Arar to file lawsuit against U.S.

Lawyers for a Canadian who was deported to Syria by American authorities in 2002 say they will formally file a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in New York on Thursday.
Maher Arar, a 33-year-old computer engineer who lives in Ottawa, will participate by telephone in a New York news conference announcing the filing.
The American Centre for Constitutional Rights, which announced last year that it would oversee Arar's suit, said the legal papers will be filed in the U.S. District Court for the eastern district of New York.
The centre would not comment on the details of the suit before the news conference.

Terrorists often carry books, maps

The FBI has issued a terror warning to police to look out for individuals carrying almanacs or maps, reports AP.
The warning was sent to 18,000 officers before Christmas. Almanacs, warns the FBI, may be used "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning." The Bureau acknowledges that there may be "legitimate recreational or commercial activities" that justify an individual carrying around a map or reference book.
Good thing the U.S. government doesn't make a lot of this information freely available on the CIA website...

Critics: U.S. security too harsh

At the White House, Homeland Security officials and their British counterparts agreed to develop procedures to handle terrorist threats against international flights. The meeting followed a chaotic week at London's Heathrow airport. British Airways Flight 223 to Dulles International Airport outside Washington was delayed or canceled several times over terrorism concerns and also because British Airways pilots objected to U.S. demands that armed marshals be on board.

White House ‘distorted’ Iraq threat

Bush administration officials "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to war, according to a new report to be published on Thursday by a respected Washington think-tank.
These distortions, combined with intelligence failures, exaggerated the risks posed by a country that presented no immediate threat to the US, Middle East or global security, the report says.

U.S. begins fingerprinting most visitors

Foreigners entering U.S. airports and seaports from all but 27 nations were having their fingerprints scanned and their photographs taken beginning Monday as part of a new program to tighten border security.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who was in Atlanta to help launch the program at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, said Monday on NBC's "Today" show that the pilot program before the formal launch had led to 21 foreigners' being denied entry because they had earlier been deported for criminal or other legal issues.

Bush prevents non-coalition contracts from Iraq reconstruction

United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan has called on the US government to open up the bidding process for reconstruction contracts in Iraq to all countries, not just to those that supported the US-led war.
But US President George W Bush has ignored the call, saying contracts awarded should reflect troops on the ground.
The 26 contracts worth $25 billion will only be open to countries contributing forces to Iraq, such as Spain, Poland and Australia.

President Bush Was Wrong on Iraq Evidence

Amid questions about who knew what about prewar intelligence, the White House has admitted that U.S. President George W. Bush was wrong when he said last January that Iraq had recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa.
The White House acknowledgement came as a British parliamentary commission questions the reliability of British intelligence about Saddam Hussein's alleged efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
Democrats in Congress also have questioned how the Bush administration used U.S. intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.
Bush said in his address to Congress in January that the British government had learned that Saddam recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa.
The president's statement in the state of the union was incorrect because it was based on forged documents from the African nation of Niger, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said yesterday.

Troop morale in Iraq hits ‘rock bottom’

US troops facing extended deployments amid the danger, heat, and uncertainty of an Iraq occupation are suffering from low morale that has in some cases hit "rock bottom."
Even as President Bush speaks of a "massive and long-term" undertaking in rebuilding Iraq, that effort, as well as the high tempo of US military operations around the globe, is taking its toll on individual troops.
Some frustrated troops stationed in Iraq are writing letters to representatives in Congress to request their units be repatriated. "Most soldiers would empty their bank accounts just for a plane ticket home," said one recent Congressional letter written by an Army soldier now based in Iraq. The soldier requested anonymity.

American troops looted and vandalized Iraqi airport

Much has been written about how Iraqis complicated the task of rebuilding their country by looting it after Saddam Hussein's regime fell. In the case of the international airport outside Baghdad, however, the theft and vandalism were conducted largely by victorious American troops, according to U.S. officials, Iraqi Airways staff members and other airport workers. The troops, they say, stole duty-free items, needlessly shot up the airport and trashed five serviceable Boeing airplanes. "I don't want to detract from all the great work that's going into getting the airport running again," says Lieut. John Welsh, the Army civil-affairs officer charged with bringing the airport back into operation. "But you've got to ask, If this could have been avoided, did we shoot ourselves in the foot here?"

The real scoop on Ashcroft

Ashcroft's greatest -- uh, let's go with "highest profile" -- accomplishment to date was the rolling back of individual rights by several decades, under the guise of fighting terrorism.
The provisions of the PATRIOT Act taken as a whole are enough to make civil libertarians scream; the average citizen can usually find at least one provision worthy of alarm. Sponsored by the Bush administration, the PATRIOT act gave sweeping new powers to Ashcroft and his department, including:

• The right to freely monitor the activities political and religious groups without a criminal pretext.
• New restrictions on open hearings and the public's right to receive information through the Freedom of Information Act.
• The ability to stamp down on the dangerous menace of librarians who tip off the media to federal subpoenas of borrowing records.
• Permission to monitor conversations between lawyers and suspects, on those increasingly rare occasions that suspects are allowed to have lawyers.
• The ability to detain Americans in prison indefinitely without trial or criminal charge.