Teresa's Ted Kennedy Tirade

Teresa Heinz Kerry, years before becoming a Democrat, railed against the party's ``putrid'' politics, said she didn't trust Sen. Edward M. Kennedy [related, bio] and angrily called the liberal lion a ``perfect bastard.''

In comments published in a little-known 1975 book about political wives called ``The Power Lovers: An Intimate Look at Politicians and Their Marriages,'' Heinz Kerry lashed out at the senator she'll share the primetime convention stage with tonight.

``I know some couples who stay together only for politics,'' Heinz Kerry said at the time. ``If Ted Kennedy holds on to that marriage (to ex-wife Joan) just for the Catholic vote, as some people say he does, then I think he's a perfect bastard.''

Heinz Kerry, then married to Republican Sen. H. John Heinz III of Pennsylvania, said she ``didn't trust'' President Richard M. Nixon but added, ``Ted Kennedy I don't trust either.''

The combustible and ever-quotable Heinz Kerry said of Democrats, ``The Democratic machine in this country is putrid.'' Excerpts of the comments appeared in The Boston Herald American in January 1976.

Coming a day after Heinz Kerry was caught on camera telling a reporter to ``shove it'' when the reporter questioned her on statements made in a Boston speech, the remarks could undercut Democrats' ability to showcase a positive message at the convention.

Clinton Attacks Bush Record

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AFP) - Former president Bill Clinton on Monday urged Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry not to copy the Bush-bashing tactics of some of his supporters.

"The most important thing is that he not fall into that," Clinton told NBC television in an interview aired a few hours before Clinton was to speak at the opening of the Democratic Party convention here.

The two-term president said there was nothing Kerry could do about the tactics used by some of his supporters against the Republican incumbent George W. Bush. "I don't think there's anything we can do about it. And the bitterness is really rooted in the reaction to the 2000 election, where every Democrat who didn't support the Homeland Security bill, just as it was written, was a supporter of Saddam Hussein."

Clinton said Kerry had to use the convention, where he will be officially named Thursday as the party candidate for the November 2 election, to show the U.S. nation who he is.

Many analysts have highlighted how Kerry is still a largely unknown figure in his home country. "He needs to close the deal with the American people," said Clinton. "I would say this is likely to be a fairly close election, but on today's facts, he has the advantage. And we need to use this convention to close the deal."

According to Clinton said the domestic policies of the Bush administration and ways to improve national security and combat terrorism after the official report into the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington were likely to dominate the election.

U.S. Tells Its Citizens in Kuwait to Be on Alert

July 27, 2004 — KUWAIT (Reuters) - The United States issued a warning to its citizens in Kuwait on Tuesday to be on alert after recent arrests of suspected al Qaeda supporters enlisting Kuwaitis for anti-U.S. attacks.

"With the detention of several individuals in Kuwait for suspected activities against the U.S. military in Kuwait and Iraq, the embassy would like to remind all U.S. citizens to be aware of their security posture at all times," said the notice, distributed by email and posted on the embassy's Web site.

The Gulf Arab state has launched a crackdown on a local network of suspected al Qaeda supporters accused of brainwashing Kuwaiti youths and training them to fight foreign troops within the country and in neighboring Iraq.

The Kuwaiti Interior Ministry has identified three suspected militants on the run, asking citizens to contact the authorities with any information about them or their activities.

Police Investigations Cause Rush-Hour Subway Disruptions

NEW YORK -- It was a rough morning commute Tuesday for subway riders, with two separate police investigations shutting down trains.

A police investigation resulted in the Williamsburg Bridge being shut down to train and vehicular traffic at 8:55 a.m., according to NYC Transit spokesman Charles Seaton.

He said the shutdown affected the J, M, and Z subway lines between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The Terror Web

For much of Spain’s modern history, the organization that has defined its experience with terror is ETA, which stands for Euzkadi Ta Azkatasuna (Basque Homeland and Liberty). ETA, which was founded in 1959, has a clear political goal: it wants to set up a separate nation, comprising the Basque provinces, in northern Spain, and parts of southern France. Although ETA has killed some eight hundred people, it has developed a reputation for targeting, almost exclusively, politicians, security officials, and journalists. Over the years, the terrorists and the Spanish police have come to a rough understanding about the rules of engagement. “They don’t commit attacks on the working class, and they always call us before an explosion, telling us where the bomb is situated,” an intelligence official in the Spanish National Police told me recently in Madrid. “If they place a bomb in a backpack on a train, there will be a cassette tape saying, ‘This bag is going to explode. Please leave the train.’” And so on March 11th, when the first reports arrived of mass casualties resulting from explosions on commuter trains, Spanish intelligence officials assumed that ETA had made an appalling mistake.

At 7:37 A.M., as a train was about to enter Madrid’s Atocha station, three bombs blasted open the steel cars, sending body parts through the windows of nearby apartments. The station is in Madrid’s center, a few blocks from the Prado Museum. Within seconds, four bombs exploded on another train, five hundred and fifty yards from the station. The bombs killed nearly a hundred people. Had the explosions occurred when the trains were inside the station, the fatalities might have tallied in the thousands; a quarter of a million people pass through Atocha every workday. The trains at that hour were filled with students and young office workers who live in public housing and in modest apartment complexes east of the city. Many were immigrants, who had been drawn by the Spanish economic boom.

As emergency crews rushed to the scene, two more bombs demolished a train at the El Pozo del Tío Raimundo station, three miles away. By then, José María Aznar, the Prime Minister, had learned of the attacks, which were taking place at the end of an uneventful political campaign. The conservative Popular Party, which Aznar headed, was leading the Socialists by four and a half points in the polls, despite the overwhelming opposition of the Spanish population to the country’s participation in the war in Iraq. It was Thursday morning; the election would take place on Sunday.

At seven-forty-two, one minute after the El Pozo bomb, a final bomb went off, on a train at the suburban Santa Eugenia station. Emergency workers arrived to find mangled bodies littering the tracks. The Spanish had never seen anything like this—the worst ETA atrocity, in 1987, killed twenty-one shoppers in a Barcelona grocery store. At Santa Eugenia, there were so many wounded that rescue crews ripped up the benches in the waiting area to use as stretchers. In all, there were a hundred and ninety-one fatalities and sixteen hundred injuries. It was the most devastating act of terrorism in European history, except for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.