------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
DU counterweight
Missile Defense Debate Resumes
Russia Vows to Continue Security Talks With U.S.
Salvagers Cut Bow From Russia's Nuclear Sub Kursk
US urges nuclear plant precautions after attack
A nuclear nightmare
TMI had security gate problem
MILITARY
Saddam Says 'Evil' U.S. Policy to Blame for Attacks
Israel calls for war against terrorism
Israel Carrying Out Military Operation
Israeli Forces Enter Jericho
NATO Says Attack on U.S. Was Attack on Alliance
Threat forces UN evacuation
U.N. General Security Council Condemns Attacks
Sept 12 UN Security Council Resolution 1368
Plotters Found the Flaw In Nation's Defense Plans
Military officers seek swift, deadly response
Attacks changes U.S. foreign policy
THE WAR AGAINST AMERICA
Bush's Military Options Are Limited
OTHER
Ramsey Wants IMF, World Bank to Cancel Meetings
WTO Postpones China Decision
Osama bin Laden--The CIA's Frankenstein Monster
Attacks Show That Political Courage Is the Only Real Defense
Terrorists strike U.S.
At least 100 killed in assault on Pentagon
Terrorists Hijack
Hanford once victim of attack
Another Perspective
ACTIVISTS
Message to the Peace Movements in the USA
Washington Peace Center - daily vigil
We suffer together
Statements from Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky
Peace Council Aotearoa New Zealand Statement
Message to US Peace Movements
Peace activist reflection, printed in Raleigh daily paper
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Does somebody know how many kilos of DU counterweight are in these planes?
From: "robert james parsons" rjparsons@hotmail.com
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001
All the planes were relatively recent model Boeings, and Boeing stopped using DU for counterweights in the early nine-teen-eighties, at that time advising all air-line companies that had bought planes with DU counterwights to remove them when the routine maintenance schedule allowed.
Robert James Parsons
rue de la Flèche 17 CH - 1207 Geneva, Switzerland Telephone: +41 22 736-59-55 Geneva United Nations Office Press Room No 1 CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland Telephone: +41 22 917-20-18
-------- missile defense
Missile Defense Debate Resumes
September 12, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The terrorist attack on America was used Wednesday to support arguments for and against President Bush's prized missile defense plan.
Democratic lawmakers said the fact that airlines, not missiles, were used to carry out the attacks demonstrated that more attention should be paid to non-missile, terrorist threats. Republicans said the attacks showed why a missile defense is needed.
``Unfortunately, today our threat is not a threat of somebody launching nuclear missiles at us,'' said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., an opponent of Bush's emphasis on missile defense.
Leahy noted that a nuclear bomb would be more likely to carry ``a return address'' that would invite a certain and swift counterattack.
``The problem with an open, complex society like the United States is our Achilles' heel has always been well-organized terrorist attacks,'' he said.
But House Armed Services Committee Chairman Bob Stump said the next terrorist attack could easily take the form of a relatively short-range missile carrying chemical or biological weapons.
``They have the capability, they have chemical warfare materials, they have biological warfare materials,'' said Stump, R-Ariz. ``And they have, through China and Russia, the technology to deliver that on a missile.''
``It's only a matter of time before we face that,'' he said. ``I think we're only fortunate that they didn't employ chemical or biological weapons in this last attack.''
Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, said some Democratic opponents of missile defense had indicated a slight change of heart following the attacks.
``I believe that right now, with what took place yesterday, there is a strong desire to ensure that the resources are there so they can have a multipronged attack on this and other security problems that exist,'' said Dreier. He represents part of Los Angeles County, where three of the four planes hijacked in the attack were headed.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said the terrorist attacks showed missile defense is ``absolutely ineffective'' as a way to combat terrorism, the Interfax news agency reported.
``A national missile defense system is a shield from so-called rogue countries that may possess missiles and nuclear weapons, but what happened in the U.S. has nothing to do with this. Meanwhile, terrorist acts like this one bring colossal damage,'' Klebanov said.
Two top U.S. officials who are in Russia negotiating on a proposed missile shield acknowledged it could not have protected against the terrorist attacks, but said that didn't undermine the rationale for building it.
``A missile launched at New York would cause much more damage,'' said J.D. Crouch II, assistant U.S. secretary of defense for international security policy.
And U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith said: ``I don't think that it's fair to say a system designed for a specific purpose is flawed because it doesn't do something it's not designed to do.''
Stump said there is a need for more work in non-missile defense areas, particularly human intelligence, which relies on people to uncover crucial information. He bemoaned Congress' reluctance to approve more money for recruitment of covert operatives.
``People don't like to vote for human intelligence, or a lot of intelligence generally, because they don't a get a big shiny plane or a big tank out of it,'' Stump said.
-------- russia
Russia Vows to Continue Security Talks With U.S.
Washington Post
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14267-2001Sep11?language=printer
MOSCOW, Sept. 11 -- Russia said today it would continue to negotiate a new post-Cold War security framework even if the United States pulls out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to build a nuclear missile shield, as President Bush has promised. After the latest round of consultations on Bush's plans to build a missile defense system and pull out of the treaty that prohibits construction of such a shield, Russian Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky told reporters, "I can assure you that our relations will be continuing regardless of whether the U.S. withdraws from the ABM treaty or not." A U.S. withdrawal, added the deputy chief of the Russian general staff, "will not affect these relations of trust."
The comments reflect a new tone from Russia, which previously said a U.S. withdrawal from the treaty would spark a major crisis.
Both sides today offered what they described as "concrete" and detailed new suggestions for a post-ABM deal, but they did not spell them out in detail. "We were quite pleased with the interest that was shown in a number of proposals that we put forward . . . for developing the framework," said Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, who led the U.S. delegation here. "The U.S. is proposing a way to think about strategic stability that is new," he said.
-- Susan B. Glasser
--------
Salvagers Cut Bow From Russia's Nuclear Sub Kursk
By REUTERS
September 12, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-kursk.html
KIRKENES, Norway (Reuters) - An international team cut the bow off the sunken nuclear Russian submarine Kursk Wednesday, bringing salvagers a step closer to raising the wreck from the bed of the Barents Sea later this month.
Salvagers plan to raise the Kursk, which sank after explosions ripped through its bow last August, killing all 118 men aboard, and bring it to dock in Roslyakovo on Russia's northern coast by Sept. 27-28.
``The bow has now been cut off,'' said Lars Walder, spokesman for the Dutch Mammoet-Smit rescue team aboard the Giant 4 barge, docked off Kirkenes in northern Norway. The Giant 4 will hoist the wreck to the surface using 26 mammoth cranes.
Divers have been working for more than a week in icy waters more than 300 feet deep to slice off the bow using robot cutting gear.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to raise the Kursk before winter storms and darkness make work too hazardous.
Putin has said he wants to find out the cause of the disaster, recover the Kursk's nuclear reactor from the seabed and give crew members a proper burial. But experts say the mangled torpedo bay in the bow holds the key to the sinking.
Some Russian navy officials have said the Kursk may have collided with a Western submarine, while many other experts say a torpedo explosion aboard the craft caused the disaster.
Either way, Walder said the 80-foot bow had to come off in order to salvage the rest of the submarine. ``The problem is that the bow is completely damaged,'' he said. Otherwise, in the worst case, it might have fallen off during the salvage.
Walder said the most critical stage of the rescue operation would be to loosen the Kursk from the seabed, when rescuers drag a giant steel wire under the submarine. The cranes will lift the Kursk by attaching other wires to 26 pre-bored holes.
Crane worker Michael Salderbeek told Reuters he was not afraid of any possible nuclear radiation from the Kursk's reactor, but said he was still apprehensive about the rescue.
``It is a mixed feeling,'' he said. ``There is all the dead people, but at the same time we are doing something for the families.''
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
US urges nuclear plant precautions after attack
USA: September 12, 2001
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12378/newsDate/12-Sep-2001/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday recommended that all U.S. nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel facilities go to the highest level of security as a precautionary measure in response to devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"While there has been no credible general or specific threats to any of these (power plant) facilities, the recommendation was considered prudent, given the acts of terrorism in New York City and in Washington, D.C.," the NRC said.
Hijacked planes crashed into the major U.S. landmarks, destroying New York's twin towers and plunging the Pentagon into flames in what President George W. Bush called an "apparent terrorist attack."
The agency said it would not provide details of the heightened security measures being taken at the nation's 103 nuclear reactors located in 31 states because such steps are classified.
Nuclear power provides about 20 percent of the U.S. electricity supplies.
Progress Energy President Bill Cavanaugh said his company was coordinating with federal authorities and "is taking every step necessary to ensure safety and security" at all its facilities. "As always, safety is our top priority," he said.
Cavanaugh added that he was "shocked and saddened" by the attacks.
The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company owns two major utilities, CP&L and Florida Power, that operate nuclear power plants.
Meanwhile, the Energy Department has ordered the highest state of security readiness at its nuclear weapon laboratories.
"We've had a lockdown of our nuclear material, and we are in close contact with our labs and field offices," department spokeswoman Jeanne Lopatto said.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has been in close contact with White House officials about the situation.
For security reasons, Lopatto refused to say where Abraham was. "He's in a safe location," she said.
----
A nuclear nightmare
They look tough, but some plants are easy marks for terrorists
BY DOUGLAS PASTERNAK
9/17/01
U.S.News & World Report
He called it Project Worst Nightmare. And in the twisted mind of Donald Beauregard, commander of the 77th Regiment Militia in St. Petersburg, Fla., it surely was. Beauregard's plan was simple-disable the electric power grid feeding the nearby Crystal River nuclear power plant with explosives stolen from a National Guard armory. That would shut down the plant, blacking out St. Petersburg. This was no idle fantasy. When the cops finally caught up with him, Beauregard and his "strike team" had a 20-mm cannon, a .50-caliber machine gun, and a few pipe bombs primed to blow.
Beauregard might have succeeded if an informant hadn't tipped the police. He was prosecuted and clapped off to prison last year. But the FBI took Beauregard's plan seriously enough to incorporate it into a test it ran last May against the Palo Verde nuclear generating station in Arizona.
And here lies the rub. In the past decade, nearly half the nation's 103 power plants have failed mock terrorist attacks against them. The plants that failed, in other words, would not have stopped the Donald Beauregards of the world.
In the parlance of counterterrorism, nuclear power plants are among the world's most "hardened" targets. Barbed wire, surveillance cameras, motion sensors, armed response teams-all are designed to make the plants impenetrable to even the most determined saboteur. But interviews with current and former Nuclear Regula- tory Commission inspectors, security experts, and plant guards paint a very different picture. Often, security measures at nuclear plants don't work as they should or don't work at all. A re- view of recent incidents by U.S. News reveals numerous breakdowns in plant security, from criminals being granted access to sensitive areas to inadequate security that places vital equipment within easy reach of an attacker who never even enters the plant's perimeter.
Security experts say a terrorist is far more likely to attack a so-called soft target- such as a government building-than a nuclear power plant. Indeed, argues Lynnette Hendricks of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power trade group: "We believe the plants are overly defended at a level that is not at all commensurate with the risk." But in light of attacks against fortified targets such as U.S. embassies, threats against nuclear plants are now considered very real. And concerns about security are likely to mount as the Bush administration calls for greater use of nuclear power. Last year, for instance, Japanese police arrested a man with seven pipe bombs who was planning to blow up a uranium processing plant. Last September, Ukrainian police arrested a group planning to sabotage the Chernobyl reactor. And in the United States, officials list at least 30 threats against nuclear plants since 1978. Most have been hoaxes, but in the mid-1980s, for instance, three of four power lines leading to the Palo Verde plant were sabotaged. And in 1989 four members of Earth First!, a radical environmental group, were charged with conspiring to disable three nuclear power plants in the Southwest.
Rating risks. Despite the threats and the documented security flaws, the nuclear industry has convinced the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-the federal agency that oversees nuclear power plants-that security at these sites would function better with less federal oversight. So starting this fall, the NRC will launch a pilot program allowing the power companies to design their own security exercises-a function formerly performed by federal terrorism experts. The industry says the new program will cost the plants less, yet allow for more frequent tests. But opponents, including many within the NRC, say the industry's track record has hardly earned it the right to looser regulation. In the past year alone, NRC inspectors have discovered alarms and video surveillance cameras that don't work, guards who can't operate their weapons, and guns that don't shoot. "I am very skeptical about the nuclear industry's ability to regulate itself," says Rep. Edward J. Markey, a vocal critic of nuclear security.
High on critics' lists of concerns is the failure rate in the NRC-run mock terrorist assaults-attacks that, if real, could have released radiation more lethal than the 1986 Chernobyl accident that resulted in an estimated 32,000 deaths. These exercises, called Operational Safeguards Response Evaluations, or OSREs, have been run by an outspoken former U.S. Navy SEAL captain named David Orrick. In a typical exercise, a team of three "terrorists" armed with small weapons and basic knowledge of how a plant works attempts to penetrate the facility. They evade or disable security equipment and destroy a set of targets in an effort to damage the plant's nuclear core, causing a radioactive release. In some cases, the mock terrorists make it all the way to the sensitive control room-even though they give plant operators ample advance notice of when they intend to strike.
Proponents of the NRC's mock attacks say they teach valuable lessons. In 1999, the Waterford 3 Nuclear Plant in Taft, La., failed a preliminary mock attack, but the plant's managers said that the exercise did not reflect the plant's true capability. So Orrick's team returned last year to conduct a more rigorous exercise against the plant. "We [the NRC team] just ate them alive," says one NRC inspector. The Waterford 3 site then hired more guards, improved training, and fortified physical barriers. They finally passed an NRC exercise last January. And in May, security guards easily apprehended a man with a history of mental illness who scaled a 10-foot, barbed-wire fence surrounding the site.
Still, critics charge that even the NRC's mock terrorist attacks do not reflect today's real-world scenarios. "There is nothing about protecting against a helicopter assault or a missile taking out one of our positions," says one plant security guard. Last September, for instance, an anti-nuclear demonstrator landed a motorized parafoil on the roof of a nuclear reactor in Bern, Switzerland, before being apprehended by security guards.
While nuclear plant operators design much of their security to prevent attacks from the outside, the record suggests that the greater danger lies within. "If somebody got a job as a janitor and got access to the plant, that's the real threat," says Erik Pakieser, former nuclear security officer at the Prairie Island nuclear generating plant in Minnesota. For instance, at the same time Donald Beauregard was cooking up his Project Worst Nightmare, a maintenance technician at the Crystal River site discovered that someone had intentional- ly disabled one of the plant's |emergency diesel generators. Some nuclear security experts also believe that sabotage should not have been ruled out so quickly as a possible cause of the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory found striking similarities between the incident and a computer-generated sabotage scenario they had run several months earlier.
Two decades later, critics remain troubled by the sorts of individuals who can gain access to a nuclear plant. In the early 1990s, a carpenter named Carl Drega got jobs at three nuclear power plants in the Northeast despite an arrest record and a job reference that described him as "volatile." Two months after Drega left the third plant, in 1997, he shot four people to death, including two state troopers, a judge, and a newspaper editor. An NRC investigation of the incident found that none of the three plants had violated their regulations by hiring him.
Easy access. Another insider, a computer programmer who once worked in the control room at the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant, goes to trial next year for murdering seven of his coworkers at a small Massachusetts technology company. Plant coworkers said the programmer, Michael McDermott, slept in a coffin and told a colleague he was sometimes so angry he felt like killing someone. In 1998, a worker at the Turkey Point nuclear plant in Florida had free access to critical areas of the plant for more than a month before officials learned of his 14 arrests. And at the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, officials took eight months to learn that a worker was an illegal Mexican immigrant with fake identification papers and an arrest record. "Charles Manson could get access to a nuclear power plant," says former nuclear security officer Richard Kester.
But some experts worry that attackers can succeed even without getting inside. Classified reports from Sandia National Laboratories show that a well-placed truck bomb would not even have to enter a site's property to destroy vital equipment, leading to a possible release of radiation. In addition, experts say, the water-intake systems at some plants are particularly vulnerable to sabotage by either cutting off the water supply by clogging the intake valve or introducing volatile chemicals into the reactor's cooling system.
An even more accessible target may be spent nuclear material piling up at these plants. Large cooling pools inside reactor containment buildings were designed to store this fuel, but several years ago the pools began to fill up. Now, at many plants, the highly radioactive fuel is stored in cooling pools outside the containment building. "A lot of the spent nuclear fuel casks can be hit with a shoulder-fired missile by someone standing outside the fence," says Dave Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Yet at plants that are being decommissioned, the nuclear fuel is even less closely guarded. The Maine Yankee plant, which has stored 700 tons of spent fuel in outside cooling pools, has removed all of its vehi- cle barriers and received the NRC's permission to eliminate its armed guard force once the fuel is placed into dry casks.
The chairman of the NRC, Richard Meserve, says that no matter who runs the security drills, the plants remain among the world's most heavily guarded sites. And he says that the NRC mock attacks are expensive for both the commission to run and the plants to prepare for. "The reason we are making a big deal about this," says the Nuclear Energy Institute's Hendricks, is that the corrective actions resulting from these exercises " can have a tremendous impact" on a plant owner. "It can cost a million dollars to make these upgrades [of plant security]," she says. In any case, says Meserve, the new self-assessment pro- gram is only a trial: If it doesn't work, he says, it will be scrapped.
But the chorus of nuclear industry critics continues to grow. "The overall focus [at these sites] is not to protect the public but to get the NRC's blessing and ensure profits," says one nuclear security officer. Starting next week, the Waterford 3 plant, which had boosted security to pass the NRC's terrorist exercise, will begin to reduce its training programs and its guard force. "As soon as the NRC leaves," says one guard, "they downgrade security."
---
Re: MANY NUKE POWER PLANTS ARE EASY TERRORIST TARGETS
Response From: Mary Ellen Marucci
Dear Bill and Paul,
Articles like this act as a how-to list for some aberrent human being who would like to put an end to the human race. Something like mutual assured destruction (MAD)?
Well, having seen spin doctors at work I respond:
1. As a woman I refuse to be limited by political definitions of terrorism. To run these plants is terrorism. To shut them down with no release to the environment is an act of love.
2. The article is hoping to stir someone to take the hint and actually do a nuclear power plant or pool in! To shut down the power TO of FROM a plant is not sufficient unless the plant is in real bad shape..and then it shouldn't be running as it is breaking all the rules of safe operation.
3. If no terrorist takes the lead from this article then a "natural" accident will happen soon enough ( but maybe not soon enough for the political agenda of the Presidency)Such an accident is waiting to happen from the natural decay of materials in radioactive enviornments ongoing in these plants and/or the natural decay of morale which is also ongoing in these plants. No Nuke is a safe Nuke. That goes for bombs as well as these plutonium factories (aka "power" plants)
4. The govenment is building a case and giving itself an option to call it an act of terrorism by individuals and/or groups when in fact the more likely cause will be an act of folly (like cutting expenses and packing the waste fuel too tight) and/or and act of the natural laws of physics which man has yet to fully understand in radioactive environments.
5.When (not if) such an "accident" occurs the government will have the added excuse of terrorism (though not necesary) to suspend the constitution and enact federal FEMA.
6. When you look at the face of the article and know the workings of these nuclear electric suppliers it is apparent that anyone who wishes to protest their abuse of power by not using electric (i.e. the current push to coordinate a boycott (albeit of short duration) of electric use, or to find other ways of financially disabling these plutonium factories) will be by extension labeled terrorists, when in fact they are human beings willing to say and do something to stop this MAD production of more plutonium.
7. It is civilian NPPs with their low-enrichment fuel that are the most efficient at producing plutonium! There is more plutonium in the spent fuel from these "power" plants than is in the world's military stockpile!. That is why the AEC owned the civilian spent fuel, and why its spin-off, the DOE, has control of it. That fact alone explains to me why none in the civilian anti-nuclear movement speaks of it. It is bad enough to be fighting stupid energy projects than to acknowledge that you are also fighting stupid military projects!
8. NPP's steady radioactive releases act like a slow poison just below the level of U.S. citizen's consiousness, thanks to magazines such as US News, who cater to the large corporations rather than the public's need to know. Thanks to efforts of the major toxic chemical industries worldwide, nuclear poisoning does not seem as bad. Only in America must we chose between worse and worst. But that Christ chose between better and best when tempted in the desert!
9. That a child's hurt when young can turn him into a beast rather than a man says much to me as to where to stop this insanity. Stop hurting the children!
10. That adults fear for their livelihood and thereby allow projects that threaten their lives and most certainly will lead tor their children's slavery or death, for in nuclear environments only a selected few will be allowed to survive!. this Fear At Work is as I see it the main reason for the loss of democracy we never quite achieved.
11. That you should ask me to respond to this article as directed shows me that you too were dupped by the spin doctors. The only good nuke is a dead nuke, or better yet a never built nuke! Better to be active than reactive!
Respectfully, MaryEllen Marucci hotpool@mindspring.com
------- pennsylvania
TMI had security gate problem
From: "Scott D. Portzline" <sportzline@home.com>
To: "nukenet" <nukenet@envirolink.org>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 10:33:02 -0400
THREE MILE ISLAND, PENNSYLVANIA - I didn't want to say anything yesterday, but TMI could not close its vehicle barrier at the entrance to TMI becuase it did not have electrical power to close it. However, i think that the other actions they took would have prevented any vehicle intrusion.
Osami Bin Laden's terrorists trained 30 miles from TMI in 1993 before they bombed the World Trade Center. They then treatened to attack nuclear targets.
-------- MILITARY
-------- iraq
Saddam Says 'Evil' U.S. Policy to Blame for Attacks
September 12, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-iraq-saddam.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said on Wednesday that devastating attacks on the Pentagon in Washington and the World Trade Center in New York were the harvest of the ``evil policy'' of the United States.
``Regardless of...human feelings on what happened yesterday, America is reaping thorns sown by its rulers in the world,'' the Iraqi News Agency (INA) quoted Saddam as saying in his first directly reported comment on the attacks.
``He who does not want to reap evil should not sow evil,'' Saddam said at a meeting with the minister of military industrialization, Abdul Tawab Mullah Hwaish, and a group of engineers.
Thousands of people are feared dead after hijacked airliners demolished the twin towers of the World Trade Center and caused carnage at the Pentagon, heart of U.S. military might.
The United States is exporting evil, corruption and crime, not only through its armies deployed in various parts of the world, but also through its movies, Saddam said.
He also referred to ``current criminal acts, backed by criminal, racist Zionism, against our Palestinian people.''
Saddam did not rule out that Tuesday's attacks were carried out by American nationals.
``If what happened to America is an internal affair, the Americans are best placed to diagnose the ailment,'' he said
Iraqi state television on Tuesday hailed the attacks as the ''operation of the century'' which the United States deserved for its ``crimes against humanity.''
President Bush has pledged that the United States will hunt down the attackers and make no distinction between terrorists and their hosts.
U.S. and British warplanes conduct virtually daily flights over large swathes of northern and southern Iraq to prevent Iraqi forces from conducting operations against anti-Baghdad peoples in the regions.
-------- israel
Israel calls for war against terrorism
Washington Times
September 12, 2001
From combined dispatches
http://www.washtimes.com/world/nobyline-200191242549.htm
JERUSALEM -- Israel pledged to give its full support to the United States and called for all-out war on terrorism after the attacks on New York and Washington yesterday.
In a defensive move and following the U.S. example after the plane attacks, Israel closed its airspace for 24 hours to all incoming flights by foreign carriers, the airports authority said.
Also, the government announced that Israel was to declare a national day of mourning in solidarity with the United States after a devastating series of aircraft attacks hit buildings in New York and Washington.
The state of mourning would take effect today, with flags flown at half-staff across the Jewish state to express its sorrow over the unprecedented assault on its main ally, senior political sources said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged full support to the United States, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres called for all-out war on terrorism.
"Knowing our bitter experience of terrorism, if it turns out the events in United States were a terrorist attack, Israel will do all it can, and expresses condolences to the victims of the tragedy," said a spokesman for Mr. Sharon.
"This is a turning point in the international war on terrorism. This is a war between good and evil. The fight of the free world against the forces of darkness," said Mr. Sharon at a news conference yesterday.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said yesterday that the time has come to "destroy terrorist regimes starting with the Palestinian Authority."
"What happened in the United States is a turning point in history," he said on Israeli public television.
Mr. Netanyahu called for the "formation of an international front against terrorism."
Mr. Netanyahu has been increasingly critical of Mr. Sharon in recent weeks, saying he was not taking a tough enough line against the Palestinians. Mr. Sharon and senior Cabinet ministers also decided to close off all of Israel's border crossings as part of a measure to heighten security already tight amid a nearly year-old Palestinian uprising.
The new orders followed the closure of Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport yesterday to foreign airlines.
An Israeli airport spokesman said foreign flights would not be allowed to land or take off from Ben Gurion airport at least until midday today "because of the situation."
The Defense Ministry said army teams were preparing to leave for the United States. Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer ordered the mission, which will include teams specialized in rescuing victims trapped in collapsed buildings.
Mr. Peres said the world must "fight without compromise" against terrorism after the unprecedented attacks rocked the United States, Israeli public television reported.
"The danger of terrorism is a worldwide danger. The world must organize itself to face it because terrorism can strike anywhere, over borders and over the heads of the most powerful armies in the world," Mr. Peres said.
The foreign minister did not say whom he believed responsible for the wave of attacks but said, "We know countries that are centers of terrorism."
The minister met with defense officials to review the consequences of the U.S. attacks for Israel, which is "ready for any eventuality."
Israel moved swiftly to evacuate its diplomatic missions in the United States, fearing they may also be targets for attack, according to the public television. Only key personnel were kept in place, it said.
Although the culprits were still unidentified and no link was established with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Ben Eliezer denounced the threat posed by Islamic extremists.
"Terrorism by Islamic extremists represents the biggest threat to the free world," the minister said in a statement. "The aim of this terrorism is to destroy the foundations of democratic society and Westerners."
--------
Israel Carrying Out Military Operation
September 12, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Incursion.html
JERICHO, West Bank (AP) -- Israel sent tanks into the West Bank town of Jericho early Thursday at the start of a military operation, witnesses said.
Flares were fired in the air over the desert oasis town in the Jordan River Valley, and residents said 12 Israeli tanks entered the town. Loudspeakers on mosques called people out to defend the city against the invading Israeli forces.
The operation followed an Israeli invasion of the West Bank town of Jenin early Wednesday. Tanks and bulldozers entered the town, at the northern end of the West Bank, and tore down a police headquarters building.
Jericho is usually a quiet town, though there have been incidents of gunfire between Palestinians there and Israeli forces, and some gunfire attacks on Israeli motorists using a bypass road around the town.
--------
Israeli Forces Enter Jericho
September 12, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERICHO, West Bank (AP) -- Israeli forces capped a day of incursions by entering the West Bank town of Jericho with tanks early Thursday, after raiding three other West Bank localities. Palestinian security officials said seven Palestinians, including an 11-year-old girl, were killed.
The sources said 22 Israeli tanks and three bulldozers entered Jericho, an oasis town in the arid Jordan River valley. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he had talked by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, urging them to hold a high-level meeting to stop a nearly yearlong conflict and start on peacemaking.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who lives in Jericho, drew a connection between the incursion and the terror attacks in New York and Washington Tuesday that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.
``The Israelis are using the tragedy of the events in New York and Washington, feeling that the attention of the world is elsewhere,'' he said. ``There was nothing to provoke this.''
Earlier Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi also said Israel is ``using this tremendous tragedy as a cover for an escalation against the Palestinians.''
Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman Yarden Vatikay called the allegation absurd, saying Israel went after Palestinian militants because the Palestinian Authority was not trying to prevent terror attacks.
Erekat told The Associated Press that he had called U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, the American Middle East envoy, and European Union envoy Miguel Moratinos to complain about the Israeli move.
Following the Jericho incursion, a cloud of smoke and an orange glow could be seen at the Aqbat Jaber refugee camp area at the south end of town.
The purpose of the Israeli raid wasn't immediately clear, but the presence of the bulldozers indicated that they intended to tear down Palestinian structures, as they have in previous incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas.
In Israel's in incursions a day earlier, tanks moved into the West Bank town of Jenin and two nearby villages -- Tamoun and Arrabeh.
Seven Palestinians were killed -- two of them members of the radical Islamic Jihad when Israeli tanks shelled their hideout. The 11-year-old sister of a third militant in the house also died, Palestinian security officials said.
In a separate incident, three Palestinian security officials were killed when their convoy of unmarked cars came under Israeli helicopter attack near Tamoun, witnesses said.
In Jenin, Israeli tanks and bulldozers destroyed a two-story police headquarters building and then returned to the edge of the town. A gunman from the militant Hamas was killed by a tank shell during the incursion.
The Israeli army said the building was a ``terror center.'' It confirmed the incursions into Tamoun and Arrabeh.
In Gaza, a Palestinian was killed when soldiers opened fire on a taxi. The military said the vehicle ignored orders to stop.
After nightfall Wednesday, an Israeli woman was killed in a Palestinian shooting ambush in the West Bank, the military said.
Israel, meanwhile, started easing restrictions adopted after the attacks in the United States, gradually opening its air space, said Pini Schiff, Ports Authority spokesman.
However, Israel's land border crossings would remain closed until further notice, he said.
The limitations scuttled Arafat's long-awaited trip to Syria to mend fences after two decades of strained relations. Arafat was to have met Wednesday in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Israel did not give Arafat permission to fly from Gaza to Egypt, and he was unable to make the trip by land, Palestinian officials said.
-------- nato
NATO Says Attack on U.S. Was Attack on Alliance
WORLD REACTION
September 12, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-attack-nato-declaration.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium - NATO invoked a mutual defense clause for the first time in its history Wednesday, opening the way for a possible collective military response to Tuesday's attacks on the United States.
``The (NATO) Council agreed that if it is determined that this was an attack directed from abroad against the United States, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article V of the Washington Treaty, which states that an attack against one ally is an attack against them all,'' Secretary-General George Robertson told a news conference.
The article commits each of the 19 member nations to take ''such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.''
Asked whether this meant NATO would take joint action, Robertson said: ``The country attacked has to make the decisions, it has to be the one that asks for help. ... The U.S. is still assessing the evidence available. They are the ones to make that judgement.''
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the statement would ``tee up'' a possible collective response once the United States identified the perpetrators and their sponsors.
-------- u.n.
Threat forces UN evacuation
USA TODAY
09/12/2001
The Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/12/un-evacuation.htm
NEW YORK (AP) - A threat forced the evacuation of the United Nations on Wednesday morning, a day after terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center towers. U.S. government and New York city authorities informed the U.N. chief of security of a threat specifically against the United Nations at about 9 a.m. on Wednesday and as a precautionary measure staff in the 39-story building were ordered to go to the basement or out of the building, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said. The precautionary measures were still in effect but essential staffmembers were allowed to return to their offices about 11 a.m.
The Security Council planned to go ahead with its scheduled open meeting at 11:30 a.m. which was to be addressed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan and where the terrorist attacks would be discussed, Eckhard said.
The 15-member council issued a statement Monday condemning "the horrifying terrorist attacks ... in the strongest terms" and calling on all nations to work together urgently to bring the perpetrators to justice and redouble efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts.
Meanwhile, Annan met with the outgoing and incoming presidents of the general assembly and with UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy to discuss whether to cancel or go ahead with the U.N. Children's Summit, Eckhard said. The summit is scheduled to bring about 75 world leaders to New York from Sept. 19-21.
--------
U.N. General Security Council Condemns Attacks
UNITED NATIONS
September 12, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/international/12UN-WIRE.html
UNITED NATIONS - With flags flying at half-mast, the United Nations Security Council Wednesday condemned the attacks against the United States and called on the world to help find the perpetrators and those who sheltered them.
After a minute of silence, each of the 15 members of the council, including U.S. envoy James Cunningham, spoke individually. They then rose as a group rather than voting from their seats to adopt a resolution, which "unequivocally condemns in the strongest terms the horrifying terrorist attacks which took place on 11 September 2001."
"We meet in exceptionally grave circumstances," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said at the start of the meeting. "Our host country, and this host city, have been subjected to a terrorist attack which horrifies us all."
"A terrorist attack on one country is an attack on humanity as a whole," Annan said. "All of us feel deep shock and revulsion at the cold-blooded viciousness of this attack."
The United Nations received an unidentified "security threat" early on Wednesday and closed for two hours. But Annan and other senior officials remained in the building while police searched for explosives in the compound, which includes a 38-story high rise that marks the skyline on Manhattan's East River.
The council, summoned to a special session by its current president, French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, also called on all countries to "bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these terrorist acts."
It said those responsible for "aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these acts will be held accountable."
The 189-member General Assembly is scheduled to hold a similar ceremony later in the day, the official opening of its 56th session that President Bush was scheduled to address on Sept. 24.
But a gala children's summit, which was to begin on Sept. 19, with at least 75 presidents and prime ministers, will be postponed, U.S. and French officials said. A tentative date is expected to be set for June. Diplomats said the United Nations could not impose more work on the New York police department.
In the worst attack against the United States since Pearl Harbor, hijackers commandeered four planes Tuesday and flew two aircraft into New York's World Trade Center. A third seriously damaged the Pentagon in Washington and a fourth crashed 80 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
"This was an was an assault not just on the United States but on all of us who support peace and democracy for which the United Nations stands," Cunningham said. "We will grieve and we will heal...we will make no distinction between those who acted and those who harbored them."
Russia's U.N. ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, said the attack "goes beyond national borders and "is a brazen challenge to all of humankind."
The events of Tuesday, said British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, "took us to a place beyond our imagination."
"We all have to understand this is a global issue, an attack on modern civilization and an attack on the human spirit," he said.
Levitte, in his remarks, said "France stands side by side with the United States in this time of trial."
"Nothing ever again in any place in the world justifies a resort to terrorism," he said. "A global strategy is needed (and) the Security Council is the principal organ trusted with international peace and security."
--------
Sept 12 UN Security Council Resolution 1368
From: John Burroughs <johnburroughs@lcnp.org>
United Nations S/RES/1368 (2001)
Security Council Distr.: General
12 September 2001
Resolution 1368 (2001)
Adopted by the Security Council at its 4370th meeting, on 12 September 2001
The Security Council,
Reaffirming the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations,
Determined to combat by all means threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts,
Recognizing the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence in accordance with the Charter,
1. Unequivocally condemns in the strongest terms the horrifying terrorist attacks which took place on 11 September 2001 in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania and regards such acts, like any act of international terrorism, as a threat to international peace and security;
2. Expresses its deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims and their families and to the people and Government of the United States of America;
3. Calls on all States to work together urgently to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these terrorist attacks and stresses that those responsible for aiding, supporting or harbouring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these acts willbe held accountable;
4. Calls also on the international community to redouble their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts including by increased cooperation and full implementation of the relevant international anti-terrorist conventions and Security Council resolutions, in particular resolution 1269 (1999) of 19 October 1999;
5. Expresses its readiness to take all necessary steps to respond to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and to combat all forms of terrorism, in accordance with its responsibilities under the Charter of the United Nations;
6. Decides to remain seized of the matter.
Some initial explanatory comments (look for fuller analysis by LCNP later):
In the preamble the resolution refers to self-defense. But the resolution nowhere says specifically that use of force in response to the attacks would be self-defense. The first sentence of Art. 51 of the UN Charter states: "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security".
The resolution in para. 1 characterizes the attacks as a "threat to international peace and security". Under Chapter VII of the Charter, once this has been determined, the SC can decide upon sanctions (Art. 41) or armed force (Art. 42). Art. 48 provides that the SC can decide whether such enforcement measures are to be carred out by some or all member states.
The resolution in para. 5 "expresses [the SC's] readiness to take all necessary steps to respond to the terrorist attacks". Paras. 3 and 4 concern bringing to justice perpetrators etc. and suppression of terrorism. The International Criminal Court could not be used for prosecution of perpetrators, because the ICC treaty has not yet entered into force and the treaty applies only to crimes committed after it enters into force. But the SC could establish an ad hoc tribunal. Regarding treaties on terrorism, eg prosecute or extradite and prevention of financing for terrorist operations, not all have entered into force and theUnited States is not a party to all those that have. However, this is not necessarily an obstacle, for example, to another country extraditing a suspect to US or to international tribunal. (I will circulate more info on this soon).
Generally, then, the resolution lays groundwork for steps that may be taken by the SC in the future. It is not itself an action resolution. The emphasis perhaps is on justice and suppression of terrorism. But self-defense is mentioned. And the basis is there also for the SC, should it so choose, later to approve the use of force by the United States and other states to respond to the "threat to international peace and security". On the latter point, there is concern about the use of the SC to legitimize acts of force, especially by US and NATO. On the other hand, going through the SC probably imposes some constraints on US/NATO, and is also what is called for by the Charter and insisted upon by major powers like Russia and China.
Gillian Gilhool Legislative Organizer Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section WILPF in Washington 110 Maryland Avenue NE, Suite 112 Washington, DC 20002 202-546-6727 phone 202-544-9613 fax www.wilpf.org
-------- u.s.
Plotters Found the Flaw In Nation's Defense Plans
Debate Revived on Sharp Rise of Counterterrorism Spending
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 12, 2001; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14120-2001Sep11?language=printer
Over the last few years, as concern grew about the possibility of a large-scale terrorist attack against the United States, senior U.S. officials and counterterrorism experts warned about a "digital Pearl Harbor," a "nuclear Pearl Harbor," even a "biological Pearl Harbor."
But no one predicted the catastrophic event that actually took place: hijacked airplanes crashing into the centers of American financial and military power.
Like President Bill Clinton before him, President Bush has focused extraordinary attention and national resources on dealing with new "asymmetric threats" to national security following the end of the Cold War. In the process, a generation of Americans who grew up in the shadow of nuclear tension with the Soviet Union have been educated in a multitude of new national security dangers, ranging from the release of biological agents in a crowded subway to a missile attack by a "rogue state."
Spending on counterterrorism programs doubled from under $6 billion at the end of 1995 to about $12 billion this year, and more than $13 billion has been requested for 2002. The Bush administration has also earmarked $8.3 billion next year for preliminary work on defenses against a missile attack. In the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, billions of dollars have been spent protecting key installations from terrorist attack.
In spite of all these precautions, those who orchestrated yesterday's attacks discovered and exploited a huge vulnerability in the nation's defenses, in a way that no one in either the Clinton or Bush administrations quite foresaw.
"This goes beyond anything we've faced before, both in sophistication and scope," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, national security adviser to Clinton. "It certainly indicates that the focus should be on this kind of threat."
"People both inside and outside the government would think this is more the stuff of a Tom Clancy novel than reality," said James M. Lindsay, a member of the Clinton administration national security team that began issuing warnings in the early 1990s of the possibility of major terrorist attacks on American soil.
Several politicians and terrorism experts suggested yesterday that the government has been preparing for the wrong kind of attack. Political and media attention has tended to focus on the acquisition by terrorists of weapons of mass destruction, such as a crude nuclear bomb or a biological weapon. This came on top of a focus on conventional terrorist attacks, such as car bombs and airplane hijackings.
"We focused on the low end -- the car bomb and the truck bomb -- and the more exotic high-end threats like [biological warfare], but we neglected the middle," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert for Rand Corp., a Washington think tank. Hoffman said the government's success in protecting public buildings from car bombs may have encouraged terrorists to devise new and even more destructive methods for attacking high-profile targets.
Within hours of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, politicians and missile experts were arguing over whether successive administrations have allocated sufficient resources to counterterrorism, and whether the money has been well spent. Some Democrats took aim at the Bush administration for what they called its preoccupation with missile defense at a time when the country is facing more immediate threats from conventional terrorism.
"We need to devote much more attention to conventional threats," said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a sponsor of legislation designed to strengthen security in the nation's transportation networks, including airports. "Our resources are finite, as is our attention span. We have more urgent priorities" than missile defense.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), a leading proponent of missile defense and increased Pentagon budgets, rejected that view. "It is not either-or," he said. "We need to do both. . . . Our number one priority, according to the Constitution, is to provide for the common defense of the American people."
Despite a new emphasis on missile defense, the Bush administration has embraced many of the counterterrorism programs initiated by the Clinton administration, and has yet to introduce any significant changes. Richard A. Clarke, who has coordinated U.S. counterterrorism efforts from the National Security Council for the past eight years, was one of the few senior White House officials to survive the change of administration.
In May, Bush appointed Vice President Cheney to review programs to protect the United States from "the threat of weapons of mass destruction," and announced the creation of an Office of National Preparedness to deal with terrorist attacks. But officials said that the Cheney task force has made little progress, and the establishment of the preparedness office is bogged down in turf fights between the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Justice.
Some terrorism experts depicted yesterday's attacks as a catastrophic intelligence failure, despite major efforts by the CIA and other U.S. government agencies to track the movements of terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden and eavesdrop on their conversations. "How nothing could have been picked up is beyond me," said Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism expert at the Congressional Research Service.
Others defended the counterterrorism efforts of successive administrations, arguing that U.S. intelligence has foiled numerous plots, including a plan for bin Laden supporters to bomb targets in the United States and the Middle East on New Year's Day last year. "Many terrorism cells have been rolled up in many countries, and this has often been done quietly," said Daniel Benjamin, who worked with Clarke in the Clinton White House. "Unfortunately, if just one conspiracy succeeds, it looks as if America has fallen down on the job."
A detailed breakdown of counterterrorism budgets shows that much of the increased funds went to strengthening protection around government buildings, as well as the defense of computer networks and other "critical infrastructure." Of the $13 billion requested for counterterrorism spending next year, $1.7 billion has been earmarked for "weapons of mass destruction" and about $2.6 billion for critical infrastructure.
"To a certain degree, some good stuff has gotten in place, and we are seeing the benefits of that," said John Parachini, head of the Washington office of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "But the question is whether we have spent too much money preparing for high-consequence, low-probability incidents, and not enough on things that are much easier for terrorists to do."
Staff writers Vernon Loeb and Bradley Graham and researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report.
--------
Military officers seek swift, deadly response
September 12, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200191241929.htm
America must confront murderous terrorists with quick and violent retaliation, military officers said yesterday as President Bush began weighing responses for the kamikaze-style attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.
"This is our generation's Pearl Harbor," said a senior retired Navy officer. "It is time to kick ass. And If we have to kill a few innocent civilians in the process, so be it."
Military officers said they hoped Mr. Bush would break with past practices of handling terrorists attacks as drawn-out criminal homicide investigations rather than what they really are - acts of war that demand swift reprisals.
"The American people and the military will now be ready to put in ground troops with all the risks that that would entail," said an Army special operations soldier. "Missiles will not do the trick. We'll spend millions on missiles to destroy $20 worth of tents."
At the Pentagon, the mood was angry. In a not-so-veiled threat, Gen. Henry Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "I will tell you upfront, I have no intention of discussing today what comes next, but make no mistake about it, your armed forces are ready."
Said a general officer whose Pentagon office barely missed the havoc brought by a terrorist-aimed 757 commercial airliner, "While the FBI will certainly lead the investigation, we should be careful to see this for what it really is: an act of war. ... We should be wary of considering these acts as crimes, which involve the normal and understandable mechanisms of justice. If the actors are extraterritorial, then I believe international law allows for other responses."
The United States has not seriously retaliated for deadly attacks on U.S. service members in the Middle East despite lengthy criminal investigations by the FBI that linked the murders to associates of Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Said a congressional defense aide, "If I were Bush, I would launch B-52s toward Afghanistan and carpet-bomb where bin Laden is. I'd have Special Forces go in afterward and kill any survivors. We know where he typically hides and where he trains in Afghanistan. I know we do."
Pentagon sources said planners were quickly updating contingency plans for striking terrorists sites, including the known hideouts of the prime suspect, bin Laden, and his deadly operatives. The sources said the Pentagon's National Military Command Center remained up and running throughout the explosion and fire caused by the aircraft smashing into the building's southwest section.
"Once we have the evidence, the response is going to be hard, swift and violent," predicted a Senate defense aide.
Defense sources also argued that the U.S. government has enough evidence right now to attempt to target bin Laden even before linking him to yesterday's catastrophe. He is on the FBI's 10 most wanted list and stands indicted by a federal grand jury in connection with the bombings of two U.S. embassies in 1998 in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.
The U.S. also believes that bin Laden, who has vowed to kill Americans wherever and whenever he can, masterminded last year's suicide bombing of the destroyer USS Cole while it refueled in Yemen.
"This is total war. I think this is a wake-up call for America," said Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican. "This is a war, a real war."
President Clinton launched the first overt attack on bin Laden in 1998 shortly after bombings at the U.S. embassies in Africa. He ordered a barrage of Navy-fired Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed at bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan near its border with Pakistan. Those attacks, coming when the president was embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, were seen as largely ineffective, however.
Officials say that if Mr. Bush chooses to strike bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization, the response must be more extensive. Options include the forcible entry of thousands of troops or sustained bombing over days, not hours.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld briefed the press last night but declined to speculate on any military action.
Asked if he was confident that the perpetrators of the attacks would be found, he said, "All one can offer by way of assurance is a seriousness of purpose. We're still taking bodies out of this building, so I would say that that's a little premature."
--------
Attacks changes U.S. foreign policy
September 12, 2001
By David R. Sands and Tom Carter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-20019124263.htm
The devastating terror attacks that rocked New York and Washington yesterday will produce aftershocks that will be felt in U.S. foreign policy for decades to come.
President Bush faced intense pressure to respond to the attacks before U.S. officials could even hazard a guess as to who had orchestrated and carried out the world's worst act of terrorism.
"Everything changes," said Thomas Henriksen, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a specialist on states accused of harboring terrorists. "Terrorism has always been remote, but now it has touched us."
"This was clearly not an isolated attack," former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in an interview yesterday on CNN. "It can't be dealt with by just one retaliatory blow."
Foreign policy experts predicted a vastly heightened sense of urgency in the global war against terrorism. With much of the early speculation focusing on Islamic fundamentalist groups with links to Saudi financier Osama bin Laden, the attacks could foreshadow a profound change in the dynamics of the Middle East peace process.
Some predict that current U.S. laws forbidding the use of assassination and infiltration of suspect terrorist groups abroad may be amended or repealed in the wake of the attacks.
"There was clearly an intelligence failure of massive, international proportions here," said George Friedman, chairman of the Texas-based forecasting service Stratfor. "It really raises question of whether our intelligence capabilities are up to par."
As expressions of sympathy and outrage poured in from leaders around the globe, several pointed to the attacks as proof of the need to coordinate the response to terrorism. Many of the calls came from states who fear the resurgence of militant Islamic fundamentalist movements on their own borders.
Said Russian President Vladimir Putin: "What happened today underlines the relevance of the offer of Russia to unite the powers of the international community in the fight against terrorism, the plague of the 21st century."
Scrambling for clues yesterday, U.S. officials said in private briefings they suspected the attacks were the handiwork of bin Laden, whom intelligence officials accuse of running an anti-American terrorist network from his sanctuary in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is run by the Taliban, a strict Muslim fundamentalist movement.
"We need to call our allies on the carpet, especially those like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that recognize the Taliban," said Jim Prince of Control Risks Group, a former Middle East specialist for the House International Relations Committee and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, suggested yesterday that the United States must strike hard at the Taliban if bin Laden and his supporters are linked to the attack.
"Bin Laden sits in Afghanistan," said Mr. Barak. "We know where the terror sites are. It's time for action."
Taliban spokesman Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel denied in a brief press conference in Kabul yesterday that his government had any knowledge of yesterday's events. He condemned the attacks but said his own government had been the target of terrorist activity as well.
Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, issued his own statement condemning the "brutal and horrible" attacks in New York and Washington.
"The world must unite to fight against terrorism in all its forms and root out this modern-day evil," Gen. Musharraf said.
Ariel Cohen, a defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation, noted that U.S. relations with both Saudi Arabia and Yemen have been strained over friction in the investigation of past terrorist attacks on U.S. targets.
"We may be in for a period of protracted turbulence in the Middle East because of these attacks," said Mr. Cohen, although he and others cautioned that the identities of the terrorists still had not been determined.
Stratfor's Mr. Friedman said Israel, which is dealing with its own wave of suicide bombers in the latest violent stand-off with the Palestinians, could emerge as a "big winner" from yesterday's events.
"I can see this changing the whole dynamic of the American approach to that conflict," he said.
"If [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat had been counting on U.S. pressure on Tel Aviv on the terms of a cease-fire, he can pretty much forget it now. The whole game has changed," he said.
Several analysts and lawmakers said Mr. Bush was under pressure to respond more effectively than President Clinton did after previous bin Laden attacks, which they said had barely dented the Saudi terrorist's network.
"This cannot be a Clintonesque response, a slap on the wrist," said the Hoover Institution's Mr. Henriksen.
Rep. Bob Barr, Georgia Republican, has authored legislation to lift the ban on assassinations of foreign leaders deemed a threat to the United States. "We have to be smart about our retaliation," said Mr. Barr. "It needs to be swift and decisive."
Virtually every observer agreed that the attacks have pushed intelligence and security to the top of the American foreign policy agenda.
"This is the kind of shock that can be a turning point," said Edward S. Walker Jr., president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute and former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs.
"The fact that we are so vulnerable to such an extraordinarily well-conceived attack is going to bring a sense of urgency and cooperation to the terrorism issue that wasn't there before," he said.
This article is based in part on wire service reports.
--------
THE WAR AGAINST AMERICA
New York Times
September 12, 2001
The National Defense
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/opinion/12WED2.html?searchpv=nytToday
As the nation assays the horrific human and physical losses of yesterday's brutally efficient terrorist attacks, it must also begin the urgent work of determining how an open and democratic society can better defend itself against a threat that conventional armies and weapons cannot defeat.
Terrorism is not new, but the scale and audacity of the attacks in New York and Washington make it obvious that familiar defensive strategies are inadequate and that the fight against terror must move from the periphery to the center of American national security planning and operations. An unconventional and frightening assault on the American homeland has commenced. The American people and their leaders must mobilize the resources to meet it.
This cannot be just another moment when the president declares that the United States is unbreakable, when American military forces strike back ineffectually and when airport security is tightened for a month or two. It must be the occasion for a fundamental reassessment of intelligence and defense activities. There must be an exacting examination of how the country can face this threat without sacrificing its liberties.
The best defense against terrorism is good, timely intelligence. The Central Intelligence Agency and other organizations have enjoyed some quiet victories, but much more must be done to try to infiltrate terrorist groups and to track their activities and communications. No one suggests this is easy or inexpensive work, but for the nearly $30 billion that Washington spends on spying, the nation should know more about terror networks and their plots. If more money can be usefully invested in these efforts, it can be provided by Congress.
When retaliation is warranted, as it will be in this case once the organizers have been identified, Washington needs light but lethal weapons to attack terrorist compounds in remote locations. Cruise missiles can be effective, but even more accurate weapons may be needed that can be used in coordination with enhanced intelligence information.
When Washington has prepared to act in the past it has often been stymied by faint-hearted allies. Some of America's closest friends have found it more useful to do business with countries that have either supported terrorists on their soil, been indifferent to them or been too afraid to go after them. America must let its economic partners and allies know that they can no longer stay on the sidelines of this global conflict.
While the United States must retain its conventional and nuclear war-fighting machinery, the government needs to consider a reallocation of resources to homeland defenses against unorthodox threats. That was the largely ignored recommendation of a national commission headed by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman that early this year noted that the relative invulnerability of the nation to catastrophic attack could soon end because of terrorist threats.
When all that suicidal terrorists need to crumble the twin towers of the World Trade center are airplane tickets from Boston to Los Angeles, it seems reasonable to wonder again why a missile shield should be Washington's highest priority.
Tightened airport security seems such a painfully obvious way to enhance homeland security after yesterday's strikes, all of which used hijacked commercial airliners as deadly weapons. A nation with the resources and technological skills of the United States can develop detection systems that are far more sophisticated than those normally in use today. Indeed, there are already machines that can detect plastic explosives and other non-metallic devices, but they have been installed in only a few airports because they are expensive and deemed an inconvenience.
Americans must rethink how to safeguard the country without bartering away the rights and privileges of the free society that we are defending. The temptation will be great in the days ahead to write draconian new laws that give law enforcement agencies - or even military forces - a right to undermine the civil liberties that shape the character of the United States. President Bush and Congress must carefully balance the need for heightened security with the need to protect the constitutional rights of Americans. That includes Americans of Islamic descent, who could now easily became the target for another period of American xenophobia and ethnic discrimination.
Terrorism is a global threat. Part of the challenge for the United States is to recognize that the roots of terrorism lie in economic and political problems in large parts of the world. The end of the cold war has brought a resurgence of ethnic hatreds that were often stilled by the superpower conflicts between East and West.
The United States must therefore be adroit as well as strong. It will not be easy to address religious fanaticism or the anger among those left behind by globalization. The distaste of Western civilization and cultural values that fuels terrorism is difficult to overcome.
Americans have long known that these resentments existed. The nation must now recognize and address the fact that hatred has turned into a malignant threat that can destabilize the underpinnings of the world economy and civil society. The World Trade Center was not just a symbol of American prosperity. It was an economic nerve center.
As horrible as it is to imagine, the United States must also consider a future in which the assaults carried out yesterday may be overshadowed by even more lethal nuclear, biological or chemical attacks by terrorists. We have long known that these dangers could be part of our future. It is now clear they may be nearer than most people thought. A concerted national effort to remake the nation's defenses must begin immediately.
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Bush's Military Options Are Limited
September 12, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Bushs-Options.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Though public support for revenge is high, President Bush's military options are constrained by the difficulty of targeting nomadic terrorists and hardships imposed by the terrain.
Still, few doubt Bush will order retaliation.
``After the bloodiest day in American history since the Civil War, those American deaths can't go unanswered,'' said Dan Benjamin, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ``America won't stand for it.''
With the death of thousands of Americans at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and on four hijacked airliners, Bush has an outraged nation behind him. And Tuesday's airborne attacks drew near-universal international condemnation.
Bush characterized the attacks as ``acts of war,'' setting the stage for a response in kind.
But against whom and where?
Bush has suggested that the United States would not only go after the perpetrators of Tuesday's violence but against countries that harbor them.
Preliminary evidence pointed to fugitive Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, implicated in the 1998 terrorist bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa and sheltered in Afghanistan. U.S. investigators also are looking into the possibility that other terrorist groups or cells could be involved as well.
White House aides said privately that Bush wanted to act swiftly.
Although the United States could go it alone on retaliatory strikes, presumably against targets in Afghanistan, U.S. officials suggested the action would be more effective if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was involved.
Setting the stage for such possible joint action, 19 NATO ambassadors meeting Wednesday in Brussels, Belgium, agreed that the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington could be deemed an attack on the whole alliance, if investigators determine they were directed from abroad.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared to be preparing U.S. forces for possible combat. He told the troops in a videotaped message: ``The task of vanquishing these terrible enemies ... falls to you.''
Robert Gates, director of the CIA during the first Bush administration, said it was important for the current president to carefully frame his objectives and to limit potential civilian casualties.
``Nobody should underestimate the difficulty of going after and finding a specific individual like bin Laden,'' Gates said. ``It's a highly complicated intelligence challenge.''
He recalled the difficulty in locating former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega when the United States invaded Panama in December 1989. And in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ``was not going to wait for us on his verandah,'' Gates said.
Former President Clinton tried to target bin Laden after the 1998 embassy explosions, ordering strikes against his camps in Afghanistan as well as a suspected chemical-weapons plant in Sudan.
But bin Laden escaped harm. And controversy remains over the true character of the plant in Sudan.
Sandy Berger, who was Clinton's national security adviser, said Bush is confronted with a series of hard options.
``Cruise missiles are not rifles, and Afghanistan is a thousand miles from the nearest body of international water'' from which to launch missiles, Berger said. Still, he added, ``What happened yesterday is a qualitative escalation that requires us to consider a different risk calculation than we have in the past.''
Polls taken after Tuesday's terror attacks show high public support for retaliation. Nine in 10 in an ABC-Washington Post poll said they had at least some confidence that the United States would find and punish those responsible. Two-thirds of those surveyed by CBS News said the United States should retaliate even if innocent people are killed.
``There isn't any simple military response,'' said Lee Hamilton, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
Hamilton, former chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said Bush may have to give serious consideration to the use of ground forces to get the job done. ``The common habit of preferring to fight wars without casualties is going to be called into question here.''
Any mention of ground troops in Afghanistan has to recall the Soviet Union's failed and costly military campaign there in the 1980s.
Dan Goure, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank based in Arlington, Va., said Bush should ask Congress for a declaration of war -- even if he doesn't name a specific enemy -- to focus national attention on rooting out terrorism.
``We could say `conspirators to be named at a later date.' We've been attacked at home, so you want to treat this as a war,'' Goure said.
-------- OTHER
-------- imf / world bank
Ramsey Wants IMF, World Bank to Cancel Meetings
By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 12, 2001; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15247-2001Sep12?language=printer
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said last night that he would recommend to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that they cancel their upcoming annual meetings in downtown Washington in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
Ramsey made his comments at an evening news conference, and representatives of the two international financial institutions said a definitive decision about whether to hold the meetings remains a few days away, following consultations with local police and federal officials.
"I don't think today is the day to focus on the annual meetings," Caroline Anstey, a World Bank spokeswoman, said last night in response to Ramsey's comments. "We'll be taking into consideration views of the police. . . . Obviously, there are implications for the annual meetings, and we'll be looking at that over the next couple of days."
IMF spokesman William Murray said, "I can't respond immediately to something the chief said . . . but this is something that we'll be certainly looking into in the days ahead."
The IMF and the World Bank have taken the advice of local and federal authorities seriously in recent weeks, having drastically consolidated their meeting schedule to two days -- Sept. 29 and 30 -- in response to security concerns for planned demonstrations.
The cancellation of the meetings would halt a massive mobilization effort that has been underway across the country, and the equally massive security precautions being planned in response. Police estimate that as many as 100,000 protesters could turn up.
Ramsey said he doesn't believe the city will be ready to deal with the massive protests planned for the meetings. "We are recommending that the meeting between the IMF and the World Bank be canceled," Ramsey said, adding that he had not spoken to the institutions' leaders.
Earlier yesterday, officials with the World Bank and the IMF said it was too early to assess the impact of the terrorist attacks on the meetings. Anstey said, "Today, we are only thinking about the tragedy and what we can do to help, but in a day or two, we will certainly turn our attention to what this means for the annual meetings."
D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said he does not know what effect the attacks will have on the meetings.
"That is something we are looking at right now," Williams said. "We are an open society. That obviously exposes us to jeopardy and risk."
Protest organizers who had been working round-the-clock in recent weeks joined thousands of people across the country who put their plans on hold in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks yesterday.
A D.C. news conference by the AFL-CIO and other activist groups was canceled "out of respect for the working people and their families affected by the World Trade Center tragedy," a statement from the groups read.
"I think that everyone is extremely saddened," said Lisa Fithian, a Los Angeles activist working full time in the District on organizing against the IMF and World Bank. "It's a tragedy."
--------
WTO Postpones China Decision
September 12, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-WTO-China.html
GENEVA (AP) -- Negotiators still shocked by images of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington decided Wednesday to postpone a decision on admitting China to the World Trade Organization.
``Such a big thing happened. This kind of thing compared with that kind of thing -- we have to reschedule,'' said Chinese chief negotiator Long Yongtu.
WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said that there would be further informal meetings Thursday to resolve final differences over China's admittance, an informal group meeting on Friday and then the formal session on Monday.
The decision means that a meeting planned for Friday to admit Taiwan will also be put off until next week. It was agreed in 1992 that Taiwan could not become a member ahead of China.
The U.S. Mission to international organizations in Geneva remained open Wednesday with a skeleton staff. ``We aren't going to be very active today because of the circumstances,'' somber U.S. officials said.
Diplomats originally had a self-imposed deadline of Thursday for completing works on the terms of China's membership, but the attacks made it difficult for U.S. negotiators to get guidance from Washington.
Earlier Wednesday, the WTO announced that it was postponing meetings planned for later in the day and Friday to study U.S. policies on international trade. The meetings were unrelated to the China talks but had been scheduled for almost a year.
Clearance by WTO members would open the way for formal approval of China at a November meeting of WTO trade ministers in Doha, Qatar. China could then become a full member early next year.
If China's membership goes through next week, the WTO also hopes to clear Taiwan for membership.
China's approval depends partly on settlement of a disagreement between the United States and the European Union.
American International Group, which has operated in China since 1994, wants assurances that it can continue to expand its operation there without having to find Chinese partners, unlike new companies joining the life insurance market which under the membership agreement must be 50 percent Chinese-owned.
European insurance companies, which operate as joint ventures with Chinese partners, insist that AIG must play by the same rules as they do. The European Union says it already has a guarantee from Beijing that all companies, including AIG, will have to respect the 50 percent rule in all future ventures.
-------- terrorism
Osama bin Laden--The CIA's Frankenstein Monster
Bush's Press Conference: Into the Abyss
by Rick Rozoff
12 September 2001
Mr. Rozoff is an editor of Emperor's Clothes
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/rozoff/abyss.htm
As many of you have, I just watched US President Bush's White House press conference on yesterday's gruesome events in New York City and Washington, D.C. Bush and the United States federal government have officially declared war...only it is not evident against whom.
Subsequent reports indicate that Bush will appear before the U.S. Congress to invoke the War Powers Act, passed by the House in the 1970s to limit a president's ability to wage war unilaterally and arbitrarily, but destroyed as an effective mechanism for doing so in April of 1999 when the Clinton Administration, for the first time in US history, was denied authorization to continue a war - against Yugoslavia - in a 213-213 vote in the Congress. Within an hour of that vote a Clinton National Security Council spokesman was on national television shrieking that not only would the bombing not stop, but that it would be intensified.
By the US Congress accepting that crude diktat and nevertheless appropriating funding for the continuation of the illegal war, it definitively signalled the end of the US Constitutional role of America's formal representatives to oversee and rein in the chief executive - half a president, half a monarch - in future acts of illegal miitary actions and aggression abroad.
It appears that each successive American administration pushes yet further the boundaries of armed adventurism and catastrophe.
As all the news commentators assure us, Bush will receive near-unanimous carte blanche authorization to wage war whenever, wherever and against whomever he finds it expedient to do so.
The US Congress, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, avowed war hawks and alleged Progressive Caucus members, will grant him whatever he requests: The funds and support to attack any country or countries, even those not even remotely implicated in yesterday's attacks, and the use of whatever weaponry, conventional and otherwise, he should choose to employ.
What in fact Mr. Bush will soon be armed with - by that assemblage of professional politicians on the Hill who yesterday evening broke into a spontaneous chorus of God Bless America, right out of the closing scene of the revanchist Hollywood film, The Deer Hunter - is an unlimited, permanent blank check to wage la guerre eternal - war without end.
The White House, with none of the fictitious foreign policy fissures we've heard so much about, and its diehard loyalists on both sides of the Congressional aisle, have been evoking the specter of Osama bin Laden to rally hateful and revengeful public sentiment and to personify the oft-repeated *evil* that threatens the United States and, to quote the president, "all democratic and freedom-loving people" - no other of whom, it should be noted, seems to be on the alleged hit list of Mr. bin Laden.
Furthermore, and ominously, Bush threatens not only to attack - recall this is in his words a state of war - the actual perpetrators of yesterday's attacks (whomever they may be), but "their harbors." No those who allegedly harbor them, but their harbors.
To be consistent, which is to say honest, Bush, as his legion of intelligence operatives could readily tell him, would have to identify who has and still is supporting the villain of this dangerous melodrama, Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden worked hand in glove with the US Central Intelligence Agency since the early 1980s in establishing his Maktab al-Khidamar network, which raised money and recruited jehadis - the so-called Afghan Arabs, estimated to be some 10,000 strong - to overthrow the secular Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
He was a joint asset of the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence, which the Afghan Northern Opposition, Russia and India insist still supports and controls him and his current Al-Qaida operation. The latter is supported by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates...all three loyal US and British clients regimes and recipients of Anglo-American military protection and largesse. So if Bush is looking for harbors to bomb, he knows where they are located.
He also knows where they are not.
And where and who they are not are the likely targets: Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran.
All four are not only not linked to bin Laden in any conceivable manner, but instead are vocal opponents of him and his activities; are in fact potential victims of the same.
An audio voice-over somehow got on an American television network yesterday that said: Bin Laden, who has assisted forces in Somalia, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo....
The link has never been broken, of course, and the CIA's Frankenstein monster still serves its purposes. Further Reading:
1) While Washington points to Osama bin Laden as "suspect # 1" in yesterday's horrific violence, the truth is not being told to the American people: 'Washington Created Osama bin Laden' by Jared Israel can be read at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/sudan.html#w
2) If one looks carefully, one can find in the Western media evidence that bin Laden has been involved - on the U.S.-backed side - in Kosovo, Bosnia and now Macedonia.
3) Bin Laden was propelled into power as part of the U.S. drive to create an Islamist terrorist movement to crush the former Soviet Union. See, the truly amazing account from the 'Washington Post,' 'Washington's Backing of Afghan Terrorists: Deliberate Policy.' at http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/anatomy.htm
---
[Note that the date on this story is August 1998, by MSNBC's International Editor]
Bin Laden comes home to roost
His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story
By Michael Moran
MSNBC
Aug. 24, 1998
http://msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1
NEW YORK, - At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.
BEFORE YOU CLICK on my face and call me naive, let me concede some points. Yes, the West needed Josef Stalin to defeat Hitler. Yes, there were times during the Cold War when supporting one villain (Cambodia's Lon Nol, for instance) would have been better than the alternative (Pol Pot). So yes, there are times when any nation must hold its nose and shake hands with the devil for the long-term good of the planet.
But just as surely, there are times when the United States, faced with such moral dilemmas, should have resisted the temptation to act. Arming a multi-national coalition of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan during the 1980s - well after the destruction of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 - was one of those times.
BIN LADEN'S BEGINNINGS
As anyone who has bothered to read this far certainly knows by now, bin Laden is the heir to Saudi construction fortune who, at least since the early 1990s, has used that money to finance countless attacks on U.S. interests and those of its Arab allies around the world.
Osama bin Laden's network
As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow's invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation.
By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan's mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for Afghanistan's freedom - like the Taliban regime that now holds sway over most of that tortured nation - were Afghan nationals.
Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to "read" than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the "reliable" partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.
WHAT'S 'INTELLIGENT' ABOUT THIS?
Though he has come to represent all that went wrong with the CIA's reckless strategy there, by the end of the Afghan war in 1989, bin Laden was still viewed by the agency as something of a dilettante - a rich Saudi boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.
America strikes back
In fact, while he returned to his family's construction business, bin Laden had split from the relatively conventional MAK in 1988 and established a new group, al-Qaida, that included many of the more extreme MAK members he had met in Afghanistan.
Most of these Afghan vets, or Afghanis, as the Arabs who fought there became known, turned up later behind violent Islamic movements around the world. Among them: the GIA in Algeria, thought responsible for the massacres of tens of thousands of civilians; Egypt's Gamat Ismalia, which has massacred western tourists repeatedly in recent years; Saudi Arabia Shiite militants, responsible for the Khobar Towers and Riyadh bombings of 1996.
Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. "It was worth it," he said.
"Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union," he said.
HINDSIGHT OR TUNNEL VISION
It should be pointed out that the evidence of bin Laden's connection to these activities is mostly classified, though its hard to imagine the CIA rushing to take credit for a Frankenstein's monster like this.
It is also worth acknowledging that it is easier now to oppose the CIA's Afghan adventures than it was when Hatch and company made them in the mid-1980s. After all, in 1998 we now know that far larger elements than Afghanistan were corroding the communist party's grip on power in Moscow.
Even Hatch can't be blamed completely. The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its "mission," had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director William Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities in its annual "Soviet Military Power" report right up to 1990.
Given that context, a decision was made to provide America's potential enemies with the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.
That decision is coming home to roost.
[Michael Moran is MSNBC's International Editor]
----
Attacks Show That Political Courage Is the Only Real Defense
A good story on restraint
From: Jim Schulman jschulman@igc.org
Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
William Pfaff --
International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
PARIS The first thing that must be said about the attacks in New York and Washington on Tuesday is that they have demonstrated the vulnerability of the United States, as of any modern society, to an intelligently prepared and determined attack.
Military officials and the uniformed and civilian analytic agencies attached to the U.S. defense establishment have for decades formulated speculative scenarios of attack on the nation, but their work has all but invariably been dominated by the high-technology mind-set of the Pentagon and by the engineering ethos of American society.
The planning has always suffered from the planners' assumption that their opponent would attack them in a manner symmetrical to the defenses they already had or that they planned to have.
Thus they concentrated speculation and planning on the danger of attack with mass-destruction weapons, probably using more or less high-technology methods. The discussion has almost entirely concerned missile attacks, rogue nuclear weapons and chemical and biological agents. Rogue commercial aircraft were not interesting to defense planners.
The real lesson, which was not learned, was provided nearly 60 years ago, shortly before the end of World War II, when an American medium bomber, lost in the fog, crashed into the Empire State Building in New York City - then the country's highest building.
The lesson was that exotic methods and high technology are not necessary to produce devastating results. On Tuesday the lesson was validated. You merely need to crash three old-fashioned airplanes into vulnerable targets to produce mass panic in the United States, shutdown of most of the government and evacuation of the centers of Washington, New York and other major cities.
The second lesson was that the psychological and political consequences of such an event are not primarily measured by the scale of the casualties but by the unexpectedness and drama of the attack. So long as the attack remains anonymous, the fear and panic increase.
The effect sought is demonstration of the vulnerability of those who are targeted - and the continuing vulnerability of those who might be targeted the next time. It is to demonstrate that high-technology defenses, of the kind in which the United States takes pride, can easily be circumvented, using simple methods. It is to demonstrate that there is no real defense against an anonymous attack that makes use of the ordinary functioning of civilian society.
Such an attack is possible so long as civil airplanes fly, trains run, power systems and utilities function, people go to work and business and markets continue. Each can be subverted, or intervened in, or exploited in ways that damage their users and the larger society.
Even a totalitarian security state cannot deal with this - even if it were to suppress basic civil liberties. It is extremely important to understand this, since there will be two natural reactions to what has happened, both of them essentially futile.
First there will be continuing calls for revenge against whomever is responsible, presuming that the author is eventually identified.
The practical uselessness of revenge has repeatedly been demonstrated, and continues to be demonstrated in the Middle East, since those who employ terrorism are not functioning on a pragmatic scale of reward and punishment. As the Israelis find, making martyrs of your enemies invites further martyrdoms.
The second reaction will be that the United States needs even more elaborate defenses than now exist. Yet the Pentagon, CIA, NSA and the rest of the American apparatus of national security proved incapable of preventing the attacks Tuesday. They are incapable of preventing their repetition in some other version.
There are no technological defenses, as such, against this sort of thing. Surely, if nothing else comes out of the attacks Tuesday, they ought to have demonstrated to Americans the irrelevance of national missile defense.
There are ordinary security measures that can be taken or improved, but the nature of attacks mounted from within the regular functions of society, means that no comprehensive or conclusive defense exists. The entire history of terrorism in both 19th and 20th centuries has demonstrated that.
The final and most profound lesson of these events is one that it will be hardest for government to accept - this government in particular. It is that the only real defense against external attack is serious, continuing and courageous effort to find political solutions for national and ideological conflicts that involve the United States.
The immediate conclusion nearly everyone has drawn about the origin of these attacks is that they come out of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It is reasonable to think that this is so, although there is as yet no proof.
For more than 30 years the United States has refused to make a genuinely impartial effort to find a resolution to that conflict. It has involved itself in the Middle East in a thousand ways, but has never accepted a responsibility for dealing impartially with the two sides - locked in their shared agony and their mutual tragedy.
If current speculation about these bombings proves to be true, the United States has now been awarded its share in that Middle Eastern tragedy.
----
Terrorists strike U.S.
September 12, 2001
By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200191241636.htm
Suicidal terrorists piloting airplanes hijacked from Dulles and Boston airports toppled the 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center and demolished part of the Pentagon yesterday in the worst terrorist attack on American soil.
Police sources estimated that thousands may have been killed in the attacks, in addition to the 266 aboard the four hijacked jets and 343 New York fire and police personnel missing and presumed dead.
President Bush told the nation in a televised address that "thousands" lost loved ones in yesterday's attacks, and late last night New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he "could not dispute" the president's estimate of the losses. The mayor said that the city's fire chief and deputy fire chief were among those killed.
Mr. Giuliani also said last night that people remained trapped alive under the rubble of the collapsed buildings of the World Trade Center.
Survivors were found among the ruins of the twin World Trade Center towers and officials were rushing to their aid, New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said last night.
Mr Giuliani said late yesterday that two police officers were rescued from the rubble.
The calamitous sneak attacks in airplanes loaded with people and fuel left the nation reeling from a new day of infamy that spurred demands for speedy retaliation.
American forces were placed on wartime footing at the "highest state of alert" but the guns of the mightiest nation on Earth remained silent despite murderous assaults on the most visible symbols of American military and economic power.
The American public remained shocked and numbed after morning's well-coordinated attacks, in which four airliners were hijacked by terrorists. Two airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center, while another one hit the Pentagon -- the heart of the U.S. military establishment. The fourth plane crashed in western Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.
All U.S. commercial flights were grounded at least through noon today.
Military F-16 jet fighters were ordered to the skies to defend Washington and New York, and scrambled elsewhere as a precaution. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that will continue for an unspecified time.
Meanwhile, White House and Pentagon officials denied any connection with explosions on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, at about 6 p.m. Washington time, and suggested they were launched by opportunistic local resistance forces.
Federal workers in Washington and New York were sent home early as a precaution but U.S. government offices will reopen today. Stock exchanges are to remain closed one more day.
Mr. Bush vowed vengeance on the unseen enemy whose attacks were reminiscent of Pearl Harbor, and then presided over a National Security Council meeting from a secure bunker at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, an Air Combat Command headquarters.
"Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts," said the president, who promised that "appropriate security precautions" to protect Americans were being taken.
"We will do what it takes. No one is going to diminish the spirit of this country," Mr. Bush said as he arrived back in Washington last night after a flight with three fighter escorts.
Mr. Bush in last night's televised address asked the nation to find comfort in Scripture as he mourned the deaths of thousands of Americans in yesterday's atrocities and vowed to avenge their killings. "Today, our nation saw evil," he said.
In his first prime-time Oval Office address, Mr. Bush said the United States would retaliate against "those behind these evil acts," and any country that harbors them.
From American Airlines Flight 77, which was hijacked after takeoff from Washington Dulles International Airport and crashed into the Pentagon with the loss of all aboard, Washington lawyer Barbara Olson twice used her cell phone to call her husband, U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson.
She told him hijackers were carrying what looked like box-cutter knives. She said the 58 passengers and the flight crew, including the pilot, had been herded to the rear of the plane.
"What do I tell the pilot to do?" she asked her husband, according to CNN's Tim O'Brien. Mrs. Olson had waited a day to take that particular flight so she could have breakfast with her husband on his birthday yesterday.
She offered no hint of the hijackers' nationality or motives.
Even before Mrs. Olson's report that hijackers were flying the plane, aviation analysts said it would be unthinkable that any airline crew would fly an airliner into an occupied building.
"I can't imagine any American pilot crashing a plane into one of these buildings, even with a gun at his head," said James Kallstrom, an FBI investigator.
"I think it's clearly an act of war," said Mr. Kallstrom, who noted that the nation doesn't yet know whom it is at war with. "It's everything that Pearl Harbor was and more."
Air-traffic-control workers apparently never noticed that all four flights deviated from flight plans and were moving through and across high-risk flight paths without proper clearances.
"It was like a Cruise missile with wings. It went right into the Pentagon," said Mike Walter, who saw American Airlines Flight 77 plunge into the Pentagon while on his way to work at USA Today's television operation. "It was just sheer terror."
"It seemed to be almost coming in slow motion," said Marine Cmdr. Mike Dobbs as he watched the crash from an upper level window. "I didn't actually feel it hit, but I saw it and then we all started running."
Senators leaving an intelligence briefing last night said they were told that the pilot of another Boeing 757, United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco, may have crashed that plane in rural Pennsylvania when hijackers took it over and attempted to turn it around toward Washington to destroy the White House or Congress. All 45 persons aboard were killed.
Among the likely thousands of New York's still-uncounted dead were an estimated 78 police officers and 265 firefighters who swarmed to help only to be caught under tumbling debris and falling bodies when the towering infernos collapsed one after the other.
After so many rescuers were killed, many fire and police units pulled back several blocks and watched the thick black smoke pour from the wreckage all day long, its ash falling like snow and carried by winds that howled through the canyons of downtown New York's financial district.
One National Guardsman involved in the rescue effort reported finding "body parts by the thousands" amid the wreckage.
"I have a sense it's a horrendous number of lives lost," Mr. Giuliani said in a broadcast from his emergency bunker. A New York police source estimated the death toll could run in the thousands and the mayor said rescue efforts will take a week or more.
"It's still possible for us to save a lot of the people who were there," Mr. Giuliani said of the collapsed World Trade Center buildings that houses 50,000 people on most days.
Yesterday the entire 15-game professional baseball schedule was canceled, as was the primary election for New York's mayor's race -- a joint action supported by Mr. Giuliani and Gov. George Pataki. Disneyland and Walt Disney World both closed as did many other entertainment centers and virtually all public gathering sites.
The 700 pounds of beef tenderloin and 400 pounds of catfish shipped from Abilene, Texas, for the annual congressional picnic to be held last night was used instead to feed relief workers. The picnic was canceled.
Federal officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said there are "good indications" that people linked to the Osama bin Laden organization are responsible for the sweeping attack, and they reportedly warned in dark humor against Americans vacationing in Afghanistan anytime soon. Afghanistan has been harboring bin Laden's terrorist network. Within hours, bombs were falling in Kabul and an apparent fuel dump was seen ablaze. The U.S. State Department denied any involvement in the attacks.
Taliban officials with an eye on their Afghanistan government being targeted by military retaliation insisted that neither they nor bin Laden, whom they call "a guest," played any role in the attacks yesterday on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Those attacks were pointedly condemned by Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan.
"We want to tell the American children that Afghanistan feels their pain. We hope the courts find justice," the ambassador said.
There seemed to be no immediate effort to explain how such a complex plan, involving the hijacking of four long-range airliners on similar schedules with extra fuel, could be carried out with no whisper of it reaching U.S. intelligence agents.
"If there had been advance warning there would have been steps taken to interdict it," said Sen. Bob Graham, Florida Democrat, prior to a CIA briefing for the Select Committee on Intelligence of which he is chairman. He said there was "a general warning" of a terrorist attack somewhere but nothing specific, a view shared by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
"We have had warnings, but there are all the time warnings," Mr. Peres told CNN.
However, Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening said yesterday the head of his state police force received a list of 11 sites that had threats with what a federal official called "some degree of credibility."
In addition to the Baltimore World Trade Center and State House in Annapolis, Mr. Glendening said, the list included the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He neither released the list nor specified its other targets.
"This is an act of war. As far as I'm concerned, war has been declared against the United States and we should act accordingly. There must have been thousands of people killed here, probably more than at Pearl Harbor by far," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, who urged a retaliatory attack on bin Laden forces.
"We all know Osama bin Laden is doing everything he can to antagonize American forces. We should respond forcefully," Mr. Hatch said.
Many commentators likened the assault to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the "Day of Infamy" when 353 Japanese planes caught American forces asleep at dawn, killing 2,390 persons, and disabling the Pacific fleet in an invasion that triggered U.S. entry into World War II.
Mr. Bush was first to use the word "terrorist," even before American Airlines Flight 77 bound from Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles was hijacked and driven into the Pentagon.
"Terrorism against this nation will not stand," the president said, invoking the memorable line-in-the-sand phrase that his father invoked when Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait.
The radical Islamic Jihad movement denied responsibility for the terrorism but called the attacks "a consequence of United States policy in the Middle East." Hamas also denied any involvement.
The airliner that hit the first of the World Trade Center towers at about 8:45 a.m. was the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, carrying 92 persons.
At 9:03 a.m. United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boston to Los Angeles flight, crashed into the second tower with 65 persons aboard, sparking a colossal fireball that exploded on all four sides of the building. The second crash was televised live by CNN.
The Pentagon, with 24,000 employees, was slashed open at 9:45 a.m. by American Airlines Flight 77, which was hijacked on a flight from Dulles Airport to Los Angeles with 64 persons aboard, all of whom were feared dead.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
----
At least 100 killed in assault on Pentagon
September 12, 2001
By Daniel F. Drummond and Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200191242218.htm
Late last night Arlington, Va. Fire Chief Edward T. Plaugher estimated that at least 100 persons died when a hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon yesterday morning, and officials feared the toll could go much higher.
"We know there are casualties," Pentagon spokesman Adm. Craig Quigley said of the apparent terrorist attack.
American Airlines Flight 77 was bound from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles with 58 passengers on board, as well as four flight attendants and two pilots, when it crashed into the southwest side of the Pentagon about 9:30 a.m.
Paramedics at the scene said about 200 people were in the vicinity of the plane's impact.
Adm. Quigley said the crash was an act of terrorism but he did not have information about who was behind it.
The design of the Pentagon is such that five rings or corridors make up the building. The rings are labeled from E to A, with the innermost being A and the outermost being E. Department of Defense Protective Services Chief John Jester said the plane smashed into the outside of the building, the E ring, and "cut into the E, D, and C rings."
About a half-hour after the attack, F-16 planes scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base and circled the Pentagon. Crowds outside cheered at the sight of the fighter jets.
Chief Jester said, as of late afternoon, Arlington County search and rescue crews had not begun to look for survivors or remains of the dead because the fire sparked by the impact of the plane was still burning.
A two-block stretch at the south end of the building continued to smolder after 5 p.m., more than six hours after the attack.
"Fires are still burning intensely inside the Pentagon," Adm. Quigley said.
The damage done by the plane effectively split in half one side of the Pentagon, constructed at the height of the Cold War.
The gash looked like an alleyway ripped into the side of the building, witnesses said.
The five-story wall of the Pentagon that was hit by the plane crumbled, falling in like a deck of cards collapsing, eyewitnesses said.
Thousands of Pentagon Naval Annex and other government employees who work in nearby buildings were evacuated, but many stayed and watched smoke billow from the gash as flames licked skyward.
Survivors milled about, unable to grasp the shock of America suffering its worst attack since Pearl Harbor.
"We just felt a boom, we felt a shake," Navy Cmdr. Tom Ransom said.
"We knew something bad had happened because we just saw everything on TV."
Defense Department worker Peggy Mencl was standing in a corridor when "the doors blew out and debris just came flying out. It blew me ten feet." She was not injured, but still had debris in her hair.
Adm. Quigley said military planners inside the Pentagon were working on a response to the attacks on the World Trade Center when the Pentagon was attacked.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was in the building but on the opposite side -- the north side -- when the attack occurred.
"He went down, running" to survey the damage and assist the victims, Adm. Quigley said.
After helping during the initial evacuation of the Pentagon, which military officials said was orderly and calm, Mr. Rumsfeld went to a command center.
Mr. Rumsfeld did not provide any estimates of casualties.
"We are still taking bodies out of this building," he said. "We're making every effort to take care of the casualties."
He spoke from the Pentagon briefing room, which is on the opposite side of the Pentagon from where the crash occurred, though the air in the building was hazy and smelled of smoke. He said the undamaged sections of the Pentagon will reopen today.
Marine Maj. Stephanie Smith helped one victim who was suffering from smoke inhalation and a leg injury.
The injured "were covered with smoke and their uniforms were covered with smoke," Maj. Smith said. People were bloodied and soaked with water from the sprinkler system.
Adm. Quigley said all joint chiefs of staff and their deputies were accounted for and none were injured.
"I'm just upset. There's no revenge, just remorse," Marine Gunnery Sgt. Tony Simms said.
Sgt. Simms and fellow Marines watched the building turn into an inferno from atop a hill where the Marine Corps barracks is located on part of Arlington National Cemetery.
Along Columbia Pike, next to the disaster site, government workers streamed out of the Pentagon and surrounding complexes for more than two hours after the attack. Some walked several miles down a closed highway, next to the graves of Arlington National Cemetery, looking for a way to get home.
Dozens of military helicopters touched down at the site, joining hundreds of firefighters and emergency medical technicians in trying to rescue and aid the victims of this tragedy.
One of the difficulties search-and-rescue workers encountered was that the part of the building where the plane went in was undergoing renovation, Chief Jester said.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said the government is "taking every appropriate means to find out who was responsible." Military sources said they believe extremist Osama bin Laden is probably responsible for all of yesterday's attacks.
Arlington and Fairfax County urban search-and-rescue teams, trained to remove people from building rubble, were dispatched throughout the afternoon, leading the search-and-rescue effort, military officials said.
Because of the magnitude of the attack, all U.S. military forces were put on the highest military state of alert, Force Protection Condition Delta, Adm. Quigley said.
Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III put 300 Virginia Guard troops -- mostly medics, military police and engineers -- on active duty and put the entire Virginia National Guard on heightened alert. The alert included a squadron of Guard F-16 fighter jets based at Richmond International Airport, an administration source said.
• Guy Taylor contributed to this report.
----
Terrorists Hijack 4 Airliners, Destroy World Trade Center, Hit Pentagon; Hundreds Dead
Bush Promises Retribution; Military Put on Highest Alert
By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14035-2001Sep11?language=printer
Terrorists unleashed an astonishing air assault on America's military and financial power centers yesterday morning, hijacking four commercial jets and then crashing them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside.
There were no reliable estimates last night of how many people were killed in the most devastating terrorist operation in American history. The number was certainly in the hundreds and could be in the thousands.
It was the most dramatic attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, and it created indelible scenes of carnage and chaos. The commandeered jets obliterated the World Trade Center's twin 110-story towers from their familiar perch above Manhattan's skyline and ripped a blazing swath through the Defense Department's imposing five-sided fortress, grounding the domestic air traffic system for the first time and plunging the entire nation into an unparalleled state of anxiety.
U.S. military forces at home and abroad were placed on their highest state of alert, and a loose network of Navy warships was deployed along both coasts for air defense.
The terrorists hijacked four California-bound planes from three airports on the Eastern Seaboard; the airliners were loaded with the maximum amount of fuel, suggesting a well-financed, well-coordinated plot. First, two planes slammed into the World Trade Center. Then an American Airlines plane out of Dulles International Airport ripped through the newly renovated walls of the Pentagon, perhaps the world's most secure office building. A fourth jet crashed 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, shortly after it was hijacked and turned in the direction of Washington.
None of the 266 people aboard the four planes survived. There were even more horrific but still untallied casualties in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which together provided office space for more than 70,000 people. At just one of the firms with offices in the World Trade Center, the Marsh & McLennan insurance brokerage, 1,200 of its 1,700 employees were unaccounted for last night.
The spectacular collapse of the Trade Center's historic twin towers and another less recognizable skyscraper during the rescue operations caused even more bloodshed. At least 300 New York firefighters and 85 police officers are presumed dead. The preliminary list of victims included the conservative commentator Barbara K. Olson, "Frasier" executive producer David Angell and two hockey scouts from the Los Angeles Kings.
No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but federal officials said they suspect the involvement of Islamic extremists with links to fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden, who has been implicated in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and several other attacks. Law enforcement sources said there is already evidence implicating bin Laden's militant network in the attack, and politicians from both parties predicted a major and immediate escalation in America's worldwide war against terrorism.
In a grim address to the nation last night, President Bush denounced the attacks as a failed attempt to frighten the United States, and promised to hunt down those responsible. "We will make no distinction," he said, "between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."
Bush vowed that America would continue to function "without interruption," and federal offices and Congress are scheduled to be open today. But the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market will remain closed, along with most businesses in lower Manhattan. And yesterday was a day of extraordinary interruptions -- for the president, for federal Washington and for the country.
Bush was in a classroom in Florida yesterday morning when the attacks began and spent the day on the move for security reasons, flying to military bases in Louisiana and then Nebraska before returning to Washington in the evening. At one point at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, the president rode in a camouflaged, armored Humvee, guarded by machine gun-toting soldiers in fatigues.
Vice President Cheney and first lady Laura Bush were whisked away to undisclosed locations in the morning, and congressional leaders were temporarily moved to a secure facility 75 miles west of Washington. The White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, the State Department and the Treasury Department were evacuated, along with federal buildings nationwide and the United Nations in New York.
Private buildings also were shut down, from the Space Needle in Seattle to the Sears Tower in Chicago to Walt Disney World in Orlando. America's borders with Canada and Mexico were sealed. New York's mayoral primary was abruptly postponed. So was Major League Baseball's schedule for the night.
Wireless networks buckled under the barrage of cell phone calls. The besieged Internet search engine Google told Web surfers to try radio or TV instead. Amtrak train and Greyhound bus operations were also halted in the Northeast.
Last night, fires were still burning amid the rubble of the World Trade Center, and pools of highly flammable jet fuel continued to hinder rescue teams searching through waist-deep rubble.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency dispatched eight search-and-rescue teams to New York and four teams to the Pentagon. The Department of Health and Human Services sent medical teams and mortuary teams, and activated a national medical emergency cadre of 7,000 volunteers for the first time.
The Empire State Building went dark as a symbol of national mourning. In Washington, Republicans and Democrats presented a united front in condemning the attacks; members of Congress delivered a spontaneous rendition of "God Bless America" after a news conference on the Capitol steps.
"We are outraged at this cowardly attack on the people of the United States," the leaders of Congress said in a bipartisan statement. "Our heartfelt prayers are with the victims and their families, and we stand strongly united behind the President as our commander-in-chief."
The impact of the attacks reverberated not just in the United States but in every major capital. European and Asian airlines canceled all flights to the United States and recalled or diverted those already in the air. Flights over London, Paris and other capitals were re-routed over less populous areas. London's financial district was largely evacuated; security was bolstered around U.S. schools and embassies in many countries.
Panic buying caused oil and gold prices to soar while stock investors in all major foreign markets dumped shares in the most frenzied wave of selling since the 1987 crash. In the Middle East, China and the Yugoslav republic of Serbia, some people welcomed the attacks, but an array of international leaders pledged support for the victims.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon condemned the attack in blistering terms, and described it as a "turning point" in the global war against terrorism. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemned the attack as well, although some Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories and Lebanon celebrated with glee.
But amid all the sadness and all the outrage, there were questions about lax security and inadequate intelligence, as Americans tried to fathom how such a catastrophe could happen with no apparent warning. On at least two of the airliners, according to federal officials, the hijackers were armed with nothing but knives. How did they get away with it?
In fact, counterterrorism experts have talked in recent years about cyber-attacks and biological attacks. Security officials issued warnings just last month about bin Laden's threats to American installations abroad.
But yesterday's attacks caught a vast security apparatus off guard. The military command center in Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain, responsible for U.S. air defenses, received word just 10 minutes before the first aircraft struck the World Trade Center that a American plane had been hijacked. The notification came too late for fighter jets to take action, a senior Air Force officer said.
The disaster began to unfold at 8:48 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11, carrying 92 people from Boston to Los Angeles, crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, the landmark glass-and-steel complex at the southern tip of Manhattan that provided office space for 50,000 workers. Islamic militants had detonated a bomb there in 1993, killing six people. Yesterday's terrorism turned out to be far worse.
Eighteen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175, carrying 65 people on the same Boston-to-Los Angeles route, tore through the South Tower with an even larger explosion. The collisions shrouded New York's helter-skelter financial district in pallid ash, and created mass pandemonium inside and outside the towers. Workers were screaming, running for stairways, gasping for air. Several of them began leaping to their death from the upper floors.
But the scene soon shifted from America's financial mecca to its military fortress. At about 9:40 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77, carrying 64 people from Dulles to Los Angeles, barreled into the west wing of the Pentagon in yet another fiery collision, destroying at least four of the five rings that encircle the world's largest office building. A Pentagon spokesman called the casualties "extensive," although they were clearly not as extensive as New York's.
The Federal Aviation Administration promptly banned takeoffs nationwide, ordered domestic flights to land at the nearest airport and diverted international flights to Canada. But officials soon confirmed that a fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, carrying 45 people from Newark to San Francisco, had crashed in Shanksville, Pa. It had been hijacked as well -- one passenger called 911 from a cell phone -- and had been heading toward Washington when it went down.
Then it was back to the World Trade Center. Shortly before 10 a.m., the South Tower collapsed with an earthshaking roar. Smoke replaced steel as if the building had suddenly imploded. A half-hour later, the North Tower collapsed. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani publicly urged New Yorkers to stay calm and stay put -- unless they were below Canal Street in lower Manhattan.
"If you're south of Canal Street, get out," he warned. "Just walk north."
America's battle against terrorism, it seemed clear last night, will never be the same. The nation's airports are expected to reopen at noon today, but with beefed-up security measures: no more curbside check-in, and a possible return of armed "air marshals" to prevent future hijackings.
Many members of both parties declared that for all practical purposes, the nation is at war. At a briefing last night in the battered Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned that America's enemies should not rest easy.
For now, those enemies have not been publicly identified. But government officials said they have strong evidence from multiple sources linking the attacks to bin Laden and his terrorist web, known as al Qaeda.
Journalists with access to bin Laden said his followers have been boasting about preparations for major attacks against the United States in retaliation for American support of Israel. Bin Laden has already been linked to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and last year's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. Yesterday, government officials said they intercepted messages from bin Laden associates gloating about hitting their targets.
Before the mayhem, though, U.S. intelligence all pointed to an attack overseas. The State Department had warned travelers in an advisory Friday, and U.S. military and diplomatic posts abroad have been on alert as well.
Terrorism experts have repeatedly warned that U.S. airport security is extremely lax, warnings that have been backed up by a stack of studies. When Department of Transportation investigators tried to breach security at eight airports three years ago, they succeeded 68 percent of the time.
"The security of airports is pathetic," said Harvey W. Kushner, a Long Island University professor and terrorism consultant to several federal agencies. "It's very easy to have someone get on a plane and wreak havoc."
Today, at least, the debates over education, health care, Social Security and the budget surplus that have consumed Washington in recent months have been put on hold; perhaps for the first time since the Gulf War, national security is at the top of the agenda. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) was preparing to call for more military spending at a news conference at the time of the attacks.
"This is a failure of the U.S. intelligence system, caused by a lack of resources and by complacency," he said. "Today, our government failed the American public."
But that was a discordant note yesterday in Washington, where solidarity was the watchword of the day. In his speech last night, Bush emphasized the nation's harmony, noting that "a great people have been moved to defend a great nation." After reading from the 23rd Psalm, he proclaimed that even amid suffering and death, Americans will remain committed to their freedom-loving way of life.
"This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace," he said. "America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time."
------
Hanford once victim of attack
Wed, Sep 12, 2001,
By John Stang,
Tri-City Herald staff writer Hanford News
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0912-3.html
Hanford has been the victim of a sneak air attack -- 56 years ago during World War II.
A Japanese explosive-laden balloon hit a power line between Benton City and Grandview on March 10, 1945 -- briefly cutting electricity to parts of Hanford.
Generators quickly restored any power lost, however. The next day, Hanford received several reports of balloon sightings, but none was found.
From November 1944 through April 1945, Japan launched about 6,000 bomb-carrying balloons from the Japanese island of Honshu.
Each balloon was about 32 feet in diameter and carried either a 33-pound anti-personnel bomb or a 26-pound incendiary bomb designed to start fires.
The balloons were supposed to fly across the Pacific Ocean at 200 to 300 mph in the eastern flowing jet stream at an altitude of 30,000 feet.
Less than 300 balloons made it to the United States and Canada. They ended up as far south as California, as far north as the Arctic Circle in Canada, and as far east as Michigan.
The balloons started a few forest fires in the Northwest. The only casualties were six people killed by one balloon bomb near Medford, Ore.
A minister, his wife and five Sunday school children had gone on a picnic on May 5, 1945. While the minister parked the car, one boy found a Fugo balloon with its bomb attached.
Not knowing what it was, he dragged the balloon to the picnic site, where the bomb exploded, killing all five children and the minister's wife.
----
Another Perspective
From: "Light Worker Center (Lanny and Mary Rose Sinkin)" light@ilhawaii.net Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 13:08:08 -1000
Dear Friends,
... As some of you may know, I served as legal counsel at the Christic Institute during the 1980s. The major case we pursued was a racketeering case against the private, off-the-shelf, covert operators conducting the Iran-contra operation. During that litigation, I got a good look at the dark side of the U.S. democratic experiment. To summarize that perspective, the commitment to democracy unleashed great creative potential for innovation that in turn produced massive wealth. The commitment to democracy then got lost in the pursuit of materialism. The large corporations received recognition in the law as persons, their contributions polluted the democratic process, the government became an extension of their blind advocacy of an unlimited right to devour the Earth's resources, and the military-industrial-intelligence complex became a second government within the government holding more power than the publicly presented government.
To preserve and enhance the national security state, things were done supposedly in the interest of the American people that the people knew nothing about and not have approved had they known. Death squads, assassinations, subversion of indigenous movements, overthrow of democratically elected governments, and other manifestations of the national security state agenda took place out of sight. Only occasionally did these actions surface, such as Cointelpro conducted by the FBI to discredit and destroy dissenting groups.
A dream image captured the essence of what was happening. I was watching people sitting on the ground picnicking with their families while a band played happy music in a nearby bandstand. Behind the picnickers was a high, black wall that the people did not notice. Every now and then, a figure would slip out from under the wall, go out into the world and perform some abominable act, and then slip back again - all without anyone noticing. That is what U.S. history looks like when you step back and objectively observe what has been done.
Outside dreamtime, our investigation into the history of U.S. covert operations revealed the patterns of behavior that manifest in such events as Iran-contra.
During the Iran-contra involvement, I met various people inside the intelligence establishment who continued to struggle to prevent the abuses that were bringing the U.S. into disrepute throughout the world. This evening, I received a message from one of those people regarding the events unfolding today. I neither reject nor embrace the analysis set forth in the message. Ever since the Iran-contra investigation, I have kept an open mind regarding how to interpret unfolding events that are often very different from what they seem on the surface.
I send you this message to provide you with a perspective that you will not hear or see on CNN or any other major media outlet. In times like these, it is even more important to keep our wits about us and not be sucked into anyone else's script, even this one.
Aloha,
Lanny Sinkin 11:00 p.m.; 9/11/01
========= The Message =========
"Aloha to you my friend,
I know that the many discoveries and lessons we shared during the Christic investigation are still fresh in your memory. I have applied our analytical technique to the events unfolding today and thought you might enjoy the musings that resulted.
There is always the onion. You peel off one layer and there is another layer underneath. I think Warren Christopher sought to encourage such peeling on CNN today. He said that while we may rush to conclude the bin Laden is the author of the events, it is important to dig deeper than that surface analysis to find the true perpetrators. As with most of the liberal Democrats, Christopher is not going to come right out and say what he thinks he knows. After all, during Iran-contra, when Congressman Jack Brooks of Texas asked Oliver North about his plan to suspend the U.S. Constitution (hatched inside FEMA), it was liberal Democrat Daniel Inouye who cut off the question and shuffled that subject off into executive session.
Let's start with the Taliban. Russia invades Afghanistan. The CIA is loosed to fight them. Actually, as you know, the CIA is simply the visible agency for the much larger group of agencies that conduct U.S. covert policies and that are in turn part of an international network of covert organizations pursuing common policies in many instances. The CIA looks for a group that will meet certain criteria, such as fanatical enough to conduct a guerilla war, disciplined, hardy, and amenable to outside support to fulfill their perceived mission. Enter the Taliban, a relatively obscure group preaching a fanatical version of Islam that bears little resemblance to the actual religious teachings and is rejected by most Islamic movements. The value of their beliefs is that the Russians fit their model of the unbeliever, who must be destroyed. On the border near Pakistan, they are available. Kissinger had already put the "tilt toward Pakistan" in motion. So the onion now has three layers - U.S./CIA, Pakistan, Taliban. Arming, training, and supplying the Taliban through Pakistan, the CIA experiences a rare success. The Taliban and others inflict so much damage on the Russian forces that Russian public opinion (similar to U.S. public opinion during Vietnam) turns against the war and forces Russia to withdraw.
Now armed and dangerous, the Taliban turn their guns on competing groups within Afghanistan and rise to national dominance. Women, foreign missionaries, and other groups not holding a sufficiently holy place to be considered righteous become targets of Taliban fanaticism. Ben Laden is considered a true believer with the resources to do a lot of harm to the unrighteous and finds a home in Afghanistan.
To the onion now has four layers: U.S./CIA; Pakistan; Taliban; Ben Laden.
The final layer of the onion is the semi-independent cells with the Laden network. Even better would be to have sent recruits in to Laden to form such cells that would actually operate under control external to Laden.
Enter Bush and Company. With practically all the judges on the federal bench now appointees of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush (the elder), stealing an election through the Supreme Court is a piece of cake. The Iran-contra gang comes storming back into power. The appointment of Richard Armitage as Deputy Secretary of State is like a rooster crowing in terms of announcing who is in charge. Colin Powell is window dressing.
The old gang sets about doing what they always wanted to do (loot and pillage) and undoing what they always wanted undone (environmental protection, civil rights, etc.) They follow the old axiom of do everything controversial you can in the first months of office to give people time to forget. Withdrawing from the Kyoto Treaty, leaving arsenic in the water, violating and then withdrawing from the ABM treaty, promulgating a "reward your friends" energy policy, etc. all will predictably lead to an alienation of the electorate.
Sure enough, the opposition begins to strengthen. Your campaign to stop deployment of low frequency active sonar is only one of many campaigns that have mobilized people, fattened the coffers of opposition organizations, and produced a greater willingness to challenge the actions of the government.
The next step is to powerfully impact the emotional body of the electorate and cause the nation to rally behind the President and the military. The Gulf War model is not readily available. You remember how U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Hussein that the dispute between Kuwait and Iraq was a local matter and how Hussein swallowed that fly like a hungry trout. Then Bush (the elder) got to unite the world to drive Hussein out of Kuwait. Those types of manipulation are not so easy to find. So back to the onion.
The terrorist bin Laden or elements of his network are available as a surrogate. Only this time the purpose of the surrogate is not to fight someone else. The purpose is to terrorize the U.S. population into embracing Bush and Company.
Laden's big actions to date have generally involved getting a bomb into some place where it can cause harm, such as a truck aimed at an embassy gate or a small boat aimed at a large ship. This time, however, he will make a great leap forward into being able to recruit four teams that are capable of hijacking four different airplanes from three different airports, conducting the hijacking with such swiftness that none of the legitimate crew can punch in the hijack code, flying those airplanes without the crew in place, navigating those airplanes to separate targets with high impact potential (Trade Center innocents, military hq, and presidential retreat plus the passengers), and impacting three of the four targets in a very short period of time, thereby inflicting the damage in such a way as to have the most emotional impact on the population.
The onion provides plausible deniability. Assistance will be provided through cooperating elements of Pakistani intelligence and then through cooperating elements in the Taliban to bin Laden and perhaps on to elements of Laden's network operating without his direct control. The network cell conducting the operation will be suicide squads, perhaps recruited from the Palestinian population. Deniability for everyone and obliteration for the perpetrators. Pretty clean all around.
Laden will never know that he is a pawn of the U.S. national security state. He will believe that Allah has suddenly blessed him with resources and capability that previously eluded him. He will be the trout. Once he takes the bait, he will be the new demon, the country will rally behind the President and the military to exorcise their fears, and everyone will forget all the terrible things Bush and Company did since January. I would assume that you will have a very hard time getting anyone to pay any attention to low frequency active sonar, particularly as your position can be painted as impeding military preparedness at a time when terrorists and rogue nations are on a rampage. Sorry about the whales.
As you may have noted, President Bush (the younger) appointed his campaign manager head of FEMA. While being given charge of an agency that provides financial and other assistance in time of flood and other natural disaster may not seem like much of a reward for returning the White House to the national security state, there are still all those pesky little executive orders that essentially turn the country over to FEMA in times of national instability. As events unfolded today, FEMA took charge.
Once the deed is done, tracks are to be covered. An amusing CNN story today was the "leak" from law enforcement that the FBI intended to execute search warrants tomorrow in Hollywood and Daytona Beach, Florida. Of course, law enforcement, particularly in highly sensitive cases, always broadcasts in advance to potential suspects their intent to conduct a search the next day. CNN, which would almost certainly withhold a story about a planned military action during wartime, somehow cannot contain itself and breaks the news to the perpetrators that a trail needs to be covered. Alternatively, the search sites need to be sown with the necessary evidence to continue pointing the finger in the "right" direction. Perhaps they will find a diary of one of the perpetrators detailing their service to Allah against the U.S. Satan and their allegiance to bin Laden. The FBI will find whatever it is that others want them to find.
It will be interesting to watch as the cover up continues. Will evidence be lost? Will evidence be fabricated? Witnesses die mysteriously? Stay tuned if you can stomach it all.
Well color me cynical if you will. I have seen enough of how these guys operate to find this entire episode simply too useful politically and too perfect in execution. I hope you enjoy these musings. No need to reply."
-------- activists
Message to the Peace Movements in the USA
September 12, 2001
From: "Antiatom" antiatom@twics.com
Dear friends,
We are shocked and deeply saddened by the simultaneous terrorist attacks conducted on September 11, 2001. Through you we express our heartfelt sympathy to the families and friends of the victims who lost their lives, as well as to the injured.
We strongly denounce the terrorism, the indiscriminate violence and the killings, which nothing can justify for any reason whatsoever.
The peace movements in the USA are calling for a thorough investigation and resolution of the problem based on law and reason, as opposed to a hasty, revengeful military action. We support your approach, and will work together with you to build-up public opinion that stands against terrorism, the use of military force and against nuclear weapons.
Yours sincerely,
Hiroshi Taka, Secretary General, Japan Council against A & H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo)
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From the Washington Peace Center - daily vigil at Dupont Circle, 5 pm
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001
From: "Washington Peace Center" wpc@igc.org
The Washington Peace Center would like to offer our support and deepest condolences for those lost and injured in the attacks of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on Tuesday, September 11th. The Washington Peace Center condemns the terrorist attacks on civilians in New York and Washington. In the wake of such violence, we call for people of conscience to come together and redouble our efforts to foster a just and peaceful world. We call for U.S. officials to step with trepidation and not retaliate violence with vengeance. Violent tactics employed in yesterday's attacks cannot be used to find the perpetrators. We stand in solidarity with our American-Arab and American-Muslim friends in urging communities to create environments free of racism and religious persecution.
A vigil will be held today (and in days to follow) at 5pm at Dupont Circle. There will be an interfaith gathering at St. Alban's Church at 7pm. There is another interfaith gathering at Georgetown University, Gafton Hall tonight.
The Washington Peace Center has helped organize a second gathering tomorrow, Thursday at 12noon at All Souls Church, corner of 16th and Harvard Streets NW. All are welcomed.
You can report incidents of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim harassment to marvinw@adc.org.
(We would like to apologize for the tardiness of this statement, but we have been experiencing difficulties with our server.)
In solidarity The Washington Peace Center
-- Washington Peace Center 1801 Columbia Road NW, Suite 104 Washington, DC 20009 (202) 234-2000; fax (202) 234-7064 www.washingtonpeacecenter.org
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We suffer together
From: bethbc bethbc@PLANET.EDU
Bishara Awad & the faculty and staff Bethlehem Bible College
Wednesday morning 12 September 2001
Dear Friends,
"For we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercessions for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." Romans 8:26
What can we say except that we are completely shocked at the horrible, horrible events that have taken place in your beautiful country. We at Bethlehem Bible College feel your pain and wish
for you to know that we are praying for you. Numerous Palestinian churches are holding special prayers this morning for all those suffering and mourning in the wake of this unthinkable tragedy. What happened is utterly evil, incomprehensible, beyond belief or understanding.
Despite the terrible pain this event caused and will yet cause, we pray that something good will come out of this tragedy, and that America with its people and its government will look up to God and submit to Him. We pray that God will give America and Americans wisdom from above to cope with this act in all its horror.
People the world over must pray that no more innocent people anywhere will suffer. We must pray together for healing and reconciliation.
Some Palestinians, out of frustration and in particular those whose homes have been bombarded by missiles and tank shells, reacted inappropriately. But I am so glad that all Palestinian factions,
including Hamas, have denounced this act for what it is: an act of unspeakable terror. We urge American citizens and politicians to refrain from speaking or acting in a way which would increase or intensify the pain and suffering. The time to acknowledge our common humanity and fellowship under God is now.
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Statements from Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky
From: Brian Corr [mailto:BCorr@NEAction.org]
A Quick Reaction
By Noam Chomsky
September 12, 2001
The September 11 attacks were major atrocities. In terms of number of victims they do not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and probably killing tens of thousands of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind. But that this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt.
The primary victims, as usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other poor and oppressed people. It is also likely to lead to harsh security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining civil liberties and internal freedom.
The events reveal, dramatically, the foolishness of ideas about "missile defense." As has been obvious all along, and pointed out repeatedly by strategic analysts, if anyone wants to cause immense damage in the US, including weapons of mass destruction, they are highly unlikely to launch a missile attack, thus guaranteeing their immediate destruction. There are innumerable easier ways that are basically unstoppable. But these events will, nonetheless, be used to increase the pressure to develop these systems and put them into place. "Defense" is a thin cover for plans for militarization of space, and with good PR, even the flimsiest arguments will carry some weight among a frightened public.
In short, the crime is a gift to the hard jingoist right, those who hope to use force to control their domains. That is even putting aside the likely US actions, and what they will trigger -- possibly more attacks like this one, or worse. The prospects ahead are even more ominous than they appeared to be before the latest atrocities.
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NOT VENGEANCE, BUT COMPASSION
Howard Zinn
Historian and author of A People's History of the United States.
This is Howard Zinn for TomPaine.com.
The images on television have been heartbreaking. People on fire leaping to their deaths from a hundred stories up. People in panic and fear racing from the scene in clouds of dust and smoke. We knew that there must be thousands of human beings buried alive, but soon dead under a mountain of debris. We can only imagine the terror among the passengers of the hijacked planes as they contemplated the crash, the fire, the end. Those scenes horrified and sickened me.
Then our political leaders came on television, and I was horrified and sickened again. They spoke of retaliation, of vengeance, of punishment. We are at war they said. And I thought: they have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the history of the twentieth century, from a hundred years of retaliation, vengeance, war, a hundred years of terrorism and counter-terrorism, of violence met with violence in an unending cycle of stupidity.
We can all feel a terrible anger at whoever, in their insane idea that this would help their cause, killed thousands of innocent people. But what do we do with that anger? Do we react with panic, strike out violently and blindly just to show how tough we are? "We shall make no distinction," the President proclaimed, "between terrorists and countries that harbor terrorists." Will we now bomb Afghanistan, and inevitably kill innocent people, because it is in the nature of bombing to be indiscriminate, to "make no distinction," as Bush said. Will we then be committing terrorism in order to "send a message" to terrorists?
We have done that before. It is the old way of thinking, the old way of acting. It has never worked. Reagan bombed Libya, and Bush made war on Iraq, and Clinton bombed Afghanistan and also a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, to "send a message" to terrorists. And then comes this horror in New York and Washington. Isn't it clear by now that sending a message to terrorists through violence doesn't work, only leads to more terrorism?
Haven't we learned anything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Car bombs planted by Palestinians bring air attacks and tanks by the Israeli government. That has been going on for years. It doesn't work. And innocent people die on both sides.
Yes, it is an old way of thinking, and we need to think about the resentment all over the world felt by people who have been the victims of American military action. In Vietnam, where we carried out terrorizing bombing attacks, using napalm and cluster bombs, on peasant villages; in Latin America, where we supported dictators and death squads in Chile and El Salvador and other countries. In Iraq, where a million people have died as a result of our economic sanctions. And, perhaps most important for understanding the current situation, in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, where a million and more Palestinians live under a cruel military occupation, while our government supplies Israel with high-tech weapons.
We need to imagine that the awful scenes of death and suffering we are now witnessing on our television screens have been going on in other parts of the world for a long time, and only now can we begin to know what people have gone through, often as a result of our policies. We need to understand how some of those people will go beyond quiet anger to acts of terrorism.
We need new ways of thinking. A $300 billion dollar military budget has not given us security. Military bases all over the world, our warships on every ocean, have not given us security. Land mines, a "missile defense shield," will not give us security. We need to rethink our position in the world. We need to stop sending weapons to countries that oppress other people or their own people. We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.
Our security can only come by using our national wealth, not for guns, planes, bombs, but for the health and welfare of our people -- for free medical care for everyone, education and housing, guaranteed decent wages and a clean environment for all. We can not be secure by limiting our liberties, as some of our political leaders are demanding, but only by expanding them.
We should take our example not from our military and political leaders shouting "retaliate" and "war" but from the doctors and nurses and medical students and firemen and policemen who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem, whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing, not vengeance but compassion.
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Peace Council Aotearoa New Zealand Statement
12 September 2001
From: "kugimiya nobue" <kbnobu@fantasy.plala.or.jp>
We express our sorrow for those innocent people who have suffered in the USA in the disaster that has occured there. It is time that the United Nations called a World Peace Conference to secure abolition of nuclear arms, now an urgent necessity, and social justice and self-determination and true democracy protected by the will of the people not by foreign military bases or threats.
The attacks within the United States have demonstrated the fallibility of and the extreme dangers of reaction to New World Order military policy and the frailty of world policing by violence. Violence begets violence. Peace is secured through justice.
Even moreso these attacks have reduced to absurdity the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars on defence systems that cannot possibly contain the reaction that has been generated against US policies.
At this year's World Conference Against Nuclear Weapons held in Japan the President of Honour of the New Zealand Peace Council Gerald O'Brien drew urgent attention to the fact that globalisation of the nuclear menace threatens the world as never before. We quote from his address to the plenary session;-
"Globalisation of the Nuclear Menace threatens us all as never before. Dr. Stangelove is now centre-stage. A starting example of the reality of our fears lies in the face that the US fired Cruise Missiles across Pakistani air space, at Osama bin Laden without properly notifying Pakistan. Michael Foot in his 1999 book illustrates how they might readily have been mistaken for an Indian first strike. If so we would have been involved in the first nuclear war, and all of our fears be realised. But by then, as we have always said, too late for humanity.
A regime of total abolition is vital. Let us realise that the fear currently used by the US that proliferation might equip so-called rogue terrorists with nuclear weapons is a real possibllity. We know that because nuclear weapons are fundamentally based on the technology of the forties, they are thus not beyond the reach of current technology in any country, no matter what the cost in deprivation to their peoples may be. The example of the nuclear states themselves provides the measure of lack of concern for human rights and living standards in pursuing the madness of nuclear armaments.
Proliferation is the natural consequence of Deterrence Theory. Deterrence theory has been peddled for so long and with such ardour as a justification for the retention of nuclear weapons that any nation may see itself as having a right to protect itself by deterring others in the manner chosen by the nuclear states, no matter the mutually assured destruction."
Those countries also which harbour foreign military bases are also and have long been likely targets for attack. Australia's announced increase in involvement with the US Missile System brings our part of the world into an unnecessary danger zone.
Only justice and disarmament can bring about the peace that these days is vital.
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Message to US Peace Movements
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001
From: "Antiatom" <antiatom@twics.com>
Dear friends,
We are shocked and deeply saddened by the simultaneous terrorist attacks conducted on September 11, 2001. Through you we express our heartfelt sympathy to the families and friends of the victims who lost their lives, as well as to the injured.
We strongly denounce the terrorism, the indiscriminate violence and the killings, which nothing can justify for any reason whatsoever.
The peace movements in the USA are calling for a thorough investigation and resolution of the problem based on law and reason, as opposed to a hasty, revengeful military action. We support your approach, and will work together with you to build-up public opinion that stands against terrorism, the use of military force and against nuclear weapons.
Yours sincerely,
Hiroshi Taka Secretary General Japan Council against A & H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo)
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Peace activist reflection, printed in Raleigh daily paper
Raleigh News & Observer,
9-12-01
By Patrick M. O'Neill
From: BruceF@Peta-Online.org
As I write these words I have no idea if my brother Timothy, a New York City cop who works in Lower Manhattan, is dead or alive. I was sickened as a I watched the World Trade Center spire collapse on live television. A native New Yorker, I have visited the World Trade Center many times, and gazed in wonder at its magnificence.
Now a terrorist attack has reduced it to rubble, killing thousands in the process. The events of September 11, 2001 will surely be remembered as among the most horrifying in world history. Many of us will have lost friends and loved ones. It will take days for the bodies to be dug out. Our newscasts will be dominated for weeks with follow-up stories, and footage from funerals.
Like a major war, this act of once-unthinkable violence will touch the lives of millions of United States citizens. Not since our own Civil War have Americans really experienced the horror of war on our own soil. On Sept. 11 those living in New York City found themselves in a war zone.
Sadly, we are now experiencing what people in many parts of the world know so well. In places like Iraq and Yugoslavia the people know what it's like to live in terror of bombs falling from the sky; of loved ones lost to violence.
The question now before our leaders is how does the world's only Super Power respond to an act of violence of this magnitude? Sadly, the message I am hearing from U.S. officials is the tough talk of retaliation rather than reconciliation and prevention.
As I watched the television news accounts, and saw the human toll from the attacks, I was struck by the absurdity of the comments made by FBI Director James Kalstrom (Spell?) who told CBS News Tuesday morning: "Full retaliation will be in the cards."
Retaliation against whom? And in what form? The terrorists are all dead. Who would we target? Would we use nuclear weapons? How much more is our government willing to ratchet up the violence that has brought us to this terrible impasse?
This is a critical point in human history. How our leaders respond to this attack may determine the fate of humanity. We are at a turning point. We can choose to continue the violence or take a new course.
On Tuesday at noon I took three of my children and headed for Sacred Heart Cathedral to join about 300 other Catholic Christians to attend mass and pray for peace. I realize that our only hope as a human family is to follow in the footsteps of the God of Peace -- regardless of what others may say or do. Cathedral Rector, the Very Rev. Girard Sherba spoke for us all when he said: "Our hearts have been torn apart by the senseless killing of innocent lives." Sherba reminded mass-goers that this would be a time of testing for Christians -- "Maybe the test of our entire lives."
Rather than seek retaliation, Sherba told us to "be people of forgiveness; be people of compassion; be people of love ... words we don't want to hear right now."
What Tuesday's attacks proved is that terrorists don't need sophisticated weapons to commit horrific acts of violence. All the talk of protective shields and safeguards against terrorism mean nothing in this modern era where the tools of the terrorist can be as innocent as an airliner boarding pass.
And, it could have been far worse. What if the terrorists had decided to fly those jets into nuclear power plants? Tuesday's events could be just the tip of the iceberg of what might be in store for us in the future if we don't
transformation of the world. l know why. Terrorists don't commit suicide attacks that maim and kill thousands of people for no reason. We need to understand the roots of this hatred and do all we can to address this deep-seeded anger. Seeking peace and reconciliation with our enemies is at the very heart of the message of Jesus who told us clearly -- "Those who live by the sword, die by the sword."
The United States is the number one purveyor of weapons in the world. We frequently use massive violence against weaker nations. The worst single act of killing in a single day occurred in August 1945 when President Truman decided to drop atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I fear that nuclear weapons will be the next tool of the terrorist, and we will be the target.
I urge President Bush and our nation's leaders to forget retaliation, and instead begin a process that can lead this world to eliminate violence as a means of conflict resolution. Think of the message that would send to the world -- The most powerful nation in the world forgoes retaliation and violence and instead begins a heartfelt search for justice and peace. During mass, Father Sherba reminded us of our duty as Christians: "If we dare call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ, we have to dare to follow in his footsteps.
" ... Now is not the time to hate; not the time to fear; not the time for animosity. Now is the time for prayer."
(P.M. O'Neill is the cofounder of St. Martin de Porres Catholic Worker House, a pacifist community in Garner that provides hospitality for women and children in crisis.)
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