Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 432

By Karen DeYoung

Previewing the world for the next U.S. president, a top U.S. intelligence official this week predicted that the Bush administration would make little progress before leaving office on top national security priorities including an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, political reconciliation in Iraq and keeping Iran from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

A regenerated al-Qaeda will remain the leading terrorism threat, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Donald M. Kerr said. Pakistan's "inward" political focus and failure to control the tribal territories where al-Qaeda maintains a haven, he said, is "the number one thing we worry about."

Kerr's analysis, in a speech Thursday evening that he posited as a presidential intelligence briefing delivered on Jan. 21, 2009, contrasted with more optimistic administration forecasts of rapprochement among Iraq's political forces and a possible Middle East peace agreement in the next eight months. It also seemed at odds with CIA Director Michael V. Hayden's judgment that al-Qaeda is now on the defensive throughout the world, including along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Senate intelligence committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) yesterday said Hayden's assessment, in an interview this week with The Washington Post, was inconsistent with recent intelligence reports to Capitol Hill. In a letter to Hayden, Rockefeller said that he was "surprised and troubled by your comments" and asked for "a full explanation of both the rationale for, and the substance of" the interview.

The CIA defended Hayden's comments. "The director simply said in his interview that progress has been made against al-Qaeda, which remains a very dangerous foe. That judgment should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the intelligence," CIA spokesman George Little said.

Kerr is one of two officials -- the other is National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell -- who deliver the President's Daily Briefing at the White House. Speaking to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Kerr offered "a notional view of some of the issues that will be raised in the Oval Office PDB" for the next president. "Let's imagine for tonight that you have just been sworn in -- you're the 44th president of the United States."

Issues in "your first post-inaugural briefing . . . will, for the foreseeable future, remain the threats and challenges emanating from the Middle East," Kerr said.

None of the three presidential candidates has received a full intelligence briefing. In past election years, the CIA director or his deputy have met with the nominees after the party conventions. This year, following the establishment of the umbrella intelligence directorate in 2005, the briefings will probably be conducted by McConnell and Kerr.













By Pat Dawson

The global food and fuel crisis is resulting in more than just people going hungry. Rising grain and gas prices, as well as the closure of American slaughterhouses, have contributed to a virtual stampede of horses being abandoned — some starving — and turned loose into the deserts and plains of the West to die cruel and lonesome deaths. Horse rescue projects, which are mostly small, volunteer operations with limited land and resources, are feeling the consequences of this convergence of events. In the meantime, many now unaffordable horses are being sold to abattoirs south of the border where inhumane methods of slaughter are practiced.

"It's a growing problem. Basically, it's the economy," says Brent Glover, who has run Idaho's Orphan Acres since 1975, and has found new homes for 1,600 rescued horses. "We're getting calls constantly." With more horses coming onto his 50-acre refuge, he is feeling the pinch of a hay bill that has risen from $28,000 to $80,000 this year, not to mention rising transportation and grain costs. "It's a horrible mess of bad consequences," says Colorado State University animal sciences Professor Temple Grandin. "People are turning them loose because of the decline in discretionary spending."

Outside Pueblo, Colorado, 101 rescued horses graze on 850 acres at Dreamcatchers Equine Sanctuary, and more are on the way. "It's a very scary situation right now," explains manager Julie DeMuesy. "Everybody's stressed to the max. It exploded for us at the end of 2007." Some horses are coming from people who have had their mortgages foreclosed, and can't afford to feed their steeds. "We're trying desperately to reduce our herd [by sending horses] to good homes. It's become a revolving door — They're coming in as fast as they are going out to new homes."

And the problem isn't limited to the West. Earlier this week, nearly 120 starving horses (along with some ponies and donkeys) were taken from a ranch of a Central Florida woman who had become overwhelmed by the demands of caring for the rescued animals.

Another reason for the rise of numbers, in addition to economics, is the absence of U.S. slaughterhouses. (The last three were shut in 2007 after several court rulings came down against horse slaughter for human consumption.) Says DeMusey: "We're seeing a lot of elderly horses and horses with special needs that normally would be sent to slaughter." Says Montana livestock transporter John Chaffee: "What can you do with all these horses? You can't bury 'em all. I have nothing against eating horse meat. I wouldn't eat it, but millions of people in the world do." Chaffee says he has stopped hauling horses to a plant in southern Alberta, Canada, because of costlier trucking restrictions and Canadian humane-group pressures at border crossings. "People who protest slaughter ought to have a bunch of these old horses starving to death in their back yards."

Colorado State's Grandin, who helped refine standards for humane livestock slaughter, says Americans have an "ick" factor when it comes to the idea of horseflesh, equating it, she says "killing and eating pets." But, Grandin argues, "the problem is, these are 800 to 1,200-pound pets. When they shut down those plants, I said we've got to avoid alternatives worse than slaughter. But we have not, and all my worse nightmares have come true."

Chaffee says horses that are taken north to Canada are treated humanely. But with the long-distance hauls now being prohibitive, horses in the southern U.S. are being laundered through a series of dealers into Mexico. Says Colorado State's Grandin, who helped refine standards for humane livestock slaughter: "At the Mexican border, they just wave the trucks through. The conditions down there are horrible." Proposed legislation to outlaw U.S. horses for slaughter may get passed, says Grandin, but the law won't be enforceable because Mexican "kill buyers" can circumvent the law by labeling horses as breed stock or for riding purposes. And such a law may not ameliorate the plight of American horses in an economic downturn.

Longtime Montana horse breeder Kathy Thornton says she will cut back on the number of her brood mares producing offspring every year, because of high costs of feed and transportation, plus the sudden drop in value of her well-tempered colts. A three-year-old trained ranch horse that traditionally would bring upwards of $1,500 fetched only $525 at a sale 175 miles away, a transaction that cost her $200 in truck fuel. "I'm open for barter," says Ms.Thornton. "I'm now trading horses for cattle. Personally, I don't send horses to slaughter, but I'm glad if it's available. I sure feel bad for the poor horses left alongside the highway."