Sometime this spring or summer, barring an unexpected turnaround by Tehran, President Bush is likely to go on national television and announce that he has ordered American ships and aircraft to strike at military targets inside Iran. We must still sit through several months of soap opera at the United Nations in New York and assorted foreign capitals before this comes to pass, but evidence suggests that Bush has already decided an attack is his only option and the rest is a charade he must go through to satisfy his European allies. The proof of this lies half-hidden in recent public statements of his, which, if pieced together, provide a formal list of justifications for going to war

WEATHER FORECAST: DON'T ASK

The final word on global warming is out, and the news is awful: Even if CO2 levels were frozen at current levels, the damage will continue for centuries, with rising oceans, intense storms, widespread drought and floods. If tomorrow we shut down every smokestack factory, junked every car, and returned to the Stone Age, it cannot be stopped.

And that's the GOOD news. According to some climatologists, the panel's forecasts are too cautious because they don't take into account more recent studies, for example, about glacier melt in Greenland, which can greatly increase how much the sea level will rise, and how fast.

While the Bush Administration is officially in denial about the existence of global warming, the United States is leading research into geo-engineering schemes, include deliberately polluting the stratosphere with tiny sulphur dioxide particles or putting trillions of wafer-thin reflectors into orbit. The U.S. government has been lobbying the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to include geo-engineering in the third part of its report to be released in May on ways to mitigate the impacts

South Pacific More Vulnerable to Global Warming Than Thought

Threat to millions of people who live on low-lying coasts, not just in the Pacific

Capturing Carbon Will Be Most Critical Challenge of Century

Coal may be 80% of CO2 emissions within 100 years

White House Meddling With Climate Science Has Done Lasting Damage, Senate Told

"Tremendous amount of White House pressure" to suppress scientific concern about global warming

IPCC Report Called Too Cautious

Researchers from 133 countries found consensus with conservative estimates

Desperate or Dishonest Schemes to Fix or Exploit Global Warming

"There's a little bit of panic brewing, governments are taking these wacky ideas seriously"

Germany Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back on Green Energy

Despite law promoting renewables, nation building new coal power plants, trading carbon emissions

Climate Catastrophes Inevitable, Says New Report

Destruction of cities located near the seas, melting of glaciers in the North Pole, droughts and desertification in vast areas

What happened January 28, near the holy city of Najaf? Known for certain is that a U.S. helicopter was shot down killing two soldiers, and 25 members of the Iraqi security force were also killed. But the greatest number of casualties were the 263 Iraqis that U.S. and Iraq government sources were quick to label as a Shiite zealot "death cult."

According to the New York Times, "Iraqi forces were surprised and nearly overwhelmed by the ferocity of an obscure renegade militia...which calls itself the Soldiers of Heaven." The story went on to quote "Iraqi government officials" who claimed the group was preparing to storm Najaf and assassinate Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leader of Iraqi Shiites.

But local Iraqis told a much different story: Iraqi soldiers fired on members of two Shiite tribes who oppose the Maliki government. "Our two tribes have a strong belief that Iranians are provoking sectarian war in Iraq which is against the belief of all Muslims," one witness told the reporters, "and so we announced an alliance with Sunni brothers against any sectarian violence in the country. That did not make our Iranian-dominated government happy."

What happened next, say numerous media outlets in the Arab world, was nothing less than a systematic massacre by U.S. air and ground forces of opponents to the ruling clique in Baghdad