History > 2007 > USA > Politics > White House

George W. Bush (IV)

President Bush met Pope Benedict XVI today

at the Vatican for the first time.

Photograph: Jim Watson

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Bush Meets Pope Benedict for the First Time

NYT

9 June 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html

White House Backs Gonzales

on Testimony

July 27, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, July 27 — The White House offered a vigorous defense of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales today, insisting that he had not given misleading testimony to Congress, but that national security factors prevented further clarification for now.

“He has testified truthfully and tried to be very accurate,” the chief White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said of Mr. Gonzales’s testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Snow said repeatedly that Mr. Gonzales had not been contradicted by Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, as has been widely reported, on whether there were serious disagreements within the Bush administration on its secret surveillance program.

Mr. Snow said, in effect, that Mr. Gonzales had been constrained in what he could say because there was a danger he would divulge classified material. “I understand it’s difficult to parse, because what you have involved here are matters of classification,” Mr. Snow said. “Sometimes it’s going to lead people to talk very carefully, and there’s going to be plenty of room for interpretation or conclusion.”

The latest controversy over Mr. Gonzales’s credibility arose on Thursday afternoon, when Mr. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee that an internal dispute that nearly caused the resignations of several top Justice Department officials, including himself, in 2004 was over the propriety of the surveillance program, run by the National Security Agency.

Mr. Mueller’s account appeared to conflict starkly with Mr. Gonzales’s version of events, in which he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was no disagreement about the program.

In insisting that there was no real contradiction between the officials’ accounts, Mr. Snow said Mr. Gonzales was just not able to explain further “because to do so would compromise American security.”

Moreover, Mr. Snow asserted, the attorney general’s harshest critics knew that Mr. Gonzales was at a disadvantage, and sought to exploit the situation.

“You’ve got an interesting situation when members of Congress, knowing that somebody is constrained by matters of classification, they can ask very broad questions,” Mr. Snow said. “And those are questions that they know the person sitting on the other side cannot answer thoroughly in an open session.”

The White House offensive began this morning, when Dana Perino, a presidential spokeswoman, accused Congressional Democrats of embarking “on a crusade against him, to try to destroy the attorney general.” She, too, argued that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Mueller did not, in fact, contradict each other, but she said that the classified nature of the program prevented her from explaining further.

Nor is there unanimity among Mr. Gonzales’s critics on how to proceed. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been as critical of Mr. Gonzales as have his Democratic colleagues.

But Mr. Specter said on Thursday that he did not agree that a special outside counsel should be appointed to investigate Mr. Gonzales, as four Democrats on the Judiciary Committee proposed. Mr. Specter accused one of the four senators, Charles E. Schumer of New York, of being a publicity hound and noted that the committee chairman, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, had not signed the letter asking for an outside counsel.

White House Backs Gonzales on Testimony, NYT, 27.7.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/washington/26cnd-gonzales.html

Editorial

Defying the Imperial Presidency

July 26, 2007
The New York Times

The House Judiciary Committee did its duty yesterday, voting to cite Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and Joshua Bolten, the White House chief of staff, for contempt. The Bush administration has been acting lawlessly in refusing to hand over information that Congress needs to carry out its responsibility to oversee the executive branch and investigate its actions when needed. If the White House continues its obstruction, Congress should use all of the contempt powers at its disposal.

The committee really had no choice but to hold Ms. Miers in contempt. When she was subpoenaed to testify about the administration’s possibly illegal purge of nine United States attorneys, she simply refused to show up, citing executive privilege. Invoking privilege in response to particular questions might have been warranted — the courts could have decided that later. But simply flouting a Congressional subpoena is not an option.

Mr. Bolten has refused to provide Congress with documents it requested in the attorney purge investigation, also citing privilege, and he has been equally unforthcoming about why he thinks it applies. Together, Ms. Miers’s and Mr. Bolten’s response to Congress has simply been: “Go away” — a position that finds no support in the Constitution.

If these privilege claims make it to court, it is likely that Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten will lose. The Supreme Court has held that a president’s interest in keeping communications private must be balanced against an investigator’s need for them. In this case, the president’s privacy interest is minimal, since the White House has said he was not involved in purging the United States attorneys. Congress’s need for the information, though, is substantial. It has already turned up an array of acts by administration officials that may have been criminal.

The administration’s contemptuous attitude toward the constitutional role of Congress was on display again this week when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He repeatedly refused to answer legitimate questions, and he contradicted himself so frequently that it is hard to believe he was even trying to tell the truth.

Congress must not capitulate in the White House’s attempt to rob it of its constitutional powers. Now that the committee has acted, the whole House must vote to hold Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten in contempt. The administration has indicated that it is unlikely to allow the United States attorney for the District of Columbia to bring Congress’s contempt charges before a grand jury. That would be a regrettable stance. But if the administration sticks to it, Congress can and should proceed against Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten on its own, using its inherent contempt powers.

It is not too late for President Bush to spare the country the trauma, and himself the disgrace, of this particular constitutional showdown. There is a simple way out. He should direct Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten to provide Congress with the information to which it is entitled.

Defying the Imperial Presidency, NYT, 26.7.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/opinion/26thu1.html

Bush Panel Seeks Upgrade

in Military Care

July 26, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, July 25 — A presidential panel on military and veterans health care released a report Wednesday concluding that the system was insufficient for the demands of two modern wars and called for improvements, including far-reaching changes in the way the government determines the disability status and benefits of injured soldiers and veterans.

The bipartisan commission made 35 recommendations that included expanded and improved treatment of traumatic brain injuries and the type of post-traumatic stress disorders that overwhelmed public mental health facilities during the Vietnam era but remain stigmatized to this day.

President Bush told reporters at the White House late Wednesday that he had directed Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary, and Jim Nicholson, secretary of veterans affairs, “to take them seriously, and to implement them, so that we can say with certainty that any soldier who has been hurt will get the best possible care and treatment that this government can offer.”

The commission said fully carrying out its recommendations would cost $500 million a year for the time being, and $1 billion annually years from now as the current crop of fresh veterans and active military members ages and new personnel is in place.

The report was spurred by a series of embarrassing news reports about the substandard treatment returning soldiers received at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which for years had been held up by politicians, including the president, as providing unparalleled care to American troops.

Mr. Bush named the nine-member President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors in March, with Bob Dole, the former Republican Senate leader, and Donna E. Shalala, the former Clinton administration health and human services secretary, as its leaders.

The commission’s report went beyond just the problems at Walter Reed. It proposed fixes for longstanding concerns about disparities in treatment and benefits at Department of Defense facilities, for active-duty military personnel and the Department of Veterans Affairs facilities, which treat the retired. It also recommended cutting the red tape that frustrates military families.

“This is a major overhaul and a simplification and a rationalization of the disability system in this country for our veterans,” Ms. Shalala told reporters Wednesday.

The report also focused on treatment, calling for more aggressive attention to potential brain trauma caused by roadside bombs.

Even as it called for change, the report avoided harsh assessment of the administration’s handling of the military and veterans health care systems. Rather, it portrayed many of the problems it was seeking to fix as resulting from advances in modern medicine that have allowed soldiers to survive injuries that would have killed them in previous wars.

“While numerous aspects of U.S. medical care are excellent, problems in coordination and continuity of care are common,” the report said. “Our overall health system is oriented to acute care, not long-term rehabilitation.”

And, it acknowledged, “Many of the concerns already are being addressed by Congress and in the two departments.”

Indeed, the panel’s recommendations came on the same day the Senate approved several related measures. The chamber approved a 3.5 percent pay raise for military personnel and the creation of programs to improve the oversight of injured service members as they move through the system, and to improve the treatment of brain injuries and stress disorders.

The most far-reaching of the commission’s recommendations involve restructuring the Defense Department’s disability and compensation system, which has provoked complaints from many military personnel. Currently, injured service members go through an elaborate process to assess whether their conditions are serious enough to prevent them from returning to duty.

If they are unfit, Defense Department doctors assign patients a rating that determines what level of benefits they receive.

After retiring, a service member can choose whether to receive benefits from Veterans Affairs or the Defense Department, evaluating which package is better — a choice that would be eliminated under the new recommendations.

When the commission met in April, Col. Allan Glass of the Army talked about the case of a sergeant with 18 years of active duty to illustrate the disparity in disability ratings.

Colonel Glass said the sergeant was found to have stomach cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes and underwent surgery at Walter Reed. The colonel said the Army’s physical evaluation board said the soldier was unfit for service but gave him a disability rating of zero percent. The Army reopened the case at the behest of the soldier’s senator and changed his rating to 4o percent. Yet when Colonel Glass spoke in April, he said the soldier had still not received a final disability rating from Veterans Affairs.

The commission report on Wednesday called for a change in the system that would leave the Defense Department responsible for determining if a service member is fit for duty, but transfer the responsibility for determining disability ratings and compensation to the V.A.

Ms. Shalala said the shift could provide savings by reducing the bureaucracy, though she said the savings had not been calculated, and were not accounted for in the plan’s overall price. And carrying out that recommendation, the report acknowledged, would require Congress to pass legislation.

The commission also recommended creating a “recovery plan” for seriously injured military personnel and assigning one coordinator for each patient and their family to help them navigate the process of recovering and returning to duty or retiring from active service.

Patients are now assigned case managers, but the commission said it found that patients “typically have several case managers, each concerned with a different component of their care.”

In addition, the report said, patients complained that some managers “did not understand” how to treat people with traumatic brain injuries, a condition that can affect soldiers injured in roadside bomb attacks.

When 35,000 apparently healthy returnees from Iraq and Afghanistan were screened, 10 to 20 percent “had apparently experienced a mild T.B.I. during deployment,” the report noted, using the military abbreviation for traumatic brain injury.

Soldiers and their families complained in the wake of the Walter Reed revelations — first disclosed in The Washington Post — about delays in receiving benefits and treatment because of delays in sharing data between the Defense Department and the V.A.

Democrats noted that the administration had not embraced previous reports and their recommendations, including the recent Iraq Study Group report and those of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But Mr. Bush has spent his presidency pledging support for the troops, and reports of problems in their care has exposed political and policy vulnerabilities that the Democrats have seized upon.

After a brief run Wednesday on the White House South Lawn with two veterans who were using prostheses, Mr. Bush said: “The spirit of that report is, any time we have somebody hurt, they deserve the best possible care, and their family needs strong support. We’ve provided that in many cases, but to the extent we haven’t, we’re going to adjust.”

(Aides said the jog, with one veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan and one who lost a leg in Iraq, had been scheduled earlier, independent of the report’s release.)

Asked if she thought Mr. Bush would follow through on his pledge, Ms. Shalala said, “Senator Dole and I are going to keep an eye on him.”

Jacqueline Palank contributed reporting.

Bush Panel Seeks Upgrade in Military Care, NYT, 26.7.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/washington/26medical.html?hp

President Links Qaeda of Iraq to Qaeda of 9/11

July 25, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and MARK MAZZETTI

CHARLESTON, S.C., July 24 — President Bush sought anew on Tuesday to draw connections between the Iraqi group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, and he sharply criticized those who contend that the groups are independent of each other.

At a time when Mr. Bush is trying to beat back calls for withdrawal from Iraq, the speech at Charleston Air Force Base reflected concern at the White House over criticism that he is focusing on the wrong terrorist threat.

Mr. Bush chose to speak in the city where Democrats held their nationally televised presidential debate on Monday, a forum at which the question was not whether to stay in Iraq but how to go about leaving.

“The facts are that Al Qaeda terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they’re fighting us in Iraq and across the world and they are plotting to kill Americans here at home again,” Mr. Bush told a contingent of military personnel here. “Those who justify withdrawing our troops from Iraq by denying the threat of Al Qaeda in Iraq and its ties to Osama bin Laden ignore the clear consequences of such a retreat.”

Kevin Sullivan, the White House communications director, said the speech was devised as a “surge of facts” meant to rebut critics who say Mr. Bush is trying to rebuild support for the war by linking the Iraq group and the one led by Mr. bin Laden.

But Democratic lawmakers accused Mr. Bush of overstating those ties to provide a basis for continuing the American presence in Iraq. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush was “trying to justify claims that have long ago been proven to be misleading.”

The Iraqi group is a homegrown Sunni Arab extremist group with some foreign operatives that has claimed a loose affiliation to Mr. bin Laden’s network, although the precise links are unclear.

In his speech, Mr. Bush did not try to debunk the fact — repeated by Mr. Reid — that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist until after the United States invasion in 2003 and has flourished since.

His comments also reflected a subtle shift from his recent flat assertion that, “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on Sept. 11.”

The overall thrust of the speech was that the administration believes that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has enough connections to Mr. bin Laden’s group to be considered the same threat, that its ultimate goal is to strike America and that to think otherwise is “like watching a man walk into a bank with a mask and a gun and saying he’s probably just there to cash a check.”

Mr. Bush referred throughout his speech to what his aides said was newly declassified intelligence in his effort to link Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the central Qaeda leadership that is believed to be operating from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. Although the aides said the intelligence was declassified, White House and intelligence officials declined to provide any detail on the reports Mr. Bush cited.

In stark terms, Mr. Bush laid out a case that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had taken its cues from the central Qaeda leadership, and that it had been led by foreigners who have sworn allegiance to Mr. bin Laden.

Mr. Bush acknowledged that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian founder of the Iraq group, at first was not part of Al Qaeda. But, he said, “our intelligence community reports he had long-standing relations with senior Al Qaeda leaders, that he had met with Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Zawahri,” referring to Ayman al-Zawahri.

Mr. Bush acknowledged differences between Mr. Zarqawi and Mr. Zawahri over strategy.

But he recounted Mr. Zarqawi’s pledge of allegiance to Mr. bin Laden in 2004 and promise to “follow his orders in jihad” and how Mr. bin Laden “instructed terrorists in Iraq to ‘listen to him and obey him.’ ”

Mr. Bush quoted from what aides said was a previously classified intelligence assessment, saying, “The Zarqawi-bin Laden merger gave Al Qaeda in Iraq quote, ‘prestige among potential recruits and financiers.’ ” He added, “The merger also gave Al Qaeda’s senior leadership ‘a foothold in Iraq to extend its geographic presence.’ ”

Officials agree that the membership of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is mostly Iraqi but insist that it is foreign-led. Mr. Bush noted that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian, had led the group since United States forces killed Mr. Zarqawi in June 2006.

He listed several other foreigners in the Qaeda in Mesopotamia leadership structure, including a Syrian who he said was the Qaeda emir in Baghdad, a Saudi he said was its spiritual adviser, an Egyptian he said had met with Mr. bin Laden, and a Tunisian who helps manage the foreign fighters in Iraq.

Mr. Bush cited information of the foreign leadership structure gleaned from the recent capture of Khalid al-Mashadani, an Iraqi terrorist leader whom American officials say linked Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Al Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan.

Last week, the top American military spokesman in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, said Mr. Mashadani funneled information from Mr. bin Laden’s network to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia about strategic direction and provided other guidance.

Yet General Bergner said at the time that he could not point to specific attacks in Iraq directed by Mr. bin Laden’s group.

Some administration officials have been more conservative in their assessments of any ability and desire that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia might have to carry out attacks here.

“When you look at how they are arraying their capabilities, those capabilities are being focused on the conflict in Iraq at this time,” Edward M. Gistaro, one of the principal authors of a recent National Intelligence Estimate on terrorist threats to the United States, said last week.

Jim Rutenberg reported from Charleston, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington. Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Baghdad.

    President Links Qaeda of Iraq to Qaeda of 9/11, NYT, 25.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/washington/25prexy.html

Bush and Iraqi: Frequent Talks, Limited Results

July 25, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and ALISSA J. RUBIN

WASHINGTON, July 24 — Once every two weeks, sometimes more often, President Bush gathers with the vice president and the national security adviser in the newly refurbished White House Situation Room and peers, electronically, into the eyes of the man to whom his legacy is so inextricably linked: Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq.

In sessions usually lasting more than an hour, Mr. Bush, a committed Christian of Texas by way of privileged schooling in New England, and Mr. Maliki, an Iraqi Shiite by way of political exile in Iran and Syria, talk about leadership and democracy, troop deployments and their own domestic challenges.

Sometimes, said an official who has sat in on the meetings, they talk about their faith in God.

“They talk about the challenges they face being leaders,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss private conversations. “They, of course, also share a faith in God.”

The official declined to elaborate on the extent of their religious discussions, but said, “It is an issue that comes up between two men who are believers in difficult times, who are being challenged.”

In the sessions, Mr. Bush views Mr. Maliki’s crisp image on a wall of plasma screens. Aides say the sessions are crucial to Mr. Bush’s attempts to help Mr. Maliki through his troubled tenure. The meetings are also typical of the type of personal diplomacy Mr. Bush has practiced throughout his presidency, exemplified by the way he warmed to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — misguidedly, in the view of some policy analysts — after Mr. Putin showed him a cross he wears that his mother gave him.

So far, the sessions with Mr. Maliki appear to have pointed up the limits of the personal approach, with questions persisting about Mr. Maliki’s ability — and desire — to strike the hard deals that could ultimately bring political reconciliation to his violently fractured country.

In Mr. Maliki, Mr. Bush has a partner who is neither known for great political skills nor for showing any real desire to move against the interests of his Shiite supporters, who still harbor deep suspicions of their Sunni Arab compatriots. In the sessions, aides say, Mr. Bush has tried to play many simultaneous roles — friend, counselor and ally, but also guide, instructor and even enforcer — as the United States has tried to hold Mr. Maliki to his commitments.

In recent months, White House officials say, Mr. Bush has spoken more frequently with Mr. Maliki than just about any other foreign leader besides those of Britain and Germany.

Administration officials say the sessions have given Mr. Bush a forum to persuade Mr. Maliki to make more of a public show of being a leader to all Iraqis, not just his fellow Shiites. It was in the teleconferences, aides said, that Mr. Bush prevailed upon Mr. Maliki to implore his colleagues in Parliament to reduce their planned two-month vacation this summer, though their grudging concession to take just one month has not done much to quiet criticism.

The White House also believes that Mr. Maliki has made good on pledges to commit three new Iraqi brigades to Baghdad, the official said, and has given American and Iraqi forces more leeway to go after Shiite militias, though the official acknowledged that Shiite security officials sometimes block their pursuit.

John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, cautioned against relying too much on a single Iraqi leader. “It’s not a question of faith in one person at this point,” he said. “The issue for the Iraqis is whether they’re going to find a way to live together.”

Despite Mr. Bush’s perception that he knows Mr. Maliki, he has sometimes appeared to misread the Iraqi leader and the political world in which he operates. Mr. Maliki may agree with Mr. Bush on the steps that need to be taken in Iraq to achieve stability, such as bringing more ex-Baathists back into government. But if he is perceived as going too far in accommodating former Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein, he could splinter his already divided Shiite base of support.

Shiites put their faith in Mr. Maliki because of his own history as a staunch anti-Baathist. Mr. Maliki comes from a political party, Dawa, that for decades operated clandestinely to avoid torture or death at the hands of Mr. Hussein.

“With that kind of background it’s hard to move to the broader political stage and be open in your dealings and be inclusive,” said an American official in Baghdad who agreed to speak about Mr. Maliki only on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Maliki fled Iraq in 1979 after being sentenced to death for his political affiliation. When the Hussein government fell, Mr. Maliki became a leader on the commission to purge Baath Party members from government — efforts now deemed to have gone too far. And he opposed early efforts to bring some of them back.

Critics of Mr. Maliki in the Bush administration say that the Iraqi leader’s history shows he is more capable, and less hapless, than he may want to show. Detractors can point to his Shiite allegiance as evidence that he is simply telling Mr. Bush what he wants to hear just to keep American troops in place for the time being.

Last fall Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, wrote in an internal White House memo, “We returned from Iraq convinced we need to determine if Prime Minister Maliki is both willing and able to rise above the sectarian agendas being promoted by others.”

Aides say that Mr. Bush has used the videoconferences to discuss those doubts, and steps that can be taken to allay them, with Mr. Maliki.

“There was a lot of that discussion about the importance for Maliki to show not only to the communities in Iraq but to all of his neighbors that while it was a Shiite-led government, it was a government for all Iraqis,” a senior administration official familiar with the meetings said.

President Bush’s first point, the official said, was, “ ‘You need to do this to be a leader for all of Iraq,’ but secondly, ‘As you do this, it will also send a message to the region which will help you with your Sunni neighbors but, quite frankly, it will help me here at home.’ ”

Mr. Bush has said that he has seen signs of improvement. Describing his regular contact with Mr. Maliki , Mr. Bush said in April, “I’ve watched a man begun to grow in office,” adding, “I look to see whether or not he has courage to make the difficult decisions necessary to achieve peace. I’m looking to see whether or not he has got the capacity to reach out and help unify this country.”

Jim Rutenberg reported from Washington, and Alissa J. Rubin from Baghdad.

    Bush and Iraqi: Frequent Talks, Limited Results, NYT, 25.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/washington/25maliki.html?hp

Bush Alters Rules for CIA Interrogations

July 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:27 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush breathed new life into the CIA's terror interrogation program Friday in an executive order that would allow harsh questioning of suspects, limited in public only by a vaguely worded ban on cruel and inhuman treatment.

The order bars some practices such as sexual abuse, part of an effort to quell international criticism of some of the CIA's most sensitive and debated work. It does not say what practices would be allowed.

The executive order is the White House's first public effort to reach into the CIA's five-year-old terror detention program, which has been in limbo since a Supreme Court decision last year called its legal foundation into question.

Officials would not provide any details on specific interrogation techniques that the CIA may use under the new order. In the past, its methods are believed to have included sleep deprivation and disorientation, exposing prisoners to uncomfortable cold or heat for long periods, stress positions and -- most controversially -- the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The Bush administration has portrayed the interrogation operation as one of its most successful tools in the war on terror, while opponents have said the agency's techniques have left a black mark on the United States' reputation around the world.

Bush's order requires that CIA detainees ''receive the basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care.''

A senior intelligence official would not comment directly when asked if waterboarding would be allowed under the new order and under related -- but classified -- legal documents drafted by the Justice Department.

However, the official said, ''It would be wrong to assume the program of the past transfers to the future.''

A second senior administration official acknowledged sleep is not among the basic necessities outlined in the order.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the order more freely.

Skeptical human rights groups did not embrace Bush's effort.

Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, said the broad outlines in the public order don't matter. The key is in the still-classified guidance distributed to CIA officers.

As a result, the executive order requires the public to trust the president to provide adequate protection to detainees. ''Given the experience of the last few years, they have to be naive if they think that is going to reassure too many people,'' he said.

The order specifically refers to captured al-Qaida suspects who may have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group's senior leaders. White House press secretary Tony Snow said the CIA's program has saved lives and must continue on a sound legal footing.

''The president has insisted on clear legal standards so that CIA officers involved in this essential work are not placed in jeopardy for doing their job -- and keeping America safe from attacks,'' he said.

The five-page order reiterated many protections already granted under U.S. and international law. It said that any conditions of confinement and interrogation cannot include:

-- Torture or other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation or cruel or inhuman treatment.

-- Willful or outrageous acts of personal abuse done to humiliate or degrade someone in a way so serious that any reasonable person would ''deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency.'' That includes sexually indecent acts.

-- Acts intended to denigrate the religion of an individual.

The order does not permit detainees to contact family members or have access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

In a decision last year aimed at the military's tribunal system, the Supreme Court required the U.S. government to apply Geneva Convention protections to the conflict with al-Qaida, shaking the legal footing of the CIA's program.

Last fall, Congress instructed the White House to draft an executive order as part of the Military Commissions Act, which outlined the rules for trying terrorism suspects. The bill barred torture, rape and other war crimes that clearly would have violated the Geneva Conventions, but allowed Bush to determine -- through executive order -- whether less harsh interrogation methods can be used.

The administration and the CIA have maintained that the agency's program has been lawful all along.

In a message to CIA employees on Friday, Director Michael Hayden tried to stress the importance and narrow scope of the program. He noted that fewer than half of the less than 100 detainees have experienced the agency's ''enhanced interrogation measures.''

''Simply put, the information developed by our program has been irreplaceable,'' he said. ''If the CIA, with all its expertise in counterterrorism, had not stepped forward to hold and interrogate people like (senior al-Qaida operatives) Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the American people would be right to ask why.''

For decades, the United States had two paths for questioning suspects: the U.S. justice system and the military's Army Field Manual.

However, after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration decided more needed to be done. With Zubaydah's capture in 2002, the CIA program was quietly created.

Since then, 97 terror suspects are believed to have been held by the agency at locations around the world, often referred to as ''black sites.''

The program sparked international controversy as details slowly emerged, with human rights groups saying the agency's work was a violation of international law, including the Third Geneva Convention's Common Article 3 protections, which set a baseline standard for the treatment of prisoners of war.

In September, Bush announced the U.S. had transferred the last 14 high-value CIA detainees to the military's detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they would stand trial. The CIA has held one detainee since then -- an Iraqi who the U.S. considered one of al-Qaida's most senior operatives. He was also eventually transferred to Guantanamo.

Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.

    Bush Alters Rules for CIA Interrogations, NYT, 21.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Terrorism.html

Editorial

Terrorism and the Law: In Washington, a Need to Right Wrongs

July 15, 2007
The New York Times
 

Congress and President Bush are engaged in a profound debate over what the founding fathers intended when they divided the powers to declare and conduct war between two co-equal branches of government. But on one thing, the Constitution is clear: Congress makes the rules on prisoners.

At least that is what it says in Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 11 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to “make rules concerning captures on land and water.” And it is good that Congress seems finally ready to get back on the job. This week, the Senate will consider a bill that would restore to the prisoners of Guantánamo Bay the right to challenge their detention in court.

The Senate and then the House must pass the bill with veto-proof majorities. But that is only a start. The White House and its Republican allies have managed to delay consideration of bills that would finally shut the prison at Guantánamo Bay and begin undoing the damage wrought by the Military Commissions Act of 2006. That national disgrace gave legal cover to secret prisons, kangaroo courts and the indefinite detention of prisoners without charges in a camp outside the United States.

Shutting Guantánamo Bay will not be easy — and it will not be enough. Of about 375 inmates, the administration says only about 80 can be charged under the Military Commissions Act. Along with Guantánamo the entire law needs to be scrapped. Prisoners against whom there is actual evidence of crimes should be tried either in military or federal courts. Mounting an effective prosecution may be hard, since these prisoners were held for years without charges and some were tortured. But it is up to the administration’s lawyers — who helped Mr. Bush create the problem by allowing indefinite detention and torture to begin with — to deal with it.

Human rights groups say there are about 30 inmates who should be released but have legitimate fear of persecution or torture if sent home. The administration reportedly has already sent back some vulnerable prisoners, after obtaining what it must know are worthless assurances of their safety. Congress should require notice of such transfers, real guarantees of protection for released prisoners, and a review of the deal by outside judicial authority.

That leaves around 265 prisoners who have been held for years in violation of American and international law because Mr. Bush decided they were illegal enemy combatants — even though most were captured while fighting the invasion of Afghanistan. Under pressure from the courts, the administration created Combatant Status Review Tribunals to rubber-stamp that designation. These tribunals must be disbanded and their rulings reviewed by courts. Inmates who are not security risks should be released, and the others held under normal articles of war.

President Bush, of course, wants Congress to simply endorse his arrogation of power. The Times reported recently that the White House is seeking support for legislation that would permit the long-term detention of foreigners on American soil without charges or appeal, just on Mr. Bush’s say-so. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said “the biggest challenge is finding a statutory basis for holding prisoners who should never be released and who may or may not be able to be put on trial.”

Challenge? The very idea is anathema to American democracy. Congress did harm enough by tolerating Mr. Bush’s lawless detainee policies, and then by passing the Military Commissions Act. Giving the president a dictator’s power to select people for detention without charges on American soil would be an utter betrayal of their oath to support and defend the Constitution, and of the founders’ vision of America.

    Terrorism and the Law: In Washington, a Need to Right Wrongs, NYT, 15.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/opinion/15sun1.html

Parts of Iraq Report Are Grim Where Bush Was Upbeat

July 15, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, July 13 — The mixed progress report on Iraq that the White House submitted to Congress this week included several grim assessments of the Iraqi government that contrasted with the more upbeat public statements of President Bush, his top aides and public White House briefing materials in the past few weeks.

In several recent cases, the White House discussed progress toward benchmarks that the review found unsatisfactory.

Two weeks ago, when a reporter asked Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, for “any signs they are making progress in any way,” he said, “We do know that they are obviously working toward oil law and distribution laws,” and added, “but it’s a parliamentary process.” The Americans and the Iraqis consider the proposed Iraqi law to distribute evenly oil revenues throughout the country to be a crucial salve for internal division.

When the reporter followed up by saying, “That doesn’t sound like any progress,” Mr. Snow responded, “It may not, but on the other hand, it could.”

A few weeks earlier, when a reporter traveling with Mr. Bush in Europe asked him if he had seen any progress toward national reconciliation in Iraq, he said, “Yes, look, they’re close to getting an oil deal done.”

But in addressing progress toward the oil law, the report concluded, “The current status is unsatisfactory, but it is too early to tell whether the government of Iraq will enact and implement legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources to all Iraqis.”

The report said, “The effect of the limited progress toward this benchmark has been to reduce the perceived confidence in, and effectiveness of, the Iraqi government.”

That apparent contradiction highlights the difficulties the White House is facing in balancing the president’s desire to rally a pessimistic public behind the war effort with his political need to demonstrate that he is following a realistic approach, after years of optimistic predictions from the administration and its allies that did not bear out.

In interviews on Friday, White House officials said it also reflected the difference between progress, of which they said there were signs, and the achievement of goals, for which the results were more mixed.

In all, the report, which was mandated by Congress as a preliminary analysis of the success of Mr. Bush’s latest Iraq strategy, gave unsatisfactory marks to eight of the 18 benchmarks identified as fair standards upon which to assess progress. The report gave eight satisfactory marks and said it was too early to determine progress for two benchmarks. Many of the satisfactory grades were on military and security matters. Many of the unsatisfactory ones were given to measures meant to foster political reconciliation, including a proposed “de-Baathification” law to set conditions for some Saddam Hussein-era officials to return to government posts.

In a speech in Washington in early May, Mr. Bush said: “Leaders have taken initial steps toward an agreement on de-Baathification policy. That’s an important piece of reconciliation that we think ought to go forward.”

On May 23, Mr. Bush struck a more demanding tone, saying: “The Iraqi government has a lot of work to do. They must meet its responsibility to the Iraqi people and achieve benchmarks it has set, including adoption of a national oil law, preparations for provincial elections, progress on a new de-Baathification policy.”

But for the past several months, he and other administration officials have said that the Iraqis deserve patience, as even the United States Congress has been slow to enact new laws of national import. The report offered a less forgiving assessment: “The Government of Iraq has not made satisfactory progress toward enacting and implementing legislation on de-Baathification reform.” It also said, “Given the lack of satisfactory progress, we have not achieved the desired reconciliation effect that meaningful and broadly accepted de-Baathification reform might bring about.”

The report expressed dissatisfaction on a focal benchmark, the ability of Iraqi security forces to act efficiently without American help, saying, “The Iraqi government has made unsatisfactory progress toward increasing the number of Iraqi security forces units capable of operating independently.”

Yet in a news release given to reporters on June 28, two weeks before the report was made public, the White House said it was encouraged by improvements in the security forces, declaring, “The Iraqi security forces are growing in number, becoming more capable, and coming closer to the day when they can assume responsibility for defending their own country.”

Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, which oversaw the drafting of the report, said that the Congressional report required the White House to take a snapshot in time, and that developments in Iraq appeared different from one moment to the next.

“For example, the oil law has not been passed, so it was deemed unsatisfactory,” he said. “But over the course of the last six months, when it moved through the various legislative steps after starting from nothing, those were signs of progress.”

    Parts of Iraq Report Are Grim Where Bush Was Upbeat, NYT, 15.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/washington/15prexy.html

Hadley: Concerns About Terrorist Threat

July 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House expressed concern Sunday about recent indications of a heightened terrorist threat and said it points to a greater need to promote the benefits of democracy.

''It's a source of concern. And we're responding to it,'' said Stephen Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser. ''It's a good reminder that the struggle against terrorism is going to be with us for a long time.''

''We need to also, at the same time, engage in the battle of ideas, the president talking about the vision of democracy versus a vision of despair,'' Hadley added. ''And we need to get the country in a position where it has the tools it needs to deal with the terrorist threat.''

A new U.S. intelligence assessment being released to Congress this week is expected to say that al-Qaida is stepping up its efforts to sneak terrorist operatives into the United States and has acquired most of the capabilities it needs to strike here.

The National Intelligence Estimate is expected to point in particular to al-Qaida's growing ability to use its base along the Pakistan-Afghan border to launch and inspire attacks.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last week said he had a ''gut feeling'' that the nation faced a higher risk of attack this summer. Without offering specifics, he has pointed to several factors: al-Qaida's increased freedom to train in South Asia; a flurry of public statements from the network's leadership; a history of summertime attacks; and a broader range of attacks in North Africa and Europe and homegrown terrorism increasing in Europe.

A new al-Qaida videotape posted Sunday on a militant Web site featured a short, undated clip of a weary-looking Osama bin Laden praising martyrdom. The bin Laden clip, which lasted less than a minute, was part of a 40-minute video featuring purported al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan paying tribute to fellow militants who have been killed in the country.

Hadley said Sunday he was troubled by suicide bombings over the weekend in Pakistan as well as reports that militants in the Afghan border region were pulling out of a peace pact with Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

''We have seen in the northwest territories in Pakistan, Taliban pooling, planning and training,'' Hadley said. ''It has not worked the way he wanted. It has not worked the way we wanted.''

''And one of things he is now doing is moving more troops in. We are supporting that effort in order to get control of the situation,'' he said.

Hadley appeared on ''This Week'' on ABC.

    Hadley: Concerns About Terrorist Threat, NYT, 15.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Terror-Threat.html

White House Holds Firm on Iraq Strategy

July 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:15 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House is rejecting as premature a plan by two senior Republican senators to restrict the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq

President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said Sunday the administration has a ''very orderly process'' set out for reviewing whether its Iraq strategy is working and that should be allowed to play out.

Asked in a broadcast interview whether Bush could live with the plan offered by Sens. John Warner of Virginia and Richard Lugar of Indiana, Hadley said, ''No.''

Warner and Lugar proposed legislation Friday that would give Bush until mid-October to submit a plan to limit the military mission in Iraq to protecting borders, fighting terrorists, protecting U.S. assets and training Iraqi forces.

Hadley said Bush is sticking to his plan to take stock of progress in Iraq in September and decide on a course of action from there, without conditions.

''They've done a useful service in indicating the kinds of things that we should be thinking about,'' Hadley said of the senators. ''But the time to begin that process is September.

''And the opening shot really ought to be to hear from the commanders on the ground who can make an assessment of where we are in our current strategy.''

The Senate's Democratic leadership also is cool to the Warner-Lugar proposal, but for different reasons. Democrats favor tougher steps to restrict Bush's options and get the troops out, but need more Republicans to peel away from Bush before they can prevail.

Lugar and Warner said their proposal asks that Bush starting thinking now about different options and seek to boost diplomacy in the coming months. They cited an over-stretched military and growing terrorist threats around the world.

But that doesn't mean an abandonment of a U.S. presence in Iraq either, they said.

''This nation of ours has got to remain in that area,'' Warner said, pointing to the United States' ''vital security interests'' involving Middle East oil and relations with Israel.

''I'm confident when the reports come to the president in September, he will come forward -- we ask for it in October -- with his revision in strategy to comport with the situation on the ground,'' he said. ''The president will have to make some changes, and I'm confident the president will do so.''

Hadley appeared on ABC's ''This Week'' and ''Fox News Sunday,'' while Warner spoke on ABC.

    White House Holds Firm on Iraq Strategy, NYT, 15.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Bush Deflects Criticism on Iraq War

July 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:29 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush took his critics to task Saturday for using the poor marks the Iraqi government received on a progress report this week as reason to argue that the war is lost.'

Bush acknowledged the Iraqis received ''unsatisfactory'' marks on eight benchmarks, including failure to prepare for local elections or to pass a law to share oil revenues among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. But the president said ''satisfactory'' grades the Iraqis received in eight other areas -- like providing three Iraqi brigades for the military offensive under way and providing $10 billion of their money for reconstruction -- were cause for optimism.

''Our strategy is built on the premise that progress on security will pave the way for political progress,'' Bush said in his weekly radio address. ''This report shows that conditions can change, progress can be made, and the fight in Iraq can be won.''

He said the last of more than 20,000 additional troops he ordered to Iraq just recently arrived, and U.S. troops deserve more time to carry out the offensive.

''Changing the conditions in Iraq is difficult, and it can be done,'' he said. ''The best way to start bringing these good men and women home is to make sure the surge succeeds.''

In the Democratic response to Bush's radio address, Brandon Friedman, a former infantry officer in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, said it's past time for a transition to diplomatic efforts in Iraq that Democrats have long demanded.

''The fact is, the Iraq war has kept us from devoting assets we need to fight terrorists worldwide -- as evidenced by the fact that Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and al-Qaida has been able to rebuild,'' Friedman said. ''We need an effective offensive strategy that takes the fight to our real enemies abroad. And the best way to do that is to get our troops out of the middle of this civil war in Iraq.''

On Friday, two of the Senate's most respected Republicans -- John Warner of Virginia and Richard Lugar of Indiana -- cast aside Bush's pleas for patience on Iraq and proposed legislation demanding a new strategy by mid-October to restrict the mission of U.S. troops.

Their measure would require Bush to submit by Oct. 16 a plan to ''transition U.S. combat forces from policing the civil strife or sectarian violence in Iraq'' to a narrow set of missions: protecting Iraqi borders, targeting terrorists, protecting U.S. assets and training Iraqi forces. The bill suggests the plan be ready for implementation by next year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid balked at the proposal because it would not require Bush to implement the strategy. He said he prefers legislation the Senate will vote on next week that would order combat troops out of Iraq by next spring.

Bush spokesman Tony Fratto said the White House would review the Warner-Lugar measure. ''But we believe the new way forward strategy -- which became fully operational less than a month ago -- deserves the time to succeed,'' he said.

Through top aides and in private meetings and phone calls, Bush has repeatedly asked Congress to hold off demanding change until September, when the top U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, deliver a fresh assessment of progress.

The Warner-Lugar proposal came as the Pentagon conceded a decreasing number of Iraqi battalions are able to operate on their own.

At a news conference Friday, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, said the number of battle-ready Iraqi battalions able to fight independently has dropped from 10 to six in recent months despite an increase in U.S. training efforts. Pace said the readiness of the Iraqi fighting units was not an issue to be ''overly concerned'' about because the problem was partly attributable to losses in the field.

    Bush Deflects Criticism on Iraq War, NYT, 14.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html

News Analysis

Fending Off a Deadline: Bush Seeks Time on Iraq

July 13, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, July 12 — President Bush’s Iraq strategy now boils down to this: He is trying to buy time for a surge that is living on borrowed time.

At Thursday’s news conference, Mr. Bush insisted — as he has for much of the four-year-long war — that drawing down troops was his ultimate goal, one he wants to accomplish while still in office.

But Mr. Bush steadfastly rejected the advice of those who have urged him to hint at a timeline for a withdrawal, concluding that even the whiff of a deadline would embolden Republican rebels to join Democrats in setting a concrete schedule for moving troops out of the worst parts of Baghdad and other cities.

Mr. Bush appears all but certain now to succeed in getting Congress to stand down until Sept. 15, when a fuller report on political and security progress in Iraq is due. Two weeks ago, it was unclear whether he could succeed even in getting that time. But in the past few weeks, many Republicans have also said publicly and privately that after that date, their patience with the president’s strategy will expire.

Anticipating that moment, even some of Mr. Bush’s aides acknowledge that the increase in American forces that the president so ardently defended Thursday was already in its final phases. From the White House to the Pentagon to the military headquarters in Iraq, the focus of behind-the-scenes planning is already on what follows — a “post-surge” mission for the American military that Mr. Bush only alluded to on Thursday.

That narrower mission would focus the Americans on training Iraqi forces, assuring Iraq’s territorial integrity, deterring Iran from seeking to extend its influence in Iraq and preventing Iraq from becoming, as a result of a botched American occupation and all that followed, a terrorist haven. To a significant extent, it would pull American troops off the streets and out of harm’s way.

White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to upstage the president, say that it is now clear that Mr. Bush is headed in that direction — and that the Iraqis want Washington to go there, too. But the White House officials refuse to say how fast, perpetuating the fears of Mr. Bush’s critics that he is just stalling for time, trying to get every extra moment on the clock he can for the current strategy, in hopes that the Iraqi government will somehow come together.

A pivotal player in the discussion about how long to wait is Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates — with an assist from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. If Mr. Gates and Ms. Rice hold any skepticism on the troop-increase plan, they have kept it private. Instead, they have tried to frame the discussion beyond this week’s review of benchmarks in Iraq to one of long-term American national security interests there.

That mission would last for years and would require a sustained presence, but at levels far below those on the ground today. Mr. Gates has hinted at a desire to at least announce plans this year for reducing the troop commitment in Iraq, which would have a significant benefit for morale among the troops and their families.

The efforts by his national security team to get Mr. Bush to embrace a narrow mission and lower troops levels sooner rather than later appear to have been carried out quietly, in hopes that by shifting the president a few degrees at a time, they can get the White House out ahead of the Congress, and try to defuse the issue before the presidential election. Whether that strategy will succeed is far from clear.

But it was clear from Mr. Bush’s statements on Thursday that there is no appetite to preview publicly the thinking about any eventual troop reductions and a narrowing of the mission, even if those reductions are inevitable. And they are inevitable: come April, say top military officials, Mr. Bush will either have to pull one brigade a month out of Iraq, or again extend the tours of soldiers on the ground — in the middle of a presidential election.

Administration officials say that if Mr. Bush talked now about pulling back forces at the end of this year or next spring, he would only provide new ammunition to those Democrats and a growing number of Republicans who are pushing for legislation now to set timelines for the withdrawal of some of the 150,000 American troops. The argument inside the White House last week, one official said, was over “how much leg to show” of that strategy. Karl Rove, the president’s political adviser, was among those arguing for showing very little, and judging by Mr. Bush’s performance on Thursday, Mr. Rove won the day.

Apparently with that advice in mind on Thursday, Mr. Bush described the follow-up mission in Iraq only in the broadest of terms. Perhaps one reason is that a scaled-back approach would bear tremendous resemblance to the narrow mission recommended by the Iraq Study Group in December and rejected as premature by Mr. Bush in his January announcement of a significant troop increase.

Mr. Bush said again on Thursday that he wanted to give the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki the chance “to open space for Iraq political leaders to advance the difficult process of national reconciliation” among Shiites and Sunnis.

Mr. Bush’s problem is that the Iraqis have shown little to no progress in using that time and space, as the National Intelligence Council told Congress on Wednesday. Few in the White House are betting that the situation will look much different in September. And that will raise anew the hardest questions facing the administration: What has the surge in American troops bought? And at what cost?

To be sure, Mr. Bush and his commanders in Iraq would argue that an effort to begin scaling back the American mission earlier would not have worked as recently as late last year, when it was advanced by the Iraq Study Group and supported by some officers in Iraq and at the Pentagon. But in the end, White House officials say, everything will come down to whether Mr. Maliki’s government can come together on the fundamental issues that divide Sunnis and Shiites before the American clock runs out. On that, there is far more skepticism in Washington than optimism — except from Mr. Bush himself.

    Fending Off a Deadline: Bush Seeks Time on Iraq, NYT, 13.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/washington/13assess.html

Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert

July 13, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JIM RUTENBERG

BAGHDAD, July 12 — In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.

But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.

There is no question that the group is one of the most dangerous in Iraq. But Mr. Bush’s critics argue that he has overstated the Qaeda connection in an attempt to exploit the same kinds of post-Sept. 11 emotions that helped him win support for the invasion in the first place.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

The American military and American intelligence agencies characterize Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as a ruthless, mostly foreign-led group that is responsible for a disproportionately large share of the suicide car bomb attacks that have stoked sectarian violence. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, said in an interview that he considered the group to be “the principal short-term threat to Iraq.”

But while American intelligence agencies have pointed to links between leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the top leadership of the broader Qaeda group, the militant group is in many respects an Iraqi phenomenon. They believe the membership of the group is overwhelmingly Iraqi. Its financing is derived largely indigenously from kidnappings and other criminal activities. And many of its most ardent foes are close at home, namely the Shiite militias and the Iranians who are deemed to support them.

“The president wants to play on Al Qaeda because he thinks Americans understand the threat Al Qaeda poses,” said Bruce Riedel, an expert at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a former C.I.A. official. “But I don’t think he demonstrates that fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq precludes Al Qaeda from attacking America here tomorrow. Al Qaeda, both in Iraq and globally, thrives on the American occupation.”

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who became the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, came to Iraq in 2002 when Saddam Hussein was still in power, but there is no evidence that Mr. Hussein’s government provided support for Mr. Zarqawi and his followers. Mr. Zarqawi did have support from senior Qaeda leaders, American intelligence agencies believe, and his organization grew in the chaos of post-Hussein Iraq.

“There has been an intimate relationship between them from the beginning,” Mr. Riedel said of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the senior leaders of the broader Qaeda group.

But the precise relationship between the Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden and other groups that claim inspiration or affiliation with it is murky and opaque. While the groups share a common ideology, the Iraq-based group has enjoyed considerable autonomy. Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy, questioned Mr. Zarqawi’s strategy of organizing attacks against Shiites, according to captured materials. But Mr. Zarqawi clung to his strategy of mounting sectarian attacks in an effort to foment a civil war and make the American occupation untenable.

The precise size of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is not known. Estimates are that it may have from a few thousand to 5,000 fighters and perhaps twice as many supporters. While the membership of the group is mostly Iraqi, the role that foreigners play is crucial.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri is an Egyptian militant who emerged as the successor of Mr. Zarqawi, who was killed near Baquba in an American airstrike last year. American military officials say that 60 to 80 foreign fighters come to Iraq each month to fight for the group, and that 80 to 90 percent of suicide attacks in Iraq have been conducted by foreign-born operatives of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

At first, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia received financing from the broader Qaeda organization, American intelligence agencies have concluded. Now, however, the Iraq-based group sustains itself through kidnapping, smuggling and criminal activities and some foreign contributions.

With the Shiite militias having taken a lower profile since the troop increase began, and with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia embarking on its own sort of countersurge, a main focus of the American military operation is to deprive the group of its strongholds in the areas surrounding Baghdad — and thus curtail its ability to carry out spectacular casualty-inducing attacks in the Iraqi capital.

The heated debate over Iraq has spilled over to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as well. Mr. Bush has played up the group, talking about it as if it is on a par with the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks. War critics have often played down the significance of the group despite its gruesome record of suicide attacks and its widely suspected role in destroying a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that set Iraq on the road to civil war.

Just last week, Mr. Zawahri called on Muslims to travel to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia to carry out their fight against the Americans and appealed for Muslims to support the Islamic State in Iraq, an umbrella group that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has established to attract broader Sunni support.

The broader issue is whether Iraq is a central front in the war against Al Qaeda, as Mr. Bush maintains, or a distraction that has diverted the United States from focusing on the Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan while providing Qaeda leaders with a cause for rallying support.

Military intelligence officials said that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s leaders wanted to expand their attacks to other countries. They noted that Mr. Zarqawi claimed a role in a 2005 terrorist attack in Jordan. But Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said that if American forces were to withdraw from Iraq, the vast majority of the group’s members would likely be more focused on battling Shiite militias in the struggle for dominance in Iraq than on trying to follow the Americans home.

“Al-Masri may have more grandiose expectations, but that does not mean he could turn Al Qaeda of Iraq into a transnational terrorist entity,” he said.

Michael R. Gordon reported from Baghdad, and Jim Rutenberg from Washington.

    Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert, NYT, 13.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/middleeast/13qaeda.html?hp

A Firm Bush Tells Congress Not to Dictate Policy on War

July 13, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, July 12 — President Bush struck an aggressive new tone on Thursday in his clash with Congress over Iraq, telling lawmakers they had no business trying to manage the war, portraying the conflict as a showdown with Al Qaeda and warning that moving toward withdrawal now would risk “mass killings on a horrific scale.”

Hours later, the Democratic-controlled House responded by voting almost totally along party lines to require that the United States withdraw most combat troops from Iraq by April 1.

The 223-to-201 House vote, in which just four Republicans broke with their party, came as the White House continued its intense effort to stem a growing tide of Republican defections on the war. Officials from the White House — beginning with the president himself — have been reaching out to party members all week, trying to persuade them to wait until September to pass judgment on Mr. Bush’s current military strategy of sending more troops to quell the sectarian fighting and pursue insurgents.

The Senate has so far fallen well short of the 60 votes needed to approve a troop withdrawal, but more votes are expected there next week. And while Democrats have failed to win enough Republican votes to force a change in policy, Democratic leaders say they remain hopeful. Even some Republicans conceded Thursday that it could be difficult for Mr. Bush to hold the party together for much longer.

At a morning news conference where he released a mixed progress report on his troop buildup, Mr. Bush repeatedly invoked the threat of Al Qaeda as a reason to stick with his strategy, saying the group he referred to as Al Qaeda in Iraq “has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden.”

The president acknowledged that public opinion might be against him — he said that “sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don’t enable you to be loved” — but suggested that Congress was overstepping its constitutional role by trying to force a change of policy on him.

“I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,” Mr. Bush said. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.”

It is the first time since the Vietnam War that the legislative and executive branches have fought so bitterly over the president’s authority as commander in chief. Around the Capitol on Thursday morning, televisions were tuned into the White House news conference, as lawmakers and their aides passed around the White House’s status report on Iraq.

Lawmakers in both parties bristled at the president’s suggestion that Congress was overstepping its role in the war debate. Among them was Senator George V. Voinovich, a Republican from Ohio who has called for a change of direction in Iraq.

“We have a role to express our opinion in regards to the way he does anything,” Mr. Voinovich said in an interview. “He should welcome our point of view because it does reflect the point of view of the people who elected us to office.”

Mr. Bush wants Congress to wait until September, when the top military commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the top civilian official, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, deliver a fuller assessment of progress of the troop buildup. But the president also said he was not “going to speculate on what my frame of mind will be,” at that time, and he would not say how he might react if the September report is as mixed as the one delivered Thursday.

The report assessed the Iraqi government’s progress in meeting 18 benchmarks set by Congress on military, economic and political matters. It found the Iraqis had made satisfactory progress in meeting eight benchmarks, including committing three brigades for operations in and around Baghdad, and spending nearly $7.3 billion in Iraqi money to train, equip and modernize its forces.

But the Iraqis made unsatisfactory progress in meeting another eight benchmarks, including passing an oil revenue-sharing law and preparing for local elections that could help reconcile the country’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions. On two benchmarks, progress was too mixed to be characterized.

The report bluntly criticized the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, saying the government continued to permit political interference in some military decisions. Though the report claimed that Mr. Maliki was not involved, it singled out the Iraqi Office of the Commander in Chief, which reports directly to Mr. Maliki, saying there was evidence that the office formulated “target lists,” primarily of Sunnis.

And Mr. Bush himself offered only lukewarm support for Mr. Maliki at Thursday’s news conference, declining to echo the praise he put forth in Jordan last November, when he proclaimed Mr. Maliki “the right guy for Iraq.” Asked if he still felt that way, the president responded, “I believe that he understands that there needs to be serious reconciliation, and they need to get law passed.”

As Mr. Bush offered his interpretation of the report, administration officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, were working behind the scenes, offering to interpret the document for Republican senators. Among those called was Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, who is working with Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, to draft a proposal calling for a change in the military mission in Iraq.

Mr. Warner said the report was disappointing. “That government is simply not providing leadership worthy of the considerable sacrifice of our forces,” he said of the Iraqis, “and this has to change immediately.”

Despite such warnings, administration officials, who just two weeks ago feared Republican support for the troop buildup might collapse, say they think they will be able to hold the party together until September. One senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the feeling inside the White House was that while Americans want to get out of the war, they have enough doubts about withdrawing to give Mr. Bush leeway to pursue his strategy at least for another two months.

“There’s something in the American psyche that says this is important,” the official said, “and for all the criticism about how we got into it, we’d better be careful about where we go from here.”

Mr. Bush has been making the case, as he did again Thursday, that the troop buildup, which was completed only last month, cannot be fully evaluated until September. He said Congress itself had dictated that schedule in an emergency spending bill passed earlier this year, and he urged lawmakers to stick to it. Mr. Bush said the military gains cited in the report would ease the way for progress in creating a viable, effective Iraqi government.

But even among Republicans, patience is wearing thin, and the White House has not spelled out why it believes that Iraq will look substantially different in just eight weeks.

At the news conference, Mr. Bush was asked why — after failing to anticipate the sectarian divisions that would tear the country apart after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government — Americans should believe he has the vision for victory in Iraq. The president responded by appearing to lay blame for mistakes in the war directly on one of his military commanders at the beginning of the war, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who led the invasion more than four years ago.

“Those are all legitimate question that I’m sure historians will analyze,” he said, adding that he had asked at the outset of the war whether his military commanders needed more troops. “My primary question to General Franks was: ‘Do you have what it takes to succeed, and do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein?’ And his answer was, ‘Yeah.’ ”

Critics of Thursday’s White House report said it overstated the Iraqis’ progress. In sections of the report dealing with efforts to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, for example, two different benchmarks were given satisfactory grades while offering little evidence that reconstruction was anywhere close to improving the delivery of electricity, water, sanitation or other services.

In 2006, for example, the Iraqi ministries were criticized for failing to spend all but a small fraction of the billions in oil revenues the Iraqi government had set aside for reconstruction. But American officials said in an interview on Thursday that spending had only modestly accelerated toward the end of 2006 and into early 2007, and that the Iraqi government had not provided precise figures for this year.

David S. Cloud contributed reporting from Washington, and James Glanz from New York.

    A Firm Bush Tells Congress Not to Dictate Policy on War, NYT, 13.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/washington/13policy.html?hp

Transcript: President Bush on Iraq

July 12, 2007
The New York Times

PRESIDENT BUSH: Good morning. Thank you.



Yesterday America lost an extraordinary first lady and a fine Texan, Lady Bird Johnson. She brought grace to the White House and beauty to our country. On behalf of the American people, Laura and I send our condolences to her daughters, Lynda and Luci, and we offer our prayers to the Johnson family.



Before I answer some of your questions, today I'd like to provide the American people with an update on the situation in Iraq.



Since America began military operations in Iraq, the conflict there has gone through four major phases. The first phase was the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein. The second phase was the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people and the holding of free elections. The third phase was the tragic escalation of sectarian violence, sparked by the bombing of the golden mosque in Samarra.



We've entered a fourth phase, deploying reinforcements and launching new operations to help Iraqis bring security to their people. I'm going to explain why the success of this new strategy is vital for protecting our people and bringing our troops home, which is a goal shared by all Americans. I'll brief you on the report we are sending to Congress. I'll discuss why a drawdown of forces that is not linked to the success of our operations would be a disaster.



As president, my most solemn responsibility is to keep the American people safe. So on my orders, good men and women are now fighting the terrorists on the front lines in Iraq.



I've given our troops in Iraq clear objectives. And as they risk their lives to achieve these objectives, they need to know they have the unwavering support from the commander in chief, and they do. And they need the enemy to know that America is not going to back down. So when I speak to the American people about Iraq, I often emphasize the importance of maintaining our resolve and meeting our objectives.



As a result, sometimes the debate over Iraq is cast as a disagreement between those who want to keep our troops in Iraq and those who want to bring our troops home, and this is not the real debate. I don't know anyone who doesn't want to see the day when our brave service men and women can start coming home. In my address to the nation in January, I put it this way: If we increase our support at this crucial moment, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home. The real debate over Iraq is between those who think the fight is lost or not worth the cost and those who believe the fight can be won, and that as difficult as the fight is, the cost of defeat would be far higher.



I believe we can succeed in Iraq, and I know we must.



So we're working to defeat al Qaeda and other extremists and aid the rise of an Iraqi government that can protect its people, deliver basic services (OTCBB:BICV) and be an ally in the war against these extremists and radicals. By doing this, we'll create the conditions that would allow our troops to begin coming home while securing our long-term national interests in Iraq and in the region.



When we start drawing down our forces in Iraq, it will (be) because our military commanders say the conditions on the ground are right, not because pollsters say it'll be good politics. The strategy I announced in January is designed to seize the initiative and create those conditions. It's aimed at helping the Iraqis strengthen their government so that it can function even amid violence. It seeks to open space for Iraq's political leaders to advance the difficult process of national reconciliation, which is essential to lasting security and stability. It is focused on applying sustained military pressure to route-out terrorist networks in Baghdad and surrounding areas. It is committed to using diplomacy to strengthen regional and international support for Iraqi's democratic government. Doing all these things, it is intended to make possible a more limited role in Iraq for the United States.



That's the goal outlined by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. That's the goal shared by the Iraqis and our coalition partners. It is the goal that Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus and our troops are working hard to make a reality.



Our top priority is to help the Iraqis protect their population. So we've launched an offensive in and around Baghdad to go after extremists, to buy more time for Iraqi forces to develop and to help normal life and civil society take root in communities and neighborhoods throughout the country. We're helping enhance the size, capabilities and effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces, so the Iraqis can take over the defense of their own country. We're helping the Iraqis take back their neighborhoods from the extremists. In Anbar province, Sunni tribes that were once fighting alongside al Qaeda against our coalition are now fighting alongside our coalition against al Qaeda. We're working to replicate this success in Anbar and other parts of the country.



Two months ago in the supplemental appropriations bill funding our troops, Congress established 18 benchmarks to gauge the progress of the Iraqi government. They require we submit a full report to Congress by September the 15th. Today my administration has submitted to Congress an interim report that requires us to assess, and I quote the bill, "whether satisfactory progress toward meeting these benchmarks is or is not being achieved."



Of the 18 benchmarks Congress asked us to measure, we can report that satisfactory progress is being made in eight areas. For example, Iraqis have provided the three brigades they promised for operations in and around Baghdad, and the Iraqi government is spending nearly $7.3 billion from its own funds this year to train, equip and modernize its forces.



In eight other areas, the Iraqis have much more work to do. For example, they have not done enough to prepare for local elections or pass a law to share oil revenues.



And in two remaining areas, progress is too mixed to be characterized one way or the other.



Those who believe that the battle in Iraq is lost will likely point to the unsatisfactory performance on some of the political benchmarks. Those of us who believe the battle in Iraq can and must be won see the satisfactory performance on several of the security benchmarks as a cause for optimism. Our strategy is built on the premise that progress on security will pave the way for political progress, so it's not surprising that political progress is lagging behind the security gains we are seeing.



Economic development funds are critical to helping Iraq make this political progress. Today I'm exercising the waiver authority granted me by Congress to release a substantial portion of those funds.



The bottom line is that this is a preliminary report, and it comes less than a month after the final reinforcements arrived in Iraq. This September, as Congress has required, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will return to Washington to provide a more comprehensive assessment.



By that time, we hope to see further improvement in the positive areas and the beginning of improvement in the negative areas.



We'll also have a clearer picture of how the new strategy is unfolding, and be in a better position to judge where we need to make any adjustments.



I will rely on General Petraeus to give me his recommendations for the appropriate troop levels in Iraq. I will discuss the recommendation with the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I will continue consultations with members of the United States Congress from both sides of the aisle. And then I'll make a decision.



I know some in Washington would like us to start leaving Iraq now. To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we're ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States. It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to Al Qaida.



It'd mean that we'd be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It'd mean we'd allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It'd mean we'd be increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.



The fight in Iraq is part of a broader struggle that's unfolding across the region. The same region in Iran -- the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons and threatening to wipe Israel off the map is also providing sophisticated IEDs to extremists in Iraq who are using them to kill American soldiers.



The same Hezbollah terrorists who are waging war against the forces of democracy in Lebanon are training extremists to do the same against coalition forces in Iraq.



The same Syrian regime that provides support and sanctuary for Islamic Jihad and Hamas has refused to close its airport in Damascus to suicide bombers headed to Iraq.



All these extremist groups would be emboldened by a precipitous American withdrawal, which would confuse and frighten friends and allies in the region.



Nations throughout the Middle East have a stake in a stable Iraq. To protect our interests and show our commitment to our friends in the region, we are enhancing our military presence, improving our bilateral security ties and supporting those fighting the extremists across the Middle East.



We're also using the tools of diplomacy to strengthen regional and international support for Iraq's democratic government.



So I'm sending Secretary Gates and Secretary Rice to the region in early August. They will meet with our allies, reemphasize our commitment to the international compact of Sharm el-Sheikh, reassure our friends that the Middle East remains a vital strategic priority for the United States.



There is a conversion (sic) of visions between what Iraqi leaders want, what our partners want and what our friends in the region want and the vision articulated by my administration, the Iraq Study Group and others here at home.



The Iraqis do not want U.S. troops patrolling their cities forever, any more than the American people do.



But we need to ensure that when U.S. forces do pull back, the terrorists and extremists cannot take control.



The strategy that General Petraeus and the troops he commands are now carrying out is the best opportunity to bring us to this point.



So I ask Congress to provide them with the time and resources they need. The men and women of the United States military have made enormous sacrifices in Iraq. They have achieved great things, and the best way to begin bringing them home is to make sure our new strategy succeeds.



And, now, I'd be glad to answer a few questions.



QUESTION: Mr. President, you started this war, the war of your choosing, and you can end it alone, today, at this point. Bring in peacekeepers, U.N. peacekeepers. Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead.



Don't you accept -- don't you understand, we brought the Al Qaida into Iraq?



BUSH: Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That's why I went to the United Nations and worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said, Disclose, disarm or face serious consequences.



That was the message -- clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course.



QUESTION: But didn't we go into Iraq?



BUSH: It was his decision to make.



Obviously, it was a difficult decision for me to make to send our brave troops, along with coalition troops, into Iraq. I firmly believe the world is better off without Saddam Hussein is power.



Now the fundamental question facing America is: Will we stand with this young democracy? Will we help them achieve stability? Will we help them become an ally in this war against extremists and radicals that is not only evident in Iraq, but it's evident in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan?



We're at the beginning stages of a great ideological conflict between those who yearn for peace and those who want their children to grow up in a normal, decent society -- and radicals and extremists who want to impose their dark vision on people throughout the world.



Iraq is obviously -- Helen, has got the attention of the American people, as it should. This is a difficult war, and it's a tough war. But as I have consistently stated throughout the -- this presidency, it is a necessary war to secure our peace.



I find it interesting that as this young democracy has taken hold, radicals and extremists kill innocent people to stop its advance. And that ought to be a clear signal to the American people that these are dangerous people. And their ambition is not just contained to Iraq; their ambition is to continue to hurt the American people. My attitude is we ought to defeat them there so we don't have to face them here, and that we ought to defeat their ideology with a more hopeful form of government.



QUESTION: Mr. President, you're facing a rebellion from Republican -- key Republican senators who want you to change course and begin reducing the U.S. combat role. Given the mixed report that you present today, how do you persuade Republicans to stick with you as they look ahead to the next elections?



BUSH: A couple of things. First of all, I respect those Republicans that you're referring to. I presume you're referring to friends of mine, like Lugar -- Senator Lugar, Domenici.



These are good, honorable people. I've spoken to them. And I listened very carefully to what they have to say.



First of all, they share my concern that a precipitous withdrawal would embolden Al Qaida.



And they also understand that we can't let Al Qaida gain safe haven inside of Iraq.



I appreciate, you know, their calls, and I appreciate their -- their desire to work with the White House to be in a position where we can sustain a presence in Iraq.



What I tell them is this, just what I've told you, is that as the commander in chief of the greatest military ever I have an obligation, a sincere and serious obligation to hear out my commander on the ground. And I will take his recommendation -- and as I mentioned, to talk to Bob Gates about it, as well as the Joint Chiefs about it, as well as consult with members of the Congress, both Republicans and Democrats -- as I make a decision about the way forward in Iraq.



And so, you know, I value the advice of those senators. I appreciate their concerns about the situation in Iraq. And I'm going to continue listening to them.



QUESTION: Mr. President, in addition to members of your own party, the American public is clamoring for a change of course in Iraq.



Why are you so resistant to that idea, and how much longer are you willing to give the surge to work before considering a change in this policy?



BUSH: First of all, I understand why the American people are -- you know, they're tired of the war. People are -- there's war fatigue in America. It's affecting our psychology. I've said this before. I understand that. This is an ugly war. It's a war in which an enemy will kill innocent men, women and children in order to achieve a political objective. It doesn't surprise me that there is deep concern amongst our people.



Part of that concern is whether or not we can win, whether or not the objective is achievable. People don't want our troops in harm's way if that which we're trying to achieve can't be accomplished.



I feel the same way. I cannot look a mother and father of a troop in the eye and say, I'm sending your kid into combat, but I don't think we can achieve the objective. I wouldn't do that to a parent or a husband or a wife of a soldier. I believe we can succeed, and I believe we are making security progress that will enable the political track to succeed as well.



And the report, by the way, which is -- as accurately noted as being submitted today -- is written a little less than a month after the full complement of troops arrived.



I went to the country and said, I have made this decision. I said, What was happening on the ground is unsatisfactory in Iraq.



In consultation with a lot of folks, I came to the conclusion that we needed to send more troops into Iraq, not less, in order to provide stability, in order to be able to enhance the security of the people there.



And David asked for a certain number of troops. David Petraeus asked for a certain number. General Petraeus asked for a certain number of troops. And he just got them a couple of weeks ago.



Military -- it takes a while to move our troops, as the experts know. You just can't load them all in one airplane or one big ship and get them into theater.



They had to stage the arrival of our troops. And after they arrived in Iraq, it took a while to get them into their missions.



Since the reinforcements arrived, things have changed.



For example, I would remind you that Anbar province was considered lost. Maybe some of you reported that last fall.



And yet today, because of what we call bottom-up reconciliation, Anbar province has changed dramatically.



The same thing is now beginning to happen in Diyala province.



There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where violence is down. There are still car bombs, most of which have the Al Qaida signature on them.



But they're declining, you know. So there's some measurable progress.



And you ask: How long does one wait? I will repeat as the commander in chief of a great military who has supported this military and will continue to support this military, not only with my -- with insisting that we get resources to them, but with -- but by respecting the command structure, I'm going to wait for David to come back -- David Petraeus to come back and give us the report on what he sees.



And then we'll use that data, that -- his report, to work with the rest of the military chain of command and members of Congress to, you know, making another decision, if need be.



QUESTION: You talk about all the troops now being in place, and only in place for the last three weeks or a month. Yet, three- quarters of the troops for the surge were in place during the period when this July interim report was written.



Are you willing to keep the surge going, no matter what General Petraeus says, if there is no substantial Iraqi political progress by September?



BUSH: You're asking me to speculate on what my frame of mind will be in September. And I would just ask that you give General Petraeus to come back and brief me. And then, of course, I'll be glad to answer your questions along that line.



QUESTION: But there's been no -- but there has been no substantial political progress, even with three-quarters of the troops in there.



BUSH: Well, as I mentioned...



QUESTION: So can you keep that going through September even if there isn't...



BUSH: As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we have felt all along that the security situation needed to change in order for there to be political progress. It's very hard for a young democracy to function with the violence that was raging.



Secondly, there's a lot of the past that needs to be worked through the system. Living under the brutal tyrant Saddam Hussein created a lot of anxiety and a lot of tensions and a lot of rivalry. And it's just -- it's going to take a while to work it through.



But they couldn't work through those tensions and rivalries in the midst of serious violence.



And so the strategy was: Move in more troops to cause the violence to abate. And that's what David Petraeus will be reporting on.



QUESTION: Question for you about the process you're describing of your decision-making as commander in chief.



Have you entertained the idea that at some point Congress may take some of that sole decision-making power away through legislation? And can you tell us: Are you still committed to vetoing any troop withdrawal deadline?



BUSH: You mean in this interim period?



QUESTION: Yes.



BUSH: I don't think Congress ought to be running the war. I think they ought to be funding our troops.



I'm certainly interested in their opinion. But trying to run a war through resolution is a prescription for failure, as far as I'm concerned, and we can't afford to fail.



I'll work with Congress. I'll listen to Congress.



Congress has got all the right to appropriate money, but the idea of telling our military how to conduct operations, for example, or how to, you know, deal with troop strength is -- it's -- I -- I don't think it makes sense.



I don't think it makes sense today, nor do I think it's a good precedent for the future. And so the role of the commander in chief is, of course, to consult with Congress.



QUESTION: So if Reed-Levin or anything like it were to pass and set a --



BUSH: Well, I would hope they wouldn't pass, Jim. But I --



QUESTION: But --



BUSH: Let me make sure you understand what I'm saying. Congress has all the right in the world to fund. That's their main involvement in this war, which is to provide funds for our troops. What you're asking is whether or not Congress ought to be basically determining how troops are positioned, or troop strength. And I just -- I don't think that would be good for the country.



David.



QUESTION: Mr. President, you've said many times this war at this stage is about the Iraqi government creating a self-sustaining, stable government. Last November, your own CIA director, according to The Washington Post, told you about that government, quote, The inability of the government to govern seems irreversible. He could not point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around.



And he said, in talking about the government, that, It's balanced, but it cannot function.



BUSH: Yes.



QUESTION: When you heard that, since that point, you think of how many hundreds of soldiers have been killed, how much money has been spent, why shouldn't people conclude that you are either stubborn, in denial, but certainly not realistic about the strategy that you've pursued since then?



BUSH: You know, it's interesting, it turns out Mike Hayden -- I think you're quoting Mike Hayden there -- was in this morning to give me his weekly briefing. And I asked him about that newspaper article from which you quote.



His answer was his comments to the Iraq Study Group were a little more nuanced than the quotation you read.



He said that he made it clear the current strategy in Iraq wasn't working.



That's his recollection of the briefing to the Iraq Study Group.



He briefed them to the fact that it wasn't working and that we needed a change of direction.



He also said that those who suggest that we back away and let the Iraqis' government do it -- this is in November of 2006 -- let the Iraqis handle it, don't understand the inability of the Iraq government at that time to take on that responsibility.



He then went on to say -- this is what he -- his recollection of this conversation was that our strategy needed to help get the violence down, so that there could be political reconciliation from the top down as well as the bottom up.



There has been political reconciliation from the bottom up. Anbar province is a place where the experts had -- or an expert had said that it was impossible for us to achieve our objective.



This is the -- part of the country of Iraq where Al Qaida had made it clear that they would like to establish a safe haven from which to plan and plot further attacks, to spread their ideology throughout the Middle East.



Since then, since this November 2006 report and since that statement to the Iraq Study Group, things have changed appreciably on the ground in Anbar province. And they're beginning to have the same change (ph), because the people on the ground there are sick and tired of violence and being threatened by people like Al Qaida, who have no positive vision for the future.



And there's been a significant turn, where now Sunni sheiks and Sunni citizens are working with the coalition to bring justice to Al Qaida killers. And that same approach is being taken in Diyala.



And so there's a lot of focus -- and should be, frankly -- on oil laws or elections. But, remember, there's another political reconciliation track taking place as well, and that's the one that's taking place at the grassroots level. Mike Hayden talked about that as well.



QUESTION: So you think you've been realistic about the strategy and what's possible?



BUSH: Well -- thank you for the follow-up. Nothing's changed in the new room.



Anyway, yes. I mean, as I told you last November right about this time, I was part of that group of Americans who didn't approve of what was taking place in Iraq because it looked like all the efforts that we had taken to that point in time were about to fail. In other words, sectarian violence was really raging.



And I had a choice to make, and that was to pull back, as some suggested, and hope that the chaos and violence that might occur in the capital would not spill out across the country, or send more troops in to prevent the chaos and violence from happening in the first place.



And that's the decision I made, so it was a realistic appraisal by me.



What's realistic as well is to understand the consequences of what will happen if we fail in Iraq. In other words, it's -- people aren't just going to be content with driving America out of Iraq; Al Qaida wants to hurt us here. That's their objective. That's what they'd like to do.



They have got an ideology that they believe that the world ought to live under, and that one way to help spread that ideology is to harm the American people, harm American interests.



The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11, and that's why what happens in Iraq matters to security here at home.



So I've been realistic about the consequences of failure. I have been realistic about what needs to happen on the ground in order for there to be success. And it's been hard work.



And the American people see it as hard work.



And one of the reasons it's hard work is because on our TV screens are these violent killings perpetuated by people who have done us harm in the past. And that ought to be a lesson for the American people to understand that what happens in Iraq and overseas matters to the security of the United States of America.



QUESTION: On that point, what evidence can you present to the American people that the people who attacked the United States on September 11th are, in fact, the same people who are responsible for the bombings taking place in Iraq? What evidence can you present?



And also, are you saying, sir, that Al Qaida in Iraq is the same organization being run by Osama bin Laden himself?



BUSH: Al Qaida in Iraq has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden.



And the guys who had perpetuated the attacks on America -- obviously, the guys on the airplane are dead. And the commanders, many of those are either dead or in captivity -- like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.



But the people in Iraq, Al Qaida in Iraq has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden. And we need to take Al Qaida in Iraq seriously, just like we need to take Al Qaida anywhere in the world seriously.



QUESTION: Mr. President, in Jordan in November you stood by Prime Minister Maliki and said, He's the right guy for Iraq.



Given this report card today and given the lack of top-down political reconciliation, can you tell the American people that you still believe he's the right guy for Iraq?



BUSH: I believe that he understands that there needs to be serious reconciliation and they need to get law passed, I firmly believe that.



I have had a series of conference calls with the prime minister, as well as the presidency council.



In the presidency council, you would have the president, Talabani. You'd have the two vice presidents, Mahdi and Hashemi, as well as the prime minister.



And I have urged them to work together to get law passed. It's not easy to get law passed in certain legislatures, like theirs. There's a lot of work that has to be done.



And I will continue to urge...



QUESTION: Do you have confidence in them?



BUSH: Let me just -- I'm almost through with the first one, and I'll come back to the second one.



And so I'll continue to urge the Iraqis to show us that they're capable of passing legislation. But it's not just us; it's the Iraqi people.



And what really matters is whether or not life's improving for the Iraqi people on the ground.



And, yes, I've got confidence in them. But I also understand how difficult it is. I'm not making any excuses, but it is hard. It's hard work for them to get law passed.



And sometimes it's hard work for people to get law passed here. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to work to achieve an objective, which is a government that is able to, you know, provide security for its people and to provide basic services and, as importantly, serve as an ally against these extremists and radicals.



QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.



BUSH: No, not you.



QUESTION: I'd like to switch subjects.



BUSH: OK, is that harsh?



QUESTION: Yes.



BUSH: Like the new hall -- I should have been more gentle? Do we ever use kinder and gentler? No. Go ahead.



QUESTION: If I could just switch subjects for a second to another big decision you made recently, which was in the Scooter Libby case, you spoke very soberly and seriously in your statement about how you weighed different legal questions in coming to your decision on that commutation.



But one issue that you did not address was the issue of the morality of your most senior advisers, you know, leaking the name of a confidential intelligence operator.



Now that the case is over -- it's not something you've ever spoken to -- can you say whether you're at all disappointed in the behavior of those senior advisers?




And have you communicated that disappointment to them in any way?



BUSH: First of all, the Scooter Libby decision was, I thought, a fair and balanced decision.



Secondly, I haven't spent a lot of time talking about the testimony that people throughout my administration were forced to give as a result of the special prosecutor. I didn't ask them during that time and I haven't asked them since.



I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person. And, you know, I've often thought about what would have happened had that person come forth and said, I did it. Would we have had this, you know, endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter?



But it has been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House, and it's run its course, and now we're going to move on.




Wendell.



QUESTION: Mr. President, you have spoken passionately --



BUSH: Oh, I'm sorry, John. Okay.



QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.



QUESTION: You're taking it away from me?



BUSH: I am.



QUESTION: After doing the fair and balanced, you're going to take --



BUSH: Yeah. (Laughs, laughter.)



PRESS MEMBERS: Ohhh.



QUESTION: (Off mike.)



QUESTION: You were going to come back to me, sir.



BUSH: You got the mike, then John, you're next. Possession deal, you know what I'm saying?




QUESTION: Thank you, sir. You have spoken passionately about the consequences of failure in Iraq. Your critics say you failed to send enough troops there at the start, failed to keep al Qaeda from stepping into the void created by the collapse of Saddam's army, failed to put enough pressure on Iraq's government to make the political reconciliation necessary to keep the sectarian violence the country is suffering from now from occurring. So why should the American people feel you have the vision for victory in Iraq, sir?



BUSH: Those are all legitimate questions that I'm sure historians will analyze. I mean, one of the questions is, should we have sent more in the beginning? Well, I asked that question, Do you need more? to General Tommy Franks.



In the first phase of this operation, General Franks, you know, was obviously in charge.



And during our discussions in the run-up to the decision to remove Saddam Hussein after he ignored the Security Council resolutions, my primary question to General Franks was: Do you have what it takes to succeed? And do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein?



And his answer was yes.



Now, history is going to look back to determine whether or not there might have been a different decision made. But at the time, the only thing I can tell you is that I relied upon military commander to make the proper decision about troop strength in acting.



And I can remember meeting with the Joint Chiefs, who said: We've reviewed the plan, and seemed satisfied with it.



I remember sitting in the PIAT (ph), or the situation room, downstairs here at the White House. And I went to commander and commander, that were all responsible for different aspects of the operation to remove Saddam.



I said to each of them, Do you have what it takes? Are you satisfied with the strategy? And the answer was yes.



We have worked hard to help this country reconcile. After all, they do have a modern constitution, which is kind of a framework for reconciliation. And after all, there was a significant series of votes where the people were given a chance to express their desire to live in a free society. As a matter of fact, 12 million Iraqis went to the polls.



What happened then, of course, is that the enemy -- Al Qaida -- attacks the Samarra mosque, which of course created anxiety and anger amongst the Shia and then all of a sudden the sectarian violence began to spiral. Reconciliation hadn't taken hold deep enough in society to prevent this violence from taking hold.



And so I have a -- you know, I've got to decide whether or not it's OK for that violence to continue or whether or not it makes sense for us to try to send more troops in to quell the violence, to give the reconciliation process further time to advance.



My concern is that, as a result of violence and killing, there would be chaos. Now that's -- that's a state of affairs that thugs like Al Qaida need to survive, and they like chaos. As a matter of fact, they like to create chaos in order to create conditions of fear and anxiety and doubt.



Out of that chaos could come a further escalation of violence in the Middle East, and this is what's important for the American people to understand. That violence and that chaos would embolden extremists groups, whether they be Shia or Sunni.



And they would then get into competition with each other.



Such chaos and violence would send a mixed signal to the Iranians, who have stated that they believe Israel ought to be wiped off the map.



People would begin to wonder about America's resolve. Al Qaida would certainly be in a better position to raise money and recruit. And what makes all this scenario doubly dangerous is that they have proven themselves able to attack us and kill nearly 3,000 of our citizens, and they would like to do it again.



And therefore the strategy has got to be to help this government become an ally against these people. What happens in Iraq -- and I understand how difficult it's been. It's been hard. I have received a lot of inspiration, however, from meeting with our troops, who understand the stakes of this fight, and meeting with their families.



And, you know, we owe it to our troops to support our commanders: smart, capable people who are devising a strategy that will enable us to succeed and prevent the conditions I just talked about from happening.



QUESTION: Your administration has cited Al Qaida leaders such as Zawahiri as saying that if we leave prematurely, it would be a glorious victory for Al Qaida. But the reason that we can't leave or haven't been able to leave is not because we're getting defeated in any way militarily, it's because the Iraqis can't get it together so far.



So why can't we counter those messages and, obviously, not withdraw precipitously, but begin some sort of gradual withdrawal that prevents ethnic cleansing but also allows our military to get out?



BUSH: Well, there's a lot of discussion about a scenario in which our troop posture would be to guard the territorial integrity of the country of Iraq, to embed and train, to help the Iraqi security forces deal with violent elements in their society, as well as keep enough special forces there to chase down Al Qaida.



As a matter of fact, that is something that I've spoken publicly about, said that's a position I'd like to see us in.



However, I felt like we needed to send more troops to be able to get the situation to quiet down enough to be able to end in that position.



And in terms of my own decision-making, as I mentioned earlier, I definitely need to be in consultation, and will be, with General David Petraeus, who asked for the additional troops in the first place, troops which have been in place -- fully in place for about three weeks.



And so, I would ask members of Congress to give the general a chance to come back and to give us a full assessment of whether this is succeeding or not.



And it's at that point in time that I will consult with members of Congress and make a decision about the way forward, all aiming to succeed and making sure that Al Qaida and other extremists do not benefit from a decision I might have to make.



Mark?



QUESTION: Yes, sir, Mr. President.



BUSH: Yes, sir, Mark.



(LAUGHTER)



QUESTION: How come -- thank you. Thank you, sir.



(CROSSTALK)



QUESTION: How comfortable are you -- sir, how comfortable are you with your homeland security secretary saying, in the face of no credible intelligence of an imminent threat against the United States, that he has a gut feeling that one is coming this summer? And, sir, what does your gut tell you?



BUSH: My gut tells me that -- which my head tells me as well -- is that when we find a credible threat, I'll share it with people to make sure that we protect the homeland.



My head also tells me that Al Qaida's a serious threat to our homeland. And we've got to continue making sure we've got good intelligence, good response mechanisms in place; that we've got to make sure we don't embolden them with -- by failing in certain theaters of war where they're confronting us; that we ought to continue to keep the pressure on them.



We need to chase them down and bring them to justice before they come home to hurt us again.



And so it's a serious issue that is going to outlast my presidency. As I say, this is the beginning stages of what I believe is an ideological conflict that -- where you've got competing visions about what the world ought to be like.



What makes this more difficult than previous conflicts is that there's the assymetrical use of power. In other words, IEDs and, you know, suicide bombers are the main -- the main tactical device used by these thugs to try to achieve, you know, strategic objectives.



Their objective is to impose their vision of the -- on the world. Their objective is to drive the United States out of parts of the world. They want safe haven.



They -- they -- they -- they'd love a society where women have no rights, just like the society that they worked to impose, with the Taliban, on the -- on the women of Afghanistan.



That's their vision.



And it's in our interests to defend ourselves by staying on the offense against them. And it's in our interests to spread an alternative ideology.



We have done this before in our nation's history. We have helped people realize the blessings of liberty, even though they may have been our enemy.



And freedom has an amazing way of helping lay the foundation for peace. And it's really important as we head into this ideological struggle in the 21st century that we not forget that liberty can transform societies.



Now, the interesting debate is whether or not a nation, you know, like Iraq can self-govern, whether or not these people even care about liberty.



As you've heard me say before, I believe -- strongly believe that freedom is a universal value, that freedom isn't just, you know, for Americans or Methodists, that freedom is universal in its application.



And so when they voted in '05, I wasn't surprised -- I was pleased that the numbers were as big as they were to defy that many, you know, threats and car bombers, but I wasn't surprised.



And this is the real challenge we face. And Iraq is just a part of a broader war against these jihadists and extremists. It's a -- it is a -- it is a -- we will be dealing with this issue for a while, just like we dealt with other ideologies for a while. It takes time for ideologies to take root.



I firmly believe that you'll see the democracy movement continue to advance throughout the Middle East if the United States doesn't because isolationist. That's why I told you that I'm making sure that we continue to stay diplomatically involved in the -- in the -- in the region.



Condi Rice and Bob Gates will be traveling there in early August to continue to remind our friends and allies that we're -- one, we view them as strategic partners and secondly that we want them to work toward, you know, a freer societies and to help this Iraqi government survive. It's in their interests that Iraq become a stable partner. And I believe we can achieve that objective.



And not only do I believe we can -- I know we've got to achieve the objective so we will have done our duty.



This is hard work. And one of the things I talked about in the opening comments was, you know, do we do it now or basically, you know, pull back, let the Gallup poll or whatever poll there are decide the fate of the -- of the country.



And my view is that if that were to happen, we would then have to go back in with greater force in order to protect ourselves. Because one of the facts of the 21st century is that what happens overseas matters to the security of our country.



QUESTION: Good morning, Mr. President. Given the events on the ground in Iraq and the politics here at home, has U.S. military deployment to Iraq reached the ceiling or can you allow any further military escalation?



BUSH: You're trying to do what Martha very skillfully tried to get me to do, and that was to...



QUESTION: Can I have a follow-up?



BUSH: Yes, you can, because you're about to realize I'm not going to answer your question....



(LAUGHTER)



... except to say this: There's going to be great temptation to -- not temptation. There will be -- you won't be tempted. You'll actually ask me to speculate about what David Petraeus will talk to us about when he comes home. And I just ask the American people to understand that the commander in chief must rely upon the wisdom and judgment of the military thinkers and planners.



It's very important that there be that solid connection of trust between me and those who are in the field taking incredible risk.



And so I'm going to wait to see what David has to say. I'm not going to pre-judge what he may say. I trust David Petraeus' judgment. He's an honest man. Those of you who have interviewed him know that he's a straight shooter, he is an innovative thinker. I was briefed by members of the CODEL that came back that said that it appeared to them that our troops have high respect for our commanders in Baghdad, as do I.



Now, do you have a follow-up on perhaps another subject, another area, another...



QUESTION: How hard is it for you to conduct the war without popular support? Are you personally -- do you ever have trouble balancing the -- between doing what you think is the right thing and following the will of the majority of the public, which is really the essence of democracy?



BUSH: Yes, it is.



And, first of all, I can fully understand why people are tired of the war. The question they have is: Can we win it?



And, of course, I'm concerned about whether or not the American people are in this fight. I believe, however, that, when they really think about the consequences, if we were to precipitously withdraw, they begin to say themselves, maybe we ought to win this; maybe we ought to have a stable Iraq.



Their question, it seems like to me, is: Can we succeed?



And that's a very important, legitimate question for anybody to ask. I think many people understand we must succeed. And I think a lot of people understand we've got to wait for the generals to make these military decisions.



I suspect -- I know this: that, if our troops thought that I was taking a poll to decide how to conduct this war, they would be very concerned about the mission.



In other words, if our troops said, Well, here we are in combat, and we've got a commander in chief who is, you know, running a focus group, in other words, Politics would be -- is more important to him than our safety and/or our strategy, that would dispirit our troops.



And that's a lot of constituencies in this fight. Clearly, the American people, who are paying for this, is the major constituency. And I repeat to you, I understand that there -- this violence has affected them, and a lot of people don't think we can win. There's a lot of people in Congress who don't think we can win as well.



And, therefore, their attitude is, Get out. My concern with that strategy, something that Mike Hayden also discussed, is that just getting out may sound simple, and it may affect polls, but it would have long-term, serious security consequences for the United States.



And so sometimes you -- you know, you just have to make the decisions based upon what you think is right. My most important job is to help secure this country. And, therefore, the decisions in Iraq are all aimed in helping do that job and that's what I firmly believe.



The second constituency is the military, and I repeat to you, I'm pretty confident our military do not want their commander in chief making political decisions about their future.



A third constituency that matters to me a lot is military families. These are good folks who are making huge sacrifices, and they support their loved ones. And I don't think they want their commander in chief making decisions based upon popularity.



Another constituency group that is important for me to talk to is the Iraqis. Obviously, I want the Iraqi government to understand that we expect there to be reconciliation, top-down, that we want to see laws passed. I think they've got that message.



They know full well that the American government and the American people expect to see tangible evidence of working together.



That's what the benchmarks are aimed to do.



They also need to know that I'm making decisions based upon our security interests, of course, but also helping them to succeed and that a poll is not going to determine the course of action by the United States. What will determine the course of action is: Will the decisions that we have made help secure our country for the long run?



And finally, another constituency is the enemy, who are wondering whether or not America has got the resolve and the determination to stay after them.



And so that what's I think about. And, you know, I'm guess I'm like any other political figure. Everybody wants to be loved -- just sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don't enable you to be loved.



And so, when it's all said and done, if you ever come down and visit the old, tired me down there in Crawford, I will be able to say, I looked in the mirror and made decisions based upon principle, not based upon politics.



And that's important to me.



Thank you all for your time. I loved being here at this new building. Thank you.



QUESTION: Can I just ask you about the Al Qaida intelligence report, please?



BUSH: What was that?



QUESTION: The intelligence...



BUSH: This is amazing.



QUESTION: I know. I know.



BUSH: The new me.



(LAUGHTER)



The Al Qaida intelligence report?



QUESTION: The intelligence analysts are saying Al Qaida has reconstituted in areas of Pakistan, saying the threat to the West is greater than ever now -- well, as great as 2001.



What's happened?



You tell...



BUSH: OK, I'm glad you asked. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that opportunity to...



QUESTION: Thank you for coming back.



BUSH: I'm happy to do it. This is not the new me. I mean, this is just an aberration. In other words...



QUESTION: It's over, next time?



BUSH: I'm not going to leave and then come back for somebody to yell something at me.



QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)



BUSH: Yes, exactly. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Exactly.



There is a perception in the coverage that Al Qaida may be as strong today as they were prior to September the 11th. That's just simply not the case. I think the report will say since 2001, not prior to September the 11th, 2001.



Secondly, that because of the actions we've taken, Al Qaida is weaker today than they would have been. They are still a threat. They are still dangerous.



And that is why it is important that we succeed in Afghanistan and Iraq and anywhere else we find them. And that's our strategy, is: to stay on the offense against Al Qaida.



She asked the question, Is it Al Qaida in Iraq?



Yes, it is Al Qaida, just like it's Al Qaida in parts of Pakistan. And I'm working with President Musharraf to be able to -- I mean, he doesn't want them in his country. He doesn't want foreign fighters in the outposts of his country, and so we're working to make sure that we continue to keep the pressure on Al Qaida.



But, no question, Al Qaida is dangerous for the American people, and that's why -- as well as other people that love freedom. And that's why we're working hard with allies and friends to enhance our intelligence.



That's why we need terrorist surveillance programs. That's why it's important to keep -- and I would hope Congress would modernize that bill, and that's why we're keeping on the offense.



Ultimately, the way to defeat these radicals and extremists is to offer alternative ways of life so that they're unable to recruit, that they can use -- they like to use frustration and hopelessness. The societies that don't provide hope will become the societies were Al Qaida has got the capacity to convince a youngster to go blow himself up.



What we need to do is help governments provide brighter futures for their people so they won't sign up.



And the fundamental question facing the world in this issue is whether or not it makes sense to try to promote an alternative ideology. I happen to think it does.



They say, He's idealistic. Yeah, I'm idealistic. But I'm also realistic in understanding if there's not an alternative ideology presented, these thugs'll be able to continue to recruit. They'll use hopelessness to be able to recruit.



And so it's a -- thank you for asking that question.



QUESTION: Is bin Laden...



BUSH: Thank you all.



QUESTION: Is bin Laden alive?

    Transcript: President Bush on Iraq, NYT, 12.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/washington/12bush_transcript.html

Bush Counters G.O.P. Dissent on Iraq Policy

July 11, 2007
By JEFF ZELENY and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Fearful of a Republican rebellion over Iraq that his own aides believe could force him to change course, President Bush said Tuesday that the United States would be able to pull back troops “in a while,” but asked Congress to wait until September to pass judgment on a future military presence there.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, fresh from a trip to Iraq, joined in the call for patience, imploring lawmakers not to “let fatigue dictate our policies.” As the Senate began a two-week debate over a major military spending bill, the White House dispatched cabinet officials and advisers to urge other Republicans to stand by the president.

The administration’s message was spelled out in remarks Mr. Bush delivered in Ohio, in which the president signaled more clearly than before that he might be open to shifting toward a smaller, more limited mission in Iraq in the future — without stating precisely when.

“I’ll be glad to discuss different options,” Mr. Bush said to a business group in Cleveland. “I believe we can be in a different position in a while, and that would be to have enough troops there to guard the territorial integrity of that country, enough troops there to make sure that Al Qaeda doesn’t gain safe haven.”

While skepticism and pessimism about Iraq policy are evident in the voices of a growing number of lawmakers, including several prominent Republicans, even more Republicans spoke forcefully about their desire to continue the fight. It remains an open question whether a series of proposals, including those calling for troop withdrawal deadlines, will gain the 60 votes needed for initial passage in the Senate when the measures are scheduled to be considered next week.

As the debate began Tuesday, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, and his new Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, arrived on Capitol Hill to lobby senators, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates fielded phone calls from lawmakers in both parties. The officials were, effectively, previewing a progress report to be delivered to Congress by week’s end.

Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican, said she received a call on Tuesday morning from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, urging her to wait until September to denounce the Bush policy. Ms. Snowe, who has previously opposed hard-and-fast deadlines for removing troops, said the time had come to change course in Iraq.

“The tide has turned,” Ms. Snowe said. “They obviously would prefer that we wait until September, but my view is that we should send a very strong message now.”

Among the proposals to be considered over the next two weeks is a plan requiring a troop withdrawal to begin within 120 days and to be completed by the end of April 2008. The sponsors of the plan, Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, both Democrats, said the legislation would allow troops to remain in Iraq for a limited mission of combating terrorism, training Iraqi forces and protecting American forces.

While debate over the Iraq war has dominated the first six months of the new Congress, Democrats have struggled to use their narrow majority to influence the administration’s policy. But Mr. Bush’s own words on Tuesday signaled the beginning of a White House counteroffensive aimed at emphasizing that, like Americans around the country, he, too, wants to bring troops home.

“I fully understand that when you watch the violence on TV every night, people are saying, ‘Is it worth it, can we accomplish an objective?’ ” Mr. Bush said. “Well, first I want to tell you, yes, we can accomplish this fight and win in Iraq. And secondly, I want to tell you, we must, for the sake of our children and grandchildren.” While Mr. Bush hinted in his remarks that he was open to exploring different options in the future, he did not expound on them in any significant detail, only broadly mentioning border protection and counterterrorism. He did not mention either providing security in Baghdad or training Iraqi troops, both of which remain central to the current American mission.

In a White House memorandum circulated on Capitol Hill and beyond, the administration said it was “too early to declare the surge a success or failure,” but highlighted what it called signs of progress, including “a substantial drop in sectarian murders in Baghdad since January,” “total car bombings and suicide attacks down in May and June” and “signs of normalcy in Baghdad like professional soccer leagues, amusement parks and vibrant markets.”

Even as several members of Congress said Tuesday that they were awaiting a progress report on Iraq this week before rendering their judgment, administration officials sought to play down the review of the benchmarks of progress in Iraq.

The document, required by Congressional budget legislation, is based on reports from senior commanders and diplomats in Iraq, and is being written in Washington by the National Security Council staff with participation from other departments, including State and Defense.

“This week started to take on greater importance than anyone in the administration had intended,” said one senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “September is our window.”

The Republican senators who believe September is too late for a new strategy began huddling privately on Tuesday to begin discussing compromise legislation to change course in Iraq. Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Senator John W. Warner of Virginia are among those who are shaping such proposals.

At the same time, a string of Republicans stepped forward and voiced support for the president, while Democratic leaders accused Republicans of using procedural maneuvering to delay votes on the Iraq legislation.

Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, said the critics were being hasty. “Do we not have the patience to see a totally new strategy, which is appearing to work, given a chance?” he asked.

But Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, said the two-week Congressional debate needed to produce some signs of progress. He and Senator Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, are proposing a bipartisan plan to put into law the provisions of last year’s Iraq Study Group report, which called for a gradual troop withdrawal and change of direction in the mission.

“At some point we’re going to have to stop shouting at each other and see what we can agree on,” Mr. Alexander said. “We owe that to our troops and we owe that to our country.”

Jeff Zeleny reported from Washington, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Cleveland. David M. Herszenhorn and Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington.

    Bush Counters G.O.P. Dissent on Iraq Policy, NYT, 11.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11policy.html?hp

Bush Denies Congress Access to Aides

July 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:18 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush invoked executive privilege Monday to deny requests by Congress for testimony from two former aides about the firings of federal prosecutors.

The White House, however, did offer again to make former counsel Harriet Miers and one-time political director Sara Taylor available for private, off-the-record interviews.

In a letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary panels, White House counsel Fred Fielding insisted that Bush was acting in good faith and refused lawmakers' demand that the president explain the basis for invoking the privilege.

''You may be assured that the president's assertion here comports with prior practices in similar contexts, and that it has been appropriately documented,'' the letter said.

Retorted House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers:

''Contrary what the White House may believe, it is the Congress and the courts that will decide whether an invocation of executive privilege is valid, not the White House unilaterally,'' the Michigan Democrat said in a statement.

The exchange Monday was the latest step in a slow-motion legal waltz between the White House and lawmakers toward eventual contempt-of-Congress citations. If neither side yields, the matter could land in federal court.

In his letter regarding subpoenas the Judiciary panels issued, Fielding said, ''The president feels compelled to assert executive privilege with respect to the testimony sought from Sara M. Taylor and Harriet E. Miers.''

Fielding was responding to a 10 a.m. EDT deadline set by the Democratic chairmen, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, for the White House to explain it's privilege claim, prove that the president personally invoked it and provide logs of which documents were being withheld.

As expected, Fielding refused to comply. He said he was acting at Bush's direction, and he complained that the committees had decided to enforce the subpoenas whether or not the White House complied.

''The committees have already prejudged the question, regardless of the production of any privilege log,'' Fielding wrote. ''In such circumstances, we will not be undertaking such a project, even as a further accommodation.''

The privilege claim on testimony by former aides won't necessarily prevent them from appearing under oath this week, as scheduled.

Leahy said that Taylor, Bush's former political director, may testify as scheduled before the Senate panel on Wednesday. The House Judiciary Committee scheduled Miers' testimony for Thursday, but it was unclear whether she would appear, according to congressional aides speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations were under way.

The probe into the U.S. attorney firings was only one of several Democratic-led investigations of the White House and its use of executive power spanning the war in Iraq, Bush's secretive wiretapping program and his commutation last week of I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby's prison sentence.

Fielding's letter welcomed lawmakers back to town with a clear indication that relations between Congress and the White House had soured during the break.

Bush's counsel cloaked his tough rejoinder to the Democratic committee chairmen in gentlemanly language, but his message was unequivocal: the White House won't back down, and believes the congressional legal argument to be far weaker than its own and its attitude less appealing.

Fielding dismissed the chairmen's attempt to ''direct'' the White House to provide the legal underpinning of Bush's executive privilege claims and a detailed listing of the documents he is withholding. He said the White House already has provided its legal argument and so does not need to do so again -- and won't.

''We are aware of no authority by which a congressional committee may `direct' the Executive to undertake the task of creating and providing an extensive description of every document covered by an assertion of Executive Privilege,'' he wrote. Fielding suggested that asserting executive privilege on the testimony comes as a result of this impasse and the lack of good faith it demonstrates on the part of Congress.

More broadly, Fielding suggested that the congressional inquiry into the entire matter of the U.S. attorneys' dismissals has no constitutional basis, in large part because the president has sole authority to hire and fire federal prosecutors.

''Although we each speak on behalf of different branches of government, and perhaps for that reason cannot help having different perspectives on the matter, it is hoped you will agree, upon further reflection, that it is incorrect to say that the President's assertion of executive privilege was performed without `good faith,' '' Fielding's letter said.

    Bush Denies Congress Access to Aides, NYT, 9.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Bush.html?hp

Bush Marks 61st Birthday on Friday

July 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:54 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When President Bush turned 60 last year, the milestone garnered interest around the globe. On Friday, he turned a year older, but to much less notice.

Bush celebrated his 61st birthday a bit early -- with dinner and a party that first lady Laura Bush threw for him Wednesday evening at the White House, where he watched the Fourth of July fireworks over the National Mall.

On Thursday night, the president took in his favorite pastime, venturing across town to see the Washington Nationals play the Chicago Cubs. With no fanfare, the former part-owner of the Texas Rangers entered RFK Stadium at the bottom of the first inning, sat in a team box with team executives and an owner, and left after the seventh-inning stretch. The Cubs won 4-2.

Spokesman Scott Stanzel said Bush ''had a wonderful evening'' on Wednesday. His parents, former President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, were there -- after the president just spent a long weekend with them at their summer home on the Maine coast.

Bush's 25-year-old twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, also came to the White House to celebrate their father's birthday. Barbara had joined her dad and grandparents in Kennebunkport, Maine, over the weekend.

Stanzel said that ''a number of good friends'' came as well. Guests included several professional golfers, including Phil Mickelson, Fred Funk, Justin Leonard, Davis Love III, Jim Furyk, Brad Faxon, Paul Azinger and Jeff Maggert, and their spouses, said Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman.

The big-name field of golfers are in the area for the inaugural AT&T National at Congressional Country Club in suburban Washington. The PGA event is commonly known as Tiger's Tournament because it was created by Tiger Woods and benefits his Tiger Woods Foundation.

At the White House party, Funk gave Bush a TaylorMade golf bag with the presidential seal embroidered into it and his name on the bag, Lawrimore said.

Bush was scheduled to leave Friday for the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland. Last year, friends joined the first couple for the birthday weekend.

    Bush Marks 61st Birthday on Friday, NYT, 6.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Birthday.html

Cal Grondahl        Utah Standard Examiner        5.7.2007

White House Criticizes Clintons

July 5, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:47 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House on Thursday made fun of former President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for criticizing President Bush's decision to erase the prison sentence of former aide I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby.

''I don't know what Arkansan is for chutzpah, but this is a gigantic case of it,'' presidential spokesman Tony Snow said.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has scheduled hearings on Bush's commutation of Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence.

''Well, fine, knock himself out,'' Snow said of Conyers. ''I mean, perfectly happy. And while he's at it, why doesn't he look at January 20th, 2001?''

In the closing hours of his presidency, Clinton pardoned 140 people, including fugitive financier Marc Rich.

The former president tried to draw a distinction between the pardons he granted, and Bush's decision to commute Libby's 30-month sentence in the CIA leak case.

''I think there are guidelines for what happens when somebody is convicted,'' Clinton told a radio interviewer Tuesday. ''You've got to understand, this is consistent with their philosophy; they believe that they should be able to do what they want to do, and that the law is a minor obstacle.''

Sen. Clinton, seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said the Libby decision ''was clearly an effort to protect the White House. ... There isn't any doubt now, what we know is that Libby was carrying out the implicit or explicit wishes of the vice president, or maybe the president as well, in the further effort to stifle dissent.''

Former Vice President Al Gore said he found the Bush decision ''disappointing'' and said he did not think it was comparable to Clinton's pardons.

''It's different because in this case the person involved is charged with activities that involved knowledge of what his superiors in the White House did,'' Gore said on NBC's ''Today'' show Thursday.

Snow also tried to clear up confusion about Libby's probation. While commuting Libby's sentence in terms of prison time, Bush left in place his two years of supervised release. But supervised release -- a form of probation -- is only available to people who have served prison time. Without prison, it's unclear what happens next.

Snow said the White House view was this: ''You treat it as if he has already served the 30 months, and probation kicks in. Obviously, the sentencing judge will figure out precisely how that works.''

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, earlier this week, said the law ''does not appear to contemplate a situation in which a defendant may be placed under supervised release without first completing a term of incarceration.''

He gave Libby's attorneys and Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald until Monday to respond.

    White House Criticizes Clintons, NYT, 5.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-CIA-Leak-Libby.html

Op-Ed Contributor

The Lying Game

July 5, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL KINSLEY

Seattle

WHEN the Republicans in Congress impeached President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, they insisted that it wasn’t about sex, it was about lying. Of course that wasn’t true. Even at the height of their power-mad self-delusions (when Newt Gingrich was conducting his own affair with an aide while prosecuting the president), Republicans realized that to make lying an impeachable offense was opening a door no politician should eagerly walk through.

Of course it was really about sex. Nevertheless, those of us who thought impeachment was an outrageous abuse of power by the Republicans had to accept that Mr. Clinton had, clearly, lied. And our argument was this: Mr. Clinton made a mistake. He should not have lied. But he lied in answer to questions he should not have been asked. He should not have been put in a position where he had to choose: he could lie under oath, and be impeached or worse, or he could tell the truth, and embarrass himself and his family, and probably still be impeached or worse.

In short, he was caught in a “perjury trap.” Bill Clinton chose wrong — it all came out anyway — and he defeated impeachment, though you wouldn’t say he got away scot-free.

On Tuesday, President Bush commuted the sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, who was convicted of lying to investigators about the C.I.A. leak case. Mr. Libby will escape prison, but he won’t get away scot-free either. He faces a fine of $250,000 and two years of probation, and if he was thinking of cashing in big on K Street like so many of his administration colleagues, he had better think again.

Mr. Libby’s critics are not the people who criticized Mr. Clinton. And his defenders are not Mr. Clinton’s defenders. But the scripts are similar. The Libbyites believe that their man is being railroaded and shouldn’t have been prosecuted, let alone convicted, for his involvement in a campaign of leaks intended to discredit a critic of the administration, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Mr. Libby’s critics respond that this isn’t about leaking, it’s about lying.

But of course this really is about leaking. It’s the nefarious, though inept, campaign to sully Mr. Wilson that outrages critics of the administration. True, Mr. Libby was not the source for Robert Novak, whose column identifying Mr. Wilson’s wife as a C.I.A. operative started the whole business. And Mr. Libby’s most prominent leakee, Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter who went to jail rather than reveal a source, didn’t actually write about the case. But Mr. Libby was part of the cabal that was conspiring to discredit Mr. Wilson and, more generally, to convince people that Iraq was strewn with nuclear weapons.

So when Mr. Libby was questioned by federal investigators pursuing the leaks, he too was caught in a perjury trap. He could either tell the truth, thereby implicating colleagues and very possibly himself, in leaking classified security information (the identity of Mr. Wilson’s wife), or he could lie. In either case he would be breaking the law or admitting to having done so, and in either case he could have gone to prison. Mr. Libby, like Mr. Clinton, made the wrong choice.

There is nothing wrong with a perjury trap, as long as both sides of the pincer are legitimate. The abuse comes when prosecutors induce a crime (lying under oath) by exploiting an action that is not a crime. The law about “outing” C.I.A. operatives is apparently vague enough that it isn’t clear whether Mr. Libby violated it. But let’s leave that aside. Exposing one of your country’s intelligence officers is a bad thing to do. If it isn’t against the law, it ought to be, right? Well, this is where the press comes in. At first many in the press supported appointing a special prosecutor to investigate.

The crime, if there was one, was leaking government secrets to journalists. If you were investigating that crime, where would you start? Yes, of course, by questioning journalists. The government leakers, if you found them, would be protected by the Fifth Amendment. You would need more and different evidence, and only journalists had it.

The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, followed this commonsense logic straight into a First Amendment buzz saw. News organizations that insisted on the need to get to the bottom of the leak also insisted that no journalist should have to supply information to this investigation.

The leaks that The Times and other papers defended so ardently were not laboratory examples of press freedom at work. Quite the opposite: they were part of the nefarious campaign by the vice president’s office to discredit Mr. Wilson — itself part of the larger plot to convince the world that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was of course part of the plot to get us into the war in the first place. And it worked.

It takes two to leak. How can it be fair that one party to the leak doesn’t even have to testify about it, because leaks are so vital to the First Amendment, while the other party might go to prison for it? And if that is unfair, how is a perjury trap fair when it forces a leaker to choose between going to prison for the leak and going to prison for lying?

So as much as I dislike the war in Iraq, as much as I dislike President Bush, as much as I expect that I would dislike Mr. Libby if I ever met him, I feel that he should not have had to face a perjury trap: the choice between prison for lying, or prison for his role in a set of transactions that the press regards as not merely O.K. but sacrosanct. In fact, if journalists had a more reasonable view about this, the reporters whom Mr. Libby tried to peddle this story to would have said, “Look, outing C.I.A. agents is bad and we are not going to help you do it anonymously.” I bet that today, commuted sentence and all, Mr. Libby wishes they had done just that.

Michael Kinsley is a columnist for Time magazine.

    The Lying Game, NYT, 5.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/opinion/05kinsley.html

Bush Evokes Revolutionary War to Bolster the U.S. Cause in Iraq

July 5, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

MARTINSBURG, W.Va., July 4 — Facing renewed wrangling with Democrats — and possibly some Republicans — over continuing the Iraq war, President Bush on Wednesday took Independence Day as an opportunity to hark back to another bloody war with no apparent end in sight.

Reading aloud from an article about the first Fourth of July celebration, in Philadelphia in 1777, and its “grand exhibition of fireworks,” Mr. Bush told the audience of Air National Guard members and their families at the base here, “Our first Independence Day celebration took place in a midst of a war — a bloody and difficult struggle that would not end for six more years before America finally secured her freedom.”

Addressing National Guard members with the 167th Airlift Wing who were gathered in a cavernous airplane hangar here, he said, “Like those early patriots, you’re fighting a new and unprecedented war — pledging your lives and honor to defend our freedom and way of life.”

After nearly six years of war, beginning with the war in Afghanistan, such Fourth of July speeches have become routine for Mr. Bush. On Independence Day last year, Mr. Bush went to Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, to argue against Democratic calls to withdraw from Iraq.

Then, with Congress in Republican hands and no real attempts by it to force a withdrawal legislatively, his argument seemed tailored for that year’s Congressional elections above anything else. Now, with Congress under the control of Democrats, many of whom won with promises to force an end to the war, the threat to his plans from Congress is real.

Democratic leaders have said they will use votes on the defense authorization bill after the July 4 recess to push new proposals calling for withdrawal timetables and possibly even a reassessment of the authorization to use force in Iraq.

A Congressionally mandated preliminary progress report on the results of the troop increase that Mr. Bush ordered in Iraq is due on July 15 and its results — which are expected to be mixed — could add to the pressure to end the war or change strategies. It comes as a growing number of moderate Republicans, including Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, voice concerns.

Mr. Bush said if the United States were to leave Iraq now, Al Qaeda “would be able to establish their safe haven from which to do two things: to further spread their ideology and to plan and plot attacks against the United States.”

Victory, he said, “will require more patience, more courage, and more sacrifice.”

Several Democrats have made the case that the president’s strategy is failing and that a full or partial withdrawal would press the Iraqis to settle their problems on their own. The lawmakers are facing dissatisfaction in polls that party strategists attribute to disquiet among Democratic voters with the party’s failure to force change in the president’s Iraq strategy.

Mr. Bush spent 20 minutes in the hangar, which dwarfed the crowd, shaking hands and talking with a long line of Guard members who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families. He then lifted off for what his spokesman, Scott Stanzel, said would be a Fourth of July celebration at the White House that would double as a celebration of his 61st birthday this Friday.

Mr. Stanzel said Mr. Bush’s daughters and parents and his wife, Laura, would attend.

As Mr. Bush said of Mrs. Bush, “Laura sends her love — she would be with me, but I told her to fire up the grill.”

    Bush Evokes Revolutionary War to Bolster the U.S. Cause in Iraq, G, 5.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/washington/05prexy.html

Bush Defends Military Buildup in Iraq

July 4, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:20 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday defended the U.S. military buildup in Iraq in a patriotic Fourth of July speech, saying victory will require ''more patience, more courage and more sacrifice.''

''However difficult the fight is in Iraq, we must win it,'' Bush said, telling members of the West Virginia Air National Guard that he admires the valor of America's fighting men and women but that now is no time to leave.

''We must succeed for our own sake. For the security of our citizens we must support our troops. We must support the Iraqi government and we must defeat al-Qaida in Iraq.''

He defended the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq to a friendly audience that cheered the toppling of Saddam Hussein as well as Bush's decision in January to send 28,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq to try to tamp down on the violence and encourage the Iraqis to reach political agreements among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

The offensive in Baghdad and areas to the north and south has boosted American casualties, although the number of bombings and shootings has fallen in the city in recent days.

''It's a tough fight, but I wouldn't have asked those troops to go into harm's way if the fight was not essential to the security of the United States of America,'' Bush said of the more than 4-year-old war that has claimed the lives of over 3,580 men and women of the U.S. military.

In Baghdad, the administration was highlighting a ceremony where more than 500 troops, who have fought in Iraq, re-enlisted in the U.S. armed forces and a hundred of their comrades raised their right hands to recite an oath making them citizens of the United States.

Difficulties remain, however; Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds said Wednesday that they have not been able to agree to a draft bill to regulate the country's oil industry -- something U.S. officials hope will rally Sunni support for the government and reduce backing for insurgents. The oil bill is a top concern of Iraq's Sunni minority, which is centered in regions of the country with little proven reserves and fears that Shiites and Kurds in the oil-rich south and north will monopolize profits from the industry.

Bush thanked the servicemen and women serving abroad and their families, including children at the event who recited the Pledge of Allegiance with him. He read from a 1777 newspaper article about an Independence Day celebration in Philadelphia where people fired artillery, toasted democracy and watched fireworks that illuminated the sky.

''We're still celebrating, and rightly so,'' Bush said.

About 2,000 people, including members of the 167th Airlift Wing and their families were invited to the event.

On the other side of the state, West Virginia Patriots for Peace, who are critical of the Bush administration and its handling of the war, scheduled a protest against the president's invitation-only appearance at the 167th Airlift Wing.

''The Fourth is not going to go by with this guy coming in here and no voices coming back at him,'' said the Rev. Jim Lewis, a member of the group and a veteran activist.

''I was told it was a closed affair, that it was for the families and a few invited guests. They've iced us out,'' Lewis said. ''The public needs to know that this is certainly an isolated event.''

After the speech, Bush was returning to the White House to watch fireworks and celebrate his 61st birthday on Friday.

''I told her to fire up the grill,'' Bush said he told first lady Laura Bush, who did not attend.

Last year that same Fourth of July celebration was interrupted when North Korea test-fired a series of missiles. Bush was at the White House with family and friends to watch fireworks when Pyongyang test-fired six missiles, including a long-range missile capable of reaching U.S. soil. That one failed after being airborne for 35 seconds, and the shorter-range missiles fell into the Sea of Japan.

Associated Press Writer Lawrence Messina in Charleston, W.Va., contributed to this report.

    Bush Defends Military Buildup in Iraq, NYT, 4.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html?hp

Ratings for Bush, Congress Sink Lower

July 4, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:43 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Like twin Jacques Cousteaus of the political world, President Bush and Congress are probing the depths of public opinion polling as voters exasperated over Iraq, immigration and other issues give them strikingly low grades.

In a remarkable span, the approval that people voice for the job Bush is doing has sunk to record lows for his presidency in the AP-Ipsos and other polls in recent weeks, dipping within sight of President Nixon's levels during Watergate. Ominously for Republicans hoping to hold the White House and recapture Congress next year, Bush's support has plunged among core GOP groups like evangelicals, and pivotal independent swing voters.

Congress is doing about the same. Like Bush, lawmakers are winning approval by roughly three in 10. Such levels are significantly low for a president, and poor but less unusual for Congress.

''The big thing would be the war,'' said independent Richard MacDonald, 56, a retired printer from Redding, Calif. ''I don't think he knew what he got into when he got into it.'' As for Congress, MacDonald said, ''It's just the same old same old with me. A lot of promises they don't keep.''

Bush was risking more unpopularity by commuting I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby's prison term in the CIA leak case, and his refusal to rule out a full pardon. Polls in March after the former White House aide's conviction showed two in three opposed to a pardon.

The public's dissatisfaction may be more serious for Republicans because even though Bush cannot run again, he is the face of the GOP. He will remain that until his party picks its 2008 presidential nominee -- and through the campaign if Democrats can keep him front and center.

''Everything about this race will be about George Bush and the mess he left,'' Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., a member of the House Democratic leadership, said about 2008. ''He'll be on the ballot.''

Congress' numbers could signal danger for majority Democrats, since they echo the low ratings just before the GOP 1994 takeover of the House and Senate, and the Democratic capture of both chambers last November.

But unlike the president, Congress usually has low approval ratings no matter which party is in control, and poor poll numbers have not always meant the majority party suffered on Election Day. Voters usually show more disdain for Congress as an institution than for their own representative -- whom they pick.

A majority in a CNN-Opinion Research Corp. survey in late June said Democratic control of Congress was good for the country. Yet only 42 percent approved of what Democratic leaders have done this year -- when Democrats failed to force Bush to change policy on Iraq.

Republican strategists hope the dim mood will help the GOP in congressional elections.

''The voters voted for change and they expected change, and they see an institution still incapable of getting anything done,'' said GOP pollster Linda DiVall.

The abysmal numbers are already affecting how Bush and Congress are governing and candidates' positioning for 2008.

Last Thursday's Senate collapse of Bush's immigration bill showed anew how lawmakers feel free to ignore his agenda. Republican senators like Richard Lugar of Indiana and George Voinovich of Ohio have joined increasingly bipartisan calls for an Iraq troop withdrawal.

This year's GOP presidential debates have seen former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Arizona Sen. John McCain and others criticize Bush or his administration for mishandling the war and other issues. Some Republican congressional candidates have not hesitated to distance themselves from Bush.

''President Bush is my friend, and I don't always agree with my friends,'' said Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., facing a tough re-election fight next year. ''And on the issues of Iraq and immigration, I simply disagree with his approach.''

Bush's doleful numbers speak for themselves.

In an early June AP-Ipsos poll, 32 percent approved of his work, tying his low in that survey. Other June polls in which he set or tied his personal worst included 27 percent by CBS News, 31 percent by Fox News-Opinion Dynamics, 32 percent by CNN-Opinion Research Corp. and 26 percent by Newsweek.

The Gallup poll's lowest presidential approval rating was President Truman's 23 percent in 1951 and 1952 during the Korean war, compared with Nixon's 24 percent days before he resigned in August 1974. Bush notched the best ever, 90 percent days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The AP's June survey showed that compared with an AP exit poll of voters in November 2004, Bush's approval was down among swing voters. His support dropped from about half of independents to a fifth; from half to a third of Catholics; and from nearly half to a fifth of moderates.

Among usually loyal GOP voters, his approval was down from about eight in 10 to roughly half of both conservatives and white evangelicals.

Congress had a 35 percent approval rating in a May AP-Ipsos survey. Polls in June found 27 percent approval by CBS News, 25 percent by Newsweek and 24 percent by Gallup-USA Today.

Congress' all-time Gallup low was 18 percent during a 1992 scandal over House post office transactions; its high was 84 percent just after Sept. 11.

In the AP poll, lawmakers won approval from only about three in 10 midwesterners, independents and married people with children -- pivotal groups both parties court aggressively.

AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

    Ratings for Bush, Congress Sink Lower, NYT, 4.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Congress-Plunging-Polls.html

Analysis: Pardon Shows Worst in Politics

July 4, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:48 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The hypocrisy is unpardonable. President Bush's decision to commute the sentence of a convicted liar brought out the worst in both parties and politics.

In keeping I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby out of jail, Bush defied his promise to hold wrongdoers accountable and undercut his 2000 campaign pledge to ''restore honor and dignity'' to the White House. And it might be a cynical first step toward issuing a full pardon at the conclusion of his term.

Democrats responded as if they don't live in glass houses, decrying corruption, favoritism and a lack of justice.

''This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice,'' said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It was a brazen statement from a woman entangled in many Clinton White House scandals, including the final one: On his last day in office, President Clinton granted 140 pardons and 36 commutations, many of them controversial.

One of those pardoned was Marc Rich, who had fled the country after being indicted for tax evasion and whose wife had donated more than $1 million to Democratic causes.

Clinton's half brother, Roger, who was convicted of distributing cocaine and lobbied the White House on behalf of others, also received a pardon.

Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, was paid tens of thousands of dollars in his successful bid to win pardons for a businessman under investigation for money laundering and a commutation for a convicted drug trafficker. Her other brother, Tony, lobbied successfully for clemency on behalf of a couple convicted of bank fraud.

It's hard to fathom that those pardons had absolutely nothing to do with cronyism or ideology, but Hillary Clinton defended them. She drew a distinction between her husband's pardons and Bush's commutation.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the senator said Bill Clinton's pardons were simply a routine exercise in the use of the pardon power, and none was aimed at protecting the Clinton presidency or legacy. ''This,'' she said of the Libby commutation, ''was clearly an effort to protect the White House.''

Indeed, there is ample evidence that Libby's actions were fueled by animosity throughout the White House toward opponents of the president's push to war against Iraq.

But Hillary Clinton will have a hard time convincing most voters that her brother-in-law would have gotten a pardon in 2001 had his name been Smith. Or that Rich's pardon plea would have reached the president's desk had he not been a rich Mr. Rich.

The hypocrisy doesn't stop there.

Bush vowed at the start of the investigation to fire anybody involved in the leak of a CIA agent's identity, but one of the leakers, adviser Karl Rove, still works at the White House. Libby was allowed to keep his job until he was indicted for lying about his role.

The president said Libby's sentence was excessive. But the 2 1/2 years handed Libby was much like the sentences given others convicted in obstruction cases. Three of every four people convicted for obstruction of justice in federal court were sent to prison, for an average term of more than five years.

Want more hypocrisy? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney praised the commutation for Libby, quite a departure for a guy who brags that he was the first Massachusetts governor to deny every request for a pardon or commutation. Romney even refused a pardon for an Iraq war veteran who, at age 13, was convicted of assault for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun.

What about all the Republican politicians who defied public sentiment and insisted that President Clinton be impeached for lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky? Many of them now minimize Libby's perjury.

What about all those Democrats who thought public shame was punishment enough for Clinton lying under oath, basically the position adopted today by Libby's supporters? Many of those Democrats now think Libby should go to jail for his perjury.

''There appears to be rank hypocrisy at work here on both sides of the political spectrum,'' said Joe Gaylord, a GOP consultant who worked for House Speaker Newt Gingrich during impeachment. ''It causes Americans to shake their heads in disgust at the political system.''

The Libby case followed the same pattern of hype and hypocrisy established during Clinton's impeachment scandal. It's as if we're all sentenced to relive the same sad scene:

A powerful man lies or otherwise does wrong.

He gets caught.

His enemies overreach in the name of justice.

His friends minimize the crime in pursuit of self-interest.

And the powerful man hires a lawyer.

Marc Rich had a high-priced attorney for his battles with the justice system. His name was Scooter Libby.

Ron Fournier has covered politics for The Associated Press for nearly 20 years.

    Analysis: Pardon Shows Worst in Politics, NYT, 4.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Unpardonable-Politics.html

Bush Rationale on Libby Stirs Legal Debate

July 4, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

In commuting I. Lewis Libby Jr.’s 30-month prison sentence on Monday, President Bush drew on the same array of arguments about the federal sentencing system often made by defense lawyers — and routinely and strenuously opposed by his own Justice Department.

Critics of the system have a long list of complaints. Sentences, they say, are too harsh. Judges are allowed to take account of facts not proven to the jury. The defendant’s positive contributions are ignored, as is the collateral damage that imprisonment causes the families involved.

On Monday, Mr. Bush made use of every element of that critique in a detailed statement setting out his reasons for commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence — handing an unexpected gift to defense lawyers around the country, who scrambled to make use of the president’s arguments in their own cases.

Given the administration’s tough stand on sentencing, the president’s arguments left experts in sentencing law scratching their heads.

“The Bush administration, in some sense following the leads of three previous administrations, has repeatedly supported a federal sentencing system that is distinctly disrespectful of the very arguments that Bush has put forward in cutting Libby a break,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University who writes the blog Sentencing Law and Policy.

Perhaps inadvertently, Mr. Bush’s decision to grant a commutation rather than an outright pardon has started a national conversation about sentencing generally.

“By saying that the sentence was excessive, I wonder if he understood the ramifications of saying that,” said Ellen S. Podgor, who teaches criminal law at Stetson University in St. Petersburg, Fla. “This is opening up a can of worms about federal sentencing.”

The Libby clemency will be the basis for many legal arguments, said Susan James, an Alabama lawyer representing Don E. Siegelman, the state’s former governor, who is appealing a sentence he received last week of 88 months for obstruction of justice and other offenses.

“It’s far more important than if he’d just pardoned Libby,” Ms. James said, as forgiving a given offense as an act of executive grace would have had only political repercussions. “What you’re going to see is people like me quoting President Bush in every pleading that comes across every federal judge’s desk.”

Indeed, Mr. Bush’s decision may have given birth to a new sort of legal document.

“I anticipate that we’re going to get a new motion called ‘the Libby motion,’ ” Professor Podgor said. “It will basically say, ‘My client should have got what Libby got, and here’s why.’ ”

As a purely legal matter, of course, Mr. Bush’s statement has no particular force outside Mr. Libby’s case. But that does not mean judges will necessarily ignore it.

No one disputes that Mr. Bush has the authority under the Constitution to issue pardons and commutations for federal crimes. But experts in the area, pointing to political scandals in the Reagan, Truman and Grant administrations, said Mr. Bush had acted with unusual speed.

“What distinguishes Scooter Libby from the acts of clemency in the other three episodes,” said P. S. Ruckman Jr., a political science professor who studies pardons at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill., referring to Mr. Libby by his nickname, “is that in those episodes they generally served their time and some other president pardoned them.”

Mr. Bush repeated yesterday that he had found Mr. Libby’s punishment to be too severe. But experts in federal sentencing law said a sentence of 30 months for lying and obstruction was consistent with the tough sentences routinely meted out by the federal system.

“On what legal basis could he have reached that result?” asked Frank O. Bowman III, an authority on federal sentencing who teaches law at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said of the commutation. “There is no legal basis.”

Nor is there a reason to think that the Justice Department has changed its position about the sentencing system generally. Indeed, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said last month that the department would push for legislation making federal sentences tougher and less flexible.

Similarly, in a case decided two weeks ago by the United States Supreme Court and widely discussed by legal specialists in light of the Libby case, the Justice Department persuaded the court to affirm the 33-month sentence of a defendant whose case closely resembled that against Mr. Libby. The defendant, Victor A. Rita, was, like Mr. Libby, convicted of perjury, making false statements to federal agents and obstruction of justice.Mr. Rita has performed extensive government service, just as Mr. Libby has. Mr. Rita served in the armed forces for more than 25 years, receiving 35 commendations, awards and medals. Like Mr. Libby, Mr. Rita had no criminal history for purposes of the federal sentencing guidelines.

The judges who sentenced the two men increased their sentences by taking account of the crimes about which they lied. Mr. Rita’s perjury concerned what the court called “a possible violation of a machine-gun registration law”; Mr. Libby’s of a possible violation of a federal law making it a crime to disclose the identities of undercover intelligence agents in some circumstances.

When Mr. Rita argued that his 33-month sentence had failed to consider his history and circumstances adequately, the Justice Department strenuously disagreed.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, posted a copy of the government’s brief in the Rita case on his blog yesterday and asked, “Why is the president flip-flopping on these criminal justice decisions?”

The Justice Department also took a hard line last year in the case of Jamie Olis, a midlevel executive at the energy company Dynegy convicted of accounting fraud. The department argued that Mr. Olis deserved 292 months, or more than 24 years. He was sentenced to six years.

Sentencing experts said Mr. Libby’s sentence was both tough and in line with general trends.

“It was a pretty harsh sentence,” Professor Berman said, “because I tend to view any term of imprisonment for nonviolent first offenses as harsh. But it certainly wasn’t out of the normal array of cases I see every day.”

    Bush Rationale on Libby Stirs Legal Debate, NYT, 4.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/washington/04commute.html?hp

Bush Is Said to Have Held Long Debate on Decision

July 4, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, July 3 — Before commuting the prison sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr., President Bush and a small circle of advisers delved deeply into the evidence in the case, debating Mr. Libby’s guilt or innocence and whether he had in fact lied to investigators, people familiar with the deliberations said.

That process, in weeks of closely held White House discussions, led to the decision to spare Mr. Libby from a 30-month sentence rather than grant a pardon. But Mr. Bush, defending the move Tuesday, left the door open to a pardon in the future.

“I weighed this decision carefully,” the president told reporters after visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. “I thought that the jury verdict should stand. I felt the punishment was severe, so I made a decision that would commute his sentence but leave in place a serious fine and probation. As to the future, I rule nothing in or nothing out.”

The decision brought a storm of criticism, as well as a new investigation on Capitol Hill. Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced Tuesday that he would hold a hearing next week to examine “the use and misuse of presidential clemency power” for executive branch officials.

The White House deliberations in the case of Mr. Libby, a key architect of the war in Iraq who served as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, were scattered throughout Mr. Bush’s regular business over the past several weeks, an administration official said.

That description, along with the accounts of two Republican allies of the White House, illuminated a process that was almost clinical, with a detailed focus on the facts of the case, which stemmed from an investigation into the leak of a C.I.A. operative’s identity. Mr. Libby was accused of lying to investigators and was convicted on four felony counts, including perjury and obstruction of justice.

Because the deliberations were so closely held, those who spoke about them agreed to do so only anonymously. But by several different accounts, Mr. Bush spent weeks thinking about the case against Mr. Libby and consulting closely with senior officials, including Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff; Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel; and Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush’s departing counselor.

“They were digging deeply into the substance of the charges against him, and the defense for him,” one of the Republicans close to the White House said.

The second Republican said the overarching question was “did he lie?”

Mr. Bush has not publicly offered his conclusion to that question, nor have his aides. In his statements about the commutation, the president has said only that he respects the jury’s verdict and that his interest was in reducing what he regarded as an overly severe sentence.

“I felt like some of the punishments that the judge determined were adequate should stand,” Mr. Bush told reporters Tuesday. “But I felt like the 30-month sentencing was severe, made a judgment, a considered judgment, that I believe is the right decision to make in this case, and I stand by it.”

In issuing his commutation order on Monday, Mr. Bush left intact Mr. Libby’s conviction, a $250,000 fine and the two years of postprison supervised release that were ordered by Judge Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court.

But the details of the president’s order raised procedural questions in court.

Judge Walton said Tuesday that the law did not allow for imposing a period of supervised release on an individual who had not first completed a jail sentence. He asked the lawyers for both sides to submit briefs next week on whether Mr. Libby should have to submit to supervision by the probation office.

Mr. Bush has issued 113 pardons and commuted four sentences, including Mr. Libby’s, during his presidency, but no act of clemency has been as controversial as the Libby decision. The C.I.A. leak case raised impassioned questions about the administration’s flawed intelligence leading up to the Iraq war, and whether officials at the highest reaches of the White House, including Mr. Cheney, ordered the leak of the identity of the operative, Valerie Wilson, to discredit her husband, a war critic.

Both critics of the administration and supporters of Mr. Libby viewed him as a fall guy in the case, and Mr. Bush had been under intense pressure from conservatives to issue a pardon, which constitutes an official act of forgiveness.

Pardons are typically reviewed by the Justice Department and sent to the president for a final determination. But a former administration official said that in this case the White House had sent a message of “we’re not going through the usual pardon scrub, we’re going through this one ourselves.”

The process was delicate. Karl Rove, the chief White House strategist and one of Mr. Bush’s closest and longest-serving aides, had been implicated in the leak investigation, and it was unclear how extensive a role he played in the deliberations.

The special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, ultimately decided not to pursue charges against Mr. Rove. Some Republicans said they believed that Mr. Rove steered clear of the pardon discussions, perhaps because his participation would have been awkward.

“I talk to Karl a lot, and I just never got any sense that he was involved in that at all,” said Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman who said he believed that Mr. Libby should be pardoned.

Mr. Weber also said he was concerned about Mr. Bush’s statement Tuesday, in which the president said he believed that the jury verdict should stand. “It disturbs me,” he said, “because the president has set himself up for more criticism if indeed he does issue a full pardon, which I think he should.”

Another question that remained open Tuesday is to what extent Mr. Cheney participated. Aides to the vice president have said he regarded Mr. Libby’s conviction as a tragedy, but people close to Mr. Cheney said they did not know what conversations, if any, the vice president had with the president about the commutation decision.

The White House was besieged by criticism over the decision Tuesday. Before Mr. Bush spoke at Walter Reed, his press secretary, Tony Snow, fended off an unruly press corps, whose members demanded to know why Mr. Libby had received special treatment. Mr. Snow insisted that he had not, saying the case had been handled in a “routine manner.”

“The president does not look upon this as granting a favor to anyone,” Mr. Snow said, “and to do that is to misconstrue the nature of the deliberations.”

Neil A. Lewis contributed reporting.

    Bush Is Said to Have Held Long Debate on Decision, NYT, 4.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/washington/04libby.html

Jimmy Margulies        New Jersey        The Record        7.3.2007

Clinton Slams Bush Over Libby Maneuver

July 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:38 p.m. ET
The New York Times

KEOKUK, Iowa (AP) -- Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton drew a distinction between President Bush's decision to commute the sentence of White House aide I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby -- which she has harshly criticized -- and her husband's 140 pardons in his closing hours in office.

''I believe that presidential pardon authority is available to any president, and almost all presidents have exercised it,'' Clinton said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. ''This (the Libby decision) was clearly an effort to protect the White House. ... There isn't any doubt now, what we know is that Libby was carrying out the implicit or explicit wishes of the vice president, or maybe the president as well, in the further effort to stifle dissent.''

Libby, a former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, had been sentenced to 30 months in prison as well as two years' probation and a $250,000 fine for perjury in connection with the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plane's name to reporters.

Just hours after a federal appeals court rejected Libby's appeal, Bush announced his decision to commute the prison term portion of the sentence, which he labeled excessive.

As she campaigns with her husband for Iowa's leadoff precinct caucuses, Clinton has joined other Democrats in ripping Bush's decision. In the interview, she said it was ''one more example'' of the Bush administration thinking ''it is above the rule of law.''

Her husband's pardons, issued in the closing hours of his presidency, were simply routine exercise in the use of the pardon power, and none were aimed at protecting the Clinton presidency or legacy, she said.

''This particular action by the president is one more piece of evidence in their ongoing disregard for the rule of law that they think they don't have to answer to,'' she said.

Clinton opened her latest campaign swing -- the first with her husband along -- just hours after rival Barack Obama announced he had broken all fundraising records by bringing in $32.5 million in the most recent quarter, $10 million more than Clinton reported in primary money.

''I think his campaign did a terrific job,'' said Clinton. ''We're excited by the support we're getting. We're obviously going to have the resources we need to run the campaign.''

She said she never considered the nomination inevitable.

''I know how complicated and uncertain political campaigns are,'' she said.

    Clinton Slams Bush Over Libby Maneuver, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Clinton-Interview.html

Pat Bagley        Salt Lake Tribune        Utah        7.3.2007

FACTBOX: U.S. editorial reaction to Bush clemency for Libby

Tue Jul 3, 2007
10:28AM EDT
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Following is editorial reaction in U.S. newspapers on Tuesday to President George W. Bush sparing former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby from a 2-1/2 year prison sentence for obstructing a CIA leak probe.

Democrats accused Bush of abusing power in a case that has fueled debate over the Iraq war. Conservatives in Bush's Republican party had pressured him to pardon Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.

NEW YORK TIMES

"When he was running for president, George W. Bush loved to contrast his law-abiding morality with that of President Clinton, who was charged with perjury and acquitted."

"For Mr. Bush, the president ... untarnished ideals are less of a priority than protecting the secrets of his inner circle and mollifying the tiny slice of right-wing Americans left in his political base."

"He has repeatedly put himself and those on his team, especially Mr. Cheney, above the law."

WASHINGTON POST

"There were mitigating factors in this case. After two years of investigation, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking (CIA operative Valerie) Plame's name."

"It's true that the felony conviction that remains in place, the $250,000 fine and the reputational damage are far from trivial. But so is lying to a grand jury. To commute the entire prison sentence sends the wrong message about the seriousness of that offense."

NEW YORK POST

"Now the president should go all the way -- and grant Libby a full pardon ... It would be the right thing to do, because Libby was the victim of an out-of-control prosecutor."

WALL STREET JOURNAL

"By failing to issue a full pardon, Mr. Bush is evading responsibility for the role his administration played in letting the Plame affair build into fiasco and, ultimately, this personal tragedy."

"Mr. Bush's commutation statement yesterday is another profile in non-courage ... Mr. Libby deserved better from the president whose policies he tried to defend when others were running for cover."

MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL

"In the six years that George W. Bush was governor of Texas, 150 men and two women were executed by the state. In each case, Bush got a so-called clemency memo. He allowed all but one of the executions to proceed.

"In commuting the 30-month sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby ... President Bush said Monday that the sentence was "excessive".

"The irony here would be laughable if the message the president sends with this action was not so damaging ... There are indeed two standards of justice -- one for the powerful and well-connected and another for the rest of the country."

DALLAS MORNING NEWS

"Perhaps the president felt he had nothing left to lose, given his unpopularity. But considering how much trouble the White House faces in regard to congressional subpoenas, the last thing this president needed was to further antagonize Capitol Hill regarding abuse of executive power."

SACRAMENTO BEE

"Fitzgerald's investigation was about the conduct and truthfulness of the Bush administration. It involved the nation's top leaders, the use and misuse of classified information and the misleading of the public and Congress as the nation moved toward war in Iraq.

"Now the president has commuted the sentence of a man who obstructed that investigation ... he has raised anew questions about his judgment and about all of the actions that were the focus of Fitzgerald's investigation."

    FACTBOX: U.S. editorial reaction to Bush clemency for Libby, R, 3.7.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0341560220070703?src=070307_1231_TOPSTORY_pardon_not_ruled_out

Editorial

Soft on Crime

July 3, 2007
The New York Times
 

When he was running for president, George W. Bush loved to contrast his law-abiding morality with that of President Clinton, who was charged with perjury and acquitted. For Mr. Bush, the candidate, “politics, after a time of tarnished ideals, can be higher and better.”

Not so for Mr. Bush, the president. Judging from his decision yesterday to commute the 30-month sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. — who was charged with perjury and convicted — untarnished ideals are less of a priority than protecting the secrets of his inner circle and mollifying the tiny slice of right-wing Americans left in his political base.

Mr. Libby was convicted of lying to federal agents investigating the leak of the name of a covert C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. Mrs. Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson, was asked to investigate a central claim in Mr. Bush’s drive to war with Iraq — whether Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Africa. Mr. Wilson concluded that Iraq had not done that and had the temerity to share those conclusions with the American public.

It seems clear from the record that Vice President Dick Cheney organized a campaign to discredit Mr. Wilson. And Mr. Libby, who was Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, was willing to lie to protect his boss.

That made Mr. Libby the darling of the right, which demanded that Mr. Bush pardon him. Those same Republicans have been rebelling against Mr. Bush, most recently on immigration reform, while Democrats in Congress have pursued an investigation into whether Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney lied about Iraq’s weapons programs.

All of this put immense pressure on the president to do something before Mr. Libby went to jail. But none of it was justification for the baldly political act of commuting his sentence.

Mr. Bush’s assertion that he respected the verdict but considered the sentence excessive only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it’s committed by common folk. As governor of Texas, he was infamous for joking about the impending execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row. As president, he has repeatedly put himself and those on his team, especially Mr. Cheney, above the law.

Within minutes of the Libby announcement, the same Republican commentators who fulminated when Paris Hilton got a few days knocked off her time in a county lockup were parroting Mr. Bush’s contention that a fine, probation and reputation damage were “harsh punishment” enough for Mr. Libby.

Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

    Soft on Crime, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/opinion/03tues1.web.html

Analysis: Bush Now Must Limit Fallout

July 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:03 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's decision to spare former vice presidential aide I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby from going to prison -- but not pardoning him -- may have been an attempt to have it both ways. If so, it appears to have proved only partially successful.

Democrats still slammed Bush's commuting of Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence for obstructing a CIA leak investigation. And while some Republican conservatives applauded the decision, others grumbled that Libby should have been granted a full pardon.

Calling Libby's sentence ''excessive,'' Bush on Monday spared the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney from having to go to prison. But he left in place Libby's conviction, two years probation and a $250,000 fine.

Bush acted just hours after a federal appeals court rejected Libby's request to remain free on bail while pursuing his appeals. That meant Libby soon would have been called to begin his sentence, putting added pressure on the president.

''It is another piece of bad news for the president in the sense that the appeals court forced his hand,'' said Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University.

Commuting Libby's sentence but without pardoning him was Bush's ''way of having his cake and eating it too,'' Light said. ''He'll get some boost from his conservative base -- and it removes a topic of conversation for the 2008 Republican presidential campaign.''

In a GOP debate last month, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a former prosecutor, said the sentence was excessive and ''argues in favor of a pardon.'' Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said he would keep ''that option open.'' Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Duncan Hunter of California both said flat out that they would pardon Libby.

Conservatives had recently ramped up pressure on Bush to pardon Libby.

With Bush's approval ratings in the 30 percent range, he could little afford to further alienate this core of his support, already angry about his immigration proposals.

Conservatives characterized the prosecution of Libby by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald as a witch hunt. They also groused that Sandy Berger, who was national security adviser in the Clinton administration, got no jail time for illegally sneaking classified documents out of the National Archives -- while Libby received a 30-month sentence.

Greg Mueller, a conservative GOP strategist, said Bush will ''get a lot of points from people in the conservative movement for doing something so bold when his approval ratings are so low.''

Still, Mueller said, ''there are a lot of conservatives who say that they'd just pardon him outright. There are a lot of people who feel that Libby shouldn't even had any kind of punishment whatsoever.''

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said Bush's decision to commute Libby's sentence ''stands in contrast to his prior history in his first 6 1/2 years'' in office.

During that period, Tobias said, Bush was very circumspect in issuing pardons and commuting sentences, using strict standards and doing it relatively rarely.

Bush has pardoned more than 100 people, but none of them were prominent.

Other presidents have issued pardons for which they were heavily criticized. President Ford's pardon of former President Nixon may have cost Ford the election in 1976.

President Clinton pardoned 140 people on his last day in office, including fugitive financier Marc Rich. On Christmas Eve in 1992, just before he left office, the first President Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and a CIA official as they awaited trial on Iran-Contra charges, as well as four other administration officials who had pleaded or been found guilty in the scandal.

But the elder Bush and Clinton were on the verge of leaving office. Bush still has 18 months to go.

Furthermore, the commutation of Libby's sentence comes at a time when the administration is embroiled in accusations of political cronyism in last year's dismissals of U.S. attorneys.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called Bush's decision on Libby ''betrayal of trust of the American people,'' representative of the sharp criticism leveled in general by Democrats.

While some Republicans may cheer Libby's commutation, ''the general public will believe that Bush is taking care of one of his and Cheney's own,'' University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato said.

Polls have shown roughly two out of three Americans opposed pardoning Libby. There is no polling data on commuting his sentence.

At the heart of the case was the outing in 2003 of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson, was an outspoken Iraq war critic.

Bush initially vowed to fire anyone in his administration shown to have leaked classified information. It can be a federal crime to deliberately disclose the name of a covert CIA agent.

Testimony at Libby's trial showed that a number of administration officials had passed along information on Plame to reporters, including Libby; and that both Bush and Cheney took steps to discredit Wilson. Cheney even told Libby to speak with selected reporters, testimony showed.

Fitzgerald has said that the obstruction of justice that prosecutors claim Libby engaged in made it impossible for them to determine whether the leak itself violated the law.

After Libby's sentencing in early June, both Bush and Cheney had kind words for Libby. Cheney called him a friend and ''a fine man.'' Bush said, ''My heart goes out to his family.''

On Monday, Bush had the final say on Libby's sentence: ''With the denial of bail being upheld and incarceration imminent, I believe it is now important to react to that decision.''

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Tom Raum has covered Washington for The Associated Press since 1973, including five presidencies.

    Analysis: Bush Now Must Limit Fallout, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-CIA-Leak-Trial-Analysis.html

News Analysis

For President, Libby Case Was a Test of Will

July 3, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, July 2 — President Bush’s decision to commute the sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. was the act of a liberated man — a leader who knows that, with 18 months left in the Oval Office and only a dwindling band of conservatives still behind him, he might as well do what he wants.

The decision is a sharp departure for Mr. Bush. In determining whether to invoke his powers of clemency, the president typically relies on formal advice from lawyers at the Justice Department.

But the Libby case, featuring a loyal aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who was the architect and chief defender of the administration’s most controversial foreign policy decision, the war in Iraq, was not just any clemency case. It came to symbolize an unpopular war and the administration’s penchant for secrecy.

Even as he publicly declined to comment on the case, Mr. Bush had privately told his aides that he believed Mr. Libby’s sentence, to 30 months in prison, was too harsh.

“I think he sincerely believed that Scooter was not shown proper justice,” said Charlie Black, a Republican strategist close to the administration. “We can get into the whole definition of justice versus mercy, but the point is the president didn’t say justice wasn’t done, he just didn’t think the sentence was fair and therefore he showed mercy.”

Mr. Bush is not a man to dole out pardons lightly, and in offering a commutation — which left Mr. Libby’s $250,000 fine intact — rather than a pardon, he chose not to use his Constitutional powers of clemency to offer Mr. Libby official forgiveness.

The decision was closely held; only a few aides knew. The commutation seemed to catch Justice Department officials, and even some of Mr. Bush’s closest aides, off guard. At the Justice Department, several senior officials were on their way out of the building shortly before 6 p.m. when news flashed on their Blackberries. They were floored.

At the White House, Tony Snow, the press secretary, said he did not know who was consulted, or how the decision reached. Asked if Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel, had been advising Mr. Bush on the matter, Mr. Snow said, “My guess is Fred did, but I’m guessing with you right now.”

Mr. Libby had close allies in the White House. The president’s new counselor, Ed Gillespie, who started at the White House just four days ago, played a role in Mr. Libby’s legal defense fund. Asked if he had spoken to Mr. Bush personally about Mr. Libby, he said, “I’m not going to go into any internal discussions.”

One big question is what role, if any, Mr. Cheney played. Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney are extremely close — they often rode to work together before Mr. Libby’s indictment forced him to resign as Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff in October 2005 — and aides said the vice president viewed Mr. Libby’s conviction as a tragedy.

Mr. Bush comes at the decision a weakened leader, with his public approval ratings at historic lows for any president, his domestic agenda faltering on Capitol Hill and his aides facing subpoenas from the Democrats who control Congress. Those circumstances offer him a certain amount of freedom; as Mr. Black said, “He knows he’s going to get hammered no matter what he does.”

Indeed, to administration critics, the commutation was a subversion of justice, an act of hypocrisy by a president who once vowed that anyone in his administration who broke the law would “be taken care of.”

Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party, called it a “get- out-of-jail-free card.” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, called it “a betrayal of trust of the American people.”

But to the conservative believers who make up Mr. Bush’s political base, the Libby case was a test of the president’s political will. In the end, although he did not go so far as to pardon Mr. Libby, Mr. Bush apparently decided that it was a test he did not want to fail.

“It became an issue of character and courage, really,” said William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, who had argued in his magazine that if Mr. Bush was not going to pardon Mr. Libby, at least he should commute his sentence. “I certainly think Bush did the right thing and I think he did something important for his presidency. I think conservatives would have lost respect for Bush if he had not commuted Libby’s sentence.”

Even as Mr. Libby’s defenders lobbied the White House intensely for a pardon, the deliberations were closely held. In fact, Mr. Bush only reached the decision on Monday, hours after a federal court ruled that Mr. Libby could not remain free while his case was on appeal.

The decision was announced by the White House in a formal statement, just after Mr. Bush had returned to Washington from Kennebunkport, where he spent the weekend meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. In it, Mr. Bush said he had carefully weighed the arguments of Mr. Libby’s critics and defenders.

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” he said. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive.”

From the outset, Mr. Bush tried to keep his distance from the Libby case, which grew out of the investigation into who leaked the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson. He declined to talk about it, and until Monday had insisted that he would let the legal process run its course before considering a pardon.

But aides said the judge in the case, Reggie B. Walton of the Federal District Court, pushed Mr. Bush into a decision when he ordered Mr. Libby to begin serving his time — a decision upheld Monday by a three-judge panel. So, unlike predecessors, including his father, who used their powers of clemency as they were leaving office, Mr. Bush was forced to act now. He has 18 months left to absorb the political risks, and benefits, of his decision.

    For President, Libby Case Was a Test of Will, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/washington/03bush.html?hp

White House Won't Rule Out Libby Pardon

July 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House on Tuesday declined to rule out the possibility of an eventual pardon for former vice presidential aide I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby. But spokesman Tony Snow said, for now, President Bush is satisfied with his decision to commute Libby's 2 1/2-year prison sentence.

''He thought any jail time was excessive. He did not see fit to have Scooter Libby taken to jail,'' Snow said.

Snow said that even with Bush's decision, Libby remains with a felony conviction on his record, two years' probation, a $250,000 fine and probable loss of his legal career. ''This is hardly a slap on the wrist,'' Snow said.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who sentenced Libby to prison, declined Tuesday to discuss the case or his views on sentencing. ''To now say anything about sentencing on the heels of yesterday's events will inevitably be construed as comments on the president's commutation decision, which would be inappropriate,'' the judge said in an e-mail.

With prison seeming all but certain for Libby, Bush on Monday spared the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. His move came just five hours after a federal appeals court panel ruled that Libby could not delay his prison term. The Bureau of Prisons had already assigned Libby a prison identification number.

Snow was pressed several times on whether the president might eventually grant a full pardon to Libby, who had been convicted of lying and conspiracy in the CIA leak investigation. The press secretary declined to say anything categorically.

''The reason I'm not going to say I'm not going to close a door on a pardon,'' Snow said, ''Scooter Libby may petition for one.''

''The president thinks that he has dealt with the situation properly,'' he added. ''There is always a possibility or there's an avenue open for anybody to petition for consideration of a pardon.''

Bush's decision was sharply criticized by Democrats. Republicans were more subdued, with some welcoming the decision and some conservatives saying Bush should have gone further.

''The president's getting pounding on the right for not granting a full pardon,'' Snow suggested.

Asked whether Cheney had weighed in on the decision to commute Libby's sentence, Snow said, ''I don't have direct knowledge. But on the other hand, the president did consult with most senior officials, and I'm sure that everybody had an opportunity to share their views.''

    White House Won't Rule Out Libby Pardon, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-CIA-Leak-Trial.html

Commutation Doesn’t Equal a Full Pardon

July 3, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

President Bush’s commutation of I. Lewis Libby Jr.’s prison sentence yesterday was not the equivalent of a pardon.

A commutation lessens the severity of the punishment. A pardon excuses or forgives the offense itself.

Mr. Bush commuted Mr. Libby’s 30-month sentence, for obstruction of justice and perjury, saying it was excessive. But he left in place two years’ probation and a $250,000 fine.

He did not disturb the underlying conviction. To the contrary, Mr. Bush said in a statement, “The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant and private citizen will be long-lasting.”

That means Mr. Libby’s appeal of his conviction and his remaining sentence can continue. The original sentence was within the range called for by federal sentencing guidelines.

Had Mr. Bush pardoned Mr. Libby, it would have been easier for Mr. Libby to rebuild his life. Mr. Libby’s ability to practice law, for instance, may be affected by the fact that Mr. Bush chose to commute his sentence rather than pardon him.

“The garden-variety pardon is a forgiveness,” said Margaret Colgate Love, the pardon lawyer at the Justice Department for most of the 1990s. “It does not expunge or seal a conviction, but it provides relief from the collateral legal consequences of a conviction.”

Commutations, by contrast, only make the punishment milder. Governors sometimes commute death sentences to life in prison, for instance.

The Constitution gives the president the “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” The provision is generally understood to grant complete discretion where federal crimes are involved.

According to Justice Department standards, “requests for commutation generally are not accepted unless and until a person has begun serving that sentence,” and they are generally not granted to those appealing their convictions. Cooperation with prosecutors is usually considered a factor in granting such requests.

With just minor exceptions, Ms. Love said, “I can’t think of a recent commutation that was granted before at least some prison time was served.”

    Commutation Doesn’t Equal a Full Pardon, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/washington/03commute.html

Bush Spares Libby From Prison Term

July 3, 2007
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE and NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, July 2 — President Bush spared I. Lewis Libby Jr. from prison Monday, commuting his two-and-a-half-year sentence while leaving intact his conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice in the C.I.A. leak case.

Mr. Bush’s action, announced hours after a panel of judges ruled that Mr. Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, could not put off serving his sentence while he appealed his conviction, came as a surprise to all but a few members of the president’s inner circle. It reignited the passions that have surrounded the case from the beginning.

The commutation brought immediate praise from conservatives, who hailed it as a courageous step to avert a miscarriage of justice, and condemnation from Democrats, who said it showed a lack of accountability and respect for the law.

The president portrayed his commutation of the sentence, which fell short of a pardon and still requires Mr. Libby to pay a $250,000 fine and be on probation for two years, as a carefully considered compromise.

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Mr. Bush said in a statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive.”

The president’s decision means that Mr. Libby, 56, no longer faces the prospect of leaving his wife and two children, in what probably would have been a matter of weeks, to report to prison.

His last judicial hope of postponing incarceration dissolved earlier Monday after a panel of judges ruled that he had to begin serving his sentence soon. He had already been assigned a federal prisoner number.

It was the first time Mr. Bush had used his constitutional power to grant clemency in a prominent case with political overtones and suggested that with only 18 months left in office he may feel that his hands are untied.

Mindful of the controversy that greeted pardons issued by some of his predecessors, including Gerald R. Ford, Bill Clinton and his own father, Mr. Bush has until now limited his use of the power to routine cases, and had not publicly discussed his intentions in the Libby case. The action drew a sharp response from Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the case, in which Mr. Libby was accused of lying to investigators looking into the leak of a C.I.A. operative’s identity. Mr. Fitzgerald criticized the president’s characterization of the sentence as “excessive.”

“In this case an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in a statement. “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.”

A lawyer for Mr. Libby, Theodore V. Wells Jr., issued a brief statement saying Mr. Libby and his family “wished to express their gratitude for the president’s decision.”

“We continue to believe in Mr. Libby’s innocence,” Mr. Wells said.

Mr. Bush’s decision drew warm support from Mr. Libby’s friends and supporters, who had created a defense fund that drew the support of dozens of prominent Republicans, including a half dozen former ambassadors and several former government colleagues. Former Senator Fred D. Thompson, now an undeclared candidate for president, held a fund-raiser for Mr. Libby.

“This is not a man who deserves to go to jail in any sense of the word,” said Kenneth L. Adelman, a former Defense Department official and longtime friend of Mr. Libby, who stayed at his Colorado vacation home before his trial.

“Whatever he did wrong, he certainly paid,” Mr. Adelman said, referring to Mr. Libby’s resignation from his prominent position and his public humiliation. “This is a good person who served his country very well and is a decent person,” he said.

Congressional Democrats rushed out statements lambasting the president’s move. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, called the commutation “disgraceful.”

“Libby’s conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq War,” Mr. Reid said. “Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone.”

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, acknowledged that the president had acted within his powers. But Mr. Leahy said: “Accountability has been in short supply in the Bush administration, and this commutation fits that pattern. It is emblematic of a White House that sees itself as being above the law.”

In March a jury convicted Mr. Libby of lying to F.B.I. agents and a grand jury investigating the leak in 2003 of the secret Central Intelligence Agency employment of Valerie Wilson. Ms. Wilson is the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who had accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence to justify war with Iraq.

The criminal case polarized public opinion almost as bitterly as the war itself. Conservative backers of Mr. Bush contended that because no one was charged with leaking Ms. Wilson’s identity, the investigation should have been dropped altogether. Others said that lying to a grand jury was a serious offense, while some liberal opponents of the war saw the charges as a measure of justice for an administration official they blamed for exaggerating the threat from Saddam Hussein and pushing the country into war.

In a brief interview Monday, Mr. Wilson, who recently moved with his wife to New Mexico, said the commutation “should demonstrate to the American people how corrupt this administration is.” He suggested that its goal was to prevent Mr. Libby from telling all he knew about White House actions, particularly in the planning for war.

“By his action, the president has guaranteed that Mr. Libby has no incentive to begin telling the truth,” Mr. Wilson said. Ms. Wilson, who has a book planned for publication later this year, declined to comment.

In pursuing criminal charges, Mr. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for Chicago, said Mr. Libby had subverted the justice system by lying to investigators. In urging a strong sentence in May, Mr. Fitzgerald called Mr. Libby “a high-ranking government official whose falsehoods were central to issues in a significant criminal investigation.”

The judge in the case, Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court in Washington, echoed that notion in imposing the 30-month sentence last month. The sentence was within the range recommended by prosecutors, and Judge Walton declared that high officials had a “special obligation” to obey the law.

But the conviction set off a drumbeat on the right of calls for a pardon, with such influential conservative editorial voices as The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard leading the campaign.

Publicly, the idea to commute rather than pardon appears to have first been floated in an op-ed article by William Otis, a former federal prosecutor who served as a special counsel to Mr. Bush’s father when he was president,

Mr. Otis wrote in The Washington Post that commuting the sentence “would leave Libby with the disabilities of a convicted felon—no small matter for a lawyer and public figure.” He will most likely never again be able to practice law. Mr. Otis said a partial commutation would show the importance of being truthful but added, “We will not insist on being vindictive.”

In choosing to commute the sentence, President Bush opted for the lesser of his two major constitutional powers of clemency. A pardon would have wiped out all of Mr. Libby’s penalties. Now the fine and probation would be erased only if Mr. Libby were to prevail on appeal.

Word of the commutation quickly spread on the presidential campaign trail. When Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, announced the news at a backyard campaign event in Iowa City, the crowd audibly gasped. One woman shrieked and said, "No!"

“These guys think they are above the law,” Mr. Biden said. “That translates around the world.”

Two Republican candidates for president, Mitt Romney and Rudolph W. Giuliani, expressed support for Mr. Bush’s decision. Campaigning in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Mr. Romney said, “I believe that the circumstances of this case, where the prosecutor knew that there had not been a crime committed, created a setting where a decision of this nature was reasonable.”

Mr. Bush’s statement accompanying the commutation order was reminiscent of one issued by his father on Christmas Eve 1992 when he pardoned six officials convicted in the Iran-contra affair. His action drew a strong retort from the independent counsel in that case, Lawrence E. Walsh. Mr. Walsh said it “undermines the principle that no man is above the law.”

In his lengthy statement about the commutation the current President Bush praised Mr. Fitzgerald as a “highly qualified, professional prosecutor who carried out his responsibilities as charged.”

But he said: “My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely.”

Reporting was contributed by Jo Becker and David Johnston in Washington, Jeff Zeleny in Iowa City and Michael Luo in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

    Bush Spares Libby From Prison Term, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/washington/03libby.html

Text

President’s Statement on Libby

July 2, 2007
The New York Times

The following statement was released by President Bush on July 2, 2007:

The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today rejected Lewis Libby’s request to remain free on bail while pursuing his appeals for the serious convictions of perjury and obstruction of justice. As a result, Mr. Libby will be required to turn himself over to the Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his prison sentence.

I have said throughout this process that it would not be appropriate to comment or intervene in this case until Mr. Libby’s appeals have been exhausted. But with the denial of bail being upheld and incarceration imminent, I believe it is now important to react to that decision.

From the very beginning of the investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name, I made it clear to the White House staff and anyone serving in my administration that I expected full cooperation with the Justice Department. Dozens of White House staff and administration officials dutifully cooperated.

After the investigation was under way, the Justice Department appointed United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald as a Special Counsel in charge of the case. Mr. Fitzgerald is a highly qualified, professional prosecutor who carried out his responsibilities as charged.

This case has generated significant commentary and debate. Critics of the investigation have argued that a special counsel should not have been appointed, nor should the investigation have been pursued after the Justice Department learned who leaked Ms. Plame’s name to columnist Robert Novak. Furthermore, the critics point out that neither Mr. Libby nor anyone else has been charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, which were the original subjects of the investigation. Finally, critics say the punishment does not fit the crime: Mr. Libby was a first-time offender with years of exceptional public service and was handed a harsh sentence based in part on allegations never presented to the jury.

Others point out that a jury of citizens weighed all the evidence and listened to all the testimony and found Mr. Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice. They argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable. They say that had Mr. Libby only told the truth, he would have never been indicted in the first place.

Both critics and defenders of this investigation have made important points. I have made my own evaluation. In preparing for the decision I am announcing today, I have carefully weighed these arguments and the circumstances surrounding this case.

Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.

I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.

The Constitution gives the President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted. It is my judgment that a commutation of the prison term in Mr. Libby’s case is an appropriate exercise of this power.

    President’s Statement on Libby, NYT, 2.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/washington/02libby-text.html

Text

Grant of Executive Clemency

July 2, 2007
The New York Times

GRANT OF EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS Lewis Libby was convicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in the case United States v. Libby, Crim. No. 05-394 (RBW), for which a sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment, 2 years’ supervised release, a fine of $250,000, and a special assessment of $400 was imposed on June 22, 2007;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, pursuant to my powers under Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, do hereby commute the prison terms imposed by the sentence upon the said Lewis Libby to expire immediately, leaving intact and in effect the two-year term of supervised release, with all its conditions, and all other components of the sentence.

IN WITNESS THEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this second day of July, in the year of our Lord two thousand and seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

GEORGE W. BUSH

    Grant of Executive Clemency, NYT, 2.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/washington/w03clemencyproclamation.html

Bush Cites Israel As Model for Iraq

June 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:34 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) -- President Bush held up Israel as a model for defining success in Iraq, saying Thursday the U.S. goal there is not to eliminate attacks but to enable a democracy that can function despite violence.

With his Iraq policy under increasing criticism from the public and lawmakers in both parties, Bush went to the U.S. Naval War College to declare progress and plead for patience. At the same time, his top national security went to Capitol Hill to hear out Republican critics.

Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said this week U.S. troops should start leaving now because Bush's strategy will not have time to work.

National security adviser Stephen Hadley met with Lugar, GOP Sen. John Warner of Virginia and others. Warner said a defense policy bill expected to attract several war-related amendments in July was a main topic.

The White House thought it had until an expected September assessment by military commanders before facing a showdown on the unpopular war.

But a majority of senators now believes troops should start coming home in the next few months. House Republicans want to revive the independent Iraq Study Group to get new options.

Bush sought in his speech to put the brakes on these efforts.

He characterized the fight in Iraq, where tensions between Shiite and Sunni factions have kept the country in a cycle of violence, as primarily against al-Qaida forces and their use of grisly suicide attacks and car bombings.

''They understand that sensational images are the best way to overwhelm the quiet progress on the ground,'' Bush said.

The president laid out in some of his plainest terms yet how to determine when the U.S. presence in Iraq has achieved its goals. This, Bush said, is ''the rise of a government that can protect its people, deliver basic services for all its citizens and function as a democracy even amid violence.''

''Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy's ability to get a car bombing in the evening news,'' he said. ''No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street.''

He suggested Israel, the frequent target of terrorist attacks and a country in a decades-long, intractable and often violent dispute with Palestinians, as a standard to strive for.

''In places like Israel, terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks,'' Bush said. ''The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're looking for in Iraq.''

It was likely to be controversial -- and possibly even explosive -- for Bush to set out Israel as a model for a Muslim Middle Eastern nation.

Aside from Israel's security problems, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is such a sensitive issue in the Muslim world that it has become a rallying cry for many and major recruiting tool for Islamic extremist groups such as al-Qaida.

The president ordered 21,500 additional U.S. combat troops to Iraq in January. With those troops finally all deployed, Bush ticked through the details of operations in several areas, declaring with the aid of maps and charts on screens that flanked him that progress already is being made in many places.

He said sectarian murders, after spiking in May, are now down substantially from January levels. Car bombings and suicide attacks continue, but declined in May and June. He cited ''astonishing signs of normalcy'' such as soccer matches and crowded markets.

''Even as our troops are showing some success in cornering and trapping al-Qaida, they face a lot of challenges,'' Bush said.

The president asked lawmakers and the public to give more of a chance to his effort to create breathing room for Iraqi leaders to achieve political reconciliation.

''It's a well-conceived plan by smart military people,'' he said. ''And we owe them the time, and we own them the support they need to succeed.''

Afterward, Bush took a few questions. A woman asked ''with all due respect'' how much the president listens to military officers when making decisions about the war. ''A lot,'' he replied.

Outside, about 150 anti-war protesters held signs saying ''Shame,'' ''Impeach,'' and ''War is never the answer.'' It was Bush's first presidential visit to Rhode Island, a heavily Democratic state where opinion polls show he is unpopular.

The president spent about two hours later meeting privately with families of soldiers killed in Iraq. He then traveled to his family's summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he is spending the weekend and meeting on Sunday and Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Senate, meanwhile, confirmed Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute on Thursday to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the White House.

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this story.

    Bush Cites Israel As Model for Iraq, NYT, 29.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html

Ed Stein        The Rocky Mountain News        Colorado        29.6.2007

Bush Asserts Executive Privilege on Subpoenas

June 29, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, June 28 — President Bush moved one step closer to a constitutional showdown with Democrats on Thursday, as the White House asserted executive privilege in refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas for documents related to the dismissal of federal prosecutors.

The move prompted Democrats to accuse the White House of stonewalling, and seemed to put the legislative and executive branches on a collision course that could land them in court. It was the second time in Mr. Bush’s presidency that he has formally asserted executive privilege, the power first recognized by the Supreme Court in a 1974 Watergate-era case.

On Thursday morning, the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, telephoned the Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, which had issued the subpoenas, to inform them of Mr. Bush’s decision. The president also intends to invoke executive privilege to prevent two of his former top aides, Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara Taylor, the former political director, from testifying, officials said.

“With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path,” Mr. Fielding wrote in a letter to the committee chairmen, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan. He said the committees had issued “unfettered requests.”

Mr. Conyers, in a telephone interview, called the letter “an appalling response to a reasonable question,” adding, “This is reckless; it’s a form of governmental lawlessness that is really astounding.”

The letter seemed to lay the groundwork for how the administration will respond to a separate, unrelated, round of subpoenas, issued by the Senate panel Wednesday to the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Justice Department for information about the domestic eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency.

Administration officials said they had not decided how to respond to those demands, but experts said it seemed clear that the White House would refuse to comply there, too.

“Given the way in which both the U.S. attorney matter and the N.S.A. matter are now percolating through committees, I would be very surprised if there were not a major showdown over executive privilege,” said Peter M. Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University and an authority on executive privilege. “It might not get to court, but there will have to be some very high pressure negotiations at a very late stage to avoid that.”

The clash pits the Congressional right to conduct oversight — in this case, an investigation into whether the Justice Department allowed partisan politics to interfere with hiring and firing of federal prosecutors — against the president’s right to unfettered and candid advice from his top aides. Experts disagree about how a court might rule.

Mr. Shane says Congress has a strong argument, because it is making a specific claim that it needs information to conduct an oversight investigation, and “specific claims of necessity usually outweigh general claims” like the one the administration asserts, arguing the president’s need for unfettered advice.

But David B. Rivkin, who worked as a lawyer in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, argues that the president has the stronger case, because Congress has only weak oversight authority in the area of hiring and firing federal prosecutors. “In this area, executive power is nearly absolute,” Mr. Rivkin said.

The next step is for Democrats to decide whether to try to negotiate with the White House or to vote on a contempt resolution, a process that could take months and would lay the groundwork for sending the matter to court. Democrats did not say Thursday how they intended to proceed, although by the sound of their comments, negotiations did not seem likely any time soon.

“This is a further shift by the Bush administration into Nixonian stonewalling and more evidence of their disdain for our system of checks and balances,” Mr. Leahy said.

The dispute dates to February, when Democrats began investigating the dismissals. The White House offered lawmakers access to certain documents as well as private interviews — not under oath, and without transcripts — with top aides to Mr. Bush, including Ms. Miers, Ms. Taylor and Karl Rove, the chief political strategist. The Democrats, demanding formal testimony under oath, rejected the offer. That led to the subpoenas, though Mr. Rove has yet to receive one.

Some Republicans, including Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a strong critic of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, have pressed the administration to agree at least to transcripts. But on Thursday, Mr. Specter backed off, saying now that the president has invoked executive privilege, Congress should take whatever information it can get “on the president’s terms” to avoid a protracted legal battle.

“This investigation is lagging very, very badly,” Mr. Specter said, adding, “and while the investigation is lagging, Attorney General Gonzales continues to serve.”

The first time Mr. Bush asserted executive privilege, in 2001, he inherited claims from the Clinton administration. Representative Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana, was demanding information from the Justice Department pertaining to the tenure of the former attorney general, Janet Reno, but the Bush administration refused, saying it would set a bad precedent. Mr. Burton backed down.

    Bush Asserts Executive Privilege on Subpoenas, NYT, 29.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/washington/29bush.html?hp

Immigrant Bill Dies in Senate; Defeat for Bush

June 29, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, June 28 — President Bush’s effort to overhaul the nation’s immigration policy, a cornerstone of his domestic agenda, collapsed Thursday in the Senate, with little prospect that it can be revived before Mr. Bush leaves office in 19 months.

The bill called for the biggest changes to immigration law in more than 20 years, offering legal status to millions of illegal immigrants while trying to secure borders. But the Senate, forming blocs that defied party affiliation, could never unite on the main provisions.

Rejecting the president’s last-minute pleas, it voted, 53 to 46, to turn back a motion to end debate and move toward final passage. Supporters fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to close the debate.

Mr. Bush placed telephone calls to lawmakers throughout the morning. But members of his party abandoned him in droves, with just 12 of the 49 Senate Republicans sticking by him on the important procedural vote that determined the fate of the bill.

Nearly one-third of Senate Democrats voted, in effect, to block action on the bill.

The vote followed an outpouring of criticism from conservatives and others who called it a form of amnesty for lawbreakers.

The outcome was a bitter disappointment for Mr. Bush and other supporters of a comprehensive approach, including Hispanic and church groups and employers who had been seeking greater access to foreign workers.

Supporters and opponents said the measure was dead for the remainder of the Bush administration, though conceivably individual pieces might be revived.

The vote reflected the degree to which Congress and the nation are polarized over immigration. The emotional end to what had been an emotional debate was evident, with a few senior staff members who had invested months in writing the bill near tears.

“The bill now dies,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who helped write the measure.

The outcome also underscored the challenge that Mr. Bush faces in exerting authority and enacting an agenda as members of his party increasingly break with him and Democrats no longer fear him. Having already given up on other ambitious second-term plans like overhauling Social Security, the administration has little prospect of winning any big new legislative achievements in its final months.

The collapse also highlighted the difficulties that the new Democratic leadership in Congress has had in showing that it can address the big problems facing the nation. In this case, Democratic leaders asserted that the failure of the immigration bill reflected on Mr. Bush, and not on their party.

Senator David Vitter, the Louisiana Republican who helped lead opposition to the bill, said: “The proponents did not get even a simple majority. The message is crystal clear. The American people want us to start with enforcement at the border and at the workplace and don’t want promises. They want action. They want results. They want proof, because they’ve heard all the promises before.”

In voting to end the debate, the 12 Republicans were joined by 33 Democrats and one independent. Voting against the motion to end the debate were 15 Democrats, one independent and 37 Republicans, including the minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

“I had hoped for a bipartisan accomplishment,” Mr. McConnell said. “What we got was a bipartisan defeat.”

Among the Democrats voting no were several up for re-election next year, including Senators Max Baucus of Montana, Tom Harkin of Iowa and John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said he spoke to Mr. Bush after the vote and thanked him for his work in support of the bill.

But, Mr. Reid said, “There just was not enough Republican support for the president’s approach.”

Mr. Bush, in Rhode Island for a visit to the Naval War College, said: “Legal immigration is one of the top concerns of the American people, and Congress’s failure to act on it is a disappointment. A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn’t find common ground. It didn’t work.”

In the end, many groups that had supported segments of the bill urged the Senate to pass it in the hope that it could be “improved” in the House.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, said: “The Senate vote effectively kills comprehensive immigration reform for this Congress. It’s a vote for the status quo, which most Americans are not satisfied with.”

Supporters of the bill agreed with opponents on one point, that many Americans believe that the government lacks the ability to carry out the huge responsibilities it would have had. “People look out and they see the failures of government, whether it’s Hurricane Katrina or the inability to get enough passports out for people, and they say, ‘How is the government going to accomplish all of this?’ ” Mrs. Feinstein said.

Opponents of the bill were elated.

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said: “The American people won today. They care enough for their country to get mad and to fight for it. Americans made phone calls and sent letters and convinced the Senate to stop this bill.”

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, a leading opponent of the bill, said talk radio was “a big factor” in derailing it.

Supporters of the bill wanted to pass it quickly, “before Rush Limbaugh could tell the American people what was in it,” Mr. Sessions said.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, chief Democratic architect of the bill, said many senators “voted their fears, not their hopes.”

Referring to opponents, Mr. Kennedy said: “We know what they don’t like. What are they for? What are they going to do with the 12 million who are undocumented here? Send them back to countries around the world? Develop a type of Gestapo here to seek out these people that are in the shadows? What’s their alternative?”

Without a new immigration law, Mr. Kennedy said, “The situation is going to get worse and worse and worse.”

As the vote was conducted, several House members of Hispanic descent gathered on the Senate floor, and tourists in the gallery listened to the final arguments with rapt attention.

A bipartisan group of 12 senators working closely with the administration wrote the bill in closed sessions over three months. After two weeks of debate, it appeared to die on June 7, when the Senate voted, 50 to 45, against ending debate.

Mr. Reid pulled the bill off the floor, but later agreed to return it under a procedure that bundled 27 proposed amendments into one package.

Opponents and some supporters said Senate leaders had made a mistake in taking the bill directly to the floor without hearings or review by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Not just conservatives voiced reservations. Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine who is running for re-election, said: “I just don’t think the bill struck the right balance. People were troubled by the proposed solution for the 12 million people here illegally. We did not get that part right.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a co-author of the bill, said a majority of Americans supported it when told of other provisions like increased money for border security, a new employee verification system, a guest worker program and a new merit-based system to select immigrants.

But Senator Harkin said, “The bill, as a whole, has evolved into an unworkable mess, and I cannot support it.”

Guest workers could drive down wages for Americans “on the lower rungs of the economic ladder,” Mr. Harkin said, and under the employee verification system, some citizens could have been denied jobs “because of errors in a government database.”

Among important early backers who fell away was Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, who said he received two calls from Mr. Bush in recent days. Mr. Domenici said the secrecy surrounding the bill’s drafting had left people confused and “caused it to flop.”

Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska and another recipient of a call from Mr. Bush, concluded that the bill was beyond repair after having backed efforts to advance it.

“This bill is not only hopelessly flawed, it is unsalvageable,” Mr. Nelson said. “We have to start over.”

Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic rights group, predicted that “the growing and increasingly energized Latino electorate” would hold lawmakers accountable for failing to pass a comprehensive bill.

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

    Immigrant Bill Dies in Senate; Defeat for Bush, NYT, 29.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/washington/29immig.html?hp

Bush’s Stance on Immigration Has Roots in Midland

June 24, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

MIDLAND, Tex. — Late last spring, Republicans in this West Texas oil town called for a boycott of Doña Anita’s Mexican restaurant, a retaliatory step against its owner, Luz Reyes, for closing shop and showing up at a rally against proposed new penalties for illegal immigrants.

But President Bush’s three best friends here defied the boycott and went to the restaurant, Mr. Bush’s favorite when he lived here, regardless. One of them, the president’s close confidant and former commerce secretary, Donald L. Evans, told Ms. Reyes: “Luz, you didn’t do anything wrong. We love you.”

The hometown divide helps to shed light on a broader rift, as Mr. Bush and like-minded Republicans engage in an unusually contentious fight with the rest of their party in the national debate over immigration.

Mr. Bush has pursued a goal of providing citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants with rare attacks on his conservative supporters, who have derided his approach as tantamount to amnesty. There are various political motivations for Mr. Bush to push for his plan, including the rapid growth in the nation’s Hispanic population, a voting group that he has long considered to be potentially Republican.

But the roots of Mr. Bush’s passion lie here in Midland, now heavily Hispanic, the city where Mr. Bush spent much of his childhood, and to which he returned as a young adult after spending his high school and college years in the more genteel settings of Andover and Yale.

As a boy, and later as a young, hard-drinking oilman, his friends say, Mr. Bush developed a particular empathy for the new Mexican immigrants who worked hard on farms, in oil fields and in people’s homes, and went on to raise children who built businesses and raised families of their own, without the advantages he had as the scion of a wealthy New England family.

The symbiosis fit with the Bush family’s Northeastern, free-trade Republicanism, which took on a Mexican flair, especially after Mr. Bush’s parents hired a live-in Mexican maid in Texas who became part of the family, and his brother, Jeb, married a young woman from Mexico who initially spoke little English.

But interviews in Midland also tell another story, of how a place that Mr. Bush credits with informing his relatively liberal views on immigration has started to move away from him.

Central to the shift is the perception among some in this city of about 100,000 people that he does not understand the sense of siege that has set in about the illegal population that has grown considerably since he traded the Texas governor’s mansion for the White House seven years ago.

“There’s just a real disconnect between the folks of West Texas and the president right now,” said Mike Conaway, who was the chief financial officer for Mr. Bush’s oil exploration company here in the 1980s and now represents the area as a Republican in Congress.

The disconnect has been exacerbated by a steady increase of illegal immigrants since Mr. Bush left the state, and attending newspaper reports about the strains on social services that they have brought. It is visible on a grand scale, with Mr. Conaway and this state’s two Republican United States senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, breaking with Mr. Bush on immigration in recent months after having followed his lead with Rolex reliability for most of his term.

And it is visible in smaller, more personal terms here in Midland, with the boycott that some Republicans called against Ms. Reyes’s restaurant. The dispute put Mr. Evans and the rest of Mr. Bush’s friends — who used to join Mr. Bush and his wife there nearly every Friday night — on the opposite side of the local Republican Party, including its chairwoman, Sue Brannon.

Mr. Evans said his appearance at the restaurant after the boycott had been called was “just dinner, not a political statement” against fellow local Republicans including his close friend Ms. Brannon.

But to Ms. Reyes, who has known Mr. Bush and his wife since their twins were in baby carriers, and who recounted the encounter with Mr. Evans in an interview at her restaurant, it was an important show of support from a group she still calls “the Bush clique.”

New Beginnings

George H. W. Bush came to the Midland-Odessa area in 1948 when his son George W. was 2, hoping to make his own fortune in oil, eventually forming a drilling company, the Zapata Petroleum Corporation — named for the movie “Viva Zapata!” about the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata — and later taking as a partner Jorge Díaz Serrano, a contender for the Mexican presidency before being imprisoned for fraud.

Friends of the current president have recalled how they occasionally saw Mexican workers in his father’s oil fields, part of a steady trickle of new immigrants from the other side of Southern border who also took jobs as ranch hands, maids and groundskeepers.

Randall Roden, one of Mr. Bush’s close childhood friends, recalled an upbringing that included “being aware that there were people who were poor and hard-working, and just looking for better opportunity, and a chance to do just about anything.”

Joe O’Neill, another friend from the time who remains close with Mr. Bush to this day, and who helped introduce Mr. Bush to the first lady, said of the newcomers, “They were hard-working and they were usually very close families — there was generally a father and a mother at home; you noticed it.”

Mr. Bush’s closest boyhood contact with anyone of Hispanic descent seems to have been in Houston, where the Bushes moved when George W. Bush was in middle school, two years before he went to boarding school at Andover in Massachusetts. His mother sought household help in the local paper, and answered an advertisement for a Mexican woman who was seeking sponsorship in return for housekeeping services. The woman, Paula Rendon, moved in and has stayed on with the Bush family for decades, following George H.W. and Barbara Bush to the White House and back home.

The current president has mentioned her only rarely, but he has described her as “a second mother.” Mr. Bush declined several interview requests. But in a brief e-mail exchange, Mr. Bush’s younger brother Jeb said of Ms. Rendon, “I adore her,” and added, “I got pretty good at Spanish thanks to her.” But, he said, he became fluent through his wife, Columba, with whom he has three children whom George H. W. Bush once famously, and affectionately, called “the little brown ones.”

The Son Returns

Mr. Bush returned to Midland in 1975 to find a much more Hispanic town than the one he left behind, because of an influx of Mexicans who went there to cash in on the 1970s oil boom just as Mr. Bush did.

“When the president and I came here we saw more and more Hispanics moving into the oil fields, working on well-servicing rigs — 12-hours-a-day kind of stuff,” said Mr. Evans, who arrived in Midland around the same time and married one of Mr. Bush’s grammar school friends. “So we saw a lot of Hispanics coming into that sector of our economy here, and of course, migrating their way into the community, and the schools.”

Mr. Bush became a man about the small city, drawn to its Mexican restaurants and the entrepreneurs behind them feeding on the boom times.

“The sky was the limit and who we were mattered less than where we were going,” said one of his friends from the time, José Cuevas, a third-generation Mexican American who established a fast-food burrito chain with a few thousand dollars.

Mr. O’Neill said, “He had a great deal of admiration for someone like José who started with a lot less and built it up.”

Another Hispanic friend from the time, George Veloz, recalled playing basketball at the Y.M.C.A. with Mr. Bush and sometimes “sharing a few cold ones.”

Mr. Bush’s parents had eaten at the small Mexican restaurant Mr. Veloz’s parents started after immigrating from Mexico, and which Mr. Veloz went on to build into a statewide chain. “As important as that family is, he didn’t treat me any different than any of the friends he grew up with,” Mr. Veloz said.

El Defender

In a telephone interview, Ms. Brannon, the local party chairwoman who has known Mr. Bush for decades, said he did not understand the new realities of illegal immigration. She said the friends he made in the Hispanic community when he lived in Midland were “not here illegally and taking freebies.”

“I love George and Laura dearly, and I respect him,” she said, “but this immigration thing is going to ruin our country.”

In winning election as governor in 1994, and winning re-election in 1998, Mr. Bush succeeded in drawing an unexpectedly high level of support from Hispanic voters.

He did so in part by speaking out against efforts by Pete Wilson, then the governor of California, to push initiatives intended to cut off services for illegal immigrants in his state.

Mr. Bush also spoke out against anti-trade sentiment at the time in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times that had as its headline, “No Cheap Shots at Mexico, Please.”

In a state that had for the most part reacted negatively to the amnesty provisions enacted under Ronald Reagan in 1986, Governor Bush found Texas to be largely receptive to his push to provide a bilingual education program for the children of Hispanic immigrants.

In the current climate, that seems like a distant memory, a casualty of what Mr. Bush’s longtime political adviser, Karl Rove, a Texan, said reflected how “the feelings about immigration have waxed and waned over the years” in Texas. In the 1990s, Mr. Rove said, Texans felt as if the immigration problem was relatively under control — an assessment of that time that even Ms. Brannon shared. But now, she said, “there’s just more and more coming in.”

    Bush’s Stance on Immigration Has Roots in Midland, NYT, 23.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/washington/24immig.html?hp

Bush Pick for No. 3 at Justice Withdraws

June 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:05 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's pick to be the No. 3 official in the Justice Department asked to have his nomination withdrawn Friday, four days before he was to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Bill Mercer sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales saying it was unlikely that the Senate would confirm him as associate attorney general, a post he has held on an interim basis since September. He plans to leave Washington and turn his full attention to his work as U.S. attorney for Montana.

''With no clear end in sight with respect to my nomination, it is untenable for me to pursue both responsibilities and provide proper attention to my family,'' Mercer wrote.

The Judiciary Committee had scheduled a hearing on Mercer's nomination for Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the committee had said senators needed the facts from an investigation into the firings of several federal prosecutors before he could be confirmed.

''The White House has found many ways to keep sunlight from reaching some of the darker corners of the Bush Justice Department, but this is a new one,'' Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement. ''With a confirmation hearing looming next Tuesday, they have withdrawn this nomination to avoid having to answer more questions under oath.''

Mercer is the sixth senior Justice Department official to leave the tight-knit circle of Gonzales' advisers in the wake of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last December. He is the only of the group, however, to remain with the Justice Department.

Mercer said in his letter to Gonzales that he believes he would not be confirmed promptly, if ever, ''in part by statements suggesting that some senior Justice nominees will not be voted upon until the Senate receives e-mails and witnesses it has demanded from the White House.''

In an interview with The Associated Press, Mercer noted that Judiciary Committee staff interviewed him for six hours in April about the prosecutor firings. He would not comment on the timing of his request to withdraw the nomination, but he said it was his decision.

''It's been a wonderful opportunity for 10 months and I'm saddened I won't be able to continue,'' he said.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said it was unfortunate that the Senate has indicated it will not act to confirm nominees.

Mercer's name comes up at times in thousands of pages of e-mail exchanges between Justice Department and White House officials discussing the firings. The panel had authorized a subpoena for Mercer as part of its investigation.

The demise of his nomination points up the difficulty Bush faces as he tries to fill the top ranks of a Justice Department wilting under the weight of the Democratic-led congressional investigation into whether the White House, in effect, runs the agency.

Several lawmakers, including Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, have said the department is so dysfunctional and that it suffers with Gonzales still at the helm. But with Bush's support behind him, Gonzales shows no signs of resigning. He has said he plans to stay in the post until the end of Bush's term, virtually ensuring that majority Democrats will push ahead with their investigations of his stewardship.

Montana's two Democratic senators, Jon Tester and Max Baucus, have criticized Mercer for working two jobs and have called for him to resign as the state's U.S. attorney or give up his Justice Department post. In his letter, Mercer said he ''heard the call'' from the senators and said the change would address their concerns.

But a spokesman for Tester said Mercer's request for withdrawal ''was too little, too late and something doesn't smell right.''

''He decided to sneak out the back door only days before having to face, under oath, tough questions that he's been avoiding for months,'' said the spokesman, Matt McKenna.

Baucus appeared more forgiving.

''Max respects Mr. Mercer's decision,'' said Baucus spokesman Barrett Kaiser. ''Montanans deserve a full-time U.S. attorney.''

In a statement Friday, Gonzales praised Mercer as the No. 3 official at Justice and said he was ''very pleased that the department will continue to benefit from his leadership, talent and experience through his role as U.S. attorney in Montana.''

Documents released as part of the congressional inquiry of the firings indicate Mercer was not intimately involved in planning the firings, but he tried to quell the controversy they created.

Two days before the firings, former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson sent Mercer a short e-mail to make sure the department's third in command was aware they were about to happen.

''Wanted you to know in case you get some calls from the field and so you can help manage the chatter that may result,'' Sampson wrote in the e-mail.

The documents show that one of the fired prosecutors, Daniel Bogden of Nevada, claimed that Mercer told him the day he was fired that the dismissals were to make room for others to gain experience to let the Republican Party stack federal judgeships with loyalists.

Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.

    Bush Pick for No. 3 at Justice Withdraws, NYT, 23.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fired-Prosecutors.html

At White House, Renewed Debate on Guantánamo

June 23, 2007
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and WILLIAM GLABERSON

WASHINGTON, June 22 — The Bush administration acknowledged Friday that its top officials were once again actively debating recommendations about how and when to close the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but officials said they thought it could be weeks or months before a decision was made.

A central recommendation, but not the only possibility, would be to move the terror suspects from Guantánamo to military prisons in the United States, the officials said.

The revival of a bitter, long-running debate behind closed doors in the Bush administration comes only a few months after the Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told President Bush that they believed that Guantánamo’s continued existence was undercutting American foreign policy efforts around the world, and would ultimately prove a stain on Mr. Bush’s legacy.

Meanwhile Friday, a military intelligence official who had been involved in screening detainees was sharply critical of the process.

Mr. Gates and Ms. Rice met strong resistance from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who argued that moving the prisoners to American prisons would open a floodgate of litigation. Vice President Dick Cheney has also been reported to be a staunch opponent of transferring prisoners to American soil.

But Mr. Gonzales has been badly weakened by the political dispute over the dismissals of United States attorneys, and Mr. Cheney’s influence has been on the wane, officials say.

“The president has declared this thing should be closed, sooner or later, and so all the old proposals about how to send prisoners back or move them to American soil are being brought back with new urgency,” said one official involved in the debate who was not authorized to speak publicly.

But it is unclear whether those who favor closing the prison can push Mr. Bush to action. While he has publicly expressed a desire to close Guantánamo — a point the deputy White House press secretary, Dana Perino, cited to reporters on Friday — he has never set a date certain to do so, or said whether it would happen during his time in office.

Senior administration officials, including Ms. Rice, Mr. Gates and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, were scheduled to have a meeting at the White House on Friday. But that meeting was scrapped after The Associated Press reported Thursday that a consensus was building for a proposal to transfer detainees to Defense Department facilities or to high-security prisons.

Ms. Perino said that “there was a decision that a meeting wasn’t necessary,” and would not elaborate on why it was canceled. But she added, “Everybody is working towards the goal to meet what the president has asked them to do, which is to do it as soon as possible.”

On Thursday night, in response to questions about the A.P. article, Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, issued an opaque statement that did not reflect the deep debate.

“The president has long expressed a desire to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and to do so in a responsible way,” his statement said. “A number of steps need to take place before that can happen, such as setting up military commissions and the repatriation to their home countries of detainees who have been cleared for release. These and other steps have not been completed. No decisions on the future of Guantánamo Bay are imminent and there will not be a White House meeting tomorrow.”

The administration officials who want Guantánamo closed now outnumber the ones who do not. Gone are former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; his intelligence chief, Stephen A. Cambone; and the former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers, who administration officials said all backed Mr. Gonzales’s position.

Publicly, administration officials usually cite the problem of figuring out where to send the Guantánamo prisoners as the main reason the facilities have not been closed. In written testimony before the United States Helsinki Commission on Thursday, John B. Bellinger III, the State Department’s legal adviser, said: “Although our critics abroad and at home have called for Guantánamo to be shut immediately, they have not offered any credible alternatives for dealing with the dangerous individuals that are detained there.”

But some officials noted that there are fears of lawsuits once those prisoners set foot in the United States.

“Litigation risk has been, by far, the No. 1 argument against shutting down Guantánamo,” said Philip D. Zelikow, counselor at the State Department until last December.

A decision to move the detainees from Guantánamo to the United States would change the legal landscape instantly, legal experts said, because a central assertion of the administration has been that alien enemies who are held outside of the United States could not use American courts to challenge their wartime detention. "If you move them to the United States there’s no question these people will have more legal rights,” said Scott L. Silliman, a retired Air Force colonel who is executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University.

Some detainees’ lawyers said their efforts to get federal courts to consider the legality of the detentions and the conditions of incarceration would be so strengthened that the momentum of the legal battle would change.

David B. Rivkin, a lawyer in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush who has been a consistent supporter of the administration’s detention policies, said a decision to place Guantánamo detainees in the United States would end with legal challenges that would leave the detention policies “in total disarray.”

Mr. Rivkin said that, while there are some good arguments that the detainees in Guantánamo Bay do not have constitutional rights, those arguments would very likely vanish if they were moved to American soil.

The administration says it is planning to bring war-crimes prosecution cases against about 80 of the 375 detainees at Guantánamo. It has said that about 75 others have been cleared for release but that it has been having difficulty finding countries willing to accept them.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

    At White House, Renewed Debate on Guantánamo, NYT, 23.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/washington/23gitmo.html?hp

Editorial

Don’t Veto, Don’t Obey

June 22, 2007
The New York Times

President Bush is notorious for issuing statements taking exception to hundreds of bills as he signs them. This week, we learned that in a shocking number of cases, the Bush administration has refused to enact those laws. Congress should use its powers to insist that its laws are obeyed.

The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, investigated 19 provisions to which Mr. Bush objected. It found that six of them, or nearly a third, have not been implemented as the law requires. The G.A.O. did not investigate some of the most infamous signing statements, like the challenge to a ban on torture. But the ones it looked into are disturbing enough.

In one case, Congress directed the Pentagon in its 2007 budget request to account separately for the cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a perfectly appropriate request, but Mr. Bush issued a signing statement critical of the rule, and the Pentagon withheld the information. In two other cases, federal agencies ignored laws requiring them to get permission from Congressional committees before taking particular actions.

The Bush administration’s disregard for these laws is part of its extraordinary theory of the “unitary executive.” The administration asserts that the president has the sole authority to supervise and direct executive officers, and that Congress and the courts cannot interfere. This theory, which has no support in American history or the Constitution, is a formula for autocracy.

Other presidents have issued signing statements, but none has issued as many, or done so with the same contemptuous attitude toward the co-equal branches of government. The G.A.O. report makes clear that Mr. Bush’s signing statements were virtually written instructions to executive agencies to flout acts of Congress. Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, has said that the report shows that Mr. Bush “is constantly grabbing for more power” and trying to push Congress “to the sidelines.”

Members of Congress have a variety of methods available to make the administration obey the law. They should call the agency heads up to Capitol Hill to explain their intransigence. And they should use the power of the purse, the authority the founders wisely vested in the people’s branch, as a check on a runaway executive branch.

When the Bush presidency ends, there will be a great deal of damage to repair, much of it to the Constitutional system. Congress should begin now to restore the principle that even the president and those who work for him are not above the law.

    Don’t Veto, Don’t Obey, NYT, 22.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/opinion/22fri1.html

Bush Vetoes Measure on Stem Cell Research

June 21, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, June 20 — President Bush on Wednesday issued his second veto of a measure lifting his restrictions on human embryonic stem cell experiments. The move effectively pushed the contentious scientific and ethical debate surrounding the research into the 2008 presidential campaign.

“Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical,” Mr. Bush said in a brief ceremony in the East Room of the White House. He called the United States “a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred.”

At the same time, Mr. Bush issued an executive order intended to encourage scientists to pursue other forms of stem cell research that he does not deem unethical. But that research is already going on, and the plan provides no new money.

Advocates for embryonic stem cell research called the new plan a ploy to distract from Mr. Bush’s opposition to the studies.

“I think the president has issued a political fig leaf,” said Sean Tipton, spokesman for the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, an advocacy group. “He knows he’s on the wrong side of the American public.”

The veto, only the third of Mr. Bush’s presidency, puts him at odds not only with the majority of voters, according to polls, but also with many members of his own political party. Republicans sent him a similar measure last year when they controlled Congress. But even with considerable support from the Republican minority this year, Democrats concede they do not have enough votes for a veto override.

That means decisions about federal financing for the experiments are likely to fall into the hands of the next occupant of the White House. Even before Mr. Bush could put his veto pen to the bill, two leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 — Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois — were weighing in.

Mrs. Clinton, speaking at a conference in Washington, vowed to “lift the ban on stem cell research” if elected. Mr. Obama issued a statement saying Americans deserved a president who “will make this promise real for the American people.”

Though Democrats appear united in support of the stem cell studies, the issue divides the Republican contenders. Senator John McCain of Arizona and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, are generally supportive. But Mitt Romney, who supported federal financing for the research while governor of Massachusetts, now opposes it, saying he turned against it when he learned the details. The questions are personal for him because his wife, Ann, has multiple sclerosis, which doctors hope could be treated more effectively with the benefit of the research.

Embryonic stem cells are of great interest to scientists because they have the potential to give rise to any type of cell or tissue in the body, and might therefore be used to treat disease. But religious conservatives and abortion opponents oppose the studies because they destroy human embryos.

The opponents make up an important part of Mr. Bush’s political base, and they praised his veto.

“President Bush was forceful in his defense of the tiniest human beings at the beginning of his administration,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which represents women who oppose abortion. “He is equally forceful now.”

In August 2001, Mr. Bush announced the current rules: tax dollars could be used to study colonies, called lines, of embryonic stem cells, if the embryos themselves had already been destroyed. The bill he vetoed Wednesday would have allowed research on fresh lines drawn from surplus embryos destined to be destroyed by fertility clinics.

Advocates for the research say they have not given up trying to turn the vetoed measure into law. They are now considering trying to attach the bill to legislation Mr. Bush would be reluctant to reject, like an appropriations bill for the National Institutes of Health. And Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Democrats might well hold an override vote, if only to redraw attention to Mr. Bush’s opposition to the studies.

“He’s put America in his own political straitjacket on this research,” Mr. Emanuel said.

But proponents are also clearly looking to 2008.

“Beyond trying to do this in a must-pass, must-sign type piece of legislation,” said Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware, lead Republican sponsor of the bill, “we’re going to have to wait either for a change of mind at the White House, which seems unlikely unless there are some major medical breakthroughs, or the next president.”

    Bush Vetoes Measure on Stem Cell Research, NYT, 21.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/washington/21stem.html

Bush: Will Veto Big Spenders

June 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:00 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush warned Congress on Saturday that he will use his veto power to stop runaway government spending.

''The American people do not want to return to the days of tax-and-spend policies,'' Bush said in his radio address.

The House passed a $37 billion budget for the Homeland Security Department on Friday, but Republicans rallied enough votes to uphold a promised veto from Bush.

The measure -- one of several annual spending bills that Congress began to consider this week -- exceeds Bush's request for the department by $2.1 billion.

Democrats on Friday defended the extra money in the homeland security bill, noting it contains money to hire 3,000 additional border agents, improve explosive detection at airports and provides money to double the amount of cargo screened on passenger aircraft.

The administration, hoping to appease Republicans who demand fiscal restraint, has pledged to keep overall spending to the level in Bush's proposed budget in February.

The president has had uneven success.

Most recently, Democrats added $17 billion to an Iraq war funding bill, money not sought by Bush. All told, Democrats plan spending increases for annual agency budgets of about $23 billion above the White House budget request.

House GOP conservatives have pledged to come up with the votes needed to uphold any Bush vetoes.

''I am not alone in my opposition,'' Bush said, stressing that 147 Republicans in the House have pledged to stand with him. ''These 147 members are more than the one-third needed to sustain my veto of any bills that spend too much.''

The president, though, has backed away from his veto threat of the politically sensitive bill to fund veterans' programs. It exceeds Bush's request by $4 billion, or 7 percent, but the president acquiesced when GOP lawmakers made it clear that with troops overseas, they were not interested in squaring off with Democrats over spending for veterans.

Bush taped his radio message in Washington on Friday before making a visit to Wichita, Kan., and heading to his Texas ranch for Father's Day weekend. He'll be joined at the ranch for what is expected to be a rainy weekend, by first lady Laura Bush, Jenna -- one of their twin daughters-- and family friends.

In his radio broadcast, Bush also railed against earmarks -- a common Capitol Hill practice of slipping pet projects into spending bills.

He said that in January, the House passed a rule that called for full disclosure of earmarks. To give the public a chance to peek at earmarks, he said the administration has started posting them on a web site called www.earmarks.omb.gov.

When they ran the House, Republicans larded legislation with these pet projects. But on Thursday, they were the ones forcing Democrats to be more open about Congress' pork barrel ways.

After days of bickering, Democrats this week abandoned plans to pass spending bills without allowing foes of so-called earmarks to challenge them in the full House. The hope is that by shedding more light on earmarks, excessive spending on home district projects will be curtailed.

    Bush: Will Veto Big Spenders, NYT, 16.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html

House Passes Security Bill That President Opposes

June 16, 2007
The New York Times
By JACQUELINE PALANK

WASHINGTON, June 15—The House on Friday approved the spending of $37.4 billion next year by the Department of Homeland Security, calling for significantly more spending than proposed by the Bush administration, including hundreds of millions in extra state and local antiterrorism grants.

President Bush has threatened to veto such a package, saying that it is too expensive and that it includes provisions, like a requirement that department contractors pay their employees more competitive wages, that he opposes. The Senate has not yet passed the legislation.

The spending bill passed 268 to 150. It calls for $2.1 billion in spending, or 6 percent, above the president’s request and 14 percent more than in the current fiscal year.

The bill would double the president’s financing request for state antiterrorism grants to $550 million and set aside $400 million in grants for port security, $190 million more than the president proposed.

Perhaps the most hotly contested part of the bill is a requirement that department contractors pay their employees at least the local prevailing wage. The provision, part of broader Democratic efforts to enact legislation being pushed by unions, would allow the president to waive so-called Davis-Bacon restrictions only in times of national emergency.

The House bill also withholds financing for the department’s new personnel management system until litigation with unions and employees is resolved. In early 2005, they filed suit, asserting that the system would give managers undue power to reward, punish and reassign employees.

Republicans failed in an effort to remove that section from the bill. They also objected to restrictions imposed on the $1 billion allocated to constructing a fence along the Mexican border. Before the money could be allocated, under the Democrats’ plan, communities in the area would have to be consulted.

Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, proposed amendments to address these measures, but they were defeated.

The Senate’s version of the House bill, which it largely resembles, was approved by its Appropriations Committee on Thursday but has not yet been scheduled to go to the floor. It provides a total of $37.6 billion.

The House bill would also effectively delay for a year and a half, until June 2009, the mandate that travelers flying to Canada or the Caribbean carry passports for their return, a delay the administration opposes.

The House bill, brought up for debate on Tuesday, was stalled by Republican amendments designed to protest the Democrats’ decision not to disclose in the bill legislators’ favorite spending provisions, or earmarks.

The Department of Homeland Security operates agencies like Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration, the United States Coast Guard, the Secret Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

    House Passes Security Bill That President Opposes, NYT, 16.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/washington/16homeland.html

Bush: Time to Act on Immigration

June 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Left for dead a week ago, legislation to strengthen border security while bestowing legal status on millions of illegal immigrants is showing signs of life. President Bush said on Friday it's time for Congress to act.

''Each day our nation fails to act, the problem only grows worse,'' the president said at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast. ''I will continue to work closely with members of both parties, to get past our differences, and pass a bill I can sign this year.''

Senate leaders announced plans Thursday night to revive the White House-backed measure as early as next week, although neither Majority Leader Harry Reid nor his GOP counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, made any predictions the bill ultimately would pass.

Instead, they issued a statement that said in its entirety: ''We met this evening with several of the senators involved in the immigration bill negotiations. Based on that discussion, the immigration bill will return to the Senate floor after completion'' of sweeping energy legislation that has occupied the Senate this week.

There was no immediate reaction from the bill's numerous Senate critics, who have consistently attacked the legislation as conferring amnesty on the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the country.

Bush, at the prayer breakfast, said, ''We must meet our moral obligation to treat newcomers with decency and show compassion to the vulnerable and exploited, because we're called to answer both the demands of justice and the call for mercy.

''Most Americans agree on these principles,'' the president said. ''And now it's time for our elected leaders in Congress to act.''

The immigration legislation's revival represented at least an interim victory for Bush, who returned home from Europe earlier in the week and plunged into a campaign to rescue his top domestic priority.

On Tuesday, the president made a rare visit to the Capitol to ask Republican senators to give the bill a second chance. Two days later, responding to a request from pivotal GOP senators, he threw his support behind $4.4 billion in immediate funding for ''securing our borders and enforcing our laws at the work site.'' As drafted, the legislation called for the money to become available over a period of several years.

Under a plan that key lawmakers presented to Reid and McConnell, Republicans and Democrats each will have 10-12 opportunities to amend the measure, with the hope that they will then combine to provide the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by die-hard opponents.

Officials said the Bush-backed plan for accelerated funding would be among the changes to be voted on. So, too, a proposal by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, to toughen a requirement for illegal immigrants to return to their home country before gaining legal status.

But in a gauge of the complexity of the rescue effort, officials said the Senate's decision last week to terminate a temporary worker program after five years would not be subject to change before a vote on final passage. Many of the bill's strongest supporters opposed the five-year provision.

Also to be protected from immediate change is a provision giving law enforcement agencies access to personal information that immigrants provide on their applications for legal status.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidentiality of the discussions.

The bill was sidetracked last week after it gained just 45 of the 60 votes needed to advance. Republicans accounted for only seven of the 45 votes, and Reid said, ''We'll move on to immigration when they have their own act together.''

The bill includes measures designed to seal the border to future illegal immigrants, while cracking down on the hiring of workers who are in the country unlawfully.

But the provisions relating to the legal fate of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants has drawn the most controversy.

The bill allows illegal immigrants who were in the country as of Jan. 1, 2007, to come forward, pay fees and fines, pass a background check and receive an indefinitely renewable four-year Z visa to live and work legally in the U.S.

Ultimately, holders of Z visas could qualify for citizenship if they learn English and hold down jobs. Heads of households would have to return to their home countries, whether or not they sought a green card bestowing permanent legal resident status.

The bill also creates a new employment-based point system for new immigrants to qualify for green cards based on their education and skill level, and eliminates or limits visa preferences for family members of U.S. citizens and permanent legal residents.

------

On the Net:

The text of the bill, S. 1348, may be found at http://thomas.loc.gov

    Bush: Time to Act on Immigration, NYT, 15.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Immigration.html

Bush Pledges Tougher Border Security

June 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:50 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, trying to salvage an immigration overhaul legislation, endorsed a plan Thursday that would lock in money for border security as way to win over conservative lawmakers and a skeptical public.

''We're going to show the American people that the promises in this bill will be kept,'' Bush said in a speech to the Associated Builders and Contractors.

Bush got behind a proposal to set aside money collected through fees and penalties for tougher border security and workplace enforcement. Two Republican senators, John Kyl of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have proposed such an amendment.

Bush said the measure would ''show the American people that we're going to do our jobs of securing this border once and for all.''

The provision would immediately divert $4.4 billion toward border security, with that amount to be paid back once new fees are in place. The point would be to ensure that border security would not be subject to the whims of the yearly budget negotiations.

The move is also part of a White House effort to cobble together a winning coalition, vote by vote. Some lawmakers are withholding support for the broad-based bill because of deep skepticism that border security will actually improve.

With many questions unanswered, it was unclear how much of a concession the move amounts to for Bush.

The White House did not have an estimate of how much money the provision would generate yearly toward border security. It also could not say whether the money would be in addition to currently planned border security funding levels or just a way to dedicate funds to that purpose. And it wasn't clear what budget account would be drawn down to pay for the initial $4.4 billion.

A bipartisan group of senators crafted a fragile compromise on the immigration bill that Bush supports. But the deal is in deep trouble, because many Republicans oppose that it provides a way for millions of immigrants who entered the country illegally to become legal.

The group behind the compromise was hoping to reach agreement to allow votes on a limited set of changes from the Republican and Democratic sides in exchange for a commitment from GOP holdouts to let debate on the bill resume. Architects have argued that their so-called ''grand bargain'' could collapse under the weight of too many amendments, or those designed as ''poison pills.''

Bush said the bill emphasizes security by requiring tougher border and workplace measures before new options for immigrants and guest workers could begin. Already, he said, border agents are capturing and sending home huge numbers of people trying to cross illegally.

''They're working hard down there, and they're making progress,'' Bush said. ''People are doing the jobs we expect them do, and now we're going to build on that progress.''

The legislation stalled last week when only seven GOP senators supported a Democratic bid to limit debate -- called a cloture vote -- and expedite a final vote.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the White House feels good about its chances for bringing the bill back to the floor now.

''We feel confident there are going to be enough votes for cloture,'' he said.

    Bush Pledges Tougher Border Security, NYT, 14.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Immigration.html

Official: Gillespie in As Bush Adviser

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:09 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ed Gillespie, a high-dollar Washington lobbyist and long-time go-to guy for President Bush and the Republican Party, is replacing Dan Bartlett as White House counselor in the president's inner circle, according to a senior administration official.

The president is having lunch Wednesday with Gillespie and Bartlett and making the announcement afterward, said the official, who requested anonymity because Bush had not yet talked.

Gillespie, a former head of the national GOP, will take on Bartlett's same duties and title as a senior presidential adviser, the official said. He starts June 27, in order to have some overlap with Bartlett, who is leaving around July 4.

Bartlett, 36, has been one of Bush's most trusted advisers, a constant member of the president's inner circle, and is his longest-serving aide. He announced his resignation on June 1 to begin a career outside of government.

Bartlett had been with Bush for nearly 14 years, from Bush's first campaign as governor of Texas, through two races for the White House and more than six years of a presidency marked by costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an ongoing battle against terrorism.

As counselor to the president, Bartlett has been at the center of White House decisionmaking, stepping into the public eye in times of trouble to defend Bush on everything from the unpopular war in Iraq to the government's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina and the Republicans' loss of Congress.

Gillespie has been a high-profile Washington lobbyist for years, joining forces with former Clinton administration counsel Jack Quinn to form Quinn Gillespie & Associates. He also is now the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party.

As a former Republican National Committee chairman whom the president has long trusted, Gillespie's name has surfaced nearly every time there was a significant opening looming in the Bush White House. When it seemed political guru Karl Rove might be forced out because of the CIA leak investigation, for instance, Gillespie was speculated to be one choice as a possible replacement. Same for when former chief of staff Andrew Card was leaving.

Gillespie, funny and well-liked by reporters, has played many roles for Bush, in addition to leading the party during the 2004 elections that sent Bush back to the White House and retained GOP majorities in the House and Senate.

He was a senior communications adviser to Bush's first campaign for president, spokesman during the 2000 recount in Florida and communications director for the 2001 inaugural. He was tapped to lead the confirmation efforts for Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court and later advised Samuel Alito during his confirmation process as well.

When Gillespie left as head of the GOP in November 2004, Bush heaped praise on him.

''He helped bring many new people to our cause by sharing our vision of a safer world and a more hopeful America,'' the president said in a statement. ''His successful efforts in outreach, registration and voter turnout will be an enduring legacy on which to build a long-lasting governing coalition.''

Gillespie was a campaign adviser to Sen. George Allen's failed re-election bid in Virginia last year. In the win column, he was a strategist for Elizabeth Dole's successful Senate campaign in North Carolina in 2002.

As a top aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, Gillespie was a principal drafter of the ''Contract with America,'' the 1994 GOP platform that gets credit for helping Republicans capture control of Congress that year after 40 years of Democratic rule.

He was thought to have ambitions to run for office in Virgina.

The son of a large middle-class Irish family in New Jersey, Gillespie and his wife, Cathy, have three children.

Gillespie was listed as lobbyist last year for dozens of clients, including such corporate giants as Microsoft, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, pharmaceutical manufacturer Bristol-Myers Squibb, Tyson Foods, the Safeway grocery store chain, the Entergy energy company, the Bank of America, the Diageo liquor company and NBC Universal, lobbying reports on file with the Senate show.

    Official: Gillespie in As Bush Adviser, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-White-House-Counselor.html

Bush Pleads for GOP Immigration Support

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:28 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- His party divided and his polls sagging, President Bush prodded rebellious Senate Republicans to help resurrect legislation that could provide eventual citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.

''It's a highly emotional issue,'' said Bush after a session Tuesday in which several lawmakers bluntly told him their constituents do not trust the government to secure the nation's borders or weed out illegal workers at job sites.

To alleviate the concerns, the president said he was receptive to an emergency spending bill as a way to emphasize his administration's commitment to accelerated enforcement. One congressional official put the price tag at up to $15 billion.

''I don't think he changed any minds,'' conceded Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., a supporter of the legislation. But Martinez added that the president's appearance had helped nudge ''people on the fence'' to be more favorably inclined.

One Republican widely viewed as a potential convert, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, said he was not yet persuaded. ''At the end of the day, I've got to be able to sit down and know myself that we are going to secure our border,'' he said. ''Today, I do not feel that way.''

Bush's trip to the Capitol marked only the second time since he became president that he attended the weekly closed-door senators lunch, a gesture that underscored the importance he places on passage of comprehensive immigration legislation.

Despite the president's commitment, many conservatives in his own party have criticized the measure as an amnesty for millions of lawbreakers. Additionally, job approval ratings in the 30-percent range make it difficult for the president to bend even Republican lawmakers to his will.

Compounding the challenge is a stream of statements from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that it is up to Bush and the Republicans to produce enough votes to revive a measure that was sidetracked on the Senate floor last week. ''We'll move on to immigration when they have their own act together,'' he told reporters during the day.

''Fourteen percent of the Republicans supporting the president's bill won't do the trick,'' he said, referring to the fact that only seven GOP senators supported a move to free the bill from limbo last week.

Several participants in the Republican meeting described the session as friendly and rancor-free, and said Bush had even made a joke at one point when addressing Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican who is one of the bill's fiercest critics.

One senator quoted Bush as telling Sessions: ''Don't worry, I'll still go to your fundraiser. We disagree about this, but we are friends.''

Sessions was among the senators to question the president, pointing to polls showing widespread opposition to the legislation. Bush responded that there are other polls that show support, according to participants. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing confidentiality rules covering the closed-door meeting.

These officials said numerous senators told Bush the public lacks confidence that the government would carry out the enforcement measures in the bill.

One, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., told Bush that he and fellow Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson had sent the president a letter outlining the concerns.

''The message from a majority of Georgians is that they have no trust that the United States government will enforce the laws contained in this new legislation and secure the border first,'' it said.

''This lack of trust is rooted in the mistakes made in 1986, and the continued chaos surrounding our immigration laws. Understandably, the lack of credibility the federal government has on this issue gives merit to the skepticism of many about future immigration reform.''

The letter asked Bush to support a spending bill to secure the border before other elements of the immigration measure go into effect. It did not specify how much money would be needed, but one congressional official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the advance costs could reach $10 billion to $15 billion.

''The administration should request the emergency funds, and the Senate should vote to provide them before resuming debate on the broader immigration measure,'' Chambliss said in an interview.

Apart from the additional funds, Republican and Democratic supporters of the bill hoped to complete work on an agreement that could free it for final passage by month's end.

Discussions center on a plan to allow votes on about a dozen Republican-sponsored amendments as well as several proposals by Democrats. In exchange, GOP holdouts would then support a move to end debate and advance the bill to a final vote.

Among the amendments was one by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, to require all illegal immigrant household heads to return to their countries of origin before obtaining legal status. Under the legislation, only those seeking green cards -- permanent legal residency -- would be required to return home first.

After an early evening negotiating session between Republican and Democratic senators, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the group is trying to craft an amendment to assure Americans that the bill will include ample funding for tighter border security and tougher workplace enforcement. The plan could involve ''pre-funding'' the effort with billions of dollars eventually to be repaid through fines and fees, he said, or through a more traditional supplemental spending bill, such as those recently used to pay for the Iraq war.

Graham said the bipartisan negotiators also are looking at harsher penalties for immigrants who overstay their visas or re-enter the country illegally. ''If you had mandatory jail time'' for such offenses, he said, ''I think it would create a deterrent.''

Another possible amendment, Graham said, would ban employers from participating in a new temporary worker program if they repeatedly break the law by hiring illegal workers.

''I'm looking for ways to break the cycle of skepticism'' among those who feel a new immigration law would be as poorly enforced as the 1986 law, he said.

The administration pushed back against Republican critics of the bill later Tuesday. In a letter to nine conservative senators who bitterly oppose the measure, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the administration has committed manpower and money to improving border security and enforcement, and needs the immigration bill to step up its efforts.

''Failure to act on this legislation will deny the country the safety and security provided by these enhanced enforcement measures,'' Chertoff wrote.

Associated Press writer Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed to this story.

    Bush Pleads for GOP Immigration Support, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Immigration.html

Bush Is Greeted Warmly in Albania

June 10, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

TIRANA, Albania, June 10 — His poll numbers may be in the tank at home, but when he zipped through this tiny, relentlessly pro-American nation today, President Bush was received like a rock star.

Military cannons boomed a 21-gun-salute in his honor. Thousands jammed Scanderbeg Square in downtown Tirana, wearing Uncle Sam top hats in the sweltering sun, hoping to glimpse the presidential motorcade. The superlatives flowed so freely that Mr. Bush looked a tad sheepish when Prime Minister Sali Berisha proclaimed him “the greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times.”

The eight-hour stop — Mr. Bush left Rome in the morning and was headed to Sofia, Bulgaria, tonight — makes him the first sitting American president to visit this former Communist state. He used his stop to tell Albanians what they wanted to hear — that he supports their bid for NATO membership and wants independence for Kosovo soon without making any fresh commitments.

“At some point in time, sooner rather than later, you’ve got to say, ‘Enough is enough. Kosovo is independent,’ ” Mr. Bush said. He said any plan to extend talks on Kosovo such as the one proposed recently by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France must end with “certain independence.”

The future of Kosovo, a largely Albanian breakaway province of Serbia, is of paramount interest here; some Kosovars traveled to Tirana to join the crowd awaiting Mr. Bush. The United Nations Security Council is considering a plan for independence, but Russia objects. On Saturday in Rome, the president agreed there should be a deadline to end the United Nations talks, saying, “In terms of a deadline, there needs to be one, it needs to happen.”

But today, less than 24 hours later, Mr. Bush tried to backtrack when asked when that deadline might be.

“First of all, I don’t think I called for a deadline,” Mr. Bush said, during a press appearance with Prime Minister Berisha in the courtyard of a government ministry building. He was reminded that he had.

“I did?” he asked, sounding surprised. “What exactly did I say? I said ‘deadline’? Okay, yes, then I meant what I said.”

The visit to Albania, the fifth stop on Mr. Bush’s eight-day, six-country swing through Europe — was a welcome respite for the president after Rome, where protests against him turned violent. This largely Muslim country, population 3.6 million, is just the kind of nation Mr. Bush likes best: a nascent democracy whose history includes a dramatic break with totalitarian rule.

While other Eastern European nations are generally friendly to Mr. Bush, even if they do have some reservations about his visa policies and plans for a missile defense network in Czech Republic and Poland, Albania is more than friendly. It is gushing.

The country, one of the poorest in Eastern Europe, has just issued three postage stamps bearing Mr. Bush’s likeness, and a street in front of the Parliament building has been renamed for him. At the mosque in the center of town, Uncle Sam hats were stacked in a window seat in the prayers room.

Even the war in Iraq is popular here.

“U.S.A. have the right and responsibility for all the world to protect the freedom,” said Ilir Lamçe, 37, a financial analyst who was among those waiting for Mr. Bush, expressing the views of many. “This is the right war.”

Albanians have a long history of fondness toward America, dating back to President Woodrow Wilson, who saved the country from being split from its neighbors after World War I. President Bill Clinton, who rescued ethnic Albanians from the Kosovo War, is remembered warmly here, as is Mr. Bush’s father.

Today, all that love poured in Mr. Bush’s direction, and when Mr. Bush jumped briefly out of his limousine during a stop near the prime minister’s villa in the town of Fusche Kruje, the crowd turned into a virtual mosh pit.

Hands were shooting at the president from all directions, grabbing his sleeves, rubbing his graying hair. Women kissed him on both cheeks. Men jostled to get close to him, as Secret Service agents encircled him. As he stood on the running board of his limousine, waving before ducking back in the car, a second limo pulled up to protect him from the back.

Even so, Mr. Bush left some of his adoring public disappointed. They wished that their hero, the American president, would stay longer — or at least take the time to deliver a speech in public.

“This is Albania,” said Alba Mujarrem, 50, gesturing toward the throng at Scanderbeg Square. “Albania is a quiet place. Please, why not to take a speech in front of us here? Why not?”

    Bush Is Greeted Warmly in Albania, NYT, 10.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/world/europe/10cnd-prexy.html?hp

Pope Shares Iraq Concerns in Meeting With Bush

June 10, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and IAN FISHER

ROME, June 9 — President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI, both religious conservatives, met for the first time on Saturday in the papal palace at the Vatican, where the pontiff privately expressed his concerns to the president about “the worrying situation in Iraq,” especially the treatment of minority Christians there.

Mr. Bush, speaking to reporters after having lunch with Prime Minister Romano Prodi, conceded that the pope had raised those concerns. He pronounced himself “in awe” of Benedict and said he felt he had been “talking to a very smart, loving man.”

The president said he reminded the pope of America’s commitment to spend more on AIDS in Africa and American attempts to “feed the hungry.” And the two talked about immigration; the pontiff is apparently watching the immigration legislation debate in the United States with great interest. But Iraq loomed large over their hourlong session in the grand and elegant private papal library, with its plush regal chairs, ceiling frescoes and a crucifix by Giotto.

Many Italians have been against the war, and Italy pulled the last of its troops out of Iraq last year. On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters — including antiwar demonstrators — turned out for anti-Bush marches, some of which turned violent in the early evening. Protesters in Rome’s downtown historic district lobbed beer bottles and rocks that bounced off the plastic shields of the riot police officers, who fired at least one round of tear gas to break up the demonstration.

Benedict, like Pope John Paul II before him, has expressed deep concerns not only about Christians in Iraq, as the president suggested, but also about violence there and the war more broadly. When he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became pope, he made a much-quoted remark dismissing the idea of Iraq as a “just war” — a topic Mr. Bush said did not come up on Saturday.

“We didn’t talk about ‘just war,’ ” the president said, addressing reporters in a courtyard of the Chigi Palace, the seat of the Italian government, with Prime Minister Prodi by his side. “He did express deep concerns about the Christians inside Iraq, that he was concerned that the society that was evolving would not tolerate the Christian religion. And I assured him we’re working hard to make sure that people lived up to the Constitution, the modern Constitution voted on by the people that would honor people from different walks of life and different attitudes.”

The Vatican described the session as “cordial,” and the pope apparently did not go as far as his predecessor, who in 2004 urged Mr. Bush to end the “grave unrest” in Iraq.

The Vatican did not release the exact substance of the meeting. A church statement, however, said that both the pope and his secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who also met Mr. Bush, raised “Israeli-Palestinian questions, Lebanon, the worrying situation in Iraq and the critical conditions in which the Christian community finds itself.”

Until Saturday, talk of Iraq had been largely missing from Mr. Bush’s eight-day, six-country European tour. There was little talk of it in Prague, where Mr. Bush emphasized his freedom agenda, or in Heiligendamm, Germany, where leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized nations turned their attention to climate change and aid to poor nations, or in Poland, where missile defense was the central issue.

But here in Italy, where Mr. Bush’s policies on Iraq and the global war on terrorism arouse intense passions, he found himself once again in the war’s shadow — not only in Vatican City, but also in the streets of downtown Rome, which were virtually shut down by a heavy police presence anticipating the protests.

The protesters — a mix of antiglobalists, members from left wing and radical groups and other citizens — wound their way down Rome’s Via Cavour from Piazza Della Repubblica and ended at Piazza Navona. One demonstrator, Michela Chimetto, a 37-year-old office assistant who was in town from Vicenza, where the United States has faced sharp protests in the past about plans to expand a military base, pronounced Mr. Bush “the worst president the United States ever had.”

The protest did not turn violent until the evening, when Mr. Bush was miles away, at the United States ambassador’s residence on the other side of downtown. There did not appear to be any injuries, and the protest ended around 8:30 p.m..

The Italian authorities had earlier been so concerned about Mr. Bush’s safety that the White House canceled plans for him to visit the basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, one of the oldest churches in Rome.

The church’s location, in a square surrounded by narrow streets, left Italian officials fearing that Mr. Bush’s motorcade could wind up surrounded. The president was to meet with a human rights advocacy organization there; the session was held instead at the American Embassy for “logistical reasons,” the White House said.

Mr. Bush arrived in Italy at a moment of particular strain between the nations: In Milan, a trial is under way for 26 Americans, nearly all operatives for the Central Intelligence Agency, and Italian intelligence officials or operatives charged with kidnapping a radical Muslim imam in Italy in 2003. It is the first trial involving the contentious American policy of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects are abducted and then interrogated in other countries, some of which permit torture.

Mr. Prodi said he and Mr. Bush did not discuss the trial, and he dismissed the idea that it had created any tension. “Italy, of course, is a democratic country,” Mr. Prodi said. “We have very clear-cut rules that we follow and we, therefore, enforce our rules. And I am confident that there is no conflict here, in terms of our friendship and our cooperation with the United States.”

Mr. Bush was famously close with Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, now the opposition leader (whom he met with privately) — a decision that provoked one Italian reporter to ask the president, who was standing next to Mr. Prodi at the time, which prime minister’s company he preferred.

“I mentioned this to Romano, and his attitude was, ‘I don’t blame you,’ ” the president replied, adding, “One shouldn’t read anything into it other than, we made some decisions together, we’ve known each other for a while.”

At the Vatican, the portion of Mr. Bush’s hourlong meeting with Benedict that was open to reporters seemed entirely friendly and relaxed. As is customary, the president and the pope traded gifts. The pope presented the president with an etching of St. Peter’s Square from the 17th century and a gold papal medallion. The president gave the pope a white walking stick made by a former homeless man turned artist from Texas and covered with the 10 Commandments.

The pope double-checked with the president what was written on the stick.

“The 10 Commandments, sir,” the president said. He did not use the normal honorific of “Your Holiness,” an omission that later created a stir in the Italian news media. At the news conference with Mr. Prodi, Mr. Bush pointedly changed how he referred to Benedict, saying he would “be glad to share some of the private conversation with His Holy Father.”

But earlier in the day, Mr. Bush did not appear eager to share his private conversations with the pope with reporters who were gathered in the same room.

At one point during their talks about the Group of 8 meeting, the pope asked Mr. Bush whether “the dialogue with Putin was good,” a reference to his meeting with the Russian president, who opposes an American plan to install an antimissile system in Eastern Europe.

Mr. Bush, eyeing the reporters and photographers who, a few feet away, were straining to hear any news, said: “Um, I’ll tell you in a minute.”

Peter Kiefer contributed reporting.

    Pope Shares Iraq Concerns in Meeting With Bush, NYT, 10.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/world/europe/10prexy.html

Bush Meets Pope Benedict for the First Time

June 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:36 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ROME (AP) -- President Bush, in his first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, defended his humanitarian record around the globe, telling the papal leader on Saturday about U.S. efforts to battle AIDS in Africa.

After posing for photos and sharing a few laughs, Benedict asked the president about his meetings with leaders of other industrialized nations in Germany -- the pontiff's homeland. Then, the topic changed to international aid.

''I've got a very strong AIDS initiative,'' Bush said, sitting with Benedict at a small desk in the pope's private library at the Vatican.

The president promised the pope that he'd work to get Congress to double the current U.S. commitment for combatting AIDS in Africa to $30 billion over the next five years.

The pope also asked the president about his meeting in Germany with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has expressed opposition to a U.S. missile shield in Europe.

''The dialogue with Putin was also good?'' the pope asked.

Bush, apparently eyeing photographers and reporters who were about to be escorted from the room, replied: ''Umm. I'll tell you in a minute.''

The pontiff gave the president a drawing of St. Peter's Basillica, an official Vatican medal and coins. ''It's beautiful, thank you,'' Bush said of the drawing. The president gave the pope a white walking sticking made by a former homeless man in Dallas, Texas. It was inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

Bush's activities in Rome were conducted under heavy security. Thousands of police deployed Saturday morning in downtown Rome to counter demonstrations by anti-globalization groups and far-left parties against Bush's meetings with the pope and Italian officials.

Dozens of trucks and buses surrounded the Colosseum, the downtown Piazza Venezia and other historic venues as scores of officers, some in anti-riot gear, poured from their vehicles. The main boulevard leading to St. Peter's Square and the Vatican was closed to traffic. Police and helicopters guarded the area.

Bush was greeted in the courtyard of the Vatican by members of the Swiss Guard, the elite papal security corps dressed in their distinctive orange, blue and red-stripped uniforms.

In a statement, the Vatican said Bush had ''warm'' talks with the pope and the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. They discussed international politics, particularly in the Middle East, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon, the ''worrisome situation in Iraq'' and the ''critical conditions in which the Christian communities (in Iraq) are found,'' the statement said.

The pontiff expressed his hope for a `'regional'' and `'negotiated'' solution of conflicts and crises that afflict the region, the Vatican said. Attention was also give to Africa, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and Latin America.

They also discussed moral and religious questions relating to human rights and religious freedom, the defense and promotion of life, marriage and the family and sustainable development, the Vatican said.

Bush arrived in Rome Friday night, after a stop in the Czech Republic, three days at a summit of industrialized democracies on Germany's northern coast, and a quick, three-hour visit to Poland. The president stays in Rome Saturday night, too, before going on to Albania and Bulgaria.

While in Rome, he'll visit a lay Roman Catholic organization. The Sant'Egidio Community has a $25 million program to provide free antiretroviral drugs for HIV-positive people in 10 African countries, along with follow-up and home care.

Bush began his day with a short meeting with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano at Quirinale Palace, his official residence. Bush was greeted in a courtyard by an honor cordon of soldiers in navy uniforms, black boots and fur hats. They walked under a clock tower into the palace and ascended a marble staircase under a ceiling of frescoes.

White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said the two talked about Afghanistan, Kosovo and Lebanon, but little about Iraq. Later, Bush was having longer talks and lunch with Premier Romano Prodi, also fresh from the G-8 meetings.

Perino said the Italian president told Bush that there had been speculation that U.S.-Italy relations would slide under Prodi. She said Bush told Napolitano: ''The opposite has proven true.''

Italian-U.S. relations are a bit strained.

Just hours before Bush's arrival Friday, the first trial involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program opened in a Milan courtroom. Along with the 26 Americans on trial for the abduction of an Egyptian cleric, a U.S. soldier is on trial in Rome for the March 2005 slaying of an Italian spy in Baghdad. In both cases, the U.S. citizens are being tried in absentia.

Meanwhile, a report out Friday from European investigator Dick Marty accused Italy and Germany of obstructing his probe into alleged secret prisons run by CIA in Europe. Marty said they were located in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 to interrogate suspected terrorists.

Italy also has withdrawn troops from Iraq and is reluctant to send additional soldiers to Afghanistan.

Washington is concerned that U.S. troops, along with those from Canada and Britain and elsewhere, are the only NATO countries sending forces to fight the Taliban in the most violent areas in the south. Other NATO-contributing countries, such as Germany, France and Italy, restrict the use of their forces to relatively peaceful areas of the north.

A series of small incidents involving the Italians and heavy fighting elsewhere in the country have heightened concerns in Italy over the mission and shaken Prodi's leadership.

Prodi ousted Silvio Berlusconi a year ago, replacing a like-minded conservative and staunch ally of Bush's with a center-left leader whose government has spared Washington no criticism.

Despite differences, Bush and Prodi have said they want good ties. Still, the U.S. leader is hedging his bets on Italian politics. He'll end his day with a private talk with his old friend Berlusconi.

Associated Press Writers Ariel David and Alessandra Rizzo in Rome contributed to this story.

    Bush Meets Pope Benedict for the First Time, NYT, 9.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html?hp

Bush to 'Listen' to Pontiff About Iraq

June 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:10 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ROME (AP) -- President Bush says he'll ''be in listening mode'' when he meets Pope Benedict XVI for the first time on Saturday. It's a good thing, because the Pope has a lot to say.

Benedict will discuss the Iraq war and the plight of Christians in that unstable, violence-wracked country, as well as ''the big ethical and social questions'' of the day, said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's No. 2. This includes praise for Bush's staunch opposition to abortion.

But there's concern about the war, vigorously opposed by the late Pope John Paul II and raised on occasion by Benedict. In his Easter message, Benedict said ''nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees.''

Putting on his listening ears doesn't mean Bush will be silent, however, during his third papal audience at the Vatican.

The president plans to tout U.S. aid for fighting AIDS and malaria in Africa and spreading democracy around the world.

''I think His Holy Father will be pleased to know that much of our foreign policy is based on the admonition to whom much is given, much is required,'' Bush said in a pre-trip interview.

He promised to ''go in open-minded.''

''Sometimes I'm not poetic enough to describe what it's like to be in the presence of the Holy Father. It is a moving experience,'' the president said. ''He's a good thinker and a smart man. I'll be in a listening mode.''

Bush arrived in Rome Friday night, after a stop in the Czech Republic, three days at a summit of industrialized democracies on Germany's northern coast, and a quick, three-hour visit to Poland. The president stays in Rome Saturday night, too, before going on to Albania and Bulgaria.

While in Rome, he'll help back up his message to the Pope about his humanitarian record by visiting a lay Roman Catholic organization that does extensive work in the area.

The Sant'Egidio Community has a $25 million program to provide free antiretroviral drugs for HIV-positive people in 10 African countries, along with follow-up and home care.

Bush helped lead the Group of Eight summit this week to agree to a new program worth more than $60 billion to fight AIDS, malaria and other disease in Africa. The president recently urged Congress to double the current U.S. commitment for combatting AIDS in Africa to $30 billion over the next five years.

To cut hassle, Bush is meeting with the group at the U.S. Embassy instead of its headquarters in Rome's picturesque Trastavere neighborhood. He's also canceled a planned tour of the nearby Basilica of Santa Maria.

Bush began his day with a short meeting with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano at Quirinale Palace, his official residence. Bush was greeted in a courtyard by an honor cordon of soldiers in navy uniforms, black boots and fur hats. They walked under a clock tower into the palace and ascended up a marble staircase under a ceiling of frescoes.

Later, he'll have longer talks and lunch with Premier Romano Prodi, also fresh from the G-8 meetings.

Italian-U.S. relations are busy right now -- and a bit strained.

Just hours before Bush's arrival Friday, the first trial involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program opened in a Milan courtroom. Along with the 26 Americans on trial for the abduction of an Egyptian cleric, a U.S. soldier is on trial in Rome for the March 2005 slaying of an Italian spy in Baghdad. In both cases, the U.S. citizens are being tried in absentia.

Meanwhile, a report out Friday from European investigator Dick Marty accused Italy and Germany of obstructing his probe into alleged secret prisons run by CIA in Europe. Marty said they were located in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 to interrogate suspected terrorists.

Italy also has withdrawn troops from Iraq and is reluctant to send additional soldiers to Afghanistan.

Bush said he wants his visit with Prodi to ''help boost his courage in doing the right thing in Afghanistan.''

Washington is concerned that U.S. troops, along with those from Canada and Britain and elsewhere, are the only NATO countries sending forces to fight the Taliban in the most violent areas in the south. Other NATO-contributing countries, such as Germany, France and Italy, restrict the use of their forces to relatively peaceful areas of the north.

A series of small incidents involving the Italians and heavy fighting elsewhere in the country have heightened concerns in Italy over the mission and shaken Prodi's leadership.

Large protests against Bush are planned for Saturday. Prodi even asked Cabinet members to refrain from joining them.

Prodi ousted Silvio Berlusconi a year ago, replacing a like-minded conservative and staunch ally of Bush's with a center-left leader whose government has spared Washington no criticism.

Despite differences, Bush and Prodi have said they want good ties. Still, the U.S. leader is hedging his bets on Italian politics. He'll end his day with a private talk with his old friend Berlusconi.

Prodi's fragile, squabbling center-left coalition recently fended off a major challenge by Berlusconi in local elections. Berlusconi's camp appeared to have made some gains, but achieved no landslide.

Associated Press writer Alessandro Rizzo contributed to this story.

    Bush to 'Listen' to Pontiff About Iraq, NYT, 9.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html

Immigrant Bill, Short 15 Votes, Stalls in Senate

June 8, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, June 7 —The sweeping immigration overhaul endorsed by President Bush crumbled in the Senate on Thursday night, leaving the future of one of the administration’s chief domestic priorities in serious doubt.

After a day of tension and fruitless maneuvering, senators rejected a Democratic call to move toward a final vote on the compromise legislation after Republicans complained that they had not been given enough opportunity to reshape the sprawling bill. Supporters of cutting off debate got only 45 of the 60 votes they needed; 50 senators opposed the cutoff.

“We are finished with this for the time being,” said Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, as he turned the Senate to work on energy legislation.

Mr. Reid did, however, leave the door open to revisiting the immigration issue later this year and said he would continue to explore ways to advance a plan. “We all have to work, the president included, to find a way to get this bill passed,” he said.

The outcome, which followed an outpouring of criticism of the measure from core Republican voters and from liberal Democrats as well, was a significant setback for the president. It came mainly at the hands of members of his own party after he championed the proposal in the hope of claiming it as a major domestic policy achievement in the last months of his administration.

The collapse of the measure came as Mr. Bush was in Europe for an international economic summit, and it was not immediately clear how hard he would fight to resurrect the bill upon his return next week.

Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, said the White House still held hope that a bill could be passed.

“We are encouraged that the leadership of both parties in the United States Senate indicated that they would bring this legislation back up for consideration,” Mr. Stanzel said. “And we will continue to work with members of the United States Senate to make sure this process moves forward.”

The defeat was also crushing for a bipartisan group of about a dozen senators who met privately for three months to broker a compromise that tried to balance a call for stricter border enforcement with a way for many of the 12 million people who are illegally in the country to qualify for citizenship eventually.

“The vote was obviously a big disappointment, but it makes no sense to fold our tent, and I certainly don’t intend to,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a chief author of the bill. “Doing nothing is totally unacceptable”

Other proponents said they still saw life in the legislation despite the blow in the Senate.

“This matter is on life support, but it is not dead,” said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and another central architect of the plan.

Senate conservatives fought the legislation from the start, saying it rewarded those who broke the law by entering the country illegally. After winning a few important changes in the measure, Republican critics demanded more time and drew support for their calls for more opportunity to fight it out on the Senate floor.

“I simply do not understand why some of my colleagues want to jam this legislation through the Congress without a serious and thorough examination of its consequences,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.

Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who was another leading opponent, said he believed lawmakers responded to constituent complaints about the flaws in the measure. “I was not going to support a piece of legislation that will not work,” Mr. Sessions said.

Mr. Reid said the critics were simply stalling and would never be satisfied. Noting the Senate had considered more than 40 amendments and held 28 roll call votes, he attributed the failure of the bill to Republican recalcitrance.

In the end, 38 Republicans, 11 Democrats and one independent voted not to shut off debate; 37 Democrats, 7 Republicans and one independent voted to bring the issue to a head.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said he believed Republicans would have eventually relented had they been given more time to work out an agreement on what amendments would be considered. “I think we are giving up on this bill too soon,” Mr. McConnell said.

The vote was the second attempt of the day to cut off a debate that had gone on for nearly two weeks, interrupted by the Memorial Day recess. On the initial showdown in the morning, the Senate fell 27 votes short of the 60 required; every Republican and 15 Democrats opposed the move.

The morning vote sent Senate leaders and backers of the legislation scrambling, trying to reach an agreement to salvage the measure with the help of administration officials. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was also consulted by phone.

The progress of negotiations was uncertain throughout the day. As late as 6:30 p.m., Mr. Kennedy was still uncertain where many senators stood on the call to force an end to the debate. “It’s touch and go,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It’s extremely close at this time. Republicans have held their cards.”

The compromise legislation was announced on May 17 by authors who hailed it as a “grand bargain.” It held together through much of the debate because the negotiators — embodied on the right by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican, and on the left by Mr. Kennedy — agreed to block proposals they thought would sink the measure. That led to such odd moments as when Mr. Kyl on Wednesday opposed an amendment he had helped write for last year’s unsuccessful immigration measure.

But the legislation began running into problems late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning as the Senate approved a Democratic proposal to limit a guest-worker program sought by business interests and backed by Republicans. Backers of the bill hoped to reverse that result if the measure moved forward.

“It is indispensable to have a guest-worker program to take care of the needs of the economy,” said Mr. Specter. “If we don’t, we will just encounter more people coming over illegally.”

At the same time, some Democrats were growing increasingly uneasy.

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said the bill had become “more punitive and more onerous” because of amendments adopted in the last few days. Mr. Menendez pointed, for example, to one that denied the earned-income tax credit to illegal immigrants who gain legal status under the bill.

Cecilia Muñoz, a vice president of the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic rights group, said she had similar concerns. Changes approved by the Senate this week make the bill “not only more punitive, but also less workable,” Ms. Muñoz said.

Trying to bolster Democratic support, the Service Employees International Union urged senators Thursday to vote for a limit to the debate. In a letter to the Senate, Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the union, listed many serious objections to the bill, but said, “The time to move forward is now.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of civil rights groups, also backed cloture, saying, “A small handful of immigration restrictionists’ in the Senate should not be allowed to prolong the debate indefinitely.”

In addition to the limit on the guest worker program, supporters of the bill said they would also try to change an amendment that gives law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to certain information in unsuccessful applications filed by illegal immigrants seeking legal status. Despite the strong Republican vote against ending debate, party leaders said throughout the day they wanted to reach some accommodation. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the No. 2 Republican, urged his colleagues to stiffen their spines and try to resolve one of the nation’s most pressing problems.

“Are we men and women or mice?” Mr. Lott asked. “Are we going to slither away from this issue and hope for some epiphany to happen? No. Let’s legislate. Let’s vote.”

Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting from Midland, Tex.

    Immigrant Bill, Short 15 Votes, Stalls in Senate, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/washington/08immig.html?hp

House Passes Stem Cell Bill Despite Bush Veto Threat

June 7, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, June 7 — The House gave final Congressional approval today to legislation intended to ease restrictions on federal financing of embryonic stem cell research, sending a bipartisan measure to the White House that President Bush has pledged to veto.

On a vote of 247 to 176, the House overwhelmingly passed the bill, with Republicans and Democrats forging a coalition to authorize federal support for research using stem cells derived from spare embryos that fertility clinics would otherwise discard. The Senate approved the legislation in April.

“Science is a gift of God to all of us and science has take us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. “And that is the embryonic stem cell research.”

The president has repeatedly vowed to veto the bill, following through on the first veto of his presidency when he rejected a similar stem cell proposal last year, which was passed by the Republican-controlled Congress. Democrats were not certain whether they had the votes to override a veto.

“I am disappointed the leadership of Congress recycled an old bill that would simply overturn our country’s carefully balanced policy on embryonic stem cell research,” Mr. Bush said in a statement. “If this bill were to become law, American taxpayers would for the first time in our history be compelled to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos. Crossing that line would be a grave mistake.”

Critics of the legislation said taxpayer dollars should not be used to increase spending on embryonic stem cell research, particularly in the wake of a new scientific advance reported Wednesday in which biologists believe they can use skin to generate new heart, liver or kidney cells. Such a technique, if proven successful, could sidestep the ethical debates surrounding stem cell research.

Throughout the Congressional debate, several Republicans who oppose the legislation seized upon reports of the new scientific advance.

“How many more advancements in noncontroversial, ethical, adult stem cell research will it take before Congress decides to catch up with science?” said Representative Joseph Pitts, a Pennsylvania Republican, holding up a front-page newspaper account of the scientific discovery. “These have all of the potential and none of the controversy.”

While those who support increasing the federal financing of embryonic stem cell research also hailed the development, they said such advances should not replace expanding research to press for a litany of diseases, including Alzheimer’s and juvenile diabetes.

“We welcome these advances as we welcome all advances in ethical life-saving research,” said Representative Diana L. DeGette, a Colorado Democrat and leading sponsor of the legislation. “However, this new scientific research should not be used as an excuse to say that it is a substitute for embryonic stem cell research.”

While Democrats urged the president to change his mind and sign the legislation into law, they said they would try to build support to override the presidential veto. Their campaign began today, only hours after the bill was passed, when Ms. Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, staged a rare public enrollment ceremony to send the legislation to the White House.

The attempt to override the president’s veto would begin in the Senate, where the bill passed April 11 on a vote of 63 to 34. Even counting the three Democrats who were not present for the vote, the legislation fell one vote shy of reaching the plateau to override a veto.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who leads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, began circulating a petition today to push for the expansion of the federal financing for the embryonic stem cell research. “Tell President Bush: Stop being stubborn, sign the stem cell bill,” the petition read.

A senior administration official said Mr. Bush, who is traveling in Europe, was not expected to veto the bill until his return to Washington next week.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said Democrats who pushed the legislation were simply trying to turn the stem cell debate into a political opportunity.

“This is politics. This is not about expanding research,” Mr. Boehner said today. “They understand clearly that the president has vetoed this bill in the past and will veto it again. This is Washington being Washington, trying to score a political points, one party opposed to another.”

    House Passes Stem Cell Bill Despite Bush Veto Threat, NYT, 7.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/washington/07cnd-stem.html?hp

Bush Defends Climate and Missile Plans

June 7, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

ROSTOCK, Germany, June 7 — As leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies began their annual summit meeting today, President Bush defended his plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and tried yet again to dismiss Russian concerns over a missile defense plan, saying it is “not something we ought to be hyperventilating about.”

Mr. Bush made the remarks after a private meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who has made addressing global warming a signature issue. Mr. Blair and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the meeting’s host, are backing a plan for the so-called Group of 8 nations to adopt concrete long-term goals for reducing emissions — a plan the United States has rejected.

“I told Tony that we’re deadly earnest in getting something done; this is serious business,” Mr. Bush said.

The Bush-Blair meeting was the pair’s last with Mr. Blair as prime minister; he retires this month. As they stood together with the Baltic Sea at their backs, standing outside the luxury resort hotel at Heiligendamm, about 10 miles from here, where the summit is being held, the president proclaimed it “a nostalgic moment for me.”

But climate change and United States relations with Russia — not nostalgia — will dominate the summit today. Mr. Bush is set to meet later today with President Vladimir Putin, and the president said he will again try to reassure Mr. Putin that the proposed network of radar and missile defenses the United States wants to build in Eastern Europe is not a threat to Russia.

“It is important for Russia and Russians to understand that I believe the Cold War ended, that Russia is not an enemy of the United States, that there’s a lot of areas where we can work together,” the president said.

The meeting got off to a tense beginning Wednesday, as several thousand protesters blocked roads and rail lines to Heiligendamm. Demonstrators in clown makeup and pink and yellow wigs danced outside a steel fence surrounding the meeting site, clashing with the police, who used tear gas to disperse them.

The Group of 8 meeting is always one part substance and one part political theater, and Wednesday was no exception. The rock star Bono and the concert organizer Bob Geldof turned up, along with a Senegalese musician, to lobby heads of state, including Mr. Bush, to spend more money combating global poverty and AIDS in Africa.

On climate change, the White House has said it would hold firm against concrete long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a major priority for Mrs. Merkel. After lunch with Mr. Bush on Wednesday, Mrs. Merkel seemed to concede — without explicitly saying so — that her climate change plan was off the table.

“There are a few areas here and there we will continue to work on,” she said, standing side by side with the president outside an elegant white castle on the grounds of the Kempinski Grand Hotel. When Mr. Bush turned to her and said he has “a strong desire to work with you” on the issue, the chancellor pursed her lips.

Specifically, Mrs. Merkel is pressing the Group of 8 to adopt a plan to cut emissions in half by 2050 and to limit the rise in global temperature to two degrees Celsius — terms the president’s chief environmental adviser, James L. Connaughton, said Wednesday the United States was not prepared to accept.

Instead, he said, the final communiqué approved by the Group of 8 nations — the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan — would probably reflect a merging of Mrs. Merkel’s plan with a proposal by Mr. Bush. In a major speech on climate change last week, the president said he intended to convene major polluting nations, including China and India, in a series of meetings aimed at setting long-term goals by the end of 2008.

“Here’s a way to get China and India at the table,” Mr. Bush said Wednesday, in a roundtable with reporters before his lunch with Mrs. Merkel.

He said the United States “can serve as a bridge between some nations who believe that now is the time to come up with a set goal” and “those who are reluctant to participate in the dialogue.” The climate change issue, though, is a delicate one for Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Bush, who have forged a strong bond since she took office in November 2005. With Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain planning to leave office later this month, and the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, an unknown quantity to Mr. Bush, Mrs. Merkel may be the president’s best friend in Europe, and he can ill afford to cause strain to the relationship.

Mrs. Merkel, a former physicist who has made global warming her signature issue, has staked her reputation on making real and significant progress on the problem during this year’s meeting. Experts agree that she has more at stake than Mr. Bush; if she appears to be caving in to the president’s demands, she risks a backlash at home. But neither does she want a public dispute with Mr. Bush.

“She does not want to make this a public spat,” said Julianne Smith, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “But she was elected in part because she’s a scientist, she has a very strong position on this, and Germans are huge fans of any effort to cope with climate change. So for her own public, she has to show that she’s being a bit forceful with the United States and she’s putting her foot down.”

Mrs. Merkel’s chief adviser on climate issues, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, said he expected no agreement on long-term targets for reducing emissions. But he said he was even more worried that the leaders would not agree to another part of the German proposal: a pledge to increase energy efficiency 20 percent by 2020.

“It would be very disappointing if the energy efficiency issue is marginalized,” Mr. Schellnhuber said in a telephone interview. “It’s a huge, low-hanging apple, which can be plucked now.” But Mr. Connaughton said the White House believes efficiency goals should be set by individual nations. He sought to play down the notion of a rift between the United States and Germany, saying that in fact there was more agreement than disagreement, and any assertion to the contrary would be a “gross distortion.”

One question is what role Russia will play; a spokesman for Mr. Putin, Dmitri Peskov, said Wednesday that Mr. Putin found “positive and pragmatic aspects” in both the Bush and Merkel plans. Another question is how hard Mrs. Merkel will push Mr. Bush behind closed doors, and what kind of concessions — if any — she will be able to extract in the language of the final communiqué, to be issued Friday.

“They may try to work out language in the final communiqué that might mention, for example, some targets and some numbers, but leaves it to individual states to decide whether or not to adhere to them,” said Charles Kupchan, an expert on Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“I would think she’s going to push Bush hard for it, and she will have the backing of her European comrades, but I doubt it’s going to be enough to turn Bush on the issue.”

Mark Landler contributed reporting.

    Bush Defends Climate and Missile Plans, NYT, 7.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/world/europe/07cnd-prexy.html?hp

News Analysis

When Pardons Turn Political

June 7, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, June 6 — President Bush has pardoned 113 people during his presidency, including a Tennessee bootlegger and a Mississippi odometer cheat.

But none has drawn the public scrutiny, nor posed the same political challenge, as the candidate that many conservatives hope will be Bush presidential pardon No. 114: I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, who was convicted of lying to investigators in the C.I.A. leak case and sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison.

A pardon for Mr. Libby would attract more painful attention to a case from which Mr. Bush had managed to keep his distance for more than three years, a case inextricably linked to the flawed intelligence used to justify the Iraq war and an administration effort to discredit a critic that ultimately exposed a C.I.A. officer. The Democrats who control Congress would be none too pleased, either.

A decision not to pardon Mr. Libby would further alienate members of Mr. Bush’s traditional base of support in the conservative movement, a group already angry about his proposed immigration policy, his administration’s spending and his approach to Iran.

So far, Mr. Bush seems to be willing to take that chance, saying he will not intervene until Mr. Libby’s legal team has exhausted its avenues of appeal.

Already, major conservative and neoconservative organizations, magazines and Web sites are expressing vexation that Mr. Bush has not granted clemency to Mr. Libby, who they say was unfairly railroaded for an initial leak that has now been traced to Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state.

“I don’t understand it,” said David Frum, a former speech writer for Mr. Bush who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group with close ties to the White House. “A lot of people in the conservative world are weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness here.”

A conservative with close ties to the administration, who requested anonymity to speak frankly, put it another way: “Letting Scooter go to jail would be a politically irrational symbol to the last chunk of the 29 percent upon which he stands,” a reference to the low percentage of Americans who tell pollsters they support Mr. Bush.

But Mr. Bush has never been very eager to grant pardons, and in fact is among the stingiest presidents in history, said P. S. Ruckman Jr., a political science professor who studies pardons at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill. Mr. Bush took office as his predecessor, Bill Clinton, was facing harsh scrutiny for granting a pardon to Marc Rich, whose former wife, Denise, had donated heavily to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library.

A former senior administration official with his own ties to the case said Mr. Libby had failed to meet the general standard for a pardon by not showing contrition or serving any time. This official also noted that Mr. Libby had also been found guilty of lying to investigators, the same offense that led to the impeachment of Mr. Clinton.

The former official, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the president, said: “It would show a deep disregard for the rule of law if he was to do it right now, when there has been no remorse shown by a convicted felon and no time has been served. How’s this going to fit in his long-term legacy?”

Though they can be ignored by presidents, the guidelines for pardons and clemency recommended by the Department of Justice say that a convict should generally have to wait five years after conviction or release from confinement before being pardoned. Those who received pardons are also generally expected to accept responsibility for their criminal conduct, and should be seeking forgiveness rather than vindication. Presidents can also commute sentences without granting an underlying pardon, although that action is rare and is generally taken after a sentence has begun.

Kenneth L. Adelman, the former director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and one of Mr. Libby’s prominent supporters, said he did not believe a pardon of Mr. Libby would have any bearing on Mr. Bush’s legacy.

“Clinton is very popular in the world, and he pardoned Marc Rich, of all things,” Mr. Adelman said. (Mr. Rich, for whom Mr. Libby had coincidentally worked as a lawyer, was a fugitive from charges of conspiracy, tax evasion, racketeering and violating United States sanctions by trading oil with Iran when Mr. Clinton pardoned him.)

Mr. Adelman said he was chagrined by what he described as the president’s inconsistent application of loyalty, which he said seems to be cutting against Mr. Libby after having played out in favor of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, “who were palpably doing a terrible job.”

But Mr. Bush’s support for Mr. Gonzales in the face of charges that the attorney general’s office politicized the hiring and firing of federal prosecutors has not helped clear a path for a pardon for Mr. Libby.

Other presidents withstood calls for pardons from their supporters and survived with their legacies intact.

President Ronald Reagan faced very similar — albeit, pre-Internet — pressure from conservatives to grant pardons to Oliver North, John M. Poindexter and others indicted for roles in the Iran-contra affair. He never did so, leaving the matter to his successor and vice president, George Bush. (Mr. Bush did not grant clemency to Colonel North or Admiral Poindexter, neither of whose convictions stood; he did pardon six others.)

Mr. Bush, who is hoping for a Republican successor, could do the same — and judging by the reactions against the sentence for Mr. Libby at the Republican presidential debate on CNN on Tuesday, Mr. Libby could ultimately get a pardon.

But that would mean withstanding the pressure that will intensify if and when Mr. Libby goes to jail, which could happen in a matter of weeks, even as his appeals are pending. Speaking with reporters with him for the Group of Eight economic summit in Germany on Wednesday, Mr. Bush was not showing his hand. “It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to discuss the case until after the legal remedies have run its course,” he said. He cut off a reporter’s follow-up question on a possible pardon by moving on to another reporter, Terence Hunt of The Associated Press, who changed the subject to the new tensions with Russia. “Nice going, Terry,” Mr. Bush said.

Sabrina Pacifici contributed research.

    When Pardons Turn Political, NYT, 7.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/us/07libby.html?hp

The Virtually Untrammeled Power of Presidential Pardons

June 7, 2007
The New York Times
By SUSAN JO KELLER

WASHINGTON, June 6 — When it comes to high-profile presidential pardons, the big one, of course, was President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon of Richard M. Nixon.

Ford issued the pardon on Sept. 8, 1974, pre-empting the possibility of a trial for Nixon, who had resigned on Aug. 9 because of the Watergate scandal without being charged with any crimes.

Explaining his decision, Ford described the Nixon family’s situation as “an American tragedy in which we all have played a part.”

“It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it,” he said. “I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.”

The debate about that pardon followed Ford to the end of his life, though he never wavered in his belief that it was the correct action for the country.

Passion over Watergate had cooled a bit by 1977, when President Jimmy Carter commuted the sentence of G. Gordon Liddy, who was convicted in the 1972 Watergate break-in.

President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush also acted in cases that reached high in the Washington power structure. In 1981, Reagan granted clemency to two former high officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, W. Mark Felt and Edward Miller. They had been fined after having been convicted of conspiracy to violate the rights of Americans by authorizing government agents to break into homes in search of antiwar radicals in the early ’70s. In 2005, Mr. Felt was named as Deep Throat, the source who helped The Washington Post uncover the Watergate scandal.

In 1989, Mr. Bush pardoned Armand Hammer, the head of Occidental Petroleum who had been fined and put on probation after pleading guilty to making illegal contributions to Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972.

In 1992, President Bush granted pardons to six former Reagan administration officials, including Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, who had been scheduled to go on trial in two weeks. All had been involved in the Iran-contra affair that dealt with arms sales to Tehran and the diversion of that money to Nicaraguan rebels.

Mr. Bush also pardoned Robert C. McFarlane, former national security adviser, and Elliott Abrams, former assistant secretary of state. Both had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress about support for the contras.

In 2001, as one of his last official acts, President Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, the fugitive commodities trader charged with 51 counts of tax evasion and trading with the enemy.

    The Virtually Untrammeled Power of Presidential Pardons, NYT, 7.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/washington/07pardon.html

Gay Groups Decry Surgeon General Nominee

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:30 p.m. ET
The New York Times

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- President Bush's nominee for surgeon general, Kentucky cardiologist Dr. James Holsinger, has come under fire from gay rights groups for, among other things, voting to expel a lesbian pastor from the United Methodist Church and writing in 1991 that gay sex is unnatural and unhealthy.

Also, Holsinger helped found a Methodist congregation that, according to gay rights activists, believes homosexuality is a matter of choice and can be ''cured.''

''He has a pretty clear bias against gays and lesbians,'' said Christina Gilgor, director of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, a gay rights group. ''This ideology flies in the face of current scientific medical studies. That makes me uneasy that he rejects and promotes ideology.''

Holsinger, 68, has declined all interview requests, and the White House had no immediate comment Friday.

Holsinger served as Kentucky's health secretary and chancellor of the University of Kentucky's medical center. He taught at several medical schools and spent more than three decades in the Army Reserve, retiring in 1993 as a major general.

His supporters, including fellow doctors, faculty members and state officials, said he would never let his theological views affect his medical ones.

''Jim is able, as most of us are in medicine, to separate feelings that we have from our responsibility in taking care of patients,'' said Douglas Scutchfield, a professor of public health at the University of Kentucky.

In announcing Holsinger as his choice for America's top doctor May 24, Bush said the physician will focus on educating the public about childhood obesity.

The previous surgeon general was Dr. Richard Carmona, whose term was allowed to expire last summer. Carmona issued an unprecedented report condemning secondhand smoke.

Holsinger received his bachelor's degree from the University of Kentucky, master's degrees from the University of South Carolina and Asbury Theological Seminary and a doctorate and medical degree from Duke University.

Scutchfield said Holsinger has advocated expanded stem cell research, in opposition to many conservatives, and also has shown political courage in this tobacco-producing state by supporting higher cigarette taxes to curb teen smoking.

Gov. Ernie Fletcher commended Holsinger for working to fight obesity and other health problems in this Appalachian state, which ranks near the bottom in many categories. ''He helped get the ball rolling and focusing on healthy lifestyles,'' Fletcher said.

As president of the Methodist Church's national Judicial Council, Holsinger voted last year to support a pastor who blocked a gay man from joining a congregation. In 2004, he voted to expel a lesbian from the clergy. The majority of the panel voted to keep the lesbian associate pastor in place, citing questions about whether she had openly declared her homosexuality, but Holsinger dissented.

Sixteen years ago, he wrote a paper for the church in which he likened the reproductive organs to male and female ''pipe fittings'' and argued that homosexuality is therefore biologically unnatural.

''When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur,'' Holsinger wrote, citing studies showing higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases among gay men and the risk of injury from anal sex.

Holsinger wrote the paper at a time when the church was one of numerous denominations considering a more open stance on allowing practicing homosexuals to join. It took that step in 1992, saying gays are of ''sacred worth'' who should be welcomed. Practicing homosexuals are still prohibited from serving in the clergy.

Gilgor, the gay rights activist, called the paper ''one twisted piece of work.''

As for the congregation Holsinger helped establish, Hope Springs Community Church, the Rev. David Calhoun told the Lexington Herald-Leader last week that the Lexington church helps some gay members to ''walk out of that lifestyle.''

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which is opposing the nomination along with the Human Rights Campaign and other local and national groups, calls such a practice ''nothing short of torture'' for gays.

Phyllis Nash, who worked under Holsinger for nine years as vice chancellor at the medical center, said the views he took in church appear at odds with his professional actions.

She recalled a women's health conference that Holsinger helped organize in 2002 that included a session on lesbian health. Despite complaints from some lawmakers, Holsinger insisted the session go forward, she said.

''His reaction in support could not have been any stronger,'' Nash said. ''He said, as health care providers, we have to be prepared to meet the health needs of anyone who walks into the door.''

    Gay Groups Decry Surgeon General Nominee, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Surgeon-General-Gays.html

Bush Reiterates: Russia Not an Enemy

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:41 p.m. ET
The New York Times

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday discounted Vladimir Putin's threat to retarget missiles on Europe, saying ''Russia's not going to attack Europe.''

Bush, in an interview with The Associated Press and other reporters, said no U.S. military response was required after Putin warned that Russia would take steps in response to a U.S. missile shield that would be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic.

''Russia is not an enemy,'' Bush said, seeking not to inflame a heated exchange of rhetoric between Washington and Moscow. ''There needs to be no military response because we're not at war with Russia. ... Russia is not a threat. Nor is the missile defense we're proposing a threat to Russia.''

Bush spoke before heading off to lunch with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is hosting the annual meeting of the world's seven richest industrial democracies and Russia. Merkel has made global warming the centerpiece of her G-8 leadership and is pushing for specific targets for reducing carbon emissions.

The meeting is being held under tight security on the Baltic Sea coast in northern Germany. Police used water cannons to scatter an estimated 10,000 demonstrators who swarmed a seven-mile fence that encircles the site. At one section, hundreds of protesters chanted ''Peace'' and ''Free G-8! Free G-8!''

Bush, who met with reporters for nearly an hour in a sun-drenched garden, also discussed Iran, the suffering in Darfur, global warming and this week's sentencing of a former White House aide.

The president said he would like to see other countries follow the United States in taking steps against the government of Sudan to stop the misery in Darfur.

''I'm frustrated because there are still people suffering and the U.N. process is moving at a snail's pace,'' Bush said.

Bush announced tighter U.S. sanctions on Sudan last week. He also is seeking a U.N. resolution to apply new international sanctions against the Sudanese government.

On climate change, Bush said he would not give ground on global warming proposals that would require mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, he backed his own idea for the United States and other nations that spew the most greenhouse gases to meet and -- by the end of next year -- set a long-term strategy for reducing emissions.

Merkel has proposed a ''two-degree'' target, under which global temperatures would be allowed to increase no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, (2 degrees Celsius) before being brought back down. Practically, experts have said that means a global reduction in emissions of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Merkel supports a global carbon-trading market as one tool.

But Bush wants to bring India, China and other fast-growing countries to the negotiation table. He envisions that each country will set their own goals, and decide whether they should be binding. The president said his plan addresses ''life after'' 2012, the expiration date for the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States has not endorsed.

Merkel put a good face on her talk with Bush about issues such as combatting poverty in Africa. But their debate on global warming seems unlikely to produce the kind of hard targets she and others have advocated. ''We started here on a very good footing,'' she said after the lunch with Bush.

Bush also met with Japan's new prime minister Shinzo Abe and discussed North Korea's pledge to close its sole nuclear reactor in exchange for economic aid and political concessions. ''There is a common message here and that is: We expect North Korea to honor agreements,'' Bush said.

While North Korea topped Bush's talks with Abe, the president's plan to deploy an anti-missile radar system in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland is likely to be a key topic in Bush's meeting Thursday with Putin.

Asked if he anticipated a tense encounter, Bush replied ''Could be. I don't think so ... I'll work to see that it's not a tense meeting.''

Putin has accused the U.S. of starting a new arms race and said if the U.S. pressed ahead with its plan, Russia would revert to targeting its missiles on Europe as it did during the Cold War. China joined Russia in saying the missile defense plan could touch off a new escalation in nuclear weapons.

The move to put the missile defense shield in former Warsaw Pact nations -- purportedly as a defense against a future missile launch from Iran -- clearly fanned Putin's anger.

Bush cited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declaration that it was ''too late'' to stop Iran's nuclear program as justification for the U.S. missile defense system. ''Therefore, let's build a missile defense system,'' Bush said, adding that it was time to return to the U.N. Security Council to tighten pressure on Iran to give up its suspected weapons program.

Bush also has angered Putin in the past by criticizing Russia's spotty progress on democratic reform and human rights -- a theme Bush expressed in a speech just one day ago. Bush said that despite all the problems, the United States has a friendship with Russia. He suggested Putin's recent rhetoric could be calculated mostly for internal political consumption in Russia.

''There will be disagreements,'' said Bush, who has invited Putin to meet him in July in Kennebunkport, Maine, the home of his father, former President George H.W. Bush. ''That's the way life works.''

    Bush Reiterates: Russia Not an Enemy, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html

Chastising Putin, Bush Says Russia Derails Reform

June 6, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

PRAGUE, June 5 — President Bush delivered a two-pronged message to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday, two days before their scheduled meeting in Germany, chiding Mr. Putin for derailing democratic reforms while assuring the Russian leader that he had nothing to fear from a missile defense system in Europe.

Mr. Bush issued the human rights rebuke on the first day of an eight-day swing through Europe, in a venue laden with symbolism: a conference on democracy co-led by the former Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky. Democracy advocates and dissidents from 17 countries had gathered in Czernin Palace, in the very room where the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact was dissolved, to hear Mr. Bush speak.

After a lengthy discourse on freedom as a “moral imperative,” in which he chronicled human rights abuses around the globe, from Myanmar to North Korea to Sudan, Mr. Bush turned his attention to Russia and China, linking them as countries whose relationships with the United States, he said, were strong, but also complex.

“China’s leaders believe that they can continue to open the nation’s economy without opening its political system; we disagree,” Mr. Bush said. “In Russia, reforms that were once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development.”

It was a more negative assessment than Mr. Bush has made in the past, and in likening Russia to China Mr. Bush risked arousing Mr. Putin’s ire.

The comparison to China was “a pretty significant step at the rhetorical level for the Bush administration,” said Andrew Kuchins, the director of the Russia Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

That was especially the case because the criticism came out of the mouth of Mr. Bush, rather than another member of his administration. Last year, when Mr. Bush met with critics of the Kremlin, he told them that he had concerns about the state of democracy in Russia but would not lecture Mr. Putin about them publicly.

Mr. Putin is already up in arms over the president’s plan to build a network of radar and missile defenses in Poland and here in the Czech Republic, though Mr. Bush said Tuesday that Mr. Putin need not view the proposal as a threat.

“My message will be, Vladimir — I call him Vladimir — that you shouldn’t fear a missile defense system,” Mr. Bush said during a morning appearance with the leaders of the Czech Republic at Prague Castle, high on a hill overlooking the city. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you cooperate with us on a missile defense system? Why don’t you participate with the United States?”

Reaction from the Kremlin was muted. Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Putin “has always appreciated the openness of President Bush,” though he added, “Of course, we cannot agree with some of the things that were said.”

The back-to-back speeches were orchestrated by the White House with the intent of sending a measured, but firm, message to Mr. Putin when American-Russian relations are at their lowest point in years. Mr. Bush has often spoken of the need to promote democracy, and by sounding that theme before an especially receptive crowd, the speech also offered the president a rare escape from criticism over his policies in Iraq.

“The most powerful weapon in the struggle against extremism is not bullets or bombs — it is the universal appeal of freedom,” Mr. Bush said, speaking to an audience that included Vaclav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, and Cheol Hwan-kang, the author of “The Aquariums of Pyongyang,” an account of 10 years he had spent as a child in a North Korean concentration camp.

“Freedom is the design of our maker, and the longing of every soul,” Mr. Bush continued. “Freedom is the best way to unleash the creativity and economic potential of a nation. Freedom is the only ordering of a society that leads to justice. And human freedom is the only way to achieve human rights.”

In a sense, the speeches may have also been part of the White House strategy to have Mr. Bush clear the air with Mr. Putin in advance of Thursday’s meeting between the two leaders at the gathering of the Group of 8 industrialized nations, in the Baltic seaside resort town of Heiligendamm, Germany.

The two leaders are expected to confront disagreements over Kosovo, as well as human rights and missile defense, although they may find common ground over curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Mr. Bush has also invited Mr. Putin to the Bush family compound in Maine early next month — an unusual effort by the White House to mend fences with the Russian leader. Kennebunkport is the home of Mr. Bush’s parents, and no foreign leader has received an invitation to visit since Mr. Bush’s father was in office.

Mr. Bush’s approach, however, drew criticism from two Russian opposition leaders: Andrei Illarianov, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington and Mr. Putin’s former economics adviser; and Garry Kasparov, the onetime chess champion who heads the United Civil Front, a political party devoted to promoting democratic freedoms.

Mr. Illarianov warned that the West “does not have a widely accepted and effective strategy” for dealing with Mr. Putin.

Mr. Kasparov, who is widely regarded as a potential presidential candidate in Russia, warned “If Bush hopes to gain anything by having private discussions with Putin, he’s wrong. Putin thrives in an atmosphere of secrecy. He’s a K.G.B. spy — anything behind closed doors gives him an advantage.”

Mr. Kasparov said that he wished Mr. Bush would echo the much sharper criticism of Russia put forth by David Kramer, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Asian affairs, who delivered a blistering assessment of the Kremlin’s human rights record in a speech last week in Baltimore. “These are the things that must be pronounced by George W. Bush,” Mr. Kasparov said.

But the White House has said it wants to tamp down the vocal sparring between the nations. Mr. Putin has been jabbing at the Bush administration for weeks; he made a veiled comparison of the United States to the Third Reich, complained of “diktat and imperialism,” and warned he would have no choice but to point Russia’s own missiles at Europe if the United States followed through with the missile defense system.

The remarks, in an interview published Monday, instantly evoked memories of the cold war, and Mr. Putin did little to discourage that comparison, saying, “We are, of course, returning to those times.”

But Mr. Bush, standing alongside President Vaclav Klaus and Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek of the Czech Republic, pointedly dismissed any talk of a return to those hair-trigger days. The Czech leaders both support the missile plan, and a vote in Parliament is expected this year.

“The cold war is over,” the president declared. “It ended. The people of the Czech Republic don’t have to choose between being a friend of the United States and a friend of Russia. You can be both.”

Mr. Bush left Prague on Tuesday evening for Heiligendamm, where he is to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Wednesday to discuss the major agenda topic of the Group of 8 meeting: climate change. After the meeting, Mr. Bush plans a side trip to Poland — a move that will effectively bookend Thursday’s Bush-Putin meeting with presidential trips to both nations that figure into the missile defense plan.

    Chastising Putin, Bush Says Russia Derails Reform, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/world/europe/06prexy.html

Bush Goes to Europe for Talks in Wake of Putin’s Threat

June 4, 2007
The New York Times
By JUDY DEMPSEY and GRAHAM BOWLEY

BERLIN, June 4 — President Bush flew to Europe today for talks with world leaders later this week, including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in the wake of a threat by Mr. Putin to point Russian missiles at Europe if the United States builds its missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

In an interview with journalists from the other Group of 8 big industrialized countries that was released on the Kremlin Web site, Mr. Putin set an uncompromising tone before the start of the group’s summit meeting in Germany on Wednesday.

His comments set a challenge for Mr. Bush, who flew to Prague in the Czech Republic today before the meeting in Germany.

Mr. Putin said Russia would not stand back and allow Washington to expand its nuclear potential in Europe, even though the new interceptors that the United States intends to deploy in Poland would not carry nuclear warheads.

“Europe is being filled with new weapons,” Mr. Putin said, according to the transcript. “We ask ourselves what is going on.” He said the United States’ planned new installations would be an “inseparable part of the U.S. nuclear potential,” and said the Iranian missiles that America’s bases are intended to protect against “do not exist.”

"If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe," Mr. Putin was quoted as saying by Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper that took part in the interview.

"It is up to our military to define these targets, in addition to defining the choice between ballistic and cruise missiles. But this is just a technical aspect."

Asked whether the American plan to build a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe would force Moscow to direct its own missiles against cities or American military targets in Europe, Mr. Putin replied, "Naturally, yes," according to the newspaper.

Der Spiegel, the German weekly newsmagazine, which also took part in the interview, reported that Mr. Putin had warned about the greater possibility of a nuclear conflict.

There was little immediate international reaction to Mr. Putin’s criticisms. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who will host the Group of 8 meeting, wants to lower tensions ahead of the discussions, German diplomats and advisers said.

But NATO criticized Mr. Putin’s comments. "These kind of comments are unhelpful and unwelcome," James Appathurai, a spokesman for NATO, said.

The differences over America’s plans for the missile shield are likely to dominate the talks in Europe. Ms. Merkel and Group of 8 leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and the United States had been hoping that their meeting could reach a consensus over a separate issue, the future status of Kosovo, one of the last unresolved conflicts of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

The United Nations has drawn up a plan that would pave the way for Kosovo to become independent from Serbia, ending the province’s status as a United Nations international protectorate. This arrangement has been in place since 1999. That independence would be supervised by the European Union.

But Russia, which has veto power as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, made it clear last week in Potsdam, Germany, at a meeting of Group of 8 foreign ministers that it did not accept the plan and instead wanted a resumption of talks between Serbia and Kosovo. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, used that meeting to sharply criticize the United States and the missile defense plan.

European diplomats said Mr. Putin’s blunt remarks were intended not only to sow divisions in Europe over the American missile defense plans but also to try to extract concessions over Kosovo.

In Germany, Ms. Merkel’s partners in the coalition government, the Social Democrats, oppose the American plan and have even suggested that Germany pursue a policy of "equal distance" between Russia and the United States. But Ms. Merkel, the conservative leader of the Christian Democrats, has challenged Mr. Putin on several issues, including his views about the missile defense system.

Ms. Merkel has personally told Mr. Putin that America’s plans are in no way directed against Russia.

American officials have also repeatedly told Mr. Putin that Russia would be informed of every step along the way and could even visit the sites in Poland, where the interceptors would be based, and in the Czech Republic, where the United States plans to deploy the radar system. Russia, however, has not taken up the offer of visiting the sites.

Mr. Putin is due to visit the United States for talks with Mr. Bush on July 1 and 2.

Judy Dempsey reported from Berlin, and Graham Bowley from New York.

    Bush Goes to Europe for Talks in Wake of Putin’s Threat, NYT, 4.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/world/europe/04cnd-putin.html?hp