Does this windbag shill have no shame? I know he has no decency. Maybe he was looped up on painkillers when he lied his arse off over his radio show and for what? Doesn't Limpballs even care that when he lies he can be called on it by the people he is slandering? Obviously not. The fact these women lost husbands in one of our greatest national tragedies and want answers to PREVENT such in the future means NOTHING to Limpballs because his job is to bark the party line while calling a blue sky green with purple polka dots. ---Sam

Two 9-11 Widows Respond to Rush Limbaugh Attacks

[PHILADELPHIA -- March 10, 2004 -- (TomFlocco.com) -- Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh weighed in on the subject of current George Bush campaign TV ads with references to September 11 during his nationally broadcast radio show last Friday. The following two letters were written to Mr. Limbaugh today by the two 9-11 widows whose voices were used during his radio broadcast. The controversial Limbaugh referred to Republican Kristen Breitweiser and Monica Gabrielle as Democratic "campaign consultants... not grieving widows... obsessed with rage and hatred."

According to Rush the "Anti-Bush 9/11 Families Backed by Heinz Foundation"
March 9, 2004,
Listen to Rush...
(…recount just how on the money Friday's program was)

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT 12:36 PM ET

RUSH: I can now begin to take credit for some things that happened on this program on Friday - A barnburner of a program. You remember the program opened with some audio examples that we had found of families, certain family members, 9-11 victims, all saying the same things. And I cringed. I couldn't believe that the Democratic Party would sink this low , to exploit and capitalize on the misery and loss of families. But they did it. They found a way. In fact, they found some family members - and I'm going to say this - they found some family members who seemed to have more concern over who the president of this country is than over the sanctity of the loss of their own family members. It is beyond the pale that this could happen. It is beyond the pale, yet people cooperate with it, and so much more has been learned about this since.

It turns out -- and, by the way, the thing I predicted to you on Friday about the 9-11 coffins and "no flag-draped coffins out of Baghdad," that has been picked up. I told you that was a talking point. I told you we're going to be seeing it over the weekend and you did see it over the weekend, and these people are very easily predictable. Well, it turns out that a lot of these 9-11 family members are part of a political organization that is funded in part by Teresa Heinz-Kerry! Well, this stuff is incestuous! You know, these people are poisoned. They have literally been poisoned by their hate. They have been poisoned by their rage. It is unbelievable, the depths to which they will sink.

Here, for those of you that weren't here on Friday, this is the montage. I'm just going to play it one more time. This is two different women, and they appeared on four networks: CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and NBC, and they each have three phrases that they use verbatim. And these were prepared. These were prepared by Democratic campaign consultants. In fact, these women sound like campaign consultants, not grieving family members, and I was reluctant to make this charge; it's the first thing that crossed my mind. As I say, we've now learned all the organizational effort that's going on behind this and these people are indeed aligned with the Democratic Party, and it's just… I do not know this kind of hatred; I don't know this kind of venom; I don't harbor it; I never have; I don't know what it's like to be governed by this kind of rage, and I don't know what life must be like when it is. I cannot relate. I cannot relate to being obsessed with rage and hatred. I can relate to being obsessed with love and infatuation, but I cannot relate to being obsessed with all this hatred. I just don't get it. It is unspeakable to me. It is dirty. It is wounding. I think this stuff is absolutely poison, the depths -- and Ted Kennedy on Friday goes to the Council on Foreign Relations and -- I got the story coming up -- makes all these wild accusations. John Kerry himself is becoming, if you ask me, a walking caricature of himself already. I think these people have no clue.

You know, one of the things I said all during 2002, is these people have not come to grips with the fact that they're not the majority anymore, and if they have one thing in common with Martha Stewart, and this is not my comment on Martha Stewart , but not the whole comment, but these people do not have the ability to know how average Americans see them. They have no empathy with average Americans. These family members from 9-11 that are on this political witch hunt, the Democratic Party, the presidential campaign leaders, Kerry, all these people, all the Democratic leadership, media, have no clue how they come across to real people...

...Here, listen to this montage in case you missed it on Friday, and understand that these family members are actually part of the Democratic Party machine, as they do this.

VOICE I: I think for someone like President Bush who has not cooperated with this commission, who has stonewalled this commission.

VOICE II: This president and his administration blocked the creation of the commission, have stonewalled the commission.

VOICE I: If this was realistic from the morning of September 11th, it would show President Bush before a group of school children listening to them read, while the twin towers were burning.

VOICE II: If he wants to show a picture of 9-11 depicting what he was doing, it should be a picture of him sitting and reading in a classroom to school children. That's where he was on 9-11.

VOICE I: And we need to find out why 3,000 people were murdered on his watch.

VOICE II: Well, you know, this happened on his watch.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to hear some original thoughts from any of these people, but I don't think that the Democrats trust them to speak originally. Was a piece -- I'm looking for it now. I should have put it in the right order but I didn't. In the Wall Street Journal yesterday from a woman named Burlingame , was a little editorial, small little op-ed. And it has some great lines in it. She's a family member of 9-11 that does not agree with these people and really rips them to shreds in a very classy way.

END TRANSCRIPT

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_030904/content/see_i_told_you_so.guest.html



Response from Widow Kristen Breitweiser

Mr. Limbaugh,

For your information, I am one of the widows you are wrongly accusing of being "schooled" by the Democratic Party.

My name is Kristen Breitweiser. I am not a Democrat. I voted for President Bush. So did my husband who was killed on 9/11.

I would encourage you to educate yourself on who I am, prior to your making erroneous statements about me on your radio show.

I would also encourage you to visit the website of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee (911independentcommission.org) of which I am a founding member.

The members of the Family Steering Committee (a non-partisan, completely self-funded organization) have been tireless advocates working to get answers as to why our loved ones were killed on the morning of 9/11 and why this nation was so very vulnerable to terrorism on that horrible day. In order to make this nation safer and to ensure that our loved ones were not killed in vain, we believe that we must learn from the tragic failures that occurred leading up to and on 9/11.

The only way we can be safe in the future is to learn from the past. The only way we can have a thorough examination of the past is with a cooperative government. Sadly, President Bush has been our biggest adversary in trying to find out what happened on 9/11. And, after voting for him in the last election, I am gravely disappointed in his behavior in fighting this commission and their noble efforts to explain why we as a nation were so vulnerable to terrorism on 9/11.

I look forward to your apology.

Many thanks,

Kristen Breitweiser.

P.S. And, as an aside, you failed to mention the following actual fact in your show: that Mayor Giuliani, Police Commissioner Kerik, Former Fire Commissioner Von-Essen, and 9/11 Widow Deena Burnett were "BOOKED" BY THE GOP to go on those shows. (See Washington Post article on Friday). I, on the other hand, was "booked" by no one other than myself. Frankly, Mr. Limbaugh, I expected better from you.

************************************************

Response from Widow Monica Gabrielle

Dear Mr. Limbaugh,

My name is Monica Gabrielle. I was forwarded a transcript of your recent radio show. Plain and simple – I expect an apology for your false statements and erroneous accusations.

In order to enlighten you:

- NO Democratic or other party member “schooled” me or prepared my statements! To date, I have been quite capable of thinking for myself.

- Neither I, nor the Family Steering Committee has received ANY FUNDING from ANY person or organization. We are a completely non-partisan, self-funded organization.

We have worked tirelessly for over 2 years to have the facts surrounding the 9/11 attacks and the murder of my husband along with 3,000 other innocent people brought to light. Until we know why we, as a nation, were left so utterly exposed, we will remain at risk. In order to accomplish such a lofty goal, we need to thoroughly examine what protocols and procedures were in place prior to and on 9/11. We need to find out where the breakdowns occurred.

Thus, ALL persons (BOTH political parties, BOTH past and present administrations) with any relevant knowledge need to share what they knew, when they knew it. Only then can we truly find where the failures occurred and correct them. Can we – as a nation – demand any less?

Sadly, President Bush and his administration have been staunchly opposed to any type of investigation into the murder of 3,000 innocent souls (not to mention the billions in property damage). This, to me, is unimaginable. Who wouldn’t want to know how and why all our defensive postures failed so miserably on 9/11? Who wouldn’t want to know that these “flaws” have been properly fixed? Who wants to have the same person/protocol in place today if it didn’t work on 9/11? Who wants to be the victim’s family member speaking up the next time tragedy strikes?

We, as citizens with the help of the 9/11 Independent Commission, have an opportunity to examine and hopefully correct the flaws which led to the horrors of 9/11 . We need to seize this opportunity – together – to make us all safer and quell some of the nightmares.

These are just a few of the issues which should have been debated on your program. More are available on our website (www.911independentcommission.org). The attacking of 9/11 families with false, inflammatory statements is beneath even you. Unfortunately, it accomplishes nothing and serves only to avoid the real issues.

I respectfully await your apology.

Sincerely,

Monica Gabrielle



_________________________________________________________

The "Business" President who not only has seen the greatest loss of jobs in American history under his stewardship but as the "Energy" President we've seen gas prices achieve new highs! ---Sam

Kerry Campaign Chair Awards Bush the “Herbert Hoover Award”


March 09, 2004
Washington, DC

Today as President Bush handed out awards at the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality awards ceremony, Kerry Campaign Chairwoman Jeanne Shaheen awarded George Bush the “Herbert Hoover Award” for presiding over the worst record on jobs of any president in American history.

“Since the president is handing out awards today, we wanted to give him one,” said Governor Shaheen. “So, on behalf of the nearly 3 million people who have lost their jobs under this administration, we are awarding George Bush the first ever ‘Herbert Hoover Award’ for having the worst jobs record since the Great Depression. It’s a special award reserved for presidents that have somehow managed to lose jobs on their watch. The American people need to know that their president has failed to lead on jobs, and that John Kerry is running for president to change the direction of this economy and get people back to work.”

To view the Herbert Hoover Award, click here:

GEORGE W. BUSH: WINNER OF THE “HERBERT HOOVER AWARD” – A RECORD OF FAILURE ON JOBS

BUSH: Worst Job Creation Record Since Hoover. “The economy has lost 2.2 million payroll jobs since January 2001, giving Bush the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover. The U.S. economy, to match the White House's jobs forecast, would have to churn out well over 220,000 new jobs each month for the rest of the year, economists say.” [Associated Press, 2/11/04]

The Numbers Tell the Story of Failure

ALMOST THREE MILLION: Since George W. Bush took office, America has lost almost 3 million private sector jobs.

EVERY MONTH: Manufacturing jobs have been lost every single month of the Bush Presidency.

ONE MILLION: One million jobs have been outsourced since President Bush took office.

33 PERCENT HIGHER: Unemployment has increased 33 percent since Bush took office.

$10,368. American families will pay 10,368 in interest on the debt by 2014.

George Bush’s Solution: More of the Same, More Broken Promises

Even though George Bush’s economic plan of tax cuts for the wealthy have only led to more job losses, he is offering more of the same: one trillion more in tax cuts targeted to the wealthy and new promises that he cannot meet.

First Tax Cut:
Bush Promise: Will create 800,000 jobs by the end of 2002.
Reality: American lost 1.9 million jobs.

Second Tax Cut:
Bush Promise: Will create 1 million new jobs.
Reality: America lost 53,000 jobs.

New Promise:
Bush Promise: 2.6 million jobs in 2004.
Reality: FED Chairman Alan Greenspan says it’s unlikely.

Nationally, 2.9 Million Jobs Lost; Unemployment Rate Up 33 Percent. The national unemployment rate in January 2004 was 5.6 percent, up from 4.2 percent when Bush took office in January 2001 - a 33 percent increase. Nationally, the economy has lost 2.9 million private sector jobs under Bush. [Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov]

Bush Promised, Then Backed Away From 2.6 New Million Jobs This Year. “Thursday's report also showed that the number of unemployed people collecting jobless benefits for more than a week rose by 106,000 to 3.2 million for the week ending Feb. 7, the most recent period for which that information is available. This suggests that jobs are still hard to find for some workers. The report comes as recent Bush administration comments about the job climate touched a political nerve and raise questions about the White House's economic grasp. President Bush on Wednesday distanced himself from an earlier prediction by his economic advisors that that the economy would add 2.6 million new jobs this year.” [Associated Press, 2/19/04]

One Tenth Needed Jobs Created in February. “About 21,000 jobs were created in February, the Labor Department said yesterday, a sixth the size of economists' forecasts. The unemployment rate remained at 5.6 percent as 392,000 people dropped out of the labor force, just as the presidential campaign kicked into high gear. The Labor Department, which originally estimated an increase of 112,000 jobs in January, also revised that number downward, to 97,000.” [Baltimore Sun, 3/6/04]

Nationally, Nearly 2.8 Million Manufacturing Jobs Lost Under Bush. The manufacturing industry has lost 2,787,000 jobs nationwide since Bush took office in January 2001. Employment for this key sector of the American economy is at its lowest level since October 1958. Of the 2.9 million private sector jobs lost under Bush, manufacturing losses account for 95 percent. [Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov]

Nationally, Workers’ Wages and Salaries Are Stagnant. In the third quarter of 2003, America's gross domestic product surged at a rate of 8.2 percent and corporate profits grew at an annual rate above 40 percent. But during this same period, wages and salaries grew by less than 1 percent. Furthermore, in the six months that ended in November 2003, income from wages rose just 0.65 percent after inflation. [Department of Commerce, 12/23/03; New York Times, 12/31/03; Charleston Gazette (West Virginia), 1/2/04]

Bush Presided Over “Biggest Gusher of Red Ink In History.” ”President George W. Bush has now presided over the biggest gusher of red ink in the nation's history, from a surplus of $127 billion when he entered office for fiscal 2001 to a 2004 deficit projection of $521 billion. …” [Business Week Online, 2/3/04]

Think Tanks Predicts Debt of $5.3 Trillion in Ten Years. “In a study of budget trends, the Brookings Institution said the national debt will increase by $5.3 trillion over the next decade, so that by 2014 the increase in government borrowing will cost the average household in America an extra $3,000 just to pay interest on the debt. … If the tax cuts are made permanent as Bush wants, the Congressional Budget Office says that could increase the deficit by another $1.4 trillion over the next decade.” [Chicago Tribune, 2/8/04]

Nationally, 3.5 Million More Americans Have Fallen Into Poverty Under Bush. In 2002, the number of Americans living in poverty increased to 34.6 million. Three-and-a-half million more Americans live in poverty under Bush. For 2002, a family with two parents and two children lives in poverty if their total household income is below $18,244. [Census Bureau, Poverty in the United States: 2002, Table 4, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty.html]

Bush Proposed to Eliminate Overtime for 8 Million Workers. Bush proposed regulations that would end eligibility for overtime pay—a critical source of income—for 8 million workers by reclassifying them as managers, administrative workers or professional employees. In addition, Bush's Department of Labor issued advice to companies in its explanation of the proposal on strategies to avoid paying overtime. Among these were cutting workers' base pay to subtract extra overtime pay costs and cutting workers' hours to strictly enforce a 40 hour work week. The non-partisan Economic Policy Institute called the proposal “pure special-interest politics with complete disregard for the democratic process.” [Akron Beacon -Journal, 12/5/03; EPI, 7/03, www.epi.org; New York Times, 7/1/03; AP, 1/6/04]

Republicans Say Larger Spending Increases Than Democrats. “[Reporter David GREGORY]: But the deficit and the Bush record of annual spending increases--larger than any since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House--has created a potent election-year issue for Democrats. … The real political trouble for the president is that it's not just Democrats piling on, but even conservatives. Rush Limbaugh delivered this stinging blow to his radio audience Thursday.

Mr. RUSH LIMBAUGH: Bush has outspent Clinton.

GREGORY: Spending--like Mr. Bush's plan to send a man to Mars, and his projected 17 percent budget increase for the national endowment for the arts--has the president's political base agitated. Both are seen as outreach efforts to swing voters, but allies warn it could backfire on Election Day.” [NBC Nightly News, 1/30/04]

Small Businesses Shutting Down. In fact, for the first time since 1990, more businesses with more than one and fewer than 500 employees shut down in 2001 and 2002 than were created, according to the Small Business Administration's most recent data.

Bush Eliminates Key Part of Small Business Loan Program—First Time in 50 Years. “The Bush administration's recently released federal budget is a travesty for small business. In the whopping $2.4 trillion budget, the Small Business Administration gets a measly $678.4 million — a decrease of $119.5 million, or 15%, from last year’s already low level.

Here are some ways President Bush's budget slashes small-business assistance:
Entirely eliminates the Microloan Program.

* Reduces government guarantees from 75% to 50% and increases fees on the SBA 7(a) loan program.
* Reduces funding for Small Business Development Centers.
* Slashes the Manufacturing Extension Partnership from $106 million to a paltry $39 million.

‘This would be the first time in the 50-year history of SBA that zero appropriations would be provided the 7(a) program,’ said Anthony R. Wilkinson, president of the National Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders — a group of private-industry bankers. It will be much more difficult — and costly — for entrepreneurs to qualify for SBA loans. Keep in mind these programs are highly successful and cost efficient. In fact, there's solid evidence that SBA loans and SBDC assistance result in increased tax revenues. …During the last decade, small business has become an even more important part of the American economy. Indeed, if it weren't for the jobs created by small business, the American employment picture would be far more dismal than it is. Virtually every study of new job creation shows that it's small and new companies — not big or existing businesses — creating jobs. A 2003 Census study found most job growth came from companies less than 2 years old.” [Rhonda Abrams Money column, USA Today, 2/14/03 (author of The Successful Business Plan: Secrets & Strategies)]




__________________________________________________________________

Statement from Kerry Spokesperson on Bush Attacks on Kerry Record on Intelligence

March 08, 2004

Washington, DC – John Kerry Campaign Spokesperson Chad Clanton issued the following statement today in response to President Bush’s misleading attacks on Kerry’s record on intelligence issues and funding.

“This misleading attack is a reminder of why George Bush has lost credibility with the American people. You bet, John Kerry voted against business as usual in our intelligence community. It’s no secret that we’ve got some serious gaps in our intelligence. He voted against a proposed billion dollar bloat in the intelligence budget, because it was essentially a slush fund for defense contractors. Unlike George Bush, John Kerry does not and will not support every special spending project supported by Halliburton and other defense contractor.”

Fact Check: John Kerry has supported $200 billion in intelligence funding over the past seven years – a 50 percent increase since 1996.

* FY03 Intel Authorization $39.3-$41.3 Billion*
[2002, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 9/25/02]

* FY02 Intel Authorization $33 Billion*
[2001, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 12/13/01]

* FY01 Intel Authorization $29.5-$31.5 Billion*
[2000, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 12/6/00]

* FY00 Intel Authorization $29-$30 Billion*
[1999, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 11/19/1999]

* FY99 Intel Authorization $29.0 Billion*
[1998, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 10/8/98]

* FY98 Intel Authorization $26.7 Billion*
[1997, Senate Roll Call Vote #109]

* FY97 Intel Authorization $26.6 Billion*
[1996, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 9/25/96]

* [Authorization levels are classified. Levels are an estimate based upon the Center for Defense Information Terrorism Project, Intelligence Funding and the War on Terror, http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/intel-funding.cfm]

It was widely known that the intelligence budget was overridden with pet projects and pork and was no longer appropriate to the intelligence tasks at hand. The nation was shifting from the cold war to a transnational threat involving terror, drug traffickers and international crime and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Aspin Commission found reductions “critical.”
“Indeed, finding such reductions is critical if funds are to be found for the investments in the intelligence capabilities that the nation will need in the future, capabilities that are not now funded in the proposed program and budget.” [Preparing for the 21st Century: an appraisal of U.S. Intelligence, Report of Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community, March 1, 1996, 137; http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/dpos/epubs/int/]

Intelligence agencies; in particular the NRO, were being mismanaged.
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency in charge of the nation’s spy satellites, was embroiled in controversy because of a $300 million land deal. According to the Washington Post, The NRO “bought almost 14 acres more than needed for its controversial new $ 304 million, four-building headquarters complex in the Westfields development near Dulles International Airport …. NRO, which designs, procures and manages intelligence satellites, planned to use the surplus Westfields acreage to build two additional office buildings that could be sold or leased to its contractors. The only way the NRO could buy the land it wanted was to purchase additional land, so the developers who owned it could get the profit they wanted. … [A] CIA-Pentagon investigation begun in August found that the NRO had failed to disclose the cost of the headquarters to Congress and found it was 30 percent bigger than the organization needed for its 2,190 employees and nearly 1,000 contractor personnel. The Westfields developer got NRO to purchase roughly eight additional acres because the spy satellite agency planners insisted they had to build and own the complex themselves. They refused to allow the developer to construct and rent the buildings to NRO under a long-term lease. Therefore, selling the land was the only way the developer would make money from the NRO deal.” [Washington Post, November 9, 1994]

Mismanagement resulted in $1 billion in unspent funds.
In Senate hearings in 1996, Sen. Arlen Specter announced: “[T]he failure of NRO officials to tell either the DCI or Congress that the NRO had accumulated over $1 billion in unused funds--further convinced our Committee that the intelligence community needed greater central direction and accountability.” [September 17, 1996; Senate Hearings; CR Page S10637]

In September of 1995, a secret billion dollar slush fund was found in the intelligence budget which served as a full employment opportunity for defense contractors.
The White House said yesterday it was "inexcusable" that the top secret agency that manages U.S. spy satellites had reportedly hoarded $ 1 billion in unspent funds. Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta said John M. Deutch, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had ordered an investigation into how the National Reconnaissance Office managed to stash away so much money without informing supervisors at the Pentagon or Congress. … The unspent funds were discovered after the Senate intelligence committee questioned a luxurious $ 300 million headquarters the NRO was building in a Washington suburb. [Washington Post, September 25, 1995]

Arlen Specter and Bob Kerrey sought to strip the intelligence budget of its pet projects and pork, and shift our intelligence from the cold war to the threat of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The same day that John Kerry proposed to cut the intelligence budget, Senators Specter and Kerrey introduced a similar bill, which passed by a bipartisan voice vote.


S.AMDT.2881 to S.922: To reduce the total amount of funds authorized to be appropriated for the National Reconnaissance Office to offset the availability of certain prior year appropriations. [9/29/1995: Proposed by Senator Coats for Senator Specter. Agreed to in Senate by Voice Vote.]



_________________________________________________________________

February 16, 2004
Top Dean Aide Discusses Plans to Back Kerry
By JODI WILGOREN

MILWAUKEE, Feb. 15 — The chairman of Howard Dean's presidential campaign said on Sunday that he would leave and shift his support to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts if Dr. Dean lost the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday, an outcome he sees as all but inevitable.

"If Howard Dean does not win the Wisconsin primary, I will reach out to John Kerry unless he reaches out to me first," said the chairman, Steven Grossman, who was chairman of Mr. Kerry's 1996 Senate race. "I will make it clear that I will do anything and everything I can to help him become the next president, and I will do anything and everything I can to build bridges with the Dean organization."

The comments by Mr. Grossman, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee who has known Mr. Kerry for 34 years, came as Dr. Dean faced growing pressure from aides and outside backers to abandon his quest. But while many leading supporters and staff members expect him to either quit the campaign altogether or radically scale it back by the end of this week, the candidate remained steadfast Sunday that he would soldier on.

"We're not dropping out after Tuesday, period," Dr. Dean said in a television interview with the Fox affiliate here Sunday.

But in a debate here with the other four Democratic candidates Sunday evening, Dr. Dean skipped several opportunities to directly challenge Mr. Kerry.

Dr. Dean has no events scheduled beyond Tuesday night, when he plans to fly home to Burlington, Vt., to regroup. He has not won in any of the 16 states that have voted. His bank account is dwindling. Many of his aides are planning vacations or seeking jobs with other candidates.

While many in the Dean camp felt Mr. Grossman had spoken out of school, none disputed the essence of what he said: that the campaign would not last the week in its current incarnation.

Roy Neel, Dr. Dean's campaign manager, said "anything is possible" after Wisconsin. "I'm not going to contradict Steve," Mr. Neel said of Mr. Grossman. "Every possibility is still on the table. The governor's not made a decision.

"He believes it's premature to make up his mind because we don't have the results from Tuesday night yet. He's still planning to win the primary."

The most recent polls here show Mr. Kerry 40 points ahead of Dr. Dean, who also trailed Mr. Edwards.

Aides to Dr. Dean and Mr. Kerry have met to discuss Dr. Dean's future plans, a Democratic operative said Sunday night on condition on anonymity.

"None of us are doing a whole lot right now, because there's not a whole lot to do," one top Dean aide said Sunday, on the condition he not be named. "We've put one ad on the air in Wisconsin. We're not polling anymore. We're not going to have the money to run some full-fledged campaign for March 2."

By contrast, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina promised to compete in all 10 states with primaries and caucuses on March 2, though he said he might bypass Hawaii, Idaho and Utah, which vote Feb. 24.

"This is becoming a two-person race between John Edwards and John Kerry," Mr. Edwards told reporters after a rally at the University of Wisconsin campus in Waukesha, about 20 miles from here. Like Mr. Edwards, Dr. Dean had hoped to remain standing long enough to get a one-on-one face-off with Mr. Kerry, whom he has denounced as beholden to special interests and indistinguishable from Republicans.

After the debate Sunday, Dr. Dean told supporters at a local bar, Caffrey's, that he would keep campaigning, win or lose, saying he would go on to New York, California, Ohio and even Hawaii.

But having not won a single state, his prospects seem dimmer by the day, leaving Dr. Dean with the task of transforming his organization into a force for political change while keeping his dignity.

Many supporters believe his best option would be to turn his campaign into a political action group devoted to defeating President Bush.

"Right now there is nothing that he is doing that anyone I've spoken to believes is detrimental to the Democratic party," said Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which plans to reassess its endorsement of Dr. Dean on Wednesday. "Some people may say if they were him they wouldn't do this because it may be detrimental to his reputation. I guess he's in charge of his own reputation."

Mr. Grossman, the campaign chairman, predicted that after a Dean loss here on Tuesday, "you will see a fundamental shift in rhetoric and in tone and perhaps in how the candidate uses his time."

He said Dr. Dean's name would remain on the ballot in remaining primaries, so he might still collect votes, but that he would cease criticism of Mr. Kerry.

"I think Howard is very clearly focused on making sure that we have a Democratic president in November and that this movement, hundreds of thousands of citizens or more, play an active participatory role in the fall election," Mr. Grossman said, adding that his comments reflected a lengthy recent conversation with the candidate.

Mr. Grossman said he believed Dr. Dean would work "to help the nominee, presumably John Kerry, become the president, defeat Bush, and he will work equally hard to ensure that this movement that he has led for the last year will grow."

After the news of Grossman's decision to leave the campaign became public Sunday night, Dr. Dean, through his spokesman, Jay Carson, said Mr. Grossman had "meant a lot to this campaign."

"We'll miss him and we wish him well," Dr. Dean said through his spokesman.

Randal C. Archibold contributed reporting for this article.




____________________________________________________________

Here's the kind of illegal behavior an unethical leader like Mr. DeLay inspires.

February 16, 2004
WASHINGTON TALK
Partisan Denunciations Fly Over Secret Strategy Memos
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have been matching each other with nasty accusations for well over two years in the debate over the treatment of Bush administration judicial candidates.

But the Democrats have now confidently gathered in a herd on the moral high ground over disclosures that some Republican staff aides had improperly obtained confidential strategy memorandums from a Senate computer. The Senate sergeant-at-arms, who is nearing the end of an investigation into the tampering, told senators last week that the Republican staff members' activities went on much longer and were far more extensive than previously believed.

They spanned more than two years and involved conscious computer hacking as some 3,000 Democratic documents were secretly downloaded, read and distributed by some number of Republican aides, said people who attended the briefings. No evidence that senators were involved has surfaced.

When the Judiciary Committee convened Thursday for the first time since the new disclosures, Democratic senators were present in full force to denounced the spying, saying it was a violation of both the criminal code and the unwritten rules of political behavior in the Senate under which the two parties get along.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts compared the situation to Watergate. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York invoked the depredations of Hitler and Stalin.

Before the new disclosures, Republicans had erected a common defense, saying the "spying" was little more than some staff members' peeking at a few documents made available to them through a computer flaw. More important, they argued, the documents themselves show a pattern of perfidy on the part of the Democrats in that they consulted and collaborated with outside liberal groups to oppose President Bush's judicial nominees, who were criticized in harsh terms.

But by Thursday, that appeared to some Republican senators a wan comeback.

When the Democrats began their serial denunciations, they all complimented Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who is chairman of the committee, for his alacrity in initiating the investigation and his statements that he was mortified at what had occurred, comments that have earned him criticism from some conservative groups that he was caving in to the Democrats' demand for an investigation.

"He is the only Republican senator to have apologized for what occurred," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat.

With that, Democrats looked across the U-shaped committee table and glared at the Republicans.

Faced with a difficult-to-defend situation, many Republicans simply withdrew from the field of battle, quietly slipping out of the room. Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina joined Mr. Hatch in agreeing that what had happened was terribly wrong.

Senator John Cornyn, a freshman Republican of Texas, concurred but was less conciliatory. Mr. Cornyn said Democrats had recently used stolen documents to discredit William Pryor Jr., one of Mr. Bush's nominees to a federal appeals court.

Mr. Cornyn said a former employee of the Republican Attorneys General Association had passed documents to Democratic staff aides showing that Mr. Pryor, the Alabama attorney general, might have solicited money for the attorneys general's group from people who had business before him.

The documents suggested that the group was improperly raising money from groups like tobacco companies. But the person who took those documents from the group's files was not a Senate employee, Democrats pointed out, but was someone they regard as a whistle-blower, even as Republicans called her a thief.

The most unrepentant of Republicans was Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a member of the Republican leadership. According to the newspaper Roll Call, Mr. Santorum told reporters that he still believed that "the real potential criminal behavior" was with the Democrats because the content showed their unwholesome ways of colluding with outside interest groups to oppose Mr. Bush's judicial nominees.





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The most vile snake in the Congress, Tom DeLay.

February 16, 2004
Inquiry Focuses on Group DeLay Created
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

AUSTIN, Tex. — A political action committee created by Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, enjoyed tremendous success here in 2002: all but 3 of 21 Republican candidates the committee backed for state representative won their races, helping the party take control of the Texas House.

Last year, the Republicans used that clout to carve Texas into new Congressional districts under a plan that political analysts say will bring them at least five new seats in Congressional elections this year.

But local prosecutors and a grand jury here have been investigating the committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, including its use of corporate donations in the election, lawyers close to the case said.

Investigators are also examining whether there were violations of a law intended to curb the ability of outside groups to influence the race for House speaker, the lawyers said. The investigation follows a complaint filed with prosecutors last year by Texans for Public Justice, a campaign watchdog group.

The extent to which Texans for a Republican Majority used corporate money in the 2002 races is laid out in a trail of recently obtained documents. Under Texas law, political action committees are generally prohibited from using corporate and union donations for anything other than administrative expenses, like rent and utilities.

But records and interviews show that fund-raisers from Texans for a Republican Majority who were paid with corporate money solicited donations on behalf of individual candidates backed by the committee, which also spent corporate donations on fund-raising events, polling and a voter identification project.

In one case, corporate donations were used to pay a $1,200 legal bill to defend a new Republican legislator, Bill Zedler, against accusations from his opponent that he did not live in the district that elected him.

The documents, and interviews, also show that the committee often coordinated its efforts with Tom Craddick, a Republican state representative whom lawmakers elected speaker of the House after the 2002 elections. Later, at the urging of Mr. DeLay, Mr. Craddick helped lead the bitter fight to carve the state into new Congressional districts.

John Colyandro, who was the committee's executive director, said that Texans for a Republican Majority operated lawfully and that hundreds of other political action committees in Texas had conducted business similarly.

"The notion that TRMPAC alone administered itself in this way is deceitful and offensive," Mr. Colyandro said. The payment in the Zedler case, made several days after the election, was legal because it had "nothing to do with the campaign," he said. Mr. Colyandro has been granted limited immunity in return for grand jury testimony, a person close to the case said.

But Cris Feldman, a lawyer in Austin who has sued the treasurer of Texans for a Republican Majority on behalf of four defeated Democratic House candidates, said Mr. DeLay and his aides "clandestinely funneled illegal corporate cash into the elections."

In all, the committee spent $1.5 million, including $600,000 in corporate money, according to an analysis by Texans for Public Justice.

Jim Ellis, Mr. DeLay's political aide, said he, Mr. DeLay and Mr. Colyandro created the committee. Mr. DeLay served on a five-member advisory board, which decided whom to endorse, Mr. Colyandro said. Mr. Ellis, executive director of Mr. DeLay's own political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, was one of three officers authorized to make decisions about expenditures and contributions by Texans for a Republican Majority, state records show.

Mr. DeLay's daughter was also paid by the committee to set up events, other records show.

Before the 2002 elections, Mr. DeLay wanted lawmakers to take up redistricting, Mr. Ellis said, adding that "there is no question" that Mr. DeLay wanted Mr. Craddick elected speaker. The two men served in the Texas House together in the 1980's.

But Mr. Ellis said the committee's main goals were to "elect Republicans and further the Republican agenda." He added that the investigation "seems to be getting to the point of being ridiculous" and that any mistakes by the committee "certainly weren't intentional."

But Ronnie Earle, the Democratic district attorney in Travis County, who is leading the inquiry, calls the investigation "an effort to unravel a tangled web of secret money."

In an interview, Mr. Colyandro said he believed that the committee was legally allowed to spend corporate money to raise other money that the committee collected and then distributed to candidates.

But in a separate interview, Susan Lilly, the committee's Texas fund-raiser during the 2002 elections, said she had a different understanding: that people involved in raising money intended for state campaigns — whether or not that money first passes through a political action committee — are not supposed to be paid with corporate money.

Ms. Lilly said she did not know Texans for a Republican Majority had paid her with corporate money until after the election, when prosecutors began looking at the committee's activities. She said she solicited donations that went straight to candidates, confirming a report in The Austin American-Statesman.

Records and interviews show that other committee officials were involved in raising money sent directly to candidates.

On Aug. 12, 2002, Ms. Lilly wrote an e-mail message to Mr. Colyandro and Warren Robold, a fund-raiser for Mr. DeLay who worked for the committee and, records show, was paid with money from corporate donations. In it, she described a visit from Ron Olson, an official with Union Pacific railroad.

Mr. Olson, she wrote, "came down this morning and said that through DeLay's efforts (i.e. Warren) that UP had identified $25,000 worth of TRMPAC targets that he is supposed to individually go and give checks to. However, he was asked that a `DeLay' person accompany him when he gives the checks (so that the recipient will know that it was TRMPAC related)."

A Union Pacific spokeswoman confirmed that Mr. Robold asked Union Pacific to make donations from its political action committee to candidates backed by Texans for a Republican Majority. He made the request, she said, after the railroad declined to donate to the committee.

Union Pacific donated to 11 candidates but would have made those donations anyway, she said. She also confirmed Mr. Craddick handed out some Union Pacific checks to candidates, explaining that company officials did not have time to do it.

Mr. Robold did not return calls seeking comment. He has been subpoenaed by prosecutors, a person close to the case said.

Another document, dated Sept. 27, 2002, and written by Ms. Lilly, states that committee officials sent letters to the candidates letting them know that some donations made by others were due to their efforts.

"All checks that have been distributed were pre-empted by faxed notes from Beverly or Dianne letting the recipient know the checks were coming via TRMPAC's efforts," the document states, referring to two state representatives on the committee's advisory board, Dianne Delisi and Beverly Woolley. "The only exception was the Union Pacific checks which were given to Tom and he distributed. TRMPAC has gotten credit for all the funds distributed to date."

An attached spreadsheet lists donations made by others directly to candidates at the request of the committee, including $22,000 by Compass Bancshares' political action committee. A separate document, outlining the itinerary for a fund-raising trip to Houston by Ms. Lilly and Ms. Woolley on Sept. 9, 2002, mentions a visit to an official at Compass Bank. Next to that is written, "22K direct." Ms. Woolley and bank officials did not return phone calls for comment.

Mr. Colyandro said he did not recall the documents outlining contributions by others at the committee's request. But he said, "Raising any money on behalf of any specific candidate and being compensated with corporate money is inappropriate."

Documents show that Mr. Craddick worked closely with officials from the committee to raise money. In turn, the committee sent Mr. Craddick campaign checks that he then distributed to individual candidates. For example, on Oct. 18, 2002, Mr. Colyandro wrote an e-mail message instructing the committee's accountant to send Mr. Craddick, via Federal Express, $152,000 in checks made out to 14 Republican House candidates, records show.

A spokesman for Mr. Craddick, Bob Richter, said Mr. Craddick "never passed out any money to any members or would-be members with the idea that they would vote for him for speaker. There was never a quid pro quo: I give you this check and you give me your support for speaker."

In another episode drawing scrutiny, the committee donated $190,000 raised from corporations to the Republican National Committee on Sept. 10, 2002. On Oct. 4, the national committee wrote checks totaling the same amount to seven Texas House candidates supported by the committee, money that unlike that sent to the national committee could be given directly to a campaign.

A spokesman for the national committee said there was "no record" of discussions about the transactions with Texans for a Republican Majority. Mr. Ellis also said he could not recall whether he discussed the state candidates when he delivered the check to the national committee.




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February 15, 2004 NY TIMES
Intelligence Panel's Finances Will Stay Private
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — The White House is declining to make public the financial histories of the commissioners President Bush appointed to investigate American intelligence failures.

Administration officials say the arrangement has helped to attract the best-qualified people for the panel, but critics say the White House's refusal to disclose financial information raises questions about potential conflicts of interest that could cloud the commission's work.

Citing an exemption to federal ethics regulations, the White House says the financial disclosure statements filed by the commission's nine members will remain confidential because they are not being paid for their work.

"The president was looking for highly qualified, well-respected individuals to serve on a temporary basis, and he thought that this was the best way to set up the commission," Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman, said in an interview.

While ethics specialists said members of most federal commissions typically have to disclose their financial interests to the public, the White House pointed to a number of exceptions in foreign intelligence and domestic security. "There are several out there like this. I don't think it's unique," Ms. Healy said.

But experts said the White House's refusal to make public the commission's business links may fuel questions about its independence and taint its investigation into one of the Bush administration's biggest potential political vulnerabilities: the quality of intelligence used to justify the Iraq war and other issues involving unconventional weapons.

The issue mirrors some of the concerns raised in 2002 when a commission was appointed to investigate the Sept. 11 terror attacks, only to have its original chairman and vice chairman step down, in part because of private business interests.

After initially resisting calls for a commission to study intelligence failures surrounding the Iraqi war buildup, Mr. Bush created the intelligence commission on Feb. 6 and gave it a broad mandate to look at intelligence on unconventional weapons around the globe. But before the commission has even begun its work, some critics are already suggesting that political as well as financial conflicts could influence its findings.

Laurence H. Silberman, a conservative judge who is one of the commission's two chairmen, has drawn particular criticism from liberal groups because of his judicial record and close ties to the Bush administration. Several other commissioners also have financial links to groups in the Middle East and the defense industry that could become involved in the inquiry.

"This is a critical commission, and if the White House is going to withhold basic information about its members that should be made public, that's a shame," said Bill Allison, a spokesman for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit group in Washington that tracks government ethics issues.

"The point of a financial disclosure form is that it's supposed to be disclosed," Mr. Allison said. "This completely defeats the purpose. You're starting from a position of bad faith."

One high-level commission that does make public the financial interests of its members is the panel created by Congress and the White House in late 2002 to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks. But it, too, has been dogged by charges of conflicts of interest.

The original chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, Henry A. Kissinger, stepped down abruptly because he said resolving potential conflicts of interest would have meant liquidating his consulting firm, while his vice chairman, former Senator George J. Mitchell, stepped aside in part because of an unwillingness to sever ties with his law firm. The commission's current executive director and a commissioner have also been interviewed by the commission about their knowledge of intelligence activities leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, spurring charges of a conflict from some of the victims' survivors.

Bush administration officials and ethics specialists said that when politicians seek to appoint people with broad experience to serve on important commissions, charges of conflicts arise almost inevitably because those people usually have extensive contacts in business and global affairs as well.

"It's a problem that's endemic to Washington," said Stan Brand, a Washington lawyer specializing in government ethics. "If this commission is really going to conduct a wide-ranging review of intelligence gathering, at some point its members are going to bump into individuals or entities of the kind that they've represented, and they're going to have to confront that by sealing themselves off from those clients."

The nine members of the intelligence commission include both Republicans and Democrats, and the White House points to their broad experience in intelligence, the military, academics, law and the private sector. Joining Judge Silberman as co-chairman is Charles S. Robb, the former Democrat senator and governor of Virginia.

Critics, however, suggest that the commissioners' extensive résumés may create conflicts.

One commissioner, William O. Studeman, for instance, was a former official at the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency and is now a senior executive at Northrop Grumman, a military contractor that does work in weaponry and in planning and detection for unconventional weapons, among many other areas.

Also on the panel is Lloyd M. Cutler, a prominent Washington lawyer who has served in several Democratic administrations. The firm he founded, Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, has done work for the Carlyle Group, a large Washington equity firm that has used former President George Bush and other well-connected Republicans to advance its interests in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Mr. Cutler said in an interview, however, that he had not personally represented the Carlyle Group.

Clearly the most scrutiny has fallen on Judge Silberman, a senior part-time judge on the United States Court of Appeals in Washington.

Conservatives hail Judge Silberman as a well-respected and savvy leader who has had a long and diverse career as a diplomat, law enforcement official and jurist. But several liberal groups and Democratic lawmakers have attacked what they call his severe partisanship on and off the bench in episodes including the Iran-contra affair, the Whitewater investigation and accusations of sexual misconduct against President Bill Clinton.

In a lengthy attack on Judge Silberman delivered on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, charged that "the canons of judicial ethics meant nothing" to the judge and that he should be replaced on the panel.

Judge Silberman, Mr. Reid said, was on the panel "to protect the president, not to get fair information." As long as Judge Silberman is associated with the panel, he said, "it is smeared with partisan prejudice."

Judge Silberman, in an interview, dismissed such charges as "fabrications" and said he did not believe they would distract from the commission's work.

"This all sounds like politics," he said. "Why should I be concerned if I know these charges have no merit?"

Judge Silberman acknowledged that he counts among his friends both Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, two of President Bush's most influential advisers on Iraq. And he said, "I plead guilty to being something of a conservative," but added that this would not color his leadership of the commission.

As for the commission members' financial interests, Judge Silberman said he was unaware that the White House planned to keep the information confidential, and he pledged to make his own disclosure form available in the coming days.

"It's plain vanilla — the only financial interests I have are mutual funds," he said.





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New Kerry Ad Sends Bush a Valentine’s Day message
Names Him Undisputed King of Special Interests

(click on title to go see the ad)

February 14, 2004
Washington, DC –

George Bush officially cranked up the Republican smear machine this week by choosing to make his first campaign ad a misleading attack against John Kerry. In fact, the ad was so misleading that Bush wouldn’t even appear in it to back up its claims.

In response to Bush’s misleading ad, the Kerry campaign today released a new ad entitled “More Than Anyone.” The ad – which will be emailed across the country -- will remind the American people that George Bush has taken more special interest money than anyone, ever.

Using data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, the ad outlines the huge contributions Bush has taken from big oil and gas companies, big banks and investment firms and even Enron, and reveals the favors he gave these powerful special interests in return. Given Bush’s record as the “King of Special Interests,” a Washington Post editorial today called Bush’s attack on Kerry a “brazen display of political chutzpah.”

“It’s the height of hypocrisy for George W. Bush – the undisputed king of special interests – to attack John Kerry on this issue,” said Stephanie Cutter. “Bush is trying to attack to distract voters from his record of three million jobs lost, 41 million uninsured Americans, and a nation less secure today than when he took office. Each and every day, Bush gives the American people yet another reason to doubt his credibility.”

The new Kerry ad will be emailed to over 300,000 Kerry supporters across the nation, who will then be asked to send to 10 friends to reach over 3 million Americans. By Monday, the ad is expected to reach well over 5 million people.

The ad shows an empty Oval Office and a long list of special interest Bush contributors with the question on the screen: “Who’s taken more special interest than anyone?” And unlike the Bush Internet ad, John Kerry is shown approving this message.





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Here's the beginning of an article from FactCheck.org refuting the Bush Attack Ad against John Kerry with the FACTS. Bush is the king of special interests. I'm not including the whole article (just click on the title to go to the website) because if you visit the web page it has links in the analysis where you can go to and learn more of the REAL FACTS of why John Kerry has been visciously maligned by the Rove attack machine. But hey. What else is new? Expect these attacks to happen daily because BUSH IS TERRIFIED OF KERRY'S RISING POPULARITY WHILE HIS POLLING NUMBERS SINK.

Bush's Misleading Attack Video

Internet attack ad says Kerry got most “special interest money” of any senator. He didn't. And Bush got lots more.

February 13, 2004

Summary

The Bush campaign sent an e-mail Feb. 12 to six million supporters with a link to an Internet video attacking Kerry for being "unprincipled." The ad claims Kerry got "more special interest money than any other senator," which is false.

While it is true that Kerry got $640,000 over the past 15 years from individual lobbyists, that's only one type of special-interest money. And the Bush campaign itself has reported raising $960,000 from individual lobbyists in the past year alone.

The ad says Kerry got "millions from executives at HMO's, telecoms, drug companies," which is true -- for Kerry's entire political career. But so far Kerry's presidential campaign has received a small fraction of what the Bush campaign has received from those particular sources. By any definition, Bush's "special interest" money greatly exceeds Kerry's.

Analysis...




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February 13, 2004
Kerry Picks Up Presidential Endorsement From Clark
By JODI WILGOREN

MADISON, Wis., Feb. 13 — Just two days after abandoning his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Gen. Wesley K. Clark endorsed Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts today.

"Request permission to come aboard, the Army's here," a smiling General Clark said as he and Mr. Kerry appeared at a rally here, four days before the Wisconsin primary.

Mr. Kerry, a Navy lieutenant during the Vietnam War, said, "This is the first time in my life I've ever had the privilege of saying `Welcome aboard' to a four-star general."

After thanking his own supporters, General Clark told Mr. Kerry he would do "everything I can to help you take the White House back for its rightful owners, the American people."

"George Bush has compromised America's leadership around the world," the general said. "President Bush hasn't led America; he's misled America time and again, and we have to put a stop to it."

Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, still battling Mr. Kerry for the nomination, said of today's endorsement: "I think General Clark is a wonderful man and he was a terrific candidate for president. At least in the course of these primaries endorsements just haven't mattered much."

The day after the Tennessee and Virginia primaries Mr. Edwards said he spoke with Mr. Clark by phone to tell him "I'd love to have his support."

General Clark had all but confirmed he would endorse Mr. Kerry on Thursday, when he was interviewed on CNN.

"Whether I'm in this race or not is less important to me than the opportunity to speak out and make a difference in this country," General Clark said. "I'm looking forward to seeing John tomorrow."

Even as General Clark was preparing to endorse Mr. Kerry, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Howard Dean made a direct appeal to Clark supporters on Thursday.

"I ask for your help," Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said here. "Wes Clark and I have one thing in common: We are both not from Washington, D.C."

Dr. Dean also asked supporters of Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio to back him instead, telling hundreds of University of Wisconsin students that "only one of us can beat George Bush."

"If you think Dennis is the right person to vote for, then please vote for him, never settle for the lesser of two evils," he said. "But we are able to raise the money and I have an executive record that allows me to go after George Bush."

Dr. Dean also lumped in the same boat his two main rivals in Wisconsin, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards, saying: "They are good people, but they come from inside Washington. It's another world, it's a world that has forgotten ordinary people."

Minutes earlier, Dr. Dean mischaracterized the two senators' position on financing the reconstruction of Iraq. Saying that $87 billion appropriated for Iraq and Afghanistan could have paid for universal health insurance, Dr. Dean said, "We're paying for it because two of the people I'm running against decided it was O.K. to pay it," adding, "those guys made the wrong choice."

In fact, Senators Edwards and Kerry voted against the $87 billion appropriation, though they had voted in favor of the resolution authorizing the initial invasion of Iraq.

The rally in Madison was part of a day of campaigning focused on health care. Dr. Dean and his wife, Judith Steinberg Dean, who is also a physician, toured two clinics, one on the university's Madison campus and one for uninsured people in Oshkosh.

"Judy still makes house calls, I used to," Dr. Dean said at a forum in Oshkosh. "We are going to make one more house call. It's going to be Jan. 20, 2005."

Dr. Dean told reporters between campaign stops that if he loses the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday, "we will not stop the campaign," but that he had not yet figured out what form it might take. He said he would not go into debt to stay on the trail.

"What I've said is we're not going to have a quixotic campaign that I know I can't win," he said. "We're not going to do that. The definition of that we'll have to leave to later."

Asked about Democrats who fear that his criticism of Mr. Kerry could weaken the party's eventual nominee, Dr. Dean said, "In light of the things that I've gone through, I think that would be laughable."

Mr. Edwards held one event in Wisconsin on Thursday, delivering his standard remarks about the privileged winning out over everybody else at a rally in a community center in Racine. He then flew to Los Angeles for a fund-raiser.

Mr. Edwards took questions from the crowd in Racine, which included dozens of high school students, but his drive to reach voters was apparent. Before he began answering, he whispered to an aide, "Are they old enough to vote?"




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February 15, 2004
The Permanent Scars of Iraq
By SARA CORBETT

Robert Shrode can't sleep.

At night, in the fly-speck town of Guthrie, Ky., in the rented farmhouse he shares with his 20-year-old wife, Debra, he surfs the Internet, roams the house. He lies down and gets up again. He drinks a beer and stares out the window at the black fields beyond. Hours pass. He can't sleep. Before the war, he could have six beers and sleep like a baby, but now that works against him. Drinking may help get his head to the pillow, but it also ratchets up the nightmares. For a while, he sweated out his bad dreams on the living-room couch, and it drove Debra crazy. She would come down from the bedroom, touch his shoulder, ask what the problem was. Shrode would just turn his back to her and not say a word. Now she knows better than to ask, though occasionally when the silence between them gets too deep, she'll put it out there, What're you thinking about?

''Iraq,'' he'll say. And then the silence falls again.

He pops Ambien to coax some sleep. The results are mixed. On the advice of his doctors, he is taking three different pills for pain, a pill for swelling and another pill for depression. There are days when he is unrecognizable to himself, a guy who a few years ago was a party-loving bartender at a Mississippi casino and who is now 29 and engaged in what can feel like a never-ending battle to see his own future brightly.

The only person who understands him is his buddy Brent Bricklin, a restless, dark-haired 22-year-old and fellow Army specialist in the 101st Airborne Division, who is also home after serving in Iraq. Most mornings, Shrode picks up Bricklin at Fort Campbell, the sprawling base that straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee state line where both men are stationed, and they go driving. It's always more or less the same. They drive through the buttressed gates of the base, patrolled by armed National Guardsmen, and turn onto Fort Campbell Boulevard, passing the check-cashing outfits, the strip clubs and gun-and-ammo shops that, during peacetime anyway, boom with military business.

Shrode sometimes jokes that he loves his Chevy Tahoe more than his wife, and it's half true. The Tahoe is a big upholstered bubble, a place where he can watch the world drift by harmlessly. Inside it, he shares more with Bricklin than he does with Debra, whom he met at a nightclub in 2002 and married three months before going to war. ''I can talk to him -- I can't talk to my wife,'' Shrode says. ''But 30 seconds with him, and I feel better.''

Not far from the base, they pass a pint-size Kia driving in the next lane. Someone has used soap to write a self-congratulatory ''Back From Iraq'' in large letters across the rear window. This being December, the only soldiers back from Iraq are ones sent home because of expired enlistments or for medical reasons or those on their way to being transferred elsewhere. The bulk of the division -- some 20,000 local soldiers -- remains at war. Shrode and Bricklin stare down at the Kia.

''Dumb idiot,'' Bricklin says. Shrode says nothing.

It's been nearly six months since Shrode and Bricklin arrived home from Iraq. Shrode lost most of his right arm, which was amputated just below the elbow in a Baghdad field hospital. Even healed, his face is pitted with purple shrapnel scars the size of raindrops. Bricklin, a broad-shouldered former competitive swimmer who came home honeycombed with shrapnel, bears larger, raw-looking scars from his thigh to his neck. Both men have significant hearing loss, cocking their heads like a couple of old-timers in order to grasp what's said. They are plagued by headaches and are convinced they've had some memory loss. Between them, they've had nine operations since getting, as they like to say, ''blown up'' in Iraq. Shrode, who is shorter and stockier than Bricklin and speaks with a soft Alabama accent, still visits the base hospital five days a week for occupational therapy. Once a month, he sees a military therapist. He has tried, without luck, to persuade Bricklin to get individual counseling too.

''He says I took it harder than I say I do,'' Bricklin says with a deflective smile.

''He did,'' Shrode says.

''He's says I'm messed up in the head.''

''You are,'' Shrode says earnestly.

It's a subject Bricklin doesn't want to discuss. He playfully jabs a finger near the stump of his friend's arm: ''How much feeling you got left in this thing, anyway? Let's find out.''

Both men say they feel more vulnerable since coming back from war. When someone recently dropped a tray in the hospital cafeteria, Shrode dove, horror-struck, beneath the table. A crackling summer thunderstorm sent Bricklin into a panic, convinced he was caught in the back blast of a grenade again. Both say they have frequent nightmares. And then there's something less tangible, a visceral undercurrent of anger that makes them walk around feeling ready to explode. ''I can go from being happy-go-lucky and joking to having someone's throat in my hand, like that,'' Bricklin says, snapping his fingers. Shrode nods. ''My fuse is short,'' he says. ''It's real short.''

Shrode and Bricklin are 2 of the 2,600 United States soldiers wounded in action in Iraq as of early this month, according to the Department of Defense. The basics of their stories are hauntingly familiar: just after midnight one night in June, a rocket-propelled grenade shrieked out of nowhere and hit their Humvee, which sat parked at a police station in the Baathist city of Fallujah. What was reported in the news bore the standard sterility: ''One soldier killed; five others injured.'' What wasn't said was that Branden Oberleitner, the private who died standing almost shoulder to shoulder with Shrode, was a car buff who once planned to become a firefighter or that he was killed two weeks shy of his 21st birthday. It didn't say that his blood was all over the road.

But for whatever societal void the dead disappear into, it is the wounded who must live with the confounding mix of anonymity and exposure wrought by surviving a war. On and off the Army base, Shrode is approached by strangers who size up his military haircut and missing arm and feel compelled to heap on the thanks for serving in Iraq. They all but ignore Bricklin, who is often with him but whose injuries remain hidden. Shrode finds the situation reliably awkward, sensing a whiff of pity riding on the backside of flattery. The people who open doors for him, he says, make him feel handicapped. And then there are those whose gazes follow him wordlessly as he makes his way down the buffet line at the China King restaurant near the base -- drawn, it would seem, to the spectacle of a one-armed man working to load his plate.

The discomfort feels irresolvable. ''Somebody stares at it, I get mad at them,'' Shrode says. ''Somebody looks away, and I get mad at that.''

For both soldiers, the tension between themselves and the rest of the world builds up quickly and with no real outlet. Bricklin has had one run-in with the police and says that he's been a jerk ''to anyone who didn't go'' to war. Even when someone shows concern for their well-being -- when Debra touches her husband's shoulder or a stranger flashes a kindly smile -- the effect can be abrasive. One day, as Shrode was walking down a hospital hallway, a civilian passing by happened to toss out an innocent ''Howyadoin','' which somehow, in that moment, became the last straw. ''Ninety-nine percent of the time, I tell them what they want to hear,'' Shrode says. But in this instance he couldn't help blurting out a truth that was becoming more evident each day. ''Buddy,'' he said, ''I'm going to hurt the rest of my life.''

Every other Tuesday, Shrode drives over to Fort Campbell's mental-health building to attend a support-group meeting for injured soldiers. Before going to Iraq, before being wounded, he wouldn't have been caught dead doing something like this. Support groups were the stuff of Oprah -- helpful for others, maybe, but not for him.

Given the uncomfortable silence before a session begins, it is clear that Shrode is not the only squeamish one. The soldiers -- usually anywhere between 5 and 15 of them -- sit in a circle of couches and chairs in the cramped linoleum-floored waiting room of the mental-health building, looking almost like a roomful of unusually clean-cut college kids gathering for a study group. Except that one walks with a cane. Several others have burn sleeves covering their arms. A woman with a bobbed haircut wears an arm splint. There's a guy -- an Apache helicopter pilot -- who has balance problems. His neighbor, a muscled young corporal, winces as he takes a seat. When they make chitchat, it tends to be about skin grafts and medication and how there aren't enough handicapped parking spaces on base. Occasionally, some will compare scars, hiking up pants and shirts and inspecting the wreckage of someone else's limb or torso. ''Hey, yours is growing hair back!'' one soldier says to another. ''That's pretty good.''

For every broken body in this room, there are hundreds more confined to hospital beds across the country and hundreds more again who, by choice or by circumstance, are gutting out the effects of their injuries without the help of peers or mental-health counselors. It has been suggested that the wounded are the hidden casualties of the Iraq war, stranded somewhere between our grief for the dead and a wartime patriotism best stirred by the belief that our troops are both productive and healthy. Thanks to the lifesaving properties of body armor and largely impenetrable Kevlar helmets, combined with highly advanced battlefield medicine, more soldiers are surviving explosions and gunfire than in previous wars. The downside of this is that the injury rate in Iraq is high: an average of nine soldiers have been injured per day. The pace shows little sign of slowing, which means it's possible we will bring home another 1,500 wounded before the start of summer. Some military experts worry that in the next four months -- as the U.S. rotates roughly 110,000 new troops into Iraq, many of them reservists and National Guardsmen with less combat training than the full-time soldiers they are replacing -- injury rates could climb even higher.

The government's reports on the wounded can be confusing. In early February, the Department of Defense Web site listed 2,600 soldiers as wounded in action in Iraq and another 403 as injured in ''nonhostile'' incidents like helicopter or motor-vehicle accidents. Meanwhile, the Army Surgeon General's office said that only 804 soldiers have been evacuated with battle wounds and that over 2,800 have been injured accidentally. In addition, the Surgeon General's office reported that another 5,184 soldiers have been evacuated from the theater for other medical reasons, which could include anything from kidney stones to nervous breakdowns. To date, 569 of these have qualified as psychiatric casualties.

Although many of the soldiers who attend the support group at Fort Campbell have escaped enemy fire, their injuries reflect the full spectrum of what can go wrong during war: Sgt. Jenni McKinley had her right hand crushed when her Humvee blew a tire and flipped over on a sandy road outside of Baghdad. Chief Warrant Officers Emanuel Pierre and Stuart Contant were pilots whose Apache helicopter reportedly malfunctioned and then crashed in Afghanistan, requiring them to spend months in the hospital and to endure multiple operations. There is a medic who is physically uninjured but tormented to the point of agony by memories of treating his wounded and dying colleagues. And then there is a quiet young private who comes because her hair is falling out and her fingers are numb and nobody seems able to tell her why.

These soldiers generally are no less disabled than those who were hit by AK-47 fire. Sgt. Jeremy Gilbert, another medic, laments that he never made it into Iraq at all, since a week before the invasion, a Kuwaiti civilian driving 90 miles per hour plowed into Gilbert's Humvee, shattering the soldier's right leg and pelvis and relegating him to a wheelchair for five months. ''There's nothing glamorous about the way I got hurt,'' says Gilbert, who wept in frustration as he watched the first live footage of the Army's invasion of Iraq from a bed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. ''But it sure has trashed my life.''

Operating with a blend of military toughness and quiet empathy, the injured soldiers' support group -- believed to be the first of its kind on an Army base -- has taken on everything from fractured self images and faltering marriages to traumatic memories of Iraq and the pervading question of what each soldier's future looks like in the wake of both war and injury. Yet there is little that's 12-step about it. You won't find group hugs or even metaphorical handholding here. Nor is there any second-guessing whether it was worth it to go to war in the first place. In the context of the Army's rigid hierarchy and low tolerance for weakness, the power of the support group, it seems, comes from its ability to listen.

The first time I visited, in late November, conversation was dominated by one soldier, a newcomer who looked to be in his early 30's, with a spinal injury that had required some of his vertebrae to be fused together. As a result, his neck appeared stiff and unyielding; his back, ramrod straight. He spent the better part of an hour raging about various things that angered him, mainly the way his commanders were treating him and issues he had with his medical care. When he spoke, it was at a full shout, letting out a stream of emotion so potent and vituperative that it seemed his rigid body might launch right off the chair. The other soldiers listened, expressionless except for Brent Bricklin, who leaned back in his chair with a smirk, as if he wasn't buying a word of it. It wasn't until the newcomer mentioned that he wished he were back in Iraq that anybody else chimed in.

''I miss it, too,'' another soldier said. ''At least there was a purpose.''

''I wish I was in Iraq because my buddies are there,'' Robert Shrode offered.

Heads in the group began to nod. The atmosphere seemed to lighten. But then the newcomer -- or Angry Neck Man, as some of the others would later call him -- charged headlong into another furious rant.

A while later, sitting with Terry James, the easygoing retired first sergeant who moderates the group and works as a counselor at Fort Campbell, I remarked upon how unnerving I found the soldier's anger, how potentially violent it seemed. James just laughed. ''That's how they all come to us,'' he said. ''Pretty much everyone starts out mad. Any other place in the military would've cut him off, wouldn't have let him get his anger out.''

The line between venting and sniveling, however, can be imperceptibly thin. One soldier's fury may set off another's, as was the case in a meeting where a soldier ran on too long, in Shrode's opinion, kvetching about a minor gunshot wound in his shoulder: ''He was whining and complaining and I said: 'Shut up. I'd love to be in your situation. There's a lot of people worse off than you and worse off than me.''' At another meeting, a soldier who had been run over by a truck complained to the group he hadn't received a Purple Heart -- the medal reserved for soldiers injured or killed in combat. ''I told him to get lost,'' says Shrode, who received a Purple Heart last summer. ''And then I got up and left.''

A number of soldiers confess that they were initially put off by the concept of group therapy, figuring it was going to be ''a bunch of guys crying and wiping snot on their sleeves.'' Most insist they attend not for emotional release but rather to receive information -- about disability benefits or discharge procedures. The soldiers' questions often reflect a me-against-the-world mistrust of what's to come, an indistinct but entirely accurate perception that this country has failed veterans of past wars. The war will stay with them, they realize, but after a point the Army won't.

For many, including Robert Shrode, the question is when and how to formalize their separation from the military. Everyone in the group is an active-duty soldier, though many say they are doing little more than showing up for morning formation these days -- either too consumed by pain and doctors' appointments or simply uninspired to work while their units are still in Iraq. Yet there is little that's light about what they face. In order to be medically discharged, soldiers must go before the Army Physical Evaluation Board, which assesses their injuries and then either approves or disapproves the discharge. Eventually they receive a ''disability rating'' from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which determines how much money they are eligible for. A soldier deemed ''100 percent disabled'' is granted a base payment of $2,239 monthly. (The payment can be supplemented depending on the severity of the injury.) Though the V.A. judges each case individually, an amputated arm generally gets you a 60 to 90 percent disability rating. Shrode has been told that his hearing loss and depression will likely further increase his rating.

It's the promise of a new arm that keeps him in the Army. When I met him, Shrode was waiting to get a state-of-the-art prosthetic, worth $35,000 and paid for by the government. The Army had flown him several times to Walter Reed to work with its best occupational therapists, training the tiny reflexive muscles in his elbow so that they eventually could control the carbon-fiber myoelectric hand that was being custom-built for him in Nashville. If the new arm didn't work out well, Shrode faced a cruel choice: he could have his elbow amputated in order to be fitted with a different and more effective type of prosthetic.

When it came to fake arms, though, he was hardly optimistic. In August, he had been given a low-tech prosthetic, with a hook where the hand should be, and while he had quickly proved to be a whiz at putting pegs into the pegboards they thrust at him at occupational therapy, he hated both the look and feel of it, preferring to master real-life tasks with his one good arm. He had proudly learned to lace and tie his boots and was working on figuring out how to cut a steak. When we went driving, Shrode smoked a cigarette with his left hand, ably piloting the Tahoe with one knee. In the meantime, his right arm -- or the piece of plastic that was supposed to pass for it -- rolled around neglected in the back seat.


A tornado siren blasts, and Jenni McKinley rips up her pickup truck, hunting for a gas mask. A car backfires, and she dives for cover. The panic is instant and the charge for safety instinctive and ultimately embarrassing as she climbs to her feet again, bug-eyed and looking for snipers, instead finding the Kroger parking lot full of oblivious cart-pushing families. A person can come to doubt her sanity this way.

Then there is the dead marine who visits her as she tries to sleep. A young guy, he can be angry, accusative, and sometimes he just shows up quietly and stares at her until she's jarred awake, heart racing -- another night's rest stolen away.

McKinley is 27 and a career soldier, having logged eight years with the Army, and is hoping to stay until she has earned her military retirement benefits after 20 years of service. Off duty, she has a gentle manner, a dry wit and a penchant for good wines. On duty, she has worked hard to achieve the rank of sergeant, completing tours in Korea and Kosovo, where she led a small team of mostly men. As a female soldier, McKinley says she feels the pressure to constantly prove herself, to remain emotionally bulletproof. But Iraq really got to her.

''I didn't handle war the way I thought I was going to,'' she told me one night over dinner at a Red Lobster on a strip-malled stretch of road not far from Fort Campbell. ''I thought I was going to do my job, be strong. But three days into it, I broke down crying. The scuds were flying. We were waking up to the sounds of explosions over our heads. It was terrifying.'' Whatever fear she felt, nobody saw it: she ducked into an empty field tent to do her crying. Three days later, in 115-degree heat, McKinley's Humvee rolled over, pinning her beneath it and all but destroying her right hand.

Since arriving back in the United States in April, McKinley has been told she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, which garnered recognition in the years following the Vietnam War and today is used to describe the most crippling psychological effects of trauma. The name may be new, but the concept isn't. Research on World War I veterans showed that even those who might be termed well adjusted still reported that they were quick to anger, forgetful, anxious and regularly suffering from headaches and dizziness. Traumatized World War II vets were commonly referred to as having ''battle fatigue.'' Today the military uses the term ''combat stress'' to describe a range of symptoms including anxiety, sleeplessness and depression, but post-traumatic stress disorder itself generally is diagnosed only when the symptoms become ''intrusive'' -- in other words, when they start to really mess up a soldier's or veteran's life.

McKinley has a difficult time parsing the source of her post-traumatic stress disorder. Does it stem from the shock of the Humvee accident? Was it the flying scud missiles or the sirens that wailed nearly hourly early on in the war, signaling possible incoming chemical or biological weapons? Or maybe it was the marine who lay bleeding on the stretcher next to hers at a desert combat support hospital. He was younger than she was and had been shot in the face several times. As McKinley lay watching in a morphine haze, a doctor and team of nurses worked to stabilize him. Just as they moved on to examine her mangled hand, he flat-lined and the doctor rushed back to revive him. But the soldier flat-lined again. The doctor jump-started the marine's heart twice, three times, only to have it fail -- again and again -- until the nurses finally pried him off the soldier's body. After a time, McKinley boosted herself up and took a long look at the dead man's face -- maybe to honor him and maybe to learn something. She still doesn't know why.

Her case of post-traumatic stress disorder most likely stems from the combination of these events. Researchers believe that the condition is not always connected to a specific incident and can, in fact, be spawned by repeated exposure to fear or by bearing witness to something violent or traumatic or by experiencing moral uncertainty connected to these things. Depending on the intangibles of a person's background and ability to either process or shut out stress, there are those who come through war relatively unscathed and those who don't. It's as if every psyche has a reservoir for trauma, and some fill faster than others -- each soldier's breaking point different from the next one's. And while many G.I.'s manage to hold it together during a deployment, the repression of emotion over time can lead to a tumultuous homecoming. Post-traumatic stress disorder is considered controllable but not curable, and often it will flare up years after the original trauma. In 1994, for example, Veterans of Foreign Wars officials noticed a significant spike in claims of post-traumatic stress disorder -- not from soldiers returning from Operation Desert Storm or Somalia but rather from World War II veterans whose nightmares were revved by the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of D-Day.

Since McKinley returned to the United States in April, the vision of the dead marine's face has sat in her mind like an elephant blocking the road. ''When I first got home, the nightmares were him basically calling me selfish, asking why didn't I help save him,'' she said, her voice so grave and quiet that it was nearly inaudible. ''And now it's changed to he's asking me why I didn't go with him.''

McKinley has two children, ages 4 and 6, who live with her ex-husband 50 miles away in Nashville but spend weekends at her two-bedroom apartment close to Fort Campbell. With virtually no use of her right hand, she has struggled with the smallest of maternal tasks, from opening jars to cutting vegetables and carrying laundry. Before she began treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, a child's simple request for apple juice could send her into a tailspin; her sleepless nights left her snappish, unloving. ''My husband would come pick the kids up on Sundays,'' she said, ''and before they'd get halfway home, I'd be calling on the cellphone, crying and asking if I could apologize to them for how I'd acted.''

The low point came on the day she managed to change the sheets on her queen-size bed -- a task that, one-handed, became a two-hour ordeal. In the end, she was nothing short of triumphant, with a bed orderly enough to pass a military inspection. And then the children arrived, tumbling through the door as they always did, eventually settling down on McKinley's bed to watch TV as she cooked dinner. But sitting on the bed led to jumping on the bed, which in turn led to tearing off the sheets in an exuberant frenzy. McKinley became unhinged. ''I completely lost my mind on them,'' she said, sounding as if she were still startled by it. ''I was throwing sheets and screaming.'' For a full month afterward, she slept on the living room couch, unable to confront the bed again.

It was pure desperation that led her to the support group, which she learned about through her occupational therapist at Fort Campbell's hospital. ''I didn't know what was wrong with my head,'' she recalled. But hearing other soldiers talk about what they were grappling with helped her understand that she needed -- and had access to -- help. ''After the first meeting, I almost cried with relief,'' she said. The sessions also gave her the courage to see a therapist, who prescribed Clonazepam for her anxiety and Lexapro, an antidepressant. On her third visit to the group, she managed to sputter out the story of the dead marine before breaking down in tears. When she tried to stuff the emotion back inside, it wouldn't go. ''I didn't want anyone to see me that weak, so I grabbed my keys and started to get up to leave,'' McKinley remembered. And then came the kind of touchy-feely moment so many of the soldiers claim they're not looking for: the guy sitting next to her, one of the wounded helicopter pilots, laid a friendly hand on her shoulder, coaxed her back into her seat and, without saying a word, let her know that it was O.K.


Often during my visits with injured soldiers at Fort Campbell, I would ask what they envisioned as happening in the next few months when the rest of the 101st Airborne -- plus another 100,000 or so troops around the country -- began arriving home as part of the largest troop rotation since World War II. Would returning soldiers suffer the same nightmares and anxiety, the same alienation from both intimates and the world at large, that so many of the soldiers I encountered described having? In essence, I wondered whether the wounded, as the first large group to come back from Iraq, were like canaries in a coal mine, their postwar struggles foretelling those of thousands soon to come. Usually the answers ran along the same lines. ''There will be problems,'' Robert Shrode said. ''There'll be a lot of short fuses, a lot of intolerance. People are going to have to be patient with these guys.''

The fact that post-traumatic stress disorder can develop from fear and anxiety raises particular implications in a war like the one in Iraq, where a seemingly straightforward army-versus-army scenario has long been dispensed with, replaced by the uncertainties of guerrilla warfare. Though military researchers have estimated that 25 percent of soldiers on the front lines of a war will experience combat stress, it seems possible that for Iraq the numbers will be even greater. ''These troops know no front line,'' says Alfonso Batres, the clinical psychologist in charge of readjustment counseling services for the 206 Vet Centers around the country. ''It's just like Vietnam. They have to be on guard with everyone; they're always facing an unknown. In some ways, fighting a conventional war is a lot easier on the psyche.''

Even as the military works to provide mental-health care, history shows that the vast majority of soldiers returning from war will never seek help. Or they will do it years later, when the psychological afterburn has wreaked havoc on their lives. Steve Tice, a retired Vet Center counselor and disabled Vietnam veteran, refers to the legions of soldiers who live alone with destructive war memories as the ''invisible wounded.'' Says Tice, ''There's this unfortunate stigma we attach to soldiers who say, 'I hurt.' And so soldiers don't say anything.''

In this respect, it is conceivable that the physically wounded may have a slight advantage over their peers. Whereas most soldiers without major injuries will touch down on American soil and undergo a relatively impersonal and perfunctory post-deployment medical screening before returning to duty, many of the injured soldiers have already spent months being routinely examined, assessed and questioned about their well-being -- arguably making it easier to ask for help.

One morning I stopped in on Jeremy Gilbert, the medic hurt in Kuwait, as he sat on a hospital bed, awaiting the fourth operation on his leg in six months. His cane lay hooked over the arm of a nearby chair. Two weeks earlier, just as he sensed he was making progress healing, an infection flared up and remained untamed by antibiotics. This was his 10th day as an inpatient, and he was accordingly listless. He had brought his Xbox and was playing video games to pass the time. ''My morale is kind of down,'' he confessed.

Across the hallway from Gilbert's room on Ward 4A-B, the beds were full -- two to a room -- of soldiers freshly evacuated from Iraq. I had met a National Guardsman from Kansas who had been hit by an improvised explosive device in the Sunni Triangle, an Army sergeant from California who had had his leg fractured in a roadside ambush and a small-framed 21-year-old New Yorker who had collapsed during a long march and now had permanent nerve damage in both legs. For the most part, they seemed stunned, anxious to be cleared to go home on convalescent leave, and not quite ready to talk about what had happened.

But Gilbert, who as one of the first casualties to be flown out of the gulf seemed to relish the role of elder statesman, used his own experience to predict what lay ahead. ''At first you're like, wow, I'm injured,'' he told me. ''The news on television is all about Iraq. You're like, this is good; I was part of something good. But then suddenly the news is bad -- it's all about soldiers dying -- and you're not healing the way you thought you would. You start thinking, I wish they'd cut my leg off. You think maybe I was supposed to die.''

Gilbert refers frequently to his ''bitter period,'' which stretched through the summer and involved a lot of sitting around in a wheelchair, playing solitaire, watching ''M*A*S*H'' reruns and refusing to leave the house except for doctors' appointments. It ended, slowly, after his wife, Andrea, who was pregnant with their first child, begged him to ask his doctors for antidepressants. He says he resisted, knowing his request would become part of his medical records, potentially affecting security clearances and promotions in what he hoped would be a full military career. (This was a sticking point for a number of soldiers I spoke with: patient privacy laws apply only loosely in the military, where commanders have access to a soldier's medical history, including what goes on in counseling sessions.) For Andrea Williams-Gilbert, the kick in the pants she gave her husband represented a small bit of military-spouse activism. ''Wives and family members shouldn't have to go through some of what we have to because their spouses are afraid to go on antidepressants,'' she told me. ''It's not fair to anyone.''

Even stabilized with Elavil, Gilbert said he has cycled through ups and downs, and Andrea, an outgoing blond Arkansan who was hugely pregnant when I first met her, does what she can to ride the waves. ''He'll say something touchy, and I'm out of there,'' she told me in November. ''I just head out the door and go walking.'' A week or so later, just before Thanksgiving, their daughter, Lauren, was born. Until he was hospitalized again, Gilbert had been more buoyant, regularly reporting for physical therapy, taking classes at a local university and doting, as best he could, on his wife and child. He was hoping to stay in the Army for a few more years after he recovered, but worried that if he ''toughed it out'' for a while, the fact that he was able to perform his duties (though in pain) would lower his disability rating when he did leave the service -- a difference of potentially thousands of dollars. And as it often does, fatherhood also rearranged his priorities. While earlier he was eager to get well so he could be redeployed to the Middle East, he announced to the support group in December that he'd changed his mind. ''I'm not going back there,'' he said, imagining a conversation with some higher-up in the Army. ''I'm not going to die for you.''

Whether he had wised up or had grown pessimistic, it was hard to say. Knowing that the rest of the 101st Airborne Division was soon to return to Fort Campbell, Gilbert made another prediction from his hospital bed, saying he had a ''bad feeling'' about the homecoming. ''You've got a lot of units pulling security every single day, doing missions every single day,'' he said. ''They're seeing explosions, shootings, burning bodies. And they're going to bring that back to a place where there are lots of people who just won't get it. We're about to have 20,000 people walk through their front door for the first time in a year.'' He pursed his lips, shook his head as if still thinking about it and then laughed. ''If I were a divorce lawyer, I'd be in high cotton this winter.''


Remembering how lonely she was as an inpatient at the base hospital, Jenni McKinley sometimes finishes her daily occupational-therapy appointment on the second floor and wanders up to Ward 4-AB to pop in on new arrivals from Iraq. It was there that she met Caleb Nall, a blue-eyed 23-year-old corporal from Louisiana who was recovering after being hit in the back by a rocket-propelled grenade. His torso had been severely burned; a gaping shrapnel wound had hollowed out part of his pelvis, and his left leg had been damaged. The explosion left him about 70 percent deaf in one ear. ''He was frustrated and tired of being in bed,'' McKinley said. She showed him her scars, invited him to come to the next support-group meeting and then the next day dropped off a few back issues of Maxim magazine and a case of Dr. Pepper.

When it came time for the group's next meeting, Nall showed up. He wore a pile jacket and a pair of jeans, his wounds hidden well away but his anger fully exposed. After a visiting V.A. representative started to natter on about how soldiers needed medical evidence and a formal diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder to receive relevant disability payments, Nall jumped in. ''Would you say waking up with the sound of a mortar round going off next to your head counts?'' he asked, the bitterness thinly wrapped in his Louisiana drawl. ''Jumping six inches off your bed?''

After the V.A. rep left, Nall turned to the group at large. ''Anyone else here having sleep problems?'' he asked.

Brent Bricklin raised his hand. So did Jeremy Gilbert and Jenni McKinley and Robert Shrode, as well as four of the five other soldiers who had come that day. Everybody but Nall burst out laughing.

''Is there something else they did for you?'' he continued, perplexed. ''I'm on morphine, Percocet, Elavil. . . .''

''I did Vicodin and Benadryl, but they counteract each other,'' offered a soldier across the room.

''Have you tried drinking?'' asked another.

Nall nodded earnestly. ''I take two Percocets and drink two six packs of beer, and I still can't sleep.''

This set off a voluble round of pharmaceutical recipe-swapping. Injured soldiers, I have learned, are nothing if not experts on painkillers and sleep aids. And yet little seems truly to work. A few complain that their antidepressants cause them to sleep all the time; more -- like Nall -- report that they sit up half the night in a drugged daze, waiting for sleep to come.

It was on one of these nights not long ago that a garbage truck arrived at 2:30 a.m. to empty the Dumpsters at Nall's off-base apartment. At the first slam of a Dumpster on pavement, Nall, who had been dozing in an easy chair dressed only in his underwear, was back in Iraq. ''My rifle was sitting in the corner,'' he said. ''I grabbed it, ran outside and made a loop around the block.'' Here, he paused to shake his head at just how scary this seemed in retrospect, and how utterly beyond his control. ''I was lucky it was the middle of the night, or I'd be in jail right now.'' The rifle is one of seven guns he keeps at his apartment.

The potential for violence is just one of a list of concerns both the military and veterans' groups have for returning soldiers. Combat veterans have been linked to higher incidences of drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, depression and unemployment. Having learned from its failure to treat traumatized Vietnam War soldiers 30 years ago, the military has dispatched ''combat stress teams'' to Iraq to offer counseling and in some cases dispense antianxiety meds to suffering soldiers. It may be impossible, however, to fully counteract the shock of going from a 24-hour state of generalized fear-apprehension-paranoia, sustained for a year through wartime, to evenings at home on the La-Z-Boy, asked to fulfill the requirements of love and tenderness needed to sustain a family. In a well-publicized string of incidents in 2002, three Special Forces soldiers returned to Fort Bragg, N.C., from Afghanistan and killed their wives in a span of six weeks. All three soldiers committed suicide.

It is unclear whether today's veterans will avoid the hardships that yesterday's continue to know. ''It won't be different for these guys than it was for the Vietnam vets,'' says Shad Meshad, the president of the National Veterans Foundation, who has counseled soldiers and veterans for the last three decades. He says that antidepressants and psychologists can only do so much for a hurting soul. ''There's a voice that rings through all these guys who've paid the price to survive war. No matter how much science or technology you have, those memories never leave you.'' Based out of Los Angeles, Meshad operates a hot line for war veterans. Until recently, the calls came from veterans of Vietnam and of Desert Storm, but in late fall the Iraq calls started to come -- not from soldiers but from their families. ''They're saying, 'Johnny came home, and he's angry; he wants a divorce,''' Meshad says. ''It's all the stuff I've heard from other wars.''

What might save some of today's soldiers is their awareness of the struggles of past veterans and of the resources available to them now. Not only are soldiers better educated and slightly older than their forebears in Vietnam; they are more likely to be married and have children -- meaning more people will be directly affected by their ability or inability to recover from war. On the day I met Debra Shrode, Robert's wife, at the hospital at Fort Campbell, she sat quietly holding his hand. There was an uneasy tenderness between the two, and Debra, who is tall and pretty, with wide down-turned eyes, seemed at first reluctant to speak. ''I told you she was shy,'' Robert said, grinning.

But she did speak. In a hill-country Kentucky drawl, Debra softly described getting the call last June from a commander, telling her that Robert had been hit by a grenade. She described the first time he was able to call her from the Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, about four days after the incident. (''He told me he was fine,'' she said. ''I lied through my teeth,'' Robert added.) And then she talked about his homecoming -- about meeting his medevac flight, ''scared to death,'' and first taking in the sight of his scar-ridden face, his weak body and missing arm. She remembered smiling as hard as she could at Robert before stepping out of his line of vision as the medics transferred him to a stretcher and letting herself weep.

At home, the awkwardness rarely seemed to lift. When Robert's nightmares drove him to sleep on the couch, Debra lay awake in the bedroom. ''I kept wondering, Is he sleeping down there because he rests better, or is it because he doesn't want to be beside me?'' she said. And while six months after Robert's return their relationship had stabilized somewhat, Debra was still adjusting to what the war has done to her husband. Even as she kept busy going to cosmetology school by day and selling lottery tickets in the evenings, she couldn't help feeling ''left out,'' since Robert seemed to prefer the company of Bricklin and other soldiers to her own. ''I know there's a lot of things he can't talk to me about, that he can talk to his friends about,'' she said, glancing at Robert, who was by now staring quietly at the floor. ''But I'm sitting there thinking, Why can't he talk to me?'' She added that she has become better at living with the distance between them. ''At first, I had thoughts of holding his hand, of wanting to be close with him,'' she said, a quiet resignation in her voice. ''But stuff like that's changed, too.''

For his part, Robert said that he couldn't get past the memories of Iraq, that his experience there felt unresolved. ''My body's here, but my mind is there,'' he said. Despite the injuries he had suffered, Shrode remained loyal to the war effort. ''We're doing good over there,'' he told me. ''People just don't see it.'' When it came to the future, he felt only confusion, saying, ''I'd like to live out West, but what kind of job could I do?'' He was interested in Wyoming, but remembered that cold weather makes his pain worse. ''One day I'm on the Internet searching for property there, and the next day I'm looking for a condo in Key West.'' He had thought about going to college to study forestry or real estate or to become a teacher, but his limitations always came rushing back. ''I type slow. I write slow. I can't carry heavy things. What am I going to do for work?''

Anticipating the challenges of receiving compensation and care from the V.A., he had recently joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was also going to sign up with Disabled American Veterans and the American Legion, and just in case, he was going to hire a lawyer. When I asked what his image of a group like the V.F.W. was, Robert said, ''A bunch of old guys from Vietnam sitting around in field jackets, drinking and not talking about it.'' Did he sometimes worry that he, too, might end up as one of those guys? Robert paused for a long, sobering moment. ''Yeah,'' he said finally. ''I do.''


As Christmas approached, Caleb Nall's insomnia had not subsided. He announced to the group that his doctor had heard out all his complaints and then had the gall to suggest he add a warm bath to his routine. ''A warm bath -- c'mon!'' Nall said.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Gilbert had consulted his doctor about all the pain medication he was taking. Earlier in the fall, he had started shortening the time between his prescribed doses of Percocet until suddenly he was taking twice what he should. Gilbert, who is studying to apply for a physician's assistant degree and can be aptly professorial, cautioned everyone about Percocet. ''They say it's as addictive as heroin,'' he said. Having recently replaced Percocet with controlled-release OxyContin, Gilbert admitted to having a ''serious physical dependence'' on it, developing a crushing headache every time he tried to skip a dose. ''It gets to where you'll kill somebody because you need that fix,'' he joked.

''I'm strung out on Demerol all the time,'' Jenni McKinley piped up. ''I know it's time to take my meds when I start screaming at my kids for little things.''

She added, ''My doctors are talking about switching me to methadone.''

Gilbert laughed. ''Mine said the same thing.''

Whatever lay ahead for them couldn't be as bad, they figured, as what they went through the first few months following their return from war. Or at least they hoped as much. In an attempt to salve her conscience, McKinley had done some research on the marine who died next to her in Iraq, learning his name and the fact that he had left behind a young wife. She was contemplating calling his family, but eventually decided against it. Meanwhile, she had gained some strength and movement in her injured hand and was feeling better able to enjoy her children.

Robert Shrode, meanwhile, has a new prosthetic -- a high-tech beauty complete with realistic-looking fingers -and was out on the air strip on Feb. 1 when the men and women of his unit returned home. At Fort Campbell, the troop rotation is now fully under way, with planes landing almost daily at the base, each one carrying up to 200 soldiers fresh out of Iraq.

Shrode says that he has decided against having more of his arm amputated and is now embarking on the series of doctor's exams he needs in order to receive a medical discharge. His aim is to be out of the Army in April. He has also hit upon a new idea for his future: returning to Iraq as a security contractor for a private company. If it all works out, he could be back in the desert by next January -- his wife, he says, is against it.

Meanwhile, Brent Bricklin's four-year enlistment is up in June. He plans on marrying his girlfriend in Wisconsin, with Shrode as a groomsman, and then he wants to go to college to become a history teacher. Imagining this, he expressed the first bit of military pride I had heard from him. ''I can't wait for the day I say: 'O.K. class, close your books. Today we're going to do Operation Iraqi Freedom. This here is my Purple Heart; here's the Iraqi flag I got off a rooftop in Karbala; these are pictures from Mosul.' How cool will that be?'' But while the dream of this moment kept him going, it also -- he finally admitted -- prevented him from seeking psychological help for the grief and anger he felt in the wake of his time in Iraq. ''I can't have any of that on my record,'' Bricklin told me, as if there were absolutely no choice in the matter. ''I mean, who's going to hire a teacher who has flashbacks?''


At night, in the quiet of their rented farmhouse, Robert Shrode lets Debra pick the shrapnel out of his body. Over the last six months, she's tugged out 15 pieces as they have worked their way to the surface of his skin. She has picked them from his legs, from his neck, his face. Sometimes he will study them, these twisted aluminum chunks that have managed to escape while so many more will forever live inside him.

Barely out of her teenage years, Debra Shrode never pictured her life this way. Never imagined the Army would be calling her up and asking her to hand out advice as some kind of expert wife. Yet someone from the Army's Family Readiness Group wanted her to call another wife whose husband had come home injured. She sighs and dials the number. ''I don't know what I can say to make you feel better,'' she says into the phone. ''If he doesn't want to talk, don't take it to heart.''

She adds each new piece of shrapnel to the collection they keep stored in a Tupperware container. For a while, the container sat on their coffee table, but recently Robert moved it into a spare bedroom drawer.

If it seems as if he might be moving on, Debra has only to ask, What're you thinking about?

''Iraq,'' he'll say. And then the silence falls again.

Sara Corbett is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.





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