Ohio Scandals May Give Democrats a Lift

washingtonpost.com
Ohio Scandals May Give Democrats a Lift
Republicans' Standing In Key State Endangered

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The scandal began as a curiosity. Tom Noe, a gregarious businessman and Republican Party leader in northwest Ohio, had been entrusted with $50 million in state money to invest in rare coins, with the idea of winning fat returns for the workers' compensation fund.

It seemed an oddity at most, but like a loose thread on a jacket, the more investigators pulled, the more the garment unraveled, revealing members of Ohio's Republican establishment who had been wined, dined and enriched by Noe.

Gov. Bob Taft (R), heir to the state's most famous political name, pleaded no contest in August to accepting secret freebies from Noe and others and was fined $4,000. Members of his staff admitted borrowing money from Noe or using his Florida Keys vacation home. Millions in state funds proved to be missing from Noe's accounts.

As Republicans raced to distance themselves from Noe, a federal grand jury in Toledo indicted him last month on charges that he illegally funneled $45,400 in campaign contributions to President Bush's reelection campaign. Prosecutors said he circumvented the $2,000 limit on individual contributions by getting 24 friends and associates to make the contributions, and reimbursing them.

Although Noe protests he is innocent, investigators are asking how far the growing scandal will go, and political consultants are measuring the potential fallout in a crucial Midwestern state controlled by the GOP. Historically, power has been split between the major parties in Ohio, but Republicans have won the past two presidential elections, and taken hold of both U.S. Senate seats and the state legislature in recent years. Republicans have occupied the governor's office since 1990.

The Republican brand in Ohio last week picked up another dent when six-term Rep. Robert W. Ney was identified as the recipient of favors -- including a golf trip to Scotland, meals and sports tickets -- from lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon in return for official actions. A lawyer for the central Ohio congressman denied the allegations.

Last year, the GOP caucus in the state legislature was buffeted by reports of improper fundraising and self-dealing by two consultants working for the Republican speaker of the state House.

With Ney under a cloud and Taft's approval rating diving to a historically low 15 percent in a Columbus Dispatch poll, Democrats hope to harness the scandals as part of a national campaign to paint their opponents as purveyors of arrogance and greed.

"My great fear politically is the Republicans will push him out of office," Rep. Chris Redfern, leader of the Democratic minority in the statehouse, said of Taft. "Keeping him in office is better for the Democrats than allowing him to leave under the cover of darkness."

Taft has pledged to finish his term and leave office in January 2007, as he is required to do by term limits. The governor's spokesman, Mark Rickel, dismissed the Democrats' criticisms of Taft.

"When the voters wanted solutions," Rickel said of Ohio Democrats, "they failed to offer solutions."

Ohio is the bellwether state that pushed President Bush over the top against Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in the final hours of the November 2004 vote-counting. Often studied for signals of national importance, the state is suffering from a flat economy and damage to the president's standing by the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.

If the Democrats get traction on the scandal issue in Ohio, it likely will be because of the dealings of Noe, an entrepreneur who parlayed his political ties into the chairmanships of the Ohio Turnpike Commission and the Ohio Board of Regents.

In Toledo, he chaired the Lucas County Republican Party, as did his wife, Bernadette, and contributed generously to GOP candidates at all levels. He was so anxious to honor his pledge to the Bush-Cheney campaign, prosecutors said Oct. 27 in issuing a three-count indictment, that he funneled money through friends, including local elected officials.

Noe was later named one of 19 Ohio "Pioneers," those who had raised at least $100,000 for the president's successful reelection. There is no evidence that Bush-Cheney officials knew of the alleged laundering operation, investigators said. A total of $6,000 contributed directly by the Noes to the presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee has been donated to charity, said RNC spokesman Aaron McLear.

Investigators for the Ohio Ethics Commission, highway patrol, attorney general's office and an array of other agencies have uncovered a web of business transactions they are still trying to untangle. Central to the case are two stakes of $25 million each that Noe was given by the Bureau of Workers' Compensation to invest in rare coins, artwork and other collectibles.

The money, a small fraction of a fund valued at more than $15 billion, was intended as a creative way to diversify the bureau's portfolio. After the Toledo Blade revealed Noe's coin investment contract in April, an agency spokesman said that "there is not one iota of evidence showing politics played a role."

Investigators continue to examine that issue. Taft said he was fooled by Noe and did not know of the coin stake until the Blade reported it -- a point disputed by Noe. Ohio Inspector General Thomas P. Charles asked Taft about his staff receiving benefits, leading to the governor's disclosure of 52 gifts from an array of people -- such as golf outings, meals and hockey tickets -- that he had failed to report as required by public ethics laws.

A tearful Taft pleaded no contest Aug. 18 to misdemeanor charges. After vowing earlier not to tolerate ethics violations in his administration, he said he had failed to live up to his own standards and public expectations.

"I am disappointed in myself," said Taft, the son and grandson of U.S. senators and the great-grandson of President William Howard Taft. "I just want to say there are no words to express the deep remorse that I feel over the embarrassment I have caused."

Two Taft aides pleaded no contest to accepting items of value from Noe. Ohio newspapers have identified two other former staff members as having received loans from Noe, who allegedly treated members of the governor's staff so often that dinners were called "The Noe Supper Club."

"It was a two-way street, back and forth, where influence was used and influence was sought," said one investigator who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is continuing.

Noe's attorney has said more than $11 million is missing from the coin fund that Noe established with workers' compensation money. Attorney General Jim Petro (R), who has joined the large field of contestants for next year's open governor's race, filed a civil lawsuit accusing Noe of diverting as much as $4 million for his own use.

Ethics specialists and prosecutors working on the continuing investigation say they do not yet know whether state money was channeled to political campaigns or what Noe may have received in return for his largess.

The Bureau of Workers' Compensation, meanwhile, fired 69 investment managers this month and announced that it will shift $7.2 billion from the stock market into safer fixed-income investments. The coin investments -- the ones the bureau can find -- are being liquidated.

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In Terror Cases, Administration Sets Own Rules

The New York Times

In Terror Cases, Administration Sets Own Rules
By ADAM LIPTAK

When Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced last week that Jose Padilla would be transferred to the federal justice system from military detention, he said almost nothing about the standards the administration used in deciding whether to charge terrorism suspects like Mr. Padilla with crimes or to hold them in military facilities as enemy combatants.

"We take each individual, each case, case by case," Mr. Gonzales said.

The upshot of that approach, underscored by the decision in Mr. Padilla's case, is that no one outside the administration knows just how the determination is made whether to handle a terror suspect as an enemy combatant or as a common criminal, to hold him indefinitely without charges in a military facility or to charge him in court.

Indeed, citing the need to combat terrorism, the administration has argued, with varying degrees of success, that judges should have essentially no role in reviewing its decisions. The change in Mr. Padilla's status, just days before the government's legal papers were due in his appeal to the Supreme Court, suggested to many legal observers that the administration wanted to keep the court out of the case.

"The position of the executive branch," said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University who has consulted with lawyers for several detainees, "is that it can be judge, jury and executioner."

The government says a secret and unilateral decision-making process is necessary because of the nature of the evidence it deals with. Officials described the approach as a practical one that weighs a mix of often-sensitive factors.

"Much thought goes into how and why various tools are used in these often complicated cases," Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said on Friday. "The important thing is for someone not to come away thinking this whole process is arbitrary, which it is not."

Among the factors the government considers, Ms. Scolinos said, are "national security interests, the need to gather intelligence and the best and quickest way to obtain it, the concern about protecting intelligence sources and methods and ongoing information gathering, the ability to use information as evidence in a criminal proceeding, the circumstances of the manner in which the individual was detained, the applicable criminal charges, and classified-evidence issues."

Lawyers for people in terrorism investigations say a list of factors to be considered cannot substitute for bright-line standards announced in advance.

The courts have given the executive branch substantial but not total deference, often holding that the president has the authority to designate enemy combatants but allowing those detained to challenge the factual basis for the administration's determinations. Some courts have suggested that a detainee's citizenship, the place he was captured and whether he was fighting American troops should play a role in how aggressively the courts review enemy-combatant designations.

A look at the half-dozen most prominent terrorism detentions and prosecutions does little to illuminate the standards that have informed the government's decisions.

One American captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan was held in the United States as an enemy combatant. Another was prosecuted as a criminal. One foreigner seized in the United States as a suspected terrorist is being held as an enemy combatant without charges in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Others have been prosecuted for their crimes.

In three high-profile terrorism cases, the government obtained convictions in federal court. Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen, pleaded guilty to taking part in the conspiracy that led to the Sept. 11 attacks and faces the death penalty. Richard C. Reid, who is British, pleaded guilty to trying to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic with bombs in his shoes and is serving a life term. And John Walker Lindh, the California man who pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban, is serving 20 years.

In three other cases, the administration designated terrorism suspects as enemy combatants who may be detained by the military indefinitely without charge. One, Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen of Saudi descent, was released and sent to Saudi Arabia after the Supreme Court gave him the right to contest the government's claims. A second American, Mr. Padilla, was transferred to the custody of the Justice Department last week.

The only remaining enemy combatant known to be detained in the United States, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, traveled the same road as Mr. Padilla, but in the opposite direction. "Al-Marri is precisely the flipside of Padilla," said Lawrence S. Lustberg, one of Mr. Marri's lawyers.

After 16 months of criminal proceedings on fraud charges, and less than a month before Mr. Marri's trial was to start in July 2003, President Bush designated him an enemy combatant. Mr. Marri, a Qatari who had been working on a master's degree at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., was immediately transferred into military custody and moved to the Navy brig in Charleston.

John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who is now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said two issues tended to determine how the government proceeded.

"The main factors that will determine how you will be charged," Mr. Yoo said, "are, one, how strong your link to Al Qaeda is and, two, whether you have any actionable intelligence that will prevent an attack on the United States."

Jonathan M. Freiman, one of Mr. Padilla's lawyers, questioned that, saying the administration's decisions had often seemed to be reactions to actual and anticipated court decisions.

"The government continues to be more focused on protecting its strategies than allowing them to be subjected to legal review," Mr. Freiman said.

In the indictment unsealed Tuesday, Mr. Padilla was not charged with some of the most serious accusations against him, including plotting to explode a radioactive device, because the evidence needed to prove the case had been obtained through harsh questioning of two senior members of Al Qaeda, current and former government officials have said. The statements might not have been admissible in court and could have exposed classified information, the officials said.

The Moussaoui case was also complicated by his lawyers' demands that they be given access to potentially exculpatory evidence that the government said had to be kept secret for reasons of national security.

The mere possibility of being named an enemy combatant, coupled with the difficulty of divining the standards the administration uses in choosing whom to call one, can affect the decisions of defendants in criminal plea negotiations.

"In the case of John Walker Lindh," said his lawyer, James J. Brosnahan, "there was a suggestion that even if we got an acquittal that he could be declared an unlawful combatant, that he could be a Padilla."

Indeed, the plea agreement Mr. Lindh signed contains an unusual provision. "For the rest of the defendant's natural life," it says, "should the government determine that the defendant has engaged in" one of more than a score of crimes of terrorism, "the United States may immediately invoke any right it has at that time to capture and detain the defendant as an unlawful enemy combatant."

Mr. Freiman said he, too, had been told that the government reserved the right to detain Mr. Padilla again should he be acquitted.

Arguably, it may sometimes be preferable for a defendant to be held as an enemy combatant rather than being prosecuted. Mr. Lindh's case, for instance, is at least superficially similar to that of Mr. Hamdi, another American captured in Afghanistan. But Mr. Hamdi is free after three years of confinement, though he had to relinquish his American citizenship. Mr. Lindh is in the early part of his 20-year sentence.

The government has not offered an explanation for the disparate treatment of the cases.

Mr. Marri's detention, on the other hand, is potentially lifelong. Though he has not been convicted of a crime, said Jonathan Hafetz, one of his lawyers, the conditions in the Charleston brig are as bad or worse than those in the toughest high-security prisons.

"He has been in solitary confinement for two and a half years," Mr. Hafetz said of Mr. Marri. "He hasn't spoken to or seen his wife and five children since he was designated an enemy combatant" in June 2003. "There's no news, no books, nothing."

This year, the same South Carolina federal judge heard challenges from Mr. Padilla and Mr. Marri. In July, the judge, Henry F. Floyd, ruled that the administration was authorized to detain Mr. Marri. Four months earlier, the judge had reached the opposite conclusion in Mr. Padilla's case.

The difference, he said, was that Mr. Padilla was an American citizen.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., reversed the ruling in the Padilla case. The administration's decision last week to charge Mr. Padilla and try to moot his appeal of the Fourth Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court may have been driven by its desire to maintain a helpful precedent in the circuit where it brings many of its terrorism cases.

"They are seeking to keep their options open," said David D. Cole, a law professor at Georgetown, "by avoiding Supreme Court review in the Padilla case. It lets them keep standing the Fourth Circuit decision."

In Mr. Hamdi's Supreme Court case last year, the four justices who joined Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's controlling opinion used a narrow definition of "enemy combatant," saying, at least for purposes of that case, that it meant someone "carrying a weapon against American troops on a foreign battlefield."

The government has proposed a much broader definition.

"The term 'enemy combatant,' " according to a Defense Department order last year, includes anyone "part of or supporting Taliban or Al Qaeda forces or associated forces."

In a hearing in December in a case brought by detainees imprisoned in the naval facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a judge questioned a Justice Department official about the limits of that definition. The official, Brian D. Boyle, said the hostilities in question were global and might continue for generations.

The judge, Joyce Hens Green of the Federal District Court in Washington, asked a series of hypothetical questions about who might be detained as an enemy combatant under the government's definition.

What about "a little old lady in Switzerland who writes checks to what she thinks is a charitable organization that helps orphans in Afghanistan but really is a front to finance Al Qaeda activities?" she asked.

And what about a resident of Dublin "who teaches English to the son of a person the C.I.A. knows to be a member of Al Qaeda?"

And "what about a Wall Street Journal reporter, working in Afghanistan, who knows the exact location of Osama bin Laden but does not reveal it to the United States government in order to protect her source?"

Mr. Boyle said the military had the power to detain all three people as enemy combatants.

In January, Judge Green allowed the detainees' court challenges to their confinement to proceed. Another judge on her court reached the opposite conclusion, and an appeal from the two decisions is pending.

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From Alito's Past, a Window on Conservatives at Princeton

The New York Times

From Alito's Past, a Window on Conservatives at Princeton
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - In the fall of 1985, Concerned Alumni of Princeton was entering a crisis.

The group's members at the time included Samuel A. Alito Jr., now President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, although there is no evidence that he played an active or prominent role.

The group had been founded in 1972, the year that Judge Alito graduated, by alumni upset that Princeton had recently begun admitting women. It published a magazine, Prospect, which persistently accused the administration of taking a permissive approach to student life, of promoting birth control and paying for abortions, and of diluting the explicitly Christian character of the school.

As Princeton admitted a growing number of minority students, Concerned Alumni charged repeatedly that the administration was lowering admission standards, undermining the university's distinctive traditions and admitting too few children of alumni. "Currently alumni children comprise 14 percent of each entering class, compared with an 11 percent quota for blacks and Hispanics," the group wrote in a 1985 fund-raising letter sent to all Princeton graduates.

By the mid-1980's, however, Princeton students and recent alumni were increasingly finding such statements anachronistic or worse.

"Is the issue the percentage of alumni children admitted or the percentage of minorities?" Jonathan Morgan, a conservative undergraduate working with the group, asked its board members that fall in an internal memorandum. "I don't see the relevance in comparing the two, except in a racist context (i.e. why do we let in so many minorities and not alumni children?)," he continued.

By 1987, the group had sputtered out.

Mr. Morgan's memorandum and other records of Concerned Alumni are contained at the Library of Congress in the papers of William A. Rusher, a leader of the group and a former publisher of National Review.

Those records and others at Mudd Library at Princeton give no indication that Judge Alito, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, was among the group's major donors. He was not an active leader of the group, and two of his classmates who were involved and Mr. Rusher said they did not remember his playing a role.

But in an application for a promotion in the Reagan administration in the fall of 1985, Judge Alito was asked to provide information about his "philosophical commitment" to administration policies and listed his membership in Concerned Alumni.

When the White House disclosed the application this month, liberal groups opposed to his nomination pounced on the connection. "The question for senators to consider and to ask is why Samuel Alito would brag about his membership in an organization known for its fervent hostility to the inclusion of women and minorities at Princeton," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way.

Steve Schmidt, a White House spokesman, declined to comment. But former leaders of Concerned Alumni say they do not remember the group objecting to the inclusion of minorities, only to the university's affirmative action policies.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a friend and Princeton classmate of Judge Alito, questioned the relevance of Judge Alito's association with the group. "His membership probably tells you that his social inclinations are conservative," said Mr. Napolitano, who became a leader of the group, "but he is so intellectually honest that he labored mightily to keep those inclinations from influencing his decisions on the bench."

As for how Judge Alito might rule as a Supreme Court justice, Mr. Napolitano, a former Superior Court judge in New Jersey, said, "Who knows what will happen?"

By 1985 Concerned Alumni had become well known in conservative circles. Financed in part by Shelby Cullom Davis, a member of the 1930 class and the ambassador to Switzerland in the Nixon administration, the group announced in an early fund-raising pamphlet that its goals included a less-liberal faculty and "a more traditional undergraduate population."

A pamphlet for parents suggested that "racial tensions" and loose oversight of campus social life were contributing to a spike in campus crime. A brochure for Princeton alumni warned, "The unannounced goal of the administration, now achieved, of a student population of approximately 40 percent women and minorities will largely vitiate the alumni body of the future."

In 1975, an alumni panel that included Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the current Republican leader and a 1974 Princeton graduate, concluded that Concerned Alumni had "presented a distorted, narrow and hostile view of the university that cannot help but have misinformed and even alarmed many alumni" and "undoubtedly generated adverse national publicity." (Mr. Frist could not be reached for comment.) In 1977, The New Yorker devoted 20 pages to a gently derisive history of the group's squabbles with the university.

By the 1980's, however, Concerned Alumni had added a new cause: the defense of the exclusive "eating clubs," where many upper class Princeton students took their meals, and especially the three all-male clubs. All now admit women.

As a student, Judge Alito had not joined any of the clubs, taking his meals at a dining hall. But the leaders of Concerned Alumni and the editors of Prospect regarded the clubs as pillars of the university's distinctive social life that were under attack by the Princeton administration.

When the administration proposed a new system of residential colleges with their own dining halls, Prospect denounced the idea as a potential threat to the system of eating clubs. The magazine charged that, like affirmative action, the plan was "intended to create racial harmony."

Prospect portrayed the proposal as an effort to end the de facto segregation of the campus in which black students were concentrated in one dormitory and mostly did not belong to the clubs. "Doubtless, there will be many who regard this as mere stalling, and prejudice by another name," an unsigned 1982 editorial argued in defense of the magazine's position. "If realistic approaches to problems must be called dirty names because we do not like them, well, there is no remedy for it."

The magazine's content also grew increasingly provocative under the editorship of conservative rising stars, including Dinesh D'Souza and later Laura Ingraham.

A March 1984 article by Mr. D'Souza told the story of a Puerto Rican first-year student whose mother sought to remove her from the school after learning that she was having sex with a male student and was receiving sex-education from the school. The magazine said the administration had increased the female student's financial aide to enable her to stay, and it accused Princeton of giving new meaning to the phrase "in loco parentis."

Hundreds of students signed a petition protesting the article as an invasion of privacy, and the campus debate received national attention.

Later that year, Concerned Alumni fund-raising letters to Princeton graduates charged that the director of the university's health clinic had "celebrated the fact that 31 out of 33 pregnant students had abortions after receiving counseling from Princeton's sex clinic."

In January 1985 - a few months before Judge Alito filled out his Reagan administration application - William G. Bowen, Princeton's president, issued a statement calling the letter "callous" and "outrageous."

In an interview, Ms. Ingraham said liberal groups were making too much of Judge Alito's membership. "Stop the presses!" she said. "Sam Alito, a conservative, was once a member of a conservative Princeton alumni group."

Mr. D'Souza said supporters of Concerned Alumni were motivated by a fear that "traditional values" at Princeton had come under attack, but their specific concerns varied from academic standards to the athletic program. Judge Alito's support for the group "might tell you something," he said, "but it is hard to know what."

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Ann Coulter: Stupid is as Stupid Does

huffingtonpost.com
John Amato
Ann Coulter: Stupid is as Stupid Does

I know the title of the piece doesn’t make much sense, but neither does Coulter’s latest diatribe:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucac/20051124/cm_ucac/newideaforabortionpartyaidtheenemy
Ann Coulter says that Rep. John Murtha is emboldening the enemy and encouraging them to fight on. Her thesis is that he will cause more American lives to be lost and is a traitor as are all democrats who speak out.

If Murtha is a gutless traitor (who actually served in the military) because he values the safety of our troops lives than what does that make Donald Rumsfeld? The Secretary of Defense sent our soldiers off to war without the proper protection which forced Army Spc. Thomas Wilson to ask:

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

Rumsfeld’s response was to say:

"You go to war with the Army you have not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

How many soldiers were killed and wounded because of this? Is Rumsfeld a traitor too?
We went to war when the administration decided to and not because there was an imminent threat of attack by Iraq.

What about Paul Bremmer’s decision to disband the Iraq army without asking the Joint Chiefs of Staff? How did that work out for us? Do you think they could have helped us keep the peace? I’d say he gets a notch on the traitor belt. How about the decision to allow looting by the Iraqi’s, which has resulted in weapons and explosives being used on our own troops? Donald Rumsfeld response was:

"Freedom's untidy. And free people are free to commit mistakes, and to commit crimes and do bad things."

Do I actually need to respond to that idiocy?

To Ann, if we all just shut our mouths, the insurgents will think they are losing the battle and surrender. That’ sure is a great exit strategy.

(You can see her latest performance here
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/11/26.html#a6063 )

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Coping With Combat

The New York Times

Coping With Combat
The Struggle to Gauge a War's Psychological Cost
By BENEDICT CAREY

It was hardly a traditional therapist's office. The mortar fire was relentless, head-splitting, so close that it raised layers of rubble high off the floor of the bombed-out room.

Capt. William Nash, a Navy psychiatrist, sat on an overturned box of ready-made meals for the troops. He was in Iraq to try to short-circuit combat stress on the spot, before it became disabling, as part of the military's most determined effort yet to bring therapy to the front lines.

His clients, about a dozen young men desperate for help after weeks of living and fighting in Falluja, sat opposite him and told their stories.

One had been spattered with his best friend's blood and blamed himself for the death.

Another was also filled with guilt. He had hesitated while scouting an alley and had seen the man in front of him shot to death.

"They were so young," Captain Nash recalled.

At first, when they talked, he simply listened. Then he did his job, telling them that soldiers always blame themselves when someone is killed, in any war, always.

Grief, he told them, can make us forget how random war is, how much we have done to protect those we are fighting with.

"You try to help them tell a coherent story about what is happening, to make sense of it, so they feel less guilt and shame over protecting others, which is so common," said Captain Nash, who counseled the marines last November as part of the military's increased efforts to defuse psychological troubles.

He added, "You have to help them reconstruct the things they used to believe in that don't make sense anymore, like the basic goodness of humanity."

Military psychiatry has always been close to a contradiction in terms. Psychiatry aims to keep people sane; service in wartime makes demands that seem insane.

This war in particular presents profound mental stresses: unknown and often unseen enemies, suicide bombers, a hostile land with virtually no safe zone, no real front or rear. A 360-degree war, some call it, an asymmetrical battle space that threatens to injure troops' minds as well as their bodies.

But just how deep those mental wounds are, and how many will be disabled by them, are matters of controversy. Some experts suspect that the legacy of Iraq could echo that of Vietnam, when almost a third of returning military personnel reported significant, often chronic, psychological problems.

Others say the mental casualties will be much lower, given the resilience of today's troops and the sophistication of the military's psychological corps, which place therapists like Captain Nash into combat zones.

The numbers so far tell a mixed story. The suicide rate among soldiers was high in 2003 but fell significantly in 2004, according to two Army surveys among more than 2,000 soldiers and mental health support providers in Iraq. Morale rose in the same period, but 54 percent of the troops say morale is low or very low, the report found.

A continuing study of combat units that served in Iraq has found that about 17 percent of the personnel have shown serious symptoms of depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder - characterized by intrusive thoughts, sleep loss and hyper-alertness, among other symptoms - in the first few months after returning from Iraq, a higher rate than in Afghanistan but thought to be lower than after Vietnam.

In interviews, many members of the armed services and psychologists who had completed extended tours in Iraq said they had battled feelings of profound grief, anger and moral ambiguity about the effect of their presence on Iraqi civilians.

And at bases back home, there have been violent outbursts among those who have completed tours. A marine from Camp Pendleton, Calif., has been convicted of murdering his girlfriend. And three members of a special forces unit based at Fort Carson, in Colorado Springs, have committed suicide.

Yet for returning service members, experts say, the question of whether their difficulties are ultimately diagnosed as mental illness may depend not only on the mental health services available, but also on the politics of military psychiatry itself, the definition of what a normal reaction to combat is and the story the nation tells itself about the purpose and value of soldiers' service.

"We must not ever diminish the pain and anguish many soldiers will feel; this kind of experience never leaves you," said David H. Marlowe, a former chief of military psychiatry at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. "But at the same time we have to be careful not to create an attachment to that pain and anguish by pathologizing it."

The legacy of Iraq, Dr. Marlowe said, will depend as much on how service members are received and understood by the society they return to as on their exposure to the trauma of war.

Memories Still Haunt

The blood and fury of combat exhilarate some people and mentally scar others, for reasons no one understands.

On an October night in 2003, mortar shells fell on a base camp near Baquba, Iraq, where Specialist Abbie Pickett, then 21, was serving as a combat lifesaver, caring for the wounded. Specialist Pickett continued working all night by the dim blue light of a flashlight, "plugging and chugging" bleeding troops to a makeshift medical tent, she said.

At first, she did not notice that one of the medics who was working with her was bleeding heavily and near death; then, frantically, she treated his wounds and moved him to a medical station not knowing if he would survive.

He did survive, Specialist Pickett later learned. But the horror of that night is still vivid, and the memory stalks her even now, more than a year after she returned home.

"I would say that on a weekly basis I wish I would have died during that attack," said Specialist Pickett, who served with the Wisconsin Army National Guard and whose condition has been diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. "You never want family to hear that, and it's a selfish thing to say. But I'm not a typical 23-year-old, and it's hard being a combat vet and a woman and figuring out where you fit in."

Each war produces its own traumatic syndrome. The trench warfare of World War I produced the shaking and partial paralysis known as shell shock. The long tours and heavy fighting of World War II induced in many young men the numbed exhaustion that was called combat fatigue.

But it is post-traumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis some psychiatrists intended to characterize the mental struggles of Vietnam veterans, that now dominates the study and description of war trauma.

The diagnosis has always been controversial. Few experts doubt that close combat can cause a lingering hair-trigger alertness and play on a person's conscience for a lifetime. But no one knows what level of trauma is necessary to produce a disabling condition or who will become disabled.

The largest study of Vietnam veterans found that about 30 percent of them had post-traumatic stress disorder in the 20 years after the war but that only a fraction of those service members had had combat roles. Another study of Vietnam veterans, done around the same time, found that the lifetime rate of the syndrome was half as high, 15 percent.

And since Vietnam, therapists have diagnosed the disorder in crime victims, disaster victims, people who have witnessed disasters, even those who have seen upsetting events on television. The disorder varies widely depending on the individual and the nature of the trauma, psychiatrists say, but they cannot yet predict how.

Yet the very pervasiveness of post-traumatic stress disorder as a concept shapes not only how researchers study war trauma but also how many soldiers describe their reactions to combat.

Specialist Pickett, for example, has struggled with the intrusive memories typical of post-traumatic stress and with symptoms of depression and a seething resentment over her service, partly because of what she describes as irresponsible leaders and a poorly defined mission. Her memories make good bar stories, she said, but they also follow her back to her apartment, where the combination of anxiety and uncertainty about the value of her service has at times made her feel as if she were losing her mind.

Richard J. McNally, a psychologist at Harvard, said, "It's very difficult to know whether a new kind of syndrome will emerge from this war for the simple reason that the instrument used to assess soldiers presupposes that it will look like P.T.S.D. from Vietnam."

A more thorough assessment, Dr. McNally said, "might ask not only about guilt, shame and the killing of noncombatants, but about camaraderie, leadership, devotion to the mission, about what is meaningful and worthwhile, as well as the negative things."

Sitting amid the broken furniture in his Falluja "office," Captain Nash represents the military's best effort to handle stress on the ground, before it becomes upsetting, and keep service members on the job with the others in their platoon or team, who provide powerful emotional support.

While the military deployed mental health experts in Vietnam, most stayed behind the lines. In part because of that war's difficult legacy, the military has increased the proportion of field therapists and put them closer to the action than ever before.

The Army says it has about 200 mental health workers for a force of about 150,000, including combat stress units that travel to combat zones when called on. The Marines are experimenting with a program in which the therapists stationed at a base are deployed with battalions in the field.

"The idea is simple," said Lt. Cmdr. Gary Hoyt, a Navy psychologist and colleague of Captain Nash in the Marine program. "You have a lot more credibility if you've been there, and soldiers and marines are more likely to talk to you."

Commander Hoyt has struggled with irritability and heightened alertness since returning from Iraq in September 2004.

Psychologists and psychiatrists on the ground have to break through the mental toughness that not only keeps troops fighting but also prevents them from seeking psychological help, which is viewed as a sign of weakness. And they have been among the first to identify the mental reactions particular to this war.

One of them, these experts say, is profound, unreleased anger. Unlike in Vietnam, where service members served shorter tours and were rotated in and out of the country individually, troops in Iraq have deployed as units and tend to have trained together as full-time military or in the Reserves or the National Guard. Group cohesion is strong, and the bonds only deepen in the hostile desert terrain of Iraq.

For these tight-knit groups, certain kinds of ambushes - roadside bombs, for instance - can be mentally devastating, for a variety of reasons.

"These guys go out in convoys, and boom: the first vehicle gets hit, their best friend dies, and now they're seeing life flash before them and get a surge of adrenaline and want to do something," said Lt. Col. Alan Peterson, an Air Force psychologist who completed a tour in Iraq last year. "But often there's nothing they can do. There's no enemy there."

Many, Colonel Peterson said, become deeply frustrated because "they wish they could act out on this adrenaline rush and do what they were trained to do but can't."

Some soldiers and marines describe foot patrols as "drawing fire," and gunmen so often disappear into crowds that many have the feeling that they are fighting ghosts. In roadside ambushes, service men and women may never see the enemy.

Sgt. Benjamin Flanders, 27, a graduate student in math who went to Iraq with the New Hampshire National Guard, recalled: "It was kind of a joke: if you got to shoot back at the enemy, people were jealous. It was a stress reliever, a great release, because usually these guys disappear."

Another powerful factor is ambiguity about the purpose of the mission, and about Iraqi civilians' perception of the American presence.

On a Sunday in April 2004, Commander Hoyt received orders to visit Marine units that had been trapped in a firefight in a town near the Syrian border and that had lost five men. The Americans had been handing out candy to children and helping residents fix their houses the day before the ambush, and they felt they had been set up, he said.

The entire unit, he said, was coursing with rage, asking: "What are we doing here? Why aren't the Iraqis helping us?"

Commander Hoyt added, "There was a breakdown, and some wanted to know how come they couldn't hit mosques" or other off-limits targets where insurgents were suspected of hiding.

In group sessions, the psychologist emphasized to the marines that they could not know for sure whether the civilians they had helped had supported the insurgents. Insurgent fighters scare many Iraqis more than the Americans do, he reminded them, and that fear creates a deep ambivalence, even among those who most welcome the American presence. And following the rules of engagement, he told them, was crucial to setting an example.

Commander Hoyt also reminded the group of some of its successes, in rebuilding houses, for example, and restoring electricity in the area. He also told them it was better to fight in Iraq than back home.

"Having someone killed in World War II, you could say, 'Well, we won this battle to save the world,' " he said. "In this terrorist war, it is much less tangible how to anchor your losses."

Help in Adjusting to Life at Home

No one has shown definitively that on-the-spot group or individual therapy in combat lowers the risk of psychological problems later. But military psychiatrists know from earlier wars that separating an individual from his or her unit can significantly worsen feelings of guilt and depression.

About 8 service members per every 1,000 in Iraq have developed psychiatric problems severe enough to require evacuation, according to Defense Department statistics, while the rate of serious psychiatric diagnoses in Vietnam from 1965 to 1969 was more than 10 per 1,000, although improvements in treatment, as well as differences in the conflicts and diagnostic criteria, make a direct comparison very rough.

At the same time, Captain Nash and Commander Hoyt say that psychological consultations by returning marines at Camp Pendleton have been increasing significantly since the war began.

One who comes for regular counseling is Sgt. Robert Willis, who earned a Bronze Star for leading an assault through a graveyard near Najaf in 2004.

Irritable since his return home in February, shaken by loud noises, leery of malls or other areas that are not well-lighted at night - classic signs of post-traumatic stress - Sergeant Willis has been seeing Commander Hoyt to help adjust to life at home.

"It's been hard," Sergeant Willis said in a telephone interview. "I have been boisterous, overbearing - my family notices it."

He said he had learned to manage his moods rather than react impulsively, after learning to monitor his thoughts and attend more closely to the reactions of others.

"The turning point, I think, was when Dr. Hoyt told me to simply accept that I was going to be different because of this," but not mentally ill, Sergeant Willis said.

The increase in consultations at Camp Pendleton may reflect increasingly taxing conditions, or delayed reactions, experts said. But it may also be evidence that men and women who have fought with ready access to a psychologist or psychiatrist are less constrained by the tough-it-out military ethos and are more comfortable seeking that person's advice when they get back.

"Seeing someone you remember from real time in combat absolutely could help in treatment," as well as help overcome the stigma of seeking counseling, said Rachel Yehuda, director of the post-traumatic stress disorder program at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx. "If this is what is happening, I think it's brilliant."

Tracking Serious Symptoms

In the coming months, researchers who are following combat units after they return home are expected to report that the number of personnel with serious mental symptoms has increased slightly, up from the 17 percent reported last year.

In an editorial last year in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, executive director of the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for the Department of Veterans Affairs, wrote that studies suggested that the rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, in particular, "may increase considerably during the two years after veterans return from combat duty."

And on the basis of previous studies, Dr. Friedman wrote, "it is possible that psychiatric disorders will increase now that the conduct of the war has shifted from a campaign for liberation to an ongoing armed conflict with dissident combatants."

But others say that the rates of the disorder are just as likely to diminish in the next year, as studies show they do for disaster victims.

Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general, said that given the stresses of this war, it was worth noting that five out of six service members who had seen combat did not show serious signs of mental illness.

The emotional casualties, Colonel Ritchie said, are "not just an Army medical problem, but a problem that the V.A. system, the civilian system and the society as a whole must work to solve."

That is the one thing all seem to agree on. Some veterans, like Sergeant Flanders and Sergeant Willis, have reconnected with other men in their units to help with their psychological adjustment to home life. Sergeant Willis has been transferred to noncombat duty at Camp Pendleton, in an environment he knows and enjoys, and he can see Commander Hoyt when he needs to. Sergeant Flanders is studying to be an officer.

But others, particularly reservists and National Guard troops, have landed right back in civilian society with no one close to them who has shared their experience.

Specialist Pickett, since her return, has felt especially cut off from the company she trained and served with. She has struggled at school, and with the Veterans Affairs system to get counseling, and no one near her has had an experience remotely like hers. She has tried antidepressants, which have helped reduce her suicidal thinking. She has also joined Operation Truth, a nonprofit organization that represents Iraq veterans, which has given her some comfort.

Finally, she said, she has been searching her memory and conscience for reasons to justify the pain of her experience: no one, Specialist Pickett said, looks harder for justification than a soldier.

Dr. Marlowe, the former chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed, knows from studying other wars that this is so.

"The great change among American troops in Germany during the Second World War was when they discovered the concentration camps," Dr. Marlowe said. "That immediately and forever changed the moral appreciation for why we were there."

As soldiers return from Iraq, he said, "it will be enormously important for those who feel psychologically disaffected to find something which justifies the killing, and the death of their friends."

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Republicans Are Deeply Split Over How to Apportion New Tax Cuts

The New York Times

Republicans Are Deeply Split Over How to Apportion New Tax Cuts
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 - Republicans of all stripes want to cut taxes, but rarely have they been in so much disarray about whose to cut.

If House Republicans and President Bush have their way, more than half of tax reductions over the next five years will go to the top 1 percent of households, those with average incomes of $1.1 million.

House leaders are pushing a $63-billion tax-cutting package that would extend President Bush's tax cut on stock dividends, protect oil companies from a windfall profits tax and shield people caught using illegal tax shelters.

The Republican-controlled Senate, by contrast, has passed a bill that would cut taxes by $59 billion but ignore Mr. Bush's top priority, and that contains two other provisions that have provoked his wrath.

The Senate bill omits an extension of Mr. Bush's tax cuts for stock dividends and capital gains, which are to expire at the end of 2008.

Instead, almost half of the bill is devoted to shielding middle-income and upper-income families from the alternative minimum tax.

The Senate bill has also proposed two revenue-raising measures that Mr. Bush has threatened to veto: a one-year, $5-billion tax on major oil companies and a provision that would make it easier to impose steep penalties on people caught using illegal tax shelters.

The impact of the two bills would be wildly different. According to calculations by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group, about 51 percent of the tax cuts in the House bill would go to the top 1 percent of income earners.

The Senate bill favors upper-income families, but not nearly as much: only about 12 percent of the benefits would go to the top 1 percent of earners.

The enormous gulf reflects more than just Republican disarray. With budget deficits likely to widen again next year, even as Congress cuts money for programs like Medicaid and child support, Mr. Bush and his allies have to choose between warring constituencies.

Business groups are demanding that Congress extend tens of billions of dollars' worth of tax breaks and create new ones. Mr. Bush wants to lock in his legacy, even though his tax cuts do not expire for another three years. And millions of affluent families, especially those with two or more children, want to avoid the alternative minimum tax, which excludes tax breaks for dependents.

"The great middle of America is underrepresented in Congress," said Representative Jim Leach, Republican of Iowa, who is critical of the House tax bill. "The leadership will insist that a compromise be established. But what that final product is, I have no idea."

Even staunch supporters of Mr. Bush's agenda are torn.

"We're not going to be left out in the cold," vowed Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, a New York Republican whose affluent district in the Rochester area is packed with families who could be battered by the alternative minimum tax. "There is going to be a lot of negotiation."

The budget problems have amplified Republican difficulties. Staunch fiscal conservatives, seeking to attack the budget deficit, forced Republican moderates to vote for politically painful cuts in Medicaid, student loans and child-support enforcement.

But Republican moderates are now balking at tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the very rich.

Democratic lawmakers, hoping to exploit Republican uncertainty, have remained unusually unified and were almost jubilant when Mr. Bush threatened to veto the Senate tax bill because of the tax on oil companies.

"It just shows you how outside the mainstream they are," said Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, a senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. "What they should be threatening is to veto a cut in child-support funds, cuts in student loans or cuts in funds for child health care."

Republican leaders betrayed their own anxiety, postponing a vote on the House tax bill just before Congress's Thanksgiving break.

"It could be harder to get through the House than the Senate," said Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican on the tax-writing committee. "What we decided to do is let people go back and think. We said, let's wait and make sure all the members are comfortable."

But there is no comfortable way for Republicans to deal with the budget math that confronts them.

Permanently extending Mr. Bush's tax cuts would cost about $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office says.

Republican leaders already scaled back their ambitions months ago, and are trying to pass only about $70 billion in tax cuts for the next five years.

Simply extending Mr. Bush's tax cut on stock dividends for two years, as the House bill would do, would cost $22 billion. Preventing an automatic expansion next year of the alternative minimum tax, which would mean a surprise tax increase for about 15 million households, would cost about $27 billion.

The alternative tax was created in 1969 as a way to prevent millionaires from using too many deductions. But it is now engulfing millions of additional homes every year, partly because it is not adjusted for inflation and even more because of the way it interacts with Mr. Bush's tax cuts.

The alternative minimum tax's impact is heaviest on families with many children, because it excludes tax breaks for dependents, and for people who pay high property taxes and state income taxes.

The Bush administration estimates that, if nothing is changed, the number of families that face the tax will jump to 18 million in 1006 from 3 million this year.

More than one-third of all families with incomes below $100,000 would face the tax next year, according to the Brookings-Urban Tax Policy Center. Among married couples with two or more children, 73 percent of those earning less than $100,000 would be hit.

Senate Republican leaders, bowing to moderates in their party, decided to drop Mr. Bush's tax extension and focus on the more immediate impact of the alternative minimum tax. They also included $7 billion in tax cuts for Gulf Coast areas struck by Hurricane Katrina.

House leaders decided exactly the opposite. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Bill Thomas of California, has told Republican lawmakers that he will take up the alternative minimum tax next year as part of a broader tax overhaul.

But prospects for a sweeping tax overhaul next year are almost zero, most analysts say, because it would prompt too much opposition from entrenched interest groups in an election year.

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Even Supporters Doubt President as Issues Pile Up

The New York Times

Even Supporters Doubt President as Issues Pile Up

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 22 - Leesa Martin never considered President Bush a great leader, but she voted for him a year ago because she admired how he handled the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Then came the past summer, when the death toll from the war in Iraq hit this state particularly hard: 16 marines from the same battalion killed in one week. She thought the federal government should have acted faster to help after Hurricane Katrina. She was baffled by the president's nomination of Harriet E. Miers, a woman she considered unqualified for the Supreme Court, and disappointed when he did not nominate another woman after Ms. Miers withdrew.

And she remains unsettled by questions about whether the White House leaked the name of a C.I.A. agent whose husband had accused the president of misleading the country about the intelligence that led to the war.

"I don't know if it's any one thing as much as it is everything," said Ms. Martin, 49, eating lunch at the North Market, on the edge of downtown Columbus. "It's kind of snowballed."

Her concerns were echoed in more than 75 interviews here and across the country this week, helping to explain the slide in the president's approval and trustworthiness ratings in recent polls.

Many people who voted for Mr. Bush a year ago had trouble pinning their current discontent on any one thing. Many mentioned the hurricane and the indictment of a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, which some said raised doubts about the president's candor and his judgment. But there was a sense that something had veered off course in the last few months, and the war was the one constant. Over and over, even some of Mr. Bush's supporters raised comparisons with Vietnam.

"We keep hearing about suicide bombers and casualties and never hear about any progress being made," said Dave Panici, 45, a railroad conductor from Bradley, Ill. "I don't see an end to it; it just seems relentless. I feel like our country is just staying afloat, just treading water instead of swimming toward somewhere."

Mr. Panici voted for President Bush in 2004, calling it "a vote for security." "Now that a year has passed, I haven't seen any improvement in Iraq," he said. "I don't feel that the world is a safer place."

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll in mid-November found that 37 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush, the lowest approval rating the poll had recorded in his presidency. That was down from 55 percent a year ago and from a high of 90 percent shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.

An Associated Press/Ipsos poll earlier in the month found the same 37 percent approval rating and recorded the president's lowest levels regarding integrity and honesty: 42 percent of Americans found him honest, compared with 53 percent at the beginning of this year.

Several of those interviewed said that in the last year they had come to believe that Mr. Bush had not been fully honest about the intelligence that led to the war, which he said showed solid evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

"I think people put their faith in Bush, hoping he would do the right thing," said Stacey Rosen, 38, a stay-at-home mother in Boca Raton, Fla., who said she voted for Mr. Bush but was "totally disappointed" in him now. "Everybody cannot believe that there hasn't been one shred of evidence of W.M.D. I think it goes to show how they tell us what they want to tell us."

Mark Briggs, who works for Nationwide Insurance here, said he did not want to believe that the president "manipulated" intelligence leading the country into war, but believed that, at least, Mr. Bush had misread it.

Still, however much he may disagree with Mr. Bush's policies, Mr. Briggs said, he admires the president for standing by what he says.

"There is the notion of leadership and sticking with the plan, which I believe in," he said. "George Bush is clear and consistent. He made a tough decision to go to war - and others voted for it, too. And I think he's right: those people may be trying to rewrite history."

Kacey Wilson, 32, eating lunch with Ms. Martin, said she, too, had concerns about the death toll from the war, but she felt that Mr. Bush spoke the truth, even if it might not be what the country wanted to hear. "I like his cut-and-dry, take-no-prisoners style," Ms. Wilson said. "I think people are used to more spinning."

Others, though, saw arrogance in that approach.

"We need to not be so stubborn," said Vicky Polka, 58, a retired school principal in Statesboro, Ga., who voted for Mr. Bush and described her support for him as "waning." "Something's not going right here. We need to resolve this. I hate to say it, but I think Iraq is going the way of Vietnam."

Few people said they were following the leak scandal, which led to the indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Mr. Cheney's former aide. Some who could cite main characters and events dismissed it as little more than political theater. Even fewer said they had paid attention to other scandals preoccupying Washington: the indictment of Representative Tom DeLay, the powerful Texas Republican, and the guilty plea by his former spokesman.

But several people said that the leak scandal had left them with the sense that the president was not leveling with the public about his involvement.

"He has to give us more information," said Phil Niemie, 51, an elementary school principal eating lunch with his family in Columbus. "The longer it goes without closure, it begins to trigger those Nixon Watergate years. I felt the same way with Clinton."

But for Mr. Niemie, who voted for Mr. Bush, and others, the leak scandal raised the biggest doubts about Vice President Cheney.

"A lot of problems tie back to some of Cheney's shenanigans," Ms. Martin said. "It just seems like he could have done better for vice president the second time around."

In Atlanta, Selena Smith, a director at an advertising agency, echoed others when she said she thought too much time had already been spent on the investigation.

"The war is more important to me now," said Ms. Smith, 46. "What's the plan? Give us something to hang our teeth on. What's really top of mind for me is how many people are getting killed across the creek, and how are we going to get them home?"

Here in Ohio, the most hotly contested state in the 2004 election, the heavy toll on a local Marine battalion had played out on television and in newspapers throughout the summer's end, and the majority of two dozen people interviewed here said they wanted to see the troops come home.

Some, though, faulted Americans as having short attention spans.

"Anything that takes more than a couple of months, we get bored with," said Rich Canary, 35, an information technology specialist here. "Progress has been made. The Iraqis have a constitution. They're actually creating their own country. When you hear the soldiers talk, they feel what they're doing is important."

And there was much division about how to end the war. Some military families said it was important to finish the task the troops had begun; others said they resented accusations of being unpatriotic when they criticized the war. Some who said their approval of the president had not wavered nevertheless argued for a quick end to the war, while some of Mr. Bush's strongest critics said it would destabilize Iraq to withdraw the troops anytime soon.

"Too many people would get hurt," said Laurence Melia, 28, a salesman from Newton, Mass., who campaigned against President Bush last year. "There has to be a last foot on the ground in the end, and there might be more problems if we run away too fast."

In Houston, Geoff Van Hoeven, an accountant, said he thought the war in Iraq had aggravated the terrorist threat by creating "a breeding ground for Al Qaeda." Still, Mr. Van Hoeven said a quick withdrawal was not possible, "because America's going to be perceived as extremely weak and unreliable coming in, and when the going gets rough, they pull out."

Even those who voted against Mr. Bush a year ago saw little satisfaction in his woes.

"Part of me enjoys watching him squirm," said Shirley Tobias, 46, sitting with a colleague from Netscape at a coffee shop in Grandview, a suburb of Columbus. "But he's squirming on our behalf. We're all in this together."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Cindy Chang from Los Angeles; Bill Dawson from Houston; Brenda Goodman from Atlanta; Kelli Kennedy from Boca Raton, Fla.; Gretchen Ruethling from Chicago; and Katie Zezima from Boston.

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Anti-war activists return to protest Bush

Reuters
Anti-war activists return to protest Bush

By Patricia Wilson

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's hopes for a brief reprieve from the bitter Iraq war debate were dashed on Friday when peace activist Cindy Sheehan rallied her troops in protest near his central Texas ranch.

Bush is spending a six-day Thanksgiving break at "Prairie Chapel," about 8 miles from the tiny town of Crawford where Sheehan dedicated a memorial garden to her son Casey, a soldier who died in Iraq last year.

"We're here to say that the killing has to stop and we're not going away," Sheehan told scores of supporters. "We want people to be held accountable and just because someone's president of the United States, it doesn't guarantee them immunity from accountability."

The California mother unveiled a stone carved with the words "Sheehan's Stand" set among cactus and yucca plants. The ceremony was punctuated by hecklers in passing pickup trucks, one of whom shouted, "Go home you freakin' losers!"

Sheehan, who plans to lead an anti-war rally on Saturday and participate in an interfaith service on Sunday, became an icon for the peace movement during a 26-day vigil outside Bush's ranch in the summer.

She took her protest to Washington in September where she was arrested for demonstrating without a permit outside the White House.

With Bush out of public sight working and biking on his 1,600-acre (648-hectare) ranch, Sheehan helped fill a news void for the White House press corps -- including five television networks -- that travels with the president.

Protesters say they will come to Crawford every time Bush visits his ranch. Supporters vowed to do the same.

Across the street from the Yellow Rose gift shop, Vietnam War veteran James Vergauwen stood with a sign reading: "The price of freedom is not free." He and others will stage a pro-Bush rally on Saturday.

"I didn't like the idea of her calling the president a liar and a killer," Vergauwen said.

'HEAVY TRAFFIC'

Crawford -- population 700, one traffic signal -- prepared for the influx by erecting a large warning sign for motorists a mile or so outside town that flashed the words: "Expect heavy traffic Friday, Saturday and Sunday."

With the American death toll in Iraq at more than 2,000 and Democrats openly questioning the administration's case for war and its progress, public opinion has shifted and Bush's credibility has suffered. Polls show his job approval at the lowest of his presidency.

Amid political pressure for a course correction in Iraq, U.S. officials have tried to reassure Americans that sufficient progress is being made in training Iraqi forces to possibly permit some U.S. troops to leave.

"I suspect that American forces are not going to be needed in the numbers that they're there for all that much longer, because Iraqis are continuing to make progress in function, not just in numbers, but in their capabilities to do certain functions," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told CNN earlier this week.

Rice's comments came after an acrimonious debate in Congress about Bush's Iraq policy including a demand by one of the most hawkish Democratic members, Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, that U.S. forces be withdrawn as quickly as possible.

The United States has 150,000 troops in Iraq, boosted from the usual 138,000 to tighten security for an October referendum and December elections.

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Abramoff probe broader than thought

Reuters

Abramoff probe broader than thought: paper

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department's probe of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff is broader than previously thought, examining his dealings with four lawmakers, former and current congressional aides and two former Bush administration officials, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Prosecutors in the department's public integrity and fraud divisions are looking into Abramoff's dealings with four Republicans -- former House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, Rep. John Doolittle of California and Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana, the paper said, citing several people close to the investigation.

Abramoff is under investigation over his lobbying efforts for Indian tribes with casinos. He has also pleaded not guilty to federal charges in Florida that he defrauded lenders in a casino cruise line deal.

The prosecutors are also investigating at least 17 current and former congressional aides, about half of whom later took lobbying jobs with Abramoff, as well as an official from the Interior Department and another from the government's procurement office, the Journal said.

Justice Department spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment on the investigation.

The newspaper said investigators were looking into whether Abramoff and his partners made illegal payoffs to the lawmakers and aides in the form of campaign contributions, sports tickets, meals, travel and job offers, in exchange for helping their clients.

DeLay and Ney have already retained criminal defense lawyers.

Spokespeople for the two lawmakers told the Journal that they have both hired lawyers and have not been contacted by the Justice Department.

Michael Scanlon, a former aide to DeLay and partner to powerful Republican lobbyist Abramoff, pleaded guilty to conspiracy on Monday under a deal in which he is cooperating with prosecutors probing the alleged influence-buying.

Scanlon left DeLay's office and become a partner to Abramoff, who has been indicted for fraud in a separate case in Florida. The plea agreement has been seen as a major advance in prosecutors' efforts to investigate the lobbyist. (Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington)

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Animal Instinct

atlantajewish.com
Animal Instinct

Known as the 'Zoo Rabbi,' 30-year-old Natan Slifkin is at the center of a world-wide debate on teaching evolution to Jewish children. Some of his books have even been banned in both Israel and America. We spend a day at the zoo with the revolutionary rabbi.
by Benyamin Cohen


“Did you know pandas don’t have thumbs?”

Actually I didn’t and, to be completely honest, I had never even bothered to think about panda fingers, let alone their apparent lack of thumbs. And yeah, I admit, it’s a strange question. But if you consider who’s asking it, you quickly realize this is just business as usual.

It’s a bright day, sweltering as always, and I’m standing under the shade of some nearby trees by the panda paddocks at Zoo Atlanta with Rabbi Natan Slifkin, a British wunderkind who’s professed panda knowledge is wildly way off the radar.

“Thousands of animals are on the verge of extinction,” he says interjecting his own social commentary, “but when they look cute and cuddly like pandas, people care about them a lot more.”

On the outside, the guy looks extraordinarily ordinary. This day — dressed in charcoal pants, a gray button-down shirt, and a baseball cap — he appears like your typical grad student. Book bag, bottled water, and cell phone in tow he is practically the poster child for normalcy.

But, upon closer examination, you realize that what you’re staring at is an incredibly abnormal creature. In fact, he’s nowhere even near the vicinity of normal. At 22, while most of us were enjoying college, cheap liquor, and sleeping in, Slifkin wrote his first book, a compendium of thoughts on the weekly Torah portion.

He hasn’t stopped putting pen to paper since. Now, at 30, he has written seven books and has numerous more in the works — including a multi-volume encyclopedia on the Jewish view of the animal kingdom. The youngest of five siblings, he makes the underachiever in all of us cringe.

What makes Slifkin more extraordinary is his bizarre area of expertise. At his young age, he is already a widely-respected authority in the arcane field of Biblical zoology. Jewish communities the world over have invited Slifkin to give zoo tours in their towns in which he relates Biblical and Midrashic lessons about animals. Here’s a guy who, at a moment’s notice, can whip out an offbeat Talmudic reference to unicorns while explaining why the most dangerous job in America is that of the elephant keeper. Visitors to his Web site, located at zootorah.com, can take a virtual tour of the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem and see videos of Slifkin wrestling a crocodile.

And in typical bookish manner, all he can say is, “I’m uncomfortable with fame,” as he shrugs.

* * *

On a recent overcast morning, Slifkin is flying solo, taking in the Atlanta zoo to do some research. I ask if I can tag along, perhaps, to get some idea of who this guy really is; to study the man in his natural habitat. He obliges my request and we head out to the zoo, somewhere, admittedly, I haven’t been since a fourth-grade field trip.

Once we arrive, the surprisingly shy Slifkin seems to come into his own skin. It’s his natural environment, you can tell, and he feels quite comfortable there. Once through the entrance turnstile, Slifkin makes a metamorphosis — from shy kid to wise-beyond-his-years adult.

On the surface, Slifkin doesn’t come across as a world-renowned lecturer in Biblical zoology. But when he opens his mouth to speak, it soon becomes abundantly clear that looks can be deceiving — and the hoity-toity British accent doesn’t hurt. (He grew up in the densely-populated Jewish community of Manchester, England but now resides in Israel.) But obviously, more than that, it’s the content that makes it quality.

As we meander through the gorilla exhibit, Slifkin slips into his views on evolution, specifically that it’s not as incompatible with religion as some people might think. An Orthodox rabbi, Slifkin enjoys debunking the centuries-old myth that evolution and Judaism don’t jive. He says that with certain key modifications, evolution is an acceptable method of understanding how God might have created the world. “Evolution is a very elegant way of creating an incredibly diverse animal world,” he says. The issue is so important to him that he’s written an entire book on the subject, aptly entitled The Science of Torah. And it’s that book that will change Slifkin’s life forever.

* * *

It was just a day shy of Yom Kippur 2004 when the posters were plastered up in synagogues and on telephone poles in Jerusalem’s observant neighborhoods of Mea Shearim and Bayit Vegan. Billed as a “Public Notice” three respected Israeli rabbis (one of which couldn’t even read English) were publicly bashing Slifkin, asking him to “burn all his writings.” The rabbis cited three books in particular (The Science of Torah, Mysterious Creatures, and The Camel, the Hare and the Hyrax) that dealt with, among other interesting topics, the theory of evolution. Not only were they placing a ban on the sale and purchase of the books, but they were calling Slifkin a heretic and asked him to apologize.

The ban surprised the affable Slifkin who had already gone to the trouble of finding a number of respected fellow rabbis to write letters of approbation at the beginning of the books, a kind of kosher seal of approval to anyone who may come down the line and question the books’ veracity.

And so, despite the best efforts of those against Slifkin, the ban gained little traction. That is until this January when they got 21 more rabbinic authorities (from both Israel and America) to join in on the ban of Slifkin’s books.

Calling the contents of the books “hair raising,” the right-wing Hebrew newspaper Ya’ated Ne’eman picked up on the story and created a frenzy. You couldn’t surf the Internet without stumbling upon a Jewish blog that wasn’t covering the controversy. Newspapers covering the ban — including the Forward and even the New York Times — portrayed Slifkin, for better or for worse, to a latter-day Galileo.

Under pressure from the religious right, Targum Press stopped printing Slifkin’s books. And, not surprisingly, copies showed up on eBay for upwards of $300.

As for Slifkin himself, well, the ban hit him pretty hard. A bright and optimistic Gen-Xer, Slifkin was shocked at the outrage and sheer vitriol to his work. He was worried what the effect would be on his wife and two small children. And after one of the Israeli seminaries in which he lectured refused to keep him on staff, he began to wonder if he would be blackballed in the Orthodox community.

Not interested in becoming the poster child for evolution education, Slifkin tries to sidestep out of the spotlight and rarely speaks about the ban. “I was astonished and shaken,” is all Slifkin will say of those painful months earlier this year.

What Slifkin may lack in PR damage control is more than made up for by Yitzchok Adlerstein, a Los Angeles rabbi who’s become the go-to-guy for the media when it’s looking for a sane Orthodox voice for comment. (He was the one rabbi who spoke out against the cult-like actions of the Kabbalah Centre in a recent 20/20 segment.) “My reaction to the ban was that of disappointment, disbelief, and bewilderment,” says Adlerstein, the Chair of Jewish Law and Ethics at Loyola Law School and one of eight Torah authorities who signed off on Slifkin’s books before they were published. “I seriously believed the book to be one of the finest tools available to calm the increasingly troubled waters by thinking people within the Orthodox community, a community I inhabit myself.”

Adlerstein is also quick to point out that the impetus for the ban came from outside of America. “Their reaction was a way to protect the gorgeously beautiful complete faith of a community in Israel that serves God without the static of cultural interference,” he explains. “It is a community that is not used to answering questions from the outside.

* * *

Slifkin’s discussion of evolution was, quite obviously, not the first time the concept caused a stir. It would seem that ever since the beginning of time, whenever you personally believe that actually may be, people have had problems coming to grips with the theory of evolution. Less than a century after Charles Darwin published his seminal work on evolution, The Origin of Species, evolution walked out on the main stage of the American political consciousness. On a broiling summer day in 1925, inside a small Tennessee courtroom (and outside of it, when the judge moved the whole trial outdoors to accommodate the large crowds and sweltering heat inside), that William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow judicially duked it out over whether you could ban the teaching of evolution in schools.

Believe it or not, the whole scene was a well-orchestrated publicity stunt. Bryan had successfully lobbied for the passage of a law banning the teaching of evolution. The American Civil Liberties Union promptly placed an ad in Tennessee newspapers, offering to pay the legal fees of the first teacher willing to flaunt the law. Looking for a little publicity, the residents of Dayton, Tennessee convinced John T. Scopes (who was not, as it turns out, a science teacher — he was the high school football coach) to take up the offer.

In the 80 years since Scopes was convicted (his conviction was later set aside on a technicality — the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the law itself), the tightly orchestrated show trial in Dayton has, pardon the phrase, evolved into a chaotic mess of lawsuits from one side of the country to the other. Arguably the highest profile case in recent memory involved the school system of Kansas deleting evolution from its curriculum. That invited a hailstorm of criticism, got several school board members booted out of office and, in the words of some, made Kansas an educational laughing stock.

The maelstrom finally found its way into Georgia when Cobb County, the conservative metro area that sent Newt Gingrich to be Speaker of the House, entered the evolution debate. Some 2,300 of its parents muscled a sticker onto the textbooks of its school system.

“This textbook contains material on evolution,” read the disclaimer affixed to each science book. “Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”

Though it was drafted in consultation with the school board’s lawyers, it sparked protests from parents opposed to public schools “promoting religious dogma,” in the words of attorney Michael Manley, who represented anti-sticker parents. They filed suit against the county.

In January, a federal judge agreed that the stickers were unconstitutional. In his opinion, Judge Clarence Cooper wrote, “An informed, reasonable observer would interpret the sticker to convey a message of endorsement of religion. It sends a message to those who oppose evolution for religious reasons that they are favored members of the political community ... and to those who believe in evolution that they are political outsiders.”

Having already spent $74,000 to defend the case, Cobb County nevertheless has chosen to appeal the ruling with their attorney working pro bono from here on out. Calling the decision an “unnecessary judicial intrusion into local control of schools,” the board voted 5-2 to appeal. That surprised the lead plaintiff, parent Jeffrey Selman. “They’re ludicrous,” says Selman. “They’re ignoring the ruling.”

Unaffiliated with any local synagogue, Selman has endured critics who’ve called him anti-religious. “I’m not against anybody’s religion,” argues Selman, himself Jewish. “I want everybody to practice what they believe. I practice [Judaism] the way I want to.”

Emily Cohen, a student at Campbell High in Cobb County, called the whole affair “somewhat offensive,” adding, “They kind of say, ‘consider it critically,’ as if we wouldn’t have.”

And while the ongoing controversy in Cobb County has attracted national attention and polarized forces on both sides (a squadron of Jewish groups filed “friend of the court” briefs in the case, most arguing against the stickers), elsewhere in Atlanta there are Jews saying that we can all just get along — sort of.

Rabbi Kalmen Rosenbaum, principal of Torah Day School of Atlanta, doesn’t have a problem with evolution being taught at his school. He doesn’t have a problem, that is, as long as it is taught within the framework of Torah. “At our school we give the students the opportunity to view both ends of the spectrum,” he says. “Evolution is taught as a theory. The Torah teaches us ‘who’ and science attempts to teach the theories of ‘how’. There’s not necessarily a conflict per se.”

Indeed, Slifkin was not the first religious Jew to suggest the 33 Biblical verses on creation and the concept of evolution can coexist. Numerous books have already been written on the subject of harmonizing Jewish beliefs with evolution: Yeah, God created the world in seven days but a Biblical “day” doesn’t necessarily translate to what we know as a 24 hour period. Each day could’ve been a million years. Another common approach: The Torah says that humans have been around on planet earth for 5765 years. But maybe there were other “planets” with other creatures that existed.

But not everyone sees it like Rosenbaum. “All people who possess the conviction that it is wrong to steal, or to murder, or to mate with close relatives, or to cheat on one’s spouse; all who see virtue in generosity, civility, altruism or kindness; all, for that matter, who choose to wear clothes, believe — against the dictates of Darwinism — that the human realm is qualitatively different from the animal,” says Rabbi Avi Shafran from the Agudath Israel, a right wing Jewish lobbying group.

“Either we humans are just another evolutionary development, leaving words like ‘right,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘good’ and ‘bad’ without any real meaning, or we are answerable, as most of us feel deeply we are, to something higher.”

Shafran’s lobbying efforts may actually be working. In August, President Bush essentially endorsed what Shafran and, for that matter, Christian conservatives have been asking him to do for a long time: to give equal standing in the nation’s schools to the theory of “intelligent design,” the belief that life forms are so complex that their creation can’t be explained by Darwinian evolutionary theory alone, but rather points to intentional creation, presumably divine.

* * *

As we leave the ape area of the zoo, Slifkin tells me about an absurd movement on the rise to give equal rights for gorillas. As he explains it, this group wants gorillas to have the same inalienable rights as humans, claiming that if given free choice that’s what the animals would want. Slifkin immediately casts aside the odd theory which would include allowing gorillas to vote in our elections. “We should be kind to animals not because of animal rights, but because we have a moral responsibility to take care of them,” he explains. “What makes us unique from animals is our souls, not our bodies. A gorilla doesn’t make moral choices between good and evil.”

Slifkin leads me around the zoo like a kid in a candy store. Yet, all the while, he regales me in stories like a war veteran just back from the battlefield. “When I was in Kenya, I rode on the back of a big 150-year-old turtle.”

As we meander around the reptile room, Slifkin spots a tarantula and smiles fondly. “I used to have a tarantula named Big Bob,” he says, almost like he was catching a glimpse of an old friend.

When I ask him how he got one, he looks at me quizzically, as if the answer is blatantly obvious. “At a pet store, of course,” he replies.

As if a tarantula isn’t enough, he then informs me of another exotic species-turned-pet. “I used to keep pet iguanas in yeshiva,” he says straight-faced, assuming that the sheer commonality of it is boring. “I used to walk around with it on my head.”

Dangerous reptile as head-covering aside, Slifkin is literally a walking encyclopedia of the animal kingdom. It’s as if he’s applying to be a contestant on an animal trivia game show, eager to show off his wide-ranging knowledge of the strangest things.

“Did you know that salamanders can survive a fire?” he asks as we pass by the reptile. He then goes into a classic Slifkin riff — one where he references a Harry Potter book that talks about a fire-surviving amphibian. It’s his vast cache of pop-culture references that make you wonder if he’s a rabbi or a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Shortly after telling me that his favorite movie is Jurassic Park, he laments the warped vision of animals in modern cinema. “We have a skewed version of hippopotami ever since Disney had dancing hippos in Fantasia.”

As we leave the zoo, Slifkin reaches into his backpack for a snack. He says he recently partook of a dinner where pheasants and locusts were part of the menu. It was a bizarre evening where other animal-obsessed rabbis like Slifkin were served odd creatures that the Torah considers kosher, but most people still don’t eat. To a guest, it appeared more like an episode of Fear Factor than an educational outing.

It was a fun occasion, something Slifkin is having more of these days. Time has begun to heal some of his wounds. Since the ban earlier this year, a new publisher has stepped up and decided to distribute the controversial books. “The case can be made that the days of effective banning are long gone,” explains Gil Student, who spearheaded Slifkin’s new publishing effort. “In today’s world of individuality, curious people will read what they want regardless of what is labeled ‘kosher’ and ‘non-kosher.’ Banning books only serves to make them more appealing to those who are looking for interesting reading.” The company estimates they have already done a year’s worth of business in just the first month.

* * *

Later that day, after the field trip to the zoo, Slifkin is speaking at a local synagogue to a group of about 50 who’ve come to hear the boy genius. In front of the audience, you can tell Slifkin feels comfortable in his skin. Quoting Biblical verses by heart, he exudes surprising confidence behind the pulpit. He has professor-like tendencies, asking the group questions and peppering his lecture with jokes and stories.

Throughout, he draws inspiration for life lessons from the animal kingdom. “The power of the lion described in Scripture does not only refer to its brute force, but, more importantly to control its aggression and live in groups.” Slifkin uses this bit of arcane information to teach us that, as humans, we should try to harness our own wild emotions.

Slifkin spends much of the lecture debunking Biblical myths — he contends the flood, for example, did not encompass the whole earth; that Aaron’s staff turned into a crocodile, not a snake.

He goes on to use ants to illustrate the wonders of God’s creation. “Each ant in a colony serves a different function,” he explains. “There are even ants that are suicide bombers, killing themselves to save the colony.” He pauses for effect. “Socialism really does work. Marx just had the wrong species.”

As the lecture comes to a close and people exit, Slifkin shows me a copy of his latest work, an intricate and complex book about evolution and mysterious creatures mentioned in the Talmud. It’s one of his banned books that’s now selling like hot-cakes. A bit of a mysterious creature himself, Slifkin’s high-brow book sports a fire-breathing dragon on its cover. Harry Potter would be proud.


-- Bradford R. Pilcher contributed to this report.

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What Bush Knew: More Evidence That He Deliberately Misled

thinkprogress.org
What Bush Knew: More Evidence That He Deliberately Misled

Murray Waas, writing in the National Journal, breaks new information regarding the level of knowledge President Bush had prior to the Iraq war about the supposed Iraq/al Qaeda link:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The information, which was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the “President’s Daily Brief,” corresponds with the accounts of two former White House counterterrorism advisers:

“One week after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, White House counterterrorism director Paul Kurtz wrote in a memo to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that no ‘compelling case’ existed for Iraq’s involvement in the attacks and that links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government were weak.” [Washington Post, 7/23/04]

According to the 9/11 Commission report, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Richard Clarke’s office sent a memo to the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, at the President’s direction, concluding that “only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda…Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime.” [9-11 Commission Report, p.334]

This information did not prevent Bush and Cheney from presenting the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda as an undisputed fact.

BUSH: “And I also mentioned the fact that there is a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The war on terror, Iraq is a part on the war on terror.” [10/14/02]

CHENEY: “There is also a grave danger that al Qaeda or other terrorists will join with outlaw regimes that have these weapons to attack their common enemy, the United States of America. That is why confronting the threat posed by Iraq is not a distraction from the war on terror.” [12/2/02]

Despite the risk of being labeled “dishonest and reprehensible,” this appears to be strong evidence that Bush and Cheney misled us.

For a more thorough debunking of the Bush administration’s pre-war statements, see this memo
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/atf/cf/%7B65464111-BB20-4C7D-B1C9-0B033DD31B63%7D/PRE-WAR_INTELLIGENCE.PDF
recently authored by former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham and American Progress President and CEO John Podesta.

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Heckuva Job

Heckuva Job.

The Department of Homeland Security names FEMA’s response to Katrina one of the top FEMA “accomplishments” of 2005.

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64%

64%

Percentage of Americans who believe the Bush administration “generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends.”

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Protesters arrested near Bush ranch

Reuters

Protesters arrested near Bush ranch

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - A dozen Iraq war protesters were arrested on Wednesday as they tested a new ban on camping and parking on roads near President George W. Bush's Texas ranch where he is spending the Thanksgiving holiday.

The demonstration was timed to coincide with Bush's break at his 1,600-acre (650-hectare) spread and the arrival of the accompanying White House media entourage.

The group included Dede Miller, the sister of anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan whose son was killed in Iraq and who became an icon for the peace movement after her 26-day vigil outside Bush's ranch in the summer. Sheehan was scheduled to arrive in Crawford on Friday.

McLennan County sheriff's deputies warned the protesters -- who had pitched tents by the roadside -- and then arrested them for trespassing.

After hundreds of demonstrators erected a tent city during Sheehan's August protest, the county banned camping, parking and sewage receptacles along roads surrounding Bush's ranch, citing health and safety concerns.

Bush arrived on Tuesday night for a six-day visit. He will spend Thanksgiving on Thursday with family, including his parents, former President George Bush and wife Barbara, as well as his twin daughters Jenna and Barbara.

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Big Oil 'Participation' at Issue

washingtonpost.com
Big Oil 'Participation' at Issue
Definitions Cited in Dispute Over Roles in Energy Task Force

By Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writer

It all depends how you define the word "participate."

While that may seem as silly as bickering over the definition of the word "is," the implications for some oil company executives who testified at a Senate hearing could be significant. Based on how the word is parsed, some executives either told the truth or did not when they were asked about their "participation" in the 2001 energy task force headed by Vice President Cheney.

The dispute stems from a question raised by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). At a hearing two weeks ago, he asked five oil executives whether they or representatives of their companies participated in meetings with Cheney's energy task force.

The chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co. and Chevron Corp. answered no. The president of Shell Oil Co. said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.

The Bush administration has refused to identify who participated in the task force meetings. But The Washington Post reported last week that a White House document shows that in 2001, officials from Exxon Mobil, Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil and BP America met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

Yesterday, Marnie Funk, a spokeswoman for the GOP staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, one of the two panels that convened the hearing, said its lawyers had reached a preliminary conclusion: Based on a court decision in which two groups unsuccessfully challenged the secrecy of the Cheney task force, Funk said the executives appeared to be telling the truth.

"What we simply determined was that the definition of 'participation' was something litigated, and what the court concluded was that attending meetings, and even making presentations, did not rise to the level of fully participating," Funk said.

Lautenberg sees it differently, and disputes the GOP interpretation of the court decision. He also said Republicans are incorrectly interpreting his question.

"I think we're getting down to almost a silly discussion," Lautenberg said.

Lautenberg said that when he asked the question, he was thinking of the word "participation" in broad terms. Here's his definition: "If you're doing anything more than breathing in the room when you're there. Even if you're a silent observer."

The senator has asked the Justice Department to look into the matter.

Funk said that the GOP staff's findings have given "considerable comfort" to Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), the chairman of the energy panel. Funk said Domenici is reserving final judgment until after he has reviewed the written clarification that he and the panel's ranking Democrat, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), have asked the oil companies to submit.

Yesterday, Exxon released a response to the senators, reiterating its position that its chief executive, Lee R. Raymond, testified accurately. The statement said the company had not "been a participant on the Task Force and no representative of ExxonMobil attended any meeting of the Task Force."

The statement went on to say that on Feb. 14, 2001, a 45-minute meeting took place with "an administration official" at Exxon Mobil's request. The company "provided information on the global energy supply and demand situation and steps ExxonMobil was taking to meet the world's growing energy needs."

Chevron recently submitted a statement saying that its employees had not participated in meetings with the task force. But the company said it sent a letter to President Bush outlining its position on energy policies.

ConocoPhillips has said its chief executive was appointed when Conoco and Phillips merged in 2002 and was unaware that Conoco officials had met with task force staff.

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Bitter debate on Iraq 'disturbing': Army general

Reuters
Bitter debate on Iraq 'disturbing': Army general

By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The bitter battle in Washington over whether to withdraw U.S. troops quickly from Iraq is disturbing but has not damaged U.S. military morale, a senior American Army general in Baghdad said on Tuesday.

"A precipitous pullout, I believe, would be destabilizing," Lt. Gen. John Vines, the second-ranking U.S. commander there, told Pentagon reporters in a teleconference from Iraq. He refused to set any timetable.

"Of course the debate and the bitterness is disturbing. But, after all, we are a democracy, and that is what democracy is about ... people will have differences of opinion," Vines said.

"Certainly, soldiers are concerned about whether or not they enjoy the support of not only their elected representatives but the people. And they know that they have their support," Vines replied when pressed about morale among the 155,000 American troops in Iraq.

Vines, who commands the multinational corps of U.S.-led foreign troops in Iraq, declined to be drawn into the debate over a proposal by Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania that all of the troops be withdrawn within six months.

That call, issued last week by the decorated retired Marine and longtime supporter of the military, sparked a vitriolic war of words in the U.S. Congress, with some Republicans questioning Murtha's patriotism, at a time when President George W. Bush has suffered declining popularity over the war in Iraq.

Vines said any recommendation from U.S. commanders in Iraq to begin withdrawing forces would be made based on the security situation and not on political considerations.

"I'm not going to get into a timetable. It will be driven by conditions on the ground," he said.

CIVILIAN DEATHS

Vines expressed regret over an incident on Monday in which U.S. troops opened fire on a crowded minivan north of Baghdad, killing at least three civilians, including a child. But he said the military would not make any changes in its "rules of engagement" that might endanger troops.

"The loss of any innocent life, indeed any life, is tragic," Vines said. "What we must never do is deprive a soldier in harm's way the ability to protect himself and his fellow soldiers."

How will Americans know, Vines was asked by reporters, that any recommendation by commanders to leave Iraq is based on military judgment rather than political questions over Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and his subsequent handling of the war?

"I know that our recommendations will be based on conditions here in-country. They will not be based on the things that you allude to," Vines said.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said U.S. military commanders in Iraq are mindful that the very presence of American forces may fuel insurgent violence in parts of that country, adding that this concern factored into decisions about future U.S. force levels.

The intensifying debate at home about the future of U.S. troops in Iraq will not play a role in the decisions being made about future force levels, Di Rita added.

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