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NUCLEAR
Scientists Create Antihydrogen
UK nuclear waste unloaded amid protests, security
US wants action on dirty bomb threat
Baghdad, September 2002: City of Doom
Reports: Parts Meant for Iraq Nukes
Latest weapons commission will inspect Iraq
Iraqis: Pledge Won't Ease Tensions
Inspections in Iraq Would Take Months
A Chronology of Defiance
Verification Is Difficult at Bes
TEPCO says acted improperly in 16 reactor data cases
Pyongyang admits kidnapping Japanese
9/11 Inquiry Reveals WTC Threat in 1998
Cleanup of Radioactive Soils Begins in Louisiana
Bush Left Scrambling to Press Case on Iraq
A Tortured Relationship
Rome, AD ... Rome, DC?
MILITARY
Doubts Now Raised Over Extending Force Beyond Kabul
U.S. Moves Commandos to East Africa to Pursue Qaeda in Yemen
Iraq isn't the only country making a mockery of the U.N.
The Smart Bomb That Is Shaping U.S. Iraq Strategy
Defense Cos. to Pay $6.2 Million
Defiant California City Hands Out Marijuana
An Attack Strategy to Win
A War We Can Afford
Experts agree Israel has most to gain from Saddam ouster
Israeli Fire Sends U.N. Group Scrambling
Israel threatens Lebanon on water
Israel Inoculates Emergency Workers
US urged to leave landmines out of Iraq arsenal
U.S. Pressing NATO for Rapid Reaction Force
Probe: U.S. Knew of Jet Terror Plots
Spy scandal has reduced America's control of mission
Castro suspected of giving false data for war on terror
Rift Seen at U.N. Over Next Steps to Deal With Iraq
Support for tough Iraq resolution fades at U.N.
U.N. Divided On New Iraq Resolution
Air Defenses Relaxed After 9/11 Anniversary
War in Iraq seen as quick win
Criticism of War Game Rejected
Reserves Could Be Called on Iraq
Group Analyzes Coverage of Mideast
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Hamburg Official Urges Spy Powers
UK Computer Programmer Held on Terror Charge
ENERGY AND OTHER
War Fears Buffeting Oil Prices
Scientists offer evidence that CFC ban is helping ozone
ACTIVISTS
A Look at Latest In Tools of War
Activist in Egypt Appeals Conviction
Catholic Bishops Oppose a Unilateral War on Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
Scientists Create Antihydrogen
September 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Antihydrogen.html
European scientists say they have created enough antihydrogen -- a type of the mirror-image, antimatter stuff that fictionally powers spaceships on Star Trek -- to test a widely held basic model of the universe.
While antihydrogen has been made before, the more than 50,000 atoms created at the CERN particle accelerator in Geneva are ``by far, the most produced,'' said Jeffrey Hangst, a leader of the ATHENA collaboration, one of two groups of physicists working on antihydrogen at CERN.
The quest to understand and manipulate antimatter is one of the most competitive and esoteric pursuits in science. Not all particle physicists -- even within CERN -- agree with the new finding.
A spokesman for the competing ATRAP Collaboration at CERN said he doubts that antihydrogen had been produced in the latest experiment. The ATHENA group relied on indications of the simultaneous destruction of antihydrogen's two atomic particles -- the positron and the antiproton -- to show it had been produced, said Harvard physicist Gerald Gabrielse, spokesman for the ATRAP group.
``Our long experience with these very difficult experiments warns that observing simultaneous positron and antiproton annihilation does not ensure that antihydrogen has really been produced,'' Gabrielse said.
ATHENA researchers, whose work appears in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, plan to make more antihydrogen to test the Standard Model, equations that explain the nature of matter and energy.
If the antihydrogen doesn't behave the same as normal hydrogen ``the textbooks would have to be rewritten,'' said Hangst, who is a physicist at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, along with his CERN work.
``It would imply that we have overlooked something fundamental about how nature works,'' Hangst said. ``Such a discovery certainly wouldn't help you to build a better computer or TV, but it might shed some light on why we have a universe that looks the way it does.''
Antimatter is the mirror image of conventional matter with opposite properties. Antimatter is destroyed whenever it collides with matter, turning both into bursts of electromagnetic radiation. Scientists believe this process was crucial to the fiery creation of the universe billions of years ago.
Why so little antimatter is made now in nature remains one of physics' great dilemmas. Only modest levels have been detected in cosmic ray showers and the nuclei of distant galaxies.
Antimatter is difficult to make in the lab, too. Giant particle accelerators at CERN and Fermilab near Chicago specialize in the quest. In the first antimatter experiments a few years ago, only dozens of short-lived antimatter particles were created.
Hydrogen, the most abundant element, consists of an electron orbiting a proton. Antihydrogen is the exact opposite; a positron -- an electron with a positive charge -- orbiting an antiproton, or a proton with a negative charge.
In the latest experiments, ATHENA researchers used the CERN accelerator to create antiprotons and electromagnetically trapped them in a vacuum chamber. A radioactive source, meanwhile, was used to create positrons, which were held in a separate trap. The antiprotons were then fed into the pool of positrons, where the two combined to form antihydrogen.
The antimatter was short-lived; Hangst said it was annihilated when it bumped into normal matter. Detectors picked up the unique signatures of antimatter as it was destroyed, he said.
David Christian of Fermilab said the ATHENA group appears to have made antimatter in greater quantities.
``They've got a lot more big steps they need to make, but this one is a big step,'' Christian said.
However, Gabrielse said upcoming publications by his group ``will show how it is possible to be fooled.''
``Our initial understanding of the recent report makes it likely that we will present the case that the reported observations do not prove that any antihydrogen was observed,'' he said.
ATHENA researchers plan several experiments to test the Standard Model by creating more antihydrogen, exciting it with lasers and observing what happens when the atom's positron jumps from one orbit to another.
They also want to study gravity's effect on antihydrogen. Some speculate antimatter ``falls up,'' but most scientists don't believe that is the case, Hangst said.
Using antimatter to power a starship or create a weapon, meanwhile, is still in the realm of science fiction, he said.
Making antiprotons requires 10 billion times more energy than it produces. For example, the antimatter produced each year at CERN could power a 100 watt light bulb for 15 minutes, Hangst said.
On the Net:
The ATHENA Collaboration: http://athena.web.cern.ch/athena/
Fermilab antimatter primer: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/questions/antimatter2.html
-------- britain
UK nuclear waste unloaded amid protests, security
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
By Ian Hodgson
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09182002/reu_48449.asp
BARROW-IN-FURNESS, England - A controversial nuclear waste shipment began the last stage of a two-month journey to England's Sellafield reprocessing plant on Tuesday amid protests and heavy security.
More than 100 police were on standby as the waste - which has provoked confrontation at sea and on land with antinuclear protesters - was lifted cask by cask from the freighter that transported it on an 18,000-mile voyage from Japan.
"Things are moving - slowly," British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) said in a statement as the cargo was unloaded for its final, short journey by rail from Barrow-in-Furness to Sellafield in northwest England.
The Pacific Pintail freighter, followed by its armed escort the Pacific Teal, was escorted into the harbor by nine police boats, a police helicopter and a protest flotilla of four yachts.
"There were even policemen on the uninhabited Irish Sea islands in full uniform," protester Mike Clark of the Nuclear Free Seas Flotilla said, from his yacht White Heather in Barrow harbor.
Cumbria police coordinated the security operation with Britain's Defence Ministry and neighboring police forces.
"It involved an intensive amount of preparation," a spokesman said. "With a load of this particular sort you have to look at the whole scale of potential threats and have plans in place."
One man was arrested for breach of the peace at Barrow in the last of a series of otherwise peaceful protests. On Monday a flotilla of yachts joined by environmental group Greenpeace's flagship Rainbow Warrior circled the nuclear ships but did not impede their progress.
REJECTED FUEL
The nuclear waste's marathon journey from Japan - the first shipment of its kind since last year's September 11 attacks on the United States - was an embarrassment to its owners, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL).
The potentially weapons-capable plutonium mixed oxide, known as MOX, was rejected by BNFL's Japanese client after the company admitted falsifying safety documents.
"This plutonium MOX should never have been shipped to Japan in the first place in 1999," Greenpeace's Shaun Burnie said in a statement. "If they [BNFL] had their way it would now be loaded into a nuclear reactor increasing the risks of a catastrophic nuclear accident," he added.
Dozens of countries along the shipment's route had voiced environmental and security concerns. Many feared the cargo could prove an attractive target for terrorists. The transport also aggravated tensions between London and Dublin over the Sellafield nuclear plant, which is just 110 miles from the Irish coast.
"It's absolute madness that our oceans should be used for the transportation of this material and it's intolerable that the Irish Sea should be used as a nuclear highway," Jim Corr of Irish pop group The Corrs told Sky News after taking part in the protest on board the Rainbow Warrior.
Protest skipper Clark, who lives on the Isle of Man just 45 miles across the Irish Sea from Sellafield, concurred.
"We saw last September what can be achieved on an enormous structure using a very simple method. To similarly damage a ship at sea would be the simplest thing in the world," Clark told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan)
-------- depleted uranium
[No discussion of dirty bombs is complete without mentioning the 300 tons of depleted uranium ammunition the U.S. dumped on Iraq in 1991, and subsequently 30 tons on Bosnia, and 8-10 tons on Kosovo. See http://prop1.org/2000/dulv.htm. et]
US wants action on dirty bomb threat
Story by Louis Charbonneau
REUTERS AUSTRIA:
September 18, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17807/story.htm
VIENNA - The U.S. energy secretary called this week for international cooperation to fight the threat of so-called dirty bombs, which scatter radioactive material using conventional explosive devices.
In a speech at the annual conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Spencer Abraham said more should be done to stop lower grade nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists attracted by the greater destructive potential of dirty bombs.
"While dirty bombs are not comparable to nuclear weapons in destructiveness, they are far easier to assemble and employ," Abraham said.
"And while the physical destruction they would cause is comparable to conventional explosives, the disruption caused by widespread contamination is far greater. And it is disruption that terrorists seek," he added.
Although they do not involve any nuclear fission or cause great physical damage, dirty bombs are finely milled radioactive material packed around conventional explosives designed to widely spread radioactivity and panic.
Abraham said plans found in bunkers in Afghanistan revealed the interest of the al Qaeda network, which Washington blames for last year's September 11 attacks, in making dirty bombs with the kind of radioactive materials left over from everyday uses.
"After September 11, there could be no doubt - if there ever was one in the first place - that terrorists would use nuclear materials to harm innocent citizens of the civilised nations of the world, if they could acquire them," Abraham said.
"No one of us should underestimate the implications of the use of any kind of radiological device, be it a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb," he said, adding that there should be an international conference devoted to the issue of dirty bombs.
He said the United States was closely cooperating with Russia to protect nuclear and radioactive material, much of which is missing throughout the former Soviet Union.
IRAQ AND NORTH KOREA STILL A PROBLEM
Recently the United States and Russia cooperated with the IAEA on a successful mission to recover highly enriched uranium from a nuclear reactor in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
Abraham said that one of the problems in the fight against nuclear terrorism was that there were regimes seeking nuclear weapons for aggressive purposes which cooperate with and sponsor terrorists.
"My president laid out the case against one such regime before the U.N. last week," he said, referring to George W. Bush's speech demanding that the U.N. "show some backbone" in forcing Iraq to obey U.N. resolutions by allowing the return of weapons inspectors.
Regarding communist North Korea, IAEA General-Director Mohamed ElBaradei told delegates at the conference that the agency was still unable to verify if Pyongyang had declared all of its nuclear material subject to IAEA safeguard measures.
"Further delays in the start of the IAEA's verification activities...could lead to a substantial delay in the light water reactor project," said ElBaradei.
In 1994, North Korea, which Bush said belonged to the "axis of evil" alongside Iraq and Iran, agreed to freeze a suspected nuclear weapons programme in exchange for two light-water reactors built by the West that would be hard to use for a secret weapons programme.
-------- iraq
Baghdad, September 2002: City of Doom
By Norman Solomon,
AlterNet
September 18, 2002
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14127
When Iraqi deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz described the box that Washington has meticulously constructed for Iraq, he put it this way: "Doomed if you do, doomed if you don't."
It would be difficult to argue the point with Aziz, and I didn't try. Instead, during a Sept. 14 meeting here in Baghdad, I joined with others in a small American delegation who argued that the ominous dynamics of recent weeks might be reversible if -- as a first step -- Iraq agreed to allow unrestricted inspections.
Despite Iraq's breakthrough decision that came two days later to do just that, I'll be leaving Baghdad tonight with a scarcely mitigated sense of gloom. While the news from the Iraqi capital has been positive in recent days, the profuse signs of renewed acquiescence to war among top Democrats on Capitol Hill are all the more repulsive.
Boxed in, the Iraqi government opted to accept arms inspectors as its least bad choice. Gauging the odds of averting war, Iraq chose a long shot -- appreciably better than no chance at all, but bringing its own risks. Several years ago, Washington used UNSCOM inspectors for espionage totally unrelated to the U.N. team's authorized mission. This fall, new squads of inspectors poking around the country could furnish valuable data to the United States, heightening the effectiveness of a subsequent military attack.
Aziz, a very analytical man, hardly seemed eager to grasp at weapons inspections as a way to stave off attack. Instead, he told our delegation -- which included Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) and former Sen. James Abourezk -- that a comprehensive "formula" would be needed for a long-term solution.
Presumably the formula would include a U.S. pledge of non-aggression and a lifting of sanctions. No such formula is in sight. Instead, the White House remains determined to inflict a horrendous war. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party's "leadership" in the Senate, pursuing some sort of craven political calculus, is lining up to put vast quantities of blood on its hands.
I would like to take Tom Daschle to visit a 7-year-old girl, suffering from leukemia, whom I saw in a Baghdad hospital a few days ago. He might spare a few senatorial moments to look at the IV connected to her wrist, the uncontrolled bleeding from her lips, the anguish in the dark eyes of her mother, seated on a bare mattress. Years of sanctions, championed by moralizers in Washington, have left Iraq without adequate chemotherapy drugs.
Now we're hearing about a resolution that -- unless people across the United States mobilize in opposition -- will sail through the House and Senate to authorize a massive U.S. military attack on Iraq.
I can hear the raspy and prophetic voice of Sen. Wayne Morse, who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, roaring 38 years ago: "I don't know why we think, just because we're mighty, that we have the right to try to substitute might for right."
After leaving Tariq Aziz's office, our delegation met with Sa'doun Hammadi, speaker of Iraq's National Assembly. "We are now a country facing the threat of war," he said. "We have to prepare for that."
Hammadi is an elderly man. While he's now in frail physical health, his mind and articulation remain acute. If the U.S. invaders come, Hammadi said, "The Iraqi people will fight." As those words settled in the air, the gaunt old man paused and then added: "I will fight." And for a moment I thought that I could see the dimming of light in his eyes, like embers in a dying fire.
During the current heavy dance of death, the U.S. government leads with every major step. And the sky over Baghdad seems to foreshadow new horrors, unfathomable and avoidable.
With an all-out war on Iraq shadowing the near horizon, what are Americans to do if they want to prevent such carnage from happening in their names with their tax dollars? For one thing, they -- we -- can speak up. Now. The fact that the odds are dire should spur us into creative action, not anesthetize us into further passivity.
"And henceforth," Albert Camus wrote, "the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions."
Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy (www.accuracy.org), which sponsored the U.S. delegation to Baghdad in mid-September.
----
Reports: Parts Meant for Iraq Nukes
September 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Aluminum-Tubes.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Aluminum tubing sent from China to Jordan may have been destined for Iraq to be used in enriching uranium for atomic weapons, international nuclear officials and a former U.N. weapons inspector say.
The reports could suggest that contrary to its denials, Iraq harbors nuclear ambitions but hasn't been able to buy the uranium it needs on the open market. On the other hand, some experts say the data isn't complete enough to make a definite judgment of Iraq's intentions.
The shipment of aluminum tubing was reported by officials working for international organizations in Western Europe in interviews last week and Tuesday. The tubes were found in Jordan in the last 14 months, said one of the officials. All of them spoke on condition of anonymity.
Authorities in both China and Jordan denied there was any such shipment, however.
The Bush administration alleges thousands of pieces of such tubing have been intercepted en route to Iraq. Administration experts believe the material was being sent to Iraq to build centrifuges for developing nuclear weapons.
The centrifuges are high-speed rotating drums that take raw uranium and separate it into different varieties of the element. A heavier form, which is not useful in nuclear weapons, accumulates toward the outside of the spinning drum and is siphoned off. The lighter form, which is used in nuclear bombs, tends to stay in the middle.
Because the process is highly inefficient, it requires hundreds or thousands of linked centrifuges to concentrate the light form of uranium sufficiently to be used in an atomic bomb.
In the past, Iraq has used heavy-gauge aluminum tubing to build centrifuges for refining raw uranium into fuel for a nuclear weapon. Those devices were destroyed during the 1990s by U.N. weapons inspectors.
If Iraq is seeking to rebuild centrifuges for a nuclear program, it could indicate it lacks an outside source of weapons-grade nuclear fuel.
Garry Dillon, who went to Iraq as a weapons inspector in the 1990s, said the lack of information from the Bush administration makes it difficult to determine the significance of the alleged Iraqi attempts to ship in aluminum tubes.
``Aluminum tubes come in all shapes and forms, from crutches to centrifuge'' parts, Dillon said from London. ``Nobody has enough information to decide what was the objective of this piping.''
Because the material must be spun repeatedly by hundreds of centrifuges, Iraq would need ``miles'' of such aluminum tubing, Dillon said.
Tim Brown of the Global Security.org, a nongovernment nuclear monitoring group based in Alexandria, Va., said the centrifuges Iraq once used spin at speeds of 1,000 revolutions per minute. He described their appearance as similar to ``spinning Coke cans ... the size of two wastepaper baskets.''
One of the two nuclear officials who spoke to The Associated Press said the tubing intercepted in Jordan fits a profile that would raise alarm bells in Washington, but added it was not clear if U.S. officials were referring to that shipment.
``The end user was never officially identified,'' the official told AP. ``But this may be one of the shipments they are referring to.''
President Bush touched on the aluminum tube shipments in a speech to the United Nations last week, warning that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed a threat to the world. While asking for international support, he suggested the United States was prepared to confront Iraq alone.
Baghdad on Tuesday announced it would allow the return of U.N. weapons inspectors. But the United States dismissed the offer as a tactic meant to split the Security Council, where the administration has been lobbying for a resolution that would authorize force against Iraq.
One U.S.-based expert said Bush administration officials have told him of at least two attempts to secure aluminum tubing in the past 14 months. The expert, who has close ties to the administration and formerly worked with the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor Iraq's nuclear program, spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
He said he had been consulted over the past year by a government other than the United States for his opinion on a shipment of aluminum tubing apparently suspected of having been ordered by Baghdad. He said the government divulged no details on the find.
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org
Global Security.org, www.GlobalSecurity.org
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, www.thebulletin.org
--------
Latest weapons commission will inspect Iraq
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020918-20266316.htm
It will have a new name and new faces, but the task remains the same for the United Nation's team that will try to find and destroy Saddam Hussein's arsenal of prohibited weapons.
The new name is the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, whose staff of 63 at its New York headquarters has been taking classes on weapons of mass destruction and assembling a database of 30,000 documents.
The inspection commission was created in December 1999 and replaced the U.N. Special Commission, which left Iraq in 1998 after Saddam's security forces blocked its access to various suspected weapons sites.
President Clinton then ordered four days of air strikes, known as Operation Desert Fox. Since then, Iraq has been relatively free to reconstitute and hide its chemical, nuclear and biological weapons programs. Bush administration officials believe that Iraq moved much of its nuclear work underground to escape satellite surveillance and U.S. air strikes. Baghdad shifted work on biological agents to mobile laboratories.
With President Bush threatening military action, Baghdad announced Monday that it will allow weapons monitors back inside the country.
Iraq is believed to harbor thousands of chemical munitions, gallons of biological weapons agents and Scud ballistic missiles. All are prohibited under the 1991 cease-fire agreement by which Iraq agreed "unconditionally" to destroy them.
All the secrecy will make the job for the commission; its chairman, Hans Blix; its staff; and 220 expert consultants all the more difficult.
Mr. Blix filed a report earlier this month with the U.N. Security Council that gives some clue as to how he plans to conduct inspections.
His staff told Iraqi representatives in Vienna, Austria, that the United Nations wants to reopen the Ongoing Monitoring and Verification Center in Baghdad, and open regional offices in Basra and Mosul.
The special commission relied on U.S. intelligence, overhead photographs and surprise visits to document Iraq's arsenal and destroy some of it. Defectors from Iraq's various weapons programs also provided information in the mid-1990s.
Key Bush administration officials, including Vice President Richard B. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have said that another round of inspections will not work. They predict Iraq will revert to deception and defiance.
As inspectors bored in on more sites in the late 1990s, special commission teams were repeatedly harassed and blocked by Iraqi agents.
Inspection commission inspectors, if admitted, will seek to find Iraq's prohibited weapons of mass destruction and missiles:
•Chemical - Iraq has not accounted for 6,000 chemical munitions not used in its war against Iran. The special commission found evidence Iraq had loaded VX nerve agent onto missile warheads and has converted a training aircraft, the L-29, into an unmanned vehicle capable of spraying chemical weapons.
"Since the Gulf war, Baghdad has rebuilt key portions of its industrial and chemical production infrastructure," said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Previously, Iraq was known to have produced and stockpiled mustard, tabun, sarin and VX, some of which likely remain hidden."
•Biological - Iraq admitted in 1996 that it produced offensive biological weapons and owned 30,000 liters of biological weapons agents. The United Nations believes that the stocks are much larger. Iraq admitted that it produced anthrax, botulinum toxins and aflatoxins. It developed bombs and missile warheads to carry those agents. It deployed, but did not use, the weapons in 1991.
•Missiles - Iraq had 200 to 300 Scud ballistic missiles in 1991. It fired some at Israel and Saudi Arabia. The special commission destroyed others. Iraq says it no longer has Scuds, but the United Nations believes that it has 50 or more.
•Nuclear program - Iraq has nuclear engineers and weapons designs and lacks only fissile material to make weapons. Experts believe that the country was less than a year from producing atomic bombs before allied air strikes destroyed most of Iraq's above-ground facilities.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, Austria, will hunt for nuclear components.
----
Iraqis: Pledge Won't Ease Tensions
Problems With U.S. Unlikely to End When Weapons Inspectors Arrive, Official Says
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31229-2002Sep17?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 17 -- A day after Iraq pledged to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return unconditionally, the Iraqi leadership predicted the step would not defuse the tension between their country and the United States.
Voicing a view similar to that coming from Washington, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said today that "the issue does not end with Iraq's acceptance of the return of the inspectors."
"The aim of the American policies is oil in the gulf," Aziz said at a "solidarity conference" attended by delegates from countries that share Iraq's opposition to the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
A former foreign minister who has become Iraq's front man in the current crisis, Aziz has said in recent days that he believed the United States would attack Iraq regardless of whether inspectors return to determine whether his country possesses or is developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
But with the invitation to the inspection team, "all the reasons for an attack have been eliminated," Aziz said. Now, "the United States has no pretexts or genuine reasons to justify its aggression against Iraq."
On the streets today, interviews with Iraqis yielded similar opinions. "Inviting the inspectors back won't resolve the crisis," said Faris Numan, 41, a jeweler. "America will go on threatening us until they can control us."
The White House has voiced skepticism about Iraq's offer, noting that Baghdad has obstructed the inspectors' work in the past. The U.N. team left Iraq in 1998 after a dispute with the government over where it would be allowed to work.
Iraqi officials promised Monday that new inspections would go on unhindered but predicted that U.S. leaders would nonetheless use them to create a pretext for an attack. "We know they have done this before," said Abdelrazak Hashimi, a former ambassador who serves as a semi-official government spokesman. He noted that in December 1998, the United States launched a military strike against Iraq after the inspectors departed.
As recently as Sunday, Iraqi officials called the inspectors spies and accused them of deliberately prolonging their work at the behest of the United States and Britain. But since President Bush demanded that Iraq comply with U.N. resolutions in a speech to the world body last week, the government here has found itself increasingly isolated, with Russia, China and many fellow Arab nations calling for a resumption of inspections.
"There was no way out for them," a Western diplomat here said. The diplomat said he believed the decision was probably a stalling tactic. "Nothing here happens just because there is a spirit of goodwill and cooperation and they want to solve the problem and return to the family of nations," he said. "The key now is survival, and they're hoping this will divide the world community."
"It is difficult to be optimistic that the United States will allow the inspectors to work quickly and honestly," Hashimi said.
People in Iraq often buy gold in times of trouble, driving its price up. The jeweler, Numan, said gold prices that had been rising steadily in Baghdad's markets over the past two weeks fell slightly today on the news. "But only a little," he said. "People do not believe the problem has been solved."
Several people interviewed along Yasser Arafat Street, a popular shopping area, declared, as their leaders do, that there is no way Iraq could possess weapons of mass destruction. "They were all destroyed by the inspectors years ago," said Ali Hussein, 39, the owner of a small confectionary. "Besides, we are a poor country. There's no way we could make those kinds of weapons."
A friend, Kasim Syed Gheidan, 38, owner of a china shop, said he could not understand why there has been so much concern about inspectors. "Our government does not believe in them. Neither do the Americans," he said. "What's the point?"
---
Inspections in Iraq Would Take Months
U.S. Says Tougher Resolution Needed
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 18, 2002; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31441-2002Sep17?language=printer
Under existing U.N. Security Council resolutions, returning weapons inspectors would take at least five months to fully commence operations in Iraq and report on Baghdad's initial cooperation, and up to a year to preliminarily assess whether Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction or the capability to produce them.
That extended timeframe could lead to both Iraqi deception and a loss of international and congressional momentum for stepped-up pressure against Baghdad, according to U.S. and British officials. It also helps account for the skepticism with which Washington and London greeted Iraq's promise this week to allow the return of weapons inspectors for the first time in four years.
In continuing to press for a new U.N. inspections resolution, despite Iraq's apparent agreement to those already on the books, sources said the Bush administration wants an accelerated timetable and much tougher and more definitive standards for judging Iraqi cooperation, in addition to U.N.-authorized consequences for noncompliance.
"We want clear criteria and benchmarks in a new resolution that enables us all to agree without any equivocation that either [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein is behaving, or he is not cooperating," said one source.
Administration officials are also concerned that a lengthy inspection timetable, under what they consider vague guidelines, would leave U.S. military planning for an invasion of Iraq in limbo. The military is poised to launch operations against Iraq within six to eight weeks after being told to do so by Bush, according to one well-placed officer.
The Bush administration has repeatedly insisted it has no confidence in any offer from Hussein. Yesterday U.S. officials released a report detailing "the Iraqi regime's repeated pattern of accepting inspections 'without conditions' and then demanding conditions, often at gunpoint" since the U.N. first ordered its disarmament in 1991. U.N. inspectors withdrew from Iraq in 1998, and Iraq has barred them from returning ever since.
Officials in the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) have said there are ways to speed up the timetable or adjust their efforts to arrive at an early assessment. But it appears highly unlikely they could achieve any meaningful results in the "days and weeks" being discussed by the administration.
"We will not drag our feet," said one UNMOVIC official. "But we can't snap our fingers and have it all there tomorrow."
Under the most recent U.N. inspection outline, Security Council Resolution 1284, adopted in 1999, the UNMOVIC team has 60 days after commencing operations in Iraq to draw up a detailed "work program" for inspection of suspected biological and chemical weapons-related sites and other activities. That program, along with a similar document compiled by a separate inspection team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), must then be approved by the Security Council.
UNMOVIC has a list of 700 potential biological and chemical sites that were either already inspected by its predecessor agency, the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), and must be rechecked; were on the list to be checked when inspectors departed in 1998; or have been added on the basis of intelligence and other information gathered over the past four years.
But there are many steps to be taken before even that initial process can begin, including what IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming called "practical issues" such as "where can a plane land? Can inspectors go in without visas?"
The building left by UNSCOM in Baghdad has to be reopened. Telephones, computers, office equipment and a testing laboratory left there four years ago have to be replaced or upgraded. Vehicles, including fixed-wing aircraft, have to be procured. Purchases of about 100 cameras and satellite telephones have been arranged, but delivery will take time. Medical personnel and interpreters have to be hired. Provisions for inspector security must be made.
As for the IAEA, which has its own list of potential inspection sites, "we don't have anything on the ground," Fleming said. "There is the facility we occupied when we were there before. We have no idea what shape it is in after four years. . . . We need cars, we need to reestablish our detection capabilities." Fleming noted, however, that nuclear detection is slightly less complicated than finding biological or chemical weapons because "nuclear leaves a footprint" that can be located by radiation detectors and other devices.
"We say a year . . . to allow for adequate time" to determine whether Iraq has restarted the nuclear program the IAEA certified had been completely destroyed by inspectors before their departure, Fleming said. Any shorter timeframe "depends on what the Security Council would want us to report on," she said.
After the work plan is adopted, UNMOVIC and IAEA have 120 days to make an initial report on whether Iraq is cooperating, not only in allowing complete and unfettered access to any and all locations, but also in handing over all requested documents and allowing interviews with any Iraqi officials.
Under the terms of Resolution 1284, after an additional 120 days, assuming cooperation, certain sanctions against Iraq could be suspended.
But cooperation with inspections does not necessarily mean compliance with disarmament demands, a conclusion inspectors cannot begin to draw until the process is well underway.
"We could report within a year," the UNMOVIC official said, "though some think that is far too long. . . . But if you want an effective system, you can't be too hasty."
----
A Chronology of Defiance
By Michael Kelly,
Washington Post Editorial
Wednesday, September 18, 2002; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31683-2002Sep17?language=printer
"U.N. Inspectors Can Return Unconditionally, Iraq Says," the headline reads. This, to put it mildly, and in the words of an old and apt phrase, shall not stand.
Consider the following darkly comic tale, mostly taken from the Congressional Research Service:
On March 3, 1991, the coalition forces of the Persian Gulf War signed the Safwan accords, ending hostilities in the insane conflict Iraq had forced. On April 3, the United Nations passed Security Council Resolution 687 requiring Iraq to end its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs, recognize Kuwait, account for missing Kuwaitis, return Kuwaiti property and end support for international terrorism. Iraq immediately began a decade-long pattern of defiance, alternating with stalling, tactical capitulation and more defiance. This was particularly so concerning what remains the central issue: the demand that it destroy its weapons of mass destruction and stop developing new ones.
To enforce and conduct inspections, the United Nations created a special commission, UNSCOM, which went to work in April 1991. Almost immediately, Iraq began impeding the inspections. The United Nations responded by passing its first resolution-to-enforce-the-resolution, Resolution 707, on Aug. 15, which ordered Iraq to comply with unfettered inspections of all sites and to make full disclosure of all of its suppliers to its program for weapons of mass destruction. On Oct. 11, the United Nations also passed Resolution 715, which established a long-term monitoring program.
Some success ensued, but Iraq resumed impeding inspections in March 1996. The Security Council responded with Resolution 1060, on June 12, 1996, demanding, again, Iraqi cooperation, which was not forthcoming. So, on June 21, 1997, the august body duly passed Resolution 1115, which threatened noncooperating Iraqi government officials with travel restrictions. This was followed on Oct. 23, 1997, by Resolution 1134, which threatened travel restrictions -- again -- and which banned consideration of lifting the U.N. sanctions against Iraq until April 1998.
On Oct. 29, Iraq barred American inspectors assigned to UNSCOM from conducting any inspections. So, on Nov. 12, 1997, the United Nations went right darned ahead and imposed those mean old travel restrictions. The next day, Iraq expelled all the American inspectors. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution authorizing the use of unilateral U.S. military action if necessary. But the measure died in the Senate, of inattention.
In November 1997, Russia brokered a compromise that allowed UNSCOM to resume some temporary and sharply limited inspections. In February 1998, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan put together a second compromise, by which Iraq agreed to allow inspections with the proviso that it be allowed to protect "presidential sites" from undue indignity. Iraq designated eight large tracts of land (containing more than 1,000 buildings) as "presidential sites." Inspectors could visit these sites only after announcing the visit in advance and informing the Iraqis of the composition of the visiting team -- nuclear, chemical or biological inspectors. In appreciation of this joke, the Clinton administration supported lifting the travel ban on Iraq and resuming sanction reviews.
In August 1998, Iraq barred UNSCOM from inspecting any new facilities. The Senate and House passed a resolution, signed on Aug. 14, declaring Iraq to be in "material breach" of the cease-fire. On Sept. 9, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1194, suspending sanction reviews. On Oct. 30, the council offered Iraq yet another chance to have the sanctions lifted if it complied with inspections, but Iraq spurned the offer and announced the cessation of all cooperation with UNSCOM. A very angry Security Council passed the very fierce Resolution 1205, which called Iraq's action a "flagrant violation" of the February 1998 agreement. A very, very angry President Clinton very, very fiercely threatened airstrikes. On Nov. 14, Iraq agreed to cooperate. President Clinton promptly canceled the airstrikes.
On Dec. 15, 1998, UNSCOM announced that Iraq had refused to hand over key weapons-program documents and was, again, impeding inspections. UNSCOM inspectors withdrew from the country and the United States and Britain bombed Iraqi military and security targets for several days. UNSCOM never went back into Iraq. On Dec. 17, 1999, the Security Council passed Resolution 1284 establishing a new inspection body, UNMOVIC, and offering Iraq the suspension of most sanctions in exchange for a resumption of inspections. In February 2001, Iraq entered into talks with the U.N. secretary general on this basis, "but the talks made little progress."
I'd say the current Iraqi offer can be dispensed with, oh, now.
----
Verification Is Difficult at Best, Say Experts, and Maybe Impossible
New York Times
September 18, 2002
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/international/middleeast/18INSP.html
Although United Nations inspectors say they may be prepared to resume their work within three weeks of a green light from the United Nations Security Council, verifying Iraq's assertions that it has abandoned weapons of mass destruction, or finding evidence that it has not done so, may not be feasible, according to officials and former weapons inspectors.
"I don't want to knock the new inspection regime or my successors' efforts or abilities," said David Kay, a former inspector who led the initial nuclear inspections in Iraq in the early 1990's, "but their task is damn near a mission impossible."
In interviews with weapons experts, all but a small minority echoed such skepticism. While Scott Ritter, a former inspector invited to address the Iraqi Parliament last week, said he doubted that Iraq was still hiding chemical, biological, and nuclear or radiological weapons, most inspectors said they thought Saddam Hussein was continuing his quest for such arms, but that inspectors stood little chance of proving it.
Mr. Kay, a senior vice president with Science Applications International Corporation in Virginia, said it was still unclear whether Mr. Hussein would even permit unfettered inspections of "anything, anytime, anywhere and anyone" in his country - although the United States is demanding such access as a sine qua non of the inspectors' return.
While the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, emphasized Iraq's willingness to permit unconditional inspections, Mr. Kay said, Iraq's letter of acceptance also spoke of the "practical arrangements" needed to resume visits and the "commitment" that United Nations member states had made "to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of Iraq."
Such language, he argued, was reminiscent of Iraq's earlier refusal to permit inspectors to visit Mr. Hussein's palaces and other symbols of Iraqi sovereignty and independence.
On nuclear inspections, experts disagreed about the ease with which the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitor, would be able to spot Iraqi cheating. Such inspections are critical, since a key element of the Bush administration's argument for attacking Iraq would be to stop it from upsetting the balance of world power by acquiring nuclear arms.
But on biological and chemical weapons, there was broader agreement that the new inspection organization, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known by the acronym Unmovic, is in many ways weaker than the group it has replaced at Iraq's insistence: the United Nations Special Commission, which was known as Unscom.
"They are weaker in many respects than we were," said Richard Spertzel, a former Army germ scientist who was an Unscom inspector until the group was withdrawn from Iraq in 1998. "It is optimistic to assume that in one year, which is the time they are likely to have, they will be able to account for the lack of inspections for the past four years."
The new inspection organization has about 300 inspectors - more than Dr. Spertzel's group had, he said - but "we were authorized to call in anybody we needed; Unmovic is not." Several inspectors also mentioned that Hans Blix, the Swedish diplomat who heads the new inspection group, had eliminated many of the more aggressive inspectors from his organization.
Today, Ewen Buchanan, the Unmovic spokesman, expressed confidence in the organization's ability to carry out its mandate. He said about a third of the 220 people on its roster of trained and available inspectors had worked for Unscom, in addition to the 63 full-time Unmovic staff members.
But, Dr. Spertzel noted, since the new inspectors cannot have an affiliation with any government, the talent pool from which they are drawn is far narrower than it was with Unscom. "You must retire from your job, not take a leave, to serve with Unmovic," he said.
Mr. Buchanan countered that although Mr. Blix wanted the "vast proportion" of inspectors to be on long-term United Nations contracts, he had sometimes hired analysts provided by member states for specific missions.
Several former inspectors also complained that because the new teams would be permitted to receive intelligence from United Nations members states but not provide it, they would be hampered.
"Unmovic's emphasis on one-way sharing of intelligence information is self defeating," said David Albright, a nuclear expert who has called for intrusive inspections that Iraq is almost certain to oppose.
"The essence of any intelligence sharing is the sharing," Mr. Kay agreed. "It's a circle. Tips must be checked out, expanded and improved upon."
Mr. Buchanan said, however, that Council resolutions permitted inspectors to have a "dialogue" with member states' intelligence agencies.
Several inspectors said Washington would be particularly wary of sharing sensitive intelligence information with Mr. Blix's organization. Mr. Blix, a seasoned expert in weapons assessment, served for 16 years as chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Addressing nuclear inspections, Mr. Kay said he thought that it would be easier for the atomic energy agency to spot cheating than it would be for Unmovic inspectors to detect signs of unconventional germ warfare or chemical weapons programs. "Nuclear facilities, once they are operational, are harder to move," he said.
But Khidhir Hamza, who led part of Iraq's nuclear bomb program until he defected in 1994, disagreed. Estimating that Iraq was now at the "pilot plant" stage of nuclear production and within two to three years of mass producing centrifuges to enrich uranium for a bomb, Dr. Hamza said that such centrifuges were "small, easily hidden, and emit very little radiation that can be detected." Moreover, he said, such centrifuges do not require much power to operate, compounding the difficulty of finding them..
Dr. Hamza, whose book, "Saddam's Bombmaker," describes the Iraqi nuclear program and its concealment efforts in detail, also said Iraq now excelled in hiding nuclear and other unconventional weapons programs.
"There are very few reliable scientists and technical experts coming out of Iraq these days," he asserted. "So unless Unmovic can interview scientists in a neutral place - with their families protected - outside of Iraq, without Iraqi minders present, inspectors will not know where to look for hidden centrifuges and other parts of the program," he said.
Milton Leitenberg, a scientist and biological weapons expert, said the inspectors' success would depend "entirely on the conditions that Unmovic operates in." If no sites were off-limits, if Iraqi "minders" were not permitted to monitor interviews of scientists and technicians, if there were no preset time limits, and if the Security Council backed the inspectors and would not tolerate Iraqi stonewalling, prospects would improve considerably, he said. But he added the experiences of the past 10 years suggested that "Iraq will do anything but comply," and that there was no reason to believe that its intention had changed.
-------- japan
TEPCO says acted improperly in 16 reactor data cases
REUTERS JAPAN:
September 18, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17798/story.htm
TOKYO - Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc said yesterday it had acted improperly in 16 cases regarding the keeping of nuclear power plant safety records.
TEPCO, Japan's largest power utility, said in a statement that it planned to cut the salaries of three executives by 30 percent for six months over the scandal.
Japan's Trade Ministry said on Friday that TEPCO could have breached the law in six of 29 cases in which it is suspected of falsifying nuclear safety records.
The six cases relate to TEPCO's Fukushima No 1 and No 2 nuclear power plants, located in northern Japan, where some reactors could have operated with unrepaired cracks, ministry officials said.
TEPCO has said some of its employees were involved in falsification of nuclear plant safety records.
The data falsifications are believed to have occurred during inspections in the late 1980s and 1990s.
TEPCO said earlier this month its president, Nobuya Minami, would resign along with four other senior executives to take responsibility for the scandal.
Revelations that TEPCO had falsified records on nuclear plant safety checks have stirred safety concerns in Japan, which relies on nuclear power for about one-third of its energy needs.
-------- korea
Pyongyang admits kidnapping Japanese
By Willis Witter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020918-24877390.htm
SEOUL - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il sought to end his nation's Cold War battle with Japan by confessing that agents had kidnapped Japanese men, women and children decades earlier and said four victims still alive will be allowed to return home.
The admission, along with an apology from Mr. Kim, came during a daylong visit to Pyongyang by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the first by a Japanese leader to the isolated communist state.
Mr. Kim called the kidnappings "regrettable," promised such actions "would never happen again" and said he had punished the abductors.
The North Korean leader also agreed to several security measures sought by the United States in extending a moratorium on missile tests beyond next year and agreeing to let international inspectors study North Korea's nuclear stockpile to account for fuel that could make atomic bombs.
The United States is expected to set a date shortly for Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly to travel to Pyongyang to resume a dialogue that had been suspended after President Bush took office.
Yesterday's summit in Pyongyang was a straightforward affair that contrasted sharply with a June 2000 visit by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and, later that year, by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.
At Japan's insistence, the meeting included no hugs, no banquets, no toasts to future friendship, not even a simple welcoming ceremony to mark Mr. Koizumi's arrival.
The Japanese leader, with a stern gaze, descended the stairs of his 747 jet and shook hands with a handful of gray-suited North Korean officials before driving to a guesthouse on the outskirts of Pyongyang for a day of meetings with Mr. Kim.
Mr. Koizumi, who had put the issue of 11 Japanese abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s at the top of the agenda, spoke with reporters before returning to Japan.
"When I think of the families' feelings, there is nothing I can say," Mr. Koizumi said. "My heart is filled with pain."
Beyond the kidnapping issue, he said, "Progress in Japan-North Korean ties do not just benefit the two countries. It contributes greatly to peace and stability of South Korea, the United States, Russia, China, other neighboring nations and the international community as a whole."
In the meetings, Mr. Kim said North Korean agents had abducted Japanese nationals during the 1970s and 1980s and forced them to teach Japanese language and culture to spies.
"It is regretful, and I want to frankly apologize," a Japanese government official quoted Mr. Kim as saying.
The admission marked a stunning reversal for North Korea, which for years had denied any involvement in the abductions. On more than one occasion, it had broken off talks when Japanese negotiators raised the issue.
In a joint statement issued at the close of the summit, Japan apologized for its harsh colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and pledged substantial financial aid to Pyongyang as negotiations on normalizing relations proceeded.
"The Japanese side regards, in a spirit of humility, the facts of history that Japan caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of Korea through its colonial rule in the past, and expressed deep remorse and heartfelt apology," the statement said.
"Both sides shared the recognition that providing economic cooperation after the normalization [of relations], including grant aid, long-term loans with low interest rates and such assistances as humanitarian assistance through international organizations would be consistent with the spirit of this declaration."
North Korea depends on food from outside donors - mainly the United States, Japan and South Korea - to prevent a recurrence of a famine that is believed to have killed up to 2 million, or one in 10, North Koreans in the 1990s.
The need for food, oil and fertilizer has dominated North Korea's attempts to engage the outside world.
But a series of concessions by the North to rival South Korea in the past month, followed by the summit with Japan, led some analysts to question whether a more basic change was taking place in Pyongyang.
"When you look at all these things together that are taking place in North Korea, it suggests that Kim Jong-il has finally gotten rid of the hard-line old guard and gone beyond the legacy of his father," said Michael Breen, managing director of the Seoul office of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller.
Mr. Kim's father, Kim Il-sung, ruled North Korea from its founding after World War II until his death in 1994. He created a virulent, anti-Western state that started the Korean War by invading the South in 1950 and sponsored frequent terrorist attacks against South Korean targets until the late 1980s.
"The apology [on the abductions] is such a bold move that those old hard-line forces from the father's time must have been silenced, retired, made irrelevant or convinced to step aside," Mr. Breen said. "If this is true, we're going to see some rapid movement from North Korea in the future."
The kidnapping admission dominated news coverage in Japan, with relatives of the missing holding a tearful press conference after reports of the breakthrough reached home.
On a list of 11 missing Japanese provided by Tokyo, North Korea said six had died, four were still alive and one never had entered the country. Two other Japanese who were abducted in Europe but were not on the list also had died, North Korea said.
Among the dead was Megumi Yokota, who disappeared in 1977 at the age of 13 while walking home from school in the Japanese coastal city of Niigata.
"Unfortunately, the news I received was of her death," said her father, Shigeru, as tears flowed. "But I [also] learned that Megumi got married and had a daughter."
North Korea's official KCNA news agency reported that the North will "take necessary steps to let [the four who are still alive] return home or visit their hometowns if they wish."
On the security front, North Korea agreed to let inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency determine what happened to nuclear fuel from a reactor that was shut down in a 1994 deal with the United States, Japan and South Korea.
The three nations are building two modern atomic power plants in North Korea to supply electricity, but the project cannot be completed until North Korea comes clean about its nuclear past.
The Bush administration is also eager to maintain North Korea's freeze on missile tests, which are considered necessary to develop a long-range rocket capable of hitting the United States.
North Korea, which Mr. Bush has labeled part of an "axis of evil," sells missiles, parts and technology to the other two axis members, Iran and Iraq, as well as other rogue states, to earn cash.
-------- terrorism
9/11 Inquiry Reveals WTC Threat in 1998
Reuters
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
By Tabassum Zakaria
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35899-2002Sep18?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional hearing was told on Wednesday that three years before the Sept. 11 attacks intelligence agencies had information about a group that planned to fly an explosive-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center.
The information obtained in August 1998 about the group of "unidentified Arabs" was passed to the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration, but "the FAA found the plot highly unlikely given the state of that foreign country's aviation program," said Eleanor Hill, staff director of the joint Sept. 11 inquiry of the House and Senate intelligence committees.
This was one of many details revealed at the first public hearing into intelligence failures by America's spy agencies to detect plans by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network to conduct the Sept. 11 strike.
While most of the rising volume of threat reports about an impending attack during spring and summer of 2001 pointed to a strike overseas, some of it suggested targets inside the United States, Hill told the hearing.
But none of the threats provided a specific time, date, and place of the attack. "My own view is ... no one will ever really know whether 9/11 could have been prevented," she said.
On Sept. 11, four hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon near Washington and a Pennsylvania field, killing about 3,000 people. The United States blames bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.
Despite concerns about bin Laden and al Qaeda, intelligence agencies had not directed adequate resources to analyzing them, Hill said.
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center had only five analysts assigned full-time to bin Laden's network worldwide, and the FBI's terrorism analytic unit had only one analyst looking at al Qaeda long-term, she said.
THREAT REPORTS
In March 2001 an intelligence source claimed a group of bin Laden's operatives were planning an attack in the United States in April 2001. That April, information was obtained that "unspecified terrorist operatives" in California and New York were planning terrorist attacks in those states, Hill said.
In May 2001 intelligence agencies had information that bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States through Canada to conduct an attack using explosives.
In that same month, the Defense Department acquired information that it shared with other intelligence agencies indicating that seven bin Laden associates had departed various locations for Canada, Britain and the United States.
In June 2001, Hill said, CIA's counterterrorist center had information that key operatives in bin Laden's organization "were disappearing while others were preparing for martyrdom."
The National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on global communications, reported at least 33 communications between May and July 2001 indicating a "possible, imminent terrorist attack," she said.
There were also threat reports that terrorists were considering using airplanes as weapons as a method of attack.
In August 2001, a month before the attacks, intelligence agencies had information about a plot to either bomb the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi from an airplane or crash an airplane into it, Hill said.
In April 2001, a source said that bin laden would be interested in commercial pilots as potential terrorists.
A year earlier, in April 2000, a source walked into the FBI's Newark office and claimed he had been to an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan where he learned hijacking techniques and received arms training and was supposed to meet five to six others in the United States to hijack a jumbo jet.
"They were instructed to use all necessary force to take over the plane because there would be pilots among the hijacking team," Hill said. The source passed a polygraph but the FBI was not able to verify his story, she said.
Before Sept. 11, the Counterterrorist Center had 40 analysts to analyze terrorism issues worldwide, and the only terrorist tactic it analyzed in-depth was the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, Hill said.
"We now know that our inability to detect and prevent the Sept. 11 attacks was an intelligence failure of unprecedented magnitude," Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. "Some people who couldn't seem to utter the words 'intelligence failure' are now convinced of it."
"In the days before Sept. 11, many were quick to blame the success of the terrorists' diabolical plot on failures of intelligence or preparedness," Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat and chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said. But he said there was no smoking gun at this point.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- louisiana
Cleanup of Radioactive Soils Begins in Louisiana
September 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2002/2002-09-18-09.asp#anchor6
ST. GABRIEL, Louisiana,The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is beginning an environmental cleanup of radiation contaminated soils at the Coastal Radiation Services site in St. Gabriel, Louisiana.
Contaminated material will be excavated and transported to a land disposal facility permitted to receive low level radioactive waste. The EPA is now preparing the site for excavation activities which are expected to begin in several weeks.
"It's important that we remove all pathways for human exposure from the soil in and around the site so that the community is protected," said EPA regional administrator Gregg Cooke.
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) is assisting in the cleanup by providing laboratory and community relations support during the removal action.
"We are pleased to see the removal of contaminated material initiated at the site," said Hall Bohlinger, secretary of LDEQ.
In the late 1970's, a radioactive source leaked on the ground at the site. Storm runoff later spread the contamination to adjacent properties.
Coastal Radiation Services removed about 18 55 gallon drums of contaminated soil from the site and poured a concrete slab over the area in 1979. The company continued to remove contaminated soils from the site into the mid-1980's, and went out of business in 1990.
Concerns remain about residual radiation in the soil at and around the site. The EPA expects to alleviate any remaining health concerns by removing about 1,820 cubic yards of contaminated soil and 259 cubic yards of debris in the area.
The EPA says its scans have detected no ionizing radiation in nearby residences.
-------- us politics
Bush Left Scrambling to Press Case on Iraq
New York Times
September 18, 2002
By TODD S. PURDUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/international/middleeast/18ASSE.html
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 17 - Just five days ago, President Bush's strong appeal to the United Nations for collective action on Iraq allayed world suspicion that the United States was a go-it-alone superpower bent on war and forged a broad consensus that Iraq must give up any weapons of mass destruction or face the consequences.
Now Iraq's sudden offer to readmit international weapons inspectors has turned the world again, and left Mr. Bush scrambling with mixed success to press his case for disarming Iraq and dislodging Saddam Hussein as the next milestone in his campaign against terrorism.
In Washington today, Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied Congress for swift action on a resolution authorizing force against Iraq, and the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, who had earlier said a debate might take a long time, predicted a vote "well before the election." Asked why, Mr. Daschle said that the administration had done much of what Democrats wanted, by going to the United Nations and consulting Congress, and that "now we are reciprocating."
But here in the Security Council, the hard work of multilateralism was just beginning, and the diplomatic lifting will be heavy. Russia, France and crucial Arab allies all expressed skepticism about the need for a new Security Council resolution in light of Iraq's offer, despite Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's insistence that "We've seen this game before."
"What has changed in the last few days is not the letter that came in yesterday," Secretary Powell said. "It's the full will of the international community being directed to this problem. And it is the international community, through its agency, the United Nations and the Security Council, that should make the judgment as to when, where, if, under what set of circumstances and with what potential consequences" Iraq must comply with a string of past United Nations resolutions.
The Bush administration showed not the slightest indication to heed entreaties from Russia and France - each with veto power over any Council resolution - and Arab countries to take Iraq's offer at face value. Pressing his argument with Americans, Mr. Bush set the tone by warning schoolchildren in Tennessee, "You can't be fooled again."
In short order, the White House released a detailed chronology of Mr. Hussein's past obstruction of United Nations efforts, including his repeated refusal to give teams access to sites they sought to inspect.
Kenneth Pollack, an Iraq expert at the Brookings Institution, said that by allowing the return of inspectors, Mr. Hussein had effectively agreed to Security Council resolution 1284 of December 1999, which sets a much lower threshold for inspections than the Bush administration would like.
"We've really got our work cut out for us," Mr. Pollack said. "I've always opposed going down the inspections route, because at the end of the day, you are betting that Saddam won't give in, and his past record always indicated he would give in. What's so interesting now is that he's given in at the ideal moment: really early, when it messes us up."
One State Department official acknowledged that any significant delay at the United Nations could re-open differences between Secretary Powell and administration hawks led by Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who have been highly skeptical about the utility of weapons inspectors.
"I wouldn't be surprised if there are some who will use this to point out the dangers of engaging multilaterally," the official said.
For now, senior officials said they would keep up pressure in foreign capitals and here in the Security Council to follow up on Mr. Bush's demand for United Nations action, and diplomats braced for a siege.
"If I were on the Security Council, which I'm not, I would in the next days sleep with my eyes open and the boots on," said the Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Moller, whose country currently holds the presidency of the European Union.
The administration was not completely surprised by Iraq's offer, which had been rumored here for much of Monday and drafted in part with the participation of Secretary General Kofi Annan. Washington's initial response was swift, skeptical and in sync, from the State Department to the White House.
But the early timing of Mr. Hussein's move nevertheless seemed to take the administration a bit aback, and some officials feared it could offer Russia, China and France an opportunity to slow the process.
That is particularly troublesome to those administration officials who believe they have to get through the process in a month or two because military action, if required, would almost certainly have to take place in January or February. Only then is it cool enough in the desert for soldiers to wear full chemical and biological protective gear.
"We built in some time for Saddam to play around with the U.N.," one senior official said this week. "But not much time, and we have to convince the rest of the Security Council that the old timelines - 60 days for the inspectors to `assess' what needs to be done - won't work."
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who are to discuss Iraq with Mr. Bush on Wednesday, rallied behind him to bolster his hand in the United Nations. Mr. Daschle said he was "still very skeptical about Saddam Hussein's intent and position."
Asked if he would support a resolution of force that calls for a new Iraqi government, he said Democrats "have been supportive of a regime change from the very beginning."
Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the House Democratic leader, said, "After 12 years of Saddam Hussein's defiance of United Nations resolutions, his regime's new offer to admit inspectors does not address my concerns about the threat he poses to the United States and the international community."
----
A Tortured Relationship - U.S. and Iraq Were not Always Enemies
By Chris Bury
Sept. 18, 2002 ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews/us_iraq_history_1_020917.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews/us_iraq_history_2_020917.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews/us_iraq_history_3_020917.html
Part 1: Lesser Evil
Saddam Hussein's bid to avoid a war with the United States - his decision to allow the "unconditional" return of U.N. weapons inspectors - is only the latest wrinkle in a tortured relationship that has confounded five American presidents.
Indeed, even as President Bush castigates Saddam's regime as "a grave and gathering danger," it's important to remember that the United States helped arm Iraq with the very weapons that administration officials are now citing as justification for Saddam's forcible removal from power.
The tortured relationship between the United States and Iraq has its roots in the Iranian revolution 23 years ago. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism struck fear in the hearts of Washington policymakers, according to Kenneth Pollack, a former Iraq analyst for the CIA and the National Security Council.
"There was real concern in Washington that this Islamic revolution in Iran would catch fire, and would scorch the rest of the region," Pollack said, "that the Iranians would go on a march and roll through Baghdad and into Riyadh and into the Saudi oil fields and effectively be able to corner the world's oil market."
Then, as now, oil was a driving force behind American policy on Iraq, which contains the world's second largest reserves (after Saudi Arabia) and sits at a critical position at the head of the Persian Gulf, bordering many of the other most important oil-producing countries in the world.
Taking Sides with a 'Lesser Evil'
From the beginning, an American fear of disrupting that oil supply weighed heavily on a succession of U.S. presidents. In 1980, after Iraq attacked Iran, and began a war that would eventually cost one million lives, the Reagan administration made a critical calculation. In public, the United States would be officially "neutral" on the Iran-Iraq war. But secretly, the United States would tilt in favor of Iraq.
"Iraq was probably seen as the lesser of two evils," according to Iraq historian Phebe Marr. "Iraq was seen as something of a bulwark against Iran, not only in terms of Iran and Iraq, but the rest of the Gulf as well."
Even then, it was clear Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction. Yet in 1981, when Israel's U.S.-made warplanes bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak to prevent Saddam from building an atomic bomb, the United States condemned Israel for the attack.
Anthrax and Supercomputers
By 1984, the U.S. tilt toward Iraq was becoming more apparent. Formal diplomatic relations were restored that year and Iraq was removed from the State Department's list of nations that support terrorism. But even more remarkable was what the United States was doing, in secret, to help Iraq win its war against Iran. "We provided a great deal of intelligence to Iraq," according to Pollack, "intelligence which was critical to helping them win certain battles against the Iranians."
In addition, the United States eased up on its own technology export restrictions to Iraq, which allowed the Iraqis to import supercomputers, machine tools, and even strains of anthrax. Weapons control experts say Saddam's regime could have used the anthrax to make biological weapons. "It was part of our overall policy of supplying him with a lot of very alarming things which allowed him to build up his weapons of mass destruction capability," said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.
Soon after the United States began supplying Saddam's Iraq with critical intelligence, the American military launched an active - and secret - campaign against Iran. U.S. helicopters attacked Iranian gunboats from a secret platform in the Gulf. And on April 18, 1988, the U.S. military destroyed much of the Iranian navy just as Iraq launched a major offensive. Iraq was on its way to victory. America's tilt toward Saddam had kept him in power.
In 1988, the same year the Iran-Iraq war ended, a new U.S. president was elected. George Herbert Walker Bush came into office determined to pursue a policy of engagement with Saddam. In fact, his first year in office, President Bush signed a secret executive order, National Security Directive Number 26. It called for even closer ties between the United States and Iraq.
Part 2: War
- In August 1990, when Iraq invaded oil-rich Kuwait, the very Bush administration that had secretly tried to improve relations with Saddam - with a policy of "engagement" - was suddenly caught off guard.
"It was such a monumental step, and even for Iraq and Saddam so out of character for one Arab country to totally invade another, it did take us by surprise," said Iraq historian Phebe Marr.
So Bush, surprised and betrayed, put together a coalition to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. He urged the Iraqi people to overthrow their leader, but using the American military to oust Saddam was never part of the plan.
After a 39-day bombing campaign paved the way, it took the U.S.-led ground forces only four days to defeat the Iraqi army. "I think they never anticipated that the ground war would go quite as easily as it did," says Michael Gordon, a New York Times correspondent who has written a history of the Gulf War. "Therefore, I think, they excluded as a military option going to Baghdad, partly of concern over allies, partly because they thought it was going to be too difficult militarily, and also they didn't want to get bogged down with nation-building."
There was another reason: world opinion. The White House knew images of Iraqi soldiers incinerated on the so-called "Highway of Death" would soon be playing on television screens around the world. Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs, expressed concern that continuing the ground war would be viewed as "piling on," and the United States would lose standing in the Arab world.
Leaving Saddam in Place
So even as the United States and its coalition partners achieved a stunning military victory, the strategic decision at the end of the Gulf War was to let Saddam stay in Baghdad, though President Bush himself seemed to regret it in a news conference he held just two days after the United States had declared victory. "To be very honest with you," the president told reporters, "I haven't yet felt this wonderfully euphoric feeling that many of the American people feel. And now we have Saddam Hussein still there, the man that wreaked this havoc upon his neighbors."
According to author and journalist Michael Gordon, who corresponded with Bush and other top officials after the war, "They really convinced themselves they were going to get Saddam Hussein on the cheap. They thought they would kick the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, that they would destroy some of the Republican Guard, and much of the Iraqi nation would rise up and overthrow Saddam."
No Help For a Rebellion
In fact, within days of the end of the Gulf war, much of Iraq did rise up against Saddam. Opposition Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq and Kurdish factions in the north rebelled, hoping that the American military would help them defeat Saddam's forces. The various rebel groups gained some control over 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces, according to Marr, but Saddam's forces put down the rebellion brutally using helicopter gunships.
At the White House, there was clearly no stomach for aiding the rebellion that Bush himself had once called for. A spokesman called the rebellion "internal fighting" and said the United States would not intervene.
According to Kenneth Pollack, a former Iraq analyst for the CIA and National Security Council, there was a fear in the Bush administration that Iraq would fragment into ethnic and religious groups, "that you would have a Kurdish state in the north, a Shiite Arab state in the South, and a Sunni-run state somewhere in the center. And the fear was always if that happened, this would be a new opportunity for Iran."
Instead, the Bush administration embraced U.N. resolution 687, which imposed weapons inspections on Saddam and, more importantly for the White House, got American troops out of Iraq. So the tortured relationship continued. Saddam was still in power. The United States would keep an eye on him with the U.N. inspectors. The American policy was now called "containment."
And as a new president came to office, with other priorities in mind, that policy suited him just fine.
Part 3: Containment
By Chris Bury
Sept. 18
- The U.N. inspections that began after the Gulf War hit pay dirt almost immediately. Inspectors discovered - and partially destroyed - a nuclear weapons program that was far more advanced than American intelligence realized.
According to David Kay, a former top U.N. inspector in Iraq, Saddam's scientists were only 12 months away from building a crude atomic bomb that "would have worked." Kay estimates that Saddam's regime had spent some $100 million on the nuclear program, involving 20,000 people over a period of more than 10 years. But Saddam would manage to stall the weapons inspectors, and frustrate yet another American president.
By the time Bill Clinton took office in 1993, Saddam Hussein had already outlasted three American presidents. In the new Clinton administration, the defeated Iraqi leader was not a high priority. Like Bush four years earlier, Clinton had even raised the possibility of better relations with Saddam. When asked about Saddam during the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton had said he believed "in deathbed conversions" and would consider better relations with Iraq if Saddam changed his policies.
"That was probably a very hopeful sign to Saddam," according to Kenneth Pollack, a former Iraq analyst at the CIA and National Security Council. "The Iraqis seemed to want to see if they could test the waters, see if the Clinton people would be a little bit easier on them than the Bush people."
No-Fly Zones and Weapons Inspections
But in 1993, after the CIA found evidence of Iraqi involvement in a plot to assassinate former President Bush, any hope of Saddam's "deathbed conversion" was shattered. In retaliation for the assassination plot, Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack against Iraq.
Such attacks would become the administration's favorite military option to enforce the newly emerging policy known as "containment." American and British planes would contain the Iraqi air force, patrolling no-fly zones in the north and south. U.N. inspectors would contain Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
But the U.N. inspectors increasingly found themselves in a frustrating game of cat and mouse with the Iraqis, according to former chief U.N. inspector David Kay. "By 1993, '94, '95, every time the inspectors got close to new material, they closed the inspections down, frustrated them, stopped them, and in addition to that they maintained a very active concealment and deception program designed to hide their program."
No Help for a Rebellion, Again
Meanwhile, Iraqi opposition groups, emboldened by American and British dominance of the skies, began to rebel against Saddam's forces. They were encouraged by CIA operatives on the ground, according to former CIA field officer Robert Baer. "I was on the ground. I told the Iraqis, I said it's U.S. policy: 'We believe that Iraq's better off if Saddam is out of power, we support you and what you're doing,'" Baer said.
But the Clinton administration was unwilling to commit American troops, the rebellions faltered, and Saddam's forces eventually crushed the uprisings. "I think, frankly, we betrayed them at that point and it was a lost opportunity," said Baer.
In 1996, the United States retaliated with another cruise missile attack. But by then, containment began to crumble. America's coalition partners, particularly Russia and France, were eager to resume their business ties with Iraq. And Saddam's regime so frustrated the weapons inspectors that, in November 1998, they left for good.
Helping the Iraqi Opposition
The next month, the Clinton administration launched yet another cruise missile attack, known as "Operation Desert Fox," to punish Saddam for shutting down the U.N. inspections. As he announced the attack, Clinton confirmed a new American policy calling for regime change in Baghdad. "The best way to end that threat once and for all," he said, "is with a new Iraqi government." Indeed, Congress had already passed - and Clinton had signed - the Iraq Liberation Act, which called for the United States to help finance efforts by Iraqi opposition groups to overthrow Saddam.
But the new policy was more rhetorical than real, according to Michael Gordon, a journalist who has written extensively on Iraq, "They were for regime change as long as it did not entail a risk, a significant loss of American life, and a commitment of American ground troops."
A New President Bush - and a New Resolve
By the time George W. Bush was sworn in in January 2001, Saddam had outlasted four presidents. And it looked like he had clearly won the cat and mouse game that had come to characterize Iraq's relationship with the United States.
But the Sept. 11 attacks changed everything. According to historian Marr, "there was a transformation inside the administration." Indeed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly decided on military planning against Iraq within hours of the terrorist strikes. The new Bush administration attitude, said Marr, is that military action against Iraq is "at the top of the agenda, something we can do, we're going to do it."
After 20 years of a tortured relationship, American policy appears on the verge of a truly historic change. The new Bush administration, convinced that "containment" and "engagement" have failed, now seems determined that "regime change" will be far more than a policy option. But Saddam Hussein's latest gambit, to allow U.N. inspectors back into Iraq, clearly demonstrates he is ready to play the cat and mouse game again - even with an administration that seems confident Saddam will not outlast yet another American president.
----
Rome, AD ... Rome, DC?
They came, they saw, they conquered, and now the Americans dominate the world like no nation before. But is the US really the Roman empire of the 21st century? And if so, is it on the rise - or heading for a fall?
Jonathan Freedland sifts the evidence
Wednesday September 18, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,794163,00.html
The word of the hour is empire. As the United States marches to war, no other label quite seems to capture the scope of American power or the scale of its ambition. "Sole superpower" is accurate enough, but seems oddly modest. "Hyperpower" may appeal to the French; "hegemon" is favoured by academics. But empire is the big one, the gorilla of geopolitical designations - and suddenly America is bearing its name.
Of course, enemies of the US have shaken their fist at its "imperialism" for decades: they are doing it again now, as Washington wages a global "war against terror" and braces itself for a campaign aimed at "regime change" in a foreign, sovereign state. What is more surprising, and much newer, is that the notion of an American empire has suddenly become a live debate inside the US. And not just among Europhile liberals either, but across the range - from left to right.
Today a liberal dissenter such as Gore Vidal, who called his most recent collection of essays on the US The Last Empire, finds an ally in the likes of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. Earlier this year Krauthammer told the New York Times, "People are coming out of the closet on the word 'empire'." He argued that Americans should admit the truth and face up to their responsibilities as the undisputed masters of the world. And it wasn't any old empire he had in mind. "The fact is, no country has been as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the history of the world since the Roman empire."
Accelerated by the post-9/11 debate on America's role in the world, the idea of the United States as a 21st-century Rome is gaining a foothold in the country's consciousness. The New York Review of Books illustrated a recent piece on US might with a drawing of George Bush togged up as a Roman centurion, complete with shield and spears. Earlier this month Boston's WBUR radio station titled a special on US imperial power with the Latin tag Pax Americana. Tom Wolfe has written that the America of today is "now the mightiest power on earth, as omnipotent as... Rome under Julius Caesar".
But is the comparison apt? Are the Americans the new Romans? In making a documentary film on the subject over the past few months, I put that question to a group of people uniquely qualified to know. Not experts on US defence strategy or American foreign policy, but Britain's leading historians of the ancient world. They know Rome intimately - and, without exception, they are struck by the similarities between the empire of now and the imperium of then.
The most obvious is overwhelming military strength. Rome was the superpower of its day, boasting an army with the best training, biggest budgets and finest equipment the world had ever seen. No one else came close. The United States is just as dominant - its defence budget will soon be bigger than the military spending of the next nine countries put together, allowing the US to deploy its forces almost anywhere on the planet at lightning speed. Throw in the country's global technological lead, and the US emerges as a power without rival.
There is a big difference, of course. Apart from the odd Puerto Rico or Guam, the US does not have formal colonies, the way the Romans (or British, for that matter) always did. There are no American consuls or viceroys directly ruling faraway lands.
But that difference between ancient Rome and modern Washington may be less significant than it looks. After all, America has done plenty of conquering and colonising: it's just that we don't see it that way. For some historians, the founding of America and its 19th-century push westward were no less an exercise in empire-building than Rome's drive to take charge of the Mediterranean. While Julius Caesar took on the Gauls - bragging that he had slaughtered a million of them - the American pioneers battled the Cherokee, the Iroquois and the Sioux. "From the time the first settlers arrived in Virginia from England and started moving westward, this was an imperial nation, a conquering nation," according to Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
More to the point, the US has military bases, or base rights, in some 40 countries across the world - giving it the same global muscle it would enjoy if it ruled those countries directly. (When the US took on the Taliban last autumn, it was able to move warships from naval bases in Britain, Japan, Germany, southern Spain and Italy: the fleets were already there.) According to Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, these US military bases, numbering into the hundreds around the world, are today's version of the imperial colonies of old. Washington may refer to them as "forward deployment", says Johnson, but colonies are what they are. On this definition, there is almost no place outside America's reach. Pentagon figures show that there is a US military presence, large or small, in 132 of the 190 member states of the United Nations.
So America may be more Roman than we realise, with garrisons in every corner of the globe. But there the similarities only begin. For the United States' entire approach to empire looks quintessentially Roman. It's as if the Romans bequeathed a blueprint for how imperial business should be done - and today's Americans are following it religiously.
Lesson one in the Roman handbook for imperial success would be a realisation that it is not enough to have great military strength: the rest of the world must know that strength - and fear it too. The Romans used the propaganda technique of their time - gladiatorial games in the Colosseum - to show the world how hard they were. Today 24-hour news coverage of US military operations - including video footage of smart bombs scoring direct hits - or Hollywood shoot-'em-ups at the multiplex serve the same function. Both tell the world: this empire is too tough to beat.
The US has learned a second lesson from Rome, realising the centrality of technology. For the Romans, it was those famously straight roads, enabling the empire to move troops or supplies at awesome speeds - rates that would not be surpassed for well over a thousand years. It was a perfect example of how one imperial strength tends to feed another: an innovation in engineering, originally designed for military use, went on to boost Rome commercially. Today those highways find their counterpart in the information superhighway: the internet also began as a military tool, devised by the US defence department, and now stands at the heart of American commerce. In the process, it is making English the Latin of its day - a language spoken across the globe. The US is proving what the Romans already knew: that once an empire is a world leader in one sphere, it soon dominates in every other.
But it is not just specific tips that the US seems to have picked up from its ancient forebears. Rather, it is the fundamental approach to empire that echoes so loudly. Rome understood that, if it is to last, a world power needs to practise both hard imperialism, the business of winning wars and invading lands, and soft imperialism, the cultural and political tricks that work not to win power but to keep it.
So Rome's greatest conquests came not at the end of a spear, but through its power to seduce conquered peoples. As Tacitus observed in Britain, the natives seemed to like togas, baths and central heating - never realising that these were the symbols of their "enslavement". Today the US offers the people of the world a similarly coherent cultural package, a cluster of goodies that remain reassuringly uniform wherever you are. It's not togas or gladiatorial games today, but Starbucks, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Disney, all paid for in the contemporary equivalent of Roman coinage, the global hard currency of the 21st century: the dollar.
When the process works, you don't even have to resort to direct force; it is possible to rule by remote control, using friendly client states. This is a favourite technique for the contemporary US - no need for colonies when you have the Shah in Iran or Pinochet in Chile to do the job for you - but the Romans got there first. They ruled by proxy whenever they could. We, of all people, should know: one of the most loyal of client kings ruled right here, in the southern England of the first century AD.
His name was Togidubnus and you can still visit the grand palace that was his at Fishbourne in Sussex. The mosaic floors, in remarkable condition, are reminders of the cool palatial quarters where guests would have gathered for preprandial drinks or a perhaps an audience with the king. Historians now believe that Togidubnus was a high-born Briton educated in Rome, brought back to Fishbourne and installed as a pro-Roman puppet. Just as Washington's elite private schools are full of the "pro-western" Arab kings, South American presidents or African leaders of the future, so Rome took in the heirs of the conquered nations' top families, preparing them for lives as rulers in Rome's interest.
And Togidubnus did not let his masters down. When Boudicca led her uprising against the Roman occupation in AD60, she made great advances in Colchester, St Albans and London - but not Sussex. Historians now believe that was because Togidubnus kept the native Britons under him in line. Just as Hosni Mubarak and Pervez Musharraf have kept the lid on anti-American feeling in Egypt and Pakistan, Togidubnus did the same job for Rome nearly two millennia ago.
Not that it always worked. Rebellions against the empire were a permanent fixture, with barbarians constantly pressing at the borders. Some accounts suggest that the rebels were not always fundamentally anti-Roman; they merely wanted to share in the privileges and affluence of Roman life. If that has a familiar ring, consider this: several of the enemies who rose up against Rome are thought to have been men previously nurtured by the empire to serve as pliant allies. Need one mention former US protege Saddam Hussein or one-time CIA trainee Osama bin Laden?
Rome even had its own 9/11 moment. In the 80s BC, Hellenistic king Mithridates called on his followers to kill all Roman citizens in their midst, naming a specific day for the slaughter. They heeded the call - and killed 80,000 Romans in local communities across Greece. "The Romans were incredibly shocked by this," says ancient historian Jeremy Paterson of Newcastle University. "It's a little bit like the statements in so many of the American newspapers since September 11: 'Why are we hated so much?' "
Internally, too, today's United States would strike many Romans as familiar terrain. America's mythologising of its past - its casting of founding fathers Washington and Jefferson as heroic titans, its folk-tale rendering of the Boston Tea Party and the war of independence - is very Roman. That empire, too, felt the need to create a mythic past, starred with heroes. For them it was Aeneas and the founding of Rome, but the urge was the same: to show that the great nation was no accident, but the fruit of manifest destiny.
And America shares Rome's conviction that it is on a mission sanctioned from on high. Augustus declared himself the son of a god, raising a statue to his adoptive father Julius Caesar on a podium alongside Mars and Venus. The US dollar bill bears the words "In God we trust" and US politicians always like to end their speeches with "God bless America."
Even that most modern American trait, its ethnic diversity, would make the Romans feel comfortable. Their society was remarkably diverse, taking in people from all over the world - and even promising new immigrants the chance to rise to the very top (so long as they were from the right families). While America is yet to have a non-white president, Rome boasted an emperor from north Africa, Septimius Severus. According to classicist Emma Dench, Rome had its own version of America's "hyphenated" identities. Like the Italian-Americans or Irish-Americans of today, Rome's citizens were allowed a "cognomen" - an extra name to convey their Greek-Roman or British-Roman heritage: Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus.
There are some large differences between the two empires, of course - starting with self-image. Romans revelled in their status as masters of the known world, but few Americans would be as ready to brag of their own imperialism. Indeed, most would deny it. But that may come down to the US's founding myth. For America was established as a rebellion against empire, in the name of freedom and self-government. Raised to see themselves as a rebel nation and plucky underdog, they can't quite accept their current role as master.
One last factor scares Americans from making a parallel between themselves and Rome: that empire declined and fell. The historians say this happens to all empires; they are dynamic entities that follow a common path, from beginning to middle to end.
"What America will need to consider in the next 10 or 15 years," says Cambridge classicist Christopher Kelly, "is what is the optimum size for a nonterritorial empire, how interventionist will it be outside its borders, what degree of control will it wish to exercise, how directly, how much through local elites? These were all questions which pressed upon the Roman empire."
Anti-Americans like to believe that an operation in Iraq might be proof that the US is succumbing to the temptation that ate away at Rome: overstretch. But it's just as possible that the US is merely moving into what was the second phase of Rome's imperial history, when it grew frustrated with indirect rule through allies and decided to do the job itself. Which is it? Is the US at the end of its imperial journey, or on the brink of its most ambitious voyage? Only the historians of the future can tell us that.
· Rome: The Model Empire, presented by Jonathan Freedland, is on Channel 4 on Saturday at 6.50pm.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Doubts Now Raised Over Extending Force Beyond Kabul
September 18, 2002
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/international/asia/18FORC.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 - A new State Department report on Afghanistan raises sharp questions about expanding an international peacekeeping force beyond Kabul, suggesting that it will be mainly up to the Afghan government to secure its outlying areas.
The report, delivered to Congress last week, comes less than a month after senior Pentagon officials said they had withdrawn their objections to enlarging the multinational peacekeeping unit and allowing it to patrol outside Kabul in areas plagued by crime, civil unrest and banditry.
The new report surprised officials on Capitol Hill because the State Department had been widely viewed as being more sympathetic than the Pentagon to expanding the unit, known as the International Security Assistance Force.
"Scaling up ISAF to cover a country the size of Afghanistan would pose significant logistical and command burdens, even if focused solely on other major population centers," the report said.
"Providing security to the rural hinterlands in Afghanistan would be almost impossible for any outside force," the report continued. "It is therefore up to the Afghans themselves to extend security to all of Afghanistan through an effective and responsible national army."
The Afghan Army is being trained by American, British and French soldiers but its nine brigades will not be fully fielded until June 2004.
David T. Johnson, the State Department's coordinator for Afghanistan, said in an interview that the Bush administration had not rejected enlarging the peacekeeping force. But he said that Afghanistan, with its poor roads, high mountains and wide expanses, posed different problems from international peacekeeping operations, say, in the Balkans.
"This doesn't preclude an expansion of ISAF in some targeted form," he added. "Nor does it preclude other creative ideas outside of Kabul that might help achieve an ISAF-type affect."
Expanding the peacekeeping force has been a priority of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan as well as of the United Nations' top official in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi.
In speeches in New York City in the past week, Mr. Karzai warned about spreading disorder and urged the expansion of peacekeeping operations to at least three outlying cities to enhance the central government's authority.
Representative Tom Lantos of California, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, called the State Department report a "whitewash."
"The incremental steps it proposes are entirely inadequate for addressing a crisis that is rapidly spiraling out of control, as the recent assassination attempt against President Karzai shows," Mr. Lantos said in a statement. "It also endorses continued warlord domination in the Afghan countryside, which amounts to a strategy for continued instability, not for peace and security."
Neither the United States nor any other nation has offered any additional soldiers to the 4,700-member security force, which is now led by a Turkish general.
The Pentagon had objected to enlarging the peacekeeping force largely because American soldiers are still trying to root out Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers in rural regions. Having peacekeepers operating in the same areas could lead to conflicts between friendly forces, they argued.
The State Department report contends that the troops hunting Taliban holdouts can provide security in the outlying areas without the aid of peacekeepers. It also asserts that Special Operations soldiers who work alongside regional warlords can help mediate territorial disputes.
But ultimately, the report contends, building a national Afghan army is "the most important goal in assuring Afghan security."
-------- africa
U.S. Moves Commandos to East Africa to Pursue Qaeda in Yemen
New York Times
September 18, 2002
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/international/middleeast/18MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 - Hundreds of American Special Operations forces have been quietly moved to a military base in East Africa for missions against fighters with Al Qaeda who are believed to be hiding throughout the region, but especially in Yemen, Pentagon officials said today.
An amphibious assault ship, the Belleau Wood, is sailing off Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa facing Yemen, to act as a steppingstone for the American commandos.
Just under half the 800 Americans now in Djibouti are Special Operations troops trained for stealth attacks to kill or capture suspected terrorists. The rest include pilots and support personnel.
Defense Department and military officials said the Special Operations forces were sent to Djibouti to pursue terrorists who have been operating from the region or fled there after fighting began in Afghanistan.
"We have ready forces, prepositioned and waiting for actionable intelligence," one military officer said. "We are paying close attention to that part of the world."
Officials declined to say whether any covert missions were imminent, or whether the government of Yemen had given approval for action.
But one officer said, "It's easier and certainly more efficient to launch these missions from the region" than from bases in the United States.
A potential target is the uncharted area along Yemen's porous border with Saudi Arabia, officials said. The lawless region has long been a concern of American intelligence as a haven for Al Qaeda.
It is also suspected of being a hideout for those responsible for attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen's port at Aden in October 2000.
There has been great frustration in the F.B.I. over the lack of progress - and lack of cooperation by the Yemenis - in the investigation of the Cole attack. The Yemeni security services exercise little authority in the area.
Pentagon and military officials cautioned, though, that covert missions have awaited sufficient intelligence to locate suspected terrorists with confidence, as well as discussions to determine the level of cooperation with local governments.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been working with military commanders to expand the role of Special Operations forces in the campaign against terrorism, including sending them worldwide to capture or kill leaders of Al Qaeda far from the battlefields of Afghanistan.
Proposals under discussion have included assigning units to get more deeply involved in long-term covert operations.
The Pentagon is even now drafting potential tactics for covert missions against terrorists in countries where there is no responsible local government or where the local authorities would object to American action.
The deployment to Djibouti, a former French colony where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden, was first reported tonight by ABC News.
Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, is a Saudi of Yemeni descent, as were many of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Other countries in the region suspected of harboring terrorists include Sudan and Somalia.
The staging of such a large contingent of Special Operations troops in Djibouti reflects the increased focus that the United States has placed on Yemen in the hunt for Al Qaeda.
The capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh and about 10 other Al Qaeda suspects with Yemeni connections in Pakistan last week only emphasized the significance of the region.
Mr. bin al-Shibh, also known as Ramzi Mohamed Abdellah Omar, a 30-year-old Yemeni, had been a close associate of Mohamed Atta, who is considered the leader of the Sept. 11 hijacking, and was his roommate in Hamburg, Germany.
Many investigators believe that Mr. bin al-Shibh was to have been the 20th hijacker, but he was denied a visa to enter the United States.
The officials said documents, cell phones and laptop computers were seized during the raid in Pakistan in which Mr. bin al-Shibh was caught. One of the computers contained a map of the United States, but the officials said it was not clear whether any of the computers belonged to Mr. bin al-Shibh.
Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States increased scrutiny of Yemen, an impoverished, isolated nation, when intelligence indicated that high-ranking Al Qaeda members had fled to the lawless tribal areas, the ancestral homeland of Mr. bin Laden.
The Pentagon dispatched Special Forces teams to train and advise Yemeni troops in counterterrorist tactics and techniques.
By late July, the first 40 Yemeni soldiers had completed a course that included training in marksmanship, maneuver techniques, explosives and assault, Pentagon officials said.
Fewer than two dozen American military personnel remain in Yemen as advisers to the ambassador and to assess the possibility of further training, the officials said.
Beyond the military's involvement, the F.B.I. and C.I.A. have increased their ties with their Yemeni counterparts and sent teams of specialists to increase Yemenis' surveillance skills.
The renewed cooperation between the United States and Yemen has had its ups and downs.
After the Bush administration urged the government to crack down on Al Qaeda in the remote tribal areas, Yemeni troops and suspected terrorists had a fierce firefight in December. Thirteen soldiers were killed; the terrorists escaped.
In August, Yemeni authorities recovered a huge cache of plastic explosives from the scene of an accidental explosion in Sana, the capital, that killed two Al Qaeda operatives.
The explosives, 650 pounds of Semtex, were hidden in 13 crates covered by piles of pomegranates, intelligence officials said.
In addition to the suspects seized in Pakistan, authorities have charged six men from western New York, all Americans of Yemeni descent, with attending a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
Two other suspects, also Americans of Yemeni descent, are still at large, the authorities say.
-------- asia
Iraq isn't the only country making a mockery of the U.N.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Wall Street Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110002281
Where Is Ms. Cho?
A few weeks ago, seven North Korean defectors went to the Foreign Ministry in Beijing to ask China to honor their right--theoretically guaranteed by the United Nations--to be designated and protected as refugees. Before they left, the four men and three women posed in a hotel room for a group photo. They held a white banner, bearing their desperate request in big blue Korean characters: "Recognize us as political refugees." Eyewitness accounts report a brief struggle in front of the ministry, as Chinese guards arrested all seven, bundled them into vans and drove off. That was Aug. 26. China has provided no news of them since.
Their story should not be allowed to vanish. Their approach to the Foreign Ministry took great courage. It was not only a last-ditch attempt to gain asylum but a daring attempt to draw the world's attention to the hideous predicament in which they and their fellow North Korean refugees find themselves. They rank among the world's most utterly dispossessed people.
Fleeing famine and the tyranny of Kim Jong Il's communist regime, roughly a quarter of a million North Koreans have made a run for what they hope might be a lesser evil, China. But there, instead of safe haven or even safe passage to a more hospitable nation, they find themselves persecuted and hunted down. If captured, they are sent back to terrible punishment in North Korea, simply for committing the "crime" of having tried to escape.
A few score of these defectors have gained asylum in South Korea and other places, by way of storming embassies and consulates in China. But compared with the huge number still on the run, pathetically few have been saved. Crashing the gates of foreign legations is horribly risky, with the approaches heavily guarded by Chinese security agents. Success is further contingent on getting enough world attention to embarrass Beijing into letting asylum-seekers leave the country, on the pretext of medical problems or some such. China has so far refused to recognize North Korean defectors for what they are: refugees. That would imply a set of rights that China prefers not to respect.
In coming out of hiding in China and directly approaching the authorities to ask for refugee status, these seven defectors were specifically inviting China to comply with accepted rules of international conduct. They were following the procedure prescribed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Baldly rejecting their approach puts China in flagrant violation of its U.N. agreements, as Beijing, with its seat on the U.N. Security Council, has every reason to know. Compared with the mess in the Middle East, that might seem a small matter. China's government, after all, has quite a record of jailing and murdering its own citizens. So why care how Beijing treats North Koreans?
Yet by winking at China's gross disregard for decent conduct in international affairs, the free world invites further disrespect by China and other despotic regimes. Beyond that, it is degrading to our own moral character to know that China is abusing people we have all agreed to protect, but then just let the matter slide.
At the very least, it is grotesque that the U.N. permits China to go right on enjoying a seat on the governing body of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. As spelled out by the UNHCR, a basic requirement for membership in this select, executive committee is that nations thus honored must "have a demonstrated interest in and devotion to the solution of the refugee problem." Keeping China on board goes some distance toward turning the UNHCR itself into a joke.
"When you see the erosion of things that you believed in, it is frustrating," one longtime UNHCR staffer tells me. China is not remotely living up to even its most minimal obligations as signatory to the U.N.'s 1951 convention and 1967 additional protocol on refugee policy, which promise "that no Contracting State shall expel or return ("refouler") a refugee against his or her will, in any manner whatsoever, to a territory where he or she fears persecution."
No one by now could seriously dispute that defectors from North Korea, facing return, have a well-founded fear of persecution. Ruud Lubbers, who heads the UNHCR, confirmed to me this week that the mere act of fleeing North Korea effectively turns these people into refugees, because "when they are sent back afterwards they are in real trouble in their country" and "will be treated harshly." But rather than raise a public protest, he said, "we have to do for humanitarian purposes things that we can do."
Which, in the current circumstance, amount to basically nothing. China's clear commitment is not to its respectable facade at the U.N., but to a nasty bilateral protocol signed in 1986 between Beijing and Pyongyang, a copy of which a member of Congress recently obtained. Under the heading of "developing the friendly cooperation between the public security and state security agencies of both countries," this protocol makes no mention whatsoever of refugees. Instead, it provides for the systematic return of citizens of either country who without official permission have crossed the shared border. This protocol further promises the repatriation of any "antirevolutionary element attempting destructive activities"--which by Beijing's lights seems to include North Koreans applying for asylum.
There is also a provision for the return of corpses. This, presumably, came in handy last spring, when according to a story now circulating in the Korean community, a North Korean defector, Sohn In Kuk, was beaten to death inside China by North Korean agents who had come to retrieve a batch of arrested defectors at a Chinese border station. I cannot confirm the story. What I can confirm is that when I called the UNHCR in Geneva, to ask who might be in a position to look into this account, I was told there was effectively nothing the UNHCR could do. China does not allow the UNHCR's Beijing office access to the border areas. That, incidentally, is another violation of the 1951 refugee convention, which requires that "contracting States undertake to cooperate with the office of the UNHCR."
One of the seven defectors arrested at the Foreign Ministry last month, 27-year-old Cho Sung-hye, spelled out the peril she faced in the application she tried to give to the Chinese authorities, a copy of which she provided to the press just before her arrest. Ms. Cho wrote that she had escaped the so-called Democratic People's Republic of Korea "in search of freedom" and if returned, "I will certainly be executed in accordance with Article 47 of the DPRK penal code." In the photograph, Ms. Cho, wearing a checkered shirt, her hair pulled back, holds up a corner of the banner asking for refugee status. Like the rest of the group, she does not smile. She stares straight at the camera, her face tight with fear and resolve.
The UNHCR's executive committee is next due to meet at the end of this month, with China, as usual, included. The truth is that despite all the U.N. conventions and grand talk, world officialdom provides no champion whatever for Ms. Cho.
Congress has been pondering ways to help the North Korean refugees, but nothing of heft has so far emerged. The UNHCR impotently consents to having its Beijing office guarded by Chinese security agents against the very refugees it is supposed to be helping. The only real assistance comes from private sources. And this week the most vocal advocate of the North Korean refugee cause, German doctor Norbert Vollertsen, received a warning from the German government that there was credible information that "North Korean/Chinese agents" will try to kill him.
The chief culprit in all of this is North Korea, with China running a close second. But in doing nothing to uphold its own rules to protect refugees, the U.N. is by now complicit. So are the governments of the U.N.'s member nations, which have so far chosen to look the other way. Something must change. A good start would be for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to stand up in public and ask China: What happened to the seven refugees who came to the Beijing Foreign Ministry? Where is Ms. Cho? Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Wednesdays here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe.
-------- business
The Smart Bomb That Is Shaping U.S. Iraq Strategy
By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, September 18, 2002; 9:22 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33257-2002Sep18?language=printer
When Boeing announced last week that it has received a $378 million contract to accelerate production of satellite-guided bombs for the Air Force and Navy, it was a sure sign of the Bush administration's seriousness about preparing for a major war with Iraq. But the Boeing contract also suggests that the administration has neither a clear war-fighting strategy nor a firm timetable.
Boeing's satellite-guided bomb is called the Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM. It was developed after the 1991 Gulf War, when unexpected rainy weather in Iraq wreaked havoc with U.S. laser-guided bombs. Rain and humidity disrupted the laser beams and made it more difficult for pilots to establish a "lock" on their targets.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that an all-weather guided weapon was the most important weapons innovation that came out of the Gulf War. The new JDAMs, guided by Global Positioning System satellites, were used for the first time in the NATO war in Yugoslavia in 1999. While the JDAM was slightly less accurate than laser-guided bombs under ideal conditions (capable of hitting within 30 feet of its target vs. 10 feet for the laser guided bombs), the new weapon proved reliable and deadly on the battlefield.
Weapons analysts also soon noticed that the failures of JDAMs were less severe than those of laser-guided bombs. When JDAMs missed, they usually fell within 150 feet of their "aim point." When the laser-guided bombs missed, they could land hundreds, if not thousands, of feet from their targets. The new JDAM could also be produced for less than $25,000 each--a tenth of the $250,000 price tag for the newest and most accurate laser-guided bomb.
The JDAM proved popular with U.S. commanders during the war in Yugoslavia-almost too popular. B-2 bombers dropped 700 JDAMs on Serbian targets, using up virtually the entire inventory of the new weapons. Had the war lasted longer, the lack of JDAMs would have soon limited the U.S.'s ability to launch strikes in all kinds of weather, particularly from the B-2 bomber. Seeking to prevent such shortages from occurring again, the Pentagon in 2000 boosted JDAM production to about 8,900 per year.
Now the Pentagon wants even more. Boeing's new contract will increase production to some 2,800 per month or 33,600 per year. Ultimately, this will increase the JDAM inventory to close to a quarter million, according to the trade newsletter Defense Daily.
But right now, the inventory is less than 20,000 worldwide, a fact that is central to U.S. preparations for war in Iraq. Air Force sources insist that the inventory of JDAMs, as well as laser-guided bombs, and their deployment in the right locations, is one of the major factors limiting the U.S. ability to fight a war in Iraq right now. To some, the inventory simply needs to be built up like a volunteer fire department fundraising campaign: when the goal is reached, victory is complete. Others, though, see a danger in designing a war on the basis of the inventory, rather than following a strategy that is not constrained by how many weapons, or what types, are available.
The example of the Afghan war suggests caution is in order. Some 6,000 JDAMs have been used in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan since last October 7. No one anticipated that so many of these guided weapons (together with another 6,000 plus laser-guided bombs) would be used. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said there were few good targets in Afghanistan and the Taliban's arms were primitive. U.S. aircraft mounted only about 100 strike missions daily in Afghanistan, one-sixth the number in Yugoslavia and one-fifteenth the number in Operation Desert Strom in 1991.
But Gen. Tommy Franks, the operation commander and initially a JDAM skeptic, found the weapon to be incredibly reliable and easy to employ. With a relatively low level of effort, U.S. forces wound up using an enormous number of guided weapons. That is because heavy bombers can drop large numbers in each strike mission. In Afghanistan, the B-1 and B-52 were the main users of JDAM; the stealthy B-2 only flew six missions, and those were in the first three days.
With the inventory dwindling, U.S. commanders started to look over the horizon at Iraq and ask themselves a crucial question: How many JDAMs would the military need in order to defeat Iraq? They know that U.S. planes would launch many more strikes than the 100 daily that were used in Afghanistan. A Desert Storm-like effort, with over a thousand-strike missions daily, could potentially consume the inventory in less than a month.
These are the questions that Pentagon war planners have been addressing for months. For instance, B-2 bomber advocates have been floating a proposal to use their stealth assets, some flying from Missouri, some from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, to deliver a single "mass precision" strike on Iraq in the opening hours of a war. "The theory is it might shock them into collapse," one B-2 industry expert says. Such an air mission would deliver 256 one-ton JD