Attack North Korea Before It's Too Late, Key Defector Warns

WASHINGTON - A prominent defector is urging the U.S. to use military force against North Korea, and predicts that once the rogue regime acquires nuclear weapons, it will use them against U.S. allies.
Park Gap Dong, former chief of the European Section for Propaganda, said that the U.S. should use "pre-emptive strikes against selected targets" to overthrow the brutal North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-il and destroy the nuclear weapons program.

"We cannot expect to bring down the regime of Kim Jong-il by internal means. A pre-emptive U.S. strike against selected targets inside North Korea will succeed," stated Park.

"U.S. strikes against North Korean targets would force Kim Jong-il to seek asylum in China. Kim Jong-il is a coward. If attacked, he will flee the North. The North Korean army would not fight after the regime collapsed.

"Many North Koreans believe that the United States is their savior and the only nation that can liberate North Korea," concluded Park.

Park urged the U.S. to take offensive military action against North Korea during a conference held by the American Foreign Policy Council.

Park heads the National Salvation Front, a group of high-ranking North Korean exiles living in Moscow and Seoul.

NSF's membership includes five former generals of the North Korean army, the former vice minister of home affairs, the former vice minister of culture and the former superintendent of the North Korea Military Academy.

Warning That Kim Will Use Nukes


The call for U.S. military action comes after CIA sources revealed that North Korea was working on building a small nuclear warhead capable of being carried by its new arsenal of long-range missiles.

"If Kim develops small nuclear weapons, around 700 kilograms [1,440 pounds] for the No Dong and other missiles, they will use them on South Korea or Japan. The South Korean military will have no choice but to attack," stated Park.


posted by Frodgie at 5:46 PM

 

Bush stands by CIA after Iraq mistake

ABUJA, Nigeria (CNN) -- President Bush said Saturday that he remained confident in George Tenet after the CIA director took responsibility for the now-discredited line in the State of the Union address alleging that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

The White House now says the allegations were unsubstantiated.

"I've got confidence in George Tenet, I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA," Bush told reporters Saturday during an appearance with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

In a statement released Friday evening, Tenet said that the CIA had seen and approved the speech before it was delivered, and he took responsibility for the mistake.

"The president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound," the Tenet statement said. "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."

The CIA director also said, "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency."


posted by Frodgie at 5:39 PM

 

These salaries are Ridiculous, and Uncalled for

Kidd Staying With Nets for $99M Deal

Jason Kidd is putting his hopes of winning an NBA title with the New Jersey Nets instead of the defending champion San Antonio Spurs.

Kidd ended 11 days of free agency angst for the resurrected Nets when he spurned an offer from the Spurs on Friday and agreed to a six-year, $99 million deal with New Jersey.

"I have enjoyed being here the past two years. I have worked hard with my teammates and believe in our future," Kidd said. "I've been fortunate to have had significant interest from other great organizations, but ultimately I want to finish what we started here and bring a championship to the Nets."

The perennial All-Star point guard who was the biggest catch of the free agent market this offseason never tipped his hand during his brief free agency.

There were reports earlier in the week he was leaning toward San Antonio, and then a stunning report Thursday that Kidd demanded that Nets coach Byron Scott be fired as a condition for his return to New Jersey.


posted by Frodgie at 5:36 PM

 

Official believes U.S.
has WMD proof

Paper reports testing underway on material discovered 2 weeks ago

The U.S. is testing newly discovered materials it believes will provide decisive proof of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, according to an Australian newspaper.

In an interview with The Australian daily, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton acknowledged the U.S. has evidence it hopes will prove Iraq's previous possession of WMD.

The newspaper cited "well-informed sources" who said U.S. soldiers made the discovery in Iraq two weeks ago of chemical weapons material.

The material was not in a readily identifiable state, however, The Australian said, and it was transported to the U.S. for comprehensive laboratory analysis.


posted by Frodgie at 10:41 AM

 

Al-Qaida targeted Western forests, memo says

National forests in the West were considered targets for al-Qaida attacks, according to an FBI memo to law enforcement agencies dated June 25.

A senior al-Qaida detainee told federal investigators he had developed a plan to set midsummer forest fires in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, according to the document, obtained by The Arizona Republic.

"The detainee believed that significant damage to the U.S. economy would result and once it was realized that the fires were terrorist acts, U.S. citizens would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies," the memo said.

The unidentified detainee said he hoped to create several large, catastrophic wildfires at once, mimicking the destructive fires that swept across Australia in 2002, according to the memo.

The Forest Service took note of the warning, a spokeswoman said, but didn't really change any of its policies or operating patterns.

In fact, many forest law enforcement officers contacted by The Republic had no idea the warning had been issued at all.

"It goes along with the rest of the alerts," said Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. "It's a reminder to be vigilant. We hope the public is, too. If you see something suspicious in an airport, report it. Likewise, if you see something suspicious in a forest, report it."

posted by Frodgie at 10:37 AM

 

REACH: SECRET SERVICE BUSTS STOWAWAY ON BUSH PRESS PLANE
FRI Jul 11 2003 10:24:09 ET

-courtesy of www.Drudgereport.com

**EXCLUSIVE**

Secret Service just arrested a stowaway who made it onto the Bush press charter plane in Pretoria, South Africa this morning and flew unmolested to Entebbe, Uganda, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned...

After getting on and off the 747 with absolutely no credentials, he boarded a bus with the rest of the White House press corps and was taken to the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel on the shore of Lake Victoria -- the same hotel where Bush arrived 90 minutes later! MORE....

The White House staff noticed that no one seemed to know the guy, so they alerted Secret Service, who arrested him at the hotel. There was a lot of shouting from the guy as he was hustled off to jail. Secret Service Agent Mark Sullivan assured reporters the president was never in danger, although he didn't say whether the same held true for the press. After all, there are reports of Al Qaeda presence in Uganda. MORE...

Man had no weapons, sources tell DRUDGE, and no passport. Man being charged by Ugandan authorities with illegal entry. He was nabbed after actually trying to enter the part of the hotel complex were the president was making his appearance... MORE...

There was the usual contingent of three Secret Service agents on the press plane. Also, although authorities stopped this guy from getting into the Bush event, some uncredentialed journalists gained entry! DEVELOPING....


posted by Frodgie at 1:58 PM

 

Two Clowns........This is Great.

posted by Frodgie at 12:21 PM

 

Halford reunites with Judas Priest

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Legendary heavy metal vocalist Rob Halford has reunited with Judas Priest, the singer told CNN Friday, speaking by phone from his Birmingham, England, home.

The band, one of heavy metal's most popular groups and a leader in the late-'70s wave of British metal bands, plans to release a full-length studio album in the spring of 2004. Judas Priest will also embark on a global concert tour, the band's first with Halford in more than a decade, the group's management team said.

"Rob Halford, along with band members K.K. Downing, Glenn Tipton and Ian Hill felt a heightened level of intensity," a member of the management team told CNN, speaking of recent meetings with the four. "Rob said they were all very excited and they have re-established their friendship. These guys grew up together from their early 20s on, so this means a lot to them personally and professionally."



posted by Frodgie at 11:59 AM

 

Talk show host Jerry Springer to file for U.S. Senate race in Ohio

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Jerry Springer, the talk show host who put wife-swappers, strippers and skinheads on the air and then watched the punches fly, will file papers to run for the U.S. Senate as early as Friday, advisers said.

Springer, 59, the former Cincinnati mayor, will not decide whether to actually run until later this month, said Mike Ford, his political adviser.

The early filing is necessary to avoid getting into legal trouble for raising money without officially declaring a candidacy, Ford said.

Springer is airing 30-minute infomercials across the nation to raise money and build support for his possible run for the Democratic nomination next year.

The infomercial, paid for by Springer, is part biography and part fund-raiser. It explains how Springer's parents fled Nazi Germany for England, then moved to the United States just before Springer's fifth birthday. The ad seeks small donations and offers T-shirts, bumper stickers and CDs of Springer singing "rockabilly" music.

posted by Frodgie at 10:38 AM

 

Harry Truman's Forgotten Diary
1947 Writings Offer Fresh Insight on the President

"The Jews, I find are very, very selfish," President Harry S. Truman wrote in a 1947 diary that was recently discovered on the shelves of the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., and released by the National Archives yesterday.

Written sporadically during a turbulent year of Truman's presidency, the diary contains about 5,500 words on topics ranging from the death of his mother to comic banter with a British aristocrat. But the most surprising comments were Truman's remarks on Jews, written on July 21, 1947, after the president had a conversation with Henry Morgenthau, the Jewish former treasury secretary. Morgenthau called to talk about a Jewish ship in Palestine -- possibly the Exodus, the legendary ship carrying 4,500 Jewish refugees who were refused entry into Palestine by the British, then rulers of that land.




posted by Frodgie at 10:30 AM

 

A Diesel That Delivers

It was a motorized pencil. It went exactly where I pointed it, albeit slowly -- 0 to 60 miles per hour in 13 seconds on a good day, a bit more slowly on a day of biting cold.

But once the 2003 Volkswagen Jetta GLS 1.9 TDI wagon got moving, it moved with authority. It also got up to 50 miles per gallon from its diesel engine.

Yes, diesel.

Get used to it. There is a chance that diesel-fueled cars, now 1 percent of the U.S. market for passenger vehicles, will make a comeback in the United States.

Diesels have changed radically over the past decade. They are cleaner and more fuel-efficient. At long last, diesel opponents are changing, too.

Alan Lloyd, chairman of the California Air Resources Board, says he's willing to accept the new diesels as weapons in the fight for better fuel economy and cleaner air.

That's the equivalent of a religious conversion. California owns 12 percent, the single largest share, of the U.S. market for new cars and trucks. Lloyd's agency, as a result, is as influential as the federal Environmental Protection Agency in regulating mobile-source pollution.


posted by Frodgie at 11:19 AM

 

Body of Disabled N.Y. Girl Found in Trash

NEW YORK - The body of a severely disabled 9-year-old girl was found dumped in the garbage Wednesday after her foster mother told police the child died in her care.

An autopsy was being conducted to determine the cause of death for Stephanie Ramos. Police said she was physically underdeveloped, weighed only 28 pounds, and could not see, speak or walk.

Her foster mother originally reported Stephanie missing on Tuesday, but changed her account after being questioned, police spokesman Sgt. Michael Wysokowski said.

The woman said she panicked after Stephanie died, then put the body in a black plastic bag and dumped it, investigators said. Police found the body at a collection site after tracking trucks that had removed the neighborhood's garbage.


posted by Frodgie at 8:32 AM

 

Hypertension rates on the rise

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- Almost one in three U.S. adults had high blood pressure at the end of the last decade, reversing a downward trend and raising another warning flag about Americans' health, researchers said on Tuesday.

The prevalence of high blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, rose to 29 percent among adults, up 4 percent since the last survey in 1988-1991 and halting the decline since 1960 in hypertension rates.

Of the estimated 58.4 million hypertensive U.S. adults in 1999-2000, nearly one-third were unaware of their illness, wrote study authors Ihab Hajjar of the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and Theodore Kotchen of the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, based on their analysis of government data.

The study found two out of five hypertensive adults went untreated and more than two-thirds did not have their condition under control with antihypertensive drugs or other means.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which has similarly warned about the dangers of obesity, put off until 2010 from 2000 the goal of having half of hypertensive adults get the condition under control. Less than one in four controlled it at the time of the earlier survey.


posted by Frodgie at 8:27 AM

 

Prayers for lost conjoined twins

SINGAPORE -- Prayers and memorial services have been held for conjoined Iranian twins Ladan and Laleh Bijani who died during an unprecedented operation to separate them.

In Singapore, where the operation took place, stunned members of the Iranian community gathered with other friends at a Muslim school Wednesday for a ceremony to mourn the 29-year-old sisters.

The bodies to Ladan and Laleh are expected to be flown to Tehran in separate caskets later this week. Funeral arrangements are unknown.

Both of the sisters lost too much blood during the final cut to separate them at Raffles Hospital Tuesday, causing their circulation systems to fail.

Medical staff say they were faced with a dilemma of continuing with surgery or trying to stabilize them and transferring them to intensive care which carried a risk of infection.

Hospital chairman Dr. Loo Choon Yong said that after consulting again the twins' friends, they had been assured that their wish was "to be separated under all circumstances."

posted by Frodgie at 8:23 AM

 

Two Soldiers Killed in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two U.S. soldiers have been killed in separate attacks in Iraq as their convoys came under fire, U.S. military officials said Thursday.

A soldier of the Army's 4th Infantry Division died Wednesday night while riding near the north-central city of Tikrit in a convoy hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Tikrit is the hometown of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Hours earlier Wednesday, another soldier was shot and killed south of Baghdad near Mahmudiyah when his convoy was hit by small-arms fire.

Separately, U.S. forces in Ramadi and Balad came under mortar fire overnight, officials said. No casualties were reported.

The Pentagon said more than 1,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in Iraq since March 20, when a U.S.-led airstrike started the war.

The Defense Department said 791 troops were wounded in combat and 253 troops were injured in actions unrelated to combat operations, including traffic accidents.

Since President Bush announced an end to major fighting on May 1, 76 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq. Of those, 31 were killed by hostile fire, and 45 troops died of unintentional shootings and other accidents.


posted by Frodgie at 8:17 AM

 

Fat Wrestling Boy

Young wrestler Dzhambulat Khotokhov, a 4-year-old Russian weighing 56 kilograms (123 pounds) with a height of 118 centimeters (3 feet 11 inches) flexes his muscles before wrestling against Georgy Bibilauri, a Georgian, who turned 5 on Wednesday, 120 centimeters (4 feet) tall and weighs 51 kilograms (112 pounds), in Tbilisi, Wednesday, July 9, 2003. Wrestlers Georgy Bibilauri and Dzhambulat Khotokhov had both hoped for victory, but they settled for ice cream instead. After the boys tied on the mat, theywent off to celebrate Bibilauri's birthday with ice cream and chocolate. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov)
posted by Frodgie at 3:00 PM

 

Israel angered by BBC's 'Nazi propaganda'---Neato!

A BBC documentary claiming Israel has used nerve gas against Palestinians and possesses an arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons has raised the ire of the Israeli government.

Israel is lobbying Australia's national broadcaster, ABC television, to abandon plans to air "Israel's Secret Weapon," the Australian Associated Press, or AAP, reported.

ABC says the program will be broadcast, but it has not yet been scheduled.

A publicist with ABC said it was not known when the documentary would be aired.

"It's definitely in our system, we will be showing it, we just don't know when," she told the AAP.


posted by Frodgie at 10:25 AM

 

The Supreme Court is not supreme

With the Supreme Court's decision, striking down the Texas anti-sodomy law as an unconstitutional stricture on the liberty of homosexuals, conservatives fear that all state laws banning gay marriages will fall.

They are right to be alarmed. Three-dozen states may have enacted laws defining marriage as solely between a man and woman, but those statutes could be swept away by five justices. Should the court decide that homosexuals have not only a right to engage in consensual sex, but a right to solemnize their unions, what elected legislators decide will not matter.

Why not? Because we no longer live in a constitutional republic.

In a brief brilliant essay, "The 'Happy Convention,'" William Quirk, author of "Judicial Dictatorship," describes how Americans now live under a "convention" that is a fraud upon the Constitution our forefathers crafted.

Our original Constitution divided the powers of the government and put restrictions on those powers, in a Bill of Rights, and in the retention by the states of much of their sovereign power.

Lincoln's War overthrew that Constitution. When 11 "free and independent states" sought peacefully to depart from the Union, they were dragged back in, by invasion and war. By 1884, Woodrow Wilson was writing in his "Congressional Government," "we are really living under a constitution essentially different from that which we have been so long worshiping as our own peculiar and incomparable possession."

The "noble charter" of the Philadelphia Convention is still our Constitution, Wilson continued, but it is now "rather in name than in reality." While the outward form of the Constitution remains one of a nicely adjusted ideal balance, Wilson added, "the actual form of our present government is ... a scheme of Congressional supremacy."



posted by Frodgie at 10:25 PM

 

Iran Confirms Test of Missile That Is Able to Hit Israel

TEHRAN, July 7 - Iran has successfully conducted the final test of a midrange missile, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry here confirmed today.

The missile, called Shahab-3, was first tested in 1998 and has a range of 806 to 930 miles, which means it can reach Israel and American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

The spokesman, Hamidreza Assefi, was responding to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz last week, which said the test had been carried out just over a week before.

"Apparently, the Israelis are late in getting the information," Mr. Assefi said at the Iranian Foreign Ministry's weekly news briefing. "The test took place several weeks ago, and it was a final test before delivering the missile to the armed forces. It was within the same range that we had declared before."

Iran contends that the missile relies entirely on Iranian expertise, but it is widely believed that the Shahab, or shooting star in Persian, employs North Korean technology. The United States Department of State imposed penalties on a North Korean company and five Chinese companies last week, saying they sold missile technology to Iran.

"We are very concerned, especially since we know that Iran is seeking to acquire the nuclear weapon," an Israeli government spokesman, Avi Pazner, said immediately after the Iranian confirmation, according to a report from Agence France-Presse.

"The combination of Shahab-3 and the nuclear weapon would be a very serious threat on the stability of the region," he added, according to the report.

The United States said today that it had "very serious concerns" about Iran's missile programs and that it viewed them as a threat to the region and to American interests. But American officials said that the latest test flight was one of several in recent years and that it was not a particular surprise.

posted by Frodgie at 10:18 PM

 

MSNBC fires Savage on anti-gay remarks

NEW YORK - MSNBC on Monday fired Michael Savage for anti-gay comments.

The popular radio talk show host who did a weekend TV show for the cable channel referred to an unidentified caller to his show Saturday as a "sodomite" and said he should "get AIDS and die."

"His comments were extremely inappropriate and the decision was an easy one," MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said.

There was no immediate comment from Savage, according to a spokesman at his office in California.

The brash, tough-talking Savage is one of radio's hottest jocks. His Paul Revere Society advocates closing borders, deporting illegal immigrants, mandating health tests for immigrants and eliminating entitlement programs.

The televised version of "The Savage Nation" began March 8 despite the protests of such advocacy groups as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Aired at 5 p.m. EDT Saturday, Savage didn't translate into a television hit. He increased the ratings for the time slot marginally, according to MSNBC.


posted by Frodgie at 10:15 PM