Senior American officials concluded at the beginning of last May that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, The Observer has learnt.

Intelligence sources, policy makers and weapons inspectors familiar with the details of the hunt for WMD told The Observer it was widely known that Iraq had no WMD within three weeks of Baghdad falling, despite the assertions of senior Bush administration figures and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

The new revelation came as White House sources indicated that President George Bush was considering establishing an investigation into the intelligence, despite rejecting an inquiry the previous day.

The disclosure that US military survey teams sent to visit suspected sites of WMD, and intelligence interviews with Iraqi scientists and officials, had concluded so quickly that no major weapons or facilities would be found is certain to produce serious new embarrassment on both sides of the Atlantic.

According to the time-line provided by the US sources, it would mean that Number 10 would have been aware of the US doubts that weapons would be found before the outbreak of the feud between Number 10 and Andrew Gilligan, and before the exposure of Dr David Kelly as Gilligan's source for his claims that the September dossier had been 'sexed up' to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

It would suggest too that some officials who defended the 24 September dossier in evidence before the Hutton inquiry did so in the knowledge that the pre-war intelligence was probably wrong. Indeed, comments from a senior Washington official first casting serious doubt on the existence of WMD were put to Downing Street by The Observer - and rejected - as early as 3 May.

Among those interviewed by The Observer was a very senior US intelligence official serving during the war against Iraq with an intimate knowledge of the search for Iraq's WMD.

'We had enough evidence at the beginning of May to start asking, "where did we go wrong?",' he said last week. 'We had already made the judgment that something very wrong had happened [in May] and our confidence was shaken to its foundations.'

The source, a career intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity, was also scathing about the massive scale of the failure of intelligence over Iraq both in the US and among its foreign allies - alleging that the intelligence community had effectively suppressed dissenting views and intelligence.

The claim is confirmed by other sources, as well as figures like David Albright, a former UN nuclear inspector with close contacts in both the world of weapons inspection and intelligence.

'It was known in May,' Albright said last week, 'that no one was going to find large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. The only people who did not know that fact was the public.'

[I]n the days since Dr. [David] Kay definitively declared that Iraq had no significant stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons when the invasion began in March, Washington has been seized by the question of how and why such an intelligence gap happened.

Even some Republican lawmakers are talking about a failure of egregious proportions — akin, some think, to the failure to grasp the forces pulling apart the Soviet Union in the late 1980's. President Bush is considering whether to order an investigation into the intelligence failure, an action he has so far resisted.

Some answers can be found in a dissection of the case that Mr. Powell presented, and an examination of some of the underlying intelligence information that formed its basis. Interviews with current and former senior intelligence officials, a handful of Iraqi engineers, Congressional officials involved in investigations of the C.I.A. and current and former administration officials, suggest that Mr. Powell's case was largely based on limited, fragmentary and mostly circumstantial evidence, with conclusions drawn on the basis of the little challenged assumption that Saddam Hussein would never dismantle old illicit weapons and would pursue new ones to the fullest extent possible. . . .

According to the interviews conducted by The New York Times, the administration's argument that Iraq was producing biological weapons was based almost entirely on human intelligence of unknown reliability. When mobile trailers were found by American troops, the White House and C.I.A. rushed out a white paper reporting that the vehicles were used to make biological agents. But later, an overwhelming majority of intelligence analysts concluded the vehicles were used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons or possibly to produce rocket fuel — a view now shared by Dr. Kay. The original paper was still posted on the C.I.A.'s Web site on Saturday.

Nor did they find evidence of anything but the most rudimentary nuclear program: United Nations sanctions had choked off the project, and the few parts saved from efforts to enrich uranium in the 1980's remained buried under a rose garden. While Mr. Hussein put money into reviving the program, scientists found themselves struggling to reproduce basic experiments they had conducted two decades before.

The administration's evidence, according to the interviews, was much more accurate in the arena of missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles: very active programs were under way for both. The missiles clearly violated range limits set by the United Nations, and Mr. Hussein was trying to buy better technology from North Korea. But the deal fell through, and he was left with missiles that his own scientists say were wildly inaccurate — though they were too scared to deliver that news to the dictator. The aerial vehicles appear to have been designed mainly for surveillance, not the spread of anthrax or other biological agents. . . .

Already, the overestimation of Iraq's abilities has raised a fundamental question in Congress and among America's allies: how can a nation threaten to act pre-emptively against another government if the evidence of what kind of a threat it poses — and how imminent the threat may be — is so far off the mark? That question has been the subtext of Dr. Kay's comments, and the explicit issue that Mr. Bush's Democratic challengers have raised.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — President Bush will establish a bipartisan commission in the next few days to examine American intelligence operations, including a study of possible misjudgments about Iraq's unconventional weapons, senior administration officials said Sunday. They said the panel would also investigate failures to penetrate secretive governments and stateless groups that could attempt new attacks on the United States.

The president's decision came after a week of rising pressure on the White House from both Democrats and many ranking Republicans to deal with what the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee has called "egregious" errors that overstated Iraq's stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and made the country appear far closer to developing nuclear weapons than it actually was.

Mr. Bush's agreement to set up a commission to study the Iraq intelligence failures was first reported Sunday by The Washington Post. The officials described the commission Mr. Bush will create as a broader examination of American intelligence shortcomings — from Iran to North Korea to Libya — of which the Iraqi experience was only a part.

The pressure to establish such a panel became irresistible after David A. Kay, the former chief weapons inspector, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that "it turns out we were all wrong, probably," about the perceived Iraqi threat, which was the administration's basic justification for the war.

The commission will not report back until after the November elections. Some former officials who have been approached about taking part say they believe it may take 18 months or more to reach its conclusions.

"It became clear to the president that he couldn't sit there and seem uninterested in the fact that the Iraq intel went off the rails," said one senior official involved in the discussions. "He had to do something, and he chose to enlarge the problem, beyond the Iraq experience." . . .

While other studies of American intelligence lapses have been ordered by past administrations, none has taken place at the level of a presidential commission. Nor have they operated in the midst of a heated political debate over whether the president was the victim of bad intelligence, as Republicans argue, or whether he sought to cherry-pick the evidence that would justify the decision to go to war, as many of the Democratic candidates for president have contended.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 1 — American commanders have ordered a sharp reduction in the presence of occupation troops in Baghdad, senior officers announced Sunday. The most visible role of policing the capital is being turned over to local forces while American troops pull back to a ring of bases at the edge of the city.

Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the First Armored Division, which has responsibility for security in Baghdad, made the announcement during a visit by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary. Mr. Wolfowitz returned here on an inspection tour three months after the hotel he stayed in then was hit by rockets fired by insurgents in an attack that killed one Army officer and wounded more than a dozen people.

American officers said that after reaching a peak of almost 60 operating locations in Baghdad, the American military had already cut its posts in the capital to 26, and that the number would drop to 8 by mid-April. Six of those bases will be in the Baghdad outskirts, and two will be in the high-security "green zone" that is home to the American-led occupation authority inside the city.

General Dempsey said the new Iraqi police force and civil defense corps "are capable of handling the threat" inside the city. . . .

A senior Pentagon official said one reason for removing significant numbers of American forces from the city center was to withdraw as much as possible from buildings, posts and offices associated with the fallen government of Saddam Hussein. But a number of palaces used by his government at the edge of the city will still be used by the occupying military, and the occupation political authority continues to use a Hussein-era palace in the city center as its headquarters.

A senior military officer said about 8,000 Iraqi police officers now patrolled Baghdad, a city of about 5.5 million, although security analysts say the city needs 19,000. About 1,000 new policemen are being trained each month, the officer said. . . .

The American military and Iraqi security forces are battling a spate of kidnappings by insurgents, who hope to compel the victims' families to carry out attacks against American troops and Iraqi police officers or who are trying to extort money to pay for attacks, a senior military officer said.

President Bush's new budget proposes another deficit next year, but he said cutting this year's record deficit of $521 billion in half in five years is a top priority.

All he needs to do now is come up with a realistic plan to do it.

The deficit-reduction path that Bush outlined in his 402-page budget contains questionable assumptions and large omissions that independent analysts say could greatly increase rather than shrink the out-of-control federal deficit, which is already frightening world markets, provoking cost-conscious Republicans into rebellion and feeding Democrats political ammunition in an election year.

"The good thing about this budget is it highlights the deficit and makes deficit control a goal," said Robert Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group devoted to fiscal discipline. "The bad thing is the (deficit) goals are too modest and the plan for achieving them is not credible."

Bush believes that higher tax revenues from a rebounding economy coupled with reduced federal spending will help slash the deficit. To meet his five-year goals, the White House said it intends to slice and dice: Eliminate 65 major programs and cut spending in 63 others to save $4.9 billion in 2005 alone and much more over time.

However, analysts and Democrats say the plan is flawed because Congress isn't likely to approve of killing and cutting popular programs in an election year. For example, Bush targets deep cuts for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, community police patrols, prisons, foreign assistance and air-traffic control modernization as ways to save big money. . . .

"No one should expect significant deficit reduction as a result of austere nondefense discretionary spending limits," said Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which manages the federal purse strings. "The numbers simply do not add up."

In addition, Bush's budget excludes the long-term costs of several big-ticket items, starting with the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond September.

White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten said the administration probably would ask for $50 billion more for those two military operations sometime after the November elections. Congress approved $87 billion for them last fall, on top of $78 billion in initial funding last spring.

To gauge the true nature of the deficit, the administration needs to give a long-term projection on the cost of the Afghanistan-Iraq operations instead of treating them as "onetime expenses," Bixby said.

Bush also is pressing Congress to make permanent the tax cuts passed earlier, which are set to expire by the end of 2010. He said making them permanent would help sustain the nation's economic recovery.

But making those tax reductions permanent would cost $936 billion in tax revenues over 10 years, according to figures from the Office of Management and Budget, the White House's budget office.

"Now we're right on the brink of the baby boom retirement, we have a new threat of homeland security, and these guys come back every single year with a new, unpaid-for tax cut that will have very negative long-term impact," said Gene Sperling, President Clinton's economic adviser.

The administration's revised estimate of how much Medicare will cost also could inflate the deficit. Members of Congress were enraged last week after administration officials changed their 10-year estimate of a recently enacted prescription-drug benefit program to $534 billion, up from the $400 billion price tag that lawmakers were given when they voted for the measure.

"There's a sense that this administration can't be trusted to tell all of the facts in a timely fashion," said John Podesta, Clinton's former chief of staff. "They have a credibility problem."

The budget released yesterday, which projects a $521 billion deficit for fiscal 2004, is no more credible than its predecessors. When the administration promises much lower deficits in future years, remember this: two years ago it projected a fiscal 2004 deficit of only $14 billion. . . .

The prime cause of giant budget deficits is a plunge in the federal government's tax take, which fell from 20.9 percent of G.D.P. in fiscal 2000 to a projected 15.7 percent this year, the lowest share since 1950. About 45 percent of this plunge can be attributed to the Bush tax cuts. The rest reflects the end of the stock market bubble, the still-depressed economy and — probably — growing tax sheltering and evasion.

It's true that increased spending also contributes to the deficit, and that there has been a substantial increase in discretionary spending — spending that, unlike such items as Social Security payments, isn't automatically determined by formulas. But the bulk of this increase has been related to national security.

Traditional budget measures distinguish between defense and nondefense discretionary spending. Even by these measures, defense accounts for most of the increase in recent years. But a better measure would group homeland security and other costs associated with 9/11 with defense, not domestic programs. The Center for American Progress — confirming related work by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — estimates that from 2000 to 2004 security-related discretionary spending rose to 4.7 percent of G.D.P. from 3.4 percent, while nonsecurity spending rose to only 3.4 percent from 3.1 percent.

In other words, the role of nonsecurity spending in the plunge into deficit is trivial, compared with tax cuts and security spending. (Credit where credit is due: the administration's budget numbers show the same thing.) And even severe austerity on nonsecurity spending won't make a significant dent in the deficit.

So what will it take to get the budget deficit under control? Unless Social Security and Medicare are drastically cut — which is, of course, what the right wants — any solution has to include a major increase in revenue.

Many Democrats have called for a partial rollback of the Bush tax cuts, preserving the "middle class" cuts — those that convey at least some benefit to the 77 percent of taxpayers in the 15 percent tax bracket or below. Such a partial rollback would have reduced this year's budget deficit by about $180 billion; that would help, but one hopes politicians realize that it's not enough.

Another major source of revenue could be a crackdown on tax loopholes and tax evasion, which has reached epidemic proportions. In particular, what's going on with the tax on corporate profits? That source of revenue is down, as a percent of G.D.P., to 1930's levels. No, that's not a misprint. And receipts are not growing nearly as fast as one would expect, given an economic recovery that has bypassed workers but given big gains to their employers. An administration that actually tried to make corporations pay their taxes might be able to find $100 billion or more each year.

AFTER AN excruciating delay, chickens are finally coming home to roost for George W. Bush. For over a year, critics have been pointing to the president's systematic misrepresentations of everything from Iraq to education to budget numbers. But the charge hasn't really stuck, until very lately. .

This past week, however, Bush seems to have hit a tipping point. Chief arms inspector David Kay testified before Congress that the intelligence reports were entirely wrong about Saddam's supposed weapons and that the much maligned UN inspectors were right.

Kay loyally blamed the failure on intelligence professionals, not Bush. But that argument didn't fool those who watched last year as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strong-armed the CIA, sifted through raw, unconfirmed reports, and massaged the data until he got the story he wanted.

Bush initially resisted the pressure for a full-scale investigation, but soon agreed to appoint a major bipartisan inquiry into the "intelligence failure." The real story here is the political manipulation of intelligence, and it isn't going away. A second investigation -- about the outing of CIA official Valerie Plame -- will also shed embarrassing light about the true White House concern for intelligence professionals. Yet another investigation -- into the lapses that occurred on Bush's watch in the events leading up to 9/11 -- could also unearth awkward facts.

All of the administration's mendacity comes together in the latest Bush budget. According to the White House, the deficit, now $521 billion, will be cut roughly in half over the next five years. But the administration achieves this feat by excluding future costs of occupying and rebuilding Iraq, by claiming large savings from waste and fraud as yet to be identified, and by proposing general program cuts so unpopular that Congress is sure to reject them.

Even as Bush proposes making his 10-year tax cuts permanent, the budget projects only over the next five years. Deficits, of course, dramatically increase after year five. Even in the fifth year (FY 2009), the budget leaves out about $160 billion in costs that the administration favors and is expected to propose in future budgets, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Bush's Medicare cost estimate was off by hundreds of billions. . . .

Some conservatives have tried to blame the rising deficits on increases on social spending. But federal program spending, outside of the Iraq buildup and the increased outlays for homeland security, has grown at less than the rate of inflation. We had no choice but to increase outlays on homeland security, But the war in Iraq, as we now know, was entirely optional (and needless). Without the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq war, the deficits would be well under 2 percent of GDP, and entirely manageable.

And despite the usual rosy characterizations, the latest economic growth numbers were not what the White House hoped. Four percent growth in the last quarter is not enough to generate very many good jobs. The Federal Reserve added insult to injury at its latest meeting by hinting at interest-rate increases later in this election year -- caused by rising deficits.

Even Bush's appalling Vietnam record -- pulling strings to get into a National Guard unit and then neglecting to show up much of the time -- is now fair game. What started as a gotcha game against General Wesley Clark's refusal to disavow Michael Moore's choice of rhetoric (Moore called Bush a "deserter") has refocused press attention onto the legitmate issue of just what Bush did.

Before the New Hampshire primary, Bush's reelection seemed assured. It's funny how the conventional wisdom sometimes turns abruptly, even though the basic facts were hidden in plain view all along. I'd bet we are about a week away from Time and Newsweek covers pronouncing "Bush in Trouble?" or some equivalent. It's about time.

The White House, the Republican Party and the Bush-Cheney campaign mounted a choreographed defense yesterday of President Bush's attendance record in the National Guard and denounced Democrats for raising questions about his service.

The messages marked the first time that all the parts of Bush's 2004 political machine have collaborated on a simultaneous line of attack, and reflected his advisers' mounting concern about an issue that they hoped had been put to rest after his election in 2000.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said during his televised afternoon briefing that it is "a shame that this issue was brought up four years ago during the campaign, and it is a shame that it is being brought up again."

"The president fulfilled his duties. The president was honorably discharged," McClellan said. "I think it is sad to see some stoop to this level, especially so early in an election year."

Bush's aides did not release new information to clear up questions about a one-year gap in the public record of Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Bush and his aides have said he reported to an Alabama unit during the period, from May 1972 to May 1973. . . .

After McClellan's briefing, Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot issued a statement saying Kerry is "supporting a slanderous attack" by not repudiating the McAuliffe comments. "By embracing this line of attack, Senator Kerry has made clear that he will accept and promote character assassination, innuendo and falsehood even when he doesn't have all the facts," Racicot said.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie later told CNN that McAuliffe "has become the John Wilkes Booth of presidential character assassination."

Say you have this colleague and he swears X is true, cites "facts" to buttress his argument and tells you that he will stick unswervingly to the path dictated by the solid-gold intelligence provided him.

You, on the other hand, are certain that Y is true and you cite facts that should cause a reasonable person to have reasonable doubts or at least conclude that caution is warranted.

While you're making your argument, however, your colleague is holding his hands over his ears and chanting, "Lalalalalalalalalalalalala. I can't hear you."

Every time you make the effort to convince others that your colleague is wrong or acting precipitously, he and his supporters accuse you of being a girly-man, not a team player or, worse, French.

Afterward, it turns out that your colleague's facts were pretty much bogus.

OK, is he a liar? . . .

[L]et's give President Bush the benefit of the doubt. Let's say he was gripped by the principle that toppling Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do for a host of reasons over and above WMDs. Take your pick from oil to humanitarianism to Mideast peace in our time.

So, then, emphasizing WMDs anyway and drowning out contradictory facts and the naysayers with "lalalalalalalalala" and aspersions is warranted for this higher cause?

Sorry, it doesn't wash. It's still reckless disregard, a sad commentary on his trust in us and sloppy leadership in any case.

It now appears that the president will do what [David] Kay suggested: form an independent body to investigate.

No one should be surprised, however, if the findings aren't released until after the election, though such information may actually be useful to voters.

Whatever the findings, however, they will not alter the fact that the primary reason we went to war was false. Yes, a lie.

There are really no hairs to split here. Our leadership messed up big time.

It's important to find out if the intelligence was manipulated. But it's equally important to find out how and why Americans were manipulated.

There is nothing contradictory in being thankful for Saddam's ouster and upset about how we got there.

That's because the evidence is compelling that we were led down a path strewn with dishonesty, evasion, reckless disregard for truth and a cynical view of us as simpletons to be duped.

CIA Director George J. Tenet delivered a vigorous defense today of his agency's intelligence assessments on Iraq before last year's U.S.-led invasion, saying the country had illegal missiles, as well as the ability and intent to quickly produce biological and chemical weapons.

But he said the agency never described Iraq as "an imminent threat" in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, and he acknowledged shortcomings in the CIA's performance, especially in penetrating the regime of former president Saddam Hussein with the agency's own spies.

In a rare public speech at Georgetown University, his alma mater, Tenet emphatically rebutted recent criticism of the CIA, answering several points raised by David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. Kay told a Senate committee last week that intelligence analysts, including himself, were "almost all wrong" about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, a failure that he blamed in part on a lack of "human intelligence" capability in an agency that emphasized technological means of spying.

Tenet insisted that contrary to a statement by Kay, whom he did not mention by name, "we are nowhere near 85 percent finished" in searching for banned weapons and programs in Iraq.

He said he welcomed President Bush's expected announcement this week of an "independent, bipartisan commission" to review the U.S. intelligence community's performance in assessing Iraq and other hot spots worldwide. But he stressed that the jury is still out about the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

In 1972, George W. Bush simply walked away from his pilot duties in the Texas Air National Guard. He skipped required weekend drill sessions for many months, probably for more than a year, and did not take a mandatory annual physical exam, which resulted in his being grounded. Nonetheless, Bush, the son of a well-connected Texas congressman, received an honorable discharge.

If an Air National guardsman today vanished for a year, military attorneys say that guardsman would be transferred to active duty or, more likely, kicked out of the service, probably with a less-than-honorable discharge. They suggest the penalty would be especially swift if the absent-without-leave guardsman were a fully trained pilot, as Bush was.

Bush's National Guard record, long ignored by the media, has surfaced with a vengeance. If the topic continues to rage, and if the media presses him, Bush may finally be forced to release his full military records, which could reveal the truth. By refusing to make all those records public, Bush has until now broken with a long-standing tradition of U.S. presidential candidates.

Democrats have seized on the story of Bush's "missing year," which was first raised in a 2000 Boston Globe article. This week Democratic front-runner Sen. John Kerry called on Bush to give a fuller explanation of his service record. That brought an outraged response from Bush-Cheney '04 chairman Marc Racicot, who denounced Kerry's request as a "slanderous attack" and "character assassination." White House spokesman Scott McClellan also tried to slam the door on the subject, declaiming that Democratic questions about Bush's military service "have no place in politics and everyone should condemn them." . . .

The story emerged in 2000 when the Boston Globe's Walter Robinson, after combing through 160 pages of military documents and interviewing Bush's former commanders, reported that Bush's flying career came to an abrupt and unexplained end in the spring of 1972 when he asked for, and was inexplicably granted, a transfer to a paper-pushing Guard unit in Alabama. During this time Bush worked on the Senate campaign of a friend of his father's. With his six-year Guard commitment, Bush was obligated to serve through 1973. But according to his own discharge papers, there is no record that he did any training after May 1972. Indeed, there is no record that Bush performed any Guard service in Alabama at all. In 2000, a group of veterans offered a $3,500 reward for anyone who could confirm Bush's Alabama Guard service. Of the estimated 600 to 700 Guardsmen who were in Bush's unit, not a single person came forward.

In 1973 Bush returned to his Houston Guard unit, but in May of that year his commanders could not complete his annual officer effectiveness rating report because, they wrote, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of the report." Based on those records, as well as interviews with Texas Air National guardsmen, the Globe raised serious questions as to whether Bush ever reported for duty at all during 1973.

Throughout the 2000 campaign Bush aides never forcefully questioned the Globe's account. Instead, they searched for military documents that would support Bush's claim that he did indeed attend drill duties during the year in question. His aides eventually uncovered one piece of paper that seemed to bolster their case that he had attended a drill in late 1972, but the document was torn and did not have Bush's full name on it. . . .

Today, the White House says that although Bush did miss some weekend drills, he eventually made them up, and more importantly he received an honorable discharge. Bush supporters routinely cite the president's honorable discharge as the ultimate proof that there was nothing unbecoming about his military service.

But experts say that citation does not wipe away the questions. "An honorable discharge does not indicate a flawless record," says Grant Lattin, a military law attorney in Washington and a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who served as a judge advocate, or JAG officer. "Somebody could have missed a year's worth of Guard drills and still end up with an honorable discharge." That's because of the extraordinary leeway local commanders within the Guard are given over these types of issues. Lattin notes that the Guard "is obviously very political, even more so than other military institutions, and is subject to political influence." . . .

Meanwhile, recent questions have surfaced not only about Bush's military service, but his official records. "I think some documents were taken out" of his military file, the Boston Globe's Robinson tells Salon. "And there's at least one document that appears to have been inserted into his record in early 2000." That document -- the aforementioned torn page that did not have Bush's full name on it -- plays a central role in the story.

"His records have clearly been cleaned up," says author James Moore, whose upcoming book, "Bush's War for Re-election," will examine the issue of Bush's military service in great detail. Moore says as far back as 1994, when Bush first ran for governor of Texas, his political aides "began contacting commanders and roommates and people who would spin and cover up his Guard record. And when my book comes out, people will be on the record testifying to that fact: witnesses who helped clean up Bush's military file."

If Bush wanted to resolve the questions about his National Guard service, he could do so very easily. If he simply agreed to release the contents of his military personnel records jacket, the Guard could make public all his discharge papers, including pay records and total retirement points, which experts say would shed the best light on where Bush was, or was not, during the time in question between 1972 and 1973. (Many of Bush's documents are available through Freedom of Information requests, but certain items deemed personal or private cannot be released without Bush's permission.) . . .

The spark that reignited this issue came when ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, co-moderating a Democratic debate on Jan. 22, asked retired Gen. Wesley Clark why he did not repudiate comments made by his supporter, filmmaker Michael Moore, who publicly labeled Bush a "deserter." Jennings editorialized, "Now that's a reckless charge not supported by the facts." . . .

While co-moderating the Democratic debate, ABC News' Jennings was sure he knew the facts about Bush's military record. But as the Daily Howler noted, a search of the LexisNexis electronic database indicates that ABC's "World News Tonight," hosted by Jennings, never once during the 2000 campaign ran a report about the questions surrounding Bush's military record. Asked if ignoring the story was a mistake, and whether ABC News planned to pursue it in 2004, a network spokeswoman told Salon, "We continue to examine the records of all the candidates running for president, including President Bush. If and when we have a story about one of the candidates, we'll report it to our audience."

ABC was not alone in turning away from the story in 2000. CBS News did the same thing, and so did NBC News. But it was the New York Times, and the way the paper of record avoided the issue of Bush's no-show military service, that stands out as the most unusual. To this day, the Times has never reported that in 1972 the Texas Air National Guard grounded Bush for failing to take a required physical exam. Nor has the paper ever reported that neither Bush nor his aides can point to a single person who saw Bush, the hard-to-miss son of a congressman and U.S. ambassador, perform any active duty requirements during the final 18 months of his service. Instead, the Times served up stories that failed to delve deep into the issue. . . .

Asked in 2000 why Bush failed to take his physical in July 1972, the campaign gave two different explanations. The first was that Bush was (supposedly) serving in Alabama and his personal physician was in Texas, so he couldn't get a physical. That's false. By military regulations, Bush could not have received a military physical from his personal physician, only from an Air Force flight surgeon, and there were several assigned to nearby Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. The other explanation was that because Bush was no longer flying, he didn't need to take a physical. But that simply highlights the extraordinary nature of Bush's service and the peculiar notion that he took it upon himself to decide that a) he was no longer a pilot and b) he didn't have to take a physical. . . .

A detailed Globe examination of the records in 2000 unearthed official reports by Bush's Guard commanders that they had not seen him for a year. There was also no evidence that Bush had done part of his Guard service in Alabama, as he has claimed. Bush's Guard appointment, made possible by family connections, was cut short when Bush was allowed to leave his Houston Guard unit eight months early to attend Harvard Business School.

Bush received an honorable discharge in 1973. The records contain no indication that Bush's commanding officers, one of them a friend, ever accused him of shirking his duty.

In an interview yesterday, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, asserted that Bush "fulfilled his military requirements." Bartlett acknowledged that Bush's "irregular civilian work schedule could have put strains on when he served, when he performed his duty."

Before the Globe report in May 2000, Bush's official biography reported erroneously that he flew fighter-interceptor jets for the Houston Guard unit from 1968 to 1973. In a 1999 interview with a military publication, Bush said that among the values he learned as a pilot included "the responsibility to show up and do your job."

Most Democrats consider Moore's accusation of desertion unsupportable.

Still, according to the records and interviews in 2000, Bush's attendance record in the Guard was highly unusual:

• Although he was trained as a fighter pilot, Bush ceased flying in April 1972, little more than two years after he finished flight school and two years before his six-year enlistment was to end, when he was allowed to transfer to an Alabama Air Guard unit. The records contain no evidence that Bush performed any military duty in Alabama. His Alabama unit commander, in an interview, said Bush never appeared for duty.
• In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical.
• In May 1973, Bush's two superior officers in Houston wrote that they could not perform his annual evaluation, because he had "not been observed at this unit" during the preceding 12 months. The two officers, one of them a friend of Bush and both now dead, wrote that they believed Bush had been fulfilling his commitment at the Alabama unit.
  Two other officers, in interviews, offered a similar account of Bush's absence, saying they had assumed Bush completed his service in Alabama.

Bush's official record of service, which is supposed to contain an account of his duty attendance for each year of service, shows no such attendance after May 1972. In unit records, however, there are documents showing that Bush was ordered to a flurry of drills -- over 36 days -- in the late spring and summer of 1973. He was discharged Oct. 1, 1973, eight months before his six-year commitment ended.

Through Bartlett, Bush insisted in 2000 that he had indeed attended military drills while he was in Alabama during 1972 and in 1973 after returning to his Houston base. At the time, Bartlett said Bush did not recall what duties he performed during that period.

Albert Lloyd Jr., a retired colonel who was the personnel officer for the Texas Air National Guard at the time, said in an interview four years ago that the records suggested to him that Bush "had a bad year. He might have lost interest, since he knew he was getting out."

Lloyd said he believed that after Bush's long attendance drought, the drills that were crammed into the months before Bush's early release gave him enough "points" to satisfy the minimal requirements to earn his discharge. At the time, Lloyd speculated that after the evaluation of Bush could not be done, his superiors told him, `George, you're in a pickle. Get your ass down here and perform some duty.' And he did."

The White House, of course, bristles at allegations that Bush shirked his National Guard duties, which Republican Chair Marc Racicot calls a "new low" in politics. But there's one way to put the issue to rest once and for all. Let President Bush name one guardsman he met during the seven months he served in Alabama. Just one. If he can, the issue's dead. If he can't, it's a good sign he's lying.

Don't hold your breath. In 2000, a group of former Alabama guardsmen offered a $3,500 reward to anyone who could remember serving with Lt. George Bush. Nobody came forward.

One final point. Is it, as Racicot charges, dirty pool for Cleland to raise this issue? Not at all. I remind you that Max Cleland is a decorated Vietnam hero who left both legs and one arm behind on the battlefield. He lost his Senate seat when President Bush went to Georgia and accused him of being unpatriotic because, while he sponsored his own homeland security bill, he dared oppose Bush's version of the same legislation.

Fair is fair. If it was OK for George Bush to question triple-amputee Max Cleland's patriotism, it's OK for Max Cleland to question George Bush's military service.

One of the persistent riddles surrounding President Bush's disappearance from the Texas Air National Guard during 1972 and 1973 is the question of why he walked away. Bush was a fully trained pilot who had undergone a rigorous two-year flight training program that cost the Pentagon nearly $1 million. And he has told reporters how important it was to follow in his father's footsteps and to become a fighter pilot. Yet in April 1972, George W. Bush climbed out of a military cockpit for the last time. He still had two more years to serve, but Bush's own discharge papers suggest he may have walked away from the Guard for good.

It is, of course, possible that Bush had simply had enough of the Guard and, with the war in Vietnam beginning to wind down, decided that he would rather do other things. In 1972 he asked to be transferred to an Alabama unit so he could work on a Senate campaign for a friend of his father's. But some skeptics have speculated that Bush might have dropped out to avoid being tested for drugs. Which is where Air Force Regulation 160-23, also known as the Medical Service Drug Abuse Testing Program, comes in. The new drug-testing effort was officially launched by the Air Force on April 21, 1972, following a Jan. 11, 1972, directive issued by the Department of Defense. That initiative, in response to increased drug use among soldiers in Vietnam, instructed the military branches to "establish the requirement for a systematic drug abuse testing program of all military personnel on active duty, effective 1 July 1972."

It's true that in 1972 Bush was not on "active" duty: His Texas Guard unit was never mobilized. But according to Maj. Jeff Washburn, the chief of the National Guard's substance abuse program, a random drug-testing program was born out of that regulation and administered to guardsmen such as Bush. The random tests were unrelated to the scheduled annual physical exams, such as the one that Bush failed to take in 1972, a failure that resulted in his grounding.

The 1972 drug-testing program took months, and in some cases years, to implement at Guard units across the country. And the percentage of guardsmen tested then was much lower than today's 40 percent rate. But as of April 1972, Air National guardsmen knew random drug testing was going to be implemented. . . .

During the early stages of his 2000 campaign for president, Bush was dogged by questions of whether he ever used cocaine or any other illegal substance when he was younger. Bush refused to fully answer the question, but in 1999 he did issue a blanket denial insisting he had not used any illegal drugs during the previous 25 years, or since 1974. Bush refused to specify what "mistakes" he had made before 1974.

On the basis of the available evidence, much of it dug up in 2000 by Globe reporter Walter V. Robinson, it seems clear that Bush, like many thousands of other young Americans, worked the system to his best advantage. Because his family had more clout than most, he was exceptionally successful.

In brief, Bush gained one of the highly competitive National Guard slots -- making it unlikely he would be sent to Vietnam -- through family connections; was made an officer after a relatively short training period; got permission to move to Alabama to work on a political campaign but was not recorded as keeping up his Guard duty there; and was given an honorable discharge eight months before his six-year commitment was up as he was starting Harvard Business School.

It also appears that he was allowed to make up for some missed duty by attending a flurry of drills in 1973.

This record does not support the charge of "deserter" leveled shamefully by film maker Michael Moore. But Bush's camp is out of line in suggesting that any questioning of this record is outrageous. Bush has chosen to let these factual gaps persist for four years. He should fill them in as best he can now.

A tip from Joshua Marshall, of www.talkingpointsmemo.com, led me to a stark reminder of how different the story line used to be. Last year Laurie Mylroie published a book titled "Bush vs. the Beltway: How the C.I.A. and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror." Ms. Mylroie's book came with an encomium from Richard Perle; she's known to be close to Paul Wolfowitz and to Dick Cheney's chief of staff. According to the jacket copy, "Mylroie describes how the C.I.A. and the State Department have systematically discredited critical intelligence about Saddam's regime, including indisputable evidence of its possession of weapons of mass destruction."

Currently serving intelligence officials may deny that they faced any pressure — after what happened to Valerie Plame, what would you do in their place? — but former officials tell a different story. The latest revelation is from Britain. Brian Jones, who was the Ministry of Defense's top W.M.D. analyst when Tony Blair assembled his case for war, says that the crucial dossier used to make that case didn't reflect the views of the professionals: "The expert intelligence experts of the D.I.S. [Defense Intelligence Staff] were overruled." All the experts agreed that the dossier's claims should have been "carefully caveated"; they weren't.

And don't forget the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, created specifically to offer a more alarming picture of the Iraq threat than the intelligence professionals were willing to provide.

Can all these awkward facts be whited out of the historical record? Probably. Almost surely, President Bush's handpicked "independent" commission won't investigate the Office of Special Plans. Like Lord Hutton in Britain — who chose to disregard Mr. Jones's testimony — it will brush aside evidence that intelligence professionals were pressured. It will focus only on intelligence mistakes, not on the fact that the experts, while wrong, weren't nearly wrong enough to satisfy their political masters. (Among those mentioned as possible members of the commission is James Woolsey, who wrote one of the blurbs for Ms. Mylroie's book.)

And if top political figures have their way, there will be further rewriting to come. You may remember that Saddam gave in to U.N. demands that he allow inspectors to roam Iraq, looking for banned weapons. But your memories may soon be invalid. Recently Mr. Bush said that war had been justified because Saddam "did not let us in." And this claim was repeated by Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Why on earth didn't [Saddam] let the inspectors in and avoid the war?"

Now let's turn to the administration's other big embarrassment, the budget deficit.

The fiscal 2005 budget report admits that this year's expected $521 billion deficit belies the rosy forecasts of 2001. But the report offers an explanation: stuff happens. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable result of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession and a nation confronting serious security threats." Sure, the administration was wrong — but so was everyone.

The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news — the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 — had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual.

The president's new budget, with its $521 billion deficit, is an astonishing example of how, for these guys, everything is political. It is a budget designed to mislead, deny, deflect and hide.

It misleadingly claims that the government is on a path to cut the deficit in half in five years. It denies that the president's tax program is a big part of the fiscal mess we're in. It deflects election-year criticism by shoving the most difficult budget cuts until after Nov. 2. It hides the lengths to which the administration will go to protect its tax cuts for the wealthy.

The bland language of the budget conceals the flimflam. The president's answer to the medical crisis is a health care tax credit to help the uninsured buy insurance. It's a dubious solution. But if Bush thought this was a serious idea, wouldn't he account for its effect on the deficit?

On Page 43 of the budget comes the claim that the president's plan "includes contingent offsets that would cover the estimated increases in mandatory spending that would result from this proposal."

From those words, you would think that Bush has specific cuts in mind to pay for the new benefit. But no, the budget simply promises that "the administration will work with the Congress to offset this additional spending." No specifics. No nothing.

Now turn to Page 374. You discover this health care proposal would cost $65 billion between 2005 and 2014. Three lines down, there is a minus $65 billion for a "contingent offset for refundable portion of the health care tax credit." Whoosh! Throw in that minus sign and the cost disappears, without a single hard choice having been made. Either Bush wants to cut stuff he doesn't want to own up to, or he doesn't care about his promise to cut the deficit, or he doesn't care about this proposal.

Bush is eager to tell people how much they'd save if his tax program were made permanent. But there is the little problem of the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Designed to prevent rich people from using loopholes to pay no taxes, its provisions will increasingly have the effect of raising taxes on significant numbers in the middle class.

If the AMT stays as it is, more than 30 million people will have at least part of their Bush tax cut canceled by 2009. The administration says it wants to fix the AMT, but its budget figures assume it won't. So the administration's claims about falling deficits assume revenue it promises to eliminate later. And these guys pride themselves on honesty?

Another amazing little proposal: The administration says it wants to restore pay-as-you-go rules to bring down the deficit. The old rules said that if Congress increased spending on an entitlement program such as Medicare, it had to cut another entitlement or raise taxes by the same amount. Similarly, new tax cuts had to be offset by entitlement cuts or tax increases elsewhere.

Bush's rule would exempt tax cuts from the pay-as-you-go principle, meaning no limits on more tax cuts for the rich or loopholes for big companies. But if Congress wanted to increase a benefit for Medicare recipients or disabled veterans, it would have to pay for it with cuts in other entitlements. It couldn't cover the cost by eliminating some egregious tax shelter. "This is class warfare enshrined in law," says Robert Greenstein, the executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The Bush administration's plan to cut the deficit in half within five years envisions an unprecedented long-term spending clampdown that would continue well beyond 2005 for hundreds of popular domestic programs, according to an unpublished White House budget document.

A 999-page Office of Management and Budget computer printout suggests that low-income education programs, medical research at the National Institutes of Health, grants to local law enforcement agencies, job training and other popular programs could be subject to freezes or cuts at least through 2009.

Whether the computer-generated estimates represent the administration's policy intentions -- or are simply a device enabling the president to claim that he has a plan to rein in the deficit -- was a matter of debate yesterday on Capitol Hill.

"This is one more piece of the puzzle showing this is not a serious, credible budget," said Thomas S. Kahn, Democratic staff director on the House Budget Committee.

A long-term shift in spending priorities such as that outlined, he suggested, would be sure to meet with powerful congressional opposition in both parties, and much of it might have to be discarded.

But Kahn added, "This is worrisome, because it shows that cuts in services the American public depends on are going to be much greater than expected."

Were Congress to impose the spending constraints, it would mark an unprecedented shift in federal priorities. While there were short-lived clampdowns during the first several years of the Reagan administration, and when Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, there has not been a sustained rollback in federal spending since the 1930s.

White House officials cautioned yesterday that, beyond 2005, no decisions have been made about the level of most domestic programs. The figures in the printout, said OMB spokesman J.T. Young, were generated by a computer after administration policymakers had first set a growth limit of 3 percent for all programs, including defense, and made multiyear decisions for a handful of major initiatives, such as space.

But under the scenario, money for domestic programs would decline from $390.5 billion in fiscal 2005 to $385.6 billion in fiscal 2009, according to the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That is $50 billion below what would be needed to keep pace with inflation, the center said.

The center, an advocacy group that works on issues affecting low- and moderate-income individuals and families, obtained the OMB printout this week and released it yesterday.

In past years, the tables have been published along with other budget documents. This year, said Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the center, "they took extra pains to hide them."

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — President Bush named former Senator and Governor Charles Robb of Virginia and senior federal Judge Laurence H. Silberman today to be co-chairmen of a bipartisan commission to examine American intelligence-gathering.

Mr. Robb, 64, is a Democrat, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam and the son-in-law of the late President Lyndon B. Johnson. Judge Silberman, 68, was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. He also served in the Justice Department in the Nixon and Ford Administrations. . . .

The other members he named today were Senator John S. McCain, Republican of Arizona; Lloyd Cutler, former White House counsel to President Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton; Richard C. Levin, the president of Yale University; Adm. William O. Studeman, the former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Judge Patricia M. Wald, a former chief judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals who also served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Only one of the members, Admiral Studeman, brings broad experience in intelligence matters.

"Members of the commission will issue their report by March 31, 2005," Mr. Bush said. "I've ordered all departments and agencies, including our intelligence agencies, to assist the commission's work. The commission will have full access to the findings of the Iraq Survey Group." The Iraq Survey Group is hunting for deadly weapons in Iraq but has found none so far. . . .

While other studies of American intelligence lapses have been ordered by past administrations, none has taken place at the level of a presidential commission like the one Mr. Bush announced today. Nor have they operated in the midst of a heated political debate over whether the president was steered wrong by imperfect intelligence, or whether the Administration manipulated the intelligence to find the evidence that would justify the decision to go to war, as some Democrats have charged.

Until recently, Mr. Bush said he would await the findings of the Iraq Survey Group, which was asked to find Iraq's unconventional weapons and which Dr. Kay led until last month. But it quickly became clear, White House officials said well in advance of today's announcement, that that position was untenable.

Several other inquiries into American intelligence are underway. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been conducting an inquiry into American intelligence-gathering in connection with the Iraq military campaign, but the purview of the commission announced by Mr. Bush today will apparently go far beyond those of the other inquiries.

In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday.

In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed.

Iraq "is a grave and gathering danger," Bush told the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002. At the White House two weeks later -- after referring to a British government report that Iraq could launch "a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order" is given -- he went on to say, "Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX -- nerve gas -- or someday a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally."

Three weeks later, on the day the NIE was delivered to Congress, Bush told lawmakers in the White House Rose Garden that Iraq's current course was "a threat of unique urgency."

On Thursday, summarizing the NIE's conclusions, Tenet said: "They never said Iraq was an imminent threat."

The administration's prewar comments -- and the more cautious, qualified phrasings of intelligence analysts -- are at the heart of the debate over whether the faulty prewar claims resulted from bad intelligence or exaggeration by top White House officials -- or both.

Former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told senators last week that caveats often fall by the wayside "the higher you go up" the bureaucratic chain. At the top, he said, "you read the headlines, you read the summary, you're busy, you've got other things to do."

Administration supporters say Bush, Vice President Cheney and others were simply extrapolating from the comprehensive intelligence provided by Tenet's intelligence community. Critics say Bush and his Cabinet had already decided to go to war, regardless of what the intelligence efforts found. . . .

Now that extended efforts to find weapons of mass destruction have proved futile, some are asking why Bush, Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld used unequivocal rhetoric to describe the threat from Iraq when the intelligence on the subject was much more nuanced and subjective.

For example . . .

I would like to know, though, when the media lickspittles are going to drop all this horse shit about an "independent" commission. I mean, here's how Shrub's executive order describes it:

There is established, within the Executive Office of the President for administrative purposes, a Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction...

Heh. "Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States" -- CICUS for short. Pronounced "kick us."

Somebody should pin that on their backs.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney said yesterday that the war in Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein could have made weapons of mass destruction.

The new rationale offered by the president and vice president, significantly more modest than earlier statements about the deposed Iraqi president's capabilities, comes after government experts have said it is unlikely banned weapons will be found in Iraq and after Bush's naming Friday of a commission to examine faulty prewar intelligence. . . .

Before the invasion of Iraq 11 months ago, Bush and Cheney both argued that Iraq was an urgent threat to the United States, stating with certainty that Iraq had chemical and biological arms and had rebuilt a nuclear weapons program. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," Bush said in March 2003.

Bush said he would "visit" with the commission he named last week to investigate the Iraq intelligence but suggested that he would not testify before it. Asked about why the commission will not report until next March -- after the presidential election -- while a similar commission in Britain will operate much more quickly, Bush said: "We didn't want it to be hurried. This is a strategic look, kind of a big-picture look about the intelligence-gathering capacities of the United States of America." . . .

Bush's appearance on the Sunday talk show, the first of his presidency, comes as new polls show declining public support for his leadership. A Newsweek poll released yesterday found that 48 percent of Americans approve of his performance in office, the lowest in three years. By 50 percent to 45 percent, respondents said they did not want to see him reelected.

Some of the world's hardest-working people are afraid they're about to lose their overtime pay.

The first comprehensive rewrite of U.S. overtime rules since the Great Depression is due next month, and it's set to redraw how the rules will apply to a workforce that puts in more hours than any other in the industrialized world.

The proposed changes will modify the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that guarantees most Americans overtime pay -- at time and a half -- if they work more than 40 hours a week. The law always has exempted professionals -- doctors, lawyers and company owners and managers. Now the U.S. Department of Labor says it's time to move more jobs into those ranks -- to recognize the mounting skills of average workers and the change from the days of "straw bosses" and "legmen" to "Webmaster."

As the announcement approaches, debate grows hotter over whether this will bring more Americans a secure professional salary or make them work long hours without overtime pay.

"You can expect the amount of people qualified for overtime to drop dramatically," said Don Nichols, a Minneapolis employment attorney. "I know that's not what the secretary of labor is saying. But virtually the entire plaintiffs' bar [lawyers who typically represent employees] and all labor unions have come to this conclusion."

Nichols added, "Does business suddenly want to pay more overtime? I doubt it."

Union members say they could be just one contract negotiation away from the loss of overtime protection. Union leaders say they expect employers to offer continued health benefits in exchange for reclassifying some union members so they wouldn't be eligible for overtime.

"Health care is a huge issue," said Bob Adams, bakery manager at the Rainbow Foods store on Larpenteur Avenue in Roseville and a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. "When you bargain, you have to give up something to get something. And there isn't the slightest doubt the company will come at us, trying to redefine department heads as managers."

Adams said his supermarket has at least 10 department heads who could be affected -- the deli manager, meat manager and head cashier among them. He figures he averaged eight hours of overtime a week in the past few months; as a salaried manager he wouldn't get paid for that time.

"Also," he said, "In supermarkets about 75 percent of employees are part-timers and they're dependent on every hour they can get. The company could save money by having me cover some of that." . . .

The Labor Department announced its proposed overtime changes last March, after which almost 80,000 public comments poured in. The department has said it will announce the final version before March 31 this year. Unless Congress steps in, the regulations will take effect.

According to the proposed regulations:

• Americans earning $22,100 or less per year automatically qualify for overtime pay. That cap is up from the current $8,060, and the Labor Department said this would bring overtime protection to 1.3 million more workers.
• For workers earning more than that, new lists of job "duties" help redefine who is eligible for overtime. For example, there are changes in the definition of "administrators" -- who don't qualify for overtime pay. Now, one defining duty is "discretion and independent judgment." The new, broader definition would be "position of responsibility." The department estimates 644,000 Americans will lose overtime pay as a result of these changes.
• Americans earning $65,000 or more per year are most likely to lose overtime pay.

The department calculates that more Americans will win overtime pay than lose it under its proposal. It also expects the changes to stop the proliferation of wage-and-hour lawsuits that cost businesses $2 billion a year in class actions and sometimes keep workers waiting years for a resolution. . . .

"There's a lot of disagreement about what this all means, and we don't really have the answers yet," said James O'Connell, vice president of government relations at Bloomington-based Ceridian, which provides payroll and benefits services to companies.

But most business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, support the proposed changes.

Among the most vocal opponents is the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C. It calculates that fewer than 700,000 low-wage workers will gain overtime protections. More dramatically, it calculates that 8 million U.S. workers stand to lose overtime.

Veterans groups are upset about one change: They could lose overtime pay in later civilian jobs because "training in the armed forces" would become a credential that bumps them into one of the "overtime exempt" categories.

Among the worries of Ross Eisenbrey, vice president at the institute, are the many reports that Americans are working long hours because their employers -- skeptical about a lasting economic recovery -- want to avoid hiring more people. Under the proposed regulations, millions will end up working those extra hours without pay, he said.

No, this is not the sound that Barney makes when the White House staff is late with dinner. Rather, it's the beginning of yet another intriguing mystery regarding George Bush's service in the Air National Guard. Read on for more.

To begin, you need to recall the original mystery of the "torn document" that purports to show Bush's guard activity in 1972 and 1973 (details here and here if your memory is fuzzy). Question: is the document genuine? Or some kind of clever forgery?

Answer: it's real. Here's the untorn version, as delivered to Bob Fertik in response to a FOIA request in late 2000:

As it turns out, though, we have traded one mystery for another. It's now clear that the document is genuine, but what exactly does it tell us? In particular:

• The first listed date is October 29, not November 29 as we had theorized before. But George Bush was still in Alabama in October. What exactly was he getting attendance credit for?
• This is neither a Texas Air National Guard document nor an Alabama document. What is it?

The answer, as you can see from the top line, is that it is an ARF document, as is this record from 1973-74. So what is ARF? I asked Bob Rogers, a retired Air National Guard pilot who's been following this for some time, and what follows is his interpretation of what happened.

ARF is the reserves, and among other things it's where members of the guard are sent for disciplinary reasons. As we all know, Bush failed to show up for his annual physical in July 1972, he was suspended in August, and the suspension was recorded on September 29. He was apparently transferred to ARF at that time and began accumulating ARF points in October.

ARF is a "paper unit" based in Denver that requires no drills and no attendance. For active guard members it is disciplinary because ARF members can theoretically be called up for active duty in the regular military, although this obviously never happened to George Bush.

To make a long story short, Bush apparently blew off drills beginning in May 1972, failed to show up for his physical, and was then grounded and transferred to ARF as a disciplinary measure. He didn't return to his original Texas Guard unit and cram in 36 days of active duty in 1973 -- as Time magazine and others continue to assert based on a mistaken interpretation of Bush's 1973-74 ARF record -- but rather accumulated only ARF points during that period. . . .

Bush's record shows three years of service, followed by a fourth year in which he accumulated only a dismal 22 days of active service, followed by no service at all in his fifth and sixth years. This is because ARF duty isn't counted as official duty by the Texas guard.

So Bush may indeed have "fulfilled his obligation," as he says, but only because he had essentially been relieved of any further obligation after his transfer to ARF. It's pretty clear that no one in the Texas Air National Guard had much interest in pursuing anything more serious in the way of disciplinary action.

Can we confirm all this? Only if Bush is genuinely willing to release his entire service record, including the disciplinary action that presumably led to his transfer to ARF.