Cheney sees 'lot of bloodshed' in Iraq
WASHINGTON, June 24 (UPI) -- Vice President Dick Cheney stands by his comment that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes" but expects "a lot of bloodshed" in coming months.
Cheney told CNN that progress being made in establishing a new Iraq government and democracy will indeed eventually end the violence though the conflict between now and then "will be intense."
"We will succeed in Iraq, just like we did in Afghanistan," he said. "We will stand up a new government under an Iraqi-drafted constitution. We will defeat that insurgency, and, in fact, it will be an enormous success story."
The vice president also said, "We've got a pretty good idea of the general area" where al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden is hiding but declined to elaborate.
And he said the Bush administration officials "don't pay a lot of attention" to polls showing declining public support among Americans for the Iraq war.
Murder suspect says cops missed rescue
INVERNESS, Fla., June 24 (UPI) -- John Couey claims Jessica Lunsford, the 9-year-old Florida girl he said he raped and killed, was still alive when detectives came looking for her.
"If they would have came in, they would have caught her in my closet," said Couey, a convicted sex offender, in documents released by prosecutors, the Orlando Sentinel reported Friday. "They said they searched the house, but they didn't search the house the first time."
He said he later went outside and "buried her her alive. It's stupid, but she suffered. She never fought me."
Couey's confession and statements were included in more than 300 pages of documents released by prosecutors in Inverness, Fla. They also included the medical examiner's finding that the girl died of suffocation, indicating she was buried alive.
Charged with kidnapping, rape and murder, Couey is expected to go on trial next year. The state is seeking the death penalty.
Article outlines Rudolph's survival skills
ATLANTA, June 24 (UPI) -- An article apparently written by confessed abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph tells of his five-year survival as a fugitive in the North Carolina mountains.
The 5,000-word article was published on a militantly anti-abortion Web site, www.armyofgod.com.
It centers on how Rudolph gathered, stored and cooked his food, mostly boiled and fried corn, wheat and soybeans, while avoiding a massive law enforcement manhunt that at times got very close, CNN said Friday.
The manhunt began soon after a January 1998 bombing at a Birmingham abortion clinic and ended with his arrest in May 2003 when a deputy found him foraging through a garbage bin in Murphy, N.C.
In a deal to avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty in April to the Birmingham attack and three others in Atlanta, including the 1996 Olympics bombing.
The attacks killed two people and injured more than 110 people. He will be sentenced next month.
Four dead in Iraq bomb, assassination
BAGHDAD, June 24 (UPI) -- Three Iraqis were killed and nine others injured when a booby-trapped tractor exploded near a convoy of Iraqi troops north of Baghdad Friday.
Police said two soldiers were among the dead in the blast that cut through a convoy of 10 military vehicles in the village of Bouzayla.
In another incident Friday, masked gunmen assassinated Hassan Abdel Hadi, the head of a religious Shiite association in the city of Khaless, 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Baghdad.
Police said the gunmen intercepted Abdel Hadi's car on the main road leading to Baghdad and sprayed it with automatic rifle fire, killing him instantly and injuring his bodyguard.
Shana Alexander, '70s TV star. dies
LOS ANGELES, June 24 (UPI) -- Shana Alexander, who gained fame as the liberal voice on the "Point/Counterpoint" segment on CBS' "60 Minutes" in the 1970s, has died. She was 79.
Alexander, who broke ground earlier as the first woman staff writer and columnist at Life magazine, died of cancer Thursday in an assisted-living facility in Hermosa Beach, Calif., her sister, Laurel Bentley of Manhattan Beach, told the Los Angeles Times.
A 1945 graduate of Vassar College, she was a columnist for Newsweek magazine in 1975 when she was teamed with James J. Kilpatrick, the conservative Washington Star columnist, on "Point/Counterpoint" for the next four years.
Born in New York City in 1925, Alexander was the daughter of Milton Ager, a successful pop composer whose songs included "Happy Days Are Here Again," "Hard-Hearted Hannah" and "Ain't She Sweet."
She was twice married and twice divorced. Her 25-year-old daughter, Kathy Alexander, died in 1987.
