Ms. Brunelli wrote that, to date, 45 states have accepted her office's on-line design of the federal application for a state ballot.

"Providing this form on our Web site made it immediately available to military and overseas citizens who otherwise may have been inconvenienced in obtaining a copy of the card stock form," she says.

Predator 1, Iraq 0
How many Iraqi jet fighters does it take to shoot down an unmanned aerial vehicle? Answer: More than two.

Intelligence officials tell us two Iraqi jets recently scrambled in an unsuccessful attempt to intercept and shoot down a U.S. Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over the skies of Iraq.

The Predator is a propeller-driven pilotless aircraft that can send back video and photo reconnaissance pictures. During the recent encounter, we are told, the Iraqi jets wanted to blast the drone with an air-to-air missile but failed. "They were unable to acquire the UAV" with the onboard targeting gear, one official said.

Cash-strapped Army
The money crunch continues to hit the U.S. Army hard. We received this dispatch from Germany recently highlighting how shortages of funds were cutting sharply into training time and housing repairs.

"Over here in Germany, home of the US Army 1st Armored and 1st Infantry Divisions, we are really feeling the effects of the last administration," one officer wrote.

"My brigade of over 2,000 soldiers does not have any money right now to send our troops to essential military readiness schools; we are short parts and tank upgrades; I am 50 percent or below in some soldier quotas."

This message was sent from a corps commander last month:

"Just keep in mind that [U.S. Army, Europe commander] Gen. [Montgomery] Meigs has only one pot of money right now because we are so strapped, and that is the Base Support Fund. If you request an allocation to fix some operational program, you might get approved for that request, but just know that that money will come from the Base Support Fund: that means you are taking from your soldiers and their families."

At one base in Budingen, Germany, soldiers' housing was found to have mold growing on the walls and rampant cockroach infestation. Single soldiers are living in houses with no heat and with crumbling walls. "We cannot seem to keep up," said one officer.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff want Congress to approve $7 billion in emergency funding to tackle some of these problems. But so far, President Bush, who ran on a slogan of "help is on the way" to the armed forces, has refused to submit a formal request. But Pentagon officials say the president eventually will send over the paperwork once Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pulls enough staff together to scrutinize each item.

Coed submarines
The Pentagon women's advisory committee has been pressing the Navy for years to reconfigure the under-construction Virginia-class attack submarine to accommodate women.

The Navy has repeatedly said no. But that's not to say it did not take a careful look at mixed-sex boats.

We're told that during the early design phase, the Navy created a special private berthing area where women could be housed, complete with their own "head" —Navy parlance for a bathroom. But once the room was drawn in, designers had to take space away from other areas. They found out the sub lacked sufficient room for storage, so the experiment was scrapped.

"There just wasn't enough storage space," one Navy source says.

If anyone has seen video footage of a Los Angeles-class attack sub going to sea, they know just how crowded things are. Food and other supplies are stacked in every available space. Crewmen sleep in the torpedo room. Sailors eat shoulder-to-shoulder in the mess.

The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) in a report last year urged the Navy to redesign the Virginia.

"Current experience indicates it is unreasonable to presume that women will not be assigned to submarines sometime in the next 40 years," which is the estimated service life of Virginia-class submarines, the committee said. "Redesign now before this submarine class begins full production will avoid even more costly reconfiguration in the future."

But the Navy said in a memo that reconfiguring the sub, scheduled to enter service in 2004, "would have two negative effects: further degrade habitability for both genders and require removal of operational equipment reducing war-fighting effectiveness."

Intercepts