NATIONAL & WORLD DIGEST February 11, 2007

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/weekinreview/11healy.html?pagewanted=print

February 11, 2007
The Nation

Searching for Mr. Right
By PATRICK HEALY

HAVING lost Congress and faith, at times, in President Bush, socialconservatives are now holding out for a hero in the 2008 Republicanpresidential campaign.

But who? And what kind of hero?

Is it the hero of 9/11, Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose support of abortionrights is anything but heroic to social conservatives? Is it the heroagainst gay marriage in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, who nevertheless oncechampioned gay rights? Or is it a hero of wartime, John McCain, who has alsobetrayed them on issues like federal judicial appointments?

Eleven months before the first presidential caucuses, social conservativesare in no mood to compromise; many don’t want to settle for Senator McCain,nor can they abide Mr. Giuliani. They want a true believer, reliably opposedto abortion rights, gay rights and gun control, tough on immigration and asupporter of conservative judicial appointments.


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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/world/europe/11portugal.html?ei=5094&en=e59fc9b8de29c8f2&hp=&ex=1171170000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

February 11, 2007

Portugal to Vote on Putting End to Abortion Ban
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

LISBON, Feb. 10 — Last week, children from two Roman Catholic day-carecenters in the port city of Setúbal were sent home with a most unusual note:a fictional letter from a fetus to the woman who conceived and aborted it.

“Mommy, how were you able to kill me?” the letter read. “How were you ableto allow me to be cut up in pieces and thrown into a bucket?”

The Rev. Miguel Alves, the day-care center director who sent the letters,defended his action as perfectly normal, adding, “There’s no reason forindignation.”

The letter reflects one view in a passionate, often raw campaign to swayvoters before a referendum this Sunday on whether Portugal shoulddecriminalize abortion.



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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-usa-politics-clinton.html?pagewanted=print

February 10, 2007

Hillary Clinton Faces Tough Questions Over Iraq
By REUTERS
Filed at 11:12 p.m. ET

CONCORD, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Democratic presidential contender HillaryRodham Clinton on Saturday attacked President George W. Bush for ``arroganceand incompetence'' in Iraq but faced tough questions over her own vote toauthorize the war.

On her first visit in a decade to the state that helps kick off the 2008White House race, Clinton told voters in New Hampshire that Iraq was achallenge because of ``the arrogance and incompetence of our administrationin Washington.''

At a town hall meeting of about 300 people in the city of Berlin, the NewYork senator was asked by one participant to repudiate her 2002 Senate votefor a measure that cleared the way for the March 2003 invasion.



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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/world/middleeast/11mideast.html?pagewanted=print

February 11, 2007

Calm Prevails in Jerusalem on Day After Excavation Clashes
By STEVEN ERLANGER

JERUSALEM, Feb. 10 — A few stone-throwing incidents occurred Saturday, butJerusalem streets were largely quiet a day after the police clashed withPalestinians protesting Israeli construction work near the religiouscompound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the TempleMount.

Some tires were burned and rocks thrown at police officers in eastJerusalem, an area largely populated by Arabs, and some rocks were thrown ata bus full of Canadian tourists near the Mount of Olives, said a Jerusalempolice spokesman, Inspector Micky Rosenfeld. “No one was injured, and as faras we are concerned, things are relatively calm and quiet,” InspectorRosenfeld said. The police presence, he said, was down from 2,000 officerson Friday.

In Bethlehem, some 30 Palestinians were arrested Saturday after briefclashes with Israeli troops near Rachel’s Tomb, the police said.



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The Washnington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/10/AR2007021001163_pf.html

Leaders See a Black America Sailing Off Course

By Dionne Walker
Associated Press
Sunday, February 11, 2007; A12

HAMPTON, Feb. 10 -- Beneath an oak tree on the campus of what is now HamptonUniversity, historians say, Virginia blacks heard a reading of theEmancipation Proclamation and began to dream of a better life.

On Saturday, more than 8,000 people returned to the historically blackVirginia university to chart how far they have come. They gathered for theState of the Black Union, an annual traveling town hall that is considered abarometer for black America's ills.

This year's conference, the eighth, coincides with the 400th anniversary ofthe nation's first permanent English settlement, Jamestown. Africansarriving in Virginia in the years after that milestone in American historyfaced enslavement and entrenched racism.



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The Washnington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/10/AR2007021001511_pf.html

Giuliani Strikes a Note With California GOP
Testing the Waters, Former N.Y. Mayor Garners 4 Ovations

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 11, 2007; A07


SACRAMENTO, Feb. 10 -- Rudolph W. Giuliani came west to learn whether hisbrand of Republican politics has a chance among party members significantlymore conservative than himself. By the time he had received a fourthstanding ovation Saturday at the California Republican Party convention, theanswer seemed clear.

Equating the U.S. fight against terrorism with the Civil War and the ColdWar, Giuliani told about 750 of his party's faithful that failure in Iraqwould turn that country into a "massive headquarters for terrorism."

"Having had a job where I didn't have any choice but to make a decision,"the former mayor of New York said, "prepares you as best you can be preparedto be the president of the United States."

Asked in a subsequent news conference when he would formally announce hiscandidacy for president, Giuliani quipped: "If you go back to my speech, Ithink you'll find one. We'll figure out how to do it in five places so we'llget more attention."



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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/opinion/11sun3.html?pagewanted=print

February 11, 2007
Editorial Observer

Decoding the Debate Over the Blackness of Barack Obama
By BRENT STAPLES

Those of us who were born black in the years just after World War II hadfront-row seats for the collapse of American apartheid. We started outconfined to all-black communities and schools at a time when skin color wasstill destiny. But as segregation gave way, many of us were vaulted out ofthis sequestered world and into colleges, jobs and walks of life that hadbeen closed to us pretty much since the nation’s founding.

The rush of upward mobility produced the inevitable identity crisis, whichled in turn to endless discussions about the meaning of blackness in a worldwhere skin color was beginning to matter less and less.

At their best, these discussions, held in college dorm rooms at night, wereprobing, serious and heartfelt. At their worst, they turned into lectures bythe race police — ’60s-era ideologues who characterized blackness not as amatter of individual interpretation or choice, but as a narrow set ofattitudes and experiences that were said to make up the authentic blackidentity.



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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/us/politics/11obama.html?ei=5094&en=b4428f9eb8e50583&hp=&ex=1171170000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

February 11, 2007

Obama Formally Enters Presidential Race
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY

SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Feb. 10 — Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, standingbefore the Old State Capitol where Abraham Lincoln began his politicalcareer, announced his candidacy for the White House on Saturday bypresenting himself as an agent of generational change who could transform agovernment hobbled by cynicism, petty corruption and “a smallness of ourpolitics.”

“The time for that politics is over,” Mr. Obama said. “It is through. It’stime to turn the page.”

Wearing an overcoat but gloveless on a frigid morning, Mr. Obama invoked aspeech Lincoln gave here in 1858 condemning slavery — “a house dividedagainst itself cannot stand” — as he started his campaign to become thenation’s first black president.

Speaking smoothly and comfortably, Mr. Obama offered a generational call toarms, portraying his campaign less as a candidacy and more as a movement.“Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what’s neededto be done,” he said. “Today we are called once more, and it is time for ourgeneration to answer that call.”



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The New York Times

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/opinion/11brooks.html

February 11, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist

Who’s Afraid of the New Economy?
By DAVID BROOKS

Once, there was a bridge to the 21st century. But no major Democrat todayspeaks as confidently about globalization and technological change as BillClinton and Al Gore did a decade ago. No major Democrat today speaks asoptimistically about free trade as Gordon Brown does in Britain.

In the Democratic Party today, neopopulists and economic nationalists are onthe rise. The free-traders are on the defensive. The Democratic view of theglobal economy has grown unremittingly grim. When John Edwards talks aboutthe economy, you think he’s running for the Democratic nomination of 1932.Which is why the report to be released tomorrow by the Democratic activistgroup Third Way is so remarkable. Here is a group of Democratic economistsand strategists who are taking on the rising neopopulists.The first thing their report, “The New Rules Economy,” does is challenge theneopopulist depiction of economic reality. Neopopulists are good atdescribing the suffering in towns like Mansfield, Ohio, and Flint, Mich. Butthey act as if they’ve never been to Charlotte or Phoenix, where officeparks are shooting up.


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The New York Times

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/opinion/11rich.html

February 11, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist

Stop Him Before He Gets More Experience
By FRANK RICH

AS the official Barack Obama rollout reaches its planned climax on "60Minutes" tonight, we'll learn if he has the star power to upstage AnnaNicole Smith. But at least one rap against him can promptly be laid to rest:his lack of experience. If time in the United States Senate is what countsfor presidential seasoning, maybe his two years' worth is already too much.Better he get out now, before there's another embarrassing nonvote on anonbinding measure about what will soon be a four-year-old war.

History is going to look back and laugh at last week's farce, with theVirginia Republican John Warner voting to kill a debate on his ownanti-surge resolution and the West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd seizing theoccasion for an hourlong soliloquy on coal mining. As the Senate pleasureditself with parliamentary one-upmanship, the rate of American casualties inIraq reached a new high.

The day after the resolution debacle, I spoke with Senator Obama about thewar and about his candidacy. Since we talked by phone, I can't swear he wasclean, but he was definitely articulate. He doesn't yet sound as completelyscripted as his opponents - though some talking-point-itis is creeping in -


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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901916_pf.html

Unmasking Our Pain in New Orleans

By Lolis Eric Elie
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B01

The rush begins approximately right now. Even as I write this, thousands ofAmericans are packing away their inhibitions and preparing to come to mycity and go native. They will arrive in the French Quarter uninhibited, asthey imagine we are. They will remove their clothes. They will empty theirbeer-filled guts onto each other's shoes. They will clown for hungry camerasand for journalists eager to capture New Orleans as some distant editor hasimagined it. Invariably, the networks will set up their shots in the FrenchQuarter, though none of the major parades and few of the emblematic Carnivalactivities take place there. Neither the journalists nor the revelers seemto care that our lives, local lives, are elsewhere.

For us, Mardi Gras is family time. We gather on our favorite corners towatch parades with parents and cousins and picnic lunches prepared bygrandmothers (then) or bought from fast-food dispensaries (now). We donmasks. We drink. We dance. We drink. We yell loudly. We drink. This we do,ever aware that the people on our right and on our left are the same peoplewe will see during more sober times at work, school and church.



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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html?ei=5094&en=32b822343773d3d8&hp=&ex=1171256400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

February 11, 2007
Iran Defiant, but Wants Nuclear Talks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:26 a.m. ET

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a defiant yetvague tone on Sunday, telling Iranians during the 28th anniversary of theIslamic Revolution that their country would not give up uranium enrichmentbut was prepared to negotiate.

The hard-line leader's remarks, which came days before a U.N. SecurityCouncil deadline demanding Tehran halt enrichment or face further sanctions,fell short of an expected announcement that Iran had started installing3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at its Natanz plant.

''The Iranian nation on Feb. 11, 2007, passed the arduous passes andstabilized its definite (nuclear) right,'' Ahmadinejad said. He did notelaborate, but his comments indicated that Iran had achieved proficiency innuclear fuel cycle technology.



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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aeQ6n8nf7ML4&refer=us#

Condi Rice, From Black Boots to Ambushed on Iraq, Allure Fades

By Janine Zacharia

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush, riding high after hisre-election two years ago, tapped his confidante and national securityadviser Condoleezza Rice to chart an ambitious, second-term foreign policyas secretary of state.

In February 2005, Rice, already the star of the Bush cabinet, described forreporters on her maiden cross-Atlantic trip as secretary ``the tremendousopportunities ahead of us,'' including spreading ``freedom and liberty toplaces they've never been.''

Two years later, few of those goals have been realized. Iraq, and possiblyLebanon and the Palestinian territories, are sliding into civil war, Iran ispursuing its nuclear ambitions unchecked, Russia is ignoring demands forpolitical and economic openness, and China is building ties with U.S.adversaries.



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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901926_pf.html

The Diplomats on Capitol Hill

By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B07

Foreign ministers usually try to avoid commenting on election results inother countries. But their appointment schedules are not so discreet. Anincreasingly well-beaten path to Capitol Hill by special envoys and othervisiting officials attests to the new power that Congress holds in foreignpolicy.

That result -- like so many others it has produced -- is exactly the reverseof what the Bush administration hoped to achieve. As it empowered itscritics on Iraq by focusing so relentlessly on them (see the trial ofScooter Libby) and made civil liberties a salient issue by adopting extremepositions (see the Bill of Rights), the dismissive attitude President Bushhas displayed toward the legislative branch helped push Congress into takingon policymaking duties it is ill-equipped to handle.

The confusion and bickering over competing Senate resolutions to support,oppose or split the difference on Bush's proposed "surge" of five additionalbrigades into Iraq illustrate how Washington is rolling rapidly toward theworst of all policy worlds: one in which 535 would-be secretaries of statetry to micromanage battlefield tactics on the basis of November's electionreturns.



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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html?ei=5094&en=32b822343773d3d8&hp=&ex=1171256400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

February 11, 2007

Iran Defiant, but Wants Nuclear Talks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:26 a.m. ET

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a defiant yetvague tone on Sunday, telling Iranians during the 28th anniversary of theIslamic Revolution that their country would not give up uranium enrichmentbut was prepared to negotiate.

The hard-line leader's remarks, which came days before a U.N. SecurityCouncil deadline demanding Tehran halt enrichment or face further sanctions,fell short of an expected announcement that Iran had started installing3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at its Natanz plant.

''The Iranian nation on Feb. 11, 2007, passed the arduous passes andstabilized its definite (nuclear) right,'' Ahmadinejad said. He did notelaborate, but his comments indicated that Iran had achieved proficiency innuclear fuel cycle technology.



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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901927_pf.html

Happy Talk In Bush's Budget

By David S. Broder
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B07

Experience has taught us that the Bush administration's budget cannot bejudged by its cover -- or by the cover letter the president puts at thestart of each year's volume.

The message he released last week was headlined by the Page 1 declarationthat "the Budget I am presenting achieves balance by 2012."

It would be wonderful were deficits to disappear -- if only it were true.But on the final page of the document, in Table S-10 on Page 172, one learnsthe disturbing truth. In fiscal 2012, the president's target year, the grossfederal debt will -- by his own estimate -- grow by $372 billion.

How can this be? Well, the Page 1 claim is achieved by ignoring orminimizing a bunch of real-world challenges. For example, the presidentproposes just a one-year patch for the growing problem of the alternativeminimum tax, which is whacking more and more middle-class families whothought they were beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts. The one-year fix wouldcost the Treasury $47.9 billion, but no revenue is lost in the next fouryears -- because Bush just ignores the problem.



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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/10/AR2007021001510_pf.html

McCain Taps Cash He Sought To Limit
Onetime Reformer Calls on Big Donors

By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 11, 2007; A01

Just about a year and a half ago, Sen. John McCain went to court to try tocurtail the influence of a group to which A. Jerrold Perenchio gave $9million, saying it was trying to "evade and violate" new campaign laws withvoter ads ahead of the midterm elections.

As McCain launches his own presidential campaign, however, he is counting onPerenchio, the founder of the Univision Spanish-language media empire, toraise millions of dollars as co-chairman of the Arizona Republican'snational finance committee.

In his early efforts to secure the support of the Republican establishmenthe has frequently bucked, McCain has embraced some of the samepolitical-money figures, forces and tactics he pilloried during a 15-yearcrusade to reduce the influence of big donors, fundraisers and lobbyists inelections. That includes enlisting the support of Washington lobbyists aswell as key players in the fundraising machine that helped President Bushdefeat McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries.



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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Portugal-Abortion.html?pagewanted=print

February 11, 2007
Portugal Voters Deciding on Abortion Law
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:18 a.m. ET

LISBON, Portugal (AP) -- Portugal is deciding in a national referendumSunday whether to discard its strict abortion law, a battle that pits theSocialist government against conservative parties and the Catholic Church.

The center-left Socialist government wants to grant women the right to optfor abortion during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

Portugal, where more than 90 percent of people say they are Catholic, hasone of the most restrictive abortion laws in the European Union. Theprocedure is allowed only in cases of rape, fetal malformation or if amother's health is in danger, and only in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

In 23 other EU nations, abortion is permitted within much broader limits.Women can ask for abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy in Britain andup to the 12th week in Germany, France and Italy.



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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901931_pf.html

The Limits Of Sunniness

By George F. Will
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B07

In this winter of their discontents, nostalgia for Ronald Reagan has becomefor many conservatives a substitute for thinking. This mental paralysis --gratitude decaying into idolatry -- is sterile: Neither the man nor hismoment will recur. Conservatives should face the fact that Reaganism cannotdefine conservatism.

That is one lesson of John Patrick Diggins's new book, " Ronald Reagan:Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History." Diggins, a historian at the CityUniversity of New York, treats Reagan respectfully as an important subjectin American intellectual history. The 1980s, he says, thoroughly joinedpolitics to political theory. But he notes that Reagan's theory wasradically unlike that of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism,and very like that of Burke's nemesis, Thomas Paine. Burke believed that thepast is prescriptive because tradition is a repository of moral wisdom.Reagan frequently quoted Paine's preposterous cry that "we have it in ourpower to begin the world over again."

Diggins's thesis is that the 1980s were America's "Emersonian moment"because Reagan, a "political romantic" from the Midwest and West, echoed NewEngland's Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Emerson was right," Reagan said severaltimes of the man who wrote, "No law can be sacred to me but that of mynature." Hence Reagan's unique, and perhaps oxymoronic, doctrine --conservatism without anxieties. Reagan's preternatural serenity derived fromhis conception of the supernatural.



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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901917_pf.html

Victory Is Not an Option
The Mission Can't Be Accomplished -- It's Time for a New Strategy

By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B01

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulfthat separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war.Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy inIraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance ofproducing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensusjudgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.

Its gloomy implications -- hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, inrubbery language that cannot soften its impact -- put the intelligencecommunity and the American public on the same page. The public awakened tothe reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out ofcontrol of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are stillasleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.

Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure,and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibilityfor anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around thebush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that oppose thepresident's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.

For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, thepresident's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety hasparalyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage ofdemocracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is notinevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "whogets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that willvastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.




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The Miami Herald

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16675283.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Posted on Sun, Feb. 11, 2007

Gates to Putin: 'One Cold War is enough'

LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press

MUNICH, Germany - Pentagon chief Robert Gates responded Sunday to VladimirPutin's assault on U.S. foreign policy by saying "one Cold War is enough"and that he would go to Moscow to try to reduce tensions. Gates also soughtmore allied help in Afghanistan.

He delivered his first speech as Pentagon chief at a security conference inGermany and then flew to Pakistan to discuss fears of a renewed springoffensive by Taliban fighters in neighboring Afghanistan.

Pakistan, a close U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism, has facedcharges that the Taliban militia stage attacks from Pakistan against Afghangovernment troops and NATO- and U.S.-led coalition troops.

Gates' rebuke of the Russian president relied on humor and some pointedjabs.


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365gay

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/02/021107gop.htm

Romney, Brownback Battle For GOP Far Right
by The Associated Press

Posted: February 11, 2007 - 11:00 am ET

(Grand Rapids, Michigan) Republicans Mitt Romney and Sen. Sam Brownbackpromoted their presidential campaigns before nearly 3,000 party activists atthe Michigan GOP convention Saturday.

Romney reminded the crowd that he grew up sharing the Automotive News eachmorning with his father, George, who headed American Motors Corp. beforeserving as Michigan's governor from 1963 to 1969.

The younger Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, said his father broughtmany of the lessons he learned from business to the governorship.

"He got Michigan moving again," Romney said, before running through hisstands in opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage and in favor of tightcontrols on illegal immigration. "It's time for Republican principles tocome back to Michigan again."



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Guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2010504,00.html

Britain needs a declaration of independence from America

Tony Blair's successors will have to fashion a foreign policy less obsessedwith the US and more concerned with the rest of the world

Andrew Rawnsley
Sunday February 11, 2007
The Observer

'This sucks,' says the American pilot of an A10 Thunderbolt tank buster whenhe realises that he has just unleashed a devastating cannon burst on aBritish armoured patrol. 'We're in jail dude,' chokes his wingman as theyreturn to base, streaming expletives about their deadly mistake.

Jail is not where these dudes landed after they fatally strafed theirBritish allies in Iraq in a tragic case of blue-on-blue just after theinvasion. The senior officer was subsequently promoted to colonel, awardedthe bronze star and now trains other American pilots in ground-attack. Therecording is chilling. Gung-ho American reservists on their first combatmission are misled into thinking that there are no 'friendlies' in the area.Eager for action, they talk themselves into thinking that the orange panelsmarking the tanks as their British allies are enemy rocket launchers. Theyretch and curse when they are told that they have made a horrific blunder.

The incident itself was terrible enough, but this is not what has done mostdamage to Anglo-American relations. The Pentagon obstructed the inquest intothe death of Lance Corporal Matty Hull. His widow has had to wait four yearsuntil someone leaked the cockpit recording to find out how her husband waskilled. The Ministry of Defence appeared unwilling to stand up to itsAmerican counterparts and dissembled about whether video footage of theattack existed. Not for the first time, Britain is made to look like asubservient satellite taken wretchedly for granted by the country that issupposed to be its closest ally.



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