WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sign he may seek new or revised charges in the CIA leak case, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said on Friday his investigation would be going back before a grand jury.

It was the first time Fitzgerald said he would be presenting information to another grand jury since the indictment and resignation three weeks ago of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Lawyers in the case said the investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, which has reached into the highest levels of the White House, could be moving into a new phase that could result in charges against other top administration officials.

President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was told by prosecutors last month that he remained under investigation and could still be charged, lawyers said.

Fitzgerald may also be pursuing new leads following Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward's disclosure that he was told about Plame in mid-June 2003.

Fitzgerald has been investigating the leak for two years and the grand jury that indicted Libby expired after it charged him with perjury and obstructing justice on October 28.

"The investigation will involve proceedings before a different grand jury than the grand jury which returned the indictment" against Libby, Fitzgerald said in a court motion, which spelled out a compromise with media organizations for access to some documents in the Libby case.

After appearing at a court hearing on the compromise, Fitzgerald said he would not elaborate on his plans for another grand jury.

Libby's attorney, William Jeffress, and Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to comment.

PRESSURE ON ROVE

While people close to Rove sought to play down the implications, a lawyer involved in the leak case said, "It can't make Rove feel good."

"He (Fitzgerald) can supersede the Libby grand jury (indictment) to include other crimes or other people," the lawyer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

Plame's cover at the CIA was blown after her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence to support invading Iraq. Wilson said it was done to undercut his credibility.

The special counsel had said Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter about Plame. But Woodward testified this week that a senior Bush administration official had casually told him about Plame's position at the CIA nearly a month before her secret identity was revealed publicly.

Woodward's sworn deposition sparked renewed speculation about who first leaked Plame's identity, and sent Bush administration officials scrambling to deny involvement.

A lawyer in the case said Woodward's source had not previously testified before a grand jury in the leak case.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not answer directly whether Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was Woodward's source.

White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley, with Bush at an Asia-Pacific summit in Pusan, South Korea, left it to aides to put out the word that he was not the source.

Neither was Cheney nor Bush, according to current and former officials and their lawyers, none of whom would agree to be identified.

At Friday's hearing, Fitzgerald backed off seeking a blanket order to keep all documents in the case secret following a challenge by several media organizations.

He replacing it with a more narrowly tailored order focused on blocking release of grand jury transcripts and documents containing sensitive personal information.

A group of Libby's friends and colleagues have joined a committee to help raise money for Libby's defense, a spokeswoman said. The members include former CIA director James Woolsey, ex-Republican Sens. Fred Thompson and Alan Simpson, former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp and top Bush fundraisers Bill Paxon and Mercer Reynolds.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Will Dunham)

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's inspector general said Friday it has begun an investigation into allegations that an office run by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's former policy chief, Douglas J. Feith, engaged in illegal or inappropriate intelligence activities before the Iraq war.

The probe, which two senators requested two months ago, comes at a contentious point in the political debate over President Bush's decision to invade Iraq and the intelligence upon which Bush based his decision.

It extends a controversy that has prominently featured Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a vocal critic of Bush's Iraq policy, who has accused Feith of engaging in inappropriate intelligence activities at the Pentagon and of deceiving Congress about intelligence on Iraq's pre-war links to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Levin told reporters Friday that Feith provided the White House and its National Security Council with "really erroneous and distorted intelligence" about Iraq and its purported links to terrorist groups.

One of the questions to be probed by the Pentagon inspector general, Levin said, is whether Feith, in his position as under secretary of defense for policy, "provided a separate channel of intelligence, unbeknownst to the CIA, to the White House - which he did."

In a letter Wednesday to Feith's successor, Eric Edelman, and to Rumsfeld's intelligence chief, Stephen Cambone, the inspector general's office asked for points of contact for the investigation no later than Dec. 1.

"The overall objective will be to determine whether personnel assigned to the Office of Special Plans from September 2002 through June 2003 conducted unauthorized, unlawful or inappropriate intelligence activities," the letter said. A copy was released by the Pentagon late Friday afternoon.

Feith left his Pentagon post this summer. Attempts to reach him for comment Friday were not successful. He has previously disputed Levin's charges and said they could have been put to rest if Levin had called him to seek an explanation.

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said the small office that Feith set up prior to the start of the Iraq war to evaluate intelligence on Iraq - the Office of Special Plans - has been the central focus of numerous inquiries by members of Congress and others who question whether it performed improper intelligence functions.

"The Office of Special Plans has been the subject of a high degree of scrutiny over the last several months, and one in which every inquiry into it has yielded no findings of improper or unlawful activity," Whitman said.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, asked the Pentagon inspector general in early September to investigate what Roberts called "persistent and, to date, unsubstantiated allegations that there was something unlawful or improper about the activities" of Feith's office.

Roberts wrote in a Sept. 9 letter to the inspector general that Feith had testified before both the Armed Services and Intelligence committees of the Senate, and "I have not discovered any credible evidence of unlawful or improper activity, yet the allegations persist."

Levin, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, followed with his own letter to the inspector general Sept. 22 in which he requested a broad probe of Feith's office. Among the questions he asked be investigated was whether the office produced its own intelligence analysis of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida and presented that to the staffs of the National Security Council and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Levin and others have asserted that Feith and other officials exaggerated the available intelligence on links between Iraq and al-Qaida in order to bolster the administration's case for removing then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The White House denies that intelligence was misused or manipulated in the run-up to the war.

Pentagon officials pointed out the presidential commission that assessed U.S. intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, known as the WMD Commission, concluded in its report of March 31 that intelligence agencies did not make or change any judgments about Iraq's weapons capabilities in response to political pressure.

Former CIA officer Bob Baer told ABC the techniques amounted to "bad interrogation. I mean, you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough."

CIA sources speaking on condition of anonymity described six techniques: "Attention Grab, Attention Slap, Belly Slap, Long Time Standing, Cold Cell, Water Boarding."

The six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," as sources called them, were used on a dozen top Al-Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe, ABC said.

In "Belly Slap," interrogators deliver "a hard open-handed slap to the stomach" intended to cause pain but not internal injury.

In "Long Time Standing," prisoners are forced to stand handcuffed and shackled for more than 40 hours.

In "The Cold Cell" a prisoner is made to stand naked in a cell kept near 10 degrees C (50 degrees F) and is continually doused with cold water.

Water Boarding brings results within seconds, the sources said. A prisoner is tied onto a board with his feet higher than his head, and his face is wrapped in cellophane. When water is poured over him, he begins to gag and begs to confess, sources told ABC.

"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told ABC.

After investigating the claims, the network asked CIA officials for comment, but they "would neither confirm nor deny the accounts. They simply declined to comment," ABC said.

Earlier this month, CIA inspector general John Helgerson said techniques used by the agency appeared to violate the international Convention Against Torture, according to current and former officials who described the report to The New York Times.

The report listed 10 techniques authorized in early 2002 that went beyond those used by the US military on prisoners of war.

U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx) makes an exaggerated point from an illustration of how much intelligence information the Bush Administration released during the run-up to the Iraq War during a news conference called by House Select Intelligence Committee Democrats while on Capitol Hill, November 18, 2005.

The Democrats called the news conference to deliver a point-by-point document contesting Bush Administration claims about the intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

(Photo: Larry Downing/Reuters)

Go HERE to See who Congress is and is not listening to....

You might be surprised.

Rep. John Murtha, the decorated Vietnam and Korean War Marine vet and conservative Pennsylvania Democrat who stunned Bush administration and Republican congressional warhawks and Democratic go-alongs like Sens. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden alike with his call for an immediate U.S. pullout from Iraq, left unsaid one important word in his dramatic turnaround announcement: defeat.

But that’s the real message of his change of heart from Iraq War backer and booster to peacenik.

The war begun by President Bush with such bravado and so little braino, which was designed to convert him from a dismal president to a crisp and awe-inspiring commander-in-chief, has been lost.

The nearly 2100 Americans who have died so far to help the president get re-elected, to make him look like a leader, and to provide cover for his criminal executive power grab, have died for nothing.

An unorganized bunch of insurgents armed with nothing but raw guts, aging Soviet-era rifles, and home-made explosives, have routed the most powerful military machine the world has ever known.

There will be efforts to cover up this astonishing defeat, just as there were efforts made by the Nixon and Ford administrations to hide the fact that the U.S. was defeated in Indochina, too, but the truth is clear.

American military might can destroy a country. It can kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. It can sow terror through the use of indiscriminate use of such WMDs as DU explosives, phosphorus bombs, helicopter and fixed-wing gunships and computerized drones and missiles. But it cannot defeat a concerted popular resistance.

The American military, according to some generals, is once again, as it was during the Vietnam War, falling apart. Recruitment is collapsing, both for the regular Army and Marines, and for the reserves and the National Guard. Parts and even ammunition are in short supply. Morale is at an all time low and sinking.

Who in Iraq would want to die for Bush and Cheney at this point? And yet they keep on dying.

Murtha has it right. It’s long past time to call the whole disastrous thing off. The Bush-Cheney mantra of "stay the course" is the desperate cry of two mad men caught in a trap of their own making--two men who are perfectly willing to send thousands more American soldiers to their deaths, and to slaughter tens of thousands more innocent Iraqis, in order to cling to power and to defer a final reckoning for their crimes.

They cannot be permitted to do this.

The war is lost. Iraq has been destroyed and will have to be helped for a long time to allow its people to recover somehow from the devastation caused by decades of brutal dictatorship, American-led sanctions and America’s war of aggression and criminal occupation. The broken military will have to be returned home and made into something appropriate for a world that settles disputes diplomatically, not by unilateral acts of violence and terror. Finally, the veterans of this war will need help recovering from the horrors they were forced to participate in and from the physical and psychic wounds they have endured.

Meanwhile, the political leaders who brought all this about must be called to account. Either they apologize, as growing numbers of Democrats (and some Republicans) have begun to do, like Murtha, vice-presidential candidate John Edwards and even presidential candidate John Kerry, have done, or they must be voted out. The criminal authors of this war—Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and others should be impeached or indicted as appropriate.

The first step will be admitting that the US has been defeated in Iraq. Murtha is right that the troops did what was asked of them, but their sacrifices were for naught. The war is lost.

Then we can begin the blame game in earnest.

In his speech to last spring's National Media Reform Conference in St. Louis, Bill Moyers accused the Bush Administration not merely of attacking his highly regarded PBS program NOW but of declaring war on journalism itself. "We're seeing unfold a contemporary example of the age-old ambition of power and ideology to squelch and punish journalists who tell the stories that make princes and priests uncomfortable," explained Moyers. With the November resignation of Moyers's nemesis, Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) board chair Ken Tomlinson, amid charges of personal and political wrongdoing and a host of other recent developments, it becomes increasingly clear that this White House is doing battle with the journalistic underpinnings of democracy.

To be sure, every administration has tried to manipulate the nation's media system. Bill Clinton's wrongheaded support for the Telecommunications Act of 1996 cleared the way for George W. Bush's attempts to give media companies the power to create ever larger and more irresponsible monopolies. But with its unprecedented campaign to undermine and, where possible, eliminate independent journalism, the Bush Administration has demonstrated astonishing contempt for the Constitution and considerable fear of an informed public. Consider the bill of particulars:

§ Corrupting PBS. Tomlinson's tenure at the CPB, which annually distributes $400 million in federal funding to broadcast outlets, was characterized by an assault on the news operations of the Public Broadcasting Service in general, and Moyers in particular, for airing dissenting voices and preparing investigative reports on the Administration. His goal was clearly to fire a shot across the bow of all public stations so managers would shy away from the sort of investigative journalism that might expose Bush Administration malfeasance. On November 15, on the heels of Tomlinson's resignation, the CPB's inspector general issued a sixty-seven-page report documenting Tomlinson's repeated violations of the Public Broadcasting Act, CPB rules and the CPB code of ethics with his political meddling, though it stopped short of calling for prosecution, or of examining the link between Tomlinson's actions and White House directives.

Former and current news employees of Sinclair Broadcasting have described the owners' campaign to court powerful conservative legislators who responded by clearing away legal obstacles and thereby allow Sinclair to become the largest owner of TV stations in America.

In interviews appearing in GQ magazine, the employees describe how they were subjected to political litmus tests before being hired, how they were ordered to report only "good news" about Iraq, how an interview with President Bush was delivered to stations with orders to replace the image of the interviewer with that of the local anchor, and how stations were required to run a nightly right-wing editorial delivered by Sinclair exec Mark Hyman that once accused the late Peter Jennings of "appearing to favor terrorists over America."

(One local producer said that when she used a graphic to identify Hyman's commentary as an "editorial," Sinclair officials ordered her to remove the offending word.)

Former Sinclair Reporter Jon Leiberman, who was fired for protesting against a planned anti-Kerry documentary last year (Leiberman says he voted for Bush in both presidential elections) said that Sinclair co-owner David Smith once told him his news reports ought "to look more like Mark's editorials."

In addition to providing ideological aid, the GQ article alleges, Smith and his three brothers have reportedly contributed $2.3 million to the campaigns of key Republican Congressmen.

Rep. Jack Murtha (PA) came out this week with a headline-grabbing stand which calls for the immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. His statements resulted in a hailstorm of harsh criticism from the right. In fact, much of the reaction has been standard attack and smear tactics by a despicable bevy of Republican chickenhawks. The mud and sleaze that has become the Republican weapon of choice has been fully unleashed.

What's ironic is that Murtha's been one of those political untouchables. A hawkish Democrat war hero with a highly decorated 37-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps. He volunteered for Vietnam in '66-'67 and received two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with Combat "V". Retired from the Marine Corps Reserve as a colonel in 1990. Awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal by the Marine Corps Commandant when he retired. Well-respected by both parties for his first-hand knowledge of military and defense issues, of which he has dutifully served and advised both Republican and Democratic presidents. One of the most effective advocates for a strong national defense. A ranking member and former chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. This rare combination of experience enables him to understand defense and military operations from every perspective. So when Murtha opens his mouth to speak, everyone listens intently.

Which is why Murtha's become the man of the week by saying "Our military's done everything that has been asked of them. The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It's time to bring the troops home." Murtha believes that the longer we stay in Iraq the worse we make the situation: "It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people, or the Persian Gulf region." Critical of Bush and Cheney, he claimed the war was "not going as advertised," and said the U.S. should make it clear to the transitional Iraqi government before the December 15 elections that our troops will be departing.

As expected, this mobilized the sleazebags in the GOP to quickly begin its Rovian Swift Boat smear campaign, tearing Murtha down personally and attacking his patriotism. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: "Congressman Murtha is a respected veteran and politician who has a record of supporting a strong America. So it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party." (Hastert has never served in the military)

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (Ill) essentially called Murtha a coward and said he was delivering "the highest insult" to the troops," and that "Murtha and other Democrats want us to retreat. They want us to wave the white flag of surrender to the terrorists of the world." (never served in the military)

VP Dick "Five-Deferments" Cheney said: "The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory or their backbone. But we are not going to sit by and let them rewrite history." (never served in the military)

Rep. David Dreier (R-CA): "It would be an absolute mistake and a real insult to the lives that have been lost." (never served in the military)

Majority Leader Roy Blunt (MS) said Murtha's views "only embolden our enemies." (never served in the military)

Rep. John Carter (TX) said Murtha wants to take "the cowardly way out and say we're going to surrender." (never served in the military)

What Murtha has bravely done in Congress is simply voice what a majority of Americans feel about the military failure in Iraq and their desire to put an end to the death of U.S. soldiers. We hope his actions strongly urge Democrats to take his side, and convince some Republicans as well that it's time to start demanding of President Bush that he outline a coherent and imminent exit strategy. Perhaps this is the tipping point on Iraq that we've been waiting for.

And we also hope once and for all that the GOP's attack and smear tactics backfire and cause even further damage to an already struggling and scandal-scarred party in which voters have lost faith. It is reprehensible and bordering on treasonous to attack for political purposes the bravery, patriotism and military service of distinguished war heroes like John Kerry, Max Cleland, John McCain and John Murtha. It's even more despicable when it's done by a bunch of draft-dodging Republican cowards who've never stepped into a military uniform.

"I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there," Murtha said. "I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done. I resent the fact, on Veterans Day, he (Bush) criticized Democrats for criticizing them."

The Bushies' bully-pulpit attack and smear campaign against anyone who disagrees with them is both un-American and ammoral. The tragic irony is that the neocons have our men and women dying in Iraq to spread Democracy and protect personal freedoms yet they are utterly clueless on how to promote the same liberties, freedom of speech, and right of dissent here at home.

The House bill, which also trimmed other social programs for the poor in an effort to reduce federal spending by $50 billion, was narrowly approved 217-215.

House and Senate negotiators now must write a final, compromise version of legislation to pare federal spending over five years. The Senate did not touch food stamps in its version of a $35 billion budget-cutting bill.

Food stamps, the major U.S. antihunger program, help poor people buy food. Some 25.8 million Americans received food stamps in a program run by the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Saxby Chambliss said through a spokesman that he was aiming for "zero" cuts in food stamps during talks with the House. As a committee chairman, the Georgia Republican would be a senior negotiator.

The final bill should abandon proposals to cut food stamps, urged Ellen Vollinger of the Food Research and Action Center. "In nutrition, the Senate did the right thing," she said.

Bread for the World, another antihunger group, said the prospect of food stamp cuts "will make Thanksgiving bleaker for hundreds of thousands of hard-working families." It pointed to government estimates that 38.2 million Americans live in "food insecure" households that have trouble buying enough food.

House Republican leaders say the cuts are only a sliver of food stamp spending that runs more than $35 billion a year. Earlier this week, House Majority Leader Roy Blunt said the cuts would focus the program on "the people you intended to help instead of just adding on at the edges."

In a statement, the White House said it supported the House "efforts to narrow overly broad exemptions from the food stamp program's eligibility limits." President (George W.) Bush proposed restrictions in February that are similar to the House-approved steps.

Under the House plan, roughly 165,000 people now automatically enrolled in food stamps when they get assistance from welfare programs would lose food stamps. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said these were mostly working families with children.

States would have the option to continue offering free school lunches to families cut off of food stamps. The Center on Budget said it was unlikely all states would do so.

The House proposal also would require 70,000 legal immigrants in most cases to wait seven years to become eligible for food stamps, rather than the current five years. That brings the total number of people affected by the plan to 235,000.

WASHINGTON -- The Republican-controlled Congress helped itself to a $3,100 pay raise on Friday, then postponed work on bills to curb spending on social programs and cut taxes in favor of a two-week vacation.

In the final hours of a tumultuous week in the Capitol, Democrats erupted in fury when House GOP leaders maneuvered toward a politically-charged vote _ and swift rejection _ of one war critic's call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. "You guys are pathetic, pathetic," Massachusetts Rep. Martin Meehan yelled across a noisy hall at Republicans.

On another major issue, a renewal of the Patriot Act remained in limbo as an unlikely coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans sought curbs on the powers given law enforcement in the troubled first days after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Both the House and Senate were in session after midnight Thursday, working on the tax and deficit-cutting bills at the heart of the GOP agenda, before returning to work a few hours later.

"What it does is start to turn down the escalating costs ... for our children and our grandchildren. One of the things that we cannot leave to that next generation is a huge deficit that they can't afford," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said after enactment of a $50 billion deficit-reduction bill.

Democrats dissented, with one eye on the 2006 elections.

"The Republicans are taking food out of the mouths of children to give tax cuts to America's wealthiest. This is not a statement of America's values," said the Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California. "Democrats believe that together, America can do better," she said, invoking the party's new campaign slogan.

The cost-of-living increase for members of Congress _ which will put pay for the rank and file at an estimated $165,200 a year _ marked a brief truce in the pitched political battles that have flared in recent weeks on the war and domestic issues.

So much so that the issue was not mentioned on the floor of either the House or Senate as lawmakers worked on legislation whose passage will assure bigger paychecks.

Lawmakers automatically receive a cost of living increase each year, unless Congress votes to block it. By tradition, critics have tried to block increases by attaching a provision to the legislation that provides funding for the Treasury Department. One such attempt succeeded in the Senate earlier in the year, but the provision was omitted from the compromise measure moved toward final approval.

The overall bill provided $140 billion for transportation, housing and other programs. It cleared the House on a vote of 392-31. Senate passage was by voice vote.

Pay raise harmony aside, Republicans spent the day celebrating a party-line, post-midnight vote in which the House cleared legislation to reduce deficits by $50 billion over five years. The vote was 217-215, with all the Democrats who voted in opposition, along with 14 GOP rebels.

Acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt of Missouri said Republicans would make their tax cut bill the top item on the agenda when lawmakers return to the Capitol in December.

The House-passed measure attacks deficits by limiting spending for the first time in a decade on Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and other benefit programs that normally rise with inflation and eligibility.

The House GOP leadership had hoped to clear the measure a week ago. It was forced to retreat when Republican moderates rebelled, even after Hastert agreed to strip out a controversial proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

The Senate-passed companion measure calls for less deficit reduction, $35 billion over five years, but includes the ANWR provision.

The differences are expected to make it difficult for the House and Senate to reach a compromise by year's end, particularly since Republicans can't count on any Democratic support.

The tax bill presents difficulties of its own for a GOP majority struggling to translate last fall's election gains into this year's legislative achievements.

The Senate cleared a measure after 1:30 a.m. that calls for $60 billion in cuts over five years.

The measure drew bipartisan support, passing on a vote of 64-33. Its provisions would continue a series of existing tax breaks that otherwise will expire, and shelters 14 million upper middle-income families from higher taxes.

The White House has threatened a veto, citing a provision that raises taxes on oil companies.

The House has yet to pass a companion measure. When it does, the tax on oil companies is unlikely to be included, and it is likely to be jettisoned before a compromise measure reaches the White House.

Hastert said Republicans want to "make sure that we support our troops that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan ... a lot of people say: Look, this is a tough time, we just ought to pull out and leave. We pull out and leave, we strand an effort to make sure that we can tamp down terrorism, to tamp down a dictatorship, that we can stabilize an area in the Middle East," he added.

GOP aides conceded the last-minute maneuver was designed to put Democrats in a political squeeze _ voting for withdrawal and exposing themselves to attacks from the White House, or voting against it and risk angering the voters that polls show want an end to the conflict.

Democrats angrily attacked the GOP move, then lined up with Republicans to vote against a troop withdrawal in hopes of draining the issue of its political significance. The vote was 403-3 against the measure.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., called the measure "a piece of garbage" and an attack on Rep. John Murtha. The Pennsylvania Democrat, a decorated veteran and respected congressional voice on military matters, said Thursday it was time for the troops to come home.

House and Senate negotiators announced a tentative agreement earlier in the week to pass a seven-year extension of the Patriot Act. Key senators lawmakers involved in the talks balked at the terms, and officials said they would resume compromise efforts when Congress returns to work in December.

"Announcing the plan alone will not be enough," Standard & Poor's equity analyst Efraim Levy said on Friday. "If the plan is not concrete, not enough, or not realizable, Wall Street could take it negatively."

Chief Executive Richard Wagoner has committed to a series of plant closings and the elimination of nearly a quarter of GM's U.S. factory work force through 2008.

"They need to lose a lot more jobs through 2008. The 25,000 number is the natural attrition rate, and they need to go beyond the ordinary to accomplish any change. They need more, a lot more," Levy said.

GM has been grappling with high health-care and commodities costs, loss of U.S. market share to foreign rivals, and slumping sales of large sport utility vehicles which used to be its profit center, but have now lost popularity due to high gasoline prices.

To make matters worse, GM's main parts supplier -- bankrupt Delphi Corp. -- is battling with its unions and will ask the court to void its labor contracts if a deal is not reached by mid-December. A strike at Delphi could shut down some GM and Delphi plants and could force the automaker to burn through billions of dollars a week, analysts have said.

A work stoppage could also cripple GM, Delphi's largest customer, as it prepares to roll out its GMT-900 truck series, a crucial component of its recovery plan. [...]

A majority of the job cuts -- announced to employees in an e-mail distributed by Mark Fields, president of Ford's Americas business -- will be made in the first quarter of 2006, spokesman Oscar Suris said.

The cuts will come through attrition, layoffs and the elimination of some agency and contract positions, Suris said.

They will be in addition to the 2,750 job losses already announced by the automaker this year,

Ford lost $284 million in the third quarter and its automotive division is in the red. Its North American vehicle operations have lost more than $1.4 billion before taxes so far this year.

The company's shares have dropped more than 40 percent since the end of 2004. They hit $7.57 per share on Thursday, the lowest in more than two years, before rebounding to $8.41 per share on Friday. [...]

The caricature of a fearful United States where every I must be dotted, and every T must be crossed, where coffee cups warn the the user of hot liquids inside, and where blogs are tattooed with incomprehensible license terms, isn't just the stuff of myth, however. This nit-picking has become the foundation of the nation, one that pitches the established class of nit-pickers (the lawyers) against a new breed of nit-pickers (the technocrats).
Click Here

But few stories illustrate this derangement are well as the bizarre - but true - story we bring you here. Bear with us.

The United States takes the separation of church and state (and body and mind) with a scary earnestness, so although it's nominally a Christian country, the Christian time of celebration is formally celebrated through a complicated euphemism. Here, it's called "the Holiday Season".

Isn't that a tautology? Hush for a moment. Being the land of untrammeled commerce, this also throws up a few anomalies.

For example, the uptown department store Macy's currently offers what the British call Christmas Trees (here they're called "Holiday Decorations") in a variety of pre-themed categories such as the South Park™-theme and the Barbi™-theme. But we digress.

In a sphincters-held-tight culture such as this, little things mean a lot, so when the giant US big box retailer Wal-Mart recently changed a greeting from "Merry Christmas!" to "Happy Holidays!" it drew complaints.

And here the troubles began.

The emails duly arrived, and a customer-facing rep took it on herself to explain the change with this ill-advised exhibition of learning.

The employee, who we know only as Kirby, launched into a fantastically earnest historical explanation of what the Christmas Holiday Season™ really meant.

"Christmas is actually a continuation of the Siberian shaman and Visigoth traditions," Kirby replied.

"Santa is also borrowed from the [Caucasus], mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal. It is a wide wide world," the helpful Kirby replied, making sure every I was dotted and every T crossed.

All of which is true, but as you can imagine, these weren't exactly the soothing words the complainer wanted to hear.

The Wal-Mart punter simply wanted a reassuring pat, a promise that this sudden switch from religious to secular, didn't actually mean aliens had landed. And she got fairly firm confirmation that aliens had not only landed, but - Worship of Baal?? - actually had their scaly alien tentacles manning the tills. Yikes!

What's a god-fearing literalist to do, except call out the fire brigade?

In this instance, it arrived in the form of Catholic League demagogue Bill Donohue. A boycott was duly summoned, Wal-Mart relented, and heads rolled. Kirby is no longer an Wal-Mart employee, we learn, which is a shame, as in her own painfully literal (and right-on) way, she was only trying to be helpful.

In a flash, the two worlds just shot past each other.

Integrating cultures is always messy, but it's far from impossible, as the successes have proved. France's most notoriously "Arab" city, the port of Marseilles, escaped the recent riots unscathed and in Manchester, England the fireworks that mark Eid, the end of Ramadan, are celebrated by everyone. As is Christmas. The idea of a party seems to be universally understood - and when it is, recourse to weird schematas or diagrams simply doesn't occur to anyone as an option, thankfully.

We just need to loosen a few sphincters, but the USA is a tense place these days.

I found Book One: "The Nine" a little halting in parts as Levenda began mapping his project, but Book Two: "A Warm Gun" finds him at full-stride, and there's some wonderfully compelling writing here about the occult/intelligence nexus of subjects such as the Manson Family, the People's Temple and Mark David Chapman. (And "the Nine" are back.) It's an exhilarating trip over some rarely-viewed Americana.

Just one little for instance.

In a post last June regarding the Symbionese Liberation Army I referred to a letter that then-Deputy Director of the CIA Frank Carlucci (later Director, and later still the Chairman of the Carlyle Group) had written Congressman Leo Ryan in response to Ryan's inquiries concerning the question of whether Donald DeFreeze - "Cinque" - had been subjected to mind control experiments while incarcerated at Vacaville State Prison.

Levenda reproduces Carlucci's letter to Ryan, dated "18 Oct 1978":

Dear Mr Ryan:

Thank you for your letter of 27 September to Admiral Turner requesting confirmation or denial of the fact of CIA experiments using prisoners at the California medical facility at Vacaville.

It is true that CIA sponsored testing, using volunteer inmates, was conducted at that facility. The project was completed in 1968....

You letter referred to Donald DeFreese [sic], known as CINQUE, and Clifford Jefferson, both of whom were inmates at Vacaville. In so far as our records reflect the names of the participants, there is nothing to indicate that either was in any way involved in the project.

Exactly one month after receiving Carlucci's non-denial denial, Ryan was dead on the tarmac in Guyana while investigating another mad experiment in mind control, the People's Temple.

I like how Levenda dismantles Carlucci's carefully constructed obfuscation, starting with the misspelling of DeFreeze's name:

[A]s any lawyer knows [misspelling] is a way to cover one's ass in the event that the denial is proved false. It means that there was no one at the facility being tested who bore the name "Donald DeFreese." The CIA has used this tactic before. Yet, let us allow that it was an honest mistake, a typographical error by a typist. Then there is the question of "our records."

In the first place, the key MK-ULTRA records, of which the vacaville experiments would have been a part, were all destroyed in 1973 (except for four boxes of accounting and bookkeeping records.) So, the CIA had no records of it all. In the second place, the letter is very careful to hedge even further: "In so far as our records reflect the names of the participants." Very clever, considering that in all likelihood no records existed and, anyway, the name of DeFreeze was misspelled.

Then there is the statement by future-CIA Director Carlucci that the project which had drawn Congressman Ryan's scrutiny "was completed in 1968." DeFreeze did not become an inmate at Vacaville until 1969. Thus, we are left with the distinct impression that the CIA had nothing to do with DeFreeze. But from 1970 on, DeFreeze was in twice-weekly contact with Colston Westbrook, former intelligence officer under AID cover, psychological warfare officer, and Vietnam veteran, who created and ran the Black Cultural Association at the facility. By running an operation at the prison at arm's length, the CIA had what is known as "plausible deniability." When DeFreeze was being sought by police during the SLA fiasco, he repeatedly warned that Westbrook was a CIA officer, but his warnings were taken as the ramblings of a deranged Communist and black revolutionary, and few paid his charges any attention.

"Mysterious synchronicities" is how author Dick Russell describes the subject of Levenda's work, and it's apt. Most of the mysteries, naturally enough for a study of evil, are quite horrible. And when horrible things fit together, and make eminent sense, I can't help but think of Charles Fort's remark: "If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?" Maybe not, but that shouldn't stop us. And Levenda, commendably, knows how to keep his head in the madhouse.

Britain's Prince Charles launched legal action after comments about Chinese diplomats from one of his private journals were published in a British weekly newspaper.

The journal contained the heir to the throne's views on the 1997 hand-over of Hong Kong to China, including one describing Chinese government people as "appalling old waxworks".

The comments appeared in the Mail on Sunday, which is owned by Associated Newspapers.

"The Prince of Wales's office has been advised by lawyers that the Mail on Sunday has breached both the Prince of Wales's copyright and confidentiality," a statement said..

"This is a matter of principle," said Sir Michael Peat, the prince's Prince Charles' principal private secretary, "like anybody else, the Prince of Wales is entitled to write a private journal without extracts being published.

"This journal was copied and passed on to the Mail on Sunday without permission."

In the journal, the prince wrote: "After my speech, the President (Jiang Zemin) detached himself from the group of appalling old waxworks who accompanied him and took his place at the lectern.

"He then gave a kind of 'propaganda' speech which was loudly cheered by the bussed-in party faithful at the suitable moment in the text."

The prince also expresses his horror at the "awful Soviet-style display" as Chinese troops "goose step" to "haul down the Union Jack and raise the Chinese flag" during a "ridiculous rigmarole".

The 3,000-word journal, entitled "'The Handover of Hong Kong' - or 'The Great Chinese Takeaway'," was circulated to relatives, friends, political contacts and courtiers.

The earthquake struck at around 23:14 pm (1614 GMT Friday) and was centered about 33 kilometers (20 miles) below the sea floor and 310 kilometers (195 miles) southwest of the Acehnese capital Banda Aceh, said the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency in Jakarta.

The agency said the quake was felt mostly in Banda Aceh but caused no casualties or damage.

A 9.3-magnitude quake off the west coast of Aceh on Sumatra island triggered the December 26 tsunamis that left at least 217,000 people dead around the Indian Ocean, including 131,000 in Aceh alone.

Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific Rim of Fire, where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.

Fierce Santa Ana wind fanned the late-season blaze that started early Friday in School Canyon — a hilly, rocky area between Ventura and Ojai, about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

The blaze was 30 percent contained early Saturday. After mapping, fire officials reduced the size of the blaze from 4,000 to 3,700 acres.

"We still have a few hot spots, but the fire is mostly lying down," Inspector Ron Haralson of the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.

The origin point and cause of the fire were under investigation.

At midmorning Friday, a wall of flames as high as 30 feet snaked along hillsides, and by early afternoon a huge plume of whiskey-brown smoke carried ash to the nearby Pacific Ocean.

In just a few hours, the wind-driven fire tripled in size. But the fire calmed down in the early evening as a cooler onshore breeze helped lower the wind and the temperature.

The National Weather Service canceled a wind advisory, but forecasters cautioned the wind would continue in the area through early Sunday at 15 to 25 mph with isolated gusts near 35 mph. [...]

Officers answered an emergency call at the Malt-N-Burger Wednesday night and found Sharita Williams, 30, irate over the temperature of her food, the Thibodaux (La.) Daily Comet reported.

Williams reportedly told police she decided to call 911 after the restaurant refused to replace her cold onion rings with hot ones, the newspaper said.

Williams was arrested for misusing the 911 system and ordered to appear in court in December.

In the years since the 9/11 attacks, dozens of books have sought to explore the truth behind the official version of events that day - yet to date, none of these publications has provided a satisfactory answer as to WHY the attacks occurred and who was ultimately responsible for carrying them out.

Taking a broad, millennia-long perspective, Laura Knight-Jadczyk's 9/11: The Ultimate Truth uncovers the true nature of the ruling elite on our planet and presents new and ground-breaking insights into just how the 9/11 attacks played out.

9/11: The Ultimate Truth makes a strong case for the idea that September 11, 2001 marked the moment when our planet entered the final phase of a diabolical plan that has been many, many years in the making. It is a plan developed and nurtured by successive generations of ruthless individuals who relentlessly exploit the negative aspects of basic human nature to entrap humanity as a whole in endless wars and suffering in order to keep us confused and distracted to the reality of the man behind the curtain.

Drawing on historical and genealogical sources, Knight-Jadczyk eloquently links the 9/11 event to the modern-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She also cites the clear evidence that our planet undergoes periodic natural cataclysms, a cycle that has arguably brought humanity to the brink of destruction in the present day.

For its no nonsense style in cutting to the core of the issue and its sheer audacity in refusing to be swayed or distracted by the morass of disinformation that has been employed by the Powers that Be to cover their tracks, 9/11: The Ultimate Truth can rightly claim to be THE definitive book on 9/11 - and what that fateful day's true implications are for the future of mankind.