August 09, 2002
British MP Says Britain Won’t Join an Attack on Iraq (4:18)
A top US military chief today said that resuming weapons inspections in Iraq would be ineffective because its most feared arsenal could easily be hidden. Iraq, which has refused to deal with U.N. inspectors since they left nearly four years ago, last week invited the chief inspector to Baghdad for talks on weapons issues. This as Dick Armey, a Texas Republican who is the majority leader of the House of Representatives, said yesterday that the United States had no business making a preemptive attack against Iraq, even if Iraq refused to allow weapons inspectors into the country. And in Baghdad yesterday, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein voiced new defiance toward the West, warning that anyone who attacked Iraq would be “digging their own graves.” We go now to British MP from the Labor Party, George Galloway who has just met with Saddam Hussein.
Another Texas Execution (3:20)
In a highly unusual step, a United Nations human rights body has called on U.S. authorities to stay the execution and reexamine the case of a Mexican man scheduled to die next week in Texas. Javier Suarez Medina is set to be executed by lethal injection on August 14, but his right to a fair trial was impaired, according to a statement adopted late yesterday by the U.N. Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. This, as last night the State of Texas executed T. J. Jones. Amnesty international said that as a teenage offender, Jones “would not be facing this punishment in almost any other country in the world.” Ernesto Aguilar has more from Texas.
British MP visits Libya (4:12)
In the first visit of a British minister to Libya in more than twenty years, Mike O’Brien met with Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, in order to enlist Libya’s support in the “war on terrorism.” Libya, which only in May was accused by US Undersecretary of State John Bolton as being a member of a new “axis of evil” by seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction, has made a number of concessions which may lead to the full lifting of UN sanctions. From London, Free Speech Radio News correspondent Sasha Lilley has more.
The Hague Invasion Act (3:00)
The lobby group Human Rights Watch has warned that the Bush Administration will stop at nothing in its campaign against the new International Criminal Court – the ICC, which was established at The Hague last month. The American Service Members Protection Act, which has been signed into law by President George Bush – authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American citizen being held by the Court. The new law, dubbed – the Hague invasion act – has provoked a strong reaction from US allies around the world – as Geraldine Coughlan reports from The Hague.
Operation TIPS Directs Calls to America’s Most Wanted (4:33)
If House Majority Leader Dick Armey gets his way, Operation TIPS, a Justice Department program to get as many as 24 million Americans to spy on their neighbors, will never get off the ground. The conservative Republican placed an amendment in the Homeland Security bill recently passed by the House specifically prohibiting the government from implementing the plan. But the bill isn’t law yet. And, as Kellia Ramares reports, the Bush Administration, which touts the virtues of public-private partnerships, has apparently been caught trying to marry its so-called war on terrorism to TV entertainment in a way that goes well beyond re-running old war movies.
