The WPPS contract awarded in 2004 was divided among a handful of companies, among them DynCorp and Triple Canopy. Blackwater was originally slated to be paid $229.5 million for five years, according to a State Department contract list. Yet as of June 30, just two years into the program, it had been paid a total of $321,715,794. When confronted with this apparent $100 million discrepancy, the State Department could not readily explain it.

According to Israeli sources, Olmert and Bush agreed at the May 23 summit to make 2006 the year for neutralizing Iran's nuclear ambitions, while deferring a border settlement with the Palestinians until 2007. Provoking a wider regional conflict also revived hopes among Bush's neoconservative advisers that they might yet create a "new Middle East" that would be amenable to U.S. and Israeli desires and interests. In this context, the Israeli-Lebanese war was a confrontation looking for a pretext, not an ad hoc response to Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. That so-called "kidnapping" has been sold to the American people and many world leaders as the precipitating event for the conflict, but it now appears only to have been a trigger for a prearranged scheme. Israeli sources indicate that Bush gave Olmert a green light for the conflict at the May 23 summit. The sources said Bush has even encouraged Israel to expand the war by attacking Syria, although Israeli leaders balked at that recommendation because they lacked an immediate justification.

On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail".

A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a "unique moment" for wiping out the organisation. The New Statesman's editor, John Kampfner, says he was told by more than one official source that the US government knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military action in Lebanon. The Bush administration told the British government. Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse.

Israel Asks U.S. to Ship Rockets With Wide Blast

And joining us now here Washington Anne Compton who covers the White House for ABC News, and Thomas Ricks, Pentagon reporter for "The Washington Post" and author of the new book "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq." Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other? THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon. KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here? RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

School officials in Camden, N.J., have been under investigation for allegations of cheating on state tests, falsifying data and a cover-up. The results of that investigation are expected any day. The alleged corruption is so pervasive and so blatant that New Jersey's commissioner of education has vowed to clean house. The two whistleblowers in the case say that's too little, too late for Camden's 17,000 school children.

School officials in Camden, N.J., have been under investigation for allegations of cheating on state tests, falsifying data and a cover-up. The results of that investigation are expected any day.

Just asking. I mean why are these guys willing to do such horrible things? Why are they mad at us? This can't be blamed on Iraq or Isreal. Sure those are excuses but not the cause. This IMHO can only be blamed on a groups religious fervor and hatred for everything non-Muslim. Frankly its both scary and depressing.

I never thought of us trying to "conquer" Afghanistan. Just break up the Taliban, scatter al- Qaeada and get a new central government in place.. and then do it again from time to time..

Let them live among us, free to worship how they want and then they blow themselves up?

My point of concern is that no negotiation, no understanding will make miltant Islam happy. It wants us all to submit to their ideology.

no, we keep them in squalid conditions, don't let them worship as they want ... and 'then they blow themselves up.' sheesh, what a maroon.

Reed says he unknowingly breathed DU dust while living with his unit in Samawah, Iraq. He was med-evaced out in July 2003, nearly unable to walk because of lightning-strike pains from herniated discs in his spine. Then began a strange series of symptoms he'd never experienced in his previously healthy life. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C, he ran into a buddy from his unit. And another, and another, and in the tedium of hospital life between doctor visits and the dispensing of meds, they began to talk. "We all had migraines. We all felt sick," Reed says. "The doctors said, 'It's all in your head.'" Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight sick soldiers from the 442nd Military Police, an Army National Guard unit made up of mostly cops and correctional officers from the New York area. But the medic knew something the others didn't. Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which was surrounded by tank skeletons, unexploded ordnance and shell casings. They'd brought radiation-detection devices. The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert rather than live in the station ruins.