“This is a case where the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we’re not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do,” he said. “Then the ball would be in Iran’s court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops.”

Mr Bolton, an influential former member of President George W Bush’s inner circle, dismissed as “dead wrong” reported British intelligence conclusions that the US military had overstated the support that Iran was providing to Iraqi fighters.

A US military spokesman revealed last week that the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had drafted in personnel from Lebanon’s Hizbollah to train fighters from Iraq’s Shia militias.

Colonel Donald Bacon, a spokesman for the coalition in Baghdad, said captured fighters had told interrogators that thousands of Iraqi fighters were undergoing training in the Islamic Republic.

The main camp is located near the town of Jalil Azad, near Tehran, according to coalition officials.

The capture of Qais Khazali, a major figure in the Shia insurgency alongside Ali Mussa Daqduq, a senior Lebanese Hizbollah guerilla, last year yielded a treasure trove of information on Hizbollah’s activities in Iraq.

“Ali Mussa Daqduq confirmed Lebanese Hizbollah were providing training to Iraqi Special Group members in Iran and that his role was to assess the quality of training and make recommendations on how the training could be improved,” said Col Bacon. “In this role, he travelled to Iraq on four occasions and was captured on his fourth trip.”

Five Britons kidnapped in Iraq are believed to have been put under the control of Quds Force agents after failed attempts to barter the men for Khazali and Daqduq’s freedom.

The importance of the Quds Force to stability in Iraq was demonstrated last week when a five-member Iraqi delegation was sent to Tehran to meet with its commander, General Ghassem Soleimani. The delegation was despatched by the Iraqi government to plead for an end to Iranian meddling in its enfeebled neighbour.

The nuns, all residents of a retirement home at Saint Mary’s Convent near Notre Dame University, were denied ballots by a fellow sister and poll worker because the women, in their 80s and 90s, did not have valid Indiana photo ID cards.

Though state officials reported no significant problems, advocates monitoring polling places said there was occasional confusion.

“We were at one polling place for a few hours and picked up three or four different stories of people being turned away,” said Gary Kalman of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in Washington. “I don’t have numbers about how widespread it is.”

“It’s the law, and it makes it hard,” said Sister Julie McGuire, who was working at the polling place and had to explain to the nuns that they could not vote. “Some don’t understand why.”

Indiana requires voters who come to the polls show a photo ID issued by the state or the federal government. The law was pressed by Republicans citing voter fraud and opposed by Democrats and the ACLU, who argued that it would disenfranchise voters.

The law does not recognize out-of-state driver’s licenses, a problem for college students who under Indiana law must intend to live in their college communities to vote, which involves obtaining an Indiana ID.

Angela Hiss, 19, of suburban Chicago, said she was allowed to register to vote several weeks ago but was turned away Tuesday from a polling site in South Bend, where she attends Notre Dame. Hiss said officials at a local motor vehicles office then would not accept her Illinois license as proof of identification for an Indiana license.

And Hiss didn’t have her birth certificate — she had sent it to the federal Passport Service offices recently along with her application for a passport.

Hiss declined to cast a provisional ballot because she’s leaving for Illinois after finals on Friday.

But she can add her story to family lore that includes her aunt’s going to a Chicago polling site years ago and being told that her mother had voted earlier that day.

“She said, ‘My mother’s dead,’ ” Hiss said.

“The existing double standard shall not be tolerated anymore by non-nuclear-weapon states,” Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh told a meeting of the 190 countries that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Nuclear safeguards are far from universal, he said, adding that more than 30 countries are still without a comprehensive safeguard agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure full cooperation with that U.N. body.

“Israel, with huge nuclear weapons activities, has not concluded” such an agreement or submitted its facilities to the IAEA’s safeguards, Soltanieh said.

Israel, which does not discuss whether it has atomic weapons, did not sign the nonproliferation treaty, which requires all signatories except the major powers to refrain from obtaining nuclear arms. India and Pakistan, which have developed nuclear weapons, also are not signatories.

Iran did sign the treaty and is under U.N. Security Council sanctions meant to pressure the Tehran government into allowing inspections that will ensure it isn’t developing nuclear weapons. Iran insists its atomic program is peaceful, with the sole goal of using reactors to generate electricity.

A U.S. envoy accused Iran of “provocative and destabilizing activities” and said its leaders were responsible for leading the country into the sanctions imposed by the Security Council.

“The path of defiance is also the path of isolation, of continuing and additional sanctions and of further stunted economic opportunities for a proud and sophisticated people already suffering from economic turmoil and mismanagement by its regime’s leaders,” said Christopher A. Ford, U.S. special representative for nuclear nonproliferation.

Ford said Iran joined North Korea and Syria in weakening the nonproliferation treaty.

“This treaty regime faces today the most serious tests it has ever faced: the ongoing nuclear weapons proliferation challenges presented by Iran, by North Korea and now by Syria,” Ford said.

Ford cited U.S. intelligence that North Korea was helping Syria in “secretly constructing a nuclear reactor that we believe was not intended for peaceful purposes.” Syria denied last week that it was working on an undeclared reactor, which purportedly was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike last September.

Soltanieh said nuclear-armed powers like the United States, Britain and France are practicing “nuclear apartheid” by denying or restricting peaceful atomic technology to countries like Iran.

“Access of developing countries to peaceful nuclear materials and technologies has been continuously denied to the extent that they have had no choice than to acquire their requirements for peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including for medical and industrial applications, from open markets,” Soltanieh said.

This usually means the material is more expensive, poorer quality and less safe, he said.

In a 300-page report, titled “Today’s American: How Free?”, to be released tomorrow, the group subjects the United States to the scrutiny it more often applies to the Belaruses and Tajikistans of the world.

Despite concerns, today’s America is “quite free,” according to group, which constantly places the United States in the top tier with two dozen other nations based on civil liberties and political rights in its annual reports on freedoms around the world.

In the United States, “challenges to those freedoms by government officials or other actors encounter vigorous and often successful resistance from civil society and the press, the political opposition, and a judiciary that is mindful of its role as a restraint on executive and legislative excess,” the authors say.

“Indeed, the dynamic, self-correcting nature of American democracy — the resilience of its core institutions and habits even in a time of military conflict — is the most significant finding.”

The study, however, expresses “grave concern” about the Bush administration’s attempt to extend the White House’s power without congressional or judicial review.

“Generally speaking, the controversies over counterterrorism policies can be traced to the Bush administration’s assertion of a degree of executive authority that is extraordinary even in wartime,” says the report, which finds that broad electronic surveillance affects millions, and law enforcement has “overreached” in terrorism cases.

Deputy Executive Director Thomas Melia said this is the perfect time for Freedom House — founded by Eleanor Roosevelt — to turn its sights on the United States. Not only is it an election year, but also the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“The U.S. is the most important country in the world, and if we do reports on every country, we think from time to time it might be useful to look at our own country,” Mr. Melia told The Washington Times yesterday.

“In recent years the freedom agenda of the Bush administration has made the most conspicuous … effort to promote democracy across the world, and it’s prompted a lot of people around the world to look at us.”

In detailed examination, the authors evaluated 20 aspects of U.S. civil society, from America’s robust press and religious freedoms to the increasingly corrosive role of money in political spheres.

The United States gets mixed reviews, for example, when looking at the situation of African-Americans and minorities in general.

The report notes that over the decades the government has undertaken steps to expunge racism from the law, public institutions, economic life and popular culture. It has mandated affirmative action and adopted policies to encourage political and educational participation.

“These measures have changed America in fundamental ways. But they have not contributed significantly to an improvement in the state of the inner-city poor,” the report concludes.

Freedom House finds that U.S. incarceration rates are “jarring,” rising by more than 300 percent since 1980.

Mr. Melia said many of the authors originally focused on the post-Sept. 11 limitations on civil liberties in the country. However, it became clear in the editing process that the prison camp holding terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and monitoring of individuals under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, don’t impact as many Americans as the political process, the criminal justice system and religious freedoms.

“We famously know there are flaws in our ability to keep a voter role and count the votes properly,” he said. “But there have been historical improvements.”

Dawn

In a message on the occasion of Press Freedom Day, Ms Arbour noted that harassment and secrecy laws were weakening press freedom. “It is a sad fact that many governments across the world persist in undermining the freedom of the press to report facts and opinions and, by extension, the right of people in general to be informed about events and policies that are shaping our world,” Louise Arbour said.

The proliferation of new or strengthened secrecy laws meant that the media were forced to resort to speculation, which can then be used against them to further undermine their credibility, or even as a justification for initiating legal proceedings against them, she said.

“When information flows freely, people are equipped with tools to take control of their lives,” Secretary-General of the UN Ban Ki-moon noted in his message for the day. “When the flow of information is hindered – whether for political or technological reasons — our capacity to function is stunted.”

Mr Ban stressed that a free, secure and independent media was one of the foundations of peace and democracy. “Attacks on freedom of the press are attacks against international law, humanity, and freedom itself — everything the UN stands for,” he said.

Alarmed at the increasing targeting of journalists around the world, and the failure to thoroughly investigate and prosecute such crimes, he called on all societies to spare no effort in bringing to justice the perpetrators of such attacks.

He paid tribute to all who work in difficult and dangerous conditions to provide the world with free, unbiased information.

The head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), Koichiro Matsuura, stressed that press freedom and access to information served the wider development objective of empowering people by giving people the information that could help them gain control over their own lives.

“Access to information is primordial to the exercise of the basic human right of freedom of expression,” Mr Matsuura added. To be free, the media need to have access to information. Such access is also indispensable in fighting corruption, which has been defined as the primary obstacle to development.

The winner of this year’s Unesco World Press Freedom Prize is a Mexican reporter, Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, who has been a target of death threats, sabotage and police harassment because of her work uncovering prostitution and child pornography networks.

Jeremiah Wright summarized the difference between him and Obama in his interviews last weekend as, “I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do. I am not running for office.”

But there is more to it than this.

Rev. Wright is an unapologetic African American preacher who has no hesitation speaking the truth in the best of the religious prophetic tradition. He uses the word “imperialism.” He talks about “oppressors” and “oppressed” and “God’s desire for a radical change.” He says, accurately, that “you cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you.”

Barack Obama, as is clear from a close reading of “The Audacity of Hope” and a review of his Democratic Party political career, is all about rising up within the world of the Democratic and Republican parties, the corporate duopoly. And if you are committed to that political world and becoming President through it, it is not surprising that you would do things like whitewash U.S. history, as the quote above does. Genocidal policies toward Indigenous people, the hideous reality of slavery and Jim Crow, the invasion of Mexico and takeover of much of its territory, even the Civil War and Reconstruction: nowhere in Obama’s book does he address these truths of our history.

Obama said at his April 29th press conference where he broke with his pastor of 20 years that, “What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that contradicts who I am and what I stand for. And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. . . so where I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS and suggestions that somehow Minister Farrakhan has been a great voice in the 20th century, then that goes directly at who I am and what I believe this country needs.”

It is true that a handful of statements made by Wright in response to questions from the press at the National Press Club gave them an opening to caricature him as too radical, too out of touch with the U.S. political mainstream, the political mainstream that Obama has been laboring mightily, for years, particularly over the past 16 months, to steer in a somewhat more progressive direction.

It is also true that, faced with near-certain, continued media attention on the Obama/Wright relationship, Obama needed to address the “worldview” differences between them, which are real. But was it really necessary for him to use words like these in doing so: “divisive and destructive,” “the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” and “a bunch of rants that aren’t grounded in truth”?

Obama said that “when you start focusing on the plight of the historically oppressed, you lose sight of what we have in common. . . it doesn’t describe properly what I believe, in the power of faith to overcome but also to bring people together.”

If he truly believes that he’s different in this way than Wright, then he didn’t read all of Wright’s National Press Club speech, or he deliberately discounted major parts of it, like this conclusion:

“The prophetic theology of the black church has always seen and still sees all of God’s children as sisters and brothers, equals who need reconciliation, who need to be reconciled as equals. . . Reconciliation means we embrace our individual rich histories, all of them. We retain who we are, as persons of different cultures, while acknowledging that those of other cultures are not superior or inferior to us; they are just different from us. We root out any teaching of superiority, inferiority, hatred or prejudice. And we recognize for the first time in modern history, in the West, that the other who stands before us with a different color of skin, a different texture of hair, different music, different preaching styles and different dance moves; that other is one of God’s children just as we are, no better, no worse, prone to error and in need of forgiveness just as we are. Only then will liberation, transformation and reconciliation become realities and cease being ever elusive ideals.”

Barack Obama has made a genuine effort to run a different kind of campaign, one which is more issue-oriented and less about the divisive and dishonest personal attacks that often characterize what passes for “political debate” in this country. But in this case, the case of Rev. Wright, Obama has failed his own test. The corporate media has made him bend his principles.

If Obama wins the Democratic nomination and if he wins the Presidency, which I continue to hope he does as the best candidate when compared with Clinton and McCain, we can expect to see more examples of Obama rejecting consistently progressive positions. Hopefully, he will feel that it is incumbent that he follows through on much of his generally progressive campaign rhetoric and fights for generally progressive government policies. But like Jeremiah Wright, we need to be prepared, no matter who is elected President, “November 5th, I’m [we’re] coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.”

Government of, by and for the people: that must be the objective. We aren’t going to get it on November 4th, 2008, but if we don’t lose our critical consciousness, if we don’t defend indefensible positions, if we speak truth to power, whether Democrat or Republican, and if we keep working to find the ways to come together into a powerful, grassroots-based, multi-cultural independent progressive movement, we can make progress this year toward that long-term objective.

Ted Glick is active in the climate movement. He is a supporter of Cynthia McKinney’s Power to the People/Green Party Presidential campaign. He can be reached at indpol@igc.org

Patrick Wintour

But the prime minister has ruled out rushing through a compensation package for the abolition of the 10p tax rate ahead of the Crewe and Nantwich byelection on May 22, fearing that it would turn the vote into a referendum on the issue.

He is also to consider shelving the proposed rise in fuel duty in October, but has no plans to reverse the unpopular increases in vehicle excise duty on some polluting cars announced in the March budget.

The disclosure of the essential elements of Brown’s fightback plan came as he took personal responsibility for the local elections debacleby admitting that his obsession with policy detail may have obscured the communication of big messages.

He also tried to assure voters that he was fully aware of their feelings over rising food and fuel prices. “I do understand this and I feel the hurt they feel,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

He went on to insist that he was not remote from the concerns of ordinary people. “You know I come from a pretty ordinary background … we as a family felt under pressure when the economy was going through difficult times.

“I understand what people are thinking and I understand what people are feeling. And I believe that I’m the right person to lead people through this.”

The deputy leader, Harriet Harman, said the party had to make its language more understandable. She said: “We have to have more of a focus on family finances as well as on the overall economic strategy of keeping the economy stable.”

Some of his closest allies in the cabinet are urging Brown to take greater risks and show greater definition by taking on enemies.

Despite despair at the party’s performance, and Brown’s plunging popularity, there was no sign of a challenge to the leadership from inside the cabinet.

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said Brown was “the right man to take us forward into the next general election”, but said the electorate were seeking a greater sense of order in society, and greater power. Even the Labour leftwinger John McDonnell issued a statement insisting he was not going to act as a stalking horse candidate.

But Gisela Stuart, MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, said: “While Gordon Brown himself has probably a far clearer vision as to where he wants to take the country than Tony Blair had, I think Tony Blair was better in the telling of the story … Gordon has got the story, but he has lost the knack of telling it.”

Brown is also on probation with parts of his cabinet over the way in which he is communicating his message.

One cabinet member said: “We have been given an almighty yellow card with bright red lights flashing at the edges. It is entirely up to Gordon to decide whether it will turn fully red. He has until the end of the year to do it and he must show within the next three months that he is heading in the right direction.

“That will determine whether these results turn out to be our 1991, the moment John Major recovered, or our 1995, the moment Tony Blair became undefeatable. At the moment everything is up for grabs. It could easily go either way.

“The problem with these young cabinet ministers is that they don’t have teenage children who can tell them they’re sounding or looking prats. They’re at the stage with their children of just telling them to go to bed when they’re awkward. You can’t do that with the electorate”.

Brown insisted he was not going to be shifted only 10 months into the job saying: “I am resolute and determined, and I’ve got convictions and ideas, and I’m not going to be put off by a few days’ headlines from the job that I’m determined to do for this country.

He also touched on the possible reasons for the election debacle. “Perhaps I’ve spent too little time thinking about how we can get our arguments across to the public,” he told the Andrew Marr Show. “And now of course I think people are saying, look can you show us that you can come through these difficult situations. And I believe we will.”

Downing Street hopes the plan to reinvigorate the housing market by expanding shared equity ownership schemes - so far limited to a small number of key workers - will increase the take-up by making buying easier for first-timers. The government has already announced two new Open Market HomeBuy products allowing those who sign up to buy as little as 50%of the property, with a low interest loan on the remainder. However, critics say the government has spent £350m on a scheme that has helped just 700 families.

No 10 also signalled that it would reject an extension of rubbish or bin taxes when five pilots, not due to be completed in 2012, are completed. “Punitive rises in council taxes is not what we need” said one source.

The third element of the plan - action on rising food prices - will comprise backing efforts from the competition commission to pressure supermarkets to restrain price rises at a time of high profits.

The US president said modified crops offered a ­partial solution to the food crisis gripping some parts of the world because of their high yields and resistance to drought and disease.

“These crops are safe,” he said, “and they hold the promise of producing more food for more people.”

The remarks came as Mr Bush proposed a fresh $770m (€498m, £390m) in food aid, in addition to the $200m in emergency aid announced two weeks ago.

If approved by Congress, the funds would increase total US food aid this year to $2.3bn, up from $2.1bn last year.

“We’re sending a clear message to the world: that America will lead the fight against hunger for years to come,” said Mr Bush.

Global food prices have increased by 43 per cent over the past year because of soaring demand from developing countries and droughts in Australia and other crop growing countries, according to the White House.

Decreased supply and rising prices have led to food shortages from Haiti to the Philippines.

The White House rejected criticism that its support for the development of ethanol for fuel had contributed to the crisis by increasing pressure on corn supplies.

Officials said that the use of corn to produce ethanol accounted for just 2-3 per cent of the increase in food prices, and a third of the increase in corn prices.

However, the White House acknowledged the need to develop alternative sources of ethanol to reduce pressure on corn supplies – pointing to the $1bn committed for research into the use of grasses, wood chippings and agricultural waste to produce energy.

Dan Price, the US national security adviser for international economic affairs, said that most of the aid would go to Africa, with some of the funds earmarked for technical assistance to help countries grow more food.

He said GM crops would allow poor countries to ­produce larger, more resilient harvests but said restrictions in Europe and elsewhere provided a deterrent to investment in GM crops.

The US last year provided more than $2.1bn of food aid to 78 developing countries, with more than $1.8bn dispersed by Food for Peace, the agency that is the main provider of US food aid to the rest of the world.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials.  This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or “army of god,” the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border — whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law’s throat.
 
Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran.  Further afield, operations against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.
 
All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees.  That has not proved a problem.  An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy.

Until recently, the administration faced a serious obstacle to action against Iran in the form of Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon, who made no secret of his contempt for official determination to take us to war.  In a widely publicized incident last January, Iranian patrol boats approached a U.S. ship in what the Pentagon described as a “taunting” manner. According to Centcom staff officers, the American commander on the spot was about to open fire. At that point, the U.S. was close to war.   He desisted only when Fallon personally and explicitly ordered him not to shoot.  The White House, according to the staff officers, was “absolutely furious” with Fallon for defusing the incident.

Fallon has since departed.  His abrupt resignation in early March followed the publication of his unvarnished views on our policy of confrontation with Iran, something that is unlikely to happen to his replacement, George Bush’s favorite general, David Petraeus.

Though Petraeus is not due to take formal command at Centcom until late summer,  there are abundant signs that something may happen before then.  A Marine amphibious force, originally due to leave San Diego for the Persian Gulf in mid June, has had its sailing date abruptly moved up to May 4.  A scheduled meeting in Europe between French diplomats acting as intermediaries for the U.S. and Iranian representatives has been abruptly cancelled in the last two weeks.  Petraeus is said to be at work on a master briefing for congress to demonstrate conclusively that the Iranians are the source of our current troubles in Iraq, thanks to their support for the Shia militia currently under attack by U.S. forces in Baghdad. 

Interestingly, despite the bellicose complaints, Petraeus has made little effort to seal the Iran-Iraq border, and in any case two thirds of U.S. casualties still come from Sunni insurgents.  “The Shia account for less than one third,” a recently returned member of the command staff in Baghdad familiar with the relevant intelligence  told me, “but if you want a war you have to sell it.”

Even without the covert initiatives described above, the huge and growing armada currently on station in the Gulf is an impressive symbol of American power.

Armed Might of US Marred By Begging Bowl to Arabs

Sometime in the next two weeks, fleet radar operator may notice a blip on their screens that represents something rather more profound: America’s growing financial weakness. The blip will be former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s plane commencing its descent into Abu Dhabi.  Rubin’s responsibility these days is to help keep Citigroup afloat despite a balance sheet still waterlogged, despite frantic bail out efforts by the Federal Reserve and others, by staggering losses in mortgage bonds.  The Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund injected $7.5 billion last November (albeit at a sub-prime interest rate of eleven percent,) but the bank’s urgent need for fresh capital persists, and Abu Dhabi is where the money is.

Even if those radar operators pay no attention to Mr. Rubin’s flight, and the ironic contrast it illustrates between American military power and financial weakness, others will, and not just in Tehran.  There’s not much a finding can do about that.

CNN

“Bush’s approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon (22 percent and 24 percent, respectively) but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s,” Holland added. “The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 66 percent disapproval in January 1952.”

CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider adds, “He is more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned from the presidency in August 1974.” President Nixon’s disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 67 percent.

The poll also indicates that support for the war in Iraq has never been lower. Thirty percent of those questioned favored the war while 68 percent opposed the conflict.

“Americans are growing more pessimistic about the war,” Holland said. “In January, nearly half believed that things were going well for the U.S. in Iraq; now that figure has dropped to 39 percent.”

The numbers on the Iraq war come on the five-year anniversary of President Bush’s “mission accomplished” moment onboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, when Bush proclaimed that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

The record low support for the war in a CNN poll could be one reason behind the president’s unpopularity, but it probably is not the only one.

“Support for the war, the assessment of the economy and approval of Mr. Bush are all about the same — bad,” Schneider said.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted by telephone from Monday through Wednesday, with 1,008 adult Americans questioned. The poll’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.