Tony Snow Lost Battle To Cancer At 53

Fox News reports that former talk show host, Tony Snow, died earlier this morning from complications related to an ongoing battle with cancer. He was 53.

A syndicated columnist, editor, TV anchor, radio show host and musician, Snow worked in nearly every medium in a career that spanned more than 30 years.

Snow joined FOX in 1996 as the original anchor of FOX News Sunday, and hosted Weekend Live and a radio program, The Tony Snow Show, before departing in 2006. A sometime fill-in host for Rush Limbaugh, Snow said he loved the intimacy of his radio audience.

"It's a tremendous loss for us who knew him, but it's also a loss for the country," Roger Ailes, Chairman of FOX News, said Saturday morning about Snow, calling him a "renaissance man."

As a TV pundit and commentator for FOX News, Snow was often critical of President Bush before he became Bush's third press secretary in 2006, following Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan. He was an instant study in the job, mastering the position — and the White House press corps — with apparent ease.

During a tenure marked by friendly jousting with journalists, Snow often danced around the press corps, occasionally correcting their grammar and speech even as he responded to their questions.

"Tony did his job with more flair than almost any press secretary before him," said William McGurn, Bush's former chief speechwriter. "He loved the give-and-take. But that was possible only because Tony was a man of substance, who had real beliefs and principles that he was more than able to defend."

As he announced Snow as his new press secretary in 2006, President Bush praised him as "a man of courage [and] a man of integrity." Snow presided over some of the toughest fights of Bush's presidency, defending the administration during the Iraq War and the CIA leak investigation.

Robert Anthony Snow was born June 1, 1955, in Berea, Ky., the son of a teacher and nurse. He graduated from Davidson College in 1977 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy, and he taught briefly in Kenya before embarking on his career as a journalist.

Because of his love for writing, Snow took a job as an editorial writer for the Greensboro Record in North Carolina, and went on to run the editorial pages at the Newport News (Virginia) Daily Press, Detroit News and Washington Times. He became a nationally syndicated columnist, and in 1991 he became director of speechwriting for President George H.W. Bush.

Snow had his colon removed and underwent six months of chemotherapy after he was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2005. In 2007, he announced that his cancer had recurred and had spread to his liver. He resigned from the White House weeks later and was replaced by his deputy, Dana Perino.

After taking time off to recuperate, Snow joined CNN as a conservative political correspondent early this year.

Snow is survived by his wife, Jill Ellen Walker, whom he married in 1987, and their son Robbie and their daughters Kendell and Christie.

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Ali Hassan al-Majid, AKA "Chemical Ali," Sentenced To Death By Hanging

CHARLES J. HANLEY,

AP Special Correspondent

Some two decades after Iraq's military laid waste to Kurdish villages, the Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," and two others to death for their roles in the bloody campaign against the restive ethnic minority.
Al-Majid, a cousin of executed former president Saddam Hussein, was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for ordering army and security services to use chemical weapons in an offensive said to have killed some 180,000 people during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
As the verdicts were read out in Baghdad, to the north some 10,000 American troops were in their sixth day Sunday of a major offensive to oust al-Qaida fighters from the city of Baqouba.
The commander of the U.S. operation said U.S. troops have cleared about 60 percent of western Baqouba of militants, but Iraqi security forces are "not quite up to the job" yet of holding the gains long term.
Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek, of the Army's 25th Infantry Division, said it will take weeks or months before Iraqi security forces are ready to police the reclaimed area on their own.
The defendants in what was known as the "Anfal" case, for the code name of the anti-Kurdish campaign, had claimed they were acting on orders at a time when the Baghdad leadership, under President Saddam, viewed the rebellious, independence-minded Kurds as allies of Iran during the 1980s war.
Saddam had been a defendant in the case but was executed Dec. 30 after his conviction for the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims in Dujail after a 1982 attempt on his life.
Al-Majid, who had headed the then-ruling Baath Party's Northern Bureau Command in the 1980s, stood silently for Sunday's verdict and said, "Thanks be to God," as he was led from court.
Two others sentenced to hang for anti-Kurdish atrocities were former defense minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, a former deputy director of operations for the Iraqi armed forces.
Interrupting the judge as the verdict was read, Mohammed said the defendants were defending Iraq against Kurdish rebels. "God bless our martyrs. Long live the brave Iraqi army. Long live Iraq. Long live the Baath party and long live Arab nations," he declared.
Two other former regime officials — Sabir al-Douri, former director of military intelligence, and Farhan Mutlaq Saleh, who was head of military intelligence's eastern regional office — were sentenced to life in prison. All charges were dropped against Taher Tawfiq al-Ani, a former governor of Mosul, because of insufficient evidence.
The operation in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, is part of a quartet of U.S. offensives to oust al-Qaida groups from the capital's outskirts.
Bednarek said U.S. forces now control about 60 percent of Baqouba's west side, but "the challenge now is how do you hold onto the terrain you've cleared? You have to do that shoulder-to-shoulder with Iraqi security forces. And they're not quite up to the job yet."
Across Diyala province, where Baqouba is the capital, Iraqi troops are short on uniforms, weapons, ammunition, trucks and radios, he said.
The American general predicted it would be several weeks before Iraqi police and soldiers could keep al-Qaida out of western Baqouba, and months before they could do the same on the city's east side and outlying villages.
Bednarek said the U.S. force has killed between 60 and 100 suspected al-Qaida fighters so far in western Baqouba, about 60 insurgents have been detained, and fewer than 500 civilians displaced from their homes. One American soldier has died in the fighting, he said.
He estimated between 50 and 100 insurgents remained inside a U.S. security "noose" closing on the Khatoon neighborhood of western Baqouba.
The U.S. command in Baghdad, meanwhile, reported a total of 10 soldiers killed on Saturday, including seven killed by roadside bombs, four by a single blast near Baghdad. The deaths raised to at least 30 the number of American soldiers killed in the past week.
In other violence, a car bomb in the southern city of Hillah on Saturday evening killed at least two people and wounded 18 others, a hospital official reported.
The parked car targeted a gathering of civilians in central Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, said Muthana Khalid, a spokesman for Babil provincial police. The predominantly Shiite Muslim city has been the target of some of the deadliest car bomb attacks by suspected Sunni Muslim extremists in the four years of insurgency and sectarian killings in Iraq.
On the political front, two Sunni blocs in the Iraqi parliament, holding 55 seats, began a boycott of the 275-seat house on Sunday, demanding reinstatement of the Sunni speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani.
Parliament had voted June 11 to ask al-Mashhadani, whose erratic behavior had embarrassed even his Sunni Arab allies, to step down while one of the Sunni blocs named a replacement.
The Sunni boycott threatens to further disrupt the work of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government as it seeks to enact legislation, under pressure from the United States, to reconcile the differences among Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish groups.

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Kansas' Tornadoes, Numerous Injuries And More Death

At least seven people were killed, said Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for the Kansas Adjutant General's Department. The tornado that struck Friday night damaged about 90 percent of the Kiowa County town about 110 miles west of Wichita, City Administrator Steve Hewitt said Saturday.

Dazed residents walked the streets, looking for loved ones and taking in the sight of crumbled buildings and smashed cars.

Much of downtown was destroyed, along with City Hall, the high school and the junior high school, Hewitt said.

"I don't think we have a business left downtown," he said. A mandatory evacuation was ordered, he said.

Emergency personnel and search and rescue teams raced to Greensburg from throughout southwest Kansas. Trained dogs accompanied law enforcement officers who searched house to house for anyone trapped or injured.

"There is still a possibility we do not have all of the people accounted for in that town," Watson said. "That is something we will be working feverishly to do over the next several hours."

A storm front spawned tornadoes along a line stretching northeast from Greensburg through central Kansas. Three small tornadoes also touched down Friday in rural southwestern Illinois, but officials said there were no reports of injury or damage. Two tornadoes struck in Oklahoma, damaging some structures but injuring no one, officials said.

Greensburg's injured were taken to hospitals as far away as Dodge City. Hewitt said at least 50 people had been taken to hospitals, 16 in critical condition, but said exact numbers were impossible to come by.

Rescuers pulled about 30 people from a partially collapsed hospital early Saturday. Watson said those rescued from the hospital basement had mostly minor injuries.

Phone service to the town of about 1,600 residents was knocked out, and the state's department of transportation was trying to restore emergency service.

The National Weather Service described the tornado as a "wedge," an especially broad and tall formation. Frederick Kruse of the weather service's Dodge City office said there were initial reports that the tornado was at least three-quarters of a mile wide on the ground.

Watson said the state fire marshal's office dispatched hazardous materials teams because railroad cars in Kiowa County had overturned. She said the National Guard was sending 40 troops to provide security around Greensburg.

Shelters were opened for Greensburg residents at Barclay College and a high school in nearby Haviland.

"We have more than 300 people in shelters in Haviland," Watson said. "We have another 300 en route to take advantage of those shelters, and we anticipate that number to grow."

At the high school, the Rev. Gene McIntosh described how he huddled with his family in the parsonage of Greensburg's United Methodist Church as the tornado roared overhead. McIntosh said sofa cushions protected his 11-year-old son and the boy's friend from falling debris.

"There was a lot of praying down there," McIntosh said.

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