This week's 9/11 Commission hearings will feature John Ashcroft. He's expected to be asked some tough questions, particularly because he cut the FBI's requested counterterrorism budget before Sept. 11.

Last week, Sept. 11 commission member Jamie Gorelick asserted that there had been no evidence of heightened anti-terrorism efforts in Ashcroft's office after the president received a classified memo from the CIA on Aug. 6, 2001, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." In an earlier session, commission member Richard Ben-Veniste remarked, "Ironically, on September 10th, 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft axed $58 million from the FBI's counterterrorism budget."

Janet Reno and FBI Director Robert Mueller will also testify. The main question, according to Zoe Baird, is:

How are we going to use our law enforcement and intelligence capabilities to tell us what terrorists are going to do and when they are going to it? It is the key to protecting the nation."

We hope the answer isn't going to be to create a new domestic CIA-type agency, like Britain's MI-5:

The left-leaning Center for National Security Studies in Washington is among the civil liberties advocacy groups fearful of a domestic spy agency. "We do not think it will be possible to construct rules that force such an agency to focus on the truly dangerous individuals who may be in the United States and not use their resources to put vast numbers of innocent Americans at risk," said Kate Martin, director of the center.

A 48 year old woman was blindfolded, tied to a stake and executed by firing squad in Vietnam:

She was condemned to death after being caught trafficking 337-grammes of heroin from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City in 1998. Under Vietnamese law, anyone found in possession of 300 grams or more of heroin, or at least 10-kilograms of opium, faces the death penalty. At least 28 people have been handed the death penalty this year in Vietnam, while 19 people have been executed.

Janet Jackson, playing Condi Rice, on Saturday Night Live, now.

Update: As Emily Litella would have said, never mind, we're told in the comments in was Maya Rudolph, not Janet playing Condi. Great skit.

Update: Our commenter was wrong and we were right. Pontificator finds this article with picture from the AP showing it was Janet Jackson in the intro skit with Dick Cheney, as we originally posted.

Best comment so far, from Cincy Demo: "Thanks to TalkLeft for demonstrating the unreliable nature of eyewitness identification."

A new Newsweek poll shows:

Six out of 10 Americans say the Bush administration underestimated the threat of terrorism prior to Sept. 11, 2001, and nearly two out of three are at least somewhat concerned Iraq could become another Vietnam, according to a Newsweek Poll released on Saturday.

The poll of 1,005 adults taken on Thursday and Friday also showed a 51 percent disapproval rating for President Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq, where violence has flared up in the last week amid calls by Muslim clerics for an uprising against the U.S.-led occupation.

by TChris

It's too early for a poll to predict what voters will do in November, but when the trends point toward ousting the President, polls are fun to watch.

After weeks of increasingly violent news from Iraq, presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts now leads the president in a two-way trial heat by seven points (50 percent to 43 percent), according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll.

Maxspeak says he's not voting for Ralph Nader, but he likes this memo Nader just sent out on the war and the draft. When we last bashed the draft, Max disagreed with us a bit. (Our post that he refers to has moved here.) Now, Max says, he's "four-square agin' any draft." As to Bush and Kerry:

Kerry seems to be channeling Hubert Humphrey, circa 1968. Send in more troops and do the job "right." I was in SDS and helped to "dump the Hump," resulting in Richard Nixon. That did not turn out well. Neither would Dubya, the Sequel.....Short-term, I'd say support your local peace movement, sticking to a resolute "get the hell out now" stance and communicate your views to your elected representatives.

Now here's Ralph's message to American Students:

The War, the Draft and Your Future

"
We have been down this road before.

U.S. troops sent to war half a world away. American foreign policy controlled by an arrogant elite, bent on projecting military power around the globe. A public misled into supporting an unconstitutional war founded on deceit and fabrications. As the death toll mounts, we hear claims that the war is nearly won, that victory is just around the corner. But victory never arrives.

As the public loses confidence in the government, the government questions the patriotism of any who express doubt about the war. When a presidential election arrives, both the Democrat and Republican nominees embrace the policy of continued war. The military draft comes to dominate the lives of America's young, and vast numbers who believe the war to be a senseless blunder are faced with fighting a war they do not believe in, or facing exile or prison. The year was 1968. Because voters had no choice that November, the Vietnam War continued for another six years. Hundreds of thousands of Americans like you died, were maimed, or suffered from diseases like malaria. A far greater number of Vietnamese died.

Today, the war is in the quicksands and alleys of Iraq. Once again, under the pressure of a determined resistance, we see an American war policy being slowly torn apart at the seams, while the candidates urge us to "stay the course" in this tragic misadventure. Today's Presidential candidates are not Nixon and Humphrey, they are now Bush and Kerry.

Once again, there is one overriding truth: If war is the only choice in this election, then war we will have. Today enlistments in the Reserves and National Guard are declining. The Pentagon is quietly recruiting new members to fill local draft boards, as the machinery for drafting a new generation of young Americans is being quietly put into place.

Young Americans need to know that a train is coming, and it could run over their generation in the same way that the Vietnam War devastated the lives of those who came of age in the sixties.

I am running for President, and have been against this war from the beginning. We must not waste lives in order to control and waste more oil. Stand with us and we may yet salvage your future and Americas' future from this looming disaster.

We're not voting for Nader either, but we sure do agree with him about the war and we share his concern that our kids will see a draft train before they see a peace train.

By TChris

As TalkLeft noted yesterday, most Americans think the Bush administration is hiding information about its knowledge of terrorist threats prior to 9/11. It seems those suspicions are well founded.

The daily intelligence briefing delivered to U.S. President George W. Bush a month before the September 11 attacks warns of various scenarios of al Qaeda's intentions to strike inside the United States, sources confirm to CNN.

Condoleezza Rice testified that the briefing contained only historical information, not a warning of future attacks (notwithstanding its title: "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the US.") But that's not quite true. One highlight of the briefing:

An intelligence report received in May 2001 indicating al Qaeda was attempting to send operatives to the United States through Canada to carry out an attack using explosives.

That sounds a bit like a warning of a future attack. In any event, the briefing's historical information would have given a sharp-minded President fair warning that his administration needed to give bin Laden a high priority.

The classified briefing delivered to President Bush five weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks featured information about ongoing al Qaeda activities within the United States, including signs of a terror support network, indications of hijacking preparations and plans for domestic attacks using explosives ...

Update: Here is the declassified text of the briefing.

The New York Times says military families are beginning to question their support for President Bush, and it could be a factor in the 2004 election. One military wife says:

So a lot of military wives are now asking: `Why? Why did we go to Iraq?' The administration talked a strong story, but a lot of us are kicking our butts about how we voted last time around. Now we're leaning the other way."

The article continues:

As the conflict in Iraq deepens beyond some prior predictions, the military voting block could become a serious domestic casualty for the Bush administration....it was clear at Fort Campbell, based on more than three dozen interviews here this week, that the Republican Party will have to work harder this year to keep the votes of military families, a group who at other times could be counted as Republican stalwarts.

President Bush has released the now famous August 6, 2001 memo relating to Osama's plan to attack the U.S.

.... the document said the FBI had detected "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."

The Post says the memo could be viewed as contradicting Condi Rice:

"The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or Bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives," the document said.

Update: Here's the text of the actual document (pdf). Here it is in html. [hat tip Poppy]

Bump and Update: The militants are now threatening to kill and mutilate the American hostage, Thomas Hamill, if their terms aren't met within 12 hours.

"Our only demand is to remove the siege from the city of mosques," a spokesman said in a tape given to the Al-Jazeera television network. "If you don't respond within 12 hours ... he will be treated worse than those who were killed and burned in Fallujah."

Update: The Japanese hostages may be released within 24 hours.

***********
Original Post

The militant group named Ahmed Yassin brigades now claims to have 30 hostages in Iraq. They are demanding the U.S. withdraw its forces from Iraq in return for release of the hostages. The group claims to have one American and one Canadian. Canada has no forces in Iraq.

On a related note, Colorado lost a much beloved member of the Winter Park ski community Thursday with the death of Michael Bloss in Iraq.

Bloss, an instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, died in a firefight Thursday in Iraq, where the former soldier in British special services had traveled to provide security to private contractors. Back in Wales, Peter Bloss told the BBC that his son must have jumped at the opportunity to provide security in Iraq after his military experience. "As I was originally told, he was escorting these electrical workers who were working on redoing some cables or whatever, and they were attacked by a group of Iraqis," the father said. "And Michael got them to safety and then was shot dead. He spent two years in Northern Ireland during the real troubles and didn't have a scratch, and this happens now in Iraq."

Portland Indy Media has photos of the fighting in Fallujah obtained from Al Jazeera. Not for the faint of heart. Link via Skippy.

In June, 2003, Human Rights Watch released this report (pdf) of its investigation into violent acts involving U.S. troops in Fallujah:

This report documents these first two violent incidents of April 28 and 30, the facts of which continue to be deeply contested by both sides. The conclusions of Human Rights Watch’s investigation challenge some of the assertions made by the U.S. military....The report also highlights some of the difficulties of putting a powerful combat force in a law enforcement role....Human Rights Watch’s findings of excessive use of force by U.S. troops point to the need for a full, independent and impartial investigation of the al-Falluja incidents by U.S. authorities. Such an investigation should aim to determine the full circumstances that led to the killing of as many as twenty Iraqi civilians in these two incidents, and to hold accountable anyone found to have violated international humanitarian law.

Here's some background on Fallujah: