------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Helpless Against Nuclear Terrorism?
Bush warns of nuclear threat from al-Qaeda
Bush warns of nuclear terror
Bush Warns Bin Laden Wants Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear experts warn of threat from 'dirty bombs'
Depleted Uranium in the Afghan War
Gulf War widow calls for depleted uranium tests
U.S. and India Map Path to Military Cooperation
Russia denies helping Iran develop weapons
Evicting an Unwelcome Tenant: Anthrax
Audit finds NRC not keeping accurate inventory
New debate over HEU uranium reactor use
Audit Finds Imprecise Nuclear Records
Report Finds 'Weakness' In Nuclear Controls
US energy facilities vulnerable to attack
A security guard is attacked at a power plant

MILITARY
US Campaign Against Afghanistan
Afghanistan caves thwart invaders
Strikes impair bin Laden's forces
Bin Laden messages 'limited' to notes
Ramadan respite lacks precedent
Taliban Dispersal Slows U.S.
Can Afghan rebels really accomplish US aims?
FBI: Anthrax did not come from known U.S. lab
Senators Grill FBI On Anthrax Investigation
Firm hopes to restart production of anthrax vaccine
Warning of smallpox terror risk
Anthrax Investigators Are Hoping Bronx Case Leads Them to Source
If the Guinea Pig Dies, Beware
Metro Briefing
States
Bombardier receives order for new jets
Drug Seizures Are Up At Border Crossings
Germany readies 3,900 troops
Two Palestinian Fatah leaders killed in car explosion
'Jihad Is My First Obligation'
UN Rushes Relief into Afghan Mountains Ahead of Winter
U.N. affirms tolerance, respect
CONNECTICUT
U.S. Coordinates Rebel Forces
US unleashes the Daisy Cutter on Taliban
Public will accept war casualties - to a point
Terrorists Who Torture and Kill For Us

ENERGY AND OTHER
Washington
ARCTIC OIL GETS TIED TO SECURITY DEBATE
States: Louisiana, New Mexico, Tennessee
Inside the Biotech Revolution
At Ground Zero, Questions About the Air
Christians face dismal plight in Islamic realms
REID SPEAKS OUT AGAINST INHUMANE TREATMENT OF AFGHAN WOMEN

POLICE / PRISONERS
Internal troubles make FBI's task that much harder
Supreme Court to decide limits on police searches
States
New wiretap measures worry privacy watchdogs
Count of Released Detainees Is Hard to Pin Down
Canada touted as leader to establish International Criminal Court
Poll: Americans still behind Bush
B-52s hit Taliban lines hard in the north
Afghan opposition claims capture of towns
Blair will urge Bush to accept Europe's help
Putin Warns Against 'Double Standards' on Terrorism
Elusive War Against Terrorism Isn't Unprecedented
Security Begins at Home
Bin Laden's terror will outlast him
Straw: Terrorism may outlive bin Laden
On the Home Front, a Winnable War
Fighting bin Ladenism
BOOKS OF THE TIMES 'HOLY WAR, INC.'
U.S. Escalating Efforts to Bomb Taliban Caves
Metro Briefing
Roads to Victory in This War

ACTIVISTS
FAX your Representative in Congress to oppose H.R. 2983
WTO chief warns protesters to be wary in Qatar
ECOTERRORISTS SPIKE TREES IN NATIONAL FOREST
GROUPS PROTEST WARTIME OPPORTUNISM



-------- NUCLEAR

Helpless Against Nuclear Terrorism?

Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Hansrudolf Kamer
November 3, 2001
http://www.nzz.ch/english/editorials/2001/11/06_terrorism.html

There is no telling how long the war against terrorism, or its ramified consequences, will last. But some of the questions and problems raised by it have become clearer. The main problem - the vulnerability of open societies - is confirmed almost daily, as governments issue warnings about possible terrorist attacks of no-longer-inconceivable magnitude. The idea of the threat of terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction or of nuclear, biological and chemical agents is not really new. In almost every democratically governed nation during the past 10 years, committees of experts thought about the unthinkable and issued their reports. But the impact was slight.

The storm of uninhibited aggression on September 11, and attempts by numerous and varied circles of the blind to explain and justify it, have resulted in the various projections and warnings being taken more seriously. In America during the 1990s, mixed committees considered most aspects of the terrorist threat: the proliferation, dismantling and supervision of nuclear weapons and fissionable materials, chemical and biological weapons and agents, state-supported terrorism, missile defense, the vulnerability of nuclear power plants, bridges, tunnels and dams, and many other things. What has changed, however, is the realization that attackers of this ilk will stop at nothing - though there are now doubts as to whether all those involved in the attacks on America were privy to the actual objectives. In any case, deterrence can fail; it is not a panacea.

When strategic thinkers made seriously efforts to free themselves from the patterns of cold war thinking, terrorism - both private and state-sponsored - was always seen as a front-line threat. But despite a whole series of attacks on nearly all the world's continents, it was the collapse of the Twin Towers on the southern tip of Manhattan that made the danger real in people's minds. Writing in The Economist, Graham Allison, who served in the Pentagon during the first Clinton administration, describes what the impact would have been if a simple nuclear truck bomb had exploded on the same site: not only would the World Trade Center have been destroyed, but all of Wall Street and the financial district, as well as the entire southern end of Manhattan up to and beyond Union Square, with hundreds of thousands of people dead, and the fallout subsequently taking many more victims.

It is not primarily a failure of intelligence services when a society does not take dangers seriously because it prefers to occupy itself with the pleasanter things of life and ignores possible countermeasures. Politicians who routinely trivialized such great dangers were elected and will doubtless continue to be. Who wants to vote for prophets of doom? There was no response to the expulsion of UN inspectors from Iraq, whose regime probably still constitutes the greatest danger of terrorist use of nuclear weapons. Instead, nearly all honorable members of the Security Council, with the exception of the USA and Britain, actively tried to subvert the remaining sanctions against Saddam Hussein.

It is by no means certain that al-Qaida or any other terrorist network already has nuclear devices, as was recently reported. But considering the imponderable risks involved, Western governments should behave as though Usama bin Ladin already has his finger on the nuclear fuze. It is commendable that the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, whose public information work prior to the Gulf war did not exactly cover it in glory, has now recognized the signs of the times and unequivocally called attention to the increased danger level. Its Director General Mohammed al-Baradei has declared that there are more than 10,000 sites in the world where a terrorist could acquire radioactive material, from well-guarded militarty bases to completely open civilian facilities.

From this perspective too, there can be no denying that the war against the terrorists must be conducted with all urgency and strength, making use of effective military, political, diplomatic and propaganda means. In this context, an apparently imminent agreement between the Americans and Russians about a reduction of excessive nuclear arsenals is a welcome sign. However, that joint enterprise should not be confined to weapons, but should embrace the entire nuclear complex. Effective controls against a misuse of nuclear materials should be established, and a policy laid down vis-ŕ-vis other countries, especially those in the Middle East. Instead of photo opportunities, the forthcoming summit in America should be used to tackle a compressed mass of very real tasks.

---

Bush warns of nuclear threat from al-Qaeda

Financial Times
By FT.com staff in London
November 6 2001 14:29
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/r/fcweb/US%2FTerrorism/Related%20News%20Stories/Bush%20warns%20of%20nuclear%20threat%20from%20al-Qaeda/*http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT319S4SPTC&live=true&tagid=IXLYK5HZ8CC

The US and UK warned on Tuesday of the continued terrorist threat posed by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network as President George W. Bush accused the organisation of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

"They're seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and eventually, to civilisation itself," he said.

Mr Bush's comments came as Jack Straw, UK foreign secretary, warned that eliminating Mr bin Laden would not stop further acts of terrorism being carried out by the organisation.

Both Mr Bush and Mr Straw stressed the danger posed by al-Qaeda's international cells outside of Afghanistan.

"Al-Qaeda operates in more than 60 nations including some in Central and Eastern Europe. These terrorist groups seek to destabilise entire nations and regions," Mr Bush said.

The warnings come amid a diplomatic push to rally support for the US-led attack on Afghanistan ahead of a United Nations General Assembly debate due to begin on Saturday.

Mr Bush made the comments in a televised address to 17 Eastern European leaders gathered in Warsaw for a meeting to discuss cooperation in combating terrorism.

Tony Blair, UK prime minister, said the meeting would send a "signal that Europe is united across the broadest possible front."

Mr Blair is scheduled to travel to Washington on Wednesday for talks with Mr Bush about the state of the international coalition following several setbacks during his recent diplomatic tour of the Middle East.

---

Bush warns of nuclear terror [George Bush in Warsaw in June 2001]
Bush: Hoping for tighter security against terrorists

BBC News
Tuesday, 6 November, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1641000/1641042.stm

US President George Bush has said Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation is seeking to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Speaking by videolink to 17 eastern and central European leaders meeting in Warsaw, Mr Bush said the al-Qaeda network was trying to export "terror throughout the world".

The European leaders applauded warmly when he thanked them for supporting the US-led campaign against al-Qaeda - which Washington blames for the 11 September attacks in the United States - and the group's Taleban protectors in Afghanistan.

World leaders are concerned that Europe's less stable half does not become the continent's 'soft underbelly'

The BBC's Ray Furlong

"We stand by the American nation just as they supported us in our struggle for freedom," they said in a declaration after the meeting.

They adopted an anti-terrorism plan including tighter border controls, better coordination of intelligence services and closer scrutiny of the banking sector to combat money laundering.

Many of the 17 leaders are eager to bring their former communist countries into the western military alliance Nato, analysts said.

In other developments

- Anthrax is found in post at the US consulate in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg

- Pentagon officials deny reports that a US helicopter crashed in Pakistan after being fired on by the Taleban

- Opposition Northern Alliance forces say they have captured three villages near Mazar-e-Sharif, but the Taleban say they fought them off

- The UN says the Taleban is hindering humanitarian efforts inside Afghanistan

- The US transport secretary says there was a security failure of dramatic dimensions at Chicago's O'Hare airport

- More US special forces move into Afghanistan to co-ordinate air strikes, the Pentagon says

- India's prime minister visits Russia to ensure a key role in any Afghan administration after the Taleban

"Al-Qaeda operates in more than 60 nations including some in Central and Eastern Europe. These terrorist groups seek to destabilise entire nations and regions," Mr Bush said.

"They're seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and eventually, to civilisation itself."

'With us or against us'

Speaking at the White House later after meeting French President Jacques Chirac, Mr Bush said he was unsure whether Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation already had such weapons.

"He announced that this was his intention and I believe we need to take him seriously," Mr Bush said.

All nations, if they want to fight terror, must do something... You're either with us or you're against us

President Bush

Mr Bush also increased pressure on US allies to take an active part in the campaign, saying: "It is time for action."

"A coalition partner must do more than just express sympathy," Mr Bush said. "A coalition partner must perform."

But he did not single out any country for failing to support the US-led campaign.

Mr Chirac pledged continued French support, but opinion polls show growing doubts about the military action in Afghanistan among the French public.

The BBC's Central Europe correspondent Ray Furlong says world leaders are concerned that eastern and central Europe does not become the continent's "soft underbelly", vulnerable to terrorist penetration.

Money-laundering fears

Eastern Europe is also featuring in the investigation into the 11 September attacks on America.

Western Europe has overshadowed Eastern Europe in the war on terror Poland has revealed that suspects in the attacks on the World Trade Center travelled across its territory, and the Czech Republic has said that Mohammed Atta, suspected of piloting one of the hijacked planes, met an Iraqi agent in Prague.

There are also fears about the region being used for money-laundering, and as a route for drug-smuggling.

Support falling

Some east European leaders have said the 11 September attacks underline the need for the accelerated entry of their countries into Nato and the European Union.

Mr Bush said he stuck to his vision of Europe as a "house of freedom" - outlined in a visit to Poland earlier this year.

Continued expansion of Nato and the European Union were part of that vision.

Latest opinion polls in Poland show support for military action is falling.

Only 30% would favour sending their troops into Afghanistan, compared to 60% immediately after the attacks on the US.

So far, the Czech Republic is the only country in the region that says it is preparing forces for action - an anti-chemical warfare unit.

---

Bush Warns Bin Laden Wants Nuclear Weapons

Yahoo News
Tuesday November 6
By Adam Entous
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011106/ts/attack_bush_dc.html

WASHINGTON - President Bush warned on Tuesday for the first time that Osama bin Laden's network was seeking nuclear weapons, rallying European allies to fight what he called a threat to ``every nation and, eventually, to civilization itself.''

Speaking via satellite to a summit in Warsaw, Poland, Bush told leaders of Eastern European nations, once under the yoke of Soviet domination, that their ``freedom is threatened once again'' -- this time by bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorism network.

After meeting with French President Jacques Chirac at the White House, Bush said nations that failed to take action against terrorism would be ``held accountable,'' adding, ``You're either with us or you're against us.''

Reaching out to Arab leaders, Bush will huddle with Kuwait's first deputy prime minister, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, on Wednesday. He will also meet with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a staunch ally.

The United States has accused bin Laden of masterminding the Sept. 11 hijack attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and believes his al Qaeda network operates in more than 60 nations, including some in Central and Eastern Europe.

Bush said al Qaeda's goal was to ``destabilize entire nations and regions'' and was ``seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.''

``Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and eventually, to civilization itself,'' Bush told leaders from Poland and 16 other states.

Asked to elaborate on the nuclear threat after meeting with Chirac, Bush cited bin Laden's own statements, adding, ``I believe we need to take him seriously.''

Bush vowed to ``do everything we can'' to keep bin Laden from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. If he obtains them, Bush said, ``We'll make sure he doesn't deploy them.''

``This is an evil man that we're dealing with, and I wouldn't put it past him to develop evil weapons to try to harm civilization as we know it,'' Bush told reporters at the White House. ``That's why we work hard to keep our coalition bound together, and that's why we're going to keep relentless military pressure on him in Afghanistan.''

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said it was unclear whether the bombing campaign could keep al Qaeda from acquiring a nuclear device. ``There can be no such guarantees,'' he said.

Bush came close on Tuesday to blaming al Qaeda for a string of anthrax attacks that have killed four people in the United States. U.S. investigators have yet to blame bin Laden's network publicly for spreading anthrax through the U.S. mail, and Fleischer said, ``We still do not know the source -- whether it was foreign or domestic.''

While appealing to U.S. allies to step up the fight against terrorism, Bush also made a direct appeal to Afghans, fed up with Taliban rule, to help the United States track down bin Laden, the elusive Saudi-born militant.

DIPLOMATIC OFFENSIVE

Bush's speech to Eastern European leaders and his meeting with Chirac were part of a broader diplomatic offensive aimed at shoring up support for Washington's military campaign in Afghanistan, which has drawn increasing fire in Europe and elsewhere as the civilian death toll has risen.

Chirac said afterward that 2,000 French military personnel were already taking part in the U.S.-led operation. Germany has also agreed to mobilize up to 3,900 troops. Bush will meet later this week with leaders of India, Brazil and Ireland in hopes of bolstering support for the war effort.

On Thursday, Bush was to reach out to Americans rattled by the anthrax outbreak, with a speech in Atlanta about homeland security. ``Our people are responding to this new threat with alertness and calm,'' the president said.

Previewing a speech he will deliver to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Saturday, Bush ratcheted up pressure on nations to support the war on terrorism, saying: ``A coalition partner must do more than just express sympathy. A coalition partner must perform.''

In his satellite address, Bush praised European allies for backing the anti-terror drive and called for continued transatlantic cooperation. ``For more than 50 years the peoples of your region suffered under repressive ideologies that tried to trample human dignity,'' he told the summit.

``Like the fascists and totalitarians before them, these terrorists -- al Qaeda, the Taliban regime that supports them and other terror groups across our world -- try to impose their radical views through threats and violence.''

``We see the same intolerance of dissent, the same mad global ambitions, the same brutal determination to control every life and all of life,'' he said. Listening in Warsaw were leaders from Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia.

Bush told the leaders the United States would not relent in its hunt for bin Laden and his foot soldiers. ``We're determined to fight this evil and fight until we are rid of it,'' he said.

---

Nuclear experts warn of threat from 'dirty bombs'
The ruthlessness of the Sept. 11 attack triggered alarms from scientists meeting in Austria Friday.

Christian Science Monitor
November 05, 2001
By Sonya Yee
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1105/p7s2-woeu.html

VIENNA - Before commercial airliners were used as guided missiles, few experts viewed x-ray materials as potential terrorist weapons.

But now, in the wake of Sept. 11, experts are warning that not just nuclear weapons, but other radioactive materials - widely used in medicine, agriculture, industry and research - as well as civilian nuclear installations, could become weapons in the hands of terrorists.

Experts meeting in Vienna Friday at a conference on nuclear terrorism called on the international community to act quickly to impose better safeguards for nuclear and radioactive materials. The security of nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and the countries of the former Soviet Union must also be ensured, they said.

The ruthlessness of the Sept. 11 attacks makes it clear that the risks of a nuclear terrorist act are higher than previously thought, says Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, which organized the conference.

Commonplace radioactive materials - such as those used in radiotherapy or for the preservation of foodstuffs - could be fashioned into a crude "dirty" bomb that could be detonated with conventional explosives, the experts note. "There are few security precautions on radiotherapy equipment, and a large source could be removed quite easily, especially if those involved had no regard for their own health," says Abel Gonzalez, the IAEA's director of radiation and waste safety.

A "dirty" bomb would not necessarily result in a high number of casualties. "But contamination in even small quantities could have major psychological and economic effects," Gonzalez says.

Similarly, an attack on a nuclear power plant would not automatically mean a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl. Most nuclear power plants were built to withstand natural disasters and accidental crashes of small aircraft.

But the design of most reactors did not take into account the potential for an attack like that on the World Trade Center, and IAEA experts acknowledge that they are not sure how bad the fallout would be if a fully fueled jetliner crashed into a nuclear reactor. An attack by well-trained terrorists is "a much larger threat than civilian nuclear security systems are generally designed to deal with," says George Brunn of Stanford University.

Security procedures at nuclear power plants are already under review in the US and across Europe. A number of countries have restricted airspace around plants and posted additional guards. France has deployed antiaircraft missiles near its plant for spent nuclear fuel in La Hague.

Russia has announced that it is stepping up training of personnel at its facilities. But experts warned that the vast nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union remains dangerously vulnerable - less to attack than to theft.

Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network has in the past attempted to buy nuclear material stolen from the former Soviet states. There have been frequent reports that not all of the former USSR's nuclear weapons can be accounted for, although the Russian government has denied these claims. Pakistan's nuclear weapons are also seen as a security threat, because of the country's current political instability and former close ties with Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Mr. ElBaradei said that safeguards for Pakistan's arsenal - which is not under the purview of the IAEA - appear to be sufficient. But there are fears that the country's nuclear weapons could end up in the hands of pro-Taliban forces if the government were destabilized.

Despite the dangers, conference speakers say that the chances of terrorists setting off a major nuclear bomb remain small, due to the difficulty of acquiring the necessary high-grade materials and expertise.

The experts agreed that safeguarding all nuclear materials should be a counterterror priority In the short term, the IAEA estimates that it needs between $30 million and $50 million annually in additional resources. The IAEA has been underfunded in the face of an ever-increasing workload, and earlier this year the Bush administration had moved to cut funds that help Russia dismantle its nuclear arsenal. But governments may now be more willing to pay the price for greater security.


-------- depleted uranium

Depleted Uranium in the Afghan War

From: "Dai Williams" <eosuk@btinternet.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 10:19:46 -0000

This analysis has been sent to the UK Government and media requesting an urgent answer to the questions it contains. Is Depleted Uranium the "dense metal" used in the new generation of hard-target smart bombs and cruise missiles? If so how many have been used in the Afghan war and where? What precautions are intended for ground forces and civilians?

Depleted Uranium in the Afghan War:

Are ground troops and civilians at risk in "hard target" smart bomb and cruise missile target zones?

Update by Dai Williams, independent DU researcher,
30 October 2001

Summary

Internet sources from 1997 to date indicate that several 'hard target' versions of smart bomb and guided missile systems used by Allied forces in Afghanistan may contain Depleted Uranium (DU) as a major component to increase their penetration effect.

Of particular concern are systems that use the US "Advanced Unitary Penetrator" technology, or UK developed MWS technology with "shaped charge" penetrators.

Reports from the Center for Defence information suggest that at least 500 tons of smart bombs and cruise missiles have been used in the first three weeks of the Afghan war. They are most likely to have been used on "high value targets" e.g. Taliban and Al-Qaeda command centres, airfields and other military installations.

This information is offered for verification with governments and military authorities out of concern for potential DU exposure to UK, US and other Allied ground troops expected to be involved in search missions for Osama bin Laden and other Al-Queda or Taliban leaders. Also due to concerns for potential exposure to local civilians, international aid workers and media personnel.(1)

The US and UK governments take the view that use of Depleted Uranium in weapons presents no significant hazards to human health. They have also denied that it is used in missile systems. However information from Jane's Defence indicates that it has been used in at least one anti-tank missile system and in "shaped charge warheads".(2) Analysis of multiple sources suggest that it may be a key component of several recent guided weapon system upgrades.

Internet Sources

This report is based on three direct Internet sources plus links to manufacturers' websites from these prime sites:

Jane's Defence Information http://www.janes.com General information about weapons systems, manufacturers bulletins and actions in the Balkans (4). Huge range of subjects, informed summaries but detailed information about weapons systems only available to subscribers. More DU information was available during the Balkans war. Good access. Federation of American Scientists http://www.fas.org Extensive information about weapons systems (5), historical records of government procurement plans and weapons development. Some pages seem quite old so need verification for most recent progress from other sources (e.g. Jane's). Center for Defence Information, Washington http://www.cdi.org Very concise strategic summaries of US military information by ex-military personnel. Its Terrorism Project gives a daily assessment of Afghan war operations and prime systems (6). Not as detailed as Jane's or FAS but easy to access, good links and useful for cross-referencing with other sites. Military uses and health aspects of Depleted Uranium

DU has been used in weapons systems in the USA, UK, Russia and Israel for at least 15 years and exported to over 20 nations. It has two special qualities for use in military applications:

a) Very high density (1.7x heavier than lead) which gives it high kinetic energy for its volume.

b) Pyrophoric properties - DU ignites at high temperature, melting through armour and adding incendiary effects to its munitions.

Depleted Uranium (Uranium 238) is the main by-product of refining Uranium ore for nuclear fuel. It emits high energy but very short range Alpha radiation. In its pure metallic state it is relatively stable and safe to handle (e.g. if ammunition is handled with gloves). However it presents two main health hazards:

DU ignites at high temperature and burns into DU Oxide - a fine, Alpha-radioactive, toxic dust, easily inhaled, widely dispersed by wind and water, very hard to detect and to remove from the environment or the lungs. Military DU is not pure. It includes small quantities of highly radioactive and toxic isotopes including U236 and Plutonium due to recycling nuclear fuel rods in DU processing. It was probably these other elements that enabled the UNEP survey team to trace DU in Balkans target zones.(3) DU oxide contamination has been suspected as one source of Gulf War syndrome for several years. Other recently acknowledged radioactive elements may be an additional factor in long-term illnesses, cancers and birth defects suffered by civilians and veterans or their children exposed to DU during the Gulf War, and in Leukaemia deaths of some NATO troops following the Balkans war.

Suspected of DU in hard target guided weapons

Since the Gulf War it has been known that several weapons systems use DU e.g. 30 mm armour piercing shells fired by A10 planes and 120 mm shells fired by tanks. Both were used in the Gulf war. 30 mm shells were the only DU munitions declared by the USA / Nato during the Balkans war.

The use of DU in smart bombs and cruise missiles was denied by Nato spokesmen during the Balkans war. However, as a result of anomalies between UNEP findings early this year and radiation reports during the Balkans war this possibility was researched again in January and February this year.(2)

The US and UK governments have been reluctant to discuss military uses of DU and its potential hazards. Both declare that research proves DU is not a hazard to troops or civilians but take radiation precautions when using it in test situations.

In April 1999 Greek scientists reported a dramatic increase in atmospheric radiation levels two weeks after the start of the Balkans air war. I have been informed that they subsequently lost their jobs and their research was closed down.

One explanation for the Greek measurements might be that DU has been used in larger weapons systems, and therefore in far larger quantities and different locations than previously declared or studied.

Hard target guided weapons used to date in the Afghan War

First clues to the potential use of DU in guided weapons were picked up in the following document on the FAS website:

[Air Force Mission Area Plan (MAP)]

ANNEX F Common Solution/Concept List (U) [as of 11 July 1997 - Rev 10] at http://fas.org/man/dod-101/usaf/docs/mast/annex_f/part26.htm

This included references to introducing or upgrading at least 9 systems to include "dense metal" penetrators or ballast to increase their penetration effect and hard target capability. NB most cruise missile and guided bomb systems have several warhead options e.g. for blast, sub-munitions (e.g. cluster bombs) or hard target capability. It is the hard target versions that are of concern here.

Only two high-density metals are usually mentioned in descriptions of kinetic energy weapons - DU and Tungsten. Both are similar in density (Specific Gravity 18+) but very different in material and manufacturing costs. They may also be used in alloys.

Study of the Jane's, FAS and CDI websites indicates a number of smart bomb and guided missile systems with upgraded features matching those described in the 1997 concept document. [NB: Abbreviated names / code numbers may be confusing. Some refer to guidance systems, some to the main vehicle and some to warhead types. The following notes have tried to make these distinctions clear].

Of these hard target systems the following have been reported on the CDI website, or expected to have been used by the Jane's website, in Afghanistan since 7 October 2001.

For health and safety reasons the crucial question to ask the US and UK governments is this: Is the 'dense metal' used in any of these systems Depleted Uranium, or an alloy including DU?

1. Laser or GPS Guided Bombs

GBU 28 Bunker Buster bombs and the upgraded version GBU 37: 5000 lb bombs of which 4,400 are "dense metal" penetrators. The GBU-37 upgrade uses a BLU-113 penetrator, improving on the converted gun barrels used for the original GBU-28 version improvised in the Gulf War.

CDI's Action Update for Oct 11 refers: "Underground bunkers were also targeted using the 5,000 lb bunker buster... B-52's and B-1's with cluster and other penetrating bombs (possibly the BLU-109 and BLU-113 - DoD would not specify); enormous secondary explosions reported."

GBU 24 Paveway III. 2000 lb bombs using the BLU-116 Advanced Unitary Penetrator (AUP) weighing 1700 lbs. "The AUP features an elongated narrow diameter case made of a tough nickel-cobalt (steel) alloy called Air Force 1410. The AUP maximises sectional density by reducing the explosive payload and using heavy metals in the warhead case." (Note: this FAS description is the most explicit about the combination of alloy casing and dense metal ballast that seems to define the AUP penetrators, produced in several sizes). Designed to destroy hardened aircraft hangers and underground bunkers. Designed to replace the BLU-109.

2. Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM)

GBU 29, 30, 31, 32 feature 250, 500, 2000 and 1000 lb bombs respectively with all-weather GPS guidance systems. Originally designed by adding control fins to the BLU-109 and 110 hard target bombs. The new AUP warheads are designed to be direct substitutes for the 109 and equivalent bombs with twice the penetration power for the same size and weight. Refer 1997 proposed specifications on the FAS website and summary table in Tip of the Iceberg (2). Are AUP warheads now in use in JDAM systems?

CDI reported 500 JDAMs used in week 1.

3. Cruise missiles

AGM-86D CALCM (air-launched cruise missile). New version converted by Boeing from earlier nuclear warhead versions to include a 2000 lb Lockheed Martin Advanced Unitary Penetrator (AUP-3M) using "dense metal ballast". Long range missiles for hard target capability e.g. underground command bunkers. Most likely for targeting command posts in mountain caves as well as open locations.

Jane's reports expects use of CALCM's in the Afghan operation but CDI reports do not mention them, except perhaps included in total cruise missile numbers (50-60 in week 1).

US Navy sources denied use of DU in BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles during the Balkans war except for testing dummy nuclear warheads. But the Tactical Tomahawk Penetrator Variant commissioned in May 1999 "will be modified to incorporate the government-furnished penetrator warhead (AUP?) and the hard-target smart fuze". Delivery was scheduled for 2003 so it seems less likely that DU has been used in Tomahawk attacks in Afghanistan yet - unless for testing pre-production prototypes. This increases the likelihood that the AGM 86D has been the cruise missile of choice for strategic "high value targets".

The 1997 procurement plans included a series of Small Smart Bombs (SSB's) weighing 250 lbs with 'the same penetration capabilities as the BLU 109' - using "boosted penetrators with high density payloads". Proposed applications included delivery as sub-munitions by Tomahawks and Joint Stand Off Weapons (JSOWs). Whether these have been actually been developed for use in Tomahawks or JSOW's is not known.

Jane's refer to other guided systems in Afghanistan that include sub-munitions options with anti-armour capability or shaped charge penetrators e.g. the AGM-154 JSOW (Joint Standoff Weapon), and SLAM-ER (Standoff Land Attack Missile - Expanded Response). There is insufficient data to know whether these systems include suspected DU components. However the UK BROACH warhead system (see below) was evaluated for the JSOW in 1998.

The AGM-158 JASSM (Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile) has not been referred to in Jane's or CDI reports. However its 1000 lb P31 penetrator with "dense metal case or dense metal ballast" was specifically identified in the 1997 procurement list. So far there is insufficient information to know whether it has been discontinued, is under development, or has been used in prototype or production form in Afghanistan. It may be included in the unspecified air launched systems used in Afghanistan. If so it is another potential DU based missile system. Further information required.

Potential UK involvement in DU guided weapons systems

Another form of hard target system is the UK developed BROACH two stage MWS (Multiple Warhead System) with a "shaped charge" penetrator.

The 2000 lb version was developed to prototype trial stage in summer 1998 for competitive evaluation with the Lockheed Martin AUP for the upgraded Boeing AGM 86D CALCM. It was ground tested in South Wales and may have been field tested in the Operation Desert Fox and the Balkans War. But British Aerospace Royal Ordnance lost the Boeing contract to Lockheed Martin later in 1999.

The 1997 procurement list source suggested that a 1000 lb version of this alternative MWS hard target technology was also under consideration for other applications e.g. the AGM 158 JASSM. It is not known whether BAe/RO have continued development or production of BROACH /MWS warheads.

The BROACH system needs similar DU investigation with the UK government, even if it has been discontinued. If it is currently in use, in production or prototype form, and if it has or may be used in Afghanistan, its "dense metal" specifications need to be investigated. It is very curious that Jane's' description of DU uses included "shaped charge warheads" in February 2001 (quote below) but that this description has been edited out of the current website version (link below):

Extracts from Jane's Defence website (Feb 2001)

DU is a heavy metal that, when alloyed with titanium (up to 0.75% by weight), becomes a material with a density (18,600kg/m3) and ductility suited to making penetrators for kinetic energy anti-tank munitions, or liners for shaped-charge warheads.

During the Balkans operations from 1992 to 1996, only the US Air Force acknowledges its use in some of its 30mm cannon shells fired from the GAU-8A cannon.

It is true that some guided weapons used depleted uranium to increase the penetration effect and that the 20mm Phalanx close-in weapon system, used to protect warships at sea from sea-skimming missiles, also has a percentage of DU rounds.

Current description at http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw010108_1_n.shtml

Evaluation of potential DU hazards in Afghanistan

One disturbing comment from Jane's was that the Military do not always know the materials used by manufacturers since some may be used interchangeably. Since the US DoD and UK MoD both take a public view that DU is not hazardous (at least in its metallic form) then the Military do not need any special instructions for munitions that may contain DU. If this logic is sustained there is no reason to conceal the past or current use of DU in smart bomb or cruise missile systems.

However if Military commands from any of the Allied forces have doubts about the potential use of DU munitions against hard targets in Afghanistan this will be a matter for urgent and full information exchange between the forces and governments concerned.

Note: although this paper concerns guided weapons that may contain DU any use in conventional systems e.g. armour-piercing shells from the AC 130 gunship matter too.

The immediate operational concern is the likelihood that Special Forces will be expected to enter and inspect strategic target locations, underground bunkers and caves if accessible. Unlike anti-tank shells which leave distinctive entry holes there may not be obvious way for troops to distinguish potentially DU contaminated locations from other bomb damage.

Local geography and climate may be important if significant quantities of DU have been used. Afghanistan has more in common with Iraq than the Balkans - arid terrain prone to strong winds and dust storms. 300 tons of DU was declared in the Gulf War. Elevated radiation readings are still reported in some areas, years later.

The new generation (post 1997) of guided bombs and cruise missiles with hard target capability may be using DU in considerable quantities to achieve the increased penetration effects claimed by several upgraded systems - possibly 50% of the overall weight.

The majority of hard target bombing appears to have been accomplished in the first two weeks of the campaign. What's done is done. Potential DU use remains to be acknowledged, quantified and target locations identified. The 18 months delay for the UNEP survey after the Balkans war will not be psychologically or politically acceptable in the current conflict. However if DU has been used and this becomes known to the Taliban and Al Quaeda it may encourage them to evacuate strategic target locations at the earliest opportunity, and not attempt to return.

If DU munitions have been used in populated areas then contamination levels need to be assessed at the earliest opportunity - not only for Allied troops but for the welfare of local civilians, aid and media workers. Scarce water supplies are a special concern.

Unlike anti-tank shells guided bombs and missiles containing DU seem likely to oxidise most of the ballast load and to dissipate the resulting DU oxide (and embedded isotopes) over a considerable area in debris and dust-clouds.

Weapons designers and commissioning forces should have already evaluated these effects if the DoD and MoD acknowledge the potentially toxic and carcinogenic effects of DU oxide dust. No DU safety evaluation data for these systems has been located yet.

Questions for the US and UK Governments

The basic questions asked in Tip of the Iceberg remain to be asked and answered publicly:

Which guided weapons systems (i.e. guided missiles, smart bombs and sub-munitions) use Depleted Uranium as the "dense metal" involved in hard target penetrators, by itself or in alloy with other metals? How many of the 1997 hard target system concepts have been produced in prototype or production form, or are still under development? How many of these systems or their derivatives have been used in live tests and military operations since Operation Desert Storm? How many countries currently have stocks of DU in guided or other weapons systems? And now these questions about its suspected use in Afghanistan:

5. Which and how many weapons containing DU have already been used in the current Afghan War, and where? Have DU weapons been used there before?

6. What is the estimate dispersal pattern of DU oxide fallout for each weapon? Will independent observers e.g. UNEP be allowed to commence environmental monitoring immediately?

7. What precautions will be taken to protect Allied ground troops from potential exposure to DU contamination?

8. What precautions will be taken to protect civilians and international aid teams, media, water supplies and agricultural land in potentially contaminated regions?

These concerns were submitted to the UK Government by Sir Paul Beresford MP at my request last week. Their answers are urgent in view of the imminent despatch of UK and other Allied ground forces, and the welfare of those already there.

These questions also have implications for communities and veterans involved in several recent conflicts who may have been in the vicinity of smart bomb or cruise missile targets. They may require fundamental re-evaluation of the consequences of DU health hazards and whether DU weapons systems comprise weapons of indiscriminate effect.

The potential use of DU in hard target guided weapons has obvious tactical military advantages. But its potential effects in large scale bombing campaigns may cause long term hazards for troops and civilians that seriously outweigh most military justifications.

Dai Williams, independent researcher Surrey, UK eosuk@btinternet.com

References to previous discussion papers available from the author

1. Need for a DU Civilian Safety Handbook. 10 January 2001

2. Tip of the Iceberg? - apparent use of Depleted Uranium in bombs and missile systems. 25 Feb 2001. Includes more links to original sources.

3. Use of Depleted Uranium in the Balkans War: will the UNEP report include "Dirty" DU and missile targets? 13 March 2001, updated 5 June 2001

Links used in this report

4. Janes report on Air and Missile strikes in the Afghan war http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jdw/jdw011007_1_n.shtml

5. FAS links to guided missile and bomb specifications: http://www.fas.org/man/index.html

6. CDI Terrorism Project Action Update: http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/actionupdate.cfm

---

Gulf War widow calls for depleted uranium tests on overseas forces

Montreal Gazette
MURRAY BREWSTER
Canadian Press
Sunday, November 04, 2001
http://www.canada.com/montreal/story.asp?id={D4EBA11C-9C16-4D48-B3E0-3D7FBFE77D40}

HALIFAX (CP) - Any of Canada's military personnel who end up in combat zones during the war on terrorism should be tested for exposure to depleted uranium, says the widow of a Gulf War veteran.

"I am begging that this country and the United States take care of these people and their families," said Sue Riordon, whose husband died with a high level of the heavy metal in his bones. "Immediately upon touching home soil, all of them should be tested. That would be the smart and prudent thing to do."

Riordon has been fighting a running battle with the federal government to acknowledge the apparent health risks of low-level exposure to the radioactive substance that some believe is linked to the Gulf War Syndrome.

She proposes a basic urine test.

"For our people in uniform, it would be an act of good faith," she said. "It's wonderful to support and stand together in a crisis, but there will be a crisis when they come home."

Depleted uranium is used to coat artillery shells and other munitions, making them harder and more likely to penetrate the thick skin of armoured vehicles.

Canada doesn't use the weapons, but the United States employed them in the Gulf War and Kosovo. It's not clear whether they're being used in Afghanistan.

The weapons became an issue in Canada a couple of years ago after an independent autopsy on Capt. Terry Riordon showed he died with a high level of the radioactive substance in his body.

Despite the public attention to the issue, the Canadian Forces said it's not interested in a specific testing program for returning veterans.

"When our soldiers go overseas they're not at risk, on a large scale, to depleted uranium exposure," said Lieut. Hollie Ryan, a spokeswoman for the Defence Department in Ottawa.

Canada has committed warships and aircraft to the fight, but the biggest risk of exposure would be for combat infantry.

If any Canadian personnel came in contact with the depleted uranium, Ryan said, they would know what to do. They've been issued gas masks, for example, and the means to register radiation.

"We do not anticipate having to treat depleted-uranium casualties."

During the 1991 Gulf War, several American vehicles were hit by their own fire and soldiers ended up with pieces of depleted uranium embedded in them.

Those casualties are thought to be at the greatest risk for long-term health problems.

Another school of thought suggests just being in areas where depleted uranium shells have exploded could be a health hazard.

During the blast, the radioactive coating is pulverized into a fine dust that can be inhaled.

There's research that suggests it can make its way through the blood stream, settling in the bones where it might cause long-term health problems.

That is what Riordon believes happened to her husband in 1991, but the military doesn't classify the dust as a major health risk.

"Terry died of heavy-metal toxicity and radiation poisoning from serving his country overseas during a crisis, the same as our men and women are doing to today," she said.

"How many deaths do we need? How many people are going to suffer the agony he did?"

The Canadian Forces tested veterans who served in the Gulf and in the former Yugoslavia said it found no evidence of depleted-uranium exposure.

-------- india / pakistan

ASIAN ALLY
U.S. and India Map Path to Military Cooperation

New York Times
November 6, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/international/asia/06INDI.html?searchpv=nytToday

NEW DELHI, Nov. 5 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told India's defense minister, George Fernandes, today that the United States is committed to building closer military ties between their two countries, and the two men discussed possible sales of American military equipment to India.

Mr. Rumsfeld's quick visit here at the end of four-day tour of five nations seemed meant to reassure India that the intense American partnership with Pakistan, India's archrival, will not come at India's expense, and to remind India that it has a long-term interest in staying on America's good side.

India is an ally of the United States in the global campaign against terrorism. But expanding military cooperation between the two, the world's most populous democracies, is also part of a broader American strategy, predating the Sept. 11 attacks, to deepen relations with India on issues that include trade, antiterrorism and scientific cooperation.

At a joint news conference today, Mr. Rumsfeld said his aim was "to strengthen the military-to-military and defense ties between our two countries, which I think are so important."

Mr. Fernandes, who has been testy and skeptical in his recent comments about the United States, was full of warm words, declaring himself "very happy with the discussions."

The two men - Mr. Fernandes, the aging socialist in sandals and a crumpled kurta pajama, and Mr. Rumsfeld, the aging cold warrior in a pressed gray suit - made an odd couple, but both said they wanted what Mr. Fernandes called "a relationship of mutual support and cooperation."

Mr. Fernandes has in the past expressed serious doubts about America's resolve to help India fight terrorism on its own soil and the effectiveness of the American bombing of Afghanistan.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has recommended that two Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups active in an anti-India insurgency, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-i- Muhammad, be put on Washington's list of terrorist organizations.

India had long sought this step and officials here welcomed the move. Lashkar, in particular, is one of the most dangerous groups operating in Kashmir, a land that both India and Pakistan claim, often sending suicide bombers to attack Indian security forces there.

Mr. Rumsfeld said antiterrorism would not stop with Afghanistan, and "we will be pursuing terrorist networks wherever we find them."

When asked what he thought of the American military strategy, Mr. Fernandes, known as an undiplomatic maverick, said tactfully, "I think it's the military men who decide the military tactics. One should accept what is happening now."

Mr. Rumsfeld himself said he believes that the bombing campaign is getting more effective by the day now that the Americans have personnel on the ground helping them identify targets for the bombs.

Asked if the Afghan war could last for years, Mr. Rumsfeld said: "Do I think Afghanistan will take years? No, I don't. I think it is something that is being very aggressively addressed at the present time. How long it will take, one can't guess."

Mr. Fernandes's temperate remarks signaled that India's pique about the American alliance with Pakistan, which India regards as the prime sponsor of terrorism against India, may be balanced by India's desire for a strategic relationship with the United States.

The mere fact that the American secretary of defense called on India was a measure of how dramatically United States policies have changed in recent months. After India conducted nuclear tests in May 1998, the United States imposed economic and military sanctions that derailed earlier efforts by the Clinton administration to bring the two nations closer together. No American defense secretary had come to India since January 1995.

Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Fernandes also discussed India's need for military supplies, including General Electric engines for its light combat aircraft.

By early next month, Indian and American military officials are to begin to meet as a Defense Policy Group to discuss ways that the two militaries can cooperate. Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, will lead the American side.

The members of the group will consider increased training of officers in each others' academies and joint military exercises. And in another indication of American interest, Adm. Dennis C. Blair, commander in chief of the Pacific region, will soon be coming to New Delhi.

American officials hope India's interest in a broader relationship, after decades when India was a leader of nonaligned nations and close to the Soviet Union and then Russia, will give India an extra incentive to act with restraint when it comes to Pakistan.

American officials have worried that the conflict between India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed enemies, could flare into war if there were a major terrorist attack on India by an Islamic militant group based in Pakistan. President Bush asked the two countries to "stand down" last month after intense fighting broke out in Kashmir.

Mr. Rumsfeld today made no mention of the desire for military restraint, nor did he need to. That point has been made clearly at the highest levels, including during Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's visit to New Delhi three weeks ago.

Even as senior Indian officials, including Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, have continued making bellicose remarks almost daily about Pakistan's sponsorship of Islamic militants in Kashmir, they have also said just as frequently that they have no plans to initiate military attacks across the line that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan - at least not for now.

-------- russia

Russia denies helping Iran develop weapons

USA Today
11/06/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/06/putin.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected U.S. suspicions that Russia has provided dangerous weapons technology to Iran. Putin also praised President Bush, with whom he will meet next week, as someone with whom he can do business and a leader who keeps his word. In an interview in the Kremlin with Barbara Walters for ABC's 20/20 program, Putin struck a conciliatory stand on almost all fronts. He indicated, for instance, that he could be ready to strike a deal to clear the way for a U.S. anti-missile shield program.

"We could reach quite quickly mutual agreements," Putin said in an interview conducted on Monday and set to air on Wednesday. He added that the Russian position on a missile shield "is quite flexible."

But he also cautioned that a settlement "can only be found as a result of very intense negotiations."

Both Putin and Bush have said they would like to cut nuclear arsenals, which now number about 6,000 warheads for each country. The Russians have suggested cuts as low as 1,500; U .S. officials have discussed a range of between 1,750 and 2,250. In exchange, the U.S. would like to conduct missile tests now barred by a 1972 arms control treaty.

On the touchy issue of Iran, the Russian president rejected as a "legend" that Iran is receiving technology from Russia for missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

"We have not ever sold anything to Iran, out of the range of technology or information that would help Iran develop missiles, or weapons of mass destruction," Putin said.

Russia has some projects with Iran in atomic energy, he said. But "it has nothing to do with developing nuclear weapons. We are categorically opposed to transferring any technologies to Iran that would help it develop nuclear weapons."

The issue has been underlined as serious and troubling by U.S. officials, who otherwise speak warmly of growing rapport between Washington and Moscow.

On another front, Putin ruled out sending Russian troops to Afghanistan to help the United States root out Osama bin Laden and smash his al-Qa'eda terrorist network.

"To us this solution would be unacceptable. To us, sending troops to Afghanistan is like for you, the U.S., returning your troops to Vietnam," Putin said. The Soviet Union fought a 10-year war in Afghanistan before withdrawing in defeat in 1989.

Still, Putin said the Russian army is helping the United States in rescue operations, even on Afghan territory, and said he had shown Bush intelligence data indicating terrorists in the separatist republic of Chechnya plan to kill Americans.

"The Americans should know about that," Putin said.

Reaffirming Russia's support for the U.S. war against terrorism, Putin said it would be very difficult but possible to find bin Laden.

"It is important," he said. "The main players in this should be brought to justice. But this will not resolve the overall terrorist problem."

On the war itself, Putin said the United States was losing "not in the military but in the information."

"It seems to me that in the information field, terrorist are acting more aggressively and more offensively, and they're presenting opposition in terms of emotions," he said.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Putin was the first foreign leader to call Bush to register support for the United States. In the interview, he said he wished he could have done something to prepare the United States for the assault.

"I had the feeling of guilt for this tragedy," he said. "I don't know whether it would have been possible to prevent these strikes on the United States by the terrorists. But it was a pity that our special services didn't get the information on time, and warn the American people and the American political leadership about the tragedy that came to pass."

Putin praised Bush at several points.

"I believe it's not accidental that he became the president of the United States. He sees better and deeper and understands the problems more accurately," the Russian president said.

"We argue about some problems, disagree about things, but I noticed that if he agrees with something, and if he says yes, he actually pushes the question down to resolution, to fruition, and we assess this quite positively," Putin said.

"We can do business with this man, and he lives up to the agreements that he reaches," the Russian leader said.

-------- u.s. nuc other

SCIENCE TIMES
Evicting an Unwelcome Tenant: Anthrax

New York Times
November 6, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/science/physical/06CLEA.html

The anthrax assaults have set off a scramble to decontaminate places where bacterial spores were found and to prevent more infections by sterilizing the mail - the prime source of the initial anthrax exposures and also apparently a means by which stray spores dispersed.

Government officials and scientists have feverishly sifted research on disinfectants and technologies powerful enough to kill the anthrax spores, which - like invisible biological land mines - can sit dormant a century or more and then still transform into live, toxin-producing bacteria.

Many of the methods that have been chosen or are being considered have other established uses, but this is all new, largely untested terrain, microbiologists and experts in sterilization technologies say.

"This is the first time we've really had to do something like this," said Calvin Chue, a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies. "Some of these methods will eliminate the vast majority of spores from being viable, but we can't ever give a guarantee of eliminating 100 percent. I don't think anyone can guarantee that."

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency set up a mock office - with chairs, artwork, papers and photographs - in an airtight trailer near Washington's contaminated Brentwood postal sorting building. Scientists pumped in chlorine dioxide, a yellow-green, bacteria-killing gas proposed for use in the partially contaminated Hart Senate Office Building.

They checked the effect on the materials. Some photographs were discolored, but everything else came through fine. Everything, that is, except the spores of a harmless bacterial cousin of the anthrax bacterium that laced paper strips taped around the room. The spores all died, E.P.A. officials said.

Private companies and government laboratories have offered a host of gases, foams and truck-size particle-accelerating machines that disrupt DNA with high-speed electrons.

Many are well-established means of killing bacteria in laboratory "clean rooms," hospital goods, foods or on assembly lines for products like finger bandages and the small creamer cups on deli counters.

But most have been tested only on surrogates for anthrax bacteria and have been hastily reconceived as weapons in the anthrax war. Therefore, federal officials and bioterrorism experts say, some surprises and setbacks are likely.

Certainly, experts in dangerous germs said, no one - not senators waiting to return to offices or postal workers sorting mail or citizens going to the mail box - should expect perfect results with these early efforts.

"It's a totally new paradigm and so we're a bit panicked about it until we develop solutions," said a senior federal health official. Ultimately, the official said, the potential for such microbial assaults and subsequent spread of spores should decline.

"Eventually, it'll be like with seat belts and drunk driving laws," the official said. "Traffic fatalities are down tremendously because we developed initiatives."

One challenge, some officials say, is there is no way to check every crevice of a tainted building for residual spores and, even if a few are found, they may not pose a health risk significant enough to justify further cleaning.

Moreover, there is no established standard yet for determining when a treated building or batch of mail is safe, said Dr. Bradley A. Perkins, an anthrax specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In fact, he and other experts said, this is a rare instance when a new infectious threat is being investigated, combated and studied at the level of basic research - all at the same time.

"We're trying to define with this investigation what level of contamination constitutes a risk," Dr. Perkins said.

Also, depending on the sterilization method, some of the DNA and antibody tests that are used to check for spores may not be able to discriminate between a live one and a dead one. This could produce false positives that might alarm workers being asked to reoccupy a once-tainted building.

The only way to be sure would be to use the lengthier, costlier method of culturing individual samples in the laboratory to see if spores germinated into bacteria.

The various disinfectants and devices being used kill anthrax spores in different ways.

The irradiation devices used on the mail accelerate and focus streams of electrons to kill from the inside out, disrupting the DNA inside spores and bacteria.

Irradiation is already a big, established business. Manufacturers use irradiation to sterilize products on the assembly line. Food companies are expanding the variety of foods irradiated before they hit store shelves. Irradiated ground beef, approved by the Food and Drug Administration early last year, is being sold in more than 25 states. In Hawaii, papaya, star fruit and other tropical delicacies are irradiated to kill any hidden fruit flies or other potential agricultural scourges before they are shipped.

The effectiveness of the technique depends on the power of the beam and the density of the target.

Officials at Titan Corp., a San Diego company that, with a subsidiary, SureBeam , won the first Postal Service mail sterilizing contracts, said the cleansing of batches of mail already under way at a plant in Lima, Ohio, was very similar to established disinfection methods for medical waste.

Cartons containing sealed bags of the suspect or tainted material roll on a conveyer belt into a large electron-beam machine.

Chlorine dioxide gas, the method chosen for the Senate offices, kills the bacteria in a completely different way, working from the outside in.

The gas causes an oxidizing reaction that eats holes in a spore's outer shell, disrupting its metabolism and preventing it from transforming into a rod-shaped bacterium that can then begin to reproduce.

Some scientists question whether some spores in the middle of a dense clump might survive such an attack. But the technique has big advantages over liquids or foams, particularly in a large, complex structure, because the gas can be easily disseminated through a ventilation system and then permeate every nook and crevice.

The other new disinfectant getting its first big field test is a disinfecting foam that was developed at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico to destroy biological and chemical weapons.

The foam, which causes an oxidizing reaction similar to that from chlorine dioxide, has been used to clean several Congressional offices and at ABC News, where the child of a producer contracted an anthrax skin infection.

The Postal Service chose a more tried and true method in its cavernous, carpetless sorting centers - a 10 percent solution of bleach.

Even with the various limitations and questions, officials say, the anthrax cleanups have to proceed.

The Postal Service has been scurrying to act in the face of uncertainty, driven by the deaths of employees in late October and by fears that have driven some mail recipients to try to sterilize their mail with a microwave oven or steam iron - both processes that experts say are useless.

Within a week of the deaths of two postal workers from anthrax lung infections, the Postal Service was negotiating with companies to sterilize accumulated piles of mail sent in September or October that had been deemed suspicious.

Companies were also hastily writing proposals for electron-beam devices that could be installed in sorting complexes to sterilize all of the mail as a matter of routine.

Last week, John E. Potter, the postmaster general, told Congress that it could cost $2.5 billion to install electron-beam sterilization machines capable of handling the entire national flow of mail. Whether the country decides that level of security is necessary remains uncertain.

But postal officials have already earmarked more than $200 million for cleaning up the existing contamination, primarily in large mail-sorting buildings in New Jersey and Washington, and killing bacteria in 45 truckloads of "suspect mail" from the Washington post office.

In the meantime, with half of the Senate locked out of offices because of anthrax traces and a host of other government mail rooms showing signs of spores, federal environmental officials are poised to start cleaning tainted government buildings.

The E.P.A. is also in charge of testing and cleanup in the American Media offices in Florida, where the first anthrax cases surfaced just over a month ago.

The largest federal structure with traces of anthrax is the Hart Senate Office Building, a nine-story, million- square-foot structure housing the offices of 50 senators, including the one where an aide to Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader, opened an envelope on Oct. 15, releasing a puff of anthrax spores.

Since then, the only people venturing inside the tainted portions of the building have been crews dressed in airtight suits who were there to test its suitability for a giant experiment - filling the entire building with chlorine dioxide, which in theory will perforatethe protein shell of anthrax spores.

The process, incidentally, is likely to eliminate any stray roach or mouse cached in the buildings, E.P.A. officials said. But it is rife with uncertainty, and the test in the trailer last week was one effort to reduce the unknowns.

At a briefing by E.P.A. scientists and other experts a week ago, two dozen senators asked a flurry of questions, several people who attended said.

One Senate staff member, echoing accounts of others who were there, recalled some of the concerns voiced by senators: "How do we know we're not going to have to redo this thing? If someone gets sick there's going to be hell to pay. Are you sure, are you positive?"

No one was quick to respond.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

Audit finds NRC not keeping accurate inventory

USA Today
11/06/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-06-nrc.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission are not keeping an accurate inventory of nuclear materials loaned out for domestic research, investigators say.

An audit by the Energy Department's inspector general between April and August found that 119 locations handling government-owned enriched uranium, plutonium and other nuclear materials had returned more to the department than had been loaned out or leased.

While finding no evidence of nuclear materials being diverted or misused, the government's inaccurate records could undermine its ability to detect stolen or lost materials, said Gregory H. Friedman, the department's inspector general.

The records entered into a federal electronic database run by the Energy Department and the NRC "are not logical and almost certainly incorrect," said Friedman in the Oct. 26 report, released this week.

He warned that a proper inventory must be done if the government is to keep "the strictest possible control over materials that could, in the wrong hands, threaten national security."

The report showed an excess of 4.2 million kilograms of depleted uranium, 1.3 million grams of enriched uranium and 2,500 grams of plutonium in the department's inventory.

Some of the record-keeping problems were found as early as 1994 but the department did not try to correct them until this year, the audit says.

"The department did not provide adequate oversight of the system," Friedman said in his report to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. He added that the department should not assume that the public is protected until all records have been explained and corrected.

Security officials within the department also told auditors that it was "unlikely" more material had been returned than was loaned or leased, the audit says. Those officials said a more probable explanation was that the wrong ownership codes were entered into the records when the radioactive materials were transferred to another location.

Other inaccuracies included records showing "a significant quantity" of plutonium existed at two facilities, despite NRC officials saying those facilities had not held plutonium for years. Officials said one facility had not housed plutonium since 1996 and the other facility likewise had no plutonium since its license had expired in 1993.

To its credit, the Energy Department had accounted for all 2,500 grams of plutonium by September, five months after being notified of a problem, the audit says. Security officials believe the plutonium was washed away during decontamination and decommissioning of the facilities, the audit says, though there was no documentation at the time of the audit to show what happened to the material. The department's security and emergency operations director, Joseph S. Mahaley, said he had met with NRC officials in mid-October to begin accounting for all the loaned or leased inventories of department-owned nuclear materials. The NRC licenses the research institutions.

------

Bigger, hairier problems call for new debate over HEU uranium reactor use

From: Magnu96196@aol.com
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 10:10:02 EST

http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/sci_and_tech/article/0,1406,KNS_328_868298,0 0.html

Bigger, hairier problems call for new debate over uranium use By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel Senior writer

This threatening new period has restoked concerns about nuclear terrorism and brought fresh scrutiny to security of U.S. nuclear facilities, particularly nuclear power plants. It also has renewed debate about the use of highly enriched uranium - or other materials of bomb-making potential - as fuel in nuclear research reactors. The fear, of course, is that the fissile material could be stolen and ultimately converted into some type of first-generation atomic weapon by terrorists.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, a conservative organization with an almost impossible oversight mission, last week acknowledged the risks of nuclear terrorism and pushed for upgrades in safety and security of nuclear facilities and nuclear materials.

The Nuclear Control Institute applauded the international agency's position, but said it was way overdue and still inadequate. Not surprisingly, the institute called for bigger steps to combat nuclear proliferation and stem the potential for nuclear terrorism.

"For more than two decades, we have urged the IAEA and the nuclear power industry to take seriously the risks of terrorists stealing bomb-usable nuclear materials and attacking nuclear plants," Paul Leventhal, the institute's president, said in a statement distributed to the news media.

"The need for action, not rhetoric, is long overdue,"

Among other things, Leventhal urged the IAEA to call for elimination of highly enriched uranium from research programs.

"Enormous progress has been made, with the vast majority of the world's research reactors having already converted to low-enriched uranium alternatives," he said. "However, the IAEA is silent about a new research reactor in Germany, to be licensed to use up to 360 kilograms of bomb-grade (uranium) fuel by the year 2010, equivalent to dozens of bombs."

Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor is another facility often cited in these discussions.

The Oak Ridge reactor uses a uranium fuel core with an enrichment level in the "high 90s," according to Larry Boyd of the U.S. Department of Energy's reactor oversight team at ORNL. That means the uranium consists of more than 90 percent U-235, the fissile isotope, and that's plenty of punch for a bomb. Generally speaking, the higher the enrichment the lesser amount of material needed for a crude device.

By contrast, commercial nuclear reactors typically use uranium fuel with an enrichment level of only 2 to 4 percent.

Although research reactors elsewhere have been converted to low-enriched fuel, that's never been a serious consideration with the High Flux Isotope Reactor. A fuel test was conducted at another lab reactor, the Oak Ridge Research Reactor, before it was shut down in 1987, and the results reportedly were not satisfying to scientists.

"It would essentially cripple the reactor," Boyd said. "Even using the most advanced fuel-fabrication technology, it would result in a significant reduction in power level and (neutron) flux."

The reactor would still be useful, the DOE official said, but it would no longer be a world-class research reactor. Along with a reactor in Russia, the ORNL facility has the highest neutron concentration available anywhere, and that's vital for scientific experiments, he said.

The High Flux Isotope Reactor has been shut down for more than a year for maintenance, repairs and a series of upgrades, but the laboratory could receive approval for restart as early as this week. A DOE team from Washington was in town last week to evaluate final changes made following the reactor's operational readiness review.

Ed Lee, the reactor manager, said the first few months of operation will be devoted mostly to testing and checking out systems - especially since new equipment has been installed.

"You'll do things like take measurements around the beam ports and check what all the radiation levels are," he said. "You have to do a lot of testing because the reactor was torn down to a level it hasn't been since it was built (in the 1960s)."

There will be a limited amount of isotope production during the first few months but probably not many neutron-scattering experiments, Lee said.

Lee said the readiness review went well, and he said input from the DOE overseers will help make the operations better.

However, he said he was uncomfortable discussing issues pertaining to the reactor's uranium fuel. James Roberto, associate director of ORNL, also declined comment.

A federal audit in the mid-1980s lambasted the Oak Ridge laboratory for lax security regarding the fuel storage at the reactor. At the time, the highly enriched uranium was stored in a building near the reactor with little protection other than a chain-link fence.

"We haven't done that in a long time," Boyd said.

According to the DOE official, the reactor's barrel-like fuel assemblies are stored in a vault at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant (about 10 miles away) until it's time for reloading. With a fuel cycle of 22-26 days, the ORNL reactor is reloaded about every five weeks or so.

Boyd said delivery of uranium fuel to the reactor is a high-security operation.

The enriched uranium is transported from Y-12 in the same trucks used to haul nuclear weapons, and Boyd said armed guards and a SWAT team accompany the vehicle. "It's the appropriate security for that type of material," he said.

The shipments take place at unannounced times to foil would-be onlookers.

Boyd recalls a situation a few years ago where a security-cleared DOE worker involved in environmental monitoring happened to wander too close to the delivery truck and was quickly escorted out of the area, much to his dismay.

"Given the current situation, I'm sure you'll probably see even bigger, hairier guards than before," Boyd said.

Senior writer Frank Munger can be reached at 482-9213 or by e-mail at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This weekly column on science and technology also is available on our Web site at http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/.

====

Comments:

Many of the research reactors are fueled with highly enriched uranium, as this is what makes them so small. ORNL has many HEU research reactors and they have many spent fuel assemblies stored in an unguarded building in the burial ground area.

ORNL also used to store U-233 unguarded at MSRE, where only a drill and a bucket placed in a building would of collected this plutonium like bomb material.

At HFIR, HEU is real easy to find as the irradiated fuel plates sit in the cooling off zone of the swimming pool reactor. Just a little chemical separation will get a lot of HEU. The HFIR curved fuel plates are an aluminum sandwich, with the HEU sealed in the middle.

--------

Audit Finds Imprecise Nuclear Records

Tuesday November 6
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
From: "Peter Diehl" <uranium@t-online.de>

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission are not keeping an accurate inventory of nuclear materials loaned out for domestic research, investigators say.

An audit by the Energy Department's inspector general between April and August found that 119 locations handling government-owned enriched uranium, plutonium and other nuclear materials had returned more to the department than had been loaned out or leased.

While finding no evidence of nuclear materials being diverted or misused, the government's inaccurate records could undermine its ability to detect stolen or lost materials, said Gregory H. Friedman, the department's inspector general.

The records entered into a federal electronic database run by the Energy Department and the NRC ``are not logical and almost certainly incorrect,'' said Friedman in the Oct. 26 report, released this week.

He warned that a proper inventory must be done if the government is to keep ``the strictest possible control over materials that could, in the wrong hands, threaten national security.''

The report showed an excess of 4.2 million kilograms of depleted uranium, 1.3 million grams of enriched uranium and 2,500 grams of plutonium in the department's inventory.

Some of the record-keeping problems were found as early as 1994 but the department did not try to correct them until this year, the audit says.

``The department did not provide adequate oversight of the system,'' Friedman said in his report to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. He added that the department should not assume that the public is protected until all records have been explained and corrected.

Security officials within the department also told auditors that it was ``unlikely'' more material had been returned than was loaned or leased, the audit says. Those officials said a more probable explanation was that the wrong ownership codes were entered into the records when the radioactive materials were transferred to another location.

Other inaccuracies included records showing ``a significant quantity'' of plutonium existed at two facilities, despite NRC officials saying those facilities had not held plutonium for years. Officials said one facility had not housed plutonium since 1996 and the other facility likewise had no plutonium since its license had expired in 1993.

To its credit, the Energy Department had accounted for all 2,500 grams of plutonium by September, five months after being notified of a problem, the audit says. Security officials believe the plutonium was washed away during decontamination and decommissioning of the facilities, the audit says, though there was no documentation at the time of the audit to show what happened to the material.

The department's security and emergency operations director, Joseph S. Mahaley, said he had met with NRC officials in mid-October to begin accounting for all the loaned or leased inventories of department-owned nuclear materials. The NRC licenses the research institutions.

On the Net:

Energy Department Office of Inspector General: http://www.ig.doe.gov
The full report (dated Oct. 26, 2001) is available at: http://www.ig.doe.gov/pdf/ig-0529.pdf (159k PDF)

--------

Report Finds 'Weakness' In Nuclear Controls
Plutonium, Uranium Not Accounted For

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 6, 2001; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44533-2001Nov5.html

Government records about plutonium and uranium loaned to U.S. academic institutions, private companies, hospitals and other government agencies cannot account for "substantial" amounts of the material, according to a report released yesterday by the Energy Department inspector general.

The investigation into the matter, which began before the Sept. 11 terrorist acts, did not conclude that the radioactive materials were lost or stolen from the facilities. Instead, it said there was "a weakness in controls over potentially dangerous materials" in record-keeping by a private contractor used to track the materials.

Although one official said the lapse might turn out to be only "sloppy bookkeeping," officials said the Energy Department is taking the report seriously because of concerns that terrorists may be trying to acquire radioactive materials.

The Energy Department has called for an early meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licensed the research institutions, and the private contractor whose job it is to keep track of the materials. The identity of the contractor was not disclosed.

Although some of the record-keeping problems were discovered before 1994, "It was not until 2001 when, in response to our report . . . [that Energy's] security operation was tasked to correct these problems," the report said.

In one case, a Sept. 30, 2000, management record showed a "significant quantity of plutonium" at a facility that the NRC said "had not held plutonium since 1966," the report said.

Energy Department officials said the unaccounted-for plutonium may have been washed away during decontamination and decommissioning of the facilities, according to the report.

At another site, the report said, management records show significant amounts of plutonium while the NRC said the facility's license was terminated in 1993 and "no material was at this location."

In neither case, the report said, could the NRC or Energy Department security operations explain the discrepancies in the records.

In the case of 119 locations, the management records showed licensees returned to the Energy Department substantially more nuclear materials than originally loaned or leased. In those cases, Energy officials believed the original transfer of the material was incorrectly reported. In 35 instances where more than 2,500 grams of plutonium were reported returned, Energy Department security officials resolved all the discrepancies five months after being notified of the problem.

As the result of this inquiry, the department's inspector general may have to conduct a similar audit of records of nuclear materials held by the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories, "where significantly greater numbers are involved," an Energy Department official said.

--------

US energy facilities vulnerable to attack

by Chris Baltimore,
Reuters:
6/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13145/story.htm

WASHINGTON - From the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to the Golden Gate Bridge and Boston Harbor, there is no shortage of energy-related facilities vulnerable to attack, according to a report sent yesterday to Homeland Defense Secretary Tom Ridge.

"America's energy infrastructure is, as a whole, highly vulnerable to ... terrorist threat," the Texas law firm Bracewell & Patterson said in a 42-page analysis on the nation's energy infrastructure.

The report underscores the Herculean task before federal agencies in guarding the nation's energy installations, including nuclear reactors, oil and natural gas pipelines, and maritime tanker facilities.

It reads like a potential laundry list of targets for saboteurs, and includes the massive pipeline that moves Alaskan oil, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Panama Canal.

Marc Racicot, a partner in the firm and the former governor of Montana, sent the report to Ridge yesterday, and was set to brief Energy Department officials. The firm represents many energy firms, but said its report was done "independent of client advice."

REGULATORY ROLLBACKS EYED

Private companies can't go it alone in the security effort, and need federal help in the form of tax incentives, low-interest financing and regulatory relief, the report said.

"No private sector company has the wherewithal to defeat a terrorist threat on the order of a hijacked airplane turned missile or a weapon of mass destruction," it said.

On the regulatory front, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department and Interior Department should cut red tape for firms that want to upgrade security, said report co-author Rob Housman, Bracewell Patterson lawyer.

Such roll-back requests are not new. Energy firms for years have clamored for relaxation of guidelines imposed by EPA and other agencies which they view as too costly and burdensome. Those requests have gained a fresh urgency after the Sept. 11 aerial attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

Regulatory changes, which would require legislative approval, should include relaxing EPA rules that require power plant and refineries to add expensive pollution controls when updating their facilities, the report said.

SPOTLIGHT ON NUCLEAR SECURITY

Security of the nation's 103 nuclear plants has been in the spotlight since the Sept. 11 attacks, because the facilities "present obvious potential for a terrorist attack of immense magnitude," the report said.

Over 280,000 people live within a 10-mile radius of the Indian Point 2 plant in New York, and radiation released in an attack there could reach New York City, it warned.

National Guard fighter jets scrambled after the Sept. 11 attacks to guard airspace over the plant. But since then, security has fallen to "pre (Sept. 11) normalcy, if not outright complacency," the report said.

The report urged the U.S. Department of Defense to cooperate with state governors to create specially trained National Guard units to counter nuclear plant threats.

Results from mock-attack exercises organized by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are not encouraging, the report said. Some 27 of 57 tests conducted between 1991 and 1998 allowed breaches big enough to damage the reactor core and release radioactive materials into the air, the report said.

On the cyber front, the report urged the government to crack down on information on nuclear waste shipment logistics available on the Internet.

The NRC on Oct. 11 halted Internet postings of market-sensitive plant status reports citing concerns terror groups might try to use the data to plan attacks.

Some U.S traders have expressed concern that without the information report, the electricity market may be liable to rumors and price manipulation.

MARITIME ATTACK A PRESSING CONCERN

Maritime port security is also a pressing security concern, Housman said. The report recommended more U.S. Coast Guard officers to guard ports with fast, heavily armed ships.

Meanwhile, over 750 oil-laden tankers pass beneath San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge each year, giving "ample targets for a terrorist seeking to do harm," the report said.

A repeat on U.S. shores of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, could have "devastating consequences," it said, including environmental damage and disruption of shipping routes.

Vulnerable seaports are the Saint Lawrence Seaway, the Panama Canal, Great Lakes shipping channels and Boston Harbor's Distrigas facility for offloading liquefied natural gas.

The U.S. Coast Guard fleet "is limited in number, antiquated and lacks the technology required to effectively protect shipping ... against terrorism," the report said.

Housman said he did not think the security analysis presented a laundry list of attack targets. "Do we bury our heads and pretend that the threat isn't there ... or do we act to do something about it?" he said.

-------- west virginia

A security guard is attacked at a power plant

MSNBC
Scott Saxton, WSAZ Charleston
http://www.msnbc.com/local/WSAZ/M111982.asp

PUTNAM CO., WV, Nov. 5 - With the world as it is now, an attack at a power plant gets even more attention. And it comes just days after the news leaked that the coast guard was already looking for a suspicious boat in our region. At this point, the coast guard is not sure whether the two things are connected. It could be a coincidence. But here's the good thing out of this whole mess: AEP says it was a test that security passed.

Putnam County Sheriff Stan Farley says, "Someone tried to come on the property." They came from the river side of the John Amos plant. A female security guard spotted one man and chased him. Then she says he turned and hit her. Farley says, "They were talking some type of foreign language. They got into the boat and took up the river." By the time police got there, only the ripples of the river remained. The men were long gone.

They're described as two dark skinned men, wearing dark clothing. Joe Haynes, with the John Amos Plant, says, "Our security reacted exactly the way we wanted them to." The Kanawha River is very close to the John Amos plant. AEP officials say from time to time people wander on to their property. Two months ago, they wouldn't have thought twice about this incident. Now they do.

September 11th changed that. A recent report from the Coast Guard adds to the concern. The guard says some boat is masquerading as a guard vessel in this region. Haynes says, "We're a little more sensitive to those kind of things, so we have to take that extra little bit of precaution when something like this happens." Joe Haynes says the already tight security at John Amos tightened even more after September 11th. Guards use mirrors to check under cars and trucks, just one precaution to keep much of the Valleys power supply pumping.

The guard who was involved in that scuffle, Patricia Parsons, is okay. She did go to the hospital, but she only had minor injuries. The Coast Guard is looking into this incident. They have the discretion with any water incident. The Coast Guard wants to find out if there are any connections to the bogus boat.


-------- MILITARY


Legal Analysis
US Campaign Against Afghanistan Not Self-Defense Under International Law

Counterpunch
November 6, 2001
By Brian J. Foley
http://www.counterpunch.org/foley1.html

On September 11, terrorists killed thousands of Americans and left millions fearful of further attacks. The attacks are widely believed to have come from a terrorist network based in Afghanistan. On October 7, the United States launched a military offensive against that country in an effort to prevent future attacks. The U.S. has based its attacks on the international law right of self-defense. But with the U.S. campaign now in its fifth week, is the claim of self-defense still valid? Was it ever?

Surprisingly, few people are asking this question, based on a belief that the United Nations Security Council has already concluded in two resolutions (1368 and 1373) that the U.S. response is legal self-defense, and that the Security Council gave a green-light to "any means" the U.S. chooses to take. This belief is mistaken. A look at the full texts reveals otherwise -- and that the resolutions are far from the war cries some people have imagined hearing.

This belief comes from the language of Resolution 1368, in which the Security Council (not individual nations) said it was "determined to combat by all means threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts," and "expressed its readiness to take all necessary steps to respond to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and to combat all forms of terrorism, in accordance with its responsibilities under the Charter of the United Nations," and similar language in 1373. This language is styled broadly, but the resolution takes pains to note the Security Council's "responsibilities under the Charter," which would allow the Security Council to authorize force only under extremely limited circumstances, and when other measures are impossible -- and most likely under a U.N. flag and command.

Also, when the Security Council actually outlined a broad array of means, in 1373, it did not mention force. Instead, it ordered member countries to freeze terrorist assets, criminalize the financing and support of terrorists, exchange police information about terrorists, prevent movement of terrorists through increased border controls, and capture and prosecute terrorists.

Likewise, the resolutions do not conclude that the U.S. strikes are self-defense. Repeating language from 1368, Resolution 1373 "reaffirm[ed] the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations." As we shall see, this right "as recognized by the Charter" is extremely limited. Moreover, in practice the Security Council decides whether particular uses of force are self-defense only after the fact, and after careful consideration (given that, as shown below, self-defense is based on an immediate need to respond, and the response must be proportional to the threatened harm). The last of these resolutions, 1373, was issued on September 28, more than a week before the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan.

The U.S. campaign has been relentless and expansive. The following analysis will show that it has already exceeded the extremely limited right to self-defense under international law.

Self-Defense Under International Law

The U.N. Charter provides a sweeping prohibition against the use of force, commanding in Article 2(4) that, "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force ." Self-defense is the lone instance where a nation can use force without prior approval from the U.N. Security Council. Contained in Article 51, the exception states:

"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security."

Like any exception to a rule, Article 51 must be interpreted strictly in light of the rule's purpose. That purpose is found in the first words of the U.N. Charter, which begins, "We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind ."

The international law standard for whether a particular use of force is self-defense comes from an 1837 incident where British subjects destroyed an American ship, the Caroline, in a U.S. port, because the Caroline had been used in American raids into Canadian territory. The British claimed the attack was self-defense. Through an exchange of diplomatic notes, the dispute was resolved in favor of the Americans. U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster urged the following definition of self-defense, which the British accepted: "There must be a necessity of self-defense, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation. [The means of self-defense must involve] nothing unreasonable or excessive; since the act , justified by the necessity of self-defense, must be limited by that necessity, and kept clearly within it." This has been the accepted rule in international law ever since.

This strict standard helps prevent incidents and conflicts from escalating into war, which is the U.N.'s main purpose. Forcing nations to think up and consider non-violent responses even to illegal, horrific attacks by other nations prevents attacks from escalating into wars that can spin out of control.

This standard does not permit retaliation, and it also prohibits what international law scholars call "anticipatory self-defense." Most people agree that there is a difference between retaliation and self-defense; it's not hard to see how retaliation can lead to a cycle of violence. It's harder to understand why "anticipatory self-defense" is prohibited. That's because many people do not appreciate that the legal definition of self-defense is much narrower than our intuitive conception. That "the best defense is a good offense" may be true in football and other sports, but it is not enshrined in international or even our domestic law. For example, you can use force to fend off someone coming at you with a knife or gun, but you can't seek out and kill someone who is plotting to kill you.

An example of "anticipatory self defense" is Israel's strike against an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, to keep Iraq from developing a nuclear arsenal. The U.N. Security Council condemned the attack, because the threat to Israel, though foreseeable, was not "imminent": there was time to try other measures. Similarly, the U.N. Security Council also rejected Israel's argument that its 1985 attack on PLO headquarters in Tunis was self-defense.

These two situations involved serious dangers, but in each instance there were options besides force. Under this tough rubric, how does the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan hold up?

Are the US Attacks "Necessary?"

IMMEDIATE DANGER: First, we must ask whether bombing Afghanistan was necessary, and whether it continues to be necessary, to prevent "an immediate, overwhelming danger" from terrorists. There are no airliners flying from Afghani airports toward American targets, which the U.S. could legally intercept and destroy as an immediate danger. Do the terrorist training camps and Taliban government constitute an immediate threat? Although it appears they do not -- the recent anthrax attacks have been coming from New Jersey -- we should not be too quick to say so. After all, bin Laden has called for the destruction of the U.S. and its citizens, wherever they may be. His tactics are stealth and surprise, and he intends to use and develop weapons of mass destruction.

The U.N. Security Council condemnation of the 1981 Israeli attack against the Iraqi nuclear reactor is precedent that works against those who defend the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan as self-defense. Some international law scholars have argued that Israel's attack actually does meet the Caroline standard, because destroying the reactor may have been Israel's last chance to avoid a nuclear attack. Given the enormity of the threat -- nuclear, not conventional -- and Iraq's hostility toward Israel, the surgical strike was necessary, the argument goes. It must be noted, however, that these scholars are in the minority, and that their argument suffers because there were other means available to Israel at the time, such as U.N. intervention or sanctions.

On the other hand, if Al-Qaeda camps are developing weapons of mass destruction and training men to use them, might bombing these camps be the only chance for the U.S. to protect itself? A scenario likely to meet this strict standard would be if terrorists had a "suitcase" nuclear bomb and we knew where they were -- and they were leaving Afghanistan imminently. Striking them in their camp would most likely meet the standard of self-defense. However, the U.S. government has not produced evidence of such immediate danger. The only "immediate" threats appear to be from "sleeper" terrorists already inside theU.S. and Europe.

What about the Taliban, whose army and government installations have been frequent U.S. targets? It appears that the Taliban has enabled Al-Qaeda, which may or may not pose an "immediate, overwhelming" threat. But the Taliban itself does not. No terrorist acts have been attributed to them, and there is no evidence that the Taliban is planning any immediate ones.

CHOICE OF MEANS: Second, whether our attacks are "necessary" depends on the options available -- there must be "no choice of means." Has the U.S. worked hard to avoid war and followed the advice of the many experts on the Middle East who have outlined peaceful, diplomatic solutions? Did our government attempt to negotiate a peaceful solution?

President Bush has twice refused Taliban offers to turn bin Laden over to a third country if evidence against him is produced, instead holding to his initial demand to hand over bin Laden immediately and unconditionally, "dead or alive." The Taliban's offer was similar to what the U.S. agreed to concerning the Libyans suspected of bombing Pan Am 103 in 1988.

Under the U.N. rules, the U.S. should negotiate. All countries have a responsibility to avoid the calamity of war -- and calamity is possible here. The Middle East is even less stable now that we've bombed, and some of its powers are nuclear. Pakistan is less stable as a result of the U.S. campaign, and many of its citizens are rushing to Afghanistan to join Taliban forces. Perhaps more frightening is the fact that Pakistan's Army has officers sympathetic to the Taliban who could conceivably pass along nuclear weapons.

Indeed, the U.S. may have been better served by supporting a U.N.-led incursion into Afghanistan. U.N. action would have lent more moral authority to the campaign and would have sent the Taliban a loud message that the world, not just the U.S., disapproves. To its credit, the U.S. did build a coalition, but it lacks the symbolic, moral authority of the U.N. Using the U.N. might also have prevented some of the anti-Americanism that has risen since the bombing began, and which will likely fuel future terrorist attacks.

The U.S. has been pursuing other means, including those outlined in U.N. Resolution 1373: working with police bureaus from other nations, moving against terrorists' funds, and ratcheting up border security. In fact, domestic police investigations to disrupt and destroy terrorist networks, and increasing domestic security overall, may prove to be the best means of preventing terrorist attacks. Diplomatic overtures toward governments in the Middle East could also tamp down some of the anti-Americanism there; so could reducing the poverty and anguish that help breed terrorism.

Certainly, whether the U.S. attacks are necessary is a close question. Bin Laden is intent on destroying Americans, and he uses stealth and surprise, leaving the U.S. few chances to stop him. However, international law does not allow countries to strike enemies who are likely to commit nefarious deeds unless there is an immediate, overwhelming danger that leaves no other means are available. The U.S. must consider and try "other means" in good faith. Negotiating with the Taliban might be unsavory, but as the U.N. Charter warns us, the "scourge of war" is far worse.

Are the US Attacks Excessive in Light of the Threatened Harm?

The second requirement for acting in self defense is to use only the force necessary, "nothing unreasonable or excessive." This requirement is often rephrased to say that any response must be "in proportion to" the threatened harm. Might a period approaching five weeks of daily bombs and missiles go beyond self-defense?

It depends on the threat -- its size, what it is and where it is coming from. With Al-Qaeda, the threats appear numerous and unpredictable. They have hijacked domestic airliners and used them as guided missiles. They are suspected of unleashing anthrax. Scenarios have been posed of terrorists' using airplanes, ships, trains, trucks or even suitcases to carry bombs, conventional or nuclear. The list of what a well-financed, hostile terrorist group is capable of seems endless.

In response to these threats, U.S. forces have targeted Al-Qaeda camps as well as Taliban troops and government installations. The attacks continue to expand, in part to limit the threat to U.S. ground troops. The U.S. has also expanded its aims to include "nation building" -- toppling the Taliban and installing a new government. And, so far -- although the Pentagon will not confirm -- it is likely that hundreds of civilians have been killed by U.S. bombs.

These attacks on Afghanistan most likely do not stand up as proportional to the threat of terrorism on U.S. soil, when the immediate threats appear to come from terrorists "sleeping" in the U.S. and other countries. Eradicating the Taliban, which although reprehensible poses only an indirect threat to the U.S. through its support of Al-Qaeda, also seems to go beyond proportional force.

Most of all, it is troubling that the U.S. continues to place Afghani civilians at risk of death to protect U.S. troops -- especially given that international law and custom oblige troops to limit risks to non-combatants, not vice-versa. This risk seems especially unnecessary given that we have already inserted soldiers into Afghanistan with no combat losses. Perhaps more damaging to the U.S. claim of self defense is that, so far, the U.S. has not heeded calls from world leaders to stop bombing so that food may be trucked in now, before the roads are snowed-in. Thousands, if not millions, of displaced Afghani civilians face the specter of starvation in the coming months as winter tightens its grip on Afghanistan, making the roads impassible for food convoys.

The U.S. faces serious threats, but we must keep asking whether the U.S. is engaging in self-defense instead of illegal retaliation or outright aggression. September 11 may be seen as a crossroads for international law. The temptation to ignore it may be strong, but if nations follow international law in response even to these horrific attacks, international law will have even more authority and legitimacy to protect us -- and future generations -- from the scourge of war. CP

Brian J. Foley is a professor at Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Delaware.

Foley can be reached at: Brian.J.Foley@law.widener.edu

-------- afghanistan

Afghanistan caves thwart invaders

USA Today
11/06/2001
By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/acovtue.htm

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - In Afghanistan, the landscape itself rises up against invaders, its soft limestone caverns, stunning granite mountains and subterranean streams offering Afghan fighters countless underground places from which to elude and harass foreign armies. From ancient irrigation systems to caves that go on for miles, the country's underground labyrinths have confounded would-be conquerors since the days of Genghis Khan. They helped Afghan guerrillas defeat British imperialists in the 19th century and drive out the Soviets in the 20th. Now it's America's turn. President Bush has vowed to "smoke out" Osama bin Laden and the Taliban rulers who give him shelter. Already, U.S. forces are targeting the caves and other underground complexes. Reports indicate they are attacking from the air with "bunker-busting" bombs. It's almost certain, if they haven't already, that U.S. commandos will follow once they believe they know where bin Laden is.

Media reports over the weekend suggested that U.S. intelligence has narrowed bin Laden's whereabouts down to a handful of underground hideaways in eastern Afghanistan.

Driving the enemy out of their lairs is a difficult and dangerous task. Just finding the right hideaways is hard enough - maybe impossible without help from sympathetic Afghans. Then U.S. troops must avoid ambushes in deadly mountain passes, overcome treacherous winter weather and avoid blundering into the booby traps and mines that Afghan fighters have turned into a macabre form of art.

Completing a successful military operation against the caves and other hideaways isn't impossible. U.S. troops are better trained and better equipped than those who came before them. They use infrared sensors to spot and target cave dwellers huddled around underground campfires. And the "bunker-busting" bombs can crumble some, but not all, of the country's underground lairs.

But first they have to find what they are looking for.

"We have caves even the Devil himself doesn't know about," former mujahedin fighter Zaidullah Qaumi says. "Caves were our best heavy weapon."

He once spent 2 days with 10 other fighters crouched in a lair near a subterranean stream, listening to Soviet troops search futilely for them aboveground.

Perfect for guerrilla warfare

Afghanistan's rugged terrain is ready-made for guerrilla warfare. Start with extensive networks of limestone caves. Some have tunnels that lead down thousands of feet or extend for miles horizontally, says Jack Shroder, a University of Nebraska geologist who specializes in Afghanistan's caves.

Then there are man-made caves. The oldest are karez, irrigation tunnels built before Alexander the Great entered Afghanistan more than 2,300 years ago. They were constructed by farmers desperately seeking water beneath a parched landscape.

The tunnels make good hiding places. Afghans cowered in the karez when Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes roared through the country in 1221, killing anyone they saw. Fighting Soviet invaders who sought in vain to prop up the puppet regime of Afghan President Najibullah in the 1980s, mujahedin rebels expanded the karez, adding special storage tunnels for ammunition and supplies.

Many of the underground bunkers are even more ambitious. Afghan rebels started building them in the 1980s, under granite thousands of feet inside mountains. They can be more than 2 stories high and wide enough to park 18-wheelers inside.

"Even if they bombed us, we wouldn't even know it because we were down so deep," Qaumi says. "We weren't even afraid of an atom bomb."

Bin Laden and his Arab followers later occupied and expanded these compounds, sealing them with steel doors and reinforcing the interiors with concrete. America's 5,000-pound bunker-busting bombs are useless against some of these compounds.

Two of the three biggest are near Jalalabad, a major city on Afghanistan's northeast border with Pakistan near a key crossing point for refugees leaving the country. The other, experts say, is north of the Taliban stronghold Kandahar.

During the Afghan-Soviet war, former mujahedin commander Ahsan Ullah met bin Laden at an underground complex near Khost, in Paktia province along the Pakistani border. Behind buildings set in a mountainside, bin Laden had tunneled into the rock, Ullah recalls. The interior was carpeted and furnished, the temperature controlled by heaters and air conditioners, the electricity cranked out by generators.

Different problems posed

The different subterranean lairs and dugouts pose different problems to invading troops.

The karez and simple shelters gouged out of the earth give Afghan fighters a place to store small caches of supplies and weapons, take short rests, find shelter from enemy bullets and stage guerrilla operations in which they seemed to materialize out of nowhere and vanish. "When you come, there is nobody," recalls a former Afghan colonel in the Communist army. "But when you leave, they come out and attack you from behind."

The larger underground bunkers give fighters a place to store more and bigger weaponry and to hide more people for longer periods, allowing them to survive bombing raids in relative comfort.

Consider the Zhawar complex in Paktia province. In 1986, the compound withstood 57 days of bombardment before the mujahedin finally abandoned it. The advancing Soviets were astonished by what they found inside.

Mujahedin rebels had built an underground mosque with an ornate brick facade; a hospital with an ultrasound machine; a grease pit occupied by a T-34 tank; a library stocked with books in English and Farsi; and a subterranean hotel furnished with comfy chairs and plush carpets. The compound had 41 spacious caves and tunnels the length of six football fields.

"How many of our aircraft had worked this site over and the hotel and caves were still intact," marveled Viktor Kustensko, a Soviet witness to the 1986 incident, in a article he wrote in 1996 for Soldat udachi, the Russian version of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

After being used by the mujahedin, the Zhawar compound was occupied and expanded by bin Laden and then bombed ineffectually by the Americans in retaliation for the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.

The colonel, who requests anonymity because he lives illegally in Pakistan, says he and his comrades would search for underground hideouts by pounding their feet or the butts of their Kalashnikovs against the ground in suspicious spots, listening for a hollow sound.

That low-tech approach was only sometimes successful: Informants were by far the best way to root out mujahedin caves.

Captured rebel fighters would be persuaded - either by torture or promises of freedom - to lead Soviet soldiers to the hideouts. The informants were concealed in sheets to protect their identities in an effort to prevent reprisals.

The colonel recalls arranging for one informant to be spirited away to a hidden location with his family, while the government-controlled media published a bogus report of his death - a Soviet-style witness relocation program.

The caves are good for hiding guerrillas and storing supplies, but not for fighting. "A cave can protect people from airstrikes," says Afghan journalist Ali Jalali, who fought alongside the mujahedin against the Soviets. "But fighting in a cave is not something you would do. ... The cave can become a tomb for the people inside."

Soviets' brutal methods

The Soviets often dealt brutally with rebels hiding in caves, using flame-throwers among other things. In 1982, Soviet troops found Afghans hiding in a karez in Logar Province, in eastern Afghanistan. Wearing gas masks, the Soviets poured gasoline, diesel fuel and an incendiary white powder into the tunnel and set it alight, incinerating 105 men, women and children, Jalali and military analyst Lester Grau wrote in a history of the mujahedin-Soviet war.

At first, the mujahedin would often open fire at Soviets trying to enter their caves. But the Soviets and their Afghan allies developed a special weapon that would lob four or five grenades at a time into the caves, the colonel says. After that, he recalls, the rebels usually surrendered when cornered underground.

The Soviets also fired Roman candles into caves, letting loose colorful stars and a piercing siren sound. The candles were virtually harmless but terrified cave dwellers. "The Soviets found the unsuspecting foe covering his head with his arms," Jalali and Grau wrote.

Rooting the rebels out of caves was still a deadly business. The mujahedin would booby-trap caves with mines, which would explode when Soviet soldiers tried to enter.

David Grange, a retired Army general and ex-Ranger and Green Beret, warns that U.S. forces must not enter the mountains, looking blindly for caves.

"You'd have people getting lost in minefields," he says. "It would spoil on you. It's a big place."

So, Afghans say, the U.S. must ally itself with former rebels who can locate the right caves. Qaumi, who has ties to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, says: "Without the help of these Afghans, America cannot do anything." The Soviets, he says, "had very great fighters... But we were strong Muslims, and it was our territory."

Contributing: Andrea Stone in Washington, Gregg Zoroya in Quetta, Pakistan

----

Strikes impair bin Laden's forces

November 6, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011106-90456284.htm

Allied bombing and missile strikes have seriously crippled Osama bin Laden's forces in Afghanistan, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Staff, said yesterday.

"We have taken away their ability to use their training camps. We have taken away their known infrastructure. We are striking at the caves that we have learned that they utilize or have utilized," he said.

There is no "active evidence" that bin Laden's al Qaeda network is operating in Afghanistan.

Damage to the leadership is not known.

"But I think it's fair to say," the admiral said, "that we know they are not free to operate in Afghanistan at this point because we are keeping up the pressure throughout the country."

Keeping up the pressure is the reason the military will not halt operations during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, he said. Adm. Stufflebeem also reported that the U.S. military is negotiating for bases in neighboring Tajikistan.

"Airfields closer to Afghanistan would give us an advantage in being able to generate sorties," he said. "We would hope to have a capability to get access to Afghanistan from the north and the south."

The military currently is limited in using its lone base in neighboring Uzbekistan for search and rescue, intelligence and humanitarian operations.

Adm. Stufflebeem said U.S. air strikes have been designed to assist any push by Northern Alliance forces. "I have heard reports that they may be ready to move, but until they do, I think that it's a bit supposition on our part," he said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters aboard his plane on the way to Washington from India that the number of U.S. troops working with the Northern Alliance has more than doubled.

"We've gone two-and-a-half times what we had," he said. "So now, instead of in two locations, we're in four - maybe more. That will accrue to our advantage over the coming period."

The number of troops on the ground in Afghanistan are said to include scores of Army Special Forces troops, a "modest" number.

Reports from the region said heavy bombing strikes continued yesterday in areas close to Mazar-e-Sharif and north of Kabul, the capital.

Among the weapons used against Taliban positions, the Associated Press reported yesterday, is the BLU-82, a 15,000-pound bomb believed to be the world's largest conventional bomb.

Nicknamed the "daisy cutter," the BLU-82 uses a liquid ammonium nitrate mixture to fuel an explosion that incinerates everything within 600 yards. Each 17-foot-long BLU-82 costs $27,000. It was used to clear jungle landing zones in Vietnam, and creates a shock wave that can be felt miles away.

The decision to advance is in the hands of Northern Alliance commanders, Adm. Stufflebeem said.

"We are helping to set those conditions by prepping this battlefield and taking down Taliban resistance."

----

Bin Laden messages 'limited' to notes

November 6, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011106-86261903.htm

Osama bin Laden is not emitting any electronic signals that would give away his location in Afghanistan and has had only limited communications with supporters through handwritten notes, U.S. officials say.

Since his orchestrated September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, bin Laden has stayed on the run, moving from cave to cave hide-out, sometimes more than once in one day, said officials, quoting intelligence reports.

U.S. sensors have not picked up any communications by bin Laden or top leaders in his al Qaeda terrorist group, which has several thousand members.

The officials say "limited" communication from bin Laden has been through handwritten notes. The CIA, which President Bush has authorized to kill bin Laden, is trying to trace the note chain back to bin Laden with little success. On-the-ground reports of his exact location often prove to be outdated or bogus.

"We know he's using hand-carried notes," said one military official.

A CIA-operated Predator drone captured bin Laden on videotape last spring as he stood in one of his terrorist camps.

But he disappeared shortly before September 11 and has not been seen since, officials said.

Bin Laden typically traveled in vehicle convoys, protected by about 40 elite al Qaeda soldiers.

"He will not let a non-Arab approach him," said one U.S. official.

But some officials believe that today he travels by horseback so he will not attract the attention of U.S. spy assets.

Asked during the weekend about the hunt for bin Laden, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said tips "always tend to be retrospective, not prospective."

"He is fully aware, I'm sure, that the world would like to see more of him in person and have an opportunity to locate him. But he is careful, as are all the senior leaders in al Qaeda. They've been spending a lot of time in caves and tunnels and moving frequently, and I think that the reports are probably as much wrong as right, from time to time, but they are always late."

The Pentagon in recent weeks has increased targeting of Afghanistan's large network of caves, the preferred redoubts of bin Laden and al Qaeda both in hiding war materiel and themselves.

Gen. Tommy Franks, the overall U.S. commander of the Afghanistan air and special-operations campaign, disclosed that one reason for hitting caves is to remove future hiding places.

Asked by ABC whether he was close to catching bin Laden, Gen. Franks said, "Afghanistan's a big country. There are lots and lots of places to go. I think last week, the president talked a little bit about attacking caves, tunnels and this sort of thing. So what we intend to do is we intend to limit his opportunity to move about."

Asked whether he had the authority to strike bin Laden, Gen. Franks answered, "I do. [Mr. Bush] has given me the authority. Yes."

Mr. Bush has said he wants the former Saudi citizen "dead or alive." But senior officials told The Washington Times that there is a private consensus in the administration that capturing bin Laden alive would present the government with major problems. They include having to divulge intelligence sources and methods at a trial and providing security for the world's most-wanted man.

Gen. Franks has gone after underground complexes with two principal weapons: the GBU-28, a 5,000-pound "bunker-buster" bomb guided by lasers and carried by the F-15E fighter, and a satellite-directed version, GBU-37, dropped by Air Force heavy bombers. The bombs bore deep inside a cave or bunker before exploding.

U.S. special-operations sources say the onset of winter will facilitate the search for bin Laden and the Taliban.

The soldiers say cave entrances will emit a much stronger heat signature for commandos on the ground and fighter-bombers at 10,000 feet.

Some Pentagon officials harbor a faint hope that bin Laden is already dead, killed by one of the "bunker busters" directed at known cave residences.

But the Taliban says he and their group's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, are still alive.

"We do believe that they do use [caves]," Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday.

"We use all-source intelligence to try to refine where they're at, either as individuals who may be there, or as storage facilities. And when we feel comfortable that we have a known facility or we suspect that it has been used, then we strike it."

----

Ramadan respite lacks precedent

November 6, 2001
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011106-10846280.htm

In another sign U.S.-led air strikes against Afghanistan will continue during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the United States yesterday began airing a message worldwide that seeks to explain why no break is necessary.

In an editorial entitled "No pause in war against terror" to be broadcast by the Voice of America, Washington says there is no precedent for a bombing break, even as calls from the Arab and Muslim world grow for a respite.

The editorial, released yesterday with a directive that it is "for mandatory use by all services," notes that Muslims have not stopped fighting among themselves during Ramadan, nor have Muslim countries refrained from launching attacks on people of other faiths during the holy month.

"In truth, the U.S. is far from alone in realizing that there can be no pause when fighting for survival," the editorial says, according to an internal transcript obtained by AFP.

It recalls that in the year 624, the Muslim prophet Muhammad had fought and won the battle of Badr during Ramadan and had also began his campaign to retake Mecca.

In addition, it points out that the 1973 Middle East War in which Egypt and Syria attacked Israel began not only on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, but was also waged during Ramadan.

"Over the centuries, Muslims have often fought wars during Ramadan - or on days sacred to other faiths," the editorial says, before going on to note that the Iran-Iraq war, as well as civil wars in Lebanon and Algeria, had continued without pause during Ramadan.

This year, Ramadan begins on Nov. 17 and a number of prominent Muslim political and religious leaders have urged the United States to stop the bombing out of respect for Islam and to quell potential further unrest from opponents of the campaign directed at Osama bin Laden, his al Qaeda network and Afghanistan's Taliban militia.

For days, though, officials from President Bush to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice have all said that they are "sensitive" to Ramadan, but will not necessarily halt the bombing because of it.

"The coalition has no choice but to go to the source of the terrorism in Afghanistan and to root out terrorist groups elsewhere," the editorial said.

"As President George W. Bush put it, 'the enemy won't rest during Ramadan, and neither will we.'"

VOA is the U.S. government-funded shortwave radio and Internet broadcaster that operates in 52 languages around the world, including Arabic and other languages spoken in Muslim countries.

The service maintains editorial independence, but frequently airs clearly identified editorials expressing the position of the U.S. government.

--------

Taliban Dispersal Slows U.S.
Enemy Moves Forces To Civilian Centers, Complicating Airstrikes

By Bradley Graham and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 6, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44920-2001Nov5.html

As U.S. warplanes bear down on front-line Taliban troops in northern Afghanistan, efforts to weaken rear-guard forces in key cities have been frustrated by the movement of Taliban units out of their barracks and into residential areas, religious buildings and cultural centers, defense officials said yesterday.

The calculated action contrasts with the first days of the air war in early October, when the Taliban appeared confused and without a coordinated dispersal plan to reduce the damage being done by the U.S. bombardment, the officials said. By shifting soldiers and military equipment into civilian neighborhoods and taking refuge in mosques, archaeological sites and other nonmilitary facilities, Taliban forces are confronting U.S. authorities with the choice of risking civilian casualties and destruction of treasured Afghan assets or forgoing attacks.

"They've gotten smarter every day," one U.S. defense official said of the Taliban. "They know what we say we're not going to hit -- and they go there."

En route home from visits to Pakistan and other nations in the region, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said a U.S. helicopter had extracted Taliban opponent Hamid Karzai from Afghanistan on Sunday and ferried him to safety in Pakistan.

"He's just come out for consultations," Rumsfeld said, noting that he is certain Karzai, whose family and tribe have played a central role in Afghan history, would return to Afghanistan in his effort to press for a new government and ouster of the Taliban.

But Ahmed Karzai said last night from the Pakistani city of Quetta that his brother was still in Afghanistan and "doing fine."

In its campaign against the Taliban, the United States has acknowledged several instances in which airstrikes have gone awry, killing civilians, damaging houses and destroying Red Cross relief supplies. Frustrated at the widespread media attention given to these incidents, several officials yesterday provided a number of examples of what they described was the Taliban's disregard for civilian safety and international laws of armed conflict.

For instance, in the southern city of Kandahar, Taliban authorities who had worked in the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue were said to have relocated to mosques. In the city of Khost, south of Kabul, Taliban troops were reported to have taken over nongovernmental relief organization buildings.

Some Taliban commanders were said to have set up residence in Red Crescent facilities or located their headquarters across the street from hospitals or civilian houses. The Taliban also was described as having stolen relief trucks meant to bring food and clothing to civilians, turning them into ammunition and supply vehicles for troops.

In one case, according to a senior U.S. officer, a truck in a convoy purportedly on a humanitarian mission to deliver food tipped over, and crates of tank and mortar shells could be seen spilling to the ground underneath a thin layer of flour.

"Whole villages are being used as human shields by the Taliban to protect their large stockpiles of ammunition and weapons hidden in nearby caves," the senior officer said. "If we smack those caves, we run the real risk of killing the innocent. If we don't smack them, Taliban and al Qaeda forces have more bullets and bombs to kill our folks. It's nasty -- and it's illegal."

Such reports are difficult if not impossible to verify, and in the case of airstrikes on caves, the Pentagon said yesterday such attacks were continuing. But stories of Taliban forces taking cover among the civilian Afghan population and stashing military equipment in mosques and schools have been told by many refugees fleeing the country.

In recent days, U.S. airstrikes have focused increasingly on front-line Taliban positions around Mazar-e Sharif, a key northern crossroads city, and Kabul, the capital. Briefing reporters at the Pentagon yesterday, Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem described the purpose of the latest attacks by B-52 bombers and ship- and land-based fighter jets as "preparing the battlefield for future offensive actions" by the rebel Northern Alliance.

The heightened bombing was facilitated by the arrival over the weekend of additional special operations teams to help in locating targets for U.S. warplanes and training the rebel forces.

Rumsfeld told reporters returning to Washington with him yesterday after a trip to the region that the number of U.S. commandos in Afghanistan increased nearly threefold during the past few days. He gave no figures, but other officials said the total still comes to fewer than 100. Those forces are operating in more than four locations, mostly in northern Afghanistan, with more troops to come soon, he said.

Before departing Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, Rumsfeld said he met with the crew of a Global Hawk, an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft that can remain at 65,000 feet over a target for 30 hours. The craft is headed for duty over Afghanistan.

Stufflebeem, who is deputy director of operations on the Joint Staff, said he could offer no prediction on when the rebels might advance, either toward Mazar-e Sharif or Kabul. "I have heard reports that they may be ready to move, but until they do, I think that it's still a bit suppositional on our part," he said.

Asked to assess the success of the month-long bombing campaign against Taliban forces, Stufflebeem said they appear to have suffered "substantial" losses. But he said he could not offer any numerical estimate of the damage done, noting the difficulty of getting "reliable information" in territory held by the Taliban.

"I can't quantify in terms of numbers," he said. "I can quantify it best by saying that if the northern opposition is feeling emboldened or ready to make moves, then that means that it has had the intended effect."

One indicator of Taliban losses, Stufflebeem added, is that days have passed in some areas since the Taliban has responded to rebel fire. "My guess is that that would be because they're either hunkered down and aren't coming out or they're not able to fire," the admiral said. "So I think that that's a very positive sign."

Rumsfeld also disclosed yesterday that the Pentagon has lost two Predator reconnaissance drones over Afghanistan due to icing problems. And he provided new details about a helicopter rescue mission in southern Afghanistan on Friday that ran into winter weather trouble as well.

He said the helicopter crew, dispatched to rescue an ill U.S. soldier working with rebel forces, crash-landed after hitting "a weather situation that was just like a wall." The crew spent about six hours on the ground before being rescued. Four soldiers suffered back injuries as a result of the severity of the landing,

Rescue helicopters sent from two locations also had to turn around in the storm.

"At one point there was a report that [downed crew members] were going to start walking seven miles to a landing site, but of course they had four people that were injured," Rumsfeld said.

The crew members were ultimately lifted out by a companion helicopter that had flown in with them and had also made an emergency landing due to the weather. The downed helicopter was destroyed by airstrikes from two Navy F-14s.

Rumsfeld said he learned of the stranded crew on his way to Moscow on Friday at the start of a four-day trip that also took him to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and India. Rumsfeld said he talked several times to Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander directing the war in Afghanistan, before learning shortly before landing in Moscow that the crew had been rescued.

The serviceman whose ill health necessitated the initial rescue attempt was also rescued, although it is not clear by whom. Without going into detail, one senior defense official said that while the initial diagnosis was meningitis, the ill serviceman is now thought to have been suffering from a severe case of altitude sickness.

Loeb reported from New Delhi. Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this report from Quetta.

---

Can Afghan rebels really accomplish US aims?

Christian Science Monitor
By Ann Scott Tyson
November 05, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1105/p3s1-usmi.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1105/csmimg/1105p3.jpg

WASHINGTON - It may be the most pressing strategic question of America's month-long military campaign in Afghanistan: Do the internal foes of the Taliban - the Northern Alliance and other rebel forces - really have the ability to achieve US aims?

Washington has acknowledged just how uncertain the answer is, even as it intensifies efforts to aid those opposition groups. In hope of advancing its goal of felling the Taliban government, the United States in recent days has increased bombing of front-line Taliban forces and worked to insert more special-operations troops to help coordinate the war effort.

"It is, I think, a question as to whether or not the opposition forces - the Northern Alliance, the tribes in the south - are going to pursue the Taliban and the Al Qaeda with the necessary energy and success that one would like," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a televised interview last week. "It's far too soon to say."

While there have been reports of sporadic movement by resistance forces, such as near the city of Mazar-e Sharif, Pentagon officials describe the fight against the Taliban so far as an "ebb and flow." It could take months, some former military commanders predict, for the US to bolster the resistance to the point where it could effectively take on the Taliban.

Indeed, some military experts say the US has relied too much, and too soon, on a conventional military strategy - dominated by air power - while failing first to lay the groundwork for the kind of unconventional guerrilla warfare needed to uproot the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network.

"We have been attacked asymmetrically, but what we've done in response is a classic, conventional response out of our playbook," says retired Col. Hy Rothstein, a veteran special-operations commander now at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass.

The upshot, these experts predict, will be continued delays and dashed expectations, as US special-operations teams essentially start from scratch in shoring up the small, factional, and dispersed opposition groups.

"You can't start a bombing campaign, then throw a bunch of troops on the ground and think you can get those resistance elements going very quickly," says Colonel Rothstein. "When you have not worked with the folks for ... months together, the likelihood of having well-coordinated operations is almost zero."

But other experts say America had little choice but to quickly start bombing to try to disrupt the activities of its prime target - terrorists - by forcing them to go into hiding. Efforts to bolster the resistance can go on in concert with the air campaign, they argue.

"We can do both. We can walk and chew gum at the same time," says Tom Nichols, a professor of strategy at the United States Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

US officials and military experts agree, however, that the United States faces major obstacles as it works to build up the anti-Taliban resistance forces, which totalled some 15,000 fighters compared with an estimated 50,000 Taliban troops at the start of the campaign.

So far, despite what Mr. Rumsfeld described as "many, many, many weeks" of diligent work, the US military has succeeded in putting only a few dozen troops on the ground with the opposition in northern Afghanistan.

Enemy ground fire, a lack of safe landing zones, and bad weather, including freezing rain and dust storms, have slowed the effort to insert more special-forces teams, officials say. A US helicopter crash landing on Friday, during an aborted mission to rescue an ill US commando in Afghanistan, again illustrated the hazards of the country's rugged climate and terrain. (Four US troops were injured in the crash, and the serviceman was safely rescued on a second attempt Saturday.)

An equally daunting obstacle, however, is for US forces to make certain who is friend and foe on the ground - and then to build trust, US military officials say. "You have to get in there with them and build trust, or learn to trust," Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told a Pentagon briefing. "Once you see how they operate, you then know who you can trust and who you probably should not."

Such trust is crucial as US troops currently work with the main anti-Taliban group, a loose coalition of fighters known as the Northern Alliance - both by identifying Taliban targets for US airstrikes, as well as by offering broad tactical advice, US officials say.

Rumsfeld, on a four-day trip that included efforts to win greater military cooperation from Central Asian nations, emphasized the difficulties of working with the dispersed, factional opposition groups of northern Afghanistan. "On any given day, you can find someone who will be happy and someone who will be sad," he said. "You will find someone who is pleased with the targeting and someone who isn't."

Signaling the ongoing efforts to recruit more anti-Taliban fighters, Rumsfeld said the United States "is trying to help everyone we can find to help. And we keep adding more people every week."

US troops are also helping to resupply the Northern Alliance with ammunition and food, as well as winter gear. Because of the mountainous terrain, however, air-dropped supplies often do not arrive into opposition hands for three to four days. The US military is sending food and ammunition to resistance elements in southern Afghanistan, but the Pentagon suggests it does not have ground troops there yet.

-------- biological weapons

FBI: Anthrax did not come from known U.S. lab

USA Today
11/06/2001
By Laura Parker and Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/07/anthrax.htm

WASHINGTON - None of the anthrax mailed to government and media offices recently was stolen or misplaced from a registered American lab, a top FBI official told a Senate panel Tuesday.

That assessment by James Caruso, deputy assistant director of the FBI, was the most definitive public statement yet about the source of the anthrax that has killed four people, infected 14 others and forced the closure of key government buildings here.

But Caruso cautioned against concluding that if the anthrax wasn't missing or stolen, then it must have been privately cultivated in an unknown location somewhere in the USA.

"There is insufficient information" to support that, Caruso said of an investigation that has involved 7,000 federal agents and so far not identified any suspects.

Caruso was questioned sharply by senators who clearly were impatient with the lack of results so far.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the panel, said she was "very surprised that the FBI has not made more progress."

But Caruso said that many people had worked in US labs over the past several decades who could have learned about anthrax or had access to it.

"It's a very big population and universe to look at," he said.

The most perplexing part of the investigation is tracking how a New York City hospital worker was exposed. Kathy Nguyen, who died of inhalation anthrax on Oct. 21, did not fit the profile of previous victims, who were associated either with the media or the mail system. On Tuesday, investigators were using Nguyen's subway fare card to try to trace her steps around the city during the 2 weeks before her death.

As the investigation grinds on, the frenzy that accompanied the beginning weeks of the attacks has largely subsided:

- The Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, where Nguyen worked, reopened 6 days after it was closed.

- Post offices in Princeton and West Trenton, N.J., where traces of anthrax were found, reopened Tuesday after they were cleaned.

- No new spores were found at the government buildings being tested, although a small number of spores were detected on a diplomatic mailbag sent from Washington to the U.S. Consulate in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

- No new cases of infections were reported. A New Jersey postal worker hospitalized for inhalation anthrax was discharged from a hospital after a 3-week stay.

Meanwhile, the Postal Service announced that it has hired a second private contractor to speed up efforts to decontaminate mail that was quarantined after the anthrax attacks. Postal officials warned that they will ask Congress to finance the entire cost of their agency's response to the anthrax attacks, now estimated to be several billion dollars.

"We strongly believe these costs should not be borne by our customers through increased rates," said Robert Rider, chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors.

The Postal Service's revenue was down $300 million from Sept. 5 to Oct. 8, spokesman Azeezaly Jaffer said. Now the agency faces the expensive new chore of sanitizing the mail before it is delivered.

The Postal Service says it spent $2.4 million to hire a Chicago firm, Ion Beam Applications, to sterilize mail that had been quarantined when Washington's Brentwood mail-processing center was closed Oct. 21.

Two postal workers there died of inhalation anthrax. The company will supplement the work of a Lima, Ohio, company that has been cleansing the mail.

Jaffer said the backlog of mail quarantined after the closure of the Brentwood facility, which handles nearly all of the capital city's mail, will last 2 or 3 more weeks. He said the delivery of cleansed mail from that facility should begin within 2 days.

---

Senators Grill FBI On Anthrax Investigation

Truthout
CNN News
November 6, 2001
http://www.truthout.com/11.07B.FBI.htm

WASHINGTON (CNN) --The FBI's expert on counterterrorism acknowledged Tuesday that much about the tainted anthrax letters of recent weeks, including who is responsible, remains a mystery -- a fact he called "unsatisfactory."

"We think that there are many people that have the potential, that have the knowledge to be able to produce a deadly biological agent," Tim Caruso, deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, told a Senate hearing on bioterrorism. Caruso said such individuals would still need facilities and laboratories to produce the anthrax powder, but he could not tell lawmakers how many such facilities exist.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the panel, was incredulous.

"If you don't know how many labs produce it, how many labs produce this quality. What do you know?" the California Democrat asked.

"I know it's an unsatisfactory answer and unsatisfying to us as well," Caruso said about the lack of knowledge about the anthrax incidents. Caruso said he could provide some details, but would not release them publicly because of the ongoing investigation.

Asked whether the anthrax letters are the work of terrorists from abroad or within the United States, Caruso said authorities don't know. "We've not come to any final judgments," he said.

Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina, followed a similar line of questioning, asking Caruso directly whether the FBI knew who was responsible for the anthrax terror. "We do not know at this time," Caruso replied.

The frustration at the hearing was evident, more than one month after the first anthrax case surfaced in Florida. Seventeen people have been infected with anthrax; four of them have died of inhalation form of the disease.

Authorities have identified three tainted letters -- one to a Senate office, another to NBC News and a third to the New York Post -- and believe most of those who fell ill, including postal workers, came into contact with those letters. Investigators, however, have not ruled out the possibility of other letters or sources of contamination.

The letters came in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Despite the timing, Justice Department officials say they don't know whether the letters are connected to the hijackings.

"I have been very surprised the FBI has not made more progress," Feinstein said.

Caruso said the anthrax investigation has been complicated by a large number of false alarms and hoaxes.

To illustrate his point, he said the number of cases of possible weapons of mass destruction, including biological agents, the FBI has responded to has skyrocketed from the 257 it handled in 2000.

Since mid-September, the FBI has responded to 7,089 suspicious anthrax letters, 950 incidents involving other alleged weapons of mass destruction, such as bombs, and 29,331 telephone calls about suspicious packages.

"The vast majority of these responses were not actual incidents," he said. "Resources made available by the law enforcement (branch) and responding to the alleged threat, and the resources made available by the public health laboratories in testing suspicious materials for the presence of biological agents are strained and stretched to capacity."

CNN National Correspondent Susan Candiotti contributed to this report -

---

Firm hopes to restart production of anthrax vaccine

USA Today
11/06/2001
By Anita Manning, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/05/anthrax-vaccine.htm

The lone producer of anthrax vaccine in the USA, sidelined for 2 years by manufacturing problems, is gearing up for a federal inspection that may have it back in business soon. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to begin inspections at BioPort Corp.'s plant in Lansing, Mich., within a couple of weeks, says Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. If the company's manufacturing processes meet FDA standards and extensive remodeling of the facilities checks out, he says, the company could, and should, be making new vaccine by Nov. 22.

Thompson has been negotiating with the Department of Defense to extend the use of the vaccine from the military to civilians, and to transfer some vaccine, once it has been judged safe by the FDA, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials are discussing whether to order a supply large enough to vaccinate all those potentially at risk, including postal workers.

BioPort spokeswoman Kim Brennan Root says she can't say when the FDA's review will be complete. The process "can take several months, (but) we recognize that there's very high visibility of this product, in terms of public health interest in this vaccine," she says.

BioPort submitted documents to the FDA on Oct. 12 that "we believe fully satisfy all the issues the FDA had in its 1999 and 2000 inspections," Root says.

Those inspections, part of the FDA's routine scrutiny to ensure drugmakers use good manufacturing practices, turned up design and construction problems that could've affected the sterility of products. Also cited: inadequate monitoring procedures and incomplete record-keeping.

BioPort was forbidden to distribute vaccine, though it has continued to manufacture it. The U.S. military, which plans to immunize 2.4 million service members, has been relying on vaccine manufactured by a BioPort predecessor.

The Defense Department holds an exclusive contract to buy about 5 million doses of vaccine, Thompson says. Before agreeing to transfer any of it for civilian use, he says, the Pentagon "wants to make sure that what we're asking for is a supply that they can afford to give up."

The vaccine was developed during the 1950s and '60s and was licensed by the FDA in 1970. It is given as a series of six injections over 18 months. Though some military personnel have been concerned about chronic fatigue, memory loss and other health problems they say are side effects of the vaccine, the Pentagon says severe reactions are rare and 18 human studies have shown the vaccine to be safe.

---

Warning of smallpox terror risk

By Ben Aris in Moscow,
Roger Highfield and Philip Delves Broughton in New York
06/11/2001
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$BJFNFAIAAFXITQFIQMFSFF4AVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2001/11/06/wpox06.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/11/06/ixhome.html

THE Russian scientist in charge of one of the last known deposits of the smallpox virus called yesterday for the reintroduction of mass vaccination, saying terrorists could easily lure underpaid former Soviet researchers to turn it into a weapon.

"Smallpox is a very dangerous weapon in the hands of terrorists and you don't need some clever way of delivering it," said Dr Lev Sandakhchiyev, director of Russia's Vektor Institute. The Siberian centre holds one of only two official samples of the extinct disease.

"All you need is a sick fanatic to get to a populated place. The world health system is completely unprepared for this."

The disease claimed around one billion lives before being declared extinct in 1980. Inoculation has not been routine for decades but, in the light of heightened fears of bioterrorism, worldwide vaccination should be reintroduced, Dr Sandakhchiyev said.

In the past few weeks, following the anthrax attacks in the United States, moves by American and British authorities have underlined how smallpox is considered more than a theoretical concern.

However, Prof Harry Smith, chairman of the Royal Society working group on biological weapons, said the call for worldwide vaccination was "going over the top". But he added: "On the other hand, I think smallpox vaccine needs to be ready to immunise key people and deal with any outbreak, if it occurs."

This week, the United States Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, began a series of training courses on smallpox for some employees and state and local health workers. It also vaccinated 140 doctors and nurses against smallpox over the weekend. They will act as shock troops against any signs of an epidemic.

"We are putting together several teams that could be quickly dispatched to the field if we did see a suspected case of smallpox," said its spokesman, Tom Skinner.

At the end of October, the American government asked pharmaceutical companies if they could produce 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine. However, there has been a reluctance to introduce widespread vaccination because of side effects which, though rare, can be serious, including still births.

Interim guidance issued by the Public Health Laboratory Service referred to the "serious threat" from the disease. Unlike anthrax, smallpox can spread from person to person and there is "no specific treatment", it said. Suspected patients must be put in a special isolation facility, with negative air pressure, and filtered ventilation.

Vektor is one of only two official repositories for smallpox, the other being the CDC. However, it is possible that other facilities still have the virus, such as plants in Kirov, Yekaterinburg, Sergiev Posad and St Petersburg. There may even be other sources - for example, the corpse of a person killed by smallpox and preserved in the Arctic permafrost.

Vektor was a leading centre in the Soviet biological weapons programme which studied the genetic code of the virus, genetic modification of the virus and tested it as a potential bio-weapon as late as 1990. Various initiatives have been made by the West to find peaceful work for former weapons scientists.

But Dr Sandakhchiyev said that, like most Russian scientists, those at Vektor earn a pitiful Ł75 a month and so could be tempted to sell the virus and work on it by a well-funded terrorist group. "Everything is possible in today's world," he said.

"If the question is, 'Do Russian scientists work in Iran or Iraq?' my answer is no. Do Iraqis work at Vektor? The answer is no," he said.

"But only the devil knows with whom they meet. Our scientists sit at international conferences as part of large government delegations with a large team from Vektor."

His concerns were echoed by Anatoly Vorobyov, a former general at Moscow's secret bio-weapons programme in the 80s. "In principle, the whole population needs to be vaccinated, not only in the United States, but in Russia and everywhere in the world," he said.

As the American authorities stepped up their attempts to hunt down the source of the anthrax, another sample was found yesterday at a small post room in the Pentagon.

---

THE INVESTIGATION
Anthrax Investigators Are Hoping Bronx Case Leads Them to Source

New York Times
November 6, 2001
By N. R. KLEINFIELD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/nyregion/06INQU.html

Investigators are intensifying efforts to trace the last encounters and daily routines of a New York hospital worker before she died of anthrax last week, hoping to unravel the mystery of who is behind the attacks that killed her and three other people and sickened a dozen more.

The focus remains on 61-year-old Kathy T. Nguyen, according to senior federal law enforcement officials, because investigators believe her habits or relationships may take them somewhere other than the routes of three anthrax-tainted letters mailed from Trenton, N.J., a trail that baffled investigators seem to feel has grown frustratingly cold.

"We're missing something," a senior government official said. "There's something wrong here."

Of the anthrax cases, Ms. Nguyen's stands alone in defying comprehension. She contracted a lethal dose of inhalation anthrax, but no traces of the bacteria have been found anyplace she is known to have been in her last few weeks or on any item of clothing she might have worn.

Ms. Nguyen died Oct. 31, three days after checking into a Manhattan hospital.

"Nothing in her house. Nothing at work. Nothing in her mail. Nothing anywhere," said a senior law enforcement official.

Unpersuaded for the moment that Ms. Nguyen developed the disease from mail cross-contaminated in some fashion by contact with the known anthrax letters, law enforcement officials said it remains possible she actually crossed paths with whoever unleashed the attacks. But where and when that may have happened, or with whom, remain open questions.

That theory is partly a hope built on last-ditch optimism, because the alternative - that some innocent letter addressed to her was cross- contaminated - would leave the investigation essentially where it has been almost from the start: nowhere.

Investigators admit that it has been difficult pinpointing everything Ms. Nguyen did in her last days. Did she buy gum here, get coffee there? One momentary encounter might have been the only one that matters.

Epidemiology is a field that learns from patterns, but Ms. Nguyen's case is stubbornly devoid of patterns - no traces of spores in her environment, no obvious correlation to the known germ-laced letters, no emergence of related cases that point in a direction.

Every day, detectives and medical investigators assemble before wall charts that represent the hospital worker's final weeks. Every day, they hope to fill in more of the chart's gaps. But most of the blanks remain just that: blank, save for the long hours and frequent double shifts she worked at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital on the East Side of Manhattan, according to Dr. Marcelle Layton, the New York City assistant health commissioner.

Still, each day investigators delve anew into those aspects of a structured and quiet routine, looking for some light that has yet to shine. Again and again, a discovery about her life raises hopes only to later deflate them. In one case, investigators were excited to find a receipt for an airline ticket in her apartment. Then they noticed its date - 1991.

In trying to divine the details of an encounter that caused the exposure, agents of the task force have tried to interview anyone who might known anything about Ms. Nguyen. Father Carlos M. Rodriguez, the pastor at St. John Chrysostom Roman Catholic Church on 167th Street in the Bronx who presided over her funeral yesterday, said investigators visited him looking for details. All he was able to tell them, he said, was that she often attended his 10 a.m. Sunday Mass, and that she also worshiped at a Catholic church in Midtown. He wasn't sure which one. What's more, he told the authorities that she liked to shop for groceries in Chinatown, but he didn't know which shops.

Dave Cruz, the superintendent at the building at 1031 Freeman Street in the South Bronx, where Ms. Nguyen lived on the third floor, said he was interviewed by agents at least twice, once shortly after he dropped her off at Lenox Hill hospital when her illness worsened and again after she was diagnosed with anthrax. He wouldn't discuss what she said to him during the trip to Lenox Hill, and said he knew little of her routines. "That's the mystery right there," he said. "Other than being at work and home, I don't know where she went."

Anna Rodriguez, who lives above Ms. Nguyen's apartment, said that agents have been questioning everyone who showed up at the Ortiz Funeral Parlor in the Bronx on Saturday and Sunday, when Ms. Nguyen's body was laid out for viewing.

"It's a tough one," said Jerome M. Hauer, former director of the city's emergency management office. "It's almost the way you try to find out who murdered her. Who did she make contact with? Where'd she spend her last days?"

As Ms. Nguyen was buried yesterday, and as Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat announced that it would reopen today, a few fresh tidbits about her surfaced. One lead that investigators are pursuing is that Ms. Nguyen, who worked in a stockroom in the hospital's basement, may have moonlighted at a restaurant. It was not clear, however, whether officials knew of a specific establishment, or whether Ms. Nguyen worked there or simply ate there.

Dr. Bradley Perkins, an anthrax expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a conference call with reporters yesterday that, "We do not have any very good leads as to where or how the exposure occurred."

Dr. Bradley said that, amazingly enough, even as many more samples have been tested from the hospital, her apartment, her car, along her daily subway route to work on the No. 6 train, and from other places she was known to have visited, there has not been a single positive reading for anthrax. Investigators have been running swabs over every sweater, tabletop and doorknob that Ms. Nguyen might have touched, rubbed or passed.

Authorities concede that anything is possible, including that Ms. Nguyen did in fact touch a contaminated letter. But if that is true, it would be one more surprise in a succession of anthrax surprises over recent weeks.

From what is known, Ms. Nguyen's case doesn't fit the cross- contamination pattern. Four people have died after developing the disease in their lungs - the three others being a photo editor in Florida and two postal workers in Washington - and the same strain of anthrax was identified in all four cases. But in the three other deaths, anthrax was detected at their offices and presumed to have originated in a letter.

Ms. Nguyen's path is not believed to have crossed news media outlets or postal facilities.

She first became seriously ill on Oct. 25. Dr. Perkins said the likelihood was that she was exposed no more than four or five days before then, or around Oct. 20. This is well beyond when the known anthrax letters arrived in New York. Also, other cases of anthrax triggered by cross contamination of letters have been limited to a less-severe form: cutaneous, or skin, anthrax. Given these factors, Dr. Perkins said, it is unlikely that Ms. Nguyen was infected through cross-contamination.

The greatest hope of investigators is that she somehow intersected with one or more people responsible for the attacks.

Frustrated at their inability to achieve a breakthrough, officials have told the F.B.I.-N.Y.P.D. Joint Terrorist Task Force to continue their dissection of her routine, and investigators are believed to be intent on formulating as detailed a biographical portait of Ms. Nguyen as they can.

Their work has been hindered by the fact that Ms. Nguyen, a Vietnamese refugee who arrived here in 1977, died without being able to be interviewed about her life and routines. She lived alone and had no nearby family. Indeed, at her funeral yesterday, it was said that she might have lost almost all of her immediate family during the war in Vietnam. Neighbors in the Bronx depicted her as friendly and unremarkable, but it was unlikely that anyone knew with precision her itinerary in the weeks preceding her death.

Even a $1 million reward for information, which produced a spate of telephone calls and e-mail messages to federal law enforcement agencies over the weekend, has so far left the anthrax investigation starved for promising tips.

---

If the Guinea Pig Dies, Beware

New York Times
November 6, 2001
By EDWARD M. CANER and LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/opinion/06KRAU.html

CLEVELAND -- One of the most dangerous bioterrorist acts against the United States would be an aerosol attack of anthrax. Not only is anthrax resilient and highly toxic, but because a cloud of it would be colorless, odorless and invisible, no one would know it had been released. And because the spores are so small and can seep through tiny spaces, an outdoor attack could expose people both indoors and outdoors to anthrax.

Anthrax patients showing up in hospitals would be the first indication of what had happened, and because the initial symptoms of inhaled anthrax resemble those of the flu, many people's illness could be diagnosed too late, and they would die before they could be treated effectively.

Clearly, some sort of early-detection system is needed.

Currently there is no sophisticated way to tell whether a cloud of anthrax spores has been released. But there could be an unsophisticated one: Let animals provide the early alarm. As any coal miner with a canary could attest, an animal's illness can be a warning of danger for human beings.

It takes nearly 1,000 times fewer anthrax spores to infect a guinea pig or mouse than to infect a human. And once anthrax takes hold in one of these animals, it advances more quickly than it does in humans. It takes only one or two days for a guinea pig or mouse to die from anthrax, compared with an average incubation time in humans of 10 days - time that can be used for treatment with antibiotics.

A city, town, college or private institution monitoring these animals might know rather quickly if there had been an aerosol anthrax attack. Health officials would have time to test people in the local population and treat those who were infected before it was too late. Anthrax-like symptoms in a guinea pig, followed by tests on the animal's body, would provide immediate evidence of death by anthrax.

The Department of Defense has a large amount of classified information about anthrax in animals like mice and guinea pigs, and the Pentagon should release it to public health officials. This information would help observers decide where to put the animals' cages for quick anthrax detection. And data on when symptoms are likely to appear would be invaluable for people watching the animals for purposes of anthrax detection.

The costs of using animals to monitor the environment for anthrax spores are not high. We should be putting rodents on the front lines in the fight against terrorism - especially now that the front lines are in our own communities.

Edward M. Caner is a fellow and Lawrence M. Krauss is a professor in the physics entrepreneurship program at Case Western Reserve University.

---

Metro Briefing

New York Times
November 6, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/nyregion/06MBRF.html?searchpv=nytToday

NEW YORK
PLUM ISLAND: TIGHTER SECURITY URGED FOR LAB Senator Charles E. Schumer called yesterday for a prompt "top to bottom" review of security at a federal research laboratory specializing in animal diseases. The Plum Island Animal Disease Center, off Long Island's North Fork, studies and handles animal pathogens like the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease, which has devastated British beef. Noting that security has been enhanced at nuclear power plants, Senator Schumer said, "We've got to do the same for Plum Island." A spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture said a review was already under way and was expected to be released by year's end.

Elissa Gootman (NYT)

---

States

USA Today
11/06/01
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Florida

Tampa - An inmate is going on trial charged with sending threatening letters to a judge and a journalist detailing an alleged plot by skinheads to attack U.S. cities with anthrax. The letters were sent early last year, long before anthrax attacks in the USA. Mitchell Monteverdi, 32, faces 15 years in prison if convicted in federal court. He's already serving a 15-year sentence for forgery, burglary and grand theft.

Minnesota

St. Paul - The state commissioner of health would be given the power to ration medicines, take over hospitals and quarantine people with infectious diseases under an emergency bill proposed by a state legislator. The powers would be triggered if the governor declares a public health emergency in the event of an infectious disease outbreak or a terrorist attack using biological weapons.

Virginia

Blacksburg - Virginia Tech scientists are developing a more advanced vaccine for anthrax and several other diseases with a grant of more than $1 million from the U.S. Department of Defense. The vaccine will be given in a single dose. The vaccine now used by the U.S. military takes 18 months to administer fully. The new vaccine will also prevent the plague, tuberculosis, brucellosis and Rift Valley fever, researchers said.

-------- canada

Bombardier receives order for new jets

Canadian Press
Monday, November 05, 2001
Montreal Gazette
http://www.canada.com/montreal/story.asp?id={D284B05C-3D54-47D5-97D1-3E12B7472D99}

Bombardier Aerospace has won a contract to build five new intercontinental business jets for TAG Aeronautics, a company that distributes the Montreal company's aircraft in the Middle East.

The deal, announced Monday at the Dubai Air Show, comes 11 days after the Canadian aircraft maker announced plans to build the new Global 5000 jet at a news conference in Canada.

The first Global 5000 aircraft are scheduled to enter service in late 2004.

Financial terms of Monday's deal were not revealed.

"This agreement further strengthens our growing association with TAG, which has led to the delivery of over 70 Bombardier aircraft to Middle East customers in the past 15 years," said Shawn Vick, Bombardier Aerospace's senior vice-president for international business aircraft sales.

Bombardier Aerospace is a unit of Bombardier Inc., a major industrial company with 79,000 employees around the world building aircraft, rail transportation equipment and motorized recreational products. The company had revenues last fiscal year of $16.1 billion Cdn.

-------- drug war

Drug Seizures Are Up At Border Crossings
Smuggling Resumes Despite More Security

By Chris Roberts
Associated Press
Tuesday, November 6, 2001; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44789-2001Nov5.html

EL PASO, Nov. 5 -- At the Santa Fe International Bridge in El Paso, customs inspectors looking for terrorists are flinging open hoods and trunks, knocking on body panels and getting down on their hands and knees to peek under vehicles.

Last week, inspectors dug out nearly 50 packages of marijuana, weighing a total of 70 pounds, from a false gas tank in a shiny Toyota Tercel.

The seizure illustrates what Customs Service and Border Patrol officials are seeing: Drug smugglers are getting back to business -- and drug seizures are up sharply -- after a lull prompted by the stepped-up security along the U.S-Mexican border that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Investigators believe smugglers are trying to push more drugs across the border to make up lost profits. The smugglers are being caught by the tighter security.

"They're desperate," said Carlos Quevedo, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's McAllen, Tex., sector. "They don't even care if it's daylight. They just want to get lucky."

Before Sept. 11, most vehicles were waved through border checkpoints. Now, since border officials went to the highest level of alert, nearly every vehicle is examined. Inspections include an inspection of the trunk and the engine compartment.

In the two weeks immediately following the terrorist attacks, drug seizures along the 1,962-mile U.S.-Mexico border fell 80 percent compared with the same period last year. But the trend has since reversed.

Drug smugglers "decided to wait it out, hoping it would go back to the way it was, and that hasn't happened," said Vincent Bond, customs spokesman in Southern California. "They decided to risk the increased scrutiny."

Customs Service seizures of marijuana between Sept. 24 and Oct. 25 are up anywhere from 58 percent along the South Texas border to 394 percent in Arizona. Altogether, more than 32,000 pounds were confiscated in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

In Southern California, where records are kept differently, there was an 11 percent increase in marijuana seizures in the first 25 days of October. Nearly 31,500 pounds were taken in.

The situation is similar at the U.S.-Canadian border, though the seizures are in far smaller quantities than along the southwest border, said Dean Boyd, a customs spokesman in Washington. The Canadian border is not as closely guarded as the nation's southern edge, but customs officials seized 980 pounds of marijuana on Oct. 3 in Blaine, Wash., Boyd said.

Marijuana smugglers are in a bind because the end of September marked their harvest and dealers are eager to move old supplies, Boyd said. Increased scrutiny of U.S. airspace means flying drugs into the United States is no longer a good option, he said.

"They owe people and they need to get it to market," Boyd said.

Cocaine is the second most commonly seized drug, though in far smaller amounts. For every southwest border state except Arizona, seizures increased between Sept. 24 and Oct. 25 compared with the same period last year.

In South Texas, customs officials have netted 378 percent more cocaine. "I guess they're trying to move what they held back," said Rick Pauza, a customs spokesman in South Texas.

Bond said smugglers entering Southern California are picking the busiest checkpoints -- "trying to be a very small needle in a very large haystack."

Others are searching for ways around official checkpoints. In Arizona, smugglers are using backpacks or pack horses to avoid official border crossings. That means Border Patrol agents also are picking up narcotics.

-------- germany

Germany readies 3,900 troops

USA Today
11/06/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/06/germany-troops.htm

BERLIN (AP) - The German chancellor pledged up to 3,900 German troops for the U.S. war on terrorism Tuesday, pushing the nation toward its most far-reaching participation in military action since World War II. Gerhard Schroeder's decision to seek a leading role in the anti-terror campaign is a new step in Germany's quest for greater world influence as it sheds its reluctance to join in warfare. However, the chancellor said there were no plans to send ground troops, and the defense minister said German forces would not necessarily be deployed inside Afghanistan.

Germany would offer armored vehicles equipped to detect nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; special forces; a medical evacuation unit; and air transport and naval forces to protect shipping lanes, Schroeder told a news conference.

"This is an important, fundamental and - if you like - historic decision," Schroeder said, adding he expects parliament to give its approval next week.

Schroeder and key aides have prepared a wavering public for weeks for a German military role, saying the nation could not stand aside and provide only financial backing as it did during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Japan, another country haunted by memories of World War II, loosened postwar restrictions on its military Oct. 29. It has been considering various non-combat roles, including sending warships and personnel to help with refueling and reconnaissance missions in the Indian Ocean.

Schroeder's offer, though short on specifics, would put Germany in the forefront of U.S. allies supporting the campaign - second only to Britain, which is flying refueling and reconnaissance missions in support of U.S. airstrikes and has also fired Tomahawk missiles at Afghan targets.

Canada, another major contributor with ships, aircraft and special forces, has provided 2,000 personnel. France has about 2,000 military personnel currently involved in the effort, counting naval, air force, and intelligence, according to a French official in Washington.

Italy has offered an armored regiment, attack helicopters, fighter jets and specialists in nuclear, chemical and germ warfare.

Other contributors include Australia with SAS special forces, war ships and aircraft; New Zealand with a commitment of special forces and humanitarian aid, and Turkey, which pledged an anti-guerrilla mountain warfare unit.

Schroeder said his government's positive response to specific U.S. requests for military support underscored "a solidarity that I have expressed again and again" since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The Cabinet would approve the plan Wednesday, he said.

But he also sought to address concerns among many Germans - including members of his center-left governing coalition - that the envisaged deployment is a step too far in military involvement abroad, which began after Germany reunited in 1990.

He stressed the importance of political and diplomatic efforts to hold the international coalition against terrorism together, the humanitarian mission to help Afghans, economic sanctions aimed at undermining terror networks and cooperation of secret services.

"We mustn't forget that the military measures are only a part of the measures against international terrorism," Schroeder said.

Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping told ZDF television that a deployment would come "not as fast as many people believe, because it requires careful preparation - and the requests are in no way such that they would necessarily be headed for Afghanistan."

Scharping insisted the proposal to be put before parliament this week was not "a blank check aimed at being able to deploy the German armed forces worldwide."

Germany has gradually relaxed a postwar taboo against sending troops abroad, starting with support for a Cambodian peacekeeping mission in 1992.

German troops have helped hunt war criminals in Bosnia and taken part in NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia. In another milestone, Germany in September took command of a 1,000-strong military force to protect international observers in Macedonia.

Schroeder's plans have sparked concerns in his own Social Democratic Party and his junior coalition partner, the Greens. Greens leaders have criticized U.S. strikes that have killed Afghan civilians and called for a break in the military campaign.

"Now that we're facing the question of participating in this war, the answer can only be: No," Greens lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele told Phoenix TV.

But party moderates aligned with Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the most prominent Greens figure, support Schroeder's course.

"One must also use military means in the effort to oust the Taliban regime," said Angelika Beer, the ranking Greens member on parliament's defense committee.

Despite the divisions, support for the military deployment appeared to be broad. Only the former East German communists are uniformly opposed to a German military role.

-------- israel

Two Palestinian Fatah leaders killed in car explosion

USA Today
11/06/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/06/palestinian-explosion.htm

NABLUS, West Bank (AP) - A car exploded Tuesday in a Palestinian refugee camp in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, killing two militants sitting inside, said officials in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

The militants, Fatah brigade leaders, had received the car from an Israeli Arab man in the northern Israeli town of Umm el-Fahm hours before it exploded, Fatah officials said.

Palestinian security officials accused Israel of involvement. The Israeli army said it was checking the report.

Palestinian militants often buy stolen cars from Israeli Arabs. The car in question, a new Toyota, had been stolen before it was acquired, the Fatah officials said.

More than 2,000 people marched in the refugee camp after the blast, calling for revenge.

The militants, identified by Fatah sources as Ikrima Stateh and Majdi al-Tayeb, were active among militants in the Jenin refugee camp and were local leaders of the Al Aqsa Brigade, which is linked to Fatah.

-------- pakistan

'Jihad Is My First Obligation'
Muslims in Pakistan's Tribal North Ready to Fight Alongside Taliban

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 6, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44767-2001Nov5.html

BATKHELA, Pakistan, Nov. 5 -- Shahid Hussain, a bright and articulate man of 19, carries two plastic identification cards in his vest pocket. One is from a private college where he has studied science part time for the past two years in hopes of becoming a doctor.

The other card, of far more recent vintage, is his ticket to a very different fate.

Issued Oct. 28 by the Movement for the Implementation of Islamic Law, it certifies that Hussain has vowed to follow the path of "sincerity, virtue, patience and unity," taken a brief training course in physical endurance and target shooting, and registered to fight an Islamic holy war in Afghanistan if the movement's leaders call on him to do so.

"I am a Muslim, so jihad is my first obligation. School and business are secondary," said Hussain, who sells metal trunks in this bustling town in Malakand Agency, a semi-autonomous tribal area in northwestern Pakistan. His shop is plastered with posters of Osama bin Laden, the accused terrorist who is a major target of the U.S.-led military assault in Afghanistan.

Throughout Malakand, one of seven tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan that border Afghanistan, the fever of jihad has swept through virtually every town and village. The militant mood seems to be growing daily as the Western military attack intensifies against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban Islamic movement, which shelters bin Laden.

During a two-day tour of the region, which is officially off-limits to foreigners, a Western journalist encountered a half-dozen anti-American rallies, convoys of pickup trucks headed for Afghanistan with donated supplies, and bin Laden posters displayed in produce markets and pasted on passenger buses and cargo trucks.

The Pakistani government has cut its long-standing ties with the Taliban and supports the Western anti-terrorism campaign. But the government's writ is virtually nonexistent in the tribal areas -- holdovers from British colonial days where heavily armed and fiercely independent tribes of the Pashtun ethnic group have their own police, laws and courts. Many people have close ethnic, family and business ties with Afghanistan, including a lucrative cross-border trade in untaxed and smuggled goods such as cars and appliances.

Islamic traditions are deeply conservative here, and pro-Taliban religious parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami, the Sufi Mohammad movement and Jamiat-e-Ulema-i- Islami are extremely popular, with offices in many towns and tens of thousands of followers.

In many markets throughout the region, booths have been set up to collect money and supplies for the Afghan cause. They are manned by followers of various militant Islamic groups, surrounded by well-wishers and decorated with posters of assault rifles and rocket launchers. Loudspeakers play lilting tapes of clerics chanting, "Long life to Taliban, long life to Osama, death to America."

In one village, hundreds of men marched through the streets Sunday, parading an effigy of Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and protesting the house arrest of Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, who was detained Saturday after giving a number of public speeches calling for Musharraf's overthrow.

In Batkhela, several thousand men gathered around a truck at dusk to hear Islamic leaders denounce the United States and recite Arabic prayers for the success of the Taliban. The crowd shouted angrily at a visiting journalist, and nervous tribal militiamen insisted she leave the area immediately. There were no other women or foreigners in sight.

"People here are very emotional. Many of them fought with their Afghan brethren against the Russians, and they are trained to use military weapons. Now they are ready to fight against America," said Bakhtar Molani, a local elected official and member of Jamaat-e-Islami. "Most of the time they are peaceful and occupied with their cultivation, but when something endangers their religion, it awakens them."

Molani said his party does not favor a massive, armed pro-Taliban movement here and that Taliban officials have asked fighters to stay inside Pakistan until they are needed. But he said influential area clerics had issued fatwas, or religious orders, saying that joining the conflict is farz, or a religious duty.

"A number of people from my village, ordinary farmers and small-businessmen, have already gone to Afghanistan," he said. "I argued against it, but jihad is a dream for Muslim youth, and when a maulvi [cleric] says you should go, it makes people ashamed if they refuse. The government can interfere, but it cannot stop them."

In another town, called Jalala, men in turbans and combat fatigues prepared a caravan of six heavily loaded pickup trucks to take clothing, bedding and money into Afghanistan. The men were from Harkat ul-Mujaheddin, a militant Islamic organization that was banned by the Musharraf government last month and has since gone underground in Pakistani cities.

"We have traveled to many villages in Malakand to collect help for the Taliban. Our Islamic brothers are in trouble, and everyone wants to help," said Rahim Khan, the convoy leader. "The Taliban have brought justice and security to Afghanistan. We want the same system here in Pakistan, and we want it in America, too."

The most radical pro-Taliban group here is the Sufi Mohammad organization, which has been aggressively promoting an armed cross-border movement in the past several weeks. Its followers also blockaded the Karakoram Highway, a major route to China, for nearly all of last week, placing large boulders in the road at spots where it winds through several tribal areas.

Mohammad, a radical Muslim cleric from the tribal areas, claims his movement has already sent 12,000 armed men into Afghanistan in the past month and that thousands more are prepared to join them. Fazlullah, one of his sons and aides, said in a telephone interview from the Dir tribal area that the group would attack anyone, including Pakistani security forces, who tried to prevent them from crossing the border.

"When America attacks Afghanistan, people want to gather their weapons and go for jihad. It is their obligation and no one can stop them," Fazlullah said. He said the volunteers were stopping in the Afghan city of Jalalabad for training with antiaircraft guns and rocket launchers. "America has done a cowardly act," he said. "When the ground troops come, the real war will begin and the world will see who the winner is."

"If the ground war starts, we will all shut down our shops and go," vowed Hussain, the science student, adding shyly that he hoped his parents would give him permission. "Every home here has many weapons, and even if we are martyred, we know we will not die. I was born in this town, but now I am an Afghan and I must do my duty."

There were also reports of armed marchers gathering in Swat, the semi-tribal region just north of Malakand. But police at a border checkpoint refused to allow a foreign journalist to enter Swat today, saying religious leaders there had warned that angry crowds would "shoot any foreigner."

Despite the atmosphere of mounting tension, some people in Batkhela and other tribal towns were eager to explain their feelings to a foreign journalist. Young men like Hussain seemed excited by the chance to join a holy war; older ones like Molani fondly recalled the exhilaration of youthful years spent combating Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

"Those were my best days, fighting the Russians," confided Molani, a dignified politician of 36 who holds a degree in political science. "I believe America should seek a peaceful solution in Afghanistan and that all religions should be tolerant of each other. But if another superpower wants to fight us, I still remember how to use an antiaircraft gun."

-------- u.n.

UN Rushes Relief into Afghan Mountains Ahead of Winter

November 6, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-06-03.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, The World Food Program (WFP) is "turning somersaults" to step up food deliveries into the mountainous areas of Afghanistan, attempting to get supplies where they are needed before winter begins, according to WFP representative Lindsey Davies, speaking at a briefing in Islamabad.

The immediate priority, Davies said Saturday, is to transport almost 40,000 tons of food into the mountainous northeast regions before they become inaccessible due to snow. So far about 7,000 tons have gone in.

Davis said WFP is developing plans to establish a supply camp at a high elevation in the mountains in order to keep deliveries moving through the winter.

The WFP has hired an Arctic harsh environment specialist who is drawing up plans for WFP to set up a logistics base camp at the tip of the Anjuman pass. This is a 6,000 meter (19,500 foot) high pass that leads into the Panjsheer valley. This camp will help to continue the food convoys and to supply them with fuel, accommodation for drivers, trucks and snow ploughs, the first time this will be done in Afghanistan.

The aim is to keep the Anjuman Pass - the only link in the Pansheer Valley from the north - open as long as possible.

Afghan father and son return from a WFP food distribution at Shamshatoo. Their flour is from the Japanese government. (Photos by Mike Huggins courtesy WFP)

With an estimated six million people expected to need food aid inside Afghanistan over the winter months and a potential 1.5 million refugees to feed in neighboring countries, WFP is working across the region in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Iran and Pakistan to avert an humanitarian crisis.

According to recent estimates by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 100,000 Afghans have arrived in Pakistan since September 11, when terrorist plane strikes leveled the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon in Washington, DC. U.S. President George W. Bush has laid the responsibility for these terrorist attacks on Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden who is believed to be hiding out in Afghanistan sheltered by the Taliban regime.

Bush has said he wants bin Laden "dead or alive" and the U.S. has been conducting a bombing campaign against Taliban strongholds for the past four weeks. Food rations are also being dropped by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). The U.S. Agency for International Development said today the DOD has airdropped 1,239,000 Humanitarian Daily Rations valued at $5.3 million into Afghanistan.

Wheat donated by the U.S. is loaded on to trucks at Peshawar, north western Pakistan, ready for transport into Afghanistan.

Davies said the priority for WFP is to deliver 39,000 tonnes of food to feed 700,000 people living in the isolated Central Highlands, the Panjsheer Valley and five districts in the North Eastern province of Badakshan which usually get cut off by snow, by the end of this month.

To speed food to the stranded refugees, the WFP is buying bulk quantities of the food in the region, including Iran and Kazakhstan. On Sunday, two huge bagging machines were flown in from WFP's Djibouti operation to Turkemenabad. "This means we can bring in bulk wheat and bag it insitu and load it immediately onto trucks, enabling us to take it more quickly and efficiently to the north and north west of Afghanistan.

Turkmenabad will become a major hub as it has road links to transport food to the north and north west of the country as well as rail and road networks to Tajikistan which allows WFP to get into the northeast.

If trucks cannot make it, then "as a last option we will have to use air operations," Davies said. WFP already has an emergency air group in Islamabad working on the technical aspect of the operation.

WFP reported that several districts in northern and western Afghanistan remain inaccessible due to insecurity. An estimated 500,000 people live in these areas, and WFP anticipates a severe food shortage by the end of December.

Millions of people inside Afghanistan, like these women, are living on the edge of famine after years of drought and conflict.

News sources reported that the Taliban Embassy in Pakistan has called on the United Nations to resume its relief efforts in Afghanistan.

Speaking Tehran, Iran today, Lakhdar Brahimi who is visiting the region in his role as special representative of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, "I don't think that the Taliban asked the UN to resume their efforts in Taliban held areas because our efforts have never stopped. What I think they said is that they want the UN personnel whom they had asked to leave to return.

"The United Nations personnel was very sad to leave Afghanistan, and I think we would very much like our personnel to go and work everywhere in Afghanistan, irrelevant of who is in charge, as to the humanitarian activities that we carry out in Afghanistan. But I think we need to ascertain what the security situation is in every single part of Afghanistan before we decide to go back."

During his time in Iran, Brahimi said, Iranian leaders asked the UN to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of Afghanistan, and so has the rest of the world, he told reporters. "I think that there is more than a consensus, that there is unanimity in the international community and in the United Nations ... So, this is a very big responsibility for the UN. The Secretary General is telling everybody that yes, he will take up this challenge."

----

U.N. affirms tolerance, respect

By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 6, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011106-7004117.htm

NEW YORK - The United Nations yesterday answered taunts from Osama bin Laden with a vow that the organization and its member nations would continue to strive for tolerance and mutual respect.

On Saturday, bin Laden released a videotaped statement mocking the United Nations as an American-dominated "tool of crime" that created the state of Israel and did not prevent attacks against Muslims in Kashmir and Indonesia.

"We have suffered because of this United Nations, so no Muslim should resort to it under any circumstance," bin Laden said in a statement broadcast by the satellite network Al Jazeera.

"The United Nations is a tool of crime. We [Muslims] are being slaughtered every day and it does not move."

U.N. officials rejected the statement, as well as fears that bin Laden - the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks - had ordered a strike on the organization.

"The United Nations is the expression of all its members, and does not represent any particular culture or the views of any [individual] member states," said deputy U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva.

He said Secretary-General Kofi Annan "hoped that Muslims and other peoples of the world would not be misled" by bin Laden's remarks.

The verbal assault on the United Nations came just one week before the opening of the annual General Assembly debate, which was expected to attract 50 world leaders including President Bush, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and South African President Thabo Mbeke.

The directors of the U.N. security office, who had increased provisions around the building, met yesterday afternoon to discuss security measures for the debate.

Bin Laden, speaking apparently from an Afghan cave, also lashed out at Arab leaders. "Those who claim to be Arab leaders and are still [cooperating] with the United Nations are infidels in the eyes of the message of Muhammad," he said.

He said that any Muslim leaders who refer issues to international courts have abandoned Islamic law.

Many of those Arab leaders have denounced the speech. "I think there is a war between [bin Laden] and the rest of the world," said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.

The U.N. headquarters has long been a beacon for demonstrations claiming various oppressions and injustices. While some of those demonstrations have become unruly over the years, the 39-story building has never been the target of a terrorist attack.

U.N. security officials will not comment publicly on specific measures concerning the building or Mr. Annan.

However, they said they probably would adopt restrictions and screening methods for the General Assembly debate similar to those used during last year's Millennium Summit, which was attended by more than 140 world leaders and closed streets all along Manhattan's east side.

During such politically charged events, the U.N. building is closed to the public. Sharpshooters are plainly visible on First Avenue rooftops, and police helicopters patrol the airspace over the U.N. compound. Blinds are erected at the portico and pedestrian doors so that potential assassins don't have a clear shot at arriving or departing leaders.

Security has been noticeably increased since September 11. Bomb-sniffing dogs can be seen around the headquarters building at the end of most workdays.

An official said a private contractor now supplies the dogs year-round, instead of just during the General Assembly session.

New York Police Department boats and U.S. Coast Guard cruisers are anchored in the East River, where they have prevented most boat traffic from trawling past the six waterfront blocks of the U.N. compound.

Garbage barges, which normally pass the U.N. building at regular intervals from morning to late afternoon, are being rerouted because they cannot be searched properly.

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

CONNECTICUT

Metro Briefing
New York Times
November 6, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/nyregion/06MBRF.html?searchpv=nytToday

HARTFORD: BENEFITS BILL FOR SOLDIERS A bill that would give state employees called to military service in Operation Enduring Freedom partial pay and other benefits is expected to be introduced at the special legislative session next Tuesday. Representative Linda Orange, Democrat of Colchester, is sponsoring the bill that would grant military personnel paid leave for 30 days plus partial pay for the duration of service; a state income tax waiver; and continued family health benefits.

Hope Reeves (NYT)

--------

U.S. Coordinates Rebel Forces

By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Tuesday, November 6, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49263-2001Nov6.html

WASHINGTON -- American efforts to coordinate with rebel forces in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban are gradually expanding but face more pitfalls, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday.

U.S. warplanes focused fire on Taliban caves and troops and have dropped bombs designed "to kill people" as well as destroy military targets such as buildings and airfields, a senior defense official said.

"It is not going to be a steady march forward across a front. It is going to be probes and pushes and successes and steps back. That is the nature of it, and I think we just have to face that fact," Rumsfeld said.

As an example of the unsteady progress, Rumsfeld said U.S. special forces pulled a prominent tribal leader out of southern Afghanistan for consultations, although he denied the chieftan had been in Taliban custody.

Rumsfeld said Hamid Karzai, an exiled tribal chief who had been in Afghanistan to rally opposition to the Taliban, was flown to Pakistan, where he has been living in recent years. Rumsfeld said Karzai "undoubtedly" will go back to southern Afghanistan to resume his efforts against the Taliban.

"To my knowledge, he was not detained or held by the Taliban," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. "It was a very sensible arrangement whereby he requested to be extracted for a period, and we cooperated."

Whatever the circumstance of his departure, Karzai was one of two key opposition figures the United States has counted on to stir up trouble for the Taliban and to organize efforts to form a replacement government. The other, Abdul Haq, entered Afghanistan last month and was captured and executed by the Taliban.

Karzai and his band of armed supporters battled Taliban forces last week in the southern province of Uruzgan, with the two sides offering widely conflicting accounts of the fighting. The Taliban said members of Karzai's group were killed, and that Karzai was rescued by a U.S. helicopter.

Karzai's brother Ahmed confirmed the gunbattle, but said his brother and his men made it to safety.

Rumsfeld said Karzai was flown out of Afghanistan on Sunday with a small number of senior supporters and fighters. He said U.S. forces had been supplying ammunition to Karzai's fighters before the extraction.

President Bush, meanwhile, said the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan has made good progress since it began Oct. 7, although he cautioned Americans not to expect it to end soon.

"We are at the beginning of our efforts in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan is the beginning of our efforts in the world," Bush said.

At his news conference, Rumsfeld said there was no telling how long it would take for the alliance of anti-Taliban forces in northern Afghanistan to succeed. He declined to say whether he believes they will, but said American military assistance will continue.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was encouraged that U.S. bombing in recent days has focused on the Taliban's frontline troops.

"They've really been pounding very hard the Taliban lines. I think that's very good. I hope the northern alliance succeeds," he told reporters.

At the Pentagon, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, told reporters that U.S. forces recently began using a huge bomb known as a "daisy cutter." The 15,000-pound bomb is billed as the world's most powerful non-nuclear explosive. Most bombs used by the United States range from 500 to 2,000 pounds, although the Air Force also has dropped a few 5,000-pound "bunker buster" bombs against underground targets.

Pace said the U.S. military has dropped two "daisy cutters," technically called the BLU-82, recently in Afghanistan. They are shoved out the back of an Air Force C-130 transport plane and float down by parachute.

"As you would expect, they make a heck of a bang when they go off, and the intent is to kill people," Pace said. They are especially effective against troops in light defensive positions, he noted.

In keeping with the Pentagon's practice of discussing only the previous day's bombing activity, Pace said U.S. warplanes flew about 100 attack missions on Monday, mostly against Taliban troops and cave complexes.

-------

US unleashes the Daisy Cutter on Taliban

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 06, 2001,
The Times of India
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=548133652

WASHINGTON: With its use of the 6,750-kg 'Daisy Cutter' bomb in Afghanistan, the United States has unleashed one of its most powerful weapons - billed as the world's largest conventional bomb.

The BLU-82 combines a watery mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum with air, then ignites the mist for a huge explosion that incinerates everything within up to 600 yards. The shock wave can be felt miles away.

First created during the Vietnam War to quickly clear jungle landing zones, the Daisy Cutter was also used against Iraqi troops during the Gulf War. Reports from the ground in Afghanistan indicate the huge bombs have been used against front line Taliban positions.

The bombs cost about $27,000 each. They are dropped from a C-130 cargo plane flying at least 1,800 metres off the ground, to avoid the bomb's massive shock wave. Each is more than 5 metres long and 1.5 metres in diameter - about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle but far heavier. ( AP )

-------

Public will accept war casualties - to a point

USA Today
11/06/2001
By Robert J. Blendon and John M. Benson
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-06-ncguest1.htm

Every day the news from Afghanistan and Washington makes it seem as if the war will go on for a long time, with American ground forces playing a key role. But how long will the public support that?

So far, the news is good. A recent Pew Research Center poll showed that three-fourths (77%) of Americans favor taking military action, including the use of ground troops, even if U.S. armed forces might suffer thousands of casualties. A Washington Post poll found two-thirds of Americans favoring military action, even if it means getting into a long war in which a large number of U.S. troops are killed or wounded.

But John E. Mueller's analysis in War, Presidents and Public Opinion of Americans' views during World War II, Korea and Vietnam showed that large U.S. casualties in the past have reduced support for continued use of ground troops, particularly if the war goes on for years.

One experience clearly relevant to the current circumstance is the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In no conflict since World War II has the American homeland been threatened as it is now. After Pearl Harbor, Americans worried that Germany might shell the East Coast, that the Japanese navy might invade the West Coast or that foreign agents might blow up U.S. buildings and military installations. There were no public-opinion polls to measure support for the war, but we do have one indirect measure: President Roosevelt's popularity. As the war dragged on, his popularity gradually declined from a high of 84% right after Pearl Harbor to 66% in late 1943.

Korea and Vietnam also are important historical precedents. These two long-term overseas engagements shaped how many Americans think about military conflicts today. Polls during those wars paint a complex picture. Although a majority originally supported U.S. military involvement, public opinion shifted within a year of large-scale troop deployments. These wars presented the American public with the sight of large numbers of casualties, without a perception that the United States could achieve its goals.

In Korea, U.S. forces were sent in June 1950 with strong public support. But when China entered the war later that year, public opinion shifted sharply. From then on, the country was more equally divided about whether it was a mistake for U.S. troops to be in Korea, although the percentages shifted with events until the war ended in July 1953.

In Vietnam, the belief that sending troops was a mistake grew by 11% during the first year after the big U.S. combat-troop buildup in 1965. That view continued to grow as the instability of the South Vietnamese government and the inability to achieve permanent military victories became more apparent. Opposition to the war accelerated in early 1968, when the North Vietnamese launched the Tet offensive, which made the media and much of the public think the war effort was doomed. But it took 5 more years of deaths and national strife before the last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam.

Based on the Korean and Vietnam experiences, the public's willingness to accept U.S. troop casualties will be directly tied to the perception of how well the president's military strategy is seen as succeeding in ending terrorism in the USA and getting those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Recent research by Steven Kull and Eric V. Larson has shown that even in conflicts less obviously related to the nation's security at home, such as the Gulf War in 1991, the American public has been willing to sustain casualties if it thinks the United States can achieve its goals.

Today's conflict is unique because it involves overseas military action that will be judged mainly on what terrorists end up doing in the United States. Asked what must be achieved in this war, 91% of Americans cited reducing terrorist attacks in the United States. Two-thirds of Americans say that even if we capture Osama bin Laden and overthrow the Taliban, the war will not be won if there later is another Sept. 11-like attack on the United States.

What happens to public opinion a year or more from now if American ground troops are taking large casualties but not achieving the war's principal goals?

The experiences in Korea and Vietnam suggest that in the face of mounting U.S. casualties, the current public-opinion consensus would likely end. Then there would be three main strands of opinion: withdraw our armed forces and concentrate entirely on protecting the home front from terrorist attack; carry on the present level of fighting; or escalate ground-troop levels and/or air attacks.

In Korea, although the public was divided on the question of whether the United States had made a mistake sending troops, even as late as December 1952, near the war's end, a majority still wanted to keep fighting as we were or escalate the conflict. But Vietnam was different. Although most Americans early on wanted to keep fighting or escalate the war, those viewpoints slipped downward to the point that about half wanted to bring the troops home. The rise in sentiment to withdraw troops was due in part to a highly visible anti-war movement concerned with the costs of continued U.S. involvement.

Although the current conflict is likely to be much smaller, World War II probably provides a better model of Americans' future attitudes than Korea and Vietnam. The huge loss of civilian lives Sept. 11 will not be forgotten, and Americans will not be able to assume that the homeland will be secure if military action is ended. This is likely to sustain public support for the war for a long time, all the more so if there is another large-scale bombing or biological attack on the United States in the coming months. But in contrast to World War II, majority support for the war will co-exist with a significant anti-war movement like the one that opposed the Vietnam War.

Robert J. Blendon is a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and an expert on public opinion. John Benson is managing director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program.

--------

Terrorists Who Torture and Kill For Us

CounterPunch's Booktalk
November 6, 2001
By C.G. Estabrook
Counterpunch http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook9.html

Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein

What sort of moral monsters would crash airplanes into buildings and kill thousands of innocent people? Were they the same sort of moral monsters as those whose actions now may produce the death from starvation of perhaps three or four million people over the next several weeks?

The former group of terrorists, still largely faceless and many now dead, were representatives of the terror networks that the CIA founded a generation ago to trouble the USSR. In its most expensive operation in history, the CIA gathered the most savage and fanatical people it could find, trained and armed them, and set them loose in Afghanistan in the 1970s, even before the Soviets invaded that now ruined country. Unfortunately, like so many other CIA "assets," these Mujahideen did not limit themselves to the task the CIA had in mind. Already in 1981 they assassinated the president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, and then went on to use the techniques and weapons supplied by the CIA (at the rate of half a billion dollars a year of our tax money) to kill in the name of their Islamicism around the world -- in Chechnya, Bosnia, North Africa, Kashmir, the Philippines, and finally New York City.

When asked if he regretted organizing these terrorists, President Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said in a 1998 interview, "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" (In Brzezinski's defense, perhaps, it may be noted that he said that in a 1998 interview, when the stirred-up Moslems were killing merely foreigners and not Americans on American soil.)

The latter group of terrorists are the American officials who complacently contemplate the starvation of millions of people in Afghanistan in the next few weeks in what United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson has called a humanitarian disaster on the scale of Rwanda in the mid-1990s. "Are we going to preside over deaths from starvation of hundreds of thousands -- maybe millions -- of people this winter because we didn't use the window of opportunity before winter closes?" Robinson was calling for at least a halt in the American bombing of Afghanistan so that supplies could be put in place. Then on October 24 the NEW YORK TIMES reported that "senior Pentagon officials said for the first time today that they hoped to choke off fuel, food and other supplies ..."

Remarkably enough, people who criticize the mass murder being undertaken by Washington are often confronted with the question, "Well, what would you do, after September 11?" My first response is, Try to dissuade my government from killing many, many more people than died on that day. But the questioner usually wants to know what's to be done to stop terrorism.

Of course there was another way. Rather than purposely flouting it, the US should have (a) used the resources of domestic and international law to apprehend and prosecute anyone left alive who was responsible for this crime; and (b) made an effort to understand the causes, motives, and reasons for the crime so that they can be removed, lessening the chance of a repetition. A practical program for (a) would have been:

- Before killing anyone, take the matter to the UN Security Council, as the US is bound to do by treaty, and insist on the delivery to a court of justice of anyone responsible for the crimes. If no appropriate court could be found, then one could be created, as they were for the Lockerbie terrorist attack and the Balkan war crimes.

- If the US has evidence that a state was involved, it should be presented to the International Court of Justice, the World Court, which has declared states guilty of terrorism before and demanded that they make restitution. (Admittedly, it was the US that was judged guilty of terrorism.)

- Suppose that the effective government of Afghanistan, say, although it said that it was willing to turn over Osama bin Laden to a court if the US produces evidence, refuses the Security Council's demand to do so. At this point a UN military force, drawn from disinterested countries -- i.e., no Russians, Americans, Pakistanis, or Iranians, all of whom have territorial interests in Afghanistan -- should be authorized by the Security Council to retrieve those people whom it denominates.

Instead, the US has launched a war that may result in the deaths of millions in the next few months. And then this week the FBI floated a trial balloon, suggesting that it might have to use torture on some of more than 1,130 people detained, many illegally, in the course of the investigation! CP

Carl Estabrook teaches at the University of Illinois and is the host of News From Neptune, a weekly radio show on politics and the media. He writes a regular column for CounterPunch.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Washington

States
11/06/01
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Bellingham - Western Washington University's Vehicle Research Institute received an $800,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration to build a natural gas-electric hybrid car. The vehicle will be designed to protect passengers in a high-speed crash. The Viking 32 is the institute's first four-seater. WWU students have been building and racing experimental Viking cars since 1970.

-------- energy

ARCTIC OIL GETS TIED TO SECURITY DEBATE
SENATE DEMOCRATS BLOCK BUSH'S DESIRE FOR DRILLING IN REFUGE

Truthout
11.06.01 (AP)
http://www.truthout.com/11.07A.ANWAR.htm

WASHINGTON - A dispute over oil drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge is blocking energy legislation and prompting the White House to link the debate to national security and the September terrorist attacks. That has some Democrats in Congress and environmentalists accusing the Bush administration and Republicans of exploiting terrorist fears to allow drilling in an area where oil wouldn't actually be pumped for a decade.

"IT'S IN OUR national interest that we develop more energy supplies at home," President Bush told business leaders recently, demanding that the Senate take up energy legislation "and get a bill to my desk" before Congress adjourns for the year.

Opening the Arctic refuge for oil development remains key to "an independent energy policy for America," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. He noted the House already has approved energy legislation, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR.

But in the Senate, an energy bill that six months ago was viewed as a priority has slipped to the back burner, eclipsed by the response to the Sept. 11 attacks and the slumping economy.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-N.D., has put energy legislation on hold, telling reporters: "The most important focus for us now is the economic recovery plan, the airport security plan and the appropriations bills."

It's clear that energy "is an issue that Democratic leaders want to duck for now," Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, contended.

Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the reason is the Arctic refuge. He believes he has the 51 votes needed to lift a 1980 congressional ban on developing the Alaska refuge's millions of barrels of oil.

Key Democrats, however, have promised environmentalists they will protect the refuge. That includes, if necessary, blocking a vote with a filibuster -- a parliamentary tactic that requires proponents of a measure to have 60 votes to limit debate.

FILIBUSTER PROMISED

Any debate is likely to be quarrelsome and disruptive, with each side trying to wrap itself in patriotism and hurling accusations at the other. It's a showdown Daschle would like to avoid.

"This is a critical dividing-line issue," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has pledged to lead such a filibuster. Among those expected to join in are Democratic Sens. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Hillary Clinton of New York and Ron Wyden of Oregon, he said.

The events of Sept. 11 and their aftermath have not changed the debate over ANWR, Kerry said. Drilling there "will do nothing to enhance our national security at this moment in time," he said in a recent interview.

Murkowski, contending that oil can be taken from the refuge without endangering the environment, called it a matter of "our national security, as opposed to environmental extremists."

To press the point, he brought representatives from a number of veterans organizations to Capitol Hill last week to deride -- as one wrote Daschle -- "the heavy reliance of the United States on foreign oil."

Bush administration officials have stressed the same point.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton called recently for action on energy at a Capitol Hill news conference, in a speech to an oil conference in Louisiana and in letters to radio talk show hosts.

"Every day the United States imports 700,000 barrels of oil from (Iraq's) Saddam Hussein. . . . It's time to start producing that energy in the United States," Norton wrote the radio hosts, volunteering to discuss the issue if invited.

BEYOND ANWR

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, bemoaned "the almost obsessive attention" focused on the Arctic refuge at the expense of other energy matters.

There are other places in Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico where domestic oil resources have been ignored, he said. Growth in energy demand "will overwhelm any future domestic production even if ANWR were opened," he added.

The government estimates that at least 5.7 billion barrels -- and possibly as many as 16 billion barrels -- may be recoverable from the refuge, although how much will be pumped will depend on the price of oil.

Environmentalists argue that ANWR has no more than 3.2 billion barrels, not enough to dramatically ease the country's reliance on imports.

"Drilling the Arctic refuge for a speculative six months supply of oil 10 years from now will not do anything to enhance our energy security," said Adam Kolton of the Alaska Wilderness League. He called the national security drumbeat "an attempt to exploit the tragedy of Sept. 11" to overcome opposition to opening the refuge.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

-------- environment

States: Louisiana, New Mexico, Tennessee

USA Today
11/06/01
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Louisiana

Pontchatoula - Federal plans to clean up an industrial site contaminated by a former battery salvage and metals smelting operation were delayed by a lack of Superfund money. The Environmental Protection Agency said the decision to suspend cleaning up the former DeLatte Metals site is part of a slowdown across the USA in the cleanup of abandoned hazardous waste sites. Louisiana has 24 Superfund sites, the EPA said.

New Mexico

Santa Fe - Two environmental groups have filed a lawsuit to force the Environmental Protection Agency to protect endangered species before approving revised New Mexico water quality standards. The suit also claims the EPA isn't following the Clean Water Act. Forest Guardians and Defenders of Wildlife allege that the EPA failed to protect such endangered fish as the Rio Grande silvery minnow.

Tennessee

Chattanooga - State and federal officials say two new tests near an old ammunition factory show little chance that ground water is contaminated and threatens residents' health. The Environmental Protection Agency ordered the tests in neighborhoods surrounding the Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant where 3 billion pounds of TNT were made from World War II through the Vietnam War.

-------- genetics

Inside the Biotech Revolution

Motley Fool
By Zeke Ashton (TMF Centaur)
November 6, 2001
http://www.fool.com/specials/2001/sp011106.htm

Medarex and Abgenix are two fast-moving companies using genetically engineered mice to produce the hottest thing in drug development:
human monoclonal antibodies.

Each has fat alliances with top-tier drug makers. Zeke Ashton interviews Medarex's CEO, Donald Drakeman, who makes the case for his company's bright future.

I'll bet you thought Disney (NYSE: DIS) was the only company based on a mouse. Think again. The biotechnology revolution has brought us two companies whose genetically engineered mice create human antibodies for drugs. They are Medarex (Nasdaq: MEDX) and Abgenix (Nasdaq: ABGX), and their technologies have attracted major deals not only with all the big drug makers, but also the newer genomics-based companies who hope to join the big leagues.

I spoke with Medarex's President and CEO Donald Drakeman about Medarex's prospects for growth in a world where human monoclonal antibody drugs are poised for takeoff. (Tom Jacobs was unsuccessful in his request for an interview with Abgenix's CEO earlier this year.)

(The following is an edited transcript. You can see the complete version on the Medarex discussion board.)

TMF: To get started, what does Medarex do and how does it make money?

Drakeman: Basically, what we see happening is that the genomics revolution is creating a huge change in product development. The whole $350 billion pharmaceutical industry up until now has been developed around the knowledge of about 500 disease targets, something that is present on a diseased cell but not present in a normal cell that can be targeted for drug intervention. But now scientists estimate that we are going to have anywhere between 4,000 and 15,000 new disease targets coming out of genomics. This is a watershed event in the history of medicine the likes of which we've never seen before.

This new abundance of targets creates both an opportunity and a challenge for the industry, which is how to come up with effective products to such a wealth of targets rapidly and efficiently.

At Medarex, we think that human antibody technology is the best way to address this market -- it's faster, it's more efficient, and it appears to be more effective than the traditional technologies for creating new drugs. We've set out to make Medarex the leader in creating new antibody technology.

As far as how we make money, we have a strongly patented technology base, which positions us to make money in two different ways. The first to simply sell our technology to people, which in this case is to provide them with our UltiMAb ["MAb" stands for monoclonal antibody] platform, which makes transgenic mice that create human antibodies. In this case, we receive milestones and royalties and generally share in the success of these partners with no additional cost to us.

The second way, and the most important way, that we plan to make money is by developing our own broad pipeline of therapeutic products based upon targets that are being provided to us by the 15 or so different companies with expertise in genomics and proteomics and a variety of other areas that we've partnered with.

So we are trying to combine the best of both worlds, the worlds being the platform technology where you have low risk but where the revenue is more modest, but which will generate cash flow for us in the near term so that in the mid term and beyond we can create a product pipeline that is as robust as anything in the biotech industry.

TMF: Let me ask you a question about transgenic mice -- this sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. Do you actually deliver cell lines for the mice or do you deliver the mice? What exactly do you deliver?

Drakeman: In a certain number of our partnerships, we deliver mice. Think about these mice as ones that have been genetically engineered to have human genes instead of mouse genes. What we have created is the Adam and Eve of mice, and any one mouse can make an antibody to whatever target our partners are interested in. After that, we simply breed them, feed them, and ship them.

TMF: And I guess mice are pretty good at making other mice.

Drakeman: Yep. I'm pretty sure they think that's the best part of the job.

TMF: Human antibodies seems like such a hot theme in the industry. I've read that there are some 220 different companies with antibodies in development right now. But if you look at what has actually reached the market, you realize that what's there is a long way from state of the art. There are still lots of mouse parts in these drugs.

Starting with the first generation of antibodies, which are half mouse and half human (called chimeric), there is Genentech's (NYSE: DNA) and IDEC Pharmaceuticals' (Nasdaq: IDPH) blockbuster drug Rituxan. The second generation, of which Genentech's Herceptin would be an example, is a humanized antibody, where it's mostly human but still contains some mouse parts. Finally, we have the third generation -- a human antibody with no mouse parts at all.

But none of these third-generation drugs have reached the market yet. How long do you think it will take before the first of these fully human drugs hit the market, and how well do you think that these drugs will perform relative to the partially human and chimeric antibodies currently on the market?

Drakeman: The first ones are coming along over the next two or three years. A handful of fully human antibodies are now in clinical testing, and I think that analysts have estimated that the first of these will reach the market within that two or three year timeframe. I think that when you compare fully human antibodies to partially human antibodies, there is a series of reasons why fully human will be more attractive... by eliminating the mouse parts, you have a chance to create a product that essentially performs better. There is less of a chance that the human body will identify something as foreign and therefore create an unwanted immune response.... [Another reason is that] the intellectual property in this area is so clear and clean. For a company developing an antibody, it may actually be cheaper to develop a fully human antibody rather than a partially human antibody.

TMF: As a layperson, it's difficult for me to compare your antibody technology to that of your major competitor, Abgenix. But it is clear to me that aside from Abgenix and Medarex, there aren't any other major players in this area. Can you clarify some of the differences between the two companies?

Drakeman: I think that one of the analysts has called it a "duopoly" -- we have cross-licensed our patents back and forth between Medarex and Abgenix so that we can each provide that crystal clear intellectual property value to our partners and for our own products.... I think that it is not a zero sum game, and there is going to be room for both Medarex and Abgenix to be very successful companies. Of course, I think that Medarex is going to be substantially more successful. Part of the reason for my opinion is because I believe that we have the best and most advanced technology, and part of it is that we have a slightly different business strategy that I think in the long term will provide us with a significant advantage in terms of business results.

We were the original inventors of this transgenic mouse technology and all the early patents were issued to Dr. Nils Longberg, who works for Medarex.... Abgenix mice were very similar to our mouse, although they pointed out that their mice had more human genes than ours did and they made the argument that more genes make a better mouse.... But what has happened now is that thanks to a collaboration we have entered into with Kirin, we have mice in our UltiMAb platform with the ability to make 100% of the human antibody genes. So I'm now willing to concede that more genes make a better mouse, because we've got all the genes.

And since we unveiled this new technology last November, if you look at the rate of new partnerships entered into by us and those entered into by Abgenix, you will see that we are well ahead, and have probably a two-to-one advantage during this timeframe. We have really gathered some excellent momentum, and our new UltiMAb platform is a significant reason for that.

-------- health

At Ground Zero, Questions About the Air

New York Times
November 6, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/opinion/L06AIRR.html

To the Editor:
Re "Workers and Residents Are Safe, Officials Say" (news article, Nov. 2):

It should be common sense that protocols intended to measure regular, low-level exposure to environmental poisons don't necessarily apply to an unpredictable source of contamination like what we have at ground zero.

Yet officials hold fast to assurances that the air in Lower Manhattan is safe, despite complaints of burning throats, lungs and eyes, and despite evidence obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency by the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project that dangerous contaminants exist in the air at the site where the World Trade Center once stood.

These assurances have legitimized complacency about the task of putting out the fires at the World Trade Center site, which are projected to burn for up to eight months or more.

Extra attention needs to be directed to expediting this task and to keeping dust down in the meantime.

TOM ADESKO New York, Nov. 2, 2001

-------- human rights

Christians face dismal plight in Islamic realms

By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 6, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011106-73789.htm

The Oct. 28 attack by Islamic militants on a Pakistani church that left 16 dead dramatizes the plight of Christians in Muslim-ruled countries, and according to several human rights organizations it's a dismal one.

In many of those countries, Christians cannot openly practice their religion, nor attempt to convert others to it. Churches are not even allowed in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, and in other Islamic countries there are severe restrictions on where they can build and to whom they can preach the Gospel.

The religious freedom enjoyed by America's 1.8 million to 2 million Muslims - the numbers are in dispute, and some Muslim groups claim millions more - lets them construct mosques, set up their own nonprofit groups and evangelize for their religion. Protected by the First Amendment, radical Muslim groups have also freely operated and raised funds here.

The U.S. State Department's annual religious freedom report, released Oct. 25, rates Islamic-ruled Afghanistan among the worst countries - along with Burma, China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam - in terms of religious freedom.

Runners-up included Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, where leaving Islam for another religion is a capital offense. Turkmenistan, where four Baptists were tortured for having religious literature in their car, made the list, along with Uzbekistan.

Nigeria, Indonesia and Sudan lead the world in actual death tolls of Christians, says Paul Marshall, senior fellow of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House in the District. The number of Christians and animists who have perished in the Sudan is estimated at 2 million.

In terms of Draconian government restrictions, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan are the most severe. Pakistan has "very bad laws," Mr. Marshall says, but "compared to these others, it's relatively open."

Iran, which allowed the slaying of several prominent Christian pastors in the mid-1990s, has severe laws against Christians trying to evangelize Muslims. But outright persecution there has lessened a bit, he says, probably due to the influence of its reform-minded president Mohammed Khatami.

Robert Finley, founder of Christian Aid, a missions organization in Charlottesville, Va., points to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia as the most repressive countries. Iraq is the least hostile country in the Middle East toward Christians, he says, because its brand of Islam is more secularized than that of Saudi Arabia.

"But Kuwait is very intolerant of Christians," he said. "They just don't allow them."

The Kuwaiti constitution promises freedom of religion but does not address conversion. In 1996, the marriage of a Kuwaiti convert from Islam to Christianity was forcibly dissolved and his children taken from him before he underwent a much-publicized trial for apostasy.

Shafeeq Ghabra of the Kuwait Information Office says his country has plenty of churches. "There are Catholics and non-Catholics," he said in an interview. "There are several important churches there. There are hundreds of thousands of Christians in Kuwait." Most of these are expatriates, he says, estimating that 5 percent of the Kuwaiti people themselves are Christians.

Human Rights Watch cites Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, as a place where Christian villages have suffered repeated attacks from Muslim militias. Starting in 1999, the conflict has left more than 5,000 dead and at least 400,000 refugees on about a dozen islands in central Indonesia.

Although the government "appealed for humanitarian aid for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people," it says in its 2001 World Report, "it also obstructed delivery of that aid."

Steve Snyder, president of International Christian Concern in the District, has traveled to Indonesia and is trying to raise funds to rescue Christians trapped in villages surrounded by warriors belonging to Laskar Jihad, an Islamic group.

"Laskar Jihad has been continually attacking Christian villages, murdering Christians and burning down their houses, businesses and church buildings for well over a year now," he said, "and the Indonesian government has seemingly been unable or unwilling to stop them."

Punishment meted out to Christians from the Islamic militias has included a choice between conversion to Islam or death, he says. The conversions have included forced circumcisions of men, women and children.

"Laskar Jihad trained in Afghanistan," Mr. Marshall says. "Their personnel have met with Osama's networks. They've got 5,000 people who've had some military training and they've been killing, converting or forcibly driving out all the Christians in the area."

A spokesman for the Indonesian Embassy says his government is doing its best to stop the fighting. "We are promoting some measures to reconcile these groups, and we've installed our security forces to quell the violence," says Dino Djalal, head of the embassy's political section. "We've declared civil emergency in that area. Our navy has installed a blockade so the violence doesn't spread. We are sending troops there and taking care of the refugees."

A Web site set up by Islamic warriors in Indonesia (www.laskarjihad.or.id) claims that Christians, backed by Jews, are the aggressors in central Indonesia.

"The honor and existence of the ummah [Muslim community] must continually be defended in the midst of attacks by international Cross/Zionist activities," says a statement issued by Laskar Jihad. "As Muslims, we adamantly believe that a solution to the current problem ... involves a movement toward jihad."

Egypt turns a deaf ear to complaints of discrimination against Christians, Mr. Marshall says, and the lives of Christians is equally grim in Nigeria, where Islamic law, or shariah, has been implemented in 12 states.

Mr. Marshall, who visited the country in June, says 5,000 persons have died there and whole neighborhoods in the cities of Kaduna, Jos and Kano have been razed because of Muslim-Christian fighting. "On September 11, when Muslim groups took to the streets to celebrate the terrorist attacks on the United States, that rekindled violence," he says. "Some 300 to 400 people died in the two days since then."

--------

REID SPEAKS OUT AGAINST INHUMANE TREATMENT OF AFGHAN WOMEN BY THE TALIBAN

Truthout
11.06.01
http://www.truthout.com/11.07D.Reid.htm

"Not a question of cultural differences," said Senator Reid. "The Taliban's inhumane treatment of women has nothing to do with religion."

WASHINGTON - Statement by Senator Harry Reid, the Assistant Majority Leader, as prepared for delivery on the floor of the United States Senate:

On countless occasions, I have come to the Senate floor to speak about equality for women in the United States. For all of the advances women have made, they still earn 74 cents for every dollar a man makes. Women pay 68 percent more in out-of- pocket costs for health care than men, and almost half of all large health plans do not cover any form of contraception. And although women make up over half of our population, federal funding for women-specific illnesses has not kept pace with women's health needs.

While I cannot overstate the importance of achieving gender-equality in the United States, these issues pale in comparison to the gender-apartheid Afghan women are experiencing under the Taliban.

Gender-apartheid is not unlike racial apartheid in South Africa where the black majority suffered appalling human rights violations. They were deprived of political and economic rights, mixed marriages were forbidden, residential areas were segregated and many were forced into slums.

One of the most far-reaching consequences of apartheid was its impact on education. Black children were educated at a very low level, if at all. Children were taught things like dish-washing and weeding flower beds.

It is difficult to imagine a system worse than apartheid in South Africa. Sadly, this is the case in Afghanistan where women are suffering unthinkable violations of their most basic human rights. Taliban decrees have greatly restricted every aspect of Afghan women's lives from their behavior to their dress. According to Taliban rules:

- Women cannot work outside the home.Women are not allowed to receive any education -- including home-schooling.

- Women cannot leave their home unless accompanied by a close male relative, such as a father, brother or husband.

- When they do leave their homes, women must be covered from head-to-toe in a burqa. Women who disobey this rule will be subject to whipping, beating and verbal abuse.

- Women cannot deal with male shopkeepers, or be treated by male doctors. Women who do not cover their ankles will be whipped in public.

- Women accused of having sex outside marriage will be stoned publicly. Women are prohibited from using cosmetics. Many women with painted nails have had their fingers cut off.

- Women are banned from talking or shaking hands with men to whom they are not related.

- Women are prohibited from laughing loudly - no stranger should hear a woman's voice.

- Women cannot wear high heel shoes, which would produce a sound while walking. A man must not hear a woman's footsteps.

- Women are banned from riding a taxi without a close male relative. A woman's presence in radio, television or public gatherings of any kind is forbidden.

- Women cannot play sports or enter a sport center or club.

- Women are banned from riding bicycles or motorcycles -- even with a close male relative.

- Women cannot wear brightly colored clothes. In Taliban terms, these are considered "sexually attracting colors."

- Women are prohibited from gathering for festive occasions, or for any recreational purpose.

- Women cannot wash clothes next to rivers or in public places.

- Women are banned from appearing on the balconies of their apartments or houses. All windows of a woman's home must be painted so women cannot be seen from outside their homes.

- Male tailors cannot take women's measurements or sew women's clothes. Female public baths are forbidden.

- Males and females cannot travel on the same bus. Public buses have been designated "males only" or "females only."

- Flared or wide pant-legs - even under a burqa - are not allowed. Women cannot be photographed or filmed.

- Women's pictures cannot be printed in newspapers and books, or even hung on the walls of houses and shops.

The only thing worse than Taliban restrictions against women are the punishments for those who dare to disobey. Penalties include public beatings, torture, stoning and executions.

Let's be clear - this is not a question of cultural differences. The Taliban's inhumane treatment of women has nothing to do with religion. Nowhere does the Islamic religion say women cannot be educated or employed. In fact, the president of Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic nation, is a woman, Megawati Sukarnoputri. The toll that the Taliban's rule has taken on Afghan women is profound:

The rate of illiteracy among girls in Afghanistan is now over 90 percent. Women do not have access to health care. As a result, an estimated 45 women die every day from pregnancy-related causes.Ninety-percent of Afghan women suffer from severe depression, and the suicide rate among Afghan women has sky-rocketed. Sadly, many women resort to killing themselves by taking caustic soda. Caustic soda burns away the throat and it takes three torturous days for a woman to die. The only surgeon capable of providing the necessary intervention is in a hospital that is now closed to women. In Kabul alone, there are over 40,000 widows as a result of the war. Because the Taliban forbids women from working, they are forced into begging - and sometimes prostitution - in order to support themselves and their children.

This tragedy is only intensified by the fact that, prior to the Taliban's takeover of the country, Afghan women were:

- 70 percent of the nation's school teachers,

- 40 percent of the doctors,

- 50 percent of civilian government workers, and

- 50 percent of the college students in Kabul.

Just a few years ago, Afghan women were scientists, professors, members of parliament and university professors. They led corporations and non-profit organizations. Today, these same women cannot show their faces in public or leave their homes alone.

As we continue life after September 11th, we cannot forget that the women of Afghanistan are the first victims of the Taliban.

We must also demonstrate our support through humanitarian relief for the women of Afghanistan andthe scores of Afghan refugees in the surrounding regions.

And as we look toward the future of Afghanistan, we have to recognize that women must play a critical role in the rebuilding of a post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Until that day comes, we cannot forget that women are being brutalized by the Taliban and we must redouble our efforts to help restore the human rights of Afghan women.

-------- police / prisoners

Internal troubles make FBI's task that much harder

USA Today
11/05/2001
By Kevin Johnson and Toni Locy, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-06-fbi.htm

WASHINGTON - The man running the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history had been planning to retire as deputy director of the FBI long before Sept. 11.

But when Tom Pickard's resignation finally was announced last week - just 48 hours after U.S. officials again alerted the nation about the possibility of new terror attacks - it was a poignant reminder of the fragile and harried state of the nation's chief law enforcement agency. The FBI is burdened with deep structural problems that threaten to hinder its hunt for accomplices of the Sept. 11 hijackers and those responsible for the recent anthrax attacks.

Before Sept. 11, the main concern at FBI headquarters was whose heads should roll for a series of embarrassing foul-ups. The latest of those was a failure to disclose evidence in the Timothy McVeigh case, an error that led to a 1-month delay in the execution of the Oklahoma City bomber. President Bush's choice to fix the FBI was Robert Mueller, a former U.S. attorney with a reputation for revamping troubled agencies.

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Mueller's already difficult task has been made more so:

- Pickard, 50, a 27-year bureau veteran, isn't the only top official being lost to retirement. Assistant Director Barry Mawn, the top FBI agent in New York, is nearing the mandatory retirement age of 57. Mawn oversees the bureau's largest anti-terrorism unit, a crucial position in the FBI apparatus that responds to major terror incidents.

- A recent hiring blitz designed to offset a steady flow of retirements and resignations has left the ranks of the FBI with little experience as the bureau confronts the largest and most complex investigation in its history. About 40% of the bureau's 11,132 agents have been on the job 5 years or less.

- More critical, perhaps, is the bureau's lack of experience in responding to bioterrorism threats such as anthrax. Before the recent anthrax-by-mail attacks on government and media institutions, the FBI had estimated that such attacks were not likely in the near future. But now the FBI, like federal health officials, essentially has been forced to create a bioterrorism response system while engaged in what so far has been a frustrating search for those behind the attacks.

"I have the sense that no one unit of our government, including the FBI, had constructed a scenario similar to what we are experiencing now," says former FBI and CIA director William Webster, who is leading one of six separate probes of FBI operations. Webster's group is investigating why the FBI went 15 years without noticing that one of its counterintelligence agents, Robert Hanssen, was spying for Moscow.

"I get the feeling, especially with anthrax, that federal law enforcement and public-health people are learning as they go," Webster says.

The FBI declined to comment.

Mueller has called the FBI's top agents from its 56 U.S. field offices here this week for the first glimpse of his vision for an agency that is desperate to restore public confidence and keep pace with terror-related incidents.

If the FBI is to keep pace with the enormous demands of the current terrorist threat - 25% of the bureau's agents have been assigned to some portion of the hijacking and anthrax cases - many officials believe the FBI will be forced to dramatically streamline its mission.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who has harshly criticized FBI bungling in the past, says the bureau might have to leave some of its traditional responsibilities to state and local authorities.

Former deputy attorney general Eric Holder says the FBI's role in drug cases could be shifted to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Bank robbery investigations, long a drain on the FBI, could be done by state and local authorities, he says.

"The emphasis of any law enforcement agency is going to reflect the times," former attorney general Richard Thornburgh says. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI "became adept at bank robberies and stolen cars when they were the issues du jour."

When Hoover's 48-year reign as FBI chief ended in 1972, public corruption and organized crime became more of a focus for the FBI. Now, Thornburgh says, law enforcement is "international in scope, and a new kind of intelligence-gathering emphasis is going to result."

The anti-terrorism law just signed by President Bush, for example, gives the FBI more authority in wiretapping and monitoring the computer use of those linked to probes involving national security. Critics say civil liberties are likely to be trampled in the process, but polls indicate that most Americans support the measures.

Attorney General John Ashcroft says he wants federal law enforcement to be geared more toward preventing terrorist incidents than reacting to them. That, officials say, will require a fundamental shift in the FBI's thinking and organization.

"They (the FBI) need an influx of new talent and, frankly, new abilities ... to think more strategically," Thornburgh says.

Making that happen falls largely to Mueller, who was barely a week into his new job on Sept. 11. For him there was no honeymoon.

Grassley says Mueller will be a success only if he meets a difficult mandate: Track down those behind the terrorist attacks while remaking a resistant bureaucracy.

The FBI will be helped by legislative and financial support from Congress, Grassley says.

"They have this new responsibility with the war on terrorism," he says. "In the past we didn't get results ... but they have a real chance to show their colors."

---

Supreme Court to decide limits on police searches

USA Today
11/06/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-06-policesearch.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court Tuesday to uphold searches of the homes of criminals on probation or parole - the first police search case to reach the court since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Malcolm L. Stewart, arguing for the administration, said authorities need leeway to protect the public from people who could be more likely to engage in other crimes.

Justices will decide by next summer whether California police needed a warrant to search the home of a man suspected of setting a fire that knocked out telephone service to an airport and caused $1.5 million in damage.

The court members spent most of the argument time talking about public safety and criminals' civil rights, without any discussion of terrorism. The issue of police power has been more closely watched since the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

Mark James Knights, who police said had a grudge against the Pacific Gas & Electric Co., was on probation for public intoxication in 1998 when authorities were investigating vandalism against the company. Under a state law - the strictest of its kind in the nation - Knights had agreed to waive his constitutional protection against warrantless searches as a condition of his early release.

The outcome of the case could determine whether the nation's 4.4 million convicts on probation or parole can be forced to waive their Fourth Amendment rights.

Knights' attorney, Hilary A. Fox, said the law allows searches any time, any place by any law officer. She said it would be more reasonable for only probation officers to conduct searches.

"I don't see why it's magic that a probation officer has to do it," said Justice Antonin Scalia.

He said any lawman with authority could conduct the search and "I assume it could be a law enforcement officer from Afghanistan."

The federal government contends that an early release is a privilege and that those not wishing to waive their privacy rights can remain behind bars.

"Every state will get on the bandwagon - every attorney general in the United States will be arguing for the same kind of exception," said John Wesley Hall Jr., an Arkansas defense attorney who follows Fourth Amendment cases.

Police said Knights conspired to blow up utility equipment in revenge for his electricity being turned off. The search at Knights' apartment 30 miles north of San Francisco yielded a detonation cord, chemicals, books on how to make bombs, bolt cutters and a brass padlock stamped "PG&E," police said.

Knights is in prison awaiting trial. The Supreme Court will determine whether the items found in his apartment can be used as evidence. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said they could not.

Two other states, Arkansas and Georgia, have rules similar to California's, according to a survey by the Rutherford Institute, a generally conservative legal group that supports Knights in the case.

---

States

USA Today
11/06/01
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

New York

Buffalo - The city will be forced to cut spending on police and fire services to close a $97 million budget gap, Mayor Anthony Masiello said. The city has already laid off more than 400 teachers and 75 city employees. Even more reductions will be necessary, Masiello and state Comptroller Carl McCall said.

Pennsylvania

Philadelphia - A former Philadelphia probation officer has pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from convicted drunken drivers trying to get out of court-ordered alcohol treatment programs. Federal prosecutors say Gary Robinson took bribes ranging from $60 to $100. He's scheduled to be sentenced in February.

Tennessee

Memphis - An evidentiary hearing for condemned murderer Philip Workman concluded with the judge saying he would decide within 30 days whether Workman should receive a new trial. Workman was within an hour of being put to death in March when the Tennessee Supreme Court ordered the hearing. Workman contends he has proof that he did not fire the fatal shot that killed a Memphis police officer during a restaurant robbery in 1981.

Texas

Palestine - Two Anderson County Jail inmates scaled a wall to freedom and remain on the loose. Rocky Janes II, 21, and Patrick Poston, 36, fled after telling guards they were going to a recreation yard, authorities said. Work on a new roof there may have facilitated the escape, investigators said. Janes was held on aggravated robbery and assault charges; Poston faces charges of burglary and evading arrest.

Utah

Ephraim - Sanpete County sheriff's officers have arrested two men who escaped from the county jail through an open door. Michael Bacon and Blaine Larson were arrested at a girlfriend's home in Ephraim, Sheriff Claude Pickett said. They were being held in the jail while awaiting sentencing. Bacon faces a sentence for burglary; Larson was convicted on several charges, including theft of a vehicle.

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New wiretap measures worry privacy watchdogs

November 6, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011106-26509384.htm

It meets for a few days each month in a windowless room in the Justice Department basement, a highly secretive court that can shape how the government spies on some U.S. residents.

Already viewed warily by civil libertarians, the court will grow more powerful as a result of the tougher anti-terrorism laws President Bush signed into law last month.

The court considers requests, almost always from the FBI, for warrants and searches related to foreign-intelligence operations inside the United States. Little is known of the proceedings except that the warrants typically allow the government to listen in on suspected spies or terrorists.

Civil liberties and privacy watchdogs say the court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will now be free to approve more wiretapping against a wider range of people. The government may never have to disclose who has been targeted, or why.

"FISA already had just the minimal trappings of a judicial process," said David Sobel, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The anti-terrorism measures "chip away at the very minimal procedures that currently exist."

Established by Congress in 1978, the court was intended to police the kind of surveillance abuse seen in the Nixon era, by requiring the FBI to go before a judge to get a national security-related warrant. Previously, the Justice Department or the White House could order such surveillance directly.

"It acts as a brake on people acting imprudently," former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh said.

Yale international law professor Ruth Wedgwood agreed the court imposes discipline on the Justice Department.

"There is a careful process of scrutiny before the warrants are approved," she said, "and I have met intelligence agents who have had their warrants rejected" as too thin to pass the court's scrutiny.

Civil libertarians have always been uneasy with the law and the court, because FISA allows the government to do things in the name of national security that would be illegal or unconstitutional if done as part of a regular criminal investigation.

Under FISA, domestic surveillance can begin once the government has shown that a suspect is probably a "foreign power or agent of a foreign power."

Law enforcement must meet a higher standard - probable cause that a crime was committed - to get an ordinary criminal warrant for wiretapping or other electronic intrusion.

The different standards were permitted because secret FISA surveillance is supposed to help protect the country rather than gather information that could be used against a particular person in court.

The new anti-terror laws effectively eliminate that distinction, said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies.

FISA used to allow secret domestic surveillance if "the purpose" was foreign intelligence. The Bush administration wanted the wording changed to "a purpose," and Congress settled on "a significant purpose."

"They are going to say every [warrant application] has that as a significant purpose," said Miss Martin. That would mean the government could ask for a FISA warrant when it would not have been able to get a criminal warrant, she said, adding, "We think it renders the statute unconstitutional."

The court will expand from seven federal judges to 11 under the new laws. The judges sit in panels of three, and the larger pool will make it easier for the court to meet more often. All the judges are chosen by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

----

Count of Released Detainees Is Hard to Pin Down

By Dan Eggen and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 6, 2001; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44034-2001Nov5.html

Most of the hundreds of people arrested on criminal charges as part of the investigation into the Sept. 11 terror attacks have been released from jail, a White House spokesman said yesterday.

But the Justice Department said the majority of those detained for all reasons, including immigration violations as well as criminal charges, remain in custody.

The statements from the White House and Justice, which initially seemed to contradict each other, underscored the secrecy and confusion surrounding the U.S. government's roundup of more than 1,000 potential terror suspects, which has come under increasing criticism from Arab American and civil liberties groups.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer initially told reporters that "the lion's share" of those detained since Sept. 11 have been released, a contention that ran counter to previous statements from Justice officials.

"Most of the people, the overwhelming number of the people, were detained, they were questioned, and then they've been released," Fleischer said. President Bush "is fully satisfied that anybody who is continuing to be held is being held for a wise reason," he added.

Contacted later for clarification, Fleischer said he was referring only to people who faced criminal charges, not those detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service or as material witnesses with information about the terror attacks. He said he did not have exact numbers.

Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said a majority of all the detainees remain in jail. "He had information based on the criminal detainees only," Tucker said, referring to Fleischer. "It wasn't the full picture."

Since Sept. 11, hundreds of people -- many of them Middle Eastern men -- have been detained in connection with the probe into the suicide hijackings that killed nearly 4,600 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. None have been charged with abetting the attacks. But Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other officials have said the detentions are part of an effort to prevent more attacks.

Tucker said 1,182 people have been detained since Sept. 11, including 185 now in INS custody. Federal authorities repeatedly have declined to say how many have been freed. The Washington Post reported Sunday that of 235 detainees identified by the newspaper, at least 75 had been released.

One of those in custody pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that he lied to a New York grand jury. Osama Awadallah, a Jordanian student at Grossmont College in San Diego, is accused of perjuring himself by denying he knew Khalid Almidhar, one of five men suspected of hijacking American Airlines Flight 77 and crashing it into the Pentagon Sept. 11.

Awadallah appeared in federal court in Manhattan to enter his plea. He is being held on two charges of perjury pending a Nov. 21 bail hearing.

Authorities say Awadallah knew three of the hijackers who spent much of last year living in the San Diego area: Nawaf Alhazmi, Hani Hanjour and Almidhar.

In testimony before a grand jury on Oct. 10 and 15, he denied knowing Almidhar even after prosecutors confronted him with a copy of his journal in which he mentioned the hijacker. Awadallah subsequently amended his testimony and acknowledged writing the passages about Almidhar, according to his lawyer, Jesse Berman. He also admitted knowing Alhazmi, but said he was just an acquaintance.

Berman said yesterday that prosecutors had been looking for a way to hold his client, a permanent U.S. resident. "They snagged him on an unimportant inconsistency," Berman said.

Awadallah was detained as a material witness Sept. 23 after authorities found a note in the glove compartment of a hijacker's car left at Dulles International Airport, where Flight 77 originated. The note said "Osama" and had Awadallah's phone number on it. The indictment said Awadallah's apartment contained pictures of suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.

---

Canada touted as leader in efforts to establish International Criminal Court

Canadian Press
Sunday, November 04, 2001
Montreal Gazette
GREG JOYCE
http://www.canada.com/montreal/story.asp?id={8B50A1BA-8089-471B-9689-A2CAEFC74910}

(CP) - The days and murderous ways of the likes of Osama bin Laden and Slobodan Milosevic may soon be numbered - on international crime court documents with power to punish - if Canada and other like-minded countries have their way.

Less than a month ago, Switzerland become the 43rd and most recent country to ratify the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the framework for the proposed International Criminal Court. Canada, touted as one of the countries in the forefront of setting up the court and promoting the ratification process, gave its blessing in July 2000.

The court comes into existence when there are 60 ratifications from the 120 countries that signed the treaty. Some observers believe that may occur by the middle of next year.

Under international law, signing a treaty is like a show of political support but doesn't bind the country. To be legally binding it must be ratified.

Only seven countries voted against the treaty, including the United States, China, Israel and Iraq.

The court is directed at bringing individuals - as opposed to states - to justice for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But Canadian observers also believe those engaging in terrorist acts would be unable to run and hide, even though terrorism isn't specifically covered.

"The 20th century could be billed as the century of atrocity, but it might also be called the century of impunity since few perpetrators were ever brought to justice," said former law professor Irwin Cotler, the Liberal MP for Mount Royal, an adviser to Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley on the court.

"Individuals and not just states are responsible for their crimes."

The idea for an international criminal court was first proposed about 55 years ago at the time of the Nuremberg trials for Nazi war crimes, said Cotler, who was director of McGill University's Human Rights Program.

Atrocities of the last few decades, in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan, Liberia and elsewhere "gave the idea for the ICC the sense of urgency it warranted," he said in a recent interview.

Cotler, an internationally known human rights lawyer who once served as counsel to South African activist Nelson Mandela, bubbles with enthusiasm when he discusses the proposed court.

"I regard this as one of the most dramatic developments in international human rights law in generations, and international criminal law in particular for the last 55 years."

Warren Allmand, a former Liberal cabinet minister and current president of Montreal-based Rights and Democracy organization, said his group and the University of British Columbia belong to an international coalition that includes hundreds of non-governmental organizations that pushed initially for the Rome statute.

They now are leading the charge for ratification and implementation by the signatories.

"Canada was 14th to ratify, but first to ratify as well as pass implementation legislation," said Allmand.

The implementation process for each country involves amending criminal codes, extradition acts, armed services acts and other statutes, he explained.

Rights and Democracy, together with the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform at the University of B.C., produced a manual showing other nations the way for ratification and implementation.

"The Canadian government has shown a leadership role in the world on this issue," said Allmand. "Canada was the first country to put through a law on ratification and implementation. Their legislation we've been using as a model."

Joanne Lee, a PhD. candidate at the UBC centre who helped produce the manual, has been taking it around the world.

"This manual is considered the best introduction to the technical details on how to ratify and implement the Rome statute," says Lee.

The ICC would be more sweeping and international in scope than tribunals now in existence, such as the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in the Netherlands.

That court is an inter-state system that deals with a complaint by one state against another and in which both states must consent to the proceedings.

It would also differ from tribunals, such as the Rwandan and Yugoslavian War Crimes Tribunals, which are set up under UN regulations for specific situations.

Milosevic, known as the 'Butcher of Belgrade,' is currently undergoing pre-trial appearances before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

There is yet a third type of hearing, such as occurred when the Lockerbie bombers were brought to trial. In that case, the two parties - Libya and the U.S. - had to agree to a trial but the venue was in a third locale, Scotland.

Cotler and Lee concede terrorism wasn't included when the Rome statute was hammered out three years ago, but they haven't lost hope.

"In the list of crimes against humanity and war crimes, many would cover terrorist things, so it's possible to catch people under a so-called maybe," said Cotler, noting that in Canada's current anti-terrorism bill, C-36, many things that people would consider terrorist activities are already in the Criminal Code, such as hate crimes and murder.

Lee said there have been scholarly disputes about how the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. would be treated through the International Criminal Court.

"If we had the court on Sept. 11, there are two schools of thought," she said. "One is that what happened in U.S. constituted a crime against humanity and could have been prosecuted as such if you could prove there was an organization behind it."

But another group believes the Sept. 11 attack wouldn't fit the definition of crimes against humanity, she said.

"The final treaty in Rome was a compromise," said Lee, "the bare minimum that 120 countries (in attendance) could agree to. So they picked the most serious crimes that nobody could possibly dispute were international crimes."

But seven years after the treaty comes into force there will be a conference to discuss including more crimes, and terrorism and drug trafficking are among them, said Lee.

Many of the so-called rogue countries, such as Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iran have not ratified the treaty, which may be a concern in terms of international effectiveness.

Allmand said that if a country has not ratified the statute and a crime is committed on its territory by individuals of another country that has ratified, the individuals can be brought to court by the ratifying nation.

"If Germany invaded Belgium and Belgium had ratified and Germany had not, and Germany committed war crimes on Belgium territory, you can still try the Germans."

"Or, if there are Belgians in Germany and war crimes are committed against Belgians, you could try Germany."

Allmand concedes the statute is "not as complete as we would like it and our aim is to get more than 100 ratifications."

Another important feature of the implementing legislation for each country that ratifies the statute is the "principle of complementarity." It gives states the primary responsibility to prosecute the most serious crimes, allowing the court to step in if the states fail their duty.

Cotler also expresses disappointment but understanding that the United States has not come on board.

The United States believes, said Cotler, that it is the world's greatest democracy with the best legal system "and why should they subordinate that system to an international legal system."

Secondly, said Cotler, the treaty means that a country not only becomes party to an international agreement, but the treaty could subject U.S. nationals to prosecution before the court.

Cotler also noted that at the last meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission, the United States was not re-elected, but "one of the great human rights violators in world, Sudan, was elected."

"So the U.S. says, 'If this is the universe we're living in, we're not sure we want to be part of this international system.'"

-------- terrorism

Poll: Americans still behind Bush

USA Today
11/06/2001
By Richard Benedetto, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm

WASHINGTON - Public support for President Bush and the progress of the war against terrorism remains high, despite media reports that suggest citizen patience might be wearing thin, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows.

At the same time, solid majorities remain confident that the United States will remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and capture elusive terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

The Friday-Sunday poll shows strong support not only for Bush's handling of the war, but also for his management of the economy and his response to the recent incidents related to anthrax.

- 87% approve of Bush's handling of his job overall.

- 87% approve of his handling of military action to fight terrorism.

- 75% approve of his response to recent threats of anthrax.

- 71% approve of his handling of the economy.

The numbers run contrary to media speculation over the past week that apparent lack of progress in the terrorism fight, coupled with continuing anthrax scares, might cause public support for the effort to drop sharply.

"Journalists listen to the media talking heads, but the public has a way of screening them out," says Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

The strong support for Bush on the economy is surprising since the poll was taken immediately after news reports last Friday that 400,000 Americans lost jobs last month and unemployment jumped to 5.4%, a five-year high. It suggests that despite the bad news, most continue to rally around the president on issues that are not directly war related.

"We're still at a point in a national crisis when the public will stand behind any president," Lichter says

As the air war intensifies, 86% say they approve of the current U.S. military action in Afghanistan. And 66% favor sending large numbers of ground troops into battle there.

Overall, 79% say they are satisfied with the progress so far in the U.S. military war in Afghanistan.

- 66% are confident that bin Laden will be captured or killed.

- 83% are confident that the U.S. will be able to remove the Taliban from power.

- 62% are confident the U.S. will destroy all terrorist operations in Afghanistan.

Moreover, those who favor a diplomatic or economic solution to the war are in a distinct minority.

- 89% say the government should use military force to combat terrorism.

- 6% say use diplomatic or economic efforts.

On the question of anthrax which has dominated domestic news coverage over the past three weeks, Americans are worried, but not panicky.

About one in three - 29% - say it's likely that someone in their family will be exposed to anthrax, up from 20% two weeks ago.

And a similar one in three - 35% - are worried that someone in their family will be exposed to anthrax through the mail.

- 27% say they are handling their mail more carefully

- 22% say they are seriously considering it.

- 50% say they are not seriously considering or haven't thought about it.

But in the face of worries, Americans are putting up a brave front. A solid 80% say they are confident in the U.S. government's ability to respond effectively to health threats posed by anthrax.

On whether public government warnings of possible new terrorist attacks are a good thing, 55% say they have mostly helped people, while 40% say they have just scared people.

But rather than drop them, 71% say continue to issue public alerts without any details.

The Nov. 2-4 poll of 1,012 adults has an error margin of +/-3 percentage points on most questions; +/- 5 points on Bush approval and personal worry questions.

------

B-52s hit Taliban lines hard in the north

USA Today
11/06/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/05/attacks.htm

JABAL SARAJ, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. warplanes bombarded Taliban front lines, while the opposition pressed its attack Monday on three fronts near Mazar-e-Sharif - but the rebel fighters conceded they were facing stiff Taiban resistance around the key northern city. At the other main front, north of Kabul, deposed Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani and other opposition leaders reviewed their troops at this dusty outpost and declared they would soon march on the capital, 45 miles away.

"You are bravely defending your country against the evil triangle of Pakistan, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden," a senior commander, Bismillah Khan, told the fighters. The Afghan opposition has long been hostile to Pakistan, which - though now supporting the air campaign - was the Taliban's staunchest ally until Sept. 11.

President Bush launched airstrikes against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the ruling Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his alleged role in the September terrorist attacks in the United States.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, B-52 bombers and other U.S. warplanes hammered away at Taliban positions Monday near the southern city of Kandahar and outside the northern city of Taloqan, once the opposition's capital but now held by the Taliban.

In other developments:

- A small group of American military personnel is in Tajikistan assessing the possibility of using at least three bases there to expand the U.S. bombing campaign and strengthen support for Afghan opposition forces, a U.S. official said Monday.

- American planes dropped 34,000 packets of food over Afghanistan overnight, bringing the total number of rations dropped so far to more than 1.2 million.

- Taliban chief spokesman Amir Khan Muttaqi said the Islamic militia was "preparing for a long war" and again challenged the United States to send in ground troops "to fight us face to face."

- About 6,500 Afghans have poured into an Iranian-run camp, doubling the number of refugees crowding the desert outpost just across the border in Afghanistan, officials said Monday.

Despite the U.S. bombardment, fighters of the northern alliance have been unable to advance on the fronts outside Kabul or around Mazar-e-Sharif, where Taliban defenses are well outside the city.

On Monday, U.S. aircraft were heavily pounding Taliban positions around Mazar-e-Sharif, an opposition spokesman said, while the rebel forces were struggling in a three-pronged offensive launched over the weekend in a bid to take the city before winter sets in.

The U.S. jets were flying in waves of four to six planes, spokesman Ashraf Nadeem said. "Every 15 minutes they are bombing," he said. "They drop the bombs and then come back."

Nadeem, speaking by telephone to The Associated Press in Uzbekistan, said one column led by Uzbek leader Rashid Dostum was making no progress. Another column regained several miles of territory lost to the Taliban and had cut the road from Mazar-e-Sharif to Sar-i-Pul, 80 miles to the southwest, he said.

Opposition leaders sought to inspire their troops and raise morale with Monday's parade at Jabal Saraj. Opposition soldiers, decked out in fresh uniforms, shouted "God is great" as at least three U.S. bombs exploded on Taliban positions across the nearby Shomali plain.

Flags fluttered in the brisk wind and old Soviet tanks fired practice rounds into arid hillsides north of Kabul in a display of strength.

"Your jihad (holy war) is right," Rabbani, the titular head of the northern alliance, told the troops. "You can save the world from terrorism."

U.S. officials have confirmed sending more special forces into Afghanistan to help coordinate airstrikes and provide other assistance to the opposition.

As part of that effort, a team of five U.S. military personnel landed at a new airstrip in Golbahar, not far from the front line, "to help coordinate efforts in the war," opposition interior minister Yunis Qanoni said. He said the men arrived Sunday from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, in a twin-engine plane. They were expected to study the new dirt landing strip to see if it's ready to handle supplies.

The supply route for the northern alliance, which snakes through the formidable mountains from Tajikistan to the north, has already been snowed over.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who wrapped up a tour of Central and South Asia on Monday, said the military operation in Afghanistan was becoming more effective and would not take years to complete.

Speaking in India, Rumsfeld said it is impossible to defend every possible target where terrorists may strike, so "the only way to do it is to take the battle to them." With more U.S. military teams on the ground in Afghanistan to direct airstrikes, "the effectiveness of bombing is improving every day."

Other U.S. officials have said the campaign against terrorism is global and could last well after the end of fighting in Afghanistan.

The Taliban-controlled Bakhtar News Agency claimed bombs killed 10 people and injured 15 others in a village outside Mazar-e-Sharif. Five people died and seven were wounded in a raid near the southern city of Kandahar, it said.

The reports could not be independently confirmed. The Pentagon has repeatedly dismissed the Taliban's claims of widespread civilian casualties as lies.

---

Afghan opposition claims capture of towns

USA Today
11/06/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/nphoto.htm

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) - Backed by heavy U.S. bombing, Afghan opposition forces claimed the capture Tuesday of several key towns on the road to Mazar-e-Sharif in their first reported significant advance against Taliban defenses. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said an assessment of the claimed move against the strategic northern city would have to wait until the "dust settled" and there was a pause in the fighting. Even if true, it would mean opposition forces were several dozen miles away across mountainous terrain from Mazar-e-Sharif, with winter closing in.

But after seesawing battles south of Mazar-e-Sharif in recent weeks, the opposition said intense strikes by American planes helped open the way for Tuesday's advance. The alliance had complained earlier that U.S. bombing was not heavy enough.

U.S. jets also hit Taliban positions on another main front of the war, north of the capital, Kabul, dropping more than a dozen bombs and raising black smoke over the valley.

Rumsfeld said U.S. military planners hope that American help to the opposition alliance - including weapons and ammunition - will unite its factions so "that we will see more success" on the ground.

President Bush launched airstrikes against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the ruling Taliban militia refused to hand over Osama bin Laden for his alleged role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In other developments:

- Bush pledged "to keep relentless military pressure" on bin Laden and the Taliban, saying it is essential to keep terrorists from acquiring nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

- Germany said it would commit 3,900 troops for the U.S. war on terrorism, opening the way for the nation's widest-ranging military engagement since World War II. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said there are no immediate plans to deploy ground troops.

- Rumsfeld said the United States extracted Hamid Karzai, a southern opposition leader, from Afghanistan over the weekend. Taliban forces had been chasing Karzai as he tried to rally support among ethnic Pashtun tribes for an alternative to the Taliban.

- The Bush administration said it will help Pakistan stop smugglers from trucking weapons across its porous border with Afghanistan, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan said.

The Northern Alliance, which launched a three-pronged attack Sunday toward Mazar-e-Sharif, seized Ogopruk and two other towns in a pre-dawn assault, said Ashraf Nadeem, an opposition spokesman. The area is 45 miles south of Mazar-e-Sharif.

"We attacked while the Americans were bombing," Nadeem said in a satellite telephone interview. "It was not only us who killed. It was mostly the Americans."

In recent weeks both sides have taken and lost villages around Mazar-e-Sharif. Retaking the city, which the Taliban captured from the opposition in 1998, would likely lead to the collapse of the Islamic militia's power in the northern region.

Nadeem claimed 300 Taliban defenders died and 300 defected to the opposition during Tuesday's fighting. Five opposition fighters were killed and nine wounded, he said. His account could not be independently verified, and there was no comment from the Taliban on the claims.

The towns' capture allowed opposition forces to push Tuesday toward Shol Ghar, and heavy fighting was reported about 30 miles southeast of Mazar-e-Sharif, Nadeem said.

Rumsfeld declined to confirm the claims of an opposition advance. "There are so many reports about this village or that village," he said. "I like to let the dust settle and see where it is at the end of some period of time after there has been a pause."

The United States wants the Afghan opposition, a loose coalition of fighters dominated by ethnic minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, to make significant gains ahead of winter. Fighting traditionally tapers off then because snow closes roads and hampers the resupply of troops.

At the front line north of Kabul, U.S. jets targeted Taliban-held territory Tuesday near the Bagram air base and later the villages of Khan Agha and Barikab, and black smoke blanketed the area.

On the ground nearby, shots rang out on each side of the front. Opposition fighters say Taliban fire has lessened in recent days, but some say the lull is a sign the Taliban is saving ammunition to repel a large opposition advance.

Beyond a row of abandoned buildings, Taliban soldiers in baggy shirts and pants could be seen pacing, Kalashnikov rifles slung over their shoulders.

Zaubet, a 19-year-old opposition fighter, said he had seen the Taliban bringing in men and supplies in pickup trucks in the past few days.

In Kabul on Tuesday, Taliban gunners opened fire at what appeared to be a small U.S. spy plane that cruised over the city at mid-afternoon.

Later, puffs of black smoke could be seen in the southern outskirts of the city. Taliban gunners fired repeated bursts of anti-aircraft rounds, but it was unclear whether they hit anything.

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Blair will urge Bush to accept Europe's help

The Independent
By Stephen Castle in Brussels and Andrew Grice
06 November 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=103397

Tony Blair will press President George Bush tomorrow to accept more European help in the war in Afghanistan to head off growing frustration over America's apparent indifference to international offers of military support.

The "council of war" held by seven EU countries in Downing Street on Sunday, which reiterated European backing for America, underlined the impatience of some nations that have made public offers of military support. And it also caused a row about who should be invited to such talks.

The Prime Minister is sympathetic to offers by Italy, Spain and the Netherlands to join Britain, France and Germany in providing support for the American-dominated action in Afghanistan. He will ask Mr Bush to accept more back-up from EU countries when the two leaders meet at the White House tomorrow night.

British ministers said the move would highlight the strength of the international coalition against terrorism. They also said EU countries that had taken "difficult" decisions to offer forces should now be allowed to deploy them.

One senior official said: "The more people invited to partake, the more of a stake they have in the operation and the more support they are going to give to it." One or two countries, which have been "courageous" in making their pledges, need them to be taken seriously by America for the sake of domestic public opinion, he added.

Sunday night's discussion also agreed on the need to press the United States and all interested parties to increase efforts to push forward the Middle East peace process.

The meeting helped underscore support for the US, but it also caused continuing fears that European policy is being driven by the Britain, France and Germany. That has raised particular concerns in Italy and Spain, the two other EU nations which have most publicly pledged military support, and in the Netherlands, which is in talks on possible contributions with American officials.

To the embarrassment of Downing Street, the guestlist for Sunday's meeting had to be expanded several times to avoid a re-run of the row that overshadowed last month's EU summit in Ghent, when Britain, France and Germany held a pre-summit meeting to discuss the military campaign.

Originally Mr Blair was scheduled to meet only his French and German counterparts. At the weekend, Washington indicated it would take up Italy's offer to contribute forces, giving the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, a pretext to force his way onto Downing Street's invitation list.

Italy's inclusion prompted further invitations to Spain, whose Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, has also pledged support, and Belgium, which holds the EU's rotating presidency. In a further embarrassment to Downing Street the guest list had to be expanded to include Wim Kok, the Dutch Prime Minister, who announced his intention to attend. He told reporters of the chaotic background to the meeting: "I heard in the course of the afternoon, actually the second half of the afternoon, that the field of participants had become broader than originally [planned] and I had a phone call with Prime Minister Blair and I said, 'Listen, what is going to be discussed? Is it going to be an informal meeting? Are you going to brief us and listen to our views?' "

Greece, Portugal and Luxembourg protested yesterday at a meeting of EU ambassadors and Finland also criticised the format of the mini-summit.

The resulting diplomatic mess may be worse than that produced by the Ghent debacle. With Mr Blair and the French President, Jacques Chirac, both visiting Washington this week the Government saw the gathering as an opportunity to co-ordinate positions. But Italy is still fuming about its exclusion from the Ghent meeting and ensured that this omission would not be repeated.

Downing Street said the bigger-than-expected meeting highlighted the unity of EU countries. A spokesman said the talks had been "highly successful" on both terrorism and the Middle East.

While the EU's four neutral countries, Finland, Sweden, Austria and Ireland, are happy to miss military discussions, they are not so relaxed about the idea of other issues, such as the future of Afghanistan and the Middle East peace process, being debated without them.

That feeling is even stronger among small and medium-sized countries such as Greece and Portugal who are also part of Nato. One EU diplomat said: "Some of the issues discussed, including the Middle East peace process, are the same as those which were on the table for last week's general affairs council [of foreign ministers]. This leads to confusion both internally and with our external partners."

A Portuguese cabinet source was quoted as saying such meetings "contribute neither to the cohesion of the anti-terrorist alliance, nor to European unity", and a Finnish official added: "Our position is that this is not the correct way to conduct European affairs."

The presence in London of the Belgian EU presidency and the EU's foreign policy high representative, Javier Solana, seems to have been designed to reassure small countries and give a voice to those not around the table. Ironically, this backfired because their presence added to the impression that this was a formal EU meeting.

British officials are adamant that the mini-summit was primarily about reinforcing Britain's position as a bridge between the EU and the United States. Mr Blair flies to America on Concorde for dinner with Mr Bush tomorrow, after he takes prime minister's questions in the Commons.

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Putin Warns Against 'Double Standards' on Terrorism

World Headlines
Tuesday November 6
Yahoo News
By Clara Ferreira-Marques
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20011106/wl/attack_russia_india_dc_3.html

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that any double standards in the international fight against terrorism could split the global coalition formed after the September 11 attacks on U.S. landmarks.

Putin was addressing journalists after Kremlin talks with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who has embarked on a tour of allies to ensure Delhi's voice is heard on the makeup of any future Afghan government. The Russian leader said after their talks that India's views had to be taken into account.

``A policy of double standards could result in a split of the common international position, and given the seriousness of the situation, this is inadmissible,'' Putin told journalists.

Putin was responding to a question about whether the fight against terrorism applied to areas other than Afghanistan -- including Kashmir, divided between Pakistan and India, and Russia's own separatist Chechnya region.

``There cannot be good and bad terrorists, our terrorists and others,'' Putin said. ``All those who have resorted to arms in order to resolve political disputes, all those organizations, all those structures and individuals who carry out those policies should not be tolerated.''

Putin has often argued that Russia is combating the same international terrorist menace in Chechnya that was behind the attacks on the United States.

Vajpayee, who signed a declaration on terrorism with Putin, called for greater efforts against those resorting to violence.

``The international community cannot tolerate states which assist, support and harbor terrorists and use terrorism as an instrument of their state policy,'' Vajpayee said.

India accuses key U.S. ally Pakistan of sponsoring terrorism in the Indian-held part of Kashmir and is keen to ensure that Pakistan does not dictate the makeup of a new Afghan government.

AGREEMENT THAT INDIA MUST BE HEARD

Putin said that as a regional player India's standpoint was important. But he said Vajpayee had agreed with the principle of discussing Afghanistan's future within the ``six-plus-two'' group organized by the United Nations -- which includes Russia, the United States and Afghanistan's neighbors, but not India.

``We reached agreement with the Indian prime minister that a six-plus-two arrangement can and should be employed, but at the same time India must have the opportunity to be more involved,'' Putin said. ``The Indian voice must be heard when solving the problem of Afghanistan.''

Both Russia and India have fully backed U.S.-led strikes against Afghanistan, which is refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant suspected of being the mastermind behind September's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Russia and India, longstanding allies during the Cold War, have passed through a period of cooler relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But since Putin's arrival in the Kremlin, Russia has rejuvenated ties with what was traditionally a key military and trade partner.

During Vajpayee's visit, the two countries have proceeded with an agreement on nuclear cooperation first signed when Putin traveled to India last year.

The accord includes construction of the Kudankulam power station in southern India, a $2.7 billion project funded by the Indian government and by soft credits from Russia.

Vajpayee said India's $1.75 billion investment in the Sakhalin-1 oil project off Russia's Pacific coast underscored improved cooperation. Officials in Delhi expect the venture will provide between 2.5 and five million tons of crude annually.

Vajpayee will visit President Bush in the United States and attend a session of the U.N. General Assembly before flying to London to meet Prime Minister Tony Blair.

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Elusive War Against Terrorism Isn't Unprecedented

New York Newsday
November 6, 2001
By Steven Lubet
Steven Lubet is a professor of law at Northwestern University.
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vplub062450056nov06.story?coll=ny%2Dviewpoints%2Dheadlines

NOW THAT ground troops have seen their first action in Afghanistan, and as anthrax-laced envelopes continue to arrive at government and media offices, there can be no doubt that our nation has entered a protracted war against an elusive enemy.

In nearly every public pronouncement, the Bush administration has emphasized that this will be a "different kind of war" to be fought with unconventional means. In the words of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: "There is not going to be a D-Day, as such, and I'm sure there will not be a [surrender] ceremony on the Missouri."

The greatest difference, of course, is that we are not fighting against a nation, or even a group of nations. Instead, our enemy is an international terrorist network, evidently headquartered in Afghanistan, but with clandestine cells spread across the globe. No single attack can defeat such a decentralized, loosely organized enemy.

There is no template or model for fighting this war, but it turns out that it is not completely unprecedented. History has seen at least one other protracted military campaign against a murderous international network that victimized innocent civilians. And while the comparison is not precise, there are still lessons that may be drawn.

Beginning in 1807, Great Britain embarked upon a "war" against the trans-Atlantic slave trade that lasted for well over 50 years. We can call it a war because the British used the Royal Navy, and occasionally land forces, to pursue, capture and sometimes destroy the slavers and their resources. We can also draw an analogy between 19th-century slave traders and 21st-century terrorists, and not only because both targeted innocent populations. To defenseless men and women in chains, what was slavery if not a form of terror?

Even more relevant is that the slavers acted privately, in the sense that they were not employed or directed by any nation. Each slave ship can be thought of as a separate cell, indeed a floating cell, only loosely tied to a central authority. The slave trade was, in fact, a vast, international, criminal network supported and encouraged by many states but acting independently of any government.

At first, the British limited their efforts to the interception of individual slave ships, attempting to capture them at sea. The slave captains were charged with piracy and brought to trial in ports such as Havana and Sierra Leone. This early endeavor at international justice had relatively little impact on the slave trade, since the Atlantic coastlines of Africa and the Americas proved virtually impossible to patrol. The great majority of slave ships managed to evade capture or to frustrate successful prosecution.

Thwarted in their efforts at interdiction, the British employed a more direct approach. They began to bombard the baracoons, or slave forts, on the West African coast. By going to the very source of the evil, the Royal Navy solved the problems that had rendered arrest and prosecution so ineffective. The destruction of the baracoons damaged the slave trade more thoroughly than any conceivable number of naval patrols.

Unfortunately, diplomatic pressure forced the British to call off their military raids. Too many interests - both European and African - had a financial stake in the slave trade. As one sorrowful measure of retreat, the number of slaves transported to Cuba more than doubled in a single year.

Diplomacy was always important to the British as essential to their geopolitical strategy. It was also argued that the slave trade could not be suppressed without the cooperation of nations such as the United States, France, Spain and Portugal. The paradox, of course, was that several of these countries, most notably Spain and Portugal, depended on the slave trade for revenue and colonial labor. Thus, the British spent decades attempting to bring the "sponsors of slavery" into a grand anti-slaving coalition.

The successes of this policy were often paper-thin, resulting in a number of unenforceable treaties and declarations. The failures of the policy suffered the Middle Passage. As many as 2 million slaves arrived in Cuba and Brazil between 1807 and 1860. No one knows how many died on the journey.

To their enormous moral credit, the British persevered. The Atlantic slave trade more or less ended by the time of the American Civil War, more than 50 years after the first attempts to stop it. Tragically, the enslavement of Africans continued. It continues even today.

And the lessons from the first international war against terror? There are two. First, diplomacy, coalition building and law enforcement all have their uses. Second, extraordinary evil must be combated with extraordinary measures.

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FROM THE HEARTLAND
Security Begins at Home
Our enemy is effective because it is decentralized. But then so are we.

Wall Street Journal
BY THOMAS J. BRAY
Tuesday, November 6, 2001
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/tbray/?id=95001423

With President Bush planning to spend more time speaking about war aims, it's clear the administration hopes to reassure Americans that it is on top of things, both at home and abroad.

But it's not clear that the public is quite as worried as the politicians and press are. Last week, after a flight to San Francisco, my wife and I arrived to TV monitors blaring news that Gov. Gray Davis had ordered extra security on the city's major bridges. By the time we checked into the hotel, the local news was interviewing people who drive across those bridges.

"My message to Osama is: Come and get me," a man shouted as he pulled his sport-utility vehicle into a tollbooth at the Golden Gate Bridge. One woman, asked what she planned to do, thought about it for a moment and then offered up an all-American answer: "Drive faster, I guess." Traffic on the bridges continued at close to normal levels.

The Taliban may be dogged, but Americans can be pretty dogged too. And actions speak louder than words--as George W. Bush himself showed last week. The best throw among some superb pitching in the World Series came when Mr. Bush himself coolly walked out to the mound at Yankee Stadium, wound up and tossed a perfect strike. The main point, as my wife aptly noted, was that "he's out there at the ballpark. Osama's in his cave."

It takes a certain amount of sangfroid to opt for freedom over security, of course. The natural instinct is to run for cover, pull in the horns or turn to mommy for comfort. In a talk to a local group recently, I noted that the most dangerous part of an airplane trip is still the ride to the airport. But I could tell from the looks on their faces that statistically correct points don't cut much mustard by themselves.

As students of risk management have long observed, people feel a sense of control when behind the wheel of their own car. They don't feel in control when riding in the back a plane. The perceived risk is very different.

This white-knuckle syndrome is something to which the White House will have to pay attention. FDR was hugely popular because he invented all sorts of programs to cope with the Depression. Never mind that the programs didn't do much good and indeed may have made matters worse. People just felt better thinking that somebody had a plan. Trust in government soared.

That's not to suggest that Mr. Bush should start delivering fireside chats. But Mr. Bush could start drilling home the Tocquevillean point that our federal political system, as well as our highly decentralized economic system, offers an excellent way to meet the highly decentralized, highly ambiguous threat of terrorism.

The airport-security debate shows that the president himself understands this. So far he is sticking by the principle that federal oversight, rather than nationalization, is the way to go. Lay down standards, then hold people accountable. It was a federal bureaucracy, choking on its own information flow, that let the terrorists slip by in the first place. Those reputed $6-an-hour security guards with their ill-fitting uniforms and bored looks may not have been always reassuring to travelers, but it's worth noting that prior to Sept. 11 there had been no hijackings in America for almost a decade.

Mr. Bush, like any war president, has accumulated a tremendous reservoir of goodwill in the early days. He should use it now to insist that the war will mainly be won at the grass roots by the people and their communities--and that the result will be a more resilient and thus more secure America. If he does this he will help restore the economy, as well win the war against fear.

There is obviously a big role for the federal government, among other things in safeguarding the borders and coordinating intelligence. But why shouldn't Gray Davis decide if there is reason to guard California bridges? As long he is also responsible for financing such decisions--and as long as Washington doesn't suck up all the resources for itself--he is likely to exercise better judgment than far-off politicians in Washington. If he doesn't, California voters can toss him out of office.

On the economic front, the Bush team needs to rally around those on Capitol Hill who want to reduce marginal tax rates rather than those who want to spend more and hand out rebates in the name of stimulus. This would have the effect of shoring up community and improving America's resilience.

At first such an approach may not seem to offer the degree of control that Americans may be seeking in their first direct engagement with worldwide terrorism. But Big Government--big, clumsy, overextended government--offers only an illusion of control. Calling on the bravery and ingenuity of the American people offers the best guarantee of long-term success. If this is indeed a new kind of war, and if all Americans are now on the front line, then it's time to consider new ways in which we mobilize on the home front.

Mr. Bray is a staff columnist at the Detroit News. His OpinionJournal.com column appears Tuesdays.

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Bin Laden's terror will outlast him

The Times
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 06 2001
BY PHILIP WEBSTER AND RICHARD BEESTON
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001380016-2001383749,00.html

JACK STRAW today gives warning that terrorist atrocities could be carried out in the name of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda even after he is captured or killed.

In remarks believed to reflect fears in Western intelligence organisations that bin Laden will have given orders for further attacks in the event of his being captured or killed in Afghanistan, Mr Straw says that he has always worked on the basis that terrorist cells operating under al-Qaeda's umbrella would continue for a period after the destruction of the network in Afghanistan.

The Foreign Secretary opens up a new front against bin Laden in an interview with The Times , declaring that bin Laden's only religion is terrorism. The comments mark the start of an offensive to attempt to demolish bin Laden's claim that he is fighting a holy war.

Mr Straw calls him psychotic and paranoid, and says that the way the network is so focused on him is "similar to the Nazi phenomenon".

The Foreign Secretary's interview comes as another frantic week of diplomatic activity gets under way. General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, will make an unexpected visit to Britain on Thursday, a sign that discussions on the future shape of a successor regime to the Taleban are reaching a crucial stage.

General Musharraf will see Tony Blair hours after the Prime Minister returns from a short visit to Washington for talks with President Bush on the war and the Middle East peace process. King Abdullah of Jordan will also be in London on Thursday.

Mr Straw will next weekend address the United Nations General Assembly at a meeting postponed from late September because of the attacks on America.

Saying that the UN's time has now come, he will urge it to play a strengthened role in establishing the political future of Afghanistan, a reconstruction programme for the country, and the counter-terrorism programme.

Declaring that bin Laden "will get caught in the end", Mr Straw admits that there were danger signs two or three weeks ago that the West was losing the propaganda battle. That had changed because of improvements in the West's performance and mistakes by bin Laden, notably the weekend video in which he claimed that the United Nations was against Muslims, the Foreign Secretary says.

The video, Mr Straw says, shows a "degree of hatred of humankind that is impossible to avoid".

It shows the mindset of someone "whose theology is terror". Mr Straw adds that bin Laden's "religion is not Islam. His religion is terrorism. It is the religion of terrorism with which we are in conflict."

Mr Straw says that the biggest challenge in winning the battle for hearts and minds has been to move from the widespread denunciation of terrorism to concentrate on attacking what bin Laden stands for. "We are seeing the beginnings of that now," he says.

He welcomes the rejection of bin Laden's message from the chief of the Arab League.

Asked about bin Laden's state of mind, Mr Straw says that he is psychotic and paranoid. "Those words exist to describe people like this - their complete detachment from the suffering of others and their absolute faith, conviction and obsession with the rightness of what they are saying."

Mr Straw hints at a toughening of sanctions against Iraq, but makes it plain that Britain is still opposed to extending the military conflict to attack Saddam Hussein.

Asked about the possibility of atrocities continuing after the apprehension of bin Laden, the Foreign Secretary says that they cannot be ruled out and that people must always be on the alert.

"In that situation you would have to look to see whether it was the work of an isolated fragmentary group operating in the country of attack or whether it was part of a wider active network operating from another country.

"What you do next would depend on the evidence. We are in the realms of speculation.

"What we know from the way terrorist groups have operated in the past, even when they have been destroyed, is that those still at large may decide to carry out some further acts of terrorism."

Asked whether bin Laden was irreplaceable, the Foreign Secretary said that no one was. "But he is of great importance in this movement. It has been so focused on his personality. To that extent it is similar to the Nazi phenomenon."

Mr Blair meanwhile linked the defeat of international terrorism to the state of the world economy.

In his speech to the CBI in Birmingham yesterday the Prime Minister said that the campaign against terrorism was not only essential to prevent further atrocities and bring bin Laden to justice, but would be "a win for the economy too".

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[Could Bush/Cheney be psychotic? et]

"[A] key characteristic of people who are psychotic and paranoid is the sense of complete detachment from the suffering of others. They are absorbed and obsessed with their own rightness and of what they are saying."

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Straw: Terrorism may outlive bin Laden

November 6, 2001
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/nobyline-2001116113614.htm

LONDON, Nov. 6 -- British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in an interview published Tuesday the death or capture of accused terrorist leader Osama bin Laden probably would not end terrorism by his al Qaida organization.

Straw also told The Times newspaper in London he believed bin Laden was suffering from "psychosis." The reclusive Saudi millionaire "is obviously psychotic, and paranoid as well," Straw said.

He insisted bin Laden eventually would be caught but added that act would not mean an end to the terrorism bin Laden has spearheaded, including, according to U.S. officials, the hijacked airliner attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington.

The Times said Straw's remarks were believed to reflect fears in Western intelligence organizations that bin Laden will have given orders for further attacks in the event of his being captured or killed in Afghanistan.

"In that situation," Straw said, "you would have to look to see whether it (terrorism) was the work of an isolated fragmentary group operating in the country of attack or whether it was part of a wider active network operating from another country."

"What we know from the way terrorist groups have operated in the past, even when they have been destroyed," the foreign secretary said, "is that those still at large may decide to carry out some further acts of terrorism."

Straw said bin Laden was not irreplaceable in the al Qaida organization, "but he is of great importance in this movement." "It has been so focused on his personality," he said. "To that extent, it is similar to the Nazi phenomenon" under Adolf Hitler.

Straw told The Times that in describing the alleged terrorist leader as psychotic, "I am picking my words with care here because whenever you use the language of mental illness, you get letters from people." "But these words exist to describe people like this," he said. "Because a key characteristic of people who are psychotic and paranoid is the sense of complete detachment from the suffering of others.

"They are absorbed and obsessed with their own rightness and of what they are saying," he said.

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On the Home Front, a Winnable War

New York Times
November 6, 2001
By BRUCE ACKERMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/opinion/06ACKE.html

NEW HAVEN -- Perhaps a simple distinction can help resolve many of the perplexities of life in our brave new world. Despite the panic of the moment, our domestic problems are manageable, if not completely solvable. But our international problems are utterly intractable, and the sooner we recognize this, the better.

These facts should shape our basic response. We should be seriously engaged in antiterrorism efforts at home but we should satisfy ourselves with limited victories abroad, because ridding the world of terrorism is quite another matter.

It would be a mistake to exaggerate the long-term threat on the home front. In contrast to Israel, Ireland or Spain, we are not confronting a group of terrorists with significant support in our society. Al Qaeda is in the unenviable position of projecting a small number of its partisans into a distant and uncongenial place.

This is a more difficult task than the one taken on by the Soviet Union during the cold war. Soviet agents were probably more numerous on our shores then than agents working for Al Qaeda are now, and the K.G.B. could offer them much greater support. Yet the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation managed to contain that grave threat. These agencies can do it again. The accompanying challenge - difficult but not impossible - is to preserve civil liberties in the process.

In other countries, members of left-wing cells have been willing to risk their lives while engaging in high-visibility acts of terror. One example was the group that kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro, one of Italy's leading politicians. Yet Western societies showed a remarkable capacity to endure these shocks without permanent damage. Moreover, the terrorists of the last generation could at least appeal to old-time Marxists, while almost nobody in the West thrills to the prospect of an Islamic republic.

I do not mean to minimize the attacks of Sept. 11. And I do not deny that other attacks may well occur - perhaps committed by home-grown extremists. But with serious effort, the domestic war on terrorism seems relatively winnable. We will never return to the days of precious invulnerability we knew before the World Trade Center towers fell. But we will learn to live with the new risks, much as Londoners have learned to live with acts of terrorism by the Irish Republican Army over the past quarter-century. In time, we will learn how to minimize these risks.

In contrast, the international prospect is very grim. Even if we catch and kill Osama bin Laden, others will take his place. While we will undoubtedly disrupt Al Qaeda over time, other networks will fill the vacuum. The truth is that there are millions of fundamentalist sympathizers in the Islamic world, and there is nothing we can do to change this in the short run.

Nor will it be enough for us to force one or another government to crack down on its terrorists. At most, this will simply cause terrorists to move elsewhere. And it is beyond our power to induce a government crackdown everywhere at once. The West is too addicted to Arab oil to sustain such a strategy. No less important, crackdowns could reinforce the autocrats of the Islamic world, making it easier to crush emerging forces of democracy. Our long-run strategies will have to take more comprehensive and constructive forms.

When state-sponsored terrorists strike, it is right and proper for us to retaliate. By all means, bring Osama bin Laden to justice and weaken or destroy the Taliban. But we should not fool ourselves. We should figure out clever ways to declare victory at the first decent opportunity and remove our troops. Lengthy military engagement against shifting targets will simply increase the number and tenacity of the bin Ladens of the future.

This cautious approach has gained a foothold in our law. In responding to the attack on New York and Washington, Congress did not give President Bush carte blanche. To the contrary, it only authorized "all necessary and appropriate force" against those who "aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001."

We should not lose sight of the narrowness of this Congressional mandate. Congress has not authorized the president to expand the battle to include rogue states unless they are clearly linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. Nor has it given him a mandate for further military exercises in Afghanistan once the Taliban are ousted from power. The administration should not be preparing for years of militarized state building in Afghanistan, or taking the war to other rogue states. We should be focusing our energies on securing the home front. That will be challenging enough.

Bruce Ackerman is a professor of law and political science at Yale.

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Fighting bin Ladenism

New York Times
November 6, 2001
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/opinion/06FRIE.html

DOHA, Qatar -- If you want to know why the U.S. is hated in the Arab street, read the recent editorial in the semi-official Egyptian daily, Al Ahram, written by its editor, Ibrahim Nafie. After saying that the U.S. was deliberately making humanitarian food drops in areas of Afghanistan full of land mines, Mr. Nafie added: "Similarly, there were several reports that the [U.S.] humanitarian materials have been genetically treated, with the aim of affecting the health of the Afghan people. If this is true, the U.S. is committing a crime against humanity by giving the Afghan people hazardous humanitarian products."

This was an editorial written by Egypt's leading editor, personally appointed by President Hosni Mubarak. It basically accuses the U.S. of dropping poison food on Afghans - according to unspecified "reports." So is it any wonder that people on the Egyptian street hate us?

This is the game that produced bin Ladenism: Arab regimes fail to build a real future for their people. This triggers seething anger. Their young people who can get visas escape overseas. Those who can't turn to the mosque and Islam to protest. The regimes crush the violent Muslim protesters, but to avoid being accused of being anti-Muslim the regimes give money and free rein to their most hard-line, but nonviolent, Moslem clerics, while also redirecting their public's anger onto America through their press. Result: America ends up being hated and Islam gets handed over to the most anti-modern forces. Have a nice day.

What these Arab regimes still don't get is that Sept. 11 has exposed their game. They think America is on trial now, but in fact it is stale regimes like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which produced the hijackers, that are on trial. Will they continue to let Islam be hijacked by anti-modernists, who will guarantee that the Arab world falls further behind? Will they continue to blame others? Or will they look in the mirror, take on intolerance, and open their societies to a different future?

Here's the good news: Some Arab-Muslim voices are popping up, rejecting the garbage peddled by the regimes. The London-based newspaper Al Hayat just published a letter from an Egyptian film critic, Samir Farid. It said: "I felt ashamed while reading most, if not all, of the commentary [on Sept. 11], primarily in the Egyptian press. . . . Most, if not all, of what I read proves that the poison of the undemocratic, military Arab regimes has also entered the bloodstream of the [intellectual] elite. These [people] no longer see . . . destruction for its own sake as disgraceful. What murky future awaits this region?"

Here in Qatar, on the Persian Gulf, Al Jazeera TV, the freest and most popular in the Arab world, recently ran a debate featuring the liberal Kuwaiti political scientist Shafeeq Ghabra versus an Islamist and a radical Arab nationalist. While the latter two tried to excuse Osama bin Laden, Mr. Ghabra hammered back: "The Lebanese civil war was not an American creation; neither was the Iran-Iraq war; neither was bin Laden. These are our creations. We need to look inside. We cannot be in this blame-others mode forever."

Dr. Abdelhameed al-Ansari, dean of Qatar University's law school, wrote in Al Raya: "How does a terrorist [bin Laden] become a hero? What is happening to the collective Arab outlook? What is happening to our famous Islamic scholars? . . . We should solve this problem from its roots. Education is the key."

While Arab leaders have refused to acknowledge any Palestinian responsibility for the stalemate with Israel, a few weeks ago the Jerusalem-based Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh had the guts to criticize Palestinian strategy: "We're telling the Israelis we want to kick you out: it's not that we want liberation, freedom and independence in the West Bank and Gaza, we want to kick you out of your home. And in order to make sure that the Israelis get the message, people go out to a disco or restaurant and blow themselves up. The whole thing is just crazy, ugly, totally counterproductive. The secret is to get Israelis to side with you. We lost our allies."

The Bush team should tell our Arab partners: Look, we don't need your bases or armies. We just need you to open your societies so the voices of those who want a different Arab future can really be heard. We'll take care of bin Laden - but you have to take care of bin Ladenism.

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BOOKS OF THE TIMES 'HOLY WAR, INC.'
How Osama bin Laden Became a Global Celebrity
Marcie McGallagher/The Free Press HOLY WAR, INC.

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
New York Times
November 6, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/books/06KAKU.html?searchpv=nytToday

Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden
By Peter L. Bergen 283 pages. The Free Press. $26.

CNN's terrorism analyst, Peter L. Bergen, observes in his new book on Osama bin Laden that the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were "the deadliest salvo" yet in a holy war against the United States that began "almost a decade earlier with the little-noticed bombing of a Yemen hotel that housed American soldiers." "An Australian tourist was the sole casualty of that assault," he writes, "but with every passing year the attacks became more sophisticated and more deadly."

Mr. Bergen was part of the CNN team, along with the veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett and the cameraman Peter Jouvenal, that interviewed Mr. bin Laden in 1997, and he tries to cover a lot of ground in this book. In addition to a portrait of the world's most wanted man, he sketches in the history of Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization, profiles its leaders and more prominent members and examines its evolution into a global network that has attracted followers around the world, including in the United States (in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, Virginia and California).

Though much of this book will be familiar to readers who have followed the many reports about Al Qaeda in newspapers and on television in the last two months and though it sheds little new light on the youth and formative experiences of Mr. bin Laden, Mr. Bergen does a succinct job of pulling together a wealth of information into a coherent if sometimes subjective narrative.

It is a narrative that impresses upon the reader the crucial role that the Afghan- Soviet conflict played in radicalizing many Islamic militants, enabling men like Mr. bin Laden to meet important figures from other terrorist organizations, leaving them with the confidence that they could defeat a superpower and replacing the notion of Arab nationalism with that of a larger Islamist movement. It is also a narrative that underscores mistakes made by the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States government in initially assessing the threat posed by Al Qaeda and their miscalculations in dealing with the Afghan-Soviet conflict, most notably, Mr. Bergen contends, in deciding to provide the Mujahedeen with American Stinger missiles and in allowing the Pakistanis to "disproportionately fund the most Islamist factions" in the war and funnel "hundreds of millions of dollars to anti-Western Afghan factions."

Some of Mr. Bergen's findings - along with his grating penchant for describing Mr. bin Laden in flippant terms like a "Pied Piper of jihad" - are bound to provoke controversy. He contests the suggestion made by some writers that Mr. bin Laden went through a period of womanizing and drinking in his youth, arguing that such reports probably confused the young Osama with one of his 20 or so half-brothers.

Mr. Bergen questions the suspicion voiced by some observers that Iraq was involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and plays down the significance of Mohamed Atta's meeting with an Iraqi intelligence agent a year before the Sept. 11 attacks. And he belittles the National Security Agency's expenditure of "billions of dollars every year" to intercept phone calls, arguing that Mr. bin Laden has long been aware of such intercepts and since 1997 has stopped using satellite phones, preferring to deliver his orders via radio or in person.

As for attempts by the United States government to go after Mr. bin Laden's money, Mr. Bergen writes that they have been "largely feel-good measures, with little impact on his finances," since the terrorist leader does not use conventional banks. The new measures to freeze his assets announced by President Bush, he writes, "are no more likely to succeed than those taken by President Clinton three years earlier, following the embassy bombing attacks in Africa."

Like Mary Anne Weaver, who wrote an article about Mr. bin Laden in The New Yorker in January 2000, Mr. Bergen argues that the Clinton administration's reaction to those embassy bombings - including missile attacks on suspected bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan and on an alleged chemical weapons plant in Sudan, as well as indictments of Mr. bin Laden - helped mythologize him, turning him "from a marginal figure in the Muslim world into a global celebrity."

Mr. bin Laden, Mr. Bergen writes, differs from the Arab terrorist leaders of the 70's and 80's not only in his worldwide fame - which his followers have assiduously promulgated by using the Internet to spread his message and recruit followers - but also in espousing a "philosophy that went beyond opposition to Israel and calls for a Palestinian state," a "somewhat coherent ideology of anti-Americanism and opposition to Middle Eastern governments he deems `un-Islamic.' "

Judging from Mr. bin Laden's silence about Hollywood movies and the Western use of drugs and alcohol, Mr. Bergen argues, he "cares little about such cultural issues": "what he condemns the United States for is simple: its policies in the Middle East," namely, "the continued U.S. military presence in Arabia; U.S. support for Israel; its continued bombing of Iraq; and its support for regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia that bin Laden regards as apostates from Islam."

"Bin Laden is at war with the United States," Mr. Bergen goes on, "but his is a political war, justified by his own understanding of Islam, directed at the symbols and institutions of American political power. The hijackers who came to America did not attack the headquarters of a major brewery or AOL Time Warner or Coca-Cola , nor did they attack Las Vegas or Manhattan's West Village or even the Supreme Court. They attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, pre-eminent symbols of the United States' military and economic might. And that fits the patterns of previous Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies, military installations and warships."

Would capturing or killing Mr. bin Laden help bring down Al Qaeda? Though Mr. Bergen says the loss of this terrorist's charismatic leadership and business skills would be a blow, he sounds dubious about the organization's demise: "There are others who would replace him. Standing in the wings are the éminence grise of the group, Ayman al- Zawahiri, as well as his colleague Abu Hafs, Al Qaeda's Egyptian military commander. The latter is now father-in-law of bin Laden's son, Mohammed, who himself might one day lead Al Qaeda. And behind them are the many thousands of members and affiliates of Al Qaeda, not only in Afghanistan but in 60 countries around the world: a Hydra-headed monster."

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AIR RAIDS
U.S. Escalating Efforts to Bomb Taliban Caves

New York Times
November 6, 2001
By ERIC SCHMITT and STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/international/asia/06MILI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - A combination of heavy-duty bombs and more precise target information from Russia and from American Special Operations forces on the ground have helped the United States escalate attacks on caves and tunnels in Afghanistan that have been identified as Taliban arms depots and command centers, military officials said today.

The bombing, which has included the use of 5,000-pound bunker-busters, came as American Special Operations forces deepened their involvement in the conflict. Today, commandos spirited out of southern Afghanistan a prominent opposition leader, Hamid Karzai, who has been trying to organize a rebellion in the Taliban's stronghold, a military official said.

As the campaign entered its fifth week, the United States has been trying to intensify military firepower and psychological pressure on Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

On Sunday, for the first time, the Air Force dropped a 15,000-pound fuel-air explosion bomb on Taliban positions behind the front lines. The weapon, a "Daisy Cutter," was used in the last year of the Vietnam War.

But officials said the key to destroying Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters and supplies hidden in deep cave complexes is the more precise information on targets.

The expansion of Special Operations activity has vastly improved the American military's ability to strike Taliban targets accurately, officials said. Better intelligence from foreign sources has also helped.

A Pentagon official said Russia, whose forces spent a decade fighting in Afghanistan, had specifically helped identify caves, tunnels and other command centers that had been used by Afghan forces.

"The Russians are being very helpful," said a Pentagon official. "There's lots of stuff coming in. The problem now is sifting through it."

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that over the weekend, the United States also doubled the number of Special Operations forces working with Northern Alliance rebels inside Afghanistan to help provide, among other things, accurate information on targets.

"We've gone two and a half times above what we had and we're now, instead of two locations, we're now in four and maybe more," Mr. Rumsfeld said today, adding that most of the Special Operations forces were in the north.

Mr. Rumsfeld said last week that he wanted to quadruple the number of Special Operations forces on the ground. Officials said that would bring the total in the country to about 100 soldiers and officers, which is the number contained in an Army Special Forces company.

"Clearly, the targeting is improving," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "When you're doing it without contact with forces on the ground, and you compare that with doing it with precision weapons and people on the ground who can give you precise coordinates, you just have an enormous advantage."

Mr. Rumsfeld said battlefield assessments from intelligence sources, including spy planes and satellites, showed that the bombing was steadily destroying the Taliban's military.

"There's no question but that the numbers of things - armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces, troop gatherings - that we're targeting, the numbers that we're actually hitting, and know we're hitting, are going up every day," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Mr. Rumsfeld made his comments on his flight back from a four-day trip to Russia, Central Asia, Pakistan and India to consult with allies, negotiate additional basing rights for fighter-bombers and fine-tune strategy.

Today, B-52 bombers and other American aircraft pounded Taliban targets in northeastern Afghanistan, where the Northern Alliance is fighting for control of supply routes into neighboring Tajikistan ahead of winter. Warplanes also hit Taliban forces dug in north of Kabul.

"We continue to strike at Taliban infrastructure wherever possible to wither away the Taliban's ability to regenerate, re-equip and resupply forces in the field as the demanding winter season approaches," said Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, a deputy director of the operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Over generations, the Afghans have become masters at hiding crucial supplies of food, fuel and weapons in hundreds, perhaps thousands of caves around the country. Troops and their commanders use the caves for shelter. By attacking those complexes, the Pentagon is hoping to kill militia fighters and destroy many of their essential supplies.

Warplanes are dropping an array of weapons on the caves and tunnels, ranging from 2,000-pound laser- and satellite-guided bombs, to a small number of 5,000-pound munitions that can burrow down more than four stories before detonating to demolish underground complexes. Air Force F-15E's can also carry a 2,000- pound AGM-130 missile that is guided to its target by a video camera.

Identifying the caves, whose entrances are often camouflaged or tucked into the folds of gullies or hillsides, can be extremely difficult for pilots flying at high altitudes. But Russia and other countries, including Pakistan, Britain and France, have been willing to share considerable information that has helped in finding targets, officials said.

"We have better knowledge now of where these caves are and who or what is inside of them," said a senior military officer. "Some of the intelligence is coming from Special Forces on the ground. Some of it is coming from defectors."

Bombing the caves has also forced the Taliban to move their supplies and command bunkers from the secure hiding places, making them more vulnerable, officials said.

"We are striking at the caves that we have learned that they utilize or have utilized," Admiral Stufflebeem said. "So we believe that we are chipping away at Al Qaeda."

When asked if commandos would at some point conduct raids on some of the cave complexes that bombing fails to destroy, Admiral Stufflebeem said, "All elements of our coalition forces will at some time likely be brought to bear."

In the wake of Mr. Rumsfeld's visit to Central Asia, American inspection teams have been dispatched to Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to assess whether former Soviet bases are usable for American warplanes.

Up to now, the United States has relied mainly on carrier-based aircraft that are hours away from their targets. Basing Air Force fighter- bombers like F-15E's, F-16's and A- 10's at closer Central Asian sites would enable the military to carry out more frequent combat missions.

Those bases might also assist in resupplying rescue missions, although the operation to whisk Mr. Karzai out of southern Afghanistan today was probably initiated from Pakistan or from one of the American vessels offshore. Pentagon officials tonight would not discuss the mission in any detail.

Mr. Rumsfeld said over the weekend that the United States had dropped food and ammunition to Mr. Karzai, and hinted that more help might be on the way. American Special Operations forces had been in contact with Mr. Karzai before today, a Pentagon official said, and there were discussions under way on how to increase the military support. But the official said the Central Intelligence Agency had taken the lead so far in helping organize anti-Taliban resistance in southern Afghanistan.

---

Metro Briefing

New York Times
November 6, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/nyregion/06MBRF.html?searchpv=nytToday

NEW YORK

MANHATTAN: MAN SAID TO KNOW HIJACKER A Jordanian student who attended an American college pleaded not guilty yesterday in federal court in Manhattan to two counts of lying before a grand jury about knowing a man suspected of crashing a jetliner into the Pentagon. Prosecutors have accused the student, Osama Awadallah, who attended college in San Diego at the time of his arrest, of lying about his associations with Khalid al-Midhar, above, one of the people suspected in the hijacking of the jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Mr. Awadallah's lawyer, Jesse Berman, said he would seek his client's release in a bail hearing.

Benjamin Weiser (NYT)

CALENDAR
Tomorrow

HEARING ON CHARITIES FOR TERROR VICTIMS The New York State Assembly has scheduled a hearing on the management of charities for victims of the Sept. 11 terror attack. Assembly hearing room, Room 1923, 19th floor, 250 Broadway, Manhattan, noon. Information: (518) 455-3888.

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Roads to Victory in This War

New York Times
November 6, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/opinion/L06WARR.html

To the Editor:
Re "Guns Won't Win the Afghan War" (Op-Ed, Nov. 4):

John J. Mearsheimer seems to think that we can essentially bribe our way to victory in this war. He argues that we can buy allies and intelligence and that this will enable us to target our enemies effectively. But the people we are fighting are fanatics. Many of the people who support them are fanatics. Fanatics cannot be bought off.

Violent fanatics must be met with violence. Otherwise, they will prevail. We defeated the Nazis with violence in World War II, and now we need to use such violence against Al Qaeda and its supporters, including the Taliban. We need to take the fight to the enemy ourselves. We need a serious war effort.

ERIC BRANDON Winston-Salem, N.C., Nov. 4, 2001

•To the Editor:
John J. Mearsheimer (Op-Ed, Nov. 4) advocates a quaint but wholly inappropriate approach to the war that the United States is now fighting. In the cold war, perhaps his suggestion that we "emphasize ground-level diplomacy, with open wallets" would have been relevant.

But in the war against terrorism, which has hardly begun, and which may involve large military actions against terror-sponsoring states across an entire region, his idea about the first gambit in Afghanistan has no relevance to the danger we find ourselves in.

GARY FRANKFORD Portland, Ore., Nov. 4, 2001

•To the Editor:
John J. Mearsheimer (Op-Ed, Nov. 4) is persuasive in arguing that "massive military force is not a winning weapon" in Afghanistan; "it makes the problem worse." But our recent and historic experience shows that his prescription - covert action, bribery and use of Pakistani intelligence - is unreliable at best.

Now that Osama bin Laden's most recent statement has made it plain that his greatest fear is a true international response led by the United Nations, shouldn't we examine that approach instead?

ROBERT S. NELSON Brooklyn, Nov. 4, 2001

•To the Editor:
Re "Gauging the Use of Ground Troops and the Scale of the Afghan War" (military analysis, Nov. 4):

It would be a terrible shame if our political leadership felt rushed to achieve "results" and therefore decided to put large ground forces into Afghanistan. This member of the public has a simple message: Take your time. Get it right. We are patient.

MICHAEL A. JACOBS Sausalito, Calif., Nov. 4, 2001

•To the Editor:
Re "U.S. Jets Pound Taliban Positions in Heaviest Bombing Yet" (news article, Nov. 5):

Our first goal in the war was to capture Osama bin Laden, which we have not succeeded in doing. Our second goal was to force the Taliban government to turn Osama bin Laden over to us, which we have not succeeded in doing.

Our overall goal is to stop terrorism, but we have been warned about further terrorist attacks. The Afghans will retaliate in kind for the killings in their country, as called for by their tribal code of conduct, no matter how long it takes. But the only means left at their disposal, after we have destroyed all their military capabilities, is terrorism. Thus, we will probably be seeing more terrorism in this country from the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

MICHAEL D. INTRILIGATOR Los Angeles, Nov. 5, 2001 The writer is director, Burkle Center for International Relations, University of California at Los Angeles.

•To the Editor:
Re "Retired Officers Raise Awareness on Television and Hackles at the Pentagon" (news article, Nov. 3):

There have been numerous news reports about the lack of progress in the war campaign. But this is only the fourth week of strikes. The warring peoples of Afghanistan have been embroiled in conflict for years. They are dug in, and they have the advantage of knowing the landscape.

The media and their retired generals should not be undermining the military with second-guessing. Rather, the media need to build on the unity within America by reporting the facts and making sure that the administration is giving the public the information it needs.

KEVIN J. MURRAY Brooklyn, Nov. 4, 2001 The writer is a sergeant in the United States Army military police.


-------- activists

FAX your House Representative in Congress (for free) and urge him/her to oppose H.R. 2983 on the Suspension Calendar at this URL: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/forms/fax/housezip.cfm

Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001
From: "Noel Petrie" <NPETRIE@citizen.org>

Action Alert. Please circulate widely.

On October 31, the House Energy and Commerce Committee marked up H.R. 2983, a bill to reauthorize the Price-Anderson Act.

The Price-Anderson Act was originally enacted in 1957, as a temporary measure in support of the nascent nuclear industry. Nearly 50 years later, this legislation continues to subsidize the nuclear industry by artificially lowering insurance costs and limiting liability of nuclear operators in case of accidents. Reauthorization of the Price-Anderson Act would pave the way for the construction of new nuclear reactors.

At the recent mark-up, Energy Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin announced he would request that the bill be placed on the Suspension Calendar. If Speaker Dennis Hastert agrees to put H.R. 2983 on the Suspension Calendar, no amendments will be allowed and a vote could be held as soon as Tuesday, November 6. 145 votes opposed would be necessary to remove H.R. 2983 from the Suspension Calendar and return it to the normal legislative process where amendments would be allowed.

H.R. 2983 needs amending!

§ The bill does not adequately address heightened concerns about security problems at nuclear power plants. Congress should not promote the construction of additional vulnerable targets.

§ The bill grants special concessions to proposed new Pebble Bed Modular Reactors. If these reactors are "inherently safe," as the industry claims, why do they need subsidized insurance? This section should be removed.

§ The insurance coverage required under the H.R. 2983 grossly understates the calculated cost of a nuclear accident. Premium levels should be raised.

§ The bill reauthorizes the Price-Anderson Act for 15 years. This period should be shortened.

It is inappropriate to determine this significant aspect of nuclear energy policy through a restricted legislative process.

FAX YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TODAY!

Questions about the CMEP-list can be directed to cmep@citizen.org To learn more about this and other issues Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program works on, visit our website at www.citizen.org .

----

WTO chief warns protesters to be wary in Qatar

by Adrian Croft,
Reuters:
6/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13132/story.htm

BRUSSELS - World Trade Organisation chief Mike Moore warned yesterday that peaceful protest at this week's WTO meeting in Qatar could be misinterpreted by security forces in the current tense climate over terrorism.

"The security is going to be absolute and tight and serious," Moore said of the WTO ministerial conference starting on Friday in the Qatari capital Doha.

"I just hope that what could be a prank, a publicity gimmick, doesn't go terribly sour," he said, referring to possible peaceful protests against the trade body.

"I've said to NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and friends - this is very serious. Nobody knows the difference between a boat that's coming ashore to protest and something that could be much uglier," he told Reuters in an interview.

"Be very careful and respect our hosts who are good people and doing their best," said Moore, who was in Brussels to speak at a meeting of trade ministers from the 77-nation African, Caribbean and Pacific group of developing countries.

Ministers from the WTO's 142 member states will try in Doha to agree on an agenda for a new round of global trade liberalisation talks.

Security is expected to be extremely tight after the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities and the retaliatory U.S. strikes on targets in Afghanistan. The November 9-13 Doha meeting was in doubt for a time last month due to security fears.

The last WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle two years ago was marked by huge street demonstrations against globalisation. A meeting of the world's leading industrialised nations in Genoa, Italy, last summer was marred by violence that left one protester dead.

Qatar has said it will allow peaceful demonstrations but will not allow anyone to disrupt the conference. It has limited the number of non-governmental participants to 600.

Environmental group Greenpeace said last month it was sending its flagship, Rainbow Warrior, to Qatar with about 35 activists on board to protest at the WTO meeting. The group said it had official permission.

MAJOR DIFFERENCES

Moore said there were still major differences to be bridged if the Doha conference was to agree on launching new trade negotiations.

Industrialised countries are pressing for a new trade round but some developing countries are reluctant, saying they have seen little benefit from earlier trade liberalisation.

"There are major differences that really only ministers and heads of state can solve. There has to be some flexibility there and really it's a matter, too, of vision," Moore said.

"Do we want a unified world, do we want our international institutions to function or do we allow ourselves to be polarised?...If we believe in a multilateral system...we are going to have to move in the next few days," he said.

Asked if he believed new trade negotiations would be launched in Doha, he said: "I think we can do this. I think it's extremely close. It just needs on all sides a little bit more flexibility and perhaps a little bit more humour and a little bit more humility from everyone."

Some of the major stumbling blocks are over agriculture and the European Union's wish to include environmental issues in new trade talks.

Moore warned that if industrialised nations were frustrated in their wish for a new multilateral trade round they could opt for bilateral trade pacts instead.

"We work by consensus and what worries me is if in the end...countries representing 90 percent of the world's imports and exports, under a reasonable agenda, can't proceed they will do something else," he said.

"Just because the big countries are big countries doesn't always make them automatically wrong," he said.

---

ECOTERRORISTS SPIKE TREES IN NATIONAL FOREST

Environmental News Service
November 6, 2001 (ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-06-09.html

NEZ PERCE NATIONAL FOREST, Idaho, The eco-terrorist group Earth Liberation Front (ELF) has claimed responsibility for "spiking" trees throughout the Otter Wing Timber Sale in the Nez Perce National Forest.

Some anti-logging activists have adopted a technique called spiking trees - driving metal spikes into trees to damage chain saws and other equipment used to log the trees. However, many environmentalists avoid spiking, as it can endanger lumber mill workers if spikes or saw teeth broken by spikes fly into the air.

The anonymous ELF cell said the action was taken in protest of the destruction of public forests by private companies, and the destruction of habitat which affects hundreds of species of fish, insects, birds and mammals.

The group claimed no single area or issue as a sole focus, but included in its message a warning to the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho, stating that "We may feel called to act again. The forest service of Idaho should know that has long as they continue to destroy Idaho's last remaining wildlands, they risk action on behalf of the ELF."

Timber activists have been protesting the Otter Wing sale for years. The sale is removing millions of board feet of lumber from what had been one of the largest remaining roadless areas in the lower 48 states.

"The timber sale program - nothing but a financial drain as well as a ecological disaster - must end," said the anonymous ELF activists. "The Otter Wing Timber sale has destroyed a once pristine ecosystem on the South Fork of the Clearwater River. It is an area which hosted abundant wildlife, such as fish, birds, mammalian predators, ungulates and a beautiful mosaic of different forest vegetative patterns. Now most of that area has been logged - aside from the spiked units."

---

GROUPS PROTEST WARTIME OPPORTUNISM

Environmental News Service
November 6, 2001 (ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-06-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, Citizen advocates converged in Washington, DC on Monday to call on President Bush and Congress to end the outburst of wartime opportunism since the September 11th terrorist attacks.

"Since September 11th, members of Congress have served up a nonstop buffet of corporate pork legislation," said Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and Citizen Works founder. "Under the guise of 'national security' our federal treasury is being raided and democratic rights are being taken away while Congress feeds sympathetic campaign contributors at taxpayer expense, sends working people to fight, and leaves the unemployed, disenfranchised, and American families to suffer."

Organizations in the environmental, labor, consumer, civil liberties, civil rights and pro-democracy communities say they now must defend citizens against an onslaught of opportunism in areas ranging from multi-billion dollar corporate tax cuts to expansion of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"For corporations to loot the U.S. Treasury and prey on the environment while wrapping themselves in the flag is an act of sheer treachery, one Americans will not soon forget," said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA.

Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, said that, "The administration and many in Congress are pushing energy legislation that will actually weaken national security."

Citizen Works, a pro-democracy citizen organization, listed several areas of "corporate opportunism,"including an economic stimulus plan that benefits corporate treasuries and neglects workers, and the emergence of "fast track" legislation that would hinder congressional input into international trade agreements.

Other moves criticized by the group included handouts for the insurance industry, tax breaks for billionaires instead of the poor, and price gouging by pharmaceutical companies.

"The nation recognizes that the heroes of this tragedy are our nation's working people, but all Congress and the president want to do is give more tax breaks to big business and the nation's wealthiest people," said Mildred Brown, past national president of ACORN.

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