Christianity & Islam In Action

Shiite Pilgrimage Leads to Church: On Perilous Border, Lebanese Christians Take In Muslims

There is a lesson to be learned in these acts of kindness toward those that are in opposition to each other. These Lebanese Christians are acting in good conscience and faith to the teachings of Christ. Bravo for for them.

As a Christian that lived and worked in Bahrain, and visited Saudi Arabia several times as part of my work responsibilities, I found that the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims were also moved by the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed to treat the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians according to the best Islamic Scholars of the Koran) with kindness except when they act in a war-like manner.

What many misconceive about the conflict in the Middle East is that there is a religious basis for the conflict. Just the opposite is true in most cases. Hamas and Hezbollah do not hate Jews, but they do hate Israel and Israelis. They justify their positions with religious ideology, but the nature of the problem is geopolitical more than it is religious. Jews, Christians and Muslims can--and do-- live peaceably among each other in communities where there is not a zealotry to convert, either religiously or politically, others.

RMEISH, Lebanon -- The word went out -- there was refuge in a Christian village -- and thousands came.

In a pilgrimage of fear, Shiite Muslims from the towns most ravaged along the Lebanese border fled for Rmeish, a hilltop hamlet along a road where Israeli shells fell, at times, every 15 seconds Friday. Here, they escaped to a church, and at the church, a basement lit by soft shafts of sunlight. In it were the wretched of this war: children with dirty feet and a pregnant woman who feared giving birth in squalor, an 85-year-old man whose donkey, his sole possession, was killed by a bomb and hundreds of others among the at least 10,000 who arrived in Rmeish, some drinking from a fetid pool and walking the streets in search of food and goodwill.

"The safety of God," said Heidar Issa, one of those here. "That's what we were counting on."

In a country fractured by faith, torn asunder by 15 years of civil war, they found refuge among the Lebanese Christians they once fought. Their politics often diverged -- over support for Hezbollah, their views of today's conflict -- but they shared a plight. And in a common misery wrought by war, less than a mile from the Israeli border, there was fleeting coexistence rather than talk of strife.

"Everyone is opening their doors to anyone who comes," said Tannous Alem, a 43-year-old resident of Rmeish with a cross around his neck, who had brought 120 people into his home over 12 days. "We're all the same in times like these."

Southern Lebanon, populated largely by Shiite Muslims, has borne the brunt of Israel's attacks, its villages depopulated, its roads and bridges in shambles and nearly every family touched by the war. But the road to Rmeish along Lebanon's border is a microcosm of the diverse country itself: Sunni Muslim village, then Shiite hamlet, alongside Christian town.

Along the sea was Alma al-Shaab, a Christian village with its olive trees, cactuses bearing prickly pears and gardens wilting with no water. Inland was Yarine, a largely Sunni Muslim town, along rolling green hills with cream-colored stones and shrub-like trees. With a wave, an inhabitant there beckoned a passing car: "Welcome! Come join us!" On the Israeli side of the border, antennas stood like sentries along a ridge. Horses, seemingly lost, wandered the streets, unfazed by the explosions. Passing them was a gaggle of Syrian workers, fleeing on foot. Their white flags were tethered to crooked branches, held by hand.

"They are fighting jihad in the path of God," read a sign attached to an electricity pylon in Raamiye, a Shiite Muslim village near the site where Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid more than two weeks ago.

"Please," one woman cried. "Check and see if my home is safe."

"When you come back, can you take us?" another man shouted.

Next was Kawzah, a Christian village with an abandoned Lebanese army checkpoint, then Aita al-Shaab, a village known as a stronghold of Hezbollah, where torn electricity wires dangled like vines along the street. Israeli attacks have destroyed swaths of the village, now deserted. A white Toyota was abandoned there, its trunk unlatched. Next to it was a blue Mercedes, its hood open.

And then came Rmeish, long a rival of Aita al-Shaab, whose Christian inhabitants sometimes served as officers in a Lebanese militia that fought Hezbollah during the Israeli occupation that ended in 2000. The hundreds of displaced people convulsed its streets, gathering along the curbs.

"17 days without water!" one person shouted. Another pointed to the hillsides. "There are still bodies there," he yelled.

In peace, Rmeish was a village of 7,000, picturesque with its red-tiled roofs and tidy streets. Since Israel ordered Lebanese to flee their villages along the border, as many as 10,000 have come, perhaps more. Isolated from the rest of the country, Rmeish suffered the same fate as its neighbors: no fuel for cars even for those who want to leave, no electricity, and supplies of food dwindling, even as stores remained open. To bathe, wash dishes and cook, the displaced draw water from a fetid pool filled by winter rains. Some said they were drinking from it. Diseases like scabies were spreading. The municipal government, overextended in the best of times, has virtually collapsed.

A ride to Beirut, once $10, now costs as much as $400, sometimes more.

"It's so miserable," said Carla el-Hage, a 19-year-old from the village. "This is what you read in history books."

The displaced have gathered in homes, a school and a convent. As many as 700 went to the Tajali Church, part of it unfinished. On a concrete steeple, roofed in red tile, stands a cross. Windows await their stained glass. On the church door was a letter pleading for order: a curfew beginning at 7 p.m., no lights at night and no trucks on the streets that might be targets.

In the basement was Khadija Rahme, a 29-year-old woman, eight months pregnant with her first child. She grasped a half-burnt candle. Her face drawn, she complained that there had not been enough water for bathing in 17 days.

"I'm so scared," she said, pleading. "I'm so scared I'm going to have to give birth here."

Next to her was 50-year-old Haniya Srour, who started crying.

"She's 95 years old," Srour said, pointing to her mother, Malika, lying listlessly on a mattress.

"Look how we're eating," she said, pointing to week-old bread, crumbling in her hands. Nearby was a bottle of drinking water, tinted green. Around the room were mattresses in small spaces, pans and silverware soaking in pots, plastic bags stuffed with clothes, a Koran and their identity papers, and cheap rugs marking the extent of each family's domain.

"Come look at the bathroom," she said, walking into a pitch-black room, the toilet a plastic bucket.

Not everyone in Rmeish was happy with the flood of displaced Shiites. Some complained that a few had broken into deserted houses, searching for food. Others worried that they might become squatters. And there was a sense of relief as thousands managed to travel the dangerous roads and flee toward Beirut since Thursday. But even the displaced were struck by the generosity they found in a village that, almost without exception, they thought the Israelis might not attack because it was Christian.

"They welcomed us with 100 hellos," said Issa, who arrived 10 days ago with 26 people in his truck. "Bless them."

His friend, Hussein Rahmi, nodded. "It's safer with the Christians," he said.

In the church's courtyard walked Fadi Abdoush, a stocky, 23-year-old Christian from Rmeish, with the gait of someone who had taken charge. He worked at a grocery store, but since the conflict began, he had struggled to provide help for the displaced.

"There is no city council," Abdoush said. "I've become the city council now. I've become the mayor."

He turned on a faucet that let out dirty water. "This is what we're drinking," he said.

He walked past 11 steel vats from Holland for shipping hydrogenated vegetable fat that he had lined up next to the church. Filled with stagnant water, they were for washing clothes. He walked into the entryway of his house, where he had set up three large steel plates for baking bread. He pointed out a makeshift latrine, too small to serve so many people. Then he walked into a small concrete hut, with brown tobacco leaves hanging from the roof for drying, where he had put 28 people, one family, who came from Aita al-Shaab.

Sixteen days ago, their house was destroyed. They had walked to Rmeish at 3 a.m.

"We don't know what our destiny is," said Hussein Nassar, the 65-year-old patriarch. "We have no idea what awaits us."

Abdoush looked out at the family. "One day it might be our turn," he said, echoing the words of neighbors that were often repeated Friday.

Along the town's main road was a jarring scene: a rare, chaotic, desperate panorama of life in an otherwise desolate and deserted region. People milled about on the roads, looking for rides. "$500 to Beirut! This isn't a shame? It's not a shame?" Suheil Adeeb shouted. Others stood expressionless. They held bags with clothes, blankets in plastic bags and their cooking pots on the street before them, the metal catching the glint of the sun. "We're waiting for God's help," said Yusuf Jamil, a 24-year-old from Aita al-Shaab.

A convoy left the city. Other cars joined it, frantically, people believing that in numbers there was more safety.

"It's a disaster for them, and it's a disaster for us," said 30-year-old Yusuf Rida.

Three nights before, his house was destroyed. So were three houses of his relatives. His grandfather was killed, as was his grandmother. With his cousin and uncle, they were still buried in the rubble. Before dawn, he walked to Rmeish with his three children and wife, all of them barefoot, bringing nothing with them but their clothes. They slept by the fetid pool.

"I didn't want to leave," he said.

"It was forced upon us," added his wife, Amal.

As they left Rmeish, a convoy with perhaps 100 cars plied the road, the vehicles flying their ubiquitous white flags, as blasts reverberated in the wadis along each side. Ahead, the white flag once tied to the roof of one minibus trailed behind it like a sail. There was a battered red Mercedes, improbably filled with 10 people, and a red tractor carrying 20 in back. They passed olive trees, a plowed but abandoned field and a silver Mercedes that was abandoned. "Joe Taxi," its windshield read.

At each blast, the eyes of Rida's children grew wider, and his wife cried more.

"These aren't my tears," she said. "These are the tears of my children."

He called his brother, staying near Sidon, to see whether he had room for his family. His daughter asked where another relative had gone. But for long stretches, they simply sat in silence, the terraced, rolling hills of southern Lebanon passing their windows.

"We don't know where we're going," he said softly. "We're just going."

Comments On Misinformation/Disinformation At Pregnancy Centers

I received a couple of comments regarding my post on misinformation/disinformation being given out by pregnancy centers that I thought deserved my attention rather than just publishing them... so here goes:

From an ANONYMOUS commmenter:

--Unfortunately, we are suckers, just like P.T. Barnum told us we were. We don't check things out for ourselves, but we accept the word of the "experts" that are paid to lie to us. (quoted from my post)

It's incredibly interesting that you say this considering that American mainstream medical statements regarding the risks of abortion are at odds with the large majority of studies that have come out of other nations that do not have federally funded abortion clinics (Planned Parenthood received $272 million from the U.S. government last year alone).

There are no legitimate, comprehesive or scientifically sound evidence from any study ANYWHERE in the world that demonstrates a statistically significant relationship or corrleation between having an abortion and increased risk of breast cancer, infertility or deep psychological trauma. While there are anecdotal reports and descriptions of depression after an abortion, the best evidence suggests these occurrences are related to the hormonal imbalance that occurs after the fetus is removed from the uterus, similar to what is called "post-partum hormonal depression" (aka "baby birth blues") that usually clears within a week or two. There are also cases where the deeper, more profound hormonal imbalance occurs and true depression sets in, but the rate for such occurrences is statistically less than that experienced by women that carry the fetus through late stages of pregnancy and give birth. Most of the reports of "deep psychological trauma" are reported by unsound surveys (or should I say "polls") that are not medical evidence and come from those that have an anti-abortion agenda that borders on the fanantical.

As for infertility, there is more risk of infertility from those that contract an STD, especially gonnorhea, syphillis and clamydia, or develop PID (pelvic inflammatory disease). The evidence published in the New England Journal Of Medicine, JAMA and Lancet, including evidence from European countries, indicates NO MARKED INCREASE RISK of infertility among those that had an abortion that was conducted in a safe, sterile and established manner. There is evidence of infertility resulting from post-surgical infection. But reputable medical centers conducting abortion procedures in full compliance with established techniques and protocols, including stringent cleaning and aseptic technique, present a risk, but not a significant risk. The risk is similar to that of developing an infection after any type of surgery. But it is NOT an increased risk and should not be reported or understood as such. By the way, those of us in the know have asked congress and state legislators to pass regulations that require all facilities and practitioners that conduct surgery or treat infection disease to publicly report their rates of facility-acquired infections (aka nosocomial infections) not only by facility, but also by procedure and by practitioner... That would be useful information regarding which surgeon or doctor one would choose to conduct a procedure. Guess who resists this idea the most? Congress!

As for breast cancer, once again there is no study--anywhere--that can demonstrate a statistically significant relationship between abortions and breast cancer. While such links and correlations do exist for those that undergo partial or full hysterectomy, the rates of breast cancer for women who have had an abortion are reported as being close to the same rate as that for all women in an industrial society. Given all of the crap that we put into our water, air and soils, it would be hard to identify whether it was the abortion or the environment was the causal link to any incident of breast cancer. Breast cancer is a big enough threat to our women. There is a relationship between breast cancer and oral contraceptives, smoking and STDs, but no established relationship between abortion and breast cancer. We need not create misinformation of disinformation to make the threat larger than it is...

Whose interest does it really serve to lie to women and hide the real risks associated with abortion. This brings me back to the days when big tobacco was still trying to cover up the risks of smoking cigarettes until finally the science was so overwhelming that they were forced to put those little labels on the boxes.

Well, that is an interesting question. Since the lying is being done to prevent abortions, it only serves the ultra-conservatives and their Christian Right voting base that insist on pushing a religious agenda and ideology down everyone's throats. I argue that abortion is indeed an immoral act and refuse to participate in it. I applaud hospitals that refuse to conduct abortions as a matter of principle. However, I will not support lies, misinformation and disinformation as a means of defeating abortion in our society. Two wrongs have never made a right.

Pregnancy Centers are doing just that. Bringing the science front and center. They want to debate facts, but instead they get attacked

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THERE IS NO SCIENCE THAT SUPPORTS THESE VIEWS. No sound evidence exists. Trust me, I have looked at the science for over 20 years. I have worked with one of the foremost authorities on the biology of abortion in investigating the evidence as to what a woman and a fetus experience during and after an abortion. If we want to fight abortion, we have to stand taller than this approach. Instead of corrupting ourselves, we should be taking a stand for better pre-natal care, more legitimate ways of helping pregnant women with their needs, better sex education that serves to help prevent unwanted pregnancies (and transmission of diseases), and more effective foster care and adoption options.

The abortion industry is trying to silence them by discrediting them, just like big tobacco did to all those fringe groups.

These reports are not coming from the abortion industry. They came from our own congress, which is loaded down with anti-abortion activists possessing a clear and present ultra-conservative and Christian Right ideological bias. The federal government reviews the studies of such things via the CDC.

But eventually the studies from Japan, New Zealand, England, and others will become readily available and Americans will finally realize that abortionists weren't doing them any favors, rather that they were knowingly putting their health at risk for what...cash ($300-$1500 per abortion- and that's only what the client pays considering that most state governments subsidize the procedure).

There are no comprehensive, fully disclosed or sound studies from anywhere in the world that conclusively, medically or scientifically establishes a higher rate of depression, cancer or infertility from abortion itself. Any reports that claim such have not been validated by repeat studies, longitudinal studies or collaborative findings. As such, they are not sound. Science is not only based on the concept of observation, but also control.

We are so intent on pidgeon-holing political agendas that we can't see what is really happening here!

If the pidgeon hole fits, then we must admit... that there is a religio-political agenda and ideology that is so pervasive that it is willing to ignore its own tenets of religion and principle to defeat the existence of abortion. Anti-abortionists have killed in the name of their cause, becoming terrorists for God. Terry Randall's group and others are terrorists when they advocate bombings of clinics, accosting clinic patrons, shooting doctors and interfering with a person's free will and conscience. These folks are wrong-headed in their zeal as is any other zealot in history. Christ warned us not to go down that path. God gave us this lesson of free will and conscience in Genesis. Figure it out folks.

Another (?) ANONYMOUS commenter left the folowing:

Unfortunately, none of the Congressional reports, or the latest media coverage, have made mention of the substantial scientific studies that support the possibility for increased risk of breast cancer, infertility, and emotional trauma among women who undergo one or more abortions.

I repeat, there are no conclusive scientific studies that positively demonstrate a scientific link between abortion and these other issues.

The Abortion-Breast Cancer (ABC) Link

http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/Brind_NCBQ.PDF

Is a study that has been touted and reported by the Catholic Press. Reading it, one comes up with all kinds of questions regarding methodology and conclusions. It is unreliable in its science and conclusions and reflects the religious and political ideology of its supporters.

www.abortionbreastcancer.com/Lanfranchi060201.pdf
The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link by Angela Lanfranchi, MD, FACS

Dr. Lanfranchi is a member of a Pat Buchanan, ultra-conservative group known as The American Cause Organization. It's stated agenda includes the following:

We believe that life begins at conception and that the deaths of 1.4 million unborn children each year are a stain on our nation's soul. We will fight for the appointment of pro-life judges and justices, passage of a human life amendment by Congress, and eventual reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Certainly we can see an agenda here that does not necessarily support a scientific inquiry.

www.aapsonline.org/press/abortioncancer.htm

Once again we see a political agenda with this organization. It is an alternative physicans organization with a limited membership that includes the following political statement in its code of ethics:

(3) The physician should not condone the taking of human life in the practice of his profession, but at all times respect the sanctity of human life and seek to preserve or improve the quality of life.

It is so committed to this statement that it actually advocates that doctors withdraw from Medicaid and Medicare so that they are not compelled to perform abortions or other services that do not meet its set agenda.

http://www.johnkindley.com/wisconsinlawreview.htm

Kindley is an ultra-conservative that brought his claims to court under a false advertising scheme and LOST.

After four days of testimony, Judge Michael McGuire ruled in favor of the clinic. According to The Forum: "Based on expert testimony from epidemiologists and endocrinologists, McGuire decided the Fargo clinic did not mislead its patients through material contained in its brochures." Judge McGuire ruled: "It does appear that the clinic had the intent to put out correct information and that their information is not untrue or misleading in any way. They did exercise reasonable care...One thing is clear from the experts, and that is that there are inconsistencies. The issue seems to be in a state of flux."

Kindley has an established relationship with at least three anti-abortion groups and had it long before he wrote the paper cited above and the court case he brought to bear. He also gets his press from the World Net Daily, an ultra-conservative web-based outlet that is anti-abortion. There is a significant pre-existing bias here.

These reports do not mention that numerous states including Mississippi, Texas, Kansas, Minnesota, and Montana have passed legislation mandating that abortion providers notify a woman of the increased risk for breast cancer, emotional trauma, and miscarriages that can result from induced abortion.

The reason this is irrelevant is simple... All of these states are run by ultra-conservatives with a political agenda that includes a clear position against abortion. The decision to pass a law of this type is a political process, not one based upon evidence developed in legitimate scientific study. The views offered in passing these laws were full of bias. I look at issues from both sides. I have yet to find any study--absent of a predetermined agenda or bias--that demonstrates a clear, scientifically valid link. Demonstrate that to me and I will bite.

Additionally, little attention has been given to a 1994 report by the National Cancer Institute citing that "Among women who had been pregnant at least once, the risk of breast cancer in those who had experienced an induced abortion was 50% higher than among other women" ("Risk of Breast Cancer Among Young Women: Relationship to Induced Abortion," Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Volume 86, #21). This report has since been removed from their website.

So, let us reveal what the NCI has to say TODAY:

The relationship between induced and spontaneous abortion and breast cancer risk has been the subject of extensive research beginning in the late 1950s. Until the mid-1990s, the evidence was inconsistent. Findings from some studies suggested there was no increase in risk of breast cancer among women who had had an abortion, while findings from other studies suggested there was an increased risk. Most of these studies, however, were flawed in a number of ways that can lead to unreliable results. Only a small number of women were included in many of these studies, and for most, the data were collected only after breast cancer had been diagnosed, and women’s histories of miscarriage and abortion were based on their “self-report” rather than on their medical records. Since then, better-designed studies have been conducted. These newer studies examined large numbers of women, collected data before breast cancer was found, and gathered medical history information from medical records rather than simply from self-reports, thereby generating more reliable findings. The newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk.

AND...

Important Information About Breast Cancer Risk Factors

At present, the factors known to increase a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer include age (a woman’s chances of getting breast cancer increase as she gets older), a family history of breast cancer, an early age at first menstrual period, a late age at menopause, a late age at the time of birth of her first full-term baby, and certain breast conditions. Obesity is also a risk factor for breast cancer in postmenopausal women. More information about breast cancer risk factors is found in NCI’s publication What You Need To Know About™ Breast Cancer.

I repeat my assertion that there is no sound evidence that links abortion to any of the ills that the ultra-conservatives have placed on their agendas.

Here Comes The Bush Gang: NATO Leaders Should Run For Cover

Rice Outlines Proposal to Deploy Force In Lebanon: Plan for Buffer Zone on Border Greeted Skeptically in Beirut

Deploying troops, even NATO troops, along the border in Lebanon is a futile effort. That was proven when our troops were in Lebanon in the 1980s and our Marines were killed by a suicidal car bomber. The strategic situation in Southern Lebanon is a military leader's nightmare. It is a wrong-headed plan and won't work given the topography, urban-suburban georgraphy of close-knit, poorly planned neighborhoods that provide hiding places where the cockroach-like Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists can come out, strike and run for cover. Then, too, is the lack of discipline of the Israeli leadership, the lack of courage of Israeli military leaders to resist breaching international law and committing war crimes under orders from the PM and military ministers, and the realities regarding the relationship between Israel and its neighboring states.

Honestly, the only thing that can be done is to bomb the whole region until there is nothing left and leave the entire region to the Beduoin nomads of the desert and the odd Jewish kibbutz. Seriously, the entire problem is so far out of control that, much like the parent that has had enough of the sibling quibbling and fighting in the back seat on a long road trip, the only thing to do is make it so uncomfortable for both sides that they will either destroy themselves of come to their senses and work it out.

My cousin Kathy and I got into this situation when we were both in the third grade. Being only a few months apart in age, and living in the same triple-decker in Lynn, Massachusetts, Kathy and I got into proverbial pissing contests almost constantly. She would walk by and smack me. I would find an opprtunity to get even and attack her when she wasn't looking. It was a constant state of turmoil. Finally, one night when my aunt and mother were out and about town, my father and my uncle yelled, "ENOUGH!" They pulled the furniture out of the living room of my aunt's apartment, put me in one corner, Kathy in another, and instructed us to commence fighting. We resisted the idea, but they gave us the option of presenting an all-out-get-it-all-over-with fight or suffer the whooping of our lives, a lengthy grounding and a promise that our lives would be more miserable than if we had been sent to hell. Given the dysfunction that prompted these two "adults" to employ this approach to discipline, we both knew that it was better that we beat on each other than get beat by either of them.

We fought for about twenty minutes non-stop. It was viscious. Since Kathy fought like a girl--and in Lynn that didn't mean she was weak and unskilled--hair pulling, scratching, kicking, biting, gouging and groin punching was fair game. When we wanted to quit, these geniuses insisted that we continue. After two hours of fighting we were totally exhausted and devastated. When they finally let us stop the combat, we were so beat up and in such a state that we could barely stand up. They yelled at us for another 20 minutes and sent us to bed with a warning that the next time either one of us even thought about picking on the other, we would repeat this battle royale.

While I do not recommend this approach to disciplining rivaling siblings or cousins, it had the one redeeming feature that no one can deny: it worked. Kathy and I never engaged in such discord ever again. In fact, it made us close friends most of our lives (my mother and aunt always lived very close to one another when we lived in Massachusetts).

The issues in the Middle East involving the Israelis, Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians and others needs to become an all-out-get-it-all-over-with fight because we cannot count on them acting like adults with realistic goals and objectives for peace. So, much like what my uncle and father dis, we should just clear out a space, secure the rest of the region from the fallout, make arrangements for refugees and evauations, and let the silly bastards destroy each other until they get tired of doing so. Maybe after each side kills off most of each other's people they will get the hint that this bovine excrement has to stop... forever.

My only hope is that we can place Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld directly squat in the middle of the battlefield so that they, too, will get the hint that war sucks and is the worst way possible to resolve political problems. But Rice is over there causing more problems that she is helping... all at the behest of Dubya, Dick "The Shootist" Cheney and Donald "We Can Kill'em" Rumsfeld.

On an unannounced trip to ravaged Beirut, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice outlined a plan Monday to deploy an international force, possibly led by NATO, in a buffer zone just inside Lebanon for 60 to 90 days, after which it would expand its mission to help the Lebanese army regain control of the south, Lebanese and U.S. officials said.

The force would also help train the army, which according to U.S. officials now has neither the will nor the means to disarm Hezbollah, Lebanon's last private militia.

But Rice's plan to end the conflict, prop up the Lebanese government and weaken Hezbollah was greeted with skepticism by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, as well as Lebanon's top elected Shiite official and other leaders. Siniora and the speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, a Shiite with close ties to Hezbollah, warned that Hezbollah was unlikely to accept any foreign military presence in its traditional stronghold in heavily Shiite southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has already rejected calls to disarm.

Rice released her proposal, the first major U.S. diplomatic move since the crisis began, as Israeli tanks and troops pushed about a half-mile farther inside south Lebanon on Monday. They met stiff resistance from entrenched Hezbollah fighters around the town of Bint Jbeil, which is roughly two miles inside the border. Meanwhile, Hezbollah fired 80 rockets into northern Israel, wounding more than 20 civilians, two of them seriously, according to Israeli military officials.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and 14 others were wounded in the fighting. Israeli military officials said they are attempting to secure a roughly 15-square-mile region that they describe as a center of Hezbollah operations. Hezbollah has killed 24 Israeli soldiers and 17 civilians since the crisis broke out 13 days ago. More than 60 soldiers have been wounded.

The Israeli air force said it struck about 70 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon Monday. Israeli strikes have killed at least 384 Lebanese, the vast majority of them civilians, during the crisis, the Associated Press reported. The news service also reported that the United Nations said four U.N. peacekeepers were wounded Monday, one of them seriously, in south Lebanon.

[Early Tuesday, the Associated Press reported, an Israeli missile struck a house in the southern Lebanon town of Nabatiyeh, killing seven people and wounding one, hospital and security officials said.]

In Beirut, U.S. officials said that Siniora promised to look more fully at Rice's plan and explore it with others in his government, chosen in elections last year. "He was receptive to our ideas. He gave us enough to keep going. There were no show-stoppers," said a U.S. official traveling with Rice. "We came away convinced that Siniora and the U.S. are on the same page, working toward the same ends."

But U.S. officials also conceded that Lebanon's weak government also faces its own heavy lifting. After flying in by military helicopter from Cyprus, Rice praised Siniora for his "courage and steadfastness."

On the first leg of her diplomatic effort, Rice focused heavily on humanitarian issues. She announced that the U.S. government is pledging $30 million in aid as part of a new international drive to raise $150 million for Lebanon. The U.S. aid will come largely in the form of goods, including 100,000 medical kits, 20,000 blankets and 2,000 plastic sheets that the U.S. military will begin delivering Tuesday.

But Siniora pressed Rice for an immediate cease-fire. The United States is coming under growing Arab and European pressure because of the humanitarian crisis, with about 750,000 displaced people in Lebanon, a country of 4 million people.

The sequence of next steps is also becoming an issue, U.S. officials said. Arab demands have focused on first achieving an immediate cease-fire, before considering other measures such as arrangements to disarm Hezbollah and release two Israeli soldiers taken captive by Hezbollah on July 12 in an incident that sparked the crisis. The Bush administration has backed Israel's campaign to cripple the Shiite militia, which has fired more than 1,000 rockets into Israel, and the United States and Israel are demanding the immediate release of the Israeli soldiers.

Rice told Berri that she was "deeply concerned" about the Lebanese and "what they are enduring." President Bush had personally asked her to make Lebanon the first stop of her Middle East mission, she said. But she also told Berri, whose mainstream Shiite Amal party has worked politically with Hezbollah, that "the situation on the border cannot return to what it was before July 12."

After her five-hour visit under heavy guard through a Beirut that was suddenly quiet, Rice flew back to Cyprus, then on to Israel, where she had a working dinner with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

On the battlefield, Israeli soldiers, encountering a seasoned Hezbollah guerrilla force, say they have killed dozens of gunmen fighting with guided anti-tank missiles, mortars and small arms from houses, tunnels and bunkers in the past few days.

"They're in the forests and inside hiding places in town. They hide in holes in the ground," said Lt. Shahar Mintz, 20, who serves in a tank battalion operating inside Lebanon. "They have so many places to hide from the airstrikes, so we have to send in the infantry. It can be dangerous."

Mintz spoke from Avivim, an Israeli farming community a half-mile from the hilltop Lebanese town of Maroun al-Ras, where Israel's ground operation has focused in recent days. Busloads of soldiers mustered in the mostly abandoned town, painting their faces green and black before walking into Lebanon.

Columns of four to five tanks waited to be sent across the border. At least a dozen ambulances awaited the wounded. Israeli unmanned drone aircraft buzzed overhead, and a steady pounding of air and artillery strikes sounded throughout the day, leaving Maroun al-Ras shrouded in a brown-gray fog of smoke and dust.

On Israel's second front, the Gaza Strip, where the governing Hamas movement's military wing and two smaller armed groups continue holding an Israeli soldier captured in a June 25 raid on an army post just outside Gaza, at least six Palestinians died in Israeli artillery strikes near the town of Beit Lahiya. Palestinian hospital officials said the dead included a 50-year-old woman, her 11-year-old grandson and a 4-year-old girl.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said 20 rockets were launched from Gaza in the last two days, including eight on Monday from the area that Israeli forces were targeting. In the incident that killed the girl, the spokeswoman said Israeli forces were not aiming at residential buildings "but one of our shells misfired, and it hit closer to the civilian population than it was aimed."

The military was also investigating the crash of an Apache Longbow helicopter in Israel's northern Galilee region that had been flying support operations for troops on the edge of Bint Jbeil. Israeli military officials said two crew members died in the crash.

While leaving open the possibility the helicopter could have been damaged by Hezbollah ground fire, Israeli military officials said it was more likely that a technical malfunction caused the crash, the second by a U.S.-made Apache here in the past week.

"This battle against Hezbollah is going to last," Avi Dichter, Israel's public security minister, told a small group of reporters in Jerusalem. "We're not in any hurry."

But Dichter also acknowledged that the military operation would likely make way for diplomacy in the coming days.

"The target is not to dismantle totally Hezbollah from its missiles capability -- that's not the mission," Dichter said. "But we know that we, Israel, by our means, and the guidelines we gave to the [military], can't drive Hezbollah from its means of warfare."

Lebanese medics spoke about a weekend incident that highlighted what they said was Israel's indiscriminant targeting in the south.

On Saturday, Israeli forces struck two ambulances outside the town of Qana, injuring six Red Cross volunteer medics as well as the three wounded passengers they were carrying, Red Cross medics said. The ambulances were flashing blue lights and had illuminated the Red Cross flag, the medics said.

"I fell down," said Qassem Shalaan, 28, one of the wounded medics, who was standing about three feet from the first ambulance when it was struck. "I opened my eyes to make sure I could still see, then I checked my body and I was okay."

He had three stitches below his lip and cuts on his leg. His eardrums were bruised.

As the medics in the other ambulance called for help, a second missile hit it less than a minute later, wounding the three other medics, they said.

The medics, all wearing flak jackets and helmets, kept working despite their injuries. They took the wounded -- a 14-year-old boy, his father and his grandmother -- into a nearby home. There, in the basement, they used their shirts as bandages amid shelling that lasted throughout their two-hour wait for help.

"I'll speak for myself, but I feel like I have no cover even as a Red Cross worker," Shalaan said from his hospital bed.

By evening, Sami Yazbak, head of the Red Cross in Tyre, said he had received an Israeli apology and an assurance they would not be attacked again. Shaalan returned to the Red Cross office, a small, six-room compound a short way from the Mediterranean coast. He had taken off his bandages before seeing his mother so as not to worry her.

Kudos To The NC Medical Licesning Board: Just Say No To Executions

N.C. Medical Board Favors Ban On Doctors Aiding Executions

"First, do no harm!" That is the often quoted portion of the Hippocratic Oath. It is an important part of the foundational principles--the first principles--of medicine as a discipline, academic field of study, art form and profession.

In that light, the North Carolina state licensing board has blocked physicians from overseeing and administering ("actively participating") in executions. From the view of someone that has made a concerted effort to study ethics and the social problems that raise ethical issues and present ethical dilemmas, this is a step in the right direction. Medical personnel are not supposed to administer death. They are supposed to assist in making the transition from life to death in the case of a person suffering from illness, but they are not supposed to be administrators of justice. It is not the role of the medical professional, or medical paraprofessional, to administer justice, especially in the form of an execution.

While the government will probably try to force the issue and compel the participation of a medical practitioner at executions, I am hoping that the medical profession will resist this on moral, ethical and religious freedom grounds. In the mean time, the government will have to work its way around the issue. Unfortunately, the way this work-around will manifest will not be in the form of eliminating the death penalty completely.

I maintain that it is a universal ethic that killing without immediate threat of life or limb is unethical and immoral. It is against the teachings of Christ, for those interested in the Christian view. It has been applied in too many cases where there have been errors in the prosecution of the case, and it is a convenience rather than an ethical approach to solve the problems of our society. It is inhumane. We would not allow people to incarcerate an animal in the same manner as we do our prisoners on death row (or maximum security for that matter). Proof of the ethical problem is that we often have to medicate many of those sentenced to death in order to make them sane enough and medically sound enough to execute them. The fact that we are willing to execute those among us that seem to suffer mental illness and a lack of connectivity to our society speaks volumes about the unethical quality of the death penalty.

A soldier facing an enemy on the battlefield is acting ethically if he kills the enemy, even though war itself is unethical. The soldier has an inherent right to survive on the battlefield. But, a soldier has the obligation to assess, prior to entering the battle, whether or not the war is a just war or merely an exploitation by force. Such ethical courage has been displayed by Ehren Watada and should be exercised by more members of our military. The invasion of Iraq is a violation of the Constitution. The soldiers (all military service members) took an oath to support and defend the Constitution above all things. It is therefore the right of a soldier to refuse to go to battle in an illegal war.

A person being attacked, whose life or safety is being threatened, has a right to defend himself/herself with commensurate force, including deadly force when warranted.

But there is no inherent right of a government to destroy life, despite the centuries of history of doing so. Historical precedence does not constitute a right, merely precedent. But a historical review of why prisoners have been put to death will reveal that most of the death penalties handed down have been inappropriate expressions of revenge, convenience, exploitation or political will of the majority. In short, the death penalty is so often implemented for the wrong reasons that there must be something inherently wrong about it.

So, bravo to the NC licensing board for recognizing the problem and taking action.

RALEIGH, N.C., July 21 -- The state licensing board for doctors gave initial approval Friday to a policy blocking doctors from actively participating in executions, addressing an issue that has weighed heavily on medical professionals in many states.

The North Carolina Medical Board is expected to take a final vote on the proposed policy in two or three months, after receiving comments.

Under the proposed policy, "physician participation in capital punishment is a departure from the ethics of the medical profession."

State law requires a doctor to be present at executions, but the proposal, which the board approved unanimously, would prohibit physicians from doing anything but observing.

"This board will not discipline licensees for merely being present at an execution," said Art McCulloch, a Charlotte anesthesiologist who is chairman of the board's policy committee.

The proposed policy is less strict than the stance of the American Medical Association, which equates the presence of a doctor with participation.

A doctor employed by the prison system attends executions at Central Prison in Raleigh, but a prison official would not say exactly what he does.

The AMA has long opposed physician involvement in executions, and the president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists has advised his group's members to "steer clear" of helping states put condemned criminals to death.

Traveling In Boston: What A Nightmare

Anyone that knows the Boston Metropolitan Area knows that driving anywhere in the area is a major pain in the gluteal masses. Routes 128/I-95, I-93 and 3 South ("The Expressway") are difficult enough to traverse when there are not major disasters occuring on the roadways. For years the maneuvering through and around Boston proper was a migraine headache because of the "Big Dig." Getting into Boston is a struggle with majorly obstructive bumper-to-bumper traffic in the Callahan-Sumner Tunnels, on the Tobin-Mystic River Bridge, and along the Mass Pike Extension. Add to this the fact that the roads in Boston proper were designed by cows wandering to the Commons (or a bowl of spaghetti turned upside down), and the fact that Boston streets do not often have signs telling you where you are, and traveling the roads around Boston is one of the toughest commutes in the nation... perhaps the second or third worst commute with only DC and LA at the top of this list. By comparison, getting around in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, San Antonio, Houston, Memphis, Little Rock, San Diego and New Orleans is a breeze.

But when the billions of dollars spent on the Big Dig result in fraud, tunnel collapses, bolt-popping hazards and utter frustration for those trying to get in, out and around Boston, we can see the error of the Republican/Conservative pro-big business ways. Contractors, architects and suppliers made a fortune on the Big Dig project... and all Boston got was... well, you know the word.

Democrats Have Values—American Values

The following speech was delivered at the Democratic Leadership Council's "Conversations With Hilary" event held in Denver, Colorado this past weekend. While the writing is mine, the thoughts were developed conjointly with Mrs. Helen Boothe, a leading Democrat in Northwest Indiana/Calumet Region/Duneland Area of Porter County. It is my sincerest hope that someone at this DLC event was listening.

Helen Boothe and Jim Downey
Northwest Indiana
July 22, 2006

The other side of the political spectrum accuses us Democrats of being “leftist,” “liberal” as if it were a curse word, flip-floppers, wishy-washy, and without values. It is our contention that we are not without values. But we do lack a cohesive voice as to what those values are. We have failed to clearly articulate why most Americans should share those values.

Even in the face of the many scandals (most of them perpetrated by those claiming to have superior values), the breach of our Constitution, and clear indication that everything in our federal government is for sale to the highest bidder, we have failed to convince most Americans—and perhaps the rest of the world—that we Democrats have any values, purpose or mission.

If we, as Democrats, ever hope to genuinely affect the lives of our citizens, to change the direction of our government, our role in the international community, and be the party that speaks for the moral character of our nation, we must return to the values that made the Democrats great. Those values are clearly delineated in the Preamble, our Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the subsequent Amendments. Those values were clearly articulated by FDR, JFK and LBJ. These were leaders that called for our nation to come together and face our problems, fears and threats—without compromising our basic truths. It is not that these leaders did not make mistakes, it is that we have learned much from those mistakes. We remain willing to learn from our mistakes while those on the other side of the spectrum remain entrenched in their mistakes.

The fact is that we must act in accordance with our Constitution not only to preserve our union, but also to strive, as our framers set forth, for a more perfect union. Over the last four presidential administrations we have not focused on the struggle for a more perfect union. The Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr administrations have been focused on a form of corporatism that has lead us to a latent form of fascism—acting like fascists in our dealings with those we hold captive and by subverting the rights of our own citizens. During the Clinton administration we were distracted by wild goose chases, red herrings and wrong-headed debates on issues that have no business on our national agenda. We have lost our way as a party—and as a country.

When our nation acts in a manner that is contrary to our own principles of justice, fairness, equity and law, we undermine all our endeavors. We destroy our standing before the world—and our own people—when we abandon the lessons of our own history and rely upon emotional, knee-jerk reactions to guide us in important matters of governance, leadership and national morality.

When our government, its elected officials, appointed officers and representatives fail to adhere to even the most basic principles of justice in all things—and at all times—we undermine the very foundation of our way of life. We rob our greatness and cast aside the achievements of all our previous generations. Our lofty goal and first principle of establishing justice becomes mere words on a sheet of paper. Our nation, our principles, cannot be dismissed in this manner if we expect to survive another year, another decade or into the rest of this millenium as one nation.

Our domestic tranquility does not rest upon the widely cast net of secret spying programs that are not only ineffective at catching the evil bastards that desire to do us harm, but only serve to imprison us in an ideological jail while the perpetrators run free.

Our safety and security does not depend upon creating so much fear among our citizens that we surrender our basic liberties with a mere shrug of our collective shoulders. FDR warned us about allowing fear to rule our lives.

Our common defense does not require us to erode the safety net of the Bill of Rights, but does indeed depend upon assuring that our government operates in complete regard for, and congruency with, every principle and tenet of the Constitution in its entirety. We cannot stand idly by while a person holding our highest elected office dismisses the supreme law of the land with a shrug, an excuse, a threat of impending catastrophe and a disregard of our fundamental truths.

We cannot promote the general welfare by ignoring those that suffer from the trappings of poverty, and implement policies that force those needing our support into the poorest paying jobs that lack any real benefits.

We cannot allow corporations to write off almost any type of expense but tax the hell out of those receiving unemployment benefits. We cannot give business a blank check, allowing the largest corporations to rack up huge windfall profits, while harming workers through down-sizing, outsourcing and hacking benefits to pieces. We cannot allow big businesses to declare bankruptcy and wipe out obligations to pensioners and stockholders while top executives walk away with years of high income and golden parachutes that make the income of the average worker seem like pennies thrown in the gutter. We cannot create laws that allow businesses to wipe out debts but forces those hit with family crises to adhere to a harsher standard.

We do nothing for our country by passing tax cuts that only benefit the top 10% of our income earners while we hold the poverty line and the minimum wage hostage for a decade or more.

Our nation does not benefit when a third of our homeless population are children. We are not perceived as a great nation when we have 3 million people living on the streets, in their cars or in a trash container. Our status as a great nation is not secured when we completely ignore mental health issues across the nation. We do not demonstrate family values when we define a family according to rigid standards that ignores the heritage, ethnicity, free will and religious choice of over 40% of our people.

Our greatness is not demonstrated to the world when we remain the only highly industrialized nation in the world that does not have universal health care coverage.

Our nation will not survive if our public health status remains in decline. Not only have we cut funding for public health, but we have actually allowed major relapses in our overall public health. Our healthcare infrastructure is shifting from a public duty to a private matter… and those holding the purse strings are getting rich because our people are not receiving the best of care.

Even though we know there is a direct link between overall health and dental care, we do not have universal dental care. Not only do we face HIV and AIDS, but hepatitis, tuberculosis, a litany of occupational diseases and a host of sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise. We have become so pre-occupied with regulating the reproductive habits of the poor through anti-abortion campaigns that we have failed to see that abstinence-only programs are placing the poorest and least educated among us in untenable economic and social circumstances. We rail against abortion but do nothing to make foster care and adoption easier, more effective or more acceptable. These are not the actions of a nation founded on the principles and values articulated in our Preamble.

Our public health is not well when our medical profession is dependent upon doctors, nurses and technicians that are being imported to our nation because we are not spending the money on education.

Our prosperity and posterity are not preserved when foreign students attend our best colleges and universities on a fully-paid stipend or scholarship from their government while our own citizens are forced to take out huge burdensome loans.

Our continued prosperity is not assured when our schools fail to educate because we are not funding federal mandates and are too busy teaching to the patchwork quilt of standardized tests that do not teach our students to read, write, problem solve or achieve.

Our ability to protect this nation, respond to its needs during an emergency, and secure its borders remains at an all-time low. Our basic infrastructure—roadways, railways, locks, dams and levees—are wholly inadequate to meet our needs and protect us from disaster. Our National Guard—which is supposed to be guarding our home front—is so depleted because its troops are in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere while active duty troops remain at bases across the country. A great society is able to help its own people during a time of crisis… and we have failed that task.

We are not a great nation when we pay lip service to honoring those that have placed their lives on the line for our flag and our first principles. Our reverence for those that have served our nation—our veterans and fallen war heroes—is being desecrated by the denial of basic healthcare benefits. Our commitment to our service members is not demonstrated when troops on the battlefield are still not fully equipped with proper armor… and our troops are suffering grave injuries or death as a result.

Our basic American values are not fulfilled when the federal government sticks its nose into our private lives while ignoring our public needs. We are more concerned with the choices people make about who they love or choose to engage sexually than whether our people are well-fed, healthy or represented properly—and ethically—in government. We would rather pass an amendment against gay marriage than laws that require ethical behavior and proper financial management by our politicians, business leaders and the government.

We cannot survive as the bedrock nation of democracy if we do not return to the first principles and fundamental values embedded and embodied in our Constitution. Our deficits are at an all-time high and the principle of balancing our expenditures and revenues is “whacked.” Our ability to voice our concerns to our political leadership is almost non-existent because the lobbyists and wealthy influence peddlers crowd us out of the offices of our own congress.

America does not stand tall among the nations of the world when we are more willing to pay for prisons, executions and punishment than education, treatment and treating people with even the most basic levels of respect. While there are those among us that criticize our nation for not having family values—and by that they mean only their ideas and values—while ignoring the foundation and demonstration of those values. Our hypocrisy is fully exposed when our nation’s leaders proclaim values based on a single-minded religiosity, but fail to act in a manner consistent with even the basic teachings of that religion: love, hope and charity.

Our invasion of other nations based upon lies and manipulation—committed by our own leaders and officials—does not represent us well before the international community. We have gone from hoping for, and supporting, democracy around the world to becoming jailers of ideas and liberty at home and abroad. We have become so focused on implementing a wrong-headed idea of freedom, democracy and liberty that we have all but abandoned those principles here, where our framers so valued these ideals that they found a way to weave them into our government and our way of life.

Democrats need to come together over American values. American values are not found in a religious scripture… they are found in our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the subsequent Amendments. We, as members of the party whose name has the same linguistic roots as the word “democracy,” must re-commit to those basic values and ideals. But more importantly, we must articulate these same values, principles and ideals in all that we do. Our actions need to speak louder than our words.

Our people must feel free to dissent and voice opinions contrary to the party bosses and political leadership. We must find the best candidates—those that are committed to these American values and service to our nation and to “We the people…”—and fully support them in their efforts to not only win an election, but put our American values into practice… into action. We must demonstrate to that large portion of our voting-age population that do not bother to go to the polls, that WE have their interests at heart… WE will represent them, their needs, their hopes, their dreams and their interests in government. WE need to re-assure the whole nation that we can lead in such a way to allow businesses to succeed; workers to thrive; people to be healthy; and our nation to once again be looked upon with not only favorable eyes, but with awe because we are a great nation that will not abandon our first principles and fundamental values not matter what adversity confronts us.

Medical Errors Abound - Many Can Kill You

Medication Errors Harming Millions, Report Says: Extensive National Study Finds Widespread, Costly Mistakes in Giving and Taking Medicine

I have been talking to my personal physician regarding his practice being too busy to give proper attention to some issues. One of those issues is that his office staff are responsible for writing out scripts and giving them to patients without stringent review. He reviews all the controlled substance prescriptions, but his staff sign his scripts that do not require a "blue script pad." The problem is that medication errors have occurred. In my case, one of my medications was reduced by half and I did not notice until it was filled. Luckily, the medication is not used for life-threatening issues and it only affected my daily life in a minor way. But this study demonstrates that we need more attention paid to not only the training of medical workers, but also on stringent cross-checking of medication prescribing practices.

In surgical operating rooms they have implemented some basic steps that seem redundant, but have effectively reduced some of the more common OR errors, like operating on the wrong side of the body or the wrong patient. We need to implement some of those steps in our medical offices, clinics, ERs and other treatment facilities.

While I am thinking about it, my doctor needs to re-train his office staff on taking a blood pressure.

At least 1.5 million Americans are sickened, injured or killed each year by errors in prescribing, dispensing and taking medications, the influential Institute of Medicine concluded in a major report released yesterday.

Mistakes in giving drugs are so prevalent in hospitals that, on average, a patient will be subjected to a medication error each day he or she occupies a hospital bed, the report by a panel of experts said.

Following up on its influential 2000 report on medical errors of all kinds, the institute, a branch of the National Academies, undertook the most extensive study ever of medication errors in response to a request made by Congress in 2003 when it passed the Medicare Modernization Act.

The report found errors to be not only harmful and widespread, but very costly as well. The extra expense of treating drug-related injuries occurring in hospitals alone was estimated conservatively to be $3.5 billion a year.

"Even I was surprised and shocked by how common and serious a problem this is," said panel member Albert Wu, a drug safety specialist at Johns Hopkins University. "Everyone in the health-care system has to wake up and take this more seriously."

Many of these medication errors could be avoided if doctors adopted electronic prescribing, if hospitals had a standardized bar-code system for checking and dispensing drugs, and if patients made more of an effort to know about the risks of the drugs they take, the report said.

The panel members said the problem requires immediate action and that many key players in health care have been slow to take the steps -- and invest the money -- needed to significantly reduce medication errors. At least a quarter of the injuries caused by drug errors are clearly preventable, the report said.

"Everyone in the health-care system knows this is a major problem, but there's been very little action, and it's generally remained on the back burner," panel member Charles B. Inlander said in an interview. "With this report, we hope to give everyone involved good, hard information on how they can prevent medication errors, and then create some pressure to have them implement it."

Common errors include doctors writing prescriptions that could interact dangerously with other drugs a patient is taking, nurses putting the wrong medication -- or the wrong dose -- in an intravenous drip and pharmacists dispensing 100-milligram pills rather than the prescribed 50-milligram dose.

The report spotlighted the case of Betsy Lehman, a 39-year-old health reporter for the Boston Globe who died in 1994 after being given an erroneously high dosage of an experimental chemotherapy agent.

The study, funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was assembled by 17 experts in related fields who analyzed research in the field, as well as government reports and data. They also held public forums to hear from representatives from the health-care system.

We Told You NAFTA Was A Bad Idea

US Trade Court Rules for Canada in Softwood Lumber Dispute

There were some of us that opposed the passing of NAFTA. NAFTA passed muster on the Clinton watch, and Clinton embraced it, but it was a wrong-headed agreement that gave more power to importers of goods to the US than to exporters of goods to Mexico or Canada... and an impetus for US businesses to pack up shop and move to Mexico where labor costs are a third of costs in the US and regulations are not only less stringent, but less enforced and easily bypassed with the proper greasing of a palm.

The proof, in this case, is in the court decision. The effort to implement protective taxes and duties on softwood imports from Canada failed to meet the legal requirements of NAFTA. While not a fan of protective taxation as an effective tool for competitiveness, the tactic is used to create national control over certain products and services. It keeps US goods out of Japan and actually prevents our industries from being forced to innovate, update and become competitive.

The US Court of International Trade ruled Friday that the US must abide by a North American Free Trade Agreement panel ruling that improper duties were levied on Canadian softwood lumber used in US housing construction jobs. The president of the British Columbia Lumber Trade Council, John Allan, said $1.2 billion in duties collected by the US since November 2004 would need to be refunded as a result of the ruling. The court is still considering what action to take on the $3.4 billion in duties paid by Canada before November 2004.

The court's ruling is expected to have an effect on a softwood lumber trade agreement that Canada and the US initialed earlier this month, but which the Canadian lumber industry has been hesitant to approve. The 7-year deal intended to end the long-running softwood lumber dispute between the two countries would reimburse $4 billion to Canada but would allow US lumber producers to keep $1 billion. Canadian critics say their government was too lenient in drafting the deal and lumber industry members have specifically opposed a clause that would give the US the option to walk away and re-impose duties.

The SAT Sucks... And We've Finally Taken Notice

SAT Group Can Do Better, Says Report It Commissioned

Remedies Are Urged for SAT Scoring

The College Board should acquire better scanning software, increase training for test center personnel and make other improvements in its procedures to help prevent errors in scoring SAT exams, according to a report released yesterday.

Standardized testing is useful if it is used properly. The SAT is not an adequate tool for predicting success in college. It is nothing more than an academic achievement test that measures the level of education is specific academic areas. It would be more useful as a diagnostic tool for identifying weak areas of an individual's education. But we have become test happy under the banner of the Christian Right and the ultra-conservatives that believe the only way to ascertain the effectiveness of a curriculum is to achieve an overwhelming success rate on standardized tests. Not too long ago many colleges were moving away from using the SAT and other standardized testing as part of the college entrance evaluation process. Today, we find that the new version of the SAT has far too many flaws.

The report, by the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, was commissioned by the board after more than 5,000 SAT exams were incorrectly scored last October, some by as many as 450 points out of a possible 2,400 points. The College Board owns and manages the SAT.

But critics of the College Board questioned the independence of Booz Allen, which received $5.2 million in consulting fees from the board in the year ending June 30, 2005, according to a board filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

The other conflict of interest is that the College Board makes its money by promoting the SAT as a tool for evaluating college applicants... and despite the CB's marketing approach, the test has never done the job.

Why Is Your Steak Red?

Studies Fail to Quell Concerns Over Gas Treatment of Meat

Most of us believe that a piece of beef must be red to be fresh and of good quality. But what we seem to ignore is why our beef remains red... and we don't seem to know if the process used to make it red is good for us.

A bitter regulatory battle over the safety of a packaging system that can keep meat looking fresh long past its shelf life is escalating, amid complaints that the industry misinterpreted recent research reports to bolster its case.

At issue is the growing practice of spiking sealed packages of meat with small doses of carbon monoxide. The gas is harmless at the concentrations being used, but it can keep meat looking bright red and fresh even as it spoils.

In a series of largely unpublicized decisions, the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration have allowed use of the gas in various packaging systems. Proponents, including the three major meat producers, say the process is safe and will help reduce the $1 billion the industry loses every year from having to discount or discard meat that has begun to turn brown but is still safe to eat.

Opponents, including consumer groups and a company that makes a competing preservation product, charge that the process, banned by the European Union, can deceive consumers into thinking meat is fresher than it is.

In addition, the opponents say, date labels that the USDA requires for the treated meat -- which instruct consumers to "use or freeze" treated ground beef within 21 days after the package was sealed -- give the public false assurance the meat will remain unspoiled that long. Although the government does not require "use or freeze by" dates on meats not treated with carbon monoxide, most packagers use them anyway -- with time scales generally in the range of 11 to 14 days for ground meat.

Kalsec Inc., a Kalamazoo, Mich., maker of spice extracts, has petitioned the FDA and the USDA to ban the process. Its rosemary extracts have long been used to slow the browning of meat -- though only by a couple of days -- in a process that also involves pumping high levels of oxygen into the package. Extract sales have begun to decline as packagers switch to carbon monoxide.

Of the new studies, the two most thorough were conducted by researchers at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. They were presented last month at a scientific meeting, and the results were announced in a university news release that proclaimed, "Despite Carbon Monoxide, Beef Consumers Still Safe."

In one study, microbiologist Mindy Brashears inoculated meat with disease-causing bacteria and compared the microbes' growth in different packaging systems. The results showed that meat sealed in packages with carbon monoxide had less bacterial growth than meat wrapped in air with traditional plastic wrap.

Randy Huffman, a spokesman for the American Meat Institute, said Brashears's work vindicates the carbon monoxide process.

But in an interview, Brashears said the benefit was only in comparison with traditional packaging. Carbon monoxide showed no advantage over meat sealed in high oxygen with Kalsec's extracts.

In the second Texas Tech study, J. Chance Brooks, an assistant professor of meat science, asked a panel of trained sniffers to judge the freshness of meat of various ages that had been stored in different packaging systems. He concluded that consumers would not be deceived into eating spoiled meat that had been kept red by carbon monoxide because it, too, has a distinctive smell when it spoils.

"You cannot mask odor," Brooks said.

Huffman said the results confirmed the industry's long-standing claim that smell is a better indicator of spoilage than color. The industry says consumers should use smell and the "use or freeze by" date as the best indicators of whether meat is fresh.

But 17 percent of the trained panelists in Brooks's study detected "unpleasant odors" in carbon-monoxide-treated meat that had been in a refrigerated case for just 14 days, calling into question the products' 21-day freshness claim.

Don Berdahl, vice president and laboratory director at Kalsec, said those findings are in sync with his own less formal study. Berdahl went to supermarkets and bought more than 100 packages of ground beef -- some packaged with carbon monoxide and others with high oxygen and Kalsec's extracts. He put them all in a cooler and took them to S&J Laboratories Inc. of Portage, Mich.

Documents Kalsec submitted to the FDA and the USDA on June 14 reported that the samples treated with carbon monoxide had much higher bacterial counts, on average, than the others. In some samples, the filing notes, "the high bacterial levels were indicative of spoilage, even though the meat was within the labeled 'use or freeze by' date listed on the package."

The July issue of Consumer Reports describes a similar finding. The magazine's investigators took bacterial counts on 10 samples of locally purchased ground beef and steaks that had been treated with the gas. All the meat looked red, but two had spoiled by their "use or freeze by" dates and one "was on the brink of spoilage" one day before its stamped date.

Berdahl acknowledged that both his study and the one by Consumer Reports have limited value. Among other issues, the only carbon-monoxide-treated meats he could purchase were closer to their "use by" dates than the other samples, which might account for their higher bacteria counts. Nonetheless, he said, that raises the question of why the USDA allows gas-treated ground beef to be labeled fresh for 21 days.

The USDA allowed that limit for carbon-monoxide-treated meat based on data presented by Minnesota-based Precept Foods LLC, a major proponent and user of the process.

The problem, Berdahl said, is that real life does not mimic the ideal conditions in Precept's studies, in which meat was kept at or below the recommended 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Studies have found that one-third of store refrigerators are at 45 degrees or higher, 5 percent are warmer than 55 degrees and one-fifth of home refrigerators are above 50 degrees.

Food-safety officials have repeatedly said that their regulatory decisions are supposed to reflect real, rather than ideal, conditions.

Huffman of the Meat Institute dismissed Berdahl's suggestion that carbon-monoxide-treated meat is at increased risk of being spoiled by its "use or freeze by" date.

"Well over 100 million packages of [the product] have been sold and consumed in the U.S." he said, and none has been linked to any outbreak of food poisoning or store returns. He called the issue a "manufactured controversy" and the risks "hypothetical."

Laura Tarantino, director of the FDA's Office of Food Additive Safety, and Robert C. Post, USDA director of labeling and consumer protection, said the agencies are reviewing Kalsec's petition, including the new data, but could not say how long that will take.

With the agencies also now considering a new application from a meat company to use higher concentrations of carbon monoxide than are currently used, several consumer groups are saying it is time to make the reviews public.

"What's been thwarted here is the process," said Donna Rosenbaum, a board member of Safe Tables Our Priority in Burlington, Vt., a food-safety group formed after several children died from eating tainted Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers. "We really should have had all this laid out by the agencies, but none of that was allowed to happen."

Some stores already refuse to sell the gas-treated meats, and the Chicago City Council has held two hearings on a proposal to ban them within city limits.

Another Case Of Eminent Domain Gone Wrong... For Religious Reasons

US House Votes to Seize San Diego Cross Property at Center of Court Dispute

The cross displayed at Mount Soledad in San Diego has become a clarion call for the Christian Right. The US House of Representatives has now made a grab for the property so that the venue for the legal battles surrounding the display of Christian dominance in our society can be given a better chance of success due to less stringent rules regarding the display. In a similar misuse of the eminent domain provisions of our governmental structure and powers, the House is proposing that we turn the property over to the fed.

However, this doesn't resolve the basic problem involved in the First Amendment's establishment clause (see previous posts on the issue). Instead of the fed taking the property and delaying the inevitable court battle through ineffective and costly legal maneuvers, the government entity owning the property on which the cross sits should sell just the property where the cross sits (maybe 10-20 square yards of land) to a religious group, grant them a permanent easement and right of way to provide maintenance and care for the land and cross, covenant in the deed a commitment to its upkeep and care, and then contract with the group for the actual maintenance of the grounds as part of their normal landscaping activities.

This has the elegance of making just the property where the cross occupies space private. There is no law that precludes the erection and maintenance of a religious symbol on private property. But, the folks on the Christian Right are more interested in a legal showdown that will establish a precedent that gives them a right to display their religious ideas within our government. While they claim that Christianity is under attack and that liberals want a government that endorses the "religion" of secular humanism (Ann Coulter's "godless religion"), the reality is that the agenda and ulterior motives of the Christian Right--according to their own statements--is to force their version of Christianity upon us all.

Again, I am a Christian. I believe in God and pray daily. But my understanding of God, Christianity and my role as an American citizen is quite different than the version of Christianity offered by those that constantly push for their religion to be elevated to a national standing.

On the other hand, I think Phillip Paulson's opposition to the cross is an asinine ultra-liberal demonstration of social idiocy.

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a measure to seize land on Mount Soledad in San Diego to resolve a dispute over whether a 29-foot cross honoring Korean War veterans on the property is a government endorsement of religion under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The House agreed to transfer the land to the Defense Department before an expected appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this fall because federal law has been more permissive toward religious displays on public property than the California constitution. San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre said the House measure, if it becomes law, would merely set the stage for another court challenge because the federal government has no basis seize the city property.

Earlier this month, US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ordered the continuation of a temporary stay against the removal of the monumental cross pending the Ninth Circuit appeal. Kennedy issued the original stay after a district court ordered in May that the cross be removed by Aug. 2 and that the city be fined $5,000 a day if it was not, finding that the cross constitutes a state endorsement of religion. Philip Paulson, an atheist and Vietnam War veteran, has been challenging the cross for more than 16 years. AP has more. The San Diego Union-Tribune has local coverage.

Sports Obsession: A Commentary On Our Society

It seems to me that we are obsessed with sports in our society, not just in terms f the United States, but worldwide among the highly industrialized and heavily communicated society. I say this as one who has played football in my younger days, and spent 25-plus years as a martial artist, with the odd barbecue softball game and horseshoe pitching contest thrown in.

When I was a kid, we watched football games on Sundays during the fall, with Thanksgiving Day being the day that occupied our dreams of filling not only our stomachs with tasty morsels of the holiday, but also six or seven great games, including one between our favorite high school team and its arch-rival. Then we awaited the Super Bowl. But most of the time we didn't watch football, we went out and played football, leaving the watching activities for those special occasions aforementioned.

Then we moved into hockey season. Here too, we had special games where we watched the games on television. It wasn't until the end of the season, when the competion for a playoff position became the fiercest, that we bothered to tune in. Most of the season we were out playing street hockey, and hoping we were good enough to get invited to play during a private game at 2:00 AM in a rented rink, or on the peewee team. Sometimes we would even find a game at a makeshift rink in someone's back yard, or on a frozen pond close to our home. Our frenzy for watching hockey only took over during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

We had a lot of folks who were into basketball, which took over our sports interests for a short while, with some overlap with hockey. But once again, it wasn't until the playoffs that our interests reached a frenzy level.

Then there was baseball season. I was never much of a baseball fan. It struck me as being a rather useless game where a bunch of guys stood around waiting for the odd pitch to be struck by the odd batter, with all the real action occuring in about 10 seconds in an effort to get on base or force the runner out. It was just too slow moving for my vote. But I had friends that were caught up in the game and played every day during the baseball season. We used to take in one or two games a season as a spectator, usually because someone gave us tickets to a profession league game or our firends were in the local league playoffs. But watching baseball games was strictly seen as an activity taken up by an older generation sitting around in a bar... a celebration of days gone by.

We also had special sports that we watched on days when it was too inclement to go outside and play. ABC's Wide World Of Sports introduced us to sports we didn't see everyday, such as competitive skiing, the Olympics, and special reviews of the past sports season.

Don't get me wrong. I like sports to a certain extent. I don't mind watching the odd game on television if I am among friends, and the activities are not restricted to just watching the games. More important than the game is the socialization and connectivity that occurs on these occasions.

A good example of this concept was the time my wife won the use of the corporate skybox for the Chicago White Sox. It was not a playoff game, but it allowed us to fill the box with friends. We had a great deal of fun at corporate expense. We watched the game in an off and on fashion, but watched the premiere of a sci-fi movie that we had been anticipating, and episode of Star Trek: TNG that was among our favorite, ate a huge number of ballpark hotdogs, consumed a large quantity of imported beer, were introduced to some of the best foccacia sandwiches we've ever eaten, enjoyed some terrific carrrot cake, and met some new people... and sung "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. I do not recall if the White Sox won or lost, but I remember the occasion with fondness.

But we have become too focused on sports. Today, sports are on every television channel. Even those channels that are usually focused on movies interrupt the normal schedule for sports. This past weekend was a wash for those of us not fixated on sports. Several of the favorite movie channels in my cable lineup pre-empted the regular line up of movies to show several of the golf outings. I understand from the recap on the news that Tiger Woods pulled off a victory and offered an emotional tribute to his father who passed away sometime last year. In my book the most important part of that victory was the tribute to his dad.

But car racing is now added to the sports events that pre-empt regular programming. Now we cannot change the channels on our 70-plus cable channel system without tuning in golf, archery, poker (is that a sport), billiards, ultimate fighting, wrestling, cheer leading competitions, soccer, baseball, curling (which took a weird mesmerizing role during the recent Olympics), weight lifeting, strongest man competitions, more golf, Nascar racing, etc. And that wasn't even the lineup for the dedicated sports channels like ESPN.

For those of us that got our cable service to watch something other than sports, it's actually quite disappointing. This is especially the case when those remaining channels were either tied up with 24-hour commentary on the news (notice I did not say news) or showing movies that should have never been produced, never mind aired on mass broadcast media. And those of us that pay through the nose for a premium movie channel like HBO are not exempt from these dynamics. The movies shown on these premium channels are repeated incessantly, occasionally interrupted with a sports show, boxing events, recaps of past sports seasons, or some other sports event.

I have studied the sociological, psychological and educational benefits of sport in our society. While playing these sports have something significant to offer our society, watching sports on television--especially to the degree and extent that we currently indulge ourselves--doesn't seem to offer these same benefits. The loss of value in sports spectating via our televisions also occurs because our obsession leads us to examine our sports teams and players in terms of their foibles, vices and flaws. We now have sports heroes that are more known for their drug use, spousal abuse and social screw ups than for their playing of the sport.

I have used Judo and Aikido to facilitate group therapy for children and teens. In my younger days I used physical activities as therapy for behaviorally and emotionally disturbed children. So, I am fully aware of the benefits a healthy involvement in sports and physical activity can have... but, much like when I was a kid, it is the activity, not the sport itself, that offers these benefits.

Movies and television dramas, on the other hand, can provide benefit to our society through the mere watching of the show. Movies like "The Stepmother," "Pay It Forward," "A Few Good Men," "The American President," "You've Got Mail," "Nuts," "Star Trek TNG: The Measure Of A Man," "All The President's Men," "Law And Order" (all of them), "Seventh Heaven," "The Gilmore Girls," "Lorenzo's Oil," "Shawshank Redemption," "Sling Blade," "The Candidate," "ER," and others offer us a moral story. Our society thrives on having our morals examined in a story. All of the great sacred literature tells us a story that requires us to examine the morality of the events and the meaning of the story. In the Bible, all of Christian salvation is told in stopry format. The teachings of Christ are best impressed upon us by the story. Even some of the Adam Sandler movies, despite the fact that he always portrays some form of idiot, moron or jerk, tells us a story and offers us a moral dilemma to examine.

Seldom is there a moral story in the sports we watch. There are some social and moral lessons to be learned from playing, coaching and participating in sports, but watching sports doesn't seem to do much for society, our collective moral character or even the individuals watching. But we do seem to get a lot of social problems from sport spectatorship... problems related to the alcohol consumed during such spectator activities, soccer fans that create riotous disruptions, fights over team loyalty, and some more latent, insipious problems. These latent problems include the fact that we pay people more to dream up the ads shown during these events than we do for people to teach our children, care for our sick (not diagnose our sick, but actually care for them), serve our elderly, feed our hungry, intervene in family crises, address addiction problems, and deal with out real social problems. We are so busy and consumed by our obbsession with sports, we haven't even noticed that big corporations have taken over our sports and hiked up the price for watching a ten-cent ballgame to over $50 for nosebleed seats and sometimes thousands of dollars for the best seats in the house... and even more for the televised version because each of those ads we watch drain our resources away from dealing with our really important matters... our relationship to our friends, families, community, nation, society and such.

Covert Operations In Health Care Facilities

Pregnancy Centers Found to Give False Information on Abortion

The climate of secrecy and the culture of decption espoused by the Bush gang and the Christian Right seem to have invaded--or should I say, permeated--even our healthcare clinics. The ideology of the Christian Right has taken over in disseminating misinformation and disinformation regarding abortion, pregnancy and reality.

Unfortunately, we are suckers, just like P.T. Barnum told us we were. We don't check things out for ourselves, but we accept the word of the "experts" that are paid to lie to us.

Federally funded "pregnancy resource centers" are incorrectly telling women that abortion results in an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility and deep psychological trauma, a minority congressional report charged yesterday.

The report said that 20 of 23 federally funded centers contacted by staff investigators requesting information about an unintended pregnancy were told false or misleading information about the potential risks of an abortion.

The pregnancy resource centers, which are often affiliated with antiabortion religious groups, have received about $30 million in federal money since 2001, according to the report, requested by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). The report concluded that the exaggerations "may be effective in frightening pregnant teenagers and women and discouraging abortion. But it denies the teenagers and women vital health information, prevents them from making an informed decision, and is not an accepted public health practice."

A spokeswoman for one of the two large networks of pregnancy resource centers, Sterling-based Care Net, said that the report is "a routine attack on us that's nothing new."

Care Net's Molly Ford said the centers criticized by Waxman received federal grants for abstinence-only programs they conduct, but not for pregnancy counseling. "The funds are kept entirely separate," she said.

Ford said, however, that she agrees with pregnancy counselors who tell women that abortion may increase the risk of breast cancer, infertility and a condition described by antiabortion groups as "post-abortion syndrome."

"We have many studies that show significant medical problems associated with abortion," she said.

Those studies are at odds with mainstream medical opinion. An expert panel of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), for instance, concluded in 2003 that an "abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer." The experts said their conclusion was "well established" by the evidence.

The report, from the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee, found that counselors at eight of the centers told callers that abortion substantially increases the risk of breast cancer. Some counselors also said the psychological effects of abortion are severe and long-lasting, while research generally has found that severe stress reactions are no more common after an abortion than after giving birth.

President Bush has been an advocate for pregnancy resource centers and for abstinence-only sex education. Few of the pregnancy resource centers -- formerly called crisis pregnancy centers -- received any federal funding before 2001. Care Net's Ford said there are now about 2,000 centers in the United States and Canada.

Waxman has been a critic of many Bush administration women's health programs, including a 2002 reference on an NCI Web site suggesting that there was serious debate about whether abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. As a result, the NCI brought together experts to review existing data and came up with its conclusion that no abortion-breast cancer association exists. The statement was later deleted from the NCI Web site.

Last year, Waxman initiated a study of a government Web site intended to help parents and teenagers make "smart choices" about sexual activity. A team of medical experts who reviewed the Web site said it included inaccurate or misleading information that could alienate some families or prompt riskier behavior.

The Parallels Of A Different War

In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam: Early Missteps by U.S. Left Troops Unprepared for Guerrilla Warfare

For those of us that were alive, conscious and conscientious during the Vietnam War knew that several executive administrations were conducting secret surveillance programs, tapping into the communications of many citizens, including Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and most of the civil rights and anti-war protest groups. Additionally, we were being lied to by those in direct control of the strategies and implementation of the war. There was a deliberate effort to control the media, spin the news a particular way, and represent the war a certain way to many Americans.

From a military point of view, the dynamics and events we are witnessing on the battlefields are equally parallel. In Vietnam we had incidents like the My Lai Massacre. In that situation those in charge of the operations, the higher echelon, gave the orders, set the culture under which atrocities occurred, and a decline in principled leadership from the Oval Office down to the field grade commanders. The CIA was conducting secret, unauthorized and illegal missions under the guise of private corporations. What we see in Iraq is so damn similar that it should be scaring the hell out of us.

The real war in Iraq -- the one to determine the future of the country -- began on Aug. 7, 2003, when a car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy, killing 11 and wounding more than 50.

That bombing came almost exactly four months after the U.S. military thought it had prevailed in Iraq, and it launched the insurgency, the bloody and protracted struggle with guerrilla fighters that has tied the United States down to this day.

There is some evidence that Saddam Hussein's government knew it couldn't win a conventional war, and some captured documents indicate that it may have intended some sort of rear-guard campaign of subversion against occupation. The stockpiling of weapons, distribution of arms caches, the revolutionary roots of the Baathist Party, and the movement of money and people to Syria either before or during the war all indicate some planning for an insurgency.

But there is also strong evidence, based on a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel, that the U.S. approach to pacifying Iraq in the months after the collapse of Hussein helped spur the insurgency and made it bigger and stronger than it might have been.

The very setup of the U.S. presence in Iraq undercut the mission. The chain of command was hazy, with no one individual in charge of the overall American effort in Iraq, a structure that led to frequent clashes between military and civilian officials.

On May 16, 2003, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-run occupation agency, had issued his first order, "De-Baathification of Iraq Society." The CIA station chief in Baghdad had argued vehemently against the radical move, contending: "By nightfall, you'll have driven 30,000 to 50,000 Baathists underground. And in six months, you'll really regret this."

He was proved correct, as Bremer's order, along with a second that dissolved the Iraqi military and national police, created a new class of disenfranchised, threatened leaders.

Exacerbating the effect of this decision were the U.S. Army's interactions with the civilian population. Based on its experience in Bosnia and Kosovo, the Army thought it could prevail through "presence" -- that is, soldiers demonstrating to Iraqis that they are in the area, mainly by patrolling.

"We've got that habit that carries over from the Balkans," one Army general said. Back then, patrols were conducted so frequently that some officers called the mission there "DAB"-ing, for "driving around Bosnia."

The U.S. military jargon for this was "boots on the ground," or, more officially, the presence mission. There was no formal doctrinal basis for this in the Army manuals and training that prepare the military for its operations, but the notion crept into the vocabularies of senior officers.

For example, a briefing by the 1st Armored Division's engineering brigade stated that one of its major missions would be "presence patrols." And then-Maj. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the commander of that division, ordered one of his brigade commanders to "flood your zone, get out there, and figure it out." Sitting in a dusty command tent outside a palace in the Green Zone in May 2003, he added: "Your business is to ensure that the presence of the American soldier is felt, and it's not just Americans zipping by."

The flaw in this approach, Lt. Col. Christopher Holshek, a civil affairs officer, later noted, was that after Iraqi public opinion began to turn against the Americans and see them as occupiers, "then the presence of troops . . . becomes counterproductive."

The U.S. mission in Iraq is made up overwhelmingly of regular combat units, rather than smaller, lower-profile Special Forces units. And in 2003, most conventional commanders did what they knew how to do: send out large numbers of troops and vehicles on conventional combat missions.

Few U.S. soldiers seemed to understand the centrality of Iraqi pride and the humiliation Iraqi men felt in being overseen by this Western army. Foot patrols in Baghdad were greeted during this time with solemn waves from old men and cheers from children, but with baleful stares from many young Iraqi men.

Complicating the U.S. effort was the difficulty top officials had in recognizing what was going on in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at first was dismissive of the looting that followed the U.S. arrival and then for months refused to recognize that an insurgency was breaking out there. A reporter pressed him one day that summer: Aren't you facing a guerrilla war?

"I guess the reason I don't use the phrase 'guerrilla war' is because there isn't one," Rumsfeld responded.

A few weeks later, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid succeeded Gen. Tommy R. Franks as the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East. He used his first news conference as commander to clear up the strategic confusion about what was happening in Iraq. Opponents of the U.S. presence were conducting "a classical guerrilla-style campaign," he said. "It's a war, however you describe it."

That fall, U.S. tactics became more aggressive. This was natural, even reasonable, coming in response to the increased attacks on U.S. forces and a series of suicide bombings. But it also appears to have undercut the U.S. government's long-term strategy.

"When you're facing a counterinsurgency war, if you get the strategy right, you can get the tactics wrong, and eventually you'll get the tactics right," said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a veteran of Special Forces in the Vietnam War. "If you get the strategy wrong and the tactics right at the start, you can refine the tactics forever, but you still lose the war. That's basically what we did in Vietnam."

For the first 20 months or more of the American occupation in Iraq, it was what the U.S. military would do there as well.

"What you are seeing here is an unconventional war fought conventionally," a Special Forces lieutenant colonel remarked gloomily one day in Baghdad as the violence intensified. The tactics that the regular troops used, he added, sometimes subverted American goals.

Draconian Interrogation Ideas

On the morning of Aug. 14, 2003, Capt. William Ponce, an officer in the "Human Intelligence Effects Coordination Cell" at the top U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, sent a memo to subordinate commands asking what interrogation techniques they would like to use.

"The gloves are coming off regarding these detainees," he told them. His e-mail, and the responses it provoked from members of the Army intelligence community across Iraq, are illustrative of the mind-set of the U.S. military during this period.

"Casualties are mounting and we need to start gathering info to help protect our fellow soldiers from any further attacks," Ponce wrote. He told them, "Provide interrogation techniques 'wish list' by 17 AUG 03."

Some of the responses to his solicitation were enthusiastic. With clinical precision, a soldier attached to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment recommended by e-mail 14 hours later that interrogators use "open-handed facial slaps from a distance of no more than about two feet and back-handed blows to the midsection from a distance of about 18 inches." He also reported that "fear of dogs and snakes appear to work nicely."

The 4th Infantry Division's intelligence operation responded three days later with suggestions that captives be hit with closed fists and also subjected to "low-voltage electrocution."

But not everyone was as sanguine as those two units. "We need to take a deep breath and remember who we are," cautioned a major with the 501st Military Intelligence Battalion, which supported the operations of the 1st Armored Division in Iraq. "It comes down to standards of right and wrong -- something we cannot just put aside when we find it inconvenient, any more than we can declare that we will 'take no prisoners' and therefore shoot those who surrender to us simply because we find prisoners inconvenient."

Feeding the interrogation system was a major push by U.S. commanders to round up Iraqis. The key to actionable intelligence was seen by many as conducting huge sweeps to detain and question Iraqis. Sometimes units acted on tips, but sometimes they just detained all able-bodied males of combat age in areas known to be anti-American.

These steps were seen inside the Army as a major success story, and they were portrayed as such to journalists. The problem was that the U.S. military, having assumed it would be operating in a relatively benign environment, wasn't set up for a massive effort that called on it to apprehend, detain and interrogate Iraqis, to analyze the information gleaned, and then to act on it.

"As commanders at all levels sought operational intelligence, it became apparent that the intelligence structure was undermanned, under-equipped and inappropriately organized for counter-insurgency operations," Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones wrote in an official Army report a year later.

Senior U.S. intelligence officers in Iraq later estimated that about 85 percent of the tens of thousands rounded up were of no intelligence value. But as they were delivered to the Abu Ghraib prison, they overwhelmed the system and often waited for weeks to be interrogated, during which time they could be recruited by hard-core insurgents, who weren't isolated from the general prison population.

In improvising a response to the insurgency, the U.S. forces worked hard and had some successes. Yet they frequently were led poorly by commanders unprepared for their mission by an institution that took away from the Vietnam War only the lesson that it shouldn't get involved in messy counterinsurgencies. The advice of those who had studied the American experience there was ignored.

That summer, retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, an expert in small wars, was sent to Baghdad by the Pentagon to advise on how to better put down the emerging insurgency. He met with Bremer in early July. "Mr. Ambassador, here are some programs that worked in Vietnam," Anderson said.

It was the wrong word to put in front of Bremer. "Vietnam?" Bremer exploded, according to Anderson. "Vietnam! I don't want to talk about Vietnam. This is not Vietnam. This is Iraq!"

This was one of the early indications that U.S. officials would obstinately refuse to learn from the past as they sought to run Iraq.

One of the essential texts on counterinsurgency was written in 1964 by David Galula, a lieutenant colonel in the French army who was born in Tunisia, witnessed guerrilla warfare on three continents and died in 1967.

When the United States went into Iraq, his book, "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice," was almost unknown within the military, which is one reason it is possible to open Galula's text almost at random and find principles of counterinsurgency that the American effort failed to heed.

Galula warned specifically against the kind of large-scale conventional operations the United States repeatedly launched with brigades and battalions, even if they held out the allure of short-term gains in intelligence. He insisted that firepower must be viewed very differently than in regular war.

"A soldier fired upon in conventional war who does not fire back with every available weapon would be guilty of a dereliction of his duty," he wrote, adding that "the reverse would be the case in counterinsurgency warfare, where the rule is to apply the minimum of fire."

The U.S. military took a different approach in Iraq. It wasn't indiscriminate in its use of firepower, but it tended to look upon it as good, especially during the big counteroffensive in the fall of 2003, and in the two battles in Fallujah the following year.

One reason for that different approach was the muddled strategy of U.S. commanders in Iraq. As civil affairs officers found to their dismay, Army leaders tended to see the Iraqi people as the playing field on which a contest was played against insurgents. In Galula's view, the people are the prize.

"The population . . . becomes the objective for the counterinsurgent as it was for his enemy," he wrote.

From that observation flows an entirely different way of dealing with civilians in the midst of a guerrilla war. "Since antagonizing the population will not help, it is imperative that hardships for it and rash actions on the part of the forces be kept to a minimum," Galula wrote.

Cumulatively, the American ignorance of long-held precepts of counterinsurgency warfare impeded the U.S. military during 2003 and part of 2004. Combined with a personnel policy that pulled out all the seasoned forces early in 2004 and replaced them with green troops, it isn't surprising that the U.S. effort often resembled that of Sisyphus, the king in Greek legend who was condemned to perpetually roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down as he neared the top.

Again and again, in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006, U.S. forces launched major new operations to assert and reassert control in Fallujah, in Ramadi, in Samarra, in Mosul.

"Scholars are virtually unanimous in their judgment that conventional forces often lose unconventional wars because they lack a conceptual understanding of the war they are fighting," Lt. Col. Matthew Moten, chief of military history at West Point, would comment in 2004.

When Maj. Gregory Peterson studied a few months later at Fort Leavenworth's School of Advanced Military Studies, an elite course that trains military planners and strategists, he found the U.S. experience in Iraq in 2003-2004 remarkably similar to the French war in Algeria in the 1950s. Both involved Western powers exercising sovereignty in Arab states, both powers were opposed by insurgencies contesting that sovereignty, and both wars were controversial back home.

Most significant for Peterson's analysis, he found both the French and U.S. militaries woefully unprepared for the task at hand. "Currently, the U.S. military does not have a viable counterinsurgency doctrine, understood by all soldiers, or taught at service schools," he concluded.

Casey Implements a New Tactic

In mid-2004, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. took over from Sanchez as the top U.S. commander in Iraq. One of Casey's advisers, Kalev Sepp, pointedly noted in a study that fall that the U.S. effort in Iraq was violating many of the major principles of counterinsurgency, such as putting an emphasis on killing insurgents instead of engaging the population.

A year later, frustrated by the inability of the Army to change its approach to training for Iraq, Casey established his own academy in Taji, Iraq, to teach counterinsurgency to U.S. officers as they arrived in the country. He made attending its course there a prerequisite to commanding a unit in Iraq.

"We are finally getting around to doing the right things," Army Reserve Lt. Col. Joe Rice observed one day in Iraq early in 2006. "But is it too little, too late?"

One of the few commanders who were successful in Iraq in that first year of the occupation, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, made studying counterinsurgency a requirement at the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, where mid-career officers are trained.

By the academic year that ended last month, 31 of 78 student monographs at the School of Advanced Military Studies next door were devoted to counterinsurgency or stability operations, compared with only a couple two years earlier.

And Galula's handy little book, "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice," was a bestseller at the Leavenworth bookstore.