Actor Slams Secretary of State Colin Powell

And now the most scintillating two minutes in television, the latest from the wartime grapevine:

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Incomplete Application Gets Him a Visa?
One of the 9/11 hijackers, Abdulaziz Alomari, gave his home address as a hotel in Saudi Arabia on his U.S. visa application. He didn't bother to fill in the blanks listing his nationality and sex. He got a visa anyway. Another, Khalid al Mihdhar, put down his U.S. destination as simply "hotel." Another, Hani Hanjour, was denied a visa at first, then changed a bunch of the answers on a second application and got right in. National Review had a panel of six experts, including six present and former consular officers, look at the visa applications of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. They concluded that all of them should have been denied on their face by the State Department, which insisted today that the visas were properly granted.

Harry Says Colin Lives in the Slave Days
Harry Belafonte, the singer and actor, is likening Secretary of State Powell to an obedient slave who gets to live in the master's house. In an interview with San Diego radio station KFMB, Belafonte said, "Colin Powell's permitted to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture." In the same interview Belafonte also likened the methods of Attorney General Ashcroft to those of Joseph McCarthy.

His Real Views Come Out...
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who has been widely applauded for clear thinking on the Mideast and the war on terror, has unburdened himself in a magazine interview, with views on the Bush administration not seen in his Times column. He told Rolling Stone, "I think these guys are bought and paid by ‘Big Oil’ in America, and they are going to do nothing that will in any way go against the demands and interests of the big oil companies. I mean, let's face it. ExxonMobil — I think this is a real group of bad guys."

Poll Says People Back Force Against Iraq
House Democrats have gotten a strategy memo from James Carville's political consulting group, which concludes, based on a private poll, that people by 50 percent to 40 percent want their congressman to back the use of force against Iraq. But, according to Carville and company, a candidate who supports the president with reservations runs significantly better than one who backs the president all the way.