The measure would create terrorist surveillance subcommittees under both the Senate and House intelligence committees to oversee the surveillance program.

The panel, meanwhile, rejected a full investigation of the program, which was acknowledged by Bush in December after it surfaced in media reports.

Bush authorized the National Security Agency shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to eavesdrop on Americans suspected of communicating with al Qaeda members overseas -- without obtaining a warrant from a special court under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

According to DeWine, the bill would allow surveillance of international calls that involve a suspected terrorist but would require a program review every 45 days.

At that time, the administration would have three options: apply for a warrant, if there is enough information to justify one; stop the surveillance; or explain to Congress why it is in the national security interest to continue the surveillance and why officials cannot apply to the FISA court for a warrant.

"What this does is it provides for a case-by-case examination and oversight by the United States Congress ... of what the executive branch is doing," DeWine said.

Critics of the surveillance program, including some leading Republicans, have said it runs afoul of FISA. Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, has said that the 1978 law "flatly prohibits any kind of electronic monitoring without a court order."

The administration has defended the program, contending that it is legal under the president's inherent authority and under a 2001 congressional authorization of the use of force against al Qaeda.

A subcommittee of seven committee members will be fully briefed on the surveillance program while the legislation is pursued, the senators said.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, objected to that plan Tuesday, arguing the entire committee should be involved.

"Our committee has to be fully informed if we are to guide the legislative debate on this program that is fast approaching," he said, adding that Democratic members of the panel had been excluded from negotiations with the White House.

Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who chairs the panel, said his goal has been "to reach accommodation, not confrontation."

Specter: White House 'on notice'

In a closed meeting Tuesday, the committee voted to reject a request by Rockefeller for what he called "a careful and fact-based review of the National Security Agency's surveillance eavesdropping activities inside the United States."

"The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House," he told reporters.

"This was an unprecedented bow to political pressure," Rockefeller said. "You can't legislate properly if we don't know what's going on."

Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday threatened to limit funding for the NSA program if the Bush administration does not provide more details on the matter.

"We're having quite a time in getting responses to questions as to what has happened with the electronic surveillance program," he said.

"I want to put the administration on notice and this committee on notice that I may be looking for an amendment to limit funding as to the electronic surveillance program -- which is the power of the purse -- if we can't get an answer in any other way," he said.

In response to the bill proposed Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, "We've said for several weeks we're committed to working with Congress on legislation to further codify into law the president's authority to intercept conversations between suspected al Qaeda members who are calling into or out of the U.S.

"And we believe that the legislation is generally sound, and we are eager to work with Congress.

"However, we have said before, and we remain committed to this principle, that we will not do anything that undermines the program's capabilities, or the president's authority. Generally, we are OK with this approach," Perino said.

Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the committee voted to create a new seven-member subcommittee that would scrutinize the eavesdropping under a plan approved by the White House.

The Bush administration was criticized by rights groups, Democrats and some Republicans for the surveillance program. It started after the September 11 attacks and allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant on Americans' international phone and e-mail communications while in pursuit of al Qaeda.

In addition, the White House has begun discussions with several Republican lawmakers on legislative language that could further regulate the program.

"I believe the president is prepared to sign a bill once the Congress does work its will," Roberts told reporters after a closed-door committee meeting.

"When it comes to national security, I prefer accommodation over confrontation whenever possible. We should fight the enemy. We should not fight each other."

Four Senate Republicans, all critics of the program, proposed a plan that would authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant for 45 days but require the White House to justify every decision to continue beyond that timeframe.

The legislative proposal, titled the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006, also would force the eavesdropping program to cease after five years unless renewed by Congress.

Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio, one of the four Republicans pressing for legislation, said the proposal was backed by Roberts and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and accepted "in broad concept" by the White House.

DEMOCRATIC COMPLAINTS

But the Republican-controlled intelligence panel voted down a Democratic proposal for a complete investigation into the

surveillance by the National Security Agency by the full 15-member intelligence committee. Democrats complained that they had been shut out of discussions with the White House that led to the agreement.

"The committee, to put it bluntly, is basically under the control of the White House through its chairman," said a visibly frustrated Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee.

Republicans rejected suggestions that the intelligence panel was retreating from its oversight duties on the NSA program. "The scope of the subcommittee's purview will be broad, wide, deep," said Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

The committee's decision came five days after the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence agreed on a new plan to pursue oversight of the NSA program through a subcommittee that has not yet been identified.

The White House has not agreed to the new House oversight plan. Up to now, White House officials have allowed full details of the NSA program to be shared only with eight members of Congress, including the Republican chairmen and ranking Democrats of the intelligence panels in both House and Senate.

The House agreement appeared to undermine efforts by Democrats and some Republicans to seek an inquiry by the full House intelligence committee.

The White House contends that Bush has the constitutional authority to order the eavesdropping as commander-in-chief, as well as congressional approval in the form of an authorization for use of military force against al Qaeda that lawmakers enacted on September 14, 2001.

Democrats and some Republicans contend the authorization was not meant to cover warrantless domestic spying and say the NSA program may violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to obtain warrants for all electronic eavesdropping inside the United States.

That issue helped fuel a two-month Senate filibuster that forced the White House to accept some new restrictions on information gathered in terrorism probes.

Republicans on Tuesday declared the legislative war won, saying the renewal of the act's 16 provisions along with new curbs on government investigatory power will help law enforcement prevent terrorists from striking.

"Intense congressional and public scrutiny has not produced a single substantiated claim that the Patriot Act has been misused to violate Americans' civil liberties," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.

And now he has another problem on his hands – his own Republicans. They're opposing him on, of all things, his signature issue–national security. It's a fight they're having on everything from the Dubai ports deal to the oversight of National Security Agency wiretaps. As Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told me, "I think the administration has looked at the legitimate power of the executive during a time of war and taken it to extremes."

It's interesting that Republicans would face off on national security, which is, of course, their strong suit. It makes Democrats gleeful because, according to one pollster I spoke with, any division within the GOP ranks on that issue is good for Democrats.

But there is one small problem for Democrats: They disagree about what to do about Iraq, which is the nation's greatest national security issue. So will they be able to take advantage of the GOP disarray on national security? The jury is still out–and so far, at least, the polls show that Americans trust the GOP more to manage their security and trust the Democrats more to manage their checkbooks.

In just days, Bush toppled long-honored safeguards for the allocation and control of fissile material, and created a "nuclear bizarre" to be exclusively regulated by the United States. His trip tells the world that global nuclear-policy will now be decided by the Pentagon big-wigs and hard-right fanatics who dominate the Bush White House.

No wonder the media was so awestruck by Bush's performance and celebrated his recklessness as "groundbreaking" or "a landmark deal". The press seems to relish the idea that America can single-handedly nudge the planet ever-closer to nuclear destruction.

Bush's deal with PM Singh allows him to provide technology and fuel to a nation that has stubbornly refused to comply with internationally-accepted standards for the supervision of nuclear material. The agreement flaunts the NPT, the IAEA, the United Nations, and the US Congress, which is the body that is supposed to ratify such pacts before they are enacted.

Instead, Bush has elected himself "the god of all things nuclear"; capriciously revamping 20 years of nuclear policy with a sweep of the hand. Why would any country sign the NPT when America claims to be the sole arbiter of its application?

Former Iranian President Muhammad Khatami has already noted the duplicity of the Bush-system. He said, "I believe that double-standards are to blame for the crisis in our region and the world, because if a rational and fair approach were pursued, all issues of contention could be resolved easily and peacefully."

How could anyone dispute that?

Bush hands out technology to a "nuclear cheater" like India while his UN ambassador, John Bolton, is busy threatening Iran with "tangible and painful consequences" for complying with the terms of NPT.

What kind of message does that send?

Bolton's blustery speech was delivered at a meeting of the powerful Jewish lobby AIPAC, where he stated that America was "beefing up defensive measures to cope with the Iranian threat".

"Beefing up defensive measures"? Will America really go to war again when the IAEA has repeatedly said that there is "no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program"?

So, what is the yardstick the administration uses to decide who gets technology and who doesn't?

Regrettably, it looks like the only principles guiding American foreign policy are cynicism and self-aggrandizement. India gets the royal treatment because it's seen as a strategic ally that will help contain China. It also promises to lift limits on foreign investment ensuring that more of America's high-paying, high-tech jobs will continue to flee the country. Pakistan has less to offer by way of market-potential, but is still a valued ally in the war on terror.

Iran, unfortunately, sits atop an ocean of oil which is coveted by American petroleum giants and guarantees that it will receive a laser-guided dose of shock-and-awe, followed by "liberation" of its vital resources.

If these aren't the Machiavellian principles that underscore Bush's foreign policy, then what are?

The administration's shortsighted approach to proliferation is dragging the world towards disaster. No one will accept this blinkered standard for regulating nukes.

The threadbare treaties that once slowed the production of nuclear weaponry have all been tossed overboard. Now development is to be decided according to the whims of Washington mandarins and their corporate colleagues.

What kind of fool would ever listen to them?

"It absolutely affects us locally," said Newfane select board member Dan DeWalt, who drafted the impeachment article. "It's our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, who are dying" in the war in Iraq.

At least four other Vermont towns, spurred by publicity about Newfane's resolution, endorsed similar resolutions during Tuesday's meetings: Brookfield, Dummerston, Marlboro and Putney.

In Newfane, the impeachment item came at the end of a roughly four-hour meeting that was devoted mostly to the local affairs of the town of 1,600 located in southeastern Vermont. Among the other items discussed was whether the town should fix some of its 100-year-old sidewalks.

The impeachment discussion took up more than half an hour, reflecting the intense interest in the topic and something of a division over whether the town meeting was the appropriate place to debate it.

"As a teacher I can't say to my kids that what happens on the national level doesn't affect us at the local level," Ann Landenberger told the Newfane meeting. "Would that we could all be in a cocoon, but that is not the case."

Greg Record, a local justice of the peace, criticized the amount of time and attention such advisory votes get.

"We spend more time on these things than on a million dollar budget item," said Record, who said the town is made up of people from the "far left."

Lenore Salzbrun defended Bush, saying she had close friends who died in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"I am so grateful that our president didn't just put his head in the sand ... and did go out and fight," she said.

"How many attacks have we had on the U.S. since September 11?" asked another resident, Carlton Brown. "Maybe some of the terrorists around the world are sitting up and taking notice that we're not going to be patsies."

The Bush vote is not the first time Newfane has used its town meeting forum to take a state or national stand. Last year, for example, the town went on record against the Iraq war.

Sanders issued a statement after the Newfane vote saying that although the Bush administration "has been a disaster for our country, and a number of actions that he has taken may very well not have been legal," given the reality that the Republicans control the House and the Senate, "it would be impractical to talk about impeachment."

Jim Barnett, chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, said Sanders should reject the resolution: "We should not be impeaching presidents just because we disagree with them."

After the recent confirmation of Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, it was only a matter of time before a state like South Dakota passed a law that banned all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. South Dakota's governor, Mike Rounds, signed the ban on Monday. While the ban is a turning point for abortion politics at home, it mirrors what's already been happening overseas. Abortion rights advocates say it's time for Americans to start connecting the dots.

"Because of the constitutional guarantees embedded in the Roe v. Wade decision, Republican administrations have been unable to completely defund abortion groups in the United States, so they've taken it out on poor women in developing countries, but those policies are coming home," says Steven Sinding, an American who serves as director-general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), a London-based organization that supports the poor, underserved and marginalized in 180 countries.

The United States has funded international family planning programs since the 1960s, but in 1984, the Reagan Administration passed the Global Gag Rule, which denies U.S. Agency for International Development funding to overseas organizations that perform legal abortions with exceptions for rape and incest or to save a woman's life; provide counseling and referrals for abortion; engage in abortion-related public policy debates; or lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their own country.

"Americans have the right to say where their funding is going, but we find it completely unfair to be asking others not to talk about certain topics which are not liked by the American establishment," says Tewodros Melesse, director of the IPPF's Africa Region Office. "We believe the American Constitution and virtue of the American democracy exists on individual choices, on freedom and on democracy and to deny that right to others sends the wrong message."

The Clinton administration ended the Global Gag Rule in 1993 by executive order; President Bush reinstated it on his first day in office in January 2001, halting an estimated $15 million per year in funding to the IPPF after it refused to sign the rule. A number of reproductive rights groups, including Ipas, which has offices in 11 countries, have also lost funding to other organizations.

As a result, community-based health services have been curtailed and contraceptive supplies have drastically decreased. The United States stopped giving Zambia donated condoms after it refused to sign the Gag Rule, and several family planning clinics across Africa and Asia have been forced to close.

"We used to have 17 clinics; now we have nine," says Dr. Joachim Osur with IPPF member Family Health Options Kenya, a nongovernmental organization that advocates for reproductive rights in Kenya, where abortion is illegal, with an exception to save a woman's life. "We've been closing them one after another; we were hoping that someone would come to our rescue, but it never happened. After the clinics closed, fetuses were thrown in the streets. We feel the rate of abortion has gone up because women have no access to family planning."

The British Department for International Development recently announced plans to defy the U.S. government by contributing $5.3 million to the IPPF's new Global Safe Abortion Program. "That by itself does not make up for the $15 million a year we estimate we are losing as a consequence of the Global Gag Rule, but it's greatly appreciated," says Sindig. "They've [the British government] asked other European governments to join them in supporting the safe abortion fund. I anticipate it could compensate for the loss of the American money"

The program aims to provide the services and information needed to reduce the growing number of unsafe abortions worldwide. This year alone, 19 million women will face serious injury, illness or death as a consequence of abortions performed by unskilled people under unsanitary conditions. Nearly 70,000 will die. Virtually all of those women live in the poorest countries in the world, and almost every death and injury could be prevented, according to the IPPF's report, "Death and Denial: Unsafe Abortion and Poverty."

A 42-year-old Ghanaian market trader named Esinam recently told the BBC why she decided to have an illegal abortion at a back-street clinic in Accra, after becoming pregnant for the fourth time despite using birth control. "My husband and I can barely look after our three children on the little income we have. How could we afford to feed another mouth?" She was four months pregnant when she had the back-street abortion.

"Even though I realized it wasn't a proper clinic, I was still determined to go through with the termination. I had no choice," she said. After the abortion, she bled profusely, lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital. When she regained consciousness, she was told her womb was rotten and had to be removed. "I cannot have anymore children, and if I had lost any more blood, I would have died. I am very grateful to the doctor and his team at Accra's Ridge Hospital who saved my life."

Esinam was lucky she survived. In Africa, four million unsafe abortions occur each year, and more than 40 percent of the world's deaths occur on the continent due to unsafe abortions.

"We can't tell you how many of those injuries and deaths are a direct result of the Global Gag Rule. There's just no way we can accurately calculate that," says Sinding. "But we have no doubt that the curtailment of services has led directly to suffering by women both because they had pregnancies they didn't want or because they acquired sexually transmitted infections."

Sinding says the Swedish, Japanese and British governments are the world's largest international family planning donors; the German, Denmark, Norwegian and Dutch governments also make substantial contributions.

Funding from the British government prevented three clinics from closing in Ghana, where abortion is permitted to protect a woman's health and in cases of rape, incest and fetal impairment; funding from the Dutch government prevented the closure of 10 clinics in Ethiopia, where abortion laws were relaxed in 2004 to allow abortions in cases of rape and incest. The law also makes an exemption for young women who suffer from psychological stress. The anti-choice movement overseas, which is heavily funded by American organizations, unsuccessfully challenged those exceptions.

"While the current [American] administration and anti-choice groups says abortion kills life, the very precise intervention to prevent abortion is leading millions of women to abortion and killing so many babies and so many mothers," says Melesse. "Over 50 percent of the maternal deaths in Africa are linked to complications due to abortion, which are preventable."

Almost 12 years ago, at an international conference on population in Cairo, 179 countries made a commitment to greatly improve reproductive rights and decrease maternal deaths around the globe by 2015. The Bush administration's policies are making it close to impossible to meet that goal.

"If American women understood what the actions of our government means to the lives of women around the world, particularly poor women in poor countries, they couldn't in good conscience support this administration for any reason," says Sinding. "The fact is, what the Bush administration is doing to women in the developing world hasn't really penetrated the consciousness of the American electorate."

Maybe not. But as we fume about the passage of South Dakota's draconian abortion ban, soon to be headed toward its first legal challenge, it's a good time to remember that we're now facing in the U.S. what women around the world have suffered since the day Bush took office.

(One such moment last year -- when we tuned into Glenn Beck on the way to work and heard him call many Katrina survivors "scumbags" -- touched off a series of only-in-the-blogosphere events that led to Keith Olbermann naming Beck "the worst person in the world." Heh.)

Now this.

Quickly, a confession -- we had thought some of the recent anti-Chris Matthews hysteria from our friends on the left was overblown. We thought many of the foolish things he says were the result of needing to bloviate for an hour every day, and not so much from warped political bias -- until we heard him Friday on the local Michael Smerconish show in Philly.

Ironically, the topic was the Oscars. Smerconish and Matthews -- whose brother is a GOP candidate for lieutenant governor here in Pennsylvania -- were running down the list, and they came to "Good Night and Good Luck." A casual listener might expect broadcaster Matthews -- who has pretty much the same job, if not the same gravitas, as Edward R. Murrow some fifty years later -- to praise the flick -- but think again. Here -- with an assist from Smerconish's producer, the fabulous T.C. Scornavacchi -- is what he really said (and you can listen to the actual clip here):

You know, one-sided, to some extent liberal propaganda. Because you know there Communists – I'm sorry…there were Communists in the government…I could go through the whole list – Elizabeth Bentley, Harry Dexter White, and of course Alger Hiss – there's a whole gaggle of them.

And the biggest nonsense of this sort of revisionist history is that there wasn't a Communist threat and that McCarthy was just a drunken fool. Well, he may have been a drunk – he certainly was – and he may have been unable to shoot straight, but there were lots of targets there. He just didn't hit any.

Hello, ditch.

When did Chris Matthews start channeling Ann Coulter? Yes, there was a Cold War in 1950s, and both sides had spies, and there supporters of Communism and the Soviet Union. We also were at war with the nation of Japan from 1941 to 1945, but that didn't justify internment camps for thousands of harmless Japanese-Americans.

Joe McCarthy and his ilk were never about catching the few real Communists at the higher levels of American society. It was all about creating the climate of fear necessary for a new kind of national security state -- and making a name for Joe McCarthy in the process. A lot of innocent people were hurt in the process -- including screenwriters and filmmakers who made the type of Oscar-worthy flicks that Matthews and Smerconish were yakking freely about a half-century later.

You know what Matthews' analogy is like? It's like saying that because there are some real terrorists, that invading Iraq wasn't really so bad. Oh wait, that's pretty much what Matthews' fellow and the other pundicrats have said, isn't it? (NOTE: Updated in fairness to some critical Iraq comments he made in 2003). In fact, Matthews might as well have said this:

"And the biggest nonsense of this sort of revisionist history is that there wasn't a terrorist threat and that Bush was just an ex-drunken fool. Well, he may have been a former drunk – he certainly was – and he may have been unable to shoot straight, but there were lots of targets there. He just didn't hit any.

Oh wait, that's Cheney who can't shoot straight."

Good night...and get lost!

Criticism of right-wing programs and policies, you see, is never confronted on its own terms, but is dismissed with a wave of the ad hominem wand: it can't be right because the critics are Bad People with Bad Motives.

Recent discussions over blame-laying in the Iraq war fiasco has provided us with the latest example of the bubble (which in this case also includes a large number of liberal warhawks). It's not Bush's fault the war has gone so badly, it's his critics'.

So it has always been: Conservatives concoct a cockamamie vision of what the world ought to look like, try to force it on the rest of us -- and when it all predictably turns to shit, find a scapegoat (usually liberals).

A recent permutation of this surfaced after William F. Buckley, that conservative icon, declared the Iraq war a disaster. Responding to liberals' glee, Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom turned the blame back in their direction (via Sifu Tweety at the Poor Man).

And this is (and has been) a crucial component of the war -- one that many on the anti-war side are loathe to admit: that their constant naysaying, though it is well within their right to voice, has objectively hurt the war effort, particularly when the criticism incorporates carefully-crafted falsehoods many of the war's critics know for a fact to be objectively untrue.

I don't know if Goldstein can establish the levels of actual harm inflicted by the domestic naysaying, but I can say that a number of other "carefully crafted falsehoods" perptrated by the White House -- from claims regarding weapons of mass destruction to the Al Qaeda-Saddam link to -- were substantively harmful in that they induced the nation to go to war under false pretenses, costing so far over 2,200 soldiers' lives and thousands more innocent Iraqi civilians.

A constant drumbeat of similar falsehoods, ranging from Swift Boat smears to the bizarre distortion of a Howard Dean campaign cheer, were contrived to help Bush stay in power, and have been ceaselessly deployed to destroy any and all critics. And that was also substantively harmful. Indeed, the decision to retaliate against one of these critics by outing a CIA operative engaged in WMD anti-proliferation work almost certainly damaged our ability to contain nuclear-arms work in places like Iran.

Still, no one who raised these objections, either then or now, was credible in the eyes of guys like Goldstein because, you see, they were just Bush haters:

Most of those on the right who I've read on the subject have criticized Buckley's analysis by noting that his initial stance on the war was hardly gung ho, and his most recent conclusions seem a bit premature. But they have respected him for making the argument, knowing that his goal, from the outset, has not been to undermine efforts to democratize Iraq either out of some immense hatred for the President or out of some newfound Democratic party / progressivist fealty to foreign policy realism; in fact, it can be argued Buckley has been there all along).

Unfortunately, I don't think the same can be said for the majority of those most vocal voices on the political left.

I'm wondering if Goldstein can point to any mainstream critics of the war who actually announced their intent to undermine efforts to democratize Iraq, for instance; expressing doubt that it was possible under these circumstances isn't the same thing. How many, exactly, raised these issues by saying they did so because they hated Bush? (As for foreign-policy realism, it seems to me that real realism -- that is, a policy based in real facts and not speculation -- is what Democrats were arguing for all along.)

No, we only know that those were the critics' motives because the right told us so. That is, whenever critics on the left or center (or even the right) came up with substantive reasons for opposing the war, they were dismissed as "Bush haters." No matter, as Glenn Greenwald described in detail at Crooks and Liars, that those reasons in fact proved wholly prescient.

We saw the same kind of circular logic at work in John Hinderaker of PowerLine's recent attack on John Murtha as "nuts." When his work was fact-checked by Judd Legum at ThinkProgress, Hinderaker responded with typical churlishness:

One of the dimmest of the dimwitted left-wing web sites has tried to respond to this post. Among other things, the proprietor of this slough of ignorance has resurrected the old chestnut that Dick Cheney said in an interview that Iraq had "reconstituted nuclear weapons;" ergo, Murtha was right! This is so stupid it makes your head hurt.

Hinderaker then goes on to ostensibly demonstrate that Cheney simply misspoke in the interview. But as Legum noted subsequently:

That's right, it was a just a "slip of the tongue" made on national television four days before the war. Cheney didn't bother to correct it for six months.

Indeed, Hinderaker's response, such as it was, only covered one of Legum's multiple findings, but even that was generous, apparently -- because Bush's left-wing critics are simply to be dismissed out of hand anyway:

Sadly, I think a great many liberals are this stupid. Worse, I think that many liberals--like the proprietor of the hate site that resurrected the Cheney quote earlier today--are so far gone in hatred of President Bush that everything they say and do is said and done in bad faith. Like Jack Murtha, they have lost any ability to distinguish truth from fiction, and any desire to do so.

Moreover, Hinderarker's rant obscures the reality of what the nation was being told during the runup to the war. As John MacArthur detailed in Columbia Journalism Review, the administration began trying to convince the public that Saddam was on the verge of obtaining a nuclear device, and steadily impled that he may well have already done so, as early as September 7, 2002:

It was then that the White House propaganda drive began in earnest, with the appearance before television cameras of George Bush and Tony Blair at Camp David. Between them, the two politicians cited a "new" report from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency that allegedly stated that Iraq was "six months away" from building a nuclear weapon. "I don't know what more evidence we need," declared the president.

For public relations purposes, it hardly mattered that no such IAEA report existed, because almost no one in the media bothered to check out the story. (In the twenty-first paragraph of her story on the press conference, The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung did quote an IAEA spokesman saying, in DeYoung's words, "that the agency has issued no new report," but she didn't confront the White House with this terribly interesting fact.)

But the next day, more "evidence" suddenly appeared, on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. In a disgraceful piece of stenography, Michael Gordon and Judith Miller inflated an administration leak into something resembling imminent Armageddon: "More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today."

The key to this A-bomb program was the attempted purchase of "specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium." Mysteriously, none of those tubes had reached Iraq, but "American officials" wouldn't say why, "citing the sensitivity of the intelligence."

The nuclear-weapons claims reached a feverish level in Bush's Oct. 7, 2002, speech pitching the preparations for war, in which he warned of the threat of a "mushroom cloud" over America:

If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed.

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

To heighten the nuclear fearmongering, the White House even began promoting a forgery regarding a supposed deal Saddam had made with Niger to obtain the uranium:

Bush cited the uranium deal, along with the aluminum tubes, in his State of the Union Message, on January 28th, while crediting Britain as the source of the information: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." He commented, "Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide."

The clear implication of the claim was that Iraq had in fact finally obtained the means to build a nuke, and probably had done so. Indeed, while the administration danced around the question, it consistently implied that Saddam obtaining a nuke was a fait accompli. Cheney's remark was made within this context, and went uncorrected until after the invasion. Pretending that this was anything other than a "carefully crafted falsehood" is simply disingenuous.

And when Joseph Wilson, with a long record as a nonpartisan diplomat who had served both Republican and Democratic administrations with honor and skill, stepped forward to point out that the claim of a Niger uranium deal was a hoax, the administration chose to maintain its bubble by attacking him personally. He wasn't someone with credibility making a substantive charge: he was a Bush hater who had been pushed into the role as a bit of nepotism by his CIA-operative wife. Oh, oops! Did we just blow her cover?

So much for national security. Yet to listen to Bush defenders like Goldstein and Hinderaker, it was people like Wilson who were really responsible for the administration's failures in Iraq.

So it has always been with this crowd.

Paul O'Neill? Oh, he's just trying to sell a book. Nevermind that his description of Bush as incurious and insular, not to mention incompetent, played out before the nation during the Katrina disaster.

Richard Clarke? Just an embittered loser with an agenda (and a book to sell too!). Nevermind that his concern that the Iraq invasion would be a disastrous diversion from the serious pursuit of a real "war on terrorism" is proving all the more accurate every day.

Brent Scowcroft? Please. He just lives in a pre-9/11 world still.

Bruce Bartlett? Just another disgruntled ex-employee.

Nevermind that all these "Bush haters" are people who have long histories of distinguished service under Republican adminstrations, people who have real credibility on the subjects they're addressing. And all people dismissed with yet another wave of the ad hominem wand.

Perhaps, when considering whether Bush's critics "objectively hurt the war effort," it's useful to run a simple test of logic. Namely, tell us which has hurt us more:

-- An administration that ignored serious and well-founded concerns about the legitimacy of the invasion and the planning for postwar reconstruction, as well as an exit strategy, and proceeded to commit our troops to what has proven an inextricable disaster, worsened by its own outrageous incompetence.

-- The critics who raised all those concerns in the first place.

Logic, however, is incapable of puncturing an ideological bubble like this, because its structure resists it: Even good logic can be ignored because anyone proferring it is by definition a Bush hater, a Bad Person with Bad Motives.

The reality, of course, is that the motives of the critic do not delegitimize his criticism. Moreover, it's clear that the motives of many of his critics originate not with "hatred" of Bush but at well-founded opposition to his policies.

Conservatives, in order to maintain the bubble, have even begun constructing an agenda predicated on the mythology that there is no legitimacy to liberal or centrist criticism of Bush because it is constituted solely of "unhinged" Bush hatred -- even if the actual evidence for this charge is scant. So, of course, they drum up outlier incidents like the Colorado high-school teacher who ranted a lot of anti-Bush nonsense before his classroom, as though it represented the mainstream of opposition to the Bush agenda.

Perhaps even more ominously, the "Bush hater" dismissals are coming with a lot of expressions of elimination talk, suggesting that the people who are now being blamed for the dismal failure in Iraq need to "dealt with." This isn't relegated just to the fringes and radio ranters, but is even coming from leading elected Republicans.

Consider, for instance, what Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham recently told Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during the latter's Senate testimony regarding the NSA surveillance program:

During the time of war, the administration has the inherent power, in my opinion, to surveil the enemy and to map the battlefield electronically - not just physical, but to electronically map what the enemy is up to by seizing information and putting that puzzle together. And the administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue fifth column movements. And let me tell folks who are watching what a fifth column movement is. It is a movement known to every war where American citizens will sympathize with the enemy and collaborate with the enemy. And it's happened in every war.

It would not be much of a step, judging from what we are now reading from the Bush defenders, to conclude that Bush's left-wing critics comprise just such a "Fifth Column." After all, the underlying logic of the meme is that criticism of Bush has been motivated purely by a desire to harm Bush which ignores the consequent harm to the nation. If they're harming us, well, what's the harm of a little surveillance? Or, for that matter, a few mass roundups?

The conservative bubble is a problem not just because it produces a pathological brand of politics. It also dehumanizes the people living inside it, because everyone outside of it becomes, if not the enemy, then at least expendable.

But like all such bubbles, it is also doomed to founder on the sharp rocks of reality. The question is whether the rest of us will be spared the shock of the explosion.

If you have been convicted of a felony, then it says something bad about you.

And if you have been convicted of a felony, then people generally don't want anything to do with you.

So, our advice -- don't get convicted of a felony.

But let's say we had a system where you could commit a felony, and not be convicted of a felony.

Let's say you rob a bank, and get caught robbing the bank.

And the prosecutor says to you -- okay, we can do this two ways.

You can plead guilty to the crime. And be sentenced to prison. And you would have been convicted of a felony.

And that felony will follow you the rest of your life.

Or you can just agree to go to prison, and agree to pay a fine -- and we won't convict you of the felony.

So, when you get out of prison, there won't be that black mark on your record.

And when you are asked throughout your life -- have you ever been convicted of a felony? -- you can tell the truth and say -- no.

The prosecutor gets everything the prosecutor could get with a conviction -- restitution, prison, a fine.

Except for the conviction.

Prosecutors would never accept such a system for human being criminals.

Because prosecutors believe they represent the public.

And in cases of serious crimes, they must defend the public's right to get justice.

And justice demands not only punishment but deterrence.

And deterrence demands of us that we remember for our entire lives that rules exist for a reason.

Society says, if you commit a serious crime, the conviction will follow you your whole life.

Those are the rules for human beings who commit serious crimes.

For corporate criminals, the rules have changed, in just the past couple of years.

The change is this -- a major U.S. corporation that commits a felony no longer has to plead guilty to a felony.

Instead, federal prosecutors will offer -- and the corporation will accept -- a deferred prosecution or non prosecution agreement.

And it is difficult to find a prosecutor, defense attorney, academic or politician who is not supportive of this trend.

They argue this -- a prosecutor gets everything they could get from a criminal prosecution -- fines, restitution, changing in corporate structure, cooperation against the guilty individuals -- except for the conviction.

And a conviction would threaten innocent third parties -- workers and investors. See Arthur Andersen.

So, with deferred and non prosecution agreements, you get the best of both worlds -- change within the corporation, fines paid to the government, restitution to the victim -- and few if any collateral consequences against innocent third parties.

This sea change has largely gone unnoticed in the mainstream media.

It used to be that a corporation caught committing a serious crime would be convicted of committing a serious crime.

No longer.

Under the new system, outside of a few antitrust and environmental crimes, it is highly unlikely that a major corporate criminal will be convicted of a crime in the United States.

Corporations too do not like to answer "yes" to the question -- have you ever been convicted of a felony?

They could be barred from government contracts, from the various markets. Consumers, investors and workers may shun them.

Had corporations introduced legislation in Congress to repeal corporate criminal liability, there would have been an uproar in the press.

But they have effectively repealed corporate criminal liability for big business -- through prosecutorial discretion. It is unclear what the effects of this effective repeal will be.

But to those who defend the trend, they must answer this question -- why the double standard?

Why not offer deferred prosecution and non prosecution deals to all major individual felons -- drug pushers, money launderers and muggers alike?

After all, you get all of the benefits of a criminal prosecution, without the collateral consequences.

Prison, fines, restitution.

It's just that, when you go to answer -- have you ever been convicted of a felony? -- then all of us -- individuals and corporations alike -- will be able to answer "no" with a clear conscience.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, . Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, . Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman