Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge

The Senate Intelligence Committee released a scathing report on the CIA's unfounded, unjustified, and unreasonable claims about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction; the report was oddly silent, however, about the Bush Administration's well-documented and apparently successful campaign to intimidate the CIA into coming up with justifications for the President's fraudulent case for the invasion.¹ Senator Trent Lott was outraged by the CIA's "totally ridiculous, uncalled for, and counterproductive" redactions of the report and called for an independent commission to oversee the classification of government information.² Japan's defense ministry said that it will issue its annual defense whitepaper as a "manga" comic book.³ Iyad Allawi, the prime minister of Iraq's new puppet government, signed a law giving him the power to declare martial law and ban seditious groups. Allawi hinted recently that national elections, which are scheduled for January 2005, might be delayed.⁴ President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was planning to delay parliamentary elections once again, and federal⁵ authorities in the United States were discussing the possibility of postponing the November elections in the event of a terrorist attack.⁶ Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security, warned that Al Qaeda might be planning an attack to disrupt the November elections, but he said that he was aware of no specific threat or details about the alleged plan. The color-coded threat level remained unchanged, and many observers suspected the announcement was made to distract attention from Senator John Kerry and his new running mate, Senator John Edwards, whom President Bush accused of being too inexperienced.⁷ The Pentagon revealed that pay records of George W. Bush's National Guard service during the Vietnam War, records that might be able to establish whether he met his military obligations, were accidentally destroyed.⁸ A new study concluded that children of fat people are more likely to be fat.⁹

The Pentagon announced the creation of military review panels to allow prisoners at Guantánamo Bay to challenge their detentions, though they will not be permitted to have lawyers present, nor will the hearings be public; critics said that the Pentagon's plan falls short of the standard set by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the prisoners have a right to an independent hearing.¹⁰ Confused brown pelicans were crashing into streets in Arizona, because heat waves rising from the pavement look like water.¹¹ The World Court declared that Israel's West Bank wall is illegal because it effectively seizes Palestinian land, and¹² Israel's public-security minister warned that Jewish extremists might try to assassinate Israeli leaders to prevent the planned withdrawal from Gaza.¹³ Slobodan Milosevic wasn't feeling well, and¹⁴ Kenneth Lay, the former chairman and CEO of Enron, was finally indicted.¹⁵ The British House of Lords voted to limit the right of parents to spank their children.¹⁶ Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain admitted that weapons of mass destruction might never be found in Iraq but continued to maintain that "we know" Saddam had such weapons: "I do not believe there was not a threat in relation to weapons of mass destruction."¹⁷ A federal appeals court ruled that the government's standards for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste dump in Nevada are insufficient because they extend for only 10,000 years.¹⁸ Algerian police admitted that a June 21 explosion at a power plant was a terrorist attack by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.¹⁹ A Tamil Tiger suicide bomber killed four policemen in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and an²⁰ Israeli soldier was killed by a bomb in Tel Aviv.²¹ Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen rebel leader, claimed to be able to fight the Russians for another twenty years if necessary, and he threatened to kill the next president of Chechnya. "Whoever occupies this puppet's chair — his days are numbered."²² Governor Jeb Bush was asked to list the angles on a three-four-five triangle, a question that appears on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which high school students must pass to graduate. Bush replied: "I don't know, 125, 90, and whatever remains of 180?"²³

Federal health officials were thinking about banning the practice of feeding pork, chicken, and other animal parts to cattle; the pigs and chickens eat rendered cattle and thus could transmit mad cow disease prions. There was apparently no plan to stop feeding cattle huge quantities of cattle blood, an obvious vector for the disease, and cattle will continue to enjoy the feathers and excrement of 8.5 billion chickens.²⁴ The mayor of Nyahururu, Kenya, ordered the slaughter of 500 pigs because they were mating with stray dogs.²⁵ Ireland was said to be short of priests, and the²⁶ Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, filed for bankruptcy.²⁷ In Shreveport, Louisiana, police arrested a man in a wheelchair for shooting a man on crutches who apparently hit the accused over the head with a crutch.²⁸ Condom supplies in much of the world were falling short, and²⁹ Britain's Environment Agency said that male fish were being changed to females by hormone-laden sewage dumped into rivers.³⁰ The EPA announced that it will fine DuPont for failing to report significant test results relating to a chemical used in making Teflon that was found in drinking water near factories and in the fetus of a pregnant employee.³¹ One hundred fifty million pieces of toy jewelry were recalled because of high lead content.³² Peat bogs around the world were releasing carbon dioxide, which is speeding up global warming, and avian³³ flu reappeared in Thailand and China and Vietnam.³⁴ Four organ-transplant recipients died from rabies; all four received tissue from the same infected donor.³⁵ The European Court of Human Rights declined to extend full human rights to fetuses, and the³⁶ French parliament banned human cloning.³⁷ People in Canberra, Australia, were warned to beware of mad starving kangaroos; at least one golden retriever has been drowned by a kangaroo, and a woman was attacked while out walking her poodle.³⁸ A sinkhole in Louisiana ate a giraffe and an ostrich.³⁹ Scientists succeeded in reading the mind of a monkey.⁴⁰