Bush says he's first and foremost a war president. Kerry says he's a jobs president first, then an education president, an environmental president, a taking-thorns-out-of-kittens'-paws president, and - oh yeah - a guy in charge of some military stuff.

Thus it was prudent to let all this alone, and not take the bait of thinking a decorated veteran who opposed the war could score points against a supporter of it who did not serve. But the Democrats were not content.

Instead, they floated old accusations that a twenty-something George Bush, who strapped himself into something as dangerous as an obsolete, fire-belching, and occasionally explosive F-102, was somehow near treasonous. Young Bush may have been impetuous and he apparently missed some roll calls, but anyone who rides the stratosphere a few inches above a jet engine is neither a coward nor a man who shirks either danger or responsibility.

Now the Democrats who thought up this low hit on the president will reap what they have sown - as Kerry's entire (and ever-expanding) record of ancient slips and slurs will unnecessarily go under full scrutiny, the sometimes shameful words of a rash and mixed-up youth unfairly gaining as much attention as once brave deeds. By August the American people will be sick to death of Kerry's pandering to veterans - or perhaps as indifferent to his medals as they were to the equally stellar record of sometimes-failed candidates like Bob Dole, Bob Kerry, John McCain, or Gray Davis.

An Army Reserve sergeant whose husband is charged with concocting a story about her death returned home to Waterbury from Iraq Thursday night, intent on seeing her children and assuring her family she was OK.

Betsy Valentin's 21-hour flight ended at Bradley International Airport. When she got to her home in Waterbury, she met with family members and a police escort, the Republican-American of Waterbury reported Friday.

The escort was provided in case there was any trouble between Valentin and her husband, Edward Valentin, who is out on bond. No problems were reported.

Edward Valentin was charged last week with falsely reporting an incident after telling reporters that the Defense Department called him on his cell phone to tell him his wife died in an explosion in Iraq. Police later inspected his phone records and alleged that Valentin made up the story.

When a mongrel puppy wandered into his tent last fall, one Army sergeant said the effect was immediate and jarring. "When I saw him, I smiled. . . . I smiled so big and I realized that I haven't smiled in five months," he wrote on a Web posting from Iraq.

Iraq's economy is providing pleasant surprises, including booming consumer demand, strong oil revenue and healthy foreign exchange reserves, a top Treasury official said Thursday.

"The economy is beginning to work and thrive again and grow," John Taylor, undersecretary for international affairs, said by telephone from Baghdad.

U.S. occupation authorities estimate Iraqis have imported 1 million cars and trucks and more than 500,000 satellite dishes since fighting ended in April, Taylor said.

Other signs of improvement:

Oil revenue. On an annualized basis, oil exports are running $1.5 billion ahead of projections by U.S. authorities and Iraqi technocrats, who forecast 2004 revenue at $12 billion.

The currency. Iraq's new dinar, introduced in October, has gained value against the U.S. dollar. U.S. officials originally worried Iraq could deplete its foreign currency reserves if Iraqis weren't confident in the dinar.

Building materials. Demand for cement, asphalt and other construction material is boosting the economy, Taylor said.

He said controls on interest rates for bank loans and deposits will be lifted March 1. A fully functioning central bank and finance ministry should be in place by June 30, when the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority is to hand power to an Iraqi government, he said.

He also finds relief in the fact that he's now part of an exclusive club, a combat veteran. Thinking about Vietnam vets, he says, "I have mad respect for those guys now."

But he holds older veterans in even higher regard. "I love talking to guys from World War II," he says. "It was nothing like what I dealt with. They were gone for three or four years."

But although Sergeant Devine draws that distinction, sees their sacrifice as greater than his, still he feels the bond, the brotherhood with those who view his photographs and immediately understand.

A bad day is when (1) you get arrested (2) by the people who once worked for you and (3) they tell you exactly what they think of you.

Muhammad Zimam Abd al-Razzaq was having a really bad day. Mr. Zimam, a former interior minister under Saddam Hussein and an enemy of Iraq's Kurds, was No. 41 on the American occupation force's most-wanted list in Iraq.

He was in his house in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Saidiya on Sunday, when a squad of Iraqi police officers showed up around lunchtime. No burly, locked-and-loaded American soldiers to hunt down the dangerous; no, this was a bunch of Iraqi cops barely old enough to shave, wearing baseball caps that read SWAT in homemade letters.

If music is the universal language, then the message emanating from a Steinway concert grand piano at a concert today in Baghdad, Iraq, was one of friendship and support.

The Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra performed its first concert today at the Baghdad Convention Center since its new grand piano arrived last month.

Steinway & Sons offered to donate the piano after the orchestra performed here with the Washington National Symphony Orchestra.

Steinway responded to a National Endowment for the Arts plea for companies to donate instruments to the Iraqi orchestra, which floundered under Saddam Hussein.

Radio France Internationale has started broadcasting round-the-clock French-language programmes in Baghdad to complement its Arabic station already available there, the state-owned radio network said Thursday.

Confronting problems on critical fronts, the CIA recently removed its top officer in Baghdad because of questions about his ability to lead the massive station there, and has closed a number of satellite bases in Afghanistan amid concerns over that country's deteriorating security situation, according to U.S. intelligence sources...

The CIA's Baghdad station has become the largest in agency history, eclipsing the size of its post in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War, a U.S. official said. But sources said the agency has struggled to fill a number of key overseas posts.

Many of those who do take sensitive overseas assignments are willing to serve only 30-to-90-day rotations, a revolving-door approach that has undercut the agency's ability to cultivate ties to warlords in Afghanistan or collect intelligence on the Iraqi insurgency, sources said.

There is such a shortage of Arabic speakers and qualified case officers willing to take dangerous assignments that the agency has been forced to hire dozens -- if not hundreds -- of CIA retirees, and to lean heavily on translators, sources said. The agency has also had to use soldiers for tasks that CIA officers normally perform, sources said.

The Iraqi people Pfc. Jennifer Gruselle has contact with aren't much different from the people back home.

That's part of the message the 20-year-old Green Bay Southwest High School graduate who is serving in Iraq sent to students at McAuliffe Elementary School in Bellevue.

"It's like a whole other world here," the medic with the 501st Forward Support Battalion wrote to students. "I have found the vast majority of Iraqis to be nothing but kind and caring. They're not all that different from you and me, with families and friends that they love and jobs or school they work hard in."

Gruselle sent the letter, a page of signatures, a stuffed bear and photos to students at the school, who in November sent 550 cards and about a dozen care packages to troops in Iraq.

Their message included an aerial photo of the students who lined up to form a heart and spelled out "USA" outside the school.

Tonie Mixer, a fourth-grade teacher at McAuliffe, read Gruselle's letter to her class.

"You could have heard a pin drop when I was reading the letter to my kids and passing the pictures around," she said. "They have no toilets, no running water and the Iraqi people have no shoes on their feet. "

Gruselle's parents, Gregg and Sandy, live in Allouez.

"There is a huge job to be done in Iraq, and I am honored to be part of the process of giving this country back to its people," Jennifer Gruselle wrote.

In her letter, Gruselle told the students about the oppression the people of Iraq lived under prior to their liberation last spring.

"If any of you have friends or family deployed to Iraq, it is natural to worry, but don't worry too much as we are all soldiers and we all take very good care of each other," Gruselle wrote.

In a country where terrorist bombs are a clear and present danger, concrete blast barriers have become a critical landscape feature.

The U.S. military uses the barriers, some up to 10 feet high, to enclose its base camps. Civilian government officials, aid agencies and hotel owners wrap the concrete walls around their buildings like protective blankets. Barriers divide roads and surround parking lots.

Denmark has introduced new immigration laws that will make it more difficult for Muslim clerics and other religious leaders to enter the country.

The new rules are designed in part to deter Islamic clerics from establishing Islamic communities in Denmark and instead encourage Muslims to integrate into the broader society. The rules however, would apply to any religious group...

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, said yesterday: "Access to obtaining a Danish residence permit for foreign missionaries has been too easy up until now.

"That is why we now put forward new requirements for residing in the country, like the demand that imams and others have an education and that they be financially self-sufficient."...

Peter Skaarup, a spokesman for the DPP, said: "In theory, these rules concern all clerics from all religions. But in practice, they target the imams."

U.S. Navy sailors may board thousands of commercial ships in international waters to search for weapons of mass destruction under a landmark pact between the United States and Liberia, the world's No. 2 shipping registry.

But it's unfair to put all the burden, and the risks, on the military. A United States general told me he was worried that Americans back home didn't appreciate the challenges and sacrifices of his troops. "Where are the victory gardens?" he asked, referring to the World War II home-front effort to show solidarity by growing fruits and vegetables so more food could be shipped to soldiers overseas.

Conditions in Afghanistan won't get a lot better any time soon. The military is expected to be involved in a big spring offensive against Al Qaeda that will probably mean more combat and less time for community projects. The participation of civilians, then, seems all the more important. But if it's too dangerous for them to be on the ground in Afghanistan, why not find other ways for them to participate? There are no ready models, but modern technology may be part of the answer.

Here's one idea. American corporations, service clubs, education and health organizations could adopt villages and provide each with a generator to power donated computers and large-screen televisions. Then American and Afghan doctors, teachers, carpenters, soccer coaches and the like could appear in instructive software, videotape or television programming to supplement military efforts. Another possibility would be to convert one of those go-anywhere Afghan trucks into a classroom. Load it with computers and conferencing equipment and go from village to village.

Such a program would not replace the Army, but it would add a civilian face to the efforts to build a civil society. It would also tighten the bonds between the military and the American people. It could be the 21st century equivalent of a victory garden.

Oddly, just as the foreign minister was announcing Iran's intention to sell enriched uranium to interested parties ? thereby spitting in the eye of the French, German, and English diplomats who sang love songs to themselves just a few short months ago, proclaiming they had negotiated an end to the Iranian nuclear program ? two smugglers were arrested in Iraq, near Mosul, with what an Iraqi general described as a barrel of uranium.

Here is what General Hikmat Mahmoud Mohammed had to say about the event: "This material is in the category of weapons of mass destruction, which is why the investigation is secret. The two suspects were transferred to American forces, who are in charge of the inquiry."

The war in Iraq is over and the occupation has turned into a quagmire. The United States troops have become the targets of criminals and terrorists who are flowing into Iraq for the chance to kill Americans. The cost of the occupation keeps rising: The president has already asked for more than $155 billion to pay for it, and there is no end in sight. U.S. military casualties in Iraq have now exceeded 500...

We must pay for what we destroyed. We must pay reparations to the families of innocent civilians we killed and injured. But we must work through the United Nations. We must allow the United Nations to facilitate the creation of a democratic government that will be acceptable to the Iraqi people.

It's hard designing a transition to democracy.

Maybe democracy will take in Iraq, maybe it won't, but I hope our experience with Iraq gives us a nudge toward appreciating our own democracy, which too many of us take for granted, and too few of us understand.

Watching democracy being tried there and in Haiti, Russia and numerous other places around the world, nothing is clearer than how difficult a plant it is to cultivate.

So many things have to be in place for a democracy to work...

We had to fight the Civil War before we really became a nation instead of a collection of states whose interests lay primarily within their own borders. It was that war that led people to change their grammar: They stopped saying the United States are, and started saying the United States is.

Read the history of any democracy you choose, and you'll see that it didn't come easily or quickly — not in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. Its evolution can take decades, sometimes centuries. OK, maybe Canada had no problems (no, wait, there is still that French/English thing). Political marriage is hard work, and the work is never done.

U.S. soldiers captured seven insurgents with possible links to al Qaeda during a raid in central Iraq Wednesday, the U.S. military said.
The seven men were targets of a raid carried out by the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division in Baquba, 40 miles north of Baghdad.

"The seven targets may have links to al Qaeda," a military spokesman said. They were suspected of being part of a cell that launched attacks against U.S.-led occupation forces, he said. Fifteen other people were also arrested in the same raid.

Later that night, I went down to dinner in my hotel restaurant, sitting by chance beside a table of Christian activists from America and Canada.

As if to make clear anti-occupation sentiments clear, they were loudly snickering at the behavior of U.S. troops—specifically, the GIs’ tendency to wear sunglasses when on patrol. Why, everyone knows the Arabs value eye contact, the Christians sneered. How stupid, how culturally insensitive, how American can you be? And these are the people who want to bring democracy to the Middle East?

I wondered if these God-fearing war protestors had expended similar energy condemning the murderers who packed a Toyota pick-up truck with explosives and sent it into the Baghdad streets—but something told me they had not.

In my two trips to Iraq, I’ve come to dread these kinds of leftists. You run into them everywhere—in teahouses, restaurants, hotel lobbies, anyplace where Westerners gather. Their ranks include NGO workers, European journalists, religious pacifists, Canadians of every stripe—disparate groups united by their sense of moral superiority, opposition to the war in Iraq and their disdain for the United States.

Together, they form a kind of humanitarian chorus which decries Coalition abuses of Iraqi citizens—yet falls silent before Ba’athist crimes, or the horror of suicide bombing.

“I refuse to use the word ‘terrorist’ to describe those who resist the U.S. occupation,” a Baghdad-based member of a Canadian Mennonite group once told me. “Those are terms used by the American government.”

There’s a place for activists in Iraq, of course. If democracy is to take root here, the country needs to experience the full spectrum of civic life, from voting booths and private enterprise, to labor unions, environmentalists, feminists and civil rights lawyers...

Too often, though, the main interest of leftists is not Iraq, but the perceived faults of the U.S. Take, for example, the foreign press. When I visited last fall, numerous Baghdadis complained to me how European journalists frequently ignored the joy Iraqis felt with the fall of Saddam; instead, they sought mainly to report on (or in some cases, manufacture) anti-American sentiment. “The French were the worst,” groused sculptor Haider Wady. “They keep trying to get us to say bad things about the war and the Americans.”

Nowadays, one sees in Iraq a newer, more subtle form of anti-Americanism...Recently, I met the members of CODEPINK—a self-described “grassroots peace and social justice movement”—which specializes in taking women on week-long excursions among the city’s most wretched inhabitants: homeless people, traumatized children, families destroyed by trigger-happy U.S. soldiers. “Robin Williams has asked us to find a children’s hospital he can donate money to,” co-founder Jodie Evans informed me.

No one wants to begrudge such altruism, of course. Still, the selective concerns of CODEPINK and other do-gooders trouble me...

Demonstrating the narrowness of her experiences in Iraq, a woman traveling with CODEPINK asked me, “How bad was Saddam really?” As for the victims of terrorist bombings, no one ever mentions them; they are not a stop of the leftist’s pity circuit.

Insurgents fired mortars and rockets at a U.S. base at a prison on the western edge of Baghdad, slightly wounding one soldier, the military said Thursday. U.S. troops killed one Iraqi and detained 55 for questioning, the military added.

The incident occurred Wednesday between 6:30 p.m. and 6:50 p.m. at the Abu Ghraib prison, the military said. Thirty-three mortars and five rockets were fired during the insurgent attack.

Abu Ghraib was one of Iraq's most notorious prisons during the rule of Saddam Hussein, who detained, tortured and executed many regime opponents there.

The U.S. military uses the prison to house coalition opponents and former regime members.

For Nicholas, Erika and Logan Stewmon, seeing Mom and Dad both home together is getting to be a very strange thing.

The three children, ages 14, 12 and 5, belong to a dual-military family in Illesheim, Germany. Their father, Chief Warrant Officer 4 Brian Stewmon, pilots an AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter for the Illesheim-based 6th Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment. Their mother, Capt. Michelle Stewmon, is a nurse for the 67th Combat Support Hospital in Würzburg.

Brian Stewmon returned late last month from an 11½-month tour in Iraq. He got home just in time to kiss his wife goodbye and send her off on her own yearlong deployment.

“We expected separation, but we never expected two years,” Michelle Stewmon said last week, just after arriving in Kuwait. “People don’t know that it’s going on. They’re shocked this is happening.”

The war- and travel-weary soldiers filed off the chartered bus to the joyful screams of wives and open-armed children running for hugs a year gone missing.

Company A, 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion was finally home from Iraq.

But for many of the 68 soldiers who returned Friday to Heidelberg, Germany, home is still a long way away.

“Will you hold my hand,” whispered a sergeant in Pfc. Cody Sheldon’s ear as Alpha’s commander stood before the troops for one last formation with tearful flag-waving wives and children standing on the sidelines.

“It’s hard,” said Sheldon, a 19-year-old single soldier from Baltimore, as he lugged his gear from the bus up into his barracks. “You knew there were going to be all those families here, but it kind of leaves you wishing you were already home with your own family.”

This picture of the statue below was made by an Iraqi artist named Kalat, who for years was forced by Saddam Hussein to make the many hundreds of bronze busts of Saddam that dotted Baghdad.

This artist was so grateful that the Americans liberated his country, he melted 3 of the fallen Saddam heads and made a memorial statue dedicated to the American soldiers and their fallen comrades. Kalat worked on this night and day for several months.

To the left of the kneeling soldier is a small Iraqi girl giving the soldier comfort as he mourns the loss of his comrade in arms.

It is currently on display outside the palace that is now home to the 4th Infantry division. It will eventually be shipped and shown at the memorial museum in Fort Hood, Texas.

Democratic frontrunner Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) began a seven-day, eight-state whistle-stop tour Monday, addressing a group of Frigidaire factory workers from the all-teak deck of his 60-foot luxury motor cruiser...

"John Kerry wanted to get out there, connect with the people, and hear their stories," Cahill said in a press conference held in the main cabin. "Taking his yacht across the Midwest is the best way for Kerry to reach out to all the people who lost their jobs under George W. Bush."

"There's no better place to have a good conversation than on the deck of a fine sailing vessel, out there in the sunshine, with the gentle breeze playing in your hair," Cahill said. "It's beautiful up there."

Cahill said she hopes the yacht will appeal to independent voters, who may decide the election in November.

An additional benefit of campaigning in the craft is that it affords Kerry the opportunity to make unexpected stops along the campaign trail, simply by alerting the convoy with his International Maritime Signal Flags.

"What's John Kerry all about?" said Kerry, addressing a small group of supporters that he spotted at a rest stop on Interstate 76. "John Kerry believes in affordable health care, renewable energy, decisive foreign policy, and economic recovery. I'm putting that message on my yacht and taking it all the way across America."

The question of whether Saddam Hussein was a monstrous, murderous tyrant has two answers - "no" or "yes". There is no "yes but".

Russia's biggest military exercise since the collapse of communism flopped yesterday, ruining an attempt to project Vladimir Putin as a global leader and reaffirm the country's status as a nuclear superpower.

With Mr Putin and a host of military officials watching from the nuclear submarine Arkhangelsk, two intercontinental ballistic missiles went wrong during a firing from a submarine believed to be the Novomoskovsk. They were aimed at Kamchatka on the Pacific coast. A malfunctioning satellite was blamed.

The Russian website gazeta.ru said one of the missiles blew up shortly after firing. The navy refused to confirm the accident.

Television, which had been leading news programmes with glowing reports of the exercises, quickly reduced them to a short bulletin.

For Mr Putin, decked out in naval garb, it was an embarrassing setback.

With less than a month before presidential elections, he has sought to cast himself as a hard man in the mould of the old Soviet leaders.

He has also pledged to preside over a return to the days when Russia was a powerful global player.

Last week he said the collapse of the Soviet Union had been a "national tragedy of enormous scale".

It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then...

Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries that are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people.

And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: of all the millions of refugees we’ve seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world.

Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.

An average of 50 trailers of soft drinks drop their cargo at Jamilah daily compared to one or two before the war. The price of a can of Pepsi has fallen by more than half to 20 cents.

"The Iranians have sent me $50,000 (26,000 pounds) worth of confectionery without asking for a bill. They are so keen on a distributor. They know Iraqis are starting to spend," Aibi said.

HIGHER SPENDING

U.S. officials say Iraq's economy is seeing consumer-led growth, helped by an increase in public sector salaries and the fall of the business elite who monopolised Iraq's resources and discouraged independent private enterprise.

"The private sector is recovering from the hostilities. We are laying the regulatory framework so the practices of the old regime do not creep back in," said an official in the U.S.-led administration of Iraq.

Wages have climbed sharply under the occupation, although unemployment remains rampant. A street cleaner is paid around $3 a day, as much as the average government worker's monthly salary during the sanctions era.

Businesses are expanding slowly, although security and a legal system to enforce contracts are lacking.

Nabil Mamo, a prominent surgeon, said demand for private health care was rising and he would soon reopen his eye care centre, which was looted after the war.

"There is no credible state protection yet," Mamo said. "But things have definitely changed for the better. I see it in my patients and their willingness to spend."

"My sister bought a refrigerator and a television with her new salary. She needed decades to afford them before," he said.

About 80 people turned out Monday night at the Bausch & Lomb Public Library to listen to poets express outrage over the war in Iraq.

The event was the second annual Rochester Poets Against the War & Occupation. Twenty-six poets read from their works.

Governor McGreevey (D-NJ) spent part of Tuesday at Fort Dix speaking to 180 soldiers as they prepare to deploy for Iraq. The members of the two New Jersey National Guard units will be overseas for one year serving as military police officers.

As the soldiers spent time with their loved ones, the governor announced a new loan program for military families. Four banks are offering loans of up to $10,000 with principal and interest deferments to all New Jersey National Guard members and military reservists called to active duty. The governor says the "Freedom Loans" will allow soldiers to concentrate on their military duties without worrying about financial problems at home.

Kulongoski said he feared that fellow Democrats might push for the return home of U.S. troops too soon.

“I think the American military needs to have a presence in Iraq,” he said. “I do believe we need to be there, both for the political stability of the country and the economic recovery of the country.”

Peter Bergel, executive director of Oregon PeaceWorks in Salem, agreed that troops can’t be rushed back home.

People in the peace movement always have warned that removing Saddam Hussein would lead to a long, costly and complicated rebuilding effort, he said.

The Army is paying students to put their degrees on hold and join troops in Iraq as Arabic interpreters.

Five students have already been sent to areas under British control and 11 more are in the final stages of preparation, the Ministry of Defence said.

Their work includes translating documents and dealing with the public.

The MoD said they wear blue jackets and helmets to distinguish them from troops but have been warned: "There's a degree of risk inherent in working in Iraq."

Another apparent failure was the Army's "information operations," including the attempt to use propaganda to mold the battle and persuade Iraqis to surrender without a fight. Before the war, commanders expected mass surrenders like they had seen in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. But that didn't happen, perhaps because this invasion did not follow the sort of heavy bombing that helped sap Iraqi will in 1991.

"Frankly, with a few exceptions ... it is hard to make the case that U.S. efforts in the broad category of information operations produced any meaningful results," the study says. An ironic exception: One of the first "kills" of the war was scored by the information campaign, when a box of pamphlets fell unopened from an airplane and hit an Iraqi soldier.

Money illicitly siphoned from the UN oil-for-food programme by Saddam Hussein was used to finance anti-sanctions campaigns run by British politicians, according to documents that have surfaced in Baghdad.

Undercover cash from oil deals went to three businessmen who in turn supported pressure groups involving the ex-Labour MP George Galloway, Labour MP Tam Dalyell, and the former Irish premier Albert Reynolds, it is alleged in documents compiled by the oil ministry, which is now under the control of the US occupation regime...

Mr Chalabi and Mr Zureikat gave money to the Mariam Appeal, run by Mr Galloway, the MP confirmed. Mr Tahir said he ran another anti-sanctions campaign called Friendship Across Borders, which had Mr Dalyell as its official patron and organised visits to Baghdad by supportive politicians.

The top 10 most secure sites in the globe were:

1) Cheyenne Mountain, USA – The command, control, communication and intelligence centre for coordinating and controlling North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) and US Space Command (USSPACECOM) missions.

2) HavenCo – A data protection company which is based at Sealand in the North Sea, six miles off Britain. Access is restricted to authorised staff, investors and members of the Royal Family.

3) ADX-Florence Prison, Colorado – A maximum security prison designed so that one guard can control the movements of numerous prisoners in several cell blocks by way of electronic doors, cameras and audio equipment.

4) Saddam Hussein’s bunker in Baghdad – The bunker can resist a direct hit of a 20 kilo-ton bomb or atomic bomb impact and keep those inside independent of the outside world for six months.

5) The Mormon Church records store, Granite Mountains in Utah – Vaults encased in granite rock. Armed guards waving metal detector wands greet visitors inside a concrete bunker before swinging open metal gates to a tunnel entrance.

6) Fort Knox – A bank vault with a door that weight 25 tonnes.

7) The 1960s Bar – Part of the Burlington bunker in Wiltshire, which held a replica of Whitehall and included a bar.

8) Air Force One – A modified Boeing aircraft with all the latest safety technology which transports the US President around the world.

9) Area 51 – A secret military facility about 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

10) Bold Lane car park, Derby.

The U.S. military issued Tuesday, for the first time, a wanted list of dozens of key figures suspected of leading the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq, including a $1 million reward for a senior Baath Party figure believed to be running guerrilla cells...

The list of 32 wanted people included suspected cell leaders, former members of Saddam Hussein's military and regional Baath leaders thought to be helping the insurgency, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations chief.

At the top of the list, with a $1 million reward, is Mohammed Yunis al-Ahmad, a former top Baath Party official. Rewards between $50,000 and $200,000 were offered for the others.

''He is one of the former [regime] personnel we suspect of significant anti-coalition activities,'' Kimmitt said of al-Ahmad. ``We have reason to believe he has been running cells in certain parts of this country.''

The military has been compiling the list as it built up a better understanding of the insurgency, Kimmitt told reporters. ''Some names keep popping up,'' he said.

Iraq's Governing Council is to discuss proposals for a revamped Iraqi stock exchange later this week.
The talks follow months of preparatory work aimed at putting the country's financial markets back on their feet after last year's war.

The new Iraqi bourse would be run in line with international corporate governance standards.

It would also enable foreign investors to buy shares in local companies for the first time.

Suicide car bombers have killed two Iraqis and wounded 44 others as well as eight soldiers with the U.S.-led coalition at a base used by coalition soldiers in the Iraqi city of Hilla, a military spokesman says.

"At 7:15 local time near the logistics base there was a terrorist attack using two cars," Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Strzelecki, a spokesman for Polish-led troops in the region, told Reuters on Wednesday. "We found the bodies of the two drivers, and two Iraqis standing in the street were killed."

Eight coalition soldiers -- six Poles, a Hungarian and an American -- were wounded in the attack in Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, the latest strike on the soldiers of countries helping the United States occupy Iraq.

There is a chill in the air inside buildings at Navy bases around Europe as officials lower thermostats as part of an effort to save money and prepare for expected budget cuts.

Navywide cuts aimed at setting aside more funds to help modernize the fleet, coupled with a weakening dollar, have bases looking for ways to reduce costs and do things more efficiently, said Lt. Cmdr. Carla McCarthy, spokeswoman for Navy Region Europe.

For the second time, a charter flight carrying 1st Infantry Division troops suffered a malfunction on takeoff, prompting an unscheduled landing, a division spokesman said.

Shortly after sunrise on Feb. 10, an indicator light on the American Trans Air Boeing 757 showed the aircraft had lost its hydraulics right after takeoff from the Nuremburg, Germany, airport, passengers on the flight said.

“You knew something was wrong, because we weren’t gaining altitude,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jon King, a 1st ID re-enlistment counselor.

The jet, carrying more than 150 soldiers from the Kitzingen-based 4th Battalion, 3rd Air Defense Artillery, flew about 200 miles northeast to Frankfurt for repairs. As a precaution, King said, the pilot told the passengers they would fly at low altitude with wheels down...

On Feb. 6 a chartered World Airways flight loaded with 278 1st ID soldiers took off from Nuremburg for Kuwait but also had to make an emergency landing. As the plane took off, one of its engines burst into flames and was quickly shut down. The plane landed safely without further incident.

Iraq’s civil defense force asked U.S. soldiers not to aid a besieged Fallujah police station Saturday to keep the defenders from losing face with locals, according to the U.S. commander of coalition forces in the area.

At least 25 people were killed in simultaneous attacks on the police station and an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps compound. On Monday, a team of six U.S. congressmen and several members of the Iraqi Governing Council laid a wreath at the Baghdad Police Academy in memory of 17 police officers killed during the attack.

Col. Jefforey Smith, commander of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, now based in Fallujah, said U.S. soldiers prepared to head to the police station after hearing gunfire.

However, the troops at Volturno Forward Operating Base, about seven miles from the police station, were held back at the request of the commander of the 506th Iraqi Civil Defense Corps battalion.

Shortly after the attack started the commander arrived at Volturno seeking weapons and ammunition.

“I asked if he wanted us to send an element but he said [the ICDC and Iraqi police] had the situation under control. We had four military ambulances standing by but he said they didn’t need them,” Smith said.

“He almost demanded we not put forces into Fallujah at that time because it would damage their credibility with the people there if they could not protect themselves.”

A Christian missionary was killed and three others injured in an ambush on their car near Baghdad on Sunday, February 15.

A number of gunmen opened fire on the car the missionaries were riding on their way back from the southern Iraqi city of Babil, eyewitnesses told Al-Quds press...

Since the U.S. and British forces rolled into Baghdad on April 9, more than 100 Christian missionaries entered the Arab Muslim country.

Shrouded in secrecy and under the guise of humanitarian aid, American missionaries, mainly evangelicals, are pouring into the predominantly Muslim Iraq, fearing the now "open door" may be soon closed when an Iraqi government takes over power, Daily Telegraph reported on December 27.

The goal now is spreading some one million Arabic bibles along with Arabic religious videos and tracts throughout Iraq, after only 8,000 copies were circulated in their last missions, the paper added.

In Baghdad's bustling liquor trade, the ancient Roman buyer's warning, caveat emptor, might better be translated as "let the drinker beware."

With no import taxes and no laws governing the sale of alcohol, and a post-war influx of foreigners with a taste for it, sales of liquor, beer and wine are brisk.

But among the real bottles are impostor elixirs masquerading as legitimate top-shelf brands.

"There are fakes and people who cheat you," said Salam Bahnam, who owns a liquor shop in Baghdad's Karrada district. "The original scotch is Scottish. The fakes are from Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Sweden."...

Jalal Hoshabir, who runs a neighboring shop he opened in mid-January, said the bogus bottles come from home-made stills in Baghdad and northern Iraq, and from outside the country.

A group of anti-war activists Sunday plastered the Paris outlet of the Planet Hollywood chain "Planet Baghdad" in a protest against the ongoing US military occupation of Iraq, the group and police said.

Around 50 militants from the group "Act Against the War" stuck a banner across the front of the restaurant's shopfront on the Champs-Elysees Avenue proclaiming "Occupation is a crime" and fixing a mock-up of the chain's logo that read "Planet Baghdad".

A year ago, soldiers from the 3rd Infantry and 101st Airborne divisions joined Europe-based troops from the 11th Aviation Regiment and the 12th Aviation Brigade to fill Udairi and the neighboring camps Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Then Udairi offered no amenities except a chow hall and a post exchange. A few trucks traveled up and down a single hardpan road along the camp’s north-south axis.

Along that road, now named Eisenhower Drive, are most of the soldiers’ tent pads. A tiny Burger King, Subway sandwich shop, barber shop and tailor shop sit near the PX at the center of camp. Across the street is a Morale, Welfare and Recreation hub featuring a gym, phone center, Internet cafe and game room.

Once authority is in Iraqi hands, the Baathists and Islamists have a real problem: They can't even pretend to be fighting the U.S. anymore. It will be clear to all Arabs and Muslims that they are fighting against the freedom and independence of Iraq and for their own lunatic ideologies.

Which is why they are desperate to prevent us from reaching that tipping point. Their strategy is to sow chaos, defeat President Bush and hope that his Democratic successor will pull out.

Which is also why at this moment the most important statement on Iraq that can be made — one that could even save lives — is nothing President Bush could say. No, the most important statement on Iraq right now could only come from the likely Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry.

Yet here we are two years later, and they're running on biography all over again. But this time their chosen biography is Vietnam, and for many Americans, and especially boomer Democrats, that's far more psychologically complicated. Look at Kerry's stump speech: ''We band of brothers,'' he says, indicating his fellow veterans. ''We're a little older, we're a little grayer, but we still know how to fight for this country.'' Thirty years ago, he came back from Vietnam and denounced his ''band of brothers'' as a gang of drug-fueled torturers, rapists and murderers.

These versions are not reconcilable. When he was palling around with Jane Fonda in the '70s, he hated the military. It wasn't just that he opposed the war but that he accused his ''band of brothers'' of a level of participation in war crimes and civilian atrocities unmatched by the Japanese, the Nazis and the Soviets. If he'd said, ''We band of brothers . . . We're a little older, we're a little grayer, but we still know how to get high, murder the gooks and rape their womenfolk,'' it would at least have been consistent with his congressional testimony.

So one John Kerry is a fake. Which is it? The Jane Fonda in pants of the early '70s? Or the Bob Hope USO tour Kerry of today? Running on biography is lame enough. Running on fake biography is pathetic.

Iraq will ask the United States to remove Saddam Hussein's status as a prisoner of war and hand him to Iraqis for trial, the nation's foreign minister said Sunday.

Hoshyar Zebari said in Kuwait that the new Iraqi government will request that Saddam is ''handed over to the Iraqi justice.'' Zebari was speaking at the end of a two-day meeting with delegates from Iraq's neighbors.

''We have agreed with the United States and the coalition forces that whenever we are ready as Iraqis, and especially after we regain power ... we will demand changing Saddam's status as a prisoner of war,'' Zebari said.

An Iraqi mother in a head scarf sang softly to her baby as she fed the child on a bed at the Women's and Children's Hospital.

The 500-bed hospital off Highway 10 now has a new air conditioning system and clean water for its patients due to a project financed and directed by 1st Battalion, 124th Infantry, Florida National Guard.

"It's the right thing to do," said the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Hector Mirabile of Miami. "When we first got here, we contracted with an Iraqi doctor to assess the condition of the hospital. We've got to take care of the women and children."...

But even that poor condition is a universe better than what the hospital looked like before, Guardsmen say. Capt. Paul Blackketter, in charge of civic action projects for 1st Battalion, said the place was a shambles when he first saw it.

"It was filthy, with the walls completely covered with dirt, from 30 years of outright neglect," Blackketter said. "In the summer, it gets to be 125 degrees here. Our main focus became the mechanical aspects. It was critical that we provide air conditioning and clean water."

After that, the battalion paid to have the walls painted, the sewage treatment plant repaired, the interior ductwork and filters replaced.

Cost: $100,000. The best part for the American taxpayer was that the United States didn't foot the bill. Most of the $3 million to $4 million in civic projects started or completed by the unit were paid for by confiscated Iraqi assets.

Spc. Thomas Daniels' one-year stint in Iraq as an Army engineer is almost over. But the 24-year-old is already making plans to return — without a gun and, he hopes, with a lot a more money.

Daniels has applied online for construction work with Washington, D.C.'s military contractor in Iraq — Kellogg, Brown & Root — eyeing a job he says will pay more than twice his current salary of around $1,700 a month.

"That's where I am going. It's where I need to be," said Daniels, of Wilmington, Del. "I know I can't stay in the Army. It doesn't pay enough."

Daniels is one of many soldiers at this military base being lured back to Iraq when their term of service ends — not by re-enlisting but by taking up work with companies contracted by the Pentagon...

Besides higher pay, soldiers, reservists and retired officers are attracted by perks like tax-free salaries, better living conditions and regular home leaves — a major draw for soldiers as one-year deployments become the norm.

Alongside jobs in cafeterias, construction, engineering and communications, demand is high for armed security guards. Iraq is awash with ex-soldiers from around the world working for private security firms.

Governors who went to Iraq on a trip arranged by the White House are determined to keep their trip and the war from becoming a partisan election issue, Gov. Linda Lingle said yesterday.

Lingle spoke to reporters after she and five other governors met with President Bush, who they said was interested in hearing about daily life in Baghdad.

"One of the conclusions we managed to reach here is very important in the presidential election year, is that this issue not be politicized during political debates," said Republican Lingle. The governors who spent two days in Iraq included four Republicans and two Democrats.

"We know it is an election year, and yet we feel there are simply too many American lives at stake; there's been too many American resources put into this effort to allow it to degrade into political fighting in a presidential election year," she said.

A man believed to have been the victim of a cruel prankster who told him his wife had been killed in Iraq has admitted concocting the story and was arrested Sunday, authorities said.

Edward Valentin, whose wife Betsy is an Army Reserve sergeant, was charged with making a false statement to police, falsely reporting an incident concerning a death and harassment, Police Chief Neil O'Leary said.

Valentin was being held in lieu of $5,000 bail and arraignment was set for Monday.

"As far as why he did it, there's no clear answer," Police Chief Neil O'Leary said. "He claimed he did it because he has been struggling with three children. And if everyone felt sorry for him, including the military, they'd send Betsy home."

O'Leary said investigators also discovered that Valentin had been trying to date another woman, who was not interested in dating a married man.

As the United States military draws up long-term plans to leave Iraq, top officers are looking to the U.S. intervention in Bosnia's civil war as a model for an American exit strategy here.

The United States will keep combat teams in Iraq for the next few years, pulling them gradually out of cities into the countryside, and then perhaps into Kuwait and other countries. Eventually it will leave entirely, said Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack, commander of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division.

The UN is to move its remaining international staff in Baghdad to Cyprus over the weekend, according to reports.

The move by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was prompted by Monday's suicide bombings which killed 34 people and wounded over 200...

Yesterday, UN officials insisted the pull out is not an evacuation but a re-evaluation of the security situation after a series of deadly suicide bombings in the post-war country this week.

A special Iraqi police unit arrested a senior Baath Party leader on the U.S. military's most-wanted list during a raid Sunday on his home in a Baghdad suburb.

The capture of Mohammed Zimam Abdul Razaq leaves only 10 top figures still at large from the list of 55 issued after the Saddam Hussein regime fell. Abdul Razaq was No. 41, and the four of spades in the military's "deck of cards" of top fugitives...

The captured Abdul Razaq once headed Saddam's Baath Party in the northern provinces of Nineveh and Tamim, which include the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. He earlier served as interior minister, and Ibrahim said he kept a "personal prison" behind the police academy where "innocent people" were held in dog cages.

The U.S. administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, opened the nation's first human rights ministry Saturday, saying it will investigate atrocities committed during Saddam Hussein's rule.

Bremer also said the Baghdad ministry will draft a human rights declaration and promote private groups that defend civil liberties in the country.