No Osama. No Omar.

"Pentagon officials who long opposed expanding the international security force in Afghanistan now say that enlarging it and placing its troops outside Kabul may help secure the country and allow American troops to leave sooner, senior Bush administration officials said today."

"The Bush administration became locked in a dispute today with critics at the United Nations who argue that efforts to shut down Al Qaeda's financial network have hit a dead end."

"Vice President Dick Cheney today repeated his earlier case for pre-emptive military action against Iraq, brushing off a groundswell of unease on the part of European allies, Muslim nations and broader world public opinion."

"The Bush administration struggled Thursday with an increasingly skeptical Congress and international community as it tried to gain support for deposing President Saddam Hussein of Iraq."

"French President Jacques Chirac has become the latest Western leader to speak out against an American attack on Iraq."

"The President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, has said a United States attack on Iraq would 'alienate the Muslim world'."

"The Bush administration sought today to shore up Congressional support for a campaign against Iraq, even as it tried to head off pressure from Britain and France to work through the United Nations before taking any action against Saddam Hussein."

"THE scale of opposition in the Labour Party to Tony Blair supporting a pre-emptive attack on Iraq by the United States is laid bare today."

"US Air Force commanders considered crashing fighter jets into hijacked planes on 11 September because of a lack of armed planes, a BBC investigation reveals."

"The United States will seek Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's ouster regardless of whether he lets U.N. specialists resume inspections of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability, a U.S. official said on Wednesday."

"No sooner had Donald Rumsfeld declared that the international community would back an eventual U.S. attack on Iraq than the world begged to differ."

"Sightings have been replaced by rumors and U.S. officials admit they are baffled."

"THE Bush Administration debated taking military action against Iraq just days after September 11, but decided to deal with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan first and to turn its attention to Saddam Hussein later."

"Recent reports indicate the Taliban and al Qaeda are regrouping in preparation for a major escalation of fighting in Afghanistan. Moreover, STRATFOR has received intelligence that resistance to U.S. forces in Afghanistan has spread well beyond these groups, threatening a steep increase in fighting over the coming months."

"TONY BLAIR privately warned President Bush that the US-led bombing campaign in Afghanistan was having little effect on the ground."

"A global campaign to block al Qaeda's access to money has stalled, enabling the terrorist network to obtain a fresh infusion of tens of millions of dollars and putting it in a position to finance future attacks, according to a draft U.N. report."

"Suspected members of al Qaeda who fled to Iraq are likely in an area of the country controlled by Kurdish groups, not President Saddam Hussein, a top State Department official said here today.

But Armitage's information lends support to the Iraqi leadership's denial that they are playing host to al Qaeda fugitives. And it appeared to undercut one argument used by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to justify a possible attack on Iraq's ruler. Rumsfeld said last week that the al Qaeda members must be in Iraq with the assent of the Baghdad government."

"Civil liberties groups in the United States claimed a landmark victory against the Bush administration yesterday after a federal appeals court forcefully condemned the government's policy of holding foreign nationals after the 11 September attacks and arranging secret deportations.

The ruling is a particularly serious blow to Mr Ashcroft, an extreme conservative who has managed to infuriate lawyers, civil rights' advocates and defenders of the constitution across the political spectrum."

"Osama bin Laden is firmly back in command of al Qaeda and the group is digging in for guerrilla attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, an Arab journalist with close ties to the militant's associates said on Tuesday."

"After months of frustration, American commanders appear to have concluded that Osama bin Laden is probably still alive and moving between mountain hideouts somewhere on a 250-mile stretch of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan."

"The governor of the southeastern Afghan province of Paktika said on Wednesday that U.S. forces had harassed locals during the latest operation to flush out Taliban and al Qaeda fugitives, a private news agency reported."

"Afghan authorities are considering releasing hundreds of foreign prisoners, many of them suspected al-Qaeda fighters, but those guarding them argue the men are still dangerous terrorists who should remain behind bars."

"Afghanistan will take back its crown this year from the notorious Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia as the world's top producer of opium, the raw material used to make heroin, a Thai anti-narcotics official said."

"Vice-president Dick Cheney's combative speech advocating a pre-emptive strike against Iraq was intended to settle the most serious rift in US public life right now, a conflict simmering not only within the Republican party, but inside the Bush dynasty itself."

"President Bush told Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States today that Saddam Hussein was "a menace and a threat" to both his Middle East neighbors and the United States. But after a meeting that lasted several hours, Saudi officials said their position was unchanged — that war was not acceptable and they would not cooperate in any military action."

"Qatar's foreign minister ended a two-day visit to Baghdad on Tuesday during which he added his voice to a growing chorus of Arab opposition to a U.S. invasion of Iraq, complicating the Bush administration's ability to launch an attack from the region."

"Rumsfeld went on to draw parallels between the Bush administration's position toward Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, and former British prime minister Winston Churchill's warnings about Adolf Hitler before the second world war."

"Tony Blair faces acute political embarrassment from damaging defeats over Iraq at next month's TUC and Labour conferences after the results of the latest Guardian/ICM poll disclosed sharply rising opposition among Labour voters to American military action."

"A bomb exploded in a garbage bin next to a U.N. staff house here tonight, injuring at least two Afghans, and rockets were fired at a U.S. military outpost in remote Konar province earlier today, highlighting the continued threat of terrorism in the capital and across the country."

"The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan said Sunday that American troops will remain here indefinitely and won't be able to leave until it's clear this war-torn country has stabilized and is no longer a safe haven for terrorists."

"The commander of the biggest US search for Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives in Afghanistan for five months said last night that the quarry appeared to have been tipped off that the troops were coming.

When Operation Mountain Sweep in the south-east ended it had nine prisoners and a tonne of weapons and ammunition, but it had failed to engage any sizeable units in combat."

"A GROWING rift between George W. Bush and his father’s senior advisers over whether to invade Iraq exploded into the public yesterday when James Baker, Secretary of State during the Gulf War, said a unilateral US attack on Saddam Hussein would be economically and politically perilous."

"The Pentagon is planning to use a British weapon that can disable electronic and electrical systems without killing anyone to attack Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons sites."

"The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reportedly deployed satellite-based communications systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, night vision radars and trained dogs at its 44 offices in Pakistan."

"The secretive federal court that approves spying on terror suspects in the United States has refused to give the Justice Department broad new powers, saying the government had misused the law and misled the court dozens of times, according to an extraordinary legal ruling released yesterday."

"Support for sending troops to Iraq has fallen from a high of 74% in November, when allied forces had al-Qaeda terrorists on the run, to 53% now, when the war on terror has shown little recent progress and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is still at large."

"OSAMA BIN LADEN is still alive, but may have left Pakistan, where he was thought to be hiding as recently as last month, according to a senior Indian minister."

"With attention currently riveted on Iraq, it is easy to forget that the Afghan-Pakistani region remains far from pacified. A few days ago, two U.S. special operations soldiers were wounded while gathering intelligence in central Afghanistan, indicating that forces hostile to the United States are continuing with at least low-intensity attacks."

"Reinstating United Nations weapons inspectors — not the removal of Saddam Hussein — is the centerpiece of Britain's policy toward Iraq, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said today."

"One of America's most senior generals has condemned as 'foolish' plans backed by leading Washington hawks to topple Saddam Hussein by using special forces in a repetition of the tactics that succeeded in Afghanistan."

"The United States has accused Iraq of witholding information about a US Navy pilot who was declared killed in action on the first day of the Gulf War in 1991 but who has since been redesignated by the Pentagon as possibly still living and missing in action."

In a recent exercise known as the "Millenium Challenge," retired general Paul Van Riper played the role of a crazy enemy warlord in a Persian Gulf nation with weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. was planning a, um, preemptive strike, but Van Riper decided to strike first. Quote: "The idea, being weaker, if they're going to preempt me then I'm going to preempt them first."

"Afghanistan said on Wednesday that U.S. troops and local forces had launched a fresh operation against suspected Taliban and al Qaeda bases around the southeastern city of Khost."

Rummy plays the Hitler card. Soon Saddam will be marching down the Champs d'Elysee!

"Repeatedly, senior Argentine officials brushed aside concerns raised by embassy officials, saying that Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and other top Ford administration officials supported their war against Communists and were not deeply worried about rights abuses, several documents show.

In one cable to Mr. Kissinger, dated Oct. 14, 1976, Ambassador Robert Hill complained that the Argentine foreign minister, César Augusto Guzzetti, returned from a visit to Washington feeling "ecstatic" about relations with the United States.

"Guzzetti went to the U.S. fully expecting to hear some strong, firm, direct warning of his government's human rights practices," Mr. Hill continued. "Rather than that, he has returned in a state of jubilation, convinced that there is no real problem" with the United States over this issue."

"A handful of "second-tier" al Qaeda members have taken refuge in northern Iraq, in an area controlled by the militant Kurdish group, Ansar al Islam, U.S. officials said Wednesday."

"President Pervez Musharraf single-handedly enacted 29 wide-ranging amendments to Pakistan's constitution Wednesday, granting himself near dictatorial powers and cementing the military's role in political life."

"President Bush's case for ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is turning into a tough sell, drawing opposition from allies at home and abroad."

"The Bush administration has begun to back down from plans for a near-term attack on Iraq. The controversial plan was shredding the coalition against al Qaeda, which Washington needs in battling the group. But the Bush administration's retreat from Iraq, although necessary, forces it to manage a political and psychological defeat."

"Despite intense interrogations and investigations, U.S. authorities have yet to identify any senior Al Qaeda leaders among the nearly 600 terrorism suspects from 43 countries in U.S. military custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials say."

"Pakistan has demanded the release of 58 of its citizens from Guantanamo Bay, officials said yesterday, amid a growing number of reports that none of the 598 inmates being held without charge at the US Caribbean base are al-Qaida leaders."

"THE NEW INFORMATION on the policy shift toward Iraq, and Rumsfeld’s role in it, comes as The New York Times reported Sunday that United States gave Iraq vital battle-planning help during its war with Iran as part of a secret program under President Reagan — even though U.S. intelligence agencies knew the Iraqis would unleash chemical weapons."

"The benefit in fighting a proxy-style war in Afghanistan was victory on the cheap—cheap, at any rate, in American blood. The cost, NEWSWEEK’s investigation has established, is that American forces were working intimately with “allies” who committed what could well qualify as war crimes."

"A final report by foreign peacekeeping officials on the assassination of Vice President Abdul Qadir suggests that government protection for Afghan officials is woefully lacking, that Afghan security agencies are ill-equipped to investigate the crime and that the assassins are unlikely to be found."

Remixed propaganda posters, courtesy of the Ministry of Homeland Security

"The United States is likely to keep troops in Afghanistan for many years to guard against it becoming a haven for terrorists again, the American war commander said Thursday."

"Leading Republicans from Congress, the State Department and past administrations have begun to break ranks with President Bush over his administration's high-profile planning for war with Iraq, saying the administration has neither adequately prepared for military action nor made the case that it is needed."

also:

Sen. Chuck Hagel: "You can take the country into a war pretty fast, but you can't get out as quickly, and the public needs to know what the risks are. Maybe Mr. (Richard) Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad."

"One of the Republican party's most respected foreign policy gurus yesterday appealed for President Bush to halt his plans to invade Iraq, warning of 'an Armageddon in the Middle East'.

The outspoken remarks from Brent Scowcroft, who advised a string of Republican presidents, including Mr Bush's father, represented an embarrassment for the administration on a day it was attempting to rally British public support for an eventual war."

"U.S. intelligence cannot say conclusively that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, an information gap that is complicating White House efforts to build support for an attack on Saddam's Iraqi regime."

"Iraqi opposition groups were told in Washington that President George W Bush will complete the job his father failed to finish by overthrowing Saddam Hussein, according to a Kurdish leader."

"An American touted by Attorney General John Ashcroft as a significant terrorism figure with plans to detonate a radioactive bomb is probably a 'small fish' with no ties to al-Qaida cell members in the United States, law enforcement officials say.

The FBI's investigation has produced no evidence that Jose Padilla had begun preparations for an attack and little reason to believe he had any support from al-Qaida to direct such a plot, said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity."

"Pentagon hardliners have thrown their weight behind a campaign to demand answers from Iraq over the fate of a US navy pilot missing since the Gulf war."

"The most powerful Kurdish chieftain in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, refused the Bush administration's invitation to attend the meeting of Iraqi opposition figures at the White House last week, Kurdish and administration officials said today."

"RELATIONS between the United States and Saudi Arabia have deteriorated so far that the Saudi Arabians are no longer considered allies, senior diplomatic sources said yesterday."

"Even when the US military tries to bend its hand to a little humanitarian work, the Western NGOs (non-governmental organisations working with the UN) prefer to keep their distance. As a British NGO worker put it with devastating frankness in Kandahar: 'When there is a backlash against the Americans, we want a clear definition between us and them.' You hear that phrase all the time in Afghanistan. 'When the backlash comes...'"

"No Evil-Doers" belt buckle, available at BushWares.

"President Mohammed Khatami of Iran struck out at President Bush and other senior American officials today during a visit to Afghanistan, saying they had 'mis-used' the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States 'to create an atmosphere of violence and war.'"

"The US defence secretary says UN weapons inspection in Iraq would be unlikely to succeed because of the atmosphere of fear there."

US spying under the guise of the UN to be much more difficult.

When Kissinger is against using force, there's something terribly wrong with the idea.

"Arab opposition to a US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein is growing so significantly that it may change the shape of potential US plans to launch an attack against Iraq, Western and Middle Eastern analysts say."

"Nine months since the last confirmed sighting of Osama bin Laden, the U.S. government has no evidence that the terror mastermind is still alive, U.S. officials told NBC News. Indeed, some intelligence analysts now believe that the man accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks may be dead."

"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is considering ways to expand broadly the role of American Special Operations forces in the global campaign against terrorism, including sending them worldwide to capture or kill Al Qaeda leaders far from the battlefields of Afghanistan, according to Pentagon and intelligence officials."

A senior advisor to Rumsfeld, on the convenience of perpetual war: "We're at war with Al Qaeda. If we find an enemy combatant, then we should be able to use military forces to take military action against them."

"... by mid-December, 1,000 or more Qaeda operatives, including most of the chief planners and almost certainly Osama bin Laden himself, had managed to escape. Efforts to capture them since then had one notable success—the capture of key operative Abu Zubaydah in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad in late March. But most of the top echelon and even rank-and-file fighters are still on the loose."

also:

"Some European and Arab intelligence experts believe, in fact, that Al Qaeda has mutated into a form that is no less deadly and even more difficult to combat. 'We are confronted with cells that are all over the place, developing in a very horizontal structure without any evident big center of coordination,' a top European counterterrorist investigator told NEWSWEEK. 'Our operational evaluation today is that the threat is a lot greater than it was in December. That is to say, the worst is ahead of us, not behind us.'"

"Tony Blair and Labour will suffer a potentially catastrophic loss of support if Britain joins American military action against Iraq, a poll commissioned by The Telegraph says today."

"According to exclusive interviews with Afghan military intelligence chiefs in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, Al Qaeda has established two main bases inside Pakistan – hundreds of miles north of where US and Pakistani troops are now hunting – and is preparing for a massive strike against the Afghan government. To blunt US air superiority, Al Qaeda forces are attempting to acquire surface-to-air missiles in China."

"The remarks by Mr. Armey, a Texas Republican who is retiring this year, are the most prominent sign of Congressional unease that the administration is moving rapidly toward a war against Iraq and were especially striking coming from a leading conservative and a staunch Bush ally."

also:

"Mr. Armey said he had supported the Persian Gulf war, which drove Iraq out of Kuwait. But in this case, he said, basic principles of international law apply, and that attacking Iraq without a specific provocation would violate those norms.

'He has a right to hold dominion within his own national boundaries, as obnoxious as he is and as comical as he can be,' said Mr. Armey. 'He is what we in Texas know as a blowhard, he can't help himself.'"

"'Christian fundamentalism is no less dangerous to international peace and security than extremists in other religions,' the daily al-Watan newspaper said. 'Rather it is more dangerous especially if it controls the policy of the United States.'"

"The Afghan Government has said that 13 armed men killed in a gun battle with its forces near Kabul were high-ranking al-Qaeda members who had escaped from a prison in Kabul."

"In the eight months since I published my original study, I have updated and corrected my database, and incorporated the civilian deaths resulting from British and US special forces attacks. My most recent figures show that between 3,125 and 3,620 Afghan civilians were killed between October 7 and July 31."

Let's call it even and go home.

"Less than two months after the Bush administration helped engineer the election of an interim government in Afghanistan, U.S. policymakers are growing increasingly concerned that the country is entering a more dangerous period and are unsure what steps to take next to prevent a spiral of factional violence."

"Saudi Arabia announced yesterday it would veto the use of any of its territory for an attack on Iraq. The announcement is a severe blow to attempts by the United States and Britain to forge an international coalition against Saddam Hussein."

"Senior British ministers are privately admitting to growing exasperation across government at the lack of a clear and coherent US policy towards Iraq."

"The U.S. military said Wednesday American special forces soldiers had killed four men in east Afghanistan but withdrew an earlier claim that they did so fighting their way out an ambush.

The revised details of the incident brought the American version of events closer into line with an account carried by the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency on Wednesday. AIP said four Afghan civilians were killed when U.S. troops opened fire on their vehicle after the driver apparently failed to stop when signaled."

"It was the most serious battle in the capital in months, and came just a day after U.S. troops killed four men who reportedly opened fire on them in Kunar province, 90 miles to the northeast."

"At a time when Karzai begins nearly every speech with a plea for money to rebuild Afghanistan's roads, when there are armies of unemployed men clamoring for just such work and when international donors are pledging billions of dollars in assistance, the absence of road improvements reflects a broader problem: Even the most basic of Afghanistan's many needs remain unaddressed."

"SAUDI ARABIA is in the process of concluding a special trade deal with Baghdad and is likely to deny the United States access to its military bases for any attack on Iraq, according to diplomatic sources."

"Although Mr. Rumsfeld drew no link between Baghdad and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people, the accusation that Baghdad is harbouring al-Qaeda operatives is the first time a senior member of the Bush administration has implicated the Iraqi regime in assisting Osama bin Laden's militant Islamic group."

"As the U.S. saber rattles in the direction of Iraq, European allies are making their own noise in opposition to war and are insisting that any military action against Baghdad be endorsed first by the United Nations."

"A plan to attack Iraq using overwhelming air power, rather than by a land invasion, is gaining support in American and British governments, defence and diplomatic sources say."

"The Pentagon has distanced itself from a report commissioned by an influential defence think-tank that suggested blowing up Saudi oil fields and damaging the country's financial assets unless it did more to fight terrorism."

"General Tommy Franks, who would lead a US military action in Iraq, has presented President George Bush with refinements of a plan for attack. Gen Franks, who led the US military operation in Afghanistan, presented the latest version and its potential consequences to the White House on Monday."

Scott Ritter: "I keep hearing from people that they are bluffing. They are not bluffing. The Bush administration is going to go to war come hell or high water. The decision has been made."

"I looked around at people dragging off cow legs, heads and organs, and I couldn't believe my eyes. And yet there I was, with my own bloody knife and piece of meat. I felt like we had become a pack of wild animals . . . like piranhas on the Discovery Channel. Our situation has turned us into this."

"Padsha Khan Zadran, a warlord as volatile as the region he rules over, is again making trouble for the new central government in Afghanistan — and this time the government is hinting that it might hit back with force."

"Keeping a low profile, as many as 50 U.S. special forces soldiers are now providing security for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The president has rarely left his palace compound in Kabul in recent days, and he never strays far from his American guards. He has dismissed his Afghan security detail, apparently because he can’t trust them. The shift only underscores the perilous security situation in Afghanistan, where warlords are comfortably flexing their muscles in the provinces, defying a government whose hoped-for national army is still in its infancy."

And Kabul is the most stable city in the country ...

"The new government faces a range of formidable challenges, including writing a new constitution and building a multi-ethnic national army. However, political and ethnic rivalries are complicating the government's tasks and threatening its stability."

"German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his Social Democratic party yesterday broke ranks with America's other European allies by declaring at the start of their election campaign that Germany would refuse to provide troops or money for an invasion of Iraq."

"While politicians and pundits debated Britain's potential role in any U.S. effort to achieve a regime change in Baghdad, Channel 4 News broadcast an NOP poll in which 52 opposed British military involvement, 34 percent were in favor, and 14 percent were undecided."

"A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States."

"PRESIDENT BUSH and Tony Blair faced growing opposition to their planned war against Iraq last night as fellow world leaders, British and American politicians, and religious leaders openly voiced objections."

"Cpl. Justin Chisholm, one of Fetterman's men, said he had been sent on search operations near Khost at least four times in recent months. He has yet to fire his rifle, and said he is convinced the arms caches U.S. troops regularly turn up in their searches have little or nothing to do with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In one recent search, the corporal witnessed the clash of cultures that is more likely to haunt the U.S. forces the longer they stay here.

Chisholm was in a village where U.S. forces were preparing to blow up several caves they had discovered and that they believed al Qaeda was using.

'We were ready to blow the caves, when this farmer came up yelling and screaming,' he recalled. It turned out that rather than being an enemy hiding place, the cave was a storage area filled with little more than grain."

"Afghan authorities have warned local warlord Padshah Khan Zadran, who opposes President Hamid Karzai's rule, to halt anti-government protests in his power base in the eastern city of Khost, an Afghan news agency said."

"A smoldering power struggle between Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's U.S.-backed president, and Mohammed Fahim, the ambitious defense minister who commands thousands of loyal troops, has flared into serious confrontation in recent weeks, raising concerns here and abroad of a violent split in the still-fragile government."

"While the Bush administration appears determined to expand its campaign against terrorism to Iraq, a growing chorus of experts inside and outside the U.S. government is cautioning against turning attention away from the war's first front: Afghanistan.

Since vanquishing the Taliban, the United States has failed to devote enough resources to the tougher job of remaking Afghanistan into a stable nation, these critics fear. They say the mission of American troops is changing from military action to the uncertain, risky task of enforcing a tense peace."

"Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is alive and on the run inside Afghanistan, but there has been no sign of Osama bin Laden for months, said a senior official in the south of the country."

"The United States has closed its consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi because of security threats, U.S. officials said Monday."

"AMERICA’S National Security Adviser during the Gulf War warned President Bush yesterday that invading Iraq would cause an 'explosion' in the Middle East and consign the United States to defeat in its War on Terror."

"As the debate over a potential U.S. attack on Iraq continues in Washington and abroad, a subtle increase in the mobilization of Army combat troops is underway. This development offers a hint to the Pentagon's evolving Iraq strategy, with the specific units involved indicating that a conventional attack on Iraq could be slated for January or February, with a major thrust possibly coming from Turkey."

Lyrics here. Sample:

Oh, justice will be served and the battle will rage:
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage.
An' you'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A.
'Cos we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way.

Hell yeah!

"An increasingly contentious debate is underway within the Bush administration over how to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, with the civilian leadership pushing for innovative solutions using smaller numbers of troops and military planners repeatedly responding with more cautious approaches that would employ far larger forces."

Tommy Franks blames the Afghans for pressing the Tora Bora attack. Yep. Afghans gave orders to American forces.

"In the first public hearings on the administration's goal of ousting Saddam Hussein from the Iraqi presidency, an array of experts warned a Senate committee today that an invasion of Iraq would carry significant risks ranging from more terrorist attacks against American targets to higher oil prices."