An American cattleman. Robert Gates was approved by the Senate to replace Donald Rumsfeld as the new secretary of defense; senators described themselves as “very pleased,” “very impressed,” “very enthusiastic,” “very grateful,” and “very happy” with the confirmation. Rumsfeld gave an emotional farewell speech to Pentagon employees, and had to wipe his nose.Washington PostWashington PostNew York TimesPresident George W. Bush blamed John Bolton’s departure from the U.N. on the “shallow politics” of the Senate, and Kofi Annan, who will leave the U.N. on December 31 after completing his second five-year term as secretary general, said that he and Bolton were …

White House photo. General George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, presented a plan for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.CNN.comSaddam Hussein, on trial with seven other defendants for killing civilians in 1982, complained to a judge about being denied a pen and paper;CNN.comIraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said that human-rights abuses in Iraq are “the same . . . and worse” than they were under Saddam Hussein.Guardian UnlimitedGunmen in Baghdad killed a Sunni Arab chief, his three sons, and his son-in-law,BBC Newsand south of Baghdad thirty people were killed when a …

Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority. He dedicated his victory to “the soul of the brother martyr Yasir Arafat and to our people.”New York TimesEarlier in the week, Abbas called Israel the “Zionist Enemy” at an election rally,The Indian Expressthen announced he would pursue peace talks with it.ReutersIsrael shut the border at Gaza,Xinhuathen offered Abbas personal security in Jerusalem, which he refused.Azcentral.comKofi Annan visited the site of the South Asia tsunami disaster and said, “I have never seen such utter destruction.”CBS NewsColin Powell toured Indonesia and called it “amazing” and “heartbreaking.”ABC NewsHe also said providing disaster relief …

A Christian martyr. Time Magazine named President George W. Bush “Person of the Year” and praised him for “reframing reality to match his design.”CBS NewsTommy Franks, George Tenet, and Paul Bremer III were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor,New York Timesand Donald Rumsfeld announced that from now on he would personally sign condolence letters sent to the families of soldiers killed in action, instead of using a machine.CNNFox News hired Zell Miller.New York TimesUnited States military officials couldn’t explain the failure of the most recent missile shield test, but maintained that it was “a very …

Doctors determined that the mysterious facial disfigurement of Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader, was caused by dioxin, a component of Agent Orange; his blood was found to contain over a thousand times the normal human level of dioxin, and someBBCspeculated that the poison was mixed into soup fed to Yushchenko during a dinner with the Ukrainian security service on the night before he became ill in September.The AustralianColin Powell and Russian leaders squabbled about each other’s interest in monitoring the upcoming Ukrainian election, andNew York TimesHamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first elected president.New York TimesMarwan Barghouti, the …

Two government reports, one civilian and one military, were issued on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. The Army reported that military intelligence officers and civilian contractors were deeply involved in the abuse; the civilian report went to great lengths to avoid the logical conclusion that the Bush White House had created the conditions (legal, operational, and military) that directly led to the Abu Ghraib horrors. Both reports found that many of the techniques employed at Abu Ghraib originated in CIA torture chambers in Afghanistan.New York TimesArmy investigators discovered that military police dogs were used to terrify teenage Iraqi prisoners as …

Runaway Raft on the Tigris. President Bush unveiled his new “five-point plan” for Iraq during a speech at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and offered to destroy the Abu Ghraib prison if Iraqis want him to; the president also promised to give Iraq a modern prison system.New York TimesThe Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that 1 in 75 American men were in prison or jail last year, and itAssociated Presswas reported that interrogators from Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, went to Iraq last fall and trained military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison.New York TimesIyad Alawi, a doctor who has …

After a heavy lobbying campaign by the electric industry, President George W. Bush broke a campaign promise and decided not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, humiliating Christie Whitman, his EPA administrator, and effectively killing the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change. The President said that he was worried about an energy crisis and that he wasn’t entirely convinced that global warming was real. OPEC decided to cut production by 4 percent in order to keep oil prices high. North and South Korea exchanged mail for the first time since the Korean War. Apparently offended by President Bush’s comments last week …

A National Academy of Sciences report found that most U.S. nuclear bomb-making facilities, including the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, will be contaminated “in perpetuity.” Defense Secretary William S. Cohen delayed making his recommendation to President Clinton concerning the wisdom of building a national missile defense program. The contents of a top secret report on the likely consequences of the anti-missile program were leaked to the news media, confirming numerous public statements by Chinese and Russian government officials that they would deploy more missiles. A standoff between workers and government agents continued at one of Russia’s premier vodka factories; President Vladimir Putin …