In December 2001, I participated in discussions between two Pentagon officials and Iranians who claimed knowledge of Iranian-sponsored efforts to kill Americans in Afghanistan.

We met in Rome, Italy over several days. The discussions were approved by Stephen Hadley, the deputy national-security adviser, and the two Defense department officials' travel was approved by their superiors. The American ambassador in Rome was fully informed in advance, and fully briefed afterwards.

The conversations produced detailed information about the identities, locations, and plans of Iranian-trained terrorists in Afghanistan. This was passed on to the proper authorities at the DoD, and I was later told by military officers that the information likely saved American lives.

Now comes the former DCI (director of central intelligence), George Tenet, with several pages about the meeting in his new book.   His every word, it seems, is meant to justify the chilidish tantrum he had over the meeting.

In a documentary broadcast in Berlin Friday, German filmmaker Wilfried Huismann added a new twist to an old controversy.

In Dallas on Nov. 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was killed days later by small time mafioso Jack Ruby. The following September, a commission chaired by then Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded Oswald had acted on his own.

This finding was unsatisfying to millions of Americans, who didn't want to believe that so beloved a president could have his life snuffed out just because, the Warren Commission surmised, a fruitcake loser wanted some attention. There had to be more significance to the act. There had to be a deeper, darker conspiracy.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose tenure at Foggy Bottom began with such energy and fine language about support for freedom in the Middle East, is begging the Iranian foreign minister to come to a "future of Iraq" conference in Egypt next week. She told the Financial Times that it would be a "missed opportunity" if Minister Mottaki didn't show up.

In the same interview, she denied ever thinking about regime change in Iran. Our Iran policy, according to the secretary, is to "have a change in regime behavior." Some day she will perhaps explain how any rational person can believe this cast of characters capable of changing behavior that has been constant for 28 years.

We are back to the days when Madeleine Albright went to international meetings hoping to get a one-on-one with an Iranian minister so she could apologize for past American sins and get on with the glorious business of striking a grand bargain with the mullahs.

Developers can use Google and other search engines to find source code, but it's not easy.

In his speech at the Naval Academy Wednesday outlining U.S. strategy in Iraq, President Bush paid tribute to Marine Corporal Jeffrey Starr, killed in a fire fight in Ar Ramadi April 30th. He was 22, on his third tour in Iraq.

A letter to his girlfriend was found on Starr's laptop computer:

"If you're reading this, then I've died in Iraq," Cpl. Starr wrote. "I don't regret going. Everybody dies but a few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we're in Iraq; it's not to me. I'm here helping these people so they can live the way we live, not to have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. Others have died for my freedom; now this is my mark."

In a mammoth article in October taking note of the 2,000th U.S. death in Iraq, the New York Times mentioned Cpl. Starr and his letter, but didn't quote the passages above.  All the Times quoted from his letter was: "'I kind of predicted this,' Corporal Starr wrote of his own death. 'A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances.'"

The Times' omissions and distortions -- which are more the rule than the exception in news coverage of Iraq -- explain why so many Americans think we're losing a war we're plainly winning.