Fine Print Is Given Full Voice in Campaign Ads: "In one of his television commercials, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts announces his candidacy for president before a throng of adoring, placard-waving supporters. But at the end of the spot, amid the roar of the crowd, Mr. Kerry abruptly steps from the podium, looks into the camera and shouts, 'I'm John Kerry, and I approve this message!'" Such odd juxtapositions occur often in the first commercials of this election season because of a little-noticed provision of the new election law requiring candidates � including President Bush, when his campaign begins running ads � to pledge responsibility for their ads.� "It's really clumsy and awkward to put in an ad," said Steve McMahon, whose firm is handling the advertising for Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont. "Focus groups say `Of course you approve it, you wouldn't have said it.' " Academics, lawmakers and lobbyists who helped write the provision said it was intended to force campaigns to stand by any attack ads they produce. That, some argued, could dissuade the production of such ads to begin with. But the campaigns contend that it is unclear whether the provision will ultimately stanch the flow of negative political advertisements this election season anyway. At the very least, strategists with every presidential campaign now advertising said the rule seemed silly at this early stage, when the vast majority of spots are positive. "It's just one more example of reform gone amok," said David Axelrod, a consultant for Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. "It was meant to police negative ads, and now you have this absurd addendum to positive ads that makes absolutely no sense." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/08/politics/campaigns/08ADS.html

Job Figures Buoy Bush, but Democratic Hopefuls See Room to Attack: "'Good luck in using statistics to convince working Americans that the Bush administration has their economic interests at heart,' Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said in Salem, N.H., in remarks typical of all the potential challengers. 'The deep unfairness of the Bush economy is real to Americans.'" Economic matters have long been the Democrats' strong suit. Now, although the jobs numbers suggest that the economic recovery may be genuine and that the issue may not be the sure winner it seemed a few months ago, the party's strategists said the candidates had no choice but to continue to play this hand. "I still think the race will be run on the economy," said Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of moderate Democrats. "But it won't be so much on the recent past as on the outlook for the future." Another tactician who is not affiliated with any candidate, Howard Wolfson, said the improving jobs picture made "the argument on the economy tougher to make but still not impossible." Mr. Wolfson added, "What we have to argue is that he bought a short-term uptick in jobs at the expense of structural deficits as far as the eye can see." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/08/politics/campaigns/08CAMP.html

The Fruits of Secrecy: "One of President Bush's first acts was to convene a task force to produce a national energy strategy. Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the group met secretly with hundreds of witnesses. It heard from few environmentalists, but many lobbyists and executives from industries whose fortunes would be affected by any new policies. Despite lawsuits, the White House has refused to divulge the names of those privileged to get Mr. Cheney's ear. The results, however, have been plain as day: policies that broadly favor industry � including big campaign contributors � at the expense of the environment and public health." That unfortunate bias was demonstrated anew this week when the Environmental Protection Agency decided to drop investigations into more than 140 power plants, refineries and other industrial sites suspected of violating the Clean Air Act. The winner is industry; the loser, the public. The administration had already weakened the cases' legal foundation: a provision in the act that required companies to install up-to-date pollution controls whenever they increased harmful emissions by making major upgrades to their plants. The utilities had complained that the rule kept them from producing more power and discouraged investments in energy efficiency. Though the companies produced no convincing evidence, Mr. Cheney's task force swallowed the argument whole, and in due course it forced Christie Whitman, then head of the E.P.A., to jettison the rule in favor of a more permissive regime allowing companies to increase pollution without paying for new controls. The administration insists lamely that a handful of cases in litigation will be pursued. It seems clear, however, that the many investigations that have not reached litigation will be dropped altogether or at best restarted under the new rules � rules so full of loopholes that it is highly unlikely that anybody will ever be found to have violated them. The administration swore to Congress months ago that this would not happen, that all the old investigations would be aggressively pursued under the old rules.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/08/opinion/08SAT1.html

Diplomacy: Iraq Said to Have Tried to Reach Last-Minute Deal to Avert War: "As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal." Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections. The messages from Baghdad, first relayed in February to an analyst in the office of Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and planning, were part of an attempt by Iraqi intelligence officers to open last-ditch negotiations with the Bush administration through a clandestine communications channel, according to people involved. The efforts were portrayed by Iraqi officials as having the approval of President Saddam Hussein, according to interviews and documents. The overtures, after a decade of evasions and deceptions by Iraq, were ultimately rebuffed. But the messages raised enough interest that in early March, Richard N. Perle, an influential adviser to top Pentagon officials, met in London with the Lebanese-American businessman, Imad Hage. According to both men, Mr. Hage laid out the Iraqis' position to Mr. Perle, and he pressed the Iraqi request for a direct meeting with Mr. Perle or another representative of the United States. "I was dubious that this would work," said Mr. Perle, widely recognized as an intellectual architect of the Bush administration's hawkish policy toward Iraq, "but I agreed to talk to people in Washington." Mr. Perle said he sought authorization from C.I.A. officials to meet with the Iraqis, but the officials told him they did not want to pursue this channel, and they indicated they had already engaged in separate contacts with Baghdad. Mr. Perle said, "The message was, `Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad.' " A senior United States intelligence official said this was one of several contacts with Iraqis or with people who said they were trying to broker meetings on their behalf. "These signals came via a broad range of foreign intelligence services, other governments, third parties, charlatans and independent actors," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Every lead that was at all plausible, and some that weren't, were followed up." There were a variety of efforts, both public and discreet, to avert a war in Iraq, but Mr. Hage's back channel appears to have been a final attempt by Mr. Hussein's government to reach American officials. In interviews in Beirut, Mr. Hage said the Iraqis appeared intimidated by the American military threat. "The Iraqis were finally taking it seriously," he said, "and they wanted to talk, and they offered things they never would have offered if the build-up hadn't occurred." Mr. Perle said he found it "puzzling" that the Iraqis would have used such complicated contacts to communicate "a quite astonishing proposal" to the administration. But former American intelligence officers with extensive experience in the Middle East say many Arab leaders have traditionally placed a high value on secret communications, though such informal arrangements are sometimes considered suspect in Washington. The activity in this back channel, detailed in interviews and in documents obtained by The New York Times, appears to show an increasingly frantic Iraqi regime trying to find room to maneuver as the enemy closes in. It also provides a rare glimpse into a subterranean world of international networking. The key link in the network was Imad Hage, who has spent much of his life straddling two worlds. Mr. Hage, a Maronite Christian who was born in Beirut in 1956, fled Lebanon in 1976 after the civil war began there. He ended up in the United States, where he went to college and became a citizen. Living in suburban Washington, Mr. Hage started an insurance company, American Underwriters Group, and became involved in Lebanese-American political circles. In the late 1990's, he moved his family and his company to Lebanon. Serendipity brought him important contacts in the Arab world and in America. An influential Lebanese Muslim he met while handling an insurance claim introduced him to Mohammed Nassif, a senior Syrian intelligence official and a close aide to President Bashar al-Assad. On trips back to Washington last year, Mr. Hage befriended a fellow Lebanese-American, Michael Maloof, who was working in the Pentagon as an analyst in an intelligence unit set up by Mr. Feith to look for ties between terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and countries like Iraq. Mr. Maloof has ties to many leading conservatives in Washington, having worked for Mr. Perle at the Pentagon during the Reagan administration. In January 2003, as American pressure was building for a face-off with Iraq, Mr. Hage's two worlds intersected. On a trip to Damascus, he said, Mr. Nassif told him about Syria's frustrations in communicating with American officials. On a trip to the United States later that month, Mr. Hage said, Mr. Maloof arranged for him to deliver that message personally to Mr. Perle and to Jaymie Durnan, then a top aide to the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz. Pentagon officials confirmed that the meetings occurred. Mr. Perle, a member of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon, is known in foreign capitals as an influential adviser to top administration officials. After Mr. Hage told his contacts in Beirut and Damascus about meeting Mr. Perle, Mr. Hage's influential Lebanese Muslim friend asked Mr. Hage to meet a senior Iraqi official eager to talk to the Americans. Mr. Hage cautiously agreed. In February, as the United States was gearing up its campaign for a Security Council resolution authorizing force against Iraq, Hassan al-Obeidi, chief of foreign operations of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, arrived in Mr. Hage's Beirut office. But within minutes, Mr. Hage said, Mr. Obeidi collapsed, and a doctor was called to treat him. "He came to my office, sat down, and in five minutes fell ill," recalled Mr. Hage. "He looked like a man under enormous stress." After being treated, Mr. Obeidi explained that the Iraqis wanted to cooperate with the Americans and could not understand why the Americans were focused on Iraq rather than on countries, like Iran, that have long supported terrorists, Mr. Hage said. The Iraqi seemed desperate, Mr. Hage said, "like someone who feared for his own safety, although he tried to hide it." Mr. Obeidi told Mr. Hage that Iraq would make deals to avoid war, including helping in the Mideast peace process. "He said, if this is about oil, we will talk about U.S. oil concessions," Mr. Hage recalled. "If it is about the peace process, then we can talk. If this is about weapons of mass destruction, let the Americans send over their people. There are no weapons of mass destruction." Mr. Obeidi said the "Americans could send 2,000 F.B.I. agents to look wherever they wanted," Mr. Hage recalled. He said that when he told Mr. Obeidi that the United States seemed adamant that Saddam Hussein give up power, Mr. Obeidi bristled, saying that would be capitulation. But later, Mr. Hage recounted, Mr. Obeidi said Iraq could agree to hold elections within the next two years.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/politics/06INTE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Death Be Not Loud: "Who can blame poor President Bush? Look at his terrible dilemma." There are those who say the chief executive should have come out of his Texas ranch house and articulated and assuaged the sorrow and outrage and anxiety the nation was feeling on Sunday after the deadliest day in Iraq in seven months. An attack on a Chinook helicopter had killed 15 American soldiers, 13 men and 2 women, and wounded 21. There are those who say Mr. Bush should have emulated Rudy Giuliani's empathetic leadership after 9/11, or Dad's in the first gulf war, and attended some of the funerals of the 379 Americans killed in Iraq. Or one. Maybe the one for Specialist Darryl Dent, the 21-year-old National Guard officer from Washington who died outside Baghdad in late August when a bomb struck his truck while he was delivering mail to troops. His funeral was held at a Baptist church three miles from the White House. But let's look at it from the president's point of view: if he grieves more publicly or concretely, if he addresses every instance of bad news, like the hideous specter of Iraqis' celebrating the downing of the Chinook, he will simply remind people of what's going on in Iraq. So it's understandable why, going into his re-election campaign, Mr. Bush wouldn't want to underscore that young Americans keep getting whacked over there, and we don't know who is doing it or how to stop it. The White House is cleverly trying to distance Mr. Bush from the messy problem of flesh-and-blood soldiers with real names dying nearly every day, while linking him to the heroic task of fighting global terror. It's better to keep it vague, to talk about the "important cause" and the "brave defenders" of liberty. If he gets more explicit, or allows the flag-draped coffins of fallen heroes to be photographed coming home, it will just remind people that the administration said this would be easy, and it's teeth-grindingly hard. And that the administration vowed to get Osama and Saddam and W.M.D., and hasn't. And that the Bush team that hyped the presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq has now created an Al Qaeda presence in Iraq. And that there was no decent plan for the occupation or for financing one, no plan for rotating or supporting troops stretched too thin to guard ammunition caches or police a fractious society, and no plan for getting out.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/opinion/06DOWD.html

Op-Ed Columnist: Death by Optimism: "Ultimately, Saddam's rule collapsed in part because he couldn't read Iraq and made decisions based on hubris and bad information. These days, President Bush and his aides are having the same problem. Critics complain that they lied to the American public about how difficult the war would be, but I fear the critics are wrong: they didn't just fool us � they also fooled themselves. Evidence suggests that Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney may have actually believed that our troops would be, as Mr. Cheney predicted, "greeted as liberators." The administration chose to rely not on intelligence but on wishful thinking, and it became intoxicated by the siren calls of Ahmad Chalabi, a silver-tongued charlatan." I wish administration officials were lying, because I would prefer hypocrisy to delusion � at least hypocritical officials make decisions with accurate information. Policy by wishful thinking is crippling our occupation. Initially, U.S. officials didn't restrain looting because they regarded it as celebratory high jinks. Then, confident that security was in hand, they disbanded the Iraqi Army. They didn't push hard to bring in international forces. The foreign forces they suggest introducing are Turks, which adds to my fear that administration officials have been more deluded than duplicitous. It is a crazy scheme: anyone who has spent time in Iraq knows that Iraqis will never accept their former colonial power policing them. Mr. Cheney has cited a Zogby International poll to back his claim that there is "very positive news" in Iraq. But the pollster, John Zogby, told me, "I was floored to see the spin that was put on it; some of the numbers were not my numbers at all." Mr. Cheney claimed that Iraqis chose the U.S. as their model for democracy "hands down," and he and other officials say that a majority want American troops to stay at least another year. In fact, Mr. Zogby said, only 23 percent favor the U.S. democratic model, and 65 percent want the U.S. to leave in a year or less. "I am not willing to say they lied," Mr. Zogby said. "But they used a very tight process of selective screening, and when they didn't get what they wanted they were willing to manufacture some results. . . . There was almost nothing in that poll to give them comfort." Sure, we're making some progress in Iraq. A hand grenade sells for $2.50 now, compared with 10 cents a few months ago. But U.S. troops now face 25 to 30 attacks daily, compared with 15 to 20 in September. Last month 33 Americans were killed, twice as many as in September.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/opinion/05KRIS.html

Op-Ed Contributor: So Few Soldiers, So Much to Do: "The Bush administration's reaction to the deaths of 16 American soldiers in the downing of a helicopter on Sunday morning was the same as it was to the suicide bombings at police stations and the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad a week earlier � and the same as it has been to every other setback the coalition has faced: insistence that there is no need for more American troops beyond the 133,000 now in Iraq." It is part of any president's job to inspire confidence under pressure, but given the true number of troops in Iraq � actual armed soldiers doing a soldier's job � President Bush might just as well have said that there is no need for any American troops in Iraq. Because zero is the exact number of soldiers actually present at many sites that should be secured 24 hours a day. Such is the arithmetic of an ultra-modern army. The support echelon is so large that out of the 133,000 American men and women in Iraq, no more than 56,000 are combat-trained troops available for security duties. As for the rest, there are many command posts where soldiers operate computers not guns, there are many specialized units charged with reconstruction and civil duties, and even in the actual combat formations there is a large noncombat element. The 101st Airborne Division has 270 helicopters, which alone require more than 1,000 technicians. The Fourth Infantry Division has the usual panoply of artillery, aviation and antiaircraft units that are needed in war but have little role in peacekeeping and security duties. And even the finest soldiers must sleep and eat. Thus the number of troops on patrol at any one time is no more than 28,000 � to oversee frontiers terrorists are trying to cross, to patrol rural terrain including vast oil fields, to control inter-city roads, and to protect American and coalition facilities. Even if so few could do so much, it still leaves the question of how to police the squares, streets and alleys of Baghdad, with its six million inhabitants, not to mention Mosul with 1.7 million, Kirkuk with 800,000, and Sunni towns like Falluja, with its quarter-million restive residents. In fact, the 28,000 American troops are now so thinly spread that they cannot reliably protect even themselves; the helicopter shot down on Sunday was taking off from an area that had not been secured, because doing so would have required hundreds of soldiers. For comparison, there are 39,000 police officers in New York City alone � and they at least know the languages of most of the inhabitants, few of whom are likely to be armed Baathist or Islamist fanatics.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/opinion/04LUTT.html

Issue for Bush: How to Speak of Casualties?: "When the Chinook helicopter was shot down on Sunday in Iraq, killing 15 Americans, President Bush let his defense secretary do the talking and stayed out of sight at his ranch. The president has not attended the funeral of any American soldiers killed in action, White House officials say. And with violence in Baghdad dominating the headlines this week, he has used his public appearances to focus on the health of the economy and the wildfires in California." But after some of the deadliest attacks yet on American forces, the White House is struggling with the political consequences for a president who has said little publicly about the mounting casualties of the occupation. The quandary for Mr. Bush, administration officials say, is in finding a balance: expressing sympathy for fallen soldiers without drawing more attention to the casualties by commenting daily on every new death. White House officials say their strategy, for now, is to avoid having the president mention some deaths but not others, and so avoid inequity. (Mr. Bush does send a personal letter to the family of every soldier killed in action and has met privately with relatives at military bases.) http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/politics/campaigns/05STRA.html

Bush Says Iraq Attacks Don't Rise to Level of Major Combat: "President Bush said today that despite the deadly attack on an American helicopter on Sunday, the United States was no longer involved in major combat in Iraq. And he insisted that Saddam Hussein is no longer a danger." Asked whether United States forces were again engaged in "major combat operations," � which he declared over on May 1 � Mr. Bush said that they were not. "We're back to finding these terrorists and bringing them to justice," the president said in Harbison Canyon, Calif., where he toured areas swept by wildfires. "And we will stay the course," he added. "We will do our job." The president was asked for his reaction to the death of 15 soldiers (the Pentagon revised the toll down from 16 today) in a helicopter that was shot down on Sunday near Falluja, Iraq. "I am saddened any time that there's a loss of life," he said. The White House has been visibly struggling with how to address the loss of American life in Iraq and has apparently decided, at least for now, to refer only in general terms to the dead, who now number more than 135 since Mr. Bush's May 1 declaration. Asked whether his administration was trying to speed up the transfer of power to Iraqis, Mr. Bush said there were now more than 70,000 Iraqis engaged in police and border-security work and in creating a new army. "That has been our mission all along, to develop the conditions such that a free Iraq will emerge, run by the Iraqi citizens," Mr. Bush said. The president said that despite reports that the fugitive Saddam Hussein might be behind some of the recent attacks on American troops, he was no longer a menace.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/politics/04CND-BUSH.html

Justices Face Decision on Accepting 9/11 Cases: "With cases generated by the Bush administration's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, now reaching the Supreme Court in substantial numbers, the court faces a basic decision apart from the merits of any individual case: whether to become a player in the debate over where to set the balance between individual liberty and national security." As early as this week, there may be an indication of whether the court intends to remain on the sidelines, leaving the last word to lower courts that have so far deferred to the White House, or to weigh in with the same assertiveness it has displayed so often in recent years on some of the most bitterly disputed issues in American life. The first cases in the queue on the court's docket are appeals filed on behalf of two groups of detainees at the United States naval base at Guant�namo Bay, Cuba. These appeals frame an issue that at some level all the cases, despite their considerable differences, have in common: the degree of deference owed by the judicial branch to the executive for actions taken in the name of national security in a crisis. In these cases, two British citizens, two Australians and 12 Kuwaitis, all seized in Pakistan or Afghanistan during operations led by the United States against the Taliban, are challenging a ruling by the federal appeals court here in March. That court ruled that no federal court has jurisdiction to consider the legality of an open-ended detention that has now lasted more than 18 months without charges and without review by any impartial military or civilian tribunal. A wide array of groups, including former senior military officers, retired American diplomats and prisoners of war from World War II, are urging the justices to hear the appeals, which the administration opposes. Later this year, probably before its winter recess, the court will decide whether to hear a United States citizen's challenge to his open-ended detention as an "enemy combatant." The man, Yasser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who was apparently captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, has been held without access to a lawyer in military brigs, first in Virginia and now in South Carolina, since April 2002. The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled in January that he was not entitled to a lawyer and had no right to challenge the basis for his continued detention. The justices have also been asked to hear a Freedom of Information Act case challenging the Bush administration's refusal to release information, including their names, about the hundreds of people, nearly all of them Muslim immigrants, who were arrested in the weeks following the terrorist attacks. Overturning a ruling by a federal district judge, the appeals court here ruled in June that the information, even concerning those found to have no connection to terrorism, was exempt from disclosure. Unlike the small category of cases the Supreme Court is jurisdictionally obliged to consider � the campaign finance case now awaiting decision, which Congress instructed the court to hear, is one example � these appeals all fall within the completely discretionary part of the court's docket. If the court decides not to hear them, no explanation is likely to be forthcoming, only the word "denied" on the weekly list of orders that dispose of new appeals. The votes of four justices are required for the court to agree to hear a case. The court applies several unofficial criteria for selecting roughly 75 cases to decide each term out of the 8,000 that are filed. These appeals meet none of those criteria. The issues raised have not produced conflicting rulings in the lower courts � the main test the court uses to choose cases worthy of its attention � and the appeals were not filed by the solicitor general's office, which enjoys a very high success rate in getting its cases accepted, if not always decided favorably. Indeed, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson is urging the court not to hear the Guant�namo detainees' appeals, Rasul v. Bush, No. 03-334, and Al Odah v. United States, No. 03-343. His brief argues that the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit properly interpreted a 53-year-old Supreme Court precedent to hold that "aliens detained by the military abroad" have only those rights that are "determined by the executive and the military, and not the courts," and that these cases consequently do not merit Supreme Court review. The government's formal responses to the other pending appeals � Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, No. 03-6696, and Center for National Security Studies v. United States Department of Justice, No. 03-472 � are due at the court in early December. The question, then, is whether the justices will nonetheless see these cases as simply important enough to command the Supreme Court's attention despite the absence of the traditional factors that govern discretionary review. The appeal filed by Shearman & Sterling, an international law firm with offices here, on behalf of Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad al Odah and 11 other Kuwaitis held at Guant�namo invokes the court's robust sense of institutional pride and concern for the separation of powers, a particular interest of the conservative majority. "It is not for the executive branch to define the jurisdiction of the federal courts," the brief says. The decision of what steps are required to protect the country "is not a judgment the executive alone should make," it continues, adding: "Someone impartial must have authority to examine the executive's actions. That is the traditional role of the judiciary." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/national/03SCOT.html?pagewanted=all&position=

White House Letter: Two Words on a Banner That No Author Wants to Claim: "President Bush and the banner that will not go away. No one seems to want to take credit for coming up with the idea for the banner." Whoever came up with the idea of the "Mission Accomplished" banner that has so plagued President Bush remained as elusive last week as the White House leaker. But here, so far, is the story of "Bannergate" and the hunt for the person or persons behind the two words. President Bush got the story rolling in a Rose Garden news conference on Tuesday, when he distanced himself from the exultant "Mission Accomplished" declaration that his critics increasingly cite as hubristic and premature. As anyone who has watched television lately now knows, the enormous red, white and blue banner was the backdrop to Mr. Bush's May 1 landing in a flight suit on the carrier Abraham Lincoln and his speech on the open deck declaring major combat in Iraq at an end. "The `Mission Accomplished' sign, of course, was put up by the members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished," Mr. Bush testily told reporters at the news conference, on another day of violence and death in Iraq. "I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff. They weren't that ingenious, by the way." After the news conference, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, tiptoed around the president's words. The banner "was suggested by those on the ship," Mr. McClellan said. "They asked us to do the production of the banner, and we did. They're the ones who put it up." The Democratic presidential candidates immediately pounced, saying that Mr. Bush was blaming the Navy for something his advance team had staged. Gen. Wesley K. Clark told reporters that Mr. Bush's comments were outrageous and added, "I guess the next thing we're going to hear is that the sailors told him to wear the flight suit and prance around on the aircraft carrier." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/national/03LETT.html