Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.
So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.
First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.
There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.
Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"
Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.
Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."
In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.
Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.
Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."
I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.
At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.
Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.
So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.
Rescuers are scouring New Orleans for the last survivors of Hurricane Katrina after what has been called the largest emergency airlift in US history.
Up to 40 aircraft operating around the clock finally cleared thousands from squalid conditions at the Louisiana city's Superdome and convention centre.
Survivors have been telling harrowing tales of violence inside the complex.
President George W Bush has ordered thousands of extra troops to the area, amid criticism of the rescue effort.
The majority of those in most desperate need of relief were impoverished black people who may not have had the means to leave the affected area ahead of Hurricane Katrina.
A huge airlift rescues thousands of survivors from New Orleans
Civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson has said racial injustice was to blame for the delayed response to the disaster.
Senior cabinet members, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are due to tour the disaster area, which takes in three states - Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Ms Rice, the most senior black politician in government, is due to visit the town of Mobile in her home state of Alabama.
Utilities experts were due to enter the city for the first time to assess the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and the failure of New Orleans' flood defences.
The first few days were a natural disaster, the last four days were a man-made disaster
After spending days without food, water or medicines among rubbish and human waste, survivors appeared stunned as they stumbled towards buses and helicopters.
The exact number of victims is still unknown, but thousands are believed to have died.
The bodies of people who had died while waiting to be rescued could be seen among the survivors just outside the convention centre.
Many survivors said they had witnessed scenes of violence, including rapes and murders at the shelters carried out by criminal gangs.
Urgency
The BBC's James Coomarasamy in New Orleans says the arrival of thousands of soldiers has finally made a difference by bringing an overdue sense of urgency to the evacuation process.
On Saturday, in a televised address from the White House, Mr Bush acknowledged the response had been insufficient and spoke of an "incalculable" human cost.
More than 10,000 people were rescued from New Orleans
"The magnitude of responding to a crisis over a disaster area that is larger than the size of Great Britain has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," he said.
"The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable."
The president has signed off a $10.5bn (£5.7bn) emergency spending package approved by Congress.
More than one million people are said to be displaced. Most of them are in Texas, Tennessee, Indiana and Arkansas.
The US has asked the European Union and the Nato alliance to send emergency aid, including blankets, food and water trucks.
US televangelist Pat Robertson has called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez while a radio host has been fired by a Washington station after he refused to apologise for calling Islam a terrorist organisation.
Calling Chavez a "terrific danger" to the US, Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former presidential candidate, said on Monday on his TV show The 700 Club, that it was the duty of the US to stop Chavez from making Venezuela a "launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism".
Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of US President George Bush, accusing the US of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him.
US officials have called the accusations ridiculous.
"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson said.
"It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."
A message to a Robertson spokeswoman were not returned.
Covert operatives
Robertson accused the US of failing to act when Chavez was briefly overthrown in 2002.
"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said.
"We don't need another $200-billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."
In a separate development, conservative radio host Michael Graham was suspended by WMAL-AM after his 25 July broadcast drew protests from the Council on American-Islam Relations.
According to CAIR, Graham, who had a daily three-hour talk show on WMAL, had said: "We are at war with a terrorist organisation named Islam."
No retraction
On his website on Monday, Graham said WMAL had asked him to retract his comments about Islam and deliver an on-air apology. "I refused," he said. "And for that refusal, I was fired."
WMAL president and general manager Chris Berry told the industry publication Radio & Records: "Some of Michael's statements about Islam went over the line - and this isn't the first time that he has been reprimanded for insensitive language and comments.
"I asked Michael for an on-air acknowledgment that some of his remarks were overly broad and inexplicably he refused."
CAIR executive director Nihad Awad said on Monday: "Although we are saddened that Michael Graham would not take responsibility for his hate-filled words, we do welcome WMAL's action as a step towards removing some of the harmful anti-Muslim rhetoric that fill our nation's airwaves."
Graham blamed the Muslim group for his firing. "As a fan of talk radio, I find it absolutely outrageous that pressure from a special interest group like CAIR can result in the abandonment of free speech and open discourse on a talk radio show," he said.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative U.S. evangelist Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but top U.S. officials denied on Tuesday that any such illegal act was being contemplated.
Venezuelan officials said Robertson's remarks were ``a call to terrorism,'' and demanded President George W. Bush condemn his political ally and fellow Christian conservative. But Chavez, who was winding up a three-day visit to communist ally Cuba, told reporters he didn't care about Robertson. ``I don't even know who this person is.''
Robertson, the founder of the Christian Coalition and a presidential candidate in 1988, said Chavez, one of Bush's most vocal critics, was a ``terrific danger'' to the United States and intended to become ``the launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.''
``We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,'' Robertson said during Monday broadcast of his religious ``The 700 Club'' program.
``We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator,'' he continued. ``It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.''
SILENT WHITE HOUSE
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed Robertson's remarks, but the White House remained silent despite calls for repudiation from Venezuela and religious leaders including the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
``Certainly it's against the law. Our department doesn't do that type of thing,'' Rumsfeld told reporters.
Both he and State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the remarks were from a private citizen and did not represent the U.S. government position. ``Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time,'' Rumsfeld added.
McCormack added, ``Any accusations or any idea that we are planning to take hostile action against Venezuela or the Venezuelan government -- any ideas in that regard are totally without fact and baseless.''
Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, said Bush needs to guarantee Chavez's safety at next month's United Nations meeting in New York.
``Mr Robertson has been one of this president's staunchest allies. His statement demands the strongest condemnation by the White House,'' Alvarez said.
In Caracas, Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said, ``This is a huge hypocrisy to maintain an anti-terrorist line and at the same time have such terrorist statements as these made by Christian preacher Pat Robertson coming from the same country.''
The leftist Chavez has often accused the United States of plotting his overthrow or assassination. Alongside Cuban President Fidel Castro in Havana on Sunday, Chavez scoffed at the idea that he and Castro were destabilizing troublemakers.
Chavez survived a short-lived coup in 2002 that he says was backed by the United States. Washington denies involvement.
'CHEAPER THAN STARTING A WAR'
Chavez was first elected in 1998 and won a referendum on his rule last year. Polls show he would be re-elected in 2006. Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil exporting country and a major supplier to the United States.
In his broadcast, Robertson said: ``You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.
``It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.''
The comments hearkened back to a long history of U.S. political and military interventions in Latin America including the invasions of Grenada in 1983 and Haiti in 1994, attempts to assassinate Castro and a CIA-backed coup in Chile in 1973.
Political assassination as U.S. policy has been prohibited since 1976.
Despite the attention by government officials, media and religious leaders, Robertson made no further comment.
Jackson called Robertson's remarks ``morally degenerate'' and said Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ``cannot be silent on such a suggestion by one who has had such a relationship with the White House.'' He plans to meet with religious leaders in Venezuela next week.
This was only the most recent explosive Robertson remark. Criticizing the State Department in 2003, he said ``maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up.''
Robertson's ``700 Club'' reaches an average 1 million American viewers daily, according to his Web site.
Mr Bush is trying to win back political and public support
US President George W Bush is to interrupt his summer holiday again to give a speech on the war on terrorism later on Wednesday.
Earlier this week he spoke out in defence of the war in Iraq, saying US troops would stay to finish the job.
Mr Bush is facing mounting problems politically and in terms of public opinion, says the BBC's defence and security correspondent.
Opinion polls suggest more than 50% of Americans think Iraq is going badly.
Most also believe some or all US troops should be withdrawn from Iraq, according to the polls.
The BBC's Rob Watson reports that there even signs of splits within the president's Republican party, with at least one senior senator making that most damaging of all comparisons by likening Iraq to Vietnam.
Meanwhile the US anti-war movement has been reinvigorated by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq.
Ms Sheehan's supporters have been camped outside the president's ranch at Crawford, Texas.
Familiar language
The Bush administration is trying to win back public and political support for the war.
This is not a president who would be interrupting his summer holidays unless he thought his political future was really at stake, our correspondent says.
The president is likely to repeat Monday's message that a policy of retreat and isolation will not bring America safety.
In that speech, Mr Bush used now-familiar language to urge Americans to stand united in the war in Iraq - and the wider war on terror.
He again stated that US troops would only come home from Iraq when the Iraqi security forces could "stand up" to take the fight to insurgents.
BEIJING, Friday, July 15 - China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official said Thursday.
"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," the official, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, said at an official briefing.
General Zhu, considered a hawk, stressed that his comments reflected his personal views and not official policy. Beijing has long insisted that it will not initiate the use of nuclear weapons in any conflict.
But in extensive comments to a visiting delegation of correspondents based in Hong Kong, General Zhu said he believed that the Chinese government was under internal pressure to change its "no first use" policy and to make clear that it would employ the most powerful weapons at its disposal to defend its claim over Taiwan.
"War logic" dictates that a weaker power needs to use maximum efforts to defeat a stronger rival, he said, speaking in fluent English. "We have no capability to fight a conventional war against the United States," General Zhu said. "We can't win this kind of war."
Whether or not the comments signal a shift in Chinese policy, they come at a sensitive time in relations between China and the United States.
The Pentagon is preparing the release of a long-delayed report on the Chinese military that some experts say will warn that China could emerge as a strategic rival to the United States. National security concerns have also been a major issue in the $18.5 billion bid by Cnooc Ltd., a major Chinese oil and gas company, to purchase the Unocal Corporation, the American energy concern.
China has had atomic bombs since 1964 and currently has a small arsenal of land- and sea-based nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States, according to most Western intelligence estimates. Some Pentagon officials have argued that China has been expanding the size and sophistication of its nuclear bombs and delivery systems, while others argue that Beijing has done little more than maintain a minimal but credible deterrent against a nuclear attack.
Beijing has said repeatedly that it would use military force to prevent Taiwan from becoming a formally independent country. President Bush has made clear that the United States would defend Taiwan.
Many military analysts have assumed that any battle over Taiwan would be localized, with both China and the United States taking care to ensure that it would not expand into a general war between the two powers.
But the comments by General Zhu suggest that at least some elements of the military are prepared to widen the conflict, perhaps to persuade the United States that it could no more successfully fight a limited war against China than it could against the former Soviet Union.
"If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond," he said. "We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."
General Zhu's threat is not the first of its kind from a senior Chinese military official. In 1995, Xiong Guangkai, who is now the deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, told Chas W. Freeman, a former Pentagon official, that China would consider using nuclear weapons in a Taiwan conflict. Mr. Freeman quoted Mr. Xiong as saying that Americans should worry more about Los Angeles than Taipei.
Foreign Ministry officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment about General Zhu's remarks.
General Zhu said he had recently expressed his views to former American officials, including Mr. Freeman and Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the former commander in chief of the United States Pacific Command.
David Lague of The International Herald Tribune contributed reporting for this article.
A senior Chinese general has warned that Beijing was ready to use nuclear weapons against the United States if Washington attacked his country over Taiwan, the Financial Times newspaper reported.
Reuters
Zhu Chenghu, a major general in the People's Liberation Army(PLA) who said he was expressing his own views and did not anticipate a conflict with Washington, nevertheless said China would have no option but to go nuclear in the event of an attack.
"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," he told an official briefing for foreign journalists on Friday.
Zhu said the reason was the inability of China to wage a conventional war against Washington.
Nuclear response
"If the Americans are determined to interfere ... we will be determined to respond," he said.
"Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese"
Maj Gen Zhu Chenghu. PLA, China
"We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese," he added.
The newspaper observed that it was unclear what prompted the remarks, but noted that they were the most specific by a senior Chinese official in nearly a decade.
During a visit to Beijing earlier this month US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there should be no unilateral change in the status quo over the disputed island of Taiwan.
"That means that we don't support unilateral moves toward independence by Taiwan. It also means that we are concerned about the military balance, and we'll say to China that they should do nothing militarily to provoke Taiwan," she added.
In this former imperial capital, every square seems to contain a giant statue of a Habsburg on horseback, posing as a conquering hero.
America's founders knew all too well how war appeals to the vanity of rulers and their thirst for glory. That's why they took care to deny presidents the kingly privilege of making war at their own discretion.
But after 9/11 President Bush, with obvious relish, declared himself a "war president." And he kept the nation focused on martial matters by morphing the pursuit of Al Qaeda into a war against Saddam Hussein.
In November 2002, Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent, told an audience, "I have never covered a president who actually wanted to go to war" - but she made it clear that Mr. Bush was the exception. And she was right.
Leading the nation wrongfully into war strikes at the heart of democracy. It would have been an unprecedented abuse of power even if the war hadn't turned into a military and moral quagmire. And we won't be able to get out of that quagmire until we face up to the reality of how we got in.
Let me talk briefly about what we now know about the decision to invade Iraq, then focus on why it matters.
The administration has prevented any official inquiry into whether it hyped the case for war. But there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that it did.
And then there's the Downing Street Memo - actually the minutes of a prime minister's meeting in July 2002 - in which the chief of British overseas intelligence briefed his colleagues about his recent trip to Washington.
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam," says the memo, "through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." It doesn't get much clearer than that.
The U.S. news media largely ignored the memo for five weeks after it was released in The Times of London. Then some asserted that it was "old news" that Mr. Bush wanted war in the summer of 2002, and that W.M.D. were just an excuse. No, it isn't. Media insiders may have suspected as much, but they didn't inform their readers, viewers and listeners. And they have never held Mr. Bush accountable for his repeated declarations that he viewed war as a last resort.
Still, some of my colleagues insist that we should let bygones be bygones. The question, they say, is what we do now. But they're wrong: it's crucial that those responsible for the war be held to account.
Let me explain. The United States will soon have to start reducing force levels in Iraq, or risk seeing the volunteer Army collapse. Yet the administration and its supporters have effectively prevented any adult discussion of the need to get out.
On one side, the people who sold this war, unable to face up to the fact that their fantasies of a splendid little war have led to disaster, are still peddling illusions: the insurgency is in its "last throes," says Dick Cheney. On the other, they still have moderates and even liberals intimidated: anyone who suggests that the United States will have to settle for something that falls far short of victory is accused of being unpatriotic.
We need to deprive these people of their ability to mislead and intimidate. And the best way to do that is to make it clear that the people who led us to war on false pretenses have no credibility, and no right to lecture the rest of us about patriotism.
The good news is that the public seems ready to hear that message - readier than the media are to deliver it. Major media organizations still act as if only a small, left-wing fringe believes that we were misled into war, but that "fringe" now comprises much if not most of the population.
In a Gallup poll taken in early April - that is, before the release of the Downing Street Memo - 50 percent of those polled agreed with the proposition that the administration "deliberately misled the American public" about Iraq's W.M.D. In a new Rasmussen poll, 49 percent said that Mr. Bush was more responsible for the war than Saddam Hussein, versus 44 percent who blamed Saddam.
Once the media catch up with the public, we'll be able to start talking seriously about how to get out of Iraq.
Wednesday 25 May 2005, 19:39 Makka Time, 16:39 GMT
An international human rights group has accused Israel of committing abuses that constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The annual report by the humanrights watchdog group Amnesty International (AI) criticised the Israeli use ofPalestinians as human shields, extra-judicial killings, systematic housedemolitions, torture, collective punishment and closures and deliberate killingof civilians.
Some 700Palestinians were killed byIsraeli occupying forces last year alone, an increase from last year's figure of 600, according to the report. 150 of these were children, many killeddeliberately, most unlawfully, charged the watchdog group.
"Many were killed in deliberate aswell as reckless shooting, shelling and bombardment of densely populatedresidential areas or as a result of excessive use of force," said the group.
The report also said some 109 Israelis, most of them civilians and including eight children, were killedby Palestinian armed groups in bombings, shootings and mortar attacksinsideIsraeland in theOccupiedTerritories.
But AI also accused the Israeliarmy of granting impunity to soldiers and settlers whose crimes against innocentPalestinians went unpunished.
"In the overwhelmingmajority of the thousands of cases of unlawful killings and other grave humanrights violations committed by Israeli soldiers in the previous four years, noinvestigations were known to have been carried out," the report stated.
House demolitions
The group went on to attackIsrael 's policies of house demolitions inthe southern Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army destroyed 300 homes anddamaged about 270 others in a refugee camp in Rafah, leaving close to 4,000Palestinians homeless
"Routine destruction of Palestinianhomes, land and property in theWest Bankand Gaza Strip was stepped up in thebiggest wave of house demolitions in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of theintifada," said the report.
Amnesty further criticizedIsrael 's continual expansion of theillegal separation wall and increased attacks by Jewish settlers againstPalestinians and international activists, and the destruction of their propertyand crops.
Separation Wall
"The fence/wall and hundreds ofIsraeli army checkpoints and blockades throughout theOccupiedTerritoriescontinued to hinder or preventPalestinians' access to their land, their workplaces and to education, healthand other crucial services," wrote the group.
The Hague-based International Courtof Justice ruled unlawful the construction byIsraelof a barrier inside the occupiedWest Banklast July.
The Israeli army declined to commenton the report.
In a chapter devoted to thePalestinian Authority, the human rights group said security officials wereinvolved in fighting between various militant groups, which killed dozens ofPalestinians.
According to AI, 18 Palestinians were killed in the clashes after they were suspectedof collaboration with Israel.
The excuses
The report further criticized theUnitedStatesfor disregardingrule of law world-wide, andIsrael,among others, for defying humanrights in the name of "counter-terrorism".
"TheUSA,as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviourworldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at therule of law and human rights, it grants a license to others to commit abuse withimpunity and audacity," read the report.
"FromIsraeltoUzbekistan,EgypttoNepal, governments have openly defiedhuman rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national securityand 'counter-terrorism'" it concluded.
Uproar
The report has caused an uproar inIsrael, with Yahad (Meretz) lawmaker Zahava Gal-On on Wednesday calling for anurgent Knesset debate following its publication.
The Israeligovernment, meanwhile, accused the human rights watchdog group of holding a "very one-sidedand extremist position".
Eimat Hurvitz,of AmnestyInternational's Israeli office, rejected such claims, saying thatIsraelis judged by the samestandard as other nations."These are not new definitions [ofwar crimes], they are taken from the Nuremburg trial after the Holocaust thatbrought to trial Nazi leaders:crimes that are perpetrated againstcivilians and that are part of a systemic policy," explained Huvitz.
Hurvitz told Aljazeera.net:
He give theexample of the Israeli assassination of Palestinians as a policy that "takesinto account civilians deaths but doesn't take them into account".
In the end, Hurvitz said definitionsare not important; abiding by the report is.
"What's important is how do we innext year, what's important is to have less attacks against civilians or
OUR pictures of Saddam Hussein rocked the US — and were beamed around the world.
Americans woke to find the The Sun on all the news channels with our exclusive the top story on CNN.
The New York Post carried the pictures on its front page, along with our famous red logo.
It said: “Most Iraqis don’t know how Saddam can even sleep at night, but these photos show that when he does get some shut-eye, he bundles up against the cold like a street bum.”
Fox News anchor David Asman said: “This has really steamed some of the top brass at the Pentagon.”
CBS’s Early Show correspondent Steve Holt said: “They are truly remarkable pictures.”
Newspapers followed up our exclusive from Germany and Italy to India and Australia. The pictures were shown on TV in China and Hong Kong. And they were even screened in Baghdad by a Dubai-based station.
Back in Britain three 30p copies of The Sun, headlined Tyrant’s In His Pants, were cheekily put up for sale worldwide on eBay — with bids rising up to £4.40. The auction will continue for four days.
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In pictures
The first few days were a natural disaster, the last four days were a man-made disaster 
