Dover has been catapulted into the center of a renewed battle over the teaching of evolution in schools. The religious right, emboldened by its spreading influence in the Republican Party and an explosive growth in the number of evangelical Christians, has launched a major push to get an alternative to evolution — which they believe denies the biblical version of God’s creation of the world — into the classroom. At least 40 U.S. states have faced legal challenges in recent months.

At the forefront of the challenge is the concept of “intelligent design,” which stipulates that the universe is so complex it shows clear evidence of a “designer.” Advocates say evolution is just another theory, not a scientific fact. Critics, however, say intelligent design is bringing religion into science. “It is just creationism-lite,” said Nick Matzke, a spokesman for the National Center for Science Education.

The move in Dover was led by William Buckingham, a born-again Christian. The decision has split the community and dominates conversation in diners, bars and churches. The Browns say Buckingham and a group of evangelical Christians have hijacked the school board and imposed their views on a community in which creationism in the classroom had never been an issue. “They are on a crusade,” Brown said. His wife added: “Dover is just ahead of the curve. There will be a lot more things like this in other places.”

In fact, Dover is already just part of a growing phenomenon. In Cobb County, Ga., textbooks have had stickers stuck inside them telling children that evolution is “theory, not fact.” In Grantsburg, Wis., new rules direct teachers to analyze the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, as well as allow for the study of other theories. In Ohio the state school board has sought to open the way for the teaching of opposing theories to evolution. The Missouri Legislature will consider the introduction of intelligent design into its classrooms last year.

Arguments over evolution — which has long been accepted as fact by the vast majority of scientists — arouse deep passions in America. Almost 80 years after the Scopes “monkey trial,” in which Edward Scopes was tried and convicted for teaching evolution in Tennessee, many Americans still do not believe in it. A Gallup Poll last month showed that 45 percent believe God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years.

Now both sides are preparing to take the issue to the Supreme Court for the first time since the ’80s. A conservative law firm, the Thomas More Law Center, has offered to represent the Dover school board members. Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union is looking for Dover complainants to take the case on from a pro-evolution view. Conservatives are confident that they will prevail. “We are going to win. It is a free-speech right for students to receive alternative views,” said Richard Thompson, president of the law center.

Thompson says intelligent design does not by its nature advocate a religious point of view, which would be against the U.S. Constitution. “It is based on science that shows the world is so complex it could not have happened by accident,” he said. Critics contend the very concept of a “designer” implies a god.

Religious groups have been galvanized by the reelection of President Bush, a born-again Christian who has stated: “On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth.”

Christians are being encouraged to join school boards and lobby to get intelligent design in the curriculum. “We have as much right as the evolutionists to be on our school boards,” said Patricia Nason, of the Institute for Creation Research. She and fellow creationists believe Bush’s victory gave them a chance to get their agenda into schools. “I feel that if we don’t make progress in the next four years that window of opportunity will close,” she 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.”

Witnesses and analysts familiar with the region said most protesters were complaining about government corruption and poverty, not espousing Islamic extremism.

The U.S. comments were seized on by Karimov, who said Saturday that the protests were organized by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic group often accused by Tashkent of seditious extremism. Yet Washington, which has expressed concern over the group’s often hard-line message, has yet to designate it a terrorist group.

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, tried to deflect accusations of the contradictory stance when he said it was clear the “people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government. But that should come through peaceful means, not through violence.”

Washington has often been accused of being involved in a conspiracy of silence over Uzbekistan’s human rights record since that country was declared an ally in the “war on terror” in 2001. Uzbekistan is believed to be one of the destination countries for the highly secretive “renditions program,” whereby the CIA ships terrorist suspects to third-party countries where torture is used that cannot be employed in the U.S. Newspaper reports in America say dozens of suspects have been transferred to Uzbek jails.

The CIA has never officially commented on the program. But flight logs obtained by the New York Times earlier this month show CIA-linked planes landing in Tashkent with the same serial numbers as jets used to transfer prisoners around the world. The logs show at least seven flights from 2002 to late 2003 originating from destinations in the Middle East and Europe.

Other countries used in the program include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Morocco. A handful of prisoners’ accounts — including that of Canadian Maher Afar — that emerged after their release claim they were tortured and abused in custody.

Critics say the U.S. double standards are evident on the State Department Web site, which accuses Uzbek police and security services of using “torture as a routine investigation technique” while giving the same law enforcement services $79 million in aid in 2002. The department says officers who receive training are vetted to ensure they have not tortured anyone.

The aid paradox was highlighted by former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who criticized coalition support for Uzbekistan when it was planning the invasion of Iraq, using similar abuses as justification. Murray said Saturday: “The U.S. will claim that they are teaching the Uzbeks less repressive interrogation techniques, but that is basically not true. They help fund the budget of the Uzbek security services and give tens of millions of dollars in military support. It is a sweetener in the agreement over which they get their air base.”

Murray said that during a series of suicide bombings in Tashkent in March 2004, before he was sacked as U.K. ambassador, he was shown transcripts of telephone intercepts in which known al-Qaida representatives were asking each other, “‘What the hell is going on?’ But then Colin Powell came out and said that al-Qaida was behind the blasts. I don’t think the U.S. even believes their own propaganda.”

The support continues, seen by many as a payoff for the Khanabad base. The U.S. Embassy Web site says Uzbekistan got $10 million for “security and law enforcement support” in 2004.

Last year Human Rights Watch released a 319-page report detailing the use of torture by Uzbekistan’s security services. It said the government was carrying out a campaign of torture and intimidation against Muslims that had seen 7,000 people imprisoned, and documented at least 10 deaths, including that of Muzafar Avozov, who was boiled to death in 2002.

“Torture is rampant,” the reported concluded. Human Rights Watch called for the United States and its allies to condemn Uzbekistan’s tactics.

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.

The pictures of American soldiers abusing and torturing prisoners created a global backlash against the U.S. presence in Iraq, outraging allies and opponents alike.

Several low-ranking soldiers have been prosecuted. They blamed senior officers, saying they were just following orders, but the new probe has now cleared those officers.

The investigation was intended as the military’s conclusion on the ultimate responsibility for the scandal. It is the only U.S. inquiry so far to have had the power to apportion blame. Critics say it has made scapegoats of ordinary soldiers. “This decision unfortunately continues a pattern of exoneration and indeed promotion for many of the individuals at the heart of the torture scandal,” said Amnesty International spokesman Alistair Hodgett.

Army officials say 125 soldiers have been tried at courts-martial or been otherwise punished. The officials have always denied that the abuse was systemic or planned by the senior military hierarchy. Yet some soldiers and Karpinski have said their superiors encouraged the abusive practices and relaxed rules about harsh treatment of prisoners.

Guy Womack, a lawyer for Spec. Charles Graner, who has been sentenced to 10 years for abusing prisoners, called for action to be taken against at least two of the senior officers.

Other official investigations have taken a stronger line. One probe by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger concluded that Sanchez should have taken firmer action in November 2003, when the Army first realized the scale of the abuse. An investigation last summer found that the “action and inaction” of Sanchez and his senior officers “indirectly contributed” to what was going on at Abu Ghraib.

The report followed a week of renewed bloodshed — including the massacre of 19 men in a football stadium in Haditha and the shooting down of a civilian helicopter — that appears to have been encouraged by three months of political stalemate since January’s elections. Saturday, the U.S. military arrested six Iraqi men in connection with the downing of the helicopter.

The report also follows increasing disillusionment among foreign diplomats and Iraqi party leaders over the choice two weeks ago by the Shiite majority of Ibrahim al-Jaafari for prime minister. Iraqi and Western officials have told the Observer that they fear Jaafari lacks the leadership skills to guide Iraq at such a crucial time.

According to a report in Saturday’s New York Times, the political impasse is largely the result of leading Kurdish political figures trying to stall the formation of a new government in an effort to force out Jaafari. “The Kurds are intent on delaying the government so that Jaafari will fall,” Sami al-Askari, a member of the Shiite alliance, told the paper.

Last week British and U.S. officials blamed the increase in violence on the continuing inability of Iraq’s political parties to agree on a government — a hiatus that bodes ill for negotiations on a new constitution due later this year.

A spokesman for the Kurdish alliance denied on Friday that there was any effort to unseat Jaafari. However, Kurdish leaders have never been comfortable with religious figures such as Jaafari, the leader of a popular Shiite religious party. Under Iraq’s transitional law, Jaafari will lose his position if he does not name a cabinet by May 7. If he is displaced, Iraq’s new president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and his deputies would choose a prime minister.