The story as related by the commission: Two cemeteries in Addison township in DuPage County have been part of the city limits of Chicago since O'Hare Airport was built. St. Johannes Cemetery, founded in 1849, contains the remains of German Lutheran immigrants who fled revolution a year earlier. These Germans died believing that their bones would lie undisturbed by upheaval. St. Johannes is operated by the United Church of Christ, which believes, declares its lawyer, that bodies should be moved only on Judgment Day. The second cemetery, Rest Haven, is operated by an association that believes the same thing. But no rest is assured: Chicago bulldozers wait for no man.

Lawyers charge that removal of the two cemeteries is an encroachment of religious liberty. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty (named for St. Thomas Becket, the brave archbishop of Canterbury who was martyred for his beliefs) declined to question Daley -- but there are other options. There is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed by Congress, with co-authors Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), and Illinois' own Freedom Restoration Act. These laws didn't deter the mayor when his lobbyists pushed the O'Hare ''modernization'' plan through the Legislature, but lawsuits now spring to life from the opposition long assumed to be dead and buried.

The Suburban O'Hare Commission is litigating not just for the embattled citizens of the communities near O'Hare but for those honored dead at St. Johannes and Rest Haven. A lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Chicago charges that Daley's O'Hare modernization program, by transgressing the dead, stands in violation of the religious liberties provision of the U.S. Constitution and federal and state laws. Repeated calls to the Federal Aviation Administration to consider the matter have drawn no reply.

Whether the legal action will succeed no one can say. But increasingly, the case for O'Hare expansion is taking on an odor suspiciously like the overpriced, long-delayed Millennium Park debacle. Not long ago at the City Club of Chicago, a group of brave souls determined to buck the mayor reviewed a litany of statistics that show the O'Hare project is an enormous boondoggle.

Some of those facts: With this country's airline industry in serious economic straits, United Air Lines, which filed bankruptcy, and American Airlines, which narrowly escaped the same fate, are exceedingly unlikely to support the project, which will cost $15 billion. Even if the airlines can support it, American's unsecured debt is rated below investment grade. The expansion project would drive the 2012 unit cost per passenger from about $9 to more than $26 -- a nearly 300 percent increase. Economic benefits estimated by the city are torturously exaggerated, assuming that airspace capacity and traffic growth will be unconstrained.

After reviewing all the public documents, Global Aviation Associates, a professional group, says that ''Chicago has overstated the economic impact benefits by at least 150 percent.'' Crain's Chicago Business has said, ''With the full $15 billion price tag . . . questions are emerging about how the city will pay for the costliest public works project in its history,'' and how the city can ''squeeze 42 percent more passengers into the airport by 2012 and nearly 76 percent more by 2022.''

If these and many other arguments don't suffice, there's always the case for the dead in the two cemeteries. The epitaph may well have been written by Shakespeare in "MacBeth": ''Better be with the dead/Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace/Than on the torture of the mind to lie/In restless ecstasy.''

If one wishes to adopt the outlook of the contemporary critics of the Iraq enterprise, than World War II could have been characterized as an endless quagmire that we could never win. Relatively few people are aware that the strategic bombing campaign in 1943 nearly ground to a halt when the deep penetration raids into Germany were called off after the catastrophic heavy bomber losses of the Schweinfurt and Regensberg missions. (So brilliantly characterized in the great World War II movie "12 o'clock High") No one was whining loudly and publicly about the fact that the self defending bomber formation concept was flawed and had revealed itself to be so by not having a long-range fighter escort ready at the time. We are so used to the Air Force sustaining almost no casualties in current day operations that we often forget that the 8th Air Force based in England suffered more dead (26,000) than the entire Marine Corps did in World War II (less than 20,000) There were no loudly public howls of quagmire, quagmire we can't win this.

How about the night naval battle off Savo Island, Guadalcanal in August of 1942 in which the United States Navy, defeated by a Japanese navy far better versed in night fighting tactics, sailed away and left the Marines stranded on Guadalcanal with no immediate hope of supply? There weren't any howls of quagmire, quagmire we can't win.

How about the slaughter off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States in 1942 in which the U-boats of the German Kreigsmarine during Operation Drumbeat sunk 500 allied merchant and navy ships in a six-month period in the greatest naval disaster in United States history? There was an almost incomprehensible failure to develop an efficient convoy escort system despite the lessons of World War I. Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire we can't win, let's make the Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations resign.

How about the Kasserine pass in Tunisia in February of 1943? The tough veterans of Rommel's Afrika Corps soundly defeated and routed green American troops, sending them into pell mell retreat. Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire these Germans are just too battle hardened and ruthless to beat.

Relatively little is known of the bloody check inflicted on units of the 1st, 4th, 28th, and 9th infantry divisions by the Germans during the battle of Huertegen Forest during Sep- Nov of 1944 as a prelude to the Battle of the Bulge? The men of these units were attrited horribly in one the most soul destroying campaigns in American history, comparable to the Wilderness and Cold Harbor campaigns of the Civil War. Winston Churchill called it "Passchendale with tree bursts." Or the Battle of the Bulge's disastrous opening on the Schnee Eifel in Belgium where intelligence failures allowed a totally surprised American Army to lose to captivity two whole infantry regiments of the 106th division in the opening rounds of the battle? Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire we just can't win.

Or how about the defeat inflicted on the allies during Operation Market Garden (a Bridge Too Far) in 1944 when everyone knew that the Germans were already beaten? Or the horrendous losses off Okinawa? Or the failure to ensure sufficient numbers of tracked landing craft at Tarawa due to a misinterpretation of the meteorological conditions affecting the tides around Betio atoll? Nearly 1,000 Marines died in a 76 hour battle for an atoll smaller than Manhattan's Central Park, many because they had to wade hundreds of yards to shore from Betio's lagoon after their landing craft hung up on the reef. Or the largely unnecessary Pelielu campaign in which 1,800 were killed and 8,500 wounded? Or the bloody repulse at the Rapido River in January of 1944, or the grinding stalemate at Anzio or the entire checkmated Italian campaign, hopelessly bogged down in the Liri Valley before Monte Cassino? Even though the Rapido River attack generated enormous controversy, culminating in a congressional inquiry, it did not commence until the war was over. Or, due to logistical failures, the inability to maintain the pressure on a retreating German Army, shattered in Normandy, which allowed it to refit and regroup behind the Westwall, lengthening the war and costing thousands of lives. Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire we can't win.

We often forget that World War II was no unrelieved string of victories until the final triumph. We often suffered defeat on the battlefield, sometimes catastrophic, but we prevailed because we knew that we had to, since the alternative to victory was just too bitter to contemplate.

Nothing even remotely resembling any of these historical disasters of World War II has occurred in Iraq, but these infantile naysayers who try to pose the situation has an absolute defeat are either hopelessly naïve or determined to demoralize our soldiers and willfully undermine this effort. Despite the setbacks that have occurred in Iraq, there is nothing here that cannot be remedied to this country's favor.

Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...

... The first battalion of the new Iraqi Army has graduated and is on active duty.
... Over 60,000 Iraqis now provide security to their fellow citizens.
... Nearly all of Iraq's 400 courts are functioning.
... The Iraqi judiciary is fully independent.
.. On Monday, October 6, power generation hit 4,518 megawatts, exceeding the prewar average.
... All 22 universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges are open, as are nearly all primary and secondary schools.
... By October 1, Coalition forces had rehab-ed over 1,500 schools - 500 more than scheduled.
... Teachers earn from 12 to 25 times their former salaries.
... All 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are open.
... Doctor's salaries are at least eight times what they were under Saddam.
... Pharmaceutical distribution has gone from essentially nothing to 700 tons in May to a current total of 12,000 tons.
... The Coalition has helped administer over 22 million vaccination doses to Iraq's children.
... A Coalition program has cleared over 14,000 kilometers of Iraq's 27,000 kilometers of weed-choked canals which now irrigate tens of thousands of farms. This project has created jobs for more than 100,000 Iraqi men and women.
... We have restored over three-quarters of prewar telephone services and over two-thirds of the potable water production.
... There are 4,900 full-service telephone connections. We expect 50,000 by year-end.
... The wheels of commerce are turning. From bicycles to satellite dishes to cars and trucks, businesses are coming to life in all major cities and towns.
... 95 percent of all prewar bank customers have service and first-time customers are opening accounts daily.
... Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses.
... The central bank is fully independent.
... Iraq has one of the world's most growth-oriented investment and banking laws.
... Iraq has a single, unified currency for the first time in 15 years.
... Satellite TV dishes are legal.
... Foreign journalists aren't on 10-day visas paying mandatory and extortionate fees to the Ministry of Information for minders and other government spies.
... There is no Ministry of Information.
... There are more than 170 newspapers.
... You can buy satellite dishes on what seems like every street corner.
... Foreign journalists (and everyone else) are free to come and go.
... A nation that had not one single element -- legislative, judicial or executive -- of a representative government now does.
... In Baghdad alone residents have selected 88 advisory councils. Baghdad's first democratic transfer of power in 35 years happened when the city council elected its new chairman.
... Today in Iraq chambers of commerce, business, school and professional organizations are electing their leaders all over the country.
... 25 ministers, selected by the most representative governing body in Iraq's history, run the day-to-day business of government.
... The Iraqi government regularly participates in international events. Since July the Iraqi government has been represented in over two dozen international meetings, including those of the UN General Assembly, the Arab League, the World Bank and IMF and, today, the Islamic Conference Summit. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs today announced that it is reopening over 30 Iraqi embassies around the world.
... Shiva religious festivals that were all but banned, aren't.
... For the first time in 35 years, in Karbala thousands of Shiites celebrate the pilgrimage of the 12th Imam.
... The Coalition has completed over 13,000 reconstruction projects, large and small, as part of a strategic plan for the reconstruction of Iraq.
... Uday and Queasy are dead - and no longer feeding innocent Iraqis to the zoo lions, raping the young daughters of local leaders to force cooperation, torturing Iraq's soccer players for losing games, or murdering critics.
... Children aren't imprisoned or murdered when their parents disagree with the government.
... Political opponents aren't imprisoned, tortured, executed, maimed, or forced to watch their families die for disagreeing with Saddam.
... Millions of long-suffering Iraqis no longer live in perpetual terror.
... Saudis will hold municipal elections.
... Qatar is reforming education to give more choices to parents.
... Jordan is accelerating market economic reforms.
... The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for the first time to an Iranian
-- A Muslim woman who speaks out with courage for human rights, for democracy and for peace.
.. Saddam is gone.
... Iraq is free.
....The handover of power is on schedule.
….Terrorists are being drawn to an arena in which our military can kill or capture them

Our magnificent soldiers, sailors and airmen still have more tough work to do which will undoubtedly be done with the same mix of courage, humanitarianism, innovation, and competence that has characterized our effort in Iraq to date, Abu Ghraib notwithstanding. But when you compare this effort to that other great effort of World War II that we are presently commemorating, this one looks to be comparatively well in hand. All this was accomplished at almost no cost in strictly military terms, and yes, I am aware that the brutal calculus of war is soulless and necessarily heedless of the irreplaceability of individual human beings. But we must also realize that wars in the national interest, as I believe this one to be, require that we be prepared to accept this as a condition of our national security.

Again, I wish to express my undying gratitude to a generation of Americans who showed us how to prevail in a REAL quagmire. And to the Americans who are now getting it done despite those who say they can't or shouldn't. As the ever brilliant Mark Steyn said best in his 30 May editorial:

But that's the difference between then and now: the loss of proportion. They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren't a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screwups worth re-examining, but they weren't a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else. They had hellish setbacks but they didn't lose sight of the forest in order to obsess week after week on one tiny twig of one weedy little tree.
There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites -- from the deranged former vice president down -- want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. - John Stuart Mill ~ (1868)

May's increase in employment remained strong and above market expectations. 248,000 new jobs were created in May - and the increases in April and March were revised upward 58,000 and 16,000 respectively, for a combined upward revision of 74,000 new jobs. The economy has posted steady job gains for each of the last nine months -- with nearly one million new jobs in the last 3 months alone.

An average of over 257,000 jobs per month has been created since the beginning of this year.
The household survey shows a similar increase in jobs, up 1.5 million since August.
The national unemployment rate stayed constant at 5.6% in May - down 0.7 percentage point from a peak of 6.3% in June 2003. At 5.6%, the unemployment rate is below the average of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Employment over the last year was up in 44 of the 50 states and the unemployment rate was down in all regions and in 47 of the 50 states.
National manufacturing employment increased 32,000 in May, and was revised upward by 22,000 jobs for March and April. Manufacturing employment has risen for four consecutive months. The ISM Manufacturing survey shows similar strength in manufacturing employment, reaching a 30-year high in May.
Weekly unemployment insurance claims are near their lowest levels since 2000.
Background: President Bush's Actions are Helping to Drive Our Economic Recovery

The President's Jobs and Growth tax relief package enacted a year ago helped drive the strong improvement in our economy. It raised the level of economic activity and productivity, which will result in higher incomes and living standards for American workers.

The American economy grew at a strong annual pace of 4.4 percent during the first quarter of 2004 - well above the historical average, and continuing the strong growth seen over the previous two quarters. Economic growth over the last year has been the fastest in nearly 20 years, at a 5.0 percent annual rate that would double the real size of the economy in 14 years. The Blue Chip consensus of private forecasters expects 4.2 percent growth during the four quarters of 2004 compared to an average since 1960 of 3.3 percent.

America's standard of living is on the rise. Real after-tax incomes are up by 11% since December 2000 - substantially better than those following the last recession. Since the President's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, personal consumption levels have risen significantly.

Retail sales other than motor vehicles in the first quarter of 2004 increased 11.8 percent, more than double the average annual rate of growth over the last decade.
Consumer confidence is at its highest level in 4 months. The Conference Board's index of consumer confidence increased nearly 10 index points in the past 12 months, from 83.6 last May to 93.2 this May.
New housing construction in April remained at levels near those of December 2003, when they were at their highest in almost 20 years.
In the first quarter of 2004, the national homeownership rate reached a record high of 68.6 percent, beating the record set in the previous quarter.
Minority homeownership set a new quarterly record of 50.8 percent in the first quarter, up 0.2 percentage points from the fourth quarter and up 1.5 percentage point from the first quarter of 2003.
Inflation remains low by historical standards, with the core CPI (Consumer Price Index) rising only 1.8 percent and the core finished-goods PPI (Producer Price Index) rising 1.5 percent over the last 12 months.
Mortgage rates remain near historic lows, making homebuying easier and more affordable.

American companies are reporting historic levels of growth.

Productivity grew from 2000 to 2003 at the fastest 3-year rate in more than 50 years. This has bolstered profits and will lead to significantly higher real wages for workers.
More manufacturers have been reporting increased activity and new orders than at any time in the last 20 years.
Since its low in mid 2002, the stock market is up about 40% and the NASDAQ is up almost 70%.

==>Winston Churchill