As battle rages in Iraq, despite howls of protest across the world, American antiwar organizers contemplate whether they should focus on stopping this war or the next one. Some activists still believe that Operation Iraqi Freedom can somehow be halted -- or, at least, that they have a duty to keep fighting for that goal -- and that business in America should be disrupted until it is. Others, hearing the murmurs from America's foreign policy elite that Iraq is but the first step in a grander plan to remake the Middle East and the world, are using their energy to lay the groundwork for a broader movement against George Bush's agenda and his reelection.

Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from southern California, is urging the U.S. government to build from scratch a cellular network for relief efforts based on the CDMA (news - web sites) standard popularized by Qualcomm Inc. rather than the GSM standard, which dominates in Europe.

Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham and one of the nation’s most outspoken critics of Islam, said Wednesday he has relief workers "poised and ready" to roll into Iraq to provide for the population’s post-war physical and spiritual needs.

Graham, who has publicly called Islam a “wicked” religion, said the relief agency he runs, Samaritan’s Purse, is in daily contact with U.S. Government agencies in Amman, Jordan, about its plans.

The group’s main objective is to help refugees and people who have lost their homes or are sick and hungry as a result of the war, Graham told Beliefnet. “We realize we’re in an Arab country and we just can’t go out and preach,” Graham said in a telephone interview from Samaritan’s Purse headquarters in Boone, N.C.

However, he added, “I believe as we work, God will always give us opportunities to tell others about his Son….We are there to reach out to love them and to save them, and as a Christian I do this in the name of Jesus Christ.”

The bumbling and arrogance of the administration has made the Middle East -- and the world -- a more dangerous place.

Two missiles from an American jet killed them all...

It's a dirt-poor neighborhood, of mostly Shia Muslims, the same people whom Messrs Bush and Blair still fondly hope will rise up against President Saddam Hussein, a place of oil-sodden car-repair shops, overcrowded apartments and cheap cafés. Everyone I spoke to heard the plane. One man, so shocked by the headless corpses he had just seen, could say only two words. "Roar, flash," he kept saying and then closed his eyes so tight that the muscles rippled between them. ...

In Qatar, the Anglo-American forces – let's forget this nonsense about "coalition" – announced an inquiry. The Iraqi government, who are the only ones to benefit from the propaganda value of such a bloodbath, naturally denounced the slaughter, which they initially put at 14 dead. So what was the real target? Some Iraqis said there was a military encampment less than a mile from the street, though I couldn't find it. Others talked about a local fire brigade headquarters, but the fire brigade can hardly be described as a military target.

Certainly, there had been an attack less than an hour earlier on a military camp further north. I was driving past the base when two rockets exploded and I saw Iraqi soldiers running for their lives out of the gates and along the side of the highway. Then I heard two more explosions; these were the missiles that hit Abu Taleb Street.

"F___ Saddam. We're taking him out." Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase. The Senators laughed uncomfortably; Rice flashed a knowing smile. The President left the room.

Morans of the world, UNITE!

In some ways, I think that the way this war is being treated both by the professionals and amateurs is far too dangerously close to the way we watch sports. When people get together to talk about sports, they speculate about why people performed badly in the last game, what play the coach will call next, and what moves their favorite team needs to make to get ready for next season. Most of the fun comes from prognosticating and then hoping against hope that you're right, because then your fellow fans will see just how smart you are. I'm not saying that this analysis isn't useful, either in sports or in war, but it's also self indulgent. And, the bottom line for me is that I'm completely uninformed. If I think I know what's really going on, I'm just engaging in self deception.

I could have talked about what finding a huge chemical weapons factory in Najaf means for the war effort, but we still don't know whether that's really what was found. I could talk about the disallowed Scud missiles that Iraq has been firing at Kuwait, except that it turns out they're not Scud missiles at all. I could be discussing the mass surrender of Iraq's 51st Infantry Division, except those reports were false. I could be talking about the positions and plans of various US units, except that I don't really know where they are.

California electricity and natural gas prices were driven higher because of widespread manipulation and misconduct by Enron and more than 30 other energy companies during the 2000-2001 energy crisis that threatened the state's solvency, federal energy regulators said today.

In its first effort to estimate the economic effects of President Bush's proposed budget, including its plan for $726 billion in tax cuts, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that even counting any stimulus deficits would run more than $1 trillion over the next five years.

Mr. Bush imposed tariffs of nearly 30 percent on most types of steel imported into the United States from Europe, Asia and South America last spring, the biggest government action to protect a domestic industry in several decades.