From the "Paper Of Treason," the New York Times:

A video grab shows released U.S. journalist Jill Carroll as she speaks to Baghdad Television in Baghdad March 30, 2006.

Reporter Freed in Iraq, 3 Months After Abduction

March 31, 2006

Reporter Freed in Iraq, 3 Months After Abduction

By KIRK SEMPLE and DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 30 — Jill Carroll, the American reporter kidnapped in Baghdad nearly three months ago, was freed Thursday, saying she had spent most of her time in a small room but had been well treated by her captors.

Ms. Carroll, 28, was dropped off in a Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad at midday and walked into the nearby offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group, dressed in a light-green head scarf and gray dress. From there, she was taken to the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area in central Baghdad, where the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said she was in "good health and good spirits."

" I was treated very well; it’s important people know that, " Ms. Carroll said in an interview with an Iraqi, conducted in the Sunni party’s offices and shown on television later in the day. "They never threatened me in any way."

"All I can say right now is I am very happy," said Ms. Carroll, who in an earlier video praised her captors and the insurgents fighting the Americans. "I am happy to be free and I want to be with my family."

Ms. Carroll, a freelance reporter, was kidnapped at gunpoint on Jan. 7 as she left the offices of a prominent Sunni politician. Her kidnappers had threatened to kill her. In videotapes released during her captivity, Ms. Carroll wept and pleaded for her freedom. In the interview shown Thursday, she said she was never told why she was being held. The kidnappers shot to death Ms. Carroll’s Iraqi interpreter as the abduction unfolded. "They didn’t tell me what was going on," she said.

The shadowy and little-known group that released Ms. Carroll said it had freed her because the American government had agreed to some of its conditions. The group, called the Revenge Brigade, had demanded that the United States release all Iraqi women from its prisons. In late January, the American command announced that it had freed five Iraqi female detainees, but said that the release had nothing to do with the kidnappers’ demands.

In a news conference here, Mr. Khalilzad said no American officials in Iraq "entered into any arrangements with anyone" to secure Ms. Carroll’s release. Four other Iraqi women were still being held in American detention centers, American officials said. Editors at The Christian Science Monitor, the newspaper that was employing Ms. Carroll at the time of her abduction, also said they had conducted no negotiations with her kidnappers.

Ms. Carroll, who grew up in Michigan and graduated from the University of Massachusetts, was part of a small corps of intrepid young freelance reporters in Baghdad. She had learned more Arabic than many and had cultivated a keen interest in Iraqi society.

In a videotape posted Thursday on the Internet, made before her release, Ms. Carroll denounced the American presence in Iraq and praised the insurgents fighting here. In the video, Ms. Carroll smiled, laughed once and gestured in a seemingly relaxed manner, saying she felt guilty about being released while so many Iraqis were still suffering.

Ms. Carroll, apparently knowing she would be released, denounced what she described as the "lies" told by the American government and predicted that the insurgents would defeat the Americans in Iraq. "I feel guilty. I also feel that it just shows that the mujahedeen are good people fighting an honorable fight, a good fight. While the Americans are here, the occupying forces, you know, treating the people in a very, very bad way. So I can’t be happy totally for my freedom because there are people still suffering in prisons, in very difficult situations."

Ms. Carroll was seated in front of a white background, where she answered questions put to her in accented English by a man standing offscreen. The video was distributed by SITE, a Washington, D.C.-based group that tracks jihadist Web sites.

These kind words for her captors were a sharp contrast to her demeanor on the videotapes made shortly after her kidnapping, in which she appeared distraught, weeping and terrified. Ms. Carroll’s seeming sympathy for her captors suggested either that she was pretending in hopes of gaining her release or that, after suffering weeks of extreme duress, she had fallen under the sway of her kidnappers.

The light-green head scarf that Ms. Carroll was wearing at the time of her release, and the head scarf she wore in most of the videos shown during her captivity, is the typical dress for Iraqi women. Ms. Carroll was wearing one at the time of her abduction, in large part to conceal her identity as an American reporter on Baghdad’s chaotic streets.

Dr. Alan Manevitz, a psychiatrist and trauma expert at New York Presbyterian Hospital, said it would not be surprising if she suffered from a degree of Stockholm syndrome, a condition in which hostages become sympathetic to their captors. The name comes from a bank robbery in Sweden in 1973 in which hostages were held in a vault for six days.

"It’s a form of brainwashing in a deprived state where victims emotionally bond with the captors in order to survive," Dr. Manevitz said. He stressed that he did not know Ms. Carroll and could speak about the syndrome only in general terms. "People can feel helpless and hopeless, and any small act of kindness — not killing her, giving her food, letting her have a shower — can lead to bonding with the captor." The captor, he said, becomes both tormentor and savior.

Ms. Carroll’s whereabouts had been unknown since her abduction, carried out by armed men who cut off her car down the street from the offices of Adnan Dulaimi, the Sunni politician. Ms. Carroll, an accomplished swimmer, broke free of her kidnappers and was chased down the street, according to witnesses. Her interpreter, Allan Enwiyah, 32, was shot dead as he tried to make a call on his cellphone, while her driver managed to run away.

Dozens of people are kidnapped on Baghdad’s streets every day — most of them for ransom — and they are often sold while in captivity from one group to another. Though she made no mention of being traded from one group to another, it was unclear on Thursday whether Ms. Carroll had been released by the same men who had captured her. The motives of the group were unknown as well; some officials speculated that the kidnappers had originally grabbed Ms. Carroll in the hope of securing a ransom and began to demand the release of the Iraqi women after it seemed less probable to them that they would get money.

In the weeks after her kidnapping, Ms. Carroll’s captors released three videotapes, which showed her in increasing distress. The kidnappers’ deadline passed, and there was no further word of her. On Feb. 28, Iraq’s interior minister told ABC News that Ms. Carroll was still alive, that he knew who had kidnapped her and that he believed she would be released soon.

In the United States, Ms. Carroll’s family reacted joyously to word of her release, as did the editors of The Christian Science Monitor. "My cousin, Mary Beth Carroll — Jill’s mother — and all of our family are delighted, thrilled and ecstatic that Jill has been released," Peter Alonzi said in a statement he read outside her home in Evanston, Ill. "My wish is that this joyous occasion will offer hope to all the mothers of Iraq whose children have been kidnapped. May they all be returned safely and swiftly to their mothers’ arms.’ "

Tariq al-Hashemi, the general secretary of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said at a news conference that Ms. Carroll walked into the office and handed officials a paper written in Arabic asking that the party help her.

Alaa Makki, another leader in the party, said Ms. Carroll seemed wary about talking about her captors.

"We asked her, ‘Why did you come to the I.I.P.? Why did you choose the I.I.P.?’ " he recalled. "She said, ‘I really don’t know.’ "

He went on: "She said, ‘I promised the kidnappers not to speak.’ She was a little bit frightened. She was very careful. She didn’t give much information."

In the interview shown on television on Thursday, Ms. Carroll said she had been almost entirely cut off from the outside world. She did not know where she had been held, and said her room had a window but that it was obscured. She was well fed and was permitted to take showers and go to the bathroom whenever she wanted. She was able to watch television and see a newspaper only once.

"I didn’t really know what was going on in the outside world," she said.

Her release, she said, was as mysterious as her capture. "I don’t know what happened," she said. "They just came to me and said, ‘O.K., we’re letting you go now.’ "

Ms. Carroll is the only American woman to have been kidnapped in Iraq and, according to her family, was motivated by a desire to publicize the hardships facing the Iraqi people. Her story of pluck and empathy seemed to capture the public’s imagination.

In addition, her plight struck close to home for many of the journalists here in Baghdad who covered it and for whom kidnapping has become one of the foremost threats.

Ms. Carroll traveled to the Middle East in 2002 with a dream of covering a war. In the American Journalism Review last year, she wrote that she moved to Jordan six months before the start of the war "to learn as much about the region as possible before the fighting began." She worked for a newspaper in Amman and took Arabic lessons.

Once in Baghdad, she began working for a number of publications, including The Christian Science Monitor. As conditions worsened for American and other Western reporters working in Iraq — and major news organizations began investing heavily in armed guards and armored cars — Ms. Carroll continued mostly on a shoestring budget. At the time of her kidnapping, she was traveling in an ordinary car, unprotected by guards.

By the time of her abduction, Ms. Carroll was a well-known face at the Hamra Hotel, the home of many Western reporters. She had grown close to Marla Ruzicka, an American aid worker, and when Ms. Ruzicka was killed in a suicide bombing in 2005, Ms. Carroll organized a memorial service for her at the Hamra.

In lighter moments, Ms. Carroll often got water polo matches going in the hotel’s pool, where she usually emerged as the fiercest competitor.

I think we all know what she is. All we have to figure out was her price.

Not that this is any news.

From the Associated Press:

DNC makes plans to reach displaced voters

Mar 30, 8:41 PM EST

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Democratic National Committee is setting up toll-free phone lines and airing ads on black radio stations, hoping to spur participation in next month’s municipal election.

The DNC is the latest group to get involved in the city’s April 22 election. Besides the mayor’s race, city council seats, tax assessors and other key city offices are up for grabs.

Black activists and civil rights groups worry that many evacuees living outside New Orleans may find it hard to vote.

The DNC said its effort was nonpartisan and that it was not supporting any particular candidate. The radio ads will air in Atlanta, Houston and Baton Rouge, major cities with hurricane evacuees.

"Our mission is simple: To reduce any impediment and to make sure their voices are heard," said Louisiana native and veteran Democratic activist Donna Brazile. She is also the chair of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute.

A federal judge has approved an election plan that includes setting up polling places in 10 Louisiana cities, easing absentee voting rules and bringing in workers from beyond New Orleans to help the strapped local agencies.

Their mission is simple all right.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., center, walking down the steps of the House side of the U.S. Capitol after the last scheduled vote of the day Thursday, March 30, 2006 on Capitol Hill in Washington.

McKinney faces arrest over security incident

By BOB KEMPER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
03/31/06

WASHINGTON — Capitol Hill police are expected to seek an arrest warrant next week for Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, who was involved in a physical confrontation with a Capitol police officer Wednesday, police and legal authorities said Thursday.

Officially, the investigation of the incident, in which the DeKalb County Democrat allegedly struck a police officer who tried to stop her from going around a security checkpoint, is ongoing, said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, spokeswoman for Capitol Hill police.

However, police have notified the federal prosecutor’s office in Washington that they will be seeking an arrest warrant after the investigation is complete next week, said police and legal authorities, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because the investigation was not yet complete.

McKinney ignored a reporter’s questions Thursday as she walked into the Capitol, before word of the planned arrest warrant. She could not be reached for comment later Thursday.

In a statement released Wednesday, McKinney said, "I deeply regret that the incident occurred."

McKinney’s office said she may hold a news conference today in Washington.

The U.S. attorney’s office must approve any warrant before police can take it to a judge for final approval. The prosecutor’s office also would have to notify the Justice Department because the warrant would involve a sitting member of Congress.

Charges could range from assault on a police officer, a felony carrying a possible five-year prison term, to simple assault, which is a misdemeanor, police and legal officials said.

Capitol Hill police have viewed a security camera videotape of the incident, which occurred in a House office building around 9 a.m. Wednesday. However, one official familiar with the tape said it doesn’t clearly show what happened.

The tape, the official said, only shows McKinney walking around the security checkpoint, which members of Congress are allowed to do. It does not show her confrontation with the officer who, not recognizing McKinney as a member of Congress, tried to stop her and have her go through the metal detector. McKinney acknowledged that she was not wearing the special lapel pin given to the 435 House members to make them easier to identify.

Andy Maybo, head of the Capitol Hill chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, praised the officer involved in the incident, who has not been identified.

The police union, he said, was "extremely proud of our officer. He has upheld his duties and responsibilities in a professional manner," Maybo said. "He was correct in his actions and we support him 100 percent."

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), talking to reporters Thursday, called the incident "a mistake," and said she hoped the police and McKinney could settle the dispute.

Pelosi said it was understandable that an officer who didn’t recognize a member of Congress would try to stop her from going around a checkpoint. But she added, "I can also understand that members who have been here a long time think they’re recognizable. I wouldn’t make a big deal of this."

Back home in McKinney’s district, DeKalb County Commissioner Hank Johnson, who plans to challenge her in this year’s election, said the incident was just further evidence that she was undeserving of her office.

"For years, it’s the people of the 4th District who have suffered and been shortchanged because of our representative’s behavior in Congress," Johnson said in a statement. "It’s why she is ineffective in Congress."

But a number of people at South DeKalb Mall in the heart of McKinney’s district Thursday remained largely supportive.

"She is a good woman," said Andrew Hicks of DeKalb County. "I will always support her, 100 percent."

Fred Maxwell, also of DeKalb, agreed.

"Had she been one of the white persons, they would not have asked for her ID," he said. "I still think the Republicans are trying to get her out of office."

Steven McGhee of Atlanta said McKinney "damaged herself" in the incident, but he’s not counting her out.

"She lost her composure," he said. "But she will probably bounce back. I would vote for her, because she is a fighter."

Wednesday’s incident was not the first time a Capitol Hill police officer failed to recognize McKinney as a member of Congress. Her office on Thursday posted on her Web site a clip from a documentary, "American Blackout," that features one such encounter.

The clip first shows a black police officer recognizing McKinney and welcoming her back to Congress in 2005, when she returned after a two-year hiatus because of a 2002 re-election defeat. It then shows a white officer approaching her and the filmmakers as they enter the Capitol grounds, asking McKinney and the crew to identify themselves. Told that McKinney is a member of Congress, the officers backs off and starts apologizing.

"That’s just the typical kind of treatment that I receive," McKinney says on camera. "So I’m not surprised and I’m not offended."

In what she says is a quote from the late hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur, she adds, "Some things never change."

I wonder what would happen to me if I slugged a cop?

But aren’t people like McKinney always saying that our leaders should be held to an even higher standard?

This is a story that has gotten remarkably little press.

From the DNC’s Associated Press:

Man Gets 30 Years in Plot to Kill Bush

By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press Writer

Mar 30, 9:08 AM EST

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — An American Muslim convicted of joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President Bush was sentenced to 30 years behind bars by a judge who compared him to "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh.

Prosecutors had asked for the maximum - a life sentence - for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a 25-year-old U.S. citizen who was born to a Jordanian father and raised in Falls Church.

Authorities said Abu Ali went to Saudi Arabia in 2002 out of hatred for the United States. The Saudis arrested him in June 2003 as he was taking final exams at the Islamic University of Medina.

"The facts of this case are still astonishing," prosecutor David Laufman said. "Barely a year after Sept. 11 the defendant joined the organization responsible for 3,000 deaths."

But U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee said 30 years was sufficient punishment, pointing out that Lindh - captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in November 2001 during the U.S.-led effort to topple the Taliban - received a 20-year sentence. Abu Ali’s actions "did not result in one single actual victim. That fact must be taken into account," he said.

Abu Ali, wearing a green prison jumpsuit, declined to speak before his sentence was imposed. Defense lawyers said they plan to appeal.

He was convicted in November of conspiracy to assassinate the president, conspiracy to hijack aircraft and providing support to al-Qaida, among other crimes.

The jury in the three-week trial saw a videotaped confession Abu Ali gave to the Saudis in which he said he joined al-Qaida because he hated the United States for its support of Israel.

He claimed that the Saudis had extracted a confession from him through torture. Prosecutors denied he was mistreated.

Abu Ali said he had the scars on his back that proved he was whipped or beaten by the Saudis. Pictures were taken of his back, and doctors for both the government and the defense examined him, coming to different conclusions.

In February, defense lawyers asked for a review of the conviction in light of the disclosure that the Bush administration had eavesdropped on suspected terrorists’ conversations without search warrants. Abu Ali’s lawyers said they suspected, but had no firm evidence, that Abu Ali had been a target of the surveillance program.

The government’s response was not made public, but the judge decided to go ahead with the sentencing after receiving it.

A man of the Islamic persuasion?

The hell you say!

And the DNC's Associated Press want to make that perfectly clear:

American reporter Jill Carroll speaks to media after her release from captivity at the Islamic Party Headquarters Thursday March 30, 2006 in Baghdad in this image taken from video. Carroll, who was kidnapped three months ago in a bloody ambush that killed her translator, was released from captivity Thursday and said she had been treated well.

Military Not Involved in Carroll's Release

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military was not involved in the release of American journalist Jill Carroll, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Thursday.

Whitman said it is also not yet clear whether the military will play any role in her transportation out of Iraq.

He added, however that there are still five female detainees being held in detention facilities in Iraq. Earlier in Carroll's nearly three-month kidnapping, her captors, a previously unknown group calling itself the Revenge Brigades, publicly demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq. A short time later five female detainees were released.

President Bush rejoiced Thursday in the release of American hostage Jill Carroll in Iraq. "Thank God," the president said.

"I'm just really grateful she was released," he said. He thanked those "who worked so hard for her release. I'm glad she's alive."

Bush spoke at this Caribbean resort where he is meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In Berlin for a conference with counterparts, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed "great delight and great relief of the United States, the people of the United States and, I'm sure, the people of the world at the release today of Jill Carroll."

"This is something that people have across the world worked for and prayed for and I think we are all very pleased and happy to hear of her release," Rice said.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess.

By the way, here is a photo of Carroll's Iraqi translator who was killed by her "friends":

Apparently Carroll is now saying she never felt threatened by her captors. She never thought her friends would harm her.

So who was it in those videos saying she would be killed if the US did not not meet the terrorists' demands?

Sorry, but I smell a terrorist sympathizing rat.

Of course the DNC’s Associated Press do their best to downplay it:

Georgia congresswoman in scuffle with Capitol police

The Associated Press, Mar. 29, 2006

Rep. Cynthia McKinney and a police officer scuffled Wednesday after the Georgia Democrat entered a House office building unrecognized and refused to stop when asked, according to U.S. Capitol Police.

McKinney, a sixth-term congresswoman who represents suburban Atlanta, struck the officer according to one account, a police official said, adding there were conflicting accounts. The officer, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the incident, spoke only on condition of anonymity.

No charges were filed, police said.

Officials in McKinney’s office refused two requests for comment.

Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said only that senior officials have been made aware of the incident and are investigating.

Members of Congress do not have to walk through metal detectors as they enter buildings on the Capitol complex. They wear lapel pins identifying them as members.

McKinney routinely doesn’t wear her pin and is recognized by many officers, the police official said, adding that she wasn’t wearing it when she entered a House office building early Wednesday.

By one police account, she walked around a metal detector and an officer asked her several times to stop. When she did not, the officer tried to stop her, and she then struck the officer, according to that account.

McKinney was defeated in 2002 after she implied on a talk radio program that the Bush administration might have had advance notice of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She won back the seat two years later with 64 percent of the vote.

Republicans circulated an e-mail noting that McKinney’s party the same day announced an election-year "affirmation" of their commitment to shoring up the nation’s security.

"On a day when the Democrats unveil their national security agenda, it’s probably not a good idea to allegedly strike a police officer," said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

She’s no Zsa Zsa, that’s for sure.

(Thanks to 1sttofight for the heads up.)

I guess Spring is in the air and everyone is feeling foolishly optimistic.

From the terrorist enablers at Reuters:

New Orleans to be emptied for next storm: officials

Tue Mar 28, 2006

By Ned Randolph

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - Everyone in New Orleans must evacuate the low-lying city the next time a hurricane threatens and no shelters will be offered for those who stay, officials said on Tuesday.

Hoping to avoid a repeat of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when thousands struggled to survive after ignoring evacuation orders, they said planes, trains and buses would be used to move people out and the Superdome football stadium would not be open for refuge.

"Today the population stands around 200,000 to 225,000 people in New Orleans," said Orleans Parish Homeland Security Advisor Terry Ebbert. "Our goal is to ensure that we create an environment where it makes more sense to leave than to stay,"

"We want all 225,000 people to get out of the city," he said. Before Katrina, New Orleans had nearly half a million residents, but many who fled the storm have not returned.

Ebbert spoke at a news conference after state and local officials met with Federal Emergency Management Agency acting director David Paulison to discuss plans for the next hurricane season, which starts June 1.

Officials plan to have only small shelters available for police and rescue workers and will not open the Superdome, the site of mass misery when stranded Katrina victims crowded into the dank and damaged stadium and waited days for rescue.

Ebbert said evacuations could come early and often this year because the levee system protecting New Orleans was weakened by Katrina and there are thousands of people now living in FEMA-provided travel trailers.

Residents will be ordered out not just for hurricanes, but for tropical storms, too, he said.

Good luck with that.

You know that our one party media is hating this.

They were hoping that, despite his confessions, he would get off with a slap on the wrist.

From a very disappointed Associated Press:

Al-Qaida Conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui Offered to Testify Against Himself, Prosecutors Reveal

By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Mar 29, 11:26 AM EST

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — In another twist to an already convoluted case, the jury deciding whether al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui will be executed learned that he offered last month to testify for prosecutors against himself at his death penalty trial.

He also told agents he did not want to die in prison, the jury was told Tuesday.

The disclosure, which came at the end of the testimony phase of Moussaoui's trial, provides the firmest evidence yet that 37-year-old Frenchman is seeking to derail his own defense in an effort to obtain martyrdom through execution.

It also could provide fodder for the closing arguments of both prosecutors and Moussaoui's court-appointed defense attorneys.

Closing arguments in the trial were set for Wednesday afternoon on whether Moussaoui's actions make him eligible for the death penalty. The jury must decide whether the only man charged in this country in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will be executed or imprisoned for life. He the jury finds he is eligible for the death penalty, a second phase would determine whether a death sentence is imposed.

In a hearing Wednesday morning outside the jury's presence, prosecutors and defense attorneys argued over fine points of jury instructions and the implications of a hung jury in this phase. Prosecutors want a mistrial declared if the jury does not agree unanimously; defense attorneys argued that result should end the trial with a sentence of life in prison. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema appeared to lean toward the defense argument, but did not resolve the issue.

To be eligible, prosecutors must prove that Moussaoui's actions resulted in at least one death on Sept. 11.

According to Tuesday's testimony, Moussaoui offered in February during a jailhouse meeting with prosecutors to testify for the government that he planned to hijack and pilot a fifth plane on Sept. 11.

FBI agent James Fitzgerald testified that Moussaoui told him - in a meeting requested by the defendant - that he did not want to die behind bars and it was "different to die in a battle … than in a jail on a toilet."

Moussaoui dropped his effort to testify for prosecutors after he learned that he had an absolute right to testify in his own defense.

On Monday, he stunned the court by asserting publicly for the first time that he was to fly a 747 jetliner into the White House on Sept. 11, despite having claimed for three years that he had no role in the plot. Instead, he had said he was to be part of a possible later attack.

The February meeting with the prosecution was to have been off the record but was ruled admissible after the defense introduced a partial transcript of Moussaoui's guilty plea last April.

In that 2005 pleading, Moussaoui said, "Everybody knows that I'm not 9/11 material" and that Sept. 11 "is not my conspiracy." He said he was going to attack the White House if the United States did not release radical Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel Rahman, imprisoned for other terrorist crimes.

The defense on Tuesday also presented evidence from two high-ranking al-Qaida operatives that cast doubt on Moussaoui's claim of involvement in 9/11.

Their testimony supports that of another top al-Qaida captive, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, chief organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks. He said in testimony read in court Monday that Moussaoui had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 plot, but was to have been part of a later wave of attacks.

Prosecutors argue that if Moussaoui had revealed his al-Qaida membership and his plans to hijack an aircraft, the FBI could have pursued leads that would have allowed them to track down most of the 9/11 hijackers and thwart or at least minimize the attacks.

The defense argues that nothing Moussaoui might have said would have made a difference because the FBI and other government agencies were consistently ignoring warnings prior to 9/11 that an attack was imminent.

The defense also argues that it's legally irrelevant to speculate on what might have happened if Moussaoui confessed, because Moussaoui always enjoyed a constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

The defense needs to go back to law school. There is no prohibition against incriminating yourself, if you want to.

Sheesh.

Some good news for a change.

From the DNC's Associated Press:

Afghan Arrives in Italy After Fleeing

ROME - The Afghan man who faced the death penalty after converting from Islam to Christianity flew to Rome on Wednesday after the Italian government granted him asylum. Abdul Rahman, 41, "is already in Italy. I think he arrived overnight," Premier Silvio Berlusconi said…

It's a good choice.

Even if he is a little pazzo , he'll fit right in.

Another Religion Of Peace moment.

From the DNC's Associated Press:

Pakistani officials load dead body on a truck in Badshahkili near Peshawar, Pakistan, Tuesday, March 28, 2006. A religious rivalry that started as a battle for the airwaves between two Islamic preachers with their own FM radio stations escalated into bitter fighting that left at least 24 people dead.

2 Dozen Killed In Pakistan Radio Battle

March 28, 2006

BADSHAHKILI, Pakistan — A battle for the airwaves between two Islamic clerics with their own FM radio stations in Pakistan has escalated into fighting that's killed at least 24 people.

The violence in Pakistan's northwestern frontier with Afghanistan raises new doubts about the government's grip over the lawless region, where Islamic radicals wield growing influence.

The fighting broke out late Monday and continued into Tuesday as the rival Islamic factions traded fire with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and hand grenades.

The enmity between the Muslim clerics was sparked when they started criticizing each other's religious beliefs in broadcasts. Their small FM radio stations operate from homes in the remote region dominated by tribesmen.

Sometimes you just have to ask yourself what what the heck is going on in their heads?

(Thanks to JimWilson for the heads up.)

Man, they are not kidding. They really don't want to have to work.

The latest on their seemingly never-ending demonstrations, from the DNC's Associated Press:

French Protesters Pour Into the Streets

By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer

PARIS - Tens of thousands of protesters poured onto France's streets and absent workers hobbled transport services Tuesday in the first nationwide strike against a new labor law for youths, increasing pressure on the embattled prime minister to withdraw the contested measure.

Paris and other cities deployed thousands of police to prevent a possible resurgence of violence that marred previous demonstrations against the jobs contract. Marches took place in scores of cities and towns.

"We have to defend the rights that were won by our ancestors and which the current government is trying to take away," said Maxime Ourly, a literature student who joined thousands protesting on Paris' Left Bank.

The new jobs law would let companies dismiss workers under 26 without cause during their first two years on the job — a provision students and labor unions say will erode France's cherished workplace protections and leave youths even more vulnerable.

But conservative Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin says the greater flexibility will encourage companies to hire young workers, who face a 22-percent unemployment rate — the highest in Western Europe.

On Tuesday, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called for a suspension of the new contract, in a clear break with Villepin.

"The contract must not be applied during the talks," Sarkozy told members of the ruling UMP party, which he heads.

His comments were relayed to reporters by party members after a weekly meeting.

Villepin's sputtering effort at reform underscores the dilemma facing many European countries, whose lush jobs protections and social safety nets are threatened by competition from fast-rising Asian economies with cheaper labor and fewer protections.

Protesters in Paris said they want to defend the status quo.

"We are here for our children. We are very worried about what will happen to them," said Philippe Decrulle, an Air France flight attendant. "My son is 23, and he has no job. That is normal in France."

Light rain did not dampen the festive atmosphere, with red union flags and balloons floating over the marchers and stands selling them sausages.

Many French people, accustomed to sporadic strikes, have learned how to prepare — by either taking vacation or comp days, using cars to get to work or staggering their hours around peak times. With all the extra car usage, traffic congestion on highways outside Paris was about twice the normal level Tuesday, the national highway information center said.

Newsstands also were empty of national dailies because of the strike. State-run radio France-Info, a top source of daily news for the French, aired only music. France-2 television broadcast its morning show in a smaller-than-usual studio, with some technicians on strike.

The strike slowed train, plane, subway and bus services across the country to a fraction of normal levels. It was the first time that unions had ordered walkouts in solidarity with students spearheading protests against the job contract.

France's top five labor union federations also refused Villepin's invitation to meet Wednesday for talks, insisting that he shelve the contract first.

France has the sort of political system that the left has long wanted for this country. Rule by mob in the street.

Of course after the recent illegal alien demonstrations in this country, it's clear we're well on the way.

From Page Six of the New York Post:

KERRY’S ROOM SERVICE

Kerry requires Poland Spring water, down pillows for his hotel bed, and the ability to order movies on-demand, according to Web site The Smoking Gun. "JK (for the time being) will not be eating spicy food or anything containing tomato, citrus or chocolate," reads a 2004 campaign memo obtained by the site.

Another section warns, "NEVER order: Tomato-based products OR sandwiches." For dinner, Kerry favors meatloaf with mashed potatoes, roasted chicken, and Szechuan string beans - although he also likes filet mignon, cooked medium.

Kerry’s wife, ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry, wants a "heavenly bed" in a Starwood hotel suite, "good air circulation (no blowing heat)," and a fruit mix. For dinner, Heinz Kerry "loves stone crabs" but "NO TUNA, HALIBUT, OR SWORDFISH."

From The Smoking Gun:

Paging Dr. Freud.

Hmmmm.

From the DNC’s Associated Press:

Supreme court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada holds a copy of Bible that belongs to Abdur Rahman, who converted from Islam to Christianity.

Afghan Convert Vanishes After Release

By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer

KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity quickly vanished Tuesday after he was released from prison, apparently out of fear for his life with Muslim clerics still demanding his death.

Italy’s Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said he would ask his government to grant Abdul Rahman asylum. Fini was among the first to speak out on the man’s behalf.

Rahman, 41, was released from the high-security Policharki prison on the outskirts of Kabul late Monday, Afghan Justice Minister Mohammed Sarwar Danish told The Associated Press.

"We released him last night because the prosecutors told us to," he said. "His family was there when he was freed, but I don’t know where he was taken."

Deputy Attorney-General Mohammed Eshak Aloko said prosecutors had issued a letter calling for Rahman’s release because "he was mentally unfit to stand trial." He also said he did not know where Rahman had gone after being released.

He said Rahman may be sent overseas for medical treatment.

On Monday, hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting "Death to Christians!" marched through the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif to protest the court decision Sunday to dismiss the case. Several Muslim clerics threatened to incite Afghans to kill Rahman if he is freed, saying that he is clearly guilty of apostasy and deserves to die.

"Abdul Rahman must be killed. Islam demands it," said senior Cleric Faiez Mohammed, from the nearby northern city of Kunduz. "The Christian foreigners occupying Afghanistan are attacking our religion."

Rahman was arrested last month after police discovered him with a Bible during a custody dispute over his two daughters. He was put on trial last week for converting 16 years ago while he was a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. He faced the death penalty under Afghanistan’s Islamic laws.

The case set off an outcry in the United States and other nations that helped oust the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001 and provide aid and military support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. President Bush and others had insisted Afghanistan protect personal beliefs.

If he never re-appears, I think it will be clear how the clerics really decided this.

Here's a study in objective journalism from the French AFP:

Students from high schools in the Los Angeles area march after walking out of class Monday, March 27, 2006, as immigrant supporters continued nearly a week of street protests against proposed immigration reforms.

At least 14,000 LA students walk out in immigration law protest

Mar 27, 2006

At least 14,000 mostly Hispanic students stormed out of school classes across Los Angeles in a snowballing protest against Washington's plans for a draconian crackdown on illegal immigration.

Local news reports said that "tens of thousands of students" were taking part in the protest that was spreading through schools across the country's second largest city ahead of a US Senate debate on a divisive immigration reform bill.

"At least 14,000 students are protesting in the streets in Los Angeles city alone," Monica Carazo, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District told AFP.

The latest protest came after one of the biggest protests in recent US history Saturday when more than 500,000 people marched in Los Angeles against the immigration reform bill that would make it a felony criminal offence to be in the United States illegally.

Smaller protests took place in a number of cities around the country as well over the weekend and on Monday against the draft laws.

Los Angeles pupils pursued the protest Monday by walking out of class in at least 21 schools across the city and its surrounding areas, prompting education officials to lock down some campuses to keep the angry students inside.

But they leaped fences and marched through streets brandishing US and Mexican flags and chanting slogans against the immigration bill.

"If we don't leave school today, half of the school who don't have papers will have to leave soon if this law passes, and they won't come back, ever," shouted Huntington Park High School student Anita Benitez.

The Los Angeles Police Department put officers on a "city-wide tactical alert" as a precaution because of the wave of protests that included a crowd of at least 1,500 students who were demonstrating outside city hall.

The protests target a bill, already passed by the US House of Representatives, that would crack down on employers hiring illegal workers and people smuggling illegal immigrants into the country.

The bill would also require employers to verify social security numbers with the Department of Homeland Security, beef up penalties for immigrant smuggling and stiffen penalties for undocumented immigrants who reenter the United States after having been removed.

At least 11 million illegal immigrants, most of them from neighbouring Mexico, live in the United States and are responsible for keeping the human machinery of US cities humming.

I didn't know that.

How did we ever get along without them before?

I guess this is why his attorneys and his fans in our one party media didn’t want him to testify.

From the DNC’s Associated Press:

Moussaoui Says He Was to Hijack 5th Plane

By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane and fly it into the White House as part of the attack that unfolded Sept. 11, 2001.

Moussaoui’s testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom. His account was in stark contrast to his previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions.

On Dec. 22, 2001, Reid was subdued by passengers when he attempted to detonate a bomb in his shoe aboard American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami. There were 197 people on board. The plane was diverted to Boston, where it landed safely.

Moussaoui told the court he knew the World Trade Center attack was coming and that he lied to investigators when arrested in August 2001 because he wanted it to happen.

"You lied because you wanted to conceal that you were a member of al-Qaida?" prosecutor Rob Spencer asked.

"That’s correct," Moussaoui said.

Spencer: "You lied so the plan could go forward?"

Moussaoui: "That’s correct."

The exchange was key to the government’s case that the attacks might have been averted if Moussaoui had been more cooperative following his arrest.

Moussaoui told the court he knew the attacks were coming some time after August 2001 and bought a radio so he could hear them unfold.

Specifically, he said he knew the World Trade Center was going to be attacked, but asserted he was not part of that plot and didn’t know the details.

Nineteen men pulled off the Sept. 11 attacks on New York in Washington in the worst act of terrorism ever on U.S. soil.

"I had knowledge that the Twin Towers would be hit," Moussaoui said. "I didn’t know the details of this."

Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son Christian died at the World Trade Center, said "at least there would have been a chance" to head off the attacks if Moussaoui had told investigators in August 2001 what she heard him admit in court Monday.

"I was convinced that this man was only a heartbeat away from taking the controls of a plane," she said.

Asked by his lawyer why he signed his guilty plea in April as "the 20th hijacker," Moussaoui replied: "Because everybody used to refer to me as the 20th hijacker and it was a bit of fun."

Before Moussaoui took the stand, his lawyers made a last attempt to stop him from testifying, but failed. Defense attorney Gerald Zerkin argued that his client would not be a competent witness because he has contempt for the court, only recognizes Islamic law and therefore "the affirmation he undertakes would be meaningless."

Moussaoui at first denied he was to have been a fifth hijack pilot but under cross examination spoke of the plan to attack the White House. He said Reid was the only person he knew for sure would have been on that mission, but others were discussed.

Reid, a self-proclaimed member of al-Qaida who has pledged support to Osama bin Laden, pleaded guilty in October 2002 to trying to blow up Flight 63 and was sentenced to life in prison.

Moussaoui testified that at one point he was excluded from pre-hijacking operations because he had gotten in trouble with his al-Qaida superiors on a 2000 trip to Malaysia. He said it was only after he was called back to
Afghanistan and talked with Osama bin Laden that he was approved again for the operation.

"My position was, like you say, under review."

Previous testimony indicated that Moussaoui had irritated his hosts in Malaysia who were members of an al-Qaida affiliate. Although al-Qaida was a well-financed group, he had asked his Malaysian hosts for money to take flight training.

The 19 terrorists on Sept. 11 hijacked and crashed four airliners, killing nearly 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on the planes. The intended target of the plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field remains unknown.

Before Moussaoui took the stand, the court heard testimony that two months before the attacks a CIA deputy chief waited in vain for permission to tell the FBI about a "very high interest" al-Qaida operative who became one of the hijackers.

The official, a senior figure in the CIA’s Laden unit, said he sought authorization on July 13, 2001, to send information to the FBI but got no response for 10 days, then asked again.

As it turned out, the information on Khalid al-Mihdhar did not reach the FBI until late August. At the time, CIA officers needed permission from a special unit before passing certain intelligence on to the FBI.

The official was identified only as John. His written testimony was read into the record.

"John’s" testimony was part of the defense’s case that federal authorities missed multiple opportunities to catch hijackers and perhaps thwart the 9/11 plot.

His testimony included an e-mail sent by FBI supervisor Michael Maltbie discussing Moussaoui but playing down his terrorist connections. Maltbie’s e-mail said "there’s no indication that (Moussaoui) had plans for any nefarious activity."

He sent that e-mail to the CIA even after receiving a lengthy memo from the FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui and suspected him of being a terrorist with plans to hijack aircraft.

Prosecutors argue that Moussaoui, a French citizen, thwarted a prime opportunity to track down the 9/11 hijackers and possibly unravel the plot when he was arrested in August 2001 on immigration violations and lied to the FBI about his al-Qaida membership and plans to hijack a plane.

Had Moussaoui confessed, the FBI could have pursued leads that would have led them to most of the hijackers, government witnesses have testified.

To win the death penalty, prosecutors must first prove that Moussaoui’s actions — specifically, his lies — were directly responsible for at least one death on Sept. 11.

If they fail, Moussaoui would get life in prison.

Oh, and thanks again to Jamie Gorelick and the rest of the brainiacs behind "the wall."