It's Craptastic!

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller regrets his vote to authorize a war against Iraq.

``If I had known then what I know now, I would have voted against it,'' Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Friday. ``I have admitted that my vote was wrong.''

The Democratic-led Senate approved the war resolution 77-23 on Oct. 11, 2002, one day after the U.S. House approved a similar resolution.

``The decision got made before there was a whole bunch of intelligence,'' said Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. ``I think the intelligence was shaped. And I think the interpretation of the intelligence was shaped.

``We had this feeling we could be welcomed as liberators. Americans don't know history, geography, ethnicity. The administration had no idea of what they were getting into in Iraq. We are not internationalists. We border on being isolationists. We don't know anything about the Middle East.''

SAVANNAH, Ga. - A U.S. soldier who says he would rather go to prison than back to an "oil-driven war" has been charged with desertion for leaving his unit in Iraq five months ago.

Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia of the Florida National Guard returned last week to Fort Stewart to face possible prosecution. Mejia, 28, left Iraq in October on two weeks leave and did not return to his unit, the 1st Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment.

"The legal system has told him he is charged with desertion," Fort Stewart spokesman Richard Olson said Friday, nine days after Mejia reported back to the southeast Georgia Army post March 17.

Mejia, who has condemned the war in Iraq as "an oil-driven war," has an application pending for conscientious objector status. That would not stop the Army from prosecuting him for his five-month absence.

Mejia, of Miami Beach, has said he would rather go to prison than back to Iraq. He learned of the charge Wednesday, said his attorney, Louis Font.

Contrite and thankful for another chance, Larry Eustachy returned to coaching with Southern Mississippi.

Eustachy was introduced as Golden Eagles coach Thursday, 10 months after his embarrassing resignation at Iowa State.

``Sometimes until you totally bottom out, you don't really see what's going on in your life,'' Eustachy said during a news conference. ``I hit rock bottom with nobody to blame but myself. You can go one way or another ... I am a recovering alcoholic and it's constant maintenance, it's constant work. But where I find myself now, I've never felt better.''

The other thing that makes us suspicious about Clarke is that his publisher has not booked him on "The Factor." It's well known throughout the publishing industry that this program sells books big-time. Even Hans Blix has recently came in here and held his own. Clarke has chosen the soft venues.

Bubbling with confidence President Bush and congressional Republicans will win re-election this November, House Majority Leader DeLay Wednesday laid out the broad outlines of a GOP agenda next year -- including the replacement of the federal income tax with a national sales tax.

DeLay also pledged to begin work this year on a major overhaul of federal law to lighten the regulatory burden on American businesses.

"We plan to move legislation in the next Congress to fundamentally reform the tax code altogether," DeLay said in a keynote speech to a symposium sponsored by the Baker & Hostetler law firm, Clark Consulting's Federal Policy Group and the Yale Club of Washington. DeLay later told CongressDaily he wanted to abolish the federal income tax and impose a retail sales tax he said would produce more revenue.

If that proves impossible to pass, DeLay said, Republicans would "fall back" on adoption of a new flat tax on incomes that "would be better than the job-killing monstrosity we have now."

A fuming U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice accused former counter-terrorism aide Richard Clarke on Wednesday of shifting positions from backing President Bush's war on terrorism to now questioning it.