------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Nuclear Waste Vessel, Sub Collide
UK BNFL says starts up Sellafield nuclear plant
Nuclear Reactors Not Likely to Get No-Fly Zones
India recalls its envoy to Pakistan
Japan's TEPCO finds small radioactive leak in reactor
Bush welcomes Kazakhstan leader
Official: US Vows Food Aid to N. Korea
Russia Launches New Warship Production
Gorbachev Still Feels Bitter
FBI focusing on portable nuke threat
Bush Orders 2 More Groups' Assets Frozen

MILITARY
The innocent dead in a coward's war
U.S. Presses Search for bin Laden
Al - Qaida Hunt for Weapons Revealed
Taliban Mountain Hideouts Stretch Far
Army: Interrogating Prisoners Is Key
Anthrax Exposure Estimates Increased
Army Lab Said to Be Lax in Controls
Vietnam, China set border demarcation
China-al Qaeda nexus
China tiptoes around the 'T' word
China tests M-11
India Recalls Envoy to Pakistan Over Attack on Parliament
Bin Laden's Iranian connection
U.S. House warns Iraq on weapons inspectors
Powell Wary of Iraq Move
Palestinians say U.S. blindly backing Israel
Pre-9/11, we fought a covert war on American soil
An Israeli Outpost In the Front Room
Hamas Leader Defies Palestinian Authority's Crackdown
The mad leading the blind
Fraction of Reagan's Confidential Papers Approved for Release
Pakistan Says Will Respond to India Troop Movements
BACKGROUND ON THE ROLE OF SPECIAL FORCES IN U.S. MILITARY STRATEGY
Sonar Killed Whales, Navy Admits
Navy unreadiness
Military to resume testing of V-22 Osprey
Navy SEALs Talk About Afghan Mission
U.S. to Send More Troops to Search Caves of Tora Bora
Pentagon Develops Bomb for Caves

POLICE / PRISONERS
Convicts riot at California prison
FBI Investigates Possible Financial Motive in Anthrax Attacks
'Terror' Ship Seized At Sea

ENERGY AND OTHER
House passes brownfields bill but Senate unclear

ACTIVISTS
Small Victory: Giant Challenge
Foreign Falun Gong Followers Protest




-------- NUCLEAR

-------- accidents

Nuclear Waste Vessel, Sub Collide

The Associated Press
Friday, December 21, 2001; 2:20 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13125-2001Dec21?language=printer

MOSCOW -- A Russian vessel that collects spent nuclear fuel collided with a decommissioned nuclear submarine from which it was supposed to be unloading, but there was no radiation leak, a marine spokesman said Friday.

The Imandra waste carrier bumped into a mothballed Northern Fleet submarine in the Arctic Kola Bay, said Vladimir Blinov, spokesman for the Merchant Marine service in the port of Murmansk.

Blinov would not say what type of submarine it was or when the accident happened. Russia's state-controlled ORT television said the collision occurred on Dec. 13.

Radiation experts were rushed to the scene, but an inspection showed that neither vessel had leaked radiation or suffered any damage, Blinov said in a telephone interview.

Russia has more than 180 decommissioned nuclear submarines, according to official data, and most of them have stayed afloat with nuclear fuel onboard, raising the risk of a nuclear accident. Some have languished dockside for 10-15 years, their hulls rusting through. Officials said they lacked funds to build dismantling and storage facilities.

Some European Union nations have offered to provide funds for dismantling the submarines, but the talks have stalled over Russia's refusal to accept full legal responsibility for all nuclear risks, offer tax breaks or give Western inspectors unlimited access to all dismantling sites.

-------- britain

UK BNFL says starts up Sellafield nuclear plant

by Matthew Jones
Reuters:
21/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13800

LONDON - State-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) said yesterday it was starting up a 472 million pound ($797 million) nuclear fuel manufacturing plant that has been the focus of several legal challenges to stop it opening.

"BNFL has today commenced the first stage of active plutonium commissioning of the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP)," the company said in a statement.

The news that highly toxic plutonium is being introduced into SMP came as a blow to opponents of the plant, including environmental groups Grenpeace and Friends of the Earth and the government of Ireland.

All three have tried and failed to block the plant from opening via the courts.

"We are very disappointed, but we are not surprised at anything the UK authorities or BNFL do anymore on this issue," said Irish nuclear safety minister Joe Jacob.

"We have repeatedly requested the UK authorities not to proceed with MOX."

"This is a major step backwards for the environment and international security. BNFL and the British government clearly have little regard for either," Mark Johnston of Greenpeace told Reuters.

The plant, which will mix plutonium with uranium oxides to produce MOX (mixed oxide) to be used in nuclear reactors, has lain idle since it was completed in 1996 because of legal challenges and concerns it would not make any money.

The lastest legal battle was tied off on Monday when a United Nations court announced that both Britain and Ireland had submitted reports outlining consultations they had been ordered to have.

SAFETY AND POLLUTION CONCERNS

The Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which ordered the two countries to consult each other about safety and pollution concerns, had earlier this month rejected a request from Ireland for an injunction to prevent the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) from opening.

Ireland says it is worried about safety and pollution from Sellafield because the BNFL's MOX plant will discharge low level radioactive emissions into the Irish Sea.

Environmental groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, also say that apart from the pollution concerns, the MOX fuel will find few customers because it is more expensive than conventional uranium reactor fuel.

The two groups recently lost a court action in Britain to halt SMP opening.

An international furore erupted in 2000 when it was revealed data on a pilot batch of MOX fuel sent to Japan had been falsified.

The ensuing row and cancelled orders led to the UK government shelving plans to part privatise BNFL.

Jack Allen, Head of Operations MOX said, "the focus is now on delivering the first fuel to customers."

A government commissioned report into SMP published earlier this year said the plant would deliver net financial benefits of 216 million pounds ($365 million) over its lifetime once build costs were excluded.

Ireland is currently considering a complaint to the OSPAR tribunal which rules on the OSPAR convention on maritime issues in the northeastern Atlantic, and a possible challenge in the European Court of Justice.

-------- canada

Nuclear Reactors Not Likely to Get No-Fly Zones

Canadian Briefs,
The Associated Press
Thursday, December 20, 2001; 9:15 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9456-2001Dec20?language=printer

OTTAWA (AP) - Canada is unlikely to impose no-fly zones over its nuclear reactors or station missiles around them, a senior nuclear regulatory official says.

In the event of a credible threat to the reactors, Norad would likely be called on to protect them with jet fighters, said Jim Blythe, manager of security review project at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

There's also an ongoing study of engineering and procedural improvements to make the reactors less vulnerable to attack, Blythe said in an interview Thursday.

Washington imposed no-fly zones over U.S. reactors after Sept. 11 and France installed missile units around some of its nuclear facilities, fueling speculation about similar measures in Canada.

The commission is continuing to work with intelligence agencies, police and Transport Canada to ensure that appropriate measures, such as jet patrols, can be invoked quickly in case of a credible threat.

The study of how to make the facilities less vulnerable to air attack could come down to straightforward measures such as reinforcing protective walls.

Nuclear plant operators have already taken extra security measures against the risk of ground attack, such as stationing armed guards on site.

Canada has 22 nuclear power reactors, a few research reactors, and some 4,000 facilities that use radioactive materials in military or industrial applications.

-------- india / pakistan

India recalls its envoy to Pakistan

By Harbaksh Singh Nanda
12/21/2001
http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=21122001-074426-7216r

NEW DELHI, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- India has recalled its envoy to Pakistan, taking the countries a step closer to a possible military conflict a week after an attack on the Indian Parliament that Indian officials say was carried out by Pakistan-based militant groups.

India's foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said the decision to recall High Commissioner Vijay Nambiar was taken "in view of this complete lack of concern on the part of Pakistan and its continued promotion of cross-border terrorism in India."

Rao said train service running between Pakistan and India would also be terminated beginning Jan. 1.

India has blamed Pakistan-based Islamic rebels and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence group for the attack on Indian Parliament, a charge Islamabad denies. A total of 13 people, including five attackers, died in the assault.

"Since the Dec. 13 attack on Parliament we have seen that no attempt on the part of Pakistan has been made to take action against organizations involved in the terrorist attack," Rao told a news conference.

New Delhi asked Islamabad to take action against Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed groups, but Pakistan demanded proof linking the two groups with the attack. India said it has shared the evidence with other countries, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

Tension is building along the India-Pakistan border as both nations have deployed additional troops since last week.

India is under tremendous domestic political pressure to storm the Pakistan-based guerrilla training camps. Islamabad has vowed a swift retaliation to any Indian military adventure.

Indian and Pakistan, both confirmed nuclear powers, have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

-------- japan

Japan's TEPCO finds small radioactive leak in reactor

Reuters:
21/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13805

TOKYO - Japan's largest power utility, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said yesterday it had detected a small radiation leak in its 1,100 megawatt nuclear reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power plant in northern Japan.

Nobody was exposed to radiation and there were no radioactive leakage outside the environment, TEPCO said.

The Number 5 reactor has been operating normally despite the radiation leak in the reactor's turbine room, it added.

It was still investigating of the cause of the incident.

Japan, heavily reliant on nuclear power, has seen a number of incidents over the past decade that have undermined public support for the country's nuclear programme, which meets a third of the its electricity needs.

Chubu Electric Power Co Inc, Japan's third largest power utility, last month found a steam leak from a broken pipe in the nuclear reactor at its Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shizuoka prefecture.

Chubu said last week that a hydrogen explosion in a pipe at the plant may have caused the accident.

-------- kazakhstan

Bush welcomes Kazakhstan leader

By Kathy A. Gambrell
UPI White House Reporter
12/21/2001
http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=21122001-055236-1278r

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush on Friday welcomed Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev to the White House for talks on the ongoing U.S.-led campaign against terrorism and the former Soviet republic's role in rebuilding Afghanistan.

"We reiterate our intent to cooperate in the war against terrorism to its conclusion and within the framework of the international coalition," the two leaders said in a joint statement issued after the meeting.

"We underscore our support for a broad-based Afghan government at peace internally and with its neighbors. We also pledge our readiness to cooperate in Afghanistan's reconstruction," the two leaders said.

Kazakhstan was one of six former Soviet republics upon which the United States called for aid as it led an international coalition against Afghanistan in responding to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks which killed about 3,000 people in New York City and Washington. Kazakhstan offered the use of its air bases and agreed to host American forces there during the military action.

In the meeting with lasted less than one hour, Bush and Nazarbayev discussed weapons of mass destruction, and trade including export options for Kazakhstan's oil and gas supplies. The United States was the first country to recognize Kazakhstan a decade ago, and since then the two countries have developed a wide-ranging bilateral relationship. American companies have invested more than $5 billion in Kazakhstan since 1993 with bilateral trade worth $488 million in 2000.

"We will strive to further develop an attractive, transparent and predictable investment climate. Achieving this goal requires removal of legislative and administrative barriers to investment, strengthening respect for contracts and the rule of law, reducing corruption, and enhancing Kazakhstan's strong record on economic reform," the statement said. The U.S. also voiced its intention to cooperate with Kazakhstan's integration in the global economy by supporting Kazakhstan's accession to the World Trade Organization

The two leaders also said that the United States would consider enhancing Kazakhstan's assistance programs to strengthen border security and increase defensive capabilities of its military.

On weapons of mass destruction, the two countries reaffirmed their commitment to the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has been concerned that Saudi exile Osama bin Laden has been attempting to acquire biological, chemical or nuclear weapons and has called on the international community to assist in halting his Islamic extremist group from obtaining the materials and knowledge needed to achieve their goal.

"Both sides agree on the need for urgent attention to improving the physical protection and accounting of all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons materials in all possessor states, and to preventing illicit trafficking in these materials," the joint statement said.

The U.S. spent $78 million on facilities under the Cooperative Threat Reduction program to assist Kazakhstan in eliminating START-related systems such as intercontinental ballistic missile silo launchers, strategic heavy bombers, and liquid rocket fuel storage. They pledged to expand their cooperation on nonproliferation under that pact.

-------- korea

Official: US Vows Food Aid to N. Korea

By George Gedda
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 21, 2001; 3:14 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10743-2001Dec21?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, responding to a U.N. appeal, is planning to donate $52.4 million worth of food to North Korea to help alleviate anticipated food shortages next year.

The disclosure Thursday by a United Nations official came as the Bush administration is trying to revive a long-stalled dialogue with North Korea on security issues.

The contribution will consist of 50,000 metric tons of wheat and smaller amounts of dried skim milk, soybeans, rice and vegetable oil, the official said....

One of the reasons Bush wants to move ahead with a national missile defense system is North Korea's long-range missile capability.

North Korea has not responded to the U.S. offer for talks and has suspended efforts at reconciliation with South Korea after a promising start last year.

-------- russia

Russia Launches New Warship Production

By Irina Titova
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 21, 2001; 3:36 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13424-2001Dec21?language=printer

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Russia launched construction of its first newly designed warship since the Soviet collapse a decade ago, saying modernization of the Navy was a top priority after years of neglect.

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov attended a ceremony for the launch at the plant building the corvette Stereguschyii, which means On Guard.

"The modernization program of the Russian Navy is currently one of the most important tasks of the state," Kasyanov said.

Since the Soviet collapse, the Russian Navy has struggled to find funds to maintain its ships and had to scale back plans to modernize the fleet.

An estimated 70 percent of the fleet needs overhauling, and the Navy cannot afford to send ships on long voyages.

The decline was underlined by the August 2000 explosion and sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk - when the public learned that the Navy got rid of rescue equipment to cut costs.

President Vladimir Putin has vowed to boost funding, and he launched a new nuclear submarine, the Gepard, or Cheetah, earlier this month.

Kasyanov told naval chiefs Thursday that Russia has turned "a sad historical page in recent years, during which the country's naval potential was deteriorating," the Interfax news agency reported.

Kasyanov, the head of Russia's government, said Friday that the On Guard project "is a good sign of the activation of the Russian shipbuilding industry."

Alexander Ushakov, the plant's production director, said the new ship is one of the most modern in the world.

The 330-foot corvette can displace 2,200 tons and uses stealth technology, making it difficult to track.

The Russian naval chief, Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov, asked the plant workers to finish the ship's construction by 2004, a year earlier than the planned time of launching.

---

Gorbachev Still Feels Bitter

By Vladimir Isachenkov
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 21, 2001; 12:47 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12732-2001Dec21?language=printer

MOSCOW -- Mikhail Gorbachev, still bitter about his resignation as Soviet president a decade ago, said Friday he has not spoken to his rival and successor Boris Yeltsin since.

The former Soviet president shared angry memories of his Christmas Day 1991 resignation at a news conference Friday. His departure brought an end to the Soviet Union.

But Gorbachev strongly praised Yeltsin's hand-picked successor President Vladimir Putin, saying Putin was committed to revive Russia and make it an equal partner of the West.

Recalling his resignation, Gorbachev accused Yeltsin of ruining the Soviet Union out of personal ambition.

On Dec. 8, 1991, Yeltsin and former presidents Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine and Stanislav Shushkevich of Belarus announced the Soviet Union defunct, creating a new, loose alliance called the Commonwealth of Independent States. Nine other ex-Soviet republics joined the alliance later in December, leaving Gorbachev without a job.

"I was shocked by the treacherous behavior of those people, who cut the country in pieces in order to settle accounts and establish themselves as czars," Gorbachev said.

He said he couldn't disavow the republican leaders' action because of fear that would push the country toward chaos.

"I couldn't choose the path that might have led to rift and civil war in a nation brimming with nuclear weapons," Gorbachev said.

His voice trembling with contempt, Gorbachev said Yeltsin and his lieutenants settled themselves in his office hours after his televised resignation speech, breaking a promise to give him five days to pack.

"They gathered in my office and drank a bottle of whisky for their "victory," Gorbachev said. "I have never spoken to Yeltsin again."

Gorbachev had warmer words for Putin, saying in his performance in nearly two years in office proved that Russia chose the right president. Yeltsin named Putin acting president when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned Dec. 31, 1999. Three months later, Putin won the presidential election by an overwhelming margin.

"He has done more than I expected, he has achieved a greater stability and order," Gorbachev said. "He conducts reforms in Russia's interests, but also takes a responsible stance in foreign policy. His action since Sept. 11 shows that he has become a mature statesman."

He also cautioned that the West should treat Russia as an equal.

"It's hard, if possible at all, to ensure security in Europe and elsewhere without Russia," the former Soviet president said.

"Russia doesn't need to join NATO, but it's very important that it take part in its decision-making," Gorbachev said, adding that the alliance must give Russia some veto power.

Putin has brought Russia into the U.S.-led international coalition in the war against terror and pushed for closer relations with NATO. NATO and Russia are expected to work out a new framework of relations early next year.

Gorbachev criticized President Bush's decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to build a national missile defense, saying it damaged the foundation of nuclear arms control.

"What the United States has done will remain on its conscience and they will bear responsibility for that," Gorbachev said.

He also pointed at the botched, 10-year Soviet war in Afghanistan as a lesson for the Western coalition to leave it to the Afghans themselves to govern their country. Gorbachev ended the war in 1989.

"If they go there and try to substitute for the Afghans, they will fail," he said.

-------- terrorism

FBI focusing on portable nuke threat

By Nicholas Horrock
Senior White House Correspondent (UPI)
12/21/2001
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20122001-044906-9007r

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 -- The leading congressional expert on Russia's small portable nuclear weapons told United Press International that the FBI has stepped up its investigation of whether al Qaida or other terrorist groups have acquired these deadly devices from Russian stockpiles.

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., chairman of the Research and Development Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that he was briefed by the FBI late last week and that the investigation of whether terrorist groups have weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear devices, is now a top priority at the bureau after years of indifference.

"Now they're looking at everything and following up on every lead," Weldon said. It was Weldon, through his R&D subcommittee, who produced over past three years some of the most exhaustive and startling information about the Russian stockpile of weapons that could be an advantage to Osama bin Laden, his al Qaida network or other terrorist groups.

"The question is whether or not bin Laden has had access to nuclear material," Weldon said. "I think it is better than a 50-50 chance that he does."

"Do I think he has a small atomic demolition munitions, which were built by the Soviets in the Cold War? Probably doubtful," Weldon said. But he added that after Sept. 11 the FBI could not avoid running every lead to ground.

In 1997, Weldon brought former Russian security chief Gen. Alexander Lebed before his committee. Lebed testified that perhaps 100 small nuclear devices were missing from inventories under his control. Lebed said the devices were a "perfect terrorist weapon," made to look like suitcases, "and could be detonated by one person with less than 30 minutes of preparation," according to committee documents.

The Russian government immediately tried to discredit Lebed's testimony, but Weldon's committee brought a prominent Russian weapons scientist, Aleksey Yablokov, before the committee in 1998 who reported that he knew the Russians produced small nuclear weapons for combat use.

Yablokov was vilified when he returned to Moscow as a "traitor" for his testimony. Yablokov sued one major Russian magazine over this vilification, Weldon said, and won a 30,000-ruble judgment against the publication.

Perhaps the most startling testimony came from a defector from the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, who testified in 1998 that the Russians secretly pre-positioned weapons, including small nuclear devices, in the U.S. and other countries around the world to be used for sabotage by its agents in time of war.

This witness said it was his job while working undercover in Washington from 1988 to 1992 as a correspondent for the Russian news agency Tass to locate places where these weapons could be hidden both around Washington and in other parts of the country.

Weldon has described the weapons in this testimony as "small nuclear weapons that can fit into a knapsack or a briefcase or suitcase and are designed to be delivered and detonated by one or two people."

He created a mock-up of one in a suitcase form that he uses in speeches and Congressional hearings based on descriptions from Russian sources. He keeps the mock-up in his office.

A Federation of American Scientists compilation, titled Soviet Weapons, notes that there is very little information in the public venue about the size and destructive power of the small weapons. The U.S. backpack nuke weighs 163 pounds and can be carried by one or two men. One Russian naval arms compilation talks about small portable nuclear weapons weighing from 59 pounds to 154 pounds.

The yield, too, is hard to pin down. One former American scientist who worked at the Department of Energy labs said that the "Davy Crocket," which was the small bomb later converted to special operations, had a one-kiloton explosive power and would level the Capitol Building and everything in a half mile radius. It also would spread radioactive waste across a wide area of Washington. The bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. (Each kiloton has an explosive power equal to 1,000 tons of TNT.)

The GRU witness, who testified using a pseudonym, Col. Stanislaw Lunez, said that even after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russians continued to frame war plans against a range of Western nations including the U.S.

"According to Soviet military plans, very well advanced, maybe a few months, maybe a few weeks, of course, a few hours before real war would be placed against his country (the U.S.), Russian Special Operations Forces need to come here and pick up weapons systems, because they will fly here as tourists, businessmen.

"According to their tasking, in a few hours they need to physically destroy, eliminate American military chains of command, President, Supreme Commander in Chief, Vice President, Speaker of the House, military commanders, especially to cut the head from the American military chain of command," Lunev said.

He said that the Russians had a plan to sabotage industrial, communications and power targets as well.

Weldon said later the FBI discredited Lunev, saying that he exaggerated things, but another federal agency that Weldon declined to identify protects Lunev in an undisclosed location in the U.S. He said Lunev's credentials as a ranking GRU spy assigned to the U.S. have never been questioned.

Later Vasily Mitrokhin, a KGB official, disclosed in his best-selling book "The Sword and the Shield" that the Soviets had secreted weapons and explosives near NATO facilities throughout Europe for use in a war. Weldon said that Belgian officials located and dug up some caches near NATO's headquarters

The backpack nukes are part of some 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons that the Russians possessed in 1991 when they agreed to a unilateral arms reduction with the first Bush Administration. The Russians were to destroy 2,000 warheads a year from 1991, which would suggest there is only a handful left.

The U.S. destroyed the bulk of its weapons, but Weldon said that there is no evidence that the Russians have conducted such a program.

"That's part of the problem. I've continually called for a treaty with Russian and really a worldwide effort to ban or to limit tactical nukes," Weldon said.

"There has been no effort and we have had no success in getting Russia to decrease their tactical nukes. They feel they act as a buffer for Europe; the proximity of European countries. We just don't know whether they have total control of their atomic munitions."

-------- us nuc politics

Bush Orders 2 More Groups' Assets Frozen

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 21, 2001; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9639-2001Dec20?language=printer

A new president's first hundred days has become romanticized as a touchstone for taking stock and celebrating a rush of post-inaugural achievements. President Bush marked his first 100 days as a wartime commander in chief yesterday by blocking the assets of two groups accused of perpetrating or abetting terrorism, and by promising to do "much more to rid the world of evil and of terrorists."

Bush, symbolically stressing that armed combat is just one front in his war, used the occasion to freeze the financial assets of Lashkar E-Tayyiba, a militant wing of a Pakistani religious organization. India has accused Lashkar E-Tayyiba of terrorist acts in Kashmir, which both Pakistan and India claim.

Indian officials have blamed the group for last week's suicide attack on the Indian Parliament, which killed seven. U.S. officials said they expected Bush's action and remarks to pressure Pakistan, an early and crucial ally in the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism, to aggressively investigate suspects in the attack.

Bush described Lashkar E-Tayyiba as "a stateless sponsor of terrorism" that "hopes to destroy relations between Pakistan and India and to undermine" Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. "To achieve its purpose, LAT has committed acts of terrorism inside both India and Pakistan," Bush said.

"LAT is a terrorist organization that presents a global threat," he said. "I look forward to working with the governments of both India and Pakistan in a common effort to shut it down and to bring the killers to justice."

Appearing with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, Bush also said the United States was moving against Umma Tameer-E-Nau, which was founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists with close ties to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

Bush took office with no foreign policy experience, but on Sept. 11 became the manager of the biggest national security crisis in half a century. He gave a bit of a box score during a Rose Garden ceremony, noting that the U.S.-led coalition had destroyed 39 command and control sites of the Taliban regime, dropped 2.5 million humanitarian rations to hungry people inside Afghanistan and helped persuade 142 countries to freeze the financial assets of terrorists and their supporters.

"This is the 100th day of our campaign against global terrorism, and in those 100 days, we've accomplished much," Bush said. "I'm optimistic about the future of our struggle against terror. I know we've accomplished a lot so far, and we've got a lot more to do."

The White House issued a campaign-style report, "The Global War on Terrorism: The First 100 Days." It mentions Bush's name 27 times in 25 pages, and lauds his "comprehensive and visionary foreign policy against international terrorism," including diplomatic, financial, military, law enforcement and humanitarian efforts, as well as an urgent new focus on homeland security and an effort to promote tolerance of peace-loving Muslims.

Despite the rapid military progress in Afghanistan, administration officials were careful to avoid gloating as they assessed the opening of a war that Bush has said will take many years and perhaps many administrations. Jim Wilkinson, who runs the war room that delivers the White House's anti-terrorism messages and coordinates them with Britain and Pakistan, emphasized the tough work Bush believes is ahead.

"Al Qaeda has to be rooted from their caves, more financial assets need to be seized and many more training camps need to be destroyed," Wilkinson said. "It's won't be easy, and it won't be pretty."

In Britain, the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair put out its own report, "100 Days, 100 Ways," which endeavored to list the steps that the nations of the world have taken against terrorism since Sept. 11.

The booklet included "10 Reasons Why Bin Laden and Al Qaeda Are Guilty." No. 1 is his videotaped gloating. Indulging in a little gloating of its own, Blair's publication including dovish or skeptical articles about the war in a section labeled, "10 Media Views Which Have Proved to be Wrong."

Bush's announcements yesterday brought to 158 the number of individuals and organizations that he has accused of funding terrorism and has put on what he has called his "international financial equivalent of law enforcement's 'Most Wanted' list."

An executive order by Bush requires U.S. banks to seize the listed entities' funds or deny the owners access to them, and denies access to U.S. financial markets for overseas banks that do not do so.

Umma Tameer-E-Nau was founded last year by a Pakistani nuclear scientist. Bush said the group "claims to serve the hungry and needy of Afghanistan, but it was the UTN that provided information about nuclear weapons to al Qaeda."

The administration said that since Sept. 11, the United States has blocked $33 million in terrorist assets. Another $33 million has been frozen abroad by coalition partners, the administration said.

Staff writers Karen DeYoung and Alan Sipress contributed to this report.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

The innocent dead in a coward's war
Estimates suggest US bombs have killed at least 3,767 civilians

Seumas Milne
Thursday December 20, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,622000,00.html

The price in blood that has already been paid for America's war against terror is only now starting to become clear. Not by Britain or the US, nor even so far by the al-Qaida and Taliban leaders held responsible for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. It has instead been paid by ordinary Afghans, who had nothing whatever to do with the atrocities, didn't elect the Taliban theocrats who ruled over them and had no say in the decision to give house room to Bin Laden and his friends.

The Pentagon has been characteristically coy about how many people it believes have died under the missiles it has showered on Afghanistan. Acutely sensitive to the impact on international support for the war, spokespeople have usually batted away reports of civilian casualties with a casual "these cannot be independently confirmed", or sometimes simply denied the deaths occurred at all. The US media have been particularly helpful. Seven weeks into the bombing campaign, the Los Angeles Times only felt able to hazard the guess that "at least dozens of civilians" had been killed.

Now, for the first time, a systematic independent study has been carried out into civilian casualties in Afghanistan by Marc Herold, a US economics professor at the University of New Hampshire. Based on corroborated reports from aid agencies, the UN, eyewitnesses, TV stations, newspapers and news agencies around the world, Herold estimates that at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10. That is an average of 62 innocent deaths a day - and an even higher figure than the 3,234 now thought to have been killed in New York and Washington on September 11.

Of course, Herold's total is only an estimate. But what is impressive about his work is not only the meticulous cross-checking, but the conservative assumptions he applies to each reported incident. The figure does not include those who died later of bomb injuries; nor those killed in the past 10 days; nor those who have died from cold and hunger because of the interruption of aid supplies or because they were forced to become refugees by the bombardment. It does not include military deaths (estimated by some analysts, partly on the basis of previous experience of the effects of carpet-bombing, to be upwards of 10,000), or those prisoners who were slaughtered in Mazar-i-Sharif, Qala-i-Janghi, Kandahar airport and elsewhere.

Champions of the war insist that such casualties are an unfortunate, but necessary, byproduct of a just campaign to root out global terror networks. They are a world apart, they argue, from the civilian victims of the attacks on the World Trade Centre because, in the case of the Afghan civilians, the US did not intend to kill them.

In fact, the moral distinction is far fuzzier, to put it at its most generous. As Herold argues, the high Afghan civilian death rate flows directly from US (and British) tactics and targeting. The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians. Thousands of innocents have died over the past two months, not mainly as an accidental byproduct of the decision to overthrow the Taliban regime, but because of the low value put on Afghan civilian lives by US military planners.

Raids on targets such as the Kajakai dam power station, Kabul's telephone exchange, the al-Jazeera TV station office, lorries and buses filled with refugees and civilian fuel trucks were not mistakes. Nor were the deaths that they caused. The same goes for the use of anti-personnel cluster bombs in urban areas. But western public opinion has become increasingly desensitised to what has been done in its name. After US AC-130 gunships strafed the farming village of Chowkar-Karez in October, killing at least 93 civilians, a Pentagon official felt able to remark: "the people there are dead because we wanted them dead", while US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld commented: "I cannot deal with that particular village."

Yesterday, Rumsfeld inadvertently conceded what little impact the Afghan campaign (yet to achieve its primary aim of bringing Bin Laden and the al-Qaida leadership to justice) has had on the terrorist threat, by speculating about ever more cataclysmic attacks, including on London. There will be no official two-minute silence for the Afghan dead, no newspaper obituaries or memorial services attended by the prime minister, as there were for the victims of the twin towers. But what has been cruelly demonstrated is that the US and its camp followers are prepared to sacrifice thousands of innocents in a coward's war.

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

----

U.S. Presses Search for bin Laden

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-US-Military.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- American troops are combing Afghanistan's abandoned al-Qaida caves in the search for Osama bin Laden, and more are on the way, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday.

It was the first acknowledgment that U.S. troops had taken the hunt inside caves long used as al-Qaida hiding places. An official said Americans ``just recently'' began moving into the hillside caves, but declined to say exactly when.

Rumsfeld noted there are numerous caves and tunnels that could hold clues about the terrorist network.

``They're being triaged and put in priority order,'' he said. ``Then Afghan forces and coalition forces are going into those caves and looking for evidence and people and weapons and trying to determine what we can do to deal with terrorists all across the globe.''

Meanwhile, after three days without airstrikes, U.S. warplanes bombed a convoy believed to include leadership, Rumsfeld said, without indicating if it was Taliban or al-Qaida leaders.

Rumsfeld declined to say how many additional soldiers might be sent to the Tora Bora area largely abandoned by al-Qaida fighters early this week.

``Whatever is needed will be sent,'' he told a Pentagon press conference. ``And it won't be just U.S., it will be coalition forces.''

Currently British special forces are working with the U.S. military and Afghans in the region.

He said other information gathered so far in searches throughout Afghanistan has already led to the arrest of ``people across the world ... and undoubtedly have prevented terrorist activities.''

Senior defense officials say the Afghanistan war commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, proposed sending several hundred Marines and possibly a smaller number of Army troops to the Tora Bora area.

The convoy that was bombed was moving near Khost, in eastern Paktia province, in the last 24 hours, said Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the midday Friday press conference.

``It was a large convoy and there were a lot of people killed and there were a lot of vehicles destroyed,'' Rumsfeld said.

A few dozen U.S. special operations troops are already in the area helping Afghan tribal forces search the caves. But the United States is concerned that the Afghans are unwilling or unable to complete the search anytime soon.

The troops are looking for evidence such as the videotape of bin Laden discussing the Sept. 11 attacks that was found in Jalalabad last month. A more thorough translation of that tape shows bin Laden mentioning several of the Sept. 11 hijackers by name, one of the translators hired by the Pentagon said Thursday.

Translator George Michael said bin Laden asks God to accept the actions of several hijackers. They include Wail Alshehri, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the World Trade Center. They also include Nawaq and Salem Alhamzi, who were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which smashed into the Pentagon.

Michael said he provided the expanded translation to Defense Department officials on Wednesday. He said bin Laden mentioned other hijackers by name but declined to say which ones.

Sending more troops to Tora Bora would raise the risk of casualties. Some military planners believe it is the best way to clarify which al-Qaida members were killed in the recent fighting -- and gain a better understanding of whether bin Laden is still in the region.

The hunt for al-Qaida in Tora Bora has been complicated by harsh winter weather and the knowledge that some of the terrorists' abandoned bunkers and caves were probably booby-trapped or mined. It also is possible that some al-Qaida fighters are waiting in caves, prepared to resume fighting.

U.S. officials have said they would like to break into caves whose entrances were sealed shut by U.S. bombing. They believe they will probably find the bodies of al-Qaida fighters there, as well as potentially useful documents.

Most of the al-Qaida materials found thus far in caves, bunkers and in buildings throughout Afghanistan relate to the group's pursuit of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, another U.S. official said.

The finds have not changed officials' thinking that bin Laden has at most a limited capability to conduct terrorist attacks with crude chemical weapons and that he may have biological or radiological weapons.

There are about 2,000 Marines in southern Afghanistan, mostly in and around the Kandahar airport.

Franks proposed to Rumsfeld that several hundred Marines be dispatched to Tora Bora, although it was not clear whether all would come from Kandahar. Several hundred other Marines are aboard ships off Pakistan's coast. Franks preferred using Marines, rather than Army infantry, one senior official said, because they leave a smaller ``footprint,'' meaning they can move more quickly with less equipment.

Another senior official said it was possible that some Army troops would be used in Tora Bora. Those in position to move fastest might be the 10th Mountain Division soldiers now based in Uzbekistan.

--------

Al - Qaida Hunt for Weapons Revealed

December 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Bin-Laden-Weapons.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Many al-Qaida documents, videotapes and computer hard drives uncovered by U.S. forces in Afghanistan reveal that Osama bin Laden was trying to buy and manufacture weapons of mass destruction, a U.S. official said.

The materials have been found in caves, bunkers and in buildings in cities, the official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Before the Afghanistan conflict, bin Laden was believed to have possessed crude, World War I-era chemical weapons like chlorine and phosgene but to have lacked the ability to disperse them over wide areas and cause mass casualties. U.S. intelligence also believed he may have had biological and radiological weapons but not nuclear weapons.

The new finds have not caused a major shift in thinking about bin Laden's capability to conduct terror attacks with weapons of mass destruction. The official said there have been a few surprises, however, but refused to give details.

Mass-destruction armaments include chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological weapons.

Among biological weapons are simple toxins created by plants or animals and more complex disease weapons like anthrax. Radiological weapons use conventional explosives to spread harmful radioactive material but do not set off a nuclear reaction.

Military officials said the intelligence collection and analysis from dozens of al-Qaida sites in Afghanistan continues. Interrogation of prisoners may provide more locations to search.

``There have been a couple of locations where we have found documentation that is the chemistry- set equivalent of `This is how to make a bomb in your basement,''' Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a Pentagon press briefing this week. The documents include instructions in the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons, Pace said.

Bin Laden has said acquiring these weapons is ``a religious duty'' and that all Americans are targets.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, U.S. officials have said they had little doubt he would try to use mass destruction weapons.

Some of the Sept. 11 terrorists allegedly looked into using crop dusters as a means of spraying chemical or biological agents on the public.

Last year, CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that bin Laden's ``operatives have trained to conduct attacks with toxic chemicals or biological toxins.''

----

Taliban Mountain Hideouts Stretch Far

December 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Mountain-Hideouts.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The mysterious spiritual leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, have disappeared, but some Afghans believe at least one may be hiding in the rugged mountain peaks of central Afghanistan.

And there are some compelling reasons why Omar might be holed-up in the area of Baghran, in Helmand province, the stronghold of the Taliban until it surrendered on Dec. 6.

Omar has close links to Baghran's tribal chief, Abdul Wahid, who was apparently involved in negotiations that led to the surrender, said Mohammed Khaqzar, a former Taliban intelligence chief who renounced the movement he helped found.

In Afghanistan's deeply tribal south, old loyalties count. Wahid was brought into the talks because of his friendship with Mullah Naqib Ullah, one of the key anti-Taliban negotiators, along with new interim prime minister Hamid Karzai.

``When they were negotiating the surrender of Kandahar, Wahid was in Kandahar and he is close to Naqib,'' said Khaqzar. At the same time, Gul Agha, one of the key anti-Taliban commanders, accused Naqib of protecting Omar.

Tucked into the mountain peaks near Baghran were Soviet-era mujahedeen bases of at least three different groups, including Jamiat-e-Islami, Naqib's group, which is also the leading group in the northern alliance now ruling much of Afghanistan.

``Wahid is a very famous man of Baghran,'' said Khaqzar.

Khaqzar, who is also from Kandahar, said the mountain ranges that stretch northwest from Baghran are more formidable than the White Mountains around Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, where U.S. jets pounded al Qaida hide-outs for seven weeks driving bin Laden's warriors into captivity or neighboring Pakistan.

``From Baghran to almost the northern border, more than 20 mountains are all connected. It is possible to stay in those mountains for two years without ever coming out,'' he said.

Baghran is the gateway to more than six different mountain ranges that run like ribbons across Afghanistan.

They sweep through the provinces of Urzgan, Faryab, Ghor, the northeastern edge of Herat, and on to Badghis province which borders Turkmenistan.

They have tongue-twisting names like the Malmand range in Faryab province, the Chalap Dalan range which rolls into the Siah Kuh range and the Qasa Murg and Bayan ranges all in Ghor province. Some of the mountain ranges spill into the northeastern corner of Herat province.

Western diplomats say that Turkmenistan is a major route for people fleeing Afghanistan to Europe.

It is also a route used by Taliban soldiers who went to the breakaway Republic of Chechnya in the late 1990s to fight Russian troops. The Taliban were the only people to recognize Chechnya's independence and hundreds of Chechens also fought with the Taliban.

Taliban commanders said bin Laden had twice traveled to Chechnya since coming to Afghanistan from Sudan in 1996.

The $25 million question -- the reward offered by the United States for the al-Qaida leader -- is where is bin Laden?

Bin Laden's first port of call in Afghanistan, in May 1996, was northeastern Nangarhar province where he re-established links with an old friend known only as Engineer Mahmood, later killed in a tribal feud. Mahmood's base was Tora Bora.

After the Taliban took control in September 1996, bin Laden moved to southern Kandahar province.

He spent time in Khost, in eastern Paktia province, at camps called Badr I and Badr II. The United States fired Tomahawk missiles into the area after U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by terrorists in 1998. Bin Laden is the believed mastermind of the attacks. He has denied involvement.

----

Army: Interrogating Prisoners Is Key

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Interrogations.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A modern interrogation is psychology and head games, an effort to make an enemy prisoner volunteer what he knows.

Sometimes a simple offer of cigarettes to a deprived chain smoker will do the trick, say Army experts. Or play on prisoners' patriotism, or fears, or despair -- whatever it takes to establish rapport and get them talking.

``Most people want to talk,'' said Army 1st Sgt. Katrina Cobb, who trains Army intelligence personnel at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. ``They want to tell their side of what happened.''

As the United States and its allies begin to sort through and interrogate some of the 7,000 Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners in Afghanistan, they are asking questions whose answers could be critical to the war on terrorism.

When and where is al-Qaida's next attack planned? Where is Osama bin Laden, as well as Taliban chief Mullah Omar and its other leaders? How far has al-Qaida gotten in its efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction? Who are the members of al-Qaida cells in the United States and around the world? How is al-Qaida changing its operations and communications after losing Afghanistan?

Getting that out of some prisoners is a tall order. The FBI, the CIA and the military have interrogators in Afghanistan.

The FBI wants information about terrorist activity within the United States; the CIA wants to know about overseas al-Qaida cells and the location of group leaders, and the military wants to hear tactical information about enemy force concentration and capabilities.

To get it, Army and other intelligence officials say techniques have evolved in recent years from adversarial interrogations to attempts at more cordial ``conversations.'' More reliable information may come from a low-level but cooperative supply clerk, instead of an enemy commander who has no interest in talking.

That's not to say that some interrogations aren't long and grueling, but U.S. officials say they do not sanction torture, and insist that interrogators know there's a line they are not to cross.

To find a likely talker, interrogators screen the pool of prisoners for people who seem willing to open up.

Talk to their guards, says 1st Sgt. Anthony Novacek, another trainer at Fort Huachuca. Observe who is nervous, who is talkative, who is offering to help. When interrogating a prisoner, use any of a number of methods to get him to start talking: Puff up his pride, or give him a sense of hopelessness, or find out his fears.

``A lot of times, people come to us with their own fears,'' Novacek said. ``You can play on their fears, allow them to continue being afraid. You don't threaten them. You play on their own natural fears. Everybody has them.''

Interrogators -- the Army prefers the term ``human intelligence collectors'' -- can question a prisoners one-on-one, if they speak the language. Otherwise, a translator is necessary, complicating the flow of conversation.

Sometimes two interrogators will team up on a prisoner, playing good cop-bad cop, like the two CIA officers videotaped questioning American Taliban John Walker Lindh before the Mazar-e-Sharif prison uprising. One of those officers, Johnny ``Mike'' Spann, was killed in the riot.

Interrogators are trained to begin with questions whose answers they already know, providing a truthfulness check of the prisoner, Cobb said. The military also gives its interrogators language and culture training.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has suggested that drawing information out of senior terrorist leaders will take a long time because many of them are ``skilled liars.''

``They lie shamelessly. When you catch them out in a lie, they go on to another lie,'' he said at a Pentagon briefing this week. ``This is not a simple matter -- you sit down and have an interview and then you dispose the information. And it's a reason also to keep each one of them guessing as to what we've learned from someone else.''

Establishing the prisoner's identity is another goal. Then the interrogator must slowly guide the prisoner to sensitive subject matters, Cobb said.

Intelligence personnel, Novacek said, are also trained in the specifics of the Geneva Convention and other standards for treating enemy prisoners: Don't deprive them of food, medical care or sleep. Don't employ drugs or torture. Army trainees are told violating these standards makes them war criminals, Novacek said.

Of course, U.S. officials have few illusions that every northern alliance soldier is abiding by them.

While Americans are supposed to report human rights violations by allies to their U.S. superiors, it's unclear if this is taking place, and several human rights groups have called for investigations into the alliance's treatment of Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners.

But many experts say torture isn't a reliable way to get information. Someone being tortured will often say what he thinks the torturer wants to hear, regardless of whether it is true. It also will ruin the prisoner as a source for future, less-violent interrogations.

-------- biological weapons

Anthrax Exposure Estimates Increased
First Capitol Hill Aides Receive Vaccine Shots

By Ceci Connolly and Avram Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 21, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9714-2001Dec20?language=printer

Four dozen congressional aides began receiving an experimental anthrax vaccine yesterday, as federal officials announced that Capitol Hill employees and postal workers had been exposed to much higher levels of the deadly bacteria than had been previously known.

Both the Hart Senate Office Building and the Brentwood postal station were contaminated with far greater amounts of anthrax spores than earlier estimates had shown, with some workers inhaling perhaps 3,000 times the lethal dose, government physicians said.

The new details came as federal authorities raced to defend their vaccination plan, dispatching medical teams to counsel likely participants and rushing out just-completed protocols and consent forms to workers in five jurisdictions hit by a series of anthrax attacks this fall.

But the moves did little to quell the outcry from local officials, members of Congress, postal workers and their leaders, who expressed frustration that government officials were providing too little guidance on who should receive the vaccine.

"It is troubling me because I really believe our employees have a crisis in confidence with the federal health authorities right now," said postal spokesman Azeezaly Jaffer, who along with 6,000 other workers in New Jersey and the District is grappling with the decision.

The anthrax vaccination plan has caused a resurgence of concern about the health threat posed by the anthrax attacks, and reignited criticism that occurred in the early days of the scare that the government's response was disjointed, biased and ineffective.

"We fully understand that it's frustrating for those who've been exposed and the people who take care of them, that the government can't make a strong recommendation about who should receive vaccine," said Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We have inadequate science upon which to base such a strong directive recommendation."

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced Tuesday that he would make the vaccine available to about 3,000 people in the District, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Florida who may still be at risk of developing anthrax disease after taking antibiotics for two months. Eleven people developed pulmonary anthrax when they were exposed to letters containing anthrax bacteria powder last fall, including five people who died. Another seven victims developed the less serious skin form of the illness. Health experts fear it is possible for spores to survive in the lungs for up to 100 days.

"Obviously, we think that this is a concern enough to make the vaccine available and suggest a couple of options that need to be considered," Koplan said.

The first option is inoculation. Anyone deciding to get the three shots must take an additional 40 days of antibiotics, sign a form accepting the risks, keep a medical journal and submit to two years' of follow-up by doctors. If they do not want the vaccine, those potentially exposed may receive the extra antibiotics or simply monitor for symptoms of anthrax illness.

After enduring two months of unpleasant antibiotics and anxiety, thousands of postal and government employees found themselves caught yesterday between widely divergent medical opinions.

The Capitol physician, John Eisold, had strongly urged about 70 people on Capitol Hill to receive the vaccine. Federal health officials say the vaccine is safe even though it has not received final approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Forty-eight employees were vaccinated yesterday. The remainder opted against it. Those who were vaccinated will receive the second of three shots in two weeks.

Walks and other District officials, meanwhile, continued to advise against inoculation, citing the vaccine's possible risks and lack of proof of its benefit.

"If the world's best scientists can't figure it out, how is the public supposed to figure it out? What they're doing now is inappropriate. We don't make other vaccines available where there is no recommendation or no indication and say, 'If you want it, come get it,' " said D.C. Health Department Director Ivan C.A. Walks.

"I see Walks on TV saying one thing then I hear the feds want us to do something else," said Barry Baxter, a 50-year-old letter carrier at the V Street annex in Northeast Washington. "I just don't know who to listen to anymore."

Sally Davidow, spokeswoman for the American Postal Workers Union, said her "jaw dropped" when she heard the conflicting opinions. "It kind of reinforces that there is still tremendous uncertainty in the medical community about everything," she said.

"They're trying to fool the workers into taking this vaccine instead of cleaning our buildings and protecting our lives and safety," said William Smith, president of the New York Metro Area Postal Workers Union. Citing fears about adverse effects, he is encouraging 2,500 Manhattan postal workers to reject the vaccine.

Many postal workers, including 51-year-old Brentwood worker Donovan Ricks, described feeling like "guinea pigs" in a government experiment. "After a while you just get tired of the whole thing," said Ricks, who has decided to skip the shots. "After you've taken medicine for 60 days you just want to get it over with."

Every Hill employee who received a shot yesterday first got a briefing from military doctors and was required to sign a five-page consent form that catalogued the possible risks and benefits. The form warned in boldface that the Department of Health and Human Services "is not making any recommendation whether you should or should not take this vaccine."

The consent form, which has undergone extensive revisions in the two months since CDC began developing the vaccine program, had a series of dramatic warnings added this week.

With bullets, bold print and underlining, the document warns that the vaccine "has not been shown to prevent infection when given to people after exposure to anthrax spores," that the vaccine "has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration," and that it may produce "undesirable side effects."

The CDC also removed language from the original document that said the combination of antibiotics and vaccine "could save your life. If you stop taking the antibiotics, the infection could return and could kill you."

In informational sessions before vaccination, some Capitol Hill workers learned for the first time that their exposure to anthrax spores was far greater than they had initially been told.

"They said it was larger than the event in Russia," one congressional aide said, referring to a 1979 accidental anthrax release that killed at least 79 people in Sverdlosk.

In a meeting with Greg Martin, chief of infectious diseases at the National Naval Medical Center, freelance photographer Lana Lawrence discovered her risk was greater than thought. "He said, 'I have no doubt you inhaled spores,' " Lawrence recalled. "I don't think they have been very forthcoming."

Similarly, a study published yesterday by the CDC detailed how mail sorters, blowers and even perhaps foot traffic spread anthrax bacteria far more extensively throughout the Brentwood plant than initially thought. Because of that, the CDC is urging those workers to consider the "more aggressive" treatment options.

Staff writers John Lancaster, Dale Russakoff, Mary Pat Flaherty and Andrew DeMillo contributed to this report.

--------

Army Lab Said to Be Lax in Controls

December 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Anthrax-Army-Lab.html
http://www.nandotimes.com/nation/story/200278p-1943942c.html

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) -- An Army laboratory that works with the strain of anthrax mailed to two senators was lax in accounting for deadly microbes during much of the 1990s, according to some former scientists at the post.

Supervisors did not often check whether researchers were keeping track of lab materials as required, one scientist said. When they did, some researchers gave them photocopies of old reports, said Richard Crosland, who was laid off in 1997 from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick.

Others said that while it would have been nearly impossible for an unauthorized person to enter a restricted area, nothing would have prevented workers from removing deadly germs from the labs.

``As far as carrying anything out, microorganisms are small,'' said Luann Battersby, a biologist who left USAMRIID voluntarily in 1998 after eight years. ``The problem would be getting in, not getting out.''

Fort Detrick spokesman Charles Dasey declined to comment on the allegations of lax security. Regarding the possibility of someone stealing anthrax from the lab, he said: ``Other people are saying it could be done. I don't expect it has been done.''

Since the anthrax mailings, which focused attention on USAMRIID as a possible source of the bacteria, Dasey said inventory control has been re-emphasized.

He said security staff conducts random exit searches and has video cameras at important laboratory areas -- measures that Battersby said did not exist when she worked there.

The strain of anthrax found in letters mailed to Sens. Thomas A. Daschle and Patrick J. Leahy is called Ames, after the city in Iowa where researchers first isolated it. Scientists at Detrick obtained a sample from the Agriculture Department in the early 1980s for vaccine testing and gave samples to at least five other labs.

Dasey said the lab works only with Ames in cultured or liquid forms, and not in the dry powdered form used in the attacks. The Army said it has accounted for all the Ames anthrax that USAMRIID produced.

Yet the scientists, none of whom worked with anthrax, said it would have been easy to walk out with a few cells in a petri dish or smeared on their clothing that could then be grown and processed.

``No matter what you do, there is not any way you can prevent a determined, skillful microbiologist from stealing traces of a microbial culture that he is working with, because it takes so few microbes to start a culture,'' said Mark Wheelis, a University of California microbiologist who serves on a biological weapons committee of the Federation of American Scientists.

``Bioterrorism wasn't a major issue until a few years ago,'' he said. ``Nobody was thinking that one of these respected, trusted scientists might actually steal one of the cultures with malevolent intent.''

Crosland, 55, who is suing the Army for age discrimination stemming from his 1997 layoff, said the Army's disinterest in tracking the botulinum toxin he worked with was typical of what he observed during more than a decade at the lab.

``There was never an audit in the 11 years I was there as to what was in my laboratory and what was supposed to be there,'' Crosland said. ``They never tried to balance what was brought into the institution against what was actually in the institution.''

-------- china

Vietnam, China set border demarcation

Briefly December 21, 2001
Washington Times
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011221-161038.htm

HANOI - Vietnam and China are to begin demarcation of their border before the end of the month, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry announced yesterday.

Spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh told reporters that a ceremony marking the start of border demarcation would take place in late December at Mong Cai, Quang Ninh province, in northeastern Vietnam.

"Vietnam and China will erect border markers the length of the frontier next year," she said. The two countries, which fought a brief border war in 1979 following Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, share a 700-mile border.

----

China-al Qaeda nexus

December 21, 2001
Inside the Ring, Notes from the Pentagon
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011221-95780908.htm

China continued to supply arms to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist even after the group began the September 11 attack on America, says a senior U.S. official.

The official said that a week after the terrorist attack, the ruling Taliban and the al Qaeda fighters embedded among them, received a shipment of Chinese-made SA-7 missiles. The shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons are similar to the U.S. Stinger.

This official says the shipment raises serious questions about Beijing's pledge to help fight terrorism.

We already know the Taliban and al Qaeda got sizable arms shipments from China, which borders Afghanistan on the north. Opposition forces found huge amounts of Chinese ammunition in the caves of Tora Bora. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says Chinese have been found fighting among al Qaeda.

Earlier this week, Mr. Rumsfeld said eastern alliance forces near Tora Bora made another China-related discovery. "They also interestingly seem to have captured a good deal of Chinese ammunition," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

One U.S. official said the Chinese ammunition may have been left over from the 1980s, when Beijing, along with the United States, was a major supplier of the anti-Soviet mujahideen fighters.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing said Tuesday he had "no idea" what Mr. Rumsfeld was referring to in mentioning the large quantities of Chinese ammunition found in al Qaeda caves.

Asked if China had sold weaponry to Afghanistan or neighboring nations, the spokesman said, "the United Nations once adopted the resolution on weapon embargo against Afghanistan, and China has acted according to the Security Council resolutions."

---

China tiptoes around the 'T' word

From combined dispatches
Washington Times
December 21, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011221-72409124.htm

BEIJING - China said this week that a spate of recent bombings that killed seven persons around the country were isolated criminal incidents, insisting that the nation's security situation was not deteriorating.

Investigations were continuing into the explosion Saturday night that killed two and injured 27 at a McDonald's restaurant in Xian, the capital of north China's Shaanxi province, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said.

But so far, police consider it and another 23 blasts over a three-day period last week to be unconnected criminal incidents, she said.

The blast in Xian, one of China's most popular tourist cities, followed Friday's near-simultaneous detonation of 22 bombs in two cities in the southern province of Guangdong, in an apparent grudge attack that killed five persons and injured seven.

On Sunday, another bomb went off at the home of a local official in Guiguang city, in Guangxi province, also in the country's south.

"This explosion and the others were all isolated criminal cases," Miss Zhang told reporters. "These incidents by no means show that the general security situation in China is degrading."

She refused to comment on why Beijing police had stepped up security in the capital's diplomatic quarter this week, but insisted China enjoyed social stability.

Meanwhile in Taipei, a radical pro-independence party denounced the Taiwan government for bowing to pressure from Beijing by denying an entry visa to an exiled Chinese Muslim leader.

The Taiwan Independence Party (TIP) had invited Dilixat Raxit, spokesman for the East Turkestan Information Center, a group of exiled Uighur Muslims from China's northwestern Xinjiang province, to visit the island, a TIP spokesman said. But the Democratic Progressive Party government, considered pro-independence, rejected his visa application.

"We have no idea why the government rejected the entry visa of Mr. Dilixat Raxit while permitting visits by Chinese democracy activist Wei Jinsheng," TIP spokesman Huang Yu-yen said. Mr. Wei, who spent 18 years in Chinese prisons, was living in exile in the United States.

Mr. Dilixat, who lives in Sweden, had hoped to attend a conference in Taiwan on independence for China's ethnic minorities.

"We felt the government's refusal to issue him the entry visa was in deference to Beijing," said Tsai Ting-lin, another TIP official.

Tensions between Taipei and Beijing rose after Chen Shui-bian of the DPP swept to power last year, ending the 51-year rule over the island by the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), which favors Taiwan's eventual reunification with China.

The Uighur leader had planned to meet with Taiwan Vice President Annette Lu and former President Lee Teng-hui during the trip.

The McDonald's explosion on Saturday took place at the base for millions of tourists who flock each year to see the famous 2,000-year-old army of terra cotta warriors near Xian.

The bomb went off at 6:30 p.m., when the eatery was packed with diners, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

One man, Xie Bin, 22, from central Hubei province, was killed instantly and 28 persons were injured, including one who later died from his injuries, media reports said.

The state-run China Daily said the man killed instantly was believed to be the bomber, but local police contacted by Agence France-Presse declined to confirm this and have released no information about the identity of the bomber.

An employee of a newspaper in Xian told AFP, however, that the paper had learned from police that neither of the two dead was the perpetrator. "They haven't arrested the bomber yet. They said the two people killed were just customers," the employee said.

Xian police said Monday there was no indication the blast was set off by Muslim separatists. "It's true [the McDonald´s is] just [220 to 330 yards] from the mosque," a police official told AFP. "But there is probably no connection."

Xian is home to about 60,000 Muslims belonging to the Hui minority, descendants of Arab and Persian traders, leading to speculation the blast could be linked to Islamic extremists.

Muslim separatists among the Uighur ethnic minority have been blamed by authorities for a series of bombings in recent years, mainly in the western region of Xinjiang.

"People in other countries frequently attack McDonald's because it's an icon of Western popular culture," said Lau Siu-kai, a sociologist at Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The McDonald's opened two months ago and was the only one in Xian and China's northwest.

The latest explosions add to a grim recent record of bloody bomb attacks in China, blamed by some analysts on crumbling social networks and growing inequality, coupled with relatively easy access to explosives, which are used widely in construction work.

Early this week, state media reported that China would amend its criminal law to give the government more power to crack down on terrorism.

The amendment was formulated "to deal more harshly with criminal acts of terrorists, for the protection of national security, social order and safeguard of safety of people's lives and property," senior lawmakers were told.

While backing the global anti-terrorism campaign, Beijing has been criticized for using the international climate as an excuse to try to crush Muslim and ethnic separatists, especially those among the Turkic-speaking Uighurs in western Xinjiang province.

Less than five months ago, a Han Chinese policeman in Kucha died after a hand-grenade attack said to have been carried out by the East Turkestan Freedom Fighters Organization, one of many underground groups in Xinjiang that attacked police stations and public facilities during the mid-1990s.

Armed Uighur bands are also active in former Soviet republics west of Xinjiang, which comprises a strategic region bordering Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, as well as three other provinces of modern China: Gansu, Qinghai and Tibet.

China's Manchu or Ch'ing dynasty - overthrown in 1912 after an uprising inspired by Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Kuomintang - conquered the Uighur kingdom of Eastern Turkestan in 1759 and dominated it until 1862, according to a historical summary at an Internet site maintained by Uighur exiles (www.taklemakan.org/uighur-l).

In 1863, the Uighurs expelled the Manchus, and created an independent kingdom the following year that was recognized by the Ottoman Empire, Tsarist Russia, and Great Britain. But concern about Russian expansion into the region led Britain to finance its reconquest by Manchu China in 1876. The latter renamed the territory Xinjiang ("New Dominion"), and it was annexed to China in 1884.

---

China tests M-11

December 21, 2001
Inside the Ring, Notes from the Pentagon
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011221-95780908.htm

China's military is improving the accuracy of its newest short-range ballistic missile, the CSS-7. U.S. intelligence agencies detected a flight test of a CSS-7 earlier this week from a test facility in northwest China.

"There was a missile launch of a CSS-7," said a U.S. official familiar with reports of the test at the Shuang Chengzi missile center in Gansu province, northwest of Lanzhou. "This is part of a continuing series of tests they are conducting to improve the accuracy of the missile."

China has deployed about 350 short-range missiles opposite Taiwan and is building up to a force of about 600 missiles over the next several years.

The missiles are a mix of both CSS-7 and CSS-6 missiles. The CSS-7 is also known as the M-11, and defense officials say the current force is being improved with Mod 2 versions that are more lethal in targeting Taiwan.

Officials said the flight test is believed to be one of the Mod 2 versions of the missile.

-------- india

India Recalls Envoy to Pakistan Over Attack on Parliament

New York Times
December 21, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/21/international/21CND-INDI.html

NEW DELHI, Dec. 21 - India recalled its high commissioner to Pakistan today and terminated bus and train service to Pakistan to show its deep displeasure with what it called Pakistan's failure to crack down on two Pakistan-based groups that India has accused of carrying out a suicide attack on parliament.

It was the first time since 1971, when India and Pakistan were engaged in a war that led to the creation of Bangladesh, that India has recalled its high commissioner to Pakistan. The high commissioner is the equivalent of an ambassador.

"Since the Dec. 13th attack on the Parliament, we have seen no attempt on the part of Pakistan to take action against the organizations involved," said Nirupama Rao, spokeswoman for India's ministry of external affairs, reading an official statement.

Hours after the announcement, Pakistan said it was deeply concerned about reports of Indian troop movements along its borders, which it said would aggravate a tense situation and oblige Islamabad to take appropriate counter measures.

"The Indian troop movements, which follow provocative and threatening statements by Indian leadership, would aggravate an already tense situation in the region," a Foreign Ministry statement quoted a spokesman as saying.

"He added that naturally Pakistan would be obliged to take all appropriate counter measures," the statement added.

India's action today was not only a rebuke to Pakistan, but a rejection of President Bush's call Thursday for both countries, nuclear-armed adversaries, to join in a "common effort" to shut down one of the groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba, that the President denounced as a terrorist outfit.

Senior Indian officials said they were upset that Mr. Bush let the Pakistani military off the hook for sponsoring the militant groups that have committed terrorist acts against India.

In the Rose Garden on Thursday, Mr. Bush described Lashkar as a "stateless" group based in Kashmir that targets both India and Pakistan. Mrs. Rao declined to comment on the President's characterization, but offered a very different one that more closely squares with what American officials have themselves long said in private.

"I would describe it clearly as a terrorist organization which receives the support and sustenance of Pakistani authorities and that is basically operating out of Pakistan," she said. "Its sole agenda appears to be directed against India."

-------- iran

Bin Laden's Iranian connection

EDITORIAL
Washington Times
December 21, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011221-827054.htm

In a development that's certain to make supporters of U.S. rapprochement with Iran inside the Bush administration uncomfortable, a growing body of evidence suggests that members of Tehran's terror network may well have been involved with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda in planning the September 11 suicide attacks, which killed upwards of 3,000 people. Writing in the Dec. 3 and Dec. 31 issues of Insight, Kenneth R. Timmerman has made a compelling case that senior Iranian officials and members of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah (the most prominent among them being fugitive Lebanese killer Imad Mugniyeh) have long worked together in planning terrorist operations. He also suggests that bin Laden operatives have received military training inside Iran, as well as from Iranian personnel in Syria and Lebanon. "We know that Mugniyeh has a relationship to bin Laden," a U.S. official told Insight. "Did he have a role in planning the outrages of September 11? We can't rule it out."

One long-standing myth is that religious differences between the Iranian terror network, which is predominantly Shi'ite Muslim in orientation, and bin Laden, a Sunni, will prevent them from joining to carry out terrorist attacks. But in reality, both bin Laden and the Iranians have always been able to put aside doctrinal disputes when it comes to attacking the West. According to an affidavit by FBI Agent Daniel Coleman, which was based on information provided by former al Qaeda members, bin Laden personally exhorted his followers to "put aside differences with Shi'ite Muslim terrorist organizations, including the government of Iran and its affiliated group Hezbollah, to cooperate against . . . the United States and its allies."

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was briefed on the subject of Iran's ties with bin Laden on Oct. 26 and was "floored," several sources told Insight. The highly classified material showed a pattern of connections between the Iranian government and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which joined forces with bin Laden's group in February 1998 to form an organization calling itself the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders. Bin Laden's deputy - former Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is believed to have masterminded the September 11 attacks - repeatedly traveled to Iran during the 1990s as the guest of senior terrorist operatives, among them Ahmad Vahidi, head of a special operations unit which conducts foreign terrorist operations. In addition, the respected British defense publication Jane's reported in October that during the past two years, Iraqi intelligence officers were shuttling between Baghdad and Afghanistan, meeting with bin Laden, Mugniyeh and al-Zawahiri.

Indeed, the federal grand jury that indicted bin Laden in 1998 for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa said that "Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the [ruling] National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States." Ali Mohamed, who pleaded guilty last year in New York to five counts of conspiracy in connection with those bombings, testified that he arranged security for a meeting between Mugniyeh and bin Laden when the latter was based in Sudan. He added that Mugniyeh's Hezbollah "provided explosives training for al Qaeda." Mr. Timmerman's Dec. 31 Insight article outlines Mugniyeh's terrorist history in chilling detail. His "credits" include the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon and the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut. He is also known to have personally tortured and murdered CIA Beirut Station Chief William Buckley and U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, and he planned the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina, in which 29 died and 242 were wounded. Two years later, he bombed a Jewish community center in Argentina, killing 86.

State Department officials (apparently determined to achieve a rapprochement with Iran) have been downright dismissive of reports linking Mugniyeh, Iran and bin Laden in recent interviews with Mr. Timmerman. But FBI and U.S. intelligence officials believe the evidence is mounting that Mugniyeh and bin Laden, et al. have been working together closely. This is an issue that needs to be investigated thoroughly - not whitewashed in the hope of improving relations with Iran.

-------- iraq

U.S. House warns Iraq on weapons inspectors

Around the Nation
Washington Times
December 21, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011221-72425712.htm

The House yesterday called on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to allow the unrestricted return of U.N. weapons inspectors, warning his continued refusal poses a mounting threat to the United States.

Lawmakers endorsed 392-12 a non-binding resolution that stressed the urgency of resuming U.N. monitoring of Baghdad's weapons program.

----

Powell Wary of Iraq Move
U.S. Eyes Somalia in Continuing Al Qaeda Hunt

By Alan Sipress and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 21, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9604-2001Dec20?language=printer

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that the swift American military success in Afghanistan is no reason to believe that a similar campaign in Iraq to oust President Saddam Hussein would succeed.

In an interview, Powell sought to quiet speculation that the Iraqi government would be an early target in the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign. He said that Hussein's military is far stronger than the ill-equipped Taliban forces and that the Iraqi opposition is not comparable to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance.

"They're two different countries with two different regimes, two different military capabilities. They are so significantly different that you can't take the Afghan model and immediately apply it to Iraq," Powell said. He asserted, however, that the administration is "constantly looking" at ways to topple Hussein.

The Bush administration's focus remains on Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, Powell said. U.S. Special Forces and Pakistani troops are searching caves along the Pakistani border for clues to the location of the al Qaeda leader. Powell said Bush intends to persevere for as long as it takes to track down bin Laden and destroy his terrorist network.

"I don't know where bin Laden is. Nor does anyone else," Powell said. "We're chasing. We're looking. We may trip over him. We may trip over his body. We may get a lucky hit, a lucky piece of intelligence. Who knows?"

The administration, studying countries in which al Qaeda could function after the Taliban's collapse, is taking a particular interest in Somalia, according to Powell. U.S. authorities believe some bin Laden followers already are holed up there, taking advantage of the absence of a functioning government.

"It makes itself ripe for misuse by those who would take that chaos and thrive on the chaos," Powell said. "That's why we're really looking at Somalia -- not to go after Somalia as a nation or a government, but to be especially sensitive to the fact where Somalia could be a place where people suddenly find haven."

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Powell has argued against an early move against Iraq despite a strong push early on from the Pentagon leadership to consider striking Baghdad as part of the U.S. counteroffensive against terrorism.

"Everybody is focusing on Iraq as if it is the only thing out there, or it is time for us to do something beyond what we are doing," he said. "There are lots of al Qaeda cells around throughout the world that we're going after, and there are other countries that are of concern to us besides Iraq."

Powell said the administration remains committed to working with both Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to achieve peace in the Middle East, although some U.S. officials have said peace will remain elusive as long as these leaders are in office.

"We have to deal with the people who are there. We can't sit back and say just wait for a better or different or newer or other leaders to come in," Powell said. He added, "The enemy of this process right now is not Yasser Arafat or Sharon. It's Hamas. It's Palestinian Jihad. It's others. The burden now is for Mr. Arafat to demonstrate his commitment by going after these organizations."

Powell also said the administration, after its announcement last week that the United States would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, wants to explore whether Russia shares the American interest in developing a missile defense system. He noted that Russia this year proposed jointly developing a shield against theater, or short-range, missiles.

"We'll tell them what we're doing. We want to hear what they're doing, see if there are any ideas that might be of mutual interest to each other with regard to theater defense or see if they want to talk about strategic missile defense, limited missile defense -- we'll explore that as well," he said.

Powell reiterated his cautionary position about an assault on Iraq at a time when speculation has grown about a U.S.-led quest to overthrow Hussein.

Policy analysts, former government officials and foreign diplomats have been wondering aloud whether the U.S. success in Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime that sheltered bin Laden was driven from power within weeks, will embolden the administration to attack Iraq. Bush warned Hussein this month that he must admit international weapons inspectors, or "he'll find out" the consequences.

Suspicion about Iraqi development of weapons of mass destruction increased this week on allegations from an Iraqi defector. Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri said until last year he was a civil engineer who helped rebuild Hussein's facilities for producing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The Defense Intelligence Agency is reviewing his account, a senior administration official said.

Francis Brooke, an Iraqi National Congress consultant, said the Iraqi opposition group has publicized Saeed's account to help make the case that Hussein must be overthrown and the United States should not resort to less dramatic measures, such as sporadic airstrikes or new inspections of suspected weapons sites.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) further fueled the debate yesterday when he urged the president not to move unilaterally or hastily against the Iraqis. "I think a strike against Iraq at this time would be a mistake," Daschle told reporters.

Daschle cautioned against "any overt attack" against Iraq. He said such an attack would cause serious problems in the Middle East and give the Islamic world "concern about the direction of U.S. policy."

Advocates of heightened military action in Iraq have cited the Afghan model approvingly: an American air campaign using high-tech precise munitions and targeting by U.S. Special Forces on the ground in support of an indigenous armed opposition. But Powell, asked for his military judgment, warned against taking away the wrong lesson from Afghanistan.

Iraq "is very much always on our agenda. We are constantly reviewing our plans," said Powell, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs under President George Bush during the Persian Gulf War 10 years ago. "But I think it's too much of a leap to say, 'This worked here -- let's see how it lines up in a similar fashion with respect to Iraq.' "

He said it would be misleading to compare Afghanistan's Northern Alliance and the Pashtun tribal rebels of southern Afghanistan with the INC, an umbrella of anti-Hussein groups.

He also said countries that rallied behind the U.S. military response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would be unlikely to play the same role should the Bush administration take action in Iraq. Some of the closest U.S. allies have advised the administration against striking Baghdad, especially in the absence of evidence linking Iraq to the attacks on New York and Washington.

"There was one group of countries that were united with respect to what we did with Afghanistan. It would be a different political and diplomatic setup with respect to Iraq," he said.

Even before Sept. 11, there had been little enthusiasm within the administration for new military confrontation with Hussein. While top Pentagon officials looked for a new initiative to topple the Iraqi leader, Powell has pressed for overhauling U.N. economic sanctions on Baghdad to choke off imports that could be used by its military or in the development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Staff writers Walter Pincus and Dan Balz contributed to this report.

-------- israel / palestine

Palestinians say U.S. blindly backing Israel

World Scene
Washington Times
December 21, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011221-12614766.htm

CAIRO - Palestinians accused the United States of "blind" support of Israeli actions against them in a memorandum presented to an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers yesterday.

Ministers from the 22-member Arab League were gathered in Cairo at the request of Palestinians after a recent escalation of violence in an almost 15-month uprising against Israeli occupation.

The United States has said Israel has the right to defend itself against attack after a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings. Palestinians have said Israel has interpreted this as a go-ahead to carry out attacks on Palestinian installations.

----

THE SECRET WAR
Pre-9/11, we fought a covert war on American soil - against Israel

December 21, 2001
Editorial by Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com Editor
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j122101.html

You really have to hand it to the Israelis: they are nothing if not blatant. Their response to Fox News reporter Carl Cameron's devastating exposé of Israel's massive spy operation in the US can hardly be repeated with a straight face. Mark Regev, a spokesman at the Israeli embassy in Washington is quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying:

"The report on Fox News contains no quoted source, it has in no way demonstrated anything more than anonymous innuendo, and should be regarded accordingly. Israel does not spy on the United States of America."

Gee, Mark, does the name Jonathan Pollard ring a bell?

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES

Naturally, the law enforcement sources who utilized Cameron's investigation to voice their concerns didn't dare allow their names to be used: as Cameron related in his report, any question regarding the possibility of Israeli spying in the US is "career suicide" for those who dare raise it. Question: is it also career suicide for journalists to raise it?

I have seen a few news items reporting on the Cameron exposé, but, given the implications and scope of what we're talking about here, the answer is, apparently, yes. For Cameron and Fox News are not merely saying that the Israelis have been conducting a "sprawling" spy operation in the US, involving the massive penetration of our communications systems and government agencies. As Cameron so diplomatically put it in the first segment of his four-part investigation:

"There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it."

A GUILTY SILENCE

In other words: Israel's passive complicity made the worst terrorist attack in American history possible. One would think that the sheer enormity of such a charge would provoke a storm of outrage from Israel's many defenders in the media: the columnists, the think-tankers, the publicists who dote on Ariel Sharon's every word. But, no: instead, there is an ominous, one might almost say a guilty silence.

THANKS BE TO GOOGLE!

It's frightening, really, when you think about it. Here, after all, is a reporter's dream: a heretofore-undiscovered angle on the biggest story of our time. Yet no one will touch it. Why? It couldn't be because you'd need an army of researchers: you don't. All that's necessary is internet access, and, of course, the miracle of Google: anyone can go to google.com and type in the appropriate words and phrases, such as "Israelis detained," or, better yet, "Israeli art students" along with the word "detained." Go ahead: do it, and see what happens....

ARTISTIC ASPIRATIONS

Okay, so you did it and came up with a whole slew of news stories, published mostly in local newspapers, telling different variations on a single, very bizarre story: In locations as diverse as Dallas, Saint Louis, Kansas, Atlanta, New York, and Findley, Ohio, groups of young people describing themselves as Israeli art students suddenly descended on federal office buildings and no less than 36 Department of Defense facilities. They seemed particularly active in the state of Texas: in Dallas, one "student" was found wandering the halls of a federal facility with a floor plan in his hands. Say, what?

Starting in the third week of January, reports began to pour in to the National Counterintelligence Center (NCC) about "suspicious visitors to federal facilities." The NCC's bimonthly report for March 2001 states:

"In the past six weeks, employees in federal office buildings located throughout the United States have reported suspicious activities connected with individuals representing themselves as foreign students selling or delivering artwork. Employees have observed both males and females attempting to bypass facility security and enter federal buildings."

INVASION OF THE 'ART STUDENTS'

The NCC described these people -- supposedly working for an outfit known as "Universal Art, Inc." -- as "aggressive" in attempting to gain access to federal facilities, and reported that two had been arrested for having counterfeit work visas and green cards. Then this stunner: "These individuals have also gone to the private residences of senior federal officials under the guise of selling art." Now wait just a friggin' minute, dude - stop right there!

OMINOUS PORTENTS

Okay, so we're talking about some nine months before The Day, and mysterious "art students" are following high government officials home - that is, when they aren't trying to break in to Defense Department facilities, staking out DEA offices, and hanging around the federal prosecutor's office in Dallas. We've already had numerous terrorist scares, at this point: remember the New Year's hysteria, and there were all those frantic warnings by various "anti-terrorist" commissions and study groups. The NCC report posits the existence of two groups of "art students":

"One group has an apparently legitimate money-making goal while the second, perhaps a non-Israeli group, may have ties to a Middle Eastern Islamic fundamentalist group."

So, this was the first ominous sign of the terrorist onslaught to come - or was it? The NCC's speculation that these "art students" were Bin Laden's boys turns out not to have been correct. They were Israelis, alright, except for a few Latin Americans. Not only did they carry forged immigration papers, in some cases, but also at least one we know about failed a polygraph test when he denied spying for Israel.

CELLMATES AT LAST

With some 140 picked up before 9/11, and some 60-plus afterward, we have no idea how many of these "art students" were sent back to Israel to pursue their "studies." All we know is that those let go were kept for months, and others - according to Fox News, those identified as Israeli agents - are still in custody, perhaps sharing a nice cozy cell with detainees from Arab countries. I'm sure they have a lot to talk about....

HOW ODD

The Arab detainees, as we have seen, have been the subjects of a national controversy between civil libertarians and the Bush administration. We have John Ashcroft denouncing those who would spread the "false fear" of a police state as "aiding the terrorists," while on the other hand Arab-Americans and the ACLU are rallying opposition to the round-up. But when it comes to the Israeli detainees, there is no controversy, virtually no mention of it in the national media, no nothing. Jewish groups are not rallying to the defense of these poor defenseless "art students," held without bail and without lawyers, for the most part, in very uncomfortable and worrisome circumstances. Doesn't anybody find this odd?

SUCKER PUNCH

What's significant about this story is, first, that it amounts to the biggest spy operation in the US since the days of the Cold War, and, secondly, that it provides some context for understanding the mystery of 9/11. To most of us, that horrific event was a bolt out of the blue, with no prelude, no precedent, and no way to anticipate that the best days of our lives could turn into the worst. But the view from inside the US Government must have looked a whole lot different, i.e. far more threatening. Yet the threat seemed to be coming, not from Bin Laden, but - incredibly - from the Israelis, who, not content with having gained access to our phone system and federal wiretaps, were penetrating American military and government targets. Law enforcement authorities were in the midst of a massive crackdown on the Israelis, when, suddenly, they were hit - from the other direction.

IN THE DARK

We are being kept in the dark about so many things, these days, but this, it seems, is too important to be kept secret for long. If we are going to be asked to give up our liberties, our peace of mind, and even our lives in an apparently eternal "war on terrorism," then Americans at least have a right to know who their enemies are. Yes, we know the evil Bin Laden is responsible for the murder of 3000 innocent people - but we still don't know how they managed to pull off such a well-organized and spectacular display of murderous skill, unassisted by any state sponsor.

A CAROLINA COVEN

Much has been said - but nothing proved - about the alleged role of Iraq in all this. But to anyone who has seen or read through parts one, two, three and four of the Fox News investigative report, it seems clear that the most active state intelligence agency in the US prior to the twin towers attack was not the Iraqis, but the Mossad. Carl Cameron informs us that a North Carolina Israeli spy coven is suspected of renting an apartment in California "to spy on a group of Arabs who the United States is also investigating for links to terrorism." What were they doing - and, most importantly, what did they know about the planning and execution of the 9/11 atrocity?

DEMAND AN INVESTIGATION

In the months preceding 9/11, a secret war was being waged on American soil, a silent struggle from coast to coast - not an undercover battle between us and Muslim terrorists, but one pitting US law enforcement agencies against one of our closest allies. Make of that what you will. For until the US government comes clean, and Congress investigates, we'll never even have a chance to start asking the right questions.

"Carl Cameron Reports - Some U.S. investigators believe that Israel is spying in and on the U.S. and may have known things they didn't tell us before September 11"

Part 1 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/589762/posts
Part 2 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/590068/posts
Part 3 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/590668/posts
Part 4 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/592499/posts

----

[Would US citizens tolerate this?]

An Israeli Outpost In the Front Room

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 21, 2001; Page A34
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9619-2001Dec20?language=printer

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec. 20 -- Even during the most violent moments of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle over her town a decade ago, soldiers never occupied Hanan Husary's house on Tirah Street.

Boys threw stones, troops gave chase, but Husary's olive orchard, her living room with little Christian icons, and her lace-covered dining room were spared.

But five years after the Israelis left Ramallah, the main Palestinian town north of Jerusalem, and turned it over to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, not only did the soldiers come back to town, they arrived in Husary's living room.

They screened her visitors, told her when she could visit the second floor where two dozen troops bivouacked; they followed her into the kitchen to watch her prepare meals.

"They have definitely made themselves at home -- my home," the middle-aged homemaker said Wednesday night to the first reporter permitted to pay her a call after a week of isolation. "I thought we would never see them in this neighborhood again, and now I'm sleeping with them."

The troops left this morning, after a night of security meetings between Israeli and Palestinian officials.

For Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Husary's sitting room was a front in the war on terrorism, as he has defined the conflict with the Palestinians. After deadly suicide bombings killed and injured Israeli civilians, Sharon took the initiative, moving troops into Palestinian cities and hamlets, bombing Palestinian government buildings and continuing the policy of assassinating Palestinian militants deemed by Israel to be terrorists.

Husary's house became a military outpost. The Israeli soldiers said they chose it because it offered a good overlook of a nearby town that has been the scene of recent fighting.

The tactics were not new. They predated the first suicide assault during this 15-month struggle; they predated Sharon's term, which began in March. What has changed is the context, both in Israel and the world at large. Israelis, in a trauma over terrorist bombs, give Sharon's campaign high approval marks. War on terrorism has become a central policy theme throughout Western countries, especially the United States.

After the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Bush administration put anti-terrorism at the center of its policy toward the Palestinians, pressuring Arafat to crack down on terrorist organizations and muting its criticism of Sharon. Last spring, when Israeli troops invaded a slice of the Gaza Strip, the Bush administration was quick to pressure Sharon to pull out. In the last week, as troops moved into Ramallah and other West Bank cities, there was no criticism from Washington.

Arafat, who associates said feels under physical and political threat, has closed offices of the militant Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, and rounded up scores of activists. But Israeli officials have called the crackdown a "show."

It is not clear exactly what some of the most visible Israeli actions have to do with the fight against terrorism. Some of the assaults on Palestinians seem merely to be a continuation of efforts that began long before Sept. 11 to erode whatever authority Arafat maintains, and to break the morale of the people.

In Ramallah, for example, a police station that was bombed at least twice was hit again last week. Israeli sappers also blew up a radio transmission tower built by the British rulers of Palestine in 1938. The destruction was justified as a way to silence "incitement" by Palestinian Authority radio. Palestinians laughed at that explanation.

"Do you think Palestinians care about what the official radio says?" asked Mustafa Barghouti, a frequent critic of Arafat who heads a public health agency. "Does anyone think we need radio to order us to be angry at Israel?"

Last Thursday, an Israeli missile hit the Friends Boys School, a century-old Quaker-run institution, damaging three classrooms. Ramallah has long regarded Friends as a civic symbol of worldly aspirations. "Of course, the Israelis must hate this place," Hamed Salim, a mathematics teacher, said bitterly. "Muslims and Christians study here. The Quakers stand for peace. Boys get educated. Everything Sharon doesn't want for Palestinians."

Israeli troops sacked the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics a few weeks ago. It was one of the few Palestinian Authority institutions that citizens praised for efficiency. The Israeli army said it was searching for financial links to terrorist groups. The 30 invading soldiers took not only financial records, but also raw survey data, especially on political and social issues, and the names and addresses of survey respondents. The soldiers also smashed furniture and broke doors. The government has yet to make public any terrorist links.

The Tirah neighborhood is one of two in Ramallah that has been occupied by Israeli tanks and soldiers in recent weeks. Tirah sits in the southwest, along a road toward agricultural hamlets; the other neighborhood straddles the road north to Nablus, a major city. Soldiers outside Husary's house said they took it over so they could have a good view of the town of Beitunia, across the valley. Beitunia has been a site of frequent fighting.

But Husary, who lives in Tirah with her husband, son and pregnant daughter-in-law, said she thinks there's another tactical reason. The Israelis came to her house, she said, because "we are here. There are plenty of empty flats and houses in Tirah. But they know that no one will shoot at them while we are around."

Tirah is full of political activists and professors from nearby Bir Zeit University. Soldiers briefly occupied the house of Marwan Barghouti, head of the West Bank branch of Fatah, the main faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He was not home, but soldiers slept in the living room while Barghouti's wife and four children were confined to their rooms.

Because vehicles were prohibited from entering Tirah, garbage was not collected and the tank trucks that suck sewage from cesspools could not make their rounds. Sewage has been overflowing into the streets. "We're going back to the Stone Age," Husary said.

Soldiers have been shooing reporters away from the Husary house, but changed their policy today, she said. Her husband, a detergent deliveryman, would stay up all night to guard against possible theft upstairs. "Santa Claus this year comes in a tank," said Husary. "But he's only bringing us sandbags and mud on his boots."

Tanks reentered Nablus today, and one Palestinian died in a shootout nearby as residents resisted. After leaving Tirah, the tanks returned at night after boys threw stones at an Israeli military position. They stayed close to the edge of Ramallah, and did not return to the Husary house. "We expect them any day," she said this evening. "They come and go and no one can stop them."

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THE MIDEAST
Hamas Leader Defies Palestinian Authority's Crackdown

New York Times
December 21, 2001
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/21/international/middleeast/21MIDE.html

GAZA CITY, Dec. 20 - As Israeli military pressure on Yasir Arafat eased slightly today, the pressure on him from Palestinian extremists grew.

Defying efforts by Mr. Arafat to arrest him and to restrain his militant group, Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, a top political leader of Hamas, said today that Hamas's military wing intended to continue sending suicidal attackers against Israel. For a second night, forces of Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority clashed with Hamas supporters near Dr. Rantisi's house.

With at least six bodyguards in his home and scores of supporters milling in the muddy street outside, Dr. Rantisi said this afternoon that he would not surrender. "We cannot accept arrests on the orders of foreigners," he said, a reference to Israeli and international pressure on Mr. Arafat to stamp out violence.

Leaders of various Palestinian factions were seen entering Dr. Rantisi's home here this evening in what appeared to be an attempt to broker a deal.

Unlike Mr. Arafat, Hamas, a militant Islamic group, rejects any political settlement with Israel. That difference has been obscured as long as Mr. Arafat supported, or at least condoned, violence against Israel. But in a speech on Sunday, Mr. Arafat called for a "complete and immediate halt of all armed operations."

In an interview this afternoon, Dr. Rantisi criticized Mr. Arafat's efforts to close Hamas offices and arrest its leaders as knuckling under to Israeli and American pressure. "He is going the wrong way, to put an end to a struggle that continues now for 53 years," he said.

But he rejected any suggestion of possible civil war or of replacing Mr. Arafat. He said the problem was only "a few advisers" to Mr. Arafat who were "inciting him all the time against Islamic organizations."

Ranaan Gissin, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, called the attempted arrest "a prime-time show." He said that Mr. Arafat wanted merely to provoke resistance to demonstrate to the Bush administration that his task was difficult.

"But it's going to come back to haunt them," he continued, "because now whenever they come to make an arrest, the Hamas will resist. They're going to have to decide who is the sovereign authority, and if it is not the Palestinian Authority it will be the Hamas."

Israeli forces drew back today from some positions in what by treaty are Palestinian-controlled areas of two cities, Nablus and Ramallah. But Israeli officials said that the moves were only "tactical," and later the soldiers returned to some areas they had vacated.

Palestinian officials said that in one of those areas, the village of Tel near Nablus, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man. The Israeli Army said a bomb exploded near a convoy of military vehicles, which then came under fire. The Israeli soldiers returned fire, the army said.

Israeli tanks never shifted from their positions near the official compound in Ramallah where Mr. Arafat has remained since early this month, when Palestinian terrorist attacks provoked a fierce Israeli military response and a concerted international campaign to compel him to act against Hamas and other extremists.

On Wednesday, Israel offered to pull back to the margins of Nablus and permit the Palestinian Authority free rein to move against militants there, Israeli officials said. But Palestinian officials apparently rejected that offer in a rare joint security meeting with Israelis on Wednesday night. Palestinian officials have repeatedly demanded that Israel withdraw from all Palestinian-controlled territory.

On Dec. 5, one Palestinian was killed when Hamas supporters rioted here after the Palestinian Authority attempted to place the founder and spiritual leader of the group, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, under house arrest. Sheik Yassin, who is a paraplegic, ultimately agreed to a voluntary house arrest.

In his speech Sunday, Mr. Arafat declared that he would "allow only one authority" in Palestinian territory - his own. Since then, Palestinian officials said, more than 30 offices of Hamas in the Gaza Strip have been closed. In red paint, policemen have scrawled, "Closed by order of the Palestinian Authority." In one case, someone had added to the official message these words: "and the Israeli authority."

Dr. Rantisi, a pediatrician seen as one of the most powerful leaders of Hamas, was released from prison by the Palestinian Authority in February 2000 after having been accused of incitement and held for 21 months. Today, speaking in English as he discussed his views, he sat calmly on a loveseat in his third-floor living room, before a china dish of candies that rested on a lace doily.

Palestinian officials have said in recent weeks that they were searching for Dr. Rantisi to arrest him. But Dr. Rantisi said today that he had been home the whole time.

The police attempted to arrest Dr. Rantisi just before midnight Wednesday, after he had finished dinner with his wife and gone to work on his computer. He said he heard jeeps pulling up in the street and then doors slamming.

He said that the police climbed over the walls to reach his apartment building and also moved into surrounding buildings. But he refused to go with them. "They are all the time saying to us that they are under pressure," he said, describing the official explanation he was given for his arrest.

Over the loudspeakers of mosques, Dr. Rantisi's followers summoned help, and witnesses said that hundreds rushed into the street as the police called in reinforcements. Members of the crowd threw stones and some fired guns, while the police responded with gunfire and tear gas. The fighting lasted until 4:45 a.m.

Witnesses recalled hearing thousands of gunshots, but if that was true the evidence suggested that most of it was into the air.

Hospital officials reported seven injuries, two to policeman, but only three injured people were still in the hospital this evening. Two of them had gunshot wounds. One policeman, Saher Abu Hamed, 19, had been shot through the thigh. "I was standing in the street, and there was shooting," he said from his hospital bed in Gaza. "Suddenly I got this bullet." He said he did not know if he was shot by Hamas members or fellow police officers.

On Mr. Rantisi's roof today, someone had broken concrete blocks and piled the shards on several ledges, for use if the police returned.

Dr. Rantisi repeatedly defended Hamas's approach as necessary to counter what he called Israeli occupation. Asked if by "occupation" he was referring to the Gaza Strip and West Bank, which Israel conquered in the 1967 war, or to all of Israel, Dr. Rantisi smiled slightly and declined to answer directly. He said that Mr. Sharon should be asked first if he was "ready to withdraw from any part of Palestine."

Photocopied fliers distributed outside Dr. Rantisi's home today showed pictures of masked Palestinian police officers raiding Hamas offices and carrying guns through the streets. In black letters, the fliers asked, "Do you accept that the autonomous Authority is launching a war against Islam and Muslims to implement the demands of the American administration and Israel?"

But Mr. Rantisi downplayed talk of war between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. "There are always confrontations between crowds and police, everywhere," he said.

-------- propaganda wars

The mad leading the blind

Norman Solomon
Creators Syndicate
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemId=12550

12.21.01 - During the last days of 2001, bad news is fresh in our minds. The autumn began with a huge national jolt of shock, fear, grief and anger. It ended with many worries here at home and grim satisfaction about warfare abroad. A line from "King Lear," early in Act 4, is hauntingly appropriate:

"'Tis the time's plague when madmen lead the blind."

Shakespeare's observation fits the current era, and not only with reference to the murderous qualities of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network. Few media outlets -- and certainly none of the major national brands -- are willing to scrutinize the unhinged aspects of the adulated leadership in the White House.

Deep introspection for any society is difficult. Precious little danger of that, in the here and now. After more than 100 days of big-type rhetorical questions, the media answers are largely self-satisfied. "Why do they hate us?" Because we're great, though sometimes clumsy on the world stage. "How can the violence in the Middle East be stopped?" By continuing to back Israel, no matter what.

Since Sept. 11, many journalists have commented that the United States is unaccustomed to the role of victim. Left unsaid is how accustomed we are to being victimizers while preening ourselves as a nation of worldly do-gooders. The 3,000 human beings who lost their lives at the World Trade Center are casting an enormous shadow -- as they should. But what about the uncounted people killed, one way or another, by U.S. policies?

The list of countries that the Pentagon has attacked in recent decades is long. The list of governments using American-supplied weapons to repress and massacre is even longer.

And there's quieter slaughter, on a grand scale. During every hour, more than 1,000 children in the world die from preventable diseases. Basic nutrition, medical care and sanitation would save their lives. A fraction of the Pentagon budget would suffice.

But we still live in a society with the kind of priorities that Martin Luther King Jr. described a third of a century ago -- spending "military funds with alacrity and generosity" but providing anti-poverty funds "with miserliness." If he were alive now, his voice would still cry out against "the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth."

King would have good reason to reiterate words from his speech on April 4, 1967, when he denounced "capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries."

Today, advocates for humanitarian causes might see the United States as a place where "madmen lead the blind." But that's kind of a harsh way to describe the situation. Our lack of vision is in the context of a media system that mostly keeps us in the dark.

In American media's echo chamber, much of the genuine anguish from Sept. 11 has segued into a lot of braying about national greatness. Like many other pundits now in their glory days on cable TV networks, Chris Matthews knows how to dodge difficult truths. "Patriotism is more important than politics," he proclaimed the other day. What "unites us" is "democracy, freedom, human rights, the right to pursue happiness."

And what about the "right to pursue happiness" for the kids dying from lack of food or clean water or medicine, while Matthews and thousands of other journalists fawn over the U.S. military?

Anyone watching TV news since early October has seen lots of idolatry lavished on the latest Pentagon weapons. Uncle Sam's immense military power and Washington's role as the number-one arms dealer on the planet add up to a colossal drain of resources -- and a powerful means of enforcing the bonds between the U.S. government and scores of regimes that combine repression with oligarchy, amid rampant poverty.

Winners get to write history, and that starts with the news. While victory in Afghanistan gets presented as ample justification for going to war in the first place, the message that overwhelming might makes right is ever-present, even if no one quite says so out loud. And when human flesh goes up in flames and human bodies shatter -- but not on our TV screens -- did it ever really happen?

Several decades ago, peace activist A.J. Muste observed: "The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?"

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Fraction of Reagan's Confidential Papers Approved for Release

"The main problem remains with the executive order which gives [past and present pres