BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 18 -- With no sign of a breakthrough in talks with rebels in Falluja and Najaf, the leader of the American occupation appeared to move closer on Sunday to a military showdown, saying that the rebels' failure to submit to American demands would require decisive action against those who "want to shoot their way to power."

"They must be dealt with, and they will be dealt with," the administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, said, breaking a week of silence on the confrontation with Moktada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shiite cleric, in Najaf and Sunni Muslim insurgents in Falluja. Mr. Bremer spoke of the need to bring an early end to the standoffs, to return Iraq to the political path the United States has mapped out, starting with the formal return of sovereignty on June 30.

Mr. Bremer spoke on a weekend when at least 10 American marines and soldiers were killed. The deaths, announced Sunday, pushed American troop deaths in April to more than 90, higher than the 82 who were killed in November, the largest number until this month. Nearly 700 American soldiers have been killed since the invasion of Iraq began 13 months ago.

Unofficial counts based on tallies taken at hospitals and morgues have put Iraqi casualties so far in April, including insurgents and civilians, at about 1,000 killed. . . .

Aides say Mr. Bremer has worked intensively behind the scenes to allay impatience within the American military command over the standoffs and to give Iraqi negotiators as much time as possible to find a peaceful solution. But the aides say Mr. Bremer, too, believes that meeting the June 30 transfer date may require a decisive show of force, at least in Falluja, and that Iraqis who do not want their country to slide into chaos should speak up more forcefully against the insurgents.

American commanders clearly favor a solution in Najaf that disarms Mr. Sadr's militiamen without requiring American troops to enter the city, which is sacred to Iraq's religious Shiites. Powerful Shiite clerics, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, considered the country's most influential religious figure, have intervened with Mr. Sadr in a bid to have him back down and spare the city an invasion.

But in a sign that diplomacy was failing, Iran said Sunday that the United States' "iron fist policy" in Iraq and a lack of security had foiled Iran's mediation efforts to end the stand-off in Najaf. The statement, at an Iranian foreign ministry news conference in Tehran, came after a senior Iranian diplomat was fatally shot in Baghdad on Thursday.

In Falluja, American calculations appear to favor military action if the Sunni Muslim insurgents there continue resisting American demands that they quit the city. . . .

American commanders say they have been encouraged by the military situation beyond the confrontation zones in Falluja and Najaf, with levels of insurgent activity in much of the north and south at about the same level, or slightly higher, than they have been for months. But a new shock came with the battle on Saturday at Qusaybah, on the Syrian border, which had been considered a relatively pacified area.

The chief spokesman for the American command, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said Iraqi insurgents and marines fought for about 14 hours in the battle, in which insurgents used rockets, mortars and small arms in carefully plotted ambushes. A reporter for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, embedded with the Marine unit that suffered the casualties, quoted Marine intelligence reports as saying that 300 insurgents from Falluja and Ramadi, a neighboring center of the Sunni insurgency, had slipped into Qusaybah, 200 miles northwest of Falluja.

The reporter, Ron Harris, said dozens of insurgents died after they lured the marines out of their base in the neighboring town of Qaim by detonating a bomb outside the former Baath Party headquarters.

As the marines arrived at the scene, he said, they were met with a hail of rocket-propelled grenades and mortar fire. A second Marine unit rushing to the scene was also ambushed, from homes along the route, causing the battle to widen and rage on past nightfall, with American helicopters strafing insurgent positions and other American helicopters ferrying the American casualties to the Marine base at Qaim.

WASHINGTON, April 18 ? For more than a year, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his aides have tacitly acknowledged that he was concerned before the war about what could go wrong once American forces captured Iraq.

But Mr. Powell's apparent decision to lay out his misgivings even more explicitly to the journalist Bob Woodward for a book has jolted the White House and aggravated long-festering tensions in the Bush cabinet. Moreover, some officials said, the book has created problems for the secretary inside the administration just as the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and President Bush is plunging into his re-election drive.

Mr. Powell has not acknowledged that he cooperated with Mr. Woodward, but the book presents the secretary's reservations in such detail that it leaves little doubt. A spokesman for Mr. Powell said again Sunday that he would not comment on the book, "Plan of Attack."

Critics of Mr. Powell in the hawkish wing of the administration said they were startled by what they saw as his self-serving decision to help fill out a portrait that enhances his reputation as a farsighted analyst, perhaps at the expense of Mr. Bush. Several said the book guaranteed what they expected anyway, that Mr. Powell will not stay as secretary if Mr. Bush is re-elected.

The view expressed Sunday by people in the administration that Mr. Bush comes across as sober-minded and resolute in the book, asking for contingency plans for a war early on but not deciding to wage one until the last minute, saves Mr. Powell from any immediate difficulties that might grow from seeming to betray his confidential relationship to a president who prizes loyalty, several officials said.

"Look, a lot of people have been struck by the degree to which Secretary Powell is using this book as an opportunity ? to be fair ? to clarify his position on the issues," said an official. "But what this book does is muddy the water internally, which is very unfortunate and unhelpful."

Another official, who like others declined to be identified because of the political sensitivity of their criticism, accused Mr. Powell of having a habit of distancing himself from policies when they go wrong. "It's such a soap opera with him," this official said.

Democrats seized on Mr. Powell's portrayal, saying it would give them ammunition to criticize the administration for going to war without broad international backing or adequate planning for an occupation.

Throughout the day Sunday, Senator John Kerry brought up the Woodward book, mentioning it twice in his interview on "Meet the Press" on NBC and once at an outdoor rally at the University of Miami.

"Here we have a book by a reputable writer," Mr. Kerry told several thousand students at the afternoon campus rally. "We learn that the president even misled members of his own administration."

Asked if material in Mr. Woodward's book would be grist for his party, Jano Cabrera, the spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview: "Absolutely. It's one thing for us to assert it. It's another thing for it to be stated as fact by his secretary of state."

And Steve Murphy, who managed the presidential campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt, said: "The strongest criticism of Bush is that he did not have a plan for the aftermath of the war. And that was exactly what Powell was pointing out to him. He is a credible source. This intensifies the backdrop between Bush and Kerry."

People close to Mr. Powell said Sunday that they had no doubt he would weather any criticism from within over his apparent cooperation with Mr. Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post. Polls show that he is one of the most popular and best-known figures in government. The people close to him note that most people following the situation closely knew that he had misgivings about the war.

"Is the secretary going to be undercut for having been right?" asked an official close to Mr. Powell. "I don't think so. Undercut compared to who? Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? These are people who have some real problems right now. They're not reading Bob Woodward's book. They're reading the dispatches from the field."

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, has promised President George Bush the Saudis will cut oil prices before November to ensure the US economy is strong on election day, the journalist Bob Woodward says.

Woodward, discussing his new book, Plan of Attack, on the Bush Administration's preparations for the Iraq war, told CBS television that Prince Bandar pledged the Saudis would try to fine-tune oil prices to prime the US economy for the election - a move they understood would favour Mr Bush's re-election.

Questioned about his claim at a time when oil prices are nearing a 13-year high, Woodward, a senior editor at The Washington Post, said: "They're high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer or as we get closer to the election they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly."

It was unclear from the interview when the prince's pledge was allegedly made. After decades of close ties there has been growing tension between the US and Saudi Arabia since the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.

Woodward also said the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, learnt of Mr Bush's decision to go to war after Prince Bandar had been told.

The National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, and the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, were told about Mr Bush's decision to go to war in January last year.

"And they realised they haven't told Colin Powell," said Woodward, who described the Secretary of State as being opposed to the war.

But before Mr Bush called Mr Powell to the Oval Office he gave Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld permission to tell Prince Bandar about his decision to go to war. They even showed him a top-secret map of the war plan, Woodward said. . . .

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, confirmed on Sunday that he gave the Saudi ambassador a top secret document on US war plans in an effort to win Riyadh's support for the invasion of Iraq.

Woodward's book outlines a scene in Mr Cheney's office where a large map was stamped "Top secret noforn," meaning no foreigners were supposed to look at it.

General Myers used the map to explain US battle plans to the prince, Woodward said.

"It sounds basically correct. And, at that time, we were looking for support of our allies and partners in the region," General Myers told CNN. "Saudi Arabia's been a strategic partner in the region for a very long time, and we were looking for their support. And so, part of the way we do that is to ask them and show them how and why we need their support in certain areas."

Dr Rice disputed the book's claim on the timing of war, saying Mr Bush's decision to invade Iraq was not made in January last year, as Woodward says, but came in March, after all efforts to avoid war had been exhausted.

Her comments are in line with the Administration's official account of the prewar deliberations and with Mr Bush's statement at a news conference on March 6 last year that he had not then made a decision about military action. The invasion began two weeks later.

To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state's Republican party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston. . . .

[A] motion they adopted stated that Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank, that Arab states should be "pressured" to absorb refugees from Palestine, and that Israel should do whatever it wishes in seeking to eliminate terrorism. Good to see that the extremists didn't prevail then.

But why should all this be of such pressing interest to the people of a state which is seldom celebrated for its fascination with foreign affairs? The explanation is slowly becoming familiar to us, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its "biblical lands" (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth.

What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all "true believers" (ie those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.

The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000, three US Christians were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there), sponsoring Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/ European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be.

The believers are convinced that they will soon be rewarded for their efforts. The antichrist is apparently walking among us, in the guise of Kofi Annan, Javier Solana, Yasser Arafat or, more plausibly, Silvio Berlusconi. The Wal-Mart corporation is also a candidate (in my view a very good one), because it wants to radio-tag its stock, thereby exposing humankind to the Mark of the Beast. . . .

We can laugh at these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe that 15-18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which subscribe to these teachings. A survey in 1999 suggested that this figure included 33% of Republicans. The best-selling contemporary books in the US are the 12 volumes of the Left Behind series, which provide what is usually described as a "fictionalised" account of the Rapture (this, apparently, distinguishes it from the other one), with plenty of dripping details about what will happen to the rest of us. The people who believe all this don't believe it just a little; for them it is a matter of life eternal and death.

And among them are some of the most powerful men in America. John Ashcroft, the attorney general, is a true believer, so are several prominent senators and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. Mr DeLay (who is also the co-author of the marvellously named DeLay-Doolittle Amendment, postponing campaign finance reforms) travelled to Israel last year to tell the Knesset that "there is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking".

So here we have a major political constituency - representing much of the current president's core vote - in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates" will be released "to slay the third part of men". They batter down the doors of the White House as soon as its support for Israel wavers: when Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, he received 100,000 angry emails from Christian fundamentalists, and never mentioned the matter again.

The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter, it's a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to.

Americans seeking to know what President Bush said in his phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month went to the obvious place: the Kremlin.

"The presidents exchanged ideas on the situations in the crisis areas of the world: Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, etc.," the Russian government said in a statement carried by the Interfax news agency. "They expressed serious concerns about the lack of progress in the settlement of regional problems and the escalation of the situation in these areas."

And what did the White House have to say about this conversation between the world leaders? Not a thing. "White House officials would reveal no details of the conversation," the Associated Press reported.

It may come as a surprise to some that the Kremlin, symbol of secrecy and repression, has become more transparent than the White House, symbol of freedom and democracy. But such experience has become routine -- so routine, in fact, that Agence France-Presse White House correspondent Olivier Knox has proposed a slogan for the Bush team: "When we have something to announce, another country will announce it."

Word of Bush's Friday meeting at the White House with British Prime Minister Tony Blair came not from the administration but from British officials. Guatemala was two weeks ahead of the White House in announcing a visit by President Oscar Berger, which is scheduled for next week.

Nor is it merely foreign governments that "scoop" the White House on what once were routine announcements. Bush's trip to Pittsburgh yesterday was divulged not by the White House but by columnist Robert D. Novak, on April 11. And Bush's trip to Des Moines on April 15 was first announced on April 9 by the Des Moines Register, which cited "Republican congressional sources."

Reporters covering the Bush administration discovered early on that the best source on the president's activities was often someplace other than the White House. On Jan. 31, 2001, Bush and Putin had their first telephone conversation. A White House spokeswoman would say only that it was a 15-minute "friendly get-acquainted session," and that the two leaders supported the idea of meeting and "engaging one another in an ongoing dialogue."

Those wishing to have a more substantive account of the conversation had to turn to the Kremlin news service's statement on Interfax. The two discussed the arrest in the United States of Pavel Borodin, a former chief property manager for the Kremlin who was jailed in New York on a Swiss money-laundering warrant. Putin's request for his humane treatment was "met by Bush with understanding," the Russian government said.

Like the Kremlin, the Palestinian Authority has also outdone the White House in glasnost. "Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas announced on Wednesday that he will travel to Washington for his first official visit to the White House," the Jerusalem Post reported on July 17, 2003, adding that Abbas said the meeting with Bush would be July 25. "The White House would not confirm the report." The two men met at the White House on July 25. . . .

Sometimes, of course, there are legitimate reasons, such as security, for the White House's secrecy. Other times, such a reason is elusive. In April 2002, for example, the Orlando Sentinel reported that the Apopka Little League team of 11- and 12-year-olds would visit the White House on May 5 to watch a T-ball game. The source: the team manager and parents.

"The White House would not confirm the invitation," the paper reported.

WASHINGTON, April 20 (UPI) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry Tuesday announced he had broken all fundraising records for a single quarter or month, pulling in $42.8 million in March, and is that much closer to President Bush's outstanding fundraising totals than may have appeared possible several months ago.

The results come at the end of an intense fundraising campaign that started in early March after the Massachusetts senator secured the Democratic nomination and featured record-breaking one-night events in New York, Boston and other cities across the United States. It also gives credence to sentiments expressed months earlier by the Bush campaign, when it was still beating Kerry by a factor of 10 in filling its coffers, that it would be under siege and outspent by anti-Bush forces.

Not only does Kerry have his own people working for him, but a vast array of third-party organizations have hit the field to work toward the president's defeat. The Kerry camp maintains it is not running a parallel campaign with these organizations, which is strictly against federal election regulations, but his campaign is the beneficiary of the vast amounts of soft funds they pull in nonetheless.

These "527 organizations," so-called because of their designation with the Internal Revenue Service, form the single-most extensive loophole for campaigns in the post-campaign-finance-reform world. As long as they do not expressly advocate a candidate, these groups are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of so-called soft funds, money that comes from corporations instead of individuals.

And they have fully taken advantage of this opportunity. The top three 527s -- America Coming Together, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Joint Victory Campaign 2004 -- together have raised nearly $30 million. Other noted groups such as MoveOn.org and the New Democrat Network, which are headed by longtime Democratic insiders, have raised several million dollars. Altogether, there are at least 14 such anti-Bush 527s that have each raised $1 million or more, according to the watchdog Center for Responsive Politics.

These organizations are likely to be around only for the 2004 election. They came into being in the wake of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act, and the Federal Election Commission will not rule on their legality before November's election. But watchdog organizations assert they break the spirit if not the letter of the law, and they are actively working to scuttle such organizations. . . .

Despite the reformers' efforts, however, the FEC has said it will not rule on the legality of 527s in time for the 2004 presidential election. This gives the pro-Kerry faction a unique opportunity to exploit a loophole that the Bush administration, for whatever reason, has not been able to do.

The Bush administration has had both time and traditional fundraising on its side. The president has been pulling in money for months, unfettered by a costly primary contest, and has been wildly successful at mobilizing huge numbers of supporters to send in money. Bush-Cheney '04 maintained its impressive and steady rate of fundraising, pulling in $26 million from 272,700 donors in March, bringing its overall total to $185 million from 833,000 supporters.

But press accounts report Bush's funds are outweighed by the combination of Kerry and the money from 527s. Moreover, the president has taken increasing flak over recent weeks for issues ranging from the war in Iraq to his decision last week to back a controversial new plan advanced by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Call it an election-year device to please a domestic constituency, or a change in rhetoric based on deep-seated conviction. But whatever its origin, President Bush's embrace of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for unilateral Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip is going to turn out to be more than a mere gesture.

Sharon's radical initiative would evacuate all Israeli settlements and military positions, unilaterally, within the next 18 months. His purpose is to end the Israeli occupation of Gaza and thereby absolve Israel of responsibility for the Palestinians there. Indeed, one of the articles of Sharon's disengagement plan declares that it will "obviate the claims about Israel with regard to its responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."

But who's going to take over that responsibility? Not the tattered Palestinian Authority. Not cautious Egypt, which once ruled Gaza. Instead, de facto responsibility for what happens in Gaza once Israel withdraws will fall to the United States. That's the hidden meaning in the president's letter of assurance to Sharon saying that the United States will lead an international effort to build the capacity and will of Palestinian institutions to fight terrorism and prevent the areas from which Israel withdraws from posing a threat.

One wonders whether Bush really appreciates what he is getting himself and the United States into. Having trumpeted his support for an independent Palestinian state, he is now taking on responsibility for ensuring that the Gaza mini-state created by Israel's withdrawal does not turn into a failed terrorist state. The Palestinian institutions that Bush mentions in his letter of assurance do not now exist in Gaza. What does exist there is a collapsing Palestinian Authority and a mess of competing security organizations, warlords and terrorist organizations. If hooded Hamas terrorists end up dancing on the rooftops of Gaza settlements or indoctrinating Palestinian children in the former classrooms of Israeli settlers, Bush will be fielding the questions instead of Sharon. And if Israeli forces then reenter Gaza to stop a terrorist threat emanating from there, Bush could be held responsible for that, too. Indeed, in the eyes of the Arab world at least, his embrace of Sharon's initiative has already implicated him in Israel's subsequent killing of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the new Hamas leader in Gaza.

In my view, Iraq is not salvageable as a unitary state. From my experience in the Balkans, I feel strongly that it is impossible to preserve the unity of a democratic state where people in a geographically defined region almost unanimously do not want to be part of that state. I have never met an Iraqi Kurd who preferred membership in Iraq if independence were a realistic possibility.

But the problem of Iraq is that a breakup of the country is not a realistic possibility for the present. Turkey, Iran, and Syria, all of which have substantial Kurdish populations, fear the precedent that would be set if Iraqi Kurdistan became independent. Both Sunni and Shiite Arabs oppose the separation of Kurdistan. The Sunni Arabs do not have the resources to support an independent state of their own. (Iraq's largest oil fields are in the Shiite south or in the disputed territory of Kirkuk.)

Further, as was true in the Balkans, the unresolved territorial issues in Iraq would likely mean violent conflict. Kirkuk is perhaps the most explosive place. The Kurds claim it as part of historic Kurdistan. They demand that the process of Arabization of the region?which some say goes back to the 1950s?should be reversed. The Kurds who were driven out of Kirkuk by policies of successive Iraqi regimes should, they say, return home, while Arab settlers in the region are repatriated to other parts of Iraq. While many Iraqi Arabs concede that the Kurds suffered an injustice, they also say that the human cost of correcting it is too high. Moreover, backed by Turkey, ethnic Turkmen assert that Kirkuk is a Turkmen city and that they should enjoy the same status as the Kurds.

It will be difficult to resolve the status of Kirkuk within a single Iraq; it will be impossible if the country breaks up into two or three units. And while Kirkuk is the most contentious of the territories in dispute, it is only one of many.

The best hope for holding Iraq together?and thereby avoiding civil war?is to let each of its major constituent communities have, to the extent possible, the system each wants. This, too, suggests the only policy that can get American forces out of Iraq.

In the north this means accepting that Kurdistan will continue to govern its own affairs and retain responsibility for its own security. . . .

In the south, Iraq's Shiites want an Islamic state. They are sufficiently confident of public support that they are pushing for early elections. The United States should let them have their elections, and be prepared to accept an Islamic state?but only in the south. . . .

Federalism?or even confederation ?would make Kurdistan and the south governable because there are responsible parties there who can take over government functions. It is much more difficult to devise a strategy for the Sunni Triangle?until recently the location of most violent resistance to the American occupation?because there is no Sunni Arab leadership with discernible political support. While it is difficult to assess popular support for the insurrection within the Sunni Triangle, it is crystal clear that few Sunni Arabs in places like Fallujah are willing to risk their lives in opposing the insurgents.

We can hope that if the Sunni Arabs feel more secure about their place in Iraq with respect to the Shiites and the Kurds, they will be relatively more moderate. Autonomy for the Sunni Arab parts of Iraq is a way to provide such security. There is, however, no way to know if it will work. . . .

It turns out that there are some things that only the United Nations can do?such as run an election that Iraqis will see as credible or give a stamp of legitimacy to a political transition. But the most urgent reason to want United Nations participation is to share the burden. Internationalization is a key element of John Kerry's program for Iraq. Unfortunately, it is a far from easy policy to achieve. While a less confrontational US administration would certainly be able to win greater international support and contributions, it will be a challenge to persuade the major European countries to have either the United Nations or NATO take over the major responsibilities in Iraq.

The reason is cost. Taking all expenses into account, one year of involvement in Iraq costs between $50 billion and $100 billion. Under the mandatory assessment scale for the United Nations this would cost France and Germany some $5 billion to $10 billion each, and they would face pressure to put their own troops in harm's way. NATO assessments are similarly costly. While our allies may wish a Kerry administration well, they may not be willing to commit resources on this scale to help the United States get out of Iraq. As a European diplomat told me before last year's war, "It will be china shop rules in Iraq: you break it, you pay for it."

I believe United States policy is most successful when it follows international law and works within the United Nations, according to the provisions of the Charter. This is not just a matter of upholding the ideals of the UN; it is also practical. As our war in Iraq demonstrates, we cannot afford any other course.

Hundreds of thousands of people filled the Mall and marched along Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday to show their support for abortion rights, loudly identifying President Bush as the leading enemy of "reproductive freedom."

Organizers of the March for Women's Lives said they had drawn 1.15 million people, which would make it the largest abortion rights gathering in history. "This has been the largest march for reproductive rights, the largest march for women's rights and the largest march of any kind in this country," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women.

Police would not issue an official estimate, but some veteran commanders said the crowd was at least the biggest since the 1995 Million Man March, which independent researchers put at 870,000 people. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey would say only that he thought the march had met and perhaps exceeded its organizers' expectations. Their march permit was for as many as 750,000. . . .

As the marchers thronged 14th Street yesterday afternoon, Guilford College sophomore Parks Marion, 19, recalled his mother dragging him through the same streets during a 1992 abortion-rights rally. Then, he complained about the walk. Yesterday, in the midst of a take-two-steps-and-stop pedestrian crush, he marveled at "just the sheer number" of people. "It's overwhelming and it's wonderful," he said.

Organizers sought to transcend the polarizing issue of abortion, portraying the event as the work of a coalition of groups that want to improve women's access to reproductive education health care worldwide. But the dominant themes of the day were two. Again and again, march participants vowed that abortion was here to stay. And that Bush had to go.

The budget is busted; American soldiers need more armor; they're running out of supplies. Yet the Department of Energy is spending an astonishing $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons this year, and President Bush is requesting $6.8 billion more for next year and a total of $30 billion over the following four years. This does not include his much-cherished missile-defense program, by the way. This is simply for the maintenance, modernization, development, and production of nuclear bombs and warheads.

Measured in "real dollars" (that is, adjusting for inflation), this year's spending on nuclear activities is equal to what Ronald Reagan spent at the height of the U.S.-Soviet standoff. It exceeds by over 50 percent the average annual sum ($4.2 billion) that the United States spent?again, in real dollars?throughout the four and a half decades of the Cold War.

There is no nuclear arms race going on now. The world no longer offers many suitable nuclear targets. President Bush is trying to persuade other nations?especially "rogue regimes"?to forgo their nuclear ambitions. Yet he is shoveling money to U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories as if the Soviet Union still existed and the Cold War still raged.

These are the findings of a virtually unnoticed report written by weapons analyst Christopher Paine, based on data from official budget documents, and released earlier this month by the Natural Resources Defense Council. . . .

Ten years ago, spending on nuclear activities amounted to $3.4 billion, half of today's sum. In President Clinton's last budget, it totaled $5.2 billion, still one-third less than this year's. (All figures are adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2004 dollars.) Have new threats emerged that can be handled only by a vast expansion or improvement of the U.S. nuclear arsenal? Has our nuclear stockpile deteriorated by a startling degree? There's no evidence that either is the case.

Yet Paine quotes a statement from the National Nuclear Security Administration?the quasi-independent agency of the Energy Department that's in charge of the atomic stockpile?declaring, as its goal, "to revitalize the nuclear weapons manufacturing infrastructure." Its guidance on this point is the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review of December 2001, which stated that U.S. strategic nuclear forces must provide "a range of options" not merely to deter but "to defeat any aggressor."

The one aspect of this reorientation that's attracted some attention is the development of a "robust nuclear earth-penetrator" (RNEP)?a warhead that can burrow deep into the earth before exploding, in order to destroy underground bunkers. The U.S. Air Force currently has some non-nuclear earth-penetrators, but they can't burrow deeply enough or explode powerfully enough to destroy some known bunkers. There's a legitimate debate over whether we would need to destroy such bunkers or whether it would be good enough to disable them?a feat that the conventional bunker-busters could accomplish. There's a broader question still over whether an American president really would, or should, be the first to fire nuclear weapons in wartime, no matter how tempting the tactical advantage.

The point here, however, is that this new nuclear weapon is fast becoming a reality.

As chronicled in a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, when Bush started the RNEP program two years ago, it was labeled as strictly a research project. Its budget was a mere $6.1 million in Fiscal Year 2003 and $7.1 million for FY 04. Now, all of a sudden, the administration has posted a five-year plan for the program amounting, from FY 2005-09, to $485 million. The FY05 budget alone earmarks $27.5 million to begin "development ground tests" on "candidate weapon designs." This isn't research; it's a real weapon in the works.

The American Civil Liberties Union disclosed yesterday that it filed a lawsuit three weeks ago challenging the FBI's methods of obtaining many business records, but the group was barred from revealing even the existence of the case until now.

The lawsuit was filed April 6 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, but the case was kept under seal to avoid violating secrecy rules contained in the USA Patriot Act, the ACLU said. The group was allowed to release a redacted version of the lawsuit after weeks of negotiations with the government.

"It is remarkable that a gag provision in the Patriot Act kept the public in the dark about the mere fact that a constitutional challenge had been filed in court," Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director, said in a statement. "President Bush can talk about extending the life of the Patriot Act, but the ACLU is still gagged from discussing details of our challenge to it."

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the case.

To get a sense of what Iraqis were thinking a year after the overthrow of former dictator Saddam Hussein, researchers for the Gallup Organization, working with funding from CNN and USA Today, sat down with 3444 Iraqis in March and early April (before the latest outbreaks of violence). They conducted interviews that lasted as long as 70 minutes (often at great personal risk). And what they found does not bode well in the short-term for the US and its allies in Iraq, although it may bode well for the future of Iraq as a democracy.

The survey finds Iraqis mixed on the results of the invasion of Iraq, reports the Washington Post. Forty-two percent of Iraqis say their country is better off, while 46 percent say the US has "done more harm than good" in the past year. The survey also showed significant differences along ethnic/sectarian lines, with Sunnis being strongly negative towards the US-led coalition, Shiites being more positive but growing more negative, while the Kurds in the north were quite supportive of the US (95 percent of Kurds supported the US-led invasion of Iraq).

Other telling findings of the survey were that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis, 71 percent (and that figure rises to 81 percent if the Kurdish areas in the north are excluded), now see the US-led coalition as an occupying force and not as liberators. USA Today reports that a solid majority, almost 60 percent, want the US and its allies to leave immediately, even if it means the security situation will deteriorate.

US troops also took a hit in the survey. They are seen by most Iraqis as "uncaring, dangerous and lacking in respect for the country's people, religion and traditions."

"One specific Iraqi complaint against US troops is the widespread perception – whether correct or incorrect – that they have been indiscriminate in their use of force when civilians are nearby," said Gallup's director of international polling, Richard Burkholder.

Except for the Kurds in the north, two-thirds of Iraqis say that US troops "make no attempt to keep ordinary Iraqis from being killed or wounded during exchanges of gunfire," while 60 percent say the troops conducted themselves "badly or very badly."

Graphic photographs showing the torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners in a US-run prison outside Baghdad emerged yesterday from a military inquiry which has left six soldiers facing a possible court martial and a general under investigation.

The scandal has also brought to light the growing and largely unregulated role of private contractors in the interrogation of detainees.

According to lawyers for some of the soldiers, they claimed to be acting in part under the instruction of mercenary interrogators hired by the Pentagon.

US military investigators discovered the photographs, which include images of a hooded prisoner with wires fixed to his body, and nude inmates piled in a human pyramid.

The pictures, which were obtained by an American TV network, also show a dog attacking a prisoner and other inmates being forced to simulate sex with each other. It is thought the abuses took place in November and December last year. . . .

The US army confirmed that the general in charge of Abu Ghraib jail is facing disciplinary measures and that six low-ranking soldiers have been charged with abusing and sexually humiliating detainees.

Lawyers for the soldiers argue they are being made scapegoats for a rogue military prison system in which mercenaries give orders without legal accountability.

A military report into the Abu Ghraib case - parts of which were made available to the Guardian - makes it clear that private contractors were supervising interrogations in the prison, which was notorious for torture and executions under Saddam Hussein.

One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young, male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him.

Hired guns from a wide array of private security firms are playing a central role in the US-led occupation of Iraq.

The killing of four private contractors in Falluja on March 31 led to the current siege of the city.

But this is the first time the privatisation of interrogation and intelligence-gathering has come to light.

The military investigation names two US contractors, CACI International Inc and the Titan Corporation, for their involvement in Abu Ghraib. . . .

According to the military report on Abu Ghraib, both played an important role at the prison.

At one point, the investigators say: "A CACI instructor was terminated because he allowed and/or instructed MPs who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by setting conditions which were neither authorised [nor] in accordance with applicable regulations/policy."

Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, speaking for central command, told the Guardian: "One contractor was originally included with six soldiers, accused for his treatment of the prisoners, but we had no jurisdiction over him. It was left up to the contractor on how to deal with him."

She did not specify the accusation facing the contractor, but according to several sources with detailed knowledge of the case, he raped an Iraqi inmate in his mid-teens.

Col Morgenthaler said the charges against the six soldiers included "indecent acts, for ordering detainees to publicly masturbate; maltreatment, for non-physical abuse, piling inmates into nude pyramids and taking pictures of them nude; battery, for shoving and stepping on detainees; dereliction of duty; and conspiracy to maltreat detainees". . . .

"It's insanity," said Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, who has examined the case, and is concerned about the private contractors' free-ranging role. "These are rank amateurs and there is no legally binding law on these guys as far as I could tell. Why did they let them in the prison?"

The Pentagon had no comment yesterday on the role of contractors at Abu Ghraib, saying that an inquiry was still in progress.

Ten US soldiers were killed in ambushes in Iraq yesterday as a US general was suspended over alleged abuse of about 20 Iraqi inmates in a Baghdad prison, which included forcing them into acts of sexual humiliation.

The US confirmed yesterday that Brig Gen Janice Karpinski, who ran the prison, has been suspended after photographs depicting the torture and humiliation were shown on US television.

Six other soldiers were charged in connection with the alleged abuse.

One photograph shows a hooded Iraqi prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his hands. If he falls, he is told, he will be electrocuted. Another shows a pyramid of naked male bodies with a grinning female soldier giving a V sign. A third shows a naked captive being forced to simulate oral sex with another, while soldiers jeer. Yet another shows a prisoner with electrodes attached to his genitals.

The location is the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein's thugs once tortured Iraqis. Several of the photographs were shown on CBS's 60 Minutes on Wednesday evening.

The graphic images stunned American viewers, who have been told frequently by President Bush that the US-led invasion was justified partly by the brutal treatment of prisoners under Saddam.

Chilling TV pictures of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and abused by US soldiers will damage Britain and signal the "end of the story" for America in Iraq, it was claimed today. . . .

Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a respected London-based Arabic newspaper with worldwide circulation, said: "It is absolutely shocking. I think this is the end of the story, the straw that broke the camel?s back, for America.

"I think the British job will be extremely difficult because we are associated with this torture and abuse, the closest ally of a country which tortures prisoners.

"People will be extremely angry...sexual abuse is the worst is the worst thing in that part of the world. It is shocking to all Muslims.

"America has lost the battle completely.

"I believe there will be more attacks.

"Iraqis expected the Americans and British to bring democracy and human rights and not the same thing as under Saddam.

"We have replaced a brutal dictator with a brutal super-power." . . .

Major Charles Heyman, a senior defence analyst with Jane?s Consultancy Group said: "It is a disgrace. A slur on the uniform of the US Army. It will not play well inside the Arab world. In Iraq they will say they have just exchanged one brutal regime for another one.

"I don?t think there will be an explosion of rage on the streets, but the opposition will say, 'We told you so, we knew this was happening'.

"A significant percentage of support for the US will transfer to the insurgents."

There is a real crisis of leadership in Iraq -- with double standards and double speak on human rights, Amnesty International said today.

"The latest evidence of torture and ill-treatment emerging from Abu Ghraib prison will exacerbate an already fragile situation. The prison was notorious under Saddam Hussein -- it should not be allowed to become so again. Iraq has lived under the shadow of torture for far too long. The Coalition leadership must send a clear signal that torture will not be tolerated under any circumstances and that the Iraqi people can now live free of such brutal and degrading practices," Amnesty International said.

"There must be a fully independent, impartial and public investigation into all allegations of torture. Nothing less will suffice. If Iraq is to have a sustainable and peaceful future, human rights must be a central component of the way forward. The message must be sent loud and clear that those who abuse human rights will be held accountable.

"Our extensive research in Iraq suggests that this is not an isolated incident. It is not enough for the USA to react only once images have hit the television screens".

Amnesty International has received frequent reports of torture or other ill-treatment by Coalition Forces during the past year. Detainees have reported being routinely subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment during arrest and detention. Many have told Amnesty International that they were tortured and ill-treated by US and UK troops during interrogation. Methods often reported include prolonged sleep deprivation; beatings; prolonged restraint in painful positions, sometimes combined with exposure to loud music; prolonged hooding; and exposure to bright lights. Virtually none of the allegations of torture or ill-treatment has been adequately investigated by the authorities.

Amnesty International is calling for investigations into alleged abuses by Coalition Forces to be conducted by a body that is competent, impartial and independent, and seen to be so, and that any findings of such investigations be made public. In addition reparation, including compensation, must be paid to the victims or to their families.