Pace opened Tuesday's regular Pentagon briefing with a defense of the planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, where U.S. troops have been battling a persistent insurgency since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government.

In the past month, three former generals have accused Rumsfeld of bungling the occupation of Iraq by refusing to commit enough troops to secure the country after taking Baghdad.

In a Time magazine essay published this week, retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold said the war plan was "fundamentally flawed," and many senior officers "acted timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard."

"When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military's effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction," wrote Newbold, who was the operations chief for the Joint Chiefs of Staff before retiring.

Another retired Marine general, former U.S. Central Command chief Anthony Zinni, has called for Rumsfeld to resign over his management of the war. And in a New York Times op-ed piece in March, former Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton called Rumsfeld "incompetent."

Asked if the criticism was affecting his ability to do his job, Rumsfeld said, "No."

Newbold left the service in October 2002 -- in part, he said, because of his objections to the upcoming invasion.

"Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I've been silent long enough," he wrote in Time. "I am driven to action now by the missteps and misjudgments of the White House and the Pentagon, and by my many painful visits to our military hospitals."

Rumsfeld said Newbold "never raised an issue publicly or privately when he was here that I know of." Pace also said he was unaware of any objections Newbold raised.

Pace said plans for the invasion were significantly overhauled between the time Newbold retired and the day American troops crossed the Iraqi frontier in March 2003.

He said members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed on to the war plan presented by Gen. Tommy Franks, then-commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, before it was presented to Rumsfeld and President Bush, and top officers had "every opportunity to speak our minds."

"And if we do not, shame on us, because the opportunity is there. It is elicited from us, and we're expected to," Pace said.

About 150,000 U.S. troops went into Iraq to topple Hussein, and about 130,000 remain there to provide security for Iraq's nascent government. But Zinni said estimates of the force needed for any invasion and occupation of Iraq during his 1997-2000 tenure as Central Command chief called for between 380,000 and 500,000 troops.

"The idea that you could control that country in the aftermath with those few troops was flawed," he told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Newbold criticized the Pentagon's civilian leadership for launching the invasion, which he said was done "with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results." And he criticized fellow officers for not standing up to those leaders, saying their silence meant "that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war."

But Pace said "lots of concerns" were raised by both military and civilian leaders -- and Newbold was not one of them.

Newbold, the military's top operations officer before the Iraq war, said he regretted not speaking up more forcefully against what he now regards as an unnecessary war and a diversion from "the real threat" posed by al Qaeda.

In a Time magazine opinion piece on Sunday, Newbold encouraged officers still in the military to voice any doubts they have about the war.

"My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results," Newbold wrote.

Newbold said he went public with the private encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership.

Pace, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, questioned whether Newbold knew all the facts about the invasion plans, noting he retired in September 2002, six months before the invasion took place.

The plan was first reported Saturday in The Seattle Times.

Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, denounced the proposed settlement yesterday, saying it would benefit Enron and its creditors at the expense of electricity customers in the Pacific Northwest who saw their electric bills soar by more than half in 2000 and 2001.

"We expect federal regulators to stand up and do their job of protecting the public with just and reasonable rates," she said in an interview. Instead, she said, the regulators are helping Enron keep "unjust profits" earned "from fraudulent contracts."

She said that the proposed settlement would only encourage more fraud in energy markets because "if they don't stop this, then people continue to do it."

Bryan Lee, a commission spokesman, said he was mystified by the criticism by Senator Cantwell and others. "Nothing is being sealed," he said.

Commission staff documents said "thousands of e-mails, documents, etc." that are in the public record "will forever remain in the public record."

But Senator Cantwell said that only a minority of the audiotapes and documents were in the public record and the rest would be removed from any possible access by parties who thought that Enron cheated them.

"They are suppressing the facts," she said, adding that whether the verb was suppress, seal or withdraw, "it all amounts to the same thing."

Eric Christensen, deputy general counsel for the Snohomish County Public Utility District, which is trying to recover its share of more than $1 billion in profits that Enron made during the peak of the market manipulations, also criticized the commission.

The energy commission "is acting at Enron's behest and completely abdicating its responsibility to the public," he said.

In response, Mr. Lee, the commission spokesman, said the ability of the public utility district and others to get access to the tapes and documents would not be diminished by the proposed settlement. He noted that the materials were held by the Justice Department.

Commission records show that a relatively small number of Pacific Northwest electric customers bore most of the cost of inflated electric prices, in part because California had put a cap on retail electric rates. Enron earned $694 million in profits from retail customers in the Pacific Northwest in 2000 and 2001, and $347 million in California, Mr. Christensen said.

Under the proposed settlement, Enron would pay a fraction of a penny on each dollar of profit it earned in the Northwest.

Harlan Loeb, a spokesman for what he calls "the new team" that is running Enron, described the proposed settlement as "the best deal for creditors," which include the public utility district.

On the field with him were three U.S. servicemen, two of whom had been wounded in Iraq and a third who was injured in Afghanistan.

Cheney was the eighth vice president to throw out a first pitch for Washington's baseball team on opening day at home. He was the first since 1968 when Hubert Humphrey tossed the first pitch when the team was the Washington Senators.

Before the game, Cheney visited the locker rooms of both the Nationals and the visiting New York Mets. Nationals manager Frank Robinson, who was taking the field for his 51st pro baseball season, escorted Cheney and introduced him to the players.

A recent speech by U.S. Republican congressman and chairman of the House of international relations committee, Henry Hyde was the focal point of analysis by Martin Jacques in The Guardian newspaper.

"Our power has the grave liability of rendering our theories about the world immune from failure. But by becoming deaf to easily discerned warning signs, we may ignore long-term costs that result from our actions and dismiss reverses that should lead to a re-examination of our goals and means," Hyde said.

In his poignant analysis -- decoding Hyde's deliberately implicit thoughts -- Jacques argued, "The Bush administration stands guilty of an extraordinary act of imperial overreach which has left the U.S. more internationally isolated than ever before, seriously stretched financially, and guilty of neglect in east Asia and elsewhere."

Ironically, the invasion of Iraq with its "thousands" of "tactical" mistakes -- as recently admitted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- was meant to solidify and ensure the U.S.'s post Cold-War global dominance. According to Jacques, as inferred from Hyde's notable speech, "It may well prove to be a harbinger of its decline."

It can also be argued that the U.S. adventurism in Iraq has provided the coveted opportunity to other countries to further their national and regional interests without the constant fear of U.S. reprisals.

In a recent interview with Radio Havana, MIT professor Noam Chomsky -- known for his sharp critique of U.S. foreign policies, particularity in Indochina, Central and Latin America -- delineated a new global political reality that is being forged as the U.S. stubbornly insists on fighting a lost battle in Iraq.

"What's happening is something completely new in the history of the hemisphere. Since the Spanish conquest, the countries of Latin America have been pretty much separated from one another and oriented toward the imperial power. For the first time, they are beginning to integrate and in quite a few different ways."

That integration is evident, according to Chomsky, not only by examining the unbridled rise of the Left in these countries and the almost immediate alliances -- economic cooperation, for example -- that these populace governments have achieved. There is a simultaneous rise of the political relevance of the indigenous Indian population in Bolivia, and the opportunities it represents to the Indian population of Ecuador and Peru.

Moreover, there is a noteworthy South-South integration that is already breaking regional boundaries and significantly undermining the overpowering grip of the IMF, which has played the infamous role of the unfair middleman between the rich and hapless poor.

China and India, on the other hand, continue to achieve astounding economic growth with China's economic might and relevance to soon surpass that of the United States. In fact, there is an intense diplomatic clash underway between the U.S. and China, since the latter has dared to violate the understanding of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which gave the U.S. alone the right to manage its Latin American domains.

For the first time since then, says a BBC news analysis, a foreign country has challenged American influence in that region, and successfully so. Indeed, China is upgrading its economic relations with Brazil -- both increasingly formidable economic powers -- in ways that will eventually help Brazil break away from a domineering U.S. hold.

These are all part of the "warning signs" to which Hyde was refereeing in his speech. While there are indications that Washington is finally waking up to this grim reality, which it has helped create, there are no signs whatsoever that a fundamental change of course in U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East is taking place: the U.S. destructive war in Iraq rages on; the self-inflicting damage of unconditionally backing Israel in its endless colonial ambitions perpetuates; and the same detrimental policy line used with Iraq is employed, almost identically with Iran. U.S. policy planners seem as ever insistent on following the same destructive course that has compromised their nation's global standing like never before.

Instead of healing the many woes, which it helped to mold, the Bush administration is desperately trying to recover some of its Southeast Asia losses by signing a nuclear treaty with India, an action that reeks with hypocrisy and further miscalculations. Moreover, the administration has recently lifted the ban on sales of lethal arms to Indonesia in recognition of its "unique strategic role in Southeast Asia," despite outcries of major international human rights groups to maintain the ban.

Despite President Bush's recent "historic" trip to India and other top U.S. officials' hasty attempts to reassert U.S. global dominance, there should be no illusions that the United States' chief foreign policy debacle starts and ends with the Middle East, particularity its unwarranted, yet "special" relationship with Israel. While the latter has served the role of the client state since its establishment on ethnically cleansed Palestinian territories, this relationship was significantly altered in recent years, with the pro-Israeli lobby taking center stage, not simply by influencing U.S. foreign policies toward Israel, but eventually by directing that policy altogether in the region.

The rise of the neoconservatives (also known as the Likudists for their open support of, and direct involvement with Israel's right wing policies) helped create the false impression that the U.S. and Israeli policies are one and the same, including their mutual interests in maintaining Israel's military "edge" over its neighbors, which eventually led to the invasion of Iraq.

While the neocons are washing their hands from any responsibility in the deadly Middle East impasse, the U.S. administration's arrogance is stopping it from immediately withdrawing its troops from Iraq and seriously reassessing its relationship with Israel.

The world is changing, yet the U.S. government refuses to abandon its old ways: militaristic, self-defeating and overbearing. Indeed, the U.S. must remold, not only its policies in the Middle East, but also its hegemonic policies throughout the world. For once, the U.S. administration needs to tap into its sense of reason, and discern the "warning signs," that should lead to "the re-examination of [its] goals and means." A first step is to bring the troops home, and with them the entire doctrine that unrestrained violence and perpetual wars can further the cause of an already dishonored superpower.

Veteran Arab American journalist Ramzy Baroud teaches mass communication at Australia's Curtin University of Technology, Malaysia Campus.

His most recent book is entitled, "Writings on the Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London.) He is also the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle online newspaper.

"What were they trying to say?" asks the Central Catholic High School graduate. "That Iraqi lives are less important than American lives?" Molly and Sarah decided to leave the green stakes strewn around the lawn. Another student, evidently disheartened by the vandalism and figuring that she could make an even more powerful symbol of the commonality of Americans and Iraqis in futile killing and death, uprooted the white stakes as well.

The women also arranged for a forum and a panel of students and professors to air issues. Molly reports, "The silence on campus about the war these last couple of years had been deafening. At the forum we asked why that is so and how in the future we can carry on dialogue about something so big as this war."

Molly's own opinion is that the silence had to do with the absence of a draft, the inability of the media to report the whole tragedy of chaos and death, and the fact that "we live in bubbles and behind gates, absorbed in our own little worlds."

Whatever the reason, at Holy Cross College dialogue is finally beginning. Molly and Sarah hope that the discussion, which has until now swirled about the display and how to foster civic and civil debate, will turn to questions about the war itself. It is just possible that their courageous deed, magnified ironically by an act of cowardice, might help spark national debate about the question Molly and Sarah hung over the display and posted on their email: "How many more?"