Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Shattering all grassroots fundraising records, 75 percent of the funds Kerry has raised since Super Tuesday have been from grassroots fundraising - online $44 million, direct mail and phones $31 million. The average grassroots contribution at johnkerry.com was $108, the average via direct mail and phones was about $70.

For the third straight month, Kerry out-raised Bush. May's Kerry Campaign total was more than double the Bush-Cheney campaign's May total of $13 million. Kerry beat Bush's total by $15 million in April ($31 million to $16 million) and by over $17 million in March, when the Kerry campaign raised $43.4 million. The Kerry Campaign has receipts for well over $140 million for the presidential primary cycle, breaking Bush's 2000 record for a non-incumbent, according to the FEC report Kerry will file on June 20th.

Prison Officer Says He Felt Heat

WASHINGTON, June 18, 2004
(CBS/AP) An Army intelligence officer claims the abuses at Abu Ghraib took place after interrogators came under pressure from Bush administration officials.

In a sworn statement to Army investigators obtained by USA Today, Army Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib when abuses occurred, said he was under intense pressure from the White House, Pentagon and CIA last fall to get better information from detainees.

He also said he had worked out a procedure with CIA interrogators to hide five or six inmates from Red Cross inspectors in October, the newspaper reported in Friday editions.

Jordan's statement said he was reminded of the need to improve intelligence "many, many, many times" and the pressure included a visit to the prison by an aide to White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, the paper reported.

To rebut Jordan's account, the White House arranged an interview with White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend before, but in anticipation of, the newspaper's publication.

Townsend, who last fall was Rice's deputy for combating terrorism, told The Associated Press she visited Abu Ghraib and even walked through a cellblock but "we never discussed interrogation. We never discussed interrogation techniques. That wasn't the focus."

"I did not go there to pressure them to do anything they weren't doing," Townsend added. "I really wanted to understand how they were taking the information they had and what they were doing with it so that I could ^=… think through how we could make that dissemination of information most effective."

WASHINGTON, June 20 - The Bush administration, which cut off its share of financing two years ago to the United Nations agency handling population control, is seeking to isolate the agency from groups that work with it in China and elsewhere, United Nations officials and diplomats say.

Pressed by opponents of abortion, the administration withdrew its support from a major international conference on health issues this month and has privately warned other groups, like Unicef, that address health issues that their financing could be jeopardized if they insist on working with the agency, the United Nations Population Fund.

The administration also has indicated that it hopes to persuade the United Nations' Latin American caucus to back away from a common position on population and development that was adopted in Santiago, Chile, in March on the grounds that the document's discussion of reproductive rights could be interpreted as promoting abortion.

The realization of contradictions in one's own attitudes and behaviors.

The anxiety that occurs when there is a discrepancy between a person's knowledge and beliefs.

An unpleasant emotional state that is felt when there is a logical inconsistency among cognitive elements.

The cognitive process whereby an individual's values and beliefs are challenged. The challenging process is necessary in moral reasoning to wrestle with moral dilemmas.

...With a middle ground made less likely, it forces us as the recipients of both positions to make a choice. In a rational world, people can make an assessment about the motives of a member of the administration in a re-election year versus a bipartisan commission that is not involved in the election. In a rational world, the credibility of the commission on this point would be virtually unassailable.

As we know, though, people are not always rational. The need to reduce our dissonance is one of the forces that compromise our rationality. People who identify with Bush and Cheney for any number of reasons will have difficulty resolving dissonance by dismissing their position.

Many Americans believe al-Qaeda may have worked alongside the regime of Saddam Hussein, according to a poll by Harris Interactive. 69 per cent of respondents believe the deposed Iraqi leader supported the terrorist network, while 22 per cent disagree.

Moses Murphy was as Republican as they come. The 27-year-old former Marine always voted a straight ticket and his Jeep Cherokee sported three "Bush-Cheney '04" bumper stickers.

But two months ago as the Boardsman, Ohio, resident was surfing the Internet, he came across the Web site for the Constitution Party, a small, conservative group still struggling to be on the ballot in every state. Off came the Bush paraphernalia and now Murphy's Jeep is plastered with stickers for Michael Peroutka, the Constitution Party's little-known presidential nominee.

Media attention has focused on Ralph Nader as a potential spoiler to presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry, but President Bush could face a similar threat from third party candidates on the right. The Constitution and Libertarian parties believe they could siphon away enough disenchanted conservatives to tip a close election.

For Murphy, Bush's proposal to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants living in the United States was the final straw. "We can't keep letting illegals come in; we need troops on the border," Murphy said in a telephone interview. "(Bush's) views no longer reflect my views, and I need to vote my principles."

The party occupying the White House is typically more prone to disgruntled ideologues bolting for a third party, said Lawrence Jacobs, director of the 2004 Elections Project for the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. And hardline conservatives have no shortage of gripes with the president they helped elect. Topping the list is the dramatic increase in federal spending, especially the $500 billion new Medicare entitlement for prescription drugs Bush pushed through Congress, said Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation and a leading conservative activist.

Weyrich said grassroots conservatives "have a real problem with this administration's out of control spending."

The U.S. Senate on Monday backed the Bush administration's ban on media coverage of the flag-draped caskets of dead soldiers being received at Dover Air Base, despite complaints that the policy was an attempt to mask the rising death toll in Iraq.

Republicans who control a Senate majority defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to make the Pentagon write new rules to allow media coverage of the return of the remains of soldiers to the United States...

The Clinton administration made exceptions, but President Bush reimposed the ban when the Pentagon issued a directive on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

As a result, "The over 830 service men and women who died in Iraq passed through a politically imposed void hiding the truth," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, said in floor debate on the issue last week.

Instead of protecting the soldiers' families, Lautenberg said, "This policy has everything to do with keeping the country from facing the realities of war, shielding Americans from the high price our young service people are paying."

Americans in Kabul hold fund-raiser for Kerry presidential campaign
- MATTHEW PENNINGTON, Associated Press Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004

(06-25) 06:25 PDT KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) --

With armed Afghan guards at the gate and a Democrat donkey mascot chewing leaves in the shade, dozens of American expatriates held a fund-raiser in Kabul on Friday for U.S. presidential hopeful John Kerry ...

... "It's important to show that there are Americans everywhere, even in Afghanistan, who want a change of leadership in the United States," said organizer Karen Hirschfeld, of Winchester, Mass., who is helping Afghans get ready for this year's national elections.

"For the future of Afghanistan, Iraq and America, we need someone with a more rational foreign policy who will work with the international community. We think John Kerry will be a good leader." ...

... None of the thousands of U.S. military personnel based in Afghanistan to hunt for al-Qaida and Taliban rebels turned up for Friday's event ...