9/11 Trials And Bush's Ads. Mounir el-Motassadeq, the only person successfully prosecuted for involvement in the 9/11 attacks, will receive a retrial because "crucial evidence [was] withheld by the German and American authorities." The US's unexplained refusal to allow testimony by Ramzi bin al-Shibh has also led to the collapse of a similar case against Abdelghani Mzoudi and it threatens to derail the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui. Nevertheless, a Justice Department spokesman says the US is cooperating "to the fullest extent possible."

There is plenty of coverage today of the Bush administration's campaign ads. Not all of the 9/11 family members are against the ads. Deena Burnett, whose husband Thomas was killed on Flight 93: "I'm glad to see they're being used. I think it serves as a great reminder of those that died." Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the pilot of the plane that hit the Pentagon: "These images honor those whose lives were lost." ... Using the images, which include a flag-draped body of a firefighter being carried from the rubble, might not be such a controversial issue if Bush actually supported a full investigation into the attacks -- and if he wasn't also preventing flag-draped coffins from Iraq from being shown to the American people. It is his behavior since that morning that gives the commercials the stink of hypocrisy.

WaPo: "The Bush administration's prewar assertion that Saddam Hussein had a fleet of mobile labs that could produce bioweapons rested largely on information from an Iraqi defector working with another government who was never interviewed by US intelligence officers ..." Xymphora on Aristide and Haiti.