Paul Harris

The U.S. Army says the policy is needed to maintain cohesion and avoid problems of continually integrating new men and women into units at war. However, critics have said that the Army is using the policy as a way of maintaining manpower levels at a time when the military is facing a recruiting squeeze. In recent months more than 7,000 soldiers have been affected by the policy.

The soldiers’ suit against the Army claims that the stop-loss policy is a breach of contract. “This is a matter of fairness. My job was to go over and perform my duties under the contract I signed … Now I believe that they should honor their end of the contract,” one of the soldiers, David Qualls, told the New York Times. Qualls, the only one of the group not listed on court papers as “John Doe,” said he was not against the war. But the soldiers’ case, which has been filed in a court in Washington, has been taken up by several groups connected to the antiwar movement.

The soldiers have been given legal help from the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has launched several cases challenging the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay. Some relatives of the soldiers have also been given advice and encouragement by Military Families Speak Out, a lobbying group of relatives formed to oppose the war. “This lawsuit addresses an injustice that is keeping soldiers fighting and dying after they have completed their side of their contract with the Army,” said Nancy Lessin, cofounder of MFSO.

The eight soldiers in the lawsuit come from a variety of backgrounds. They include an Army musician, a transportation specialist and a National Guardsman. Qualls, who is due back in Iraq this weekend, is a radio operator. He signed up for one year in the Arkansas National Guard in 2003, but he said that he now expects to be in Iraq until sometime next year. “You’ve got thousands of people over there in the same situation as me and somebody’s got to do something. Why not have it be me?” he said.

Nestled deep in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, in the heart of America’s Bible Belt, this is the first dinosaur museum to take a creationist perspective. Already thousands of people have flocked to its top-quality exhibits, which mix high science with fundamentalist theology that few serious scientists accept.

The museum is riding a wave of creationist influence in America. Creationism, which holds that the Earth is just a few thousand years old and that the biblical account of Genesis is fact, is central to a rash of furious arguments across America. From school boards in Kansas to elections in Pennsylvania, the “debate” between creationism and evolution has become a political hot potato.

Even as America’s scientists make advances in paleontology, astronomy and physics that appear to disprove creationism, Gallup surveys have shown that about 45 percent of Americans believe the Earth was created by God within the past 10,000 years. It’s not just creationism, either. Last week, NBC’s “Dateline” program investigated some miracles and concluded some could be real. It is hard to imagine Jeremy Paxman on BBC’s “Newsnight” taking this stance.

That wellspring of popular belief, and the political clout that comes with it, are the inspiration behind the museum. It is not interested in debating with mainstream science. It simply wants to represent the view of a significant slice of America. “We want people to see that finally they have something that addresses their beliefs, to show that we do have a voice,” said Thomas Sharp, business director of Creation Truth, the religious group that co-founded the museum.

No expense was spared. The fossil casts, which range from a Triceratops skull to an 18-foot-long Albertosaurus (a relative to T. rex), could easily grace London’s Natural History Museum. Plans for a much bigger museum in Dallas are being considered. And “we would love to open in the United Kingdom if the right partner showed up,” Sharp said.

The museum forms part of a Bible-based theme park in Eureka Springs. The parking lot is full of cars and coaches from all over the country. To enter the museum is to explore a surrealistic parallel world. Biblical quotes appear on displays. The first has dinosaurs, alongside Adam and Eve, living in harmony. The ferociously fanged T. rex is likely to be a vegetarian. Then comes the “Fall of Man” and an ugly world where dinosaurs prey on one another and the first extinctions occur. The destruction of the dinosaurs is explained, not by a comet striking the Earth 65 million years ago, but by the Flood. This, the museum says, wiped out most of the dinosaurs still alive and created the Grand Canyon and huge layers of sedimentary rock seen around the world.

Some dinosaurs survived on Noah’s Ark. One poster explains that Noah would have chosen juvenile dinosaurs to save space. An illustration shows two green sauropods in the ark alongside more conventional elephants and lions. The final exhibit depicts the Ice Age, where the last dinosaurs existed with woolly mammoths until the cold and hunting by cavemen caused them to die out.

Scientists dismiss such claims as on a par with believing in Atlantis. Yet the museum is unlikely to be seen as a major threat to mainstream science. It was put in the heart of an area where Christian attractions are a mainstay of the local economy.

It was built in cooperation with the “New Holy Land” theme park, which re-creates the biblical Middle East in the Ozarks. A huge statue of Christ, the largest in North America, looms over Eureka Springs. The site is the setting for “The Great Passion Play,” where each night, in a 4,500-strong arena, the last days of Christ are acted out. The play has attracted more than 7.2 million people.

But creationism is seeking to become more influential in other parts of the country. In Kansas the state school board recently held public hearings on the validity of evolution and the teaching of “intelligent design” in classrooms. The hearings were boycotted by scientists who believed they were rigged against evolutionists. The theory of intelligent design holds that the world is so complex it must have been created, and has been dubbed “creationism lite” by its critics. Kansas is now expected to recommend that schools include intelligent-design-friendly material in its science courses this summer.

In Pennsylvania, the issue dominated an election in the town of Dover after the school board decided to include mention of intelligent design in its science classes. A vote last week between anti-evolution and pro-evolution candidates ended in an electoral tie.

Creationism has found one high-level voice. President George W. Bush famously proclaimed: “The jury is still out on evolution.” And a CBS survey late last year showed that 45 percent of Bush voters wanted creationism taught in schools instead of evolution, compared with 24 percent of voters for John Kerry. “Under the Bush presidency, we are clearly able to get a lot more done,” Sharp said.

The Museum of Earth History may be the first dinosaur museum of its kind. It is not likely to be the last.

Clinton, prosecutors stress, is not personally involved in the trial, which began last week in Los Angeles district court, but the case is threatening to derail her preparations for a bid for the White House in three years’ time. Even if Rosen is cleared, the case is likely to provide ammunition for her conservative critics.

The problems began at a glamorous fundraising event in 2000 when Hillary Clinton was campaigning for her Senate seat in New York. Billed as a lavish and star-studded farewell by Hollywood to outgoing President Bill Clinton, the party at a Beverly Hills mansion was attended by such star names as Cher, Brad Pitt and Diana Ross.

The event’s organizer, entrepreneur Peter Paul, is believed to have spent more than $1.2 million on it. But Rosen told the commission it cost $400,000, which means that at least $800,000 could have gone illegally into Clinton’s campaign coffers. This, if it is proved true, would be a serious breach of America’s strict campaign finance laws. Rosen faces a maximum jail sentence of 15 years and up to $250,000 in fines if he is found guilty.

Even though there has been no suggestion that Clinton knew about the alleged crimes, her name has already dominated the proceedings. Potential jurors were questioned about their feelings toward the senator.

One of her friends, James Levin, told the court the charges were part of a smear campaign. “I thought, and I still think, they were politically motivated,” he said.

The case has highlighted a growing network of Republicans and other conservatives who are gearing up to attack Hillary Clinton’s nascent 2008 campaign. One of them, the veteran Arthur Finkelstein, has set up a “Stop Her Now” Web site with the objective of raising $10 million to bankroll anti-Clinton activities.

Another site, the Hillary Clinton Accountability Project, was designed by the webmasters behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group that helped to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry in last year’s presidential election.

Judicial Watch, a body that highlighted various scandals involving the Clinton White House, filed papers with the Senate ethics committee last week claiming that Hillary Clinton must have known that Rosen’s filings to the FEC were false.

Conservative publishing house Sentinel has announced plans to publish a tell-all book called “The Truth About Hillary” this year. The appearance of the book, being written by journalist Edward Klein, is gleefully awaited by Republicans.

Although Clinton is popular with many grass-roots Democrats, she has some party bosses feeling nervous. “She is just such an easy target,” said Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California.

The main evidence against Rosen is taped conversations he allegedly had with Ray Reggie, brother-in-law of Sen. Edward Kennedy. In transcripts leaked to a New Orleans newspaper, Rosen and Reggie talk about the fundraiser, apparently admitting its cost. The pair swap salacious asides that could also cause political damage. At one point Rosen describes how a donor to the Democratic Party sent prostitutes to the hotel rooms of two senior Clinton loyalists after a night of drinking.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that organizer Paul was convicted of trafficking cocaine in 1979 and has been convicted of trying to defraud the Cuban government in a coffee-trading scheme. Aaron Tonken, another organizer of similar events for Democrats, is now in prison for a charity fraud.

Such links provide much material for Hillary Clinton’s many critics on the right and the left to play with. It has also dealt a blow to her efforts to move her politics to the center by appearing softer on social issues such as abortion and harder on defense issues such as military spending and Iraq.

“This sort of thing just serves to remind people of the ’90s scandals like Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky affair,” said Bowler. “Some Democrats have short memories — but I don’t think that a lot of American voters do.”

Saar paints a picture of a base where interrogations of often innocent prisoners have spiraled out of control, doing massive damage to America’s image in the Muslim world. Saar said events at Guantánamo are a disaster for U.S. foreign policy. “We are trying to promote democracy worldwide. I don’t see how you can do that and run a place like Guantánamo Bay. This is now a rallying cry to the Muslim world,” he said.

Saar arrived at Guantánamo Bay in December 2002, and worked there until June 2003. He first worked as a translator in the prisoners’ cages. He was then transferred to the interrogation teams, acting as a translator.

Saar’s book, “Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo,” provides the first fully detailed look inside Guantánamo Bay’s role as a prison for detainees the White House has insisted are the “worst of the worst” among Islamic militants. His tale describes his gradual disillusionment, from arriving as a soldier keen to do his duty to eventually leaving believing the regime to be a breach of human rights and a disaster for the war on terror.

Among the most shocking abuses Saar recalls is the use of sex in interrogation sessions. Some female interrogators stripped down to their underwear and rubbed themselves against their prisoners. Pornographic magazines and videos were also used as rewards for confessing.

In one session a female interrogator took off some of her clothes and smeared fake blood on a prisoner after telling him she was menstruating. “That’s a big deal. It is a major insult to one of the world’s biggest religions, where we are trying to win hearts and minds,” Saar said.

Saar also describes the snatch teams, known as the Initial Reaction Force (IRF), who remove uncooperative prisoners from their cells. He describes one such snatch where a prisoner’s arm was broken. In a training session for an IRF team, one U.S. soldier posing as a prisoner was beaten so badly that he suffered brain damage. It is believed the IRF team had not been told the “detainee” was a soldier.

Staff at Guantánamo also faked interrogations for visiting senior officials. Prisoners who had already been interrogated were sat down behind one-way mirrors and asked old questions while the visiting officials watched.

Saar also describes the effects prolonged confinement had on many of the prisoners. He details bloody suicide attempts and serious mental illnesses. One detainee slashed his wrists with razors and wrote in blood on a wall: “I committed suicide because of the brutality of my oppressors.”

Saar details a meeting with an Army lawyer at which linguists, interrogators and intelligence workers at the base were told the Geneva Conventions did not apply to their work, as the detainees could not be considered normal prisoners of war. At the end of the meeting the group was told: “We still intend to treat the detainees humanely, but our purpose is to get any actionable intelligence we can, and quickly.”

But Saar said that many, if not most, of the detainees were rarely interrogated at all after their initial arrival. They just sat listlessly in their cells for months on end. He believes that many of them were either simple foot soldiers caught up in the war in Afghanistan or elsewhere, or innocent men sold out to the Americans by local enemies settling a grudge or looking to collect reward money.

Saar accepts that some genuine terrorists have been held at Guantánamo. “There are individuals there who I hope will never be set free,” he said, but he contends that they are in the minority. “Overall, it is counterproductive,” he said.

Saar was an enthusiastic supporter of George W. Bush in the 2000 election, but he has changed his worldview after being exposed to Guantánamo Bay. “I believe in America and American troops,” he said, “but it has drastically changed my worldview and my politics.”

Saar left the Army and has become a hate figure for some right-wing groups, which say he and his book are unpatriotic. But Saar believes exposing the abuses of Guantánamo will lessen the damage done to America’s reputation in the long run. “The camp is a mistake. It does not need to be that way. There should be a better way, more in line with American morals,” he said.