WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

http://waynemadsenreport.com/

December 3, 2005 -- EXCLUSIVE -- Intelligence "cooking" and retaliation also plagues IMINT (Imagery intelligence) community but with a healthy dose of contract fraud. WMR has already reported on tainted intelligence being created on the orders of the Bush administration in the SIGINT (signals intelligence) and HUMINT (human intelligence) communities. Largely ignored has been the effect of this policy in the IMINT (imagery intelligence) community. IMINT analysts carefully scan spy satellite and air reconnaissance photos taken of foreign airfields, weapons labs, shipyards, government office complexes, and other strategic and tactical sites.

MZM, the company involved in paying bribes to former California GOP Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham, was also part of the cooking of intelligence on Iraq years prior to the US invasion, according to a former weapons expert at the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) in Charlottesville, Virginia. MZM was sold by owner Mitchell Wade to Veritas Capital and is now known as Athena Innovative Solutions, Inc.

According to a former IMINT and weapons analyst, who worked since 1988 for various intelligence agencies looking closely at Iraq, NGIC, which is comprised of US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) intelligence analysts and personnel detailed from the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), had an all-too-cozy relationship with MZM. The firm's single source, non-competitive contract with NGIC paved the way for the cooking of some of the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

After NGIC's deputy director, Bill Rich, Sr., retired, he was quickly hired by MZM, which had replaced Battelle as the prime contractor for NGIC. Soon after taking the job with MZM, Rich's son, who had no prior intelligence experience, was also hired by MZM, according to the former analyst. In addition, NGIC's retired Sergeant Major was also hired by the firm, according to the same source. The links between MZM and Cunningham were so close, members of Wade's family also reportedly steered money to Duke Cunningham's campaign coffers.

Since the MZM-Cunningham scandal broke, the firm has been cut off from all work at NGIC. However, according to NGIC sources that has not affected Rich, who continues to work for a new NGIC contractor, Sparta, Inc., which, like MZM, is conveniently located in the University of Virginia Research Park, across the street from NGIC.

The weapons analyst said that NGIC purposely altered figures on the number of Russian helicopters in order to justify the Crusade gun system, which, the the time, was being built by United Defense, which, in turn, was owned by The Carlyle Group. After the analyst objected to the inflation by NGIC management of the numbers of working helicopters in Russia, he found himself subject to a security clearance investigation by US Investigations Services (USIS), a firm in which the Carlyle Group has a major financial stake, USIS's Iraq operations were under investigation by US Army Col. Ted Westhusing last June. During that investigation, Westhusing was reported to have shot himself in the head while in a trailer near Baghdad.

In a manner reminiscent of how the National Security Agency (NSA) treats whistleblowers, the NGIC analyst was forced to see the center's sole psychologist, someone who was on good terms with Deputy Director Bill Rich. The psychologist determined that the analyst suffered from a psychiatric problem even though his own HMO contradicted that evaluation. In June 2001, the analyst had his security clearance revoked and was terminated in 2002.

In August 2001, the analyst arranged to have some of his NGIC paperwork sent to him at home by NGIC security. However, when a clasped and taped enveloped arrived at his home, there were clear indications that sometime during the passage of the documents through four levels of NGIC management, including NGIC security, something was inserted into the files: a SECRET NOFORN WINTEL document [NOFORN is "no foreign dissemination" and WINTEL is "Warning - Intelligence Sources and Methods Revealed']. The analyst dutifully informed the FBI and the Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) at Fort Monroe, Virginia about the incident. However, the analyst was never asked to sign his statement about the incident. This is eerily similar to the planting of two boxes of classified documents in the home of former NSA analyst Kenneth Ford, who is currently on trial after being charged with the possession of classified material.



NGIC -- The Intelligence Cooking Kitchen

The intelligence cooking on Russian military aviation was so bad, according to the analyst, that NGIC plagiarized a September 1984 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document and tried to post it in an intelligence report on INTELINK, the intelligence community-wide internal "Internet" for classified information. The only problem was that in "cutting and pasting" 1984 Russian helicopter threat information to justify the Crusader project, the term "Soviet Union" was left in the Fall 1999 intelligence report. The Soviet Union ceased to exist nine years earlier.

The NGIC analyst also was well aware as early as 2000 that the aluminum tubes discovered in Iraq and were later claimed by the Bush administration to be for nuclear centrifuges for an Iraqi nuclear weapons program were nothing more than artillery replacement barrels for the Italian "Medusa 81" artillery rocket that had been produced in Egypt. The analyst has personally briefed Dick Cheney, while he was Secretary of Defense, during Desert Shield in 1990 about the anti-aircraft gun barrels. The analyst was on loan to the Pentagon's National Military Joint Intelligence Center (NMJIC) from the Intelligence Threat Analysis Center (ITAC) at the Washington Navy Yard during Desert Storm and maintains that Cheney, who he described as a "prick," knew what the aluminum tubes in 1990 and knew about them when he lied about their being part of Iraq's nuclear reconstitution program. Also present at the same 1990 intelligence briefing for Cheney was Pete Williams, the then-Pentagon press spokesman and currently an NBC TV news reporter.

NGIC altered the aluminum tube intelligence by ordering two individuals -- an artillery and cannon expert, respectively, to write a bogus intelligence report. The analyst who complained about this said that determination should have been made by NGIC's Tehnical Chemical Nuclear (TCN) branch, and not by the two individuals in question. However, the TCN experts realized that the tubes in question had nothing to do with a nuclear weapons program.

Moreover, the aluminum tubes used to justify the attack had actually been captured by US forces in Iraq during Desert Storm in 1991 and were conveniently used later to "prove" the existence of a nuclear program over a decade later.

In essence, NGIC tainted raw and refined intelligence received from its three primary providers -- INSCOM headquarters at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia; the Defense Intelligence Agency's (DIA) HUMINT collection databases (including translated intelligence) and NGA.

NGIC analysts and MZM contractors at the center also began altering intelligence databases containing threat data on various weapons systems, including helicopter production in Russia, Iraq, China, France, and Poland. When objections were raised to such tampering, the reply from NGIC/contractor management was "Congress is just a bunch of liberals and fags . . . we will tell them what they need to know." The analyst said that MZM, through bribery deals with Cunningham (who served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) and GOP Representatives Katherine Harris (FL) and Virgil Goode (VA), successfully influenced Congress by successfully tampering with intelligence coming from NGIC. MZM was also involved in providing unspecified "intelligence services" for the Bush White House and purchasing furniture for the White House.

Goode, who sits on the House Armed Services subcommittee for Military Construction, received money from MZM and shortly afterwards, the firm opened an office, complete with Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs), in Goode's hometown of Martinsville, Virginia. However, an NGIC source said that all Goode received from MZM was $40,000, which compared to what they paid Cunningham, showed that Goode "sold his ass cheap."

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"They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth." - Plato

http://lnk.nu/nytimes.com/6o6.html

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December 4, 2005

The Basics

Don't Fly Over Cheney, Weekend Pilots

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON

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Anyone who doesn't know what Mickey Mouse, Saddam Hussein, Dick Cheney and the odd volcano have in common better not be a pilot. It's the no-fly zone.

Mr. Hussein got his without asking. The governors of several states wanted such zones over their nuclear reactors but were turned down. Same with the mayor of Chicago, who wanted one for the Sears Tower.

Last week, private pilots complained that the no-fly zone for the vice president's new home on the Chesapeake Bay - imposed indefinitely the week before - severely clipped their wings.

So who rates a no-fly zone, and how do you get one?

The zones are most commonly designated "temporary flight restriction," or T.F.R., and established by the Federal Aviation Administration, sometimes on its own initiative and sometimes on someone else's. The zone for Mr. Cheney's house in St. Michaels, Md., extending out a nautical mile in radius and up 1,500 feet, was established "at the request of another government agency," said an F.A.A. spokeswoman, Laura J. Brown, who would not identify the other agency. But around Washington, the agencies that make up the Interagency Airspace Protection Working Group - Ms. Brown's, as well as the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard and Norad - have a role.

Exactly how the government determines that the vice president is a more vulnerable target, or more valuable, than a nuclear plant, is not always clear to outsiders. "You have to balance the security need with the best available information, and being able to keep the airspace clear for commerce and everything else," Ms. Brown said.

The Republican and Democratic national conventions rate zones; so do big chemical spills, space-shuttle launchings, Mount St. Helens (to protect the plane, not the volcano), the occasional very big highway accident and, of course, the Disney theme parks.

Campaign stops by presidential candidates often rate a T.F.R. There are zones around Camp David and around the Bush ranch in Texas, but those get bigger when Mr. Bush is actually there.

Mr. Cheney's T.F.R. breaks ground, says the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, because it is in effect even when he is not in residence. Chris Dancy, a spokesman for the group, noted that all previous T.F.R. zones for vice presidents were in effect only when the vice president was there.

The private pilots object mostly because it's so easy to stray into the zones. Violations nationwide occur more than 1,000 times a year. "There's not a big red line drawn across the landscape that a pilot can see," Ms. Brown noted.

And why are their itty-bitty planes a problem anyway, the private pilots wonder? A bumper sticker seen in airport parking lots sums up their derision: "I Fly a Cessna 150, the Mighty Airplane that Brings Cities to Their Knees! Fear Me ... 2 Seats, 26 Gallons of Gas, 100 HP and 90 Knots of Screaming Terror!"

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Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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http://lnk.nu/select.nytimes.com/6o8.html

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December 4, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist

All the President's Flacks

By FRANK RICH

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WHEN "all of the facts come out in this case," Bob Woodward told Terry Gross on NPR in July, "it's going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great."

Who's laughing now?

Why Mr. Woodward took more than two years to tell his editor that he had his own personal Deep Throat in the Wilson affair is a mystery best tackled by combatants in the Washington Post newsroom. (Been there, done that here at The Times.) Mr. Woodward says he wanted to avoid a subpoena, but he first learned that Joseph Wilson's wife was in the C.I.A. in mid-June 2003, more than six months before Patrick Fitzgerald or subpoenas entered the picture. Never mind. Far more disturbing is Mr. Woodward's utter failure to recognize the import of the story that fell into his lap so long ago.

The reporter who with Carl Bernstein turned a "third-rate burglary" into a key for unlocking the true character of the Nixon White House still can't quite believe that a Washington leak story unworthy of his attention has somehow become the drip-drip-drip exposing the debacle of Iraq. "I don't know how this is about the buildup to the war, the Valerie Plame Wilson issue," he said on "Larry King Live" on the eve of the Scooter Libby indictment. Everyone else does. Largely because of the revelations prompted by the marathon Fitzgerald investigation, a majority of Americans now believe that the Bush administration deliberately misled the country into war. The case's consequences for journalism have been nearly as traumatic, and not just because of the subpoenas. The Wilson story has ruthlessly exposed the credulousness with which most (though not all) of the press bought and disseminated the White House line that any delay in invading Iraq would bring nuclear Armageddon.

"W.M.D. - I got it totally wrong," Judy Miller said, with no exaggeration, before leaving The Times. The Woodward affair, for all its superficial similarities to the Miller drama, offers an even wider window onto the White House flimflams and the press's role in enabling them. Mr. Woodward knows more about the internal workings of this presidency than any other reporter. He has been granted access to all its top officials, including lengthy interviews with the president himself, to produce two Bush best sellers since 9/11. But he was gamed anyway by the White House, which exploited his special stature to the fullest for its own propagandistic ends.

Mr. Woodward, to his credit, is not guilty of hyping Saddam's W.M.D.'s. And his books did contain valuable news: of the Wolfowitz axis' early push to take on Iraq, of the president's messianic view of himself as God's chosen warrior, of the Powell-Rumsfeld conflicts that led to the war's catastrophic execution. Yet to reread these Woodward books today, especially the second, the 2004 "Plan of Attack," is to understand just how slickly his lofty sources deflected him from the big picture, of which the Wilson case is just one small, if illuminating, piece.

In her famous takedown of Mr. Woodward for The New York Review of Books in 1996, Joan Didion wrote that what he "chooses to leave unrecorded, or what he apparently does not think to elicit, is in many ways more instructive than what he commits to paper." She was referring to his account of Hillary Clinton's health care fiasco in his book "The Agenda," but her words also fit his account of the path to war in Iraq. This time, however, there is much more at stake than there was in Hillarycare.

What remains unrecorded in "Plan of Attack" is any inkling of the disinformation campaign built to gin up this war. While Mr. Woodward tells us about the controversial posturing of Douglas Feith, the former under secretary of defense for policy, there's only an incidental, even dismissive allusion to Mr. Feith's Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group. That was the secret intelligence unit established at the Pentagon to "prove" Iraq-Qaeda connections, which Vice President Dick Cheney then would trumpet in arenas like "Meet the Press." Mr. Woodward mentions in passing the White House Iraq Group, convened to market the war, but ignores the direct correlation between WHIG's inception and the accelerating hysteria in the Bush-Cheney-Rice warnings about Saddam's impending mushroom clouds in the late summer and fall of 2002. This story was broken by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus in Mr. Woodward's own paper eight months before "Plan of Attack" was published.

Near the book's end, Mr. Woodward writes of some "troubling" tips from three sources "that the intelligence on W.M.D. was not as conclusive as the C.I.A. and the administration had suggested" and of how he helped push a Pincus story saying much the same into print just before the invasion. (It appeared on Page 17.) But Mr. Woodward never seriously investigates others' suspicions that the White House might have deliberately suppressed or ignored evidence that would contradict George Tenet's "slam-dunk" case for Saddam's W.M.D.'s. "Plan of Attack" gives greatest weight instead to the White House spin that any hyped intelligence was an innocent error or solely the result of the ineptitude of Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A.

Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby are omnipresent in the narrative, and Mr. Woodward says now that his notes show he had questions for them back then about "yellowcake" uranium and "Joe Wilson's wife." But the leak case - indeed Valerie Wilson herself - is never mentioned in the 400-plus pages, even though it had exploded more than six months before he completed the book. That's the most damning omission of all and suggests the real motive for his failure to share what he did know about this case with either his editor or his readers. If you assume, as Mr. Woodward apparently did against mounting evidence to the contrary, that the White House acted in good faith when purveying its claims of imminent doomsday and pre-9/11 Qaeda-Saddam collaborations, then there's no White House wrongdoing that needs to be covered up. So why would anyone in the administration try to do something nasty to silence a whistle-blower like Joseph Wilson? The West Wing was merely gossiping idly about the guy, Mr. Woodward now says, in perhaps an unconscious echo of the Karl Rove defense strategy.

Joan Didion was among the first to point out that Mr. Woodward's passive notion of journalistic neutrality is easily manipulated by his sources. He flatters those who give him the most access by upholding their version of events. Hence Mary Matalin, the former Cheney flack who helped shape WHIG's war propaganda, rushed to defend Mr. Woodward last week. Asked by Howard Kurtz of The Post why "an administration not known for being fond of the press put so much effort into cooperating with Woodward," Ms. Matalin responded that he does "an extraordinary job" and that "it's in the White House's interest to have a neutral source writing the history of the way Bush makes decisions." You bet it is. Sounds as if she's read Didion as well as Machiavelli.

In an analysis of Mr. Woodward written for The Huffington Post, Nora Ephron likens him to Theodore H. White, who invented the modern "inside" Washington book with "The Making of the President 1960." White eventually became such an insider himself that in "The Making of the President 1972," he missed Watergate, the story broken under his (and much of the press's) nose by Woodward and Bernstein. "They were outsiders," Ms. Ephron writes of those then-lowly beat reporters, "and their lack of top-level access was probably their greatest asset."

INDEED it's reporters who didn't have top-level access to the likes of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney who have gotten the Iraq story right. In the new book "Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11," Kristina Borjesson interviews some of them, including Jonathan Landay of Knight Ridder, who heard early on from a low-level source that "the vice president is lying" and produced a story headlined "Lack of Hard Evidence of Iraqi Weapons Worries Top U.S. Officials" on Sept. 6, 2002. That was two days before administration officials fanned out on the Sunday-morning talk shows to point ominously at the now-discredited front-page Times story about Saddam's aluminum tubes. Warren Strobel, a frequent reportorial collaborator with Mr. Landay at Knight Ridder, tells Ms. Borjesson, "The most surprising thing to us was we had the field to ourselves for so long in terms of writing stuff that was critical or questioning the administration's case for war."

Such critical stories - including those at The Post and The Times that were too often relegated to Page 17 - did not get traction until the failure to find W.M.D.'s and the Wilson affair made America take a second look. Now that the country has awakened to that history, it will take more to shock it than the latest revelation that the Defense Department has been paying Iraqi newspapers to print its propaganda. Thanks in large part to the case Mr. Woodward found so inconsequential, everyone knows that much of the American press did just the same before the war - and, unlike those Iraqi newspapers or, say, Armstrong Williams, did so gratis.

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Liberty can not be preserved without general knowledge among people." (August 1765) John Adams

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11204.htm

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America Slowly Confronts the Truth

The old media dog sniffed the air, found power was moving away from the White House, and began to drool

By Robert Fisk

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12/03/05 "The Independent" -- -- Watching the pathetic, old, lie-on-its-back frightened labrador of the American media changing overnight into a vicious rottweiler is one of the enduring pleasures of society in the United States. I have been experiencing this phenomenon over the past two weeks, as both victim and beneficiary.

In New York and Los Angeles, my condemnation of the American presidency and Israel's continued settlement-building in the West Bank was originally treated with the disdain all great papers reserve for those who dare to question proud and democratic projects of state. In The New York Times, that ancient luminary Ethan Bonner managed to chide me for attacking American journalists who - he furiously quoted my own words - "report in so craven a fashion from the Middle East - so fearful of Israeli criticism that they turn Israeli murder into 'targeted attacks' and illegal settlements into 'Jewish neighbourhoods'."

It was remarkable that Bonner should be so out of touch with his readers that he did not know that "craven" is the very word so many Americans apply to their grovelling newspapers (and quite probably one reason why newspaper circulations are falling so disastrously).

But the moment that a respected Democratic congressman and Vietnam war veteran in Washington dared to suggest that the war in Iraq was lost, that US troops should be brought home now - and when the Republican response was so brutal it had to be disowned - the old media dog sniffed the air, realised that power was moving away from the White House, and began to drool.

On live television in San Francisco, I could continue my critique of America's folly in Iraq uninterrupted. Ex-Mayor Willie Brown - who allowed me to have my picture taken in his brand new pale blue Stetson - exuded warmth towards this pesky Brit (though he claimed on air that I was an American) who tore into his country's policies in the Middle East. It was enough to make you feel the teeniest bit sorry - though only for a millisecond, mark you - for the guy in the White House.

All this wasn't caused by that familiar transition from Newark to Los Angeles International, where the terror of al-Qa'ida attacks is replaced by fear of the ozone layer. On the east coast, too, the editorials thundered away at the Bush administration. Seymour Hersh, that blessing to American journalism who broke the Abu Ghraib torture story, produced another black rabbit out of his Iraqi hat with revelations that US commanders in Iraq believe the insurgency is now out of control.

When those same Iraqi gunmen this week again took control of the entire city of Ramadi (already "liberated" four times by US troops since 2003), the story shared equal billing on prime time television with Bush's latest and infinitely wearying insistence that Iraqi forces - who in reality are so infiltrated by insurgents that they are a knife in America's back - will soon be able to take over security duties from the occupation forces.

Even in Hollywood - and here production schedules prove that the rot must have set in more than a year ago - hitherto taboo subjects are being dredged to the surface of the political mire. Jarhead, produced by Universal Pictures, depicts a brutal, traumatised Marine unit during the 1991 Gulf War.

George Clooney's production of Good Night, and Good Luck, a devastating black-and-white account of Second World War correspondent Ed Murrow's heroic battle with Senator McCarthy in the 1950s - its theme is the management and crushing of all dissent - has already paid for its production costs twice over. Murrow is played by an actor but McCarthy appears only in real archive footage. Incredibly, a test audience in New York complained that the man "playing" McCarthy was "overacting". Will we say this about Messrs Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld in years to come? I suspect so.

And then there's Syriana, Clooney's epic of the oil trade which combines suicide bombers, maverick CIA agents (one of them played by Clooney himself), feuding Middle East Arab potentates - one of whom wants real democracy and wealth for his people and control of his own country's resources - along with a slew of disreputable businessmen and east coast lawyers. The CIA eventually assassinates the Arab prince who wants to take control of his own country's oil (so much for democracy) - this is accomplished with a pilotless aerial bomb guided by men in a room in Virginia - while a Pakistani fired from his job in the oil fields because an American conglomerate has downsized for its shareholders' profits destroys one of the company's tankers in a suicide attack.

"People seem less afraid now," Clooney told an interviewer in Entertainment magazine. "Lots of people are starting to ask questions. It's becoming hard to avoid the questions." Of course, these questions are being asked because of America's more than 2,000 fatalities in Iraq rather than out of compassion for Iraq's tens of thousands of fatalities. They are being pondered because the whole illegal invasion of Iraq is ending in calamity rather than success.

Yet still they avoid the "Israel" question. The Arab princes in Syriana - who in real life would be obsessed with the occupation of the West Bank - do not murmur a word about Israel. The Arab al-Qa'ida operative who persuades the young Pakistani to attack an oil tanker makes no reference to Israel - as every one of bin Laden's acolytes assuredly would. It was instructive that Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 did not mention Israel once.

So one key issue of the Middle East remains to be confronted. Amy Goodman, whom I used to enrage by claiming that her leftist Democracy Now programme - broadcast from a former Brooklyn fire station - had only three listeners (one of whom was Amy Goodman), is bravely raising this unmentionable subject. Partly as a result, her "alternative" radio and television station - how I hate that prissy word "alternative" - is slowly moving into the mainstream.

Americans are ready to discuss the United States' relationship with Israel. And America's injustices towards the Arabs. As usual, ordinary Americans are way out in front of their largely tamed press and television reporters. Now we have to wait and see if the media boys and girls will catch up with their own people.

Copyright The Independent

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"If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out" - Oscar Wilde

http://lnk.nu/rawstory.com/6oa.html

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Time poll: 60% want next president to be 'completely different' from Bush

12/03/2005 @ 11:56 am
Filed by RAW STORY

Early release to RAW STORY

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TIME Poll: Doubts About Iraq Bring Doubts About Bush -- President’s 41% Approval Undercut by Iraq / In 2008, 60% Would Like the Next President to be ‘Completely Different’ from Bush / Rice’s 53% Rating Is Highest for Administration / Only 27% Approve of Bush’s Handling of Immigration

New York -- President Bush’s counter-offensive against his critics shows little sign of reversing his flagging job approval ratings. His rating on the new TIME Poll -- 41% approve - 53% disapprove – is little changed from September following Hurricane Katrina (42%-52%).

The public is split on whether Bush can recover lost ground with half (46%) saying he is likely to recover and half (49%) saying he is unlikely to recover. Three-quarters (76%) of those who disapprove of the job Bush is doing say they are “unlikely to change their mind.” 2008

ELECTION: Looking forward to the 2008 election, three-in-five (60%) surveyed by TIME say they would like the next President to be “completely different” from George W. Bush (36% would like someone similar). If the presidential election were being held today between Bush and John Kerry, it would be a dead heat again (47% Bush, 48% Kerry). Red state residents are split on whether they will be more likely to vote for a Republican (42%) or Democratic (42%) candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in their districts next year. Blue states are more in favor of the Democratic candidate (55% Democratic vs. 30% Republican).

RICE UNSCATHED: Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has emerged most unscathed from recent negative events. The TIME Poll shows her approval rating is the highest in the Administration (53% approve, 21% disapprove, v. Vice President Dick Cheney 45%-32%, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld 42%-35%).

IRAQ: Forty-five percent said Bush’s policies in Iraq and high energy prices had a “very negative” impact on his approval rating. Sixty percent disapprove of his handling of Iraq (38% approve). Half (50%) still think the U.S. was wrong to go to war. Americans are split on whether the President was truthful and honest (45%) or deliberately misled Americans (48%) to build the case for war.

The TIME Poll also finds little change in other key indicators: ? 3-in-5 Americans (60%) still see the country going down the wrong track; ? Negative ratings for his handling of illegal immigration (57% - 27%) and the economy (55% - 40%). ? “Red” states (responsible for Bush’s 2004 re-election) approval rating only 47% approve – 45% disapprove.

Also depressing Bush’s approval ratings: ? the federal budget deficit (39% say “very negative” impact), ? cronyism charges (39%), ? his handling of hurricane recovery in the Gulf coast (37%), ? his handling of the economy (35%), ? the failure of his social security initiative (32%), ? the indictment of senior White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby (26% say “very negative” impact).

IMMIGRATION: Only 27% approve Bush’s handling of illegal immigration, which the President has addressed this week with his proposed “guest worker” program. Almost two-thirds (64%) say that illegal immigration is a very serious problem. The issue plays better with Bush’s base, with Republicans believing it is a more serious issue than Democrats (70% - 59%).

A majority believe the U.S. is not doing enough to secure its borders (74%) and that illegal immigrants hurt the U.S. economy (64%). Most (72%) favor a guest worker program for illegal immigrants, with a quarter (24%) opposing. The public is split though on whether illegal immigrants should be eligible to register for the program in the U.S. (50%) or have to return to their own countries to apply (45%).

METHODOLOGY:The TIME Poll was conducted by telephone between November 29 - December 1, 2005 among a national random sample of 1,004 adults, age 18 and older throughout America. The margin of error for the entire sample is approximately +/- 3 percentage points. The margin of error is higher for subgroups. Schulman, Ronca, & Bucuvalas (SRBI) Public Affairs designed the survey and conducted all interviewing. The full Time questionnaire and trend data may be found Mon., Dec. 5 at: www.srbi.com.

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SUPPORTING ARTICLE:

http://lnk.nu/bloomberg.com/6o9

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Americans Want Different Type of President Next Time, Poll Says

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Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Three in five Americans want the next U.S. president to be completely different from incumbent George W. Bush, according to a poll by Time magazine.

Bush's policies in Iraq and high gasoline and energy prices had a ``very negative'' effect on his overall job rating for 45 percent of respondents, according to the poll, conducted between Nov. 29 and Dec. 1. The results showed 36 percent would like the next president to have policies similar to those of Bush, compared with 60 percent who want a different type of leader.

The findings indicate Bush is failing to reverse flagging approval ratings after laying out his strategy for Iraq in a Nov. 30 speech. The poll showed 41 percent approve of the job Bush is doing while 53 percent disapprove, little changed from results in September after Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast. Of those who disapprove, 76 percent said they were unlikely to change their opinion of Bush.

Bush said in the Nov. 30 speech that he would set no timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Training and equipping Iraqi forces to take over their country's security is crucial to U.S. success in the conflict and will strike a blow against terrorism, Bush said in the speech at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

In the Time poll, 47 percent of respondents said the U.S. should withdraw most troops from Iraq in the next 12 months, while 40 percent said they should stay until the Iraqi government is stable. A majority, 56 percent, said it was very likely or somewhat likely the Iraqi government would build a stable democracy, compared with 37 percent who said it was not very likely or not at all likely.

Handling of Iraq

Bush won approval for his handling of Iraq from 38 percent of those surveyed compared with 60 percent who disapproved. The respondents were nearly split on Bush's handling of the war on terrorism, with 49 percent saying they approve and 48 percent saying they disapprove.

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have assailed critics who accused the administration of misleading Americans on pre-war intelligence. In the poll, 48 percent said they think Bush deliberately misled to build the case for war while 45 percent said he was truthful.

Half of those polled said the U.S. was wrong to go to war, and 51 percent said the country's actions in Iraq have worsened the danger of terrorist attacks against the U.S. Forty four percent say going to war was right, and 41 percent said the U.S. is safer. The poll also showed that a majority of Americans, 60 percent, think the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's earned the highest approval rating, 53 percent, of anyone in the Bush administration.

The poll is based on telephone interviews with a national sample of 1,004 adults, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Efstathiou Jr. in Washington at jefstathiou@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: December 3, 2005 14:41 EST

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"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president." - Quote from 'Bush at War' by Bob Woodward