U.N. Refused to Heed Warning

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

U.N. Refused to Heed Warning

An independent report says the U.N. was heavily to blame for the loss of 22 lives and the injury of 150 other people in that terrorist bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in August. The report, commissioned by the U.N. itself, concluded that the world body had a -- "dysfunctional" and "sloppy" security system and refused to heed warnings that the U.N. building was vulnerable.

And it said the U.N. has failed to this day to install shatterproof glass. It also confirmed that the agency had asked the U.S. to withdraw heavy equipment, security obstacles and an observation post from around the building to distance the U.N. from the U.S. occupation.

At the time of the bombing, you may recall, top U.N. officials said the U.S. was responsible for their security.

Partial-ly Misleading?

From some of the wording in news accounts of yesterday's Senate vote on abortion, you might not have known it was about banning a procedure in which a live fetus is partially pulled from the womb before its skull is punctured and its brains sucked out. This is commonly referred to as "Partial-Birth Abortion (search)."
But ABC's Peter Jennings called it -- "a certain abortion procedure."
The AP called it "a type of middle and late-term abortion."
CBS called it -- "the procedure generally performed between the 18th and 24th weeks of a pregnancy." 
Today's Washington Post calls it a -- "abortion procedure" in a headline and then refers to it as -- "what abortion foes call a 'partial-birth' procedure."
The New York Times refers to it as a -- "type of abortion" and then refers to a partial birth method.

Working with Weapons?

Pakistan (search) -- a professed ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism -- has secretly agreed to help Saudi Arabia (search) -- a suspected harbor of terrorism -- build nuclear weapons in exchange for cheap oil.  That according to The Washington Times.

An unnamed Pakistani source says the --"nuclear cooperation" agreement, which would export Pakistani weapons technology to Saudi Arabia, was disclosed after a meeting this past weekend in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The source said both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would deny there is any such agreement, and that is in fact what they did.

Fighting Terrorism Not Primary for Dems

A new poll taken in Iowa -- a key election state because it's hosting the first caucus -- shows that fighting terrorism ranks last among Iowa Democrats' biggest concerns, with one percent of respondents saying it worries them the most.

Homeland security (search) is also at the bottom, with 2 percent. In another key state, New Hampshire, 2 percent of respondents put fighting terrorism as their biggest concern, and another 2 percent put homeland security. In South Carolina, those results were the same.