"Timber!"

The Forest Service is just another impediment to Administration plans, and yet another outlet for its clear preference for loyalists over facts. The agency's mandate is being quietly shifted from preservation and custodial care to pillage and deception.

Scientists are routinely pressured to not do their jobs: to not stand up for the resource they were hired to protect so that timber, the old cultural icon of the agency, can continue to fall for the benefit of industry.
. . .
"The whole apparatus of the Bush administration is a revolving door and then some with industry. What they're doing [in changing scientists' reports and opinions] is so egregious. I don't see any explanation other than to intentionally mislead the public," says Robert S. Devine, author of the 2004 book "Bush Versus the Environment." "If environmental policies are not guided by science and are instead guided by this corporate-oriented administration, the environment will be in trouble for a long time beyond this second term."

Long after Saddam's ambitions are forgotten, we'll be reaping the benefits of this short-sighted treatment of our national resources and the ecosystem that we are a part of. Those who voted for Bush had better be praying that the Rapture really comes soon...