There is absolutely no way that Fitzgerald should trust that Cheney is going to tell the truth just because he is under oath. Cheney could be compelled to tell the truth *if* Fitzgerald can box him in with supporting evidence for the narrative he (Fitzgerald) is pushing.

So far Fitzgerald has shown himself to be a very thorough and careful prosecutor. Let's hope he's taking these steps because he has the supporting evidence he needs.

I'm as glad to see Bumiller go as the rest of the letter writers. Any reporter who can't master their own fear when interviewing/questioning the President about matters as important as going to war doesn't belong on the White House beat.

Which brings me to the really important question. Will the person replacing Bumiller be any better or are we just substituting one sycophant for another?

Man, we've been through the looking glass so many times with this administration, that I feel like I'm in a house of mirrors all the time. Attempting to pass an amendment that aims to restrict rights rather than guarantee them to all citizens is like passing a civil rights bill!!

Tony Snow comes off as a fool in this exchange. He is the one that makes the connection between the marriage amendment and civil rights and then has to backpedal furiously when pinned on it. Even the most casual viewer can see that it isn't the responsibility of the reporter to define terms when Snow is responsible for the initial comparison.

This man's simple, straighforward statement of his irreplaceable loss brings tears to my eyes.

I, like many others I know who oppose this mad war and irresponsible administration, have become partially inured to all the bad news if only to find some way to keep going in our daily lives and obligations to friends, family and work. We're no less opposed to what is happening or less engaged, just less viscerally angered and saddened by what Bush has done in our name.

The honesty and truth of Sadoon Awad did more to return that palpable sense of outrage than pages of analysis and revelations about the inner workings of the Bush administration. I've long said that every revolution sows the seeds of the counter-revolution. In Saddon Awad, we can see the terrible harvest we are sowing for ourselves in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world.

Given her prior record and penchant for distortion and outright lying about her subjects, it really didn't come as much of a surprise that Ann Coulter is a plagarist.

What I'm having much more difficulty accepting is her publishers' cavalier dismissals of the evidence that she did, in fact, commit plagarism. Perhaps her publishers are so ideologically driven that they do not care at all about the damage it does to their reputations to defend the indefensible, but, hell, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. After all, they consented to publish her hate- and lie-filled screeds in the first place.

In the last few days, even with the situation prior to that in Iraq being as awful as it was, I've had the sinking feeling that Iraq has not only devolved into a full scale civil war, but that it is almost to the point of genocide.

Roving gangs of armed men, pulling random individuals out of cars and killing them just because they are Sunni or Shia? It's beyond mere civil war. It's a hellish insanity beyond any military or civil authority's control.

Saddam was a brutal dictator, but if these sort of ethnic hatreds were simmering just below the surface in his Iraq (and I've not heard or read anything to suggest they were not), I'm not surprised that he was a brutal as he was in his tactics for quelling dissent. And as an earlier letter writer noted, it also doesn't surprise me that many Iraqis would rather be under Saddam's rule, where civil society had at least some chance, than the forces we've unleashed by invading.

If degenerates further into full scale genocide, will anyone in Iraq be able to find it in their heart to forgive us for our arrogance and foolhardiness by starting a war where we failed to foresee the possibility of these horrible consequences and to take appropriate steps to prevent them?

Assuming Tim's reporting is accurate about what Hillary Clinton really said and its context (I haven't had a chance to look into it elsewhere yet), Ms. Kornblut's "reporting" is worthy of Ann Coulter for it's ability to take a quote out of context and to create an impression of the intention of the speaker that is 180 degrees from the true intent. This should not go unpunished by the Times. For all that paper's failings during the Bush administration (and they are many), this sort of distortion/sloppy reporting should be intolerable.

Conrad Burns would do well to remember that the choices made by him and the rest of the GOP have worsened the problem of fighting wild fires this season. There have been numerous articles citing the use of the National Guard in Iraq and to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border as contributing to a manpower shortage this season for firefighting.

If he really wants to berate someone, Burns should look in a mirror and yell at his image. Then he can start working to bring home our National Guard troops and to find a better solution for our illegal immigration problems, so the Guard would be available to assist with fire fighting.

The reason Bush is reading Camus couldn't be any simpler. Obviously, he recently saw "Talladega Nights," and after seeing Sacha Cohen's character reading Camus while racing, ol' Georgie decided that if it was reported that he was reading Camus during his vacation that he would be even more beloved by the NASCAR folks.

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