Grand Link Dump

[sisyphusshrugged]

Did I mention that I've be without job for a year? Well, I have, and now I'm not, so this week has been busy, what with school starting for HM and all. It'll get better.

Kerry Links Iraq War Cost, Domestic Woes

Democrat John Kerry links the cost of the Iraq war to problems at home and vows in a new television ad to both "defend America and fight for the middle class."

"200 billion dollars. That's what we are spending in Iraq because George Bush chose to go it alone," Kerry says in the ad, to start airing Monday in 13 competitive states where he is on the air. "Now the president tells us we don't have the resources to take care of health care and education here at home. That's wrong."

Suggesting that Bush ignored domestic ills while focusing on the war abroad, Kerry says: "As president, I'll stop at nothing to get the terrorists before they get us. But I'll also fight to build a stronger middle class."

The $200 billion estimate reflects the campaign's calculation of funds already spent on combat and reconstruction in Iraq, and money anticipated to be spent through next summer, based on congressional reports. The war has cost about $120 billion, according to the White House Office of Budget and Management.

Governor Arnold and the triumph of the will of corporations

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as expected vetoed bills on Saturday that would have raised the state's hourly minimum wage and forced retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to pay for economic impact reports on planned superstores.

Analysts had anticipated the Republican governor would veto both bills as he ran for office on a pro-business platform and has often said he would veto legislation he believes gives the impression the state is hostile toward business.

"I'm not surprised," said Joe Hurd, a senior economist with the UCLA Anderson Forecast. "He seems to want to let the market take its course when he can."

Business groups applauded the vetoes.

"On the minimum wage bill, the governor has continued his policy to promote business growth in California," said Michael Shaw, assistant state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small businesses.

The bill would have raised California's hourly minimum wage to $7.75 by July 2006 from its current $6.75.

In Florida, 245 'Lost' Primary Votes Found

A mistake by an election worker "lost" 245 electronic ballots cast in last month's Florida primary, but the mix-up did not change the outcome of any race when the votes were finally counted, authorities said.

Hillsborough County residents cast the ballots before the Aug. 31 election on an ATM-style machine set up at a library, Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson said. A member of Johnson's staff left the machine, made by Sequoia Voting Systems, in test mode. The votes were recorded and stored but not counted until they were found Friday.

Johnson said the votes were discovered missing when his staff compared the number of people who signed in to vote at the precinct and the number of ballots counted there. In all, the county had 118,699 votes cast.

Although the 245 ballots did not change any outcomes, there were close contests. In the Republican primary for state House District 47, Kevin Ambler defeated Bill Bunkley by 130 votes.

"We're very disappointed this happened," Johnson said of the error. "That's the bottom line."

He assured voters that the error would not be repeated for the presidential election Nov. 2. Florida decided the 2000 race by 537 votes.

OMB Says Medicare Drug Law Could Cost Still More

President Bush promised Congress that his Medicare prescription drug benefit would cost no more than $400 billion over 10 years, but once the legislation was enacted, federal actuaries boosted the estimate to $534 billion. Now, Bush administration projections indicate that the cost could be considerably higher.

According to internal White House budget office estimates of the long-term cost of Medicare, spending related to the new drug benefit could increase by $42 billion over the coming decade.

The revised figure appears in a chart prepared during this summer's "mid-session review" by the Office of Management and Budget and Medicare actuaries. The document provides a detailed breakdown of an extra $176 billion in Medicare spending projected for the next 10 years. The chart, provided to The Washington Post late last week, identifies $42 billion of that increase "as related to MMA," the initials of the Medicare Modernization Act, the new prescription drug law.

Questions We'll Wish We'd Asked

Hurricanes are hitting the United States in bunches. Bloody car bombings rock Baghdad. Putin shows signs of acting like Stalin. US Airways goes back into bankruptcy. Dan Rather pleads his case. Medicare premiums soar. Martha Stewart pushes for going to jail. Bush attacks Kerry. Kerry attacks Bush.

And, as if all that weren't enough, the owners of the National Hockey League lock the players out of training camp.

No, I am not being facetious. And I am not turning this into a sports column about a game I have never really followed.

I'm suggesting that this is one of those too-frequent moments of mental overload, when the best thing you can do is put some distance between yourself and the TV screen and not try to absorb it all at once.

You can help keep it in perspective by looking forward and asking which, if any, of the sensations dominating the 24-hour news cycle will be important to you, say, four months from now.

Say it's next January. The hurricane season is over; Florida and the Gulf Coast have largely recovered. US Airways is still flying snowbirds to the South (bankruptcy to airlines meaning little more than another device for cutting workers' pay). Rather has joined Tom Brokaw in semi-retirement. Martha Stewart's five-month jail term is almost over. And the campaign rhetoric already looks absurd: How could we ever have wasted so much time on National Guard "orders" and Navy commendations from decades ago?

What remains of real importance? Foremost is Iraq. Americans will still be fighting and dying there. Whether or not some approximation of an Iraqi election has been held, Americans will still be the only real security force facing an insurgency that condemns us as occupiers.

That is what preoccupies the president the day after his inauguration. And in retrospect we realize that when we were choosing between George Bush and John Kerry, they should have been pressed much harder to explain what they will do now that we are stuck in an expanding guerrilla war in Iraq.

They both had checkered histories on Iraq. Bush had taken the country to war on what turned out to be false premises and appeared oblivious for far too long to the challenges of a lengthy aftermath. Kerry's history was too incoherent for ready explanation -- an on-again, off-again endorsement and criticism of Bush policy that gave almost no clue to his convictions.

We should have insisted that they clarify what they would do now -- not what they wish they had done back then. Iraq and its attendant problems should have been the only subject of the first televised debate. And we should not have let them shift to airy generalizations about being tough on terrorism. Terrorism is a real threat, but the argument about who is "tougher on terrorism" is a mug's game -- and it's not answered by pictures of a guy standing in the pit of what was once the World Trade Center or carrying a rifle in Vietnam

Gee, when we get sidetracked into paroxysms of wonkery, women (who, you know, vote) lose interest. Go figure.

ANOTHER gender gap has appeared, this time on a poll testing men's and women's knowledge of issues in the presidential campaign. On the eight-question quiz administered to 1,845 adults, men were more likely on every question to give the right answer.

The biggest gender gap was on the question asking which candidate supported moving American troops from Europe and South Korea to other places. Sixty percent of the men correctly identified President Bush, versus 43 percent of the women. There were also double-digit gaps on questions about Social Security and taxes.

The smallest gap, 54 percent versus 49 percent, was on a question asking which candidate wants to allow drugs to be imported from Canada (Senator John Kerry).

Why the gap? Kate Kenski, a senior analyst at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which conducted the poll, said one reason is the way the campaign has been covered.

"Reporters' obsession with the horse race rather than the substance of politics is likely to be more of interest to men, who pay more attention to sports than women," she said.

That theory seems to jibe with the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, which found that men were more likely, by 56 percent to 49 percent, to say they were paying "a lot" of attention to the presidential campaign. Oddly enough, though, women were more likely, by 72 percent to 62 percent, to describe the campaign as interesting, although that might be because they are tuning out the stuff about Social Security and taxes.

Even odder, perhaps, was the gender gap on a question in the Times poll asking whether Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Twenty-nine percent of men said he was, versus 47 percent of women, putting them 18 points ahead - or maybe behind.

We love us some spanish-speaking people. Just don't tell our base.

On the Bush campaign's Spanish-language Web site, prominent display is given to a translation of Bush's Jan. 7 speech proposing an immigration plan involving "guest workers." But the speech was mysteriously missing from the Bush campaign's English-language Web site, which includes almost every speech Bush gives.

An organization opposed to looser immigration policies, ProjectUSA, caught the discrepancy. It also noticed that on the Spanish-language site the Mexican flag was displayed prominently in the main photograph. ProjectUSA complained that Bush was "dividing the nation's voters into two groups and appealing to one under the flag of some other nation."

A Bush campaign official said last week that missing immigration speech was "a complete oversight" -- and quickly posted the Jan. 7 speech on the English Web site. The Mexican flag remains on the Spanish-language site. A Bush spokeswoman also pointed out that Kerry's Spanish-language Web site has numerous Spanish sections -- such as Contribuya al DNC and Sea Voluntario that link to English-only pages.

Court declines to facilitate Our Fearless Leader's late-breaking commitment to campaign finance reform

A federal judge here yesterday rejected a request from President Bush's campaign for an injunction against the Federal Election Commission that Bush attorneys hoped would ultimately halt the efforts of independent Democratic organizations working to defeat the president.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson said he agreed with Bush's attorneys that the FEC is "notoriously slow" in investigating and acting on complaints of political campaign violations, including the one the Bush camp lodged with the commission in March. But, the judge said, the law does not give him the power to act quickly against alleged violations of campaign law or demand that the FEC move more speedily.

"The FEC moves with glacial speed, but that's the way Congress set it up, because that's apparently the way Congress likes it," Robertson told Bush's attorneys.

With the election seven weeks away, the judge said he was issuing his rejection from the bench so the president's team could immediately appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The Bush-Cheney campaign sued the FEC on Sept. 1 seeking an emergency court order. The suit accused the commission of failing to act on its March complaint and of allowing "irreparable harm" by not stopping the activities of advocacy groups that support Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry. Bush's attorneys said those groups, which include MoveOn.org, the Media Fund and America Coming Together, are engaged in "massive" and "ongoing" violations of election laws.

Kerry agrees to debates, Bush doesn't wanna, Debate Commission gets annoyed

The debate over the debates must end -- soon.

That's the gist of a stern letter the Commission on Presidential Debates sent yesterday the campaigns of President Bush and Democratic challenger John F. Kerry.

The commission, which coordinates the quadrennial event, told the campaigns they must settle their differences over the fall debate schedule by Monday if the group is to meet a variety of logistical deadlines.

"These are very demanding, exacting television productions," said Janet Brown, the commission's executive director. "It isn't something you can turn around and do overnight."

The organization sent a similar letter to the campaigns last week, but Brown said it has not heard from either side.

The commission has proposed holding three presidential debates and one for the vice presidential contenders. The first is scheduled for Sept. 30 in Coral Gables, Fla. The others are slated for Oct. 5, Oct. 8 and Oct. 13.

Former secretary of state James A. Baker III, the president's debate negotiator, and attorney Vernon E. Jordan Jr., who is handling the negotiations for Kerry, continued their discussions yesterday. The Kerry campaign agreed to the commission's schedule earlier this summer, but the Bush campaign has taken no official position -- except that there will be debates.

Kofi Annan says the war in Iraq is illegal. Duh.

The declaration of the United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, on the Iraq war was shocking in its simplicity. He described it for the first time as "illegal". No caveats. No equivocation. None of the ambiguity loved by diplomats, especially at UN headquarters. The shock is in part because Annan is an inherently cautious individual. He has long professed that his role is basically that of a civil servant carrying out the decisions of the UN security council. But he has finally made his stand, angered by the damage the war has done to Iraq, to the international community and to the UN. He has been building up to these outspoken comments. Only days before the invasion of Iraq in March last year, he hinted at his opposition but without going so far as to declare it illegal, only saying that without a second UN resolution the "war's legitimacy will be questioned and the support for it will be diminished". In September, he returned to this theme, saying pre-emptive strikes "could set precedents for the proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force". He finally left all restraint behind in an interview broadcast by the BBC on Wednesday night in which he concluded: "From our point of view and from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

His verdict undercuts the argument pursued relentlessly by George Bush and Tony Blair that the war had UN approval. Blair cites as justification two security council resolutions from the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war and the one agreed after much tortuous negotiation in 2002, even though it did not warn explicitly of war if Iraq failed to disarm, only of "serious consequences". Annan said on Wednesday this was not enough: a second resolution explicitly authorising war was needed. Both the US and British governments have a tendency to treat the run-up to the war as history. This is especially so in Britain where the government argues that the issues have been gone over exhaustively in the Hutton and Butler inquiries. Weary ministers say that whatever the rights and wrongs of going to war, it is time to address the problems facing Iraq now. But the reasons for going to war still matter because the UN matters, and the credibility of the government matters.

A Florida judge has decided that Jeb's hand-picked election commissioner can't ignore the manual recount provision in the law, even if it's inconvenient

In a decision that could require the state to provide a paper trail of votes on touch-screen machines, a judge on Friday threw out a state rule that prohibits manual recounts in counties using the ATM-style equipment.

The immediate effect of the ruling and its impact on Tuesday's primary election was unclear Friday night. But the groups that brought the lawsuit against Secretary of State Glenda Hood said the ruling means some sort of paper backup on electronic voting is required.

''The law is clear; the law requires a manual recount,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. ``Which one of those words does the state not understand? This judge should be applauded for standing up for the law.''

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Hood, said no decision has been made on whether to appeal the decision. But Nash said requiring a manual recount in counties that use touch-screen machines would return Florida to the chaotic days following the bitterly contested 2000 presidential election.

''It's important to note that use of touch-screen machines was to avoid the problems counties had in that election,'' Nash said. ``This ruling is a step backward to that time.''

Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, however, called manual recounts ''doable'' in touch-screen counties -- Broward did it in a close election in January -- but said it will take a lot of staff and computer time.

Hood given no choice on state election recount

Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood got a legal rebuke Friday in her effort to single-handedly eliminate manual recounts in counties that may account for more than half of the state's votes for president in November. So now the Division of Elections is soliciting ideas from the public. What took her so long?

For more than a year, the Division of Elections Ñ which reports to Ms. Hood, who reports to Gov. Bush Ñ has been ignoring calls from Democrats for a verifiable paper trail. While the Democrats' option would raise issues of its own, Ms. Hood has done nothing to ensure that the equipment the division certifies provides a manageable way to meet a state law that calls for hand recounts of undervotes and overvotes in races decided by less than one-quarter of 1 percent. "A manual recount is unnecessary and logistically impossible," said Gov. Bush's spokeswoman Alia Faraj, on loan to Ms. Hood for damage control, "because supervisors would have to print out a supermarket-like receipt that could stretch from Miami to the Panhandle."

But whose fault is that? The secretary of state's office, under Katherine Harris and Ms. Hood, has had since 2001 to make the machines compatible with state law. Instead, Ms. Hood decided to flout the law, establishing a rule in February that removed the requirement for manual recounts on electronic machines, which will be used in 15 counties, including Palm Beach and Martin. The other 52 counties use optical scanners, on which manual recounts are possible.

Our Fearless Leader, hedging his bets on God

Before President Bush addressed a Knights of Columbus convention last month in Dallas, the audience of 2,500 conservative Catholics watched a documentary film about a woman who chose to die rather than end a pregnancy that threatened her life. Then the president gave a speech in which he called Pope John Paul II "a true hero of our time" and used the pope's phrase "culture of life" three times.

When it was over, many in the audience were convinced that the president shared their view that abortion is murder and should be banned. "The 'culture of life' is a very important code word that will resonate with Catholics," said Carl A. Anderson, head of the 1.6 million-member Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Roman Catholic men's society.

President Bush, with Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson, waves to a cheering crowd in Dallas before speaking to the Knights of Columbus convention. (Jim Mahoney -- Dallas Morning News)

But Bush had not actually said that abortion is tantamount to murder. Nor, according to aides, has he ever said that all abortions should be illegal. When asked by reporters during the 2000 presidential campaign and again last fall whether abortion should be banned, Bush said the nation was not ready for that step, without indicating his position.

George W. Bush is among the most openly religious presidents in U.S. history. A daily Bible reader, he often talks about how Jesus changed his heart. He has spoken, publicly and privately, of hearing God's call to run for the presidency and of praying for God's help since he came into office.

But despite the centrality of Bush's faith to his presidency, he has revealed only the barest outline of his beliefs, leaving others to sift through the clues and make assumptions about where he stands.

Bush has said many times that he is a Christian, believes in the power of prayer and considers himself a "lowly sinner." But White House aides said they do not know whether the president believes that: the Bible is without error; the theory of evolution is true; homosexuality is a sinful choice; only Christians will go to heaven; support for Israel is a biblical imperative; or the war in Iraq is part of God's plan.

Some political analysts think there is a shrewd calculation behind these ambiguities. By using such phrases as the "culture of life," Bush signals to evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics that he is with them, while he avoids taking explicit stands that might alienate other voters or alarm foreign leaders. Bush and his chief speechwriter, Michael J. Gerson, are "very gifted at crafting references that religious insiders will understand and outsiders may not," said the Rev. Jim Wallis, editor of the evangelical journal Sojourners.

Plame source outs himself to the special prosecutor but won't release reporters to name "him or her"

A Washington Post reporter's confidential source has revealed his or her identity to the special prosecutor conducting the CIA leak inquiry, a development that provides investigators with a fact they have been pursuing in the nearly year-long probe.

Post reporter Walter Pincus, who had been subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury in the case, instead gave a deposition yesterday in which he recounted his conversation with the source, whom he has previously identified as an "administration official." Pincus said he did not name the source and agreed to be questioned only with the source's approval.

"I understand that my source has already spoken to the special prosecutor about our conversation on July 12 [2003], and that the special prosecutor has dropped his demand that I reveal my source. Even so, I will not testify about his or her identity," Pincus said in a prepared statement.

"The source has not discharged us from the confidentiality pledge," said The Post's executive editor, Leonard Downie Jr.

Pincus and Post executives said they do not know whether the source is in legal jeopardy as a result of revealing his or her identity, saying that it is a matter for the prosecutor to decide.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is investigating whether a government official illegally disclosed the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, to members of the media.

House and Senate agree to block Bush overtime rules, but don't worry, the conference committee plans to ignore them

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted yesterday to block the Bush administration's controversial new overtime pay rules, but only after the Senate's most senior Republican warned that a slew of such legislative riders could complicate final deals on bills needed to fund the federal government in fiscal 2005.

The provision, approved 16 to 13, was attached to a $142 billion bill funding the Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services departments next year. The House attached a similar provision to its version of the bill last week, defying a threat by the White House to veto the entire bill unless Congress gives way on the issue.

Under the administration's three-week-old overtime regulations, individuals earning up to $23,600 a year would automatically be eligible for overtime pay, compared with the previous threshold of $8,060. But pro-labor lawmakers charge that the rules would allow employers to forgo overtime pay for thousands of higher-paid workers.

Although annual appropriations bills are always vehicles for riders that stand little chance of passing on their own, the practice is a source of frustration this year to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the Senate's longest-serving Republican and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

Stevens, who has vowed to send the 2005 spending bills to the president before his term as chairman expires at the end of the year, sees the flurry of legislative provisions as a potential obstacle to that goal.

"We should stick to our work," he shouted at one point yesterday, when Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) pressed for legislative language on the education, labor and health bill that would end large federal subsidies to banks making loans to students.

She withdrew the amendment only after Stevens promised to incorporate in the bill language to resolve the problem before the measure goes to the floor.

The issue is one of many that could complicate final agreement between Congress and the White House on 11 spending bills.

In a bipartisan vote, the House approved a provision preventing the Internal Revenue Service from hiring private contractors to collect taxes. It was attached to an $89 billion bill paying for Treasury and Transportation department programs and operations in 2005.

Failing the Senate Intelligence Test

he Senate has begun the bizarre exercise of anointing Representative Porter Goss as President Bush's choice as the lame-duck director of central intelligence - as if the halls of Congress were not ringing with proposals to soon change the job drastically by creating a superchief of national intelligence. Making the appointment is part of Mr. Bush's efforts to convince voters that he is responding to the 9/11 commission's report on the alarming intelligence follies before Sept. 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq. But the nation needs the kind of deep, organic reform proposed by the independent 9/11 commission, and by serious proposals for change that are now being debated in Congress, not this kind of cosmetic gamesmanship.

Once President Bush finally endorsed the creation of a national intelligence director, with authority over the Central Intelligence Agency and a dozen other intelligence organs, he should have dropped the Goss appointment. For one thing, the job amounts to a rehab work in progress. For another, Mr. Goss is a Florida Republican who has already played election-year politics by mischaracterizing the intelligence record of Senator John Kerry.

Mr. Goss also hardly embodies the independent thinking that was sorely missing before 9/11 and the misadventures of Iraq. A former C.I.A. officer, Mr. Goss built a record in Congress more protective than probing about the C.I.A.'s performance. This week, Mr. Goss gravely warned that the C.I.A. would need more than five years to repair its flaws - raising the question of where he has been, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in prodding such reform for the past three years, since 9/11. Originally an opponent of the 9/11 commission, Mr. Goss stands as a key player in the dysfunctional Congressional oversight that the panel found to be a critical factor in the nation's intelligence failures.

These would be reasons enough to disqualify Mr. Goss. But now we have the likelihood that if he is confirmed and Congress reforms the intelligence apparatus, Mr. Goss may then become President Bush's prime candidate as the new multiagency czar. If Mr. Bush is serious about intelligence reform, he should shelve Mr. Goss's appointment and let Congress do its job.

The Return of Katherine Harris

very state has an obligation to run elections that are not only fair, but also appear fair to the average voter. After the debacle of 2000, Florida's officials should understand this better than anyone. But its top elections officer, Glenda Hood, is acting in ways that create a strong impression that she is manipulating the rules to help re-elect her boss's brother. After her maneuvers this week to try to put Ralph Nader on the ballot, she cannot be trusted to run an impartial election.

In Florida's 2000 election mess, Katherine Harris served simultaneously as Florida's secretary of state and as co-chairwoman of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign committee. In her official capacity, she repeatedly took actions that favored the campaign. This year has turned out to be more of the same. When Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Ms. Hood as secretary of state, he chose someone with a history of partisanship, as a Republican officeholder and as a Bush-Cheney elector in 2000. Now Ms. Hood's politics appear to be influencing her election duties.

She recently conducted a highly suspect voting-roll purge of felons. The voters who were to be taken off the list included more than 22,000 African-Americans, who generally vote heavily Democratic, but just 61 Hispanics, who tend to favor Republicans in Florida. She was forced to scrap the list.

In last month's primary, some people without photo identification were turned away without being told that they could vote if they signed affidavits affirming their identities. After the same thing happened in South Dakota this year, the Board of Elections there told every polling place to post signs advising people of their rights. Ms. Hood's office insists that voters need not be told of the affidavit option. Voter ID is often a partisan issue because poor people and members of other groups that are less likely to have identification often vote Democratic.

Most recently, Ms. Hood has played a suspect role in helping Mr. Nader get on Florida's ballot, where he would be likely to weaken John Kerry. A court has ruled against Mr. Nader's claim to have met the requirements to be on the ballot.

Last night, the state was again involved in suits and countersuits over a presidential election in Florida. Ms. Hood's role has been a disturbing one. Instead of waiting as an impartial bystander for the court's direction, she seems to be trying to thwart any ruling that would take Mr. Nader off the ballot. At one point, while the court ruling eliminating Mr. Nader was under appeal, Ms. Hood's office hurriedly directed every county to add Mr. Nader's name to the ballots that will soon be sent to overseas voters.

Granting legitimate candidates access to ballots is important, but officials should obey the law. Ms. Hood had no right to try to proceed with her own preferred outcome. It is hard to believe that she would have done the same thing if the candidate had been one likely to hurt President Bush.

The nation cannot afford another tainted election. Governor Bush should quickly find an elections professional or academic of unquestioned neutrality to run Florida's elections.

Judge Orders U.S. to Release Files on Abu Ghraib

federal judge in New York, complaining that the Bush administration "shows an indifference" to the freedom of information laws, has ordered the Pentagon and other agencies to produce a list of all their documents on the detentions at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by Oct. 15.

The ruling, issued yesterday by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in Federal District Court in Manhattan, came in a suit filed July 2 by the American Civil Liberties Union. The group sued after the federal government failed to provide any relevant documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request it made on Oct. 7, 2003.

The request was for documents about the treatment and deaths of detainees while in United States custody in Iraq, among other subjects. The group provided a list of 70 priority documents, all of which were mentioned in public reports or press accounts.

In his ruling, Judge Hellerstein wrote that the "glacial pace" of the government's response "fails to afford the accountability of government" that the freedom of information laws require. On Aug. 17 the judge had ordered the government to start producing the 70 documents, but none have been released.

"If the documents are more of an embarrassment than a secret, the public should know of our government's treatment of individuals captured and held abroad," he wrote.

George W. Bush's Former Professor Gives A Seminar On Advanced Methods In Shrillness

Mary Jacoby in Salon brings us the story of Yoshi Tsurumi, professor at the far-left Harvard Business School, a man well acquainted with the 20-something George W. Bush, and a man who has recently become possessed of a shrillness which passeth all understanding. People looking for measured criticism delivered in dulcet tones are advised to turn away from their computer screen now.

For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world's oldest and most powerful democracy.

"I don't remember all the students in detail unless I'm prompted by something," Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But I always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect -- the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite." ...

"[Bush] showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would respond, "Oh, I never said that." A White House spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Rodney Update

Furious House Democratic leaders are considering filing a lawsuit against party switcher Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) for failing to return more than $70,000 in Member contributions to his re-election campaign.

Top Democrats have been in discussions for several weeks about whether to sue Alexander - who switched to the GOP on Louisiana's Aug. 6 filing deadline - for fraud if the freshman Member fails to return their money soon. One Democratic leadership aide said Democratic lawmakers will go to court "in days not weeks" if Alexander continues to drag his feet in returning their money.

"At some point, if he doesn't give the money back - and it's not been received and been asked for - some of us are talking about a lawsuit for fraud," said Democratic Caucus Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who gave Alexander $6,000 this cycle.
A well-placed Democratic staffer, privy to leadership talks about a potential lawsuit, said: "Members in leadership believe he committed fraud and believe we have legal standing to bring a suit." The aide said it remains unclear who would file the lawsuit and in which court.

Alexander told several news organizations shortly after his switch that he would return funds to the Democratic Members who contributed to his campaign.

His chief of staff, Royal Alexander (no relation), said Wednesday his boss will hold to his word but is delayed in sending out checks because he is assembling new D.C. and campaign staff, including a bookkeeper to process the requests for refunds.

A good share of Alexander's staff quit immediately after he switched parties.

"We are in a transition period," Royal Alexander said. "Honestly, it would be a burden off us to get that done. He fully intends to do it."

As for talk of legal action against his boss for fraud, Royal Alexander urged Democratic leaders to rethink those plans. He noted that the party already sought and failed to keep Alexander off the ballot, and hoped another lawsuit wouldn't be in the works.

"We hope they would not do that," Alexander said. "We just finished a lawsuit with them. Hopefully, they wouldn't undertake another one."

Judge Orders U.S. to Find Bush Records

A federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to find and make public by next week any unreleased files about President Bush Vietnam-era Air National Guard service to resolve a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge Harold Baer Jr. handed down the order late Wednesday in New York. The AP lawsuit already has led to the disclosure of previously unreleased flight logs from Bush's days piloting F-102A fighters and other jets.

Pentagon officials told Baer they plan to have their search complete by Monday. Baer ordered the Pentagon to hand over the records to the AP by Sept. 24 and provide a written statement by Sept. 29 detailing the search for more records.

"We're hopeful the Department of Defense (news - web sites) will provide a full accounting of the steps it has taken, as the judge ordered, so the public can have some assurance that there are no documents being withheld," said AP lawyer David Schulz.

White House officials have said Bush ordered the Pentagon earlier this year to conduct a thorough search for the president's records, and officials allowed reporters to review everything that was gathered back in February.

Through a series of requests under the federal open records law and a subsequent suit, the AP uncovered the flight logs, which were not part of the records the White House released earlier this year.

Both Bush's and John Kerry's service records in Vietnam have become a major issue in the presidential race. New records that have surfaced in recent weeks have raised more questions.

Bush's critics say Bush got preferential treatment as the son of a congressman and U.N. ambassador. Critics also question why Bush skipped a required medical examination in 1972 and failed to show up for drills during a six-month period that year.

Bush has repeatedly said he fulfilled all of his Air National Guard obligations.

Don't just vote against Bush - vote for Kerry

tristero says that he plans to devote some time to blogging about John Kerry's exemplary career and I think I'll join him in that effort. Kerry is sadly underappreciated by Democrats and I think it's important that we start to point out what a fine man he truly is.

For instance, how many of you knew that after Kerry came back from Vietnam and formed and then left Vietnam Veterans Against the War, that he was the co-founder of another highly effective advocacy group called Vietnam Veterans of America:

tristero says:

Tonight, I'll briefly remind all of us that, after Yale, after Vietnam, after protesting the war with VVAW. Kerry co-founded a different group whose purpose was to move beyond the differences that divided the Vietnam generation. Dedicated to aiding all those who fought in Southeast Asia, it's called Vietnam Veterans of America, "the only national Vietnam veterans organization congressionally chartered and exclusively dedicated to Vietnam-era veterans and their families," currently with over 50,000 individual members.

VVA receives no government funds of any kind whatsoever. But it provides philanthropic assistance to Vietnam Vets that need it, works with homeless vets. and has worked for twenty years in the effort for a full accounting of POW/MIAs.

In addition, the VVA site says they are "single-handedly leading the fight for judicial review of disabled veterans' claims for benefits. The result: In 1988, Congress passed a law creating the U.S. Court of Veterans appeals. This allowed veterans to appeal VA benefits denials to a court and required VA to obey the rule of law." Furthemore, they've pressed the Agent Orange issue, helping to press the Agent Orange Act which has resulted in the Veterans Administration paying compensation for nine Agent Orange-related diseases.

because we're just all about banning books and building bonfires with books and keeping books out of the schools. Oh, wait, no, that's them.

The Republican National Committee has sent out mailers to voters in West Virginia warning that liberals will take away their Bibles if democrats win the election. The AP reports:
The literature shows a Bible with the word "BANNED" across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word "ALLOWED." The mailing tells West Virginians to "vote Republican to protect our families" and defeat the "liberal agenda."

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said Friday that he wasn't aware of the mailing, but said it could be the work of the RNC. "It wouldn't surprise me if we were mailing voters on the issue of same-sex marriage," Gillespie said.

Guess his daddy doesn't know anybody.

A man who served the eight years required under his ROTC contract remains an Army reservist obliged to report for active duty because he failed to sign a resignation letter, a federal judge has ruled.

Todd Parrish, 31, had sought to block the Army from calling him to active duty until his lawsuit on the issue was decided.

But Judge Louise Flanagan denied the request on Friday, meaning that if the Army denies Parrish's administrative appeal, he could be forced to go on active duty while the case is litigated.

Some things you malybe should know about Kerry in case someone asks

Kerry and his top surrogates don't have the luxury to knock down every lie and distortion point-by-point.

They need to push back of course, but getting too much into the details takes the focus off Bush and puts Kerry on the defensive.

In turn, the lies linger.

But counterspinning on the ground is a great way to complement Kerry's aggresive campaign in the air.

Furthermore, if you're out engaging voters, and you're not prepared for the tough questions, you're not going to be as helpful as you can be.

So download this doc, get out there and talk up some voters.

Gore on Bush

“The real distinction of this Presidency is that, at its core, he is a very weak man. He projects himself as incredibly strong, but behind closed doors he is incapable of saying no to his biggest financial supporters and his coalition in the Oval Office. He’s been shockingly malleable to Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and the whole New American Century bunch. He was rolled in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. He was too weak to resist it.

“I’m not of the school that questions his intelligence,” Gore went on. “There are different kinds of intelligence, and it’s arrogant for a person with one kind of intelligence to question someone with another kind. He certainly is a master at some things, and he has a following. He seeks strength in simplicity. But, in today’s world, that’s often a problem. I don’t think that he’s weak intellectually. I think that he is incurious….

"But I think his weakness is a moral weakness. I think he is a bully, and, like all bullies, he’s a coward when confronted with a force that he’s fearful of. His reaction to the extravagant and unbelievably selfish wish list of the wealthy interest groups that put him in the White House is obsequious. The degree of obsequiousness that is involved in saying ‘yes, yes, yes, yes, yes’ to whatever these people want, no matter the damage and harm done to the nation as a wholeÑthat can come only from genuine moral cowardice. I don’t see any other explanation for it, because it’s not a question of principle. The only common denominator is each of the groups has a lot of money that they’re willing to put in service to his political fortunes and their ferocious and unyielding pursuit of public policies that benefit them at the expense of the nation.”

Plame: at least there's an investigation

In recent days there have been a run of stories about the byzantine, or rather sovietological, new twists and turns in the Plame investigation. And whenever this story pops up into the news, there’s a rush of speculation about that other investigation.

That, of course, would be the investigation into just who forged the notorious Niger-uranium documents that purported to show that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger --- the underlying issue that led to the Plame investigation in the first place.

It’s even been suggested in the press that the two investigations might have been consolidated into one.

The truth, though, the dirty little secret, is that there’s never been any real investigation into where those documents came from. Don't look for status updates on it because it doesn't exist.

Yes, back in March 2003, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked the FBI to investigate the matter. And it was on the basis of this supposed investigation that the Committee decided not to investigate anything about the forged documents before they showed up at the US Embassy in Rome in October 2002. (See page 57 of the Committee report.) But again, despite claims to the contrary, the FBI hasn’t made any serious effort to find out who was behind the scam.

Smackdown

The U.S. Navy on Friday rejected a legal watchdog group's request to open an investigation into military awards given to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry during the Vietnam War, saying his medals were properly approved.

"Our examination found that existing documentation regarding the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart medals indicates the awards approval process was properly followed," the Navy's inspector general, Vice Admiral Ronald Route, said in a memo written to Navy Secretary Gordon England.

Hey, remember us? Three thousand of us died?

"Dead or alive."

Those were the three words that came to mind on the evening of Sept. 11, as I looked south from my block at the spectral shafts of light memorializing the lost Twin Towers and the people who died when they fell. That old cliché, which merely sounded callow and theatrical when uttered by George W. Bush, has since taken on deeper significance. In a nation fearful of terror and facing a fateful election, the President’s forgotten vow now stands for terrible mistakes that will continue to endanger us, even if he someday fulfills it.

Although the atrocities perpetrated by Osama bin Laden three years ago were denounced repeatedly from the podium of the Republican National Convention, the name of the perpetrator whom the President had promised to bring to justice dead or alive was mentioned just once. (Governor George Pataki made that sole reference, in a fatuous attempt to blame the prior administration.) Perhaps the convention’s producers didn’t wish to spoil the October surprise. More likely they prefer not to draw attention to the fact that the Saudi mass murderer remains at large, planning to strike us again and rebuilding his organization as it slaughters innocents from Madrid to Istanbul to Baghdad.

The President has never explained why he allowed Mr. bin Laden to escape from Afghanistan. There may be no self-flattering explanation. For despite his characteristic bravadoÑand indeed, despite a quite inspiring speech to a joint session of Congress the week after the 9/11 attacksÑ Mr. Bush flinched from decisive action when he had the opportunity to destroy the leadership of Al Qaeda.

A Good Parts Version of the Kitty Kelley book

Want the best (if somewhat dubious) dish from The Family, Kitty Kelley's new treatise on the Bush clan? Follow Slate's reading guide straight to the good parts.

Academic Honors

Page 252: George H.W. Bush comes to the rescue when his sons run afoul of Andover honor codes. Jeb violates the school's alcohol ban, but he's allowed to finish his degree after his father intervenes. Years later, Kelley writes, school officials catch W.'s younger brother Marvin with drugs, but dad talks them out of expulsion and secures for his son an "honorary transfer" to another school.

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Page 253: At Andover, George W. Bush writes a morose essay about his sister's death. Searching for a synonym for "tears," he consults a thesaurus and writes, "And the lacerates ran down my cheeks." A teacher labels the paper "disgraceful."

Page 251: The family patriarch, Prescott Bush, questions W.'s seriousness about attending Yale, the Bush clan alma mater. "It's the difference between ham and eggs," he says. "The chicken is involved. The pig is committed."

Page 261-68: George W. at Yale. A witness remembers a "roaring drunk" Bush doing the Alligator at a fraternity kegger. A frat brother says Bush "wasn't an ass man." Another friend concurs: "Poor Georgie. He couldn't even relate to women unless he was loaded. … There were just too many stories of him turning up dead drunk on dates." W. lovingly tends to his frat brothers but derides other Yalies as "liberal pussies."

Page 271: Joke excised from Bush's 2001 Yale commencement speech: "It's great to return to New Haven. My car was followed all the way from the airport by a long line of police cars with slowly rotating lights. It was just like being an undergraduate again."

Page 309: At Harvard Business School, which W. attends from 1973 to 1975, a professor screens The Grapes of Wrath. Bush asks him, "Why are you going to show us that Commie movie?" W.'s take on the film: "Look. People are poor because they are lazy."...

Do As I Say - Bush lets down his Guard.

This week, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry addressed the annual conference of the National Guard Association. Neither man talked about Bush's service in the Guard, and the officers in attendance made clear that they wanted to hear about Iraq, not Vietnam. But one issue leads to the other. Bush's abuse of the Guard in Iraq is what makes his abuse of the Guard during Vietnam an important consideration in this election.

Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard on May 27, 1968. The move was well-chosen and well-timed. Only four Air National Guard squadrons were sent to Vietnam, and none was sent after Bush enlisted. All he had to do was fulfill a "statement of understanding" in which he promised to attend 24 days of weekend duty and 15 days of active duty each year.

He failed to do so. Four years into his six-year commitment, Bush "changed his mind" and decided "he preferred to be in politics." That description doesn't come from some phony memo. It comes from retired Col. Rufus Martin, Bush's then-personnel officer, in an interview with the Washington Post. Bush got permission to go to Alabama to help a family friend run for the Senate. A Boston Globe review of Bush's Guard records confirms that he "performed no service for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973." The Globe's investigative team, echoing investigators from other publications, reports that "no one has come forward with any credible recollection of having witnessed Bush performing guard service in Alabama or after he returned to Houston in 1973."

U.S. News & World Report notes that the "military service obligation" Bush signed in 1968 required him to attend 44 inactive-duty training drills every fiscal year for six years. He did not fulfill that requirement. Furthermore, when Bush took off for Harvard Business School in 1973, he signed a form pledging "to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position." He never did so.

In fairness to Bush, Vietnam was a lousy war. And lots of guys who joined the Guard in those days lost interest in their duties once the penalty they fearedÑassignment to active duty in VietnamÑexpired with the war. Maybe we should cut Bush some slack. But before we do, let's look at how much slack he's cutting the folks who serve in the Guard today....

Fear and bias bite into falafel sales

In the months after Sept. 11, 2001, the US government advised the public to be aware of suspicious persons, avoid certain landmarks, and prepare for future terror attacks. The government did not advise anyone to stop eating at Arabic restaurants.

Yet across the country, Middle Eastern restaurants saw sales drop dramatically as Americans spurned falafel and kebabs as the symbolic food of the terrorists.

In some parts of the country, businesses owned by Middle Easterners were sprayed with malicious graffiti and vandalized. Many Arab business owners placed the blame on the media portrayal of Arabs as turbaned terrorists.

Though Arabs of various nationalities reported problems, one group, the Iraqis, appeared hardest hit.

In 1999 there were dozens of Iraqi eateries in the US. Today, less than a handful remain. Their names, once exotic curiosities, are now familiar to Americans only as the battlegrounds sites for the ongoing war: Taste of Mosul, Abu Nawas, Najaf Treat, and Babylon Bistro.

In response to declining business, many restaurants changed their names so they were more ambiguous: "Iraqi Cuisine" in Los Angeles became "Middle Eastern Cuisine." In Dearborn, Mich., "Taste of Mosul" is now "Taste of Arabia."

However, even in Dearborn, home to the largest Iraqi population in the US, people avoided the association that came with eating at Middle Eastern eateries.

"I think Arab people here were afraid to be seen together," says one Dearborn restaurant owner who asked to remain anonymous. "People would see a large group of Middle Eastern people, even if they were just eating dinner, and assume the worst."

Other factors contributed to the loss of business, including the general economic downturn following 9/11 and the restaurant industry's notoriously high failure rate. (Only one of eight restaurants in the US makes it into the fifth year of business.)

What may have hurt most, though, were media reports indicating that some Arab businesses were funneling money to shady terrorist organizations in the Middle East. Several Iraqi restaurant owners have since claimed that the reports fueled discrimination, which has been their biggest economic hurdle.

"I have been in the US for 11 years now," says Salah Al-Hindawy, owner of Arabian Cuisine in Louisville, Ky. "I hate Saddam Hussein, and I was very happy when we went to war with Iraq, but still my business has suffered because people don't want to eat at an Arabic restaurant."

Nader will appear on Florida ballot

Consumer activist Ralph Nader and state Republicans scored a major victory Friday when Nader was assured a spot on Florida's presidential ballot in a 6-1 decision by the Florida Supreme Court.

Justices ruled that although the Reform Party nomination process may have been suspect, the legislature has provided few concrete guidelines as to how minor parties should be allowed on Florida's ballot.

The legislature wrote that "national parties" that have "national conventions" could win a spot on the ballot but never made clear whether a party with only $18 in its campaign treasury or one that nominated a candidate via conference call meets that definition.

"We have been unable to ascertain whether the legislature intended for these terms to have a strict or broad interpretation," the six justices wrote in an unsigned opinion.

Democrats had sought to keep Nader off the ballot, fearing he could siphon votes away from John Kerry. Republicans, including lawyers for the state elections office, worked to keep Nader's name on the Nov. 2 ballot.

"It's the right decision," Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said. "This case should have been thrown out of court immediately. . . . We urge Democrats to discuss the issues and stop trying to limit voter choices."

The state's high court ruled a mere eight hours after the conclusion of oral arguments Friday morning Ñ a time frame reminiscent of the rushed legal battles during the 2000 election recounts.

Justices said they expedited a decision so elections supervisors can send out about 25,000 overseas absentee ballots by today's deadline.

Nader, the Reform Party and state elections officials hired a team of Republican lawyers to argue their case. Democrats brought in Laurence Tribe, one of Al Gore's primary legal advisers in the 2000 election struggle.

Four years ago, Democrats and Republicans slugged it out in court for 36 days after the presidential election. This year, they started even before the first vote was cast.

Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law scholar, said he jumped into the Florida case even though he considered Nader a "hero." He said it offended his sensibilities to see Nader and the Reform Party abuse state law to get on the ballot.

"This was a sham operation," he said.

Independents break for Kerry

President Bush, who holds a sizable lead in some polls, still appears to be vulnerable to Democrat John Kerry among independent voters whose shifting loyalties could determine the winner of the November election, pollsters say.

Polling results from the Pew Research Center, the Christian Science Monitor and the Gallup Organization suggest independent voters are favoring Kerry as concerns about the economy and Iraq re-emerge as top campaign issues, despite a surge of support for Bush following the Republican convention.

"At this point, it seems that Kerry's doing slightly better than Bush among independents," said Jeff Jones, managing editor of the Gallup Poll.

A new Gallup survey released on Friday showed the Democratic presidential nominee leading Bush 50-43 percent among independents, even though the Republican incumbent held a 13-percentage-point lead among voters overall.

A Monitor/TIPP survey, one of several that showed the national presidential race returning to a dead heat, suggested a 10-point Kerry lead among independents.

The Gallup and Monitor polls both had 4 percent margins of error.

Meager Job Growth in States Closely Divided on Candidates

Less than seven weeks before the presidential election, employment figures released on Friday showed that job creation slowed to a crawl last month in some swing states hit hard by widespread layoffs in manufacturing.

Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes and is seen as crucial for victory by both President Bush and Senator John Kerry, lost 11,800 jobs in August and has about 40,000 fewer jobs than when the nation's job market began to pick up a year ago.

Missouri, another swing state, lost a total of 5,500 jobs in August and about 24,000 jobs since June. But in a bit of good news for the president, about 6,000 manufacturing jobs were added over the past year, and the state's employment is still slightly higher than it was one year ago.

Over all, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that employment climbed in 30 states and declined in 20 others during August. Nationwide, the Labor Department has estimated that employment rose by 144,000 jobs in August, slightly more than the number needed to keep up with increases in population, but not enough to significantly lower the unemployment rate, which stood at 5.4 percent.

Florida, a major swing state with 27 electoral votes, added 16,600 jobs last month and has gained about 100,000 over the past year. But most of the other closely fought states have been treading water for the past three months, and some are barely ahead of where they were a year ago.

Michigan, with an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent, has lost 21,000 jobs since June and 45,000 over the past year. Minnesota has had virtually no employment growth since June. West Virginia, with 5.5 percent unemployment and a civilian workforce of 800,000, has added 7,000 jobs over the past year and 2,000 in the last three months.

Over all, the nation has added about 1.7 million jobs over the past year but has about 900,000 fewer than when Mr. Bush took office in January 2001. The unusually slow pace of job creation is one of Mr. Bush's biggest domestic weaknesses, and the most acute employment problems are in heavily populated industrial states like Ohio and Michigan.

The rich don't pay taxes: Tax Break Bringing Businesses, and Fraud, to the Virgin Islands

Inside and outside the freshly stuccoed mansions that hug the hillsides here, the gardeners and cleaning women come and go.

No one else seems to, though. No one, that is, except the federal agents who have taken to questioning the workers and the neighbors about when the owners last took a dip in their glistening pools and when they might be expected back.
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The questions are intended to ascertain whether the owners of the candy-colored homes are bona fide residents of the Virgin Islands or instead are pretending to live in these homes to dodge an estimated $400 million in federal income taxes.

Drawn by an economic development program that is blessed by Congress and confers a special tax rate that amounts effectively to just 3.5 percent of income, well-heeled Americans have migrated in droves to this United States territory in the last few years, kindling its first real economic boom.

At least until recently. Last year, Internal Revenue Service agents raided the offices of one of the program's beneficiaries, and the Justice Department has subpoenaed others in what one government official described as three criminal investigations.

The ensuing confusion about the islands' economic development program and fears of attracting the scrutiny of tax authorities have already scared away some of the new arrivals, both individuals and companies. And local officials are beginning to fret that people violating the spirit and perhaps the letter of the tax law could derail the program, which is vital to a territory where 30 percent of the residents were living below the poverty level in 1999.

Information Is the Best Medicine

Measures to make the results of drug trials more accessible to doctors and the public, as well as the federal government's probable stiffer warnings on the use of antidepressants for children, are definitely steps in the right direction. But my experience as a family doctor on the front lines of medicine leads me to believe that these moves won't be enough to curb the influence of the drug companies on our health care.

The impetus for these changes comes largely from revelations in the Food and Drug Administration's review of the new class of antidepressants, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, in the treatment of depression in children and adolescents. Many studies, the review found, show that the drugs are no more effective than placebos, but significantly increase the risk of suicidal tendencies. So why are doctors writing millions of prescriptions each year to treat depressed children with these drugs?

Much of the problem stems from drug companies' unequal treatment of the clinical trials they sponsor. Findings that support drug sales tend to get published in medical journals, and become accepted as fact. Unfavorable findings often don't see the light of day. This leaves even the most dedicated doctors and best informed patients (and parents) unaware of important evidence about the drugs they're prescribing and using.

In response, the editors of 11 of the world's leading medical journals have agreed to publish only studies that are registered at the outset. Registration creates a trail, making it more difficult to suppress unfavorable results. Legislative efforts are also under way to make completed studies available to the public.

Waist Deep in the Big Sandy: Bush campaign displays ignorance of what combat looks like, go figure

Bush campaign officials on Thursday sharply criticized a television commercial attacking the president's policy on Iraq that shows an American soldier sinking chest-deep into desert sand as he tries to keep his rifle above his head.

The advertisement, which was run by the Democratic-leaning MoveOn PAC, noted that more than 1,000 soldiers had been killed and that billions had been spent on the war before saying: "George Bush got us into this quagmire. It will take a new president to get us out.''

Bush campaign officials immediately sought to paint the image in the advertisement as a soldier surrendering and called upon Senator John Kerry to denounce the advertisement even though it was created and run by a third-party advocacy group.

"He should apologize for the actions of his surrogates and demand that they take down their ad depicting a defeated American soldier,'' Marc Racicot, chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign, said.

Former Senator Bob Dole, chairman of the Bush campaign's veterans coalition, went farther, saying, "It's one thing to debate whether we should take the fight to the terrorists, but depicting an American soldier in effect surrendering in the battle against the terrorists is beyond the pale.''

Officials at MoveOn said the advertisement was not intended to depict a soldier as defeated or surrendering. Rather, they said it was intended to call attention to the situation in Iraq and to criticize the administration's policy. "Clearly, things in Iraq are heading in a very bad direction,'' said Eli Pariser, executive director of the MoveOn PAC. "It is irresponsible for the president to keep whitewashing the situation. People are dying there. That was our purpose, to call him out on that.''

Mr. Pariser said that the group acted independently and that Mr. Kerry had nothing to do with the spot.

Social Security Poses Hurdles for President

President Bush's vision of an "ownership society" is built, as much as anything else, on a sweeping promise: that he will transform Social Security so younger workers can divert some of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts.

At a rally in Pennsylvania last week, Mr. Bush declared, as he does at almost every campaign stop nowadays, that "younger workers ought to be able to take some of their taxes and set up a personal savings account, an account that they can call their own, an account that the government cannot take away and an account that they can pass on from one generation to the next."

It is a longstanding promise, popular with many younger workers and with conservatives who argue that the huge social insurance programs of the New Deal and the Great Society badly need to be modernized.

The private accounts, first proposed by Mr. Bush in his 2000 presidential campaign, fit neatly into his philosophy of an "ownership society," the idea that Americans should be given more control over - and responsibility for - their health care, retirement and financial lives.

But behind the sweeping promise are some harsh political realities that could loom large in this fall's debates and the final clashes of the presidential campaign. Mr. Bush has never proposed a specific plan to reach his goal - and, critics say, for good reasons. With the budget already running large annual deficits, recent estimates of typical plans for private accounts show they would cost as much as $2 trillion over the first 10 years.

Former Powell Aide Denies Spy Charge, Associates Say

A former senior State Department official at the center of accusations over possible Taiwanese espionage has told associates that he never passed any classified information to contacts from Taiwan, the associates said Friday.

The former official, Donald W. Keyser, has also denied that he received any financial compensation for passing any information to the Taiwanese, but he has acknowledged that he may have been sloppy in his reporting of foreign contacts, the associates said.

Mr. Keyser, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Chinese issues, was charged Wednesday with not reporting a secret side trip he made to Taiwan last year during an official government trip to Japan, and officials say they suspect that he passed delicate information to Taiwanese contacts in Washington.

Neither he nor his lawyer has made any public comments since his arrest, and Mr. Keyser's private comments to associates offer the first hint of a possible defense.

In an affidavit in the case, the F.B.I. said agents who had Mr. Keyser under surveillance saw him giving and showing documents to two Taiwanese government contacts at meetings in the Washington area in July and August, just after he had resigned the State Department. One such document was marked "Discussion Topics," the F.B.I. said.

The affidavit said Mr. Keyser had told the F.B.I. that he would often prepared written "talking points" for his two Taiwanese contacts. Mr. Keyser went further in his assertions this week to associates, saying he never shared any classified information with the Taiwanese.

What Is an Assault Weapon? - At last, you can get a semiautomatic rifle with a bayonet

After a decade on the books, the federal assault-weapons ban has expired, to the delight of the gun lobby and the consternation of gun-control advocates. Now that the prohibition is over, exactly what weapons can citizens add to their personal arsenals?

For starters, consumers can now purchase one of the 19 firearms specifically outlawed by the 1994 ban, including such action-movie staples as the Uzi, the TEC-9, the Kalashnikov, and the Street Sweeper shotgun. The law's authors had to be as precise as possible in crafting the ban, since the phrase "assault weapon" isn't really part of the gun-making vocabulary. Rather, it's a catchall term that gun-control advocates define as covering any firearm designed for rapidly firing at human targets from close range. The 19 guns called out in the ban are all semiautomatic in nature: They can eject spent shell casings and chamber the next bullet without human intervention, but only one round is fired per squeeze of the trigger. Not coincidentally, the verboten 19 were largely the sorts of high-profile guns that even gun neophytes have heard of, either through watching the nightly news or by reading Tom Clancy novels.

On top of the Big 19, the ban also included a few formulas for forbidding less well-known armaments. A semiautomatic rifle was considered an illicit assault weapon, for example, if it featured a detachable magazine, as well as at least two of the following five attributes: a folding or telescopic stock; a conspicuous pistol grip; a bayonet mount; a flash suppressor or threaded barrel (i.e., a barrel that can accommodate a flash suppressor); or a grenade launcher. The checklist for semiautomatic pistols includes guns weighing more than 50 ounces when unloaded, and those featuring a "shroud" on the barrel to prevent a shooter's non-trigger hand from being burned.

It's a sad day when bad news in Iraq becomes old news

Media watch alert: a curious double distortion in the media mirror, as the situation in Iraq unravels before our eyes. Iraq gets less media play for two reasons Ñ one an old media fault, and the other political.

As the story gets worse, it also becomes more familiar. We've heard it before, quite a few times, and consequently it doesn't get as much play. "Seven Marines Killed" or "Scores Are Dead After Violence Spreads in Iraq" would have been HUGE stories a year ago. Now they're just another bad day in Iraq, nothin' new here, no news. Back to the hurricane (which is also becoming unpleasantly old news).

The other factor is the Bush team's decision to drop this misbegotten war down the memory hole. Two parts at play here. The first is Teddy Roosevelt's splendid observation that the presidency is a bully pulpit. It is the single most useful public relations position in the world. When the president calls a press conference to talk about whatever he wants, all hands report for duty. And if the president doesn't mention a certain subject, nor does the veep, nor the secretaries of defense, state, etc., the media have to dig it up on their own, a responsibility at which we have often failed and are steadily getting worse.

Are we asking the right questions about Bush's National Guard Service?

In an article by AP, Robert Strong, the administrative officer in charge of air operations at Guard state headquarters from early 1971 until March 1972, says no we are not asking the right questions.

"I think the public ought to be concerned about his preferential treatment getting in and whether he satisfied his commitment to the Air Guard. Those are the two fundamental questions," said Robert Strong.

"Documents publicized last week by the CBS program "60 Minutes" have been called into question by some experts and relatives of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who supposedly wrote them when he was one of Bush's commanders in 1972 and 1973. The memos indicated that Killian had been pressured to sugarcoat Bush's performance and that the future president had ignored an order to take a physical".

Killian's surviving children have challenged the documents that have recently surfaced, and they are disclaiming any negative comments that were attributed to Killian about Bush in the latest round of who done it with regard to Bush service.

Killian's former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, 86, of Houston has said their [the documents] content accurately reflected Killian's opinions.

Strong counters by saying "he and Knox worked closely with Killian and are in better position to know about his work habits and feelings about Bush than Killian's five children, who were between the ages of two and 19 in 1972. Strong said Killian's records would have been removed from his Guard office before his family would have been allowed to retrieve his personal items after he died in 1984.

The allegation is that Bush"s records had been altered to sugar coat them - a polite way of saying leave out the bad stuff. "Why aren't we focusing on the content?" Strong said, adding that he believes there are holes in Bush's official Guard record.

Bill Burkett, a retired National Guard officer, told AP about a conversation he overheard in 1997 between then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, and then-Adjutant Gen. Daniel James of the Texas Air National Guard. Reportedly the two men spoke about getting rid of any military records that would "embarrass the governor."

Burkett is quoted as saying he saw documents from Bush's file discarded in a trash can a few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin. Burkett described them as performance and pay documents.

The questions surrounding Bush's preferential treatment, the missed flight physical, the missed mandatory readiness exercise, and the missing 5 months have never been answered. Members of the Alabama Guard unit which Bush said he reported to still maintain they never saw Bush.

Honest on Saudi Arabia (even if Powell doesn't want to be)

THE STATE DEPARTMENT set the record straight this week on America's favorite totalitarian, theocratic monarchy. In recent years, even while cataloguing Saudi Arabia's affronts to religious liberty, the department flouted the law by declining to list the country as one "of particular concern for religious freedom" in its annual report on that issue. Now Saudi Arabia is on the list, correcting an error so blatantly political that it threatened to turn the designations into a joke.

The law on the subject is clear: The government "shall designate each country" that "has engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom" as "a country of particular concern for religious freedom." By any reasonable standard, Saudi Arabia has long deserved a prominent place on the list, which this year also includes Burma, China, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Eritrea and Vietnam. In the kingdom, the State Department's human rights reports have long maintained, "freedom of religion does not exist." No religion other than Islam may be practiced publicly, and all citizens must be Muslims. Churches and synagogues are illegal, though substantial numbers of foreign Christians live and work in the country. Muslims who convert to other religions can be put to death. Shiite Muslims are discriminated against; their clerics are detained and their testimony can be excluded in court proceedings.

In explaining the change in the country's status, the department does not pretend that the situation in Saudi Arabia has worsened. To the contrary, the report notes that "there was generally no change in the status of religious freedom during the period covered by this report." In some areas, it even documents modest improvements. Nor did department officials offer a coherent explanation for their shift. Ambassador John V. Hanford III, whose office produces the report, said at a news conference that he could not say why Saudi Arabia had not been listed before his tenure but that he had now "had an adequate opportunity to dialogue [with the Saudis], to try to understand each other, to work on these problems, and we felt the time had come that Saudi Arabia should be designated." One thing seems pretty certain: Were the country not an important regional ally, the department would not have stayed its hand this long.

Blair knew

The Foreign Secretary and senior officials warned Prime Minister Tony Blair a year before invading Iraq that chaos could follow the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the Daily Telegraph says.

The newspaper said that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sent a letter marked "secret and personal" to Blair in March 2002 warning that no one had prepared for what might happen afterwards.

The Foreign Office declined to comment directly on the report but said in a statement that Iraq was moving towards a democratic future for the first time.

If confirmed, the leak -- which comes amid a sharp escalation in violence in Iraq -- could prove to be damaging to Blair with an election looming in 2005. It also illustrates the depth of concern in his government to joining the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

"There seems to be a larger hole in this (post-war planning) than anything," the Telegraph quoted Straw as saying.

"No one has satisfactorily answered how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better."

Oh goody. A freeper with ties to the Republican leadership is driving the discourse.

It was the first public allegation that CBS News used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's National Guard service Ñ a highly technical explanation posted within hours of airtime citing proportional spacing and font styles.

But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought. Instead, it was the work of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes who helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Times has found.

The identity of "Buckhead," a blogger known previously only by his screen name on the site freerepublic.com and lifted to folk hero status in the conservative blogosphere since last week's posting, is likely to fuel speculation among Democrats that the efforts to discredit the CBS memos were engineered by Republicans eager to undermine reports that Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard more than 30 years ago.

Republican officials have denied any involvement among those debunking the CBS story.

Reached by telephone today, MacDougald, 46, confirmed that he is Buckhead, but declined to answer questions about his political background or how he knew so much about the CBS documents so fast.

"You can ask the questions but I'm not going to answer them," he told The Times. "I'm just going to stick to doing no interviews."

Until The Times identified him by piecing together information from his postings over the past two years, MacDougald had taken pains to remain in the shadows Ñ saying the credit for challenging CBS should remain with the blogosphere as a whole and not one individual.

"Freepers collectively possess more analytical horsepower than the entire news division at CBS," he wrote in an e-mail, using the slang term for users of the freerepublic site.

What we see that they don't.

Democrats are panicking because they aren't thinking about how this election looks to the median voter. A partisan Democrat looks at Bush and sees: 1) upcoming disaster on Iraq and Al-Qaeda (latter brought about by former); 2) upcoming disaster on climate change and the environment; 3) upcoming disaster on the economy; 4) upcoming disaster on the Supreme Court. Then he or she wonders, "how in the world could anyone vote for this man? We're going to hell in a handbasket! The fact that Kerry isn't miles ahead shows that he's an abysmal candidate, and can never win!" And then Kerry becomes Gore-ified, with the potential of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The problem with this model is that all these disasters are UPCOMING. Policy wonks, politically educated and motivated Democrats can see them (or at least they think they can). But there is absolutely no reason for the median voter to look at the situation that way. The voter is rationally ignorant. He or she is not going to spend time digging into policy details, considering potential budget models, etc. What does this voter see? The economy isn't fabulous, but it isn't terrible. Maybe there will be environmental problems, maybe not, but at this point, there isn't anything in front of his or her face. Newsweek might say that Iraq is a disaster, but I don't see it: maybe it's just tough. I'm not comfortable with it; we probably made a mistake, but it's not clear what we do now. Besides--in Vietnam, we were losing 2,000 soldiers A MONTH. We were told that Reagan's deficits would kill us, but they didn't: every economist has some model. I'm not real satisfied with the way things are going, but things could definitely be worse, and it's tough out there. 9/11 taught us that.

All of this leads to basically what we have now: a very close election, with Bush up by a very small margin. That means that campaigning, and money, and turnout, and events, will determine things. But it is NOT a reason to think that somehow Kerry is doing a lousy job. WE think that no one in his right mind would vote for Bush, but we're not the median voter.

Put another way, panic is the product of solipsism. It should stop.

Children left behind by the invisible hand

... one of the nation's largest charter school operators collapsed, leaving 6,000 students with no school to attend this fall. The businessman who used $100 million in state financing to build an empire of 60 mostly storefront schools had simply abandoned his headquarters as bankruptcy loomed, refusing to take phone calls. That left [Ken] Larson, a school superintendent whose district licensed dozens of the schools, to clean up the mess....

Thousands of parents were forced into a last-minute search for alternate schools, and some are still looking; many teachers remain jobless; and students' academic records are at risk in abandoned school sites across California....

"Until the Charter Academy went into its tailspin, few people predicted that these crashes could be so bloody, but this has been a catastrophe for many people," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley. "The critics of market-oriented reforms warned of risks with the philosophy of let-the-buyer-beware, but in this case, buyers were just totally hung out to dry."...

I can believe this too

The New Yorker's Brendan Gill, who once visited the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine ... tried to find something to read late at night. After investigating the entire mansion, he found one book: The Fart Book.

Drowning in debt

Households are spending more of their incomes than ever on servicing their debts. The debt burden indicator constructed by the Federal Reserve, which measures how large a proportion of families’ incomes goes toward paying off debts, reached a new high recently... Low-income families have become especially vulnerable -- 27 percent of households in the lowest income group now report spending a staggering 40 percent of take-home earnings on debt payments.

Debt burdens are at record levels because families have been stretched to the limit in recent years. With more income going to housing and other rising expenses related to medical care, education, vehicles, child care, and so forth, families are relying on credit as a way to meet everyday needs. Remarkably, a family with two earners today actually has less discretionary income, after fixed costs like medical insurance and mortgage payments are accounted for, than did a family with only one breadwinner in the 1970s.

Contest!

The Freeway Blogger and General JC Christian are holding a contest. You can submit your own freewayblogger sign slogan and become famous. Your sign will be featured at Freewayblogger.com and on an overpass or fence or something.

Rules, guidelines, and prize info available from the General. Deadline Monday, Sept 20th.

Register,. dammit - yourself or someone else

Esteemed reader Raison de Fem points us to an incredibly useful site, courtesy of Michael Moore: Registration Deadlines State By State.

A hasty scrolldown reveals that possibly as many as HALF the states have deadlines in just two weeks, Oct. 1-4. Oct. 1, as it happens, is a Friday this year. I suggest all voter registration encouragers to treat Oct. 1 as the deadline by which forms must be either postmarked or physically in the hands of the registrars.

Mike has some useful data for college students on voting at school vs. back at home. My advice is to vote back home, since you know you should call your mother anyway and she will be so relieved that you are asking for an absentee ballot rather than money it will make her day. And at worst you can always ask for money later in the conversation. You may have to have voted in person at least once before you can vote absentee so check this too.

Xan Advice: (1) Carry stamps. I am looking at a TN form I picked up at the Davis-Kidd Bookstore in Jackson yesterday (free plug for good citizenship behavior), and it isn't postage-paid. Don't be a cheap bastard like TN is, blow contribute $3.70 per ten voters and think of it as an investment of good will.

(2) If you live on or near a state line, carry forms from both. Yeah it's work, but people will be impressed by your dedication and/or too embarassed to refuse by this point. As a form of nonviolent coercion I think even Gandhi would be impressed.

(3) Don't be shy. You're not asking for money, a committment, an oath of fealty or a DNA test. You can even phrase it as "hey, have you moved since you voted last time, you know you have to re-register in your new precinct" which is both perfectly true AND lets both of you avoid having to raise the question of whether the person has voted since the Carter administration.

(4) And if anybody hits you with a refusal because they think registering to vote will make them eligible for jury duty--nope. They're already in the pool if they have a driver's license. If they still argue after you point this out, skip 'em, they're so stupid they'd probably vote Bush anyway.

Ken Salazar 53, Pete "Water Grab" Coors 42

Here are the results from the POS poll of the Colorado Senate race -- 500 voters, September 10-13, 4.33% MOE:

Salazar 53%
Coors 42%
Undecided 4%

Salazar's expanding lead is due to his popularity with independents, Latinos, and rural voters (three groups where there is a lot of overlap). Did you know Pete Coors supported Referendum A, which rural Coloradans overwhelmingly opposed as a Front Range water grab? Ken Salazar knows. Never underestimate the power of water politics in the West -- and don't underestimate how huge a miscalculation Referendum A was for the Colorado Republican Party.

The real bad news for Coors is in the details. His negatives are double those of Salazar, showing he has inherited the legacy of bitterness against the Coors family due to decades of bad employment policy and right wing politics -- regardless of the attempt in recent years to reposition the company as pro-gay, pro-Latino and pro-union. Coors and Salazar both have high name recognition, but one third of the voters identify him only as a beer company guy, while Salazar is well known as the Attorney General.

Also, the attempts of the "Americans for Job Security" 527 (apparently funded by Big Pharma) to portray Salazar as weak on the environment has been apparently too implausible for Colorado voters to swallow -- Salazar gets much higher marks on the environment than does Coors. I believe injecting the environment into the political debate in Colorado generally helps Democrats, the exception that proves the rule being Wayne Allard's 2002 campaign where he successfully portrayed himself as a stout defender of Colorado wilderness by pumping that as his main issue from the get-go.

Iraq Warfare Put U.S. Troops Under Growing Stress-Study

Guerrilla warfare in Iraq is putting U.S. troops under growing mental stress as the military struggles to retain and recruit soldiers, according to a study cited by the Army Reserve commander on Thursday.

"This is just very tough business," said Lt. Gen. James Helmly, noting that military chores from driving supply trucks to directing traffic in Iraq had become battlefield jobs because of bombings and other growing guerrilla attacks.

"Driving that truck is one of the most hazardous damned occupations we have in Iraq," he said. "Truck drivers, frankly, and MPs (military police) are front-line troops these days."

He said the survey suggested that an unusually high percentage of U.S. troops in support roles had been involved in the fighting in Iraq, which has killed more than 1,000 Americans and thousands of Iraqis.

"As you know, there is no more secure area," he said in an interview with reporters, adding that the study of psychological stress was conducted by the government and involved troops from all the U.S. armed services.

"I saw the results of an effort yesterday that surveyed soldiers. And the statistics were astounding in terms of the percentages of soldiers who have served in 'Iraqi Freedom' and say, 'I have seen a fellow soldier seriously wounded,' 'I observed a fellow soldier die,' 'I observed a civilian killed,' 'My location was subjected to mortar or rocket fire."'

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have put the all-volunteer U.S. military under strain and sparked concern over the ability to re-enlist troops, especially in part-time Reserve and National Guard units called to duty to support regular forces.

US runs low on soldiers

A radio is playing Marvin Gaye's What's Going On as the Veterans for Peace create a memorial known as Arlington West on the beach beside Santa Monica Pier. They are placing 1008 white crosses in the sand - one for each US soldier killed in Iraq as of September 12.

Pictures of the dead are displayed in front of a coffin draped with the US flag and topped with a military helmet. Later, their names will be read out. It is a sobering ceremony on this late summer's day.

With the war locked into a bloody stalemate, the veterans are wondering how the military might find replacements to fill the gaps starkly spelled out by their symbolic cemetery. For despite the Pentagon's boast that it can fight and win two conventional wars, US forces are seriously overstretched.

"We don't have the manpower to sustain the war in Iraq," says Eric Ellis, a Vietnam veteran who helped to start Arlington West. "In Vietnam we had 550,000 troops. We rotated them every year. We had to do one combat tour. Now we have 130,000-odd troops in Iraq. They do a tour, come home, then go back."

Where to find the extra troops to fight a seemingly intractable insurgency that echoes Vietnam has become a pressing question. And although you wouldn't hear it from the Bush Administration, the prospect of deploying a draft for the first time in a generation may be edging towards reality.

Since Vietnam the US has fielded a volunteer military. But after a year of bloody combat in Iraq, and to a lesser degree in Afghanistan, its limitations are becoming apparent.

Many US soldiers in Iraq are fighting for a second year. The Pentagon has also deployed about 45 per cent of the 1.2 million-strong National Guard (as against 1.4 million in the regular armed forces), the highest call-up of "weekend warriors" since World War II. Arguably, the move could leave the US more vulnerable to attack.

Don't believe the hype

One poll calls the presidential race neck-and-neck, another gives Bush a ten-point lead. Whom to trust? Perhaps neither. Three new articles question the reliability of some of the major polls.

Jimmy Breslin explains one problem:

[T]elephone polls do not include cellular phones. There are almost 169 million cell phones being used in America today - 168,900,019 as of Sept. 15, according to the cell phone institute in Washington.

"I don't use telephones anymore because there is no easy way to use them," John Zogby was saying yesterday. It was the 20th anniversary of the start of his polling company. "The people who are using telephone surveys are in denial," Zogby was saying. "It is similar to the '30s, when they first started polling by telephones and there were people who laughed at that and said you couldn't trust them because not everybody had a home phone. Now they try not to mention cell phones. They don't look or listen. They go ahead with a method that is old and wrong."
Zogby points out that you don't know in which area code the cell phone user lives. Nor do you know what they do. Beyond that, you miss younger people who live on cell phones. If you do a political poll on land-line phones, you miss those from 18 to 25, and there are figures all over the place that show there are 40 million between the ages of 18 and 29, one in five eligible voters.
And the great page-one presidential polls don't come close to reflecting how these younger voters say they might vote. The majority of them use cell phones and nobody ever asks them anything.

And, Breslin points out, younger voters lean more towards Kerry than Bush, so polls omitting that demographic are skewed rightward.

But that's (probable) stupidity, not malice. Steve Soto has uncovered a further bias in Gallup and CBS/NYT polls....

TheDenverChannel.com - Soldiers Threatened With Iraq Duty

Soldiers from a combat unit at Fort Carson say they have been told to re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq, the Rocky Mountain News reported Thursday.

Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last week, two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity told the newspaper.

"They said if you refuse to re-enlist with the 3rd Brigade, we'll send you down to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is going to Iraq for a year, and you can stay with them, or we'll send you to Korea, or to Fort Riley (in Kansas) where they're going to Iraq," said one of the soldiers, a sergeant.

The second soldier, an enlisted man, echoed that view: "They told us if we don't re-enlist, then we'd have to be reassigned. And where we're most needed is in units that are going back to Iraq in the next couple of months. So if you think you're getting out, you're not."

The sergeant told the News that the threat has outraged soldiers who are close to fulfilling their service obligation.

"We have a whole platoon who refuses to sign," he said.

An unidentified Fort Carson spokesman said Wednesday that 3rd Brigade recruitment officers denied threatening the soldiers with more duty in Iraq.

"I can only tell you what the retention officers told us: The soldiers were not being told they will go to Iraq, but they may go to Iraq," said the spokesman, who confirmed the re-enlistment drive is under way.

One of the soldiers provided the form to the News. If signed, it would bind the soldier to the 3rd Brigade until Dec. 31, 2007.

Excerpts of Senator John Kerry's Remarks to the National Guard Association

The way I see it, this is a matter of values and priorities -- and on these issues, President Bush and I couldn't be more different. I believe that America's security begins and ends with our men and women in uniform - with every member of our armed forces who stands guard at the gates of freedom. I will be a President who goes into the Oval Office every morning knowing that it is my job to help you do yours. I will fight for you every day, and I will never let you down. General Clark and I were talking on the way out here about the quality of our armed forces. You are America's finest, the most capable, the most skilled troops in our history, led by the best military leaders in the world. And you deserve no less than the best.

And there's something else we owe you and all the men and women serving right now in Iraq. We owe you the truth. True leadership is about looking people in the eye and telling the truth -- even when it's hard to hear. And two days ago, President Bush came before you and you received him well, as you should. But I believe he failed the fundamental test of leadership. He failed to tell you the truth. You deserve better. The Commander in Chief must level with the troops and the nation. And as president, I will always be straight with you - on the good days, and the bad days.

Two days ago, the President stood right where I'm standing and did not even acknowledge that more than 1,000 men and women have lost their lives in Iraq. He did not tell you that with each passing day, we're seeing more chaos, more violence, more indiscriminate killings. He did not tell you that with each passing week, our enemies are getting bolder -- that Pentagon officials report that entire regions of Iraq are now in the hands of terrorists and extremists. He did not tell you that with each passing month, stability and security seem farther and farther away.

He did not tell you any of this, even though -- as the country learned today in the New York Times -- his own intelligence officials have warned him for weeks that the mission in Iraq is in serious trouble. But that is the truth - hard as it is to hear. You deserve a president who will not play politics with national security, who will not ignore his own intelligence, while living in a fantasy world of spin, and who will give the American people the truth about the challenge our brave men and women face on the front lines...

Fact Sheet on Kerry's Remarks to National Guard Association General Conference

BUSH'S RHETORIC DOES NOT MATCH REALITY IN IRAQ

BUSH FILLS STUMP SPEECHES WITH HAPPY TALK ON IRAQ

Bush: "Our strategy is succeeding... Despite ongoing violence in Iraq, that country now has a strong Prime Minister, a national council, and national elections are scheduled in January." (Bush Remarks, 9/14/04)

Bush: "We're making progress there. I'm impressed -- I'm impressed by Prime Minister Allawi. He's a strong guy who believes that democracy is the future of Iraq, and he's got hard work to do. It wasn't all that long ago that people were brutalized by Saddam Hussein. But we're making progress." (Bush Remarks, 9/9/04)

Bush: "We talked about Iraq, the way forward in Iraq, the way to help the Iraqis get to elections. We're making progress on the ground." (Bush Remarks, 8/23/04)

Bush: "We talked about Iraq, and I told him I was pleased with the progress being made in Iraq, and the prime minister had some helpful suggestions." (Bush Remarks, 7/19/04)

NEW INTELLIGENCE REPORT SHOWS BUSH IS NOT TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SITUATION IN IRAQ

Bush Received Briefing With Pessimistic Predictions For Iraq. Bush received a classified National Intelligence Estimate in late July which "spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq." The three possibilities outlined in the estimate paint a grim picture for Iraq through the end of 2005, "with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms." A government official who read the document admits "there's a significant amount of pessimism." (New York Times, 9/16/04)

Pessimistic Estimate Was Produced Even Before Recent Worsening Of The Situation On The Ground In Iraq. The pessimistic conclusions in the estimate, produced by the National Intelligence Council and approved by Acting C.I.A. Director McLaughlin in July, "were reached even before the recent worsening of the security situation in Iraq, which has included a sharp increase in attacks on American troops and in deaths of Iraqi civilians as well as resistance fighters." (New York Times, 9/16/04)

REALITY ON THE GROUND IN IRAQ...

Hiding wounded soldiers

NEW YORK (UPI) Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports commonly cited by newspapers, according to military data reviewed by United Press International. Most don't fit the definition of casualties, according to the Pentagon, but a veterans' advocate said they should all be counted.

The Pentagon has reported 1,019 dead and 7,245 wounded from Iraq.

The military has evacuated 16,765 individual service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries and ailments not directly related to combat, according to the U.S. Transportation Command, which is responsible for the medical evacuations. Most are from Operation Iraqi Freedom.