To the Point

John Bolton, Politics and Iraq Intel

At tomorrow's Senate Committee hearing, any one of four Republicans could derail John Bolton-s nomination as Ambassador to the United Nations. At issue is not Bolton-s outspoken criticism of the UN, but claims he retaliated against intelligence agents whose conclusions he didn-t like. That-s raised charges that Bolton was trying to manipulate their conclusions to justify policy decisions he'd already made. The broader issue of intelligence manipulation and the Iraq war arose in the last days of Tony Blair-s re-election in Britain. In a secret memo leaked during the campaign, the Prime Minister's cabinet members say -intelligence and facts were being fixed- in Washington to justify the decision to invade Iraq. Which comes first, the intelligence or the policy? We hear from experts in national security and defense policy, a veteran CIA analyst and Reagan Administration Defense Department official. Making News: More Insurgent Attacks and Bloodshed in Iraq There-ve been more bombings today in Iraq, and the death toll is rising since the new government was sworn in. Today's death toll is up to 64. US officials say attacks are up to 70 every day from an average of 30 to 40 earlier this year. Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor says that the cumulative death toll of 400 roughly equals that of the World Trade Center attack in February, 1993. Reporter's Notebook: Mutant Mice Injected with Human Cells In ancient Greece, the mythical chimera had a lion's head and serpent's tail on a goat-s body. Today, so-called chimeras including human elements have been used in laboratories for some time, even though human cloning has been declared illegal and the US patent office has rejected an application to combine humans and chimpanzees, Dr. Ramesh Akkina of the SCID-hu Mouse Core at Colorado State University in Fort Collins has more.