It's Craptastic!

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first let me kind of step back, squint, stick out my little tongue a bit and ignore your question in favor of reciting the lines I've been practicing for the last few days. Here goes...

Intelligence is a vital part of smartness, and smartness is needed for serious thinking, but is sort of wasted on just everyday kind of thinking used in domestic policy. It takes thinking thoughts for fighting and winning our battle against the Muslamian evildoers. And remember that this war is a crusade that will never end so long as my handlers feel that its exploitation can help ensure that our iron grasp on the levers of self-enriching power is eternal.

Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix. In fact, Cleland could have dropped a grenade on his foot as a National Guardsman – or what Cleland sneeringly calls "weekend warriors." Luckily for Cleland's political career and current pomposity about Bush, he happened to do it while in Vietnam.
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Indeed, if Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. senator in the first place. Maybe he'd be the best pharmacist in Atlanta, but not a U.S. senator. He got into office on the basis of serving in Vietnam and was thrown out for his performance as a senator.

Cleland wore the uniform, he was in Vietnam, and he has shown courage by going on to lead a productive life. But he didn't "give his limbs for his country," or leave them "on the battlefield." There was no bravery involved in dropping a grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight.

On April 8, 1968, I volunteered for one last mission. The helicopter moved in low. The troops jumped out with M16 rifles in hand as we crouched low to the ground to avoid the helicopter blades. Then I saw the grenade. It was where the chopper had lifted off. It must be mine, I thought. Grenades had fallen off my web gear before. Shifting the M16 to my left hand and holding it behind me, I bent down to pick up the grenade.

A blinding explosion threw me backwards.

For nearly 32 years, Cleland lived with the belief that it was his grenade that almost took his life. He put his struggle into words in 1980 when he wrote "Strong at the Broken Places," then followed it up with "Going for the Max! 12 Principles for Living Life to the Fullest." Then, in the summer of 1999, Cleland got a telephone call that changed his life: David Lloyd, a fellow Marine who helped save his life on the battlefield, told him it was someone else's grenade that caused the accident.

The Bush administration is proposing to double spending on sexual abstinence programs that bar any discussion of birth control or condoms to prevent pregnancy or AIDS (news - web sites) despite a lack of evidence that such programs work.
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In Minnesota, a study found that sexual activity doubled among junior high school students taking part in an abstinence-only program. The independent study, commissioned by the state's health department, recommended broadening the program to include more information about contraception.
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Advocates of comprehensive sex education said the shift, coupled with the additional money, is part of Bush's election-year appeal to conservatives.

They said the administration's proposal flies in the face of research that credits both abstinence and contraception with reducing the teenage birth rate by 30 percent in the past decade to historic lows.
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"Kids in society are saturated with information about contraception and messages about encouraging casual, permissive sex," said Robert Rector, who helped write the administration's abstinence education program.

Rector discounted the Minnesota study as unscientific and said the CDC research does not give enough credit to abstinence.

In the annals of embarrassing presidential relatives, Neil Bush is no Billy Carter or Roger Clinton.

But his messy divorce has produced some eye-opening disclosures. Among them: He had sex with women who showed up uninvited at his hotel rooms in Asia; he had an affair and may have fathered a child out of wedlock

Here are some stomach-flipping excerpts of Sharon Bush's attorney, Marshall Davis Brown, mercilessly grilling President Bush's wayward little brother:

Bush: "I had sexual intercourse with perhaps three or four, I don't remember the exact number, women, at different times. In Thailand once, I have a pretty clear recollection that there was one time in Thailand and in Hong Kong."

Brown: "And you were married to Mrs. Bush?"

Bush: "Yes."

Brown: "Is that where you caught the venereal diseases?"

Bush: "No."

Brown: "Where did you catch those?"

Bush: "Diseases plural? I didn't catch..."

Brown: "Well, I'm sorry. How ... how many venereal diseases do you suffer from?"

Bush: "I've had one venereal disease."

Brown: "Which was?"

Bush: "Herpes."

George W. Bush has a stock response to questions surrounding his service in the Texas Air National Guard in the 1970s: "I did report," he has said. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have been honorably discharged."

But that's not quite true.
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Going missing from military service and then squeaking out with an honorable discharge has a rich history among politicians. Current U.S. Representative Bobby Rush, a Democrat from Illinois, served in the army through the mid-1960s, becoming progressively more involved with radical antiwar groups. In 1968, after Martin Luther King's assassination, he went AWOL from his unit to help found the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers. Weeks later, he was honorably discharged.
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In the military, the status quo presumption is that all soldiers will receive an honorable discharge; if the government wants to change that, "it has to put together a case to overcome that presumption," according to Michael Noone, a professor of law at Catholic University and a retired Air Force judge advocate. Often, even with evidence of misconduct, the commanding officers don't want to bother with the lengthy hearings that securing a dishonorable discharge would require.
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Perhaps more striking is how often serious questions of misconduct have been flat-out ignored. John Allen Muhammad, convicted last November for his participation in the D.C. sniper shootings, served in the Louisiana National Guard from 1978-1985, where he faced two summary courts-martial. In 1983, he was charged with striking an officer, stealing a tape measure, and going AWOL. Sentenced to seven days in the brig, he received an honorable discharge in 1985.

Just days after he vowed not to run a "scorched earth" campaign that could hurt the eventual Democratic nominee, Howard Dean lit into Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts on Wednesday, saying that if Mr. Kerry wins the nomination, "once again we may have to settle for the lesser of two evils."

Seizing on a fresh report about the financing of critical ads, Democrat Howard Dean assailed front-runner John Kerry on Wednesday for being part of "the corrupt political culture in Washington."
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"What we now see is John Kerry is part of the corrupt political culture in Washington," Dean told The Associated Press in an interview. "That's exactly what I'm asking Wisconsin voters to stand up against."

"My fear is that he (Kerry) actually won't be the strongest Democratic candidate," Dean told CBS News in an interview to air Wednesday night.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly said on Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The anchor of his own show on Fox News said he was sorry he gave the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons program poised an imminent threat, the main reason cited for going to war.

"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this," O'Reilly said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America."
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O'Reilly said he was "much more skeptical about the Bush administration now" since former weapons inspector David Kay said he did not think Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction.

WASHINGTON The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday.

"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."

Asked if he would drop out if he lost Wisconsin as he had said he would just last week, Dean said, "No." Asked if he was in it for the long haul, he said, "Yup."

The former Vermont governor made the comments during interviews with local television stations. He later told a reporter that people who had urged him to stay in the race had convinced him to fight on.

"I've just been convinced that we are not going to drop out. There are too many people who have come up to me and said, 'Whatever you do, don't drop out,"' he said. "We are going to find a way to stay in, one way or the other."

A furious Powell vocalized the "license revocation" option against CBS-owned broadcast outlets to senior staff at the FCC in the hours and days after the event, a top source said from Washington.

The chairman has since moved away from exploring the possibilities of pulling CBS's license, but word of any such consideration shows just how serious Powell and others at the FCC viewed the breast breach.

NEW YORK - An American Airlines pilot asked Muslims on his flight to identify themselves and suggested the non-Muslims discuss the faith with them, the airline said.

American's Flight 34 was headed from Los Angeles to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on Friday when the pilot asked Muslims on board to raise their hands, Wagner said.

The pilot, whose name was not released, told the airline that he then suggested the other passengers use the flight time to talk to the Muslims about their faith, Wagner said.

The pilot also told passengers he would be available or discussion at the end of the flight. Wagner said the pilot had just returned to work from a weeklong mission trip to Costa Rica.

President Bush: I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind. Again, I wish it wasn't true, but it is true. And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is. And I see dangers that exist, and it's important for us to deal with them.