An Iraqi militant group with suspected links to al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi threatened to kill two US and one British hostages unless Washington caved in to its demand, the Qatar-based TV channel al-Jazeera reported Saturday.
The Tawhid and Jihad Group, with alleged ties to the Jordanian-born militant al-Zarqawi, said in a videotape obtained by the television that it gave Washington 48 hours to free all female Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Graib prison, otherwise they would execute the three hostages.

Two suicide car bombs exploded in the capital Friday morning as Iraqi security forces -- backed by U.S. soldiers in humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles -- raided residences in a neighborhood suspected of being a stronghold for foreign fighters in a day of violence across Iraq that left at least people 53 dead, including a U.S. Marine.

This has been one of the deadliest weeks in Iraq in recent months as U.S. and Iraqi forces try to dislodge insurgents, whose violent attacks are threatening to destabilize the country further as it heads toward national elections in January. More than 250 Iraqis have died since Sunday.

Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned by top government officials, including his foreign secretary, a year before invading Iraq that chaos could follow the war, the Daily Telegraph says.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sent a letter in March 2002 marked "secret and personal" to Blair, seen by the paper, warning no one had prepared for what could happen afterwards.

"There seems to be a larger hole in this (what would happen afterward) than anything," Saturday's Telegraph quoted Straw as saying.

"No one has satisfactorily answered how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better. Iraq has no history of democracy so no one has this habit or experience."

Downing Street on Saturday said it would not comment on the leaked documents but, added the government "firmly believes that Iraq is a better place for the removal of Saddam Hussein".

If found to be true, however, the leak is a damaging blow for Blair and shows the depth of opposition in his government to joining the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The paper said senior ministerial advisers warned in a "Secret UK Eyes Only" paper that success would only be achieved if the United States and others committed to "nation building for many years".

"The greater investment of Western forces, the greater our control over Iraq's future, but the greater the cost and the longer we would need to stay," it said.

Blair built a case for war on the basis that Baghdad possessed banned weapons of mass destruction, although no biological or chemical weapons have been found following Saddam's overthrow.

Noam Chomsky has been a consistent and outspoken critic of the United States
government. In his book 9-11, a series of interviews about the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he claims, as he has done
before, that the United States government is the leading terrorist
state in modern times.

Chomsky has criticized the [US] government for its involvement in the
Vietnam War and the larger Indochina conflict, as well as its
interference in Central and South American countries and its military
support of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Chomsky focuses his most
intense criticism on official friends of the United States government
while criticizing official enemies like the former Soviet Union and
North Vietnam only in passing. He explains this by the following
principle: it is more important to evaluate actions which you have
more possibility of affecting. His criticism of the former Soviet
Union and China must have had some effect in those countries; both
countries banned his work from publication.

Chomsky has repeatedly emphasized his theory that much of the United
States' foreign policy is based on the "threat of a good example"
(which he says is another name for the domino theory). The "threat of
a good example" is that a country could successfully develop
independently from capitalism and the United States' influences, thus
presenting a model for other countries, including countries in which
the United States has strong economic interests. This, Chomsky says,
has prompted the United States to repeatedly intervene to quell
"socialist" or other "independence" movements in regions of the world
where it has no significant economic or safety interests. In one of
his most famous works, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Chomsky uses this
particular theory as an explanation for the United States'
interventions in Guatemala, Laos, Nicaragua, and Grenada.

Chomsky believes the US government's Cold War policies were not
entirely shaped by anti-Soviet paranoia, but rather toward preserving
the United States' ideological and economic dominance in the world. As
he wrote in Uncle Sam: "...What the US wants is 'stability,' meaning
security for the "upper classes and large foreign enterprises."

Apparently racism is either..

a belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability
and that a particular race is superior

or

discrimination/prejudice based on race

while

observation is merely the act of observing

CATHERINE MCGRATH: These are the comments by UN General Secretary Kofi Annan on BBC radio that have brought up the Iraq issue up again.

KOFI ANNAN: Oh I hope we do not see another Iraq type operation for a long time.

BBC ANNOUNCER: Done without UN approval or without clear UN approval?

KOFI ANNAN: Without UN approval and much broader support from the international community.

BBC ANNOUNCER: I wanted to ask you that. Do you think that the resolution that was passed on Iraq before the war did actually give legal authority to do what was done?

KOFI ANNAN: Well, I'm one of those who believe that there should have been a second resolution.

BBC ANNOUNCER: You don't think there was legal authority for the war?

KOFI ANNAN: I have made it… I have stated clearly that it was not in conformity with the Security Council… with the UN charter.

BBC ANNOUNCER: It was illegal?

KOFI ANNAN: Yes, if you wish.

BBC ANNOUNCER: It was illegal?

KOFI ANNAN: Yes, I've indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter from my point, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal.

It is now legal to purchase many kinds of semiautomatic weapons that were for sale only to the military and police in the United States for the past ten years. A 1994 ban on those weapons expired at midnight Monday. It had outlawed 19 types of military style assault weapons. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry says that President Bush made a bad choice by letting the ban expire.

President Bush said he supported the ban and would sign a renewal if Congress voted for one. But the Republican Party-controlled Congress made no move to specifically reauthorize the 1994 assault weapon ban, and the President did not try to force them, so the ban expired. The National Rifle Association, a powerful lobby of gun owners in the United States had indicated it would support President Bush if the assault weapon ban was allowed to expire.

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday called for a "quick referendum" on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan.

Speaking to reporters, Netanyahu said he was worried about the increasing concerns over the possible outbreak of a civil war following calls for soldiers, policemen and reservists to refuse orders to evacuate settlements.

The finance minister said he believed a quick referendum would prevent a major rift in the country and the Knesset (parliament) must immediately draft a legislation to enable such a referendum.

He suggested that the vote should take no longer than six weeks.