OK, George, make with the friendly bombs
by Terry Jones

To prevent terrorism by dropping bombs on Iraq is such an obvious idea that I can't think why no one has thought of it before. It's so simple. If only the UK had done something similar in Northern Ireland, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today.

The moment the IRA blew up the Horseguards' bandstand, the Government should have declared its own War on Terrorism. It should have immediately demanded that the Irish government hand over Gerry Adams. If they refused to do so - or quibbled about needing proof of his guilt - we could have told them that this was no time for prevarication and that they must hand over not only Adams but all IRA terrorists in the Republic. If they tried to stall by claiming that it was hard to tell who were IRA terrorists and who weren't, because they don't go around wearing identity badges, we would have been free to send in the bombers.

It is well known that the best way of picking out terrorists is to fly 30,000ft above the capital city of any state that harbours them and drop bombs - preferably cluster bombs. It is conceivable that the bombing of Dublin might have provoked some sort of protest, even if just from James Joyce fans, and there is at least some likelihood of increased anti-British sentiment in what remained of the city and thus a rise in the numbers of potential terrorists. But this, in itself, would have justified the tactic of bombing them in the first place. We would have nipped them in the bud, so to speak. I hope you follow the argument.
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Doubts cloud US Taliban case
FBI accused of botching crucial 'confession' from fighter

Robert Pelton, whose interview with John Walker on CNN last December is one of the main strands of the prosecution case, told The Observer of his concerns.

He said there were a number of instances where the script accompanying the Walker film had been presented by prosecution lawyers as comments made directly by the accused. This made Walker appear more knowledgeable about the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the war in Afghanistan than he really was.

'These were words that I was writing to narrate a report with,' Pelton said. 'I am making assumptions because I know exactly what Walker did and where he came from, but at the same time let's say I'm a good journalist and I get my facts right. There are plenty of bad journalists out there - and if it becomes a precedent that the FBI uses television reports to convict people, God help us all.'
(...)

His remarks came as it emerged that the FBI agents who obtained Walker's alleged confession may have broken the agency's rules by failing to get his statement either on tape or in writing. The only record of the two-day interrogation is a summary written afterwards by one of the agents who carried it out.
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Eyeing What You Read
FBI in Libraries and Bookstores
by Nat Hentoff

The December 25 issue of Capital Times, a newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin, contains a warning about how the FBI, under Attorney General John Ashcroft and the USA Patriot Act, can order bookstores to provide lists of books bought by people suspected of involvement in terrorism.
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