More Americans (47 percent) said they approve of how Mr. Bush has handled the conflict so far than disapprove (27 percent), but one in four said it's too early to form an opinion.

Mr. Bush's overall approval rating remains low - and in an additional diplomatic concern, most Americans (60 percent) now think he is not respected by foreign leaders.

That number is down significantly since just before the Iraq war began in 2003, when about half of Americans thought Mr. Bush was respected around the world.

Slightly more than half of Americans said they believe Mr. Bush respects foreign leaders, a number that's also down from 2003.

Most Americans do not think the United States should step up its diplomatic efforts in the latest Mideast crisis. Fifty-eight percent said solving conflicts between Israel and Mideast nations is not America's responsibility, while 33 percent said it is.



By 59 percent to 31 percent, Americans said the United Nations and other countries, rather than the United States, should take the lead in solving international crises.

Pessimism about the Mideast extends to U.S. efforts in Iraq. Just 27 percent of Americans - the lowest number to date - now believe the United States is winning the war, compared with 13 percent who say the Iraqi resistance is winning and 58 percent who call it a stalemate.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans said the war was going badly, including 27 percent who said it's going very badly.

While a majority of Americans, 58 percent, still believe success in Iraq is at least somewhat likely, 53 percent think Iraq will never become a stable democracy, up 10 points from last month.

Forty-one percent said the U.S. presence in Iraq is making the region less stable, nearly double the number in March. Twenty-five percent said the U.S. presence in Iraq was making the region more stable.

Sixty-nine percent also said the U.S. presence in Iraq is hindering U.S. diplomatic efforts elsewhere in the Mideast. Nearly three in four said the war in Iraq has worsened America's image in the world.

Blame for the current Mideast crisis was split, with about half of those polled saying Israel's response in the conflict was about right, and a similar number saying both Israel and Hezbollah were at fault.

A separate CBS News/New York Times poll on Congress and the 2006 election (.pdf) found continued low approval ratings for lawmakers and the president translating into a Democratic lead in the midterm voting this fall.

If the midterm elections for the House of Representatives were held today, 45 percent of registered voters said they would support the Democratic candidate, while 35 percent would support the Republican.

The California proposal, identified as Proposition 86 on the November ballot, would increase the tax on cigarettes to $3.47 a pack from the current 87 cents. Similar increases would apply to cigars and other tobacco products. That would send the average price of a pack of cigarettes from $4 to $6.55, says the California Department of Health Services.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opposes the tax increase.

Paul Knepprath, lobbyist for the American Lung Association of California, says the goal is worthy. "Taxing tobacco will reduce smoking. That's been proved in every state that's raised tobacco taxes," he says. "It makes it more difficult for people to smoke and purchase cigarettes."

The initiative would also raise an estimated $2 billion or more a year in new revenue. That money would go toward health causes, including direct aid to hospitals.

Some say such estimates are usually wrong. "Evidence shows the revenue increase is not as much as you'd expect because of erosion in taxable sales," Stenson says.

That's because states often fail to fully take into account money lost from tax avoidance.

Since 2000, 42 states have raised cigarette taxes, according to the Washington-based Federation of Tax Administrators. The leaders now are Rhode Island at $2.46 a pack and New Jersey at $2.40.

The more important numbers for California are from its border states. In Nevada, the tax is 80 cents a pack. In Arizona and Oregon, it is $1.18 a pack. That means many of the state's 4 million smokers would be buying cigarettes over the state line. "People are always going to seek out low-cost cigarettes," says Patrick Fleenor, chief economist at the Tax Foundation in Washington.

That can hurt California retailers, says Charles Janigian, president of the California Association of Retail Tobacconists.

Janigian says the increase would force small retailers, particularly cigar and pipe shops, out of business. Smokers could save by going across the state line. On the Internet they could buy a 10-pack carton for $34.70 less than what they'd pay in California.

"I call it the doomsday scenario," he says.

"It would drive more and more business to the Internet and to mail-order companies outside the state of California who are not required to collect and pay tax," Janigian says.

There is another risk when one state's prices are much higher than others'.

A 2004 report by the agency then known as the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said tax increases on cigarettes open up a lucrative black market to nasty groups looking for ways to fund their activities.

"As cigarette taxes increase, so do the incentives for criminal organizations, including terrorist organizations, to smuggle cigarettes into and throughout the United States," the GAO report said.

Steve Remige, president of the union that represents Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and investigators, says a big tax increase would allow cigarette smuggling to become a new profit source for violent gangs. That is why his organization opposes the tax increase.

"This is going to make tobacco products in general an avenue for crime," he says. "It will be another burden on law enforcement."

Robin Stotter, who is opening a restaurant downtown, said he would support homeless people by pledging money for food and shelter, but supported the ordinance.

"The homeless issue is not going to be solved today," he said. "It's a safety issue, and the public deserves a safe place to be."

Two of the city's five commissioners voted against the ordinance including Robert Stuart, the head of a homeless shelter.

Stuart said the city was moving to "criminalize goodhearted people."

A subcommittee of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee held the hearing to ask if there was anything the federal government could do to address the problems raised by three Institute of Medicine reports issued in June that found severe problems in emergency rooms and other emergency medical services.

The reports found, for instance, that emergency medical services got only 4 percent of Department of Homeland Security first responder funding in 2002 and 2003.

The Institute committee also found that between 1993 and 2003 the number of emergency department visits grew by 26 percent, while the total number of emergency departments declined by 425 -- with 198,000 fewer beds.

"The message here is that the safety net is fraying," said Dr. Steven Krug, a Chicago emergency room doctor who testified on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

So what happens if pandemic influenza comes, or someone sets off a biological weapon, or giant earthquakes or hurricanes hit?

"We are neither prepared nor capable of responding," Washington Republican Rep. Dave Reichert, chairman of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Preparedness, Science and Technology, told the hearing.

Hospitals that were flooded out and even destroyed when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast last August made headlines, but little has been done to help address the problem of what to do with the sick and frail in an emergency, Blum said.

"I can tell you without qualification that the emergency care system in this country in general ... is worse today than it was last year and if we don't change things by next year it will be worse than today," Blum told the hearing.

For instance, Blum said, he and colleagues were unable to go and pitch in for two weeks or so to relieve overworked emergency room doctors in New Orleans.

"I wanted to go help for a while. but the politics and bureaucracy of it was simply more than could be done," he said.

Emergency rooms are overfilled even on a quiet day because of the way doctors are paid, Blum noted.

"One of the side effects of managed care is that primary care practitioners are very, very tightly scheduled," he said. So outside of office hours, what should be a routine office visit is sent to the emergency room, he said.

Both for-profit and not-for-profit hospitals run on a budget, Blum said. "They often make the decision that they can't afford to lose the money that they are losing in the emergency department," he said.

Williams' family has filed a $150 million civil suit for damages. Last Friday, the sheriff's attorney in the Williams case asked the court to halt the civil proceedings until the criminal investigation is complete in order to avoid self-incrimination.

The complaint documents numerous previous incidents of abuse in the Harrison County jail booking room where Williams died, including beatings, hooding, use of a restraint chair - called "the torture chair" or "the devil's chair" by inmates - and a technique similar to water-boarding where a sheet was wrapped tightly around the head of a man in the restraint chair and water was poured into the breathing hole.

In April, US Attorney Dunn Lampton told reporters, "We're moving at a good speed." Lampton told Harrison County Sheriff George Payne not to discuss the investigation with anyone and Payne has not returned RAW STORY's calls.

US Prisons the Training Ground for Military Detentions?

A recent Amnesty International report covered by RAW STORY revealed that nearly 200 African-American men in a Chicago prison have alleged torture between 1971 and 1991. The report concluded there are troubling similarities between detainee abuse allegations in US military prisons around the world and US prisons at home.

Williams' treatment, like that of many of those in the Chicago cases, is similar to reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib, the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other US detention facilities in the Middle East. The nurse's notes in Williams' case states that Williams was placed in a restraint chair, hooded, sprayed with pepper spray, and had blood coming from both ears. He was told by the restraining officer that the officer would kill him, after which the man choked him until he couldn't breathe.

Based on witness statements, the attorney for the Williams' estate commissioned an artist to create an illustration which shows Williams being carried hooded and hog-tied.

The caption reads, "This picture is a depiction made of the Harrison County Adult Detention Facility's booking room on the night of February 4, 2006, based upon witness statements, in which Jessie Lee Williams, Jr. was hog-tied, shackled (hands to feet), sack on his head, blood dripping from the beating, and carried like a human suitcase - soon to be slammed/dropped on his face - two times."

Such treatment closely resembles methods depicted in photographs of detainees at Abu Ghraib.

James Johnson, an Australian with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters Degree in Psychology, who has been an advisor to the Australian government and has been researching the US penal system for eleven years for a book, says, "I believe that the principal method of torture applied in the prisons is psychological. However outright brutality is used quite regularly."

Johnson provides examples from letters inmates have written him: solitary confinement, rapes, beatings, use of restraint chairs, hooding, shackling to the floor, sleep deprivation, extreme air-conditioning, reduction of food allowance, refusal of medical treatment, electric cattle prods, TASERs and water-boarding. Williams suffered serious burns on his back from being shot with TASERs.

"Everything you have read about them using in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo is used in American prisons," Johnson avers. " That is where most of the torturers gain their experience."

The purpose, he says, is "to destroy the mind." Johnson notes that all these methods were used "before the official policy of the American administration became known to the public."

Human rights violations under international law

International human rights lawyer, Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler, who practices in the Middle East and teaches law at Tel Aviv University, told RAW STORY that if Williams was killed as the consequence of being beaten by law enforcement authorities, as alleged, "his right to life and right to humane treatment (prohibition of torture) would have been violated under both the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man."

"A case could be brought to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention or the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights," Doebbler adds.

After a recent Supreme Court ruling in which the court held that the military tribunals used on enemy combatants at Guantanamo violated the Geneva Conventions and laws of war, the Pentagon pledged to abide by Common Article 3 of the Conventions, which establishes minimum standards of humane treatment for detainees.

Joseph Margulies, the lead counsel in another Guantanamo case in which the Court decided last year that detainees have the right to due process, noted in a Washington Post editorial, "we know what the administration means by humane treatment."

"These are the same people who said it was humane to hold a prisoner in solitary confinement with no human contact except interrogators and guards until . . . he became delusional," Margulies wrote. "Then it was humane to subject the same prisoner to an eight-week series of interrogations that lasted 18 to 20 hours a day. Interrogators doused him with water if he fell asleep and forced him to stand at attention for hours at a time if he did not cooperate."

Even when a detainee's heartbeat had slowed to 35 beats per minute and he was placed in a doctor's care, loud music was played in his cell to prevent him from sleeping.

Margulies says, "If this interrogation was not cruel, humiliating and degrading, if it did not offend personal dignity, then the words have no meaning."