“American military chiefs believe that the global war against terrorism will last at least six years,” The Telegraph reports. “Pentagon officials are being advised to draw up budgets and plans to buy new equipment on the assumption that the struggle against al-Qa’eda and other international terrorist groups will endure until 2008, and perhaps even longer.” Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, has won President Bush’s backing for a sharp increase in

I loved this little tidbit, “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” from the January 14th issue of The Weekly Standard (print edition): Washington, D.C., is a famously sensitive city when it comes to race–recall the firestorm when a city bureaucrat used the word ‘niggardly.’ But last week’s Washington Post may have set a new standard for artful racial euphemism. In a piece relating how Michael Jordan’s return to the Washington Wizards

From Xinhuanet: “The Palestinians and human rights organizations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are to submit evidence to the United Nations and international war crime tribunal seeking charges against Israeli army commanders, a statement said Saturday”: The statement referred to General Doron Almog, the Israeli army General in charge of the southern command, the Israeli army designated sector with responsibility for the town of Rafah in the Gaza

The AP is reporting that “The United States is allocating $100 million in aid for Uzbekistan for its support of the U.S.-led military operation in neighboring Afghanistan, a U.S. congressman said Saturday. The aid to the Central Asian nation so far has been targeted at military training and ensuring security, but will eventually expand to other sectors, U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., told reporters in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.” Kolbe

“The United States has led Western support for a major speech by the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, aimed at defusing tensions with India and curbing Islamic extremism within Pakistan. The White House said President George Bush welcomed what he saw as the Pakistani leader’s firm decision to stand against terrorism and extremism,” BBC News reports. The United States welcomes President Musharraf’s explicit statements against terrorism and particularly notes his pledge

“U.S. Senator Joseph Biden said Western nations should immediately release frozen Taliban assets to provide the government with about $100 million for its six-month term replacing the hard-line Islamic rulers. “‘For a government to maintain any credibility with the people, it has to have the ability to pay people’s salaries, turn on the lights, be able to have desks, stationery, telephones, fax machines, et cetera,’” the chairman of the Senate

The Washington Times’ Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough report that al Qaeda Islamopuds are fleeing by sea. A recent search of a foreign freighter by the U.S. Navy revealed that a group of al Qaeda fighters had been hiding inside a shipping container, officials told us. Inside the container, searchers found materials and equipment linked to the terrorist group, but not the terrorists themselves. The group apparently escaped from the

The Weekly Standard

U2

In Manchester, Connecticut, a 9-year old girl