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

It looks optimistic mainly because people think of zero as the threshold. In fact, job creation must keep up with population growth in order to prevent the labor market from deteriorating.

Job Creation Math: The Three-Card Monte of Economics: "What does an increase in jobs really mean? John W. Snow, the Treasury secretary, raised the issue last week by saying that he expected the economy to add 200,000 jobs a month for the next year. With almost three million jobs having been lost since early 2001, the comment had an air of bold optimism to it and caused a bit of a stir on Wall Street." We are surprised," a senior economist at Goldman Sachs wrote to clients, "that Snow would choose to hand the Democratic presidential candidates this optimistic prediction." But it looks optimistic mainly because people think of zero as the threshold. In fact, job creation must keep up with population growth in order to prevent the labor market from deteriorating. These days, the economy must add from 150,000 to 200,000 jobs every month to keep the unemployment rate from rising, economists say. In 1997, the economy added 250,000 jobs a month, and the unemployment rate fell substantially. But in 1995, 180,000 new jobs were created each month, and the jobless rate ticked up slightly. Shortly after a downturn ends, people who had dropped out of the labor force during the slump � no longer working or looking for work � begin their job search again. This swells the ranks of the officially unemployed and makes a monthly gain of 200,000 look even smaller. "It's entirely possible that you'll see an uptick in the unemployment rate even with" a monthly increase of more than 150,000, said Richard Berner, the chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley. So without changing his meaning, Mr. Snow instead could have said, "We're not going to have enough job growth over the next year to bring down the jobless rate very much, if at all." Given that the Bush administration last year predicted a monthly job gain of about 300,000 for 2004, Mr. Snow could even have added, truthfully, "This estimate of job growth is about 50 percent lower than the last one the administration made." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/weekinreview/26LEON.html

Reconstruction: Bush Got $500,000 From Companies That Got Contracts, Study Finds: "The overwhelming majority of government contracts for billions of dollars of reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan went to companies run by executives who were heavy political contributors to both political parties. Though the employees contributed to both parties, their giving favored Republicans by a two-to-one margin. And they gave more money to Mr. Bush than any other politician in the last 12 years." Among the biggest contributions to Mr. Bush's election and re-election efforts were those from executives and employees of Dell Computer at $113,000; of Bearing Point, a business consulting firm, at $119,000; of General Electric at $72,000 and of Halliburton Inc. at $28,000, according to the report. Nine of the 10 biggest contractors � the biggest of which were Bechtel Corporation and Halliburton, either employed former senior government officials or had close ties to government agencies and to Congress. Prepared by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research group, the report said the contractors' executives and employees had contributed $49 million to political candidates and parties since 1990. The new report is the first comprehensive independent study of companies involved in Iraqi reconstruction, and it provides evidence that the process for handing out big contracts has often been secretive, chaotic and favorable to companies with good political contacts. The report is the result of a six-month investigation, which included obtaining information on 70 contracts through the Freedom of Information Act.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/politics/31CONT.html

Critical Study Minus Criticism of Justice Dept.: "An internal report that harshly criticized the Justice Department's diversity efforts was edited so heavily when it was posted on the department's Web site two weeks ago that half of its 186 pages, including the summary, were blacked out. The deleted passages, electronically recovered by a self-described 'information archaeologist' in Tucson, portrayed the department's record on diversity as seriously flawed, specifically in the hiring, promotion and retention of minority lawyers." The unedited report, completed in June 2002 by the consulting firm KPMG, found that minority employees at the department, which is responsible for enforcing the country's civil rights laws, perceive their own workplace as biased and unfair. "The department does face significant diversity issues," the report said. "Whites and minorities as well as men and women perceive differences in many aspects of the work climate. For example, minorities are significantly more likely than whites to cite stereotyping, harassment and racial tension as characteristics of the work climate. Many of these differences are also present between men and women, although to a lesser extent." Another deleted part said efforts to promote diversity "will take extraordinarily strong leadership" from the attorney general's office and other Justice Department offices. Even complimentary conclusions were deleted, like one that said "attorneys across demographic groups believe that the Department is a good place to work" and another that said "private industry cites DOJ as a trend-setter for diversity." Beyond that, a recommendation that the department should "increase public visibility of diversity issues," was kept out of the public report. The edited version gave a much narrower view of the department's diversity problems.� "The Justice Department has sought to hide from the public statistically significant findings of discrimination against minorities within its ranks," said David J. Shaffer, a lawyer who has represented agents from federal agencies in class-action discrimination lawsuits. "These cases challenge the same type of discriminatory practices found to exist at the Justice Department." After the unedited document began circulating in computer circles, and articles began appearing earlier this month in publications like Computer World and newspapers like Newsday, the Justice Department pulled the edited report from its Web site, later posting a different version thought to be more resistant to electronic manipulation. The complaints about the Justice Department come as it has shifted many resources to fighting terrorism and critics have said it has allowed the enforcement of civil rights to languish and failed to aggressively pursue some accusations of discrimination in housing, the workplace and other critical areas. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the department's handling of the report called into question its commitment to diversity in its own workplace. At a Senate hearing this week, Mr. Kennedy told James B. Comey, nominated by President Bush to succeed Larry Thompson as deputy attorney general, that the episode "gives the distinct impression that the department commissioned the report, then left it on the shelf, ignoring the recommendations." By the time the department posted the theoretically more secure version of the report on its Web site, it was too late. Russ Kick, a writer and editor in Tucson, who operates a Web site, thememoryhole.org, had had already electronically stripped the edited version of the black lines that hid the full text. Mr. Kick then posted the unedited version of the report on his Web site, where it has been copied more than 32,000 times, a near record for the site. Justice Department officials said it was unlikely that any action would be taken against Mr. Kick.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/national/31JUST.html

Intelligence: Senate Panel Sends New Letter to Rice Demanding Papers on Iraq Arms Friday: "The Senate Intelligence Committee, in a letter to Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, demanded Thursday that the White House 'must lift' its objections and hand over to the panel documents related to intelligence about Iraq and its illicit weapons before the war. The panel set a deadline of noon Friday for compliance by the White House, the same as it has set for the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department and the Pentagon to provide documents and schedule interviews that the committee has been seeking for months." The committee � headed by Senators Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia � is trying to determine how the Bush administration reached its conclusions about Iraq's suspected stocks of chemical and biological weapons and its nuclear program. Among the documents sought by the committee, Congressional officials said, are copies of President Bush's Daily Brief, a document prepared by the C.I.A. that the White House has until now maintained was off limits to Congress because of executive privilege. The Congressional officials said the documents also included memorandums between the C.I.A. and the White House discussing disputed claims that Iraq was seeking to obtain enriched uranium from Niger for its nuclear weapons program.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/politics/31PANE.html

Report Links Iraq Deals to Bush Donations: "Companies awarded $8 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan have been major campaign donors to President Bush, and their executives have had important political and military connections, according to a study released Thursday." The study of more than 70 U.S. companies and individual contractors turned up more than $500,000 in donations to the president's 2000 campaign, more than they gave collectively to any other politician over the past dozen years. The report was released by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based research organization that produces investigative articles on special interests and ethics in government. Its staff includes journalists and researchers. The Center concluded that most of the 10 largest contracts went to companies that employed former high-ranking government officials, or executives with close ties to members of Congress and even the agencies awarding their contracts. Major contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan were awarded by the Bush administration without competitive bids, because agencies said competition would have taken too much time to meet urgent needs in both countries. ``No single agency supervised the contracting process for the government,'' Center executive director Charles Lewis said. ``This situation alone shows how susceptible the contracting system is to waste, fraud and cronyism.'' J. Edward Fox, an assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, took issue with Lewis' statement and aspects of the report. ``It would ... be incorrect to suggest that there is no overall oversight of this process,'' he wrote the Center. ``The USAID inspector general's review of all Iraq contracts which was requested by USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios on April 14th has shown that all Iraq contracts to date have been done in compliance'' with federal regulations. The top contract recipient was the Halliburton subsidiary KBR, with more than $2.3 billion awarded to support the U.S. military and restore Iraq's oil industry. Halliburton was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney before he resigned to run with Bush in 2000.� http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Contracts.html

In a blistering review of President Bush's national security policy, Gen. Wesley K. Clark said on Tuesday that the administration could not "walk away from its responsibilities for 9/11." "You can't blame something like this on lower-level intelligence officers, however badly they communicated in memos with each other," said the retired general, the latest entrant in the Democratic presidential field. "It goes back to what our great president Harry Truman said with the sign on his desk: `The buck stops here.' And it sure is clear to me that when it comes to our nation's national security, the buck rests with the commander in chief, right on George W. Bush's desk." "And," he added, "we've got to say again and again and again, until the American people understand: strong rhetoric in the aftermath is no substitute for wise leadership." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/politics/campaigns/29CLAR.html

In his now legendary interview last month with Brit Hume of Fox News, George W. Bush explained that he doesn't get his news from the news media � not even Fox. "The best way to get the news is from objective sources," the president said, laying down his utopian curriculum for Journalism 101. "And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Those sources? Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card. Mr. Hume, helpfully dispensing with the "We Report" half of his network's slogan, did not ask the obvious follow-up question: What about us poor benighted souls who don't have these crack newscasters at our beck and call? But the answer came soon enough anyway. The White House made Condoleezza Rice's Newshour available to all Americans by dispatching her to Oprah. "No camera crews have ever been granted this much access to this national security adviser," Oprah told her audience as she greeted her guest. A major scoop was not far behind. Is there anything you can tell us about the president that would surprise us? Oprah asked. Yes, Ms. Rice said, Mr. Bush is a very fast eater. "If you're not careful," she continued, "he'll be on dessert and you're still eating the salad." And that's the way it was, Oct. 17, 2003. This is objective journalism as this administration likes it, all right � news you can't use.�

U.N. Resolution Condemns Israeli Barrier The General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution late on Tuesday demanding that Israel tear down the barrier it is building in the West Bank to deter terrorist attacks. The barrier, according to the resolution, is "in contradiction to relevant provisions of international law" and its route could imperil the Middle East peace plan, known as the road map, which envisions a two-state solution to the crisis. The measure passed by a vote of 144 to 4, with 12 abstentions. The United States voted against it. The resolution approved Tuesday night demanded that Israel "stop and reverse the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory." The passage of the resolution reaffirmed a pattern in which the United States protects Israel in the Security Council, while the General Assembly overwhelmingly passes nonbinding resolutions critical of Israel. General Assembly resolutions carry only symbolic weight, unlike those passed by the Security Council. The vote came at the end of several days of back-room negotiations over an earlier version of the resolution and a second resolution, dropped just before the vote on Tuesday night, that would have requested an opinion from the International Court of Justice, based in The Hague, on whether Israel is legally obligated to halt construction of the barrier and tear down the existing portions. Following the vote last week in the Security Council vote on the barrier - in which France and Spain voted for the resolution condemning it and Germany and Britain abstained - the Europeans sought to vote in unison this time and forestall further divisions among the mediators who are trying to shepherd the road map. The mediators, known as the quartet, include the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. The Arab and Islamic ambassadors secured the European Union's support by agreeing to amend the resolution to include a condemnation of Palestinian suicide bombings, "extrajudicial killings" by the Israelis, and the Oct. 16 bomb attack on an American diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip that killed three American security officers. Russia also voted for the resolution. The United States, Israel, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands voted against it. Before the vote, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, called the negotiations that led to the final resolution a "humiliating farce." Israel says it is building the barrier - a network of fencing, concrete walls, barbed wire and guard posts - to stop suicide bombers entering Israel from the West Bank. But Palestinians condemn the barrier as a land grab and an attempt to create a political border. They say it does not hew along its length to the so-called Green Line, the boundary between Israel and the West Bank, but cuts into the West Bank and surrounds some towns. The vote came several hours after a top United Nations official reported that construction of the barrier had accelerated during the past month, and demanded that Israel dismantle it. On Oct. 1, Israel's government approved construction of new barriers, significantly expanding the scope of the contentious project. The United Nations official, Kieran Prendergast, under secretary general for political affairs, said at a meeting of the Security Council that halting the barrier's construction would "assist in building support among the Palestinian people for the peace process," which had sunk to "a low point." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/22/international/middleeast/22NATI.html

One message Alabama voters needed to hear more clearly was that rejecting higher taxes costs more in the long run. Saving $10,000 by denying medicine to a poor, H.I.V.-positive woman is no bargain if she ends up in a state hospital with full-blown AIDS needing $100,000 in care. Tutoring high school students in danger of failing is cheap compared with paying for welfare � or prison. What Alabama's Low-Tax Mania Can Teach the Rest of the Country The budget ax is swinging in Alabama, and the carnage is piling up. A hundred and fifty fewer low-income AIDS patients will receive life-saving medicines from the state. Fifteen thousand low-income Alabamians may lose their hypertension drugs. High Hopes, a program that offers after-school tutoring to students who fail the high school graduation exam, is being slashed. And up to 1,500 poor children and adults with Down syndrome, autism and other disabilities will not be able to attend a state-supported special-needs camp. The cuts are reaching down to core government functions. The court system is laying off 500 of 1,600 workers, from clerk's office employees to probation officers. The health department is losing investigators who track tuberculosis, and sharply reducing restaurant inspections. Alabama's huge budget gap is a result of the voters' rejection, nearly six weeks ago, of Gov. Bob Riley's tax reform plan, which would have generated an additional $1.2 billion, much of it from undertaxed timberland. After the vote, Governor Riley was forced to cut most state agencies by 18 percent, and other recipients of state funds by 75 percent. Bad as things are, the impact is being blunted by a fortuitous one-time injection of federal funds. Next year agencies are bracing for a 56 percent hit. If the state cannot find more revenue � and Governor Riley is searching � it may be nearly impossible for basic services, including courts, prisons and police, to operate. Alabama's disintegrating government is a problem, certainly, for anyone in the state. But it may also be a harbinger of where the nation is headed. There is a "starve the beast" ethic, currently fashionable among conservatives, holding that the best way to downsize government and end the social safety net is to get voters to demand lower taxes. But before we hurtle any further in that direction, we should think hard about whether we want the whole nation to look like Alabama does this year or, worse, next year. Alabama is not a wealthy state, but its bigger problem is that it is not making an effort to raise the taxes it needs. It is 48th in the nation in state and local revenue as a percentage of personal income, according to Governing magazine. And it has the nation's least equitable tax system. Alabama's income tax kicks in for families of four earning just $4,600. Its property taxes are the lowest in the nation, Governing reports, and "heavily favor farming interests." As a Republican congressman, Governor Riley strongly opposed tax increases. But when he took over the state government, he realized it could not run on the revenues coming in. He courageously offered up a tax package that raised the needed revenue while shifting the burden from overtaxed poor people to undertaxed business interests. But the package was defeated by a skeptical electorate, with many of the no votes coming from low-income Alabamians, whose taxes would have gone down. The voters were not entirely wrong to be skeptical. No budget is free of waste, not even Alabama's meager one. There is a state tradition of legislative pork, patronage controlled by key legislators. And powerful lobbies, notably the teachers' union, have long gotten more than their share of state funds. But Governor Riley has already trimmed much of the pork. And next year, he will no doubt take aim at teacher benefit packages. It is easy to sell voters on low taxes, and a well-financed campaign by Alabama's business community � aided, shamefully, by the state Christian Coalition � did just that. What is harder, but vital right now, is making the more challenging case for why taxes, and sometimes even tax increases, are necessary.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/20/opinion/20MON3.html

Prisoner's Dilemma How '60s anti-war activists let today's chicken hawks off the hook.� On the surface, the war with Iraq seems a simple case of hypocrisy gone lethal. With few exceptions, those in and around the White House who beat the drum most loudly for the invasion of Iraq had not seen a day of combat in their lives. Some, like Vice President Dick Cheney, avoided the Vietnam draft with college deferments; others, like President George Bush, served out their time in safe, hard-to-acquire berths in the National Guard; and the number of medical deferments awarded to now-vigorous conservative leaders is suspiciously high. Meanwhile, many top officials who had seen combat, including senior uniformed officers at the Pentagon and retired soldiers like Secretary of State Colin Powell and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), were dubious about the administration's choice to attack Iraq as the next move in the war on terror. Even those who came around to support the invasion openly worried about the best-case scenario "plans" for post-Saddam Iraq made by civilians at the Pentagon, few of whom had ever worn the uniform. These concerns proved valid. In the months since May 1, when the president donned an aviator's jumpsuit, landed on an aircraft carrier, and declared the end of major combat, and more than 155 American soldiers have died in Iraq. The number of wounded has skyrocketed to over 1,000, up 35 percent in August alone, according to The Washington Post. Exhausted, middle-aged reservists have had their tours of duty lengthened. And the administration has had to go back to the United Nations for a mandate to spur the international community to bail out the United States with additional troops and resources. �At a recent gathering of current and retired military officers, retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni--who endorsed Bush in 2000, became his Middle East coordinator, but then broke with the administration over Iraq--spoke for many when he said, "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is it happening again?" according to The Washington Post's Thomas E. Ricks. Last month, after Bush gave a speech to returning members of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division thanking them for their bravery, one young soldier told the Los Angeles Times, "He likes war. He should go fight in a war for two days and see how he likes it." Sidebar: How To Be a Chicken Hawk George W. Bush, President In 1968, George W. Bush, the son of a Texas congressman, applied for a position with the Texas Air National Guard, a popular way to avoid being drafted for combat. Although there was a long waiting list, and Bush had received only mediocre scores on his pilot aptitude test, he was quickly accepted. Bush's service was supposed to last until 1973, but in 1972 he received a transfer to a guard unit in Alabama, allowing him to work on the Senate campaign of a friend of his father. When he failed to take his annual flight physical, guard officials grounded him, and he never flew again. His final officer-efficiency report from May 1973 noted that supervisors hadn't seen him or heard from him. Dick Cheney, Vice President Cheney, who explained that he "had other priorities" at the time, received two draft deferments --one for being a student, and one for being married. In 1965, the government announced a change of policy: Married men would now be drafted, unless they were also fathers. Nine months and two days after that announcement, the Cheneys had their first child. John Ashcroft, Attorney General Ashcroft received six student deferments during Vietnam, plus another "occupational deferment," on the grounds that his civilian job--teaching business law to undergraduates at Southwest Missouri State University--was critical. "I would have served if asked," he has said. Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz received a student deferment, allowing him to attend Cornell, then do graduate work at the University of Chicago, where he remained until the draft was over. Tom Delay, Speaker of the House (R-Texas) Delay received a student deferment, and in 1969 drew a high number in the draft lottery, meaning he did not have to go to Vietnam. At a 1988 press conference defending his and vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle's failure to serve in Vietnam, Delay argued that so many blacks volunteered to serve as a way to escape poverty that there was no room for patriotic conservatives like him and Quayle. Richard Perle, Pentagon Adviser Perle received a student deferment, enabling him to go to graduate school at Princeton, then went to England to work on his doctoral thesis. Fed up with Perle's constant war-mongering last year, Sen. Chuck Hagel, (R-Neb) who volunteered for Vietnam and earned two Purple Hearts, suggested that perhaps "Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad." Elliott Abrams, National Security Council, Middle East Director Abrams avoided Vietnam with a bad back, which vanished once the war ended. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0310.poe.html

Democrats Find Little Donations Go a Long Way on Internet A number of Democratic presidential candidates have started monthly contribution plans as part of their Internet fund-raising strategies, attracting donations that while modest � $10 or $50 � are given repeatedly. "It's the same theory that goes behind the late-night infomercials," said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that analyzes campaign finance. "Buy the abs machine for $29.99 for six months! It's much easier to do that than to say that the machine will cost you $180. That is just part of marketing." These subscription plans are partly a result of supporters' requests, but they fit into a Democratic Party effort to build a base of small regular donors to match the one that the Republicans have accumulated over the years. They also reflect evolving fund-raising strategies in response to the new campaign finance regulations, currently under review by the Supreme Court, that have put the emphasis on "hard money," or individual contributions that are capped at $2,000. Only the first $250 of an individual donation is matched by federal funds. "You are essentially doubling every one of these contributions with matching funds," said Erik Smith, a spokesman for the campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt. "It's very significant." In addition to Mr. Gephardt, other presidential candidates who are trying the online subscriber route, where people can have donations automatically charged to their credit cards each month, are Howard Dean of Vermont and Senators John Edwards of North Carolina and John Kerry of Massachusetts. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/politics/campaigns/19GIVE.html

President Bush's support among older voters has dropped substantially in recent months, eroding recent Republican gains and highlighting the importance of this critical electoral bloc in 2004, political strategists and analysts say. The trend underscores the stakes for Mr. Bush in the current Congressional negotiations aimed at creating a long-promised prescription drug benefit in Medicare, which covers 40 million elderly and disabled Americans. Negotiators passed a self-imposed deadline on Friday for reaching agreement, but vowed to complete their work before Congress adjourns, which is expected to be sometime next month. Mr. Bush's popularity has declined over all since early summer, but some recent polls suggest that he lost significantly more ground among voters 65 and older than he did among younger Americans. Politicians in both parties consider older voters to be particularly important because they are much more likely to vote than younger people, and because they are heavily concentrated in states that are often presidential battlegrounds, like Florida and Pennsylvania. Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, a longtime Republican campaign strategist, said, "It's still a very fluid vote that can swing on a dime." A poll conducted this month by The New York Times and CBS News showed that Mr. Bush had a 41 percent approval rating among the 65-and-older voters, his lowest among any age group. That was down from 44 percent in July and 63 percent in May. Similar trends have been reported this fall by the Pew Research Center. The latest Gallup Poll, released this week, showed that even as Mr. Bush's overall approval rating had risen to 56 percent from 50 percent during the past month, voters older than 65 remained his weakest age group. Forty-nine percent of them approved of the job he was doing, compared with 60 percent of those 30 to 49. Analysts in both parties cite the economy, the stock market and the situation in Iraq as major factors in the slippage, along with more traditional concerns for older Americans like Medicare and the cost of prescription drugs. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/politics/campaigns/19ELDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

For Better or Worse, It's Becoming 'Bush's War' All may not be well at the White House if the president feels compelled to assert, as George W. Bush did in a television interview last week, that "the person who is in charge is me." If a president has to state the obvious � in 1995, Bill Clinton memorably announced that he was still relevant � it is even more likely that something, somewhere, is wrong. In this case, it was the management of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy, or at least the public's perception of it. The president's comment was meant to drive home the message that the American occupation would now be overseen by the White House, not the Pentagon. Specifically, Iraq policy would be run by the new "Iraq Stabilization Group," led by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, who works down the West Wing corridor from Mr. Bush and is one of his closest aides. To a lot of the president's critics and some of his supporters, the change was an overdue attempt by the White House to gain control of what the chattering class calls "Rummy's war," but which history will remember as Mr. Bush's war. Others, though, say the shift represents a significant risk for Mr. Bush. The decision-making, they argue, is now even closer to the Oval Office, with no one but the president to blame when things go badly. "It raises the political stakes considerably," said David M. Kennedy, a professor of history at Stanford. "The president has essentially denuded himself of possible political cover, should he need it. It strikes me as a sign of real political urgency, and possible political desperation, that he is ready to take this into the White House and expose himself in that way." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/weekinreview/19BUMI.html

Hoping to speed up reconstruction work in Iraq, American officials in Baghdad are offering contracts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, but giving companies as little as three days to submit competing bids. Procurement experts said the extremely short deadlines were legal, but some warned that they could stifle open competition, favor well-connected contractors at the expense of outsiders and lead to higher costs. "Three days is absurd," said Steven Schooner, a professor of procurement policy at George Washington University's law school. "You can objectively conclude that in the United States we don't do this. It's highly unusual." Two weeks ago, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq gave companies three days to bid on a contract to supply the Iraqi government as many as 850 personal computers as well as telephones, fax machines and other office equipment. A week before that, occupation officials gave contractors seven days to offer a price for up to 14 million boxes of ammunition for Russian-made AK-47 automatic rifles, which are widely used by the Iraqi police and security forces. Scores of other jobs have been awarded or offered with similarly short bidding periods. They include contracts to provide private security guards, repair buildings, supply heavy electrical equipment and even to destroy gigantic sculptures of Saddam Hussein. Occupation officials say they have made the process more open. They now post contracting opportunities on the occupation authority's Web site, along with a standard list of rules and conditions for bidding and carrying out work. But they also say that speed is a top priority, and they make no apologies for giving companies a very short time to respond. "We're here to support the customer, and he has an urgent need," said Col. Anthony Bell, a spokesman for the occupation on contracting issues, explaining the rationale for the rapid granting of contracts. "All that we're doing is reacting to the urgent requirement that he has provided us." The current rush of contracts is being financed out of the new Development Fund of Iraq, which holds money received from Iraqi oil exports. Since the fund's inception in mid-July, coalition officials say they have awarded 143 projects worth more than $200 million. But that is just the beginning. The Bush administration predicts that Iraqi oil revenues will reach $12 billion next year, and President Bush is pressing Congress to approve nearly $20 billion in American money for civilian work in Iraq next year. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/international/middleeast/19CONT.html

State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq A yearlong State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal State Department documents and interviews with administration and Congressional officials. Beginning in April 2002, the State Department project assembled more than 200 Iraqi lawyers, engineers, business people and other experts into 17 working groups to study topics ranging from creating a new justice system to reorganizing the military to revamping the economy. Their findings included a much more dire assessment of Iraq's dilapidated electrical and water systems than many Pentagon officials assumed. They warned of a society so brutalized by Saddam Hussein's rule that many Iraqis might react coolly to Americans' notion of quickly rebuilding civil society. Several officials said that many of the findings in the $5 million study were ignored by Pentagon officials until recently, although the Pentagon said they took the findings into account. The work is now being relied on heavily as occupation forces struggle to impose stability in Iraq. The working group studying transitional justice was eerily prescient in forecasting the widespread looting in the aftermath of the fall of Mr. Hussein's government, caused in part by thousands of criminals set free from prison, and it recommended force to prevent the chaos. "The period immediately after regime change might offer these criminals the opportunity to engage in acts of killing, plunder and looting," the report warned, urging American officials to "organize military patrols by coalition forces in all major cities to prevent lawlessness, especially against vital utilities and key government facilities." Despite the scope of the project, the military office initially charged with rebuilding Iraq did not learn of it until a major government drill for the postwar mission was held in Washington in late February, less than a month before the conflict began, said Ron Adams, the office's deputy director. The man overseeing the planning, Tom Warrick, a State Department official, so impressed aides to Jay Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general heading the military's reconstruction office, that they recruited Mr. Warrick to join their team. George Ward, an aide to General Garner, said the reconstruction office wanted to use Mr. Warrick's knowledge because "we had few experts on Iraq on the staff." But top Pentagon officials blocked Mr. Warrick's appointment, and much of the project's work was shelved, State Department officials said. Mr. Warrick declined to be interviewed for this article. The Defense Department, which had the lead role for planning postwar operations and reconstruction in Iraq, denied that it had shunned the State Department planning effort.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/international/worldspecial/19POST.html?pagewanted=all&position=