Book Alleges Secret Iraq War Plan

In an interview with the author, Bush said he feared that if news had gotten out about the Iraq plan as America was fighting another conflict, that would cause "enormous international angst and domestic speculation."

"I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq," Bush is quoted as saying. "It was such a high-stakes moment and ... it would look like that I was anxious to go to war. And I'm not anxious to go to war."

While nobody likes paying taxes, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service have been working to make the burden of paying taxes a little easier. E-filing and electronic services offered on IRS.gov are seeing big increases this year. Taxpayers can use these services and follow other simple steps to help make tax time easier

America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's policies are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation.

America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's polices are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation.

But, when asked personally by the president, Powell agreed to present the U.S. case against Hussein at the United Nations in February, 2003 -- a presentation described by White House communications director Dan Bartlett as "the Powell buy-in." Bush wanted someone with Powell's credibility to present the evidence that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- a case the president had initially found less than convincing when presented to him by CIA deputy director John McLaughlin at a White House meeting on December 21, 2002.

[Bush] then turned to Tenet and said, "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?"

"It's a slam dunk case," Tenet replied, throwing his arms in the air. Bush pressed him again. "George, how confident are you."

"Don't worry, it's a slam dunk case," Tenet repeated.

Tenet later told associates he realized he should have said the evidence on weapons was not ironclad

The president described praying as he walked outside the Oval Office after giving the order to begin combat operations against Iraq on March, 19, 2003, and the powerful role his religious belief played throughout that time.

"Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for personal strength and for forgiveness."

April 14, 2004--Forty-three percent (43%) of American voters now give President Bush good or excellent marks for handling the situation in Iraq...and 41% say poor. Those numbers represent a slight improvement from last week when just 41% said good or excellent and 44% poor.

This newest survey data is based upon telephone interviews conducted Monday and Tuesday night. The vast majority of the interviews were conducted before the President's Press Conference Tuesday night.

When computer programmer Stephen Gentry learned last year that Boeing was laying him off and shipping his job overseas, he wasn't too surprised. Many of his friends had suffered the same experience.

What really stunned him was his last assignment: Managers had him train the worker from India who'd be taking his job.

"It was very callous," says Gentry, 51, of Auburn, Wash., a father of three who is still unemployed. "They asked us to make them feel at home while we trained them to take our jobs."

Hundreds of armed Rwandan insurgents based in neighbouring Congo are moving into forests separating the two countries to prepare for attacks on Rwanda, UN and Congolese army officers said on Thursday.

At least a thousand insurgents moved from three bases in eastern Congo, converging near the border and conducting reconnaissance missions to lay the groundwork for the attacks, said Brigadier General Obed Wibasira, commander of the Congolese army in the North Kivu province.

[edit]

The insurgents include members of the former Rwandan Armed Forces, or ex-FAR, and extremist Interahamwe militia from the Hutu majority who fled to Congo after leading the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

The insurgents assembled and reorganised near the border after the UN mission prevented former Congolese rebels from neutralising them. UN peacekeepers argued that the mission wanted to coax the Rwandans to disarm voluntarily and go home, Brigadier General Charles Kayonga, the Rwandan army chief of staff said.

[edit]

"The Interahamwe and ex-FAR have taken the advantage to arm, to reorganise and to move very easily to carry out reconnaissance missions near our border and conduct an attack in Rwanda last week," Kayonga said. At least 16 rebels were killed and there were no army casualties in that raid.

"Instead of disarming them... (the UN mission) has been giving them sanctuary to reorganise and prepare to attack Rwanda," Kayonga said.

[T]ake the necessary action, in the areas of deployment of its infantry battalions and as it deems it within its capabilities, to protect United Nations and co-located JMC personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, ensure the security and freedom of movement of its personnel, and protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.

COULTER: We need an Arab Israel over there. We can't keep pimping for Israel. We need a puppet government. We need to be on the ground. We need a friendly government. We need democracy.

And I think George Bush put it far more eloquently than I am in being so direct about it by saying that, you know, even the brown people of the world can pull off democracy. And I think they can, too. We're going to be killing a lot of terrorists to make this democracy possible. But we're going to have to do that. Now we're flushing them out of the woodwork, so we know where they are and we can kill them.

"It's unbelievable that a United States company would pretty much give funding and money to a self-declared enemy of the United States."

Alabama taxpayers are getting slapped with more than a half-million dollar tab left by former Chief Justice Roy Moore's legal showdown over his Ten Commandments monument.

The state reached a settlement Wednesday with the attorneys of three groups that sued Moore about the 5,280-pound monument that was eventually removed from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building by state authorities last year.

According to the settlement agreement, the state will pay $549,430.53.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama and the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State will have to divvy up the settlement. The groups sued the "Ten Commandments" judge and won the case in 2002.

[snip]

"It's unfortunate that the state had to be exposed to this kind of liability. This is a serious amount of money," said Danielle Lipow, SPLC staff attorney.

Lipow added the matter could have cost the state nearly $1 million if the groups suing Moore hadn't reduced their bill for the high-profile case.

In a statement Wednesday to the Montgomery Advertiser, Steve Melchior, Moore's attorney during the court battle, criticized former state Attorney General Bill Pryor, who prosecuted Moore in November.

"On the bright side of things, the people of the state of Alabama only had to pay approximately 10 cents per person to expose former attorney general Bill Pryor for the moral and ethical coward that he is, and the extent to which activist federal judges will go to rewrite American history and the First Amendment," Melchoir said.

President Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furor he did not tell everyone on his national security team, says a new book on his Iraq policy.

Bush feared that if news got out about the Iraq plan as U.S. forces were fighting another conflict, people would think he was too eager for war, journalist Bob Woodward writes in "Plan of Attack," a behind-the-scenes account of the 16 months leading to the Iraq invasion.

[edit]

Woodward says Bush pulled Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld aside Nov. 21, 2001 — when U.S. forces and allies were in control of about half of Afghanistan — and asked him what kind of war plan he had on Iraq. When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Bush told him to get started on a fresh one.

[edit]

The book says Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as head of Central Command, uttered a string of obscenities when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict.

Probe shows Iraq nuclear facilities unguarded

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Iraq's nuclear facilities remain unguarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency reported after reviewing satellite images and equipment that has turned up in European scrapyards.

The International Atomic Energy Agency sent a letter to U.S. officials three weeks ago informing them of the findings. The information was also sent to the U.N. Security Council in a letter from its director, Mohamed ElBaradei, that was circulated Thursday.

The IAEA is waiting for a reply from the United States, which is leading the coalition administering Iraq, officials said.
The United Sattes has virtually cut off information-sharing with the IAEA since invading Iraq in March 2002 on the premise that the country was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

No such weapons have been found, and arms control officials now worry the war and its chaotic aftermath may have increased chances that terrorists could get their hands on materials used for unconventional weapons or that civilians may be unknowingly exposed to radioactive materials.
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In January, the IAEA confirmed that Iraq was the likely source of radioactive material known as yellowcake that was found in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam harbor.
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The IAEA has been unable to investigate, monitor or protect Iraqi nuclear materials since the U.S. invaded the country in March 2003. The United States has refused to allow the IAEA or other U.N. weapons inspectors into the country, claiming that the coalition has taken over responsibility for illict weapons searches.

So far those searches have come up empty-handed and the CIA's first chief weapons hunter has said he no longer believes Iraq had weapons just prior to the invasion.

The Hughes brothers also argue that by killing his wife, William violated the fiduciary duty that he owed her....

Even granting that the statutes here have some relevance to cases of homicide, the provisions cannot produce the result that the Hughes brothers urge us to reach. As a result of the killing here, William certainly kept Ms. Hughes from benefitting from the insurance policy. But even if he had not killed her, we do not know that she ever would have benefitted from the policy, unless we assume that he would have necessarily predeceased her, which is something that we cannot do. The Hughes brothers do not seem to be arguing that William violated his fiduciary duty by not killing himself before, say, arranging to have his wife killed after his death, and we do not in any case think that the California statutes at issue here will bear so fantastic a construction.

Nixon's first public statement about the break-in came during his afternoon press conference on June 22. In the first and only question about the break-in, the president was asked if he had ordered "any sort of investigation" to determine the accuracy of the charge by Lawrence F. O'Brien, chair of the Democratic National Committee, that the burglars "had a direct link to the White House." The president repeated his press secretary's position that "this kind of activity ... has no place whatever in our electoral process or in our governmental process" and that "the White House had had no involvement whatever in this particular incident."

[edit]

This denial of White House participation and the moral stance that such activity "has no place whatever in our electoral process" established the positions that Nixon intended to maintain.

That is not the way that this White House operates. That's not the way the President operates. And certainly, I first became aware of those news reports when we were contacted by reporters and the questions were raised. It's the first I had heard of those. No one would be authorized to do that within this White House. That is simply not the way we operate, and that's simply not the way the President operates.

Haldeman also considered [Rowland] Evans and [Robert] Novak to be journalists who would release information to promote specific White House projects.

Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Force's Size

In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. "I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction," Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help.

Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said the factors influencing cost estimates made even ranges imperfect. Asked whether he would release such ranges to permit a useful public debate on the subject, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I've already decided that. It's not useful."

"... in publicly backing an Israeli strategy developed without Palestinian input, [Bush] set aside years of U.S. policy that deemed the West Bank settlements obstacles to peace in the region. The shape of the border and the fate of refugees were to be settled in final negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

"... A desire to avoid further alienating Arab opinion helped keep the White House from backing all of Sharon's plan, officials said. The administration, entangled in an increasingly bloody battle for Iraq and a global fight against Islamic extremism, is widely perceived abroad to favor Israel over the Palestinians."

"Opposition to settlements has been official U.S. policy for more than 20 years, even as the Israeli population in Gaza and the West Bank steadily increased. By erecting tens of thousands of roofs on formerly Arab land, Israelis sought to create the reality that Bush said he is now simply acknowledging.

"Former senator and Middle East mediator George J. Mitchell drafted a series of measures endorsed by Bush early in his term. Mitchell believed freezing settlement activity should be Israel's top priority, just as halting violence was the main Palestinian requirement.

"President George H.W. Bush was so angered by settlement activity -- directed by Sharon at the time -- that he withheld $400 million in loan guarantees. By mid-2002, however, his son's White House had decided not to make a strong effort to curb continued settlement expansion."

This evening, the deadline for filing taxes, some of Denver's wealthiest residents will celebrate by gathering at the Denver Country Club and singing songs about how poor they are now that they've paid the Internal Revenue Service.

The club is calling it the "Hard Times Tax Relief Party," where members are promised they can "Forget your IRS woes by spending a fun evening at the Denver Country Club."

For $13.95, according to a flier on the bulletin board of the Country Club, members will get a dinner featuring "chipped beef on dry toast" and will be entertained by "a singalong of favorites."

Samples of the songs, with the Denver Country Club's commentary on why they were chosen: Fly Me To The Moon, (because "I can't afford it on Earth anymore") and Beer Barrel Polka (because "We can't afford anything else.")

Fashion for the evening, the flier says, is "Oscar de la Goodwill" or "Salvation Army Fifth Avenue" with "prizes given for the most fashionable couture."

[B]ut they all mangle the question Dickerson actually asked: "After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?" Bush had trouble identifying his BIGGEST mistake, not any mistake.

One of the biggest criticisms of you is that whether it's WMD in Iraq, postwar planning in Iraq, or even the question of whether this administration did enough to ward off 9-11, you never admit a mistake. Is that a fair criticism, and do you believe that there were any errors in judgment that you made related to any of those topics I brought up?

In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa.

You've looked back before 9-11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?

I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it.

John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could've done it better this way or that way. You know, I just - I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet.

[edit]

I hope - I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't - you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.

Roemer then asked Tenet if he mentioned [the arrest of Zacarias] Moussaoui to President Bush at one of their frequent morning briefings. Tenet replied, "I was not in briefings at this time." Bush, he noted, "was on vacation." He added that he didn't see the president at all in August 2001. During the entire month, Bush was at his ranch in Texas. "You never talked with him?" Roemer asked. "No," Tenet replied. By the way, for much of August, Tenet too was, as he put it, "on leave."

And there you have it. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has made a big point of the fact that Tenet briefed the president nearly every day. Yet at the peak moment of threat, the two didn't talk at all. At a time when action was needed, and orders for action had to come from the top, the man at the top was resting undisturbed.

Throughout that summer, we now well know, Tenet, Richard Clarke, and several other officials were running around with their "hair on fire," warning that al-Qaida was about to unleash a monumental attack. On Aug. 6, Bush was given the now-famous President's Daily Brief (by one of Tenet's underlings), warning that this attack might take place "inside the United States." For the previous few years - as Philip Zelikow, the commission's staff director, revealed this morning - the CIA had issued several warnings that terrorists might fly commercial airplanes into buildings or cities.

And now, we learn today, at this peak moment, Tenet hears about Moussaoui. Someone might have added 2 + 2 + 2 and possibly busted up the conspiracy. But the president was down on the ranch, taking it easy. Tenet wasn't with him. Tenet never talked with him. Rice - as she has testified - wasn't with Bush, either. He was on his own and, willfully, out of touch.

The "Counter Clinton Library" is necessary to refute the many spins and lies that will be the theme of the "official" Clinton library. So it is up to us - to simple American citizens and patriots - to finally tell the real truth about the Clintons ruining our country once and for all...No Counter-Presidential library has ever happened before, because no Presidency has done so much to tear down this country. Help us tell the truth about the Clinton Presidency today, not just for history, but for America?s children and grandchildren, so that no occupant of the Oval Office will ever again defile the institution like Bill Clinton.

"In his appearance before the 9-11 Commission, Mr. Clarke’s theatrical apology on behalf of the nation was not his right, his privilege or his responsibility. In my view it was not an act of humility, but an act of supreme arrogance and manipulation. Mr Clarke can and will answer for his own conduct – but that is all. "

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke’s testimony before a joint congressional panel on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks did not contradict his later testimony before a presidentially appointed commission.

Roberts’s comments to The Hill contradict a stinging condemnation of Clarke by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on the Senate floor after Clarke accused President Bush of failing to take Osama bin Laden seriously before Sept. 11.

Roberts said Frist did not consult him before making his floor speech, which has been criticized by Democrats. Roberts’s words make perjury charges against Clarke highly unlikely.

[edit]

When asked if Clarke contradicted himself, Roberts said he did not.

Roberts said Clarke’s 2002 testimony was on small-bore process issues related to the intelligence community while the later testimony took a big-picture view of policymakers’ handling of evidence of a pending attack.

He wished that Frist had consulted with him before making his floor statement.

In a study appearing today in the journal Human Behavior, researchers describe the drastic temperamental and tonal shift that occurred in a tribe when its most belligerent members vanished from the scene. The victims were all dominant adult males that had been strong and snarly enough to fight with a neighboring tribe over the spoils at a tourist lodge garbage dump, and were exposed there to meat tainted with bovine tuberculosis, which soon killed them. Left behind in the tribe, designated the Forest Tribe, were the 50 percent of males that had been too subordinate to try dump brawling, as well as all the females and their young. With that change in demographics came a cultural swing toward pacifism, a relaxing of the usually parlous human hierarchy, and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes and bites to foster a patriotic spirit.

As to the WMD, Bush said the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq had confirmed that Iraq was "hiding things. A country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught." See the logic? A country that hides something must be afraid of getting caught, and a country afraid of getting caught must be hiding something.

"How does Bush square his obtuseness to the threat from Bin Laden with his obtuseness to the absence of a threat from Saddam? 'After 9/11, the world changed for me,' he explained Tuesday night. That's Bush in a nutshell: The world changed for him. Out went the assumption of safety, and in came the assumption of peril. In the real world, Bin Laden was still a religious fanatic with global reach, and Saddam was still a secular tyrant boxed in by sanctions and no-fly zones. But in Bush's head, everything changed."

REPORTER: "Do you feel a sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?"

PRESIDENT BUSH: "I feel incredibly grieved when I meet with family members, and I do quite frequently. I grieve for the incredible loss of life that they feel, the emptiness they feel. There are some things I wish we'd have done when I look back. I mean, hindsight is easy. It's easy for a President to stand up and say, now that I know what happened, it would have been nice if there were certain things in place; for example, a homeland security department. And why I -- I say that because it's -- that provides the ability for our agencies to coordinate better and to work together better than it was before."

"Bush initially opposed creation of a homeland security department. But, facing criticism from Democrats, he embraced the concept in June and used it as a political issue in the midterm election campaign."

"We will find that out soon. That's what [UN envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over."

PRESIDENT BUSH, April 13, 2004

"I can't imagine an elected United States -- elected member of the United States Senate or House of Representatives saying, I think I'm going to wait for the United Nations to make a decision. It seems like to me that if you're representing the United States, you ought to be making a decision on what's best for the United States. If I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people -- say, vote for me, and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act."

PRESIDENT BUSH, Sept. 13, 2002

MIKE ALLEN, WASHINGTON POST: "Mr. President, why are you and the Vice President insisting on appearing together before the 9/11 Commission? And, Mr. President, who will you be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?

PRESIDENT BUSH: We will find that out soon. That's what [UN envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi is doing; he's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over."

PRESIDENT BUSH: "And, secondly, because the 9/11 Commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions."

MIKE ALLEN, WASHINGTON POST: "I was asking why you're appearing together, rather than separately, which was their request."

PRESIDENT BUSH: Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 Commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them."

"Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He was a threat because he coddled terrorists. He was a threat because he funded suiciders."

Fifty days after the first reports that the U.S. forces were unloading weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in southern Iraq, new reports about the movement of these weapons have been disclosed.

Sources in Iraq speculate that occupation forces are using the recent unrest in Iraq to divert attention from their surreptitious shipments of WMD into the country.

An Iraqi source close to the Basra Governor’s Office told the MNA that new information shows that a large part of the WMD, which was secretly brought to southern and western Iraq over the past month, are in containers falsely labeled as containers of the Maeresk shipping company and some consignments bearing the labels of organizations such as the Red Cross or the USAID in order to disguise them as relief shipments.

The potential for such persons attempting to evade federal and state income tax obviously is quite significant. By declaring themselves "married," and submitting joint federal tax returns, for example, such persons could attempt to benefit from the "married filing jointly" or "married filing separately" federal income tax rates currently available only to a "husband" and a "wife" who are legitimately married. 26 U.S.C. section 6013.
...
This kind of activity could mushroom into a dangerous tax scam throughout the United States. Although we have no idea at this time concerning the aggregate impact of such a scheme on the federal government, the loss of revenues to the federal government from federal income taxes clearly would be substantial.

Inadequate revenue. "Whoever is president will continue to face huge budget deficits. "They cannot solve those by capping spending," says Charles Davenport, senior contributing editor at Tax Analysts, a nonpartisan publisher. The war in Iraq adds to the problem. On NBC's "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Senator John McCain of Arizona said, "we are going have to ask for more money after the election, and it's going to increase the ... deficit."

An explosion in the number of middle-income taxpayers paying the Alternative Minimum Tax. The tax was adopted in the late 1960s to make sure the wealthiest Americans paid at least some taxes. "It now affects substantial numbers of middle-income taxpayers and will, absent a change of law, affect more than 30 million taxpayers by 2010," writes IRS taxpayer advocate Nina Olson in her annual report to Congress. The cost of fixing the problem: upwards of $450 billion over the next 10 years, according to figures from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

A sizable gap between what the government is owed and what it collects. "The tax gap is more than $300 billion in revenue we think we should be collecting and are not," says Peter Orszag of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "Some of that is nonreporting [of income], some of it is aggressive use of tax sheltering."

A major erosion in corporate tax revenue. Congress's General Accounting Office recently reported that 61 percent of US-owned companies and 71 percent of foreign-owned firms paid no taxes in the US from 1996 to 2000, when profits were booming. Last year, corporate taxes fell to just 7.4 percent of government receipts, versus 20.3 percent 40 years ago.

Fox has no problem with subsidizing the American dream of homeownership. But the tax breaks go too far, he argues, benefiting people with two homes or "McMansions."

With the deduction limit set at $1 million dollars, a high proportion of the savings go to people who can afford to live comfortably without the government's help. That leaves fewer resources for a much-touted goal - helping low-income and middle-class people afford a home.

You've probably heard candidates complain about "marriage penalties" in taxes. But what about the singles penalty?

When it comes to people struggling to make ends meet, the tax system gives families much more help than individuals. A married couple with two children had a poverty threshold of $19,000 in 2003, but didn't have to start paying taxes until their income exceeded $47,700, assuming they both work and have childcare expenses ($39,700 if they don't). Singles, however, had a poverty threshold of $9,600 and had to start paying taxes at $9,300. Such inconsistencies suggest "Congress is just not paying attention," Fox says. "Single people have failed to gather together and scream at them that it's outrageous."

Republicans don't want to fix the AMT because fixing the AMT would require undoing their beloved tax cuts. Without the billions generated by millions of taxpayers getting slammed by the AMT, the marginal rate cuts would be impossible to sustain for the next several years, let alone make permanent. Without the AMT, the deficit picture would look far worse than it does.

Former acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard, who headed the bureau just before the attacks, told the panel Ashcroft did not seem to consider terrorism a priority. He said that after he began briefing Ashcroft twice a week on the threats, Ashcroft told Pickard ''he did not want to hear this information anymore.''

Ashcroft denied saying that and added that he had ''interrogated'' Pickard in their meetings about any possible terror threats facing the United States.

Question: "After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?"

BUSH: "I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it...You know, I just _ I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet."

Yoda owes his longevity to genetic modifications that affected his pituitary and thyroid glands and reduced insulin production - and which left him a third smaller than an average mouse and very sensitive to cold.

On the other hand, at the human equivalent of about 136 years, Yoda is still mobile, sexually active and "looking good," said Dr. Richard A. Miller, associate director of research at the school's geriatrics centre.

Most of the reporting from Iraq is about death and destruction. We don't learn much about what our soldiers in Iraq are thinking or doing .... It would be interesting to have a reporter ask a group of our soldiers in Iraq to answer five questions ...

1. Do you think your country did the right thing sending you into Iraq?

2. Are you doing what America set out to do to make Iraq a democracy, or have we failed so badly that we should pack up and get out before more of you are killed?

3. Do the orders you get handed down from one headquarters to another, all far removed from the fighting, seem sensible, or do you think our highest command is out of touch with the reality of your situation?

4. If you could have a medal or a trip home, which would you take?

5. Are you encouraged by all the talk back home about how brave you are and how everyone supports you?

Treating soldiers fighting their war as brave heroes is an old civilian trick designed to keep the soldiers at it. But you can be sure our soldiers in Iraq are not all brave heroes gladly risking their lives for us sitting comfortably back here at home.

Our soldiers in Iraq are people, young men and women, and they behave like people -- sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes brave, sometimes fearful. It's disingenuous of the rest of us to encourage them to fight this war by idolizing them. We pin medals on their chests to keep them going. We speak of them as if they volunteered to risk their lives to save ours but ... [a] relatively small number are professional soldiers. During the last few years, when millions of jobs disappeared, many young people, desperate for some income, enlisted in the [military] ... to pick up some extra money and never thought they'd be called on to fight. They want to come home.

One indication that not all soldiers in Iraq are happy warriors is the report recently released by the Army showing that 23 of them committed suicide there last year. This is a dismaying figure. ... think how many more are desperately unhappy but unwilling to die. We must support our soldiers in Iraq because it's our fault they're risking their lives there. However, we should not bestow the mantle of heroism on all of them for simply being where we sent them. Most are victims, not heroes.

America's intentions are honorable. I believe that and we must find a way of making the rest of the world believe it .... We pay lip service to the virtues of openness and honesty, but for some reason we too often act as though there was a better way of handling a bad situation than by being absolutely open and honest.

President Bush reported $822,126 in adjusted gross income for last year, on which he paid $227,490 in federal income taxes – or about 28 percent, according to the president's federal returns released Tuesday by the White House.
...
Bush overpaid his 2003 taxes by $61,451, and elected to apply the entire amount to their 2004 tax bill.

For 2002, the Cheneys paid 29 percent of their adjusted gross income in federal taxes. Their income includes the vice president's $198,600 government salary and the $178,437 he earned in deferred compensation from Halliburton...Cheney's office has repeatedly stated that the vice president doesn't have a financial stake in the success of Halliburton, nor does he have anything to do with defense contracts."

Bush will be in real trouble if the situation in Iraq deteriorates. The reported boast of one anti-American demonstrator that he and his ilk "cannot drive America out of Iraq, but we can drive Bush out of the White House, like we did to Carter" is not far-fetched.

I have doubted the conventional wisdom that this election would be close. If Bush continues to stay on the offensive and Kerry's responses remain as inept as they've been, the Massachusetts Democrat will go downhill faster than he is now doing on his skiing vacation.

By conceding the field to the Republicans in March, Kerry has likely cooked his own goose. As he soars downhill on his ski vacation, his poll numbers seem headed in the same direction. Will voters who backed Kerry in early March and then were driven by negative ads to switch to undecided ever come back? It’s not very likely.

The corporate tax burden over the past few years has dropped sharply, figures gathered by the Commerce Department and amplified by public-company filings show.

The new data also suggest that shrinking effective corporate tax rates have helped boost corporate profits to record levels. Investors who have come to expect -- and in some cases even demand -- that corporations perform acts of tax diminution may be in for disappointment from here because, short of an act of Congress, it is hard to see how the corporate tax tally could get much smaller.

Corporate taxes have become a hot-button issue on the presidential campaign trial this year, fueled by a recent Government Accounting Office report that showed less than 40% of U.S. companies paid any federal taxes in each of the four years from 1996 to 2000 as well as a separate study showing that Internal Revenue Service audits have continued to drop under President Bush.

[edit]

Using data from Standard & Poor's Compustat, John Graham, associate finance professor at Duke University Fuqua School of Business, found the average tax rate for public U.S. companies was 12% in 2002, down from 15% in 1999 and 18% in 1995.

Finally, many suspect that, with a drop off in tax-law enforcement, there has been an increase in the use of tax shelters.

The operating losses that many companies reported in 2001 and 2002 accounts for some of the reduced tax burden. Tax law allows companies to carry back losses to recover prior taxes, and for 2001 and 2002 Congress extended this carry-back period from two to five years. Companies can also carry forward losses to offset taxes in later years.

Most painful to me as a dad is that my son prostituted my name for $5,000; he sold out our family's privacy for cold cash.
...
What they aren't telling — and this grieves me to the core — is that his life is in shambles: He was recently arrested for DWI; he's writing bad checks on a closed bank account; he dropped out of school a year ago; he doesn't have a job; he bounces from house to house; he's racked-up huge bills for friends and family that he cannot pay; he's been taken to court by former friends to get money he owes them; he's lied to friends, saying his "famous dad" was going to send money to pay his debts; and he has a trail of wrecked friendships and family relationships because of deceit, money fraud and crossed boundaries — a mirror image of the home he was in from his birth until he was 8.

Justice spokesman Mark Corallo blames "base politics" for charges Ashcroft had little interest in fighting terrorism during the first eight months of 2001. During that time, Corallo said, in congressional testimony and other speeches Ashcroft called preventing terrorism "the top priority."

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Justice Department hastily issued a replacement for the list of its top seven priorities in its budget proposal, adding at the top a new priority -- preventing terrorism.

[edit]

A budget handout given to reporters pre-Sept. 11 also did not highlight counterterrorism among the seven priorities. Only after the attacks did Justice officials distribute a newly printed set of eight priorities, led by counterterrorism.

''The FBI's counterterrorism strategy was not a focus of the Justice Department in 2001,'' the first year of the Bush administration, [the interim commission report] said.

... Ashcroft has testified previously that the Justice Department had ''no higher priority'' than protecting Americans from terrorism at home and abroad.

Yet the commission staff statement quotes a former FBI counterterrorism chief, Dale Watson, as saying he ''almost fell out of his chair'' when he saw a May 10 budget memo from Ashcroft listing seven priorities, including illegal drugs and gun violence, but not terrorism.

Additionally, on Sept. 10, Ashcroft rejected an appeal from Pickard for additional funding, the commission said.

The U.S. Forest Service has been accused of misrepresenting forest conditions by using misleading photographs in a brochure that urges more logging to prevent wildfires in the Sierra Nevada.

The pamphlet says fire risks have risen as the Sierra's forests have grown more dense over the past century. Six photos spanning 80 years appear beside descriptions of how the "forests of the past" had fewer trees and less underbrush, making them less susceptible to fire.

The 1909 photo shows an open, parklike forest with large trees spaced widely apart. More trees and underbrush appear in each successive picture -- 1948, 1958, 1968, 1979 -- and finally a photograph thick with trees in 1989.

"Today's forests, dense with green, may seem beautiful, but in fact are deadly," the pamphlet reads. "Our old-growth forests are choking with brush, tinder-dry debris and dead trees which make the risk of catastrophic fire high."

But the 1909 photo does not depict natural conditions -- it was taken just after the forest had been logged.

President Bush said Monday that "now may be a time to revamp and reform our intelligence services," opening the way for consideration of changes at the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other agencies.

A New Berlin family who just lost one daughter in Iraq is now pleading with federal legislators and the Wisconsin National Guard not to send their surviving two soldier daughters back to Baghdad after their sister's funeral.

Military officials confirmed Sunday that Spec. Michelle Witmer, 20, died Friday after her vehicle came under attack by small arms fire. She had been stationed in Baghdad since last summer with the 32nd Military Police Company, which was scheduled to end its deployment to Iraq on May 8, one year after the unit shipped out to southwest Asia.

Officials said she is the first Wisconsin National Guard member to die in action since the waning days of World War II and the first female soldier killed in combat in the 167-year history of the Wisconsin National Guard.

Sgt. Charity Witmer, who is Michelle's twin, and Spc. Rachel Witmer, 24, are scheduled to bring Michelle's body home today.

Rachel Witmer also is serving with the 32nd Military Police, and her family initially believed she would be allowed to remain in Wisconsin. But the unit's tour of duty has been extended by 120 days, and the family is not sure what that means for Rachel.

Unless the Army makes an exception for Charity, she also will have to return to Iraq to complete her tour of duty with Company B of the Wisconsin Army National Guard's 118th Medical Battalion.

"I can't live another year like I've lived this one," said the women's father, John Witmer. "The sacrifice that this family's made can never be understood by someone who hasn't gone through it. . . . It's a burden I can't bear. My family can't bear it."

[snip]

He also said he has received at least a dozen calls from soldiers in Iraq expressing condolences and how much they share the loss of Michelle.

"They're taking it very, very hard, sharing with me their concern over what happened, telling me they're so sorry, comforting me in any way," John Witmer said.

When she was killed, his daughter expected to have only five more days of patrol duty before preparing to leave Iraq, he said.

"Now all those people over there are struggling with the fact that they're going to be over there through the long, hot summer again," he said.

John Witmer acknowledged the final decision of whether to return will be up to his daughters, who are due to arrive home today. [Note: this is because the Army has a policy of permitting soldiers whose siblings have been killed in hostile territory to opt out of being assigned to the same region.] But he said they would have to understand "how terribly we need to know they're not going back."

[snip]

The 32nd Military Police unit's members were hit by more bad news Sunday with the news that their tour of duty had been extended an additional 120 days. The unit's commander, Capt. Scott Southworth, called Wisconsin National Guard officials Sunday morning, Wisconsin time, to alert them about the change ordered by military authorities in Iraq.

[Wisconsin National Guard Lt. Col.] Donovan said it's unknown when the unit will come home.

"We don't know if that's 120 days before their active duty ends, 120 days before they leave Iraq, 120 days before they leave southwest Asia. We just don't know," Donovan said. "It's been a difficult couple of days for this unit and their families."

About 145 members of the Milwaukee-based company, which has a detachment from Madison, are stationed in Baghdad providing security for Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, handling detainees, investigating homicides, monitoring police stations and providing weapons training for Iraqi police officers.

[snip]

The family asked that any contributions go to an Iraqi orphanage for disabled children. After visiting the orphanage last fall, Michelle e-mailed home to describe the barren, third-world conditions and the lasting effect the visit had on her. She said the children made her "want to weep."

"It moved me to see how much just holding a child or saying kind words could affect them," she wrote. "They were so joyful and happy to see us."

The orphanage, which the 32nd Military Police Company "adopted" shortly after arriving in Baghdad last summer, was featured in a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Dec. 21. Twice a week, volunteers from the company spend a couple of hours at the orphanage playing, reading and feeding the children.

Donations can be sent to Missionaries of Charity, Hay Al Karrada Mahala 903-13-9, near St. Raphel Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq.

Protection of the needy is of special concern to God: They are, after all, the least able to vindicate their own interests, especially in the face of a government that is easily suborned to favor the powerful. However, extra sensitivity to abuse of the poor does not warrant prejudice in their favor. God commanded: "Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly" (Leviticus 19:15).

Biblical justice, then, protects all men in their enjoyment of God's blessings. In this way godly justice and righteousness focus on process. That differs from the modern notion of "social justice," which demands equality of economic and cultural outcomes. However appealing may be some proposals advanced under the rubric of "social justice," they are not matters of biblical justice.

Some argue that biblical strictures against "oppression" apply to seemingly neutral processes, such as the free marketplace, that allegedly lead to unfair results, such as wealth imbalances. Yet the apparent unfairness of market transactions ?in contrast to the harmful consequences of individual cases of fraud and theft?usually results from coercion, almost always through state intervention.

Indeed, the Bible routinely links oppression to the use of force and perversion of the system of justice. The prophet Micah complained of evil men who "covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them. They defraud a man of his home." Israel's "rich men are violent," he added (Micah 2:2, 6:12). James pointed to the exploitative rich who had "failed to pay the workmen" and "condemned and murdered innocent men" (James 5:4, 6). None of these passages involves voluntary exchange, however "unequal" the parties' bargaining power.

This is not to say that such inequality is unimportant: It brings out personal responsibility to be just and generous and the Body of Christ's corporate responsibility to "do good to all people" (Galatians 6:10). It challenges otherwise comfortable believers to sacrifice to help their neighbors.

The form of economic oppression that would appear to come closest to the biblical meaning would be the use of government by influential interest groups to restrict competition, enhance their own market position, and extort subsidies. It is such lobbies, among many others, that the prophet Isaiah addressed when he proclaimed: "Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and rob My oppressed people of justice, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless" (Isaiah 10:1-2).

"stopped the massacre as soon as they were able to do so" and that the Confederate soldiers "had such a hatred toward the armed negro that they could not be restrained from killing the negroes after they had captured them."

"The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for 200 yards.... It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners."

He appears to have had a ruthless temper which impelled him upon every occasion where he had a clear advantage to push his success to a bloody end, and yet he always seemed not only to resent but to have a plausible excuse for the cruel excesses which were charged against him.

Before this letter reaches you you will have learned of the capture of Fort Pillow and of the slaughter of our troops after the place was captured. This is the most infernal outrage that has been committed since the war began. Three weeks ago I sent up four companies of colored troops to that place under Major Booth, a most brave and efficient [officer], who took command of the post. Forrest and Chalmers, with about 3,000 devils , attacked the place on the 12th at 9 a.m. and succeeded after three assaults, and when both Major Boothe and Major Bradford, of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, had been killed, in capturing the place at 4 p.m. We had, in all, less then 500 effective men, and one-third of whom were colored.

The colored troops fought with desperation throughout. After the capture our colored men were literally butchered. Chalmers was present and saw it all. Out of over 300 colored men, not 25 were taken prisoners, and they may have been killed long before this.

There is a great deal of excitement in town in consequence of this affair, especially among our colored troops. If this is to be the game of the enemy they will soon learn that it is one at which two can play.

The Government will no doubt take cognizance of this matter immediately and take such measures as will prevent a recurrence.

It is reported that Forrest will move on this place in a few days. I do not believe it. I am hurried and can write no more to-day. I am feeling dreadfully over the fate of my brave officers and men. Like all others, I feel that the blood of these heroes must be avenged. Forrest will probably try to get out of West Tennessee as soon as he can. We have re-enforcements coming in, and we shall soon be on his track.

A small but vocal group of protesters, intent on denying Southerners the right to celebrate their heritage, immediately demanded its removal.

REPORTER: "Did you see ... the President's Daily Brief from August of '01 as a warning?"

PRESIDENT BUSH: "Did I see it? Of course I saw it; I asked for it."

REPORTER: "No, no, I'm sorry -- did you see it as a warning of hijackers? And how did you respond to that?"

PRESIDENT BUSH: "My response was exactly like then as it is today, that I asked for the Central Intelligence Agency to give me an update on any terrorist threats. And the PDB was no indication of a terrorist threat. There was not a time and place of an attack. It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that ..."

PRESIDENT BUSH: (cont'd from above) "As you might recall, there was some specific threats for overseas that we reacted to. And as the president, I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence. And I looked at the August 6th briefing, I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into. But that PDB said nothing about an attack on America. It talked about intentions, about somebody who hated America -- well, we knew that."

REPORTER: "Wasn't that (Aug. 6 PDB memo) current threat information? That wasn't historical, that was ongoing."

PRESIDENT BUSH: "Right, and had they found something, they would have reported it to me ..."

So how bad are things in Iraq?

Answer: not very. Fallujah is not the new Mogadishu, Muqtaba al-Sadr is not the new Ayatollah Khomeini and, despite what Ted Kennedy says, Iraq is not ''George Bush's Vietnam.'' Or even George Bush's Chappaquiddick.

Israeli political sources said yesterday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will get a written U.S. pledge that in exchange for a Gaza pullout, Israel will be able to keep parts of the West Bank under a future peace deal.

[edit]

The Israeli sources said Washington's assurance would come in a letter Mr. Bush will hand Mr. Sharon on Wednesday at a meeting where Israel is expected to receive a U.S. green light to unilaterally "disengage" from the Palestinians.

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz, quoting from what it said was the planned letter from Mr. Bush, said borders to be established under any final peace accord would reflect "demographic realities," an allusion to large settlement enclaves in the West Bank.

Is Queen Elizabeth II taking shots at Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his view of Old Europe vs. New Europe?

At a state banquet at Elysee Palace in Paris last week to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale partnership agreement between the Brits and the French, she said: "Britain and France are two of the great nation states of Europe -- old, yes, and proud of it."

... a deputy U.S. marshal ordered two journalists to erase recordings they were making of Scalia's speech on the Constitution at Presbyterian Christian High School.

... While Scalia, a quiet, almost shy jurist, had made his long-standing wishes for no audio or video recordings known to everyone in Mississippi, he did not instruct the deputy marshal, Melanie Rube, to confront the two reporters. In one instance, Rube seized an Associated Press reporter's tape recorder .... The Code of Federal Regulations explicitly states at 28 CFR 0.111 (e) that a function of the Marshals Service is "Protection of Federal jurists, court officers, and other threatened persons in the interests of justice where criminal intimidation impedes the functioning of the Federal judicial process."

Okay, it may be a bit of a stretch to say that reporters for the Hattiesburg American and the AP, taping a speech only to make sure they quoted Scalia accurately, were engaged in "criminal intimidation," but a good lawyer might work that out.

... (Let's ignore for a moment that, while fussing with the reporters, the deputy was not scanning the audience for anyone interested in doing harm to the justice.)

... Meanwhile, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press weighed in to note the marshal's actions violate the Privacy Protection Act, passed in 1980 to ensure that law enforcement folks don't intimidate the news media or seize notes, recordings, film and so on.

The reporters committee couldn't resist reminding that a year ago Scalia barred television coverage of his appearance at the City Club of Cleveland, where he received the Citadel of Free Speech Award, honoring his work in support of the First Amendment.

This law says to every dishonest corporate leader: you will be exposed and punished; the era of low standards and false profits is over; no boardroom in America is above or beyond the law.

[edit]

This law gives my administration new tools for enforcement. We will use them to the fullest. We will continue to investigate, arrest and prosecute corporate officials who break the law.

Since taking office, the Bush administration has repeatedly promised to get tough with tax cheats, saying it has ended a long slide in enforcement of tax laws.

But an independent analysis of new Internal Revenue Service data released today shows that tax enforcement has fallen steadily under President Bush, with fewer audits, fewer penalties, fewer prosecutions and virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes. The audit rate for the 11,200 largest corporations, which pay nearly all corporate income taxes, has fallen by almost half over the last decade, as has the audit rate for unincorporated businesses.

One, here in Ketchikan, would be among the biggest in the United States: a mile long, with a top clearance of 200 feet from the water — 80 feet higher than the Brooklyn Bridge and just 20 feet short of the Golden Gate Bridge. It would connect this economically depressed, rain-soaked town of 7,845 people to an island that has about 50 residents and the area's airport, which offers six flights a day (a few more in summer). It could cost about $200 million.

The other bridge would span an inlet for nearly two miles to tie Anchorage to a port that has a single regular tenant and almost no homes or businesses. It would cost up to $2 billion.

[edit]

But if this is pork, the Republican behind the House bill says bring it on, with extra fat. Representative Don Young, Alaska's lone member of the House, where he is chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is already known as Mr. Concrete but would like to wear another title as well.

"I'd like to be a little oinker, myself," Mr. Young told a Republican lunch crowd here, taking mock offense at the suggestion that Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, directs more pork to their state than he does. "If he's the chief porker, I'm upset."

When asked why a town with one main road, a dwindling population and virtually nowhere to drive to needs a bridge to rival the world's great spans, people here inevitably respond with two words: Don Young. Mr. Young, mindful that the highway bill comes up for renewal only once every six years or so, and that the House Republican Conference imposes three-term limits on committee chairmanships, says the opportunity to pour so many federal dollars into his home state comes once in a lifetime, and should be seized.

"If you don't do it now, when are you going to do it?" he said at the luncheon. "This is the time to take advantage of the position I'm in, along with Senator Stevens."

[edit]

"If I had not done fairly well for our state," he said, "I'd be ashamed of myself."

A (Glassport, Pa.) church trying to teach about the crucifixion of Jesus performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs, upsetting several parents and young children.

... Melissa Salzmann, who took her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program was inappropriate for young children. "He was crying and asking me why the bunny was being whipped," Salzmann said.

Patty Bickerton, the youth minister at Glassport Assembly of God, said the performance wasn't meant to be offensive. Bickerton portrayed the Easter rabbit and said she tried to act with a tone of irreverence.

"The program was for all ages, not just the kids. We wanted to convey that Easter is not just about the Easter Bunny, it is about Jesus Christ," Bickerton said.

Performers broke eggs meant for an Easter egg hunt and also portrayed a drunken man and a self-mutilating woman, said Jennifer Norelli-Burke, another parent who saw the show in Glassport, southeast of Pittsburgh.

In December, 2002, a year after the Taliban had been driven from power in Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld gave an upbeat assessment of the country's future to CNN's Larry King. "They have elected a government .... The Taliban are gone. The [sic] Al Qaeda are gone. .... There are people who are throwing hand grenades and shooting off rockets and trying to kill people, but there are people who are trying to kill people in New York or San Francisco. So it's not going to be a perfectly tidy place." Nonetheless, he said, "I'm hopeful, I'm encouraged."

... A year and a half later, the Taliban are still a force in many parts of Afghanistan, and the country continues to provide safe haven for members of Al Qaeda. ... Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-backed President, exercises little political control outside Kabul and is struggling to undercut the authority of local warlords, who effectively control the provinces. Heroin production is soaring, and, outside of Kabul and a few other cities, people are terrorized by violence and crime.

(Former counter-terrorism expert Richard) Clarke told me in an interview last week that the Administration viewed Afghanistan as a ... a detour along the road to Iraq, the war that mattered most to the President. Clarke and some of his colleagues, he said, had repeatedly warned the national-security leadership that, as he put it, "you can't win the war in Afghanistan with such a small effort." Clarke continued, "There were more cops in New York City than soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan ..."

... The Bush Administration has consistently invoked Afghanistan as a success story—an example of the President's determination. However, it is making this claim in the face of renewed warnings, from international organizations, from allies, and from within its own military -- notably a Pentagon-commissioned report that was left in bureaucratic limbo when its conclusions proved negative -- that the situation there is deteriorating rapidly.

Clarke's view of what went wrong was buttressed by an internal military analysis of the Afghanistan war that was completed last winter. In late 2002, the Defense Department's office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC) asked retired Army Colonel Hy Rothstein, a leading military expert in unconventional warfare, to examine the planning and execution of the war in Afghanistan, with an understanding that he would focus on Special Forces. ... His report was a devastating critique of the Administration's strategy. He wrote that the bombing campaign was not the best way to hunt down Osama bin Laden and the rest of the Al Qaeda leadership, and that there was a failure to translate early tactical successes into strategic victory. In fact, he wrote, the victory in Afghanistan was not, in the long run, a victory at all.

... The (Rothstein) report describes a wide gap between how Donald Rumsfeld represented the war and what was actually taking place. ... In December, the Taliban and Al Qaeda retreated into the countryside as the armies of the Northern Alliance, supported by American airpower and Special Forces troops, moved into the capital. There were many press accounts of America’s new way of waging war, including well-publicized reports of American Special Forces on horseback and of new technologies, like the Predator drones.

Nonetheless, Rothstein wrote, the United States continued to emphasize bombing and conventional warfare while "the war became increasingly unconventional," with Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters "operating in small cells, emerging only to lay land mines and launch nighttime rocket attacks before disappearing once again."

"How many [United Nations Security Council] resolutions did Ho Chi Minh violate? None," the paper says. "How many UNSC resolution[s] did Saddam Hussein violate? 17." It also notes: "Against how many Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Lao did Ho Chi Minh use chemical and biological weapons? None. Against how many Iraqis, Iranians, and Kurds did Saddam Hussein use chemical and biological weapons? Thousands."