WHITE HOUSE GUESTS PUT FACE ON BUSH PLANS

Mercury News Wire Services

WASHINGTON - Sitting two seats from first lady Laura Bush in the House
gallery Tuesday was one of the more unusual guests ever invited by a White
House to a State of the Union speech: an acknowledged former crack addict
and prostitute who now runs a drug-treatment program in a Louisiana church.

Tonja Myles, director of the "Set Free Indeed" program at the Healing Place
Church in Baton Rouge, La., was called by White House aides after they
found a newspaper article about her work, church officials said.

President Bush, who called for increased federal money for drug-treatment
programs run by religious organizations, wanted a guest to symbolize such
programs, and Myles fit the bill.

Myles was one of the 18 guests gathered by the White House to sit in Laura
Bush's box to personify central tenets of the president's domestic agenda.
These included tax cuts, federal help for religious organizations and
imposing limits on medical-malpractice lawsuits.

Richard and Georgia Beck, for example, are a retired couple from Colorado
Springs, Colo., who, according to the White House, would find their federal
taxes reduced by 7 percent under the president's tax-cut plan.

Three seats were given to members of the military -- two who have served in
Afghanistan, Capt. Maureen Allen of the Air Force Reserve and Master Sgt.
Juan Carlos Morales of the Army Reserve, and Marine Cpl. Michael Vera, who
was less than 20 yards away from where a hijacked plane struck the Pentagon
on Sept. 11, 2001.

Dr. Peter Mugyenyi of Uganda, a leading figure in the fight against
Africa's AIDS pandemic, was seated next to Laura Bush.

Reflecting the role the speech plays as a moment of political drama, one
seat was kept vacant. This was done, the White House said, to symbolize
"the empty place many Americans will always have at their tables and in
their lives because of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001."