Here are some more facts: The cost of crude oil 18 months ago was $10 a barrel. It is in excess of $30 today. Because we as a nation have grown more dependent on foreign oil, we are paying the inevitably higher prices that follow such political irresponsibility.

So, let's figure this out: Retail marketing costs for gasoline are about 15 percent. Federal excise taxes are about 17 percent. Then the Clinton administration comes along and decides it's best for our nation if we produce less oil and grow more dependent.

Sixty percent of federal land is now off limits to oil drilling. Offshore the situation is even more restrictive. Forty-three million acres of federal land is off limits even to road building, which means you can't even think about drilling.

On top of all that, it is the Clinton-Gore Environmental Protection Agency that has imposed tough new blended-gas regulations that added 25 cents to the cost of a gallon of gas.

What's Gore's latest response? As gasoline prices and frustration at the pumps soar, he unveils a Carteresque multibillion-dollar national energy strategy that includes a proposal for weaning America off its reliance on foreign oil with tax incentives for building and buying energy-saving products.

That's what I would call way too little, way too late.

...the bill I sign today will help diversify our energy supply by promoting alternative and renewable energy sources. The bill extends tax credits for wind, biomass, landfill gas and other renewable electricity sources. The bill offers new incentives to promote clean, renewable geothermal energy. It creates a new tax credit for residential solar power systems. And by developing these innovative technologies, we can keep the lights running while protecting the environment and using energy produced right here at home. When you hear us talking about less dependence on foreign sources of energy, one of the ways to become less dependent is to enhance the use of renewable sources of energy.

For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks by insurgents.

The ceramic plates in vests worn by most personnel cannot withstand certain munitions the insurgents use. But more than a year after military officials initiated an effort to replace the armor with thicker, more resistant plates, tens of thousands of soldiers are still without the stronger protection because of a string of delays in the Pentagon's procurement system.

The effort to replace the armor began in May 2004, just months after the Pentagon finished supplying troops with the original plates - a process also plagued by delays. The officials disclosed the new armor effort Wednesday after questioning by The New York Times, and acknowledged that it would take several more months or longer to complete.

Citing security concerns, the officials declined to say exactly how many more of the stronger plates were needed, or how much armor had already been shipped to Iraq.

"We are working as fast as we can to complete it as soon as we can," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorenson, the Army's deputy for acquisition and systems management, said Wednesday in an interview at the Pentagon.

While much of the focus on casualties in Iraq has been on soldiers killed by explosive devices aimed at vehicles, body armor remains critical to the military's goals in Iraq. Gunfire has killed at least 325 troops, about half the number killed by bombs, according to the Pentagon.

Among the problems contributing to the delays in getting the stronger body armor, the Pentagon is relying on a cottage industry of small armor makers with limited production capacity. In addition, each company must independently come up with its own design for the plates, which then undergo military testing. Just four vendors have begun making the enhanced armor, according to military and industry officials. Two more companies are expected to receive contracts by next month, while 20 or more others have plates that are still being tested.

A man suspected of shoplifting goods from an Atascocita Wal-Mart — including diapers and a BB gun — had begged employees to let him up from the blistering pavement in the store's parking lot where he was held, shirtless, before he died Sunday, a witness said.

An autopsy for the man, identified as Stacy Clay Driver, 30, of Cleveland, was scheduled for Monday, but officials said results probably would be delayed by a wait for toxicology tests.

Driver's family, as well as one emergency worker, are questioning company procedure, including whether Wal-Mart workers administered CPR after they realized he needed medical attention.

When Atascocita Volunteer Fire Department paramedics arrived, Driver was in cardiac arrest, said Royce Worrell, EMS director. Worrell said Monday he heard from investigators that Wal-Mart employees administered CPR to Driver, but he was not sure that happened.

"When we got there, the man was facedown (in cardiac arrest) with handcuffs behind his back," Worrell said. "That's not indicative of someone given CPR."

President Bush is a Leader who has the courage to lead. It is political courage. It is not poll driven it is conviction driven. It is consistent and does not change because of pressure or threats of political survival. It is reconfirmed every day. It differs from combat courage in that it is thought oriented not reaction oriented. Combat courage does not necessarily translate into political courage. Combat courage is admirable and you only know if you have it when you are in combat. President Bush has demonstrated that he has political courage and this is why he was re-elected. By owning a bust of President Bush, Commander in Chief you will be making a statement and in a politically charged environment, it takes courage.

it is important to remember that young children may be especially affected by disasters. Families and others who care for young children need to provide comfort, reassurance, and stability.

The most important thing families and other adults can do is make sure children aren't over-exposed to media coverage of the disaster. More than any other action, avoiding media coverage will protect children from confusing and disturbing images.

When young children witness troubling events, directly or on television, they are likely to feel afraid and confused. Images of destruction and suffering can cause high anxiety and even panic. Young children are most fearful when they do not understand what is happening around them. Their strong feelings and reactions are natural and should be expected.

[snip]

Offer reassurance through physical closeness.
Holding children brings comfort and a sense of security. Children may need extra hugs, smiles and hand-holding. If they seem worried, tell them they are safe and that there is someone there to take care of them. Hearing a family member or a teacher say, "I will take care of you," helps children feel safe. Young children have great faith in the competence of adults and respond to adult reassurances.

Maintain structure.
Children need consistency and security in their day, especially when the world around them seems confusing or unpredictable, or when adults are preoccupied or upset. Provide a framework that stays the same from day to day. Emphasize familiar routines at playtime, clean-up, naptime, meals, and bedtime. Make sure children get appropriate sleep, exercise, and nutrition. Children may find it difficult to accept routines and limits, but persevere by being firm, calm, and supportive. Make decisions for children when they cannot cope with choice.

The essence of the right-wing smear machine's "outing" of Cindy Sheehan is her supposed flip-flop from supporting President Bush in 2004 to disapproving of him in 2005. As details of this have become clearer, it's obvious the flip-flop is nothing more than a canard. But setting aside the Sheehan story for a moment, have any of the shameless smearsters seen the public opinion polls recently? Here's some breaking news for them: a whole lot of Americans who supported Bush a year ago---including an increasingly large part of his "base"---have turned against him. And that includes many millions of people who haven't lost a parent, child, or sibling in Iraq.

There are so many side issues of shamelessness and crass opportunism in this story it makes my head spin. Think about the gall of a political and media machine "accusing" a private citizen of changing her mind (imagine that!) about an elected and supposedly accountable public official. When did a private citizen supposedly changing her opinion about something rise to the same level as a flip-flop about firing anyone involved in the leaking a CIA agent's name? At what point did the ability to change one's mind about a politician become something to be ridiculed and accused of instead of cherished as a basic right? And it's not as if in the past year we haven't learned anything about the pre-war manipulation of intelligence, as well as the incompetent planning, that resulted in the death of Cindy Sheehan's son and thousands of others like him.

Something else about this story that infuriates me is the vision of feckless, smarmy smearsters and cowards hiding behind keyboards in cities like Washington and New York (and yes, Miami), punching out electronic missives in a pathetic and desperate attempt to impugn the integrity of a woman sitting in the dust and August heat of Texas---a woman who, along with her dead son, embodies everything that's right about this country. The growing division between the professional class of spinning punditry and the vast expanse of Middle America that actually does the working, the fighting and the dying so the pundits can spend their time chattering has never been more clear than with this story.

If I had lost a parent, child or sibling in Iraq, I'd be right next to Cindy Sheehan sitting in that dust and heat. And I wouldn't budge until the president---ensconced within that reassuring bubble of faith, brush-clearing and mountain bike-riding---found a few moments to come listen to me. I hope as many people as possible join her protest and offer her food, water, and whatever legal or media assistance she may need.

In the meantime, it behooves the rest of us to do our part and engage in some "outing" of our own. That includes identifying and relentlessly shaming those who have become so unmoored from morality that not only have they abandoned the uniquely American ideals of accountability and sacrifice, they openly ridicule them.

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.

A group of F.B.I. counterterrorism analysts warned this week of possible terrorist attacks in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago around Sept. 11, but officials cautioned on Thursday that they were skeptical about the seriousness of the threat.

The warning grew out of intelligence developed from an overseas source indicating that terrorists might seek to steal fuel tanker trucks in order to inflict "mass casualties" by staging an anniversary attack, officials said.

The information led F.B.I. joint terrorism task forces in Los Angeles and Newark to alert other government and law enforcement officials privately this week about the threat, law enforcement officials said. Several government officials in Washington who were briefed on the threat said it was described as credible and specific enough to warrant attention.

But other law enforcement officials in Washington and New York said that while they were aware of the warnings and were concerned about the Sept. 11 anniversary, they remained somewhat skeptical about the latest threat.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was planning to send out another confidential law enforcement bulletin on Thursday to qualify the earlier one and emphasize that the threat of a possible tanker attack had not been verified.

"The information is uncorroborated, and the source is of questionable reliability," said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. "This information continues to be evaluated by the intelligence community."

"To take a nation to war on the basis of any provocation that bears the smell of fraud is to risk losing national leadership's commitment when the going gets rough. When our soldiers' bodies start coming home in high numbers, and reverses in the field are discouraging, a guilty conscience in a top leader can become the Achilles heel of a whole country." -- the late Adm. James Stockdale, The Stoic Warrior's Triad

The head of Fort Monroe's Training and Doctrine Command, four star general Kevin P. Byrnes, was fired Tuesday apparently for sexual misconduct according to official sources.

Other sources however have offered a different explanation for Byrnes' dismissal which ties in with the Bush administration's unpopular plan to attack Iran and the staged nuclear attack in the US which would provide the pretext to do so.

According to reporter Greg Szymanski, anonymous military sources said that Brynes was the leader of a faction that was preparing to instigate a coup against the neo-con hawks in an attempt to prevent further global conflict.

Indications are that, much like popular opinion amongst the general public, half the military oppose the neo-con's agenda and half support it.

Further revelations were imparted by journalist Leland Lehrman who appeared today on The Alex Jones Show.

Lehrman's army sources, including a former Captain in intelligence, became outraged when they learned that the official story behind 9/11 was impossible.

They told Lehrman that the imminent Northcom nuclear terror exercise based in Charleston, S.C, where a nuclear warhead is smuggled off a ship and detonated, was originally intended to 'go live' - as in the drill would be used as the cover for a real false flag staged attack.

This website has relentlessly discussed similar style drills which took place on the morning of 9/11 and on the morning of 7/7 in London.

"Speculation exists that he had potentially discovered the fact that it was gonna go live and that he was trying to put a stop to it or also speculation indicates that he may be part of a military coup designed to prevent the ridiculous idea of doing a nuclear war with Iran, " said Lehrman.

Lehrman said that other sources had told him all army leave had been cancelled from September 7th onwards, opening the possibility for war to be declared within that time frame.

Northcom officials also admitted to Lehrman that CNN had been using its situation room as a studio.

Earlier this week, Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has developed its first ever war plans for operations within the continental United States, in which terrorist attacks would be used as the justification for imposing martial law on cities, regions or the entire country.

American Conservative Magazine recently reported that Dick Cheney had given orders to immediately invade Iran after the next terror attack in the US, even if there was no evidence Iran was involved.

Government and media mouthpieces have been fearmongering for weeks about how a nuclear attack within the US is imminent.

Now would be the most opportune time for the Globalists to stage a major attack, as it would head off any potential indictments against the Bush administration for their involvement in illegally outing CIA agent Valerie Plame.

While rumors circulating about indictments having already taken place against Bush and Cheney should rightly be treated very carefully, the fact that there is an ongoing criminal investigation into the matter is something that's admitted and shouldn't be viewed as speculation.

I am always puzzled by big tough guys who claim to want to teach all the bad guys of the world a lesson, but at the same time they shrink from a meeting with an unarmed, middle-aged woman sitting in the shade on a hot August day in a folding chair and wearing culottes. If this menace scares them so much, what would happen if they really had to go toe-to-toe with a very, very bad guy not so delicately dressed? George has avoided using the driveway since the vigil began. Fortunately, he has a personal helicopter to make trips to the drug store and to sign mega-bucks bills related to oil and transportation that are not likely to help the average consumer at all in the near future, but will put gobs of bucks in the hands of his corporate cronies in a hurry. Let’s see, is there a tie between oil and transportation? Oh, I get it.

George W. can probably safely duck one woman for awhile, maybe forever. But what if another mother with a son killed in the Iraq War joins Cindy Sheehan? What if two join? Three? Four? Five? Six? What if some children whose fathers aren’t coming back join the crowd? What if all the people in Iraq who have needlessly had family members killed by George’s actions find a way to get to Texas? Crawford could start looking like a big city.

What if the father of an American daughter killed in Iraq joins the growing metropolis? George might consider moving to New Mexico.

So far, George attempts to console the grieving have been about as lame as they come. It would appear that he has never suffered a moment of grief in his entire life, which may be true. The thin consolation he offers is becoming less palatable with each passing day. Fewer and fewer people are going to accept his sad testimony as a reason to just keep on going and add to the body count and add to the grief. He will have to offer more. He may even have to meet with all the Mrs. Sheehans at the end of his driveway. What a sacrifice he will have made.

Meanwhile, Bush is willing to meet with his dwindling crew of supporters to decide what to do next. Somehow, no one in his camp has had a quiet moment to sit with him during the past few years to say: “Look, George, forget about an exit strategy for the war. What about an exit strategy for yourself? You have walked into a boxed canyon. No one made you do it. You did it all by yourself.”

What is sadder than our President’s pattern of avoidance is the word that somehow Mrs. Sheehan’s vigil is “waking up the national media” to the fact that maybe this infernal war should be questioned. Where have these idiots been? Who robbed them of their eyes and ears? Are they that in love with the corporate trough that supplies their feeding tubes that they have chosen to overlook the obvious waste from the beginning of the war that has not abated an iota since? What will it take to wake this legion of passionless automatons?

As for Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Matt Drudge, etc...nothing you can say can hurt me or make me stop what we are doing. We are working for peace with justice. We are using peaceful means and the truth to do it. I guess the truth frightens people. It frightens them so much, they have to resort to telling lies to rebut my arguments. They are despicable human beings and not even worth our concern.

Participants are encouraged to arrive at the Pentagon South parking lot between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. for screening to avoid long lines. The first 1,000 to arrive for screening at the Pentagon on September 11, will receive the official America Supports You campaign lapel pin.

That's right, in order to participate in a government-sponsored "Freedom Walk" on public streets past public monuments, from one outdoor public landmark to another, you have to give your name address, phone number, and email address to the Pentagon.

the boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

Rupert Murdoch has announced his intention to dominate the internet the way he dominates newspapers in Australia, and traditional media around the world.

Having recently bought MySpace.com, which he describes as a place "where people put their lives online", News Corp now has 50 million people visiting its websites.

MySpace.com has 24 million of these, which he said was growing at 100,000 people a day, "without any promotion".

Mr Murdoch has recently announced he is bringing all his internet ventures into one division called Fox Interactive Media.

Not all of his newest customers are happy with Fox's plans.

The wire service Associated Press last week reported that some MySpace users "fear" Mr Murdoch's influence.

"There are a lot of counterculture people on MySpace," Scott Swiecki, 34, a member of the MySpace group Faux News told AP. "My concern is Fox will add fees and censor content."

After the sale was announced, some MySpace members added a profile for Mr Murdoch - straight, married, 74 - which says he has joined the site for "networking" and lists his occupation as "world domination".

Today, during a press conference to announce News Corp's annual results, Mr Murdoch said there was "no greater priority for the company today than to meaningfully and profitably expand our internet presence".

Mr Murdoch, who has spent his life building a worldwide media empire, said that with strategic acquisitions "we can very quickly become the major player in this industry".

"News Corp, at its core, is about content. The web, at its core, is about personal choice. What we are aiming to do is to combine the two.

"Our leadership in news, sports and entertainment programming will give access to the best content available, and with the acquisition and development of a full array of web tools, whether it be more advanced search, email, customisation, accessibility, even voice communication, News will be able to personalise your experience to take advantage of the vastness of the internet as a whole."

Evolution lacks fossil link
By D. Chris Buttars

The campaign to eliminate God from the public forum has been going on for decades, having accelerated greatly since the Supreme Court's ill-advised decision in 1963 to eliminate prayer from public schools. And I believe those fighting against the teaching of intelligent design in schools have an ulterior motive to eliminate references to God from the entire public forum.
The argument over classroom discussion of evolution vs. divine design is just the latest attack on everything that would mention a belief in God. If you talk against Darwinian evolution in the classroom, you immediately incur the rage of those who don't want God discussed in any way, shape or form.

These vehement critics claim that there are mountains of scientific proof that man evolved from some lower species also related to apes. But in this tremendous effort to support Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, in all these "mountains of information," there has not been any scientific fossil evidence linking apes to man.

The trouble with the "missing link" is that it is still missing! In fact, the whole fossil chain that could link apes to man is also missing! The theory of evolution, which states that man evolved from some other species, has more holes in it than a crocheted bathtub.

I hear that MSNBC staffers in the Secaucus newsroom-studio watched in horror Monday night as the volatile Kaplan, the president of the cable outlet, publicly laced into the eccentric Olbermann, anchor of the 8 p.m. show "Countdown," after the latter eulogized lung-cancer victim Peter Jennings with a graphic rant about his own cancer scare.

Olbermann - a former pipe and cigar smoker - is said to have looked stunned as Kaplan raced onto the set and shouted at him after he signed off.

Olbermann had urged viewers to quit smoking and repeatedly mentioned "spitting blood" and "spitting globs of myself into a garbage can" while discussing his bout with a benign tumor in in his mouth.

I'm told that Kaplan erupted angrily and at length, calling Olbermann "out of control" and "not to be trusted," and accusing him of driving away viewers from the 9 p.m. debut of Kaplan hire Rita Cosby's show, "Live and Direct."

Kaplan - a friend and former ABC News colleague of Jennings, and a frequent cigar smoker - apparently got even angrier when Olbermann suggested that the reason he was upset was that "this is about you."

I'm told that the anchor quietly asked the news exec to move the discussion to a private location, but the enraged Kaplan wouldn't hear of it.

"I don't care if you don't come to work tomorrow," Kaplan told Olbermann, according to my spies.

KIRKUK, IRAQ – Set on an arid plain southeast of Kirkuk, Hasira looks like a place forsaken by time. Sheep amble past mud-brick houses and the odd sickly palm tree shades children's games. There is no electricity.
Yet along with 39 other villages in this region that Iraq's Kurds have named Germian (meaning hot place), Hasira and its people have become noted for presenting the first statistical evidence in Iraq of the existence of female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM), as critics call it.

"We knew Germian was one of the areas most affected by the practice," says Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, director of a German nongovernmental organization called WADI, which has been based in Iraq for more than a decade.

Of 1,554 women and girls over 10 years old interviewed by WADI's local medical team, 907, or more than 60 percent, said they had had the operation. The practice is known to exist throughout the Middle East, particularly in northern Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan, and Iraq. There is also circumstantial evidence to suggest it is present in Syria, western Iran, and southern Turkey.

But while this practice was suspected in the region, there was never solid proof that the procedure was so prevalent.

A few weeks ago, David Frum -- the neo-con author of the “axis of evil” doctrine -- had the audacity to call Cindy Sheehan an “anti-war crazy.” The neo-cons are good at that sort of thing. When they come up against compelling arguments for which they have no canned retort, they never hesitate to go for the jugulars. As Ambassador Joseph Wilson or Hans Blix can attest, they have a nasty habit of viciously Plaming dissenters to teach them the proper etiquette for addressing impertinent questions to our White House governors.

Within 48 hours after Cindy marched on Bush’s Texas ranch, the long knives were being sharpened. Instead of answering her questions, the Rove squads made the decision to give her the “Valerie Plame” treatment. Plaming is a two-step process -- first you denigrate the offending serf in the public square. You then call in the mass media muscle guys to dump the remains some place where the victim can safely be ignored. In keeping with the game plan, CNN and FOX are back filming the endless soap opera in Aruba and monitoring shark attacks and Tsunamis. If only they could spare that kind of coverage for Cindy Sheehan -- George Bush would be permanently retired in Crawford and the neo-con brigades would be sharing bunks in a federal penitentiary.

[snip]

George can’t spare the time to discuss the war with Cindy because they both know the questions and they both know the answers. He doesn’t want to talk about it and Cindy wants the whole country in on the conversation.

The loss of a child is traumatic enough for any mother. But Cindy Sheehan has to deal with the additional burden of knowing that her son might still be alive if Bush had made different policy decisions. Driven by the weight of that burden, she is now on a mission to prevent the Pentagon from wasting another mother’s child in the deserts of Mesopotamia. To the everlasting gratitude of tens of thousands of Iraqi mothers, Cindy also insists on holding the President responsible for the many innocent Iraqis who have perished as a result of his decision to invade and occupy a country that posed no threat to American national security.

Of the new jobs, 26,000 (about 13%) are tax-supported government jobs. That leaves 181,000 private sector jobs. Of these private sector jobs, 177,000, or 98%, are in the domestic service sector.

Here is the breakdown of the major categories:

• 30,000 food servers and bar tenders;
• 28,000 health care and social assistance:
• 12,000 real estate;
• 6,000 credit intermediation;
• 8,000 transit and ground passenger transportation;
• 50,000 retail trade; and
• 8,000 wholesale trade.
(There were 7,000 construction jobs, most of which were filled by Mexicans immigrants.)

Not a single one of these jobs produces a tradable good or service that can be exported or serve as an import substitute to help reduce the massive and growing US trade deficit. The US economy is employing people to sell things, to move people around, and to serve them fast food and alcoholic beverages. The items may have an American brand name, but they are mainly made off shore. For example, 70% of Wal-Mart’s goods are made in China.

The Humvee finally comes to a stop and the right side is just torn apart and I hear my squad leader screaming, 'I think I lost my arm!' And my best friend Maida was in the front passenger seat where the bomb went off and he was screaming, 'Where's help? Where's help?' And then he went quiet.

"And me, I'm trying to crawl out of the Humvee and I get most of my body out and just this leg is stuck and I thought it must be caught on something in the twisted metal. I look back and I see it's just laying there on the seat, so I'm like, 'Why is it stuck?' So I try to lift my leg up and it won't lift. I just had to pick up my leg and crawl the rest of the way out."

He mimes the action of picking up his leg with his hands, then he continues the story.

"I started patting myself down and that's when I noticed that my face took some shrapnel," he says. "It was all swollen on this side, so when I'm patting myself down, my middle finger went, like, this deep into my cheek where the shrapnel went in."

He points to a spot about halfway down his finger, showing how far it went into the shrapnel wound behind his right eye, which is still pretty much blind, unable to see anything but bright light.

[snip]

"The two trucks behind us had to stop and make sure the area was secure before they could help us," he says. "And the first guys that showed up saw Maida in the front seat, leaning against the windshield and all I heard was, 'Sir, we lost Maida.'

"And then they helped my squad leader, who lost his right arm, and then they came over and helped me. They bandaged us up . . . and when the helicopter finally showed up, they loaded me and Maida into the chopper and flew us to Baghdad.

"And after that, I don't remember anything till like a week after I got to Walter Reed."
[snip]

Terry Rodgers, who just turned 21, grew up in Rockville, son of a carpenter and a courthouse clerk. After graduating from Richard Montgomery High School in 2002, he worked as a mechanic in a Washington gas station, then joined the Army.

"It was something I always wanted to do," he says. "I thought it looked fun. I just wanted to get out on my own for a while. I got kind of bored being around here. I wanted to try something new."

He signed up in October 2002, but he didn't go into the Army until the following July. In between, the United States invaded Iraq, but Rodgers didn't pay much attention to that.

"I didn't have a political view," he says. "I'm not into politics."

[snip]

His real injuries were almost as bad as the ones he hallucinated. He had a broken femur, broken jaw, broken cheekbone. His right calf was blown away. Also, his right ear couldn't hear and his right eye couldn't see.

He spent a month and a half at Walter Reed. The doctors wired his jaw shut, put a metal rod in his leg, did nine hours of surgery on his eye, reconstructed his calf, and did skin grafts.

"I've had way too many surgeries to count," he says.

[snip]

One day a nurse came in to ask Rodgers if he wanted to meet President Bush, who was visiting the hospital. Rodgers declined.

"I don't want anything to do with him," he explains. "My belief is that his ego is getting people killed and mutilated for no reason -- just his ego and his reputation. If we really wanted to, we could pull out of Iraq. Maybe not completely but enough that we wouldn't be losing people -- at least not at this rate. So I think he himself is responsible for quite a few American deaths."

Bill Swisher, a spokesman for Walter Reed, says it's "fairly common" for patients to decline to see visitors. "We've had visitors from Sheryl Crow to Hulk Hogan," he says, but he has no idea how many have refused to see Bush, who has visited the hospital eight times.

Rodgers says he also declined to meet Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. This wounded soldier has lost faith in his leaders, and he no longer believes their repeated assurances of victory.

"It's gonna go on as long as we're there," he says. "There's always gonna be insurgents trying to blow us up. There's just too many of 'em that are willing to do it. You're never gonna catch all of 'em. And it seems like they have unlimited amounts of ammunition. So I don't think it's ever gonna end."

The Pentagon would hold a massive march and country music concert to mark the fourth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in an announcement tucked into an Iraq war briefing today.

"This year the Department of Defence will initiate an America Supports Your Freedom Walk," Rumsfeld said, adding that the march would remind people of "the sacrifices of this generation and of each previous generation".

The march will start at the Pentagon, where nearly 200 people died on September 11, 2001, and end at the National Mall with a show by country star Clint Black.

Word of the event startled some observers.

"I've never heard of such a thing," said John Pike, who has been a defence analyst in Washington for 25 years and runs GlobalSecurity.org.

The news also reignited debate and anger over linking September 11 with the war in Iraq.

"That piece of it is disturbing since we all know now there was no connection," said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq veteran who heads Operation Truth, an anti-administration military booster.

Rieckhoff suggested the event was an ill-conceived publicity stunt.

"I think it's clear that their public opinion polls are in the toilet," he said.

Rumsfeld's march had some relatives of September 11 victims fuming.

"How about telling Mr Rumsfeld to leave the memories of September 11 victims to the families?" said Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband in the attacks.

Administration supporters insisted Rumsfeld was right to link Iraq and September 11, and hold the rally.

"We are at war," said Representative Pete King, (Republican, New York).

"It's essential that we support our troops."

He also said attacking Iraq was necessary after September 11.

"You do not defeat al-Qaeda until you stabilise the Middle East, and that's not possible as long as Saddam Hussein is in power."

The space shuttle Discovery glided back to Earth to a pre-dawn landing here in the Mojave desert today, nearly 14 days after its 5.8-million-mile journey began.

The shuttle began the end of its mission at 7:06 by firing its engines over the Indian Ocean for more than two minutes in what is known as a de-orbit burn. About 30 minutes later, at an altitude of 76 miles, the shuttle entered the atmosphere at a maximum speed of more than 16,000 miles per hour, guided at first by its steering jets and later, as the atmosphere became thicker, by its wing flaps and rudder.

During the computer-controlled descent, Discovery bled off excess energy and reduced its speed by performing a series of four banks. The shuttle streaked across the California coast from the southwest and flew north of Los Angeles on a course that took it between Oxnard and Ventura. A characteristic double sonic boom could be heard over Edwards as the craft passed overhead.

Once Discovery's velocity dropped below the speed of sound, Colonel Collins took over the controls and brought the spacecraft - now, essentially, a brick with wings - in for its approach. She executed a 196-degree turn to line up with Edwards' 15,000-foot concrete runway 2-2. Main gear touched down and the parachute was deployed; the nose gear touched down immediately after, at 8:11 a.m. Eastern time, one minute ahead of schedule.

"Discovery is home," said James Hartsfield, the NASA spokesman narrating the return.

I conservatively got 3 to 5 phone calls a minute. I did about 25 phone interviews and several TV interviews. I did several right-wing radio interviews. I was supposed to do: The Today Show, MSNBC live interview, Connected Coast to Coast (MSNBC) and Hardball (MSNBC). The Today Show just never showed up and the other 3 MSNBC shows cancelled for no reason. Could it be because NBC is owned by General Electric, a major defense contractor??

Another big story that was going on today was about my first meeting with Bush in June of 2004. For you all I would like to clarify a few things. First of all, I did meet with George, and that is not a secret. I have written about it and been interviewed about it. I will stand by my recounting of the meeting. His behavior was rude and inappropriate. My behavior in June of 2004 and is irrelevant to what is going on in 2005.

[snip]

The VERY LAST THING I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS IS: Why do the right wing media so assiduously scrutinize the words of a grief filled mother and ignore the words of a lying president?

the early afternoon, we got word that if we were still there by Thursday, we were going to be deemed a "security threat" to the president. Condi and Rummy are coning in on Thursday for a "policy" meeting. Don't they mean conspiracy to commit crimes meeting? I just don't understand why we will be a security threat on Thursday when we aren't now? If we don't leave on Thursday, we will be arrested. Well, I am not leaving. There are only three things that would make me leave: if George comes out and talks to me; if August comes to an end, or if I am arrested.

[snip]

People are heading here from all over the country. I have some more Gold Star Families for Peace members coming tomorrow. We are amazed by the outpouring of love and support we are getting. If you can come, then come.

Today was so bizarre for me. I got phone calls from famous people pledging their support, and phone calls from mothers with sons in Iraq who are overcome with emotion when they talk to me. And it is so brave for them to call me, because I am their worst fear. We had a young man who is in the US Army at Ft. Hood come this morning and spend hours with us. He has been there and his unit is scheduled to go back in October. How much courage did that take for him to come within earshot of his commander in chief's home and spend time with some old hippy protestors???

Cindy Sheehan phoned me from Texas a few minutes ago to say that she's been informed that beginning Thursday, she and her companions will be considered a threat to national security and will be arrested. Coincidentally, Thursday is the day that Rice and Rumsfeld visit the ranch, and Friday is a fundraiser event for the haves and the have mores. Cindy said that she and others plan to be arrested.

A national anti-abortion group yesterday served the administrators of California's stem cell institute with a federal lawsuit seeking to stop their work on the grounds that the civil rights of frozen embryos are violated by stem cell research.
The lawsuit was delivered during a a monthly meeting of the institute's oversight committee at the University of California San Diego. Around the same time it arrived, committee Chairman Robert Klein was announcing that several lawsuits filed in state court had been consolidated to be heard by one judge, in one county, on an expedited basis.

That litigation has blocked the sale of government-backed bonds to fund the institute, which is supposed to award $300 million annually for stem cell research.

The federal lawsuit, filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children, could now further delay the sale of bonds.

If I were a cranky liberal lawyer with a lot of time and money on my hands I'd be inspired by this story to file suit against every IVF clinic in the country. It's true that some in the fetus fetish crowd are very quietly opposed to IVF treatments, but as is the case with divorce too many in their flock have had or would certainly pursue the option if necessary so they tend not to say all that much about it.

in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. "Bin Laden was never within our grasp." Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was."

In his book—titled "Jawbreaker"—the decorated career CIA officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger. (Berntsen would not divulge the book's specifics, saying he's awaiting CIA clearance.) That backs up other recent accounts, including that of military author Sean Naylor, who calls Tora Bora a "strategic disaster" because the Pentagon refused to deploy a cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members. Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman, says the problem at Tora Bora "was not necessarily just the number of troops."

In the 1990s, we called this "compartmentalizing." It was approved by journalists and public figures alike. President Bill Clinton executed his presidential tasks exuberantly day in and day out while retaining subpoenaed documents from prosecutors, coaching witnesses to deceive and lying brazenly to his staff and the public. He compartmentalized, and to this day, there are public figures who admire his sang-froid. They would agree with John Harris' assessment of him in Harris' recent encomium, "The Survivor," as being one of "the two most important political figures of their generation" -- the other being, who else, Hillary.

One of Clinton's most memorable statements that will ring down from the Decade of Illusions is: "I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." The Boy President said that glaring into the cameras on national television and pointing his finger for emphasis. Later he failed his drug test or rather his DNA test. Yet he is still arguing that the statement is somehow true.

Palmeiro is one of Clinton's finest students. Under oath before a Congressional Committee on March 17, he declared: "I have never used steroids. Period. I do not know how to say it more clearly than that. Never." He too glared and pointed his finger emphatically. Now that he is suspended after that failed test, he argues with Clintonian indefatigability: "I have never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period." The New York Times reports that the steroid he tested positive for is stanozolol. It is unimaginable that an adult would not know that he was taking it. Use of it in 1988 cost Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson his Olympic gold medal.

As an online discussion among wingnuts grows longer, the probability that a Clinton will be blamed for something approaches 1 (i.e., certainty).

The departure this week of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who has accepted the post of general counsel at Lockheed Martin, leaves a question mark in the probe into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Comey was the only official overseeing special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's leak investigation. With Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recused, department officials say they are still trying to resolve whom Fitzgerald will now report to. Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum is "likely" to be named as acting deputy A.G., a DOJ official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter tells NEWSWEEK. But McCallum may be seen as having his own conflicts: he is an old friend of President Bush's and a member of his Skull and Bones class at Yale. One question: how much authority Comey's successor will have over Fitzgerald. When Comey appointed Fitzgerald in 2003, the deputy granted him extraordinary powers to act however he saw fit—but noted he still had the right to revoke Fitzgerald's authority. The questions are pertinent because law-yers close to the case believe the probe is in its final stages. Fitzgerald recently called White House aide Karl Rove's secretary and his former top aide to testify before the grand jury. They were asked why there was no record of a phone call from Time reporter Matt Cooper, with whom Rove discussed the CIA agent, says a source close to Rove who requested anonymity because the FBI asked participants not to comment. The source says the call went through the White House switchboard, not directly to Rove.

A quarrel between two firearms vendors at a Floyd County flea market on Thursday allegedly led both men -- described as "good friends" -- to draw guns. Douglas Moore, 65, of Martin, who supports the war, shot and killed Harold Wayne Smith, 56, of Manchester, who opposed it, investigators said.

Moore was questioned at the Floyd County Jail, but he was released without being charged after Kentucky State Police said it appears he acted in self-defense.

Evidence in the case will be presented to a Floyd County grand jury, said Commonwealth's Attorney Brent Turner, who said the episode might mark the first death in the United States resulting from a dispute over the war.

Both Smith and Moore maintained gun-trading tables at the Bull Creek Trade Center near Prestonsburg, and witnesses said they began arguing over the war early Thursday morning.

One witness, Sam Hamman of Prestonsburg, told The Floyd County Times that the two men always carried guns and bickered frequently about the quality of guns, knives and the war.

"Harold was talking about the 14 people that were killed in Iraq the other day and Doug said that just as many people were killed on the highways here," Hamman told the paper.

Another witness, Chuck Newsome, said yesterday the Sept. 11 attacks also were included in the argument, which quickly escalated into an altercation and then to a kind of showdown in front of the market's snack stand.

After a scuffle, Newsome said he saw Smith stand beside the snack shed, pull a small pistol out of his pocket, cock the hammer and say, "I'm going to blow your ... brains out."

Witnesses said Moore pulled a .38-caliber pistol from his pocket.

"Doug was just quicker," Harold Hannah of Salyersville said.