Now the story may be about to take another turn. The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove.

Adam Price: Does the Prime Minister still regard Sir Richard Dearlove as having been a reliable source of information on Iraq? If so, is it safe to assume that Sir Richard's statement in the summer of 2002 that the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy was an accurate assessment of the intentions and actions of the Bush Administration?

The Prime Minister: As I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, that memo and other documents of the time were covered by the Butler review. In addition, that was before we went to the United Nations and secured the second resolution, 1441, which had unanimous support. Contrary to the hon. Gentleman's view, when I stood next to the new Prime Minister of Iraq, who had five of his relatives assassinated by Saddam, and realised that he was in power because of the democratic votes of 8 million Iraqis, I was glad that we took the action that we did and ensured that Iraq was no longer governed by a dictatorship but by a democracy.

"What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury, the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

"And I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.

"[W]e need more protection for the methods we use to gather intelligence and more protection for our sources, particularly our human sources, people that are risking their lives for their country. Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors."

The politicians argue that the long-impoverished south has never gotten its fair share of the country's oil money, even though the bulk of Iraqi oil reserves lie near Basra, at the head of the Persian Gulf.
...
The advocates of autonomy say that while the south has 80 to 90 percent of Iraq's oil reserves, the country's only ports and its richest date palm groves, the neglect under Mr. Hussein's rule is painfully evident: many of the avenues here resemble garbage dumps, open sewage floods some streets, and shantytowns dot the landscape. The south should have partial or full control over how its oil wealth and other income are distributed, the federalists say.

"There's no democracy in Iraq," Mr. Yasseen said, expressing the deep suspicions of moderate and secular Shiites. "Anyone who says there's democracy has a little Saddam in his head. He wants to become a Saddam."

"I support a real region in the south," said Abdul Khalik Zengana, a senior official in the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two main Kurdish parties. "That will help our interests, and it will help to enhance federalism in Iraq. We bless this step. But we also think southern federalism should be decided on by a referendum of people in the south."

Although the Army will not release its numbers until Friday, it fell about 25 percent short of its target of signing up 6,700 recruits in May, officials said Wednesday. The gap would have been even wider but for the fact that the target was lowered by 1,350.

Senior Army officials said in interviews earlier in the day that the Army exceeded the quota of 5,650 recruits by about 500 people.

Examination of other Junes reveals that there is no significant correlation between June tropical storm activity and the rest of hurricane season. However, the position and intensity of the Bermuda High and sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic are more typical of what things should be like a month from now. We are already beginning to see strong tropical waves with impressive satellite presentations come off the coast of Africa, and that is unusual for June. In fact, the GFS model takes one of those waves and develops it into a hurricane next week as it sweeps north of the Leeward Islands, past Bermuda around July 6, then out to sea. It will be interesting to see if the GFS model is correct. If so, this would likely be the harbinger of an active hurricane season.

If confirmed, Tuesday'’s attack would apparently be the first time a U.S.-led coalition aircraft here has been downed by hostile fire, representing a major new threat to the coalition. The U.S.-backed mujahideen war against Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan in the 1980s finally turned when the Afghan fighters began shooting down Soviet aircraft.

The Veterans Administration assumed it would have to take care of 23,553 patients who are veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but that number had been revised upward to 103,000, Nicholson told a House of Representatives panel.

Nicholson told a House Appropriations subcommittee that his agency's estimate of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in need of health care services was now four times greater than thought.

The Senate debated on Tuesday a proposal by a group of Democrats to add $1.4 billion to veterans' health care funding for next year.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada chided Republicans for finally acknowledging a problem. He noted that early attempts by Democrats to add money for veterans health care were "voted down on a strictly partisan vote."

Will Bush blame liberals Tuesday night ?

• Rove did: liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to .. offer therapy and understanding for our attackers
  
  
• O'Reilly did: [Durbin's] intent was to whip up the American public against the Bush detainee policy
  
  
• WSJ did:   Iraqis are continuing to make .. political and military gains. Where the terrorists are gaining ground is in Washington, D.C.
  
  
• Santorum did: it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the [Priest sex scandal]..
  
  
• Joe Wilson, R-SC did: Liberals hunt down and kill Americans..

  
  

Blaming fellow Americans suggests desperation. Bush is now backed into a corner. And that's when just about any living creature fights with all they have to preserve the status quo... This is the moment when Bushianity will be the most dangerous. How far will they go ? The key to the answer lies tomorrow night.

 The war in Iraq has nothing to do with Sept. 11. Saddam Hussein was a sworn enemy of Washington, but there was no Iraq-Qaeda axis, no connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks on the United States. Yet the president and his supporters continue to duck behind 9/11 whenever they feel pressure about what is happening in Iraq.

 The war has not made the world, or this nation, safer from terrorism. The breeding grounds for terrorists used to be Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia; now Iraq has become one.

 If the war is going according to plan, someone needs to rethink the plan. Questioning our planning, tactics, and strategy is not being "soft on terror."  Only idiots believe that.  We are in a difficult situation because Bush and his advisors made a risky gamble and lost.  They thought it would be a "cakewalk" and now they must face up to the hard questions.  Simply asking these questions is not being "soft on terrorism."

 Yes, it is possible to be for our continued robust operations hunting Al Qaida and Bin Laden in Afghanistan while being strongly against the Iraq war.  It is not only logical, many Americans, perhaps even a majority, now feel this way.

Days after Iraq's new Shiite-led government was announced on April 28, the bodies of Sunni Muslim men began turning up at the capital's central morgue after the men had been detained by people wearing Iraqi police uniforms.

Faik Baqr, the director and chief forensic investigator at the central Baghdad morgue, said the corpses first caught his attention because the men appeared to have been killed in methodical fashion. Their hands had been tied or handcuffed behind their backs, their eyes were blindfolded and they appeared to have been tortured. In most cases, the dead men looked as if they'd been whipped with a cord, subjected to electric shocks or beaten with a blunt object and shot to death, often with single bullets to their heads.

...eyewitnesses said that many of the dead were apprehended by large groups of men driving white Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The men were wearing police commando uniforms and bulletproof vests, carrying expensive 9-millimeter Glock pistols and using sophisticated radios, the witnesses said.
...
If the killers are proven to be Sunni insurgents masquerading as Shiite police, the murders raise troubling questions about how insurgents are getting expensive new police equipment. The Toyotas, which cost more than $55,000 apiece, and Glocks, at about $500 each, are hard to come by in Iraq, and they're rarely used by anyone other than Western contractors and Iraqi security forces.

Further evidence that a police force created, trained and funded by the United States has been abusing human rights, on the other hand, would complicate the Bush administration's efforts to muster greater domestic support for its Iraq policy and more international support for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari.

Before March 2003, he said, the morgue handled 200 to 250 suspicious deaths a month, about 16 of which included firearm injuries. He said he now sees 700 to 800 suspicious deaths a month, with some 500 having firearm wounds.

Before March 2003, he said, the morgue handled 200 to 250 suspicious deaths a month, about 16 of which included firearm injuries. He said he now sees 700 to 800 suspicious deaths a month, with some 500 having firearm wounds.

Former Iraqi leader: Militants crossing from Syria to Iraq not backed by Damascus

Egypt Iraq's former interim prime minister says militants crossing the Syrian border into Iraq are not being put up to it by the Syrian government.

Ayad Allawi (EE'-yahd ah-LAH'-wee) headed up the interim Iraqi government for nearly a year, stepping down in April. He's in Cairo seeking support for his plan for a conference to try to end the insurgency.

...

Starting in late May to June of 2002 a flurry of activity began both in the United States and in the Middle East. In what appears to be an admission of covert activity, chief allied air force commander Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley divulged in a little-noticed quote in the New York Times that US/British aircraft flew 21,736 sorties between June 2002 and March 2003.

Moseley said that some 600 bombs were dropped before the official start of the war, targeting 391 locations and/or installations.

Moseley explained that the combination of air strikes and covert raids occurred in the southern no-fly zone regions covered by routine patrols.

The targets of these strikes are difficult to pinpoint, but RAW STORY has found a clear divergence between U.S. and Iraqi reports at the time, as well as disagreement over what provoked the strikes.
...
"It was no big secret at the time," GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike told RAW STORY. "It was apparent to us at the time that they were doing it and why they were doing it, and that was part of the reason why we were convinced that a decision to go to war had already been made, because the war had already started."

Pike says the allied forces used their position in the No-Fly- Zone to engage in pre-emptive action long before war was formally declared.

"They I think had decided to take advantage of Southern Watch and Northern Watch to go ahead and take the air defense system apart and attack any other targets that they felt needed to be preemptively destroyed," Pike asserted.

"They explicitly altered the rules of engagement," he added, "because initially the rules of engagement had been that they would shoot back if [someone] shot at them. Then they said that if they were shot at, they would shoot at whatever they wanted to."

One U.S. Air Force vet told a hearing in Istanbul this weekend, "I saw bombing intensify. All the documents coming out now, the Downing Street memo and others, confirm what I had witnessed in Iraq. The war had already begun while our leaders were telling us that they were going to try all diplomatic options first."

...the problem is the war, not the rhetoric. Don't expect Bush to address that reality. A "mostly rhetorical" shift will gain him little. Americans can see the bad news out of Iraq, and a few finely crafted buzz phrases from Bush won't do much to convince them otherwise. I usually blast the broadcast networks when they do not air presidential addresses. But this time around I would find it tough to insist that they displace their usual assortment of sleazy reality shows and loaded-with-gross-details crime dramas for the latest White House word games.

...I agree with David Corn that it'd be pretty silly for the networks to show Bush's speech. I also agree with him that usually I'd be annoyed if they didn't. But, there's no actual event prompting this speech other than his declining poll numbers, and somehow that doesn't really seem like a good enough reason. Press conference, yes. Speech alone, no.