Saddam Hussein

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A Kurdish villager mocked Saddam Hussein in court yesterday as the man recalled the disappearance of his relatives during his former regime's 1980s military campaign in northern Iraq. "Congratulations! You are in a cage," said the witness, Ghafour Hassan Abdullah, addressing Hussein and his six co-defendants, who were seated inside a metal grating placed in the courtroom. Hussein's patience failed as a defense lawyer described Iraqi Kurdish rebels as freedom fighters.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush, in a televised address last night, called the war in Iraq "a struggle for civilization" that Americans should "put aside our differences" to win, capping a day of hushed remembrances, tolling bells and wailing bagpipes on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. After a daylong tour that took him to the sites in New York's financial district, rural Pennsylvania and Northern Virginia where airplanes-turned-bombs struck that day, Bush said the war would "set the course for this new century."

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Intelligence Committee said yesterday that it had found no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaida or provided a haven for one of its most notorious operatives, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- conclusions that contradict claims by the Bush administration before it invaded Iraq. In a long-awaited report, the committee instead determined that the Iraqi dictator was wary of al-Qaida, repeatedly rebuffing requests from its leader, Osama bin Laden, for assistance, and that he sought to capture al-Zarqawi when the terrorist turned up in Baghdad.

NATIONAL Bush's bill challenges criticized An American Bar Association task force concluded that President Bush's unprecedented challenges to bills he signed into law pose a dangerous challenge to constitutional checks and balances. pg 1A MARYLAND School rehires questioned The new Anne Arundel County schools superintendent wants to rehire two recently retired administrators in an arrangement that would get around state retirement rules. But some school board members are questioning the cost and the propriety of the two-year deal.

WASHINGTON -- One should not speak ill of the dead, but an exception easily can be made for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The only tears he will probably earn are the tears of anguish for those he murdered, maimed or otherwise brutalized. He was a true thug among terrorist leaders, a street gangster who hijacked Islam and turned from petty crime to mass murder. Although it remains to be seen just how great the impact of Mr. al-Zarqawi's death will be, it will not be small. His troops constituted only a small fraction of the more than 60 insurgent groups causing mayhem in Iraq, but he enhanced his influence through fear spread with a publicity-hungry ruthlessness, including videotaped beheadings.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq assured Iran yesterday that it supports Iran's right to develop nuclear energy and will not allow Iraqi territory to be used to threaten Iran, adopting a position at odds with America's view that Iran should abandon its nuclear program. Speaking during a visit by the Iranian foreign minister to Iraq to congratulate the new Iraqi government formed a week ago, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Iraq's new government "is a friendly government to Iran." "Iraq definitely will not be a place to threaten Iran from," Zebari said at a news conference in Baghdad, with the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, standing at his side.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A characteristically defiant Saddam Hussein refused to enter a plea to formal charges of crimes against humanity yesterday, lashing out at the judge while insisting he was still Iraq's leader as the defense phase of the trial got under way. "I can't reduce my answer to `yes' or `no,' " he told Judge Raouf Abdel Rahman, who demanded that Hussein answer the charges of murder, forcible deportation, imprisonment and torture of villagers in...

CHICAGO -- Should the president fire Donald H. Rumsfeld? That's like asking if Disney should retire Mickey Mouse. Why get rid of someone who represents everything important about an institution - particularly if doing so leaves those things unchanged? No, President Bush should keep Mr. Rumsfeld as a perennial symbol of the administration's essential characteristic: hubris. If you want to know what went wrong in the presidency of George W. Bush, you could find plenty of candidates. There is its ineptitude, as when it ignored warnings about al-Qaida until Sept.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Bombarded with questions during the first cross-examination in his trial, Saddam Hussein admitted yesterday that he had signed an order of execution for 148 men and boys with only a cursory glance at the evidence. The testimony appeared to bolster the case of the prosecution in a tumultuous six-month trial that has been dogged by problems ranging from assassinations to political infighting. It is still widely seen as illegitimate by many international observers and human rights advocates.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein took the witness stand at his trial for the first time yesterday and openly incited insurgents to continue resisting the U.S. military presence in Iraq, prompting the chief judge to close the session to journalists and the public. Rather than answer capital charges that he orchestrated the torture and killing of Shiite Muslims in the 1980s, the deposed president delivered a rambling 49-minute harangue, his longest and most inflammatory of the five-month-old trial.