Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain testified before the Hutton inquiry and denied the BBC's claim that his aides had "sexed up" his dossier on Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction; Blair said he would have resigned if the story had been true.¹ Alastair Campbell, Blair's powerful director of communications, announced his resignation but claimed it had nothing to do with the dossier scandal.² Murfreesboro, Tennessee, adopted a new policy banning offensive body odor among city employees.³ Two Iranian intelligence officers were charged with "semi-intentionally" causing the death of a Canadian photojournalist.⁴ American soldiers continued to die in Iraq, and the number of Americans killed since President George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier to declare that "major combat operations" in Iraq were over exceeded the number killed during the war.⁵ Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, compared the Iraqi guerrillas to the Nazi Werewolves who resisted the Allies after World War II; Rice pleaded for patience and suggested that building democracy in Iraq might take a very, very long time. "Our own history should remind us that the union of democratic principle and practice is always a work in progress. When the Founding Fathers said, 'We the People,' they did not mean me. My ancestors were considered three-fifths of a person."⁶ General John Abizaid repeated the Bush Administration's claim that there is no need for additional American troops in Iraq;⁷ the next day a car bomb killed about 80 people at a Shiite mosque in Najaf, including the Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, a leading moderate cleric.⁸ L. Paul Bremer, the American overseer of Iraq, was on vacation and no one knew when he would be back. "I think someone is writing up a statement, somebody, I'm not sure," said Mahmoud Othman of the Iraqi governing council. "We don't have a satellite, you know, that's one of the problems. The Americans should give us a satellite."⁹ Hospitals in the United States were having a hard time meeting the growing demand for stomach-reduction surgery.¹⁰ Researchers discovered that dark chocolate is good for you.¹¹

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers revealed that Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, has received more than $1.7 billion in military contracts in Iraq, far more than was previously known. It was noted that the practice of outsourcing logistical operations to private contractors was pioneered by Cheney during the first Gulf War when he was secretary of defense. Brown and Root won the first such contract, and Cheney was hired as CEO of Halliburton soon afterward.¹² A women's soccer team in Germany agreed to wear jerseys advertising a brothel.¹³ The Bush Administration issued a new environmental rule that will allow more than 17,000 power plants, refineries, mills, and chemical factories to upgrade their facilities without installing up-to-date antipollution technology, even in cases where the renovation will result in additional pollution.¹⁴ It was reported that New York City spilled 490 million gallons of raw sewage into its waterways during the recent blackout. ¹⁵ Ireland's Roman Catholic Kiltegan Fathers paid $353,000 to the victim of a pedophile priest who once attacked the victim as his father lay dying nearby.¹⁶ A survey of women who graduated this year from the United States Air Force Academy found that almost 12 percent had suffered rape or attempted rape at the school. Seventy percent had experienced sexual harassment.¹⁷ Judge Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument was removed from the Alabama supreme court building as Christians howled in anger outside, blowing ram's horns and shaking Bibles at the sky; the state was forced to hire a company from Georgia for the job because no one from Alabama would do it.¹⁸ France's health ministry concluded that 11,435 people died of the heat in early August.¹⁹ The European Commission reported that the August heat wave was consistent with predictions about the pattern of global climate change and warned that many farming areas in Europe and North America may soon be unable to support agriculture.²⁰ A decommissioned Russian nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea.²¹ A Swedish man attacked two elderly women with a samurai sword and cut off one ear.²²

The Congressional Budget Office reported that the 2004 budget deficit will probably be more than $500 billion,²³ and theInternational Monetary Fund warned the United States that the deficit was reaching dangerous levels.²⁴ Elaine Chao, the secretary of labor, predicted that the job market, which has shrunk by 2.7 million jobs in the last three years, would soon improve.²⁵ There was a blackout in London.²⁶ Burma's new prime minister, General Khin Nyunt, unveiled a new "road map to democracy."²⁷ Israel's defense minister threatened to reinvade the Gaza Strip,²⁸ and Yasir Arafat asked Palestinian terrorists to please stop killing Israelis.²⁹ King Fahd of Saudi Arabia told Muslim clerics that it was time to start fighting religious extremism.³⁰ The body of Foday Sankoh, the late rebel leader of Sierra Leone, whose men specialized in mutilating civilians with machetes, was taken from his grave.³¹ British health officials apologized for telling a black woman whose lower leg was scheduled to be amputated that she would have to pay $4,700 if she wanted her prosthesis to match her skin color; a white limb, she was told, would be covered by the National Health Service.³² Kidnappings were on the rise in Baghdad.³³ Eleven Democratic state senators from Texas were still on the run in New Mexico.³⁴ The Columbia Accident Investigation Board issued its report and largely blamed NASA's leadership and its "broken safety culture" for the space shuttle disaster.³⁵ A woman died at the Burning Man festival in Nevada when she tried to get off an "art car" and was run over.³⁶ The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to condemn the destruction of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.³⁷ The Animal Liberation Front set 10,000 minks free near Seattle; all but 1,000 were caught within a day.³⁸ North Korea announced plans to test a nuclear device.³⁹ Japan's defense ministry requested $1 billion a year to build a missile defense shield.⁴⁰ In Nigeria, the young mother who was sentenced to death by stoning for having a child out of wedlock begged for mercy as she nursed her baby in court; her lawyers argued that the child was conceived while the mother was married and that under Islamic Law a baby can gestate in its mother's womb for five years.⁴¹ Dr. Howard Dean gave a stewardess a foot exam on a chartered jet during a campaign trip.⁴² A man rode a roller coaster in Germany for 192 hours. ⁴³ Michael Jackson celebrated his forty-fifth birthday.⁴⁴ A zebra-donkey hybrid was born in Japan.⁴⁵