GET OUT FRONT Frontline's season premiere on the Iraq war, "Truth, War and Consequences," shows why the PBS series remains a standout in the world of investigative journalism. The show's website provides a huge amount of context on the Iraq issue.

THE 1973 SHOT HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLD The 1973 Yom Kippur War brought the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to the brink of war, shattered the myth of Israeli dominance in the Middle East and, ultimately, broke the martial spirit of the Arab world. Until it responded to Syrian demands of help, Egypt's strategic thrust into the Sinai threatened Israel as it had never been threatened. Bad end-game decisions by the Syrians, Iraqis and Egyptians; a massive U.S. airlift; and shoddy Russian equipment -- combined with a do-or-die resurgence of the Israeli Defense Forces -- turned the tide. Al-Ahram presents a compelling series of quotes from key players and observers about the war and its consequences.

LET'S DANCE The Starr Foster Dance Project leaps into its fifth year of bringing innovative dance to Richmond's cultural mileu.

Celebrating their fifth year, Richmond's modern dance company, Starr Foster Dance Project, will premiere Dirty Rotten Neighbors as a part of their Fall Company performance, Friday, October 24th and Saturday, October 25th, 2003 at the Grace Street Theatre.

Combining theatre and dance, Dirty Rotten Neighbors is a comedic glimpse of neighborhood activity and the meshing of different lifestyles.

The Project will also be presenting Heaven and Prom Queen as a part of this company production. A rehearsal documentary, filmed by Doug Hayes, will follow both performances.

Tickets are availableat the door the evening of the performancesat the
Grace Street Theatre, 934 West Grace Street or by reservation at (804)
343-0250. Admission is $15 for general and $10 for students and seniors. Both performances begin at 8pm.

THE PHOENIX DEBATE William Saletan agrees that Clark and Dean took the most hits last night, but he says Dean emerged unscathed, while Clark appeared to be... well, a politician.

Most shocking disclosure: Kucinich. "I have a proposal that's supported by 50 members of Congress to create a Cabinet-level Department of Peace."

Most alarming assertion: Clark. "The question that Candy raised about Iran is a very serious question. … We're marching into another military campaign in the Middle East."

Least credible alibi: Kerry, after Woodruff read aloud a criticism of Dean that "Senator Kerry's staff has been distributing" in the debate press room. "I didn't raise this, and I didn't know they were saying that."

Best Hispanic impersonation: Dean, for perfectly pronouncing the soft T in "Latino."

Best use of the audience: John Edwards, for engaging a questioner in a conversation about her prescription drug coverage, complete with Clintonesque "you are the only person in the whole world" gaze.

WHERE'S WALDO? A Brit working on Iraqi international debt issues in Baghdad says one of the issues he's encountering is that the people running the country are nowhere to be found.

BAGHDAD BLOG Riverbend continues her insightful posting from her home in Baghdad.

CIRCLING THE WAGONS This week's decision to put National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in charge of Iraq's reconstructing, apparently by-passing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, may indicate a bit of a sea change in Bush administration internal politics. (Odd how this seems to happen every August when Bush goes to Texas.) As David Ignatius explains, the constantly changing Bush administration pecking order has shifted again. Maybe not for the last time.

Rumsfeld's halo has been tarnished, too -- partly as a result of his turf consciousness. The defense secretary was determined that postwar Iraq would be his show, run through Central Command and Bremer, and not the CIA or the State Department. That meant Rumsfeld would get the credit if things went well and the blame if they didn't.

That's why Rumsfeld's outburst this week is important. He undoubtedly understands that it was President Bush (not Rice) who decided to create a broader interagency process for Iraq.

If Rumsfeld is down, then his rival, Colin L. Powell, must be up. And some observers think they see growing influence on Iraq policy for the secretary of state. He remains close to his former colleagues in the Army, such as the Centcom commander, Gen. John Abizaid. And under Rice's Iraq Stabilization Group, the State Department is likely to have more say over policy.

A final question mark is Rice herself. Rumsfeld was right when he said that the new Stabilization Group will simply be doing what the National Security Council is supposed to do.

But Rice's NSC has often failed in that coordinating role in the past. Interagency disputes over postwar policy have festered, rather than being resolved. Now Rice must make the policy process work.

UNDIMINISHED COURAGE Fred Korematsu first stood up to the government more than 60 years ago, taking his case to the Supreme Court. Now he's approaching the bench again, this time on behalf of detainees in the war on terrorism.

The name Fred Korematsu first appeared at the U.S. Supreme Court during one of the darker chapters of its history. Mr. Korematsu, then a 22-year-old American citizen of Japanese descent, refused to be interned as part of the World War II detention of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. Prosecuted and convicted, he challenged the internment order, and the high court -- in the now-infamous case that bears Mr. Korematsu's name -- upheld it, citing the deference courts owe to military authorities in a time of war. Decades later, Mr. Korematsu's conviction was thrown out and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Now, reportedly in frail health, Mr. Korematsu has once again filed a brief with the Supreme Court -- this time in support of military detainees being held without charge or access to counsel. There is no moral equivalency between the steps and oversteps taken since Sept. 11 and the wholesale detention of people based on their ethnicity. But Mr. Korematsu's brief is an important reminder that "we tend too quickly to sacrifice . . . liberties in the face of overbroad claims of military necessity" and that courts "have too often deferred to exaggerated claims of military necessity and failed to insist that measures curtailing constitutional rights be carefully justified and narrowly tailored."

Mr. Korematsu filed his brief in support of separate petitions for Supreme Court review in the cases of Yaser Esam Hamdi -- a likely American citizen captured in Afghanistan and being held in a military brig in Virginia -- and detainees at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba. The legal merits of these cases differ. Mr. Hamdi's case raises the crucial question of whether the president can designate an American citizen as an "enemy combatant" and thereby place him beyond the protections of the Bill of Rights. A federal appeals court approved not merely Mr. Hamdi's detention but his detention without any access to a lawyer as well. The ruling was based on the pretext that his capture in a war zone abroad was "undisputed" -- though, having not heard from him, the courts have no basis to know what facts he actually contests. Why did the courts not hear from Mr. Hamdi? Because of precisely the timidity, in the face of claimed military necessity, of which Mr. Korematsu warns: Letting Mr. Hamdi talk to a lawyer, the government argues, would interrupt his isolation and interrogation and thereby threaten the government's ability to glean intelligence from him. The Supreme Court ought not let this stand. It is beyond dangerous for the courts to allow potentially indefinite detentions without even hearing both sides of the story.

PACK ATTACK Howard Dean and Wesley Clark took it on the chin at last night's Democratic debate. I'm just sad that Graham dropped out of the race; I was looking forward to the media beginning to refer to the Democratic candidates as the "Ten Little Indians."

HE'S BACK Tarantino is the celluloid hero of adult teenagers and groovy hipsters for a reason. It's the same reason that makes the more squeamish postmodernists squirm in their seats -- Tarantino makes violence seem both violent and, yes, funny. Maybe the Raimi brothers can compete with Tarantino; the rest are imitators. "Kill Bill, Vol. 1" shows why.

Will all the good little boys and girls raise their hands, please? Thank you. Susie -- by the way, Susie, that was a wonderful decoupage you made illustrating the Ten Commandments -- Susie, why don't you get a piece of cake in the kitchen? And David -- congratulations on making Eagle Scout -- David, you run along with Susie.

Bye, kids.

Ah. Now for the rest of you lizardheads, geeks, mutants; twisted, pimpled dwarves; dead-eyed, beleathered, spiked freaks, boy, have I got a movie for you.

The movie would be "Kill Bill, Vol. 1," and man, is it cool.

If any civilized humans are left in the room, let me point out I didn't say "good," much less "superb" or "great." Let someone else decide that or laugh at the inquiry two decades down the road. For now, "Kill Bill," Quentin Tarantino's first film in six years, is pure evil bliss. It's not pulp fiction; it's pulped fiction, a crazed phantasmagoria of high craft, low taste and middlebrow swordplay. And by middlebrow I refer to the whizz of a multifolded samurai blade as it cleaves the skull and leaves the brow on the floor. That kind of middlebrow.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS How long will you live? Depends on a number of factors, including sheer, blind luck.

MOVE OVER, HARRY POTTER There's a new kid on the fantasy book charts these days, and he's only 19. "Eragon" was written when the author was only 15, and four years later has muscled its way to the top of the book lists. Author Christopher Paolini's own story is as interesting as the fantasy tale he wove in his book.

AN ARAB PERSPECTIVE Al-Jazeera has revamped its English-language site, which gives a slightly different spin on the news of the day than it's American-based counterparts.

A GENERALLY GOOD IDEA Presidential candidate Wesley Clark has broken ranks with his Democratic peers by actually proposing an idea.

One of the more surprising proposals of the Democratic primary campaign has so far been one of the least reported. Wesley Clark, criticizing the Bush administration for being too quick to seek military solutions to the world's problems, has proposed increasing American foreign aid and creating a cabinet-level Department of International Assistance to oversee it. For those who say the general has only a resumé and no ideas to help distinguish himself from the Democratic pack, the plan, laid out in his book Winning Modern Wars, should stand as a corrective. Right or wrong, Clark seems to be staking out a position as the candidate who is most likely to turn American foreign policy in a less aggressive direction, focusing both on unruffling allied feathers and on placating those who actively seek to do us ill...

As easy as the idea is to mock, let's hope the general sticks with it. The idea behind the department is one accepted not just by soft, lefty types: George W. Bush himself has intermittently conceded that, in the long-run war against terror, American "soft power" is a necessary complement to smoking terrorists out of their caves and blowing them apart...

The American government gives far less aid as a share of gross national income (GNI) than any other major developed country: 0.11 percent, with middle-income Egypt and Israel getting the largest share as part of the Camp David accords. This compares with 0.23 percent for Japan and 0.27 percent for Germany, the other two biggest donors by volume. The small, rich European countries devote the greatest share of their income to aid: 1.03 percent from Denmark, 0.83 percent from Norway, 0.82 percent from the Netherlands.

There's far more to national generosity than money, of course. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently published an innovative "Commitment to Development Index" that combined raw aid levels with indicators like openness to immigration, trade policy, environmental policy, and participation in peacekeeping. But here, still, America ranks 21 out of 22 (only Japan ranks lower), thanks to low aid levels, high farm subsidies, damaging environmental policies, and distaste for peacekeeping. Not included in the Carnegie Endowment survey, but every bit as damaging to the poor world, are the Bush administration's policies on birth control, abortion, and women and children's rights, which consistently line America up alongside fundamentalist Islamic countries like Sudan and Iran to oppose any policy that even indirectly endorses abortion or condoms.

SPY GAMES BBC-STYLE Americans taken by the sexy, action-packed approach of the television show Alias should take a look at the BBC's response, a British spy series called MI-5.

FIRE SALE IN IRAQ The Washington Post takes a look at where the money is going during the reconstruuction of Iraq. A curious thing about the subcontracting, only hinted at in this article, is just how much is being fed -- through Bechtel and Haliburton -- to Kuwaiti and Jordanian companies. While there is some solid rationale for utilizing major firms like KBR, which have little in the way of competition, the whole reconstruction stinks of pay-offs for supporting the war itself. It would be absurd to suggest it would be possible to approach such a massive effort effectively, but some transparency and candor would certainly be refreshing.

CLARK'S STRATEGY Retired General Wesley Clark is beginning to shape his campaign for the White House into something that makes sense. His two-fold strategy is to skip the early primaries in New Hampshire and Iowa, hoping to establish wins in February primaries, and to position himself as a winner who thinks through ideas and issues, rather than a Democratic idealogue seeking to either toe a party line or pander to a single block of the electorate. Whether this will be effective against the Howard Dean's and John Kerry's or the world remains to be seen.

After early stumbles, Clark is growing as a national candidate, sharpening his stump speech, slowly filling in the details of his political views and showing a natural ability to connect with voters one-on-one and in town hall settings. In two stops here this week, Clark talked in much greater depth than he did a few weeks ago about the health system, energy problems and education. He frequently grabs shoulders, holds hands and focuses intently on voters he is courting.

Clark continues to talk more about problems than how he would solve them, but his understanding of the issues has impressed audiences that he is a quick study. Clark, first in his class at West Point, said he recently read the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and the Americans with Disabilities Act and tried several times to plow through the 1,200-page USA Patriot Act. His advisers know the trick is to translate this book knowledge into a winning campaign playbook.

Clark won mixed reviews this week, but several Democratic activists sounded as if they were willing to buy into the Clark way -- if he can prove it works. These voters stressed their desire to pick a winner, not an ideological soul mate, and many said the retired Army general could emerge as the strongest national candidate in the field.

THE ROOTS OF WAR "Frontline," the public television program that consistently and competently delves into major national policy issues, kicks off a new season tonight in a big way. The program digs into the months leading up to the war in Iraq and the month following the fall of Baghdad, searching for meaning and rationale. The Post's Richard Leiby says the program's presentation is cogent and understandable, even if the administration's approaches were not.

"Truth, War and Consequences" (9 p.m. on Channel 22; 10 p.m. on Channel 26) paints administration officials as dissemblers as well as arrogant conquerors who paid no heed to warnings about the collapse of security after the Iraq war. Whatever your politics and opinions about the war, this documentary is must viewing for those who seek to understand why the early scenes of liberation have given way to nearly daily reports of attacks against occupying troops.

GOING UP, UP, UP It sounds like the stuff of science fiction. That's because it is. But fiction has a strange way of becoming fact -- look at our current President. In this case, the science fact has to do with the idea of a "space elevator," which could revolutionize the way we get things into space. It's not a new idea, but it might just be closer than you think.

One idea that has energized the space-elevator community involves using cargo-carrying "crawlers" that climb and descend along paper-thin ribbons made from carbon nanotubes, anchored to ocean platforms located along the equator. Reaching altitudes of some 62,000 miles, the ribbons would be held taut directly over the same spot on Earth by distant counterweights flung outward in response to Earth's rotation. The crawlers would run on electricity generated by solar cells whose light came from powerful ground-based lasers. Payloads could be released at a range of orbits, while at the far end of the ribbon, they could be released to leave Earth orbit without any additional propulsion.

TENACITY Jack Black is revving his engines in preparation for another movie, this one exploring the origins of Tenacious D.

"It starts off before there was a D," the comedian said at last week's "School of Rock" premiere (see "Osbournes, Dashboard Turn Out For Jack Black's 'School Of Rock' "), lowering his voice and raising his eyebrows. "I'm a child, a 10-year-old child. Hopefully we can get Meat Loaf to play my father. I run away from home. I find Kyle [Gass] in Los Angeles. We become friends. We form Tenacious D. You find out the secret meaning behind the word Tenacious D that you don't know. And then we go on our first quest. And that's all I can tell you."

DRINK GAS Columnist Thomas Friedman demonstrates why America continues to prick its own finger in its various wars -- on drugs, against Iraq, for the environment, etc. It's because we won't sacrifice those things that really matter, like a new Hummer that gets three miles to the gallon with a tailwind.

A $1 a gallon gasoline tax, phased in, would not only be a huge revenue generator (even with tax rebates to ease the burden on low-income people, farmers and truckers) but also a huge driver of conservation and reduced oil imports. Not only would it mean less money for Saudi Arabia to transfer to Wahhabi clerics to spread their intolerant brand of Islam around the world, but it would radically improve America's standing in Europe, where we are resented for being the world's energy hog.

President Bush could even say that this tax is his long-promised alternative to Kyoto, because the amount of energy conservation it would produce would result in a much greater reduction in U.S. energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions, than anything Kyoto would have mandated.

In short, a tax that finances the democratization of Iraq, takes money away from those who would use it to spread ideas harmful to us, weakens OPEC, makes us more energy independent, reduces the deficit and overnight improves the world's view of us — from selfish, Hummer-driving louts to good global citizens — would be the real patriot act. (It would also encourage Iraq not to become another oil-dependent state, but to build a middle class by learning to tap its people's entrepreneurship and creativity, not just its oil wells.)

"Until we raise energy prices we really aren't fighting the war on terrorism, because we're doing nothing to deny the countries who fund terrorists the cash they need to destroy us," says Philip K. Verleger Jr., the energy expert. "We could use the excess revenues to fund a true Manhattan Project to cut U.S. oil consumption in half by 2007, thereby permanently making OPEC irrelevant. That would be a truly patriotic move."

Yes, yes — I know, the Bush team would never even consider such a tax. But that's my point. When you have an administration that will not even consider undertaking the most obviously right course — a gasoline tax — that would produce so many strategic, economic and political benefits for America, then how do we win this war in the long run? Because this war on terrorism is not simply a military fight.

BAGHDAD IN BALANCE The Post Outlook section offers a balanced look at life in Baghdad, seven months after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Six months after American tanks stormed Baghdad and obliterated Saddam Hussein's regime, there are two realities here: The continuing war and a return to normality. For those of us reporters who drift between these two galaxies, the dichotomy now passes for regular life, so much so that we fail to remark on it. The roar of tanks and attack helicopters competes with the din of jackhammers as streets are repaired and storefronts reopened. One can swim laps in a sparkling pool to the sounds of a gunfight taking place a block away from the Palestine Hotel, a hulking 1970s high-rise with a panoramic vista of urban turmoil. Bombs and shootings intrude on mundane diversions. One night, a giant explosion from a trash-can bomb momentarily drowned out an "Ally McBeal" rerun on Lebanese television.

With ordinariness and violence jostling for primacy, the question is: Which will win out? That answer will determine whether American troops and their Iraqi allies -- police officers, soldiers and political operatives -- are sucked into a defensive battle that is longer and more violent than the Bush administration currently envisions. Since the stakes are critical, the Bush administration is eager to advertise one reality, while glossing over the other. In truth, the two have settled into a bizarre coexistence.

It may seem strange, but this city is suddenly throbbing with street life, even as the guerrilla insurgency drags on. Baghdadis have become tired of waiting for order to be restored, and have decided to get on with life. Traffic jams are monstrous, as drivers burn nickel-a-gallon gas. Some drive used, spit-shined BMWs and Mercedes Benzes imported -- basically tax-free, since there's no government -- from relatives or salesmen in the rich Gulf states. Many mornings, it can take an hour to drive from the shopping districts of east Baghdad to the leafier residential neighborhoods west of the Tigris River. Last week, U.S. officials shortened Baghdad's curfew by an hour, making it from midnight to 4 a.m., saying that the city's security had improved.

Telephones in Baghdad have barely operated since American missiles shattered the main communications centers last April. Yet across town countless signs in store windows and on walls announce new Internet cafés linked to satellite receivers. A hand-painted banner across one street in east Baghdad advertises new Internet service with "bowsin and chatin 24 hour," notwithstanding the curfew.

YO, ROBESPIERRE! WHAT UP? U.S. News takes a look at the quiet powerhouse known as Dick Cheney. Virtually invisible since the September 11 attacks, Cheney has had a strong influence on the Bush administration since the get-go.

Today, however, Cheney is under fire as never before. His appearance last month on Meet the Press, in which he again linked Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks, drew stinging criticism, and even President Bush felt compelled to "clarify" Cheney's remarks. Last week, Cheney was touched by the furor over the leaked name of a CIA operative that has sparked a criminal investigation by the Justice Department (story, Page 18). Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, told CNBC that Bush "has that main responsibility to see this through and see it through quickly, and that would include, if I was president, sitting down with my vice president and asking what he knows about it."

The finger-pointing has intensified because of growing disaffection with the administration's Iraq policy, especially the escalating casualties and financial costs. "The whole Iraq situation was filtered through Cheney, and he gave the president a very skewed view," says a former adviser to Bush's father who remains in close contact with officials in the current administration. A senior White House aide concedes that Cheney often makes policy recommendations based on worst-case scenarios.

The problem, according to some Republican insiders, is that Cheney reinforces the president's conservative instincts, pulling him to the right at a time when voters seem more interested in a centrist approach. A senior adviser to a former Republican president adds: "Cheney is not always right, but he's always certain. He and his allies thought they were invincible, that this would be the American century, that we could reshape the world any way we wanted to. Welcome to the real world."

SHADOWS AND FOG Newsweek's master scribes, Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff, give a clear, crisp and well-written overview of the Plame Affair, the CIA leak story that has the Beltway crowd all a-twitter. They go on to explain why this story might have enough legs to bruise the Bush administration.

GREIDER ON GLOBALIZATION William Greider, an investigative journalist who has broken new ground at both Rolling Stone in the early 90s and The Nation of late, chats with Washington Post readers about the global economy and all of its ugly blemishes.

WHITHER THE TREES Those few who are in Richmond, Virginia, can attest to the streets littered with the broken, withered carcasses of hundred-year-old trees. Massive trees. Trees twice the girth of a very large man. Trees so rotten in the core that you wonder how they stood so many years. You can also attest to the effort of area governments to gather up the remains of hundreds of thousands of fallen trees.

THE MASTER OF MAYHEM Quentin broke big in the early 90s, and soon everyone was working hard to mimic his (then) groundbreaking style. Two films into his ride, he stumbled. Then he vanished. And now? Well, Tarantino is back.

Now, as if from nowhere, he's back. With "Kill Bill" (which opens this week), the writer-director brings his signature swagger back to the movie screen, and this time he intends to make you sit up and notice. The epic action film was shot over the better part of a year, the crew spending four months in China, several more in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Mexico. It went vastly over budget and insanely beyond the 89-day shooting schedule, ending up at 155 days of production.

It's about a tall, blond assassin (Uma Thurman) who seeks revenge on the squad of killers who beat and shot her and left her for dead, pregnant, on her wedding day. The bride -- she seems to be known only as Black Mamba -- is going to kill Bill, the leader of the assassins, if it's the last thing she does. But first, many body parts will be severed. Many gallons of blood will spurt -- skyward, if possible, as if from a fire hydrant.

Even Tarantino says he lost track of the number of dead bodies.

The movie was so big it broke in half. Audiences won't get to see the last thing Black Mamba does until February, when Miramax releases Vol. 2, a last-minute decision by studio chief Harvey Weinstein, whose degree of wisdom will reveal itself in time.

ONE MAN, A FEW VOTES It's not being covered in detail by the media, but the growing dominance of one firm in the world of "electronic voting" is raising some eyebrows. The long and short of it is that Diebold is the leader of the pack when it comes to replacing those hanging chads with something cleaner, crisper... more modern. Unfortunately, their software apparently has some back doors that has led some to question voting security, and bring up allegations of tampering at the polls. The Agonist digs into the Diebold timeline:

On September 28, 2003 the Agonist published an exclusive, “Diebold Machines and Your Vote” outlining the susceptibility of electronic voting machines to tampering and election fraud.

Here in Part 2, for the first time in print, the Agonist discloses in extensive detail the Diebold case timeline, and the legal battles that ensued. The phases of this timeline are as follows: A) Diebold system becomes available to outside scrutiny, B) Revealed: Diebold system is susceptible to election tampering, C) Computer scientists demonstrate many critical vulnerabilities, D) Diebold CEO promises to “deliver electoral votes” to Bush in 2004, E) Evidence that Diebold illegally tabulated votes before polls closed, and F) Diebold responds with legal action to silence critics.