War With Iraq

WASHINGTON -- President Bush came under renewed bipartisan pressure from congressional leaders yesterday to make more strenuous efforts to solve the Persian Gulf crisis diplomatically before resorting to war."I have sort of a gut feeling the American people are not yet committed to war, and they want to make certain that President Bush has done everything, pursued every avenue for peace, before the firing starts," Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole said on NBC's "Meet the Press."Mr. Dole, R-Kan.

George J. Tenet's At the Center of the Storm is a self-serving and misleading account of his role in helping the Bush administration make its private and public case to go to war against Iraq. As the director of central intelligence, Mr. Tenet did not share the convictions of such hard-liners in the administration as Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, but he - along with senior CIA leaders - facilitated the path to war by providing intelligence to the White House and Congress that presented a false picture of Iraq's intentions and capabilities.

WEST POINT, N.Y. - President Bush told nearly 1,000 graduates at the U.S. Military Academy yesterday that the Cold War doctrines of containment and deterrence were irrelevant in a world where the only strategy for defeating America's new enemies was to strike them first. "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," the president said, speaking at the commencement of the 204th graduating class of West Point, the nation's oldest military academy. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge."

The vice president's chief of staff lied, made a false statement and obstructed an investigation. Those acts may have prevented prosecutors from getting to the bottom of the Valerie Plame Wilson case. They strongly suggest that he was attempting to divert the investigation - because there was something to hide, and someone to protect. One of the jurors who convicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. yesterday spoke on the courthouse steps after the verdict had been delivered. He described how the jury had been frustrated at having to stand in judgment of Mr. Libby when it was clear that others had also been involved in revealing Ms. Wilson's identity as a CIA agent, in what was plainly an attempt to lash back at her husband, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The issue was Iraq.

WASHINGTON - Tens of thousands of protesters, some with strollers and children, some with dreadlocks and bongo drums, rallied and marched yesterday against a U.S. war with Iraq in what officials called the largest anti-war demonstration since the Vietnam era. Hundreds of anti-war and anti-Bush signs peppered the crowd as people cheered speakers, including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, and joined a slow-moving march that began at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial...

Stock prices soared yesterday, as war with Iraq appeared imminent rather than uncertain and investors gained confidence that a U.S.-led invasion would be short and successful. The Dow Jones industrial average, an index of 30 blue-chip stocks, jumped 282.21 points, or 3.59 percent, to 8,141.92 Every member of the 30-stock average rose except Altria Group Inc. In the past four trading days, the Dow has gained 617.86 points, enabling it to close above 8,000 yesterday for the first time since Feb. 21. Yesterday's gain was the indicator's biggest since Oct. 15, when it soared 378.28 to 8,255.

What if we go to war with Iraq and lose and the Soviet Union goes to war with Lithuania and loses?

PHILADELPHIA -- Religious scholars addressing the Persian Gulf crisis at a seminar here yesterday were divided on many Middle East questions but united in their opposition to a war with Iraq.The only laughter during the four hours of discussions, which one of the participants described as "full of foreboding and tragedy," came at the expense of President Bush.John Raines, a professor of religion at Temple University, quoted the president as saying to other leaders of the world, "Come and join us in the Crusade of the Desert Shield."

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - President Bush said yesterday that NATO states should decide individually whether to join the United States in any military action against Iraq, but said it was possible that Saddam Hussein's regime could be disarmed peacefully. In a speech to students yesterday, Bush said the threats of terrorists - including those who could be aided by Iraq - were as dangerous as those faced by "your grandfathers and grandmothers." "Great evil is stirring in the world," Bush said.

WASHINGTON - A Virginia congressman was engulfed in criticism yesterday for recent comments suggesting that Jewish leaders were behind the drive toward war with Iraq and had the power to stop it if they wished. Rep. James P. Moran sparked the furor with his remarks at an antiwar forum March 3 in his Northern Virginia district. "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this," said Moran. "The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should."

VIENNA, Austria -- Iranian political and religious leaders sounded defiant yesterday in the face of the accord between major world powers demanding that Iran suspend its nuclear program in exchange for a package of incentives but stopped short of saying they would reject the deal. Much of what was said repeated past statements, and none of it addressed specifically the incentives and penalties agreed to here Thursday by permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said international pressure "would not bear fruit" and obliquely accused Israel of being behind the effort to censure Iran, in comments to the official Iranian news agency.

WASHINGTON --Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that it would not have been "that hard" for President Bush to have obtained warrants for eavesdropping on domestic telephone and Internet activity but that he saw "nothing wrong" with the decision not to do so. "My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants," Powell said. "And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that."

THE PLAME-Wilson-Novak-Rove-Libby-Cooper-Miller-Fitzgerald drama is more than a case of the usual hardball style of White House politics straying a little too far over the line. It's different, because it gets at the very heart of the way in which the U.S. went to war in 2003. The Bush administration decided to justify a war with Iraq on the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction. Plenty of people thought it likely that Iraq possessed nerve agents and biological arms, because the circumstantial evidence was fairly persuasive.

WASHINGTON - His former secretary of state, most of his closest aides and a parade of other senior officials have testified to a grand jury. His political strategist has emerged as a central figure in the case, as has his vice president's chief of staff. His spokesman has taken a pounding for making statements about the matter that now appear not to be accurate. For all that, it is still not clear what the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity will mean for President Bush.

Governor fails to cure woes of juvenile justice I couldn't agree more with Michael Olesker's assessment of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s failures on the juvenile justice system ("Ehrlich hopes we forget his promises to kids," Sept. 21). Mr. Ehrlich campaigned on an issue that he apparently cares little about. Since his administration took the helm of our state, Mr. Ehrlich has done nothing to improve the juvenile justice system. The Department of Juvenile Services has been slow to move on egregious problems such as the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School and the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center.

If Fahrenheit 9/11 offered Michael Moore the chance to vent his spleen about the Bush administration and its handling of the war with Iraq, Robert Greenwald's Uncovered: The War on Iraq offers the experts their turn. The result is a highly critical and impossible-to-dismiss examination of the administration's rush to war that is sure to move both sides of the political spectrum to apoplexy. Greenwald, whose Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism opened at the Senator last week, clearly doesn't buy into the president's oft-stated contention that ousting Saddam Hussein was a simple matter of us doing it to him before he did it to us. Rather, the film insists, the war was based on unfounded assertions and faulty intelligence (charges that have been much in the news in recent months)

WASHINGTON - I can't make up my mind about whether the United States should go to war with Iraq, and I don't feel dumb, guilty or inadequate about it. It's not part of my job to make decisions about U.S. foreign policy. But am I a bad citizen because I'm ambivalent about this historic choice facing our nation's leaders? It's not as though I've evaded the topic. I've read hundreds of articles in numerous papers, listened to many commentators on radio and TV and spoken extensively with friends, colleagues and family members.

President Bush confronted growing doubts yesterday about his decision to take the nation to war with Iraq, acknowledging that the weapons of mass destruction he said posed a grave danger to the United States have not been found, but insisting that Saddam Hussein could one day have threatened Americans if not forced from power. In a nearly hourlong interview aired yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press, Bush was asked whether he had ordered the invasion of Iraq and risked American lives under false pretenses.

WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein has been captured, and the prospects for greater peace and stability in Iraq look at least marginally better. With this genocidal monster now in custody, will those who opposed the war with Iraq now have a change of heart? Some may, but at least one most assuredly won't. Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is a "one-trick pony" who has predicated much of his campaign strategy on vilifying President Bush for going to war with Iraq. His success has come because of his strong opposition to the war. Even with Mr. Hussein now behind bars awaiting trial, Dr. Dean cannot afford to abandon a strategy that has propelled him to the top of the Democratic polls.