Now comes the Hitler analogy, and I'll be damned if I am going to apologize for it: Just as Hitler struck a chord deep in the German unconscious, Bush is touching something within the American unconscious. Whether he is a manifestation of our national mental state, or whether we are unwitting agents of his could be argued. It certainly seems symbiotic. We did elect him for a reason, and history will probably record that reason as not being a very pretty one, the similarities in our national behavior being unnervingly similar to those of pre-war Germany. Why do so many assumedly decent, normal Americans support insane actions such as the Iraq War, strange off-shore wire cage prisons in Cuba, the government's own admission of a dozen secret prisons around the world, or stubborn opposition to the world tribunal for war criminals and ethnic cleansers? Doesn't anyone find these things strange? In fact, doesn't anyone find it strange that two Bushes were elected president so closely together, the father being less than gifted, and the son as useless as tits on a boar hog? (Except at escaping his many failed businesses with loads of cash, rather like the gambler who shoots out the lights and grabs the pot.) If that's not strange I don't know what is. When Fidel Castro offered to monitor the 2000 presidential election count in Florida, we probably could not have done any worse by taking him up on it. Yet most Americans, including their media, did not seem to find all this one bit odd, and pretended that the Brownshirts torching black votes on down in Florida (despite the Brownshirts being orchestrated by yet a third Bush!) was just another zany little election fracas. Since then, the ACLU has won a lawsuit proving that it was indeed a mugging going on in Florida, and the courts have ordered those tens of thousands of black voters restored to the rolls. The Republican dominated state's reply has been an unspoken but clear as hell, "fuck you!" Those black voters are still off the rolls as I write. . . .

Too much to bear. Well, if push comes to shove and shove comes to worse, some of us seem not about to bear it at all. One can get a dual passport as a safety precaution, as an escape option. Scarcely a week goes by that I do not meet a person who confides that he or she is considering just that, because of our present political condition (Let's be honest here in these lefty communications masquerading as Internet essays. How many readers have considered the idea?) I cannot verify it with immigration application figures, but I would suspect there is at least some increase in the number of Americans seeking to emigrate to places such as Great Britain, or New Zealand or Canada. A New Zealand newspaper recently ran an editorial welcoming liberal Americans, called them asylum seekers and opining that New Zealand should ease its strict immigration standards for them because those fleeing tend to be educated, creative people with high ideals. They must be observing something from down there. Speaking for myself, I cannot decide about emigrating. Is it best to agree with Greg Palast and Gore Vidal that it is safer to shoot at the bastards from across the waters? Fighting from within is beginning to look like a lesser option every day. Or should one take the stance of Marine Corps hero Chesty Puller, who said: "The enemy is in front of us. The enemy is behind us. He is to our right and to our left. We can't miss'em now, boys!" That sounds good, but one person never beats a mob.

[Deceit 8: Fahrenheit's segment about the attack on the World Trade Center] effectively evokes the horror that every decent human being felt on September 11.

But remember, Moore does not necessarily feel the same way. As New York's former Mayor Edward Koch reported, Moore later said, "I don't know why we are making so much of an act of terror. It is three times more likely that you will be struck by lightening than die from an act of terror." . . .

[Deceit 9:] Fahrenheit mocks President Bush for continuing to read a story to a classroom of elementary school children after he was told about the September 11 attacks.

What Moore did not tell you:

Gwendolyn Tose'-Rigell, the principal of Emma E. Booker Elementary School, praised Bush's action: "I don't think anyone could have handled it better." . . .

[Deceit 55:] Moore exploits the grief of Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq. She denounces Bush and the War. But there are many mothers and relatives of US soldiers, alive and dead, who served there who don't agree with her. . . .

[Deceit 57:] He shows Britney Spears saying she supports the President on Iraq. As if there weren't a host of brain-dead bimbo celebs, (Madonna, Sean Penn, Russell Simmons, Lenny Kravitz, Susan Sarandon, The Dixie Chicks, etc.), spouting off on the other side.

A federal appeals court on Friday rejected Nevada's arguments against building a nuclear waste site in the state, but ordered the government to develop a new plan to protect the public against radiation releases beyond the proposed 10,000 years.

The three-judge panel dismissed claims by Nevada that the Bush administration's plan to build the Yucca Mountain waste site was unconstitutional and said that actions by the Energy Department and President Bush leading up to approval of the waste site were not subject to review by the court.

In a victory for Nevada, however, the court rejected the government standard that the public would have to be protected from radiation leaks only for 10,000 years. The court said the compliance period for the radiation standards would have to be developed well beyond that period.

It was not immediately clear how severe an impact the court's rejection of the radiation standard would have on the project. The Environmental Protection Agency will have to develop a standard that is protective beyond 10,000 years, and some opponents of Yucca Mountain have argued the current design for waste containment does not do that.

While the court dismissed Nevada's key arguments, state officials focused on the court's rejection of the radiation standard and suggested that might be enough to scuttle the project being planned for a volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"The Yucca Mountain site cannot meet the (radiation) standard" beyond 10,000 years, said Bob Loux, Nevada's state nuclear project director. He called the Yucca project "effectively dead -- over."

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he was pleased by the court's decision which, he said, "dismissed all challenges to the site selection" process for Yucca Mountain. He said the department would work with EPA and Congress to address the court's problems with the radiation standard, rejecting suggestions that issue would endanger the project.

Another Energy Department source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said however that addressing the 10,000-year issue might delay the project because Congress might have to address the issue.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a 100-page ruling rejected Nevada's argument that selection of the site was unconstitutional and that some procedures violated the nuclear waste law -- the key arguments made by the state before the court last January.

The state has vowed to continue fighting the case before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must issued a permit for the facility. The site is planned to store underground 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste, mostly spent reactor fuel from commercial power plants.

Congress approved the Yucca Mountain site in 2002, overriding an attempt by Nevada to block the project.

While rejecting the heart of Nevada's arguments, the appeals court upheld arguments by environmentalists that the Environmental Protection Agency requirements for safeguarding the environment from radiation were inadequate and would have to be strengthened.

The court said that the EPA's standard calling for protection from radiation up to 10,000 years "is not based or consistent with the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences," which had concluded that the danger to the public goes years beyond that.

Contrary to EPA's interpretation, the 1995 NAS report found "no scientific basis for limiting the time period of the individual risk standard to 10,000 years" but that it should be designed to protect when wastes are at their highest danger.

While Congress directed that the EPA make its radiation standard for future human exposure "consistent" with the NAS findings, "the EPA wholly rejected the Academy's recommendations," wrote the judges.

It said the EPA must either issue a revised standard consistent with the NAS findings or get Congress to give it authority to deviate from the NAS recommendations.

In arguments in January, lawyers for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which had challenged the EPA standard, argued that many of the isotopes in the waste would reach their peak radiation levels and be most dangerous up to 300,000 years into the future.

"We're absolutely thrilled," said Geoffrey Fettus, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Nevada had argued that the process by which Yucca Mountain was selected as the only site to be studied for a possible waste site was unconstitutional. It also challenged a Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule on procedures for considering Yucca Mountain as in violation of the federal nuclear waste law.

The panel -- composed of Judges Harry Edwards, Karen Henderson, David Tatel -- disagreed.

The Energy Department plans to submit an application for an NRC license later this year, a process that could take three years or more. A recent controversy over Yucca Mountain funding in Congress also has put the 2010 target date for opening the facility into jeopardy.

PARIS, July 9 -- The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled Friday that Israel's security fence being constructed on occupied West Bank land is illegal, violates the human rights of Palestinians and must be dismantled.

The wall "cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order," said Judge Shi Jiuyong of China, who announced the non-binding ruling. "The construction of such a wall accordingly constitutes breaches by Israel of its obligations under the applicable international humanitarian law."

The court is also expected to order that Palestinians whose land had been confiscated for the building of the barrier should be compensated, and it will call on countries not to give aid or support to Israel in building the fence.

The ruling was 14 to 1, with the court's only American judge, Thomas Buergenthal, siding with Israel. The ruling, which was requested by the U.N. General Assembly, is called an "advisory opinion" and is non-binding.

But the International Court's opinions do carry moral and political weight, and past decisions, such as its 1971 ruling against South Africa's occupation of Namibia, have been used to pressure governments in the court of public opinion.

The White House dismissed the ruling, saying it did not think it was the right venue for addressing the issue.

In a hard-hitting report released today, the U.S. Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence said the CIA and other agencies used unfounded "group think" assumptions to assess the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before last year's U.S. invasion and reached conclusions that were often either "overstated" or "not supported by the underlying intelligence."

"A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of intelligence" about Iraqi weapons programs, the committee concluded, according to the report.

The 511-page report, the product of the committee's year-long investigation of pre-war intelligence on Iraq, also pointed to severe management problems at the CIA. The agency's director, George J. Tenet, announced his resignation last month for personal reasons and leaves office Sunday.

In accusing the CIA and its top leaders of engaging in a "group think dynamic," the committee said analysts and senior policymakers never questioned their long-held assumption that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. In addition, the committee reported, the CIA had no undercover agents in Iraq since 1998 to help gather reliable information and failed to tell policymakers of "the uncertainties of both the reliability of some key sources and of intelligence judgments."

Reacting to the report, CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin told reporters this afternoon, "My first message to you is a very simple one: We get it."

In a briefing at CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia, he said, "Although we think the judgments were not unreasonable when they were made nearly two years ago, we understand with all we have learned since then that we could have done better."

Asked if anyone at the agency would be fired over the intelligence failure, McLaughlin said the CIA must not be "risk averse." He added, "I can think of nothing that would be more effective in generating aversion to risk than to hold an individual personally accountable for a mistake that might have been made by hundreds of people around the world. . . ."

President Bush called the report "useful" and said he looked forward to working with Congress on reforming the intelligence community. . . .

In a joint news conference to present the report, the committee's Republican chairman and Democratic vice chairman agreed that the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies had suffered a massive intelligence failure in assessing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in Iraq before the March 2003 U.S. invasion.

"The debate over many aspects of the U.S. liberation of Iraq will likely continue for decades," said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the chairman of the committee. "But one fact is now clear: before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and, if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. Today we know these assessments were wrong."

Moreover, he said, the report shows that "they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence."

Asked if he believed Congress would have authorized the use of force against Iraq had it known the weakness of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Roberts said, "I do not know." He said he would have voted for the war in Iraq on humanitarian grounds, but that it would have been a different kind of war. He said it would have been more similar to the U.S. interventions in Kosovo and Bosnia in the 1990s -- an apparent reference to the fact that U.S. ground troops were not deployed in either of those conflicts. . . .

The intelligence failures detailed in the report will affect U.S. national security for generations to come, [John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va) . . .] said.

"Our credibility is diminished," he said. "Our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."

In the news conference, Roberts and Rockefeller displayed the partisan differences that have surfaced over the issue of political pressure on the CIA, a subject that Rockefeller said had produced "major disagreements" on the committee. He said he felt "that the definition of pressure was very narrowly drawn in the final report" and that statements by Tenet and other CIA officials indicated that such pressure existed.

Roberts said there was pressure from policy-makers to be "forward-leaning" and come up with information. But he said, "I do not think there is any evidence of undue pressure on any analysts" with regard to assessments of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

He said he expects President Bush to support the committee's calls for reform of the intelligence community.

"What he said [about Iraq's banned weapons] was what he got from the intelligence community, and what he got was wrong," Roberts said. "So he more than anybody will want to work with us" on reform efforts.

The thick report, which was heavily redacted by the CIA, represents the first phase of a two-part review of intelligence on Iraq. Left for the second phase -- in a second report likely to come out sometime next year -- is the issue of the Bush administration's use of the intelligence that was provided to it.

July 19 issue - American counterterrorism officials, citing what they call "alarming" intelligence about a possible Qaeda strike inside the United States this fall, are reviewing a proposal that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of such an attack, NEWSWEEK has learned.

The prospect that Al Qaeda might seek to disrupt the U.S. election was a major factor behind last week's terror warning by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Ridge and other counterterrorism officials concede they have no intel about any specific plots. But the success of March's Madrid railway bombings in influencing the Spanish elections—as well as intercepted "chatter" among Qaeda operatives—has led analysts to conclude "they want to interfere with the elections," says one official.

As a result, sources tell NEWSWEEK, Ridge's department last week asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election were an attack to take place. Justice was specifically asked to review a recent letter to Ridge from DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman of the newly created U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Soaries noted that, while a primary election in New York on September 11, 2001, was quickly suspended by that state's Board of Elections after the attacks that morning, "the federal government has no agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election." Soaries, a Bush appointee who two years ago was an unsuccessful GOP candidate for Congress, wants Ridge to seek emergency legislation from Congress empowering his agency to make such a call. Homeland officials say that as drastic as such proposals sound, they are taking them seriously—along with other possible contingency plans in the event of an election-eve or Election Day attack. "We are reviewing the issue to determine what steps need to be taken to secure the election," says Brian Roehrkasse, a Homeland spokesman.

The case files of 26 abused detainees, interviewed by military criminal prosecutors in the Abu Ghraib scandal, were obtained by NEWSWEEK this month. Charge sheets and interrogation reports show 13 of the victims were there for criminal offenses ranging from theft to rape. At least eight of the other 13 who were initially picked up as terrorists were later ordered released without any charges. Terrorist suspect Mohammed Habibullah's interrogator noted his statements were "sketchy and unreliable at best," and added, "NEVER leaving unless it's to the loony bin."

It's difficult to escape the conclusion that the Abu Ghraib torturers were just having a good, if sadistic, time. One military investigator wrote in his notes on Graner: "the biggest S.O.B. on earth," a comment he underlined twice. The price for the party is enormous: damage done to Iraqi support for the American occupation has been incalculable. The details are sickening. Noor, a detainee whose full name is being withheld by NEWSWEEK, was forced to expose her breasts and genitalia and is shown in the MPs' pictures giving a forced smile for Graner, who sources believe was the photographer. Subsequently a letter signed by a woman named Noor circulated widely in Baghdad saying she had been raped and impregnated by American soldiers, and begging the resistance to "please kill all of us." Prisoner Satar Jabar's photograph, showing him hooded and wired up, has become familiar to Iraqis, who derisively call it "the Statue of Liberty." Far from being a dangerous insurgent, however, Jabar, 24, was an accused car thief.

"This is a prison that was clearly out of control," says Joseph Margulies, an attorney who represented Guantanamo detainees in their recent successful Supreme Court appeal. "There was either a deliberate or a negligent breakdown within the prison such that they don't even know who's there." The U.S. military is reviewing the deaths of 32 Iraqis in detention, many of them at Abu Ghraib. One was Munadil al-Jumaily, a healthy 40-year-old who died Feb. 10 of a cerebral contusion and hemorrhage. But his family didn't learn about it until his 12-year-old son Mustafa saw al-Jumaily's body May 22 in an Iraqi newspaper—on ice, with MPs Sabrina Harman and Graner posing with thumbs-up gestures over the battered corpse. "They will say they were following orders," says al-Jumaily's brother Majib. "But you could see they were enjoying themselves—look how they smile." However the scandal plays out, that image will be hard to erase.

WASHINGTON, July 21 - The White House helped to block a Republican-brokered deal on Wednesday to extend several middle-class tax cuts, fearful of a bill that could draw Democratic votes and dilute a Republican campaign theme, Republican negotiators said.

The impasse was the latest sign of deep rifts among Republicans about budget issues. House and Senate Republicans had badly wanted to pass a popular tax-cutting bill before the Democratic convention next week.

But in an improbable series of machinations, White House officials opposed the tentative deal worked out between House and Senate Republican leaders that would have extended the tax cuts for two years at a cost of about $80 billion.

That left Republicans conceding that the tax-cutting effort is over, at least until Congress returns from its recess in September.

The Republicans' inability to agree among themselves cost them the chance to highlight their link to tax cuts as the election season moves into high gear.

At issue on Wednesday were three "middle-income tax cuts'' that were a central part of President Bush's tax packages of 2001 and 2003. The biggest was a $1,000 child tax credit, which will be reduced to $700 at the end of this year. The other two big measures set to expire are a reduction in the "marriage penalty," which pushes two-income families into higher tax brackets; and an expansion of the 10-percent tax bracket to cut taxes for more middle-income families.

House Republicans and the Bush administration had sought to make those tax cuts permanent, but ran into Senate Republican moderates who wanted any more tax cuts offset by either spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere.

On Tuesday night, after arduous negotiations, House and Senate Republicans thought they had reached a deal that would extend the tax cuts for just two years but not require that they be offset.

White House officials, though, insisted that the tax cuts be extended for at least five years, without paying for them through either tax increases or spending cuts. House Republicans, who had originally sought a five-year extension as well, backed away from the deal on Wednesday once it was clear the White House was not budging.

Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration was still trying to negotiate. But Republican Congressional officials said the administration did not want a deal that Democratic lawmakers might support, giving them a tax-cutting credential, too.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, had already said he would retain most of Mr. Bush's middle-class tax cuts, and many Democratic lawmakers said they would vote for a modest extension of the tax cuts even if the extension was not paid for.

"If the Democrats had been on the same side, it would have taken a lot of arrows out of the quiver,'' said one Republican staff member.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Tammy Baldwin, the only openly lesbian member of Congress, said GOP-backed legislation stripping federal courts of jurisdiction over gay marriage would deny constitutional rights to gays and lesbians.

"With this bill, we face no less than the specter of a sign posted on the federal courthouse door which reads you may not defend your constitutional rights in this court," Baldwin, D-Wis., said shortly before the House passed the bill Thursday on a mostly party-line vote.

"You may not seek equal protection here. You may not petition your government for redress here. Today, the 'you' is gay and lesbian American citizens, but who will be next?"

Baldwin, who made the closing argument for Democrats in their unsuccessful attempt to defeat the bill, spoke loudly, pointing her finger at times. But she made no mention of her own sexual orientation.

The bill, which faces an uphill battle in the Senate, would strip the Supreme Court and other federal courts of their jurisdiction to rule on challenges to state bans on gay marriages under a provision of the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act. That law defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and says states are not compelled to recognize gay marriages that take place in other states.

Baldwin said the legislation "would do grave damage to the republic.... Enacting court-stripping legislation would seriously undermine the faith of the American people in this Congress, in the Courts and in the principles of separation of powers."

WASHINGTON, July 28 - A classified Justice Department investigation has concluded that a former F.B.I. translator at the center of a growing controversy was dismissed in part because she accused the bureau of ineptitude, and it found that the F.B.I. did not aggressively investigate her claims of espionage against a co-worker.

The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that the allegations by the translator, Sibel Edmonds, "were at least a contributing factor in why the F.B.I. terminated her services," and the F.B.I. is considering disciplinary action against some employees as a result, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the bureau, said in a letter last week to lawmakers. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times.

Ms. Edmonds worked as a contract linguist for the F.B.I. for about six months, translating material in Turkish, Persian and Azerbaijani. She was dismissed in 2002 after she complained repeatedly that bureau linguists had produced slipshod and incomplete translations of important terrorism intelligence before and after the Sept. 11 attacks. She also accused a fellow Turkish linguist in the bureau's Washington field office of blocking the translation of material involving acquaintances who had come under F.B.I. suspicion and said the bureau had allowed diplomatic sensitivities with other nations to impede the translation of important terrorism intelligence.

The Edmonds case has proved to be a growing concern to the F.B.I. because it touches on three potential vulnerabilities for the bureau: its ability to translate sensitive counterterrorism material, its treatment of internal "whistle-blowers," and its classification of sensitive material that critics say could be embarrassing to the bureau.

The Justice Department has imposed an unusually broad veil of secrecy on the Edmonds case, declaring details of her case to be a matter of "state secrets." The department has blocked her from testifying in a lawsuit brought by families of Sept. 11 victims, it has retroactively classified briefings Congressional officials were given in 2002, and it has classified the inspector general's entire report on its investigation into her case. As a result, groups promoting government openness have accused the Justice Department of abusing the federal procedures in place for classifying sensitive material.

Mr. Mueller's letter, sent July 21 to leading members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, offered a rare glimpse inside the F.B.I.'s thinking on the case, and its content surprised some congressional officials.

Given the tight secrecy surrounding the case, "one could argue that Mueller himself disclosed classified material" by quoting from a still-secret Justice Department report, said one congressional official who spoke on condition of anonymity. . . .

An official with knowledge of the report who spoke on condition of anonymity said investigators confirmed some of Ms. Edmonds's allegations about translation problems to be true, but could not corroborate others because of a lack of evidence. None of her accusations were disproved, the official said.

Ms. Edmonds said in an interview Wednesday that she had not been informed about any of the inspector general's findings and was planning a lawsuit to force the public release of the report.

She said was gratified to hear that the inspector general found that her allegations played a part in her dismissal, and she said public pressure was needed to correct what she considers continuing problems in the F.B.I.'s ability to translate terrorism intelligence.

The overall income Americans reported to the government shrank for two consecutive years after the Internet stock market bubble burst in 2000, the first time that has effectively happened since the modern tax system was introduced during World War II, newly disclosed information from the Internal Revenue Service shows.

The total adjusted gross income on tax returns fell 5.1 percent, to just over $6 trillion in 2002, the most recent year for which data is available, from $6.35 trillion in 2000. Because of population growth, average incomes declined even more, by 5.7 percent.

Adjusted for inflation, the income of all Americans fell 9.2 percent from 2000 to 2002, according to the new I.R.S. data.

While the recession that hit the economy in 2001 in the wake of the market plunge was considered relatively mild, the new information shows that its effect on Americans' incomes, particularly those at the upper end of the spectrum, was much more severe. Earlier government economic statistics provided general evidence that incomes suffered in the first years of the decade, but the full impact of the blow and what groups it fell hardest on were not known until the I.R.S. made available on its Web site the detailed information from tax returns.

The unprecedented back-to-back declines in reported incomes was caused primarily by the combination of the big fall in the stock market and the erosion of jobs and wages in well-paying industries in the early years of the decade.

In the past, overall personal income rose from one year to the next with relentless monotony, the growth rate changing in response to fluctuations in economic activity but almost never falling.

But now, with many more ordinary employees joining high-level executives in having part of their compensation dependent on stock options and bonus plans, a volatile and relatively unpredictable new element has been introduced to the incomes of millions of workers.

"Risks used to be confined largely to executives and business owners with large incomes,'' said Edward N. Wolff, an economist at New York University who studies wealth and income.

"But now for many people with more modest incomes their earnings are more volatile,'' Mr. Wolff added, leaving them more vulnerable to losing pay they count on to meet regular expenses like mortgage payments, car loans and day-to-day living costs.

The new data also helps explain why personal income taxes, the government's most important source of revenue, are subject to much greater fluctuations than in the past. It may help analysts do a better job in predicting changes in government receipts and provide businesses with clues to help anticipate bigger ups-and-downs in spending for their goods and services.

Before the recent drop, the last time reported incomes fell for even one year was in 1953. The only other time since World War II that the I.R.S. reported an interruption in income gains was from 1947 to 1949, but that was because of changes in the tax law at the time that affected how income was reported rather than an actual fall.

From 2000 to 2002, individual income taxes fell 18.8 percent, more than three times the decline in adjusted gross incomes, the I.R.S.'s latest statistical reports show. (Adjusted gross income is the broadest category of income taxpayers report to the government, excluding only a small portion of income in other forms, notably interest on tax-free bonds.)

To some extent, taxes fell more than incomes because of tax cuts championed by President Bush and approved by Congress in 2001. But in that year and in 2002 the cuts applied primarily to those making less than $100,000, especially families with children, and to capital gains from the sales of appreciated assets like stock.

The major tax rate reductions for highly paid Americans did not take effect until 2003, when - it is clear from spending patterns, general income data and the performance of the stock market - more affluent taxpayers regained some of the losses they experienced in the earlier years of the decade.

Falling incomes, rather than tax cuts, appear to count for the greatest share of the decline in income taxes paid. That is because the higher one stood on the income ladder the greater the impact was likely to be from the stock market crunch.

At the same time many of those whose incomes fell the most - those reporting $200,000 to $10 million in income - paid at the highest rates, which meant that the drain on revenues was even greater when their incomes shrank.

WASHINGTON - A campaign worker for President Bush said Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones — or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.

“Why don’t they get new jobs if they’re unhappy — or go on Prozac?” said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.

The comment was apparently directed to a colleague who was transferring a phone call from a reporter asking about job quality, and who overheard the remark.

When told the Prozac comment had been overheard, Sheybani said: “Oh, I was just kidding.”

BOSTON - While Gov. Jeb Bush reassures Floridians that touch screen voting machines are reliable, the Republican Party is sending the opposite message to some voters.

The GOP urged some Miami voters to use absentee ballots because touch screens lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote."

That's the same argument Democrats have made but which Bush, his elections director and Republican legislators have repeatedly rejected.

"The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," says a glossy mailer, paid for by the Republican Party of Florida and prominently featuring two pictures of President Bush. "Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today."

The GOP tactic is the reverse of what Bush and state elections experts have said as they have repeatedly opposed Democratic moves, in the Legislature and courts, to require a paper trail on the machines. . . .

The Republican flier is part of a hard-fought GOP primary for a state House seat in Miami where absentee ballots could make a difference.

The mailing surfaced at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday and stirred outrage by Florida delegates and elected officials.

"I've seen that advertisement. It's appalling," said Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. "It is an acknowledgement that there are excessive error rates with touch screens even by the party in power."

"That is awful. That is disgusting. Despicable," said state Sen. Ron Klein, D-Delray Beach. "Why use dirty tricks to scare people?"

"It's unbelievable," said state Sen. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. "They're the ones who won't certify a machine to attach a paper trail."

A Bush spokeswoman said the governor had not see the flier beforehand and did not approve of the criticism of the touch screen machines. . . .

"It's an astonishing level of hypocrisy," said Sharon Lettman-Pacheco of the liberal People for the American Way Foundation, which sued the state seeking to force manual recounts for touch screen machines. "Which one is it: Do the machines work, or do they know something that we don't?"

But even as Democrats criticized the message, they realized that Republicans were making the point they have been making for months.

While not an official party position, some Democrats are urging voters to use absentee ballots instead of the touch screen machines.

WASHINGTON — A comprehensive examination of the U.S.-led agency that oversaw the rebuilding of Iraq has triggered at least 27 criminal investigations and produced evidence of millions of dollars' worth of fraud, waste and abuse, according to a report by the Coalition Provisional Authority's inspector general.

The report is the most sweeping indication yet that some U.S. officials and private contractors repeatedly violated the law in the free-wheeling atmosphere that pervaded the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild the war-torn country.

More than $600 million in cash from Iraqi oil money was spent with insufficient controls. Senior U.S. officials manipulated or misspent contract money. Millions of dollars' worth of equipment could not be located, the report said.

"We found problems in the CPA's financial management, procurement practices and operational controls," Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the inspector general, wrote in the report. "These results are not surprising: The CPA faced a variety of daunting challenges, including extremely hazardous working conditions."

The report raises anew questions surrounding the occupation government under Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, who turned over control in June to an interim Iraqi government.

The coalition's failures continue to haunt the country today as Iraqis struggle with security issues and infrastructure problems with electricity, transportation and water.

The Times has reported on several cases in which a small circle of former Republican administration officials had drawn scrutiny for their actions in Iraq, including a deputy undersecretary of Defense under investigation by the FBI in connection with a telecommunications contract. In another case, officials have said, a former senior U.S. advisor conducted negotiations with a family connected to Saddam Hussein to form a new Iraqi airline.

Former CPA officials and contracting experts said they were surprised at the number of criminal investigations described in Bowen's report. They noted that criminal corruption charges in the U.S. involving federal contracting were rare.

The CPA has disbanded, and Pentagon officials did not return calls for comment.

It may have been the guy in the hood teetering on the stool, electrodes clamped to his genitals. Or smirking Lynndie England and her leash. Maybe it was the smarmy memos tapped out by soft-fingered lawyers itching to justify such barbarism. The grudging, lunatic retreat of the neocons from their long-standing assertion that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama didn't hurt. Even the Enron audiotapes and their celebration of craven sociopathy likely played a part. As a result of all these displays and countless smaller ones, you could feel, a couple of months back, as summer spread across the country, the ground shifting beneath your feet. Not unlike that scene in The Day After Tomorrow, then in theaters, in which the giant ice shelf splits asunder, this was more a paradigm shift than anything strictly tectonic. No cataclysmic ice age, admittedly, yet something was in the air, and people were inhaling deeply. I began to get calls from friends whose parents had always voted Republican, "but not this time." There was the staid Zbigniew Brzezinski on the staid NewsHour with Jim Lehrer sneering at the "Orwellian language" flowing out of the Pentagon. Word spread through the usual channels that old hands from the days of Bush the Elder were quietly (but not too quietly) appalled by his son's misadventure in Iraq. Suddenly, everywhere you went, a surprising number of folks seemed to have had just about enough of what the Bush administration was dishing out. A fresh age appeared on the horizon, accompanied by the sound of scales falling from people's eyes. It felt something like a demonstration of that highest of American prerogatives and the most deeply cherished American freedom: dissent. . . .

Our "war president" may have been justified in his assumption that Americans are a warrior people. He pushed the envelope in thinking we'd be content as an occupying power, but he was sadly mistaken if he thought that ordinary Americans would tolerate an image of themselves as torturers. To be fair, the torture was meant to be secret. So were the memos justifying such treatment that had floated around the White House, Pentagon, and Justice Department for more than a year before the first photos came to light. The neocons no doubt appreciate that few of us have the stones to practice the New Warfare. Could you slip a pair of women's panties over the head of a naked, cowering stranger while forcing him to masturbate? What would you say while sodomizing him with a toilet plunger? Is keeping someone awake till he hallucinates inhumane treatment or merely "sleep management"?

Most of us know the answers to these questions, so it was incumbent upon the administration to pretend that Abu Ghraib was an aberration, not policy. Investigations, we were assured, were already under way; relevant bureaucracies would offer unstinting cooperation; the handful of miscreants would be sternly disciplined. After all, they didn't "represent the best of what America's all about." As anyone who'd watched the proceedings of the 9/11 Commission could have predicted, what followed was the usual administration strategy of stonewalling, obstruction, and obfuscation. The appointment of investigators was stalled; documents were withheld, including the full report by Major General Antonio Taguba, who headed the Army's primary investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib. A favorite moment for many featured John McCain growing apoplectic as Donald Rumsfeld and an entire tableful of army brass proved unable to answer the simple question Who was in charge at Abu Ghraib?

The Bush administration no doubt had its real reasons for invading and occupying Iraq. They've simply chosen not to share them with the American public. They sought justification for ignoring the Geneva Convention and other statutes prohibiting torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners but were loath to acknowledge as much. They may have ideas worth discussing, but they don't welcome the rest of us in the conversation. They don't trust us because they don't dare expose their true agendas to the light of day. There is a surreal quality to all this: Occupation is liberation; Iraq is sovereign, but we're in control; Saddam is in Iraqi custody, but we've got him; we'll get out as soon as an elected Iraqi government asks us, but we'll be there for years to come. Which is what we counted on in the first place, only with rose petals and easy coochie.