Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough drinks and they tell a sordid tale of an administration under siege, beset by bitter staff infighting and led by a man whose mood swings suggest paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.

They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with “get out of here!”

In fact, George W. Bush’s mood swings have become so drastic that White House emails often contain “weather reports” to warn of the President’s demeanor. “Calm seas” means Bush is calm while “tornado alert” is a warning that he is pissed at the world.

Decreasing job approval ratings and increased criticism within his own party drives the President’s paranoia even higher. Bush, in a meeting with senior advisors, called Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist a “god-damned traitor” for opposing him on stem-cell research.

“There’s real concern in the West Wing that the President is losing it,” a high-level aide told me recently.   more »

Iraq: The unseen war: The grim reality of Iraq rarely appears in the American press. WARNING The following photo gallery contains graphic and shocking images of death and devastation in Iraq.

Dick Feagler, writing for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, viciously lashes out at the war in Iraq, at those who have "a bland, nitwit allegiance to the blood and death as if the carnage in Iraq were some kind of Olympic sport".

As in Vietnam, so now in the Ohio heartland, where the burden of death once again falls heavy, the war makes ever-less sense to those most involved. Concern for the well-being of Americans in uniform goes hand-in-hand with the rising dissent.

Underlying the two wars -Vietnam & Iraq - is the fact that, once again, our wartime sacrifices fall disproportionately on the working class and, with US deaths approaching 2,000, and thousands more soldiers and Marines horribly wounded, a recent CBS poll found that 57% of Americans now believe the war in Iraq not worth the loss of American lives.   more »

That doesn't mean that Bush is not still a formidable adversary. The boys in the administration have no intention of leaving and allowing some other administration to start snooping around 9-11, the Cheney energy papers, the Downing Street memos and the long litany of crimes perpetrated in the last 5 years.

But, certainly, some of the Bush faithful have stepped off the boat and are looking for new leadership.

Don't get me wrong; none of the powerbrokers have given up on Iraq. That's why we see Kerry, Bill Richardson and the insufferable blowhard Joe Biden reemerging on the Sunday talk shows.

These are the prospective "pro-war" candidates being primped and preened to replace Bush. Any one of them would trade-away their first-born for the swivel-chair in the Oval Office.

And, this is the great danger of Cindy Sheehan's victory, that it will be co-opted by the pro-war toadies in the Democratic Party and used to fuel their campaigns. If that happens, we've lost everything.   more »

The rest of us may be fixated on the depressing tableau in Iraq, where the U.S. seems to be delivering a fundamentalist Islamic state into the dirty hands of men like Ahmad Chalabi, who conned the neocons into pushing for war, and his ally Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who started two armed uprisings against U.S. troops. It was his militiamen who ambushed Casey Sheehan's convoy in Sadr City.

America has caved on Iraqi women's rights. In fact, the women's rights activists supported by George and Laura Bush may have to leave Iraq.

But, as a former C.I.A. Middle East specialist, Reuel Marc Gerecht, said on "Meet the Press," U.S. democracy in 1900 didn't let women vote. If Iraqi democracy resembled that, "we'd all be thrilled," he said. "I mean, women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy."

Yesterday, the president hailed the constitution establishing an Islamic republic as "an amazing process," and said it "honors women's rights, the rights of minorities." Could he really think that? Or is he following the Vietnam model - declaring victory so we can leave?   more »

Taking on one of the most highly charged questions in the abortion debate, a team of doctors has concluded that fetuses probably cannot feel pain in the first six months of gestation and therefore do not need anesthesia during abortions.

Their report, being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on a review of several hundred scientific papers, and it says that nerve connections in the brain are unlikely to have developed enough for the fetus to feel pain before 29 weeks.

The finding poses a direct challenge to proposed federal and state laws that would compel doctors to tell women having abortions at 20 weeks or later that their fetuses can feel pain and to offer them anesthesia specifically for the fetus.   more »

Once the media circus is over, Israel's melodramatic withdrawal from the Gaza Strip should be judged by how it improves Palestinian lives and the chances of a just and peaceful resolution of the conflict.

On the face of it, ending 38 years of Israel's military and civilian occupation is welcome news. The evacuation of hundreds of illegally implanted Jewish families from the midst of a million and a half Palestinians, 85% of them refugees, will close the curtains on some of the occupation's most cynical scenes.

That's why Palestinians are celebrating the withdrawal as a defeat for the occupation and victory for years of resistance. As a new Palestinian slogan goes, they hope for "Gaza today, tomorrow Jerusalem and the West Bank".

That is precisely what Ariel Sharon's plan aims to prevent. As settlers grieve, most Israelis approve of the withdrawal as a necessary demographic disengagement from an area that encompasses 2% of historical Palestine and 20% of all Palestinians.

Israel's strategic redeployment around the hostile Strip and its total control over Gaza's ports and crossings allows it, at will, to turn the area into one big prison.   more »

Our famously steadfast president is suddenly vacillating quite regularly. The last few weeks has seen the White House flip and then flop about whether the United States will be increasing its military commitment in Iraq or drawing down some time next year (in time, conveniently, for the 2006 midterm elections).

And there's still convincing evidence that we're preparing to have permanent military bases in Iraq. All this from the same president who built a case for re-election on the fact that John Kerry was sending 'mixed messages' on Iraq.

The White House cannot even make up its mind about what to call this war. The tried-and-true 'Global War on Terrorism' appeared to give way to 'Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism,' before the president distanced himself from that phrase a week later.

How distressing that energy is being wasted on slogans and catchphrases, as if this were a marketing campaign for a new line of detergent. More statesmanship, less salesmanship, please.

Everything about this war has been a ruinous debacle: the way we got into it, the way we've conducted it, the refusal of a plan for disengagement, the high price—in dollars and lives—we've paid for it. It must end as soon as possible.   more »