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To: lurqer who wrote (39690)	3/17/2004 6:09:55 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 89467

Link to database of Admin lies over Iraq prepared for Henry Waxman... house.gov On March 19, 2003, U.S. forces began military operations in Iraq. Addressing the nation about the purpose of the war on the day the bombing began, President Bush stated: “The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.” One year later, many doubts have been raised regarding the Administration’s assertions about the threat posed by Iraq. Prior to the war in Iraq, the President and his advisors repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that jeopardized the security of the United States. The failure to discover these weapons after the war has led to questions about whether the President and his advisors were candid in describing Iraq’s threat. The Iraq on the Record Report, prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, is a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. This database identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by these five officials in 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq. The search options on the left can be used to find statements by any combination of speaker, subject, keyword, or date. The Special Investigations Division compiled a database of statements about Iraq made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice. All of the statements in the database were drawn from speeches, press conferences and briefings, interviews, written statements, and testimony by the five officials. This Iraq on the Record database contains statements made by the five officials that were misleading at the time they were made. The database does not include statements that appear in hindsight to be erroneous but were accurate reflections of the views of intelligence officials at the time they were made. For more information, see the Full Iraq on the Record Methodology.

To: lurqer who wrote (39690)	3/17/2004 6:53:24 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

Space Dust to Unlock Mexican Pyramid Secrets Tue Mar 16 By Alistair Bell TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Remnants of space dust that constantly showers the world are helping unlock the secrets of a 2,000-year-old Mexican pyramid where the rulers of a mysterious civilization may lie buried. Deep under the huge Pyramid of the Sun north of Mexico City, physicists are installing a device to detect muons, sub-atomic particles left over when cosmic rays hit Earth. The particles pass through solid objects, leaving tiny traces which the detector will measure, like an X-ray machine, in a search for burial chambers inside the monolith. Since there are fewer muons in an empty space than in solid rock or earth, scientists will be able to spot any holes inside the pyramid, a sacred site in the city of Teotihuacan, which rose and fell around the same time as ancient Rome. "If we detect an area where there is less density than expected, that gives us an indication that there is probably a hole there," said Arturo Menchaca, head of the National Autonomous University's physics institute. Archeologists would then likely tunnel into the pyramid in the hope of finding a burial chamber and solving the riddle of who ruled Teotihuacan, also home to the smaller Pyramid of the Moon and a huge temple to a fierce serpent god. Housing 150,000 people at its apogee, the city's influence reached hundreds of miles to modern day Guatemala but no one knows its true name or who its founders were. The name Teotihuacan (The Place Where Men Become Gods) was given by awed Aztecs who inhabited the area 700 years after the city was abandoned around 600 AD. The Aztecs were stunned by the monumental buildings and precise city planning. A Nobel prize winning scientist, Luis Alvarez of the University of California, Berkeley, used muon technology in a scan of the Khephren pyramid in Egypt in the 1960s. "Alvarez proved there were no hidden chambers in that pyramid and it is now in scientific literature," said Menchaca, dressed in a hard hat in a cave directly under the Pyramid of the Sun. His team built the muon detector at a cost of $500,000 in the Mexican university's labs and plan to install it in the coming months in the cave below the 206-feet (63-meter) high pyramid. Used for religious ceremonies several thousand years ago, the dark, humid cave is linked to the outside by a narrow tunnel passable only by one person at a time. A prototype detector set up in the cave has already found the first muons in the pyramid overhead. The physicists hope to detect around 100 million of the particles in a year of tests after the gadget proper is set up in a few months' time. WAR ON TERROR Muon technology could also be used by U.S. border agents in the war on terror, says the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "It's very credible. We have developed a muon detector system that can be used for national security to detect nasty things in containers and trailers that we don't want to enter the country," laboratory spokesman Kevin Roark said. Muons, born when energy particles from space collide with the Earth's troposphere, constantly bombard us but are harmless and almost unnoticeable. When they pass by a detector, muons ionize gas trapped between two plates which in turn causes an electric current that can be measured. The method is more accurate, cheaper, and more versatile than X-rays but has only been developed in recent decades due to advances in sub-atomic physics. At Teotihuacan, archeologists hope the muon detector will be able to show whether the pyramid, as well as being the city's state temple, is the last resting place for a king, or perhaps several. Archeologist Linda Manzanilla, Mexico's leading expert on the site, reckons the city in its early days may have been run by a coalition of four rulers, and not a single king like the Maya or Aztec civilizations in ancient Mexico. "It is likely that those who started the four-way system, the first four, are the ones who would be inside the Pyramid of the Sun," she said. The number four is a constant theme in the city, split into four different residential zones. A vessel from Teotihuacan found elsewhere shows four figures who appear to be co-rulers around a god of thunder, Teotihuacan's state deity. "Teotihuacan is up there with Rome, one of the biggest pre-industrial cities in the world. Constantinople is also maybe there but no Chinese city was of this magnitude. Egypt didn't even have cities," Manzanilla said. The Pyramid of the Sun was probably a fertility symbol built around 80 AD and shaped like a mountain to counteract the evil influence of two nearby volcanoes known to have gone through unusually violent eruptions at the time. Nobody knows what ethnic roots the city's inhabitants had or what language they spoke as they left no written records. "I wish they would invent a time tunnel and we can hear them speak. What ethnic group did they represent?" said Manzanilla. story.news.yahoo.com