The Current: Part 1

Satire

It's Thursday, June 5th.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair promises he will cooperate with a parliamentary committee investigating allegations he duped the nation into going to war on Iraq. Blair denies that he - quote - "sexed-up" intelligence claims about Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction.

Currently, George W is coming to Tony Blair's aid - sending former Presidential spokesperson Ari Fleischer to London.

According to the Whitehouse, Fleischer can convince any country that going to war was a great idea. But as for those "sexed-up" claims, Britain is on its own. Because this guy is a regular weapons of mass destruction Casanova.

Grr.

This is The Current.

Britain - Politics

The war in Iraq may be over but the political war in Britain is just getting started. Pressure is mounting on Tony Blair as he faces accusations that he hyped up weapons evidence to justify war. The leader of the conservative opposition, Iain Duncan Smith, led the charge yesterday in Britain's House of Commons.

The British Prime Minister is resisting opposition calls for a judicial inquiry, but he will face two parliamentary inquiries into the issue. Tony Blair says he and other officials at No. 10 Downing Street welcome the queries.

And so the accusations fly from one side of the house to the other. Watching from the sidelines is Michael Binyon. He's the Foreign Affairs specialist at London's Times newspaper.

Britain - Military Analyst

While the British government faces fallout over how it sold the war, it also faces a series of controversies about the way its soldiers behaved on the battlefield. There are allegations that some British troops tortured and sexually assaulted Iraqi prisoners.

Paul Rodgers is a defence analyst and professor of peace studies at Bradford University in England.

U.S. Intelligence Factboard

The U.S. administration is also facing accusations that it 'cooked the books' in making its case that Iraq had so-called weapons of mass destruction.

Secretary of State Colin Powell used documents that turned out to be forged at his U-N presentation before the war. Specifically, these documents showed Iraq tried to buy uranium from the African country of Niger ...they turned out to be fake. And all along, C-I-A officials argued the Pentagon was exaggerating Iraq's weapons capabilities. These critics argue a small band of officers within the Pentagon provided policy makers with intelligence that was skewed to support the drive for war.

Now, the C-I-A is carrying out an investigation into whether the agency's own reports miscalculated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

President Bush and his administration also face questions on the political front. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate plan to review the accuracy of intelligence before the war.

And to date, no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons have been found in Iraq.

Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defense Secretary and a major supporter of the war, now says Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction was pumped up because it was the fastest way to get approval.

The key reason for war, says Wolfowitz, was oil. In a speech this past weekend to a security summit in Singapore, Wolfowitz explained why the U.S. went to war with Iraq but not Korea. German newspapers quote him as saying: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

Listen to The Current: Part 1

The Current: Part 2

Mars - Bob Mcdonald

Elton John knew what he was singing about - Mars really is cold as hell...an average of minus 63 degrees celsius … but that hasn't stopped scientists from sending up spacecraft to explore our planetary neighbor. Earlier this week, a British probe blasted off into space. It's expected to touch down on the red planet on Christmas day.

It was 27 years ago that the first probe landed on Mars. CBC Radio's own Bob McDonald -- host of Quirks and Quarks -- was at NASA that day watching the first pictures come in.

Mars - Society

For more than a century, the possibility of life on Mars has fired our imagination and our sense of whimsy.

Martian life has also played on our paranoia and been the subject of our wildest nightmares. That was Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast of October 30, 1938; and Jack Nicholson as President James Dale in the movie Mars Attacks.

The reverence and even obsession with the Red Planet is other-worldly... So much so, a society devoted to the exploration and settlement of Mars continues to attract members from all over the globe (although none from further afield... at least not yet!). The Mars Society has chapters across Canada, including Toronto.

That's the one Rocky Persaud belongs to - and he’s in studio.

Mail

Our new Friday host Reg Sherren joins us with your mail.

Listen to The Current: Part 2

The Current: Part 3

Food - Traceability

Two weeks into the mad cow crisis scientists are still trying to track down the calves and herdmates of the single sick cow that started it all.

That's because the cow that tested positive for B-S-E was born before the federal ear tag system was in place.

Calves born now are tagged to identify the herd they're from.

Discovery of mad cow in Canada has led to pressure to improve that system so it could track an animal's movements and health throughout its life.

It's a system called "traceability" and naturally, it costs money to put into place.

DeeVon Bailey has studied how much Canadians might be willing to pay for better traceability in our food supply.

He teaches economics at Utah State University. Today he’s in Edmonton.

Food - Tracking

An Edmonton company is poised to take advantage of the demand for better tracking of Canadian cattle.

Viewtrak Technologies Inc. uses an internet database. It allows farmers to record everything from what their cattle are fed to the drugs they're given to the grade of the meat when they're slaughtered.

Jake Burlet started the company three years ago. He's also a veterinarian. He is in Edmonton.

Food - Streeter

There may be lots we can do and lots more money we can pay to make our food safer.

But are people always rational about how much they choose to spend on food? We took to the streets to find out.

Food - Author

To talk about the value we put on food and food safety, I'm joined now by Stephen Strauss.

He writes about science for the Globe and Mail. In 2001 he was the Donner Foundation Fellow at the University of Guelph. He spent the year lecturing and researching a book about food.

"Eating Through Paradise" will be published next year.

Listen to The Current: Part 3