By: William J. Broad and Carl Hulse  

When an expert NASA panel warned last year that safety troubles loomed for the fleet of shuttles if the agency's budget was not increased, NASA removed five of the panel's nine members and two of its consultants. Some of them now say the agency was trying to suppress their criticisms.

A sixth member, a retired three-star admiral, Bernard M. Kauderer, was so upset at the firings that he quit the group, NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, a group of industry and academic experts charged with monitoring safety at the space agency.

The panel's most recent report, which came out last March and included analyses by the six departed members, warned that work on long-term shuttle safety "had deteriorated". Tight budgets, it said, were forcing an emphasis on short-term planning and adding to a backlog of planned improvements. The report called for sweeping change.

"I have never been as worried for space shuttle safety as I am right now", Dr. Richard D. Blomberg, the panel's chairman, told Congress in April. "All of my instincts suggest that the current approach is planting the seeds for future danger."

From:  

President Bush sent Congress a $2.23 trillion spending plan Monday that would accelerate tax cuts to bolster the weak economy, overhaul some of the government's biggest social programs, and shower billions of additional dollars on defense and homeland security. "We have moved to secure the nation's safety", Bush proclaimed.

Even though hundreds of other government programs would be squeezed, the President projects the deficit will still hit record highs of $304 billion this year and $307 billion in 2004. Over the next five years, deficits would total $1.08 trillion.

Bush's budget plan for fiscal 2004 that begins Oct. 1 will set off months of heated debate in Congress. Democrats attacked the tax cuts as a boon for the wealthy that will do little to help the economy but will rob Social Security of the money needed for baby boomers' retirements.

By: Bernard Weiner  

As we approach the three-month mark following the midterm election, here are a handful of things that have come into focus much more clearly. Let's cut to the chase first, and then elaborate below.

By: Les Payne  

The moment (there's always a moment) came for me when, after saying that "more then 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested", President George W. Bush beaded his eyes and added: "Many others have met a different fate. Let me put it this way: They are no longer a problem for the United States."

We're talkin' killings here, folks. Pure Texas Rangers. Not the baseball team but the cold-blooded, bloodthirsty Texas lawmen, so-called, who became legend for dispensing justice Texas-style to "suspected" this and "suspected" that. "One by one", the President said, "the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice". Killing "suspected" perpetrators is not exactly what most Americans subscribe to as justice. That aside, one must wonder if this is any way for the world's lone superpower to bluster about the conduct of its shadier - even if warranted - global affairs.

By: Mickey Z.  

...In the mid-eighties, Sacks studied the reaction of people with aphasia as they watched a televised speech by the former-actor-turned-president. Despite being unable to grasp the skillful politician's words, the patients were convulsed in laughter.

"One cannot lie to an aphasiac", Dr. Sacks noted. "He cannot grasp your words, and so cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps, he grasps with infallible precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, that total spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked, as words alone can, all too easily."

So, why did those patients with aphasia cackle at Reagan's speech?

"It was the grimaces, the histrionics, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice which rang false for these wordless but immensely sensitive patients", explained Sacks.

Conversely, Sacks remarked on a woman with tonal agnosia who was also watching the address - stony-faced. Emily D., a former English teacher and poet, was deprived of any emotional reaction to the speech but was able to judge it in the opposite way the patients with aphasia did. Her response? "He does not speak good prose", Emily D. told Sacks. "His word-use is improper. Either he is brain-damaged or he has something to conceal."

By: Leigh Strope  

A Bush administration overhaul of decades-old labor regulations could force many Americans to work longer hours without overtime pay.

The administration argues that the pillars of American labor law, which established the 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and overtime pay, are antiquated.

By: James Risen and David Johnston  

The Bush administration's efforts to build a case for war against Iraq using intelligence to link it to Al Qaeda and the development of prohibited weapons has created friction within United States intelligence agencies, government officials said.

Some analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible links to terrorism, in order to strengthen their political argument for war, government officials said.

At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network. "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there", a government official said.

"The United States is already seen by many as an aggressor in the Middle East. Speculation is rife in Europe that the United States is pressing to invade Iraq to give the U.S. control of the Iraqi oilfields. America's reputation in the court of world opinion is in tatters. We have a duty to strive to find an alternative to war. And if war it must be, then it should be a coordinated undertaking authorized by Congress and sanctioned by the member states of the United Nations, not a preemptive strike initiated by the President of the United States."

- Sen. Robert C. Byrd

"[Bush's] lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy."

- Woody Allen

By: Rep. Charles B. Rangel  

The President intended his address to calm a jittery nation. But the fears and doubts of millions of Americans who are hurting, concerned about losing their jobs and health insurance, struggling to pay for prescription drugs, and nervous about going into war without the support of our allies - those jitters will not go away because of the President's rhetoric.

I had hoped that the President would have given us more confidence that the young men and women would not be placed in harm's way unless absolutely necessary to protect this great land of ours. The start of war should be accompanied by a sense there is a patriotic need to fight for the security and protection of America and the world. However, President bush failed to demonstrate that there is an immediate threat from Iraq to us or our allies.

The President asserted in his speech that military action in Iraq will likely be needed. This belief does not appear to be shared by many members of the international community in the best position to determine how to deal with the threat of Saddam Hussein. It seems to me that the nations around Iraq, who are the most likely to be threatened, would be leading the charge if they were truly in imminent danger.

"It is a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing in Iraq. What I am condemning is that one power, with a President who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."

- Nelson Mandela

By: Nicholas Kralev  

A classified document signed by President Bush specifically allows for the use of nuclear weapons in response to biological or chemical attacks, apparently changing a decades-old U.S. policy of deliberate ambiguity, it was learned by the Washington Times.

"The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force - including potentially nuclear weapons - to the use of [weapons of mass destruction] against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies", the document, National Security Presidential Directive 17, set out on Sept. 14 last year.

"The proposed 2003 budget for NASA would scale back spending on the international space station and space shuttle but promote the development of nuclear technology in space... The space shuttle program... would receive about $65 million less than its $3.3 billion last year."

- Richard Stenger, in an article from CNN's Sci-Tech website, posted on February 5, 2002

By: Jason Leopold  

A lifelong Army veteran with no corporate experience takes a job at an upstart energy company, earns tens of millions of dollars in questionable stock sales before the company goes belly up and lands a powerful position working in the administration of the President of the United States.

Such is the story of Army Secretary Thomas White, the former vice chairman of Enron, who proved to the nation Friday that his tenure at the disgraced energy company paid off well when he sold his Florida mansion for a staggering $13.9 million. Meanwhile, thousands of Enron investors lost billions of dollars and employees of the company lost their life savings when the company imploded a year ago in a wave of accounting scandals.

But White, like other Enron executives, has repeatedly denied having any knowledge of the company's financial machinations, despite the fact that the unit he ran, Enron Energy Services, inflated the value of its energy contracts - according to dozens of former employees - and has been directly linked to the California energy crisis. Had the true value of EES' contracts been known to investors, White would not be the wealthy man that he is today and might very well be living in a one-bedroom apartment in Washington, DC.

By: Stephen C. Pelletiere  

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas - which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

By: Richard Reeves  

Yes. Haider could have disappeared in the American prisons and prison camps that are hidden in the small print of the great war against terrorism. Or he could have been executed without trial or mention.

Oh, you don't think that happens here? Americans don't do such things?

If so, then you were not watching and listening carefully to the President last Tuesday night. I literally leaped out of my seat when Bush said this: "To date we have arrested, or otherwise dealt with, many key commanders of al-Qaida... All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way, they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."

In other words, Americans are out there murdering "suspected" terrorists. And the President smirked and almost wink-winked with pleasure. He was bragging about American assassinations.

The crew of the space shuttle Columbia (from left): mission specialist Michael Anderson, pilot William McCool, commander Rick Husband, mission specialists David Brown, Laurel Clark, Isreali astronaut Ilan Ramon, and Kalpana Chawla wave to a media gathering during launch rehearsal in Cape Canaveral Dec. 20, 2002.

By: Seth Borenstein  

Scientists have warned Congress for years that the space shuttle program needed more money and newer equipment or else it faced dangerously rising safety risks, and six NASA scientists were fired in March 2001 after issuing such warnings for years.

That might be the root cause of why the space shuttle Columbia exploded Saturday. It was National Aeronautics and Space Administration's oldest shuttle, having first flown in 1981.

Last year, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel's finding said: "The current and proposed budgets are not sufficient to improve or even maintain the safety risk level of operating the Space Shuttle and ISS (International Space Station). When risk reduction efforts - such as advanced health monitoring for the Space Shuttle Main Engines, Phase II of the Cockpit Avionics Upgrade, orbiter wire redundancy separation, and the orbiter radiator isolation valve - are deferred, astronauts are exposed to higher levels of flight risk for more years than necessary."

Prior to the present panels finding, six of the safety panel members were summarily dismissed in March 2001 after making such complaints for years.

By: G.S. Doetsch  

Most importantly, you have failed to distinguish between "possession" and "intent to use" highly destructive weapons. At least eight countries have nuclear arms, and many more have other means of "mass destruction". But you are the largest stockpiler and most prolific trader of weapons in the world. And only you, America, have actually used nuclear bombs. Does anyone seriously believe that Iraq, North Korea, or any other nation would dare launch a major attack on you, America? Your military could eliminate that country from the earth within 24 hours.

And thus, the final cut - the new doctrine of "pre-emptive or preventive war". In defiance of all principle and logic, you, America, usurped the right to a first strike attack on any nation you believe might pose a danger to your security. Furthermore, you advocated permanent military supremacy in the world to implement that doctrine.

No wonder that countries, which feel threatened, are in a panic to enhance their military strength. And there is no doubt that your aggressive posture will increase - not decrease - terrorist actions.

By: D'Vera Cohn and William Harwood  

The space shuttle Columbia, speeding back to the Earth's atmosphere at 12,500 miles per hour, disintegrated in flames 200,000 feet above north central Texas today, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

"The Columbia is lost", President Bush said in a live address to the nation from the White House. "There are no survivors."

The crew of seven, led by mission chief Rick Husband, an Air Force colonel, included five other Americans and the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, an Israeli Air Force colonel. Two were on their first space missions. Six of the seven astronauts were married, and five of them had children.

By: Edward M. Kennedy  

A dangerous world just grew more dangerous. Reports that the administration is contemplating the preemptive use of nuclear weapons in Iraq should set off alarm bells that this could not only be the wrong war at the wrong time, but it could quickly spin out of control.

Initiating the use of nuclear weapons would make a conflict with Iraq potentially catastrophic.

Using the nation's nuclear arsenal in this unprecedented way would be the most fateful decision since the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. Even contemplating the first-strike use of nuclear weapons under current circumstances and against a nonnuclear nation dangerously blurs the crucial and historical distinction between conventional and nuclear arms. In the case of Iraq, it is preposterous.

By: Brad Radcliffe  

Question: Can someone's brain physically explode from the pressure of too much hypocrisy? Apparently not, because our President's head is still intact... although one has to wonder how much more self-contradiction his besieged cranium can take. Think of it as an ongoing science experiment.

Bush's current push for war in Iraq looks like a flip-flop (conveniently ignored by our ever-vigilant press corps) when compared to what candidate Bush said about going to war in the 2000 debates.

So the grand experiment continues, how much longer can our mighty helmsman continue to mouth one set of values while acting out another? How long can he spell out to the American people a set of principles, even deride those who veer from those principles, and then completely trash his own putative doctrine whenever he finds it expedient? We all wait and anxiously watch the presidential head - can it withstand the mounting pressure, or will it, like that inevitable giant surprise the night before prom, fester from within until it erupts in all its purulent glory?

By: Dick Meister  

It's hard to imagine any civil right more important to Americans than having an effective voice in setting their pay and working conditions. Yet President Bush has denied union rights to some federal employees and curtailed their use by many others.

Bush claims to be acting in the interest of national security. But it's actually part of what's been a major attack by Bush and his Republican colleagues on unions, which are among the Democrats' chief supporters. The GOP is especially eager to weaken public employee unions, the strongest segment of today's labor movement.

By: Mike Hersh  

What scares right wingers to the bone? Freedom. Free speech. Free thoughts. Free people. Why? They feel insecure in an uncertain universe. Right wingers crave order and simplicity, and will impose these things where it is not and should never be.

Dissent threatens right wingers' fragile sense of security. They demand that everyone believes whatever they believe - even if that belief changes at the whim of their superiors - because. Well just because! And don't ask questions! They believe whatever their superiors tell them to believe, because their insecurity and fear of the unknown prevents them from defying tradition or thinking in new ways.

By: Mike Shannon  

Of all the lousy reasons to go to war can there possibly be one lousier than to save face? Tragically, we may end up in a war that is totally avoidable for that very reason.

Reasonable people may argue the how and why, but no matter where you align yourself on the political spectrum very few would question that Mr. Bush has gotten himself into one heck of a spot. He has managed through his repeated use of fire and brimstone style rhetoric, simplistic reasoning - due to an over reliance on his not-very-well-seasoned "gut" - coupled with a slavish adherence to an agenda based more on ideology that geopolitical reality, to box himself into a degree that is a marvel of ineptitude. Watching him attempt to squirm his way out of his self spun web would be amusing except for the very real possibility that he will blast his way out. For when it comes to Bush vs. Hussein, the Sequel, he has left himself very few other options.

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