Vermont, where nearly three quarters of residents oppose the Iraq war, has the nation's highest per capita death rate in the conflict. It's a statistic seemingly at odds with the state's reputation as a liberal utopia, a low-stress playground for snowboarders and the escape-from-New York crowd. But with the tally of dead American servicemen and women now past 3,000, the situation in Iraq grim, and President Bush calling for more troops, many Vermonters are asking whether they've already sacrificed too much for a cause whose lofty aims they think may be unreachable.
No one could envy President Bush in trying to sell his new plan for Iraq. He has lost the confidence of the nation, the Congress, and an increasing number of his own Republican Party members, for the inept way we allowed the military triumph in Iraq to disintegrate into an ignominious failure. For the president to admit having made errors in Iraq is fine, but it is also galling because many of the mistakes made there were foreseen and warned of; the warnings fell on utterly deaf ears.
Botulinum is right up there next to anthrax and smallpox on the Department of Homeland Security's short list of potential agents of bioterrorism. But modern medicine has harnessed the neurotoxin's destructive power, turning it into a veritable magic microbullet for both rare neuromuscular diseases and the most common of human afflictions, the furrowed brow. Innovation alone, however, does not explain the rapid conversion of the poison from demon to saint. This could not have happened without the Food and Drug Administration, which enabled the drug's ever expanded use and meteoric public acceptance.
AP - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro is in "very grave" condition after three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection, a Spanish newspaper said Tuesday.
AP - The Iraqi government's attempt Monday to close a chapter on Saddam Hussein's repressive regime — by hanging two of his henchmen — left many of Saddam's fellow Sunni Muslims seething after the former leader's half brother was decapitated on the gallows.
AP - A storm blamed for at least 41 deaths in six states spread into the Northeast on Monday, coating trees, power lines and roads with a shell of ice up to a half-inch thick and knocking out power to more than half a million homes and businesses.
Britain's secret intelligence service, MI6, has challenged the government's claim that a major corruption inquiry into Saudi Arabian arms deals was threatening national security.
A journalist who saw videotape of the hangings of Saddam Hussein's half-brother and the dictator's former chief judge has described how one of the men was decapitated. John F. Burns, from the New York Times, told CNN that Barzan Hassan al-Tikriti's head "just snapped off." He said both men looked "deeply frightened" in the execution chamber.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro suffered from a serious infection of the large intestine and remains in critical condition, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported Monday.
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