Paul E. Ester's Flogger

At the same May 2002 press briefing, Rice also said that “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.”

But the congressional report states that “from at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons.” … Rest of Article

Brett Hunt, a 2nd lieutenant with the Army’s 11th Signal Brigade and a Globe native, sent this note to his parents a week ago. His unit is north of Baghdad.


Hey Mom and Dad,

Things are fine here. It is soooooooooooo hot and nasty, but what are you going to do? It is just getting worse every day. I think I may have lice or fleas or something.

… Rest of Article

Within the past two months, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has ordered U.S. military commanders to devise a new war plan for a possible conflict with North Korea. Elements of the draft, known as Operations Plan 5030, are so aggressive that they could provoke a war, some senior Bush administration officials tell U.S. News.


… Rest of Article

Democratic congressman David Obey, who is investigating the OSP, said: “That office was charged with collecting, vetting and disseminating intelligence completely outside of the normal intelligence apparatus.

“In fact, it appears that information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the national security council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than political appointees.”

The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam’s Iraq than Mossad – a highly professional body – was prepared to authorise.

“None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels,” said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith’s authority without having to fill in the usual forms. … Rest of Article

RUMSFELD:Ê I have no idea.Ê You don’t listen.Ê I said I don’t know the answers to those questions. … Rest of Article

Microsoft is starting to shift U.S.-based jobs to India as it seeks to lower technical support and development costs, the company said Wednesday.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant, long seen as a growing company immune to job losses, is now considering cutbacks in the United States while increasing staff in India, which turns out tens of thousands of English-speaking software engineers each year.

“With lots of English-speaking talent, we were thinking of a better way to tap into that,” said S. Somasegar, Microsoft’s vice president of Windows engineering services.

Boosting employee ranks in India became a priority for Microsoft after its Chairman Bill Gates announced, during a visit to India in November, that the company would invest $400 million there over three years.

So far, Microsoft has about 200 engineers developing software in Hyderabad, the south India city where, five years ago, it opened its first product development center outside the United States. Rest of Article

Dell Computer Corp. said Thursday it will stop using a contractor that relies on prison labor to dismantle and recycle computers. … Rest of Article