I want my country back! We want our country back! I am tired of being divided! I don't want to listen to the fundamentalist preachers anymore. I want America to look like America, where we are all included, hand in hand. We have dream. We can only reach the dream if we are all together - black and white, gay and straight, man and woman. America! The Democratic Party! We are going to win in 2004! Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Stand up for America, Stand up for America, Stand up for America.

But even if the deal involving [voting rights] hadn't derailed the summit, other issues would have. The British and Irish were hostile toward tax harmonization. The Austrians, Finnish, and Irish were dead-set against abandoning their neutrality for common defense. The Spanish were loath to give up their subsidies as a poor country now that poorer countries from Eastern Europe are joining. And so on.

"One year ago, the Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable," Zebari told the 15-nation council, which was sharply divided over the war.

"The UN as an organisation failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny of 35 years," he said. "The UN must not fail the Iraqi people again."

Annan, who publicly opposed the US decision to launch the war after failing to win the support of the Security Council, said it was "no time to pin blame and point fingers" over the past.

"I think the UN has done as much as it can for Iraq," Annan told reporters. "So quite honestly I don't think today is the time to hurl accusations."

"The fact that the war was won doesn't make legitimate something that was not legitimate," France's UN ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere said after the council meeting. "But this is the past."

"Settling scores with the United States-led coalition should not be at the cost of helping to bring stability to the Iraqi people," he said.

"Squabbling over political differences takes a back seat to the daily struggle for security, jobs, basic freedoms and all the rights the UN is chartered to uphold."

Expense reports show that Blanco's campaign spent nearly twice as much as Jindal's on election day, $55,282 to $28,597. The vast majority of Blanco's money, $39,035, was paid to 573 people who received $40 to $500 to help get voters to the polls on election day. Jindal, by contrast, relied on volunteers for his voter outreach and spent just $717.76 on election-day workers, with the biggest chunk of that going to campaign manager Phillip Stutts.

George Friedman, the director of intelligence gathering service Stratfor.com, provided early intelligence on geopolitical developments in the Middle East that led him to state unequivocally that long-term investors -- the so-called "smart money" -- were counting on a successful clean-up of Iraq and a broad-based stock market rally.

"The markets have been pretty sophisticated on Iraq. There does not appear to have been any Iraq war discount," says Friedman, who operates a network of intelligence gatherers around the globe. "There appears to have been a premium on some commodities but not much."

Friedman, who in an interview here earlier this year coined the phrase, "There is not such thing as smart money, just long-term money," says investors were "pretty mature" in gauging the influence of the Iraq war from the get-go.

Empowered by the American people, I will work to restore:

The legitimacy that comes from the rule of law;

The credibility that comes from telling the truth;

The knowledge that comes from first-rate intelligence, undiluted by ideology;

The strength that comes from robust alliances and vigorous diplomacy;

And, of course, I will call on the most powerful armed forces the world has ever known to ensure the security of this nation.

In November 1990, for example, the first Bush Administration was lobbying fellow United Nations Security Council members for a declaration empowering U.S. action to push invading Iraqi troops out of newly-occupied Kuwait in what would become the Gulf War.

As then-National Security Advisor General Brent Scowcroft recounted in the 1998 memoir A World Transformed co-authored with President George H.W. Bush, the Canadian Prime Minister sent them a letter just received from Jimmy Carter. The ex-President had written to all Security Council members asking them to reject the U.S. request for an ultimatum to Iraq and instead to support the perpetual delay proposed by the Arab League.

�It was an unbelievable letter, asking the other members of the council to vote against his own country,� wrote Scowcroft. �We found out about it only when one of the recipients sent us a copy�. It seemed to me that if there was ever a violation of the Logan Act prohibiting diplomacy by private citizens, this was it.�

President Bush �was furious at this interference in the conduct of his foreign policy and deliberate attempt to undermine it,� wrote Scowcroft, �but told me just to let it drop.� He could have filed criminal charges against Mr. Carter and perhaps sent him to prison.

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo has fired Prime Minister Beatriz Merino and her entire 15-member Cabinet. The move came after Merino, the first woman prime minister in that country's history, said one of her political rivals recently told Catholic Church leaders that she is a lesbian. Church officials immediately denied Merino's allegations.