------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
South Asia is like the Middle East
Ishihara seeks missile defense
How Missile Defense Would Help Terrorists
Russia Joins NATO in Condemning Terrorist Attack
Salvagers cut bow from Russia's nuclear sub Kursk
Hanford vulnerable to air strike
Foreign Policy Consequences Huge
Inside the Bunker
U.S. Federal Agencies Mobilizing

MILITARY
World War III
Afghanistan Girds for a Possible U.S. Attack
Kabul Tense as Afghans Expect U.S. Military Strikes
Middle East Developing Biological, Chemical Weapons
Report of the unreported days
Israeli Forces Enter West Bank Town
NATO invokes 'Article 5' for first time
Attack on U.S. Is Attack on All, NATO Agrees
Hill Allocates $20 Billion for Security, Aid
Security Tightened for U.S. Troops
Officials talk of military response
U.S. can go to war with any enemies
America Lines Up Support For Strike

OTHER
Unexplained phenomenon wipes out Kuwait fish
Officials at IMF, World Bank Expect to Postpone Meetings
FBI Launches Massive Manhunt
Powell Says Bin Laden a Suspect
Congress Nears Anti-Terrorism Bill
They can't see why they are hated
Threat to Bush plane included code words
Aftershocks: Progressives Locking Arms with the Jingoists?

ACTIVISTS
Protestor in the pokey
Report from 14 Wall Street
Did CNN use 1991 footage of celebrating Palestinians?
On the brink of war
Enormity! I'm stupefied by the Enormity of it all.
We have found the terrorists and THEY ARE US!!



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- india / pakistan

South Asia is like the Middle East, except everyone has nuclear weapons
The U.S. wants Pakistan to use its influence with the Taliban to hunt Osama bin Laden and his allies, but regional geopolitics will make that tricky.

salon.com
By Max Garrone and Anthony York
Sept. 13, 2001
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/13/pakistan/index.html http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/13/pakistan/index1.html

As the public cry for a military response to Tuesday's terrorist bombings grew louder Thursday, it was clear that a full-blown diplomatic effort is already underway to enlist other nations to help smoke out those responsible for the attacks and turn them over to the United States. American diplomats, led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, have focused on pressuring Pakistan to find terrorists that may be hiding in Afghanistan. Topping that list, of course, is Osama bin Laden.

Pakistan is the linchpin of the current diplomatic push because of its influence with the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan. According to many experts, the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, played a key role in the training of Taliban rebels during the early 1990s, and has maintained continuous intelligence contacts with the Taliban since the Islamic fundamentalist group took control of the country in 1996.

Thursday, Powell sent a strong message to Pakistani leaders in public as well as through private diplomatic channels. "We thought as we gathered information and as we look at possible sources of the attack it would be useful to point out to the Pakistani leadership at every level that we are looking for (and) expecting their fullest cooperation," Powell said. Pakistan should be considered a U.S. ally, the secretary of state said, but he noted that the relationship between the two nations had been through "its ups and downs."

The United States urged Pakistan to close its border with neighboring Afghanistan, where bin Laden operates, and to cut off funding for terrorist groups. And the Associated Press reported that the U.S. also asked Pakistan for permission to fly over its territory in the event of military action.

In his speech Tuesday, President Bush made clear that governments suspected of harboring and assisting terrorists -- such as Afghanistan and Pakistan -- would be punished for failing to cooperate with efforts to bring those responsible for the U.S. attacks to justice. "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them," Bush said.

For now, though, the administration is trying to work with Pakistan rather than punish it. Pakistan's military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf spoke to Powell Thursday, and also met with U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin. Powell deputy Richard Armitage has also been sent to Pakistan to meet with Musharraf.

Despite more than a decade of bumpy diplomatic relations -- marked by U.S. sanctions since 1990 -- the Pakistani government pledged its support for the counterterrorism effort in a statement Thursday, which said "Pakistan is committing all of its resources in an effort coordinated with the United States to locate and punish those involved in these horrific acts."

And on Wednesday Musharraf left a meeting with his military and issued a statement that read: "I wish to assure President Bush and the U.S. government of our unstinted cooperation in the fight against terrorism. The world must unite to fight terrorism."

Experts agree that Pakistan is not in much of a position to bargain with American diplomats. "I don't think the discussions happening now are quid pro quo discussions," said Teresita Schaffer, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' South Asia Program, and former U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka. In the long run, of course, Pakistan would hope that any cooperation could lessen its international isolation, and hasten an end to sanctions.

Pakistan's support could be crucial to the uphill effort to get Afghanistan's Taliban to turn over bin Laden. Despite Pakistani leaders' claims that they wield little influence over the Taliban, Schaffer says Pakistan was involved with the creation of the extremist Islamic government "very early on. The Taliban probably had their first home base on Pakistani soil." In a report Thursday, CNN cited unnamed sources saying Pakistani officials have had at least one meeting with Taliban leaders urging them to hand over bin Laden to the U.S. following Tuesday's attacks.

Although U.S-Pakistan relations have been strained in recent years, Pakistan has proved a useful ally in the fight against terrorists living in Afghanistan before. In 1998, for example, Pakistani intelligence was widely believed to have helped guide the American military response to the African embassy bombings. Those cruise missile attacks inside Afghanistan led to the destruction of a known training base of bin Laden, and subsequent reports indicated those attacks barely missed bin Laden himself.

Stephen Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as a member of the U.S. Department of State's policy planning staff from 1985 to 1987, says the U.S. will not only demand that Pakistan use its influence with the Taliban to out bin Laden, but U.S. diplomats will try to deal directly with the Taliban as well.

"The Taliban is very nervous," he said. "We happen to be their major economic supporter. They may hate us, but we give $200-$300 million per year in economic aid, humanitarian aid, so that Afghani citizens can eat."

Cohen says, "We've had direct contact with the Taliban from time to time. Our diplomats come back totally frustrated that the Taliban hasn't budged on this issue," Cohen said. "But the stakes are much higher now. The bar to using force is much lower than it used to be. I know the Pakistanis are telling their Taliban friends this." The diplomatic overtures to Pakistan Thursday came as U.S. foreign policy in South Asia recently shifted away from Pakistan toward India. This, despite the fact that India often sided with the Soviet Union in the United Nations during the Cold War, at a time when Pakistan's long series of military rulers proved staunch U.S. allies. But the Cold War is long over. The recent shift in U.S. policy toward South Asia seems to be directed at containing China, which many in the administration view as the largest threat in Asia. But that may change now, as U.S. policy refocuses on stopping terrorism, Cohen says.

Schaffer says a rekindled diplomatic relationship with the United States wouldn't immediately result in a renewal of aid to Pakistan. The U.S. imposed sanctions against Pakistan in 1990 when American intelligence sources concluded Pakistan had a nuclear device.

But now that capturing bin Laden and other terrorists has become a priority for the United States, Pakistan may be able to exchange terrorists for international acceptance. "Recouping international respectability is not a trivial thing for the Pakistanis and down the line there are other things that we could work with them on," like foreign aid or working out a deal between them and India over the hotly contested region of Kashmir, Schaffer said.

This could lead to a realignment of U.S. policy in South Asia, and force the United States to get more directly involved in the region. "The Clinton administration and this administration have been very pro-India," Cohen said. "Powell's statements were important because he wants to give Pakistan every chance to do something with the Taliban to help us out. It's like that old song from the '60s, 'Which Side Are You On?' It's time for Pakistan to make that decision. Are they going to be part of the solution, or part of the problem?"

Of course, South Asia diplomacy is a delicate balancing act. Pakistan must balance its desire to gain international respectability and avoid military retaliation by the U.S. on the one hand, against growing hostility to America among its citizens and in the region on the other.

"If the government allows Pakistan to be used for attacks on Afghanistan it would be a great treachery," Maulana Samiul Haq, the leader of the Afghan Defense Council, an umbrella group of Pakistan's religious political parties and Islamic militant groups, told the Associated Press. He said the group would urge street protests if Pakistan cooperates with the United States.

"In some respects, Pakistan must choose between the devil and the deep blue sea," Cohen said. Schaffer added that the major issue for Pakistan is "a domestic issue that if they go along with the demand that the U.S. may be making," its leaders may face a confrontation with their own militant groups.

"It's a military government but they've never been willing to confront the militants. If they do confront them then they risk an overt showdown with mobs in the street. If they don't, then the government risks being seen as weak, which means that they risk collapse. The United States fears the militants as well and wants a stable government in Pakistan more than anything, because if this current government falls, Pakistan could become another Afghanistan."

U.S. efforts to target Islamic terrorists will likely be welcomed by Afghanistan's neighbors, Schaffer says. In 1996, as the Taliban rebels took control of Afghanistan, China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Khazakstan entered into a security and intelligence alliance aimed at containing the threat of fundamentalists spilling into their countries.

And while Iran and Pakistan -- the other nations bordering Afghanistan -- did not sign the treaty, Martin Rudner, director of the Center for Security and Defense at Ottawa's Carelton University, said those governments are also nervous about the destabilizing possibilities of Islamic revolutionaries crossing their borders. "They're strong regimes but feel a threat to their stability from the fundamentalist contagion that could undermine their grip on power," Rudner says.

Iran already despises the Taliban, according to Rudner, because the Sunni Taliban "brutally persecuted" the minority Shiite community of Herat in southwest Afghanistan and forced a wave of refugees to camp along the border, which the Iranians now view as destabilizing elements. And yet Iran has been loathe to join efforts to isolate the Taliban. The Pakistanis have a similar balancing act. According to Schaffer, Pakistan's government has never directly confronted the militant groups that make its country a base. And any significant action against the Taliban, bin Laden or others would "risk an overt showdown with mobs in the street," she says, recalling "Pakistan sent troops to fight with the Western coalition in the Gulf War and faced pro-Saddam riots in the streets."

So South Asia represents an increasingly pressing challenge for the Bush administration. Cohen says that American military actions against the Taliban "could deteriorate into a serious South Asia crisis very quickly, or they could turn out to lead to a greater accord between India and Pakistan. It's analogous to the Mideast in many ways, but in South Asia all the countries have nuclear weapons."

About the writer Max Garrone is an editor for Salon News.
Anthony York is an associate editor for Salon News.

-------- missile defense

Ishihara seeks missile defense

September 13, 2001
By Osamu Tsukimori
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010913-73506967.htm

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, an outspoken nationalist and a co-author of "The Japan That Can Say No," wants Japan to cooperate with the United States in developing a national missile defense and says Japan needs to deploy missile-armed warships to counter China and North Korea.

"Japan has capabilities to deploy a reconnaissance satellite," he said. "Japan's cooperation with the United States is quite possible."

This seemed a bit of a shift for Mr. Ishihara, whose book boldly rejected U.S. trade pressure on his country. However, he returned to this economic criticism at a seminar.

At a meeting with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Mr. Ishihara said the United States should give total military support to Japan based on their bilateral security treaty. Otherwise, he added, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty has no meaning.

The governor added, however, that this would not require any increase in Japan's military expenditures or personnel.

Mr. Ishihara severely criticized China for its single-party communist rule and accused Japan's giant neighbor of military expansionism.

If China takes possession of Japan's Senkaku Islands, which are rich in oil and other resources, it would have catastrophic effects on Asia, Mr. Ishihara told a forum Monday at the Army-Navy Club organized by the Hudson Institute.

He said China has no alternative to military expansionism because there is no freedom of speech or the press in the country, and dissent is not permitted.

"Expansion that preys on weak countries is objectionable," he said, referring to China's control of Tibet as an invasion.

"Japan needs to defend against invasion," Mr. Ishihara said, adding that China's current military strength is not a threat but may become one in the future.

Mr. Ishihara also talked about North Korea as a threat, saying it is the world's third most advanced country in biological weapons. If North Korea can make deadly anthrax gas, it would create a huge threat to Japan, he added.

Asked about the current state of Japan's economy, Mr. Ishihara said it has more ability to revive its economy than any other nation in the world.

--------

How Missile Defense Would Help Terrorists

MSNBC
By Robert Wright
Thursday, Sept. 13, 2001
http://slate.msn.com/Earthling/01-09-13/Earthling.asp

Some critics of President Bush's missile-defense plan have already claimed a measure of vindication in Tuesday's attack on the United States. Their logic is plausible as far as it goes: They've long been saying that massive destruction, when it comes, won't come via ballistic missile, and sure enough it didn't. But by ending their argument there, they're selling themselves short. Missile defense won't just fail to stop the next big terrorist attack. It could hasten the next attack and make it literally 100 times as lethal as Tuesday's.

The question of whether terrorists might detonate a nuclear bomb in an American city has always boiled down to two questions: 1) Are there groups with significant resources and organizational skills that want to kill vast numbers of Americans? 2) How easy would it be for such a group to get ahold of the requisite materials? Tuesday gave us the grim answer to the first question. The answer to the second question is more elusive, but this much is clear: The more nuclear materials there are floating around beyond American control, the worse things look. And missile defense would probably raise that amount.

Both Russia and China have made noises about escalating their nuclear programs in response to missile defense. In the case of Russia, the threat rings hollow for fiscal reasons, but China has the resources to deliver. In fact, it is modernizing its arsenal in any event and can well afford to accelerate and expand the program in response to missile defense. And most experts agree that, within the framework of nuclear deterrence, doing so would be rational. In the more distant future, rapid growth in the Chinese arsenal could spur growth in India's arsenal, which could spur growth in Pakistan's arsenal, which could spur more growth in India's arsenal, and so on-with each iteration upping the chances of a little plutonium or uranium straying into the hands of terrorists.

The Bush administration seems to think that provoking the production of weapons-grade materials beyond America's borders is a fair price to pay for missile defense. Two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that the administration, to get Chinese acquiescence in the missile-defense program, had decided not to oppose China's nuclear modernization plans. This story, based on background reporting, was followed by hasty on-the-record qualifications and quasi-denials-whose upshot, as I read them, was to confirm the essential accuracy of the Times report.

The near indifference of many missile-defense boosters to nuclear proliferation has long been painfully clear. A few months ago, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, in a column endorsing missile defense and the larger Bush vision that it's part of, celebrated the president's aversion to arms-control treaties. "Nor does the Bush administration fear an 'arms race.' If the Russians react to our doctrine by wasting billions building nukes that will only make the rubble bounce, let them." In the wake of what happened Tuesday, is Krauthammer still sanguine about the prospect of weapons-grade plutonium being produced not terribly far from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, in factories run by underpaid bureaucrats? In any event, it's too late for him to retract his admission that Bush's policy could well lead to that.

The problem goes beyond missile defense. Months ago President Bush decided to cut by $100 million the Clinton administration's budget for a program designed to halt the spread of Russian nuclear materials. (The program does need reforming, but it sure doesn't need shrinking.) Bush also shrank a program designed to keep Russian nuclear scientists gainfully employed, so they won't need subsidies from Osama Bin Laden et. al.

Whenever you point out that a nuke is much more likely to enter the United States on a barge floating up the Hudson or a van crossing the Rio Grande than on a missile, missile-defense backers reply that we're already working on that problem. Yes, we are. But the point is that our allocation of resources is grossly unbalanced. The president plans to spend a massive amount of money to thwart incoming nuclear missiles, and less money to thwart nukes snuck across the border, a threat that everybody-everybody-considers more likely than a missile attack.

How exactly do we correct the imbalance? In theory, you should shift resources from missile defense to the fight against massively lethal terrorism until you're getting the same amount of protection per dollar from the two kinds of expenditure. Of course, we can't precisely quantify the "amount of protection" we get from each dollar spent to inhibit the spread of nuclear materials and other ingredients of mass murder. But the more likely these ingredients are to be acquired and used by terrorists, the more protection we're buying by slowing their spread. It's hard to reflect on what happened Tuesday without acknowledging that a major shift of resources is in order.

Still, some will manage. They'll argue-as if financial resources were infinite-that we can afford to keep the unprecedentedly expensive missile-defense program on track and still do more to cut the chances of a massive terrorist attack. But once you realize that ending or slowing the missile-defense program would itself cut the chances of such an attack-by cutting the world's incentive to produce nuclear materials-this argument starts to show signs of serious strain.

-------- russia

THE ALLIANCE
Russia Joins NATO in Condemning Terrorist Attack Against the U.S.

The New York Times
September 13, 2001
By SUZANNE DALEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/international/14CND-NATO.html

RUSSELS, Sept. 13 - President Bush's call for a global coalition against terrorism continued to garner foreign support today as Russia, in a rare joint statement with NATO, expressed its anger over Tuesday's attacks in New York and Washington and called for a worldwide effort to combat such acts.

After a special meeting here, the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council issued a statement saying: "While (NATO) allies and Russia have suffered from terrorist attacks against civilians, the horrific scale of the attacks of 11 September is without precedent in modern history."

The council, which oversees relations between the two former Cold War adversaries, said NATO and Russia would "intensify" its cooperation to fight the scourge of terrorism.

"NATO and Russia call on the entire international community to unite in the struggle against terrorism," the statement said.

A senior NATO official said that Russia had offered the statement, without being asked by either NATO or American officials. The official said that the Ukraine was likely to make a similar statement on Friday.

As shock seemed to give way to anger throughout Europe, some allies were forthright in supporting military action.

In Britain, where the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, said that "hundreds" of British citizens had died in the attack on the World Trade Center, the government announced that its forces were already on alert for possible retaliatory action.

France's President Jacques Chirac did not specifically mention military action, but on an interview on CNN he said that polls showed the 96 percent of the French were "in solidarity with the U.S.," something he had never seen before.

"France, I would like to repeat, will be totally supportive," he said. "We will show solidarity."

On Wednesday, the 19 members of NATO took the unprecedented step of invoking a mutual defense clause - pledging assistance if the terrorist attacks against the United States turned out to be masterminded from abroad.

The decision does not bind any of the NATO allies to any specific action. But it lays the groundwork for NATO to offer assistance if the United States requests it. One NATO official said the decision to invoke the clause was done in a "nanno" second in diplomatic time. "Some countries even had to consult their parliaments first and this was done in six hours," the official said. "The level of support is incredible."

But NATO denied reports that it had already drawn up a plan to invade Afghanistan, the refuge of Osama bin Laden, an exiled Saudi millionaire who is suspected of having planned the devastating attacks.

"The story is wrong," Nato said in a statement. "It is based on unfounded speculations."

Today some of Europe's smaller countries pledged their support as well. In Rumania, President Ion Iliescu said his country was ready to play its roll in fighting terrorism, even though it is not a member of Nato. "It is our duty in the present circumstances to act as a fully fledged member of Nato, will all the obligations that entails, Mr. Iliescu said, according to the news agency Rompres.

Bulgaria declared also itself ready to join any United States retaliation against the attacks, which have left thousands of people buried under heaps of rubble. "the Bulgarian government is prepared to use all means possible to support a possible strike or retaliation," the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, Solomon Passi said at a news conference.

--------

Salvagers cut bow from Russia's nuclear sub Kursk

Planet Ark
NORWAY: September 13, 2001
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12398/newsDate/13-Sep-2001/story.htm

KIRKENES, Norway - An international team cut the bow off the sunken nuclear Russian submarine Kursk yesterday 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 September 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 100-metres (330-ft) 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 an onboard torpedo explosion caused the disaster.

Either way, Walder said the 25-metre (80-ft) 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

-------- washington

Hanford vulnerable to air strike
Nuclear reservation with tons of plutonium on highest alert

Karen Dorn Steele -
Spokane Spokesman-Review,
September 13, 2001
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=091301&ID=s1022952&cat=se ction.regional

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where four tons of highly radioactive plutonium are stored in one building, has no defense against an air assault like the one that hit the World Trade Center.

Such an attack could release plutonium with disastrous results for public health, said a former U.S. Department of Energy official.

Tuesday's attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., are raising new questions about the vulnerability of Northwest nuclear and chemical weapons facilities.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has told all commercial nuclear power plants and fuel facilities to go to the "highest level of security."

The U.S. Department of Energy, which has jurisdiction over military reactors, took similar steps to beef up security at Hanford and nuclear facilities in Idaho.

The Army has also heightened security at its arsenal of deadly nerve gas near Hermiston, Ore.

The largest potential nuclear targets are Hanford's Plutonium Finishing Plant, where four tons of refined and scrap plutonium is stored, and the region's only nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station near Richland.

During World War II's Manhattan Project, the top-secret program to develop the world's first atomic bombs, military officials located Hanford far inland to protect the project from possible Japanese attacks.

But Hanford officials said Wednesday they have no way to protect the Plutonium Finishing Plant and other Hanford facilities from air attacks today.

"I've been here 17 years, and in that time, Hanford has had no air protection. It used to during the early days of the Cold War," said Mike Talbot, a DOE spokesman in Richland.

The Federal Aviation Administration maintains a 2,400-foot ceiling over Hanford airspace, and airplanes are not supposed to go lower, Talbot said.

The PFP was the first Hanford facility this week placed on the highest security alert.

Unlike the Three Mile Island reactor and many other commercial nuclear plants, Hanford's old weapons plants aren't hardened to withstand an airplane crash, said Robert Alvarez, a policy advisor to former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.

Alvarez helped evaluate the DOE's national emergency response plans during the Clinton administration.

DOE's Talbot declined comment on what a direct airplane hit would do to the Plutonium Finishing Plant. He said he didn't know if Hanford officials had ever done a safety analysis of that possibility.

With tons of refined and scrap plutonium inside the plant, a direct hit by a large airplane would cause a "catastrophic radiological event," Alvarez said.

"At least a fraction of the plutonium would be oxidized and dispersed. The plume would create a severe, plutonium-laced fallout with heavy offsite depositions," Alvarez said. Plutonium-239 retains half its radioactivity for 24,000 years, and can cause cancer if inhaled.

Making Hanford and other nuclear facilities invulnerable to air attack may be impossible, Alvarez said.

"You'd have to establish the site as a no-fly zone, and you'd have to have the capability to knock down aircraft. To harden these facilities is probably cost-prohibitive and impossible," he said.

In a terse announcement Tuesday on its Web site, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission didn't elaborate on the steps it is taking to safeguard commercial nuclear facilities, saying the details are classified.

In Richland, Columbia Generating Station officials had already decided to rachet up security at the 1,130-megawatt plant before they heard from the NRC this week, said Don McManman, spokesman for plant owners Energy Northwest.

A head-on hit by a large jet was not envisioned as a worst-case scenario when the nuclear plant on the Hanford nuclear reservation was designed, McManman said.

Instead, engineers designed it to withstand the impact of a major tornado, he said.

Even if the plant were struck by a jet, vital systems would remain intact because of the thickness of the primary and secondary containment, he said.

A 20-acre protective zone around the plant is guarded by machine-gun toting guards and secured by motion detectors and concertina wire.

Any decision to close airspace over the nuclear reactor would have to be made by the FAA. "Energy Northwest has no control over the skies," McManman said.

Workers at the nuclear plant have stayed on the job this week, producing enough electricity to supply the city of Seattle and its suburbs.

"Terrorists' true goal is to disrupt society. We have decided they won't succeed here. We'll continue to come to work and make energy for the Pacific Northwest," McManman said.

After the attacks this week, the Army also increased security at its Umatilla Chemical Depot, seven miles west of Hermiston, Ore.

The depot stores 3,700 tons of nerve and mustard gas -- 12 percent of the nation's original supply of chemical weapons. The gas will be destroyed in an incinerator starting in February 2003.

The Army has considered a direct hit by a fuel-heavy jet in its risk analysis, said spokeswoman Mary Binder.

"If we took a direct hit, there would be damage," including a possible release of gas, Binder said. But the risk analysis says the nerve agents and mustard gas would be destroyed by the high temperatures generated by burning jet fuel.

"We've incorporated this possibility into our security measures and our plans for the surrounding communities," Binder said.

-------- us nuc politics

Foreign Policy Consequences Huge
Missile Shield, Mideast, Security Likely to Be Influenced

By John Lancaster and Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 13, 2001; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21577-2001Sep12?language=printer

The worst terrorist attack in American history is sure to have profound consequences for U.S. foreign policies on missile defense and the Middle East, as Washington scrambles to reconsider its security needs in a suddenly altered world.

With the death toll rising, there is broad agreement among policymakers about the need for stepped-up spending on "homeland defense," rather than the theater war-fighting capability that has dominated American military planning since the end of the Cold War.

"The splendid isolation that we've enjoyed because of our geography -- the two great ocean moats -- is now being lost to what some people have called the death of distance, the ability for people to move more freely, the concentration of ever-more-destructive power in the hands of small groups of individuals," said Andrew Krepinevich, an adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who heads the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

But opinions diverge sharply on how to meet that threat -- especially with regard to the Bush administration's pursuit of a national ballistic missile defense system, which has strained relations with allies as well as with Russia and China.

Though eager to avoid appearances of partisanship in the midst of a national emergency, some Democrats have begun to cite Tuesday's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in arguing that missile defenses are irrelevant to the low-tech terrorism they see as the gravest threat to American security.

"I am hoping that it focuses people on what we've been saying all along," said Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), a leading critic of the Bush plan. "This type of incident . . . is much higher on the list of threats than anything the president would address with his national missile defense program."

Republicans counter that, if anything, the assaults only underscore the vulnerability of American cities to foreign attack and the need to protect them by all available means, including defenses against limited missile attacks by states such as North Korea or Iran.

"I believe the American people are going to be roused out of an unwarranted sense of security to reflect upon their vulnerability and the desire of some people around the world to take advantage of it," said Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy. "And there is no more egregious example of our vulnerability than our complete inability to stop even a single [ballistic] missile."

The attacks have also challenged basic assumptions of American diplomacy, especially in the Middle East, where the Bush administration has generally kept its distance from Palestinian-Israeli violence. Some foreign policy experts contend that the attacks -- if they turn out to have been executed by Islamic extremists sympathetic to the Palestinian cause -- could drive a wedge between moderate Arabs and militants and thus provide an opening for new American efforts to end the violence.

Jon Alterman, a Middle East specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a Washington think tank, compared the attacks to the 1997 massacre of foreign tourists in Luxor, Egypt, an event that turned many Egyptians against Islamic militants with whom they previously had a degree of sympathy. "It creates an opportunity for the United States to win over hearts and minds," he said.

Shibley Telhami, a Middle East specialist at the University of Maryland, gave voice to a similar hope but said the administration should not make the mistake of trying to eradicate terrorism while ignoring the context in which it occurs. "You have to deal with this anger as well as eliminate the terror, and in order to do that you have to have a policy based on political solutions that address fairly the interests of both sides," he said.

But Dennis Ross, the Clinton administration's top Middle East negotiator, said the first order of business for Bush should be to turn up the heat on moderate Arab governments that turn a blind eye to the anti-American venom that permeates much of the Arab media.

"They have to look at themselves in terms of what they have done to create a climate in which this kind of behavior is somehow seen as legitimate and acceptable," he said.

For now, however, the main focus is closer to home. Yesterday afternoon, lawmakers and White House officials were negotiating over the size of an emergency spending bill that would cover immediate needs relating to airport security, counterterrorism capabilities and other costs associated with the carnage.

In the longer term, said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), Congress will be open to any legitimate request for increased defense spending, especially for human intelligence activities. Asked about missile defense, he said that, while the attacks raised questions about the relevancy of a missile shield, he and his Senate colleagues would seek to work out disagreements or defer any decision that would indicate dissent.

"There will be a tremendous effort to avoid any lack of cohesion. . . . The unity here is palpable," he said. "The public wants us to pull together."

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said the lesson from the attacks cut both ways on the missile defense argument. "It certainly shows we're vulnerable to more than missile attack," he said, but "we're vulnerable to missiles too."

Defense had been limping through the budget debate, with generals pleading for money to replace aging weapon systems and the administration struggling to find the political will to revamp military spending priorities set during the Cold War. All of that changes because of the attacks.

"There's no question that this is going to lead to an increase in defense spending, but probably the more important thing is that it's going to lead to a shift in defense priorities," said Loren Thompson, a defense consultant with the Lexington Institute, a conservative think tank.

The attacks were a "wake-up call" demonstrating that America needs to rethink the way it spends money on the military, said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

"This is the next war that many of us have known about for some time and tried to get people to pay attention to," said Lewis, who added that he was just about to gavel into session the committee's markup of the 2002 defense budget when news of the attacks broke.

"Clearly it sends the message that the war ahead of us immediately is a terror war. We need to give priority to it," Lewis said.

--------

ESSAY
Inside the Bunker

New York Times
September 13, 2001
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/opinion/13SAFI.html?searchpv=past7days

WASHINGTON - At 9:03 a.m. Tuesday, as Vice President Dick Cheney was staring at the TV screen, the second hijacked airliner exploded against the Twin Towers. At that moment his Secret Service detail grabbed him and hurried him down to "PEOC."

The President's Emergency Operations Center is an underground facility hardened to withstand blast overpressure from a nuclear detonation. On the way to the tubular structure, Cheney was told that another plane, or a helicopter loaded with explosives, was headed for the White House.

Cheney promptly called the president in Florida, who had just boarded Air Force One, and urged him not to come back to Washington immediately.

In the PEOC, the vice president was joined by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, among others. They were told that six commercial aircraft were unaccounted for, all of which were potential missiles. One had supposedly crashed in Kentucky (not true), and another in Pennsylvania (that report of a crash was valid; its passengers or crew, apparently struggling with the hijackers, may have saved the White House).

According to a high White House official speaking to me on background, the airliner that had taken off at Dulles - AA Flight 77 - "did a 360" (meaning it changed direction from the White House) and at 9:45 slammed into the Pentagon.

About that time, accounts began coming into PEOC that four international flights were headed toward Washington over the Atlantic and another from Korea. It could not be immediately determined that they were not hostile and part of the terrorist scheme. U.S. fighter aircraft and an Awacs control aircraft were scrambled aloft.

A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that "Air Force One is next." According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible.

(I have a second, on-the-record source about that: Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, tells me: "When the president said `I don't want some tinhorn terrorists keeping me out of Washington,' the Secret Service informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts. In light of the specific and credible threat, it was decided to get airborne with a fighter escort.")

After the president put down at an Air Force base in Louisiana and made a tape for broadcast (presumably no satellite was available for a live feed), he was, in Rove's term, "pretty antsy" about not being at the center of command.

Bush made clear to Cheney, says my source who was in the bunker, his intense desire to return to Washington immediately. The Secret Service objected strongly. The vice president, a former secretary of defense, suggested Air Force One go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, with a communications facility where the president could convene the National Security Council.

"It would have been irresponsible of him to come back, pounding his chest," says my source, "when hostile aircraft may have been headed our way. Any suggestion that he should have done so is ludicrous."

Confession: I made just that suggestion in yesterday's column, which stimulated two set-it-straight calls. Why didn't the V.P. make an appearance during that long afternoon in Bush's stead? The official reason is that Cheney was busy in the basement; the real reason, I think, is that he was unduly concerned it would appear presumptuous.

The most worrisome aspect of these revelations has to do with the credibility of the "Air Force One is next" message. It is described clearly as a threat, not a friendly warning - but if so, why would the terrorists send the message? More to the point, how did they get the code-word information and transponder know-how that established their mala fides?

That knowledge of code words and presidential whereabouts and possession of secret procedures indicates that the terrorists may have a mole in the White House - that, or informants in the Secret Service, F.B.I., F.A.A. or C.I.A. If so, the first thing our war on terror needs is an Angleton-type counterspy.

-------- us nuc waste

U.S. Federal Agencies Mobilizing
Federal officials kept most airplanes on the ground and suspended shipments of nuclear materials.

By LAURA MECKLER,
Associated Press Writer
Thursday September 13 4:21 AM ET

From: "Scott D. Portzline" <sportzline@home.com>

WASHINGTON (AP) - Search and rescue teams dug through the rubble. Federal officials kept most airplanes on the ground and suspended shipments of nuclear materials. And volunteer doctors were on the scene in New York and at the Pentagon (news - web sites).

A day after terrorist attacks struck the nation, agencies across the federal government mobilized.

Disaster officials prepared for a massive, monthslong search, rescue and cleanup operation. Thousands of rescue and other workers were on site at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon, even as hope faded that any survivors would be found.

Joe Allbaugh, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (news - web sites), said he was holding out hope.

``There are pockets where ... folks could be still alive. Time is precious. Time is running out. We have to move quickly,'' he said after surveying the scene in Manhattan Wednesday.

FEMA deployed 3,000 workers at the disaster sites, including 12 search-and-rescue teams that include engineers, medical personnel and others that were helping to treat victims and search for survivors.

Displaced families and survivors were being cared for at 27 shelters in the New York City area, and two near the Pentagon.

Crews could be on the scene in New York for at least 30 days, given the sheer magnitude collapse of the Twin Towers and the size of the debris pile, said FEMA operations director Bruce Baughman.

Most worked through the debris above ground, but some of rescue workers were searching for victims in the maze of tunnels and shopping corridors beneath the Twin Towers.

A mortuary team helped prepare bodies for burial.

At the Pentagon, four teams were at work, trying to stabilize the building as they used sophisticated equipment to detect any life beneath the rubble.

``We're here to go in and find people and try to get them out alive,'' said Marko Bourne, a FEMA spokesman working at the Pentagon.

Experts from the U.S. Army of Corps of Engineers were waiting for clearance to get closer to both disaster sites to help assess structural damage and plan the arduous task of clearing the rubble.

The Department of Health and Human Services (news - web sites) activated a national medical emergency system, dispatching roughly 7,000 volunteer doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical staff.

HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said federal officials were working to provide more asthma medication to New York hospitals to handle massive amounts of dust in the air.

Elsewhere in the federal government:

-The FBI (news - web sites) identified most of the hijackers who commandeered and crashed four airplanes, as well as suspected accomplices. ``The Department of Justice (news - web sites) has undertaken perhaps the most massive and intensive investigation ever conducted in this country,'' said Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites).

-At the State Department, officials were in touch with foreign governments as they sought information in the investigation and paved the way for a military response.

-The Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) allowed limited flights but kept most of the nation's fleet grounded. It announced tighter security rules, including a ban on curbside check-in.

-At the Energy Department, officials assured the public that there are adequate gasoline supplies amid reports that retailers were charging up to $5 per gallon. The department also suspended shipments of nuclear materials and continued a high-alert at nuclear weapons production facilities.

-The Defense Department kept track of a Navy aircraft carrier patrolling the waters off New York's Long Island on Wednesday. Amphibious ships, guided missile cruisers and guided missile destroyers that are capable of responding to threats from the air and sea were also deployed along the East Coast.

-The Occupational Health and Safety Administration was assisting rescue teams on safety issues dealing with dust, asbestos, toxic fumes, leaks and building ruins.


-------- MILITARY

World War III

FOREIGN AFFAIRS
New York Times
September 13, 2001
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/opinion/13FRIE.html?searchpv=past7days

JERUSALEM - As I restlessly lay awake early yesterday, with CNN on my TV and dawn breaking over the holy places of Jerusalem, my ear somehow latched onto a statement made by the U.S. transportation secretary, Norman Mineta, about the new precautions that would be put in place at U.S. airports in the wake of Tuesday's unspeakable terrorist attacks: There will be no more curbside check-in, he said. I suddenly imagined a group of terrorists somewhere here in the Middle East, sipping coffee, also watching CNN and laughing hysterically: "Hey boss, did you hear that? We just blew up Wall Street and the Pentagon and their response is no more curbside check- in?"

I don't mean to criticize Mr. Mineta. He is doing what he can. And I have absolutely no doubt that the Bush team, when it identifies the perpetrators, will make them pay dearly. Yet there was something so absurdly futile and American about the curbside ban that I couldn't help but wonder: Does my country really understand that this is World War III? And if this attack was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means there is a long, long war ahead.

And this Third World War does not pit us against another superpower. It pits us - the world's only superpower and quintessential symbol of liberal, free-market, Western values - against all the super-empowered angry men and women out there. Many of these super-empowered angry people hail from failing states in the Muslim and third world. They do not share our values, they resent America's influence over their lives, politics and children, not to mention our support for Israel, and they often blame America for the failure of their societies to master modernity.

What makes them super-empowered, though, is their genius at using the networked world, the Internet and the very high technology they hate, to attack us. Think about it: They turned our most advanced civilian planes into human-directed, precision-guided cruise missiles - a diabolical melding of their fanaticism and our technology. Jihad Online. And think of what they hit: The World Trade Center - the beacon of American-led capitalism that both tempts and repels them, and the Pentagon, the embodiment of American military superiority.

And think about what places in Israel the Palestinian suicide bombers have targeted most. "They never hit synagogues or settlements or Israeli religious zealots," said the Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit. "They hit the Sbarro pizza parlor, the Netanya shopping mall. The Dolphinarium disco. They hit the yuppie Israel, not the yeshiva Israel."

So what is required to fight a war against such people in such a world? To start with, we as Americans will never be able to penetrate such small groups, often based on family ties, who live in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan or Lebanon's wild Bekaa Valley. The only people who can penetrate these shadowy and ever-mutating groups, and deter them, are their own societies. And even they can't do it consistently. So give the C.I.A. a break.

Israeli officials will tell you that the only time they have had real quiet and real control over the suicide bombers and radical Palestinian groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is when Yasir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority tracked them, jailed them or deterred them.

So then the question becomes, What does it take for us to get the societies that host terrorist groups to truly act against them?

First we have to prove that we are serious, and that we understand that many of these terrorists hate our existence, not just our policies. In June I wrote a column about the fact that a few cell-phone threats from Osama bin Laden had prompted President Bush to withdraw the F.B.I. from Yemen, a U.S. Marine contingent from Jordan and the U.S. Fifth Fleet from its home base in the Persian Gulf. This U.S. retreat was noticed all over the region, but it did not merit a headline in any major U.S. paper. That must have encouraged the terrorists. Forget about our civilians, we didn't even want to risk our soldiers to face their threats.

The people who planned Tuesday's bombings combined world-class evil with world-class genius to devastating effect. And unless we are ready to put our best minds to work combating them - the World War III Manhattan Project - in an equally daring, unconventional and unremitting fashion, we're in trouble. Because while this may have been the first major battle of World War III, it may be the last one that involves only conventional, non-nuclear weapons.

Second, we have been allowing a double game to go on with our Middle East allies for years, and that has to stop. A country like Syria has to decide: Does it want a Hezbollah embassy in Damascus or an American one? If it wants a U.S. embassy, then it cannot play host to a rogue's gallery of terrorist groups.

Does that mean the U.S. must ignore Palestinian concerns and Muslim economic grievances? No. Many in this part of the world crave the best of America, and we cannot forget that we are their ray of hope. But apropos of the Palestinians, the U.S. put on the table at Camp David a plan that would have gotten Yasir Arafat much of what he now claims to be fighting for. That U.S. plan may not be sufficient for Palestinians, but to say that the justifiable response to it is suicide terrorism is utterly sick.

Third, we need to have a serious and respectful dialogue with the Muslim world and its political leaders about why many of its people are falling behind. The fact is, no region in the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, has fewer freely elected governments than the Arab-Muslim world, which has none. Why? Egypt went through a whole period of self- criticism after the 1967 war, which produced a stronger country. Why is such self-criticism not tolerated today by any Arab leader?

Where are the Muslim leaders who will tell their sons to resist the Israelis - but not to kill themselves or innocent non-combatants? No matter how bad, your life is sacred. Surely Islam, a grand religion that never perpetrated the sort of Holocaust against the Jews in its midst that Europe did, is being distorted when it is treated as a guidebook for suicide bombing. How is it that not a single Muslim leader will say that?

These are some of the issues we will have to address as we fight World War III. It will be a long war against a brilliant and motivated foe. When I remarked to an Israeli military official what an amazing technological feat it was for the terrorists to hijack the planes and then fly them directly into the most vulnerable spot in each building, he pooh-poohed me.

"It's not that difficult to learn how to fly a plane once it's up in the air," he said. "And remember, they never had to learn how to land."

No, they didn't. They only had to destroy. We, by contrast, have to fight in a way that is effective without destroying the very open society we are trying to protect. We have to fight hard and land safely. We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules, and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists. It won't be easy. It will require our best strategists, our most creative diplomats and our bravest soldiers. Semper Fi.

-------- afghanistan

Afghanistan Girds for a Possible U.S. Attack

By Kamran Khan and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 13, 2001; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21145-2001Sep12?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 12 -- Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, which is providing a safe haven for reputed terrorist Osama bin Laden, is bracing for an imminent U.S. attack, sending its top leader into hiding and repositioning its military hardware throughout the country, according to reports received today by Pakistani intelligence sources.

The radical Islamic movement's top leader, Mohammad Omar, has left his headquarters in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and is in hiding, according to Pakistani military intelligence officials. In addition, the Taliban has begun moving artillery batteries, aircraft and other weaponry in anticipation of a U.S. strike, the sources said.

"We have definite reports that the Taliban are now preparing to meet a major U.S. military onslaught," a senior security official said in a telephone interview from the Pakistan city of Quetta, near Afghanistan's southern border. "There is a warlike situation inside the Taliban military installations inside Afghanistan."

The Taliban today again denied that bin Laden, one of its most staunch supporters, was behind Tuesday's terrorist-directed airplane crashes that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon. But U.S. officials have said they have evidence linking bin Laden to Tuesday's attacks.

Intelligence officials here in the Pakistani capital said that although they believe bin Laden is in Afghanistan, they do not know exactly where he is. Most likely, they said, he is moving between hideouts even more often than he customarily does.

The United States launched cruise missiles in 1998 against sites in Afghanistan where bin Laden was suspected of training terrorists. The strikes were staged about two weeks after bombings, linked to bin Laden, of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Bin Laden escaped harm, but about two dozen Pakistanis at the sites were killed. Pakistan military authorities said they were not informed of the U.S. military strike until it was underway.

Sources here said today that U.S. officials have been pressing Pakistan for months to play a greater role in efforts to dislodge bin Laden from Afghanistan, a request Pakistan has resolutely resisted.

State Department, intelligence and military officials have asked Pakistan to support military efforts against bin Laden, including secret deployment of U.S. Special Forces in northern Pakistan that would conduct operations inside Afghanistan in an effort to capture him, senior Pakistani officials said.

Although Pakistan was a major staging ground in the 1980s for covert U.S. operations and support for Islamic rebels fighting against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, relations between the onetime allies have soured since the end of Cold War. U.S. officials have emphasized that relations are further complicated by the fact that Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons, making U.S. policymakers wary of taking any steps that would destabilize the country.

Pakistani authorities said that even though they turned down the U.S. request for Special Forces staging sites on their territory, the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan, on Afghanistan's northern border, had granted the United States authority to place Special Forces troops at a site on the border.

[The Reuters news agency, quoting Pakistan's official media, reported Thursday that Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, has promised the United States its full cooperation.

["I wish to assure President Bush and the U.S. government of our unstinted cooperation in the fight against terrorism," Musharraf told the APP news agency.]

Bin Laden, an exiled Saudi dissident, has lived in Afghanistan for several years under the Taliban's protection. Though the Taliban has controlled most of Afghanistan for five years, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates recognize it as the legitimate Afghan government.

The issue of a joint U.S.-Pakistani effort to force the Taliban to give up bin Laden has been discussed regularly for more than a year in visits to Pakistan by CIA Director George J. Tenet and Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, according to Pakistani officials.

The chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's equivalent of the CIA, was in Washington on Tuesday when the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington occurred. A Pakistani official here said Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed had gone to the United States specifically "to soothe U.S. concerns about Osama bin Laden and his possible ties with militant religious organizations in Pakistan."

Ahmed was stranded in Washington by the nationwide air-traffic shutdown, and he met today with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in a more highly charged atmosphere created by Tuesday's attacks.

U.S. and Pakistani officials also met here throughout the day, wrangling over the potential consequences of U.S. efforts to apprehend or attack bin Laden, according to Pakistani officials. "Such retaliatory U.S. military strikes against Afghanistan could create a security nightmare for Pakistan," said a senior Pakistani security official here. "We have told the Americans that such an action may prove to be counterproductive."

In an effort to demonstrate its compliance with U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, Pakistan's military government has frozen all accounts of the Afghan government in the State Bank of Pakistan, as well as accounts being used by religious organizations in Pakistan to help finance the Taliban. Even so, U.S. officials have accused Pakistan of doing far too little to assist in capturing bin Laden.

Pakistan has placed the estimated 45,000 troops on its border with Afghanistan on high alert in the event of an attack, which Pakistani officials say would send thousands of Afghans fleeing into Pakistan.

Pakistani security officials have warned U.S. officials that military strikes against Afghanistan could provoke an outpouring of public sympathy for the Taliban, a movement born in Pakistan's religious schools -- particularly from Afghan refugees in its camps. The Islamic seminaries remain the primary recruiting sources for the Taliban.

--------

Kabul Tense as Afghans Expect U.S. Military Strikes

Thu, Sep 13 11:04 PM EDT
By Tahir Ikram
Reuters
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/010913/23/international-attack-afghan-dc

KABUL - Frightened Afghans began appearing on Kabul's streets soon after dawn Friday, haunted by fears that the United States could launch military strikes in retaliation for terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Overnight, President Bush's administration worked on building an alliance for what it called the first war of the 21st century, naming Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden -- sheltered by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban -- as a suspect.

"In a situation like this, you feel that death is creeping up on you as we don't know when the attacks will take place. I am leaving Kabul with my family and can't wait any longer," said a baker.

"Throughout the night, my family and myself could not sleep properly... and the noise of any movement or cars passing gave us the feeling that either the American planes have come for bombing or rockets have been fired," he added.

Afghans have been following the aftermath of Tuesday's attacks in the United States, mostly by listening to foreign radio stations as television is banned. The few international phone lines have been cut for security reasons.

With Afghans marking their traditional Friday Muslim day of prayer, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that Washington had not yet concluded that bin Laden was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"The president and the U.S. government will decide what it intends to do by way of characterizing countries or characterizing individuals like Osama bin Laden and whether or not in our judgement they have or do not have a direct relationship to this activity, but that time has not come," he told CNN.

Washington is pressing neighboring Pakistan, one of just three countries to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's legitimate government, to join its battle against terrorism.

The Afghan capital Kabul is no stranger to conflict after 23 years of war. Residents say they expect strikes against military targets but also fear hits on the city's airport, government buildings and other installations.

A nightly curfew began as usual at 11 p.m. Thursday but the streets were empty of traffic by 8 p.m., suggesting that people wanted to be back home with their families.

FOREIGN NATIONALS LEAVE

Foreign aid workers pulled out Thursday. The United Nations closed its offices and suspended flights, drought-ridden and impoverished Afghanistan's only international air links as a result of sanctions imposed over the presence of bin Laden.

Three Islamabad-based diplomats from Germany, Australia and the United States, plus relatives of eight foreign aid workers on trial for promoting Christianity, also returned to Pakistan.

U.S. diplomat David Donahue said the Taliban would be held responsible for the security of four Germans, two Australians and two Americans arrested six weeks with 16 Afghan colleagues on charges that could carry the death penalty.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which operates key health projects, says most of its foreign staff would remain.

While making clear bin Laden was a suspect, Secretary of State Colin Powell stressed the United States would root out "terrorists," those behind the latest attacks and others guilty of assaults against U.S. personnel and allies in the past.

U.S. officials say the United States is asking Pakistan -- the main backer of the ruling Taliban who are otherwise only recognized by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- for military overfly rights and "military access."

Pakistan ruler General Pervez Musharraf has pledged cooperation, but it remains to be seen what form this will take.

"All countries must join hands in this common cause," he said in a statement and on national television. "I wish to assure President Bush and the U.S. government of our fullest cooperation in the fight against terrorism."

PAKISTAN AND THE TALIBAN

The Taliban emerged from religious schools in Pakistan's northwest in 1994, sweeping to power in Kabul two years later.

The State Department says there are credible reports Islamabad provides the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance and military advisers and that it has also failed to curb the activities of religious schools.

The Taliban once more condemned the attacks that saw two hijacked commercial jets slam into New York's World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon in Washington.

The hard-line movement, under sweeping U.N. Security Council sanctions for a refusal to extradite bin Laden, said they could hand over the militant if it was proven he was guilty.

"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has honestly asked America to give clear and substantial evidence for what it considers Osama to be responsible for," BBC monitoring quoted the Taliban's Radio Voice of Shariat as saying.

"And the IEA will hand him over to one of the Islamic courts of the world in order to be tried," it added.

The Taliban says bin Laden, who has a $5 million U.S. reward on his head for suspected involvement in the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, told them he had no role in Tuesday's terror attacks.

An aide to bin Laden told media the guerrilla leader said that while he had nothing to do with the attacks, they were "punishment from Allah."

Kabul has already come under fire this week, when anti-Taliban forces used helicopter gunships to hit the city's airport after an assassination attempt -- after which bin Laden's name also came up -- on its military commander.

Experts said that besides bin Laden -- who honed his guerrilla skills against Soviet troops in the 1980s commanding Arab fighters funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency -- few have the cash or expertise to mount such attacks.

His al-Qaeda organization operates in at least 34 countries, and he is estimated to have around $300 million in personal financial assets with which he funds his network and as many as 3,000 Islamic militant operatives, according to a report by Congressional researchers.

-------- biological weapons

Middle East Developing Biological, Chemical Weapons

September 13, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2001/2001L-09-13-02.html

WASHINGTON, DC, A new Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report released to Congress just days before the terrorist attacks on the United States Tuesday reveals that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries are expanding their capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Iran is using sources in Russia, China, North Korea and Western Europe to make chemical, biological, nuclear and advanced conventional weapons and their delivery systems, the unclassified CIA report said.

The report, "Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions," is sent to Congress every six months. The current report, released September 7, covers the period from July 1 to December 31, 2000.

In it the CIA analyzes weapons of mass destruction and missile technology acquisition by Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Egypt, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. It also examines key suppliers Russia, North Korea, China and western nations.

"Iran, a Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) States party, already has manufactured and stockpiled chemical weapons - including blister, blood, choking and probably nerve agents, and the bombs and artillery shells for delivering them," the CIA said.

Iranian plane on exhibit in Japan (Photo courtesy Cool Online) "Tehran continued its efforts to seek considerable dual-use biotechnical materials, equipment, and expertise from abroad - primarily from entities in Russia and Western Europe - ostensibly for civilian uses. We judge that this equipment and know-how could be applied to Iran's biological warfare (BW) program. Iran probably began its offensive BW program during the Iran-Iraq war, and it may have some limited capability for BW deployment," the CIA explained.

Many of these countries attempting to develop domestic missile and weapons of mass destruction production capabilities will eventually become suppliers, the report said. And as such, they do not belong to recognized supplier groups and do not adhere to widely recognized export constraints.

CIA investigators found that Russia, China and North Korea continue to supply crude ballistic missile related equipment, technology and expertise to Iran.

Iraqi leader Sadam Hussein (Photo courtesy Antena) In Iraq, it is likely that the country has used the period since December 1998, when all international arms inspections ceased, to reconstitute prohibited programs. "We assess that since the suspension of U.N. inspections in December of 1998, Baghdad has had the capability to reinitiate both its CW [chemical weapons] and BW [biological weapons] programs within a few weeks to months," the report said. "Without an inspection monitoring program, however, it is more difficult to determine if Iraq has done so."

North Korea has continued to procure raw materials and components for its ballistic missile programs from various sources, and especially through North Korean firms in China. North Korea is capable of producing and delivering through munitions a variety of chemical and biological weapons.

North Korea continued to export significant ballistic missile related equipment, components, materials and technical expertise to countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa.

Egypt has maintained a relationship with North Korea on ballistic missiles and has maintained a Scud [missile] inventory.

Weapons on parade in North Korea 1999 Syria has actively sought chemical weapons related materials and expertise from foreign sources over the six month reporting period, the CIA reports. Syria has also continued work on a solid-propellant rocket motor development and production capability.

Sudan has continued developing the capability to produce chemical weapons. Sudan has also been seeking older advanced conventional weapons and cheaper conventional weapons.

India continues its nuclear weapons development program. Sources in Russia and Western Europe remained India's primary conduits of missile related and dual-use technology transfers - items which have both civilian and military applications.

China has continued to provide "significant assistance" to Pakistan's ballistic missile program, the CIA reports.

Russian entities have continued to supply a variety of ballistic missile related goods and technical know-how to countries such as Iran, India, China and Libya. "Monitoring Russian proliferation behavior, therefore, will remain a very high priority," the report said.

"Countries determined to maintain weapons of mass destruction and missile programs over the long term have been placing significant emphasis on increased self-sufficiency and attempts to insulate their programs against interdiction and disruption," the CIA said, "as well as trying to reduce their dependence on imports by developing domestic production capabilities."

The unclassified report is available online at: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/bian/bian_sep_2001.htm

-------- israel

Report of the unreported days

Sept. 13
GUSH SHALOM -
pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033
<info@gush-shalom.org>
http://www.gush-shalom.org/

Today, the editorial of the mass-circulation Ma'ariv pointed out "the rare opportunity to turn international public opinion Israel's way", since "The world is horrified by the ideological alliance between Arafat and Bin Laden". This, the paper believes, makes it possible for Sharon "To seize the moment and use against terrorism the kind of means which hitherto he did not dare to use for fear of international reaction".

Sharon needed little urging, as indicated by the frankly brutal report carried in Yediot Aharonot, Ma'ariv's great rival, also of today: "At about 2.00 PM the IDF forces reached the building in Arabeh Village where three Islamic Jihad activists had barricaded themselves. The three refused to surrender, and were liquidated by missiles and shells. A 12 -year old girl was also killed in the shooting on the inhabited building. Later, another wanted Palestinian was liquidated as well. In the three hours' exchange of fire, four Palestinian civilians were killed by mistake and about fifty wounded".

In the Israeli media it was reported, though ruthlessly - on the international networks it had no chance. (A group of firebrand politicians, led by former PM Netanyahu, seem to find such operations insufficiant; they are making shrill calls for total destruction of the Palestinian Authority and the killing or exiling of Arafat.)

Altogether, at least 18 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army in the past two days. Among those killed was a 71-year old man from Beit Likia, shot by soldiers for the crime of trying to bypass the earthen barrier blocking the single exit road from his village; and a wounded Palestinian policeman died when his ambulance was delayed by the soldiers maintaining for the third consecutive day a close siege over the town of Jenin. One Israeli got killed, a settler woman caught in a Palestinian ambush near Hable.

It is now - a late night hour - the fourth night since Israeli soldiers started the siege of Jenin, which involves occupying parts of the "A" area - the area where they should not be present according to the Oslo agreement - signed eight years ago to the day. It is an invasion of the Palestinian territory far longer - and with far more severe consequences - than the April invasion of the Gaza Strip which at the time drew a sharp reprimand from the US State Department (nothing of the kind this time, needless to say). Another big-scale invasion by an armoured column took place during the past day at the venerable town of Jericho, and there were sundry bombings and bombardments at various other spots, altogether "the largest number of simultaneous operations since the uprising started" according to the Israel Radio's military correspondent.

The weekly Gush Shalom ad, due to be published in Ha'aretz in the morning, sounds a caution to the PM and the rest of the warmongers: "(...) Sharon hopes that from now on he will get the automatic support of the Americans and Europeans for the continuation of the occupation. In this he may be disappointed. The opposite can also happen: the Americans and Europeans may interfere in order to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is poisoning the international atmosphere. This would be in the interest of the Israeli people, too."

Certainly, it seems that Secretary of State Powel has no intention to accept Sharon's "Arafat equals Bin Laden" formula. Instead, Powel has pointedly mentioned Arafat among the heads of state whose condolonces to the American people he had received, and pushed for a meeting between the Palestinian President and Israel' Foreign Minister Peres, which is due to take place on Sunday. But PM Sharon, evidently displeased with the intended meeting, gave Peres a very narrow mandate: to call for immediate ceasefire without offering the Palestinians even the most remote hope of an end to the occupation, the oppression, the settlement extension. In other words, a demand for unconditional surrender, with Peres playing the part of "Good Cop" on Sharon's behalf. Not much hope there.

Meanwhile, there are some initiatives to do whatever grassroots activists can still do in such a rotten situation.

The International Solidarity Movement and its Israeli-Palestinian component Chapter 48 are establishing a two-weeks-long presence in the West Bank village of Harres. Activists will be staying (for anything between one night and the whole two weeks) at a house which the army threatens to take over as "an observation post". They will monitor and record the situation, taking photos and films and sending out reports. There will be training on how to react to attacks by soldiers or settlers in a non-violent manner, which would be as effective and as safe as possible. To join call Liad at 058-277-849 or mailto:liadland@yahoo.com.

On Saturday, September 15, Ta'ayush is organizing a solidarity convoy of food, water and school-equipment to the small villages in South Hebron area, where houses and dwelling-caves were destroyed in a military rampage several months ago. The convoy will proceed from Shoket junction (near Be'er Sheva) at 10.30 AM (contact 057-662099 or 052-868398). Car owners can come directly there, or join the convoy at the meeting points (8.30 AM from Tel-Aviv's Arlozorov Street Railway Station, contact 055-390402 arab_jewish@hotmail.com, and also at 8.30 AM from Binyanei Ha'uma. in Jerusalem, contact 051-921696 debey@mscc.huji.ac.il).

Finally, we would like to convey a message we got from a group of Palestinian- Americans resident on the West Bank, who intend to hold a silent candlelight vigil to honour the vicims of the tragic events in the United States and their families. It will take place tomorrow, Friday Sept. 14, at 6.30 PM outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City. Israeli Peace actvists are welcome to join. For details call 052-642709, 052-290173, 052-556810.

----

Israeli Forces Enter West Bank Town

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 13, 2001
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli tanks rumbled into Palestinian towns in the West Bank for the second straight day Thursday, igniting gunbattles that left three Palestinians dead and 21 wounded.

Palestinian leaders accused Israel of stepping up incursions into their territory as the world turned its eyes toward the horrendous aftermath of terror attacks in the United States.

The tanks shelled buildings and exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen in Jenin and Jericho in raids the military said were intended to ``root out terror.''

The attack came a day after an overnight raid in Jenin and two nearby villages that killed seven Palestinians, including three suspected Islamic militants and an 11-year-old girl. A fourth suspected militant died Thursday of injuries sustained in the attack.

The army said Thursday it was investigating the death of another Palestinian man apparently shot near the West Bank town of Ramallah.

In nearly a year of fighting, 626 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and 173 on the Israeli side.

Amid the persistent bloodshed, there were efforts to bring Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat together for truce talks.

Arafat's adviser, Nabil Aburdeneh, said he expected a date and site for the meeting would be determined in the coming days. He said it is important for Peres, a celebrated peacemaker, to come to the table with a full mandate from hawkish Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Sharon has insisted there can be no peace negotiations while violence continues, limiting talks to arranging a truce. Peres said he would be prepared to discuss a cease-fire and related issues, including easing restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo suggested Peres and Arafat could meet Sunday but said details needed to be worked out.

The United States and Europe were also pushing for the meeting. Despite the turmoil in the United States, Secretary of State Colin Powell called Arafat, Sharon and Peres on Wednesday to urge talks.

Powell called Arafat again Thursday, according to Aburdeneh.

Israel, meanwhile, reopened its air space after banning incoming foreign flights in the wake of the terror attacks in the United States, said Ports Authority spokesman Pini Schiff.

The new Israeli incursions intensified Palestinian accusations that Sharon's government was exploiting the world's preoccupation with the attacks in the United States to escalate its military strikes.

``The Israeli government is hiding behind the dust and tragedy in New York and Washington, D.C., to commit these crimes against our innocent civilians and cities,'' Abed Rabbo said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Sharon compared Arafat to accused terrorist Osama bin Laden, a leading suspect in the U.S. attacks.

``Everyone has his own bin Laden. Arafat is our bin Laden,'' Sharon was quoted as saying on Israel radio. Sharon made the remark in his telephone conversation with Powell, the radio reported.

The Israeli incursions into Jenin and Jericho began in the early hours Thursday and the forces pulled out several hours later, in line with previous Israeli incursions.

In Jenin, Israeli forces destroyed the rest of a police compound they attacked the day before and then withdrew, the army said.

Palestinians said the tanks shelled houses and fired machine guns, killing three people -- a man and woman in a house and a gunman. Nine other people were wounded during the Jenin incursion, they said.

In the desert oasis of Jericho, flares lit up the night sky as tanks rolled into town. Residents said several greenhouses were destroyed and at least one house was damaged by tank fire. The local hospital reported 12 people wounded.

Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman Yarden Vatikay said the military had information that Palestinian militants in Jericho were preparing attacks against Israelis, but gave no details.

-------- nato

NATO invokes 'Article 5' for first time

September 13, 2001
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010913-8523982.htm

NATO yesterday cleared the way for a joint military response to Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, saying the 19-nation alliance is prepared to act together if it is proved that the attackers came from outside the United States.

Climaxing a day of negotiations and backroom diplomacy in Brussels, ministers to NATO's executive council voted unanimously to invoke for the first time ever the alliance's famous Article 5, which holds that an attack against any member "will be considered as directed against all the parties."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell hailed the NATO vote, telling reporters it could prove highly useful in the event of an American military retaliation, whether against terrorist groups suspected of planning the attack or the governments who shelter them.

"We're building a strong coalition to go after these perpetrators, but more broadly, to go after terrorism wherever we find it in the world," Mr. Powell said.

The resolution read in part: "The United States' NATO allies stand ready to provide the assistance that may be required as a consequence of these acts of barbarism."

Mr. Powell said the vote "tees up" military coordination between the allies, citing overflight rights for U.S. military planes as one example of potential cooperation.

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said the collective defense responsibilities would not be formally called upon until U.S. investigators determine who was behind the attack.

"The country attacked has to make the decisions. It has to be the one that asks for help," Mr. Robertson told reporters in Brussels after last night's vote.

The Brussels vote capped a day when the globe's most powerful institutions expressed sympathy and support for the U.S. victims, with the European Union, the U.N. Security Council and the Group of Eight industrial nations all voicing their outrage.

Several world leaders expressed outright support for an international military response to the attack, once the terrorists and their backers had been identified.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, asked in Tokyo yesterday if he supported retaliatory strikes by the United States, replied: "Of course we do."

"Japan supports the U.S. stance that the United States never yields to terrorism. We also have to show our firm stance," Mr. Koizumi said.

Russian officials expressed immediate support for a strong U.S. response, with many in Moscow drawing a parallel to Russia's own much-criticized campaign against rebels in Chechnya. Russian President Vladimir Putin has charged that Osama bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi financier many believe to be behind the latest U.S. attack, is also aiding the Islamic forces in Chechnya.

U.S. officials said yesterday Mr. Putin had sent a letter to Mr. Bush that appeared to offer advance approval of a U.S. retaliatory strike.

Mr. Powell also revealed that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and his Russian counterpart were to meet soon as part of the joint U.S.-Russian working group on Afghanistan, where bin Laden is based.

Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany's ambassador to the United States, said he was struck by the "enormous outpouring" of sympathy for the United States around the globe, an outpouring that helped produce the "unprecedented" NATO resolution.

"I think there is an opportunity here to shape a grand coalition, encompassing all the world's powers, against this threat," Mr. Ischinger said. "There is no major country that is not on board."

Fueling anger around the globe was the fact that many of the apparent victims of the attack on New York's World Trade Center were foreign nationals or employees of foreign firms.

Speaking to reporters at 10 Downing Street yesterday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he feared that "significant numbers of [the victims] will be British."

"So in a very real and direct sense, the interests of our country are engaged," Mr. Blair said.

The government of Thailand leased three offices at the Manhattan complex, employing about 40 to 50 Thai nationals promoting trade, investment and tourism, according to Nipon, first secretary of the Thai Embassy in Washington, who uses only one name.

We believe everybody has been accounted for," the diplomat said. "They managed to escape, but it only underscores the sense of sympathy our government has for America's situation."

Germany's Mr. Ischinger said yesterday that his embassy was still trying to determine how many German nationals were on the hijacked planes or working in the offices affected by yesterday's events.

"There's no clear picture yet," he said, "but we estimate there may be German casualties in the two digits."

China's Foreign Ministry, which denounced the attacks Tuesday, said that 14 Chinese firms had offices in the World Trade Center towers and that 30 Chinese were still unaccounted for late yesterday. Five Taiwanese banks were also tenants in the buildings, and Taiwanese officials said two Taiwanese workers were missing yesterday.

The French bank Credit Agricole had a large operation on the 92nd floor of one of the twin towers. Company officials said yesterday that some 81 employees were still unaccounted for.

Setting aside its usual ambivalence about the United States, the influential leftist French daily Le Monde wrote in an editorial yesterday: "In this tragic time, when words to express the shock we feel appear meaningless, the first thing that comes to mind is this: We are all Americans."

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Attack on U.S. Is Attack on All, NATO Agrees

By William Drozdiak
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 13, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20983-2001Sep12?language=printer

BRUSSELS, Sept. 12 -- In an unprecedented show of support for a member country, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization decided today that Tuesday's terror strikes in the United States constituted an attack against all 19 members that commits them to respond militarily if they deem force is necessary to protect security.

It was the first time in its 52-year history that the alliance invoked collective defense arrangements under Article 5 of its charter. The decision by NATO's governing body came after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell pressed his European counterparts during a day of phone calls to recognize the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as nothing short of a declaration of war against democracy.

A senior Western official said today's action was "the strongest possible signal of support that Europe could give the United States." While the NATO declaration does not obligate the allies to send military forces on a counterterror mission, it effectively bestows their blessing on retaliatory action the United States might take.

It also creates a legal framework for the United States to request military help from those allies for that action. In a news conference today, Powell spoke of a need to build an international coalition against terrorism.

European Union foreign ministers met in Brussels and also gave their backing to the United States. While acknowledging that the scale of the tragedy fully warranted retaliatory blows by the United States, some ministers cautioned that restraint might be required to avoid a spiral of violence that could spin out of control.

Norway's Thorbjorn Jagland said, "It's not easy to warn the United States in such a situation, but we must hope there will not be an irrational revenge." And France's Alain Richard urged Washington to think about the risks of provoking a new round of terrorism, contending that "if an act of retaliation leads to a new destabilization, you haven't won anything at all."

But all in all, Europe offered up a display of transatlantic solidarity that stood in sharp contrast to recent squabbles over trade, missile defense and the death penalty. German officials echoed U.S. theories that the attack was the work of Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden; British Prime Minister Tony Blair recalled Parliament from recess to debate the crisis.

At the EU foreign ministers' meeting, Italy's Renato Ruggiero said there was unanimous agreement on both sides of the Atlantic that "an attack on U.S. territory is an attack on the values that belong to all of us."

Referring to the American role in two world wars in Europe, the president of the EU's executive commission, Romano Prodi, said that "just as in the darkest hours of European history when America stood close with us, today we stand close by America. We are ready to assist with every means at our disposal."

U.S. allies also offered practical aid for rescue workers digging out the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Offers to send emergency teams for such jobs as treating burns and identifying bodies came from the European Union, NATO, Japan and Greece, among others. In many countries, citizens gave blood and put flowers at the doors of U.S. diplomatic missions.

At a NATO summit in Washington two years ago, leaders gave their approval to a significant change in the alliance's strategic concept that recognized terrorism as a potential enemy. That revision enabled alliance Secretary General George Robertson to cite Tuesday's attacks as a loyalty test of allied defense commitments.

"It was a really impressive endorsement," said a participant in the discussions. "This was a decision that required clearance by the highest authorities in every government. It gives the United States the option to call for military support from every NATO member in fighting terrorism."

Article 5 of NATO's founding treaty declares that an attack on one member must be treated as an attack on all and commits each member 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."

NATO diplomats said the key article was designed to apply to an invasion of Western Europe by the Soviet Union that would oblige the United States to come to the aid of its allies. Instead, they noted with some irony, it is now being invoked by the United States a decade after the end of the Cold War to require its European allies to live up to their collective defense pledges in fighting terrorism.

"Terrorism must not be fought by one country alone," said Javier Solana, a former NATO secretary general who is now the EU's foreign policy chief. "Terrorism is an international problem that is now recognized as a grave threat to the Atlantic alliance."

At their meeting, EU foreign ministers said their 15 countries would honor American victims with a day of mourning on Friday and urged all Europeans to observe three minutes of silence that day. In a joint declaration, the ministers said they would "spare no efforts to help identify, bring to justice and punish those responsible. There will be no safe haven for terrorists and their sponsors."

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy said his country was prepared to hold an emergency summit of leaders from the Group of Eight industrial powers to consider a joint response to the terror attacks.

Italy holds the rotating presidency of the group and hosted a summit in July that was marred by violence between police and anti-globalization protesters, but he said his country was prepared to hold another gathering of top world leaders because of the importance of finding a cohesive global strategy against terrorism.

Germany said its intelligence agencies, along with those from France, Britain and Israel, had gleaned sufficient information to surmise that bin Laden, the Saudi dissident now based in Afghanistan, masterminded the suicide attacks.

But Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a top aide to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who coordinates the German intelligence services, said they still had not discovered any evidence that would amount to a smoking gun.

"We're still putting the mosaic together," Steinmeier said. "But the way it was carried out, the choice of targets, the military approach, the highly professional preparations and the presumably large financial resources mean there are many points that indicate we should look for the perpetrators among those around Osama bin Laden."

Correspondents Peter Finn in Berlin and T.R. Reid in London contributed to this report.

-------- u.s.

Hill Allocates $20 Billion for Security, Aid
President Again Vows to Retaliate Against Perpetrators

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 13, 2001; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21271-2001Sep12?language=printer

President Bush yesterday declared the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center "acts of war," as Congress agreed to provide $20 billion for the effort to aid victims and punish perpetrators.

"The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror -- they were acts of war," the president said after an hour-long meeting with his national security advisers in the Cabinet Room. "This is an enemy that thinks its harbors are safe. But they won't be safe forever."

In a session with leaders of the House and Senate, Bush stopped short of requesting a full declaration of war from Congress. Such a formal declaration seemed unnecessary, officials from both branches said, because a joint resolution passed by Congress yesterday made clear the administration would have the leeway it needs to pursue its assault on terrorist organizations and their sponsors.

Instead, Bush agreed with Congress to a $20 billion emergency funding authorization for aid and security. Bush and congressional leaders from both parties -- several of them appearing in the White House driveway after a session with Bush -- took pains to demonstrate their "shoulder to shoulder" determination to defeat America's adversaries.

But yesterday brought some discord over lawmakers' right to information. Bush's advisers provided little information while lauding the president's actions. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld scolded government officials for divulging classified information -- interpreted by members of Congress as a reference to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said Tuesday afternoon on CNN that the United States had intercepted communications with Osama bin Laden's organization about the attacks.

Rumsfeld said the type of person divulging such classified information "is willing to frustrate our efforts to track down and deal with terrorists, and willing to reveal information that could cost the lives of men and women in uniform."

Congressional sources, meanwhile, said the White House had moved to block the CIA and FBI from briefing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence behind closed doors. In response to a request from the committee, both agencies at first said they were eager to do so but later said the White House had "locked them down" and told the agencies that Bush's National Security Council was in charge of all briefings to Congress.

The administration canceled a Tuesday briefing of the intelligence committee, saying there was not yet sufficient information. Instead, the White House offered a briefing yesterday afternoon with 10 representatives from various agencies addressing all 100 senators. A congressional source said there was consternation on Capitol Hill because such a briefing was of only cosmetic value, "the same as no briefing at all."

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said last night that the CIA and FBI are free to brief Congress directly "at their discretion." He added that "there is a benefit to a team briefing" and said the "NSC of course coordinates" briefings on the Hill.

Administration officials said the crisis had affected every corner of the White House. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. began handing out assignments yesterday and in many cases aides were working on issues outside their normal responsibilities.

Demands on the Cabinet Affairs office, which coordinates the response to the attacks by such executive branch agencies as the Transportation and Health and Human Services departments as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, swamped the small staff and additional personnel were added to help. Other parts of the White House staff worked intensively to redraw Bush's schedule and prepare for possible public events in the coming days.

One outside ally of the White House, who was in touch with officials there, said Bush's tight-knit inner circle was quickly translating the president's requests into action. "You just go to another level," he said.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice contacted officials from allied embassies, encouraging what one official called "declaratory support" for possible U.S. action. One European diplomat said the White House team appeared to be working efficiently in the aftermath of Tuesday's devastation.

The White House scrapped its normally tight and orderly schedule yesterday to manage the crisis. Bush, who was scheduled to hand out inaugural medals and address a high-tech group, instead spent yesterday in multiple sessions with security and intelligence aides and speaking with leaders of Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia. A session with congressional leaders ran long.

Though some lawmakers have suggested a formal declaration of war or invocation of the War Powers Act, Fleischer played down the likelihood. "The president will continue to work with Congress on any appropriate measures at the appropriate time," he said. "But, you know, this is also a different situation. . . . It is a different type of war than it was, say, when you knew the capital of a country that attacked you."

In the morning, Fleischer said Bush wanted to visit the sites of the attacks but that "the first priority has got to be not to do anything that would interfere with the rescue efforts that are currently underway." But in the afternoon, Bush went to the Pentagon to view the wreckage.

Facing some criticism that Bush's hopscotching of the country Tuesday and his fleeting public appearances conveyed instability, the White House yesterday argued that this was because of a threat to Air Force One. "We have specific and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were also intended targets of these attacks," Fleischer said, declining to elaborate. He said that Bush conferred by phone with his father, the former president, while Air Force One flew to Nebraska yesterday.

He also said that U.S. intelligence indicated Tuesday's attacks were not part of an ongoing wave of terrorism. "We believe the perpetrators have executed their plan, and therefore the risks are significantly reduced," he said. But members of Congress said yesterday they had been told that it may not be over, although intelligence officials could not say that they knew a second attack was planned.

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Security Tightened for U.S. Troops

By Melissa Eddy
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, Sept. 13, 2001; 8:56 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010913/aponline085625_000.htm

STUTTGART, Germany -- Flak-jacketed military police searched cars, soldiers sandbagged machine-gun posts and warships slipped out of port as U.S. troops stood on high alert Thursday, tightening security and awaiting orders after the worst terrorist attack on American soil.

Security for American military personnel and their families was tightened after President Bush put all U.S. forces on "Threat Condition Delta," the highest state of readiness, following the devastating assaults in New York and Washington on Tuesday.

"Delta is usually the result of a direct attack, which we certainly had," U.S. Navy Capt. Brian P. Cullin, the chief spokesman for U.S. European Command, said in an interview Wednesday. "The main idea is that you circle the wagons."

European Command, based in Stuttgart, covers operations in Europe, Africa and parts of the Middle East. It is responsible for troops now engaged in peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and forces based in Turkey policing the skies over part of Iraq.

Cullin declined to comment on extra security for those troops but said the missions were unaffected so far. While there were no immediate plans to redeploy troops, some special forces in Europe involved in training operations "could be called upon," he said, without giving details.

"Operationally, nothing has changed," he said.

But at every entrance to American bases in Europe, military police in flak jackets and helmets have replaced civilian security staff, searching the interior, trunk, engine and undercarriage of each incoming vehicle for bombs or weapons.

German police have placed armored vehicles outside every U.S. base, Cullin said, and Italy's elite Carabinieri were providing extra security.

Schools and recreational centers on bases in Germany and Italy have been closed until further notice, Cullin said. A midnight to 5:30 a.m. curfew was imposed on Army soldiers, and the troops and their families encouraged to stay at home as much as possible.

On the Japanese island of Okinawa, the most important U.S. military outpost in the Pacific, the stepped-up security was unmistakable, though some bases were already downgrading from Delta. Guards set up a machine gun post with sand bags at a U.S. Marine base on Okinawa.

In South Korea, helmeted national police with rifles - instead of the usual truncheons - were posted near major U.S. military bases. At the main U.S. base in Seoul, soldiers were seen with M-16 rifles on their shoulders, rather than their usual sidearms.

"These are strictly forces protection measures. It's a high level of awareness about our security," said Stephen Oertwig, a spokesman for the U.S. Forces in South Korea. He said there was no specific threat against the troops.

Shortly after the alert orders were issued, two dozen U.S. Navy warships left Mediterranean ports. Cullin declined to comment on their current location.

At bases on the European mainland, chaplains and social workers offered military personnel counseling for stress. Tensions are high because the bases are potential terrorist targets and a resource pool should the U.S. decide to retaliate with military force.

In remarks suggesting U.S. military retaliation, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told U.S. troops Wednesday that "in the days ahead" they will be added to the long history of American military heroes.

"We face powerful and terrible enemies, enemies we intend to vanquish," Rumsfeld said in a videotaped message to all Defense Department employees worldwide.

"The task of vanquishing these terrible enemies - and protecting the American people and the cause of human freedom - will fall to you," he said.

There are 116,000 U.S. troops in Europe. In Asia, there are roughly 51,500 American troops in Japan, and some 37,000 in South Korea. Though much smaller, there also are U.S. facilities on the Pacific island of Guam and on Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean.

Cullin said commanders are still assessing the possible threat in Africa, where U.S. troops are stationed mainly in Morocco, Gabon and Nigeria.

"It is unclear at this point how long we will remain in Delta," Cullin said. "Usually it's very short, but this time it may be longer than usual."

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Officials talk of military response

September 13, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010913-4292639.htm

U.S. military retaliation for Tuesday's kamikaze-style attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon will come sooner rather than later as part of a broader war against terrorists, administration officials said yesterday.

Military officers said the Pentagon has quickly updated options for striking terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, a haven for Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, the No. 1 suspect in masterminding the well-coordinated terrorist attacks. Officials said the Bush administration is in the early stages of developing a much broader war on Middle East-based terrorist organizations that could involve attacks on training camps in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

One source said that early evidence indicated the airline hijackings were executed by a large network of terrorist cells, with bin Laden as the main player.

Senior Bush officials are openly talking of quick retaliatory strikes that would merely be the opening salvo in a longer bombing campaign, once terrorist sites are identified.

Said Secretary of State Colin Powell on NBC: "I can assure the American people that the president, if he is able to get the information pinpointed who it is and where they are and get targetable information, I am quite confident that he will look at every option he has available to him to respond militarily."

Suggesting that any military action would be sustained, Mr. Powell added, "Let's not think that one single counterattack will rid the world of terrorism of the kind we saw yesterday. This is going to take a multifaceted attack along many dimensions."

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he preferred not to rattle the Pentagon's considerable sabre.

"I guess I'm kind of old fashioned," he said. "I'm inclined to think that if you're going to cock it, you throw it, and you don't talk about it a lot."

The White House said the FBI and intelligence agencies were collecting and going over a massive amount of evidence. But military officials said privately that all signs lead to bin Laden as being the one who masterminded the attacks - especially intercepted communications of two operatives telling the ex-Saudi millionaire that the targets had been hit.

The United States attacked bin Laden once before, in 1998, when the Navy launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at his suspected hideouts in Afghanistan. But that attack has been viewed as generally ineffective. Today, military officials say a much larger and more intensive campaign is needed to eliminate bin Laden and his extensive terrorist network.

"I think you have to introduce Army ground troops," said a retired four-star general who endorses forcible entry into Afghanistan's mountainous terrain.

Said an active duty Army officer: "It would be something like Somalia. A large element to secure the outer perimeter and a team to take down the suspected structures."

Another retired general said President Bush must order an attack soon. "If we don't retaliate by tomorrow afternoon, it becomes anti-climatic. The American people expect it. I don't know how we cannot."

Military officials pointed out that Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan and then attempted to occupy and control the country. But Muslim guerilla fighters, led in part by bin Laden and aided by U.S. Stinger missiles, eventually defeated the Soviets.

With that in mind, any U.S. intervention would have to be quick and lethal, the officials said.

The National Security Agency, the nation's global listening post, is conducting an extensive review of intercepts, looking for any bit of evidence that identifies the perpetrators.

The U.S. military remained on its highest level of alert - threat condition Delta - for a second straight day yesterday. Jet fighters streaked over the Washington skyline just in case another terrorist-driven airliner appeared. A Navy carrier stood guard off the coast of Long Island, NY.

"We are, in a sense, seeing the definition of a new battlefield in the world, a 21st century battlefield, and it is a different kind of conflict," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters, shortly before going to the White House for a National Security Council meeting with Mr. Bush.

Mr. Powell said that at an earlier meeting, "we reviewed all that has happened and began to make our plans for the efforts that we will be taking in the future, not only to bring these perpetrators to justice but to the punishment they deserve."

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U.S. can go to war with any enemies

September 13, 2001
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010913-672200.htm

If Congress declares war, it does not need to identify a single country as the enemy.

Political leaders -- from President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to Sen. Arlen Specter and others -- yesterday called the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "acts of war." Mr. Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, said on the Senate floor that the United States can declare war against a group -- not just against nations -- if desired.

"You don't necessarily have to exactly specify who we're at war with. It could be international terrorists," said Marshall Wittmann, senior fellow with the Hudson Institute.

While chief suspect Osama bin Laden, a member of the terrorist group al Qaeda, has been indicted by U.S. courts since 1988 for attacks against Americans, bin Laden has virtually escaped the wrath of the United States by hiding in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he oversees terrorist training camps.

That appears about to end -- with or without a formal declaration of war.

"We will hold accountable those countries that provide support, that give host nations -- if you can call it that -- support and facilities to these kinds of terrorist groups," Mr. Powell said yesterday, reiterating the president's stance.

"We will be directing our efforts not only against terrorists, but against those who do harbor and do provide haven and do provide support for terrorism."

While Congress is authorized in the Constitution "to declare war" and "to raise and support armies," Stephen Hess, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said simply: "A declaration of war is whatever the president says it is."

Political scholars also said the formal act of declaring war isn't required for Mr. Bush to strike militarily against any country or group. The War Powers Act of 1973 allows the president to attack in the event a "national emergency [is] created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."

The act was created because Congress was unhappy that President Nixon was acting unilaterally in the Vietnam War.

Other presidents have come under fire for employing the military without consulting Congress, as the War Powers Act attempted to make a requirement. The president can use military forces for 60 days without a formal declaration of war by Congress.

Most presidents, scholars said, have gotten away with breaching the act. Former President Bill Clinton violated the act in 1998 with impunity, ordering air strikes against Yugoslavia in March of that year.

The House of Representatives refused to give approval for the air war in a tie vote of 213-213 on April 28.

Sixty days later, the war was not concluded, but Mr. Clinton's authority went unchecked -- although a group of congressmen sued to end the air strikes They lost the suit.

Mr. Bush's father, as president, used both avenues. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, a U.S. ally, he would have been within his power to declare war. Instead, he asked Congress for an advance vote of confidence.

"I can think of no better way than for Congress to express its support for the president at this critical time. This truly is the last best chance for peace," the president said then. Congress authorized military force Jan. 12, 1991; aerial bombings of Iraq began four days later.

Mr. Powell yesterday, for the first time, suggested that the United States might invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreement, which states that any attack against a member country is considered an attack against the alliance.

The secretary of state said George Robertson, NATO secretary-general, was working on a resolution opening access to Article 5.

"If that resolution goes forward, that doesn't invoke Article 5 yet, but it puts in a position to be invoked when the United States makes a judgment about the nature of the attack and where that attack came from," Mr. Powell said.

--------

America Lines Up Support For Strike
Pakistan Pressured To Aid Any Reprisal

By Alan Sipress and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 13, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20862-2001Sep12?language=printer

The Bush administration moved aggressively yesterday to lay the diplomatic and military groundwork for a possible strike against Osama bin Laden and his supporters in Afghanistan, winning an unprecedented NATO commitment of support and pressuring neighboring Pakistan for intelligence and logistical backing.

As dawn was breaking on the first day after the gravest terrorist assault in American history, President Bush and his top diplomats were already lining up support across Europe, the Middle East and Asia for a response that they said would not just apprehend the attackers but retaliate against any countries behind them.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spoke early in the morning with NATO Secretary General George Robertson and by the end of the day had won a declaration committing the allies to back a U.S. military reprisal. Powell said the declaration would "tee up" the invocation of the NATO charter's mutual defense clause for the first time in the alliance's 52-year history. It assures the United States of overflight rights and other forms of support if the administration concluded the terrorist attacks came from abroad.

Bush directed the Pentagon to begin drawing up a menu of military options, a senior administration official said. After a morning meeting with his national security advisers, the president called the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "acts of war." Congress swiftly adopted a joint resolution that officials from Capitol Hill and the administration said freed the White House from having to seek a formal declaration of war.

U.S. officials also began high-level meetings with Pakistani officials to insist on their help in tracking the attackers and aiding a retaliatory strike. The Pakistani government has long had close ties with the Taliban movement in Afghanistan that shelters bin Laden. "The message to Pakistan is there's clearly a worldwide momentum right now to stand up and be counted. Whose side are you on on terrorism?" a senior State Department official said.

Powell said he had held several conversations with leaders from Saudi Arabia, who would have to give the go-ahead if the United States were to use their crucial bases as staging grounds for any move against bin Laden. But he left unclear whether he had secured Saudi agreement. "If they can be helpful in finding those who may be responsible, we will expect that help and we will express that very, very clearly," Powell said.

Meantime, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Henry H. Shelton and Vice Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers shuttled between the White House and Pentagon planning a response that a senior military officer said could draw on U.S. forces under the European and Central Commands. The options under consideration range from small-scale covert actions targeting bin Laden to a broad campaign of bombing and invasion by Army infantry, according to knowledgeable former military officers.

As the country talked of war, Powell moved well beyond his pledge Tuesday to bring the attackers to justice. "It's going after and dealing with the sources of support that they have, whether that source of support might come from a host country or other organizations that provide them," Powell told reporters. "We have to make sure that we go after terrorism and get it by its branch and root."

He vowed the United States would hold accountable any country offering support to terrorists involved in the attack. And he singled out the radical Taliban movement ruling Afghanistan for providing "protection, opportunity, facilities" to bin Laden, stopping short of expliciting blaming bin Laden's al Qaeda organization for Tuesday's massacres.

Powell cautioned that a U.S. strike would not come within the next few days since it would require time to find the proper targets and put U.S. forces in place. Nor did he indicate the scale or type of forces that any military action would entail. But he said the United States should act as soon as it determines who was responsible for the terrorist attacks. He added that it should not wait until the specific perpetrators are found if U.S. forces can in the meantime take other action, such as attacking militant training camps and havens.

In response to the unparalleled assault on American territory, a Bush administration that has largely eschewed a multilateral approach to world affairs quickly set out to build an international consensus on a tough response. But after only one day, it remained unclear whether the United States would seek to form the coalition of Western and Muslim countries that the earlier Bush administration assembled in support of the 1991 war against Iraq.

"We're building a strong coalition to go after these perpetrators, but more broadly to go after terrorism wherever we find it in the world," Powell said. "It's a scourge not only against the United States, but against civilization, and it must be brought to an end."

Bush spoke yesterday with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and twice with Russian President Vladimir Putin -- covering all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- as well as other leaders.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that in the conversations between Bush and Putin, "the two presidents agreed that they would work closely together in the coming weeks to fight those responsible for yesterday's acts of terrorism."

China, for its part, has close relations with Pakistan and recently signed an economic development accord with the Taliban, but it also fears terrorist attacks, especially in its largely Muslim province, Xinjiang.

Powell spoke with more world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Foreign Minister Louis Michel of Belgium, which holds the EU's rotating presidency. To build support in the Muslim world, where Tuesday's attacks have been applauded in some quarters, Powell spoke with leaders from the Arab League, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, officials said.

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, said he has been in constant contact with Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, offering "full support fighting terrorism and cooperation with all other friends around the world to help expose those perpetrators." He declined to provide details.

But it is Pakistan and its tangled relationship with the Taliban that have emerged as a crucial focus of U.S. planning and diplomacy. Pakistan, a historic American ally, has previously given lip service to efforts to find bin Laden but offered little tangible assistance despite U.S. pressure, U.S. officials said.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and other senior State Department figures met yesterday with Pakistani officials, including Pakistani intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, who was in Washington for a visit scheduled before the attacks. "There was an extremely candid exchange from our side, one that left little room for misunderstanding," an administration official said. "It is safe to say the rules have changed. They changed yesterday."

Incoming U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy J. Chamberlin is expected to raise the issues again today with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

"We thought as we gathered information and as we look at possible sources of the attack it would be useful to point out to the Pakistani leadership at every level that we are looking for and expecting their fullest cooperation and their help and support as we conduct this investigation," Powell said. Holding out the possibility of a U.S. attack in the immediate area of Pakistan, Powell said the United States is also interested in "how helpful they might be if we find a basis to act upon that information."

Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, Maleeha Lodhi, said she gave Armitage a message from Musharraf assuring the United States of "Pakistan's unstinted cooperation in the fight against terrorism." Musharraf later told the APP news agency in Pakistan today that he would give the United States his full cooperation.

Powell said the United States was also planning to work with Russia on their shared concerns in Afghanistan, which include the activities of militant Islamic forces. The United States and Russia are members of an international task force on Afghanistan, and Powell said Armitage would be pursuing these matters with his Russian counterpart.

A military campaign in the remote mountains of Afghanistan would confront daunting challenges -- in particular, intimidating terrain and fierce local fighters -- as the Soviet Union learned when it invaded the country in 1979.

The Bush administration would also face the issue of the legality of mounting a military initiative against a private militant organization rather than another country.

Attorney George Terwilliger, deputy attorney general in the first Bush administration who remains close to the current White House, said White House and Department of Justice lawyers are researching the extent of presidential authority to order assassinations.

They are reviewing whether "the president has authority without a congressional resolution to use force against civilians rather than a government or military installation when there is a demonstrable and imminent threat."

Amid the calls and preparations for reprisals, there were some voices of caution. Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser during the Gulf War, said the United States needed to avoid hitting the wrong targets, as the Clinton administration did in 1998 when it bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and an empty militant camp in Afghanistan after bin Laden associates allegedly bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"There's going to be tremendous pressure for early action, and I think that's the president's inclination," Scowcroft said. "But . . . you need to make sure you know what you're doing" or, he warned, the administration would risk looking "silly."


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Unexplained phenomenon wipes out Kuwait fish

Planet Ark
KUWAIT: September 13, 2001
Story by Roland Rahal
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12399/newsDate/13-Sep-2001/story.htm

KUWAIT - More than 2,000 tonnes of dead fish have been washed ashore in Kuwait in a yet unexplained, month-long phenomenon that has left a bustling fish market deserted and thousands out of work.

Contradictory statements by the government and officials on the cause have triggered angry criticism and various organisations in the state have been accused of contaminating Gulf waters off Kuwait.

Experts say the loss so far is equivalent to four years of Kuwait's annual consumption of fish - a main staple in the oil-rich state which boasts a heritage as a seafaring nation.

The extent of the disaster has prompted a call for a special session of parliament which is on summer recess. Kuwait's ruler, Emir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, has met officials investigating the cause.

"We have been on land for more than a month...I don't have any money and have eight children to support back home," Egyptian fisherman Massoud Omar told Reuters.

Some 4,000 fishermen - mainly from Egypt, Bangladesh and India - work in Kuwait where 1.4 million of the 2.2 million population are foreigners.

"I can't eat or drink and nobody is helping me except God," said 34-year-old Omar whose home in Kuwait is a small fishing boat.

Earlier this month, the government, under public pressure, banned fishing. It later deployed the military to help clean up millions of dead fish from the shoreline as the stench from their rotting bodies spread.

FISHERMEN DEMAND A SOLUTION

Hundreds of dhows - traditional wooden vessels used in the Gulf - and small fishing boats are anchored near the fish market in Kuwait City in the hope that the ban will be lifted soon.

"But who wants to eat Kuwaiti fish. Not even if they export it, will they find customers," said a Kuwaiti professional, adding that Kuwaitis were bringing in fish from Saudi Arabia.

No dead fish have been detected on the Arab side of the Gulf, a strong indication, experts say, that the cause is man-made and originates in Kuwait.

Mustafa Ismail, who supports a large family back in Egypt, said fellow fishermen are "waiting for the government to give us the green light to resume fishing. It is a great loss, we used to make about 250-300 Kuwaiti dinars ($800-950) a day...".

"We need someone to help us, we are only eating once a day. I want to know if I can go back to work, if not I want to return home...that is if I can afford the ticket...," said Egyptian Sayyed Bader.

The government has sent samples of dead fish abroad for analysis and launched several investigations into the cause. Official explanations have so far been met with public ridicule.

Asked when to expect a final result, Deputy Prime Minister Mohammad Sharar told Reuters on Tuesday: "Results are with scientists and they are studying the phenomenon...it is difficult to know when they will present their final reports".

2,300 TONNES OF FISH KILLED BY BACTERIA

Officials said streptococcus bacteria off Kuwait City was behind the disaster but its origin had yet to be identified.

Some experts and newspapers in Kuwait have blamed alleged pumping of raw sewage into the Gulf. Others said waste from the oil industry was the cause, while one scientist suggested extreme summer heat in August killed the fish.

"We have lost around 2,300 tonnes of fish until now...some fish are still dying but not in as big quantities as before," Sheikh Fahd al-Salem al-Ali Al-Sabah, chairman and director general of Kuwait's Public Authority for Agriculture Affairs and Fish Resources, told Reuters.

KUWAIT LOSES FOUR YEARS OF FISH, SHRIMPING ON HOLD

"Kuwait's fish consumption is around 600-650 tonnes a year, and with this crisis we have already lost more than four years of consumption," said Sheikh Fahd al-Salem.

Prior to the oil boom in the 1970s, pearl diving and fishing were main sources of income for Kuwaitis who now enjoy one of the world's highest standards of living.

Kuwait's once-thriving shrimp season, which usually starts in September, has been put on hold.

"We were supposed to start the season but it is now banned ...it is a big loss as we used to earn between 8,000 and 10,000 dinars a month," said one shrimp fisherman, referring to the popular Gulf jumbo shrimps which are also exported.

Sheikh Fahd al-Salem said there was no ban on shrimp fishing, adding: "It is just a postponement of the start of the season to take precautions in case shrimps were infected."

He said the Health Ministry is testing shrimps daily and if the results show that there is no danger to humans "we will reconsider this postponement".

-------- imf / world bank

Officials at IMF, World Bank Expect to Postpone Meetings
District Officials Cite Heightened Worries Over Security

By Paul Blustein and Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 13, 2001; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21108-2001Sep12?language=printer

Top officials at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are strongly in favor of canceling or postponing their annual meetings in downtown Washington at the end of this month in the wake of terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, according to sources at the two institutions.

The sources at the fund and the bank said they are awaiting final word from the U.S. government -- the official host of the meetings -- before making a decision. They cited the likely strain on D.C. police if the meetings were held and, in particular, the burden imposed on the New York City police department, which was expected to send 1,000 officers to assist with security.

"A delay is in the air," said one high-ranking official who attended a meeting yesterday morning of the IMF's executive board, where the issue was briefly discussed.

The two international financial institutions, which each represent 183 nations, are examining alternatives, including putting off the meetings for a few weeks or conducting their necessary business by e-mail or other electronic hookup. The final decision would largely depend on the advice of Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, who was returning to Washington yesterday from Tokyo.

District police officials have stated that they would recommend the IMF and World Bank cancel their meetings, saying that the capital would not be ready so soon after Tuesday's tragedy to deal with a raucous series of demonstrations. Police have estimated that as many as 100,000 protesters would fill the streets of Washington, though some activists dispute those numbers.

"The position of the department is they not have the meeting," D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said yesterday. "We think it poses a huge security risk. . . . In two weeks, we'll still be burying people. We'll still be in the middle of the tragedy. In my opinion, it's not appropriate that that particular thing move forward."

D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) also has said that canceling the meetings was an idea that needed to be explored further.

Representatives of the two world economic bodies said no decision had been made. Privately, however, several officials and staff members at the World Bank and IMF said they expect the meetings to be put off temporarily.

Outright cancellation might look "too much like capitulation" to terrorism, the official who attended the IMF meeting said, "but I think the U.S. authorities will not want to add further risk to the downtown Washington area so soon."

In recent months, both the World Bank and the IMF have taken the counsel of law enforcement as they plan the meetings. It was after consultation with D.C. police and federal officials that the World Bank and IMF broke a 20-year tradition and moved a plenary session from a Woodley Park hotel to their headquarters downtown. It was also law enforcement's advice that caused the institutions to shorten the meetings from seven days to one weekend -- Sept. 29 and 30.

Police preparations for the demonstrations have been unprecedented, with city leaders recently asking the federal government to help pay for a $29 million security plan, which includes recruiting out-of-town police officers and the possible installation of fencing in and around downtown.

Protest organizers were uncertain yesterday what impact the cancellation of the meetings would have on their plans. More than a dozen groups -- including environmentalists, human rights activists, anti-capitalists and labor organizers -- have been planning to come to Washington. Many are calling for an end to World Bank and IMF policies that they say hinder the world's poor and are demanding debt cancellation for impoverished countries.

If the meetings are postponed, activists said they still have two options: protest anyway or delay demonstrations until the meetings are held. Organizers said they worry that the terrorist attacks would increase aggression by law enforcement against demonstrators and turn an already tense situation into a nightmare. Organizers also are weighing whether to hold massive demonstrations during a period of national mourning.

Yesterday, with anti-globalization activists distracted by the terrorist hijackings and destruction, the gears of a nationwide mobilization campaign ground to a temporary halt. News conferences were postponed, and a training camp in Virginia for nonviolent direct action scheduled to begin tomorrow was canceled.

A meeting scheduled for last night of the Mobilization for Global Justice, one of the main D.C.-based coalitions, was canceled -- the first time since early summer that the group would not assemble for the weekly gathering at a Mount Pleasant church. "There's just a broad sense among everybody that it's too soon to do anything," said Robert Weissman, an organizer.

Other coalitions, including the Anti-Capitalist Convergence and the AFL-CIO, also said it was too early to say what they would do if the meetings were canceled.

-------- police / prisoners

FBI Launches Massive Manhunt
Hijackers Trained As Pilots in U.S.

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 13, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21162-2001Sep12?language=printer

Thousands of FBI agents fanned out across the country yesterday in the hunt for accomplices to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, executing search warrants from Boston to Florida and apprehending four individuals before releasing at least three of them.

Using airplane manifests, passport records and other sources, U.S. officials believe they have successfully identified most of the suicidal hijackers, who numbered at least 12 and possibly as many as 24 individuals and included several pilots who received flight training in the United States, according to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and other officials.

"The four planes were hijacked by between three and six individuals per plane, using knives and box cutters and, in some cases, making bomb threats," Ashcroft said.

At least one hijacker on each plane received flight training in the United States and several received pilot's licenses, Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said last night. She said flight schools in several states were part of the FBI's investigation.

The revelation that some of the pilots who carried out Tuesday's hijackings were schooled in the United States underscores the astonishing degree of organization and planning undertaken by the terrorists, who had the ability to recruit and train numerous pilots in preparation for the precision attacks.

The complexity of the case is further underscored by the size of the Justice Department probe, which Ashcroft called "perhaps the most massive and intensive investigation ever conducted in America." Mueller said 4,000 special agents and 3,000 support workers, or about 25 percent of FBI employees, have been assigned to the case, including more than 400 FBI crime lab experts who have been sent to the crash sites.

As part of the mobilization yesterday, the FBI detained a man for questioning and served search warrants on at least four locations in Florida, while heavily armed federal agents detained three people for several hours after law enforcement officials traced credit card receipts from a car rental agency to a guest at a hotel in downtown Boston. Law enforcement officers also searched a hotel in Newton, Mass., outside Boston.

Ashcroft, who briefed members of Congress on the investigation, said investigators were obtaining passenger manifests, rental-car receipts, telephone logs and videotape from parking garages and pay phones, particularly in the places where the hijacked flights took off.

Canadian security officials are also investigating whether as many as five participants in the deadly attack used Canada as a staging ground, slipping across the border from Nova Scotia shortly before the hijackings. Two of the hijacked planes took off from Logan International Airport in Boston; the others were from Newark International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport.

Those detained in the United States as of late afternoon yesterday were being held on immigration violations but had not been arrested or charged with any crime, according to Mueller and others.

Ashcroft also said the "government has credible evidence that the White House and Air Force One were targets" of the terrorists, who succeeded in flying two hijacked airliners into the 110-story World Trade Center towers in New York and a third into the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth crashed in southern Pennsylvania after passengers apparently mounted a revolt, according to accounts of cell phone conversations.

"We will leave no stone unturned until we have determined who was responsible for these attacks on our freedom," said Mueller, who is in his second week on the job.

Mueller said some of the suspected hijackers and their accomplices had ties to several terrorist groups, but he declined to provide details.

But other U.S. officials said that several of the groups are known to have ties to Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, an extremist Islamic militant whose organization, al Qaeda, has been linked to numerous terrorist bombings, including a previous attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

After a briefing yesterday by intelligence officials, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said authorities have discerned a "pattern of travel" by about 15 individuals, including five who have been found to be carrying passports from two Middle Eastern countries. She did not identify the countries.

Hutchison said the 15 were found to have gone to one or more other countries before entering the United States. Canada was not specifically mentioned, she added.

Asked about bin Laden's possible connection to the attacks, she said, "He is certainly high on the list . . . but he is not the only one they're looking at."

In Florida, search warrants were served on homes in Coral Springs, located northwest of Fort Lauderdale, on a home in Vero Beach along Florida's east coast, and on businesses in Hollywood and a home in Sarasota County on the west coast, according to police and witness reports.

Officials said many of yesterday's searches and detentions were prompted by a review of the passenger manifests of the four hijacked planes.

In Vero Beach, FBI agents searched the home of a Saudi Arabian pilot who had received flight engineering training along with at least one other Saudi at the local Flight Safety International training school, according to the home's property owner. Among the items seized by the FBI was a "hazardous materials manual," according to a copy of an FBI document left on the home's kitchen table.

Landlord Paul Stimeling said the man, Adnan Bukhari, helped a second Saudi pilot rent the house next door. The second pilot and his family, including his wife and as many as five children, moved out over the weekend and have not been seen since, Stimeling said.

Both of the men said they were Saudi nationals and flew for Saudi Airlines, Stimeling said. FBI agents swarmed the neighborhood yesterday morning and spent several hours searching the homes, witnesses said.

Also in Vero Beach, FBI agents detained an unidentified man in connection with the case.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service is investigating whether two of the hijacking suspects may have come into the country with "M" visas, a rarely issued nonimmigrant visa that allowed them to attend the Florida flight school, according to a former senior INS official who has talked to investigators. INS officials are also concerned that one or more of the suspects may have entered the United States while seeking asylum.

In Coral Springs on Tuesday night and again yesterday morning, FBI agents searched an apartment rented to Mohammed Atta, according to residents of the Tara Gardens complex. The FBI said a vehicle registered to Atta was connected to the case. FBI agents also questioned a 17-year-old girl who is the friend of a resident of the complex who had seen Atta twice before in the lobby and they showed her a photograph of him.

Atta listed this address when he got a Florida driver's license in May. According to driver's license records, he previously had an Egyptian driver's license.

On Tuesday, FBI agents visited a Shuckums restaurant in Hollywood with photographs of the man believed to be Atta and another heavyset man, according to Tony Amos, the restaurant's manager.

On Friday evening, Amos said Atta and the other man came into the Shuckums. The pair had been in the restaurant several times before, Amos said. This time, they were there from about 4:30 p.m. until about 7 p.m.

"My bartender said, 'These guys are giving me a hard time,' " Amos recalled yesterday. "I thought, 'Okay, here we go.' I was talking to the big guy, going back and forth. I said, 'Is there a money issue? Do you have enough money to pay the bill?' The guy arrogantly replied, 'I'm an airline pilot. Of course, I have the money.' "

Amos said they paid the $48 bill in cash.

In Boston's Copley Square area, local police and agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco descended on the Westin Copley Hotel with battering rams and shields, detaining three men who were tracked using a credit card receipt from a car rental, officials said.

Several of the hijackers may have entered the United States shortly before the attacks by taking a ferry from Nova Scotia to Portland, Maine, according to several sources.

Two of the terrorists flew to Boston from Portland, where law enforcement officials recovered their rental car, according to Maine Gov. Angus King. Another source close to the investigation said another group of at least two hijackers drove from Maine to Boston after making a ferry trip from Nova Scotia into the United States.

Bin Laden, 44, who comes from a wealthy, extended Saudi family, has strong family ties and a group of supporters in Boston, where the two hijacked airliners that demolished the World Trade Center took off. One of bin Laden's brothers set up scholarship funds at Harvard, while another relative owns six condominiums in an expensive complex in the Charlestown section of Boston.

Two bin Laden associates once worked as Boston cab drivers, including one who was jailed in Jordan on charges of plotting to blow up a hotel full of Americans and Israelis.

U.S. and Canadian officials believe that as many as five of the suspects involved in hijacking one of the planes from Boston may have entered the United States after boarding a ferry in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

"The security people are looking to find out who are these people and where they were coming from," Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chretien said at a news conference in Ottawa. "There is some indication they used Canada to get there. But we don't know. There are inquiries being done in the United States and in Canada. The police are doing their job on both sides."

Providence, R.I., Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. said local police stopped an Amtrak train yesterday and questioned several men at the request of Boston police. One man was detained and arrested for possession of a knife, Cianci said. But Cianci said the man is not believed to be connected to Tuesday's attacks.

-------- terrorism

Powell Says Bin Laden a Suspect

SEPTEMBER 13, 14:42 EDT
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7EGFS4O0

WASHINGTON (AP) - Secretary of State Colin Powell identified Osama bin Laden as a prime suspect in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and pressed the president of Pakistan for information on his operations.

Powell, at a news conference Thursday, became the first senior Bush administration official to say for the record what many have been saying privately: that bin Laden is suspected of engineering the attacks.

``We are looking at those terrorist organizations who have the kind of capacity that would have been necessary to conduct the kind of attack that we saw,'' Powell said.

Saying the administration had not yet publicly identified the organization it believed responsible, Powell added: ``When you look at the list of candidates, one resides in the region.''

Asked whether he was referring to bin Laden, the Saudi-born exile who runs a terrorist network from Afghanistan, Powell replied: ``Yes.''

Powell said he was telephoning President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, a neighbor of Afghanistan, to seek ``a specific list of things that we think would be useful for them to work on with us.''

After they talked for nearly 10 minutes, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said they had had a positive conversation and Powell had received a commitment of cooperation.

Powell described Pakistan as a friend of the United States, but also said the relationship had had its ``ups and downs.''

In Islamabad, Musharraf pledged ``unstinted cooperation.'' Besides Powell's telephone call, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage planned to follow up with Maleecha Lodhi, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington.

Bin Laden has enjoyed sanctuary in neighboring Afghanistan, most of which is controlled by the Taliban, a fiercely Muslim fundamentalist movement.

Meanwhile, Armitage scheduled a trip to Moscow on Wednesday to follow up on a Russian offer to help in the investigation.

Russia fought a 10-year war with Muslim fundamentalists after invading Afghanistan in 1979. The United States opposed the Soviet invasion and provided weapons to the insurgents through Pakistan.

Also on the diplomatic front, President Bush spoke by telephone with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said all four leaders told Bush that ``they stand united with the people of the United States.''

``We have just seen the first war of the 21st century,'' Bush told reporters after speaking by phone with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. ``I am confident there will be universal approval of the actions this government takes.''

--------

Congress Nears Anti-Terrorism Bill

SEPTEMBER 13, 14:56 EDT
By JESSE J. HOLLAND
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&PACKAGEID=terrorism&STORYID=APIS7EGG2TG0&SLUG=ATTACKS%2dCONGRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) - In an extraordinary show of bipartisan unity, congressional leaders said they intended to begin pushing an emergency anti-terrorism package through Congress as early as Thursday with a price tag that could exceed $20 billion.

But a request by President Bush for congressional backing for the use of force against terrorists hit a snag because the White House wanted the authority to extend to future incidents as well. The dispute was described by congressional aides from both parties.

Even so, leaders said they believed agreement would come by next week on a measure stating Congress' support for the use of force by Bush against the terrorists who crashed airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Tuesday, inflicting massive casualties.

Bush sent House Speaker Dennis Hastert a formal request Thursday for $20 billion and suggested he could request more money. Quick passage ``will send a powerful signal of unity to our fellow Americans and to the world,'' Bush said.

``If additional resources are necessary, I will forward another request for additional funding,'' he said.

Background documents say the money is needed to provide assistance to victims and address other consequences of the attack, including ``support to counter, investigate or prosecute'' terrorism and increase money for transportation.

Emerging from a meeting of Congress' top Democrats and Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., told reporters:

``There is a unanimous understanding that whatever we do this week is a very minimal down payment to what will be required and what we will do in the days and weeks ahead.''

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said $20 billion was ``very clearly designed to fund the initial response to this horrible act.''

Among the final details to be worked out on the spending bill were the leeway Bush would have to disperse the money to specific programs without congressional approval.

Under the version that administration officials had prepared on Wednesday, the entire sum would be provided to an emergency response fund the president controls and he would be allowed to use it for broadly defined categories such as to ``counter, investigate or prosecute domestic or international terrorism.''

``We are not talking about second-guessing the president,'' said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. ``We are supposed to protect the taxpayers' interests.''

``We don't want a dime's worth of difference with the president... but you don't make 10-year policy on attacking terrorism on the back on an envelope,'' Obey said.

Daschle said the separate bill on the use of force would be to restate his constitutional powers in that area. Like spending, the authority over force is a power that the two branches of government have contested throughout history.

``We want to give the president maximum flexibility, but we also want to recognize the constitutional responsibilities the Congress has,'' Daschle said.

Sen. John Warner of Virginia, top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he and others were trying to reach compromise language on the resolution on force.

``It is in the best interests of the United States when faced with a crisis ... that there be a contemporary expression by the coequal branch of government, the Congress, that they support him in such actions as he deems essential for our national security,'' Warner told reporters.

While the thought of spending billions more this year and likely tapping into formerly untouchable Social Security reserves would have ignited a political firestorm just a week ago, lawmakers said Wednesday the request would be granted now.

``That debate is over at this point,'' said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.

``If we can't protect our national security, how can we protect Social Security?'' Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said.

--------

They can't see why they are hated
Americans cannot ignore what their government does abroad

Seumas Milne <s.milne@guardian.co.uk>,
Thursday, September 13, 2001,
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,551036,00.html

Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it. From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force - just as soon as someone can construct a credible account of who was actually responsible.

Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world.

But make that connection they must, if such tragedies are not to be repeated, potentially with even more devastating consequences. US political leaders are doing their people no favours by reinforcing popular ignorance with self-referential rhetoric. And the echoing chorus of Tony Blair, whose determination to bind Britain ever closer to US foreign policy ratchets up the threat to our own cities, will only fuel anti-western sentiment. So will calls for the defence of "civilisation", with its overtones of Samuel Huntington's poisonous theories of post-cold war confrontation between the west and Islam, heightening perceptions of racism and hypocrisy.

As Mahatma Gandhi famously remarked when asked his opinion of western civilisation, it would be a good idea. Since George Bush's father inaugurated his new world order a decade ago, the US, supported by its British ally, bestrides the world like a colossus. Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargos against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel's 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian intifada rages.

If, as yesterday's Wall Street Journal insisted, the east coast carnage was the fruit of the Clinton administration's Munich-like appeasement of the Palestinians, the mind boggles as to what US Republicans imagine to be a Churchillian response.

It is this record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world's population, for whom there is little democracy in the current distribution of global wealth and power. If it turns out that Tuesday's attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden's supporters, the sense that the Americans are once again reaping a dragons' teeth harvest they themselves sowed will be overwhelming.

It was the Americans, after all, who poured resources into the 1980s war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, at a time when girls could go to school and women to work. Bin Laden and his mojahedin were armed and trained by the CIA and MI6, as Afghanistan was turned into a wasteland and its communist leader Najibullah left hanging from a Kabul lamp post with his genitals stuffed in his mouth.

But by then Bin Laden had turned against his American sponsors, while US-sponsored Pakistani intelligence had spawned the grotesque Taliban now protecting him. To punish its wayward Afghan offspring, the US subsequently forced through a sanctions regime which has helped push 4m to the brink of starvation, according to the latest UN figures, while Afghan refugees fan out across the world.

All this must doubtless seem remote to Americans desperately searching the debris of what is expected to be the largest-ever massacre on US soil - as must the killings of yet more Palestinians in the West Bank yesterday, or even the 2m estimated to have died in Congo's wars since the overthrow of the US-backed Mobutu regime. "What could some political thing have to do with blowing up office buildings during working hours?" one bewildered New Yorker asked yesterday.

Already, the Bush administration is assembling an international coalition for an Israeli-style war against terrorism, as if such counter-productive acts of outrage had an existence separate from the social conditions out of which they arise. But for every "terror network" that is rooted out, another will emerge - until the injustices and inequalities that produce them are addressed.

----

Threat to Bush plane included code words

From Drudge Report........
Thu Sep 13 2001

Washington (dpa) - Shortly after a hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon early Tuesday, the Secret Service in Washington received a chilling message about the president's official plane.

"Air Force One is next," said the caller. The message included code words indicating that the caller knew of White House security procedures for protecting the president during a crisis.

The call, which also came after two other hijacked jetliners smashed into New York's World Trade Centre, was reported Thursday in The New York Times, quoting an unnamed senior U.S. official. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Wednesday that there was "specific and credible" information that the terrorists were targeting the White House and Air Force One, the presidential plane.

The warning and the White House's decision to publicize the threat help highlight why President George W. Bush waited 10 hours before returning to Washington following the first attack.

Bush has been criticized for following a zigzag path from Florida to Louisiana and then to a secure air base in Nebraska before returning to the nation's capital.

His response has been compared unfavorably to New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who rushed to the trade centre immediately after the first attack and was caught in a neighbouring building during a tower collapse, and to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who remained at the Pentagon throughout the day and even helped guide people out of the damaged building in the immediate aftermath of the crash.

The official who spoke to the Times said that Vice President Richard Cheney urged Bush not to return immediately to Washington but to proceed to Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska, which has secure communications facilities set up for crises.

The unnamed official cited the possibility that aircraft other than the four hijacked airliners may have posed a threat to Bush's plane. Bush's detour to Louisiana was meant to throw off any attackers, since it would not be expected.

"It would have been irresponsible of him to come back, pounding his chest, when hostile aircraft may be headed our way," the official said. "Any suggestion that he do so was ludicrous."

Yet at least twice in the flight, Bush argued that he should do just that, said Karl Rove, a top Bush adviser who was with him on Air Force One.

The threat against Bush's life, and the attacker's apparent knowledge of White House code words and procedures, highlight the sophistication of the coordinated terror campaign unleashed Tuesday against the preeminent symbols of U.S. wealth and power.

"It's very sophisticated, very well-planned attacks by very educated people at the top, and dedicated people that are carrying them out," said Senator Richard Shelby, ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

--------

Aftershocks: Progressives Locking Arms with the Jingoists?

by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
Counterpunch;
September 13, 2001

A Very Big Hammer

Even though there's much carping about the CIA's failures in regard to Tuesday's attacks, there seems to be an unparalleled unity between the White House and the Congress on the desire for a swift and savage retaliatory response, a response that one Pentagon official described as demonstrating "our big hammer, a very large hammer that can be brought to bear in a number of ways at any time. That's not a threat, it's a fact.''

The Senate and House, in between a rash of bomb threats and "suspicious packages" that emptied the Capitol building on Thursday evening, have moved forward with a $40 billion military package that may signal the onset of a huge military build up and the end of all rational debate about the fate of the social security system. Thus was the lock-box blown apart.

So what's in store? We got some clue today from Paul Wolfowitz, the hyper-hawkish assistant secretary of defense, who said that the Pentagon would begin examining how to retaliate against the "host countries" of terrorists with the intent of "ending states that support terrorism". In other words, the decimation, occupation and reconstitution of nations that the Bush crowd finger as being part of Terror Inc. Afghanistan won't be the only target (Iraq, ever the whipping post of the Bush crowd, and, perhaps, Iran are also on the list), but the Russian experience in the Hindu Kush and in Chechnya should give any rationale military planner pause. Years of fighting, thousands dead, no ground gained.

But word coming out of the Pentagon is grim. A top Pentagon official told NBC news on Thursday evening that "Americans have to get over their fear of bloodshed. The events of Tuesday should have vaccinated them against a fear of casualties."

Most revealing reaction

Benyamin Netanyahu, former Israeli prime minister, on being asked what the attack means for relations between the US and Israel: "It's very good."

Least credible analysis

New York Times columnist William Safire, claiming there was a terrorist mole in the White House, relaying to the kamikaze pilots the whereabouts of the President and the special coordinates of Air Force One. Safire's political mission in that particular column was to explain why the President fled down a SAC bunker in Nebraska.

Least credible news footage

CNN's videotape of Palestinians supposedly dancing in the streets of a West Bank town. CounterPuncher Marcio A.V. Carvalho at the state university of Campinas in Brazil tells us that he and his colleagues had compared this tape with one from 1991 showing Palestinian cheering, and found them to be identical.

America's Greens Rally to Flag, Run for Cover

Hot to present themselves as staunch flag-waggers, some of America's premier environmental organizations have disgracefully ditched their principles.

The Sierra Club, America's oldest green group has abruptly turned off its campaign against the anti-environmental program of the Bush administration. CounterPunch has secured an internal memo in which the club's high command explains to its staff why it suspending its campaigns. "In response to the attacks on America," the memo goes, "we are shifting our communications strategy for the immediate future. We have taken all of our ads off of the air; halted our phone banks; removed any material from the web that people could perceive as anti-Bush, and we are taking other steps to prevent the Sierra Club from being perceived as controversial during this crisis. For now we are going to stop aggressively pushing our agenda and will cease bashing President Bush "

The memo then instructs club staffers on how to respond to the press: "If you are asked about what this terrorism does to the Sierra Club's agenda, please respond simply by saying that right now the public needs to focus on comforting each other and strengthening our national security to deal with the crisis at hand."

Imagine if this craven posture spreads across the public interest movement. We could expect First Amendment defenders to say that they were abandoning efforts to protect the Bill of Rights. We could expect groups defending immigrants to say that henceforth the INS should be given free rein. Fortunately First Amendment defenders and defenders of immigrants have stronger spines and principles than the supposed defenders of the environment at the Sierra Club. Are we now to expect the Club to endorse drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve as necessary "for national security"?

Even groups that we here at CounterPunch have admired are now in pellmell cowardly retreat.

The Berkeley-based International Rivers Network, which has been the main bulwark against the Three Gorges dam in China, now announces that it is suspending its planned nationwide protest against Morgan Stanley, one of the dam's principle financiers. Morgan Stanley had 50 floors of offices in the World Trade Center. IRN has also announced that "out of respect for the victims of this disaster, with understanding of the strategic difficulties in conveying to a shocked media and public our messages regarding the World Bank and IMF, with concern for the integrity of security systems in Washington DC, and for the safety of all, we will refrain from participating in activities surrounding the planned World Bank / IMF this month. We are also sharing our concerns with the leading organizations responsible for planning and coordinating these activities."

The Ruckus Society, the direct action training group involved in many demonstrations at the World Trade Organization has simultaneously announced that it is canceling its training camp, to be held in Middleburgh, Virginia, scheduled as preparation for the next World Bank meeting. This camp was to be cosponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, Jobs with Justice and Global Exchange. All these organizations have now backed out, saying that now is not the time for such activity.

The Rainforest Action Network, based in San Francisco, has called for the cancellation of the protest and said that in the event it goes forward it will not participate.

Let's get this straight. If all resisters to the Bush political program were to follow this shameful exhibition by these green groups, we would see peace groups declining to protest against nuclear attacks on Iraq and armed invasion of Afghanistan. We would see civil rights sitting on their hands as racial and religious profiling is used to persecute people of Middle Eastern descent. Defenders of Palestinian rights would say that for the time being they wouldn't protest the use of US Apache helicopters against civilians in West Bank towns and villages. What nonsense! Principles are never more important than when it is inconvenient or dangerous to stand up for them.

Big Oil's Kamikaze

Rep. Don Young, the wild man from Alaska, was one of the few members of congress who didn't completely buy into the notion of Osama bin Laden as the mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade complex and the Pentagon. There's some possibility, Young told the Alaska Daily News, that the attacks are linked to the protests against the World Trade Organization, another of which is scheduled for later this month in Washington D.C. "If you watched what happened (at past protests) in Genoa, in Italy, and even in Seattle, there's some expertise in that field," Young said. "I'm not sure they're that dedicated but ecoterrorists --which are really based in Seattle -- there's a strong possibility that could be one of the groups."

Young doesn't believe any of this. But he smells weakness in the environmental movement and, like the old fur-trapper that he is, he is poised to exploit it. Young is not beneath using the carnage of the World Trade Center as a launching ground for his own agenda: oil drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, logging in the Tongass rainforest, passing laws against environmental protest and construction of new missile bases in the Alaska tundra and on the Aleutian Islands.

Chemical War in Manhattan

As the environmentalists are putting themselves into a state of suspended animation, the citizens of Manhattan and the thousands of volunteer rescue workers mulling through the rubble at the World Trade Center complex may well be in the whirlwind of a toxic event, which has received little media attention and almost no precautionary aid from FEMA or other federal agencies coordinating.

Early reports from the Environmental Protection Agency described the destruction of the World Trade complex "an environmental catastrophe": the air of Manhattan clotted with asbestos, dioxin and other poisons. Yet, rescue workers found themselves without little more than surgical masks between their lungs and the poisons emanating from the smoldering ruins.

For years, the Pentagon and other terror pundits had been warning of the vulnerability of American cities to attack by biological and chemical weapons, the so-called asymmetrical warfare. These apocalyptic scenarios held that terrorist groups would unleash anthrax or sarin gas attacks in subways, water supplies or mega-office buildings, such as the World Trade Towers. Well, it turns out that the attackers didn't need to pack any chemicals, the buildings themselves proved to be quite toxic enough. The attackers used American planes as missiles and the buildings as chemical weapons.

Built during the height of the asbestos boom, the guts of the World Trade Center may have been one of the world's largest repositories of the carcinogenic fiber, used as insulation in the giant towers.

Underneath the rubble, thousands of tires continue to burn, sending plumes of pitch black smoke down the canyons of Manhattan. This smoke is contaminated with dioxins and assorted other poisons of the petrochemical age.

Early Warnings

Reports keep coming in to us of advanced warnings that an attack of some sort was eminent. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was booked to fly from the Bay Area to New York City on the morning of September 11. But Brown says that late Monday evening, a full 8 hours prior to the attack, he received a call from a person Brown described as his "airport security man" telling him that he should be extra cautious about air travel on September 11.

In addition to what we have previously reported about heightened security at the World Trade Center itself in the weeks leading to the attack and at the Picatinny Arsenal in Rockaway, New Jersey, CounterPunch has also learned that an internal memo was sent around Goldman Sachs in Tokyo on September 10 advising all employees of a possible terrorist attack. It recommended all employees to avoid any American government buildings.

That said, according to Rep. David Bonior, the Michigan Democrat, the Congress was the last to know. Even after two planes had struck the World Trade Center towers and another had smashed into the Pentagon, Bonior says congressional officials were not warned by the CIA or any other intelligence arm of the federal government that the 30,000 workers in the Capitol might be at risk of an attack. Bonoir has been one of the few members of Congress to openly question the value of bowing to the demands for more money made by CIA and other intelligence agencies. "If they can't even warn members of Congress about an ongoing attack, you really have to wonder what good they are," Bonior said. CP


-------- activists

Protestor in the pokey
'Trespasser' prosecution is first in a decade

By Kate Silver (silver@vegas.com)
Las Vegas Weekly,
September 13, 2001
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/2001_2/09_13/news_upfront1.html

For the past decade, thousands of protestors at the Nevada Test Site have been detained in a desert-surrounded pen for trespassing charges. After a few hours, the "prisoners" are always cited and released, causing some of them to refer to these actions as "ceremonial citings."

That is, until Aug. 6 of this year.

A group of protestors from Nevada Desert Experience, a faith-based organization opposed to nukes, was at the site to commemorate the 56th anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Las Vegas resident Erik Thompson, 44, entered the fenced area surrounding the Test Site and was immediately confronted by Nye County sheriffs, who led Thompson to the 100-by-300-foot holding pen.

Authorities later returned, offering to cite and release Thompson. He refused. They offered two more times. He remained steadfast. On the fourth refusal, Thompson told the officers to just take him to jail--he wasn't leaving the Test Site on his own. And that's just what they did.

Though Thompson has protested at the site since 1984, and says he's been cited for trespassing close to 100 times, he'd never been taken to jail. He sees the outcome as an opportunity to go before a judge and garner attention for the issue. His hearing is Oct. 4.

"I will certainly have some impact. If nothing else, than to make Nye County realize what they're doing," he says. "I would like to raise these issues in court, issues of how the United States is in violation of international law (by continuing nuclear tests)."

Sounds like Christmas at Ground Zero to me.

FALSE IMPRISONMENT

Another issue in Thompson's case is how can he face trespassing charges when he holds a permit to protest on the land? As outlined by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, Nye County has no jurisdiction over the Nevada Test Site. The treaty states that the 1,863 acres of land belongs to the Western Shoshone Nation, which grants permits to protestors each year, allowing their presence on the Test Site.

"One of the contentions we have with Nye County is that this is land that belongs to the Shoshone. That we have permits to come and go. And that we're here by invitation of the Shoshone," says Paul Colbert, office manager for Nevada Desert Experience.

Nye County Sheriff Wade Lieseke sees ownership of the land differently. When asked about the protestors having Shoshone permits to protest on the land, Lieseke seemed to stifle his laughter.

"Well, I guess that's their contention," he says. "The other contention is that they're on Department of Energy land and the Department of Energy runs the Nevada Test Site and we contract our services through the Department of Energy. The venue would be for a court of law to make that determination."

FEDERAL CRACKDOWN

Thompson's case has local activists worried about the future. "There's a trend now that the authorities are coming down very harshly compared to the past," says Sally Light, executive director of Nevada Desert Experience. "A few years ago I was arrested and put in the pen, held for a while and individually cited. I asked for the time frame that I'll hear from the court, and the police officer said I could go home and make the citation into a paper plane."

Light fears those days are over. "The Bush administration is moving very quickly to consolidate a military posture in the world," she says. "We can't draw a single line of causation, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility."

Since the Nevada Test Site is owned by the Department of Energy--it's federal land--Light fears the worst, citing the encounters at Vandenberg Air Force Base as evidence of the recent federal crackdown.

The May Vandenberg protest resulted in 15 Greenpeace activists--Star Wars protestors--and two journalists facing felony charges of "conspiracy to violate a safety zone." If convicted, they'll face up to six years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. All this for a peaceful protest consisting of actions which, according to Light, "were all but ignored in the past."

Another local activist who's witnessed this change in attitude is Susi Snyder, project coordinator for the Shundahai Network, an organization opposed to nukes that advocates the rights of indigenous people. About a year ago, Snyder was arrested and sent to jail for 16 days for what she calls "a simple line cross." A deputy insisted that she tried to bite him; Snyder says she was simply trying to reason with him (Las Vegas Weekly, "Continuing the Fight," Oct. 19, 2000).

"I think security are very worried because Southern Nevadans are taking more action opposing Bush's policies, which include the possible resumption of nuclear weapons testing and Cheney's plan to ship waste out to Yucca Mountain," says Snyder. "People are ... willing to put their bodies on the line and make sure their voices are heard. The security people are worried about that."

As well they should be, given the nuclear tests being performed at the Test Site, the possibility of nuclear waste coming to Yucca Mountain and the recent discovery of a military germ factory at the Nevada Test Site.

Protestors could soon deluge the site faster than a mushroom cloud, and Snyder's convinced that a cop crackdown won't deter them. "It's to scare people away, but people won't be scared like that."

----

Report from 14 Wall Street

September 13, 2001
Thu, 13 Sep 2001
From: Dan Kinch <danmk@rcn.com>

I'm Dan Kinch. my group -- Kairos Theatre -- did the Clown Play at Lafayette Park on July 4 in 2000. That's when we met.

Here's what happened to me. I've done it as an article because so many have asked for it. My prayers for forgiveness and not for firing cruise missiles at everyone in the world named Mohammed (which seems to be the course people are leaning towards).

I was working at 14 Wall Street yesterday, which is across the street from the WTC(it was my first day at a temp job). According to the Yahoo Map, I was 1,000 feet from Two World Trade Center. I know this because I plugged in '14 Wall Street" and "One World Trade Center" and they gave me a figure of .8 miles. But that's DRIVING directions, which are circuitous because of all the one-way streets--straight line is probably 1,000 to 1,200 feet. If you use the Yahoo map 'find directions' feature and you plug in a bad physical address, the map will come back with an error message that it can't find your street address. I wonder if Two World Trade Center will be a valid street address tomorrow. It isn't a real physical address anymore--it's a hole in the street.

I wanted to arrive early, so I got into the City at about 8:35. When I got out of the train, I already knew something was wrong--there was paper falling through the sky like confetti. There was a group of people on the corner staring up at the World Trade Center, but someone said they thought it was just a fire. I got in the building I was supposed to work in and went to the 25th floor, which faced the Trade Center. Everyone was too busy to talk-- We all watched the 'fire', with the late arrivals not knowing that the 'fire' was the result of a crash. I looked away from the building for a few minutes; then someone yelled 'another jet!' and there was a noise. I saw the flames shoot through the front of the building when the second plane hit.

The fires continued to burn, and huge pieces of decorative aluminum were falling off the building--these were sheets of molding 20 or thirty feet (10M) long, and they would spin around in the air, light enough to be carried aloft. There were thousands of reams of paper floating about--tractor feed computer paper (the stuff on a long spool). There were also memos and other pieces of paper, and these were all falling or getting sucked onto the ventilation systems on top of nearby buildings.

A few minutes passed, when no one knew what to do. Then someone yelled 'It's Coming down'. I watched the first tower fall. It tilted toward my building slightly, and then collapsed straight down (if it hadn't, it would've killed thousands more). Even before the collapse, I could not bring myself to stare at the towers after the second crash--I was more absorbed with watching the people who worked there who were watching. People were sobbing after the second jet hit--some of those who were watching had seen people flying out of the upper windows. It seemed that the flames got brighter before the first tower went down (maybe a second explosion?), but I don't remember any sound at all.

Finally, the fire alarms went off and my building was ordered cleared. We walked down 25 flights of stairs to evacuate, even though it didn't seem therer was anyplace to evacuate TO--after the first tower collapsed, the grey dustclouds climbed all the way to the 25th floor. The streets were covered with ashes and powder--it looked like christmas. When we got down to street level, we saw people who'd rushed into our building lobby to get out of the way of falling debris. They were covered with dust and soot. The building vents started pulling in the smoky white dust, and pretty soon everyone was rubbing their eyes and coughing.

The building security handed out surgical masks and a group of us attempted to go to someone's apartment on the lower east side. As we walked east on Wall Street, we heard a sound like a roaring freight train--it was the second tower falling. We ducked into a Trump building about a block from Wall street, and we watched as the outside turned inky black. When the dust subsided after a half hour, firemen arrived and told everyone to go east toward the FDR. I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and looked back on the billowing clouds of soot and ash spread across the sky.

My wife Ronnie had a tough time--she works uptown, but I had called her when the first plane hit (she didn't know about it). Then things got out of hand. I wasn't able to call her from 9:15 to 11:30, when I got to Brooklyn. She was pretty panicked. Her office closed up, but there was no place to go because the trains weren't working. They started back around 3:45, and she got home by 4:30PM.

The surreal part was how everything (mostly) stayed working during all this--there was electricity, lights were on, and the land phones worked (cell phones didn't). The city shut down the subways almost immediately, and now they've shut down all the bridges and tunnels in and out of the city from the West. Apparently, they picked up a carfull of people with explosives who were heading for the George Washington Bridge late last night.

What's also strange is the smell of the downtown area--this burned soot smell that has also reeks of melted plastic or burned metal. My place in Brooklyn is almost 9 miles away from downtown, but I can smell the soot every once in awhile. I can also smell it all over city vehicles (buses and ambulances) and can tell which ones have been through or near that part of the city. I smell the smell and I start to get that awful panic feeling back. I'm back looking away from the first tower falling down, because I'm about to die and I'd rather not look.

Also, I was not prepared to run down 25 flights of stairs (give or take) and then walk back to Brooklyn. There were thousands of people walking east on the Brooklyn Bridge, and what was interesting was how few people were looking back. There were small groups that were stopped on the Brooklyn side staring back. It was as if we'd be turned into salt if we looked back. But the sky was just full of black smoke.

People here will need everyone's prayers. Right now, I need a new temp assignment (and new legs--i can barely move because of the charley horses).

Love,
Danny

----

Did CNN use 1991 footage of celebrating Palestinians?

Thu, 13 Sep 2001
From: Max Obuszewski MObuszewski@afsc.org

by Marcio
Thu Sep 13 '01
address: State University of Campinas - Brazil
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=63454&group=webcast

I'd like to add some ideas from here, down south.

There's an important point in the power of press, specifically the power of CNN.

All around the world we are subjected to 3 or 4 huge news distributors, and one of them - as you well know - is CNN. Very well, I guess all of you have been seeing (just as I've been) images from this company. In particular, one set of images called my attencion: the Palestinians celebrating the bombing, out on the streets, eating some cake and making funny faces for the camera.

Well, THOSE IMAGES WERE SHOT BACK IN 1991!!! Those are images of Palestinians celebrating the invasion of Kuwait! It's simply unacceptable that a super-power of comminications as CNN uses images which do not correspond to the reality in talking about so serious an issue.

A teacher of mine, here in Brazil, has videotapes recorded in 1991, with the very same images; he's been sending emails to CNN, Globo (the major TV network in Brazil) and newspapers, denouncing what I myself classify as a crime against the public opinion. If anyone of you has access to this kind of files, serch for it. In the meanwhile, I'll try to 'put my hands' on a copy of this tape.

But now, think for a moment about the impact of such images. Your people is hurt, emotionally fragile, and this kind broadcast have very high possibility of causing waves of anger and rage against Palestinians. It's simply irresponsible to show images such as those.

Finally, I'd like to say that we all regret and condemn all that has happened in the last days; but Nikos has a point here. I really don't want to be misunderstood here, but the truth is that the US government had shown no respect for other countries in the last decades. In the 60s and 70s they had halped lots of military coups throughout the world (including Brazil in 64). Later, with Reagan and Bush Father, the Washington Consensus have been demolishing the bases of our economies, making us more and more dependent (and, many of us, prehocupied with this situation).

Your current president quickly made things worse: Kioto Protocol, Star Wars, Colombia Plan, the exchange of rain forest for pieces of external debt, tha abandonment of the position of third party in negotiations between IRA and England, and between Palestinians and Israel. All those mistakes in US external politics made your country more hatred than before, and, of course, more vulnerable.

Listen, I'm NOT justifying the terrorist actions that took place in your country; but it seems to me that, if your leaders had come along another path of thoughts and actions, you wouldn't be suffering what you are now.

Best regards, and the hope that everything is resolved for the best of all of us.

Márcio A. V. Carvalho State University of Campinas - Brazil

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On the brink of war

From: "Peter Coombes" pcoombes@randomlink.com
Thu, 13 Sep 2001 23:14:32 -0700

We are on the brink of war once again.

We are on the brink of world war once again.

We are on the brink of global terror.

And who shall be the enemy? How will we destroy them? With bombs? With ground troops?

How many shall we kill? Ten for everyone that was killed the week of September 11, 2001?

What number will quench our thirst for vengeance and retribution? 50,000? 100,000? A million, a couple of million or several million?

Will we invade one country or two? Will we minimize the destruction or will it be a war of total destruction? Shall we bomb them back to the dark ages or back to the days of living in caves?

And when we have won this war, and we have defeated the enemy, who will rise from the ashes to seek revenge upon us?

Peter Coombes, National Organizer

End the Arms Race Suite 405 - 825 Granville Street Vancouver BC V6Z 1K9 604/ 687-3223 fax 604/ 687-3277 ear@peacewire.org http://www.peacewire.org

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Enormity! I'm stupefied by the Enormity of it all.

From: "M. Boyd Wilcox" wilcoxmb@peak.org
Thursday, 13 September, 2001

By the enormous number of innocent lives lost and maimed; the enormous height of the windows many jumped from; the enormous temperatures it takes to melt steel; the enormous piles of debris from collapsed buildings; the enormous massing of fire and police respondents;

By the fact that there even exists an enormous assemblage of structures called the "World Trade Center" [and the "World Financial Center"] and that 50,000 people work in them every day; of the enormous power to monitor and influence global trade from a centralized location;

By the enormous size, power and influence of the Pentagon, a building that could be airliner-blasted on one side and remain "business as usual" elsewhere;

By the insanely enormous size of New York City, and multiple similar mega-cities around the world---huge cancers upon the otherwise beautiful surface of Planet Earth---each sucking up people and resources and disgorging garbage, waste and pollution;

By the enormous discrepancy between people who have too much and those who have too little, and the global corporate-military-industrial complex that insures its continuance;

By the enormous millions of barrels per day of petroleum that facilitate the daily, "normal" life of the largely-industrialized portions of the world, sustaining a fundamentally unsustainable pattern of existence;

By the enormity of global human population, at 6 billion+ and still growing at 83 million per year, where the Gaza Strip has the highest growth rate in the world closely followed by many nations in both Africa and the Middle East, where populations will double in 25-30 years;

By the enormous lengths to which some people will go to orchestrate their twisted goals, and the equally-enormous counteractions likely to follow, with all parties to the conflict seeking the help of God;

Amidst these enormous mega-deaths and mega-trends, it is not time for individuals, communities, states and nations to breathe new life into the concept, "Small is Beautiful?"

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We have found the terrorists and THEY ARE US!!

Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001
From: Joan Norman <defender5@mindspring.com>

HI,

The fanatics (4 teams of 3-5 suicidal men) that destroyed the World Trade Center were able to penetrate our airport security on the same morning at three different airports. They were able to carry razor blades in rug cutters in each of 4 different boarding areas. They were expertly trained to be skilled pilots of sophisticated commercial airplanes (not military planes) by schools in Florida, right here in our country! The gasoline that exploded was our gasoline. All of them were retaliating against us with such intense hatred that they were willing to die to give us a taste of what we do to other countries all the time. Our $30 billion CIA had not a clue!!

If Osama bin Laden was their leader (which is not proven)..who trained him to be a terrorist?? Our CIA!! 15 years ago he was their head operative. He knows us. We don't know him. He lives in a tent in the desert in an impoverished country. Are we really going to destroy what's left of this hapless land?

Bush's CIA trained and paid Manuel Noreiga and then hunted him down; demonizing him for being a "terrorist", Sadam Hussein was our huge buddy and we armed him to the hilt until we decided to demonize him and we've been bombing the innocent people in Iraq every day for the last 10 years. We blamed the bombing of PAN AM 103 on Omar Kadafi and bombed Libya and killed the guy's little daughter. We've armed Israel so completely that they are the 3rd most armed country in the world, while the Palestinians (whose land they occupy) have rocks and suicide bombers. We are the head terrorists on earth: We paid, trained and armed terrorists in Nicaragua during Reagan/Bush. Also we invaded Panama, Grenada and traded arms for hostages in Iran. We overthrew democratically elected governments in Chile, Iran, Nicaragua, the Philippines etc. Any of the children who grew up in any one of those countries would certainly want revenge toward us!!

These WTC terrorists were probably from the "middle east" and so some of our own fanatics are shootng and bombing Muslim Mosques all over this Country. Just like when we put all Japanese Americans in concentration camps after Pearl Harbor. Are we still there?? The Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski) was Polish...do we shoot and bomb Polish People?? No! Timothy McVeigh was of Irish ethnicity. Do we bomb and kill Irish people? No!! Why?? Because they look like "us". Since most of the earth does not look like us, perhaps we should have attended the Conference on Racism last week!!

In just 8 months this unelected President has seen to it that the whole world is back to hating us again. Clinton, at least tried to help make peace in The Holy Land and Ireland. Now, even they, are fighting again.

This is the first time that we have had to endure the horrendous sorrow, fright, and anger that other countries have endured for a long, long time at our hands. Our chickens are coming home to roost and until we learn that billions and billions of nuclear weapons, soldiers and star wars stuff will never stop a fanatic that wants to take our own planes, trained by our own schools, after going through our own inept airport security from killing us in anyway they wish....then we will be just as unsecure as the rest of the world. Retaliation and revenge begets retaliation, which begets retaliation, which begets retaliation, which begets retaliation and on and on until we finally either learn to grow up enough to live peacefully together on this beautiful small planet or we will finally destroy ourselves forever trying to prove who has the biggest...........!

Peace, Joan Norman


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