Morale is high, and the best sign of that is that retention is going up and the recruiting problem that we faced last year has largely been repaired.

This offer may be one sign he is rattled, but we are going to continue to rattle him until he makes an offer that meets our conditions, and he's far away from that right now.

Given what we have seen, the active redeployment of (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's) air defenses, the high state of alert, we think he is interested in much more than diplomacy, that he has ulterior motives to moving these around and we need to be prepared.

My goal is to outwork everybody in recruiting, sign the best players in the state, and turn these guys into the best team we can.

There were more manual steps to override previous retention periods, now it's simpler.

That's a lot of the job of the driver and the car owner, working to keep morale high. If those drivers and those car owners do their jobs in that respect the way they should, then they won't have problems. If everything changes to 'me, me, me,' whether it is the driver or the car owner, then it will be a long, long year.