In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard.

There's a lot of good people working hard

I work with Director Mueller of the FBI; comes in my office when I'm in Washington every morning, talking about how to protect us. There's a lot of really good people working hard to do so.

It's hard work. But, again, I want to tell the American people, we're doing everything we can at home, but you better have a president who chases these terrorists down and bring them to justice before they hurt us again.

...because Tommy Franks did such a great job in planning the operation, we moved rapidly, and a lot of the Baathists and Saddam loyalists laid down their arms and disappeared. I thought they would stay and fight, but they didn't. And now we're fighting them now. And it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work.

It is hard work. It is hard work to go from a tyranny to a democracy. It's hard work to go from a place where people get their hands cut off, or executed, to a place where people are free.

I think about Missy Johnson. She's a fantastic lady I met in Charlotte, North Carolina. She and her son Bryan, they came to see me. Her husband PJ got killed. He'd been in Afghanistan, went to Iraq. You know, it's hard work to try to love her as best as I can, knowing full well that the decision I made caused her loved one to be in harm's way.

There are 100,000 troops trained, police, guard, special units, border patrol. There's going to be 125,000 trained by the end of this year. Yes, we're getting the job done. It's hard work.

We've done a lot of hard work together over the last three and a half years.

In October of 1986, Rove was working for Republican Bill Clements in his race against then-Gov. Mark White. A few days before the candidates were to debate, Rove discovered a listening device that had been planted behind a needlepoint picture of an elephant hanging on his wall. The FBI investigated. Accusations and counteraccusations were made. But no charges were ever brought, and the matter slowly dissipated, amid general speculation that Rove had planted the bug himself.

The latest dirty trick took place earlier this month, when a videotape was apparently taken from the offices of Bush media advisor Mark McKinnon. The tape, along with copies of other debate briefing materials, was then mailed to the office of Gore ally, lobbyist, and former U.S. Rep. Thomas Downey, where it arrived on Sept. 13. Only a handful of Bush campaign staffers had access to the materials, including Rove, McKinnon, communications director Karen Hughes, campaign manager Joe Allbaugh, campaign chairman Don Evans, and policy director Josh Bolten.

Although no suspects have been named, the FBI, which is investigating the matter, has told several media outlets that it believes the tape was sent by someone inside the Bush camp, presumably in an attempt to entrap the Gore campaign. And given Rove's history, which includes more than a passing familiarity with dirty tricks, many pundits believe Rove is the chief suspect. Rove did not return calls from the Chronicle.

The Washington state headquarters for the president's re-election campaign was broken into last night, and police are investigating the theft of three computers from the Bellevue office.

Missing are laptop computers used by the campaign's executive director, the head of the get-out-the-vote effort and one that had been set for delivery to the campaign's Southwest Washington field director, said Jon Seaton, executive director of the state's George W. Bush campaign.

Seaton said data on the computers was backed up and available elsewhere. But, he said, the loss creates a potential security breach about the campaign's so-called 72-hour plan, the Bush get-out-the-vote effort.

"Obviously there's some stuff there we wouldn't want our opposition getting their hands on," Seaton said.

The campaign has spoken about the importance of the 72-hour plan in swing states across the country. Bush campaign officials say it could make the difference in a close election if Republicans are able to make sure their voters get to a polling place on election day and don't sit home as many did four years ago.

[snip]

State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance called it a "Watergate-style break in" and said he suspects Democrats are behind it.

[snip]

"To me there is some scary stuff going on from liberal radicals whose Bush hatred is out of control," Vance said.

Viola Gregg Liuzzo is not a name that rings many bells anymore.

Mrs. Liuzzo, a white woman who lived in Detroit, was 39 years old, married and the mother of five when she decided, early in 1965, to head south to volunteer her services in the brutal struggle to get blacks the right to vote. She told her husband it was something she just had to do.

She participated in the now legendary march along Route 80, the Jefferson Davis Highway, from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. The march was led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When it was over, Mrs. Liuzzo offered to drive some of the marchers back to Selma in her two-year-old Oldsmobile.

On the return trip to Montgomery on the night of March 25, Mrs. Liuzzo was accompanied only by a black teenager. On a desolate stretch of the highway, they were overtaken by a car filled with enraged Ku Klux Klansmen and an undercover F.B.I. agent. Mrs. Liuzzo was shot in the face and killed. The car ended up in a ditch. The teenager survived by pretending he was dead.

[snip]

Now, in the 2004 presidential election, we're already seeing widespread vote-suppression efforts, from the failed attempt by the Jeb Bush administration to use bogus, biased lists of alleged felons to efforts in many parts of the country to prevent the registration of new voters, especially African-Americans.

The people trampling on voting rights today are following the same ugly tradition that resulted in the disenfranchisement of millions of black Americans and led to the murder of Viola Liuzzo and others.

At one time it was the Democratic Party that produced the grandmasters in the art of disenfranchisement. Now that torch has been passed to the Republicans. President Bush could put a stop to it, but so far he's chosen not to.

"Last night about 40 minutes into the debate my son, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne, called from his barracks room. He let me know Kerry had just earned 5 votes from him and 4 other troops watching the debate in his room. He got back from Iraq in April. He was at a FOB just south of Fallujah when he was there."

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - An audiotape purportedly released by Osama bin Laden’s deputy calls for attacks on U.S. and British interests everywhere, according to a broadcast Friday by Al-Jazeera television.

The Arab station said the speaker on the tape was Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian-born surgeon and the closest aide to the al-Qaida terrorist group leader. The U.S. government has offered up to $25 million for information leading to his killing or capture.

It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the recording or determine when it was taped. In Washington, a U.S. official said the CIA was aware of the tape and was looking at it.

The tape emerged one day after a campaign debate between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., discussed the U.S. war on terror and the search for bin Laden.

The voice sounded like past recordings of al-Zawahri, but it also made an unusual reference to the possibility that al-Qaida’s top leaders were not invincible.

John: Ed, thank you so much. I know the weather's been rough down there. You know these men well. You served as Skull and Bones pledge master for both. In tomorrow night's debate, how do you see things going?

Ed [Helms]: John two men will take the stage and shake hands. I believe in an attempt to shed his cautious image, the senator will wear a cape and punctuate every sentence with the word "be-otch." The president, meanwhile, buffering his image as a strong leader, will more than likely squeeze the juice out of an orange with his bicep. He will then lick this juice. People will find it disturbing, yet erotic. And that's when the fucking starts.

John: Alright, Ed. I'm sorry. Let me just jump in here real quick. None of that is going to happen.

Ed: I know, John. Just trying to have a little imagination is fun...

John: Can you seriously talk a little about what's really going to happen at the debates tomorrow?

Ed: Okay. This is the report I'm going to file:

The two candidates exchanged poin barbs about our Iraq policy and the war on terror. Senator Kerry made strides in shedding what some of his analysts call a "patrician image" yadda yadda yadda. But the president with his plain-spoken words was more effective in communicating his vision ...

John: Alright, Ed. I'm sorry. You've written your report as though it's already happened.

Ed: Yeah. I wrote it yesterday.

John: You write your stories in advance and then put it in the past tense?

Ed: Yeah. We all do. That's ... all the reporters do that.

John: Why?

Ed: We write the narratives in advance, based on conventional wisdom and then whatever happens, we make it fit that storyline.

John: Why?

Ed: We're lazy? Lazy thinkers?

John: But what happens if actual news happens?

Ed: Well, that's what bloggers are for.

John: Alright, Ed. Why are you even bothering to watch the debate then?

Ed: To see if someone sighs or sweats, because that could cost someone the election, bee-otch!

Texas marriage records:
BUSH GEORGE W 31
WELCH LAURA L 31
11/5/1977
MIDLAND 137552

BUSH GEORGE W 23
HILL SUE E 21
12/27/1970
EL PASO 138376

It's not just Mr. Bush's self-deification that separates him from the likes of Lincoln, however; it's his chosen fashion of Christianity. The president didn't revive the word "crusade" idly in the fall of 2001. His view of faith as a Manichaean scheme of blacks and whites to be acted out in a perpetual war against evil is synergistic with the violent poetics of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and Mel Gibson's cinematic bloodfest. The majority of Christian Americans may not agree with this apocalyptic worldview, but there's a big market for it. A Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as "the base."

"we see issues in less simplistic terms than the president. The president speaks in terms that are so simple on the most complex issues that it sort of leaves you with your mouth hanging open,"

"It is one of the slickest political machines that I've seen in my lifetime, and I've been in politics for over 50 years," she said. "I think it is without question the most difficult (to counter) when it comes to the misrepresentation of facts."

"Here we are in a war where we have committed $200 billion, shortchanged education, shortchanged health care, shortchanged job training, and the reason we were told we had to go to war was because (Iraq was) a threat to the safety and security of America.

"But now it turns out, with the simplistic responses that George Bush gives, that we were there to get rid of a bad man, Saddam Hussein. There's no discussion about what he's going to do about all of the other bad men in the world.

"But if he can answer the questions with those simple little terms, he has avoided answering the tough questions, like how many more men and women will it take? How much more money? What is the Pentagon telling you? And why don't you believe the CIA reports you're getting now that this thing doesn't look solvable?"

"If we in this country have become the kind of people that we don't want to know anything more than some simplistic answer or non-answer to questions, then God help us," she said. "If we want to elect people to public office whose whole purpose and goal is to avoid controversy and avoid answering the tough questions about government, then we're in terrible shape."

“This administration will use whatever they can – they will try to hijack that legacy, they will pretend that Mr Bush is the reincarnation of my father. I don’t feel terribly happy about that; I certainly don’t remember Bush being at any Thanksgiving dinners.”

“I don’t know Mr Bush well, but from what I can gather, he’s nothing like my father as a man.”

“The reality of this administration is so ugly that most Americans, even those who are more or less opposed to the administration, really don’t want to come to grips with that.

“This is an administration that has cheated to get into the White House. It’s not something Americans ever want to think about their government. My sense of these people is that they don’t have any respect for the public at large. They have a revolutionary mindset. I think they feel that anything they can do to prevail – lie, cheat, whatever – is justified by their revolutionary aims.”

“If Laura Bush went back and did her homework, she would see that nobody thinks there is a cure around the corner for Alzheimer’s.”

“Diabetes, Parkinson’s and spinal injuries will come first in the search for therapies. It was thought that stem cell research would help Alzheimer’s, but it’s clear other things will come first. Mrs Bush was either uninformed or disingenuous in her comments, but perhaps, with federal funding, we could address the issue properly.”

“September 11 was a huge opportunity for the Bush administration. When you read accounts of insiders who were close to the top of the administration on September 11, it’s shocking. Within hours of this terrible atrocity they were looking for opportunities to take advantage of it. They turned it into a situation where they could attack Saddam, who had nothing to do with September 11. This wasn’t a wake-up call for them.”

We don't yet know who will win the 2004 election, but we know who has lost it. The American news media have been clobbered.

In a year when war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism and looming problems with the federal budget and the nation's health care system cry out for serious debate, the news organizations on which people should be able to depend have been diverted into chasing sham events: a scurrilous and largely inaccurate attack on the Vietnam service of John Kerry and a forged document charging President Bush with disobeying an order for an Air National Guard physical.

[snip]

The common feature -- and the disturbing fact -- is that none of these damaging failures would have occurred had senior journalists not been blind to the fact that the standards in their organizations were being fatally compromised.

We need to be asking why this collapse has taken place.

[snip]

When the Internet opened the door to scores of "journalists" who had no allegiance at all to the skeptical and self-disciplined ethic of professional news gathering, the bars were already down in many old-line media organizations. That is how it happened that old pros such as Dan Rather and former New York Times editor Howell Raines got caught up in this fevered atmosphere and let their standards slip.

You Say Yusuf, I Say Youssouf...

The Cat Stevens incident has its origins in a spelling mistake
By SALLY B. DONNELLY

The Yusuf Islam incident earlier this week, in which the former Cat Stevens was denied entry into the U.S. when federal officials determined he was on the government's "no-fly" antiterror list, started with a simple spelling error. According to aviation sources with access to the list, there is no Yusuf Islam on the no-fly registry, though there is a "Youssouf Islam." The incorrect name was added to the register this summer, but because Islam's name is spelled "Yusuf" on his British passport, he was allowed to board a plane in London bound for the U.S. The Transportation Safety Administration alleges that Islam has links to terrorist groups, which he has denied; British foreign minister Jack Straw said the TSA action "should never have been taken."

The incident points up some of the real problems facing security personnel as they try to enforce the "no-fly" list. One issue is spelling; many foreign names have several different transliterations into English. And the sheer size of the list is daunting; thousands of names have been added in the last couple months, says one government official, bringing the total up to more than 19,000 names to look out for. That makes it difficult for airlines and government agencies to check all passengers. Within the past six months, several people on the no fly list have been mistakenly allowed to fly.

Still, the TSA is learning. It recently acknowledged that a Federal Air Marshall, unable to fly for weeks when his name was mistakenly put on the "no-fly" list, was in fact not a threat, and removed his name from the list.

Viewers of late-night comedy programs, especially The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on the cable channel Comedy Central, are more likely to know the issue positions and backgrounds of presidential candidates than people who do not watch late-night comedy, the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey shows.

Polling conducted between July 15 and Sept. 19 among 19,013 adults showed that on a six-item political knowledge test people who did not watch any late-night comedy programs in the past week answered 2.62 items correctly, while viewers of Late Night with David Letterman on CBS answered 2.91, viewers of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno answered 2.95, and viewers of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart answered 3.59 items correctly. That meant there was a difference of 16 percentage points between Daily Show viewers and people who did not watch any late-night programming.

The campaign knowledge test covered such topics as which candidate favors allowing workers to invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market, the income range at which John Kerry would eliminate the Bush tax cut, and which candidate is a former prosecutor.

“In recent years, traditional journalists have been voicing increasing concern that if young people are receiving political information from late-night comedy shows like The Daily Show, they may not be adequately informed on the issues of the day,” said Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, a senior analyst at the Annenberg Public Policy Center who conducted the research. ”This data suggests that these fears may be unsubstantiated. We find no differences in campaign knowledge between young people who watch Leno and Letterman – programs with a lot of political humor in their opening monologues -- and those who do not watch late night. But when looking at young people who watch The Daily Show, we find they score higher on campaign knowledge than young people who do not watch the show, even when education, following politics, party identification, gender, viewing network news, reading the newspaper, watching cable news and getting campaign information on-line are taken into account.”

Earlier, during the Republican convention in New York, a Republican congressman decided to drop his bid for re-election after a blog suggested he was gay.

This past week, bloggers pushed hard on the story about controversial documents uncovered by CBS that spoke to President Bush's National Guard service. Many analysts believe all the talk on Weblogs played a part in forcing CBS to re-examine the issue and ultimately issue a statement.

Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.

According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.

While most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, especially of insurgents, are never reported, so the actual number of Iraqis killed in fighting could be significantly higher.