New Hampshire Health News Digest

Why are we still here? - Pat Buchanan For less than three months after the fall of Baghdad, we have lost almost as many men in Iraq as we did in three weeks of war. One U.S. soldier is now dying there every day. "Mission Accomplished," read the banner behind President Bush as he spoke from the carrier deck of the Lincoln. But if the original mission � to oust Saddam and end the mortal threat of his weapons of mass destruction � is "accomplished," why are we still there? What is our new mission? What are the standards by which we may measure success? What will be the cost in blood and treasure? When can we expect to turn Iraq back over to the Iraqis? Or is ours to be a permanent presence, as in postwar Germany and Japan? If that sergeant does not know what he is doing there, it is because his commander in chief has left him, and us, in the dark. And if the president does not begin soon to lay out the case for why we must keep 150,000 men in Iraq, the A...

FOXNews.com WASHINGTON � When President Bush took office in January 2001, the White House was told that Predator drones (search) had recently spotted Usama bin Laden as many as three times and officials were urged to arm the unmanned planes with missiles to kill the Al Qaeda (search) leader. But the administration failed to get drones back into the Afghan skies until after the Sept. 11 attacks later that year, current and former U.S. officials say.

The Globe and Mail Iraq now: 20 questions Is there power? Health care? How many troops remain? How many people died? In Baghdad, Globe correspondent MARK MacKINNON answers some lingering questions about the aftermath of the war in Iraq

CBS News | Iraq's 1st Public Poll Backs U.S. The Pentagon has been playing down the attacks, saying they don't indicate widespread resentment on the part of the Iraqi people. Now, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, Iraq's first-ever public opinion poll seems to back that up. Sixty-five percent of Iraqis polled in Baghdad claimed they want the U.S. military to stay until Iraq is stable and secure; only 17 percent want American soldiers out now. But some U.S. lawmakers are increasingly uneasy about the daily killings of soldiers, the stretching thin of troop forces, excessive demands on reservists and the costs of the war.

U.S. Troops Frustrated With Role In Iraq (washingtonpost.com) By Daniel Williams and Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, June 20, 2003; Page A01 BAGHDAD, June 19 -- Facing daily assaults from a well-armed resistance, U.S. troops in volatile central Iraq say they are growing frustrated and disillusioned with their role as postwar peacekeepers. In conversations in a half-dozen towns across central Iraq, soldiers complained that they have been insufficiently equipped for peacekeeping and too thinly deployed in areas where they are under attack from fighters evidently loyal to deposed president Saddam Hussein. Others questioned whether the armed opposition to the U.S. presence in Iraq may be deeper and more organized than military commanders have acknowledged.

Newsday.com - Iraqi Arms Tied to al-Qaida Iraqi Arms Tied to al-Qaida Found in raids in Saudi Arabia June 17, 2003 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Weapons and explosives smuggled out of Iraq after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime may have ended up in the hands of al-Qaida militants in Saudi Arabia, according to Saudi officials and a former Iraqi army officer. Part of a major arms cache discovered by Saudi authorities during a May 6 raid in Riyadh appears to have come from Iraq, according to a Saudi official and the former Iraqi officer. The raid had targeted 19 al-Qaida members who fled during a shoot-out with Saudi security forces. At least three of the fugitives died when they took part in a series of simultaneous suicide bombings in Riyadh a week later, Saudi officials said.

CNN.com - U.S.: Leading Saddam aide caught - Jun. 19, 2003 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. forces in Iraq have captured Gen. Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, who was Saddam Hussein's personal secretary, national security adviser and senior bodyguard, Pentagon sources said Wednesday. Mahmud is the ace of diamonds in the U.S. military's deck of 55 most-wanted Iraqis and No. 4 on the list behind Saddam and his sons Uday and Qusay. (Flash card deck: Iraq's most-wanted; non-Flash gallery) Mahmud may know a lot about the location of Iraq's possible weapons of mass destruction and whereabouts of the former Iraqi leader, one official told CNN.

Specials > Iraq in Transition EXTRA! Iraqi men sell newspapers to motorists in Baghdad. US officials say some news outlets are inciting violence against US troops. In volatile Iraq, US curbs press US issues an order against inciting attacks on minorities or US troops. BAGHDAD � The once occasional attacks on US soldiers here are growing deadlier, and more frequent: Wednesday, a US soldier was killed and another wounded in a drive-by shooting. And outside the former Republican Palace, now the headquarters of the US administration, US troops killed two Iraqis during a protest by former Iraqi soldiers that spiraled out of control. At least some of the fuel for the anti-American fire, US officials here charge, is being pumped out by new Iraqi media outlets. L. Paul Bremer, the top US official here, says a new edict prohibiting the local media from inciting attacks on other Iraqis - and on the coalition forces - is not meant to put a stopper on the recently uncorke...

The New Pet Craze: Robovacs Scientists believe that robot pets trigger a hard-wired nurturing response in humans. It appears robot vacuums tap into the same instincts. MIT anthropologist Sherry Turkle, one of the leading researchers in the field, is conducting studies on how children perceive smart toys like the Aibo, Furby, Tamagotchi and My Real Baby. She says humans are programmed to respond in a caring way to creatures, even brand-new artificial ones. When Sony first released its robot dog, the Aibo, it was surprising to many that owners bonded with their mechanical pets in ways akin to how they would relate to cats and dogs. Since then, the attachment to Aibos and other mechanical toys has become the subject of academic inquiry. Researchers at the University of Washington are also examining how children and the elderly interact with the Aibo.

The Observer | International | Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.

Weak spy network hurt hunt for arms By John Diamond, USA TODAY WASHINGTON � Slightly more than a year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the CIA launched a major effort to rebuild its network of Iraqi agents, which had been badly depleted by repeated purges, according to congressional and Bush administration officials with knowledge of the effort. (Related story: Broad purges wiped out most Iraqis helping CIA) Despite the commitment of substantial resources, however, the CIA had only modest success in reconstituting its organization inside Iraq. By the end of 2002, Iraqis working for the CIA had begun providing helpful information about Iraq's conventional weapons and other matters relating to the looming U.S. invasion. But the agents had provided no incontrovertible evidence of chemical or biological weapons, the officials said. The difficulty the CIA had keeping its Iraqi agents alive underscores the challenges U.S. intelligence faced in locating the banned weapons U.S....

Asia Times Central Asia US turns to the Taliban By Syed Saleem Shahzad KARACHI - Such is the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, compounded by the return to the country of a large number of former Afghan communist refugees, that United States and Pakistani intelligence officials have met with Taliban leaders in an effort to devise a political solution to prevent the country from being further ripped apart. According to a Pakistani jihadi leader who played a role in setting up the communication, the meeting took place recently between representatives of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Taliban leaders at the Pakistan Air Force base of Samungli, near Quetta. The source told Asia Times Online that four conditions were put to the Taliban before any form of reconciliation can take place that could potentially lead to them having a role in the Kabul government, whose present authority is in essence lim...

fun game:

TIME.com: Secret Armies of the Night -- Jun. 23, 2003 N A T I O N Sidelined for years, U.S. special forces are changing the way America fights. An exclusive look at how they fared in the war in Iraq and how they're remaking the military

Banker, Schmoozer, Spy To his American friends, Ahmad Chalabi is a democrat and a paragon of Iraqi patriotism. To his enemies, he�s a crook. Does he have the stuff to reshape Iraq? A NEWSWEEK investigation May 12 issue � In the battered precincts of Baghdad�s Hunting Club, Ahmad Chalabi holds forth on the bright future of his country and the sordid history of his enemies. The Iraqi financier and freedom fighter, just returned to his homeland after 45 years in exile, says he�s taken possession of 25 tons of documents from Saddam Hussein�s secret police, and he�s thinking how best to use them.