Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

So what would it mean if this national security president had never wanted to invade Afghanistan, had never wanted to pursue al-Qaida and its leader Osama bin Laden (who remains on the loose to this day)? What would it mean if Iraq, which contrary to administration claims had no weapons of mass destruction with which to harm America or America’s allies, had been the only target all along? And what would it mean if the case for that war had been conceived out of thin air?

It would mean that we all had all been hoodwinked, including our soldiers who had been sent to die by a president who cared not for bringing to justice those responsible for an attack on American soil, and had cared not for the truth. It would mean a national disgrace.

In fact, the now seven total Downing Street Documents provide increasing evidence that that is exactly what happened.

"Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world’s terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror. This mission isn’t easy, and it will not be accomplished overnight."

Two hours later, Annie Santa-Maria, director of inpatient and residence services, enters her pitch-black office.

"Since the Terri thing, I've had trouble sleeping," she says. "So I just come in. I get e-mail done or read."

Like many of the staff, Santa-Maria is only now processing the Schiavo episode. Her nightmares are the what-ifs. What if one of the bomb threats was real? What if someone had broken past the barricades and given Schiavo a sip of water?

"If they had given her a cup of water, she would have choked to death," Santa-Maria says, her frustration bubbling up. "I just wanted to yell at them, 'We have people die with feeding tubes all the time.' "

Some of her devout Catholic siblings disapproved of her role in the Schiavo case. The Catholic police chief peppered her with questions of ethics and morality. Congress subpoenaed her.

Santa-Maria opens her laptop to a PowerPoint presentation. The working title is "Woodside: A Fortress of Caring." Unlike the television images beamed around the world, the photos depict The Siege from the inside. Police in camouflage patrolling the verdant back grounds, people in wheelchairs pressing against orange mesh fencing, and the signs:

"Feed Terri! For God's Sake."

"Stop the Murder."

"Auschwitz Woodside."

"I would watch volunteers feeding and bathing our patients day and night, and they're out there calling us murderers," she says, her voice piercing the 5 a.m. silence.

Uzbek law enforcement and security ministries implicated by witnesses in the deadly crackdown in the city of Andijon last month have for years received training and equipment from counterterrorism programs run by the United States, according to American officials and Congressional records.

The security aid, provided by several United States agencies, has been intended in part to improve the abilities of soldiers and law enforcement officers from the Uzbek intelligence service, military and Ministry of Internal Affairs, the national law enforcement service. Besides equipment aid, at least hundreds of special forces soldiers and security officers, many of whom fight terrorism, have received training.

Witnesses and American officials say the Uzbek Army, law enforcement and intelligence service were all present at the crackdown. Among them was a special Internal Affairs counterterrorism unit known as Bars, which has two or three members who trained in a course sponsored by the State Department for crisis-response commanders in Louisiana in 2004, according to the State Department.

It is not clear whether these specific officers were present in Andijon, although their unit was. Several United States officials said they had no evidence that any of the hundreds of individual troops or security officers with American training took part in the violence. At the same time, however, they said they were not certain that no American-trained personnel were present.

The uncertainty, officials said, is one reason an independent investigation of the violence is necessary. "Until Uzbek authorities allow an independent and credible investigation to occur, we cannot know who was responsible or was involved," said Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman.

The participation of ministries that have received American aid underscores the implicit gamble in giving security help to a repressive state.

The United States has worked closely with Uzbekistan, a corrupt and autocratic state with a chilling human rights record, in the fight against international terrorism. It has also tried to professionalize the Uzbek military, improve its border security and help secure materials that could be used in nuclear, chemical or biological weapons - areas of engagement that American officials say are of clear national interest.

But such policies can backfire, improving the martial abilities of units that commit crimes against Uzbek citizens, and associating the United States with repression in the eyes of Uzbek people and the Islamic world. Uzbekistan is an overwhelmingly Muslim country with severe restrictions on freedoms of worship and expression.

Since early May, left-leaning blogs have been trying to get mainstream media to pay attention to one - and now two - leaked secret memos from meetings that Prime Minister Tony Blair had with key cabinet members and intelligence figures in the summer before the war in Iraq.

The bloggers believe the memos, leaked to the Sunday Times, show that the Bush administration had made up its mind to attack Iraq and then went about trying to justify it.

With the release of the second memo, blogs can take some credit in raising the profile of the story in the US media.

And Mr Bush's Democratic opponents sense a political opening to attack a now seemingly vulnerable president.

Blog blockbuster

The Sunday Times wrote about the first memo in May. It is the transcript of a Downing Street meeting from July 2002.

In the memo, "C", the head of MI6, said that based on meetings in Washington there had been a shift in attitude and that "military action was now seen as inevitable".

President Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein from power and would do so "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," the memo said.

Opponents of Mr Bush in the blogosphere have latched onto the next line: "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The website Technorati tracks the most talked about news stories in weblogs.

Usually, the torrid pace of the 24-hour news cycle means that stories pass quickly in and out of the news listings, but not what has become known as the Downing Street memos.

Bloggers, keen to keep the pressure on the Bush and Blair governments, have tried to keep the memos in the limelight and put pressure on the mainstream media.

Based on bloggers linking to the Times, the story has rarely left the top five for much of the last month and a half.

A computer hacker may have accessed more than 40 million credit card accounts in what could be the largest in a series of recent security breaches involving consumer data, officials said.

MasterCard International Inc. announced Friday that the breach was traced to Atlanta-based CardSystems Solutions Inc., which processes credit card and other payments for banks and merchants. All brands of credit cards could be affected.

The compromised data did not include addresses or Social Security numbers, said MasterCard spokeswoman Sharon Gamsin. The data that may have been viewed — names, banks and account numbers — could be used to steal funds, but not identities.

Gamsin said she did not know how the virus-like computer script that captured customer data got into CardSystems' network, which MasterCard said was infiltrated by an "unauthorized individual." Neither company would elaborate.

Refusing to give up on the Terri Schiavo case, Gov. Jeb Bush has asked Pinellas prosecutors to sort out time discrepancies Michael Schiavo has provided regarding the hour he found his wife unconscious 15 years ago.

State Attorney Bernie McCabe has agreed to review the time elements in the case, his chief assistant, Bruce Bartlett, said Thursday.

"We are going to look into the circumstances surrounding the times," said Bartlett, who declined to label the review an investigation. "The governor has expressed concern over that aspect of the case."

Michael Schiavo has said he called 911 immediately after finding his wife collapsed on the floor of their home on Feb. 25, 1990. Though medical records indicate he called 911 about 5:40 a.m. that day, he told the Medical Examiner's Office recently that he found his wife about 4:30 a.m.

The detail fueled suspicions by Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, that Michael Schiavo had some wicked connection to their daughter's collapse and may have delayed his call for help.

"I think this is a very troubling gap in time," Schindler attorney David Gibbs III said Wednesday. "Michael Schiavo needs to step forward and explain."

Ward also challenges analysts who insist there was no abuse, pointing out the report does not rule out that possibility.

The autopsy report says, rather, that the medical examiner could not detect any evidence.

Ward said the evidence does not rule out that Terri Schiavo's condition could have been triggered by a blow to the solar plexis -- known as commotio cordis -- or by nontraumatic asphyxia, which could be produced by a pillow or hand to the face.

Either could have caused her to lose consciousness without leaving any evidence.

"This report does not rule out abuse," Ward said in an interview with Joseph Farah's WorldNetDaily Radioactive. "It certainly does not exonerate any of the people who were so eager to hasten her death."

...People of faith are not of one mind, whether on specific issues like stem cell research and government intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, or the more general issue of how religion relates to politics. In recent years, conservative Christians have presented themselves as representing the one authentic Christian perspective on politics. With due respect for our conservative friends, equally devout Christians come to very different conclusions.

It is important for those of us who are sometimes called moderates to make the case that we, too, have strongly held Christian convictions, that we speak from the depths of our beliefs, and that our approach to politics is at least as faithful as that of those who are more conservative. Our difference concerns the extent to which government should, or even can, translate religious beliefs into the laws of the state.

People of faith have the right, and perhaps the obligation, to bring their values to bear in politics. Many conservative Christians approach politics with a certainty that they know God's truth, and that they can advance the kingdom of God through governmental action. So they have developed a political agenda that they believe advances God's kingdom, one that includes efforts to "put God back" into the public square and to pass a constitutional amendment intended to protect marriage from the perceived threat of homosexuality.

Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings. Like conservative Christians, we attend church, read the Bible and say our prayers.

But for us, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws. We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be codified by legislators.

[snip]

For us, living the Love Commandment may be at odds with efforts to encapsulate Christianity in a political agenda. We strongly support the separation of church and state, both because that principle is essential to holding together a diverse country, and because the policies of the state always fall short of the demands of faith. Aware that even our most passionate ventures into politics are efforts to carry the treasure of religion in the earthen vessel of government, we proceed in a spirit of humility lacking in our conservative colleagues.

In the decade since I left the Senate, American politics has been characterized by two phenomena: the increased activism of the Christian right, especially in the Republican Party, and the collapse of bipartisan collegiality. I do not think it is a stretch to suggest a relationship between the two. To assert that I am on God's side and you are not, that I know God's will and you do not, and that I will use the power of government to advance my understanding of God's kingdom is certain to produce hostility.

By contrast, moderate Christians see ourselves, literally, as moderators. Far from claiming to possess God's truth, we claim only to be imperfect seekers of the truth. We reject the notion that religion should present a series of wedge issues useful at election time for energizing a political base. We believe it is God's work to practice humility, to wear tolerance on our sleeves, to reach out to those with whom we disagree, and to overcome the meanness we see in today's politics.

For us, religion should be inclusive, and it should seek to bridge the differences that separate people. We do not exclude from worship those whose opinions differ from ours. Following a Lord who sat at the table with tax collectors and sinners, we welcome to the Lord's table all who would come. Following a Lord who cited love of God and love of neighbor as encompassing all the commandments, we reject a political agenda that displaces that love. Christians who hold these convictions ought to add their clear voice of moderation to the debate on religion in politics.

The Pentagon on Thursday amid mounting criticism of Guantanamo prison invited more members of the U.S. Congress to visit the jail for foreign terrorism suspects and said remarks by some lawmakers showed "a real ignorance of what's really going on."

"We invite more members to go down to Guantanamo and see what's going on, because what's going on down there is not the way it's being described by certain members of Congress," chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told a briefing.

"And the way they are describing it is unfortunate, and in some places I believe those people will regret having made those kind of comments," Di Rita added.

American homeowners have made a trillion-dollar bet that mortgage rates will remain near record lows for at least a few more years. But with some interest rates already rising, economists worry that the bet could turn bad.

The problem is that new types of mortgages that hold down monthly payments for families - helping many buy homes that they would not otherwise be able to afford - also require potentially far higher payments in future years.

The bill will soon start to come due in a serious way, as the initial period of fixed payments, typically set at artificially low rates, expires for millions of homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages.

This year, only about $80 billion, or 1 percent, of mortgage debt will switch to an adjustable rate based largely on prevailing interest rates, according to an analysis by Deutsche Bank in New York. Next year, some $300 billion of mortgage debt will be similarly adjusted.

But in 2007, the portion will soar, with $1 trillion of the nation's mortgage debt - or about 12 percent of it - switching to adjustable payments, according to the analysis.

The 2007 adjustments will almost certainly be the largest such turnover that has ever occurred.

The impact is not likely to derail the economy on its own, economists predict, but it will probably slow growth. For individual families, the problems could be significant.

"I'm not sure that people are being counseled on really how big of a risk they are taking," said Amy Crews Cutts, deputy chief economist at Freddie Mac, the mortgage company.

Consider a typical $300,000 interest-only mortgage with fixed payments for the first five years.

The homeowner would start by paying about $1,250 a month. If interest rates rise modestly over the next few years, as many forecasters expect, the payment will jump to almost $2,100 in 2010, according to Stephen Barrett, the owner of Redmond Financial, a mortgage business near Seattle.

A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds, who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, "If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling," Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M office, "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings."

Fox News Channel has signed Gen. Wesley Clark as a military and foreign affairs analyst, Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming, said yesterday.

Clark, briefly a candidate in the 2004 Democratic primary before throwing his support behind Sen. John Kerry, said, "I am excited by this opportunity to ... offer my perspective to the important issues facing the United States and the global community."

With the Senate Finance Committee at an impasse on Social Security and House leaders anxious about moving forward, Republican congressional leaders have told the White House in recent days that it is time to look for an escape route.

Senate GOP leaders, in discussions with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and political officials, have made it clear they are stuck in a deep rut and suggested it is time for an exit strategy, according to a senior Senate Republican official and Finance Committee aides.

"There is absolutely no way is he is going to put his members on a roll call where they fall on their sword on a bill with no chance of going anywhere," said one Republican House member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of crossing White House political officials.

White House officials at the highest levels recognize the problem, congressional aides say, but to pull back from private accounts now would undermine Bush's congressional allies -- such as Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) -- with no guarantee that a compromise could be reached without the accounts.

"They're frustrated, they're disappointed, and they're getting the feedback from up here that, on the one hand, we can't get Democrats' support unless we exclude personal accounts, but on the other hand, if we exclude personal accounts, we can't get Republican support," said the senior GOP aide in the Senate.

White House aides have been locked in a debate over whether it would be a victory if Bush settled for a Social Security deal without private accounts. Some White House domestic policy officials have suggested that the savings that would flow from reducing future Social Security costs would go a long way toward fixing the government's long-term financial problems.

But Rove, among others, has told Republicans that it would be unwise, both from a political and policy standpoint, to reduce benefits without offering people the potential of better returns through personal accounts, aides said. "It gets no easier without private accounts," a senior White House official said.

Bush shifted his strategy somewhat Tuesday night, setting the stage for what some consider the best excuse if his plan fails. Social Security will assume an even lower profile on his agenda in the weeks ahead, as Bush shifts more attention to Iraq and the economy.

"Her brain was profoundly atrophied," Jon Thogmartin, medical examiner for Florida's Pinellas and Pasco counties, told a press conference. "There was massive neuronal loss, or death. This was irreversible."

He added that all evidence indicated that she could not have survived without a feeding tube.

In response to questions, Thogmartin said there was no evidence Schiavo suffered from abuse.

In addition, the report said no evidence existed that Michael Schiavo tried to hasten his wife's death via drugs or other substances as her parents had alleged.

The bottom line for me is that we need to ensure the protection of America before we concern ourselves with policing the rest of the world. If that means that scum like Karimov get a few extra years in power, so be it.

Mukhtaran Bibi is under arrest. You remember her, in a world of Jackos and Rumsfelds and celebrity relationships and deified presidents, Bibi is an actual hero, a Mandela-esque story of courage and forgiveness. She's a Pakistani women whose brother committed a crime and, under the barbaric codes sometimes enforced in rural Pakistan, was condemned to public, forced gang rape to atone for him. When the four men had finished raping her, she was forced to walk home, nearly nude, while hundreds of onlookers laughed and jeered.

She was supposed to die.

If all had gone as planned, she would've grabbed a knife and slit her throat, or maybe her wrists. She would've accepted that she had been sacrificed for a male, that it was more than a fair trade, and that no one could move on until the last spark of life had vanished behind her eyes. And she would've hurried up and and finished the affair.

All did not go as planned.

The knives stayed in the drawer. Her nude body found clothes. She convinced a local Islamic leader to back her as she took her rapists to court. They were convicted. They were locked away. She got a settlement.

One could, at this point, forgive her for jetting off. For paying however many rupees it took, settling back into a plane seat, and appyling for asylum in America, hitting the lecture rout, leaving. She didn't. Instead, she built schools. Two of them, one for boys, one for girls. She took special care to enroll the children of her attackers, banishing venegeance and cutting the generational cord of ignorance. She enrolled in her own school to learn to read. She started a shelter for abused women. She decided to found an ambulance service so the rural sick could reach high-tech hospitals. She spoke out against honor killings and rapes. And she was going to visit America.

Oops.

Pervez Musharraf, our erstwhile ally in the War on Terror, couldn't have that. Mukhtaran Bibi was put under house arrest last Thursday. When she tried to walk out, police pointed guns at her. When she tried to make calls, they snipped the landline. When she moved to the cell, they took her to Islamabad and put her in prison. Then, for good measure, they released her rapists -- a warning shot.

Having Mukhtaran Bibi speak out about Pakistan's brutal side didn't fit the softer, more Western image Musharraf wanted to project. What he really didn't count on, though, was a columnist for the New York Times taking up the case and making more noise than she ever could've. And I bet he's not expecting outraged e-mails from all over the world to fly into his government's inboxes. Which is why they should be. And they should be loud, outraged, and laced with threats about how many congressmen will be informed and how much noise will be made. They should, above all, be perfectly clear on one count: if she dies, her voice will be far louder than if she lived.

Wal-Mart officials in Cross Lanes told employees on Tuesday they have to start working practically any shift, any day they’re asked, even if they’ve built up years of seniority and can’t arrange child care.

Store management said the policy change is needed to keep enough staff at the busiest hours, but some employees said it appears to be an attempt to force out longer-term, higher-paid workers.

“We have many people with set schedules who aren’t here when we need them for our customers,” said John Knuckles, a manager at the store, which is located in the Nitro Marketplace shopping center and employs more than 400.

“It is to take care of the customers, that’s the only reason,” he said.

Workers who have had regular shifts at the store for years now have to commit to being available for any shift from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. If they can’t make the commitment by the end of this week, they’ll be fired.

“It shouldn’t cause any problem, if they [store employees] are concerned about their customers,” Knuckles said.

Several single mothers working at the store have no choice now but to quit, said one employee, who would not give her name for fear of retribution.

“My day care closes at 6 and my baby sitter can’t work past 5,” said the employee, a mother of two who has been a cashier for more than three years. Neither of the services is available over the weekends, she added. “I have to be terminated; I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Wal-Mart is supposed to be a family-oriented company, but kids don’t matter,” the worker said.

Along with the “open-availability” policy, the store is requiring all floor employees to learn how to run cash registers, several employees said. They suspect this is an attempt to brace for the departure of many of the employees who now work as cashiers.

When announcing the new policies, store managers said they expected to lose about 60 people, according to another employee who asked not to be named.

“They said sales were down so much, they had to make a change,” the worker said. “The past year they’ve really been nitpicking” longer-term employees, who are paid more.

Yes, it WAS Democrats who refused to pass these bills, racists who took pride in keeping niggers in their place. Since 1964, they have migrated to the GOP, you witless fuck. But since you are obviously ignorant of history, twit, let me explain. Once Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, he said "we will lose the south for a generation" and lo and behold, that's what happened. All the segregationists suddenly found that the party of Lincoln could be converted to the party of Jefferson Davis without the moderates saying too much. So while the Dems chased racists from their party, the GOP welcomed them with open arms. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Jim East, Lester Maddox. All the segs and their friends in the White Citizen's Council found a new home in the GOP. And did the GOP object? Why no. Because that led to the White House. Hell, Reagan even kicked off his 1984 campaign in Philadephia, MS. That's a place which has been in the news lately because they're finally trying someone for the murders of three civil rights workers. You could say it was America's last official lynching.

What his critics fail to understand is that Howard Dean is leading in a manner we progressive populists have elected him to do. We tried the capitulation strategy favored by Berg and others in the party for the better part of the last 15 years under Democratic Leadership Council-based party leadership. We progressives, at least many of us, endured and even support their attempt out of misguided party loyalty.

It failed, quite miserably. So, now it is our turn. Progressive populists are the dominant force in the party and we want to speak truth to power. We want Dean to say it like it really is: The Republican Party is 80 percent white and Christian; its agenda is dedicated to advancing the power of the wealthy and corporate America. In our view, Rep. Tom DeLay's conduct is criminal. Both are trying to lead us into a fundamentalist Christian theocratic state with a diminishment of our Bill of Rights. And Howard Dean is leading us in the grass-roots development of a populist party belief system with a progressive agenda of rights that some mistakenly consider entitlements. He is empowering us at the grass-roots of the party to craft a belief system around rights to which citizens who have built by the sweat of their brow are indeed entitled as members of the richest and most powerful society in world history:

•The right to vote in fair elections.
•The right to restrain our government from squandering our wealth, national reputation and young lives on an ill-conceived and immoral war.
• The right to require corporations and the wealthy to once again pay their fair share of taxes to provide what some call entitlements — such as, health care for all of us; excellent, free public education through college or technical school; the right to remedial services to help rebuild broken communities and lives in our inner cities; and the right to a living wage and fair collective bargaining for working Americans.
Republican denial of these rights evokes justified anger and aggressive rhetoric. Howard Dean understands what some of his Democratic critics apparently fail to comprehend: Republicans have declared cultural and economic war on our people.

[snip]

Howard Dean is leading a party of resistance and rebellion to restore the American Dream. In the Clinton years we tried the triangulation strategy and what did we get? His near impeachment and a declaration of war against us and all we hold dear.

Dean -- unlike his inside-the-Beltway predecessor Terry McAuliffe -- is actually trying to build an alternative to the corporate base of the GOP. Even Newsweek's Howard Fineman, long a reflection of conventional Washington wisdom, recognizes the importance of this shift. "Early in the last 'cycle,' in 2001, the Republican National Committee outraised the DNC by a 3-1 margin," Fineman writes. "So far this year, that ratio has been cut to 2-1."

"More important," Fineman continues, "is the way it was raised. In the past the party relied on 'soft money' from millionaires. But such donations are now illegal. Officials estimate that $12 million of the $14 million the Dean regime has collected so far this year has come from those who gave less than $250. 'For people who really look hard at the numbers, he's wowing people,' says Elaine Kamarck, a respected DNC member."

In just over a hundred days on the job, Dean has visited 22 states, devolving badly-needed resources and control to the grassroots. On these trips, Dean flies coach, buys his own bus tickets and carries his own bags. Democrats in red states like Nebraska have already received 10 times the amount Terry McAullife provided last year. State party chairs describe Dean's visits as "electric," "ecstatic," and "very excited," Sam Graham-Felsen recently reported on Alternet. Nick Casey, West Virginia's State Democratic Chair, said people were driving "three hours from the south, five hours from the east, just to hear him."

SINCE ITS publication May 1 by The Sunday Times of London, the so-called Downing Street memo has dominated the media in Britain and on the Internet in the United States. The memo is the official minutes from a secret meeting about Iraq held by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his inner circle July 23, 2002.

The significance of the memo - and additional leaked British documents now surfacing in public view - can hardly be overstated. They conceivably could lead to impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

The Bush administration consistently has made two claims regarding its decision to invade Iraq:

Mr. Bush chose war only as a last resort.

Mr. Bush dealt honestly with intelligence about weapons of mass destruction and alleged Iraqi ties to al-Qaida.

The Downing Street memo contradicts these claims.

[snip]

Anyone who follows the news will not be surprised. A long list of whistleblowers, including former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill and former National Security Council official Richard Clarke, have reported that the Bush administration was obsessed with regime change in Iraq from Day One and regarded 9/11 as an opportunity to put its plans into action. Removing Mr. Hussein was in the 2000 Republican Party platform. Bush administration misuse of intelligence has been well documented.

But the Downing Street minutes and other recently leaked documents illustrate that the intelligence was wrong by design. The documents show officials at the apex of the government of our closest ally confirming among themselves what were the darkest suspicions about the Iraq war among ordinary Americans.

The evidence suggests that Mr. Bush has lied to Congress and to the American people about the justifications for war. It includes a formal letter and report that he submitted to Congress within 48 hours of launching the invasion in which he explained the need for the war in terms that appear to have been intentionally falsified, not mistaken.

Lying to Congress is a felony. Either lying to Congress about the need to go to war is a high crime, or nothing is.

Well, we need to talk about Iraq. This is no time to give up - this is still winnable - but it is time to ask: What is our strategy? This question is urgent because Iraq is inching toward a dangerous tipping point - the point where the key communities begin to invest more energy in preparing their own militias for a scramble for power - when everything falls apart, rather than investing their energies in making the hard compromises within and between their communities to build a unified, democratizing Iraq.

[snip]

Maybe it is too late, but before we give up on Iraq, why not actually try to do it right? Double the American boots on the ground and redouble the diplomatic effort to bring in those Sunnis who want to be part of the process and fight to the death those who don't. As Stanford's Larry Diamond, author of an important new book on the Iraq war, "Squandered Victory," puts it, we need "a bold mobilizing strategy" right now. That means the new Iraqi government, the U.S. and the U.N. teaming up to widen the political arena in Iraq, energizing the constitution-writing process and developing a communications-diplomatic strategy that puts our bloodthirsty enemies on the defensive rather than us.

Mr. Franken can give a speech. He knows the issues. But could he be too partisan for politics?

...President Bush has declared that he believes in a god who speaks to different religions. While many Evangelicals believe the president has accepted Christ as his Savior, some have been somewhat disturbed by such things as the White House celebration each year of Ramadan. The president may have added to those Evangelicals' concerns yesterday (June 13) when he told a group of international exchange students that he believes in a god who is not confined to one religion. "I believe there's an almighty god who speaks to different faiths -- and I believe freedom is a gift from that almighty," the president said. At the White House ceremony, President Bush went on to praise the exchange students for teaching their American classmates about Islam, and noted how one Muslim exchange student helped his Michigan high school classmates learn about the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Quoting the student, Bush said, "When I got to one of my classes on the first day of Ramadan, I was totally amazed. There were signs everywhere in the class saying 'Happy Ramadan, Abdul.'" The apparent celebration of Ramadan at the Michigan school seems in sharp contrast to the increasing hostility towards Christianity in many public school systems around the U.S.

"While I was in Iraq in February, I was able to witness firsthand the truly amazing resolve all of our troops in Iraq -- I cannot describe how very proud I am of all of those who serve. It is with that trip and those soldiers in mind that I will introduce a resolution tomorrow that calls on the President to clarify the objectives and timeframe of the current U.S. mission in Iraq, including a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. And I will work with my colleagues to hold the Administration accountable for meeting our goals and achieving clear standards of success. We owe our brave servicemen and women a concrete timetable for achieving clear goals, not vague, open-ended commitments. Having a timetable for the transfer of sovereignty and having a timetable for Iraqi elections have resulted in real political and strategic advantages. Having a timetable for the withdrawal of troops should be no different."

The resolution calls on the President to identify the specific missions that the U.S. military is being asked to accomplish in Iraq, as well as the timeframe in which those missions can be successfully achieved. Most critically, Feingold's resolution calls on the President and his administration to report to Congress with a plan and timetable for the subsequent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Feingold was in Iraq with four of his Senate colleagues in February. He has long called on the administration to level with the American people regarding the nature and length of the U.S. military commitment to Iraq.

):"The only people who are going to read this book are the true believers and the true defenders. As a side note, when you hear the usual suspects echoing this charge as fact in some circles, it probably should be pointed out that this makes anything Howard Dean has said seem positively innocuous. I have had just about enough of these so-called 'insider' true stories that are really nothing more than smear jobs, regardless of the target."

Defense officials from Russia and the United States last week helped block a new demand for an international probe into the Uzbekistan government's shooting of hundreds of protesters last month, according to U.S. and diplomatic officials.

British and other European officials had pushed to include language calling for an independent investigation in a communique issued by defense ministers of NATO countries and Russia after a daylong meeting in Brussels on Thursday. But the joint communique merely stated that "issues of security and stability in Central Asia, including Uzbekistan," had been discussed.

Americans now feel entitled to spend nearly a third of their adult lives in retirement. Their jobs are less physically demanding than their parents' were, but they're retiring younger and typically start collecting Social Security by age 62. Most could keep working - fewer than 10 percent of people 65 to 75 are in poor health - but, like Bartleby the Scrivener, they prefer not to.

The problem isn't that Americans have gotten intrinsically lazier. They're just responding to a wonderfully intentioned system that in practice promotes greed and sloth. Social Security is widely thought of as a kumbaya program that unites Americans in caring for the elderly, but it actually creates ugly political battles among generations.

With the help of groups like AARP, the elderly have learned to fight for the right to retire earlier and get bigger benefits than the previous generation - all financed by making succeeding generations pay higher taxes than they ever did themselves.

The result is a system that burdens the young and creates perverse incentives for people to retire when they're still middle-aged. Once you've worked 35 years, more work often yields only a tiny increase in your benefits (sometimes none at all), but you still have to keep paying the onerous Social Security tax, which has more than doubled over the last half century.

If the elderly were willing to work longer, there would be lower taxes on everyone and fewer struggling young families. There would be more national wealth and tax revenue available to help the needy, including people no longer able to work as well as the many elderly below the poverty line because they get so little Social Security.

• A March 25, 2002 memo by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw expressing concern that the case for war against Iraq is weak:
  

  
  The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few. The risks are high, both for you and for the Government. I judge that there is at present no majority inside the PLP for any military action against Iraq, (alongside a greater readiness in the PLP to surface their concerns).
  
  [snip]
  
  If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the US would now be considering military action against Iraq. In addition, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with UBL and Al Qaida. Objectively, the threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September.
  
  [snip]
  
  regime change per se is no justification for military action; it could form part of the method of any strategy, but not a goal. Of course, we may want credibly to assert that regime change is an essential part of the strategy by which we have to achieve our ends - that of the elimination of Iraq’s WMD capacity: but the latter has to be the goal...
  
  [snip]
  
  A legal justification is a necessary but far from sufficient precondition for military action. We have also to answer the big question - what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than in anything. Most of the assessments from the US have assumed regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq’s WMD threat. But none has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured, and how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better.
  



• A memo from British foreign policy advisor David Manning indicating that Condoleeza Rice, now Secretary of Bush Administration Lies and Spin, was committed to "regime change" in early 2002.
  

  
  Condi’s enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed.
  
  [snip]
  
  From what she said, Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions:
  
  - w to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified;
  
  - at value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition;
  
  - how to coordinate a US/allied military campaign with internal opposition (assuming there is any);
  
  - what happens on the morning after?
  
  No doubt we need to keep a sense of perspective. ut my talks with Condi convinced me that Bush wants to hear you [sic] views on Iraq before taking decisions. [sic] He also wants your support. He is still smarting from the comments by other European leaders on his Iraq policy.
  
  [snip]
  
  I think there is a real risk that the Administration underestimates the difficulties. They may agree that failure isn’t an option, but this really does not mean that they will avoid it.
  
  Will the Sunni majority really respond to an uprising led by Kurds and Shias? Will Americans really put in enough ground troops to do the job if the Kurdish/Shi’ite stratagem fails? Even if they do will they be willing to take the sort of casualties that the Republican Guard may inflict on them if it turns out to be an urban war, and Iraqi troops don’t conveniently collapse in a heap as Richard Perle and others confidently predict? They need to answer these and other tough questions, in a more convincing way than they have so far before concluding that they can do the business.



• A March 22, 2002 memo by Tony Blair's political director Peter Ricketts:
  

  
  The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein’s WMD programmes, but our tolerance of them post-11 September. This is not something we need to be defensive about, but attempts to claim otherwise publicly will increase scepticism [sic] about our case. I am relieved that you decided to postpone publication of the unclassified document. My meeting yesterday showed that there is more work to do to ensuer [sic] that the figures are accurate and consistent with those of the US. But event he best survey of Iraq’s WMD programmes will not show much advance in recent years ont he [sic] nuclear, missile or CW/BW fronts: the programmes are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up.
  
  US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Aaida [sic] is so far frankly unconvincing. To get public and Parliamentary support for military operations, we have to be convincing that:
  
  the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for;
  
  it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran).

Two separate development teams have simultaneously worked on "The Situation" since Carlson started at MNSBC in February. Sixteen people were tested for the regular roles of commentary sidekicks before Air America radio host Rachel Maddow and GOP consultant Jay Severin were picked. Keith Olbermann, Monica Crowley, Ron Silver and others will occasionally fill in.

[snip]

Although he and Severin may outnumber Maddow, Carlson said, "she's not a fake liberal. She's not a straw man. She's real. She's not there as a punching bag for me. She does more than hold her own."

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton turned furious and considered legal action after learning bestselling author Ed Klein would allege in a new book: Bill Clinton raped her -- resulting in the conception of daughter Chelsea Clinton!

"[Author] Klein is going to rot in hell for this," a well-placed source close to Hillary said over the weekend.

The explosive charge comes in THE TRUTH ABOUT HILLARY: WHAT SHE KNEW, WHEN SHE KNEW IT, AND HOW FAR SHE'LL GO TO BECOME PRESIDENT -- set for release next week.

[The book ranked #198 on AMAZON.COM's hourly sale chart late Sunday.]

MORE

"I'm going back to my cottage to rape my wife," Klein quotes Bill Clinton as saying during a Bermuda getaway in 1979.

In the morning, the Clintons' room "looked like World War III. There are pillows and busted-up furniture all over the place," an unnamed source tells Klein.

Klein source claims Bill later learned Hillary was pregnant reading about it in the ARKANSAS GAZETTE.

"The fact that his wife didn't tell him that she was pregnant before she told a reporter doesn't seem to phase him one bit, because he says, 'Do you know what night that happened?"

"'No,' I say. 'When?"

"'It was Bermuda,' he says, 'And you were there!'"

But doesn't the memo prove the President lied? Not really. He clearly sold the war on false pretenses. But he likely believed his own bull. He did what he does in so many realms: Made policy with his gut, then heard only what he wanted to hear. Dangerous incompetence? Yes. Impeachable crimes? Don't see it.

Howard Dean is "over the top," Vice President Dick Cheney says, calling the Democrats' chairman "not the kind of individual you want to have representing your political party."

"I've never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does. He's never won anything, as best I can tell," Cheney said in an interview to be aired Monday on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes."

If we learned anything from Vietnam, it is that it's difficult to wage and win a protracted war without public support. Lyndon B. Johnson learned that the hard way; so will George W. Bush. Johnson used a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. vessels in the Tonkin Gulf to ask Congress for a blank check he used to dramatically escalate the war in Vietnam. Bush used the post-9/11 fear of terrorism and slanted intelligence to claim Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened our security.

In both cases, the American people were had.

The growing pessimism about the war in Iraq suggests the public is not buying the upbeat assessments coming out of the Bush-Cheney administration. Americans don't need access to top secret documents to know the war is not the "cakewalk" administration hawks predicted it would be.

Bush may not realize it, but Amnesty International may have done him a big favor. The controversy the human rights group ignited over the treatment of Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has deflected the attention of journalists and war critics from an even more disturbing story - how all the president's talk about going to war as a last resort was just a ruse.

Seven months before the "shock and awe" bombing began in Baghdad, the Bush administration was bending intelligence to suit its purpose, which was to go to war come hell or high water.

Who says so? The head of British foreign intelligence, that's who.

[snip]

Some will ask: What's the point of bringing up the Downing Street memo now, two years after the invasion and at a time when terrorist suicide bombers are making life hell not only for U.S. troops but the Iraqi people? The point is this: President Bush didn't level with the American people before going to war. And he still hasn't.

• Show that you support Dean by donating to the DNC. Show that we the people can raise funds too


• Sign the Dean Speaks for Me petition


• If you're represented by one of those Democrats with the vapors (i.e. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein), or anyone else who's shown faintness of heart in dealing with Republicans, write, call, or e-mail your representatives asking them to please grow a spine with all due haste.


• Write a letter to the editor of your local paper.

An analysis of the Justice Department's own list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people -- not 200, as officials have implied -- were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security.

Most of the others were convicted of relatively minor crimes such as making false statements and violating immigration law -- and had nothing to do with terrorism, the analysis shows. For the entire list, the median sentence was just 11 months.

Taken as a whole, the data indicate that the government's effort to identify terrorists in the United States has been less successful than authorities have often suggested. The statistics provide little support for the contention that authorities have discovered and prosecuted hundreds of terrorists here. Except for a small number of well-known cases -- such as truck driver Iyman Faris, who sought to take down the Brooklyn Bridge -- few of those arrested appear to have been involved in active plots inside the United States.

Among all the people charged as a result of terrorism probes in the three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The Post found no demonstrated connection to terrorism or terrorist groups for 180 of them.

Just one in nine individuals on the list had an alleged connection to the al Qaeda terrorist network and only 14 people convicted of terrorism-related crimes -- including Faris and convicted Sept. 11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui -- have clear links to the group. Many more cases involve Colombian drug cartels, supporters of the Palestinian cause, Rwandan war criminals or others with no apparent ties to al Qaeda or its leader, Osama bin Laden.

But a large number of people appear to have been swept into U.S. counterterrorism investigations by chance -- through anonymous tips, suspicious circumstances or bad luck -- and have remained classified as terrorism defendants years after being cleared of connections to extremist groups.

A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.

The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.

In its introduction, the memo "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" notes that U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but adds that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, "the aftermath and how to shape it."

The July 21 memo was produced by Blair's staff in preparation for a meeting with his national security team two days later that has become controversial on both sides of the Atlantic since last month's disclosure of official notes summarizing the session.

[snip]

Now, disclosure of the memo written in advance of that meeting -- and other British documents recently made public -- show that Blair's aides were not just concerned about Washington's justifications for invasion but also believed the Bush team lacked understanding of what could happen in the aftermath.

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.