It is impolitic to say it, (and probably suicidal) but in a very real sense, the answer to the question "is the world better off without Saddam in power?" is no.

9/11 did change everything. It meant that we could not afford to go around willy nilly experimenting with Wilsonian democracy schemes in the mid-east without further endangering Americans by ramping up terrorist recruiting. It meant we needed to be smart and cunning, not blustering loudly with half baked information or "liberating people" without considering the consequences. It meant that creating another failed state crawling with lawless terrorists was the most dangerous thing we could do. But, that is exactly what we did.

Clearly, if we had left Saddam in power and used the excuse of 9/11 to get inspectors back in, we would probably have made more progress against the fight against the Islamic radicals who pose the greatest threat to us. At the very least we wouldn't have been creating more terrorists every single day with our corrupt mismanagement of the occupation.

Saddam was not an imminent or even near term threat. We knew it then and we certainly know it now. If one had asked the American people in the fall of 2002 if they thought it was worth it to "liberate" Iraq if it made Americans less safe, I think we know what the answer would be. We are a good people but we aren't that good. Sadly, it appears that we will have to have that fact demonstrated before many people will understand that this is precisely what we just did.

And those poor schmucks who are over there fighting and dying for this misbegotten war need to believe that they are doing a good deed for their fellow man and protecting their own. I understand that. But, their commander in chief has made a series of terrible, terrible errors and he is setting them up for death right now by manipulating the situation on the ground in order to get elected here at home. It just gets worse and worse.

Two-faced Bush can pretend and lie and prevaricate and mislead all he wants. But, the facts are what they are. He sent American soldiers to die for no good reason. It has resulted in a large number of unnecessary Iraqi deaths in the process and it is creating Anti-American terrorists much faster than they can even kill themselves.

President Bush has been searching vainly for Osama bin Laden for three years now, so I've decided to help him out. I'm traveling through Pakistan and Afghanistan to see whether I can find Osama, bring him back in my luggage and claim that $25 million reward.

So for the last few days, I've been peering into mosques and down village wells, even under mullahs' couches. No luck so far, but I did find something almost as interesting.

I'm talking about the arrangement under which the U.S. cuts Pakistan some slack on nuclear proliferation, in exchange for President Pervez Musharraf's joining aggressively in the hunt for Osama - in the hope of catching him by Nov. 2.

If a nuclear weapon destroys the U.S. Capitol in coming years, it will probably be based in part on Pakistani technology. The biggest challenge to civilization in recent years came not from Osama or Saddam Hussein but from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb. Dr. Khan definitely sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and, officials believe, to several more nations as well.

But, amazingly, eight months after Dr. Khan publicly confessed, we still don't know who the rest of his customers were. Mr. Musharraf acknowledged as much in an interview.

"I can't say surely that we have unearthed everything that he's done, but I think we have unearthed most of what he's done," Mr. Musharraf said. Translated, that means: I'm afraid you're eventually going to find out about other transactions that we're still trying to hide.

American intelligence experts haven't been able to interrogate Dr. Khan, and Mr. Musharraf claims that the U.S. has not even asked to do so. "Let me put the record straight: nobody asked us to be allowed to question him," Mr. Musharraf said.

President Bush apparently did not ask for that direct access at his meeting on Wednesday with Mr. Musharraf, and it's clear that the administration is not pressing the issue. Why? Because Mr. Bush in this election season has another priority: getting Mr. Musharraf to help catch Osama.

President Bush and his surrogates are taking their re-election campaign into dangerous territory. Mr. Bush is running as the man best equipped to keep America safe from terrorists - that was to be expected. We did not, however, anticipate that those on the Bush team would dare to argue that a vote for John Kerry would be a vote for Al Qaeda. Yet that is the message they are delivering - with a repetition that makes it clear this is an organized effort to paint the Democratic candidate as a friend to terrorists.

[snip]

This is despicable politics. It's not just polarizing - it also undermines the efforts of the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency to combat terrorists in America. Every time a member of the Bush administration suggests that Islamic extremists want to stage an attack before the election to sway the results in November, it causes patriotic Americans who do not intend to vote for the president to wonder whether the entire antiterrorism effort has been kidnapped and turned into part of the Bush re-election campaign.

[Note from me: We don't have to wonder. We know. And we've known since 9/11/2001. And frankly, this is a taste of what people like me have to look foward too once Diebold and Glenda Hood and the now-cowed CBS and Fox News and everyone else still carrying water for this bunch of thugs succeeds in propping him up for at least another four years (because why should anyone care about the Constitution at this point?).]

[snip]

The general instinct of Americans is to play fair. That is why, even though terrorists struck the United States during President Bush's watch, the Democrats have not run a campaign that blames him for allowing the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to be attacked.

The Islamic militant group that claimed responsibility for the Madrid train bombings has warned that its next targets could be Japan, Italy, Britain or Australia, an Arabic newspaper reported on Thursday.

The newspaper, Al Quds al Arabi, which is based in London, said on its Web site that it had received a statement from the group, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, in which the group reiterated its responsibility for bombings, which killed 201 people and wounded more than 1,600...The statement tells Americans that Abu Hafs al-Masri supports the re-election of President George W. Bush.

"We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections," it said.

Addressing Bush, it said: "We know that a heavyweight operation would destroy your government, and this is what we don't want. We are not going to find a bigger idiot than you." The statement said Abu Hafs al-Masri needs what it called Bush's "idiocy and religious fanaticism" because they would "wake up" the Islamic world. Comparing Bush with his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, the statement tells the president, "Actually, there is no difference between you and Kerry, but Kerry will kill our community, while it is unaware, because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish infidelity and present it to the Arab and Islamic community as civilization."

"My inclination was to support the government and the war until proven wrong, and that only came later, as I realized we could not explain the mission, had no exit strategy, and did not seem to be fighting to win."

"Let’s say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in some places you couldn’t because the violence was too great...Well, so be it. Nothing’s perfect in life, so you have an election that’s not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet."

The House passed legislation Thursday that would prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on whether the words "under God" should be stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance.

In a politically and emotionally charged debate six weeks before Election Day, Democrats said majority Republicans were debasing the Constitution to force a vote that could hurt Democrats at the ballot box.

Supporters insisted Congress has always had authority to limit federal court jurisdiction, and the legislation is needed to protect an affirmation of religion that is part of the national heritage.

[Note from me: Interesting how it wasn't part of the national heritage until the LAST era of American witch-hunting, the McCarthy years.]

The bill, which the House approved, 247-173, would prohibit federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from hearing cases involving the pledge and its recitation and would prevent federal courts from striking the words "under God" from the pledge.

How Many US Reps Would Flunk Con Law 101?

Two hundred and forty-seven, apparently.

That's how many members (and I use the term advisedly) of the United States House of Representatives voted for a bill that would, among other things, remove the jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a First Amendment challenge to the pledge of allegiance.

Day One of Con Law. Any law school in the USA. Case 1. Marbury v. Madison. Wherein the U.S. Supreme Court determined that they had the authority to strike down Congressional enactments that violate the U.S. Constitution. It's just the foundation of our system of checks and balances -- that's no reason any of our legislators would know anything about it.

So why shouldn't Congress end every bill with "and federal courts, including the Surpeme Court, shall not have the jurisdiction to consider the constitutionality of this enactment"? That would end judicial review of legislative action entirely. Does anyone other than Bob Bork think they have the power to do that?

Worst of all, a prior version of the bill had excepted the US Supreme Court from the jurisdiction-stripping. While I wouldn't be in favor of any version of this bill, that would at least make constitutional sense -- the lower federal courts are created by Congress, and can be (maybe) barred by Congress from hearing specific issues; the USSC is created by the Constitution and can't have their jurisdiction divested by Congress.

But no, the HORs rushed in with the version of this bill that shows the maximum possible antipathy for horizontal federalism. What a bunch of goddamn idiots.

Standing beside Iraq (news - web sites)'s interim leader, President Bush (news - web sites) contended Thursday that insurgents could "plot and plan attacks elsewhere, in America and other free nations," if the United States pulled out. He said his top commander there has not asked for more troops but if he did, "I'd listen to him."

He cautioned, however, that the election may not come off perfectly. But he assured it will be free and fair, "a giant step" in Iraq's political evolution.

While Bush and Allawi spoke, Kerry campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart said Bush must be "unhinged from reality" to cite a poll suggesting that there are more Iraqis who feel their country is on the right track than there are U.S. voters who feel the same about their own.

Putting aside efforts to control the federal deficit before the elections, Republican and Democratic leaders agreed Wednesday to extend $145 billion worth of tax cuts sought by President Bush without trying to pay for them.

At a House-Senate conference committee, Democratic lawmakers abandoned efforts to pay for the measures by either imposing a surcharge on wealthy families or closing corporate tax shelters.

"I wish we could pay for them, but this is a political problem and we have people up for re-election,'' said Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. "If you have to explain that you voted for these tax cuts because they benefit the middle class and against them because of the deficit, you've got a problem.''

Fearful of being attacked as supporters of higher taxes, Democrats said they would go along with an unpaid five-year extension of the $1,000 child tax credit; a four-year extension of tax breaks intended to reduce the so-called marriage penalty on two-income families; and a six-year extension of a provision that allowed more people to qualify for the lowest tax rate of 10 percent.

Even as they pushed for the cuts that will add to the federal budget deficit, House Republican lawmakers said Wednesday that they hoped to have a vote soon on a constitutional amendment that would require the government to balance the budget by 2010, except if the country is at war.

he mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who was arrested last week for interrupting a speech by Laura Bush is being investigated by the Secret Service for threatening remarks she made about President Bush, a Secret Service official confirmed yesterday.

The woman, Sue Niederer, 55, who lives in Hopewell, N.J., made the comments on a Web site, according to the Secret Service official, who was reached by telephone in Washington. He referred further questions to Special Agent Tony Colgary in the Trenton office of the Secret Service, who did not respond to messages.

Mr. Colgary, however, confirmed the investigation to The Trenton Times.

Mrs. Niederer, reached by phone, said: "I don't want to talk about it. Leave it alone."

The federal officials are apparently investigating comments made by Mrs. Niederer in May on the Web site counterpunch.org, a political newsletter. In the Web postings, she is quoted as saying she "wanted to rip the president's head off" and "shoot him in the groined area."

It is a federal crime to threaten the president, though civil liberties groups are expected to argue the case on free speech grounds.

Mrs. Niederer told The Trenton Times she was upset about her son's death at the time. When asked if she wanted to threaten the president, she answered, "Absolutely not."

Mrs. Niederer is being assisted by a volunteer lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union, according to Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the civil liberties group's New Jersey chapter. Ms. Jacobs, who did not return a voice mail message left at her office late yesterday, told The Associated Press that Mrs. Niederer's comments on the Web site were protected by court precedent from a 1969 case. In Watts v. United States, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a man who three years earlier had claimed at a public gathering that he would "set his sights" on President Lyndon Johnson if he was drafted.

The court ruled that while the nation had an interest in protecting the president, the 1917 statute on which the case was based "must be interpreted with the commands of the First Amendment clearly in mind."

Millions of U.S. citizens, including a disproportionate number of black voters, will be blocked from voting in the Nov. 2 presidential election because of legal barriers, faulty procedures or dirty tricks, according to civil rights and legal experts.

The largest category of those legally disenfranchised consists of almost 5 million former felons who have served prison sentences and been deprived of the right to vote under laws that have roots in the post-Civil War 19th century and were aimed at preventing black Americans from voting.

But millions of other votes in the 2000 presidential election were lost due to clerical and administrative errors while civil rights organizations have cataloged numerous tactics aimed at suppressing black voter turnout. Polls consistently find that black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

[snip]

The commission, in a report earlier this year, said that in Florida, where President Bush (news - web sites) won a bitterly disputed election in 2000 by 537 votes, black voters had been 10 times more likely than non-black voters to have their ballots rejected and were often prevented from voting because their names were erroneously purged from registration lists.

Additionally, Florida is one of 14 states that prohibit ex-felons from voting. Seven percent of the electorate but 16 percent of black voters in that state are disenfranchised.

In other swing states, 4.6 percent of voters in Iowa, but 25 percent of blacks, were disenfranchised in 2000 as ex-felons. In Nevada, it was 4.8 percent of all voters but 17 percent of blacks; in New Mexico, 6.2 percent of all voters but 25 percent of blacks.

In total, 13 percent of all black men are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, according to the Commission on Civil Rights.

"This has a huge effect on elections but also on black communities which see their political clout diluted. No one has yet explained to me how letting ex-felons who have served their sentences into polling booths hurts anyone," said Jessie Allen of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Penda Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project, which seeks to ensure fair multiracial elections, recently reported that registrars across the country often claimed not to have received voter registration forms or rejected them for technical reasons that could have been corrected easily before voting day if the applicant had known there was a problem.

Beasley said that many voters who had registered recently in swing states were likely to find their names would not be on the rolls when they showed up on Election Day.

A London-to-Washington flight was diverted to Maine when it was discovered that passenger Yusuf Islam — formerly known as singer Cat Stevens — was on a government watch list and barred from entering the country.

United Airlines Flight 919 was en route to Dulles International Airport when the match was made Tuesday between a passenger and a name on the watch list, said Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration.

The plane was met by federal agents at Maine’s Bangor International Airport around 3 p.m., Melendez said. A spokesman for the Bangor Police Department told WCSH-TV, an NBC affiliate in Portland, Maine, that Islam was driven to Boston.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy said that Islam "was interviewed and denied admission to the United States on national security grounds.”

He said Islam would be put on the first available flight out of the country Wednesday.

Questioned by FBI, immigration officials
Officials had no details about why the peace activist might be considered a risk to the United States. Islam had visited New York in May for a charity event and to promote a DVD of his 1976 MajiKat tour.

Recently, though, Islam has criticized terrorist acts, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the school seizure in Beslan, Russia, earlier this month that left more than 300 dead, nearly half of them children.

In a statement on his Web site, he wrote, “Crimes against innocent bystanders taken hostage in any circumstance have no foundation whatsoever in the life of Islam and the model example of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Islam issued a statement saying: “No right thinking follower of Islam could possibly condone such an action: The Quran equates the murder of one innocent person with the murder of the whole of humanity.”

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats...We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Bush knows that Laura is his outreach to that swing voter in Michigan who is juggling work and family, who wants to feel that her abortion rights are secure and her kids are safe. Whenever his anti-environment, anti-choice, anti-peace, anti-working-class-women policies obtrude onto her consciousness, all he needs to do is point to Laura; his recent stump speeches promise that if you vote for him, you get four more years of her.

I just heard President Bush taunt John Kerry for suggesting that the US was not safer because Saddam Hussein was deposed, and for saying that the US was in fact less safe because of the chaos in Iraq.

Bush attempted to turn this statement around and suggest that Kerry was preferring dictatorship to democracy.

Iraq, however, does not have a democracy, and cannot possibly have a democracy any time soon because of events such as those described below (and they are only 24 hours' worth)-- that is, because of a failed state and a hot guerrilla war.

Moreover, if Mr. Bush abhors dictatorships so much, why hasn't he overthrown that in China? North Korea? Zimbabwe? Or, say, Egypt? There are enormous numbers of dictatorships in the world. Is the US to overthrow them all? Putin's decision to appoint provincial governors rather than allowing them to be elected (as though Bush should appoint the governors of US states) is a step toward dictatorship. Shall we have a war with Russia over it?

I have a sinking feeling that the American public may like Bush's cynical misuse of Wilsonian idealism precisely because it covers the embarrassment of their having gone to war, killed perhaps 25,000 people, and made a perfect mess of the Persian Gulf region, all out of a kind of paranoia fed by dirty tricks and bad intelligence. And, maybe they have to vote for Bush to cover the embarrassment of having elected him in the first place.

Mr. Bush hopes that by pretending that Mr. Allawi is a real leader of a real government, he can conceal the fact that he has led America into a major strategic defeat.

That's a stark statement, but it's a view shared by almost all independent military and intelligence experts. Put it this way: it's hard to identify any major urban areas outside Kurdistan where the U.S. and its allies exercise effective control. Insurgents operate freely, even in the heart of Baghdad, while coalition forces, however many battles they win, rule only whatever ground they happen to stand on. And efforts to put an Iraqi face on the occupation are self-defeating: as the example of Mr. Allawi shows, any leader who is too closely associated with America becomes tainted in the eyes of the Iraqi public.

Mr. Bush's insistence that he is nonetheless "pleased with the progress" in Iraq - when his own National Intelligence Estimate echoes the grim views of independent experts - would be funny if the reality weren't so grim. Unfortunately, this is no joke: to the delight of Al Qaeda, America's overstretched armed forces are gradually getting chewed up in a losing struggle.

Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"

Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.

They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them -- they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican," yet the Republicans own it all -- the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do you think they've been able to pull that off considering they are a minority? It's because they eat you and me and every other liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the planet.

Look at us -- what a bunch of crybabies. Bush gets a bounce after his convention and you would have thought the Germans had run through Poland again. The Bushies are coming, the Bushies are coming! Yes, they caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they found the frequency in Dan Rather and ran with it. Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY IS FALLING!"

No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don't run -- and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.

Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for president -- Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have. Oprah just gave 300 women a... Pontiac! Did you see any of them frowning and moaning and screaming, "Oh God, NOT a friggin' Pontiac!" Of course not, they were happy. The Pontiacs all had four wheels, an engine and a gas pedal. You want more than that, well, I can't help you. I had a Pontiac once and it lasted a good year. And it was a VERY good year.

My friends, it is time for a reality check.

...is well-known for his far-right connections. In 1994, he acted as an emissary from Ken Starr to lobby both James and Susan McDougal to cooperate with his inquisition. In 1995, he produced a report on ABC that accused Hillary Clinton of perjury, based largely on a doctored video clip of the First Lady. In 1998, he threw a celebratory party for Paula Jones and her attorneys after Bill Clinton was forced to testify before the Lewinsky Grand Jury. In October, 2001, he produced a report that claimed a connection between Saddam and the anthrax attacks on Senator Daschle, et al., as well as being one of the first journalists to detail a link between Muhammed Atta and the government of Iraq; both allegations were subsequently discredited. More recently, Vlasto ran a misleading report suggesting that Howard Dean had covered-up incidents of alleged domestic abuse by one of the state troopers protecting him; it was repudiated as "slime" and denounced by those denizens of the far left, Andrew Sullivan and John Ellis. And now comes word that the tape itself was made by the Nixon Administration, which viewed Kerry as an "enemy".

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

[snip]

The Guard's primary purpose has traditionally been homeland security....There's just one hitch: "During national emergencies, however, the President reserves the right to mobilize the National Guard, putting them in federal duty status."

That's the language Bush has invoked to mobilize half the Guard's 450,000 troops.

[snip]

...the Army has sent thousands of guardsmen overseas and has instituted a "stop-loss" policy that prevents them from being released when their active duty commitments expire.

But these Guard troops aren't being sent to fight the people who attacked the United States in September 2001. They're being sent to—and locked in—Iraq. Some 40,000 members of the Guard are in Iraq today—six times the number of guardsmen sent to Vietnam. Already, more Guard troops have died in Iraq than in Vietnam.

In short, Bush has pulled Guard troops away from their homeland security duties to fight and die in a war unrelated to the service for which they enlisted. A guardsman who did less than he signed up for is coercing other guardsmen to do more than they signed up for.

First, the President has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don’t have to go it alone. It is late; the President must respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.

The President should convene a summit meeting of the world’s major powers and Iraq’s neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly. He should insist that they make good on that U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific, but critical roles, in training Iraqi security personnel and securing Iraq’s borders. He should give other countries a stake in Iraq’s future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq’s oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.

The President should urgently expand the security forces training program inside and outside Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double classroom training time, and require follow-on field training. He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq. He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries. And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers.

Third, the President must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people.
...

Now, the President should look at the whole reconstruction package…draw up a list of high visibility, quick impact projects… and cut through the red tape. He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers, instead of big corporations like Halliburton. He should stop paying companies under investigation for fraud or corruption. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.

Fourth, the President must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee the promised elections can be held next year.

Credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi government that enjoys the support of the Iraqi people and an assembly to write a Constitution that yields a viable power sharing arrangement.

Because Iraqis have no experience holding free and fair elections, the President agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role. Yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. Secretary General and administration officials themselves say the elections are in grave doubt. Because the security situation is so bad… and because not a single country has offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission… the U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff it needs in Iraq to get the job done.

The President should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force. This won’t be easy. But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq should still help protect the U.N. We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened. Otherwise, U.S forces would end up bearing those burdens alone.

For the last year and a half, the pain in my gut screamed at my head write about this war, speak out against the war! But my aching heart said, "You can't undermine your son's confidence in what he is doing." Memories of people scorning and smearing Vietnam vets ran rampant through my mind. You see, my son, 1st Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello Jr., was living his dream. He had fulfilled his dream of becoming a military officer. I thought he was fulfilling his destiny of being a man of purpose, compassion and justice working to make the world a better place.

Now my son is dead. How did he die? According to the Army, he was killed on Aug. 13 in western Iraq when an IED -- an "improvised explosive device" -- detonated near his vehicle. According to me, he was killed by the arrogance and ineptitude of George W. Bush aided by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

I hear people talk about how well-bred John Kerry and Bush were. What constitutes good breeding? What constitutes good character? My father taught me that when you make a mistake the first thing you do is own up to it and the second thing you do is fix it. Bush made mistakes. Did he own up to them right away? No, he waited until recently and admitted to miscalculations.

What Bush needed to do a year or more ago was to go to the United Nations with his hat in his hand and say, "We made a mistake. We thought we were doing the right thing, but now we have a mess that we can't handle. But now we are mired in a country that must be made stable; we don't have the right kind of troops on the ground to do the job right. You folks have the people and the Iraqi people will trust you. Will you help us fix this mistake?"

My son compulsively planned everything. For every Boy Scout outing, every ski trip, he was prepared for any eventuality.

This presidential administration ignored experts who told them that they could win the war, but winning the peace presented the challenge. Did they prepare for that? Of course not -- they were too arrogant to change their direction even as the insurgency increased.

Did our men and women in harm's way have what they needed? No.

Did we have enough tanks on the ground? No.

Could we supply parts as they were needed? No.

This Bush team could be on a poster for the old axiom: People don't plan to fail -- they fail to plan.

Their actions tarnished the reputation and honor of the United States. We are supposed to be better than other countries because we believe in individual rights.

[snip]

My son voted for Bush. If he were alive, would he be voting for him again? I am not sure. His wife and I avoided political discussions with him before and during his deployment. He would have never talked badly about the president, because you do not criticize your commander in chief.

But I sensed frustration in his letters. When he came home, I would have talked to him about it. I can't ask him now. Now I speak for him.

He worried about his men, his stateside friends set to deploy next month. I did not speak out against the war earlier and for this I am angry with myself. My son, a man of incredible honor, died from the actions of dishonorable men. I cannot bring him back. But I speak out now to protect the people still serving, to try to restore honor to our country.

But it provides philanthropic assistance to Vietnam Vets that need it, works with homeless vets. and has worked for twenty years in the effort for a full accounting of POW/MIAs.

In addition, the VVA site says they are "single-handedly leading the fight for judicial review of disabled veterans' claims for benefits. The result: In 1988, Congress passed a law creating the U.S. Court of Veterans appeals. This allowed veterans to appeal VA benefits denials to a court and required VA to obey the rule of law."

Marine Cpl. Travis Friedrichsen, a sandy-haired 21-year-old from Denison, Iowa, used to take Tootsie Rolls and lollipops out of care packages from home and give them to Iraqi children. Not anymore.

"My whole opinion of the people here has changed. There aren't any good people," said Friedrichsen, who says his first instinct now is to scan even youngsters' hands for weapons.

The subtle hostility extends to Iraqi adults, evidence some U.S. troops have second thoughts about their role here.

"We're out here giving our lives for these people," said Sgt. Jesse Jordan, 25, of Grove Hill, Ala. "You'd think they'd show some gratitude. Instead, they don't seem to care."

When new troops rotated into Iraq early in the spring, the military portrayed the second stage of the occupation as a peacekeeping operation focused at least as much on reconstruction as on mopping up rebel resistance.

Even in strongholds of the Sunni insurgency such as Ramadi, a restive provincial capital west of Baghdad, the Marine Corps sent in its units with a mission to win over the people as well as smite the enemy. Commanders worked to instill sympathy for the local population through sensitivity training and exhortations from higher officers.

Marines were ordered to show friendliness through "wave tactics," including waving at people on the street.

Few spend much time waving these days as the hard reality of frequent hit-and-run attacks, roadside bombs and exploding mortars has left plenty of Marines, particularly grunts on the ground, disillusioned and bitter.

Since the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, deployed in the area six months ago, 34 of its members have died and more than a quarter of the 1,000-member unit has been wounded.

Along with the heavy toll, the Marines cite other sources of frustration. High among them is the scarcity of tips from Iraqis on the locations of the roadside bombs that kill and maim Marines, even though the explosives frequently are placed in well-trafficked areas where bomb teams probably would be observed.

CBS News skewed its presidential poll
Dear Bob Schieffer,

There is an additional point about your program this morning that is offensive to me and should be offensive to any fair-minded person, and it was your characterization of the CBS presidential poll results without any relevant mention of the poll's methodology.

You were touting the results of the latest CBS poll and claiming the poll indicates Mr. Bush has a nine-point lead over Mr. Kerry, but you neglected to mention the way in which this poll was skewed to arrive at that result. I would remind you, again, that you are NOT a member of the polling organization or a member of the Bush campaign team and have NO journalistic obligation to defend or assist either entity when it does unethical things, as this particular poll has done.

There is one very important and overlooked statistic in The New York Times/CBS poll showing Bush with a lead.

Deep down in the methodology and questions asked was "who" the person voted for in 2000, Gore or Bush. Now this is very important because Al Gore beat Bush by ONE HALF MILLION votes, so therefore the people being questioned should have reflected that outcome (not the outcome provided by one vote at the US Sup. Ct.), and at the very least an EQUAL number of Gore and Bush supporters should have been polled. But that is NOT what happened; they polled 28 percent who had voted for Gore and 36 percent who had voted for Bush.

So Bush had an ADVANTAGE in this poll before the first numbers were even tallied. OF COURSE Bush would win in a poll where there was a higher percentage of Bush supporters questioned than Gore supporters. If anything, they should have questioned more Gore supporters, but they didn't -- so the poll was SKEWED from the start to favor Bush.

If you want to see more about the poll, click here: http://nytimes.com/politics/ and then click on "How the Poll Was Conducted | Full Results" but click on just the words "Full Results"

Now this is the second poll where I have looked into the methodology and results and found it skewed toward Bush; the other one was the Newsweek poll following the Republican Convention; that poll also favored Bush by questioning FAR more Republicans than Democrats and FAR more people living in RED states than BLUE states; in addition to which, almost HALF of those polled were from military families who famously vote Republican.

In addition, the most recent Gallup poll also questioned more Republicans than Democrats:

...the Gallup Poll, despite its reputation, assumes that this November 40% of those turning out to vote will be Republicans, and only 33% will be Democrat. >>

Likely Voter Sample
Total Sample: .......767
GOP: .................. 305 ...(40%)
Dem: ................... 253 ...(33%)

And yet...


According to John Zogby himself:...
If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000..
So the Democrats have been 39% of the voting populace in both 1996 and 2000, and the GOP has NOT BEEN HIGHER THAN 35% in either of those elections. Yet Gallup trumpets a poll that used a sample that shows a GOP bias of 40% amongst likely voters and 38% amongst registered voters, with a Democratic portion of the sample down to levels they haven't been at since a strong three-way race in 1992?

Folks, unless Karl Rove can discourage the Democratic base into staying home in droves and gets the GOP to come out of the woodwork, there is NO WAY IN HELL that these or any other Gallup Poll is to be taken SERIOUSLY.>>
Read this at: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002806.html


It is becoming sadly apparent that at least some polling outfits (as well as much of the media) appear to be under Republican control.

Sincerely, but in the hope you will open your eyes to the facts,

"L"