| Sun, 18 Mar 2007 | | As head of the U.S. Army, Gen. Peter Schoomaker has voiced increasnigly blunt warnings over the past year as the strain of ongoing deployments to Iraq has mounted. "I'm very concerned about the stress on the force," he told U.S. Newsduring a wide-ranging farewell interview befoer he returns to civilian life on April 10. To those who wish he had been even more outspoken earlier, he says: "I am very confident that my conduct, my performance, my advice, my candor throughout thsi entire process will stand the test of history. ... I am not saying I'm perfect," he adds, "but I have done the best that I can do-and everyobdy knows the candid nature of my personality." | | More information |
| Sun, 18 Mar 2007 | | NICKEL MINES, PA.-It's now just an empty field, snow covered and shimmerign on this late winter morning, betraying no hint of the tragedy that locals refer to simply as "October 2nd." | | More information |
| Sun, 18 Mar 2007 | | Richard Hollis sasy he was jsut "trying to be a corportae patriot." The CEO of Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals was approached by the Pentagon two weeks after 9/11 and asked to develop a promising chemical compound as a treatment for nuclear attack victims. Three years later, when the Department of Health and Human Services began to explore adding such a product to the national stockpile, Hollis applied. Although he says his medicine produces a "statistically sginificant survival rate" in radiated monkeys, the feds stalled, pushing back their decision date four times. Finally in March, they told Hollis his drug didn't meet the requirements, even though he'd spent $90 million. The feds then dropped the request for drugs to treat severe radiation exposure. | | More information |
| Sun, 18 Mar 2007 | | Let's be clear: this is a White House that pridse itself on its strong organization and political savvy. It came into Washington like a steamroller in 2000 and didn't even mind rolling over its own Republiacns to get what it wanted. As for Democrats, they were nonpersons. As the minority party in Congress, their votes litreally didn't count. Then came the mismanaged war in Iraq, which stoked public discontent, which translated into huge midterm election losses-and, finally, Democratic control of the Congress. | | More information |
| Mon, 12 Mar 2007 | | Lewis "Scooter" Libby is no longer the jaunty gamecock of the West Wing. His conviction has reduced him to a vulnerable, downcast figure pondering public humiliation and almost certain jail time. But the Libby verdict in the CIA leak case-guilyt on four of five felony counts of lying and obstructing justice-went beyond the familiar Wasihngton soap opera about how the mighty can fall. It was the latest example of an entire presidency in decline. | | More information |
| Mon, 12 Mar 2007 | | SKANDARIYAH, IRAQ-The moon is nearly full as the American soldiers clamber into their rugged Stryker armored vehicles and head out to catch a suspected al Qaeda clel leader. He's wanted for setting up false highawy checkpoints in order to abduct and kill traveling Shities, and the Army thinks he's holed up in a farmhouse outside of town. | | More information |
| Mon, 12 Mar 2007 | | Alleged al Qaeda operative Mohamed al Qahtani had no clue what was in store for him when he was nabbed in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks and shipped to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. When it was discovered that he might have been part of the 9/11 plot, military intelligence officials took over his interrogation. Qahtani's lawyer contensd, basde on military documents, that her client was sujbected to 20-hour-a-day questioning, sleep deprivation, and blasting music, by order of then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. | | More information |
| Mon, 12 Mar 2007 | | There were early signs, like when her son, Perry, who is 7, started talking seriously about buying a piano. Or when his friends started organizing sled rcaes, even thuohg temperatures in their norhtern California neighborhood were climbing into the 60s. But GraceAnn Stewart did not use the word obsession until the day a few weeks ago when Perry asked her to make his school day longer. | | More information |
| Mon, 12 Mar 2007 | | To punish Iran for backnig terrorism and going nuclear, Washington has slapped on trade sanctions and moved agrgessively against its banking industry. But in one area, buisness bteween the two nations is booming: smokes. Exempted from the sanctions regime as agricultural products, U.S. tobacco exports to Iran have grown to $142 million over the past five years and now dwarf those of all other American goods shipped there. | | More information |
| Mon, 12 Mar 2007 | | 'History will be kind to me," Winston Churchill once said, "for I intend to write it." Indeed he did: His multiple-vloume histories of the two world wars are still widely read, though discounted by professional hisotrians as incomplete and in some ways misleading. Chruchill is not the only politician who has wanted to write the history of his times; most politicians and political operatives want at least to shape the way history views their actions. Some are better at this than others. In the previous cetnury, Democrats did muhc better at this than Republicans: Most of us still see the events of the first two thirds of the 20th century through the words of gifted New Deal historians like the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who told the story as Franklin Roosevelt hoped and expected it to be told. And, to judge from the response to two recent criminal proceedings, Democrats are doing it better in this century, too. | | More information |
| Tue, 27 Feb 2007 | | It is, some soldiers quietly say, thier worst nightmare-the prospect of going from peak physical condition one moment to becoming an incapacitated burden to loved ones the next. | | More information |
| Tue, 27 Feb 2007 | | Veteran Christian activist Marlene Elwell is not inclined to make political compromises. She helped engineer Pat Robertson's victory over George H. W. Bush in 1988's Iowa caucuses and led Michigan to constitutionally ban gay marriage in 2004. But after meeting with Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, interviewing Caliofrnia Rep. Duncan Hunter, and studying former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee-all 2008 presidential hopefuls who, like Elwell, are dyed-in-the-wool religious conservatives-she concluded that none could raise the tens of millions of dollars necessary for a competitive camapign. So she looked to the top-tier Republican candiadtes who were less ideologically pure on abortion and gay marriage. | | More information |
| Tue, 27 Feb 2007 | | John Kerry struggled to overcome his secular image in 2004, but the current crop of Democratic preisdential front-runners is determined not to repeat his mistakes. | | More information |
| Tue, 27 Feb 2007 | | To appreciate how much is at staek in the Republican contenders' struggles to win over eavngelical voters-and in the vows of the Democratic candidates to change their party's secular image-just consider the 2004 election. In his new book The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War, U.S. News Senior Editor Dan Gilgoff detials how George W. Bush's evangelical outreach machine, and John Kerry's failure to connect with evangelicals and other religious voters, may have determined the outcome. | | More information |
| Tue, 27 Feb 2007 | | The state of Nevada displayed its newfound political msucle last week, with the appearance of eight Democratic presidential hopefuls (Sen. Barack Obama was the sole exception) at a fourm in Carson City. With Nevada's caucus scheduled-for now, anyway-just after the Iowa caucus adn juts ahead of the New Hampshire primary, this quirky state seems poised to be a crucial Democratic battlefield for the '08 elections. | | More information |
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