U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said yesterday there are no “defining moments” in Iraq. “I don’t think there is a date on the calendar, whether it’s in September or any other time in which you can say, ‘This is the defining moment. It’s all coming together, or it’s all falling apart.’ It’s an enormously complex situation.”
President Bush said he can’t recall when he learned that Army Ranger Pat Tillman died by friendly fire. Just days before Bush delivered a 2004 speech that made reference to Tillman, a top general had written a memo to Gen. John Abizaid, then head of Central Command, warning that it was “highly possible” that Tillman was killed by friendly fire and making clear that the information should be conveyed to the president.
“The next decade will be a hot one, according to scientists unveiling the first 10-year projection of global warming. … The significance of the new study is that over the last century, global warming has contributed to about a one-degree rise in average temperatures.”
“Nearly half the people murdered in the U.S. each year are black, part of a persistent pattern in which African Americans are disproportionately victimized by violent crime, according to a new Justice Department study released yesterday.”
“I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers,” said former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani yesterday. “I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I’m one of them.” Battalion Chief John McDonnell, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in New York, responded, “I think he’s really grasping and trying to justify his previous attempts to portray himself as the hero of 9/11.”
The Bush administration on Friday will announce plans to enlist state and local law enforcement in cracking down on undocumented workers, which previously was largely a federal function. The plans call for the administration to “train growing numbers of state and local law enforcement officers to identify and detain immigration offenders whom they encounter in the course of daily law enforcement.”
“A car bomb struck a market in a Kurdish area in the northern city of Kirkuk on Friday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens, police said. South of Baghdad, the U.S. military said a helicopter was forced down, leaving two soldiers injured.”
The State Department is enlisting baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken for a new diplomatic role. Ripken will travel the world as a public diplomacy envoy to increase young people’s understanding of the United States by sharing with them his “impressive personal history and life experiences.”
And finally: The Senate’s #1 Batman fan gets an appearance on the big screen. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will have a speaking part, though a “small role,” in the new flick The Dark Knight, out next year. Leahy, who “dabbles in Batman culture purely for fun,” had a cameo in the 1997 hit Batman & Robin.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
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