Israel has always tiptoed around the whole idea of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1918, in which 1.5 million Armenians perished cruelly at the hands of Ottoman Turks. You’d think that if anybody could understand, and sympathize, about genocide, it should be the Jews, since they suffered their own genocide during the Nazi holocaust, right?

Not exactly.

Israel needs to maintain good relations with Turkey –-for its stuffed grape leaves, beach resorts and to have at least one wary Muslim “friend”-- and it doesn’t want to do anything, or say anything, that might put the large community of Turkish Jews there in danger. When asked about the Armenian genocide, Israeli diplomats tend to glance away sheepishly and mutter “atrocities” and “massacre” instead of the G-word.

But last week, a prominent Jewish organization broke ranks. The Anti-Defamation League, a U.S.-based watchdog group which pounces on anything that might be anti-Semitic, was under pressure to back Armenian-Americans who are trying to get U.S. Congress to pass a resolution at last recognizing what a majority of historians say was the 20th century’s first act of genocide.

Politically, President Bush has reached the point all gamblers fear: being so far down that higher stakes start to look worth the risk. Public support for his handling of the war in Iraq is already abysmal, with 70% against him and only 25% still in his camp. So perhaps he felt he had very little to lose when Wednesday, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Mo., he effectively doubled down, arguing not only that America needs to stay in Iraq until a stable democracy can take root, but also implying we should have done the same in Vietnam a generation ago....

In the end, it is the familiarity — critics would say the lack of credibility — of those themes that provide the answer to Bush's risky invocation of Vietnam. He has so often emphasized the disastrous ramifications of failure and the potential glories of victory, they no longer hold the same currency with a war-tired public. So, given how low support for the war is, why not add the specter of Vietnam to the costs of defeat? And why not suggest that victory in Iraq could help expunge the indignity of America's loss in Vietnam? Petraeus and Crocker will say what they will regardless of Bush's assertions, so raising the rhetorical stakes in the hopes of bolstering political support ahead of their report is the only card Bush has left to play.

A recent report on students’ research habits raises questions about all the hand-wringing in academe concerning students’ overreliance on Google and Wikipedia to complete assignments. The report, based on a study conducted this year at Saint Mary’s College of California, found that most students started their research by turning to course readings or the library Web site, not Web search engines or Wikipedia.

Experts say that US President George W. Bush may be misrepresenting history when he drew a parallel between the bloody wars Americans fought in East Asia to the current US "war on terror" to back his case for maintaining US troops in Iraq.

"My understanding of the history of the Vietnam war and the lessons of that differs rather dramatically from Mr Bush's," Robert Hathaway, an Asian expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, told AFP.

Retired US Brigadier General John Johns, an expert on counter-insurgency who served in Vietnam, said Bush was "cherry-picking" history to support his case for staying the course in Iraq.

"What I learned in Vietnam is that US forces could not conduct a counterinsurgency operation. The longer we stay there, the worse it's going to get," he said.

Steven Simon of the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, echoed the comments.

Bush "emphasized the violence in the wake of American withdrawal from Vietnam. But this happened because the United States left too late, not too early," he said.

The White House evidently leaves little to chance when it comes to protests within eyesight of the president. As in, it doesn't want any.

A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance employees extensive instructions in the art of "deterring potential protesters" from President Bush's public appearances.

Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. If that doesn't work, the protesters should be thrown out.

Earlier this week, I found myself standing in the courtyard of Beirut's newest museum in front of the warped propeller of a Yasur CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter. The propeller, a placard helpfully explained, had been "destroyed by the resistance" during last summer's war, a fate that had also befallen the half-dozen charred Israeli military vehicles surrounding it. A group of hijab-clad women nudged me out of the way so they could snap some photos with the propeller.

The downed helicopter is on display at the Spider's Web, Hezbollah's new war museum. The free exhibition commemorates the group's "divine victory" over Israel last summer by offering up a professional and slickly curated collection of war paraphernalia--the work of over two dozen conceptual artists, graphic designers, engineers, musicians, and lighting technicians. Since opening last month, it has become this summer's hottest tourist destination, attracting, mostly by word of mouth, over 200,000 visitors. "We don't even remember the war in the Christian area where I'm from, but I felt like it is something that should not be forgotten soon," explains Danya, a 26-year-old Christian financial consultant, as she made her way into the museum past a busload of schoolchildren. "Also, I wanted to see what all my friends were talking about."...

Perhaps fearing that the deaths of just dozens of Zionists won't make enough of an impression, the Spider's Web design team has made sure that pictures of bloodied and limbless Israeli soldiers make up the largest part of the exhibit. Some are digitally altered to be surrounded by hellish flames; others are rendered with anguished faces into art deco portraits; still others are engulfed in spider webs constructed with Koranic verses. "The invincible army!" gloats one of these montages. "It's Lebanon, you fools," reads another. A Warhol-esque portrait of Nasrallah presides contentedly over the display.

The museum's main event is a sound-and-light show around Hezbollah's prized artifact--a Merkava tank bombed during the war--displayed in a recreated bomb crater lined with mannequins of (what else?) dead Israeli soldiers. Every few minutes, the lights dim for an effects-laden video extravaganza that shows the explosion of the tank, up-close shots of Hezbollah militants launching Katyusha rockets, and Hezbollah's missiles raining down on the Israeli city of Haifa. After the show, the lights come up on posters of crying Israeli soldiers

Last week brought two front page articles on Iraqi universities and scholars. The Financial Times, August 26, 2007 article, "Gates Foundation to help Iraqi academics escape persecution" describes a new fund, administered by New York City-based International Institute of Education, to relocate persecuted Iraqi scholars to neighboring countries. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 17 August 2007 article offers a sharp contrast, "Oasis in Iraq: Universities Flourish in Kurdistan", with a subtitle: Campuses are packed with students in a region largely untouched by war.

We thought this a good time to circulate as widely as possible information on the work Sabre has been doing in Iraq over the past several years (please see attached article). In summary, Sabre has sent three ocean freight containers holding over 34,000 new books (and CD-ROMs) and an additional 1,476 books by air. A version of this article will appear in the forthcoming Summer Update and will be online shortly. I believe you will find it interesting to read.

We are trying to build interest in our activities Iraq in order to expand the program so please circulate the article as you see fit. The needs are truly great!

It is important to note that our efforts on behalf of universities in Iraq would not have been possible without the dedicated support provided by the individuals referenced in the article, namely:

Dr. Ekhlass A. Jarjees, Entomologist & Manager of the Hawaii-Iraq Education Partnership at the University of Hawaii
Michael Masterson, former Economics Advisor at the Mosul office of the US Embassy
Jeff Spurr, Sabre Advisory Committee Member and Islamic and Middle East Specialist, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University

One name conspicuous in its absence is that of Sabre's primary contact person for the Baghdad-based Al-Sharaka Program. This is at his request.

*****************
Tania Vitvitsky
Executive Director
Sabre Foundation, Inc.
872 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 2-1
Cambridge, MA 02139
USA
tel: 1 617/868-3510
fax: 1 617/868-7916

In compliance with a requirement imposed by Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified and released the executive summary of a CIA Inspector General report that was generally critical of CIA performance prior to September 11, 2001.

>From a secrecy policy point of view, the most interesting thing about the disclosure is that it was the result of a congressional initiative undertaken against the wishes of the executive branch."While meeting the dictates of the law," said CIA Director Mike Hayden in an official statement,"I want to make it clear that this declassification was neither my choice nor my preference."

In theory, the CIA's" choice" or"preference" should be irrelevant to the declassification process. The President has directed categorically that"Information shall be declassified as soon as it no longer meets the standards for classification under this order." (Executive Order 13292, section 3.1). It is clear from the release of the Inspector General report, which was partially redacted, that it could be declassified. And therefore it should have been.

But the executive order is not self-enforcing and declassification does not occur spontaneously. Without some external stimulus it may not occur at all.

In this case, Congress provided the missing ingredient, thanks to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who authored the amendment to the recent legislation implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

While giving the needed push, Congress did not declassify the document itself, which is arguably within its power, nor did it define the precise terms of declassification, stating only that the document should be"declassified to the maximum extent possible, consistent with national security" -- as determined by the CIA.

By contrast, a more ambitious and unprecedented declassification action is the congressional requirement to disclose the amount of the 2007 National Intelligence Program budget, which must be declassified and released by October 30. No exercise of discretion is permitted.

Rusting away in a musty chamber of a courthouse is the gun believed to have triggered the upheaval that altered Philippine history.

If the military’s account of the Philippines’ crime of the century were true, it was the same weapon that fired the fatal bullet into the head of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. 24 years ago on Tuesday at the Manila International Airport on his return from self-exile in the United States.

The charcoal-toned Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum pistol, with a grip made of deer horn, was discovered a few meters away from the body of the Aquino’s alleged assassin, Rolando Galman, the “man in blue.”

It had supposedly slipped from Galman’s right hand after the soldiers, who acted as Aquino’s escorts on his homecoming that fateful Sunday afternoon, gunned him down in retaliation.

FRESNO -- Mountain backpackers have discovered remains believed to be those of a missing World War II airman resting atop a glacier near where an aviation cadet's body was found two years ago, authorities said Monday.

The second set of human remains was found in an alpine region of Kings Canyon National Park in the Sierra Nevada range on Wednesday, as little as 50 feet from where climbers spotted the ice-entombed body of Leo Mustonen in October 2005, park officials said.

Remember that goofy uncle of yours who always tried to impress you by "stealing your nose" or pulling the ol' separating-his-thumb-from-his-hand move? Well, those parlor tricks are nothing compared to the appendage stunts pulled by these 10 famous people.

John Wilkes Booth's neck bones

Einstein's brain

"Stonewall" Jackson's arm

Saint Francis Xavier's hand

Napoleon's bits and pieces

Oliver Cromwell's head

Sixty years ago the Nazi U-boat fleet that menaced wartime Atlantic convoys and threatened Britain with starvation was scuttled off the north-west coast of Ireland. The sunken hulls and rusting torpedo tubes are encrusted with coral.

Salvage plans are now being explored to see whether one of the German submarines could be raised from the deep and brought ashore. The vessel and its wartime technology could be put on display as the central attraction for a new maritime museum in Derry.

In the 35 years since they broke the Watergate scandal, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have been cursed, praised, threatened, defended, and shared a Pulitzer Prize.

Now they're about to be waxed.

Madam Tussaud's Wax Museums, which operate six such locations worldwide, from New York to Shanghai, are about to open a Washington, D.C. location.

Among the figures planned for the new site are meltable sculptures of Woodward and Bernstein, according to General Manager Janine DiGioacchino. She said Woodward's figure will be among 50 likenesses at the museum when it opens Oct. 4, with Bernstein's image expected to join them in 2008.

President Bush had been in office just a few months when Dallas oilman Ray Hunt came to Washington to talk about life after the White House.

Where would his legacy best be tended?

After a private dinner, in a conversation in the White House family quarters, Mr. Hunt, a major Bush campaign contributor, suggested his own alma mater – Southern Methodist University.

"I said to him, 'Mr. President, I would like to raise a new subject and that is that one of these days he will need to be thinking of a library,' " Mr. Hunt recalled in sworn testimony in July. "And when that day comes, I would hope that you would consider SMU."

Mr. Hunt, sitting on a sofa next to Mr. Bush with their wives nearby, said Mr. Bush appeared interested in the idea.

"He commented that his wife [Laura, also an SMU graduate] was a librarian and ... that was a nexus that he really hadn't focused on before," Mr. Hunt said.

That meeting in early 2001 reflects a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how SMU has capitalized on its political, financial and social connections with the Bushes to land the permanent memorial. The university placed a big bet early to get the library, but it sees an enormous payoff: instant national recognition and increased stature.

The purported death mask of Napoleon on show in a Paris museum is not that of the emperor, a historian alleged yesterday.

Bruno Rey Henry said the real death mask had been auctioned to an unidentified individual in 2004.

He said the mask in Paris's military museum does not display a scar on the left cheek.

The French example also did not match up to Napoleon's known appearance, with a big head and powerful jaw, he added.

The French daily Liberation said the mask could be that of Napoleon's butler, Cipriani Franceschi, whose body, some claim was the one brought back to France for burial in 1840.

HWACHEON, South Korea: For two decades now, the erratic fortunes of the massive Peace Dam here near the demilitarized zone have mirrored the tortuous relationship between North and South. As the two sides' leaders prepare for their summit meeting in early October, a review of its curious history suggests the barriers they must overcome in the quest for reconciliation.

The story goes back to 1986, when, as South Korea was busy preparing for its biggest-ever international event, the 1988 Summer Olympics, North Korean soldiers broke ground on a gigantic dam project just above the DMZ.

As South Koreans wondered what their unpredictable Communist neighbor was up to this time, the military dictator of the South, Chun Doo Hwan, offered his own terrifying scenario: a killer flood.

Caught up in the "water-bomb" scare, South Korean TV networks broadcast artists' conceptions of monstrous walls of water unleashed from the North Korean dam that wiped out most of Seoul, 200 kilometers, or 120 miles, downstream, with "the impact of a nuclear explosion" during the Olympics.

So South Korea built a dam of its own. Even schoolchildren joined the fund-raising campaign to construct a protective bulwark against the Northern threat.

Today, the Peace Dam - begun in 1987, abandoned halfway through as a misguided Cold War program, and then revived and completed in 2005 - stands here, a hulk 125 meters, or 410 feet, high and 600 meters wide.

Silas Goodrich was not having a good day.
A catfish bit his hand and sweat from the 100-degree heat was dripping under his Army uniform.

Famed explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark waited anxiously nearby at the fork of the Kansas and Missouri rivers for him to catch a meal for their hungry crew.

He dunked his arms into the muddy water.

A semi truck whizzed past.

The 19th century fisherman disappeared.

Rolland Love was back.

The Overland Park resident spends many of his days transitioning into Goodrich, the expert fisherman who followed along on Lewis and Clark’s journey through the American West.

The degree of state business that's transacted through e-mail is large and growing. If you're a historian, a lawyer, a student, an activist or a plain old citizen doing research who wants to know how a decision was made, then you have the right -- through the state's Freedom of Access Act, if necessary -- to see almost all the documents, including e-mails, that relate to that decision's evolution.

But what happens if someone in possession of those e-mails hits the delete button?

History gets erased.

That's why an ad-hoc group of state officials has been meeting for the last year. They want to devise a system to select, store and maintain e-mails. It's a massive undertaking that will require the services of an outside information management company; the group has sent out a request for proposals for the project and about 50 companies have attended a bidders' conference on the request.

We're in the heart of Quebec City, walking from the National Assembly having just taken a clue from the words you see on Quebec licence plates: "Je me souviens."

We are members of "the Order of Good Time" and we are solving a mystery called Champlain's Prophecy. And we are rushing to City Hall to pick up another clue near a Jesuit ruin. All this came about because wife Carol and I and our travelling companions Ken and Kelly Bowman, decided the best way to see and feel a city is to walk it.

But how to keep the kids amused while walking the streets of Quebec City? We had four children in tow: two McGran daughters, Ellen, 12, and Shauna, 10, and two Bowman kids, Liam, 13, and Meghan, 11.

Walking is not exactly something children in this computer-savvy, iPod-toting, Gameboy generation will do. But playing games and solving mysteries are on their radar and that's where Champlain's Prophecy comes in; it's a scavenger hunt in which you solve riddles to find "hidden" locations.

It was one of Britain’s finest Edwardian buildings until an IRA bomb ripped through its Portland stone and red granite façade in 1992.

The Baltic Exchange, built in 1903 with an opulence befitting the headquarters of global maritime trade, could not be restored on site and its marble columns, teak panelling and plaster sea monsters made way for Sir Norman Foster’s Swiss Re tower – better known as the Gherkin.

After spending nearly a decade in various salvage yards around Britain, the former Grade II* listed building is set to rise again, this time on the shores of the Baltic itself. The dismantled building was bought for £800,000 by two businessmen from Estonia after one of them found an advertisement on the internet for the building while looking for antique flooring.

The last consignment of the 45 shipping crates containing the carefully catalogued remains of the exchange has now arrived in the Baltic seaport of Paldiski where it will be kept before being rebuilt in Tallinn, the Estonian capital.

Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove continued his farewell tour Sunday with an appearance on NBC's "Meet The Press." Rove repeated his attacks on Hillary Clinton, citing her negative ratings, and faced tough questioning from substitute host David Gregory on the legacy he will leave. Rove attempted to justify the White House's handling of Iraq by quoting Napoleon, saying "Your battle plan doesn't survive the first contact with the enemy."