March 14, 2003

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] March 14, 2003

• Osiel Cárdenas, suspected leader of a Mexican drug cartel, is arrested in Matamoros, Tamaulipas.
• U.S. Representative James P. Moran, Democrat from Virginia, is forced out of a party leadership post after furor over his remarks that were interpreted as saying that American Jews are responsible for a possible war with Iraq.
• Carlos Ortega, labor union leader and opponent of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, is granted political asylum at the Costa Rican Embassy in Caracas. Ortega had eluded arrest for three weeks on charges of treason, civil rebellion and "incitement".
• Norwegian firefighter Robert Sørlie becomes the first non-American, and second non-Alaskan to win the 1,049 mile Iditarod sled dog race, which runs from Anchorage to Nome in the U.S. state of Alaska.
• Iraq disarmament crisis: Key documents presented as evidence that the US should invade Iraq are revealed as forgeries. The documents stated that Niger was selling 500 tons of uranium to Iraq. One, dated 2000, was on stationery from the military government of the 1980s and referred to a foreign minister who had not been in power for 14 years; another bore a signature of the president of Niger that was an obvious fake. Iraq's supposed acquisition of African uranium was a feature in Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council in February and in George W. Bush's State of the Union Address. [1] Senator John Rockefeller asked the FBI to investigate the origin of the documents. Rockefeller expressed concern that the forgeries "may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq."