to the least probable threat situation, that’s okay,” said Vladimir Lukin, deputy speaker of parliament. A Palestiniansuicide bomber disguised as an ultra-Orthodox Jew smiled out of the corner of his mouth and blew himself up on the Street of the Prophets in Jerusalem, wounding 20 people. It was the fifth bomb …

Forensic experts in Honduras found a mass grave containing 15 bodies on a former American military base used to train Nicaraguan Contras; prosecutors expect to find up to 80 dead leftists who disappeared during the 1980s. John Negroponte, who was the American ambassador to Honduras during the Contra war, was awaiting confirmation as the new U.S. representative at the United Nations. Slobodan Milosevic berated a judge and others at The Hague after genocide was added to the charges he faces there. An Israelideath squad using American-made weaponsassassinated Mustafa Zubari, also known as Abu Ali Mustafa, the leader of the Popular …

The Bush Administration announced that by next month the government surplus, excluding Social Security, will be closer to $600 million than the $122 billion it calculated back in April. President Bush hailed the disappearing surplus as “incredibly positive news,” because it will force the government to resist overspending. Two days earlier, the president asked Congress to grant an additional $39 billion to the military, the largest increase since Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The Federal Reserve Board cut interest rates for the seventh time this year, noting that the main threat to the economy is “economic weakness.” New research found that robots …

President George W. Bush defended his monthlong Texas vacation after a poll showed a majority of Americans disapproved: “I’m working on lots of issues,” he said. “National security matters.” By the time the President returns to Washington, D.C., on Labor Day, he will have spent almost half his presidency at vacation spots. President Bush announced that he would permit federal research on human stem cells, though the restrictions he imposed amounted to a ban. The Day My Bum Went Psycho, a children’s book by Andy Griffiths, was removed from a literacy campaign by Australianeducation officials, who said that the book, …

The United States decided not to sign a new anti-germ-warfare treaty, bringing to at least five the number of international agreements the U.S. has rejected in recent years, including the Kyoto Protocol, the Landmine Convention, the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. President George W. Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed to work toward a disarmament framework that would reduce nuclear weapons while allowing the U.S. its missile-defense scheme; a few days before their discussion, Putin remarked that Bush was “a fairly good-hearted person, nice to talk to, I …

As President Bush continued to ponder the political expediencies of permitting or banning federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, science was marching on, aided and comforted by medical ethicists. One company was using donated eggs and sperm to create human embryos from which stem cells could be harvested, a procedure that destroys the embryos. Another company, called Advance Cell Technology, was preparing to create human embryo clones, using a technique similar to that used to clone Dolly the sheep, in order to extract their stem cells. A French court upheld a “right not to be born” and awarded damages …

Serbia‘s prime minister gave Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague to be tried for war crimes even though doing so was technically illegal; the prime minister of Yugoslavia resigned in protest. The International Court of Justice rebuked the United States for executing two German brothers in 1999 without following established international law, which required the German consulate to be notified of the men’s arrest and conviction. American and British warplanes bombed Iraq again, killing three people. Dissidents from the Ivory Coast filed suit against President Laurent Gbagbo in Belgium, whose courts, oddly enough, have universal jurisdiction in crimes against humanity. Ethnic …