contributions

by SANDRO CONTENTA
LANDSTUHL, Germany?At the U.S. military hospital on a wooded hilltop here, the cost of the Iraq war is measured in amputated limbs, burst eyeballs, shrapnel-torn bodies and shattered lives.
They’re the seriously wounded U.S. soldiers who arrive daily at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a growing human toll that belies American election talk of improving times in Iraq.
They’re the maimed and the scarred that hospital staff believe are largely invisible to an (…)

Lots More Troops To Iraq... After the Election by Ray McGovern
It’s not an “if.” It’s a “when.” Pentagon officials have indicated that they plan to send as many as 15,000 additional troops during the first four months of 2005, and the President George W. Bush continues to insist “we will stay the course” until Iraq is stabilized. (I do wish his advisers would provide a different vocabulary so that those of us steeped in the mistakes regarding Vietnam could be spared painful flashbacks.) (…)

By ED JOHNSON
BRIGHTON, England — For Tony Blair, sorry seems to be the hardest word. A day after the prime minister expressed regret about bad intelligence on Iraq, delegates at the Labour Party’s annual convention were divided over whether they’d heard a genuine apology for the war.
In a contrite, conversational speech that won him a standing ovation, Blair said he could apologize for faulty evidence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — but he refused to do so for toppling Saddam (…)

By JAMES GLANZ and THOM SHANKER
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 28 - Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants. The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from (…)

By Dana Priest and Thomas Ricks, Washington Post
WASHINGTON — A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and departments of state and defense.
While President Bush, Defense (…)

By ROBERT TANNER
New voters are flooding local election offices with paperwork, registering in significantly higher numbers than four years ago as attention to the presidential election runs high and an array of activist groups recruit would-be voters who could prove critical come Nov. 2.
Cleveland has seen nearly twice as many new voters register so far as compared with 2000; Philadelphia is having its biggest boom in new voters in 20 years; and counties are bringing in temporary (…)

by Barbra Streisand
If you cross this administration you get your head handed to you. If you open your mouth and tell the truth like former White House Economic Advisor Lawrence Lindsay did when he told the Administration that the Iraqi war was going to cost between $100-$200 billion dollars, you get fired.
If you disagree with the President, like Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill did one too many times regarding the President’s policy on tax cuts, you get canned. If you claim that the (…)

By Tom Squitieri
WASHINGTON - Fewer than two-thirds of the former soldiers being reactivated for duty in Iraq and elsewhere have reported on time, prompting the Army to threaten some with punishment for desertion.
The former soldiers, part of what is known as the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), are being recalled to fill shortages in skills needed for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of the 1,662 ready reservists ordered to report to Fort Jackson, S.C., by Sept. 22, only 1,038 (…)

WASHINGTON - A member of the US House of Representatives has demanded a full congressional investigation of allegations that the all-volunteer US Army was trying to coerce soldiers at the end of their contracts to re-enlist, threatening them with tours of duty in Iraq if they refused.
In a letter sent to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter on Monday, Colorado Democrat Diana DeGette asked him to find out if "White House or civilian Pentagon officials are pressuring the (…)

by Timothy J. Burger; Douglas Waller
President Bush and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi insisted last week that Iraq would go ahead with elections scheduled for January, despite continuing violence. But U.S. officials tell TIME that the Bush team ran into trouble with another plan involving those elections - a secret "finding" written several months ago proposing a covert CIA operation to aid candidates favored by Washington. A source says the idea was to help such candidates - (…)