The Sunday Telegraph, 29 October 2006

Voting against Bush won't save a Republican up north

By Toby Harnden in Providence, Rhode Island

IF POLITICS was fair, Lincoln Chafee, a maverick who declined to cast a ballot for President George W. Bush at the last election and was the only senator in his party to vote against the Iraq war, would be cruising to victory.

Instead, the blue-blooded scion of a prominent New England family who is the most popular politician in his state is staring defeat in the face in next week’s mid-term vote because of one most inconvenient fact – he is a Republican.

America’s smallest state, Rhode Island, home to a well-heeled yachting set and peppered with sumptuous mansions once frequented by the Astors, Vanderbilts and Kennedys, prides itself on being insulated from the grubby machine politics of the rest of the country.

Mr Chafee, who inherited his Senate seat when his father John died in office in 1998, has typified this by repeatedly bucking the party whip. But with Mr Bush slumping to a 22 per cent popularity rating in Rhode Island – the lowest of all 50 states – the Chafee balancing act appears to have come to an end.

The Democrats need to gain six seats to take control of the Senate and Rhode Island, where Mr Chafee trails narrowly in the polls, is firmly in their sights.

Arriving for an ABC-6 television debate in the state capital of Providence, Mr Chafee was greeted by a man wearing flight overalls and a President George W. Bush mask who was wielding a sign depicting an Iraqi being tortured at Abu Ghraib.

“Chafee’s an enabler,” said the Bush impersonator, who identified himself as Pat Crowley, a local blogger. ‘He tries to play the independent game but in the end he’s just another Republican. He’s Bush’s guy.”

This is the message that Mr Chafee’s Democratic opponent Sheldon Whitehouse is pushing relentlessly. “The most dangerous vote of all is to put the Republican majority back in place,” he said in the debate. “It means George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld making decisions about Iraq.”

When challenged by a questioner to speak for three minutes without mentioning Mr Bush or the Republicans, Mr Whitehouse responded: “That’s a asking a lot with the stakes as high as they are and you-know-who and you-know-which party causing all the problems.”

Mr Chafee protested plaintively that he had had nothing much to do with Mr Bush. “There were 29 Democrats who voted for the Iraq war,” he said. “The Majority Leader was a Democrat. I was the only Republican who voted against it.”

Having long been derided by conservatives as a RINO – Republican In Name Only – Mr Chafee conceded that the name itself could be enough to sink him. “It’s the only issue my opponent brings up,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. “It’s all about the Bush agenda and Rhode Island’s a very Democratic state.”

The Sunday Telegraph, 29 October 2006

Conservative Democrat Woos the MidWest

By Toby Harnden in Terre Haute, Indiana

CENTRIST DEMOCRATS, in the wilderness since the Clinton years, are leading their party’s charge towards seizing control of the House of Representatives by distancing themselves from their liberal leaders in Washington.

Deep in Indiana, a conservative heartland known as the crossroads of America, Sheriff Brad Ellsworth outlined the traditional agenda that polls predict will unseat his incumbent Republican opponent and elect him to Congress in nine days’ time.

An advocate of gun rights, opponent of gay marriage and staunchly anti-abortion, he urges a “plan for victory” in Iraq. “I’m opposed to what they’re calling cutting and running.

“My father was in the Navy, my grandfather served in World War One and I had an uncle who was shot down over the Pacific in World War Two. We’re in wartime right now. We need to protect our troops with everything we have.”

Known as the “bloody eighth” because of its ferocious election battles, Indiana’s 8 th District is odds on to become one of the 15 seats that Democrats need to regain the 435-member lower house for the first time in a dozen years.

His opponent Congressman John Hostettler, a Christian fundamentalist first elected in the “Republican revolution” of 1994, is one of the most conservative politicians in America.

He has won the backing of the National Rifle Association even though two years ago he narrowly escaped jail after a loaded 9mm Glock pistol was found in his briefcase as he boarded a plane in Kentucky. He told police he had forgotten it was there.

But his attempts to portray Mr Ellsworth as a soggy liberal have failed. The 25-year law enforcement veteran appears in his latest advertisement in uniform, driving a patrol car and stating that he sees the world as “a sheriff not a politician”. During campaign appearances, he stresses he is “not Washingtonised” or tainted by the sexual and financial scandals that have dogged Republicans.

“In Indiana they want to know you are accessible and responsive,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. “I don’t want to say it’s backward but this is a home grown area with long family lines and a good work ethic. They want to feel like you’re one of them. It is a conservative district.”

Robert Springer, a Vietnam veteran supporting Mr Ellsworth, said he was tired of liberal Democrats from California or New York. “The national Democrats are not too much in touch with our values and our needs. John Kerry [the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004] was way too far to the Left to be acceptable here.”

Senator Evan Bayh, a centrist Democrat from Indiana who is likely to run for president in 2008 as an alternative to Hillary Clinton, was on the campaign trail with Mr Ellsworth, 48, whom he proclaimed to be part of a new breed.

“Brad’s not an ideologue,” he said. “He’s a pragmatist. He’s for what works. There are 10 or 12 per cent more of the American people who call themselves conservatives than call themselves liberals.

“The right thing for us to do is also the politically shrewd thing for us to do - to try and build bridges that unite not only Democrats but independents and a few moderate Republicans.”

One of Mr Ellsworth’s biggest problems in coming across as an honest-to-goodness Mid-Westerner has been his matinee-idol looks, which featured on the front page of the “Washington Post” in an article about “the politics of beauty”.

Beth Ellsworth , his wife of 24 years, said he had been “very embarrassed” by the article because he had long suffered from not being taken seriously because of his good looks. “He’s had to fight that his whole life. Ultimately, you just have to prove yourself.”

The sheriff agreed. “It’s not the way you want to get your publicity,” he said. Instead, he wanted to be known as an honest hard-worker who could things done and bring about change in Washington. “When someone dials 911, they send me.”

The Sunday Telegraph, 8 October 2006

US secretly woos Khatami

By Toby Harnden in Washington

THE BUSH administration made secret overtures to former President Mohammed Khatami of Iran during his visit to the United States last month in an attempt to establish a back channel via the ex-leader.

Diplomatic sources said that “third parties” were authorised by Nicholas Burns, US Under-Secretary of State and the American diplomat responsible for relations with Iran, to talk to Mr Khatami in a new move towards engagement with senior Iranian figures.

American officials made the approach as part of a strategy to isolate the hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr Khatami’s successor, by using the former president as a conduit to the Iranian people.

They also hoped that Mr Khatami would also report his conversations to senior members of its theocratic regime who are wary of the current president.

The clandestine contacts with Mr Khatami reflect a significant shift in American policy away from preparation for military action and towards a stepping up of diplomatic pressure on Iran, which is defying the world over United Nations demands for it to suspend its nuclear programme.

A Western diplomat said: “The message basically was that the US is prepared to engage with Iran beyond the nuclear issue and the very fact we are approaching you illustrates that that is what we want to do.”

He added that possible subjects for discussion could include access to the international economy, Iranian entry into the World Trade Organisation and an end to a ban on spare parts being supplied for Iran’s ageing fleet of Boeing aircraft.

Mr Khatami was the highest-ranking Iranian to visit Washington since Islamist revolutionaries in Iran overran the US Embassy in 1979 and held Americans hostage for 444 days. Since then, diplomatic relations have been suspended.

President George W. Bush personally approved a visa for the former president, regarded by Western officials as a “reformist” who is more pragmatic than his successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, so that he could take part in a United Nations conference in New York and speak in Washington, Charlottesville, Chicago and Boston.

Contacts between the Bush administration and such a senior Iranian figure are highly sensitive because the US and the European Union insist that there can be no talks with Tehran until Iran’s uranium enrichment programme is suspended.

Senior Pentagon figures and some in the White House were adamantly opposed to any overtures, which the CIA as well as the State Department supported.

“I'm not aware of any contacts, either direct or indirect, between U.S. Government officials and President Khatami,” Tom Casey, a US State Department spokesman, told The Sunday Telegraph.

Diplomatic sources, however, confirmed the contacts. “I can categorically tell you it happened,” said the Western diplomat. “It’s about isolating Ahmadinejad, who is not the real power in the government anyway. The theocratic leadership is very sceptical about him.”

Patrick Clawson, an Iran specialist with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who is close to White House policy makers, said: “There was a lot of back and forth between the State Department and Khatami’s people about security arrangements for the visit and I’m sure that provided opportunities for chat.”

He doubted, however, whether overtures to Mr Khatami would affect the Iranian regime’s nuclear policy and said any message passed via him might be counter-productive. “He’s totally despised by the current government. He’s not respected by the reformists. The only thing the US could get out of this is looking good in the eyes of the Europeans.”

But he said there was a recognition within the Bush administration that there was an opportunity for diplomatic avenues to be explored.

A key part of this would be to persuade the EU and the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran.  International talks in London about what measures to take against Iran ended without agreement on Friday.

“There’s a general feeling that so long as the nuclear programme is proceeding slowly we’ve got time on this,” said Mr Clawson. Iran has been experiencing problems with the overheating of the centrifuges needed to enrich uranium.

After Mr Khatami’s visit, during which he drew fire from Iranian leaders for calling the Holocaust a “historical fact”, condemning Osama bin Laden and advising American Muslims to be “good citizens”, Mr Bush said he was “interested to hear what he had to say”.

Mr Bush added: My hope is that diplomacy will work in convincing the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions. And in order for diplomacy to work, it's important to hear voices other than Ahmadinejad's."

The Sunday Telegraph, 8 October 2006

White House reels as aide quits over links to disgraced lobbyist

By Toby Harnden in Washington

REPUBLICANS HAVE been dealt a fresh blow in their increasingly frantic struggle to cling to power in next month’s mid-term elections by the resignation of a key White House aide over links to a disgraced lobbyist.

Already reeling from a Capitol Hill sex scandal, the White House was bracing itself yesterday for further fallout over a financial scandal that forced the departure of Susan Ralston, executive assistant to Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s chief political strategist since he first entered politics.

She stepped down after congressional investigators documented her extensive dealings with Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who has pleaded guilty to multi-million bribery charges involving Republican members of Congress.

Her departure was announced late on Friday – traditionally a time for releasing bad news – as the scandal surrounding the alleged cover-up of the sexual approaches made by Congressman Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, intensified.

Democrats, who need to gain 15 seats to regain control of the 435-member House of Representatives and six seats in the Senate in the November 7 th poll, believe that the drip drip of scandal will hand them victory.

A “Time” magazine poll released on Thursday found that republican support had sunk to 39 per cent and two-thirds of Americans aware of the lurid e-mails sent by Foley to congressional pages believe Republican leaders tried to cover up the scandal.

Privately, Republican strategists concede that they are fighting a losing battle in an atmosphere akin to the one that preceded the 1994 mid-terms, in which Democrats were ousted, or the 1997 election in Britain when Tony Blair defeated John Major amid public disgust over Tory “sleaze”.

More allegations surfaced yesterday that the senior aide to Congressman Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of Representatives and a long-time Republican leader on Capitol Hill, had been aware of Foley’s predatory activities with male teenage pages as early as 2003.

A congressional staff member close to the Foley investigation told The Washington Post that Scott Palmer, Mr Hastert’s chief of staff and one of the most powerful people on Capitol Hill, had confronted Foley three years ago.

Mr Hastert has insisted he knew nothing of Foley’s activities until nine days ago while his staff has maintained they were not aware until November 2005.

Republicans are bracing themselves for the release of a “Lavender List” of senior officials on Capitol Hill who are gay. Republican sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that a network of gay party members had protected Foley for several years.

“There is a Lavender mafia that covered up for Foley,” said a former Capitol Hill staffer. “They sat on the allegations and prevented them from reaching people like Hastert because they didn’t want to see one of their own get into trouble.”

The Capitol Hill website wonkette.com, which specialises in political scuttlebutt and has a cult following among congressional aides, tantalised its readership by ending an item about a key figure in the scandal with: “ Also he is GAY. Gay gay gay. Tomorrow we’ll let you know which other Foley scandal players are also gay. Here’s a hint: all of them.”

It emerged last week that Jeff Trandahl, clerk of the House of Representatives from 1999 until last year and the person who oversaw the page programme, was openly gay and a close friend of Foley.

Foley checked himself into an alcoholics’ rehabilitation programme when the scandal broke and announced through a lawyer that he was gay – an open secret in Washington – and had been molested by a priest when he was a child.

Miss Ralston, an aide to Abramoff before she joined the White House in 2001, was found to have been involved in more than half of her former boss’s 66 recorded contacts with President George W. Bush’s staff. Records showed that Abramoff’s lobbying colleagues contacted her 69 times.

Congressional investigators indicated Miss Ralston had accepted tickets to nine events, including professional basketball, hockey and baseball games and a performance Andrea Bocelli, the Italian tenor, from Abramoff.

In October 2001, Abramoff asked through a series of memos and e-mails that the White House withhold backing for a candidate in the tiny Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which his lobbying form represented.

Miss Ralston eventually responded: "You win :). KR [Karl Rove] said no endorsement." In other emails, she appears to have discussed entering into a business deal with Abramoff.

"It would take a significant amount of money for me to be lured away [from the White House] so unless you're really serious and can make it worth my while, let's wait until 2005," she wrote to Abramoff in November 2002. Abramoff replied: "I am not in a position to offer you serious money for this right now."

There was no suggestion that Miss Ralston acted illegally and it is not known whether she declared her dealings with Abramoff or paid for the tickets he gave her.

"She recognised that a protracted discussion of these matters would be a distraction to the White House and she's chosen to step down," said a White House spokesman.

The Sunday Telegraph, 8 October 2006

Scandal puts page tradition in doubt

By Toby Harnden in Washington

PAGES, first introduced on Capitol Hill in 1829, are facing explusion by US congressmen who regard the presence of teenage aides as an inconvenient temptation for the more lascivious among their number.

The early pages were teenage boys employed to stoke fireplaces and fill inkwells. In 1939, they appeared in the film "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

Girls joined their ranks in 1971 and their duties include running messages, delivering documents and holding doors open for politicians. They could be as young as 14 until 1983 when two congressmen admitted having sex relations with underage pages.

That year, Representative Dan Crane, a Republican, was ousted by voters after revelations he had sex with a female page. Gerry Studds, a Democrat and the first openly gay national politician in America, was censured for having sex with a male page but was re-elected five times.

Since 1983, they have been at least 16, closely supervised in page dormitories and subject to a strict curfew. They are currently paid $1,568 a month, minus $400 for room and board. Several former pages have been elected to Congress.

But Congressman Mark Foley’s antics in preying on male pages, who are scattered around the Capitol dressed in navy blue suits and ties, could have dealt a death blow to the scheme, which is now officially under review.

Congressman Ray LaHood of Illinois has led calls for the page programme to be wound up because it is "antiquated" and subject to insidious influences. “Some members betray their trust by taking advantage of them,” he said. “We should not subject young men and women to this kind of activity, this kind of vulnerability.”

Former pages have defended the programme and described moves to end it as an act of craven political expedience that would punish the victims of sexual abuse even as Mr Foley appears likely to escape prosecution.

More than 100 high school pupils from around America serve as pages in Washington each year. They have to apply through their local senator or congressman and submit an essay on how they see their role.

Once they are selected, they face a punishing schedule, attending a special page school at the Library of Congress at 6.45am each day before starting work at 9am and continuing sometimes into the small hours of the next morning.

“One of my jobs was to raise and lower the American flag over the chamber when the House was in session,” said James Kotecki, 20, who served as a page in 2003. “It was an uplifting and terrific experience to be so close up to the political action.

“There were a lot of small but important tasks. We were like the grease in the cogs of Congress. It would be very sad if something that meant so much to me in terms of getting me excited about politics were to be abolished because of this.”

Last week, pages were suffering the same ridicule experienced by interns duringt he Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998. But Congressman Tom Davis said his time as a Senate page had allowed him to be a “witness to history” and “interact with numerous political icons” on Capitol Hill.

“Countless young men and women continue to come to Washington through the page programme to share similar experiences. This should continue.”

The Sunday Telegraph, 1 October 2006

By Toby Harnden in Denver

AN UNEMPLOYED Transylvanian mine worker who is flown across the globe to confront Western green activists has become the gold industry’s new weapon against militant environmental groups battling their projects.

Gheorghe Lucian, 23, a plain-speaking resident of the village of Rosia Montana in western Romania, is the unlikely star of Michael Moore-style documentary film that gold mining executives argue will expose the hypocrisy and dishonesty of their environmentalist foes.

He is dismayed that the project, which would bring a £400 million investment and generate 600 jobs in an area where unemployment is 70 per cent, is being blocked by green activists.

There are a growing number of big-screen documentaries being produced, most of them associated with the Left. Mine Your Own Business, however, has excited conservative and libertarian groups.

In June, the environmentalists brought out Vanessa Redgrave –  wearing a fetching gold necklace – to denounce the Rosia Montana project with the declaration: “Our planet is dying and we have no right to destroy an ecosystem.”

But Phelim McAleer, director of the film, shown for the first time in a private viewing attended by The Sunday Telegraph at the Denver Gold Show last week, branded Redgrave and other wealthy protesters from the West were the real enemies of the poor. “Our answer to her is Gheorghe,” he said.

Yearning for a job, Mr Lucian is frustrated by the delay in the go-ahead being given for Gabriel Resources, a Canadian company, to begin mining. But when he is flown to see similar projects, also being opposed by environmentalists, in Chile and Madagascar he realises he is not alone.

In Madagascar he listens with barely disguised horror as Mark Fenn, country representative of the World Wide Fund for Nature, shows off his luxury catamaran, which he bought for pounds20,000, and then asks him: “How do we perceive what is rich and what is poor?”

People in Fort Dauphin – where he is opposing a mine project - were “economically disadvantaged” and many had no jobs, he acknowledged, but: “I could put you with a family and you count how many times in a day that that family smiles, if you could measure stress.

“Then I bring you back to Romania and I put you with a family well off or in New York or London and you count how many times people smile and measure stress and you look at how those people interact. Then you tell me who is rich and who is poor.”

In the Andes, Mr Lucian is dismayed when he is told by Rodrigo Rivas, from Barrick, the world’s largest gold company, that “anti-mining movements all over the world are present here in Chile and Argentina”.

Mine Your Own Business , made by New Bera Media, an Irish company, electrified a gathering of senior gold industry executives in Denver last week. “This is the first time I have seen the gold industry fight back,” enthused Patrick Chidley, a mining analyst with Barnard Jacobs Mellet.

“The opposition portrays mining companies as cowboy thieves who want to rape the earth. Over the past two years it’s reached a peak, stopping projects and keeping prices higher.

“It’s just a great shame because it has nothing to do with helping local people – these are environmentalists who don’t want anything to be changed.”

Using a style reminiscent of Michael Moore, McAleer, a shambolic Irishman with a disarmingly low-key interviewing technique, lures environmentalists into making statements that are false or patently ridiculous.

Francoise Heidebroek, a Belgian opponent of the Rosia Montana mine, tells him that Romanian villagers prefer to use horses rather than cars and that locals rely on “traditional raising cattle, small agriculture, wood processing” to live.

McAleer and Mr Lucian then interview locals who chuckle with bemusement at this depiction, retorting that the land is too poor for agriculture, that they all aspire to own cars and are desperate for the investment that the mine will bring.

Alan Hill, the British president and CEO of Gabriel Resources, was so moved that he wiped away tears the first time he saw the documentary, the production of which Gabriel partially funded but had no editorial control over.

“Before, the environmentalists would lob mortars at us and we would keep our heads down and keep marching. Now, there is a big push back with this film.”

Thor Halvorssen, of the Manhattan-based Moving Picture Institute, which provided almost $200,000 to help produce the film, is overseeing a tour of 20 American university campuses to show the documentary.

“This film rips the blinkers off a swindle of epic proportions,” he said. “Radical environmentalists have taken the moral high-ground and pursued their warped agenda with a zeal that is akin to religious fervour.”

Gabriel Resources argue that their investment will transform the Rosia Montana area, which was decimated by unregulated Communist-era mining, and leave it less polluted than before.

McAleer disputes the notion that the film is Right-win. "I go to the poorest parts of the world and talk to the poorest people in the places and ask them about their lives. For me there is nothing more left wing than that"

Richard Young, Gabriel’s chief financial officer, said: “The environmentalists will do anything to prevent the project moving forward. They tried to blackmail the Romanian government by saying they would not get into the European Union if funding went ahead.

“It’s crazy, it’s preposterous and it’s environmental terrorism. The film takes their lies one by one and blows their credibility.”

But the film, gold executives, said was merely the latest salvo in a long battle, the outcome of which is uncertain.

Back in Rosia Montana, the new mine has still not been approved and Mr Lucian – who had never travelled abroad or been on a plane before the film was made – is living with his parents and four siblings in a dilapidated one-bedroom apartment.

“Rosia Montana is very interesting for everybody like Greenpeace and NGOs,” he said, vowing he would trade his chance for movie-star status in return for a job. “These people do not ask what we need. People here have no food to eat, no money. It is very difficult.”

The Sunday Telegraph, 24 September 2006

My religion is a distraction, says Muslim poised to enter Congress

Gathering his teenage players around him, the high school basketball coach urged them to take notice. "This is a moment in history," he said. "This is the first Muslim, and the first African-American from Minnesota, to represent you in Congress."

Keith Ellison looked uncomfortable. He is indeed poised to become the first follower of Islam to enter the United States House of Representatives, but he feels that the focus on his religion has become a distraction from what he wants to achieve as a politician.

"I'm not really enamoured with the whole 'first' stuff," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "I'm not making an appeal on the basis of faith. I do hope, though, that people who have felt that they were on the margins, not included in the American body politic, can now feel they can play a greater part."

Mr Ellison's religion, however, has become central to the mid-term congressional race in Minneapolis where, having won the Democratic Party nomination in the primary election this month, he is the overwhelming favourite for the November 7 vote.

In the backlash against their faith after the September 11 attacks, the number of Muslims seeking elected office across America's 50 states plummeted, despite the fact that the Muslim population now stands at an estimated four million.

Some on the Republican Right have sought to make Mr Ellison, a lawyer specialising in representing impoverished blacks, a national election issue. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, has branded him a "radical Left defender of cop killers" who exposes the Democratic Party as "unacceptably radical at home and weak abroad".

Unabashedly liberal, Mr Ellison rejects President George W Bush's argument that there is a "clash of civilisations" between Islam and the West, insisting that Muslims have the same aspirations as everyone else. "It's dangerous to promote that concept," he said. "Muslims in America mostly want to get an education, start a business, get married, build a mosque, live life."

But he wants Mr Bush to be impeached for going to war based on a "fabricated case" and advocates the immediate withdrawal of American troops from the "quagmire" of Iraq.

Born a Roman Catholic, Mr Ellison, 43, was a 19-year-old economics student when he converted – and became associated with the Nation of Islam, the radical group that promotes black rights and whose leader, Louis Farrakhan, has made racist statements.

Mr Ellison, who previously used the names Keith Hakim, Keith X Ellison and Keith Ellison Muhammad, insists that he was never a member of the group.

But Alan Fine, his Republican opponent, who is Jewish, denounced Mr Ellison as a liar. "Anyone who joins a hate group during his adulthood, we should question the character of that individual," he said, to boos, at a candidate forum. "The Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi party and the Nation of Islam are not things that are positive."

There were claps and whoops as Mr Ellison responded: “I have never been involved in any hate group in my entire adult life. I have fought tirelessly for the civil and human rights of all people. And even though he hasn’t asked for it, I forgive Mr Fine for his statements.”

When Right-wing bloggers exposed the extent of his links with the Nation of Islam, Mr Ellison wrote to the local Jewish Community Relations Council apologising for failing to "adequately scrutinise the positions" of Mr Farrakhan and others. "They were, and are, anti-Semitic and I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did."

He has condemned Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups and described " Israel's security needs" as "an absolute rock bottom necessity". Many prominent Jewish Democrats have warmly endorsed him.

Mr Ellison has been a state representative in the - Minnesota legislature for four years, with a constituency where most voters are from ethnic minorities, including many Somali -refugees. But the much larger -congressional district that he hopes will elect him is only 13 per cent black, with an even smaller proportion- of Muslims, so he must also win votes from the majority white population.

Imam Markram El-Amin, head of the Masjid An-Nur mosque, where Mr Ellison worships, said: "The time is right. Keith is proud to be a Muslim but he doesn't want to hold the banner so high that people see him only in that light.

“He’ll arrive unannounced for Friday prayers and sit down with the common believers. He comes very low key, without fanfare. He’s very strong on inter-faith dialogue.”

Mr El-Amin, who has travelled to the Vatican for a papal audience as well as to Saudi Arabia for the Haj pilgrimage, said that his parents had been members of the Nation of Islam. "I wouldn't class it as a hate group but I can understand how, for the outsider looking in, it would appear that way.

"It was more about building up the black man than tearing down whites and others. Now it's time to embrace a universal, more open Islam.

Young blacks, he said, were increasingly attracted to convert to Islam by the ideas of “redemption, the recreating of yourself to start again anew” rather than because of anger against the West.

"We have a great opportunity and an obligation to play our part as Muslims in America, to show the good face of Islam.

''We believe that America is the greatest nation on earth and the freedoms that we have are greater than many Muslims have in Islamic countries."

Back with the basketball team, all but one of them black, Mr Ellison played down his faith. “The reason I think this is historic is for the first time we’ve been able to pull the whole community together – Christian, Muslim, Jewish, even some Hindu folk, Buddhists. People of all colours, people of all cultures.”

The Sunday Telegraph, 17 September 2006

'Born fighting' - the Vietnam vet battling for the Democrats

TOBY HARNDEN in Falls Church, Virginia

AS A FORMER US marine officer who won a Silver Star in Vietnam, served in the Reagan administration and voted for President George W. Bush in 2000, Jim Webb has all the credentials of the ideal Republican candidate.

He supports gun-owners' rights, once argued against women serving in combat and has expressed scepticism about affirmative action programmes designed to advance blacks. Last week, his son Jimmy, 24, a marine lance corporal, arrived in Iraq - the latest in a long family line of military men.

But Mr Webb is a Democrat. His dismay over Mr Bush's Iraq policy prompted him to switch sides and now his unlikely candidacy could secure control of the Senate for his new party in November.

Addressing a politics class last week at the J.E.B. Stuart High School three of his children attended, Mr Webb, 60, debated the philosophies of Machiavelli and Locke with teenagers but also delivered a tough message on the central issue of the election - Iraq.

He opposed the invasion for practical rather than moral reasons, he said. "It was a huge strategic mistake to put so many resources in one country. The more of a physical presence we have in a land mass in that region the less able we are to affect the problem and there is only so much you can do with military force."

The Democrats need a gain of six seats to wrest the 100-member chamber back from Republicans. Until recently, Virginia - a traditional Southern state - looked out of reach as Mr Webb trailed by 16 points in the polls to Senator George Allen, who aspires to succeed Mr Bush in the White House in 2008.

With his distinguished military service inoculating him against the kind of charges of being weak on terrorism that led to John Kerry’s 2004 defeat, however, the Vietnam veteran is suddenly looking like a potential winner.

Mr Webb surged to almost a dead heat after Mr Allen made a calamitous mistake. Spotting S.R.Sidarth, a  young Webb campaign worker of Indian origin, videotaping one of his rallies, he referred to him as "macaca" and told him: "Welcome to America and the real world of Virgina."

The word "macaca" is the name of an Eastern hemisphere monkey and was widely viewed as a racial slur against Mr Sidarth, who was born and raised in Virginia.

A month after his "macaca moment", Mr Allen still apologises for the comments almost every day. The perception of him as mean-spirited has been hard to shake off and his tobacco chewing and fondness for Western wear have begun to seem like affectations rather than signs of a common touch.

But Mr Webb is a diffident, almost reluctant campaigner. At the school, a young press aide had to remind him to say hello to the children as they trooped into the classroom. In contrast, Allen, 54, has a well-honed bonhomie and is an enthusiastic glad-hander.

On the campaign trail, Mr Webb sports a pair of battered desert-coloured combat boots, given to him by his son Jimmy, who is stationed in Ramadi, in the heart of the Sunni triangle. "I see people staring at my shoes," he said to the class of teenagers in Falls Church.

"My son, who is much better at politics than me,” he said, “'Dad, why does George Allen wear cowboy boots when there are no cowboys in Virginia. You ought to wear my boots.' So I started wearing his boots and I'll be very happy when he gets back in February and I can take them off."

While Mr Allen, who by June had raised $6.6 million in campaign funds compared to his opponent' Webb's $424,000, travels by limousine and helicopter, Mr Webb goes everywhere in a jeep painted in camouflage colours and emblazoned with the message: "Born Fighting".

His driver has one arm. Mike "Mac" McGarvey, who was Mr Webb's radio operator as a young marine nearly 40 years ago, lost the other in Vietnam. The candidate himself walks with a slight limp from a grenade attack at An Hua Basin in 1969. Mr Allen avoided Vietnam service by securing a student deferment.

Mr Webb, who is being given increased financial backing by the Democratic Party now that he has a serious chance of beating Mr Allen, also has the advantage of the imprimatur of President Ronald Reagan - a revered figure on both sides of the political divide.

Appointed Mr Reagan's Navy Secretary in 1987, Mr Webb has run a television advertisement of the then president praising him. “James' gallantry as a Marine officer in Vietnam won him the Navy Cross and other decorations," Mr Reagan says in the advertisement.

Nancy Reagan, the former First Lady, objected to the use of the footage of her late husband in what amounted to an endorsement from the grave. But her protests and those of the Allen campaign served only to publicise Mr Webb’s link to Mr Reagan.

Pam Martinov, head of social studies at the J.E.B. Stuart school – named after a Confederate general - and who taught Mr Webb’s son, said the Democrat could be elected despite Virginia’s conservatism. “He’s got a shot because there’s growing discontent over the Iraq war.”

A former classmate of Jimmy Webb, Cpl Andy Anderson, 24, was killed in Ramadi in June. “The church was full and it brought it home to us,” said Ms Martinov. “I’m a little worried for Jimmy. I just hope he takes care of himself and makes it back.”

The Sunday Telegraph, 17 September 2006

Website attacked over propaganda videos of soldiers' deaths in Iraq

TOBY HARNDEN in Washington

A US ARMY soldier steps out of a Humvee and is engulfed in flames as a radio-controlled bomb explodes. An armoured vehicle near Baghdad is blown up by a massive device, killing its crew. A sniper in Iraq fells an American marine as he chats to children.

These graphic insurgent videos are being broadcast not on an Islamist website in the Middle East but on YouTube.com, a phenomenally successful video-sharing site based in California that boasts that 70 million of its clips are viewed each day – mainly by young people.

Relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq are calling for the snuff videos to be removed or the site shut down. YouTube executives declined to comment on why the footage was being permitted on the site despite its terms stating that it “d oesn't allow videos with nudity, graphic violence or hate".

One video, filmed just three weeks ago, shows a 16-ton Stryker armoured vehicle being flipped over by a bomb buried in a road west of Baghdad. Private Daniel Dolan, 19, the driver, from the town of Roy, Utah, was mortally wounded, while the other soldier inside was killed instantly.

First issued by a Sunni insurgent group calling itself Jaish al-Mujahedeen or the Army of Holy Warriors, the video is accompanied by Islamic music and the recitation of Koranic verses.

Tim Dolan, Pte Dolan’s father, said it was “deplorable” that YouTube was allowing such videos to be posted by its members. “It’s a propaganda tool, a recruiting tool and putting it on the internet like this is rubbing it in our faces. It just infuriates me. Watching it was horrible.

“My son was hanging in there but he died eight hours after the explosion. He was only a kid. These videos stir things up here in America as well as in Iraq and Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East. The next thing is, there’ll be another 9/11.”

By yesterday(Sat),the video had been viewed 346 times since it appeared on the site a week ago. It was posted by a person using the username ZEROMX87. He responded to an email from The Sunday Telegraph stating that he was Jorge Hernandez, 18, from Mexico, and had been inspired by Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 film.

“I post them so people in the world will be able to see that the US is not having a good time in Iraq,” he wrote. “My message for the families of the soldiers would be – that’s the kind of thing that happens when the heroic people of a country defends their own families from an invader country that only tries to make money from war.”

YouTube is popular with soldiers, many of whom post their own videos, some of it graphic combat footage showing insurgents being killed. But the use of the Stryker video prompted a furious response from some of Pte Dolan’s comrades, who are still in Iraq. “You’ll get yours in the end,” one warned. “Our guys will finish the job.”

The site, which in July registered 16 million unique American visitors and 3.5 million from Britain, is among the top 50 most popular websites in the world despite being just 18 months old. Its advertisers include The New York Times and the US Department of Health and Human Services.

By uploading videos from Islamist websites, YouTube users are spreading insurgent propaganda across the globe. A US intelligence official said that this helped fulfill the aims of groups such as al-Qa’eda. “The video is as important as the attack itself because it can be used to incite and inspire young Muslims everywhere.”

A video cameraman is an integral part of an insurgent team carrying out a major attack. US snipers in Ramadi told The Sunday Telegraph last year that they would shoot cameramen on sight if they believed they were filming insurgent activity. US forces have inadvertently killed a number of journalists in Iraq.

One video of an American soldier being caught in a huge fireball after a bomb exploded as he emerged from a Humvee had been viewed 55,257 times by yesterday(Sat). One of another soldier keeling over after being hit by a sniper had been seen 10,207 times.

Many of the insurgent videos have been on YouTube for several months and some Islamist videos on the site include still photographs of British soldiers on fire during an attack in Basra.

Some relatives of soldiers declined to comment because they felt that giving the insurgents further publicity would only promote their cause. But Mr Dolan said he hoped that speaking out would lead to the videos being removed. “My wife says that it’s just another form of terrorism.”

The Spectator

16 September 2006

Bill Clinton on Tony and Gordon

By Toby Harnden in Little Rock, Arkansas

What can be done to bring order to a fractious Labour party? Inside Little Rock’s Alltel Arena, home of the Arkansas Twisters football team and filled with local Democrats greedily consuming mounds of deep-fried frogs’ legs washed down with vats of iced tea, the question was hardly a burning one.

It was a balmy evening and no one seemed much exercised by the travails of Tony Blair or the overweening ambition of Gordon Brown. Indeed, there was talk of nothing much beyond the borders of a Southern state still viewed by most of the rest of the union as a poor, illiterate cousin.

Except from one man. As he roared with laughter, signed autographs and waited with cheerful indulgence as clammy-fingered fans struggled to operate their digital cameras at the crucial moment, Bill Clinton was only too happy to offer his opinions on Labour’s future.

Clinton, who had arrived on stage to the strains of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Rising’, delivered a pitch-perfect 12-minute stump speech without notes before descending to commune with the crowd.

‘May I feel your arms around me,’ belted out Bruce, who was being given a reprise. ‘May I feel your blood mix with mine.’ Now 60, the kid from Hot Springs who went all the way to the White House did the first bit literally and, instinctive politician that he is, the second metaphorically for a few minutes shy of an hour.

‘I just want them to stay together, to decide what to do and keep the Labour party together,’ he told me as his Secret Service agents fought a losing battle to keep the sweaty mass of ordinary folks from engulfing him. ‘The political difficulties of the moment should not obscure for the British people the fact that this government has been good for their country.’

The question I had asked him was whether he had a message for Tony Blair. But the former US president chose not to mention the Prime Minister by name or to refer to his accomplishments in anything but general terms.

But he brought up Brown unprompted. ‘You’ve got a great economy, better growth than America has and less inequality than America,’ he said. ‘Gordon Brown has been a great Chancellor of the Exchequer. They just have to work this out. You can make too much of the politics and too little of the substance. The point is that New Labour has served the British people well.’

Later this month Clinton is expected to be the headline act in another arena half a world away — the G–Mex Centre in Manchester. Four years after he left delegates spellbound at Labour’s party conference in Blackpool, he is being enticed back.

With the Conservatives having bagged John McCain for their October bash in Bournemouth, expect the transatlantic party relationships to begin to revert to their traditional axes of Labour/Democrats and Tories/Republicans — David Cameron’s criticism of Bush notwithstanding — after the Blair/Bush years.

Clinton ’s Arkansas remarks indicate that he had already considered Labour’s future and concluded that it is Brown. Was the Chancellor worthy of the top job? I asked. ‘There’s no doubt,’ he responded. ‘I have known him since 1990 and I think he’d be a good prime minister.’

In fact, Clinton, then governor of Arkansas and considered a rank outsider for the 1992 presidential race, first met Brown in June 1991 at the Bilderberg conference in the Black Forest resort of Baden-Baden. By all accounts, the two clicked.

‘Late at night, a small group of us chatted for hours about the challenges of the 1990s — and about new ideas he and others had for a new generation,’ Brown wrote, with starry-eyed enthusiasm, 18 months later when Clinton was elected commander-in-chief. ‘ Clinton’s “big idea” is the New Covenant, a unifying vision of America where there is such a thing as a society.’

In the intervening period, Brown — as Labour was still smarting from Neil Kinnock’s defeat at the hands of John Major — had travelled to the Democratic convention at Madison Square Garden in New York to watch Clinton triumphantly accept his party’s nomination. He might have slipped with the exact year but Clinton’s mention of just how long he had known Brown was no accident.

He did not meet Blair until November 1995, at the US embassy in Grosvenor Square. Essentially, Clinton is uttering the Brownite line, as expressed by Harriet Harman and others over the past fortnight: it’s Brown now; we’ve got a good record in government; let’s shut up and get on with things or else the Tories will beat us. Unspoken in this formula is the need for Blair to step down sooner rather than later.

Anyone as politically astute as Clinton knows that the manoeuvring and backbiting will not cease until Tony has gone. That will surely be what Clinton will advise in Manchester. Publicly, expect fulsome praise of Blair (particularly if he has already accepted the glass of whisky and the pearl-handled revolver), warm words for Brown and a heartfelt plea to move on.

But an underlying message will be to the wider electorate. As he put it to me: ‘When you look at the achievements of the [Blair] administration — the Gleneagles summit, the aid to Africa, the economy and all those things — it’s hard to argue with the proposition that the British people have been well served over the last decade.’

Plainly, Clinton disagrees with Blair on Iraq — although he has been gracious enough to acknowledge the bind the Prime Minister was in after the quest for a second United Nations resolution failed. ‘You know what I think about Iraq,’ he snapped when I asked him if Blair had done the right thing there. ‘I think the inspectors should have been allowed to stay in. You want me to say something that’s going to cause one hell of a stink back home.’

Though Iraq is ‘a bigger problem for the Republicans’, Clinton emphasised, he acknowledged that it threatens to split the Democrats, many of whom — including one Senator Hillary Clinton of New York — voted in October 2002 to give President George W. Bush authorisation to invade.

The squabbling, he feels, lets Bush off the hook. ‘I keep telling everybody that whatever you voted nobody is responsible for what happened afterwards — the tactical mistakes, the taking the eye off Afghanistan. But what we need to talk about is what we do from here forward and I just don’t want to see our party divided on this.’

I suspect that Clinton is sorely disappointed that Blair aligned himself so closely with Bush. He has still not forgiven Al Gore, squeamish about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, for declining his formidable services on the 2000 campaign trail. Gore was following the advice of the Democratic strategist Bob Shrum — who, incidentally, has been telling Brown to distance himself from Blair.

Bush’s leaden address to the nation to mark the September 11 anniversary underlined what most voters feel: that he has run out of ideas on Iraq and is already acting like the lame duck he will become after the mid-term elections.

In this environment there is a wave of Clinton nostalgia across America and the former president is basking in the new atmosphere. Since his heart surgery two years ago, he has slimmed down and is a picture of rude health. But while his hair is now almost completely white, he still sees himself as a player rather than an elder statesman above the fray.

‘I try to stay out of politics,’ he fibbed to his Little Rock audience. ‘But the Republicans won’t leave me alone and I keep being dragged back in.’ Having never faced the challenges Bush has since 9/11, Clinton feels he was cheated of the chance to prove himself while president. So he is anxious to cement his legacy after leaving office.

Hillary is the major plank of this. Her aides say that he is more determined than she is to go all out for a Clinton victory in 2008. A danger for Senator Clinton is that her husband’s talents on the campaign trail are unmatchable, so she pales whenever they appear together. But Bill’s ability to raise funds and his encyclopaedic knowledge of America’s political landscape make him a political ally to die for.

For many Labour supporters, watching Clinton in Blackpool will be a reminder of what Blair could have become before the sincerity came to be seen as fake and the connection he had with ordinary Britons was severed.

Brown, dour at the best of times, will doubtless be overshadowed too. But most important for the Chancellor is that Clinton has the rhetorical talents and the charisma to coax Labour out of its self-destructive mood and smooth his path to No. 10.

That means Brown accepting from Clinton the Third Way torch that Blair once clasped. If Brown succeeds, then he will vindicate Clinton just as, perhaps, Hillary will do on the other side of the Atlantic. It is a deal that will suit both men.

10 September 2006

Clinton enjoys renaissance and a shot at revenge

By Toby Harnden in Little Rock, Arkansas

Six years after he left office Bill Clinton is back with a vengeance. Campaigning tirelessly to secure a Democratic victory in the autumn mid-term elections, he is once again his party's undisputed star and fund-raiser-in-chief.

"I'm working harder than ever," he told The Sunday Telegraph at a $100-a-head Deep South dinner of fried catfish and frogs' legs attended by more than 1,500 people last week. "It's such a joy for me to be here with my folks."

By the end of the day, he had raised $1 m (£530,000) for the Democrats, who are poised to win back control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, from the Republicans on November 7.

Mr Clinton is also assiduously helping to lay a foundation for his wife Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign which, if successful, would mean a triumphant Clinton return to the White House after an interregnum of eight Bush years.

"We love you, Bill," screamed a middle-aged woman among a throng of supporters when he returned to his home state of Arkansas last week. Mr Clinton reached for her hand and pulled her towards him.

"We need you back," she whispered in his ear as he gave her a full body hug. "It's so good to see you," said Mr Clinton. "If it wasn't for you all I would have had no political life."

Their embrace was only broken when a Secret Service agent prised the woman's hand away from his head. President Clinton, with lipstick smudges on his tanned cheeks, plunged back for more, posing for photographs and signing anything thrust in front of him.

The old Clinton, loved and hated in equal measure, was there. "Tell Bob I was asking, is his wife still beautiful?" he laughed, trading reminiscences with an old friend. "I remember when she was a single young woman, working on my first congressional campaign."

Drawing strength from the adulation as if it were adrenaline shot into his veins, Mr Clinton lingered for 55 minutes. He was more than an hour late for his next event - a $1,000-a-head concert - and almost had to be dragged to it by Mike Beebe, the gubernatorial candidate he was there to support.

"We've got to go," urged Mr Beebe, tapping his watch. President Clinton grinned. "You guys had better be quick," he told the clamouring well-wishers. "I'm in trouble with Beebe."

Mr Clinton did not stop until after midnight, rounding things off with a $5,000-a-head event at Nu Cuisine, a Little Rock restaurant, before retiring to his suite above the William J Clinton Presidential Library.

It is a far cry from January 2001 when he left the White House. The youngest ex-president in American history struggled to find a new role.

Vice-President Al Gore had spurned his help in the 2000 election, fearing that the Monica Lewinsky scandal would be a distraction.

"When I got out of the White House and she [Mrs Clinton] wound up in the Senate I wondered what my assignment was," he told the Little Rock crowd.

He seemed almost irrelevant after the 9/11 attacks. But as Mr Bush's fortunes slumped in the aftermath of the Iraq war, Mr Clinton, who turned 60 last month, experienced a new lease of life.

A Time magazine poll gave him a 70 per cent approval rating last month, making him almost twice as popular as Mr Bush.

As his friend and Third Way ally Tony Blair contemplates being banished to the political wilderness, Mr Clinton is enjoying a renaissance and a welcome opportunity for pay-back. Mr Beebe's opponent for Mr Clinton's old job of Arkansas governor is Congressman Asa Hutchinson, who helped to lead the attempt to impeach him. The Republican is trailing Mr Beebe by about 10 percentage points, even though Mr Bush won the state in 2000 and 2004.

Mr Clinton said Mr Hutchinson represented a "narrow slice of the Republican Party" and was part of a Washington clique that wanted "to concentrate wealth and power and make sure we're divided and scared enough to leave them in power in every election".

Now it is Republican candidates who are keeping their distance from President Bush, while every Democrat craves a full-throated endorsement from Mr Clinton. Mr Beebe was almost giddy with excitement after Mr Clinton praised him as an old friend with whom he had "worked together for a dozen years in Arkansas".

Appearing from New Jersey to California and Minneapolis to Florida, Mr Clinton has put aside his work to tackle Aids and Third World poverty to tour the country. He spends no more than two weeks a month with his wife, though the two are in constant contact over political strategy.

"Hillary's tough, but Bill is slicker," said WH Cotton Fuller, 70, a long-time supporter and former owner of a local trucking firm. "They both know where they're going and how to get there. She'll be the next president. This is something they've been working for since they first met and they decided they could both do it."

Mr Clinton chuckled when asked by The Sunday Telegraph if he was looking forward to being back in the White House. "I'm just trying to get through this election for my side - including my wife,” he said. “One election at a time. That's my rule. We have no idea what's going to happen."

10 September 2006

CIA spies fear prosecution over secret prisons

By Toby Harnden in Washington

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE Agency officers involved in the Bush administration’s secret prisons programme have consulted lawyers after being warned they could face prosecution for illegally detaining and interrogating terrorist suspects.

Spies at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia fear they will be made scapegoats for the now politically-discredited covert scheme. President George W. Bush announced last week the remaining 14 prisoners in CIA had been transferred to Guantanamo Bay to face military trials.

The CIA officers will have to pay for their own defence if they face legal action. CIA recruits are now advised on joining to take out private liability insurance to protect themselves against lawsuits. In some cases, the CIA reimburses part or all of the insurance costs.

“It’s bad,” said Robert Baer, a former CIA operative specialising in the Middle East. “You get the [White House] Office of Legal Counsel telling the CIA something is legal and then someone changes their mind. But it’s not the counsel that’s held responsible, it’s the CIA employee.”

Some CIA officers, concerned about their careers being ended by their becoming embroiled in a scandal, refused to take part in meetings about the secret prisons, controversial interrogation methods that could be in breach of the Geneva Convention and the “extraordinary rendition” of prisoners between countries.

Details of the prisons, known as “black sites” and believed to have been countries including Poland, Romania, Afghanistan and Thailand, were leaked by the Washington Post last year, Mr Bush came under increasing pressure from European countries and Democratic opponents to close them.

Mr Baer said the revelation of the scheme and the possible legal action against CIA officers had seriously affected morale at the spy agency and threatened to undermine its activities.

“If you’re in the CIA, the last thing you want to do is get involved in interrogations or covert action. You just don’t want to go near it. That makes the CIA risk averse.”

Senior Bush administration officials have said they intend to introduce legislation giving CIA officers immunity from prosecution for involvement in any activities later judged illegal. But Democrats, who may win back control of Congress in November, are likely to block any such move.

Clare Lopez, a former clandestine CIA officer who focused principally on eastern Europe and the Balkans during her spying career, said: “These secret prisons were an integral and valuable part of the war on terror and it is the leakers who should be prosecuted.

“How do you motivate the next generation of our intelligence community if you are saying - there’s a great benefits package but by the way you really should take out liability insurance in case something you’re ordered to do gets leaked to the press.”

She added that the scheme had “proper congressional oversight” and was legally constituted but the leak had put “our friends and allies in an impossible situation”.

More than 100 detainees passed through the secret prisons, the existence of which was not acknowledged until Mr Bush’s speech on Wednesday. Mr Bush said that although the prisons were now empty they could be used again if high-level suspects were captured.

Mr Bush argued that harsh CIA interrogations in the prisons had elicited vital information from al-Qaeda figures such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaida, among the 14 transferred to Cuba.

It remains unclear, however, whether any of their statements under interrogation can be admissible in even a military court.

Human rights groups contend that the scheme was deliberately conceived to create a legal black hole so that abuse and torture could be carried out unchecked.

The determination of some Democrats to hold the Bush administration to account for the scheme could lead to hearings on Capitol Hill reminiscent of those held two decades ago after the Iran-Contra scandal. CIA officers would almost certainly be compelled to testify.

10 September 2006

Rumsfeld a casualty of his own 'war on terror'

By Toby Harnden in Washington

Once considered among the most impressive politicians in Washington, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, who has overseen the "war on terror", is being singled out by Democrats as the epitome of all that is rotten in the Bush administration.

On the campaign trial, they assail Mr Rumsfeld at every turn – even Republicans view him as an easy target, using criticism of him to distance themselves from President Bush's foreign policy.

When American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Mr Rumsfeld dashed from his office to help junior staff load the injured onto stretchers as the building burnt.

Later, in the command centre, with smoke still in the air, he ordered United States Navy ships to proceed to New York and Washington. As the sun set on that cataclysmic day, with fighter aircraft circling overhead, he declared the Pentagon was "still functioning" and would be open for business in the morning.

In the months afterwards, Mr Rumsfeld, who holds the unique distinction of having been both the youngest US defence secretary in 1975, when he was 43, and the oldest, at 74, today, became the closest thing the Bush administration had to a rock star.

As American troops swept into Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, his new doctrine of fast, light forces seemed to have been vindicated. With supreme self-confidence, he goaded reporters and ridiculed anyone who questioned his war strategy.

The former White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford became, much to the amusement of his wife Joyce, an unlikely sex symbol in Washington as women of a certain age swooned over his acerbic wit and folksy exclamations such as “my goodness gracious” and “by golly”.

Fox News described him as a "babe magnet", and The Wall Street Journal said he was "the new hunk of homefront airtime". President Bush jokingly addressed his Pentagon chief as "Rumstud".

The speed with which US troops swept through Iraq to capture Baghdad in April, 2003, seemed further to burnish his reputation. But in the wake of events in Iraq – the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and the virulence of the insurgency – Mr Rumsfeld's image changed from one of lustre to tarnish.

His remarks that "stuff happens", reflecting on looting in the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, or that "You go to war with the army you have…not the army you might want," when asked by a soldier about the lack of armour on vehicles, soon began to be seen as arrogance.

Along with the vice-president Dick Cheney, his closest ally in the Bush administration, Mr Rumsfeld is also closely associated with the controversial interpretation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraqi war. That approach received fresh criticism on Friday from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee.

On the vexed question of the failed hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to the report, the CIA concludes: "There comes a point where the absence of evidence does indeed become the evidence of absence."

That observation is a direct riposte to the comment Mr Rumsfeld made frequently in the months before the war – that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

The committee also highlighted the controversial role of intelligence supplied by the opposition Iraqi National Congress and its leader Ahmad Chalabi. Many of their claims were channelled through an intelligence analysis office overseen by Doug Feith, Mr Rumsfeld's number three.

But perhaps the most potent charge from the defence secretary's critics is that by focusing so many resources on Iraq, US forces have been distracted from their search for Osama bin Laden – the architect of the attacks five years ago – and spread too thinly in Afghanistan to prevent a steady Taliban encroachment. The allegation has increasing resonance in America ahead of the November elections.

Mr Bush's strong sense of personal loyalty and his belief that admitting errors amounts to weakness meant that the clamour for Mr Rumsfeld's resignation helped to ensure his survival. Democrats now see this as a political gift.

Last week, they tried to push through a no confidence vote on Mr Rumsfeld.

"Time and time again he has been wrong about Iraq," said Sen Barbara Boxer. "And time and time again, he's responded to his own mistakes by playing politics and attacking the American people."

Some senior Republicans are abandoning him. “The president has a right to pick his team,” said Senator John McCain, a powerful runner for the republican nomination for the White Hosue in 2008. “I've been asked a number of times if I had confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld and the answer is no.”

3 September 2006

Videogames pay off for 8-year-old

By Toby Harnden in Mastic, New York

WIELDING HIS plasma sword with merciless authority, Victor De Leon III – one of the world’s most sought-after videogame tutors – smites his slow-witted foe. “You should relax and slow down,” he counsels. “And learn to reload your grenades.”

He is poised in front of a 52-inch television screen, his fingers working the game consol with practiced ease. While this is a one-on-one personalised lesson, he normally teaches remotely via the internet to pupils sometimes more than 1,000 miles away.

At the end of the session, he hops off his black leather sofa and goes to attend to his hamster, Cortana, named after a character in the Halo 2 game of which Victor is a grand master. Just as begins explaining that “more practice” is the secret of success, his mother summons him for tea.

Though he is every inch the professional gamer from the seams of his personalised embroidered shirt – provided by his principal sponsor – to the tips of his Nike trainers, Victor is just eight years old.

He sees little hope for the skills of his pupil, and vanquished opponent, from The Sunday Telegraph, 32 years his senior. “I would give him an F,” he says, giggling, when asked to award a grade of A, B or C.

Using his on-line moniker of Lil Poison, Victor teaches adults across the United States how to manoeuvre heavily-armed Halo 2 ninja characters around a stone fortress as they battle to the death. America’s child labour laws limit him to giving three one-hour lessons each week, fitted around his homework, but his earnings are rising.

Mike Brooks, 22, from Juneau, Alaska, who is among those who have paid for lessons from Victor, said: “He plays with the mindset of some of the most veteran pros in the game,” he said. “ E ven if you get the first shot on him, beware, because the boy knows how to strafe quicker than almost anyone.”

Victor is about to sign a major licensing deal that will lead to a Lil Poison clothing line. “I guarantee he will make a million by the time he’s 18,” said his father, Victor De Leon II, 30. “He started playing when he was two and I soon realised he had a special talent. He picked it up really fast and soon he was destroying me.”

Charging $25 per lesson, Victor he has saved up to buy a black Labrador he will call Eddie and is contemplating splashing out on a mate for Cortana (bought with tournament winnings) called Master Chief – the main character in Halo 2.

With impeccable logic, he explained that he had ruled out buying a cat. “The cat would eat the hamster and the dog would eat the cat.”

Victor also enjoys swimming and is an accomplished speller. “He very smart,” said Mr De Leon, who works at the Mitsubishi forklift truck company on Long Island owned by his Puerto Rican family and began gaming with Atari when he was eight.

“He knew the names of all 50 states when he was three. At school, he’ll memorise the answers and get 100 per cent before he knows what the questions mean – I have to stop him doing that.”

Victor has competed in gaming tournaments throughout America. Mr DeLeon said his son had "won thousands of dollars in prize money" but declined to reveal an exact figure. “W e try to encourage him to divide his time and do other things,” said Mr De Leon. “When there was a tournament in Dallas, we took him to the rodeo. In California, we went to Disneyland.”

The youngster is also learning lessons about sportsmanship. “Some older kids, when they lose to him they cry or they throw their consol away and go nuts,” said Mr De Leon. “One man who got beaten smashed his console and said he was quitting playing. Then he went outside, smoked a cigarette and thought about it, and came back in to shake Victor’s hand and thank him for the game.”

He is careful, he said, not to allow Victor to play games that are too violent. “he’s quite against joining the Army,” he said. “His cousin went to Iraq and he was very worried. He watches tv and picks up on these things.” Victor said he knew the games were just pretend. “If it was a real war, I’d be scared.”

Tom Turner, 18, who operates the website www.gaming-lessons.com and recruited Victor as one of his nine Halo 2 instructors, says the eight-year-old is a phenomenon. “He’s definitely got a God-given talent.

“The first time I played him was on-line and I didn’t know he was just four. My stereotype of a four-year-old was someone who could barely hold the console. For someone as popular as Lil Poison, the earning potential is limitless.”

Those signing up for lessons could be anything from Victor’s age to nearly 50. “But the peak is 17 to 24. That’s when your reflexes are at their peak. I don’t see many people over 24 that are playing really well.”

Mr Turner, a high-school dropout from Jupiter, Florida, is just about to sign a $250,000 contract with Major League Gaming, which organises videogame tournaments, and teaches up to 35 lessons a week.

Victor’s winnings are going to be managed by a vice-president of Merrill Lynch who currently looks after the affairs of the rapper Eminem and the singer Beyonce.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu, 32, editor of Electronic Gaming Monthly, described how Victor had humiliated him in an exhibition match. “This kid just took control of the show and whupped me pretty good. It was 25 to 0. I was in disbelief.”

Whether Victor remains committed to the gaming world remains to be seen. “He used to say he wanted to design games,” says his mother Maribel, 30, who was born in Mexico. “Now he wants to work in McDonald’s. He thinks that’s a big thing.”

The Spectator, 26 August 2006

Stone's 9/11 is conventional, but still insulting

Toby Harnden in New York says that ' World Trade Center' ditches Oliver Stone's left-wing conspiracy theories, but dishonours one of the heroes of 11 September

Staff Sergeant David Karnes was working as an accountant at DeLoitte & Touche in Wilton, Connecticut, on 11 September 2001 when the first plane flew into the World Trade Center. He and his colleagues watched it on television. Karnes announced that America was 'at war' and drove home in his Porsche 911 (he saw this as an omen from above) to don his old marine uniform. He got a buzz cut at the barbers, picked up equipment at a storage facility that he rented and went to a church to pray before driving to Manhattan, stopping for a McDonald's on the way.

Once there, his uniform got him through checkpoints outside Ground Zero, which had been declared unsafe for rescue workers. 'God made a curtain with the smoke, shielding us from what we're not yet ready to see, ' he said as he set out alone to find survivors. He located two Port Authority cops, Sergeant John McLoughlin and Officer William Jimeno, trapped in the rubble and, after helping save them, reflected on New York's losses with the observation, 'We're going to need some good men out there to avenge this.' And this is just what Karnes did. After 9/11 he re-enlisted for active duty and, now 48, has served two combat tours in Iraq.

Staff Sergeant Karnes is a supporting character in Oliver Stone's 9/11 movie World Trade Center, which opens in London next month. He is hardly your typical Stone hero — being a God-fearing patriot rather than an agonising left-liberal — but he is not at all happy about the way he has been portrayed: as a religious zealot.

The news that Oliver Stone was to direct Hollywood's first take on 9/11 sent the blood pressure of red-state Americans into orbit. He was, after all, the man who brought us JFK, based on a baroque conspiracy theory, and has also been a bitter opponent of the wars in Vietnam — where he was a US grunt — and Iraq. In October 2001, furthermore, at a film symposium in New York, Stone compared Osama bin Laden's jihadists to the French revolutionaries of 1789. 'This attack was pure chaos, and chaos is energy, ' he theorised enthusiastically. 'All great changes have come from people or events that were initially misunderstood.' He mused that the 'revolt of September 11' might never have happened if it hadn't been for Florida's hanging chads and the Republican Supreme Court justices who robbed Al Gore of his rightful place in the White House.

The flag wavers need not have worried, however. In Stone's World Trade Center the badly-injured cops pray together, talk of their love for their families and are dug out by a group of all-American heroes while their wives weep helplessly at home. In his utter conventionality, Stone manages, bizarrely, to make something close to a feelgood movie as the gruff Sergeant McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and chipper Officer Jimeno (Michael Pena) bond over reminiscenses of the theme tune of Starsky and Hutch.

The only mention of those who might have been responsible for what happened is in a diner in Wisconsin, where someone denounces 'those bastards' (the same words my father used when in 1979 I told him the IRA had blown up Lord Mountbatten — the first time I heard him swear). The movie's mundane, ground-level images make it much less dramatic than what actually happened that day — or even the version that appeared on our television screens.

The Left has lambasted Stone for slavishly following a script that could have been penned by President George W. Bush. Yet the portrayal of Karnes is double-edged. As played by a steely-eyed, lantern-jawed Michael Shannon, he is a scary fanatic. Karnes himself is distinctly unimpressed by this. Extremely wary of the spotlight, he has declined to make any public comment since seeing a private screening of the movie.

James Barker, the pastor who prayed with Karnes on 9/11, was one of four people who accompanied him to the screening. 'He feels he comes across as an oddball, a zombie, ' he told me. While the mainstream politics of Stone's film are a break with his leftliberal past, he stuck to his practice of taking liberties with the facts. Whereas United 93, directed by the British filmmaker Paul Greengrass, was an austere, documentarystyle movie, in which every detail was minutely researched, World Trade Center has some embarrassing lapses.

The other former marine who bumped into Karnes at Ground Zero and joined him on his search is identified only as Sergeant Thomas and is played by a short white man. After the show's premiere, a 6ft 3in, 17-stone black man called Justin Thomas popped up to declare that he was marine number two. Neither was Karnes consulted.

'He was in Iraq but they [ Paramount] could have made more of an effort to get him, ' said Barker. Perhaps they didn't want to find him. McLoughlin and Jimeno were mega-heroes even before the film. But looking coolly at what happened, their actions, while commendable, were limited to rushing to the scene as their duties demanded. Before they could do anything, the south tower had come down on them.

Karnes, who responded to a national emergency with almost preternatural determination and ingenuity, is relegated to being a marginal, kooky presence — a 'nutbag', as one fireman calls him in the film.

Depressingly, Karnes believes that the men he saved, and who were courted by Stone, want to hog all the glory. 'It seems Jimeno and McLoughlin wanted to make a movie without Dave's input, ' said Barker. The two policemen have not spoken to the marine since 2002.

The schmaltz and star-spangled religiosity of World Trade Center will prompt snorts of derision in post-Christian, anti-Bush Britain when it opens there on 29 September. But America is still raw over 9/11. A sanctity still surrounds almost everything connected to that day and this has insulated the film from criticism — even down to its linking, through Karnes, of 9/11 to Iraq.

Driving past the Grace Bible Church in Accident, Maryland, recently, I saw a Karnesian sign that read, 'Freedom is Always Purchased With Blood.' The growing disenchantment with Mesopotamian events notwithstanding, it is a sentiment that is not uncommon. Perhaps Stone was using the character of Karnes — a person he seems not really to want to understand — to undermine, even subconsciously, the overt rah-rah message of his own film. Or maybe he just wanted the money.

20 August 2006

Republicans back Vanquished Democrat

Senior Republican strategists have thrown a politcal lifeline to Joe Lieberman, the Democratic senator ousted by a Left-wing challenger over his support for the Iraq war, by supporting him through a military veterans group.

Mr Lieberman's 18-year Senate career appeared to be at an end after Connecticut's Democratic primary earlier this month when he was narrowly defeated by Ned Lamont, a millionaire newcomer who ran on the single issue of opposing the Iraq war.

But his new strategy of running in the November Senate elections as an independent candidate who would appeal to Republican voters is already paying off after the White House declined to back the official Republican candidate and a poll last week gave Mr Lieberman a 12-point advantage over Mr Lamont.

In an increasingly bitter election battle, the new Veterans for Freedom group has begun running advertisements for Mr Lieberman and senior Democrats have warned that he risks being shunned by his former colleagues in Washington if he is re-elected.

The group hopes to split the Democratic vote in Connecticut - traditionally a staunchy liberal state - and give the Republicans a better chance of winning.

All three Republican Congressional candidates in Connecticut have praised Mr Lieberman while failing to endorse their own nominee, Alan Schlesinger. Mr Lieberman's candidacy has also been enorsed by Newt Gingrich, the Republican who once served as House speaker.

Angry Democrats are comparing the veterans' campaign group to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an organisation that was widely credited with helping undermine John Kerry, who stood against President George W Bush in the 2004 election, by casting doubt on his Vietnam war record. The group is led by Wade Zirkle, a former US Marine Corps lieutenant who was badly wounded in Fallujah two years ago. But its advisers include Dan Senor, a former White House aide who was chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and William Kristol, a leading neo-conservative.

Mr Zirkle said that people were sick of anti-war activists purporting to speak for American troops. "Our goal is to give a voice to active duty troops and veterans of the global war on terror. Joe Lieberman was an obvious person to support - he gets it when it comes to the long war."

"Netroots" - grassroots Left-wing activists who mobilise via the internet - have been using weblogs to point out the group's Republican links as they try to ensure that Mr Lamont does not share the same fate as Mr Kerry. George Jepson, a senior Lamont aide, said the "swift-boating" of Mr Lamont had begun with the group aiming "to make opposition to the war in Iraq somehow unpatriotic". Despite the unpopularity of the war, many anti-war Democrats remain vulnerable to charges of lack of patriotism.

Within hours of Mr Lieberman's defeat at the hands of Mr Lamont, Republicans were seeking to portray the vote as a sign of the moral decadence of Democrats. Vice President Dick Cheney said it showed Democrats believed "that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home, which clearly we know we won't".

In retaliation, the bloggers are hitting back at what they see as cynical Republican politicking. On the popular Huffington Post site, one blogger named "Seriously" commented: "The Vets for Freedom are another band of Hired Liars who should be out raising cash for American troops who have sacrificed life and limb during the invasion of Iraq."

Another contributor, "Betsy", agreed. "Yet more truth-twisting Republican scum making money off the blood of our troops. This country needs an enema to purge us of these people. Let’s give it to them come November...TAKE AMERICA BACK!"

But the wounds and decorations for bravery earned by so many of the Veterans for Freedom mean that their views will not be easy to dismiss. One member, Joseph Worley, a former medic, lost his left leg in Iraq while another, David Bellavia, a former staff sergeant, has been recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honour, America’s equivalent of the Victoria Cross.

Mr Zirkle, who worked for a Republican gubernatorial candidate after he left the US Marines, insisted: "We are non-partisan and include Republicans and Democrats. The people saying we are like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are the Left-wing radical fringe, the netroots. The moderate, mainstream, far-sighted people of America understand."

30 July 2006

Senior Democrat branded a Judas in row set to split the party over Iraq

By Toby Harnden in Washington

LIKE A drowning man, Senator Joe Lieberman, one of the Democratic party's most respected figures, is clutching on to former president Bill Clinton in a desperate effort to save his political life.

But some Lieberman supporters believe Mr Clinton is acting only to protect his wife's own political fortunes and that he could eventually help seal the demise of the Connecticut senator's career.

Mr Lieberman, who in 2000 came within a whisker of becoming America's first Jewish vice-president, is facing defeat in a Senate primary by a political newcomer challenging from the Left of his own party.

The ugly battle threatens to split the Democrats into two camps - a traditional, moderate and hawkish one represented by Sen Lieberman, who strongly supports the Iraq war, and a young, liberal, anti-war one that supports his opponent, Ned Lamont.

Mr Lamont, a multi-millionaire scion of the J.P. Morgan banking family, has successfully painted Mr Lieberman as a lackey of President George W. Bush who has lost touch with his party's roots.

Mr Lieberman has been mocked for what has become known as "the kiss'' when Mr Bush embraced him after last year's State of the Union speech and appeared to peck him on the cheek.

Lamont supporters have characterised this as a "Judas'' or "Godfather'' kiss and a papier maché float caricaturing the moment has dogged Sen Lieberman at campaign events.

In a sign of the seriousness of his plight, Mr Lieberman announced he would run as an independent in the November mid-terms if he lost against Mr Lamont.

Last week, Mr Lieberman stood beaming as President Clinton, still one of the most popular politicians in America, urged Democrats in Connecticut to vote for the veteran senator when the party chooses its Senate nominee next Wednesday.

"Joe Lieberman is a friend of mine,'' Mr Clinton told a rally of more than 2,000 Democrats who had been swaying to the tune of Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop, the Clinton anthem during his victorious 1992 presidential campaign. "I love him. He's in a tough race,'' he said.

But the smile on Mr Lieberman's face looked distinctly strained. Not only had two new polls showed Mr Lamont with a narrow lead, unthinkable just a month ago, but he also knew that Mr Clinton's agenda might be far from straightforward.

The two men have a complicated history. In 1970, when he was a student at Yale law school, President Clinton worked for Mr Lieberman when he was running for a state senate seat.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Mr Lieberman became the first senator from outside the South to back Mr Clinton for the White House. The pair were key members of the centrist New Democrat strain of the party that swept to power.

But the relationship soured six years later when Sen Lieberman, a devout Jew whom his detractors denounce as sanctimonious, declared in the Senate that he was "personally angry'' about Mr Clinton's "immoral'' and "disgraceful'' behaviour with the intern Monica Lewinsky.

It looked briefly as if that speech would spell the end of Mr Clinton's presidency, a fact that was never forgotten by the occupants of the White House, including Hillary Clinton.

What some Clinton aides saw as Mr Lieberman's treachery was cemented in 2000 when he accepted an invitation to become Al Gore's running mate - a move widely viewed as Vice-President Gore's attempt to distance himself from the Clinton scandals.

Four years later Mr Lieberman was a presidential candidate himself. During the 2004 primaries he was in turn betrayed by Mr Gore who endorsed Howard Dean, the firebrand surprise front-runner and darling of the "netroots'' - the liberal bloggers who are becoming increasingly influential in the Democratic party.

At the time, Mr Lieberman said: "I don't have anything to say about Al Gore's sense of loyalty. I have no regrets about the loyalty that I had to him.''

He added that a vote for Mr Dean would be "a ticket for nowhere''.

Mr Dean is now Democratic party chairman and there have been concerns within the Lieberman camp about his backing for their man. His brother Jim is one of the leading Lamont supporters - jokingly dubbed the "Nedroots''.

Both Mr and Mrs Clinton have made it clear that their support for Mr Lieberman will only stretch so far. If Mr Lamont prevails next week, they will switch their backing to him because he will then be the official Democratic candidate.

Mrs Clinton fears that a Lieberman defeat would embolden and empower the liberal Democrats who are furious at her support for the Iraq war. But an independent Lieberman candidacy could damage her even further and some Democrats believe President Clinton's appearance was partly calculated to place him in a position where he could urge the senator not to run against Mr Lamont in November.

In his speech, Mr Clinton described the Iraq war as the "pink elephant in the room'' during the Democratic primary. Mr Lieberman's staunch backing for Mr Bush's foreign policy could well make him the first candidate to be crushed by it.

30 July 2006

Muslim shoots six in the US and blames Israel

JEWISH groups across the United States urged their members to step up security yesterday after a Muslim man burst into a Jewish Federation building a shot six women, killing one of them.

Naveed Afzal Haq, 31, of Pakistani origin, forced his way into the Seattle headquarters of the Jewish Federation and opened fire after shouting: "I'm a Muslim American. I'm angry at Israel."

One woman died and three, one pregnant, were critically injured. Another jumped from a first-floor window, escaping with only scrapes and bruises, as others cowered behind desks. Three of the victims were not Jewish.

“I worked very closely with these people,” said Carol Gown, the organisation’s Seattle vice-president told The Sunday Telegraph. “They were wonderful women. I love them. It is a horrific act and a terrible loss.

“We did have security on the building. Now, Jewish organisations have urged everyone to be very vigilant and to revise their procedures.” It was not thought he had deliberately targetted women.

Mayor Greg Nickels said the shootings were “a crime of hate”. Last weekend, the Jewish Federation had led a large rally in support of Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Haq, from Pasco, 220 miles east of Seattle, telephoned police himself to tell them what he had done. He has been charged with one count of murder and five of attempted murder.

Police said he had been receiving medication for a bipolar disorder and had charge of lewd conduct charge pending after he allegedly exposed himself in a shopping mall.

“This event came out of the blue,” said Mrs Gown. “We pay attention to security but we had no way of knowing a crazy man would come and do something like this.”

Yesterday, a protective police cordon was thrown around Seattle’s Seward Park area, the city's traditional Jewish neighborhood and home to three major synagogues.

Arsalan Bukhari, president of the local chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations condemned the attack."The events that are happening in the Middle East should not spill over into our city," he said.

The Anti-Defamation League offered security advice to Jewish organisations across America. Robert Jacobs, its Washington state regional director, recommended it would be best for Jews "not to congregate in one location that might be an obvious site".

The Spectator, 29 July 2006

Compassionate Redneck takes Texas by Storm

By Toby Harnden in Lubbock, Texas

The candidate is clad in a black Stetson, dark pearl-buttoned shirt and blue jeans, like a shambolic outlaw in some spaghetti western. But if he is inhibited by the audience of corpulent, stony-faced sheriffs glaring out from beneath their ten-gallon hats, he does not show it.

Within the first two minutes of his stump speech, the ageing cowboy with Frank Zappa facial hair and a history of substance abuse proudly confesses to lewd conduct and breaking a state law.

‘I’m a member of the Mile High Club,’ declares Kinky Friedman, the former country and western singer, to delegates at the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas conference, where stalls advertise professional ‘tragedy clean-up’ services and a commemorative handgun auction. ‘I’m a solo member.’

Allegations by political opponents that he had sipped from an open liquor can while driving at the head of a recent St Patrick’s Day parade in Dallas are true, he continues, clutching an unlit Montecristo No. 2 Cuban cigar. ‘It was Guinnessgate 2006. I admit I did drink the Guinness —but I did not swallow.’

Friedman, whose nickname derives not from any sexual antics, airborne or otherwise, but from his now-thinning ‘Jewish Afro’ hair, used to be best known first as the singer with the Texas Jewboys. Then he became a writer of off-beat detective novels (starring himself) with titles like Armadillos and Old Lace and Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned.

The Jewboys’ cult hits managed to upset just about every group imaginable. ‘They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Any More’ contained every ethnic slur imaginable. ‘Proud to be an Asshole from El Paso’ (a skit on Merle Haggard’s ‘Okie from Muskogee’) cast aspersions on some Texans’ affinity with sheep. ‘Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed’ prompted campus protests from feminists.

Friedman is still doing his best to offend people but he is achieving new notoriety as an insurgent candidate for governor of Texas, the post held by George W. Bush for six years. On 7 November he hopes to achieve what Arnold Schwarzenegger did in California and the pro-wrestler Jesse Ventura did in Minnesota by winning a statewide election as a celebrity political neophyte. His pitch is encapsulated by his slogans ‘Why the Hell Not?’ and ‘I Can’t Screw Things Up Any Worse Than They Have’.

Only 29 per cent voted in the last gubernatorial election, and those who stayed at home, disillusioned with politicians — not least the Republican incumbent Rick Perry — are his target audience.

Outside the Lubbock Civic Centre, where the sheriffs’ conference is being held, is Chris Bell, the Democratic candidate and a man so bland that it seems Friedman might have invented him just to prove his point. He is sipping from a can of Dr Pepper and adjusts his hair in the mirrored glass of the exit door as he talks.

‘Kinky’s funny and I like him,’ he says sourly. ‘But we don’t need a joke for a governor. I just think people will realise they need a governor who takes a serious approach to fixing problems.’

Friedman accuses his three rivals of having had a ‘humour bypass’ and cites their combined 88 years in politics as the reason. ‘Musicians can better run this state than politicians,’ he tells a crowd of some 250 crammed into Bleacher’s Sports Café in downtown Lubbock. ‘Now we won’t get a lot done in the mornings probably, but we’ll run late and we’ll be honest.’

Lubbock , the remote west Texas birthplace of Buddy Holly, is rock-solid conservative. When Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, another of its musical offspring, said she was ‘ashamed of being from the same state’ as President George W. Bush, Lubbock disowned her. ‘She stirred up a lot of s***,’ explains Tom Ward, a Friedman supporter. ‘Is she welcome here? Hell no, not at all.’

But high federal government spending and the running sore of Iraq make the national mood music for Republicans less than favourable. In the Lone Star state, the indictment on corruption charges of Tom DeLay, a Texan former Republican congressional leader, and Mr Bush’s willingness to compromise on immigration in order to woo Hispanic voters have also driven conservatives away from the Grand Old Party.

Friedman’s first action on becoming governor, he says, would be to list his phone number publicly so any Texan can call to shoot the breeze. Then he would legalise casino gambling and funnel the funds into education — ‘slots for tots’. The state lotto funds should also be redistributed. ‘What has six balls and screws Texas? The lottery. We’ve got to get these money-changers out of the temple.’

Single and 61, Friedman’s companions in the governor’s mansion would be his five mutts Mr Magoo, Perky, Brownie, Chumley and Fly. ‘Dogs can teach us a lot,’ he says. ‘How to be loyal, how to be friendly, how to love, how to be always ready for fun, how to forgive, all of that.’ On foreign policy he’s a neocon: ‘The Israelis and the Texans have a lot in common. They both have a John Wayne spirit.’

He is a keen environmentalist — he pledges to convert all 35,000 Texas school buses to biodiesel fuel — supports low taxes and has a strong libertarian streak, but he defies categorisation. He is probably the only candidate in America who supports both gay marriage and compulsory prayer in public schools.

‘My plan is to bring back the Ten Commandments and call them the Ten Suggestions. I’m for gay marriage — they have as much right to be miserable as the rest of us. I’m an independent thinker. Nobody tells me what to think and I haven’t sold myself to the highest bidder like a career politician.’

He expresses bemusement about some issues. ‘The death penalty? I’m all over the map. I’m not anti it but I’m anti the wrong guy getting executed. And I do ask the question, “When was the last time we executed a rich guy?” If I’m governor there won’t be anybody executed — except for the few that really need to die.’ His immigration stance is significantly to the right of Mr Bush’s.

Bleacher’s is decorated with homemade placards declaring ‘Kinky Time’ and ‘There is Something Kinky Going On’. Afterwards, Friedman spends more than two hours signing books, bumper stickers and anything else put under his nose, including a teenage girl’s sign that reads ‘I Prefer to be Erotic but Kinky Will Do Just Fine’, written in felt pen. The crowd is loud, in many cases drunk and decidedly mixed.

There are bikers, students, a neuro-surgeon, an elderly lawyer who was once the town’s Democratic chairman and a Native American called Roger who ran for Republican chairman. Friedman is unfazed when a six-foot transvestite christened Bruce but calling herself Laura, complete with miniskirt, smeared lipstick and stubble, asks for an autograph.

Back in his room at Lubbock’s soulless Embassy Suites, Friedman is on the phone trying to persuade the actor Robert Duvall to do a radio spot for him. Without the money and backing of a party machine, he needs cash for advertising. ‘If we rob a bank, we can do it,’ he says, adding that he hopes his friend Bob Dylan will come down to lend a hand.

Like many funny men, Friedman’s string of quips masks a somewhat maudlin temperament. When people fail to take him seriously, he gets cranky — but it seems he can’t quite bear it when they do. He calls himself a ‘dealer in hope’, and there is an endearingly childlike quality about him, but also a cynical tinge to his anti-politician message.

He is at once supremely confident about winning (the latest polls put him at 21 per cent compared with Perry’s 35 per cent — still an outsider but definitely in with a shout) and racked with self-doubt. ‘The young people are really starting to inspire the Kinkster and the feeling’s mutual,’ he says at Bleacher’s. But later, pondering voter turnout, he confides: ‘I think the young people are going to f**k us. They always do.’

He mourns the decline of traditional values, an America gone by. ‘ Texas is the last resort of wussification, which is the weakening of fibre, spiritual and moral,’ he says. ‘I’m a compassionate redneck. Someone who cares about the little fellers, not the Rockefellers, who follows not the easy way but the cowboy way. It’s honesty, leaving a place cleaner than you found it, knowing that courtesy is owed, respect is earned and love is given.’

As he walks me down to the hotel lobby, Friedman reflects on his life. ‘I was stoned a lot when I was a musician and I was involved with a lot of beautiful women. I raised a lot of hell and I don’t regret it. At least I never killed anybody. Even Ted Kennedy can’t say that.’

But he does seem regretful, even a touch lonely. The ‘love of my life’, he explains, was killed in a car crash in the 1980s — ‘she kissed a windshield at 95 miles per hour in her Ferrari’ — and a romance with Miss Texas 1987 fell apart. ‘I was too young to get married, then I was too stoned and now I’m old enough to sleep alone.’

Recently he has embarked on a romance with a British businesswoman he met while she was driving across the United States in a pick-up truck. ‘She’s a lady, a real one,’ he says. ‘I had hopes she was an extremely wealthy person.’ A future First Lady of Texas, perhaps? ‘Could be. But as I’ve waited this long I hope not to make a tragic mistake so late in the game.’

The Sunday Telegraph, 23 July 2006

Phoenix in terror as serial killers compete for notoriety

The desert city of Phoenix, the fastest-growing metropolis in the United States, is being terrorised by two serial killers operating separately and melting back into the night after striking at random.

Police believe there is no link between the two murderers, who have been branded the "Baseline Killer" and the "Serial Shooter", though some criminal profilers claim that they might be feeding off each other's notoriety.

Two victims have been picked off by a single bullet while cycling. A man was shot dead as he dozed off while waiting for a bus. A woman was abducted while vacuuming her vehicle at a car wash and her body was later found dumped in an alley.

Phil Gordon, the mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, told The Sunday Telegraph that it was the first instance that he knew of in American history of two such killers being at large in one city at the same time.

"But this is a city that isn't letting these two monsters hold them prisoner. They're the ones being hunted. They now know there is no place they can hide," he said.

He said that there were 130 of the "best of the best" police officers dedicated to the cases, supported by 3,000 regular officers in Phoenix, which recently overtook Philadelphia to become America's fifth largest city, with 1.5 million inhabitants.

The Baseline Killer is a black man whose crimes started late last summer with a series of rapes and robberies before he progressed to murder. He has attacked men and women and once robbed a group of 11 people.

Operating on foot or using a victim's car, he has been described by witnesses as wearing dreadlocks and a floppy fishing hat, probably a disguise. In one attack, he wore a Halloween mask.

"He is a predator who is very brazen and violent when he strikes," said Sgt Andy Hill of the Phoenix Police Department. "There have been occasions when he has exchanged a few words with a victim so it's very important not to engage with a suspicious person. There may still be a chance to get away."

Named after the Baseline Road, where he first marauded, he has murdered six people and committed another 15 crimes across an area of 80 square miles.

His victims are shot, usually at very close range. He normally strikes just after sunset and estimates of his age range from 25 to 40, height from 5ft 6in to 6ft and weight from 10 to 14 stone.

Details of the Serial Shooter are even more sketchy. "Nobody has seen the suspect," said Sgt Hill. "We believe all the shooting occurs from a vehicle. He's just driving around waiting for that opportunity for a victim to be alone."

Normally emerging between 10pm and 4am, he has carried out 34 shootings in the past 14 months, killing five people, five dogs and three horses and wounding a burro, a wild ass of the type introduced to the American south-west in the 16th century by Spaniards who had first encountered the animal in Africa.

He has been linked to a light-coloured saloon car but police, mindful that in 2002 erroneous reports of the Washington DC snipers using a white van delayed their capture, have warned people to beware of all vehicles.

The Serial Shooter has also fired his weapon into a Burger King restaurant.

Glenn Notsch, 44, who runs a swimming pool supplies company, called the police last May when he saw drag marks and dried blood in the gravel in his delivery area. Police searched the premises but found nothing.

Four days later, he noticed a pungent smell that at first he thought was tar. "I was walking my dog Bella between our building and a big shed. I pulled back some black paper that was there and I saw a person's arm and leg. I just ran."

The body was that of Nicole Gibbons, 26. "She was the fifth victim of the Baseline Killer and there has been one more since," he said. "This was the only body hidden and the only one that was nude. She was also a known prostitute." Mr Notsch said that he carries a 9mm Czech pistol for protection.

"I have always been a gun owner but I have friends who have bought firearms for the first time because of this," he said. "I just hope they're practising."

Mr Gordon said that since a reward of $100,000 (£54,000) was offered 11 days ago the number of tips from the public had risen from a dozen a day to 1,000 before averaging out at 500.

"The police are working 24/7. They're doing shifts of 12 hours and then going over to volunteer their time to man the tip lines. We don't want people to be afraid or embarrassed to call. The littlest thing is probably what the police need."

Sgt Hill said the lack of information made apprehending either suspect very difficult. "With the Serial Shooter, it could conceivably be more than one suspect. We've got to build these cases one brick at a time," he said. "We need a breakthrough. We know that we're racing against time and we don't want there to be another victim."

Evening Standard, 18 July 2006

The Day Alan Died

By Toby Harnden in Washington

A MOCK Star Trek email from my friend Alan Senitt to his chums back home confirmed that the West Wing aficionado and political junkie was having the time of his life in Washington.

Dubbing himself