A statewide survey conducted this summer by the California Library Association reveals that since September 11, 2001, FBI agents have formally contacted 14 libraries with requests for patron-record information. The September 22 disclosure of the survey data in the Sacramento Bee came four days after U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft asserted to police officers and prosecutors in Memphis, Tennessee, that the Department of Justice has never invoked Section 215 of the Patriot Act to access records of patrons’ library use, citing a just-released memo he had written to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

Emphasizing that “not all formal visits are Section 215 visits,” Karen G. Schneider, who oversaw the survey as chair of CLA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, told American Libraries that the committee nonetheless “set up the survey so respondents didn’t provide personal information,” thus shielding any library worker from revealing the location of a Section 215 contact; such a disclosure is a felony under the Patriot Act.

"Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry - CIA Agent's Identity Was Leaked to Media"

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity is a violation of federal law.

As if this weren't enough for one week, the U.S. public also got a lesson in wars of choice. It was administered by David Kay, the former U.N. weapons inspector who has been leading the U.S. team searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Last week Mr. Kay gave an interim report indicating that in four months of searching in Iraq he has found none of the W.M.D. that President Bush cited as his principal reason for going to war.

What this means for the American people is this: The war to oust Saddam Hussein was always a war of choice (a good choice, I believe). But democracies don't like to fight wars of choice, and, if they do, they want them to be quick sprints, like Bosnia, Kosovo or Grenada — not marathons. Knowing this, the Bush team tried to turn Iraq into a war of necessity by hyping the threat Saddam may have posed with W.M.D.

With Mr. Kay's interim report, it is now becoming clear that this was not a war of necessity at all, it was a war of choice, and, on top of it all, it was a war of choice that is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. And, because the Bush team chose to start this marathon largely alone, the free-riding world is going to let us finish it, and pay for it, largely alone.

President Bill Clinton was impeached by a Republican-controlled Congress for lying about sex. President George W. Bush and aides lied the United States into a stupid, unnecessary colonial war that has so far killed more than 305 Americans and seriously wounded more than 1,400. It has also cost many thousands of Iraqi dead, and $1 billion US weekly.

Lying about sex is an impeachable offence; lying the nation into war apparently is not. ...

Unfortunately, many Americans still do not understand how gravely the Bush White House has damaged and sullied their nation's once noble reputation.

Recent polls show that even among traditional friends abroad, America is no longer regarded as a champion of freedom, democracy and human rights, but increasingly as a dangerous aggressor bent on imperial domination and exploitation.

America's most precious and proudest asset, its moral reputation, has been gravely damaged by the Bush White House. The only positive note: rising anti-Americanism is largely associated in the eyes of non-Americans with the persona of George Bush, a man who projects almost all the negative stereotypes foreigners hold of Americans.

Bush's blinkered core supporters in middle America simply don't understand or don't care what the rest of the world thinks of their nation, which, since 9/11, has wrapped itself in a cocoon of xenophobia and self-righteous rage.