But in case Ramsay, Oliver and their ilk will be watching on freeze-frame, with their lawyer on speed-dial, Izzard insists the show is not meant to take a dig at anyone.

"It's not supposed to be any one chef's life - I think it is influenced by all celebrity chefs or a certain bunch of them," he says. "But people are fascinated by celebrity chefs and their egos. The chef's the star, a bit like a star football player. What happens in a kitchen, it's creative, it's tactile, it's tastebuds, it's very up front, it's visceral. Cooking has to be flamboyant, there must be some chefs out there who are shy, but you don't see them."

By Tony Capaccio

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Defense Department officials prepared pre-war intelligence reports that may have exaggerated links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the Pentagon inspector general said today.

Two offices set up under then-Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq produced reports that formed the basis for the administration's key pre- war claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein might provide weapons of mass destruction to the terrorist group.

These actions were authorized by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, Inspector General Thomas Gimble told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

While ``not illegal or unauthorized,'' the actions ``were inappropriate'' because they didn't ``clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community,'' Gimble said.

Committee chairman Carl Levin called Gimble's report ``devastating.'' Feith's operation produced what amounted to ``an alternative analysis,'' prepared ``without the knowledge of the intelligence community,'' that was used ``to back a decision to go to war,'' Levin said.

The committee released only the two-page executive summary of Gimble's review, which was prepared at the request of Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Relationship

Levin, 72, and other critics contend that assessments produced by the Pentagon office were skewed to portray an active pre-war relationship between Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, while the intelligence community saw virtually none. Following the U.S.-led invasion, al-Qaeda operatives did become active in Iraq, targeting U.S. forces and helping to foment sectarian violence.

``The Feith office is the one that produced the key alternative analysis which provided that material,'' Levin said in an interview. ``It was key, it was vital, it was what the White House used to make the linkage to terrorist groups.''

Gimble cited a briefing given in September 2002 at the White House to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. The briefing, given without Central Intelligence Agency approval, purported a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that ``was not supported by the available intelligence,'' Gimble said.

`Undercut' CIA

Gimble said Feith's staff didn't present CIA findings and further ``undercut'' the intelligence community by presenting a slide that said ``there were fundamental problems'' with the way the CIA and other analysts assessed information about the alleged Iraq-Iran link.

Levin said he planned to have his staff pursue this meeting, which came as the Bush administration was building the case for war that it would present to Congress and the United Nations.

He said he would have his staff interview the Feith analysts who briefed Hadley and Libby and would seek interviews with these two officials as well. He didn't say whether he intended to question Feith.

Feith, now a professor of national security policy at Georgetown University in Washington who's writing a book on the Iraq war, said the report shows ``everything we did was lawful and authorized and we did not mislead Congress.''

``The issue of the appropriate process for policy people to use to criticize intelligence work is minor compared to the key conclusions,'' Feith said in a written statement.

In an interview with CNN today, Feith disputed the notion that he and other Pentagon officials had done intelligence work, saying they had merely offered critical assessments of the work done by intelligence agencies.

`Errors the CIA Made'

``The CIA was doing things that people in the Pentagon thought was substandard,'' Feith told CNN. ``We are in trouble in Iraq because of errors the CIA made.''

Feith said he stood by the assertion that Saddam Hussein had links with al-Qaeda, as outlined by then-CIA Director George Tenet in 2002. The alleged link, since called into question, became a key argument for the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

Republicans on the committee often disagreed strongly with Levin and the report's findings.

``I strongly disagree,'' Christopher Bond of Missouri, said. ``How can something that is `authorized' and `legal' also be `inappropriate?' That doesn't pass the common sense test.''

`Turf Battle'

James Inhofe of Oklahoma dismissed most of Gimble's report as depicting a ``turf battle'' between competing bureaucrats.

``These matters have been scrutinized at least three times in the last three years by bipartisan, nonpartisan groups,'' Inhofe said. The Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, ``unanimously reported that it found that this process, the policy-makers' probing questions, actually improved the CIA's process,'' he said.

Said Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss: ``I'm trying to figure out why we are here. We are beating this horse one more time.''

Gimble, in his summary, said that, in future, the Pentagon's closer relationship with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, set up in 2005, will ``significantly reduce the opportunity for inappropriate conduct of intelligence activities outside of intelligence channels.''

White House spokesman Dana Perino told reporters today she couldn't describe the relationship between Feith and President George W. Bush but that Bush ``has long acknowledged that the intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq was inaccurate.''

Pentagon Response

Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Finn, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said ``these matters have been scrutinized at least three times in the last three years by bipartisan and non- partisan groups,'' and now the Pentagon Inspector General has concluded that the activities of Feith's office `` were legal and authorized.''

Defense Secretary Robert Gates responded ``I have a problem with that,'' when Levin asked his views on the Feith operation during Gates' confirmation hearing in December.

Levin said the report is valuable because it casts new light on the material the administration used to justify the war.

``If we are not going to repeat the mistakes of the past, there has got to be accountability,'' Levin said. ``You just repeat mistakes if there is no looking back and trying to find out what the facts were and holding people accountable the best way we can.''

Dani, I'm so glad you've been recognized for all the awesome efforts that were initiated by you!  Miss you!!
-Dana

Multiplayer games are getting so popular -- see the 2.4 million games World of Warcraft sold recently in one day -- that it's hard to think back to where it all began. But there was a time when it was just an idea in the head of game designer Dani Bunten Berry.

Bunten, who died in 1998, is credited with creating one of the first multi-player video games called M.U.L.E. in 1983, well before the Internet and broadband helped link players around the world in epic virtual contests. Bunten's imagination helped eventually shape the face of video gaming, inspiring luminaries like designers Will Wright and Sid Meier.

Now, nine years after her death from cancer, Bunten has been named today to the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame, the 10th such honoree joining Wright, Meier and other legends like Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo fame.

Bunten was never a huge commercial success, at least not by today's standards. But her titles were innovative and opened the door for a more community and social-oriented approach to gaming.

The most influential game was M.U.L.E, (Multiple Use Labor Elements) published by Electronic Arts. The game allowed players to work a plot of land, competing against and cooperating with other players in a sort of virtual economy. It opened the door for more real world games that could appeal to players beyond the hardcore set. Games like Meier's Civilization and Wright's The Sims all owe a debt to Bunten's philosophy.

"Ask most game designers what their favorite computer game of all time is," said Wright, in an interview with Salon, "and you'll get M.U.L.E. as an answer more often than any other title."

Richard Hilleman, Dani's last producer at Electronic Arts said gaming world takes for granted many of the quiet contributions of Bunten and his vision for the industry.

"Dani was remarkable because she was focused on the kind of gaming that has become our future," said Hilleman. "Community-oriented gaming like massively multiplayer online games, things like Xbox Live and Xbox Arcade and social gaming like the Wii, this is the world Dani was playing in 20 years ago."

Bunten's life, like the industry she helped shape, underwent a lot of changes and turmoil. After her third marriage failed, Bunten, who was born Daniel Bunten, underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1992. She continued to work on games until her death in 1998 to lung cancer, but maintained a quiet profile in her final years.