Christians under attack...More on FEMA...one for the history buffs

No, not here, not by the left, not "as reported by Bill O'Reilly. It's in Iraq. A series of car bombs went off yesterday at a handful of Christian sites... Funny, when Saddam was in power, Muslims and Christians co-existed peacefully. Saddam's #2, Tarik Aziz, was even a practicing Christian. But we're winning, right?

BAGHDAD -- Car bombs exploded in quick succession yesterday near four Christian churches and the office of the Vatican envoy, killing three people and raising new concerns about sectarian tensions. At least 17 other people were killed in other violence around the country.

No group claimed responsibility for the bombings, which occurred within a half-hour near two churches in Baghdad and two in Kirkuk, 180 miles to the north. The fifth bomb exploded about 50 yards from the Vatican mission in the capital.

Suspicion fell on Islamic extremists such as Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who have been responsible for massive car bombings and suicide attacks against Iraqi Shi'ite civilians.

The US military announced the death of an American soldier in a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad on Saturday. At least 2,241 US military personnel have died since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.

The attacks on Christian sites occurred amid rising sectarian tensions, including reprisal killings and raids, that threaten to complicate efforts to form a broad-based government after the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.

''This was a reaction from the al-Zarqawi people against Christians who they believe support the US military in Iraq," senior Shi'ite lawmaker Ali al-Adeeb said. ''Such acts are rejected by Shi'ites and Sunnis alike who have been living together with our Christian brothers in Iraq throughout history." (Continued...)

Turning to our own woes, there's more news about FEMA's actions after hurricane Katrina...or lack thereof. We've all heard the stories about hundreds of trucks of material sitting in such far-flung places as the South Florida fairgrounds and even Gloucester....and the hundreds of airboats from the South that converged on New Orleans to help the rescue effort. Apparently, nobody told them what to do, and the National Guard, apparently under orders, prevented people from acting privately...

WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of available trucks, boats, planes, and federal officers were unused in search and rescue efforts immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans region last August because the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not give them missions, documents have reported.

Additionally, FEMA called off its search and rescue operations in Louisiana three days after the storm on Aug. 29 because of security issues, according to an internal FEMA e-mail message that was given to Senate investigators.

The documents, released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, show lapses in FEMA's response to Katrina.

The documents also report breakdowns in carrying out the National Response Plan, issued a year ago to coordinate response to disasters.

A spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, which includes FEMA, did not dispute the documents.

Katrina ''pushed our capabilities and resources to the limit -- and then some," said a spokesman, Russ Knocke.

Responding to a questionnaire from investigators, an Interior Department assistant secretary, P. Lynn Scarlett, said her agency offered to supply FEMA with 300 dump trucks and other vehicles, 300 boats, 11 aircraft, and 400 law enforcement officers to help rescue efforts.

''Although the department possesses significant resources that could have improved initial and ongoing response, many of these resources were not effectively incorporated into the federal response to Hurricane Katrina," Scarlett wrote in the response, which was dated Nov. 7.

Scarlett's letter said that FEMA had asked US Fish and Wildlife Services to help with search and rescue efforts in New Orleans, in St. Bernard Parish, and in St. Tammany Parish but that the rescuers had ''never received task assignments." (Continued....)

Lastly this morning, there's word out of San Francisco that an archeological dig has unearthed a 19th century sailing ship with New England ties...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The skeleton of a ship unearthed at a construction site belongs to an early 19th-century merchant vessel that sailed out of New London, Conn., and limped through the Golden Gate after its last voyage, maritime archeologists concluded.

The three-masted Candace was built in Boston in 1818 and sailed the South Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans before it suffered ice damage while on a two-year whaling expedition in the Arctic.

Originally bound for home in New England, the leaking ship was retired in 1855 when the captain concluded it wouldn't make it past San Francisco, according to James Allan, the archeologist who helped identify the Candace.

The ship remained buried at the onetime site of a dismantling yard until crews found its timbers in September while digging foundations for a pair of high-rise condominiums in San Francisco.

While dozens of old ships abandoned after the 1849 Gold Rush live under the streets of San Francisco, the Candace was the first to be discovered mostly intact, Allan said. The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society hopes to install the hull at a new city history museum that is scheduled to open in two years.

''We consider it a coup," said Gil Castle, the society's executive director.

Allan and James Delgado, executive director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum in Canada, figured out that the buried ship was the Candace by consulting old San Francisco newspapers, ship logs, maritime museums, and the Center for Wood Anatomy Research run by the US Forest Service in Madison, Wis.

Built from three kinds of oak and two kinds of pine, the ship was relatively small, at 99 feet, 8 inches long and 26 feet wide.

So, there you have it. Do come and join us at Air America Place today....there's going to be voting on Alito later, and Kennedy and Kerry may try to filibuster. Should be an interesting day.