What Caught My Eye Today

Iraq - Two former CIA officers denied that they or the spy agency faked an Iraqi intelligence document purporting to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11 bomber Mohammed Atta, as they are quoted as saying in a new book. Umm, right. Who honestly thinks that anyone at Langley would ever cop to something like this, even if it was true. The White House issued the statement on behalf of the former officials after a day of adamant denials from the CIA and Bush administration about the claim, made in "The Way of the World," a book by Washington-based journalist. The author claims the White House concocted the fake letter, meant to come from the director of Iraqi intelligence under Saddam Hussein, in the fall of 2003 to bolster its case for the invasion earlier that year as it was becoming clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq. Those weapons were a chief rationale for the war. The letter was provided to a British journalist by an Iraqi government official, according to the book. The author went on to say that Former CIA Director George Tenet "is not credible on this issue" and the White House "is all but obligated to deny this." I don't know about Tenet's credibility, but I have to agree with the author on the White House's position. What are they going to say--"Yeah, so you know about that whole war in Iraq, the hundreds of billions of dollars that we've spent and the thousands of casualties we've incurred? We kind of made up all those charges. Sorry about that." Part of me wants this dude to be completely wrong. I'm not sure I want to know if my government is capable of launching a war on made up allegations.

Rwanda - Rwanda has accused France of playing an active role in the genocide of 1994, in which about 800,000 people were killed. An independent Rwandan commission said France was aware of preparations for the genocide and helped train the ethnic Hutu militia perpetrators. The report also accused French troops of direct involvement in the killings. I pretty sure this is not the sort of publicity France is looking for. It named 33 senior French military and political figures that it said should be prosecuted. France has previously denied any such responsibility. Among those named in the report were the late former President, Francois Mitterrand, and the then Prime Minister Edouard Balladur. Them there are some pretty big names to be pointing the finger at. Some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu militias in just 100 days in 1994. The report says France backed Rwanda's Hutu government with political, military, diplomatic and logistical support. It accuses France of training Hutu militias responsible for the slaughter, helping plan the genocide, and participating in the killings. The commission spent nearly two years investigating France's alleged role in the genocide. It heard testimonies from genocide survivors, researchers, writers and reporters which it documented in the 500-page report. That's an lot of testimony which, depending on who you are, amounts to a bunch of fabricated lies or a whole heap of denials that someone is going to have to come up with.

Wildlife - We rarely get good news when it comes to the growing number of endangered or threatened species, so when some actually occurs its nice to celebrate it. A census by the Wildlife Conservation Society raised the estimate for gorillas in the Congo jungle from between 50,000 and 100,000 to around 200,000, substantially changing the picture of a great ape population thought devastated by the Ebola virus, hunting and deforestation. That being said, there is an abundance of buzzkill fodder to go around. A report released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and other groups warned that nearly half of the world's 634 species and subspecies of primates are threatened with extinction due to human activity. Wait, there's more. Conservation International said primate populations are shrinking in Asia due to hunting and habitat destruction — some linked to the booming biofuel industry. And there you have it. More proof that bad news always seems to trump good news.

Cloning - Booger is back. An American woman received five puppies Tuesday that were cloned from her beloved late pitbull, becoming the inaugural customer of a South Korean company that says it is the world's first successful commercial canine cloning service. A dog named "Booger"? What kind of dog owner would name a dog, "Booger"? Seoul-based RNL Bio said the clones of Booger were born last week after being cloned in cooperation with a team of Seoul National University scientists who created the world's first cloned dog in 2005. Booger's owner contacted RNL Bioafter Booger died of cancer in April 2006. The Korean scientists brought the dog's frozen cells to Seoul in March and nurtured them before launching formal cloning work in late May. RNL Bio charges up to $150,000 for dog cloning but will receive just a third of that sum from Booger's owner because she is the first customer and helped with publicity. Seriously, "Booger"? That's just plain mean. What chance do these puppies have at the dog park with names like "Booger" or "Snot"? There should be some sort of law preventing owners from making up stupid names for their pets.