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NUCLEAR
Environmental and Health Implications of Invading Iraq
Member of Iraqi body meets world figure
LES works to inform Hartsville
Regime Change in the US
Finnish TVO launches nuke plant construction tender
Germany's EnBW asks to extend nuke power plant life
Japan Utility Firm Faces Warning
LAB'S LASER REVIEWS TAINTED, JUDGE SAYS
TENNESSEE WEAPONS PLANT RELIES ON FAILING EQUIPMENT
Y-12 criticized for putting stockpile in jeopardy
2 cheers for Jim McDermott
U.S. backs killing Saddam
U.S. to 'thwart' U.N. team heading to Iraq
As Congressional Support Builds, Bush Warns Hussein
MILITARY
Debate flares on bioterror research
Canada capable of sending big force to Iraq
Chinese Navy Cruises Toward Modernization
U.S., Colombia to Track Drug Flights
Exposing 'myths' about Iraq
U.S. Faulted Over Its Efforts to Unite Iraqi Dissidents
Israeli Troops Close to Arafat Headquarters
Report: Israel Spy Chief Talked with Palestinians
Bio warfare drills held in Kuwait
US Marines Storm Kuwait Beach in Annual Exercise
Saudi security chief resigns
Bush: Long-term US aid for Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)
Report details US 'intelligence failures'
Powell Says U.N. Ought to Hold Up Iraq Inspections
The Propaganda Race
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Democrats Vow to Pass New Security Agency Despite Filibuster
ENERGY AND OTHER
Shell helps Dutch town become world's first solar city
Spain's Iberdrola buys Gamesa wind parks
Green power to light up PNNL
In defense of nuclear energy
Stable Oil Prices Likely to Become a War Casualty
Mercury, other toxins threaten peoples, wildlife of the Arctic
Genetic Map Speeds Hunt for New Malaria Drugs
U.S. scientists look for cancer-causing food compound
ACTIVISTS
Thousands Protest Ivory Coast Rebels
Sailing-Anti-nuclear protesters greet French cup boat
Women and children would suffer most in war on Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Environmental and Health Implications of Invading Iraq
By Alan Muller,
Wednesday October 02
Philadelphia Independent Media Center
http://www.phillyimc.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/02/1459202&mode=thread
President George Bush is demanding from the U.S. Congress what amounts to a blank-check declaration of war to put in his pocket for use when and how he pleases. He says the US needs to start a war with Iraq to prevent Iraq from developing weapons like the US has.
But from the Washington Times for September 27, 2002:
"The International Atomic Energy Agency says that a report cited by President Bush as evidence that Iraq in 1998 was "six months away" from developing a nuclear weapon does not exist.
In a Sept. 7 news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mr. Bush said: 'I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied -- finally denied access [in 1998], a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon.'
'I don't know what more evidence we need,' said the president, defending his administration's case that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction." (http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/10.01B.no.report.htm)
How about some evidence that actually exists, Mr. President?
Probably no human activity, in the short run, causes as much harm to the environment and human health as war. Consider some of the consequences of the last Gulf War ("Desert Storm") of 1991, put on by the father of the current President:
While few American soldiers were killed directly (officially 148 were killed and 467 wounded, plus 121 additional deaths in "nonhostile actions," mostly vehicle accidents.) thousands have subsequently died or are suffering long term health effects from exposure to "depleted" uranium (used in anti-armor projectiles), chemical weapons, unfamiliar infectious agents, and so on. (About 27 British and French soldiers also died.)
The renowned anti-nuclear activist and scientist Helen Caldicott has written:
"For many years the United States has been using depleted uranium, a by-product from the production of enriched fuel for nuclear reactors and weapons, to manufacture shells, bullets and protective armour of tanks. This excess uranium, composed mainly of the uranium isotope U-238 is called "depleted" because it has a lower than normal content of the isotope U-235, the fissionable material. But it has one very "excellent" property-it is extremely dense [1.7 times as dense as lead] and capable of penetrating heavily armored vehicles. This capability was ably demonstrated in the Gulf massacre of 1991. "Massacre" describes what happened better than "war."
"But another physical property, which is not so desirable, is that depleted uranium spontaneously burns on impact, creating tiny aerosolized particles less than five microns in diameter, small enough to be inhaled. At least seventy percent of the uranium in these weapons is released in this form on impact, and these tiny particles travel long distances when airborne." (http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/caldicott.htm)
According to the Pentagon, "A total of 320 tons (290,300 kilograms) [640,000 pounds] of DU projectiles were fired by the U.S. during the Gulf War" (http://www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_library/gulfwar.shtml)
From a Veteran's Administration report as cited by the Traprock Peace Center (http://traprockpeace.org/gulfcasualties.html):
"As of May 2002: 696,778 individuals had served during the Gulf War with 572,833 individuals now eligible for Department of Veterans Affairs benefits. ... As of May 2002, 206,861 veterans had filed claims for benefits based on service-connected injuries and illnesses caused by Gulf War combat related duties. Department of Veterans Affairs officials have processed 183,249 claims for medical care, compensation, and pension, determining that for 159,238 veterans their injuries and illnesses are service connected, caused by Gulf War exposures and injuries. Consequently they have been awarded lifetime medical care, compensation, and pensions based on the extent of their medical problems. The VA still has claims from 23,612 individuals pending while they have denied benefits to 24,011 veterans."
"SINCE THE CESSATION OF GULF WAR HOSTILITIES IN 1991; AN ADDITIONAL 8013 VETERANS HAVE DIED FROM SERVICE CONNECTED INJURIES AND EXPOSURES INCURRED DURING OPERATION DESERT SHIELD AND OPERATION DESERT STORM."
Iraq put its losses at 75,000 to 100,000 soldiers killed in action and 35,000 to 45,000 civilians killed by allied bombing. (US estimates of Iraqi military losses were around 100,000 killed and 300,000 wounded, but there seems to be considerable uncertainty about Iraqi losses.) Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (many children) have since died since for lack of sanitation, nutrition, and health care, and due to cancer and other diseases caused by the war.
And what about the "natural" environment? From http://www.soton.ac.uk/~engenvir/environment/water/oil.gulf.war.html: "One of the greatest ecological disasters in history happened when Saddam Hussein used oil as a weapon in the Gulf War. The environmental attack came in two parts: the release of oil into the Gulf, and the burning of Kuwait's oil wells."
"Estimates of oil released [into the Gulf] range from 0.5 million to 11 million barrels, and average at about 6 million barrels. Compare this with the tremendous consequences of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which was 'only' 230,000 barrels. The oil formed a slick 30 miles long and 8 miles wide, which is about the same area as the Isle of Wight. The slick is thought to have killed between 15,000 and 30,000 birds."
"Although the burning of Kuwait's oil wells ... may have been intended as an economic weapon, the environmental conseqences were no less severe than those of the oil slick. It is estimated that about 67 million tonnes of oil were burned in total, which produced about 2.1 million tonnes of soot and 2 million tonnes of sulphur, one of the main causes of acid rain. ... the World Health Organisation esimated that death rates in Kuwait rose by 10% over the following year because of associated breathing difficulties and skin problems."
And what of the other "domestic" effects of war? These include curtailment of civil liberties, manipulation of the media by the military, and disregard for environmental and other laws. Bush and his people have already demonstrated their willingness to use any excuse to limit environmental protections. For example, they have sought to exempt military-related projects from environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy act (NEPA). All these evil tendencies will be greatly accelerated if Bush is allowed to invade Iraq.
Commenting on the 1991 Gulf War, cryan.com (http://www.cryan.com/war/" noted : " The decision to seek United Nations involvement was part of a larger, more cynical strategy of the Bush administration to circumvent Congress, to bypass the constitutional authority of Congress--and only Congress--to declare war."
Is there any reason to think another Gulf War would be any less disastrous for all concerned than the last one? We will leave that question for the reader to ponder.
We called the offices of Congressman Mike Castle, and Senators Biden and Carper, to try to find out how they felt about Bush's proposed war. We only connected with Sean Barney of Sen. Carper's office, who said Carper supports the basic idea of war with Iraq but feels the Administration's proposed resolution is too broad. We get the impression that Biden and Castle also support war. But there is opposition:
"In the House, perhaps 30 representatives are associated with a newly formed antiwar coalition. They include Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), the leader of the chamber's progressive caucus and a major opposition voice; Barbara Lee (Calif.), the only House member to oppose the congressional resolution providing Bush with war powers last year; Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), who characterized Bush's plan as 'naked aggression;' Jim McDermott (Wash.), who thinks an attack on Iraq 'has much more to do with oil than anything else;' Bob Filner (Calif.), who says Bush is 'leading us in the wrong direction;' and Maurice Hinchey (N.Y.). ... Kucinich announced formation of the coalition at a press conference Sept. 20, telling reporters that "unilateral military action by the United States against Iraq is unjustified, unwarranted and illegal." (Jack A. Smith, Oct. 1 issue of the Mid-Hudson Activist Newsletter, published in New Paltz, N.Y., by the Mid-Hudson National People's Campaign/IAC, jacdon@earthlink.net).
What does the rest of the world think of Bush's proposed war? Not much. Many people seem to think his justifications for invading Iraq resemble Hitler's justifications for invading his neighbors. A recent peace demonstration in Britain attracted as many as 400 thousand people. (http://www.stopwar.org.uk/).
Cost of such a war?
The National Priorities Project (http://www.nationalpriorities.org/iraq.pdf) estimates that the war would cost around $100 billion, not including cost of occupying or "rebuilding" Iraq. almost all of which would be paid by US taxpayers (unlike the 1991 war, which was mostly paid for by others). Delaware's estimated share is $239 million.
Alan Muller is Executive Director of Green Delaware
----
Member of Iraqi body meets world figure
Cairo, Oct2, 2003,
INA
http://www.uruklink.net/iraqdaily/9953/home4.htm
Member of the executive bureau of the General Federal of Iraqi Trade Unions Mrs. Insaf Abdul Qadir has met Director General of World-US Solidarity Center , member of US Trade Union Mr. Dan Ola Flein .
During the meeting , US threats against Iraq and the dangers Iraqi people subjects to due to the unjust sanctions and the aggression were tackled in a reference to the damages inflicted Iraqi society especially children and women owing to the continuation of unjust blockade and the use of the Depleted Uranium by US and Britain on Iraq and what has led of environmental and health problems on civilians.
For his part, Mr. Flein expressed understanding over the perilous situations Iraqi laborers and people exposed to due to the unjust sanctions .
----
LES works to inform Hartsville
By KATHY CARLSON, Staff Writer
The Tennessean
October 2, 2002,
http://www.tennessean.com/business/archives/02/10/23131204.shtml?Element_ID=23131204
HARTSVILLE, Tenn. - After the lunch dishes were cleared from five long tables at Keller's Restaurant yesterday, some of the business people and area residents attending a question-and-answer session on a proposed uranium-enrichment plant remained hungry for information.
The meeting of the Hartsville-Trousdale Chamber of Commerce drew about 100 people, more than the usual crowd of about 65, and offered a chance to question a spokeswoman for Louisiana Energy Services. That's the international consortium seeking to build the $1.1 billion facility near this town, about 40 miles northeast of Nashville. The meeting wasn't meant to answer all questions: LES spokeswoman Nan Kilkeary isn't a scientist and another meeting is planned.
The plant would mean 400 construction jobs and 250 permanent jobs for Trousdale County, population 7,259, and the region.
Rose Kelley, who lives near the proposed LES site, said she was neither for nor against the proposal, but ''just here to get more information.''
''We're looking at the future of the county, not just tomorrow,'' she said. ''We're all going to look at this real well.''
People he knows are ''cautiously optimistic,'' said Phil Thompson, general manager of the Tri-County Electric Membership Corp., a TVA distributor that supplies electricity to Trousdale and other counties. His acquaintances are excited about the plant's economic potential but ''want to make sure it's safe.''
The proposed plant would perform one step in the process by which uranium is converted into a fuel suitable for use in nuclear power plants, which generate about 20% of the nation's electricity.
The enrichment process increases the percentage of a type of uranium that's easily split in nuclear reactors to generate electric power. The enriched uranium the proposed facility would produce could be used only in power plants, not in weapons.
Before yesterday's questions started, Eleanor Ford, executive director of the chamber, laid down strict rules for participants: One question per person, no follow-up questions, no debating LES representative Kilkeary.
''This is not the Spanish Inquisition,'' she admonished the group, seated at long tables at Keller's Restaurant in Hartsville. Detailed and technical questions, she said, could be brought up at a forum scheduled for 7 p.m. Oct. 14 at Trousdale County High School.
Fielding a score of questions, Kilkeary was concise and reassuring, promising to check further on one or two questions for which she didn't have answers.
The ''average worker'' at the plant will be exposed to one to three millirems of radiation a year, she said. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, ''the average American receives about 360 millirems of background radiation ... every year from both natural and man-made sources.''
''Every one of us'' is exposed to 360 millirems a year, ''just by living,'' Kilkeary said.
Water will go into the adjacent Cumberland River cleaner than it came out and free of radiation, she said. Depleted uranium, left over from the enrichment process, won't be stored permanently on site.
The uranium enrichment process that LES will use contains safety measure upon safety measure, she said in answering a question on employee training.
People chosen to work at the plant will get ''months of serious training,'' some conducted overseas, she said. Those who want to be considered for management and professional jobs can earn a college degree by 2007, the time the plant is scheduled to open.
Moreover, the company welcomes public participation and questions, she said, announcing that LES has hired former Macon County Executive Doyle Gaines to run an information office it plans to open in the next two weeks in downtown Hartsville. Kilkeary said she hoped to lease an office yesterday.
The company is at the beginning of the road toward building the plant, which would be only the second uranium-enrichment facility in the United States. It is negotiating with the Four Lake Regional Industrial Development Authority, which owns the property on which LES wants to build, and plans to file a licensing application with federal regulators by next year.
Kathy Carlson can be reached at 259-8047 or at kcarlson@tennessean.com.
----
Regime Change in the US
October 02 2002
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CON210A.html
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=02/10/02/6596029
Proposal from a Concerned Citizen
Rather than adopting the suggested regime change in Iraq through military force, the United Nations must instead consider an entirely different course of action. This new course is based upon the facts alone, rather than political pressure. A regime change is indeed necessary, but not in Iraq. The primary regime which needs to be changed, is the one found in Washington DC. The greatest tyrant and true threat to world peace who needs to be ousted, is George W. Bush. The facts which clearly show the need for such a resolution against the U.S. are self evident...they demonstrate a "clear and present danger" to the world community. America is clearly a nation which aspires to global domination, through the use of the most expensive and high tech military the world has ever known.
In demonstration of the above assertions, let us be very clear about Americas" 300+ billion dollar a year expense, for weapons of mass destruction. These include;
1) Atomic and hydrogen bombs.
2) The "Star Wars" weaponry of space satellites, and laser devices.
3) A host of biological weapons including anthrax, which it has used on its own citizenry and manufactured in its own laboratories.
4) Guided missile cruisers, Stealth bombers and aircraft carriers conveying the most advanced air-based offensives, ever to be used in the history of mankind.
5) Depleted uranium munitions, used repeatedly upon countries such as Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, causing birth defects and lingering mutilation of civilian populations.
6) The use of spies, covert CIA operatives and other agents, as well as a barrage of propaganda, which seeks to weaken, overthrow and exploit the sovereign nations of the world, primarily for the sake of installing pro-U.S.-corporate puppets who will do Washington's bidding. [The fact that it has staged countless internal rebellions and coups within dozens of countries in the last five decades, is well documented and known. The U.S. constantly interferes with, and attempts to coerce, the mandates of foreign governments for the sake of its own special interests, and in the name of "democracy". The real reason for this behavior is, of course, unfair economic advantage and bottomless greed.]
7) Nerve gas, tear gas, blistering agents, neurotoxins and poisonous compounds of all kinds.
8) "Smart" bombs", "Bunker Buster" bombs, "Daisy Cutter" bombs, mines and laser or satellite guided munitions.
9) Teams of special forces troops, whose missions are designed for assassination, covert mass-murder and maximized destruction.
The United States possesses, and has openly discussed using, such weapons of mass destruction upon a great number of other nations. Among these nations are those listed in George Bushs' so-called "axis of evil" list, as well as many others which it says, "harbor terrorists". The so-called "War on Terror" targets Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Columbia, Nicaragua and many others. Upon these nations the U.S. has repeatedly issued a series of very aggressive and threatening statements to the effect of; "You are either with us or against us", implying dire consequences of economic, diplomatic and military measures in the case of non-compliance. It has openly discussed the possibility of a "first strike" use of conventional nuclear warheads, and "tactical nukes" on the battlefield. Its' military policy of, "win no matter what the cost of truth or human lives", as a surrogate for sane foreign relations, has earned the wrath of the world. U.S. belligerency has been a major contributor to international hostilities, instability, war and the creation of reactionary terrorist groups, as well as the oppression of peoples worldwide. Its irrational posture threatens to catapult the world into another, and probably final, world war.
The United States has repeatedly shown its willingness to target civilian populations with weapons of mass destruction, especially via the carpet-bombing of cities and infrastructures. It is the only nation to have ever used nuclear devices in war, and upon civilian targets. Among the structures bombed have been desalinization plants, water treatment facilities, police stations, electrical substations and generators, radar and communications stations, hospitals, highway, railway and other transportation facilities, factories for the manufacture of metal, plastic and wood products, and numerous other civilian centers. Countless examples of this behavior have been witnessed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The result has been millions of Iraqi and Afghan children dying of unnecessary diseases and malnutrition, due to a severe lack of food and safe drinking water. U.S. allies such as Israel, (whose military it literally makes possible) have also exhibited such behavior, as has Great Britain, through constant urging toward mindless, mutually accomplished war frenzies.
A primary export of the United States is weaponry of mass destruction, including so-called "conventional" weapons such as guided missile cruisers, bombers, small arms, mortars, rockets, tactical advisors, self guided missiles, attack helicopters, high tech surveilance and imaging systems, tanks, explosives and various other tools desigen primarily for the sake of destroying human life. Added to this list of exports are multi-lingual propaganda, biological agents, tear and nerve gas, atomic weapons and their constituents, as well as technical advice regarding their construction, maintenance and use. The U.S. has frequently urged countries to use these weapons against each other so long as it benefitted its political interests, while simultaneously criticizing those who use them without American sanction.
Permanent State of War
The U.S. has repeatedly told its own citizenry to expect involvement in what amounts to a Permanent State of War, due to the "War on Terror". A large and increasing number of foreign nationals are being held in American prisons unlawfully, often without charges, legal due process or access to legal counsel. These persons are often subjected to psychological and physical torture due to their nationality or religious beliefs. Its' Afghan prisoners of war in Cuba are treated without dignity, in violation of the Geneva Convention. At the same time, the U.S. has insisted that its military personnel must be held exempt from war crimes charges by the international community, regardless of their actions.
The United States repeatedly defies the resolutions and authority of the United Nations, making is clear that it views this body as merely a tool which can be occasionally used to achieve its special interests, rather than those of humanity in general. America has also made it quite clear that if its desires are not met by the international community/United Nations, that it will act on its own regardless of their wishes, and in whatever manner it sees fit. This includes pre-emptive military invasion of any country which dares to oppose its policies, and for whatever flimsy, baseless justification it gives to the world as an excuse for such actions.
The international community must seriously ask itself, "Who's next?" in this series of American invasions of sovereign lands. "Who will die next...by the thousands, tens of thousands or millions..." at the bloody hands of American imperialism?
For these reasons and others, it is hereby proposed that:
A United Nations resolution be created for the purpose of dis-arming and otherwise rendering harmless, the major threat to world peace which the United States has become. Toward this end the necessity of ousting its current dictator, George W. Bush, and the legislative bodies of that government which currently parrot him without serious debate, is self evident.
The functional means necessary to achieve this goal are hereby suggested. They include;
1) Economic sanctions and trade tarriffs, aimed at undermining the U.S. economy, thereby depriving its monstrous military apparatus of the necessary life blood to function.
2) The insistence of a complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from wherever they may be stationed around the world. This includes U.S. occupation forces already in conquered countries, (such as Afghanistan).
3) The elimination of world petroleum exports to the United States, as well as the necessary raw materials which make it's industrial-military apparatus possible.
4) The withdrawal of foreign investment in U.S. companies, and their various enterprises. This includes the canceling of existing contracts with U.S. companies, especially those involved with the extraction of petroleum, the mining of precious metals, deforestation, sweat shop industries of clothing, plastics, electronics and other manufacture, as well as other vital resources from lands not within their territorial domain.
5) That U.S. military and civil leaders, especially George W. Bush and his entire cabinet, be brought to justice for their heinous participations in war crimes and crimes against humanity the world over, by the international courts. World leaders must understand that no one country can both make the rules and break them, when it comes to international justice.
6) The use of joint military force if necessary, to curb, restrict and otherwise prevent the American advance toward world domination. America must be deprived of what it most desires, which are the resources of others to fuel an extravagant lifestyle, and the support of bribed or bullied foreign leaders to accomplish a singularly selfish, unilateral agenda.
In effect, the United States must feel the full pressure of international sovereignty, as it expresses its supreme dissatisfaction with the US imperialism around the globe.
The United States must also understand that its anti-humanitarian, corporate-minded, industrial-military schemes for global dominance are nothing short of those employed by Hitler, and other fascist dictators and governments, throughout the course of history. [Constantly declaring war and occupying one country after the next demonstrates this.] The international community, and indeed the peoples of the entire world, find this American attitude and behavior unacceptable. They will no longer be coerced or made to feel insecure in their own places of residence and worship, at the behest of American whims.
-------- finland
Finnish TVO launches nuke plant construction tender
REUTERS FINLAND:
October 2, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17995/story.htm
HELSINKI - Finnish nuclear power producer TVO launched a tender to build the country's fifth nuclear reactor, the first in Western Europe in over a decade, in response to expected growing electricity demand.
Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO) said it had requested bids for a light water plant unit with either a boiling water or pressurised water reactor with an electric power capacity of 1,000 to 1,600 megawatts.
TVO said bid evaluations would start next spring. It hopes to be able to select the plant and location at either Loviisa or Olkiluoto at the end of next year.
"We aim at bringing about a wide international competition," Chief Executive Mauno Paavola said in a statement.
"There are several plant alternatives available in the market which could be constructed to fulfil our strict safety requirements. We are open to different project alternatives and can purchase the plant as a complete or in parts."
France's Framatome ANP, U.S. General Electric, Britain's Westinghouse and Russia's Atomstroyexport, have recently been named as firms expected to take part in the tender.
TVO, which runs two of the four nuclear power plants in Finland, has said it could have a fifth reactor ready by 2008 and it could cost up to 2.5 billion euros ($2.47 billion) to build.
TVO is majority owned by Pohjolan Voima Oy, where forestry groups UPM-Kymmene and Stora Enso have stakes.
Earlier this year parliament approved construction of a fifth reactor that had been proposed by TVO. TVO will have to apply in due course to the government for the construction licence.
-------- germany
Germany's EnBW asks to extend nuke power plant life
REUTERS GERMANY:
October 2, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17994/story.htm
BERLIN - German electricity producer Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg has applied to extend the life of its Obrigheim nuclear power plant, Germany's oldest, an environment ministry spokesman said.
"We will examine the application jointly with the chancellery and economy ministry," the spokesman said.
EnBW declined to comment on the move but the plant, opened in 1969, was due to be decommissioned next year under Germany's nuclear phase-out law.
That law, adopted in 2000, allocated the plant a further 8,700 gigawatthours (GWh) of production. According to a counter on the environment ministry website, the plant has just 1,153 GWh remaining, or enough for 91 days output.
In its application, EnBW proposed re-allocating Obrigheim part of the production quota of its separate Neckarwestheim II reactor.
------- japan
Japan Utility Firm Faces Warning
October 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Nuclear.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan warned the nation's largest utility Tuesday to improve safety after the company allegedly manipulated data at its nuclear reactors, but stopped short of filing criminal charges because no clear legal violations were found.
In issuing the administrative measure to punish Tokyo Electric Power Co. in the coverup scandal involving reactor safety problems, Trade and Industry Minister Takeo Hiranuma told the utility to improve their safety records and prove it by meeting tougher requirements in special government inspections.
Hiranuma also demanded the company come up with preventive measures and submit them in a report to the government by the end of March, 2003.
Tuesday's government action followed investigations by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency after revelations in late August that TEPCO had been hiding structural problems in its nuclear reactors.
The warning was based on a report submitted Tuesday by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which blamed TEPCO and three regional nuclear power plant operators -- Chubu Electric Power Co., Tohoku Electric Power Co. and Japan Atomic Power Co. -- for failing to report defects more promptly.
The agency alleged that TEPCO manipulated data in 16 of the 29 cases where defects were found and failed to comply with government regulations. However, it did not find clear legal violations.
Last month, officials inspected the alleged facility, focusing on possible cracks in pipes that conduct water into the reactors, while searching for evidence of any attempts to hide problems.
The public has become increasingly wary of nuclear power since a 1999 radiation leak at a fuel-reprocessing plant killed two workers. But the government failure to detect coverup attempts also raised questions of the reliability of government inspections.
TEPCO admitted in late August that it had misreported safety problems in the late 1980s and early 1990s after a trade ministry report revealed 29 cases of cracks or minor structural damage in eight of the company's 17 nuclear reactors.
The company's top three officials resigned over the scandal, and authorities raided its Tokyo headquarters earlier this month. TEPCO contends the cracks never posed any serious danger.
Japan depends on nuclear power for about 30 percent of its electricity. TEPCO's plants supply nearly half of the country's nuclear energy.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
LAB'S LASER REVIEWS TAINTED, JUDGE SAYS
RULING ON $4 BILLION NIF PROJECT PROVIDES 'AMMUNITION'
Tri-Valley Herald
October 2, 2002
by Ian Hoffman
From: marylia@earthlink.net (marylia)
Despite demands in Congress for independent reviews of the $4 billion National Ignition Facility, the U.S. Department of Energy convened closed-door panels of potentially biased reviewers in violation of federal open-government laws, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the Energy Department to print a disclaimer on its latest NIF reviews, to include an admission that it did not "ensure the committee is open to the public, balanced in terms of the points of view represented, and free of conflicts of interest."
The ruling is likely to deepen concern in Congress that the stadium-sized, 192-beam laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will fall short of its promise of igniting hydrogen fusion in a laboratory.
Sullivan suggested his ruling will lend "ammunition" to NIF critics and plaintiffs in the lawsuit at the Washington, D.C.-based Natural Resources Defense Council and the Livermore-based Tri-Valley Citizens Against a Radioactive Environment, both environmental and arms-control advocacy groups.
"All of these committees have suffered from a lack of independence, a lack of balance and an intense pressure to come up with the 'correct' findings, namely that the project should go forward," said Christopher Paine, a senior nuclear-weapons policy analyst at the NRDC. "It certainly will add to Congress' skepticism about NIF."
In 1999, Livermore lab and DOE officials admitted construction of the giant laser-fusion project was at least $1 billion over its original $1.2 billion budget and well beyond schedule. In lieu of canceling the NIF's funding, Congress called for a series of reviews to be certain Livermore lab's revised NIF budget and schedule were credible. Ever since, Sullivan found, energy officials repeatedly relied on the disputed panels and their reports to reassure Congress of "high confidence that the project can be successfully completed" and that NIF should proceed.
Energy department officials could not be reached for comment on the ruling, but argued to Sullivan that its panels were not subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act or FACA. The law requires government agencies that form panels of outside advisers to publish notices of panel meetings, to ensure a balance of views among panelists, to hold open meetings and to release documents considered in their reviews.
The Department of Energy filled its latest panels, to varying degrees, with its own employees, employees for its labs and employees of private contractors who stood to gain financially by continuing the project, the judge found. It did not publish a charter or notice of the meetings or open them to the public, and it declined to release their internal documents.
Sullivan rejected the agency's claims that the panels were exempt from the law, including a contention that the federal contractors were in effect federal employees. In cases elsewhere, the Energy Department has opposed public-information requests on the grounds that its contractors are not agents of the federal government and so not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Paine said the ruling will make it more difficult for the Energy Department to "stack the deck" on reviews of major science projects.
-------- tennessee
TENNESSEE WEAPONS PLANT RELIES ON FAILING EQUIPMENT
10/2/2002
Associated Press;
WBIR TV News
http://www.wbir.com/News/news.asp?ID=9410
An Energy Department inspector general's report released today says the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge is relying on failing production equipment.
Investigators examined a Y-12 facility that manufactures depleted uranium bomb components used to refurbish the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.
The investigators found that the facility relies on production equipment that often is outdated and damaged beyond repair.
The Energy Department is responsible for maintaining the safety, reliability and performance of nuclear weapons in the nation's stockpile.
The report says if the depleted uranium process at Oak Ridge fails, the government may not be able to meet its stockpile needs.
----
Y-12 criticized for putting stockpile in jeopardy
by R. Cathey Daniels
Oak Ridger staff
Wednesday, October 2, 2002
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/100202/new_1002020025.html
Over the next couple of days officials at BWXT Y-12 will be reviewing a report highly critical of the plant for placing in "jeopardy" the "ability to manufacture needed parts" for the nation's stockpile of components for modern nuclear weapons.
"Y-12's depleted uranium facility is currently producing needed components, but it relies on production equipment that, in many cases, is outdated, damaged, or beyond repair," stated a Sept. 25 Department of Energy's Inspector General's report.
Management at the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration responded that the report "oversimplifies the situation regarding the reliability/vulnerability of the depleted uranium operations."
"No one can assure unequivocal reliability (zero risk of failure) of any process indefinitely into the future," wrote Anthony Lane, associate administrator for management and administration.
"Consequently we have to make risk versus cost benefit tradeoffs on all of our capabilities, including depleted uranium."
The report stated as an example of problems found at the plant, a 42-year-old hydraulic press used to forge "virtually all parts manufactured at the facility," and stated that the press is so damaged "that it will ultimately lead to failure."
"We were surprised to find a replacement press, on site for well over a year, had not been installed because Y-12 had not budgeted for its installation," stated the report.
"Similarly, six of seven specialized furnaces used to melt uranium had failed, yet Y-12 had not installed an available replacement."
In addition, the report states that "the risk of exposing plant workers to health and safety hazards remains at an increased level as long as depleted uranium operations continue in the old process buildings."
Y-12 spokesman Bill Wilburn said this morning: "We have received the report and are reviewing the recommendations." He noted that officials at the security complex had received the Inspector General's report at midday Tuesday.
"It will take a few days to review and to decide how to proceed on those recommendations," said Wilburn.
Recommendations include ensuring the plant has the "capabilities and capacities to meet its current and future stockpile requirements."
In addition the plant should immediately begin preventive maintenance on all depleted uranium equipment; establish and implement a contingency plan for preserving the 3,500-ton press and develop and implement performance-based incentives and a comprehensive maintenance implementation plan.
Lane wrote that "short-term priorities can outweigh long-term needs temporarily but a balanced investment strategy must be implemented to maintain reliability."
He said that an infrastructure replacement initiative at all NNSA sites including Y-12 "will allow us to substantially reduce the reliability risks of our production process, including depleted uranium operations."
R. Cathey Daniels can be contacted at (865) 220-5515 or danielsrcd@oakridger.com.
-------- us politics
2 cheers for Jim McDermott
October 2, 2002
by Ellen Ratner
WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29134
Prof. William Ian Miller, in his book "The Mystery of Courage," notes that of the many different forms of courage, two have always stood out as especially admirable: physical courage and moral courage. People show physical courage by exposing their lives to danger for a higher cause. One thinks of the police and firemen of 9-11, the passengers of Flight 93 and the young people of our armed forces serving in places you wouldn't visit on a dare.
Moral courage is another matter. Summarizing the views of one hardened veteran of Vietnam, Miller says, "As hard as physical courage is, it is easier than moral courage, easier to be shot at than to be laughed at and scorned. Moral courage is lonely courage. It often requires making a stand, calling attention to yourself or running the risk of being singled out in an unpleasant way."
Which brings me to Congressman Jim McDermott. Whatever you think of him or his views or the way he explains himself, you have to credit him with moral courage. The Democratic Party, of which McDermott is one of the most liberal members, has been notably silent about Bush's proposed war. All they've managed to do thus far is dance at the margins. Al Gore makes a speech, which, if you read it carefully, is less criticism than pure equivocation. Tom Daschle takes the floor of the Senate and whines interminably about how Bush "politicizes" the war. But he doesn't say bupkis about the war itself.
Is the new, unprecedented Bush Doctrine of preemption a good idea? Would it set the kind of precedent that would give Russia a free hand in Chechnya, the Chinese a free hand in Taiwan or Pakistan a green light to hit India? Is this war the right war at the right time? These are good questions. But don't look to the Democratic Party for answers. They've been too busy dodging focus groups and poll numbers to do their duty as the loyal opposition and give this democracy the debate it needs - and deserves.
But that was before Jim McDermott came along, picked up a loudspeaker and shouted that maybe, just maybe, the emperor has no clothes. Now everything's changed. Thanks to McDermott, the debate is where it should be - out in the open. Had the more "responsible" Democratic Party leaders done their jobs, this debate could have started in earnest weeks ago, and perhaps have been decided, one way or another, by now.
In the meantime, McDermott is suffering the obloquy that hits the morally courageous as bullets hit the physically brave. For visiting Baghdad and speaking his mind, he is denounced as a traitor, a congressional Johnny Walker Lindh, a man who should be denied reentry to the United States or if allowed, should be prosecuted for aiding and abetting the enemy.
Some traitor. Unlike some of the strongest neocon boosters of Attack Iraq, McDermott's actually worn a uniform - two years (1968-1970) in the Navy Medical Corps. (An M.D., he's also the only licensed psychiatrist in the House of Representatives, but I'll let that one pass.)
But history may well remember him for what he said in Baghdad. By questioning Bush's credibility on the war (by the way, he only questioned it, and didn't call Bush a liar), by presenting the issue in terms that many Arabs share, McDermott has triggered the long overdue debate. Now, our elected representatives will have to take a stand on this thing, pro or con. Isn't that why we pay them the big bucks? Whether you agree or disagree with McDermott, credit him for at least starting the discussion.
It's a sign of the times that McDermott felt he had to go all the way to Baghdad to make his statement. Given this rush to war we're being asked to join, it was probably the only "stage" where he could command a microphone. In Washington, Captain Tom Daschle and his XO Dick Gephardt had already ordered the crew of the submarine USS Democrat to rig for silent running.
Sorry all you armchair patriots, we owe Jim McDermott a debt of gratitude. None other than conservative talk show king Rush Limbaugh suggested that it was a good thing that McDermott spoke out, because now everybody will know where the Democrats stand on this war. He thinks that will hurt the Democrats, and for all I know, he's right. But at least we'll have the argument.
If we do go ahead and invade Iraq, a lot of people will be called upon to show real courage. As we proceed down this path, perhaps history will remember the first of these as Congressman Jim McDermott.
Editor's note: Reporter Gareth Schweitzer contributed to this column.
Ellen Ratner is the White House correspondent and bureau chief for the Talk Radio News service. She is also Washington bureau chief and political editor for Talkers Magazine. In addition, Ratner is a news analyst at the Fox News Channel.
----
[The Washington Times should be more careful with its headlines. The current White House only claims to speak for U.S. et]
U.S. backs killing Saddam
By Joseph Curl and Dave Boyer
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 2, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021002-377830.htm
The White House yesterday backed the assassination of Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi people, saying "the cost of one bullet" to take out the Iraqi dictator would achieve the goal of regime change more quickly and cheaply than a U.S. attack.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the ouster of Saddam "is welcome in whatever form it takes," noting that several other options - including exile - are less expensive than war, which Congress estimates would cost as much as $13 billion just to begin.
"I can only say that the cost of a one-way ticket is substantially less than that. The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less than that. The cost of war is more than that.
"But there are many options that the president hopes the world and people of Iraq will exercise themselves," he said. "Never underestimate the yearning of people to stop being tortured, to stop being suppressed."
Although Mr. Fleischer said "this is not a statement of administration policy," he added, "that if the Iraqis took matters in their own hands, no one around the world would shed a tear."
The stark words came just hours after President Bush criticized a proposed Iraq resolution on Capitol Hill and also called for a tough, new resolution from the United Nations "in order for us to make it clear to the world - and to Saddam Hussein, more importantly - that you must disarm."
As both the United Nations and Congress neared votes on resolutions authorizing force to deal with Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Bush criticized the first draft of a Senate version of his Iraq war resolution.
"I don't want to get a resolution which ties my hands," Mr. Bush said after meeting with congressional leaders at the White House, who are expected to take up the measure today.
The proposed resolution, drafted by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, and Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the panel's senior Republican, calls on Mr. Bush to exhaust all diplomatic efforts before using force.
It also would limit the use of force to making Iraq disarm and does not address White House charges that Iraq suppresses its own people, supports terrorism and threatens its neighbors.
Mr. Lugar met yesterday at the White House with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales. He said the White House advisers noted the fact that the Biden-Lugar plan would limit powers granted to the presidency in earlier resolutions on Iraq, including patrols of no-fly zones.
"We've tried to formulate new language that meets some problems they have," Mr. Lugar said. "They felt the president gained some powers in the '91 debate and the '98 debate, and they did not want in any way those powers to be restricted. I assured them, neither did I, and neither does Senator Biden."
Mr. Lugar said there are probably enough votes in the House and the Senate "to pass almost any resolution the White House comes up with." He said his goal is to get as broad a bipartisan vote as possible.
Mr. Bush will discuss the resolution this morning with the top four leaders of the House and Senate, and will try to revive a Homeland Security bill that a Republican senator declared on "life support."
The Senate yesterday stopped work on a bill to create a Department of Homeland Security, and Republicans said the measure is all but dead for the year, though negotiations continued.
"I, for one, think the bill's on a life support system," said Sen. Fred Thompson, Tennessee Republican.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, insisted that lawmakers would keep working on the bill even if they must return to Washington after the Nov. 5 election.
"We're going to stay on this bill, and we're going to figure out how to finish it," Mr. Daschle said.
Mr. Fleischer said Mr. Bush will try to break the impasse with lawmakers today.
"It would just be unimaginable for the Senate to leave town without having taken action to protect the homeland," Mr. Fleischer said.
The sticking point is Democrats' insistence on extending union and civil-service protections to the new agency's 170,000 workers. Mr. Bush wants the flexibility to hire, fire and deploy those employees.
On the use-of-force resolution against Iraq, the fourth-ranking House Democrat, Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, said he would support such a resolution, but House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Texas Republican, said he is still troubled by the notion of changing U.S. policy to allow pre-emptive military strikes.
"When the snake's out of his hole, kill the snake," Mr. Armey said. "But do you kill the snake when he's still in his hole?"
But other lawmakers, such as Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, said talk of assassination by an Iraqi does not trouble him.
"Saddam has killed a lot of his own people," Mr. Brownback said. "I could see why some generals close to him or people around him would want to see him gone."
Mr. Bush yesterday also said versions of proposed U.N. resolutions fall short of his aim.
"I'm just not going to accept something that is weak. It is not worth it. The United Nations must show its backbone. And we will work with members of the Security Council to put a little calcium there, put calcium in the backbone, so this organization is able to more likely keep the peace as we go down the road," Mr. Bush said.
In encouraging Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, Mr. Fleischer said many despise the dictator.
"Saddam Hussein has created a great many enemies inside Iraq. And it is impossible to last forever as a brutal dictator who suppresses his own people, who tortures his own people, who deliberately brings women in public to be raped, so it can be witnessed by their families.
"He has not exactly created good will among the Iraqi people," Mr. Fleischer said. "Don't overestimate Saddam Hussein's support from his own people."
----
U.S. to 'thwart' U.N. team heading to Iraq
By Nicholas Kralev and Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 2, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021002-55808.htm
Baghdad officials and the U.N. team charged with disarming Iraq agreed yesterday to resume weapons inspections after a four-year pause, saying the first advance group was expected in the country in two weeks.
But the United States said the inspectors had no authority to return to Baghdad. It warned it would try to "thwart" any inspections made before the U.N. Security Council adopts a new resolution threatening military action if Iraq fails to cooperate fully.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the inspection team needs "the strongest possible authority," which "will only come from a new resolution that keeps the pressure up on Iraq and that has linked to it consequences, so that we can get to the bottom of this once and for all."
Mr. Powell's comments, which came in a hastily arranged press conference at the State Department last night, was an indication of the growing tension between Washington and chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who plans to send a group to Baghdad around Oct. 15.
After a two-day meeting with an Iraqi delegation in Vienna, Austria, Mr. Blix said yesterday his team was satisfied by the information it received on Baghdad's nuclear facilities, as well as its readiness to provide the U.N. team with unlimited access to suspected weapons sites.
"The Iraqi representatives declared that Iraq accepts all rights of inspection provided for in all the relevant Security Council resolutions," Mr. Blix told reporters. "It was clarified that all sites are subject to immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access."
The U.N. team argues that existing Security Council resolutions give it sufficient mandate to return to Baghdad under the old rules.
But Mr. Powell said those rules will not work, as they have not worked in the past.
"We will not be satisfied with Iraqi half-truths or Iraqi compromises, or Iraqi efforts to get us back into the same swamp that they took the United Nations into," he said. "Pressure works, and we are going to keep it up."
He also said Mr. Blix "should get new instructions in the form of a resolution" and carry them out as an agent of the Security Council.
In a draft of a U.N. resolution obtained by Reuters news agency, the United States says it wants arms inspectors to delay their entry into Iraq until Baghdad supplies a list of any weapons of mass destruction and related materials.
The American-drafted measure, if adopted as written, could delay the start of arms inspections several weeks beyond the mid-October date proposed by Mr. Blix.
The draft calls on Iraq, within 30 days of adoption of the resolution, to provide a "complete declaration" of all its programs to develop chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic weapons.
This declaration has to be submitted "prior to the beginning of inspections," the draft says. It also authorizes any member state to "use all necessary means" if Iraq fails to comply with any of the resolution's demands.
Another senior State Department official said earlier that the United States has its "influence" in the council.
"We do not believe that they should go back in under the old set of resolutions and under the old inspection regime," Mr. Powell said. "And therefore, we do not believe they should go in until they have new instructions in the form of a new resolution."
The secretary did not specify what Washington would do if the new resolution was not passed by Oct. 15. But the senior official said: "Then we move into thwart mode."
Mr. Powell acknowledged that the Iraqi representatives in Vienna made "some concessions," but on other issues they continued to balk.
Mr. Blix said the Iraqis had promised full access to so-called sensitive sites, such as mosques, government institutions, research facilities and other buildings.
However, access to eight presidential palaces would be subject to a 1998 "memorandum of understanding" between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Mr. Blix said. Under that agreement, inspectors must give at least 24 hours' notice before they enter the sites, and take with them diplomatic observers.
U.S. officials complained at the time that the process was cumbersome and easily subverted by the Iraqis, who could delay permission or refuse to accept the available diplomatic escorts.
Meanwhile, Canada yesterday hardened its resistance to any unilateral U.S. attack, saying it had no intention of blindly following Washington in a move that could destabilize large parts of the world.
Foreign Minister Bill Graham said Canada fully backed President Bush's decision to press his case against Iraq through the Security Council. Using the strongest language by a Canadian official since the crisis erupted, Mr. Graham told a parliamentary debate on Iraq that a U.S. attack without U.N. authorization would have no international legitimacy.
In spite of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's pledge to cooperate with inspectors during a meeting with Mr. Annan in early 1998, his relations with the U.N. team worsened a few months later to the point that no real work could be done. The United Nations pulled the inspectors out of Iraq that December, shortly before joint U.S.-British military strikes.
For four years, Baghdad refused to let the inspectors back in, but faced with renewed threats of U.S. military action, it agreed to their return two weeks ago.
Mr. Blix said yesterday there was a "big difference" in Iraq's willingness to cooperate compared with 1998.
Mr. Aziz, in Ankara to seek Turkey's help in case of a war with the United States, said "inspections will show the reality of Iraq not having weapons of mass destruction."
The leader of the Iraqi delegation in Vienna, Saddam's technical adviser Amir al-Saadi, said he was "happy" with the agreement and that the talks were businesslike and focused.
As promised, the Iraqis handed over to the U.N. team four computer disks with long-overdue information on the status of dual-use nuclear equipment, which could be used for both civilian and warfare purposes. Such reports are due every six months but had not been provided since 1998.
At the United Nations, the United States was meeting stiff resistance from France, Russia and China to its resolution, for which it has Britain's support.
The draft's text has not been officially distributed yet, even though diplomats have been discussing it with leaders in Moscow, Paris and Beijing.
"My interpretation is that they haven't put the text on the table because they are taking remarks from the capitals into account," one diplomat on the council said.
•Betsy Pisik contributed to this report from New York.
--------
As Congressional Support Builds, Bush Warns Hussein
New York Times
October 2, 2002
By DAVID E. SANGER and CARL HULSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/02/politics/02CND-CONG.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 - With members of Congress from both sides of the aisle starting to line up behind him on the possible use of military force against Iraq, President Bush warned President Saddam Hussein today that his "only choice" was to comply with United Nations disarmament resolutions.
His announcement came as the White House released the text of a resolution that leaders in both parties have approved, giving Mr. Bush wide latitude to strike Iraq if he concludes that diplomacy at the United Nations is not making progress. He could notify Congress as late as 48 hours after he decides to act, meaning that Mr. Bush has avoided the necessity of Congressional approval - and a separate debate - before ordering a strike.
The resolution represents a major victory for Mr. Bush, who as recently as Tuesday was saying he could not agree to any resolution that "ties my hands." Today he said that the resolution had met that test, and while Congress will debate it, something close to the wording announced today seems likely to pass overwhelmingly.
"U.N. inspectors believe that Iraq could have produced enough biological and chemical agent to kill millions of people," Mr. Bush said at an afternoon news conference in the White House Rose Garden. "The regime has the scientists and facilities to build nuclear weapons and is seeking the materials needed to do so."
The president indicated little room for compromise. "Saddam must disarm, period," Mr. Bush said. "If, however, he chooses to do otherwise, if he persists in his defiance, the use of force may become unavoidable. Course of action may bring many sacrifices, yet delay, indecision and inaction could lead to a massive and sudden horror."
Mr. Bush spoke only hours after he and House leaders from both parties agreed over breakfast on a resolution for dealing with President Hussein - "diplomatically if we can, militarily if we must," as Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the ranking House Democrat, put it.
Although the majority leader, Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, did not sign off on the deal, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and three other senators - one Democrat and two Republicans - introduced the resolution in the Senate just after noon. Later, Mr. Lieberman joined Mr. Bush at the president's news conference.
"The moment of truth has arrived for Saddam Hussein," the senator said. "This is his last chance, and the best chance for the international community to come together behind the rule of law and to show that resolutions of the United Nations are worth more than the paper that they are written on."
The language worked out with the House leaders requires Mr. Bush to certify to Congress before an American military strike, if feasible, or within 48 hours after an attack that diplomatic and other peaceful means alone are inadequate to protect Americans from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The resolution, which the Republican-led House may not take up until next week, also authorizes the president to use military forces "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to 1) defend the national security interests of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq and 2) to enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq."
The resolution, which affirms American policy that Mr. Hussein must leave power, would also require the president to report to Congress every 60 days on the Iraq situation.
After weeks of working to line up Congressional support for his stance against Iraq, Mr. Bush moved quickly to capitalize on today's events.
Flanked by supportive legislators from both major parties at the news conference, he said, "Full compliance with all U.N. security demands is the only choice, and the time remaining for that choice is limited."
Senator Daschle was continuing to wrestle with a wide range of opinion among Senate Democrats about how much flexibility to give the president and said at the White House that it "isn't where you start, it's where you end."
"And it is still my hope and my expectation, really, that at the end of the day, we're going to have a broad, a broad level of support on both sides of the isle for a resolution that indicates our support for the United Nations effort and our support for the administration's effort in dealing with Iraq," Mr. Daschle said.
Mr. Gephardt sought to play down the split between him and Mr. Daschle, and he noted that there were Republican divisions as well. He said he thought the new resolution addressed reservations expressed by many Democrats and was a "very positive step forward."
"Iraq is a problem," Mr. Gephardt said. "It presents a problem after 9/11 that it did not before, and we should deal with it diplomatically if we can, militarily if we must. And I think this resolution does that."
In the Senate, Mr. Lieberman said the resolution was a way to "strengthen the president's hand as commander in chief" as he tries to contend with threats posed by Iraq. Mr. Lieberman was joined in offering the resolution by Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, and John Warner of Virginia and John McCain of Arizona, both Republicans.
Mr. McCain said agreement on a single resolution would show the rest of the world that America was united in its stand on Iraq.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has been drafting an alternative, but he put off a committee meeting this morning, observing that today's agreement would "probably create a lot of momentum."
-------- MILITARY
-------- biological weapons
Debate flares on bioterror research
Joan Lowy E-mail LowyJ@shns.com
Scripps Howard News Service.
October 02, 2002
http://www.redding.com/shns/rstory.cfm?pk=IRAQ-BIOTERROR-10-02-02&cat=AS
Some scientists and defense experts are questioning whether the Bush administration's massive effort to beef up America's defenses against bioterrorism may inadvertently make a biological weapons attack more likely.
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the anthrax letter attacks and evidence that Iraq is rebuilding biological weapons stockpiles, the administration has requested $1.75 billion for next year - a 2000 percent increase - for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to fight bioterrorism.
That's in addition to the $1.6 billion the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants to beef up the public health infrastructure and to buy drugs and vaccines to respond to germ attacks and another $600 million for Defense Department biodefense programs.
Much of the money will be doled out in grants and contracts to researchers at universities and in the biotechnology and defense industries to search for vaccines and drug treatments for countering bioattacks. Already, universities are scrambling to create new research centers and forming consortiums to bid for research dollars.
But some experts are questioning whether increasing the number of facilities and scientists with access to dangerous pathogens and the skills necessary to turn them into weapons will increase the opportunities for bioterrorism rather than lessen them.
"The way we are responding to this is not appropriate because we are increasing access and increasing secrecy, all of which are playing into the hands of proliferation," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist at the State University of New York at Purchase and chair of the Federation of American Scientists' Chemical and Biological Arms Control Program.
"What research is done should be confined to a small number of highly secured places," Rosenberg said. "It should be well thought out before it just becomes money available to any researcher who rushes into that field."
Concerns about the security of biodefense research have been heightened by revelations over the past year about lax security at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., the nation's main biowarfare laboratory, and by microbiologists generally at universities and private laboratories.
For decades, government scientists thought nothing about passing along specimens of anthrax and other dangerous pathogens to colleagues around the country, said Joe Jemski, a former microbiologist at Fort Detrick and one of the first U.S. scientists to work with the Ames strain of anthrax used in last year's letter attacks.
That history has made it especially difficult for FBI investigators to trace the origin of the anthrax used in last year's attacks. There have also been revelations about unauthorized access to laboratories and use of equipment and missing germ specimens.
Congress has attempted to clamp down on the problem by enacting a new law requiring private research facilities to keep track of and report their stocks of 36 of the most dangerous bacteria and viruses, including anthrax, plague and ebola.
More controversial are new restrictions on scientists who can work with germs. On the list: no illegal aliens, no citizens of countries that support terrorism, no convicted felons, no admitted or convicted drug users, and no one who has been judged mentally incompetent or committed to a mental institution.
Another law requires the Justice Department to have in place by Dec. 9 a system similar to the one used to check the backgrounds of gun buyers.
A number of microbiologists have expressed concern that the new restrictions may unfairly weed out legitimate scientists and discourage important exchanges of information.
Some scientists warn that the new restrictions give a false sense of security because they don't reflect advances in science that may allow terrorists to construct bioweapons by synthetically constructing germs from the genetic codes, making access to the actual virus or bacteria irrelevant.
Earlier this year, biomedical researchers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook reported the successful creation of a synthetic poliovirus using mail-order materials and data they downloaded from the Internet.
"Right now we're sitting ducks for a big anthrax attack ... but five years from now it's going to be a much more dangerous situation," said Tara O'Toole, director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies.
"The pace of advances in biological science is absolutely extraordinary," O'Toole said. "I don't think there has been anything like it in the history of the world."
Rather than proceeding slowly with biodefense research, O'Toole advocates launching a biodefense equivalent to the Apollo space program of the 1960s. And, since scientific knowledge and its dissemination on the Internet is global, the United States should make the biodefense program an international effort, she said.
"The notion that you can lock up the bugs or that we can achieve biosecurity by watching scientists that are admittedly working on the bugs that we think in 2002 are most likely to be used as weapons is very naive," O'Toole said.
Elisa Harris, a former National Security Council director for nonproliferation during the Clinton administration, said her greatest concern is trying to create a consensus in the scientific community on what kind of research should not take place in the biodefense field because of its security implications.
For example, the British journal Nature last year published the complete DNA sequence of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis. A recent article in Science described how a research team tweaked genes on an Asian flu strain to produce a virus that killed infected mice more efficiently than the original.
At the moment, there is no "fundamental oversight of research," said Harris, a scientist at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. "There needs to be a review of proposed research that has potentially high consequences before it takes place."
-------- canada
Canada capable of sending big force to Iraq if necessary, McCallum says
NAHLAH AYED
McCallum on Iraq,
Canadian Press
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/story.asp?id=B433F3BF-B8F5-4093-8792-8A182AEF016D
OTTAWA (CP) - Canada could make a "sizable commitment" to any war in Iraq, Defence Minister John McCallum says, despite longstanding concerns the military is already stretched to the limit. McCallum made the comments Wednesday as the government scrambled to clarify its position on whether it supports a strike against Iraq, and under what conditions.
After repeated questioning from opposition and reporters, both the prime minister and foreign minister stressed they only support a strike by the United States if it is done under the auspices of the United Nations.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien said Canada will back the United States and insist that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein agree to a new, toughly worded UN resolution before weapons inspectors head back to Iraq to fish out any remaining weapons of mass destruction.
"We believe in multilateralism and we have to have all the coalition working together to make sure that this type of armament will not be used either against (Saddam's) own people or neighbouring nations," Chretien said.
He added that another debate would be held in the Commons should Canada be asked to help out in a strike.
McCallum emphasized that no decision has been made on whether Canada would get involved in any military action in Iraq if it comes to pass.
But he said the Canadian Forces could provide a military contingent similar to the one that helped fight the war on terrorism in Afghanistan. That involved more than 2,000 army, navy and air force personnel.
"If the government calls upon us, we will be able to make a sizable commitment," he said.
Military experts and opposition parties have complained that Canada's armed forces are already stretched too thin.
Canada pulled its ground troops out of Afghanistan after six months, and military brass said it was because the Forces couldn't sustain a longer deployment.
Canadian soldiers are also personally suffering from too many rotations overseas - in the wake of a 25 per cent cut in military spending through the 1990s, and a drastic dwindling of their numbers.
Paul Cellucci, U.S. ambassador to Canada, lauded the Canadian Forces's contribution in Afghanistan and hoped they would be able to continue supporting U.S. military efforts.
"We think that more resources need to be allocated so the Canadian military has the troop strength it needs, (and) it has the inter-operability capability with the U.S. forces," he said Wednesday in Toronto.
Canadian Alliance Leader Stephen Harper said Wednesday that any involvement in a U.S.-led war with Iraq would be "extremely limited."
Leon Benoit, Alliance defence critic, agreed Canada could make a substantial contribution, but only for about six months. After that, he suggested, the military would run out of steam.
McCallum refused to say whether Canada would be limited to a six-month operation.
In the Commons, the Opposition said the Liberals' stance on war against Iraq has been inconsistent and will likely damage relations with their neighbour to the south.
The Liberals say they haven't wavered on the subject since the beginning.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham bristled Wednesday at the idea floated by the White House that having Saddam assassinated would be cheaper than going to war.
"The United States is . . . not in favour of assassination as a way of dealing with international politics, or we'll all go down a road which would be very unfortunate for all of us," he said.
"Unfortunately, when you decide to have one person assassinated, it isn't necessarily that person that's the only person that's assassinated."
-------- china
Chinese Navy Cruises Toward Modernization
Reuters
Wednesday, October 2, 2002
By John Ruwitch
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32195-2002Oct2?language=printer
QINGDAO, China (Reuters) - At its peak some 600 years ago China's navy ruled Asia's waves, sailing unrivaled from the Yellow Sea to Java and west across the Indian Ocean.
It wielded the kind of maritime muscle Rear Admiral Ding Yiping, commander of China's Northern Fleet, dreams of today.
Sitting on the pier in the eastern port of Qingdao in front of the guided-missile destroyer named after it, Ding proudly invokes the legend of Ming Dynasty eunuch admiral Zheng He.
Zheng, said to have towered over his crew at seven ft tall, commanded one of the mightiest armadas the world had ever seen with 62 warships and some 30,000 men.
It journeyed to the Arabian Sea and the coast of east Africa, navigating with the then high-technology compass and keeping time with graduated incense sticks.
One scholar even says Zheng's "Treasure Fleet" circled the globe seven decades before Columbus reached the New World. But within 10 years, a new emperor had ordered Zheng to destroy his fleet and China turned inward for the next half millennium.
Now, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is striving to live up to Zheng's legacy, spending billions of dollars each year on new ships and weapons systems.
On Sept. 23, the destroyer Qingdao and a supply vessel returned home to much fanfare after what was billed as the Chinese navy's first circumnavigation of the world, a four-month show of force to build relations with foreign navies.
"Due to historical reasons, we have never been able to complete a cruise around the world," Ding told a news conference on the pier after the boats tied up.
"Today I can proudly tell you we have satisfactorily completed the mission entrusted upon us by the motherland of circling the globe."
SMALL BUT SIGNIFICANT STEP
The flotilla was small, but military analysts said the voyage was significant. It was a reminder of China's naval ambitions and underscored its plans for the navy to play a growing role in security strategy.
"It's very much more the implications of the ability to do this trip than the actual ability itself," said Andrew Kennedy, head of the Asia Program at London's Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies.
However, the trip also raised questions about the longer-term goals of Chinese naval modernization.
Stung by U.S. accusations it is hiding a fat military budget to fund upgrades, the PLA has tried to improve transparency this year, allowing reporters on a rare tour of army and air force bases in July and then aboard the Qingdao.
But there is little debate about the immediate tactical direction the PLA navy is developing.
"China has been primarily focused on coping with Taiwan and the prospect of U.S. intervention in a Taiwan crisis," said retired admiral Eric McVadon, U.S. defense attache in Beijing from 1990 to 1992 and now a consultant on East Asian security.
"Almost all of the navy's systems have been directed toward that goal," he said.
Beijing views the self-governed island of 23 million people as a renegade province and has vowed to reunify it with the mainland, by force if necessary.
DESTROYERS, SUBS AND PLANES
In the past decade, the PLA navy has bolstered its mostly indigenous surface fleet with the addition of two Sovremenny-class destroyers from Russia to its eastern fleet based opposite Taiwan. Two more are on order.
What makes them worrisome, analysts say, are their supersonic SS-N-22/Sunburn anti-ship missiles. No Asian navy can shoot them down, a report to the U.S. Congress said in July.
Below the waves, too, China is enhancing its submarine force, now a collection of 50-60 mostly noisy and outdated boats.
The PLA navy has recently added four Russian-made Kilo-class diesel-electric attack submarines. The ships are nearly silent and China has eight more on order.
"If you wanted to do something like keep U.S. navy carrier battle groups from feeling comfortable being off Taiwan, flush 30 or 40 submarines out there, including some that can really hide, and you overwhelm the U.S. anti-submarine warfare forces," McVadon said.
China is also expected to buy about 40 Russian Su-30MKK fighter planes before year-end, equipped with radar systems that let them fire precision air-to-surface anti-ship missiles, Jane's Defense Weekly reported in August.
Finally, the Chinese navy has put growing stock in its large arsenal of increasingly sophisticated anti-ship mines, a crucial element in a blockade of Taiwan.
"In a lot of ways, that's the ultimate threat these days to shipping. To have enough of something so that the insurance carriers basically say, this is not worth it," said Dean Cheng, a PLA expert at the CNA Corp, a federally funded U.S. think tank.
"If Lloyds pulls your insurance papers, you're pretty much as useful as being sunk."
For the time being, plans for an aircraft carrier are on the back burner because of the high cost, analysts say.
OTHER AMBITIONS
The improvements also serve China's interests away from the Taiwan Strait, including its longer-term security goals and ensuring China's continued emergence as an economic powerhouse.
The South China Sea looms large on naval planners' radar screens, politically and economically.
Maps printed in China define its claims there with a U-shaped line snaking down the coast of Vietnam, cutting south to Borneo, then north along the Philippine chain to the east coast of Taiwan.
The loop includes the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands, a source of diplomatic and naval conflict with several Southeast Asian countries which also claim the archipelagoes in whole or in part. Key shipping lanes also cut through the South China Sea.
China became a net importer of oil in 1993 and the government also probably sees the navy as essential to keeping oil coming from the Middle East, analysts say.
"They have to look to a time in the future when maybe they have to somehow insure that their flow of oil is not disrupted in the Malacca Strait, or something like that," McVadon said.
And over the horizon, if China wants to be a regional power it will have to field a navy that can contend with Japan's technologically advanced Self Defense Force fleet.
"In some ways, the idea of really creating a blue water navy, and statements that 'this is what we're making a go toward', is really almost sort of a concealment strategy," Kennedy said.
He said China might be thinking: "If everyone's expecting us to go global with our navy, then perhaps we can build up more locally at the moment."
-------- colombia
U.S., Colombia to Track Drug Flights
October 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-US-Flight-Interdiction.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Eighteen months after an American missionary plane was accidentally shot down, the United States will resume a campaign to help Colombia track and force down drug flights, officials from both countries said Wednesday.
The program was suspended in April 2001 in Colombia and Peru after a Peruvian warplane mistakenly shot down the missionary flight over the Amazon, killing an American woman and her infant daughter.
Colombian warplanes will intercept drug flights based on intelligence from the United States, Colombian air force commander Gen. Hector Velasco said Wednesday. He said operations are expected to resume this month.
To prevent more accidental shootdowns, Colombian ground and air crews and pilots are receiving safety training in Oklahoma City, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Galen Jackman.
The U.S. State Department will be the lead agency handling the program after U.S. lawmakers recommended the CIA no longer manage it.
U.S. officials have said illicit drug flights from the Andes to the United States increased following the suspension of the U.S. program.
The missionary plane was shot down after a CIA surveillance plane spotted what it considered a suspicious aircraft and called in a Peruvian jet to intercept it. The U.S. crew later realized the flight was innocent, but was unable to dissuade the Peruvians from firing on the plane.
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that inadequate Peruvian air traffic control, poor communications and inadequate foreign language skills on both the CIA and Peruvian planes contributed to the shootdown.
U.S. officials have said that in the resumed operations, all personnel involved must be fluent in Spanish.
Jackman, director of operations for the U.S. Southern Command, told reporters last week the illicit smuggling flights will be tracked by three U.S. long-range over-the-horizon radars, as well as radars in the Andean ridge. U.S. Customs P2 radar planes and U.S. Navy P3 surveillance planes will also monitor flights, Jackman told a briefing at the Southern Command's Miami headquarters.
Data on suspicious flights will go to a military center in Key West, Fla., and then be relayed to a Colombian tracker at a military installation in this South American nation, where U.S. officials will also be present.
The Colombians will then scramble a plane to identify the suspicious flight and order it to land. If it refuses, the Colombian military maintains the right to shoot it down.
``These will be combined operations,'' Velasco said. ``The training of our crews is being completed and we expect to resume operations this month.''
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has said U.S. assistance in the aerial interdiction campaign is key to cutting the flow of drugs from Colombia, the world's biggest producer of cocaine and a major heroin exporter, and the importation of chemicals used to process the drugs.
Jackman said the campaign would resume over Peru at a later date. Peruvian Foreign Minister Allan Wagner said Tuesday that Peru's war on drugs will not succeed without the U.S.-backed interdiction efforts.
Jackman said Shining Path, the insurgent group that terrorized Peru through the 1980s and much of the 1990s, is becoming involved in drug trafficking and has opened links with Colombia's main leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC.
The FARC and an outlawed right-wing Colombian paramilitary group earn huge profits by ``taxing'' cocaine production in Colombia, then use the money to buy arms and recruit more combatants.
-------- iraq
Exposing 'myths' about Iraq
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Wednesday, October 2, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021002-1546372.htm
The article disclosing the International Atomic Energy Agency's response to the falsehoods spread by the Bush administration about Iraq was, for the most part, excellent and informative ("Agency disavows report on Iraq arms," Nation, Friday). Unfortunately it also perpetuated a myth: that U.N. weapons inspectors were "kicked out" by Saddam Hussein in 1998. In fact, the inspectors were withdrawn, on the advice of President Clinton, immediately before the Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign began in December of that year.
In the aftermath of the bombing, and because of the (later acknowledged) presence of American spies on the United Nations Special Commission, Saddam refused the inspectors re-entry in early 1999.
It is only through an acknowledgement of all the facts relevant to the current crisis that war can be averted and Saddam's threat contained. Here's hoping The Times continues to give the public all the relevant facts.
GRAEME CHEADLE
Brampton, Ontario
----
U.S. Faulted Over Its Efforts to Unite Iraqi Dissidents
New York Times
October 2, 2002
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/02/international/middleeast/02OPPO.html
While endorsing "regime change" and democracy in Iraq, the Bush administration is stumbling in its efforts to forge a cohesive opposition to Saddam Hussein. According to Iraqi opposition leaders and experts on Iraq, its approach remains plagued by differences over who should lead the dissidents and who would rule the country most effectively if Mr. Hussein were overthrown.
In August, the administration sponsored a meeting of the six main Iraqi opposition groups, trying to help them establish a united front. Yet, according to the opposition groups and analysts on Iraq, this effort has been undercut by clashes between the Pentagon, on one side, and the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency on the other, over the role of the Iraqi National Congress. That group has served for many years as the umbrella group for the Iraqi opposition.
The tensions, critics of American policy say, have seriously complicated Washington's effort to prove that there is a popular, democratic alternative to Mr. Hussein's dictatorship.
"The treatment of Iraqi opposition figures and the lack of a coherent policy towards them is an utter disgrace," said Danielle Pletka, a vice president at the American Enterprise Institute, who until last spring was responsible for Middle East policy on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The Bush administration still has no idea what it wants to do with the Iraqi opposition."
Senior administration officials involved in political and military planning on Iraq dismiss the criticism. "I don't think it is correct," said Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy.
In June, Mr. Feith helped fashion what other officials called a "truce" between the Pentagon, which favored a leadership role for the Iraqi National Congress, and the State Department, which with the C.I.A. had been promoting other opposition groups. The agencies agreed to meet jointly with all members of the opposition and to share information about what was discussed.
This led to the August meeting of the major dissident groups, with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, by video hookup, Vice President Dick Cheney. The dissidents vowed to work jointly to establish a democratic government in Iraq, and the Americans pledged to help convene a conference to discuss the future of Iraq if Mr. Hussein were deposed.
Since then, officials said, the State Department has encouraged quiet get-togethers of Iraqi dissidents, like the one held in mid-September in Cobham, England. "We are meeting with all groups and treating them as potentially part of the future leadership of a free Iraq," Mr. Feith said.
Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, went further. "One of our unheralded successes has been getting Iraqi opposition figures who have refused to work together in the past to begin working together," he said.
But interviews with Iraqi opposition figures in Washington, in Ankara, Turkey, and in London, and with experts on Iraq, suggest that the interagency rivalries have only been papered over.
In addition, they say, foes of the Iraqi government remain intensely suspicious and jealous of one another and doubt the depth of America's commitment to them. Several expressed skepticism about America's determination to oust Mr. Hussein, and many scoffed at their rivals' agendas, effectiveness and tactics.
Senior representatives of the Iraqi National Congress - which was formed in 1992 with American help and has received millions of dollars under the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 - complained that the group has had no American financing since June, despite the administration's frequent expressions of support.
Moreover, they say that extensive visa screening has jeopardized plans for military training for thousands of Iraqis exiles, whom Washington asked the national congress to nominate two months ago. They also maintain that the State Department and C.I.A. are still trying to promote other dissidents as rivals to Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the congress, and to cultivate alternatives to the group.
Administration officials said that the State Department was now trying to encourage the opposition to stage another grand conference of major dissidents, perhaps in Belgium later this month. The opposition leaders, who range from Shiite clerics to communist proponents of a secular state, have rarely met as a group since 1992, when they endorsed a democratic, federal Iraq at a gathering in the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq.
Many opposition figures and supporters still regard that 1992 meeting as a high point for the Iraqi opposition. "Never before had so many Iraqis with such a diversity of religious and political opinions gotten together, without killing each other or breaking bones," said Rend Francke, who heads the Washington-based Iraq Foundation, which advocates human rights and democracy for Iraq.
That meeting was convened by Mr. Chalabi, a Shiite Muslim from a wealthy and influential Iraqi family who helped found the Iraqi National Congress in June, 1992, with C.I.A. support. Since then, Mr. Chalabi has struggled mightily to coordinate dissident activity and fend off C.I.A. and State Department efforts to discredit his group. "At times, we feel as if their motto has been "A.B.C. - `Anybody But Chalabi,' " said Frances Brooke, the group's long-serving Washington adviser.
Iraqi dissidents and administration officials complain that both agencies have also tried to cast doubt on information provided by defectors Mr. Chalabi's organization has brought out of Iraq.
Khadhir Hamza, the most senior ranking Iraqi official ever to defect from Mr. Hussein's nuclear program, has complained about American intelligence organizations' apparent lack of interest in hearing what he had to say. Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Khidhir, an Iraqi civil engineer who says he helped renovate secret Iraqi facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and hospitals in Baghdad as recently as a year ago, has said much the same thing.
National congress members said that they have several defectors - two of whom had held senior positions in Mr. Hussein's military establishment - whom American intelligence officials had not yet interviewed. "We simply lack the resources to protect these people indefinitely," a senior official of the national congress said.
"The I.N.C. has been without question the single most important source of intelligence about Saddam Hussein," said Richard N. Perle, an influential adviser to the Pentagon and an admirer of Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. "What the agency has learned in recent months has come largely through the I.N.C.'s efforts despite indifference of the C.I.A."
A spokesman for the C.I.A. said the agency would not comment on Mr. Chalabi or its relationship with him, the national congress, or with any other Iraqi dissidents.
The group hopes for financial relief soon thanks to a decision to transfer from the State Department to the Pentagon responsibility for financing a $600,000-a-month program to support intelligence collection inside Iraq. Mr. Brooke said that the Iraqi National Congress was also recently informed that the State Department had finally concluded a 20-month audit of its finances, now giving the group, in effect, "a clean bill of health."
The congress is not alone in its complaints. Fawzi al-Shemari, an Iraqi general and member of the Iraqi Officers Movement in Washington, said that administration officials had not consulted extensively with his group, either. Even Kurdish opposition figures, who deeply distrust the Iraqi National Congress, despite being a part of it, share the the group's reservations about the administration's plans for Iraq after Mr. Hussein.
Other groups remain equally distrustful of both the Kurds and the national congress. In an interview in Ankara, Riyaz Sarikahya, the head of the Turkish-backed Turkoman Party, accused one of the two main Kurdish leaders, Massoud Barzani of still working with Saddam Hussein. He also called Mr. Chalabi's congress a "four-star hotel association" that "has no future in Iraq."
Some Iraq experts say that divisions within the opposition have been exacerbated by the splits within the Bush administration. Reuel Gerecht, a writer and former C.I.A. analyst, said he was worried that the administration could not decide whether it wanted to promote a "nice Sunni military leader who will assure stability" or to encourage a real, and possibly messy, democracy.
While State Department officials say the administration, and many dissident groups, no longer view the Iraqi National Congress as the umbrella group through which support should be channeled, Pentagon officials and aides to Vice President Cheney insist there is no effective alternative to that group.
Mr. Perle said he was untroubled by such tensions. "There are obviously differences about the role of the I.N.C.," he said. "But I believe that in this end, the I.N.C. will emerge by virtue of its long history of promoting a broadly representative democracy which renounces weapons of mass destruction."
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Troops Close to Arafat Headquarters
New York Times
October 2, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/02/international/02MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 1 - Israeli forces took up positions in buildings near Yasir Arafat's compound in Ramallah today, two days after they complied with American demands and lifted a 10-day siege there.
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said the new arrangement was intended to enable Israel to "put its hands on all those inside who are suspects if they try to come out."
Palestinian officials said the Israelis had not ended the siege, which began after a suicide bomber killed six Israelis in Tel Aviv on Sept. 19.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, an adviser to Mr. Arafat, said it remained dangerous for the Palestinian leader and others to leave or enter the compound. "They are deceiving the Americans," he said of the Israelis.
But workmen were able to move through the rubble of the compound today, as were Palestinian officials not sought by Israel. Some telephone lines were restored.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was widely described in the Israeli news media as furious with the defense minister over reports that some of the men accused by Israel of planning attacks on Israelis had slipped out of the compound when the Israeli forces pulled back on Sunday.
Before bowing to the American demands, Mr. Sharon described those men as "the biggest terrorists that exist," though Israel never released a list of their names.
The Bush administration criticized the siege in Ramallah, in the West Bank, as undermining an internal Palestinian drive for democratic change and interfering with American efforts to build support for a possible war on Iraq. The United Nations Security Council also demanded an end to the siege.
Mr. Arafat met today with his cabinet, which in theory is serving on borrowed time. Under pressure from the Palestinian Legislative Council as part of a reform drive, the cabinet ministers resigned in September. Palestinian officials said that Mr. Arafat would request more time to replace the ministers, but that efforts at reform would nevertheless move forward.
Perhaps to allay the Bush administration's concerns and domestic criticism of the siege, Israeli officials appeared today to be eager to suggest that matters were settling down.
Mr. Sharon, on a visit to Moscow, told Israel Army Radio that he foresaw an end to Palestinian attacks and a return to substantive negotiations in the coming months. "I am sure that within a few months we will succeed in ending the terror and prepare the political process," he said. Mr. Sharon did not disclose the source of his optimism. He has demanded, before a return to negotiations, that Mr. Arafat be sidelined as Palestinian leader in a process of change that would also yield clear separation of powers, financial openness and overhauled security organizations. President Bush has endorsed that approach.
In an interview last week with The Jerusalem Post, Mr. Sharon listed five other conditions. One was that the governing Palestinian Authority "arrest all the terrorists from all the organizations, investigate them and try them." He said the authority must also dismantle militant organizations, collect illegal weapons, prevent further violence against Israelis and put "an absolute end to incitement" against Israel.
In operations overnight Monday, the army reported arresting 32 Palestinians on suspicion of ties to attacks on Israelis.
Mr. Abu Rudeineh said there would be no end to the conflict, which turned two years old over the weekend, without Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
--------
Report: Israel Spy Chief Talked with Palestinians
October 2, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-talks.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli spymaster Ephraim Halevy has held secret talks in Qatar with a senior Palestinian official who is seen as a possible successor to President Yasser Arafat, an Israeli newspaper reported Wednesday.
Both Palestinian and Qatari officials denied the report.
An Israeli diplomatic source however said outgoing Mossad chief Halevy had met unidentified Palestinian officials in the Gulf Arab state two months ago.
According to the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Halevy met Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, at the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on efforts to reform the Palestinian Authority.
The report cited Palestinian officials and said the talks also included the possible appointment of Abu Mazen as a Palestinian prime minister, a move that could weaken Arafat's political powers.
Palestinian cabinet minister Nabil Shaath said the report was ``completely untrue,'' adding that ``none of the Palestinian leaders held meetings with Halevy.''
The diplomatic source said Halevy ``met with several Palestinian officials two months ago, apparently in Qatar, to discuss the Palestinian issue.'' The source said Abu Mazen was not among them.
A Qatari Foreign Ministry official in Doha denied that his country had hosted any meetings between Halevy and Palestinian officials.
``No such meeting has ever taken place in Qatar,'' the official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.
Abu Mazen, due to meet Russian officials in Moscow on Wednesday, was not immediately available for comment.
Reforms of Arafat's Palestinian Authority are an Israeli condition for resuming peace talks which froze two years ago before the start of a Palestinian uprising.
Palestinian politicians from Arafat's Fatah faction rejected Tuesday the appointment of a prime minister before a Palestinian state is established. The idea of creating that post in the Palestinian Authority has met with hostility by officials who believe it amounts to an Israeli attempt to sideline Arafat.
Qatar has maintained relations with Israel despite Arab calls for a freeze of all diplomatic ties with the country due to its military action to crush the Palestinian uprising.
-------- mideast
Bio warfare drills held in Kuwait
AFP
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 02, 2002
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=23889070
KUWAIT CITY: US, German and Czech military personnel deployed in Kuwait are conducting a two-day exercise focused on helping the emirate respond to a biological or chemical attack, the US embassy said on Tuesday.
Kuwaiti Interior Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Khaled al-Sabah, whose men will conduct a similar exercise later in the week, accompanied US Ambassador Richard Jones and German and Czech diplomats to Camp Doha to consult with US, German and Czech military experts carrying out the drill, the statement said.
"The two-day exercise focuses on support of a Kuwaiti response to a biological or chemical incident," it said, referring to the possibility of Iraqi retaliation against Kuwait in the event of a US strike on Baghdad.
"The Kuwaiti interior ministry is holding its own exercise on biological and chemical preparedness later this week," the statement added.
"If called upon, coalition forces are well prepared to help Kuwait deal with the effects of a chemical or biological incident," Jones said.
The Kuwaiti civil defense however held a separate drill on Tuesday, according to a witness.
A civil defence spokesman said that the Kuwaiti forces were preparing to deal with any possible nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) attack.
A Kuwaiti official said on September 26 that the emirate had set up early warning systems to detect NBC agents as part of moves to defend itself in case of a US-Iraq conflict.
Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah said last week he would not rule out an Iraqi strike against Kuwait using chemical weapons.
Defense Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Sabah echoed his warning, saying Kuwait took seriously the threat of Iraq hitting back at its neighbours with weapons of mass destruction in case of a US strike.
Most of the 10,000-odd US troops stationed in Kuwait are deployed at Camp Doha, north of the capital.
Germany has a unit of armoured vehicles equipped to detect nuclear, biological and chemical weapons stationed in Kuwait as part of the US-led war on terror.
Another 250 Czech troops specialised in NBC warfare are stationed in the emirate, which was occupied by Iraq for seven months before it was liberated by a US-led coalition in February 1991.
----
US Marines Storm Kuwait Beach in Annual Exercise
Reuters
Wednesday, October 2, 2002
By Ashraf Fouad
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32443-2002Oct2?language=printer
KUWAIT (Reuters) - U.S. Marines have launched their annual Eager Mace exercise in the northern Gulf, storming Kuwaiti beaches in a drill that officials stress is unrelated to tensions over neighboring Iraq.
The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that the exercise, which started Tuesday, was expected to last for two weeks.
Lt. Garrett Kasper, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, said the exercise was aimed at "providing training for our troops and not in preparation for anything."
But U.S. military training in Kuwait since the end of the 1991 Gulf War has gained significance in recent months as Washington threatens Baghdad with possible military action, accusing Iraq of developing weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. ground forces are training at a desert camp close to the border with Iraq as part of the long-standing program.
An increased deployment of U.S. military equipment to the small country that Iraq invaded in 1990 has been described as the replenishment of stocks drawn down for the Afghanistan war.
Last week, U.S. warships unloaded equipment and hardware at Kuwait City's Shuwaikh Port for the Eager Mace exercise.
"This is a series of planned exercises which include tactical scenarios without political implications," said Kasper.
In previous Eager Mace war games, Marines used battle tanks, amphibious assault vehicles, mobile Avenger stingers, helicopters, Harrier jets and other hardware.
Kuwait has said the additional equipment and manpower could leave the country at the end of the exercise, but says it would allow the use of its facilities for fresh action against Iraq if sanctioned by the United Nations.
The oil-rich state, which Iraq occupied for seven months, has launched a series of measures to defend civilians against a possible chemical weapons attack by Iraq.
Kuwait's foreign minister, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, briefed Kuwaiti media editors Wednesday on the measures.
"The abnormal situation and current military moves raise our concern in Kuwait," the official news agency KUNA quoted Sheikh Sabah as saying, but said Kuwait now had deployed 10 Patriot missiles -- designed to down incoming missiles -- compared with four in Israel.
German and Czech experts at U.S. Camp Doha on the outskirts of Kuwait City will hold drills throughout October with the National Guard, Civil Defense, the police and fire department.
----
Saudi security chief resigns
Wednesday, 2 October, 2002
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2292705.stm
Riyadh has seen several explosions in recent years
Saudi Arabia's King Fahd has accepted the resignation of the country's top security chief, state television reports.
The announcement that General Saleh bin Taha Khosaifan had asked to leave his post comes just days after a car bomb killed a German citizen in the capital, Riyadh.
King Fahd King Fahd accepted the resignation
General Khosaifan has been appointed as a ministerial advisor to the king, to work under the supervision of Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz.
There was no indication that the resignation was linked to the recent wave of bombings targeting Westerners, which the Saudi Government has blamed on expatriate alcohol smugglers rather than terrorism.
But as security chief, General Khosaifan was in charge of the investigations.
The kingdom's intelligence chief, Prince Nawwaf, blamed Sunday's bomb attack on "illegal traders", and insisted that Saudi Arabia's foreign community was safe from terrorist attacks.
But correspondents say Western diplomats believe the attacks are the work of Muslim extremists.
Five Britons, a Canadian and a Belgian are being held in Saudi Arabia, accused of bomb attacks in 2000 and 2001. They could face the death penalty - by beheading - if convicted.
String of attacks
Prince Nawwaf said in a statement released on Monday that Sunday's attack was "extraordinary and isolated and... the result of a struggle and disputes among traders in illegal matters".
The latest victim was W. Maximilian Graf, 56, a 56-year-old German employed by an electronics company in Saudi Arabia.
Previous bombings June 2002 - Briton Simon Veness killed in car bomb attack May 2001 - An American is seriously injured by a bomb in Khobar March 2001 - A Briton and an Egyptian are injured by a bomb outside a Riyadh book shop December 2000 - A Scottish man is injured by a blast in Khobar November 2000 - Two bombs in Riyadh kill a British man and injure four other Britons
The explosion occurred on Abdulhamida-Khateb street in the north of Riyadh, just 100 metres from a car bombing which killed a British national two years ago.
Christopher Rodway, 47, died when his car was blown up by what police said appeared to be a booby trap.
Most recently another Briton - Simon Veness - was blown up in June this year, provoking fears that Westerners were being targeted in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks on the US.
Several Western embassies in the kingdom have advised their nationals to remain vigilant and to ensure the security of their vehicles.
-------- philippines
Bush: Long-term US aid for Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
Philstar.com
Filipino Global Community
http://www.philstar.com/philstar/print.asp?article=95314
The United States will "continue a long-term effort to assist" the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to stamp out terrorists in the country as part of its global war on terror, US President George W. Bush said in a letter to the US Congress.
"In furtherance of our worldwide efforts against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the United States, our friends and allies, and our forces abroad, we continue to work with the Government of the Philippines to protect US and Philippine citizens and to defeat international terrorism in the Philippines," he said in his letter, dated Sept. 20, to US congressional leaders on the deployment of US forces around the world.
The text of Bush's letter was made available to the press by the US Embassy in Manila.
His letter was part of the White House's efforts to keep the US Congress informed on the worldwide anti-terrorist crackdown and the status of US troop deployments around the world as required of him by US law.
Aside from the US campaign in Afghanistan, Bush also discussed at length the results of the US troop deployment early this year in the southern Philippines.
About 1,600 US Special Forces ended their training of their Filipino counterparts last July 31 during joint military exercises called "Balikatan (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) 02-1."
The Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia are seen as Washington's second front in its war against international terrorism after Afghanistan.
Early this year 1,000 US troops conducted anti-terrorism exercises to train Philippine forces on how to better fight Abu Sayyaf Islamist rebels in Mindanao, which Washington has linked to the al-Qaeda international terorrist network of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.
In August, Washington also included the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People's Army, in its list of "terrorist" organizations. The US government also called on other countries to freeze their assets, if any.
Malacańang welcomed the US move. Communist rebel leaders denied the terrorist designation, arguing that their group is a legitimate political party, decriminalized after the 1986 ouster of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
The six-month joint US-Philippine anti-terrorist exercises in Mindanao that concluded in July, Bush said, "made great progress in enhancing the Philippine government's counterterrorist capabilities."
"United States forces have reduced their presence in the southern Philippines, but will continue a long-term effort to assist the Armed Forces of the Philippines," he said.
US officials earlier said more joint US-Philippine anti-terrorist exercises are scheduled in Luzon this year.
Defense relations between Manila and Washington improved considerably after President Arroyo immediately threw her staunch support for the US anti-terrorism campaign, launched in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington.
Bush pointed out to congressional leaders that "it is not possible to know at this time either the duration of combat operations or the scope and duration of the (worldwide) deployment of US armed forces necessary to counter the terrorist threat to the United States."
"I will direct additional measures as to exercise our right to self-defense and to protect US citizens and interests," he said.
"Such measures may include short notice deployments of special operations and other forces for sensitive operations in various locations throughout the world."
Bush's report centered on the progress made by US military forces in uprooting Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan.
Although "pockets of (al-Qaeda) and Taliban forces remain a threat to US and coalition forces and to the Afghan government," Bush said the "heart of the (al-Qaeda) training capability has been seriously degraded."
With the loss of its bases in Afghanistan, US and regional intelligence officials believe al-Qaeda has been trying to move its base of operations to Southeast Asia, and recruit "disparate militant groups" into its cause.
Because of that, the region now reportedly has the "highest concentration" of al-Qaeda operatives outside Afghanistan and Pakistan.
US new reports said detained al-Qaeda suspect Omar al-Faruq told US investigators he was ordered to plan "large-scale attacks" against US embassies and other American interests in Indonesia, Malaysia, (the) Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Cambodia on or near the Sept. 11 anniversary last month.
His information prompted the US government to raise a terror alert to its second highest level. Over a dozen US embassies were closed as a precaution, while the mission in Manila remained open but was put under tight police security.
It is a threat that is still in effect, according to US news reports.
US news reports also earlier said two al-Qaeda training camps were set up in the late 1990s in territories then held by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) secessionist rebels in Mindanao at the request of Bin Laden.
It was also reported that Bin Laden even had talks with MILF chief Hashim Salamat. The MILF denied the allegations.
Aside from the MILF, al-Qaeda reportedly was also able to build ties with eight local militant groups in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand.
According to US and regional intelligence officials, an al-Qaeda affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah, was involved in the 2000 Rizal Day bombings, in which scores of people were killed or wounded in a series of bomb attacks across Metro Manila, including one across the US embassy.
The group was also allegedly responsible for the bomb attack on a Philippine ambassador in Jakarta also in 2000 in retaliation for a massive Philippine military offensive against the MILF.
The offensive resulted in the capture of the MILF's bases and the dismantling of the two al-Qaeda camps, although no such training camps were reported back then.
-------- spy agencies
Report details US 'intelligence failures'
By Rob Broomby
BBC correspondent in Berlin
Wednesday, 2 October, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/2294487.stm
The American intelligence agency, the CIA, could have prevented the 11 September attacks if it were not for systematic failures, according to the German newspaper Die Zeit.
Just a month before the deadly attacks, the paper said, Mossad handed over to the Americans a detailed report naming several suspects they believe were preparing an attack on the United States
The paper has uncovered details of a major Israeli spy ring involving some a 120 agents for the intelligence service Mossad operating across America and some masquerading as arts students.
The ring was reportedly hard on the heels of at least four members of the hijack gang, including its leader Mohammed Atta.
But the Israeli agents were detected by their American counterparts and thrown out of the country, it says.
The US authorities said then that they were students whose visas had expired.
Report dismissed
Just a month before the deadly attacks, the paper said, Mossad handed over to the Americans a detailed report naming several suspects they believe were preparing an attack on the United States.
But it contained no specific indications as to the objective and it was not treated seriously.
The paper also claims that the CIA failed to inform the German authorities that Ramzi Binalshibh, a key logistics man for the attacks, had attended a high level meeting of al-Qaeda activists in Malaysia over 18 months before 11 September.
Without that information the Germans could not prevent him re-entering the country and contacting the Hamburg cell that was planning the hijackings.
-------- un
Powell Says U.N. Ought to Hold Up Iraq Inspections
New York Times
October 2, 2002
By TODD S. PURDUM with JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/02/international/middleeast/02IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - Hours after Iraq agreed with United Nations officials that weapons inspectors could return in two weeks, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said tonight that any search of Saddam Hussein's arsenals should be delayed until the Security Council approves a "new, strong, tough resolution" setting terms.
"We will not be satisfied with Iraqi half-truths or Iraqi compromises or Iraqi efforts to get us back into the same swamp that they took the United Nations into" in the past, Secretary Powell said at a hastily called news conference at the State Department as the Bush administration scrambled to salvage its push for a new United Nations resolution.
After two days of meetings with an Iraqi delegation in Vienna, Hans Blix, the leader of the United Nations weapons inspection team, said, "There is a willingness to accept inspections that has not existed before."
Iraqi officials agreed to allow the inspectors to do their work under the terms of existing Security Council resolutions, but did not respond to American demands for access to palaces and other tough new provisions that Washington wants.
The Iraqi strategy was apparently an appeal to France, Russia and China, all of whom hold vetoes on the Council and have expressed wariness of the desire of the United States and Britain for a new resolution threatening military action if Iraq does not disarm.
In the face of such reservations, the Americans and British delayed presenting the formal draft of a new resolution to the Security Council today as they had planned. Instead, Secretary Powell said the administration would work "over the next couple of weeks" to get a new resolution.
The draft resolution prepared by the United States and Britain would make the inspectors' mandate far more intrusive. [Excerpts, Page A12.] That mandate would include creating no-flight and no-drive zones protected by United Nations or United States security forces along the routes that the inspectors would travel, according to extensive excerpts obtained by The New York Times. The proposal also calls for the inspectors to be guarded by "sufficient United Nations security forces" for their protection. It would expand the presence of United Nations or American security forces on the ground or in the skies over Iraq even while the inspections were under way, in advance of any military strike if Iraq failed to comply with the Council's terms.
In a sharply worded diplomatic challenge, Secretary Powell said tonight that the United States would resist any inspections until the Security Council provided stringent new instructions.
"Dr. Blix, as an agent of the Security Council, will carry out what the Security Council instructs him to do," Secretary Powell said.
He added: "It was up to Dr. Blix to work out certain technical details and modalities, which is what he did. But as Dr. Blix made clear, the only discussion he could have was on the basis of the old resolutions. But we have made it clear that those old resolutions are what got us in trouble in the first place."
Secretary Powell said there had been "some progress" on a new resolution with Russia, China and France.
"We have heard some strong views coming back from some of our partners," he said, adding, "I think there's an understanding that we have to deal with this now and not next year, and to deal with it now, you need to have the strongest resolution we can come up with, and we have to have consequences associated with continued violation."
In a meeting at the United Nations today with China, France and Russia, the other three veto-bearing members of the Council, American and British diplomats discussed "concepts" in the draft, diplomats said, but did not bring a text for negotiation, as they had said they would on Monday. The United States also did not follow through on its offer on Monday to provide informal copies of the draft to the 10 nonpermanent members of the Council.
The United States and Britain moved to slow the pace of the discussions after the three other permanent members remained adamant in their opposition to the American proposal for a resolution authorizing a unilateral military attack by the United States and any ally if Washington determined that Iraq had made even minor violations. American envoys provided the text to the three other permanent nations in their capitals over the weekend.
"The United States is in a negotiating mood because they realized they are not going to get what they want by bending arms," one Council diplomat said. "They might have to adjust themselves to the Security Council. They cannot say from the outset: take it or leave it."
Still, a senior State Department official said today that the United States would go into "thwart mode" if Mr. Blix sought to return to Iraq without fresh instructions.
Secretary Powell appeared in the State Department briefing room on a few minutes' warning, just in time for evening news broadcasts, apparently in an effort to counter Mr. Blix's optimistic-sounding announcement and to make it clear that the United States would keep up pressure for a new resolution.
"The Iraqis made some concessions," he said of the talks with Mr. Blix, but added: "In other areas, they made no concessions. It was the same old, the same old stuff. And so we want to have a fuller discussion with Dr. Blix to see what he thinks was accomplished.
"But we have made it clear that we do not believe the inspection regime that existed previously is adequate to the demands of the day and adequate to the challenge we're facing right now with continued Iraqi intransigence."
Other Security Council members sought to capitalize on the announcement from Vienna to build support for their approach. French diplomats hope to attract support for their proposal for two stages: a first resolution to establish a toughened regime for the weapons inspections and a second resolution authorizing military force if Iraq fails to allow unrestricted inspections.
Secretary Powell said, "We're pressing forward on a one-resolution solution," but he added, "We will see which argument prevails."
Mr. Bush himself seemed to soften his tone about military action against Iraq today, saying he was open to compromises with both Congress and the United Nations as long as both passed "tough" resolutions that did not tie his hands.
Many Council nations regarded the forceful inspection regime proposed in the American and British draft as too aggressive for Iraq to accept. In addition to allowing American fighter planes and security forces greater access to Iraqi airspace, the proposal cancels all the exemptions the United Nations had agreed with Iraq before 1998 for inspections of presidential compounds and other "sensitive sites."
The Council majority is also reluctant to endorse the hair trigger that the United States proposes. Any errors in a "currently accurate, full and complete declaration of all aspects" of its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, or "failure by Iraq at any time to comply and cooperate fully," would constitute "a further material breach . . . that authorizes member states to use all necessary means to restore international peace and security in the area."
The draft would allow the United States to place its own inspectors on the United Nations weapons team. Several Council diplomats observed that this demand ran counter to a recent reform of the weapons teams by the Security Council, when they were reorganized to rely on an international staff of arms professionals rather than experts provided by individual countries.
The reform followed the disclosure that a United States spy on the United Nations team had planted an electronic eavesdropping device in Baghdad that helped guide allied bombing in December 1998.
The draft also demands the names of all Iraqi weapons personnel.
-------- propaganda wars
The Propaganda Race
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
October 2, 2002
LewRockwell.com
http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker24.html
Every week or so, the New York Times carries an item on how the US has bombed a military installation in Iraq. This is strange on the face of it. When you bomb someone's country, doesn't that imply that the war has already begun? Not according to the US. The US government says that it is merely "patrolling" the no-fly zone and retaliating for Iraqi fire.
I mentioned the US bombs to someone the other day, who didn't quite believe it. If the US were currently using weapons of mass destruction against Iraq, wouldn't we know more about it? And truly, it is hardly ever talked about. (Neither, for that matter, are the decade old trade sanctions, which are also warlike.)
True to form, Donald Rumsfeld decided to take preemptive action against misperceptions concerning US bombing. Standing in front of a color graphic labeled: "No-Fly Zones: Iraqi Violations" he detailed with scientific precision all the times that that Iraq has fired on US and British planes.
And don't you dare point out that, after all, this all takes place inside Iraq. Imagine if Iraq declared, say, Michigan to be a no-fly zone, insisted on the right of patrolling it, and dropping bombs if the US fired on the foreign planes. Imagine if Iraq did this while calling for a regime change in the US. The US could easily mistake such actions for acts of war.
Given that he would probably rather keep quiet about US activities, the very fact of the Rumsfeld press conference is revealing. It seems that the Bush administration's timing is off. It's been using the last several months dispensing war propaganda in order to rally the public for an attack.
But opponents of war have also been organizing and there is a rising sense that the public is just not as supportive of the idea at it might be. World opinion is solidly against a US attack on Iraq, while American opinion is softly pro-war at best, and generally less enthusiastic than Bush might have hoped.
What does it mean? Having just read David Welch's The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda ( New York: Routledge, 1993, 2002), one can speculate that it means the following: the opinions of the intellectuals are making advances over the opinions of the masses, the intended target of the war propaganda.
Now, before you send me a hysterical email, know that I am not saying that Bush is like Hitler. Neither, for that matter, did Germany's justice minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, who caused fits of frenzy in the US by observing that distracting people with foreign menaces in the face of domestic trouble is a common tactic of statecraft. "Even Hitler did that," she observed.
Just so. Indeed, we find in the experience of the Third Reich a model of war propaganda that is easy to recognize in any state that seeks war - and to that extent, the Bush administration's method can be seen to have something in common with that of the National Socialists in the 1930s.
Hitler came to understand the importance of propaganda as a result of watching the workings of the Allied Powers in World War I. He came to believe that their main victory was not military but in the conquest of public opinion. It was the anti-German feeling that made possible the imposition of a war treaty that was brutal as regards German territories. It was this model of propaganda that he sought to replicate once in power.
According to the Hitlerian model, good political/war propaganda:
- Must forget about appealing to the intellectuals and go directly to the masses, not with careful argument but with dire assertions and clear agendas.
- Must not have a long litany of points or a case that requires careful thought but rather one must have one, two, or three points that sum up the case so that it can be immediately grasped by the man on the street.
- Must not be radically implausible but must tap into and reinforce a preexisting socio-cultural sensibility and stretched to accord with one's political ambition.
As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf,
- "To whom should propaganda be addressed? To the scientifically trained intelligentsia or to the less educated masses? It must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses."
- "The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequences, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."
- "the art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses."
In the Third Reich, the plausible assertion involved pointing to the unjustness of the Versailles Treaty, together with playing up an existing socio-political bias by affixing blame for Germany's current plight to the Jews, and calling for justice based on reclaiming lost territory and purging Germany of "alien" political and cultural forces that would stand in the way - all to be done through the strength and leadership of one man.
And so the masses were hammered again and again with slogans: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer. Neither did the propaganda have to make much sense. One common poster read: "Marxism is the Guardian Angel of Capitalism. Vote National Socialist." If you were inclined to point out that Marxism and capitalism are opposite systems and that socialism and Marxism are indistinguishable in practice - as brave men like Wilhelm Roepke and Ludwig von Mises did - well, you must be an dissident intellectual and therefore you should probably be silenced.
The means for accomplishing the goals of political/war propaganda were different in those days. There were newspapers and radio and mass political rallies, and the National Socialists were very good at using all the newest technology.
The same means cannot be employed today, at least not directly. The regime must use existing channels of communication, which means it must depend on middle men: reporters and editors and talk show hosts.
Fortunately for the current regime, these are all very stupid people, stupid and gullible. They know they are hacks and worry, above all else, that this will be discovered. They specialize in seeming to know what they do not know, which means that they have a tendency to defer to anyone with more specialized knowledge, particularly knowledge that seems to come from an inside source.
In our time, the message must be relayed calmly, almost coolly, so that it comes across well on television. There must be supporting documentation (it doesn't need to be true) so that reporters can fill up their column inches. And it must depend on argument from authority because everyone knows that reporters, editors, and producers defer to authority for favors and access.
The message we hear today abides by all the usual rules concerning political propaganda. It taps into a certain truth ("Terrorists want to harm us"), draws on already established biases ("Saddam is a very bad man"), and has in mind a certain political solution ("regime change"). The only difference is that it is packaged in a way to make it compelling to those with access to the public mind so they can be persuaded to pass on the information without critical commentary.
Of course the intellectuals don't buy it, but then they do not have to. During September 11 anniversary events at our local university, hardly any faculty displayed interest in the flags, the pomp, the songs, the whipping up of war fever. Regardless of their politics otherwise, probably 95 percent of the faculty looked down their noses at the display of bellicosity and chauvinism. This is very striking, and for all the problems in academia today, it should be congratulated for this at least.
Of course, the regime has its kept intellectuals, those who will echo the line of the moment. They write for National Review and the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal and they are very valuable to the regime for putting an intelligent spin on propaganda that is otherwise pathetically low brow. But they are in the minority now. For the most part, the intellectual classes are not buying into the war line.
Regardless of the handful of intellectuals willing to do the state's bidding in this case, the success of war propaganda depends on convincing the masses in such a way that public opinion swamps the opinions of the intellectuals - making the intelligentsia feel outnumbered, isolated, and passive. A few months back, this is certainly how matters stood. Most intellectuals were only willing to grouse about public opinion in private moments. Some of those who raised their voices were drummed out of a job.
But that does seem to be changing now, for three reasons: the Bush administration has been ineffective in rallying the masses, possibly because its case is just not that compelling; second, because Americans don't like to think of themselves as starting wars; and third, intellectuals are beginning to speak out in classrooms, in opeds, in articles, on the web, and on television.
Too many questions are being raised, and the masses are starting to hear another side. The people are not being converted, at least not yet. It is also possible - we can't rule this out - that the masses are not as stupid as the opinion-molding middle men the current regime has so thoroughly cowed.
This could stop the war. The failure of propaganda is the failure of the state.
Jeffrey Tucker [mailto:jatucker@mindspring.com] is vice president of the Mises Institute.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- homeland security
Democrats Vow to Pass New Security Agency Despite Filibuster
New York Times
October 2, 2002
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/02/politics/02HOME.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - Senate Democratic leaders vowed today to approve a Homeland Security Department, even if that meant staying in session for weeks. But with no sign of a breakthrough in a partisan dispute over Civil Service protections, the prospect for passage by year's end appeared dim. Republicans refused today to end their filibuster against a Democratic plan to protect job security in the proposed antiterrorism department, defeating a motion to end debate.
In a series of meetings through the day, moderate senators from both parties failed to broker a compromise with the White House, which wants to limit Civil Service and union rules, to streamline the proposed agency.
Barring a last-minute compromise, the standoff could last until the end of the Congressional session, now scheduled for Oct. 11.
Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader, announced that the Senate would return later in October or even after Election Day to continue working on the department. Democratic officials said he hoped that continued debate or a prolonged filibuster would pressure the White House to reach a deal.
"We're going to stay on the bill," Mr. Daschle said at a news conference. "We're going to try to figure out how to finish it. They can drag this out as long as they want to, and they can tell us when they've finished dragging it out. But at some point, whenever that is, we'll have a vote on final passage."
Republicans said the flexibility demanded by President Bush was too fundamental to bargain away and once again suggested that by disagreeing, Democrats were not concentrating on national security.
"It's not that the Democrat leadership loves national security less," Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas, said. "It's that they love their political security more. And they are so tied to these public employee labor unions that they're not willing to cross them on issues that have to do with the life and safety of the American people."
If the compromise effort fails, that would mean an end for now to the largest reorganization of the federal government in 50 years, a reconfiguration intended to protect the nation from terrorist attacks.
The idea for a department grew from widespread dissatisfaction with the failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks. It was greeted with bipartisan cheer when Mr. Bush adopted it from the Democrats and proposed it in June.
In weeks, the parties had reached agreement on 90 percent of the structure for the proposed department. The shuffling would move familiar agencies like the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and the Immigration and Nationalization Service into a single organization.
But any substantive debate over reorganizing intelligence and security functions quickly became overshadowed by a passionate ideological dispute over union rights. Mr. Bush said they would inhibit his ability to create a streamlined department.
For more than a month, all progress on the bill in the Senate has been stalled over the personnel issue, preventing any negotiation with the House, which passed its plan in July.
The dispute became tangled in the election campaign, with Republicans saying the Democrats valued union support over national security and prominent Democrats accusing the White House today of killing its own proposal to tar the Democrats as unpatriotic.
"I'm a trusting person, but I keep asking myself, `Why won't the White House negotiate with us on these issues?' " Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, chief Democratic advocate for the department, asked. "I worry that we are being stopped from achieving an agreement on this department for reasons that have something to do with the election."
He accused the White House of "stubborn intransigence" in rejecting compromise proposals made by moderate Democrats and a Republican, Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island.
A second Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, joined the call today for a White House compromise.
But with the debate over military action in Iraq scheduled to start this week, the Senate began running out of time for further negotiations.
Republican supporters of the White House proposal said union rules and Civil Service protections would hobble the president's ability to reorganize fully the response to terrorism, allowing lengthy grievance procedures to interfere with quick action.
"The president is entitled to an up-or-down vote on his proposal," Senator Fred C. Thompson, Republican of Tennessee, said in explaining why his party was filibustering a compromise proposal that had won over a majority of the Senate. "If we do not resolve this matter in the next day or so, there will be no Homeland Security Department this year, and that would be a tragedy for this country."
The filibuster began last week, after Mr. Chafee had agreed to a proposal that would limit the president's right to reduce Civil Service protections.
Although Democrats have the 51 votes needed to pass the compromise, the Republicans will not allow a vote on it, insisting that the president's plan be voted on first. Mr. Chafee suggested today that the White House and leaders of his party were making political calculations on the bill.
"In this climate, everything's political," he said. "I'm sure they're making a judgment, `Is this something we can blame on the Democrats, or are they going to be successful saying we're filibustering our own bill?' I'm sure they're making decisions on that."
The White House, however, suggested that the Senate was simply not doing its job.
"From the president's point of view," the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said, "it would just be unimaginable for the Senate to leave town without having taken action to protect the homeland."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Shell helps Dutch town become world's first solar city
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
By GreenBiz.com
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2002/10/10022002/s_48556.asp
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Madurodam in the Hague is full of movement and light. Windmills turn, tour boats ply the canals, trams and trains arrive, and more than 50,000 bulbs light up the evening sky. But Madurodam is anything but an energy-guzzling metropolis.
The town, which plays host to around a million visitors per year, is a place where all things Dutch, from the Rijksmuseum to a Shell service station, are replicated and built to the tiniest detail - in miniature.
As part of its 50th birthday celebrations, the diminutive ville decided to become self-sufficient in its energy consumption, and thanks to a solar system supplied by Shell Solar, it has done just that. Spelling out the words "Solar City" in blue and yellow, a 300m2 bank of photovoltaic panels supplies the energy demands of the entire theme park, or about 100,000 kilowatts per annum.
One of the project's aims is for people to become more aware of the potential of solar energy. The Madurodam installation includes a smaller solar wall, made up of 40m2 of light-absorbing cells, where visitors can watch as the panels soak up the sun's rays and convert them into electricity to power seven of Madurodam's pint-sized townhouses. A gauge shows how much electricity is being created.
With plenty on a sunny day and only slightly less even on the cloudiest Dutch afternoon, Shell Solar proves that this is a technology that's not just for toy towns.
-----
Spain's Iberdrola buys Gamesa wind parks
Story by Carlos Ruano
REUTERS SPAIN:
October 2, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17993/story.htm
MADRID - Spain's second-largest power utility Iberdrola said it was acquiring wind parks with a capacity of 982 megawatts from Spanish engineering and wind power firm Gamesa for more than one billion euros ($1.0 billion).
Iberdrola, which indirectly holds a stake in Gamesa, said it was part of a larger strategic partnership in which Iberdrola will buy wind turbines from Gamesa with a total capacity of 1,100 megawatts by 2006.
Renewable energies, such as wind power, are likely to play an increasing role in the European energy mix as Europe tries to meet its targets for reducing greenhouse gases under the Kyoto treaty against international warming.
Iberdrola said it would pay 693 million euros, including assumed debt, for the first 666 megawatts of capacity this year. A further 316 MW of capacity will be purchased from 2003 to 2006 at a price between 337 million and 376 million euros.
No price was given for the wind turbine deal.
Iberdrola and Gamesa also will create two joint ventures, each 60 percent owned by Iberdrola - one to operate Gamesa wind parks in Spain and the other to operate Gamesa wind parks in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium.
Corporacion IBV, a joint venture between Iberdrola and bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, controls 37.78 percent of Gamesa.
In May, Gamesa said it planned to sell wind parks as part of a plan to reduce debt and finance expansion. But Iberdrola opposed the plan as it was written then and used its influence to put it on hold.
Analysts said Iberdrola was not interested in allowing other companies, likely foreign, into Spain at a time when it was building up its renewable energy business.
After this deal, on which Iberdrola was advised by Morgan Stanley, the utility says it is "one of the world leaders in the area of renewable energy."
Newspaper El Pais, citing sources close to the operation, said earlier that Iberdrola was on a short list of potential buyers along with Belgian utility Electrabel, the renewable energy unit of Italy's Enel and U.S. investment fund the Carlyle Group.
Each of the four favourite candidates had put in offers of more than one billion euros, the report said.
Gamesa stock rose 0.9 percent yesterday while Spain's main share index fell 3.5 percent, but Gamesa shares are still down 32 percent for the year. Iberdrola shares rose 0.4 percent.
Gamesa said on Friday it had reached an agreement with Minnesota-based counterpart Navitas to buy a 75 percent stake in the U.S. company.
--------
Green power to light up PNNL
Oct 2, 2002
By Annette Cary
Tri-Valley Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2002/1002-1.html
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory began buying slightly more than 10 percent of its power from a Mid-Columbia wind farm Tuesday, which could open the way for others in Richland to buy "green energy."
The power purchase from the Stateline Wind Power Project between Pasco and Walla Walla was arranged through the city of Richland.
Next, the city will survey its utility customers to see if others are interested in buying wind power -- an option made easier by PNNL's big purchase.
"What this really signifies for Richland is an opportunity for choice," said Richland Mayor Bob Thompson.
But that choice could come with a price tag until wind power costs drop, which is expected as the industry matures.
The 8.8 million kilowatt-hours the lab has agreed to buy will cost about $96,000 more than it would have spent on power from traditional sources.
Lab officials are hoping the purchase will jump-start the use of clean wind power in the region -- diversifying its electricity portfolio and stimulating a new energy economy.
"We think it's a good investment," said lab Director Lura Powell. "When you have a major buyer it makes it more cost competitive."
The lab is leading by example and helping develop and promote the use of renewable energy sources, said Richard Moorer, the Department of Energy's deputy assistant secretary of renewable energy.
With the Mid-Columbia's growing population, the region will not be able to depend so heavily on power generated at major Columbia-Snake river dams, Powell said. "We want something that's green, safe, good for the environment and is always going to be there," she said.
About two-thirds of the Northwest's power comes from hydropower, which is not classified as renewable if it interferes with salmon. Less than 1 percent of the Northwest's power comes from wind. Most of the rest comes from coal plants and natural gas.
But the Mid-Columbia has the resources -- wind, sunshine and biomass or agricultural leftovers -- that could be used to generate renewable energy.
A prime example is the Stateline project, which started producing power in July 2001. When complete later this decade, its 400 turbines will be able to generate about 270 megawatts at peak capacity, with an average yield of about 100 megawatts.
Part of the impetus for the Richland lab to buy the green power comes from DOE. "President Bush has called for a balance of renewable energy and energy conservation" in his energy plan, said Raymond Orbach, director of DOE's Office of Science, who is in Richland this week for the lab's annual review.
Last spring DOE moved to buy 17 percent of the electricity at agency headquarters from renewable sources.
"At the time, DOE issued a challenge to its laboratories and other sites to step up and join them -- even surpass them -- in incorporating the use of green power in their facilities," Powell said.
DOE set a goal of each site purchasing 7.5 percent of its power from green sources by 2010.
Before Tuesday, the Richland lab was far from that goal, buying approximately 2 percent or 3 percent of its power from renewable resources through the city. But the wind power purchase brings its total to 13.7 percent, making it a leader among DOE facilities.
Increased costs will be paid by savings from an aggressive energy conservation program in the lab's research and office buildings. Last year, it spent $250,000 less for energy than the year before, freeing up money for renewable investments.
The lab has cut energy consumption per square foot by 25 percent since 1990, said Mike Moran Jr., facility energy program manager. Part of that has come from $13 million in energy-related building improvements. The company also has emphasized energy savings when awarding utility contracts.
And it has educated employees on ways to reduce energy, including holding an energy reduction contest in eight buildings that led to a savings of $1,000 per week. Those savings have been sustained as employees continue to do things such as shut off computers at the end of the workday, Moran said.
The purchase also is appropriate for the lab, which does about $30 million of energy research each year. That includes work on fuel cells and ways to make buildings more energy efficient.
Thompson expects Richland residents eventually to have more choices in their power purchases, possibly through metering that gives them price breaks for using power at low-demand times or choosing alternatives such as green power.
But he expects the city to be cautious about green power purchases that would raise power rates for everyone. More than a third of residents are older than 65, and many are on fixed incomes.
-------- energy
[To reply - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]
In defense of nuclear energy
Ralph Beedle
October 2, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021002-63383032.htm
Since the tragic events of September 11 brought terrorism onto U.S. shores, security concerns have become an overwhelming priority for America's critical infrastructure, airports and other civil services. Our government, businesses and even our entertainment industry have had to alter their entire security procedures in light of the changed world we live in.
The nuclear energy industry has implemented a number of enhancements at our facilities, but the reality is that nuclear power plants were the most secure industrial facilities in the United States before September 11. Today, we're even more secure.
Since last September, security enhancements at nuclear power plants include: extending the security perimeters at our plants, increasing armed security patrols and increasing well-qualified security staffing to 6,000 at 67 nuclear plant sites and augmenting almost-daily coordination with local, state and federal law-enforcement authorities.
Seventy percent of security officers at the nation's nuclear power plants are former military, law-enforcement or industrial security professionals - including former U.S. Secret Service, Delta Force and other paramilitary officers skilled in counterterrorism tactics. They are heavily armed, well-trained and highly compensated officers who form the front line of a comprehensive security program.
James Kallstrom, former director of the New York Office of Public Security, said after a review of the Indian Point nuclear power plant: "What I care about is the security of this plant, the ability of a terrorist organization to take it over, and I can tell you, it's robust enough to let 'em try." Mr. Kallstrom's view is not unusual. State security directors, governors and members of Congress who have visited nuclear plants recently are universally impressed by their robust security programs.
It is unfortunate that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, a few special-interest groups have sought to further their nuclear phaseout agenda by spinning unwarranted tales of nuclear disaster. Their conjecture is alarmist and irresponsible, and has been discredited repeatedly by officials responsible for security issues.
No business can guarantee it won't be targeted with an act of war similar to the September 11 attacks. But nuclear power plants already are among the most robust and closely protected facilities, and the industry has worked with federal, state and local authorities to ensure that a seamless response exists to guard against terrorist threats.
Nuclear power plant buildings that protect reactors are extremely strong and designed to resist catastrophes. The steel-reinforced concrete containment structures have been designed to withstand the impact of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and airborne objects with tremendous force. Nuclear power plants were designed with a "defense-in-depth" safety strategy that includes metal sleeves that hold the low-enriched uranium fuel, and a combined 12 feet of concrete and steel between the reactor fuel and the outside of the reactor building.
The industry employs state-of-the-art electronic surveillance, sensor technology and rigorous personnel screening procedures to augment plant security programs. Computer-controlled gates requiring positive identification of personnel control entry to the plants. In addition, the security programs at nuclear power plants are constantly updated to take advantage of new technology and to counter potential new threats as they evolve.
All 103 nuclear power reactors and other facilities licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission met stringent federal security regulations long before September 11. In the past year, the industry has remained at a heightened security level and has been continuously monitored by the NRC, which is in constant contact with the intelligence community, federal law enforcement agencies and the military.
Physical security of power plants is just one component of our overall energy security. Energy is the vital foundation of America's national security and economy, with reliable electricity providing the foundation and spark for our technology-driven society. Nuclear energy is essential to the U.S. economy, providing electricity for one of every five homes and businesses.
In spite of the slowing economy, the demand for electricity is growing. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the United States will require almost 50 percent more electric generating capacity between now and 2020. In recent years, U.S. nuclear power plants have produced record amounts of electricity, and they are operating at a pace to again set efficiency and production records.
During this time, nuclear plants have operated at well more than 90 percent efficiency - the best round-the-clock operation of any energy source. In addition to outstanding reliability and low production costs (averaging 1.74 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2000), nuclear energy is needed to meet reduction goals for greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide. Put simply, if nuclear power were not used nationwide, approximately 135 million passenger cars would have to be removed from our roadways to keep U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in balance.
We cannot realize our goals of energy security and environmental stewardship without nuclear energy. An economy that increasingly relies on computers and electro-technology must have an ample supply of reliable electricity to power those devices. There simply is no way to have a coherent, forward-looking energy policy without significant use of nuclear energy.
Ralph Beedle is senior vice president and chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute. He served 21 years in the Navy nuclear submarine program, including as commander of the USS Los Angeles and as a member of the Secretary of the Navy Strategic Studies Group.
--------
Stable Oil Prices Likely to Become a War Casualty, Experts Say
New York Times
October 2, 2002
By NEELA BANERJEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/02/international/middleeast/02OIL.html
Amid all the unknowns about the American campaign against Saddam Hussein, the one certainty is its potential to shake up oil markets.
Already, oil prices have risen substantially over the last few weeks, because of traders' and consumers' concern that a war in the Persian Gulf could disrupt supplies and set off price spikes. Prices rose on similar fears before the Persian Gulf war a decade ago, but fell back once the first shots were fired, replacing uncertainty with action.
Longer term, the impact depends on the outcome of any military campaign, and the fallout.
Some analysts warn that if Mr. Hussein were ousted, Iraq could dissolve into civil war. If so, its oil exports - 1.1 million barrels a day under the United Nations' oil-for-food program - could be drained from the world market.
Bush administration strategists and Western oil companies have a rosier view. Iraq's reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia's, they note. Revived by the lifting of sanctions and a flow of foreign investment, Iraq's production could rival Saudi Arabia's in five to seven years.
"Oil will be the engine of Iraq's reconstruction," said Gregg Sullivan, a spokesman for the State Department, which has set up working groups to develop plans for a post-Hussein Iraq. "No one is talking about a Marshall Plan for Iraq because oil will take care of that."
A market awash in Iraqi oil would mean lower prices - an economic boon to the United States, the world's top consumer of oil. It could also rattle the cohesion of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose control of oil prices the Bush administration seeks to loosen, those analysts say.
But success for the United States could roil the economies of oil-producing countries from Indonesia to Mexico to the Middle East.
The deepest concerns are for Saudi Arabia, where some officials worry that an American-led attack on Iraq could touch off upheaval, given the powerful anti-American feelings there. A prolonged period of low oil prices would erode the kingdom's budget revenues, making it harder for Saudi Arabia to support the vast welfare state vital to its stability.
Over the past three months, the possibility of war in the Persian Gulf has spread anxiety through oil markets, lifting prices almost 18 percent, to above $30 a barrel.
According to oil traders, those prices reflect worry that Baghdad would retaliate against American allies - perhaps by bombing oil facilities in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait.
Saudi officials say that their facilities are well defended, and that even if an Iraqi attack succeeded, they could quickly repair the damage. Any price increases, in that case, would be short-lived. Industry experts point out that destroyed Kuwaiti fields were restored in about a year after the gulf war. The loss of Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil from world markets during the gulf war was offset by increased Saudi production.
As before the gulf war, there is a sharp debate about the extent to which oil is driving Washington's policies toward Iraq. That would seem inevitable, given the potential of Iraqi oil fields. "It's not about oil, but becomes about oil," said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, a research group.
A decade of United Nations sanctions has weakened the Iraqi oil industry, whose production capacity is about three million barrels a day but which is producing about half that, analysts said.
If a removal of Mr. Hussein led to foreign investment in Iraq, production could increase to seven million barrels a day within five years, according to Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraqi under secretary of oil who is executive director of the Center for Global Energy Studies in London. Saudi Arabia pumps about 7.7 million barrels a day and has a production capacity of 10 to 10.5 million barrels.
Other experts contend that Iraq, even at a higher capacity, would not displace Saudi Arabia in oil markets.
"It's a truly ludicrous strategic error that continually crops up in discussions of oil - that bilateral relations have anything to do with supplies," said Chas. W. Freeman Jr., the United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992. "If Saudi Arabia were not selling to the United States, we would still be indirectly dependent on Saudi Arabia, because of the major role it has in the international oil trade."
Indeed, Mr. Freeman and other experts doubt that a post-Hussein Iraq would fight OPEC quotas or leave the cartel, because the new regime would favor the higher oil prices that would bring it revenues to rebuild the country.
Still, a friendly regime in Baghdad could enhance American leverage over Saudi Arabia, according to a recent report by the Petroleum Finance Company, a Washington consulting firm. World demand for oil is expected to remain weak in the medium term, the report said, so if more oil were pumped into that market, prices - and arguably Saudi power - would decline.
"The `new' Baghdad's willingness to cooperate with the United States with respect to military bases, expanded oil production and perhaps even peace with Israel would all work to diminish Saudi influence," the report said.
So far, Saudi officials claim that more Iraqi oil would not threaten their country's prosperity, because increased demand would help keep prices stable.
The Petroleum Finance report suggests that Saudi Arabia could wrest control of oil markets now by flooding them quickly with oil, touching off a collapse in prices and discouraging investment in new fields, like those in Iraq. The Saudis have the money to weather low prices for a time, the report contends.
But for that approach to work, the Saudis would have to win the agreement of their OPEC partners and the Saudi business community, industry analysts said.
The effects of lower oil prices would be felt well beyond the Middle East. Countries friendly to the United States but dependent on oil revenues could suffer. The new oil production that the Bush administration has encouraged in Russia and West Africa could wither. Oil companies would be reeling.
"What's actually going to happen here is bad for our business," said a senior Western oil company executive about the prospect of Mr. Hussein's ouster. "We're looking at short-term price spikes, possible supply disruptions and then, after the fact, the question, `Was that all about oil?'"
-------- environment
Mercury, other toxins threaten peoples, wildlife of the Arctic, report says
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
By Matti Huuhtanen,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/10/10022002/ap_48589.asp
HELSINKI, Finland - Mercury and other toxins in the food chain are threatening humans and wildlife in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to high blood pressure in newborn babies and causing polar bears to lose cubs at birth, scientists said Tuesday.
"We were really surprised by the mercury problem. The amount of mercury transported into the area seems to be much higher than anyone believed before," said Lars-Otto Reiersen, one of the compilers of a report on Arctic pollution.
Released at a conference of environmental experts in Rovaniemi, 830 kilometers (520 miles) north of the capital Helsinki, the Arctic Pollution 2002 report says human-made toxins follow air and water currents from as far away as Asia to the remote and fragile Arctic environments of North America, Greenland, and the Svalbard islands north of Norway.
Although still one of the cleanest regions in the world, indigenous peoples - especially the Inuit in Greenland and Canada - are particularly vulnerable because they depend on whale blubber and seal meat containing high concentrations of toxins.
"The energy is in the fat, the vitamins are in the fat, and now, unfortunately, we see the pollutants are in the same place," said Reiersen, who heads the Norway-based Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP).
The effects of the toxins are felt further south too, including in the Faeroe Islands, an archipelago midway between Iceland and Scotland several hundred kilometers (miles) south of the Arctic Circle, the AMAP report said.
"Newborn babies in the Faeroe Islands have increased blood pressure, and it stays high for six years," Reiersen said. "It's the only place we have studied this, but it's bound to occur in other more northern areas where concentrations of pollutants are equally high or even greater."
Reiersen said that while mercury emissions - from burning coal in power plants and garbage incinerators - have fallen in Europe and North America, they are increasing in China and elsewhere in Asia.
Reiersen said polar bears are giving birth to fewer cubs, and many more are dying at birth because of the toxins. Arctic fox, seals, killer whales, harbor porpoises, and birds also suffer high levels of contamination by organic pollutants that damage the nervous system, development, and reproduction, the AMAP report said.
But it's not all bad news. Emissions of some heavy metals such as zinc are down, and lead has been substantially reduced because of a switch from leaded to lead-free gasoline, the report said.
Lapland, which stretches across northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, provides a livelihood - mainly fishing, reindeer husbandry, and tourism - for 40,000 indigenous Sami, or Lapps.
"The fish, reindeer, and plants of Lapland are safe to eat. Numerous tests have proven this," said Outi Mahonen, a Finnish member of AMAP.
In a separate study, female polar bears with both male and female sexual organs were discovered in 1997 on Norway's Svalbard Archipelago, some 500 kilometers (300 miles) north of the mainland. Researchers believe the deformity could be due to PCBs and other toxins. Potentially cancer-causing PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are chemical compounds once widely used in plastics and electrical insulation that can take decades to break down. They have been widely banned in the West.
But new pollutants are taking their place. "Now we are seeing evidence of a new generation of pollutants in the Arctic: brominated products or flame retardants" used in radios, televisions, and textiles to reduce the risk of fire, Reiersen said. "We are near to achieving a ban on them in Europe, but once again, they are being increasingly used in Asia from where they will travel here," he added.
-------- genetics
Genetic Map Speeds Hunt for New Malaria Drugs
New York Times
October 2, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/02/health/02RTRS-MOSQ.html
LONDON (Reuters) - As part of a campaign against malaria, scientists have decoded the genetic codes of the malaria parasite and the mosquito that spreads it.
Cracking the genetic code of the malaria parasite will speed the hunt for new drugs to tackle the killer disease, which is growing resistant to conventional medicines.
Professor Brian Greenwood, head of the 80-strong malaria center at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, sees the breakthrough announced Wednesday as a major advance.
"It will accelerate the rate at which we get new tools for malaria control," he told Reuters.
In addition to new drugs, understanding the genetic make-up of both the mosquito and its Plasmodium falciparum parasite could help in the development of new insect repellents and traps to prevent mosquito bites.
The need for new medicines has never been more urgent.
Malaria kills more than one million people each year -- 90 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa, where infections are running at record levels.
And traditional tablets are losing their potency.
"It's very important to find new drug targets. The present cheap drugs that we've got are useless in Southeast Asia and the parasite is becoming increasingly resistant in Africa," Greenwood said.
For decades, the mainstay treatment for malaria has been chloroquine, a medicine costing about six cents for a course, which has saved millions of lives.
But now parasites are becoming resistant to chloroquine and, more recently, to sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine, or Fansidar, another cheap drug chosen when chloroquine fails.
Other, newer drugs have been developed, including artemisinin-based combination therapies, derived partly from a Chinese herb -- but the number of options in the medicine cabinet is running low.
NEW TARGETS
With the entire inventory of genes in P.falciparum at their fingertips, scientists are seeking new ways to hit the parasite.
"Any antimicrobial drug has to knock out a biochemical pathway in a pathogen but not affect the human host. The way to identify those drugs is to look for pathways which are unique to the pathogen," said Dr. Neil Hall of Britain's Sanger Institute.
The team of 150 researchers in the United States and Britain that sequenced all the genes in the threadlike organism have, in fact, already pinpointed six potential new drug targets.
Screening and developing active pharmaceuticals against those targets will take time -- and money.
Big pharmaceutical firms have little commercial incentive to do this work, since malaria is not a major problem in the West, but a number of public-private initiatives are tapping into companies' know-how to find cheap alternative treatments.
Britain's GlaxoSmithKline Plc is one group working with the World Health Organization and various charities to try and roll back malaria, via new drugs and vaccines.
Dr Joe Cohen of GSK's biologicals division in Belgium believes the latest genome work will be a boon to drug researchers who can use robots to screen rapidly for new compounds that block against specific genes and proteins.
Making an effective vaccine, though, will take longer.
"It is positive for vaccine development in the long term, but I would see most of the benefits in the short to medium term in helping identify new targets for drug development," he said.
VACCINE BY 2010?
Creating a malaria vaccine is proving more difficult than scientists had expected because the parasite has many mutations.
That makes it a moving target and, while some 30 different approaches are being assessed, there are no guarantees they will work or be effective in different countries.
Dr. Filip Dubovsky, chief scientific officer with the Malaria Vaccine Initiative in Washington, said developing and testing new vaccines would be a long, drawn-out process.
"Development is the stumbling block. Even after you have the sequence and the protein, it still requires a huge amount of work to translate that into a product in a vial that you can test on people," he said.
The most advanced vaccine candidate, being developed by GSK in association with non-profit making groups, is currently in clinical trials in Mozambique.
"I think by the end of this decade we could launch that, if everything goes well," Dubovsky said.
-------- health
U.S. scientists look for cancer-causing food compound
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
By Maggie Fox,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/10/10022002/reu_48567.asp
WASHINGTON - Concerned about a chemical only recently discovered in food, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said this week it would investigate whether people risk getting cancer from eating fried and baked goods.
The chemical, acrylamide, has for years been designated as a possible or probable carcinogen, a cancer-causing agent. But no one thought it was in food until last year, when Swedish scientists announced they had found it in fried foods and some breads and other foods baked at high temperatures.
The World Health Organization urged further research.
"It is clear that acrylamide is a problem," FDA Deputy Commissioner Lester Crawford said in an interview. "It doesn't need to be in food."
But no one knows whether acrylamide causes cancer in people, and if so, what amounts are dangerous, what foods it is in, or whether it can be removed.
The FDA is testing baby food, canned beans, cereals, chocolates, cookies, crackers, french fries, infant formulas, nuts, nut butters, potato chips, meat, and other foods, Dr. Lauren Posnick of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Nutrition said at a public meeting. She said her team had sampled 150 of 600 different foods the FDA plans to test.
French fries and potato chips had a varying amount of acrylamides, some with a high amount. Some crackers and nuts also did, but most foods - including infant formulas - contained very low levels of acrylamides or none at all.
ACRYLAMIDES DAMAGE DNA
Other FDA researchers said they had done tests on acrylamides and found they damage DNA and cell proteins. Such damage is often a first step to cancer because it can lead to mutations that cause cells to grow into tumors. "It is the fact that acrylamide ... attaches to DNA that is of concern to us," said Dr. Bernard Schwetz, the FDA's senior adviser for science.
Acrylamide, used to purify water and for other industrial processes, can cause cancer in laboratory animals but has never been linked to human cancer.
Schwetz noted that not all the animal studies duplicated how humans become exposed to acrylamides. For instance, the chemical was injected directly into rats for one study.
Food is known to carry cancer-causing agents. For example, barbecuing or grilling foods can form compounds called PAHs, which can cause cancer, and now the federal government advises Americans to grill foods carefully to avoid burning them.
"The fact that a chemical that has carcinogenic properties in laboratory animals in food is not a new finding," Schwetz said. "The presence of acrylamides in food isn't something that just happened in the past several months."
Schwetz said the FDA is working to find out how acrylamides are formed, whether changing cooking oils will lower their occurrence and whether people absorb them when they eat them - or if the chemicals simply pass through the body.
One possible precursor is aspargine, a common amino acid. Two teams of scientists reported this week that they had found amino acids, including aspargine, react with sugar at high temperatures.
Richard Stadler at the Nestle Research Center in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Donald Mottram at Britain's University of Reading said they had found a chemical process called the Maillard reaction could explain how acrylamides form in food.
Writing in Thursday's issue of the science journal Nature, they said they had found asparagine has the potential to become an acrylamide in the Maillard reaction. Asparagine is particularly abundant in potatoes and some cereals.
One important question is how much of the chemical people actually eat. Thomas Sinks of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said his agency will add a test for acrylamide to its annual survey of what chemicals Americans are exposed to. The CDC screens thousands of Americans to see what chemicals are in their blood and urine.
In the meantime, the FDA sticks to the standard government advice to eat a balanced diet, with plenty of fruits and vegetables and only the occasional fried food.
Food processors said they would cooperate with the FDA. "The FDA is asking the right toxicological questions about how the body metabolizes acrylamide and how toxic it may or may not be. And, FDA is moving to determine whether any additional steps are necessary," Jim McCarthy, president of the Snack Foods Association, said in a statement.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Thousands Protest Ivory Coast Rebels
October 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ivory-Coast.html
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) -- Tens of thousands of angry government loyalists raced down the skyscraper-lined highways of Abidjan on Wednesday, waving sticks and shouting their rage at rebels advancing steadily south toward Ivory Coast's commercial capital.
Rebels were reported by U.S. military officials and diplomats to be newly in control of the northwest city of Seguela, 180 miles away. Residents there said rebel forces had entered the day before, attacking the paramilitary police's headquarters and the city courts. Amid a West African-led peace effort, Ivory Coast's leaders ``obviously are doing a lot of talking,'' said a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``And while they are talking, the rebels are making significant gains south.''
Ivory Coast's rebels, including a core group of 750-800 soldiers dismissed from the army for suspected disloyalty, grabbed the leading northern and central cities of Korhogo and Boauke simultaneously with a bloody failed coup attempt Sept. 19 in Abidjan.
The well-armed, well-disciplined insurgents since have spread north and west, taking towns including Odienne and now Seguela. Their goal is Abidjan, the key to holding a country that remains one of the region's economic powerhouses.
Rebels say only a formidable French military presence at Yamoussoukro is blocking their drive south. The roughly 1,000-strong French force has made Yamoussoukro, capital of the former French colony, its base for rescue missions and other deployments in the nation's deadliest uprising.
The French say they are there to protect foreign nationals and provide logistical support to the embattled government.
In Abidjan, demonstrators streamed along boulevards toward the heart of the city, once known as the Paris of West Africa for its chic boutiques and expensive restaurants. Many waved sticks, and others carried Ivory Coast's orange, white and green flag.
``We are ready to go and liberate Boauke!'' the angry crowd shouted.
Youth leaders insisted they would march on Bouake themselves in a week if rebels remained in control of the city, Ivory Coast's second-largest, where a half-million people are struggling without water, electricity or fuel.
Protesters, some waving green branches or wearing leaves wrapped round their heads like traditional warriors, bellowed war chants or sang the national anthem.
Businesses and shops closed for fear of looting and bloody rampages that have broken out in recent years' pro-government rallies. Despite high tensions, there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.
Since the Sept. 19 coup attempt, paramilitary police and other loyalists have repeatedly burned hundreds out of shantytowns housing many of the city's Muslims from the north and from neighboring countries.
Since its first coup in 1999, Ivory Coast has accused neighboring Burkina Faso of fostering and funding unrest here.
``When we finish chasing the attackers out of the country, all the Burkinabes will have to go home,'' youth leader Charles Ble Goude yelled at Wednesday's crowd. The crowd chanted back ``Today, today!''
In Seguela, wary civilians spent their first day under the expanding rebel control.
``There are not many of them, but they are well-armed. They are not harming civilians,'' one resident, reached by telephone, said. He did not want to give his name for safety reasons.
In eastern Ivory Coast, meanwhile, residents in the town of Bouna said rebels had entered town the night before, firing their weapons in the air and ransacking the police headquarters. The insurgents left Wednesday.
Witnesses have reported what appeared to be long-range exchanges of gunfire between French troops and rebel forces in the region around Yamoussoukro. French Lt. Col. Ange-Antoine Leccia did not confirm the reports, but said only, ``When we are tested, we respond.''
Loyalist forces claim they have inflicted serious defeats on the insurgents, although repeated government threats of all-out war on the rebels have yet to materialize.
French and American troops have evacuated around 2,500 foreign nationals from rebel-held areas, ferrying them through Yamoussoukro.
Squat C-130 cargo planes took the majority of U.S. troops out of Yamoussoukro on Wednesday. Their gear and Humvees left with them. U.S. authorities did not say where the Americans were headed.
The U.S. focus is now swinging to Abidjan, to assist Americans there who want to leave, said Richard Buangan, a Paris-based American diplomat helping coordinate the evacuations.
Many U.S. citizens have so far declined to leave Abidjan, doubting the fighting will reach here. There are 2,000 Americans in Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa producer, and a base of multinational companies.
High-ranking regional envoys met in Abidjan on Wednesday, to try to build on a first telephone contact with the rebels.
``Yesterday, we made initial contact with the rebels. We agreed to talk some more today and try to arrange a meeting,'' said Mohamed Ibn Chambas, secretary-general of a West African economic bloc that mandated the regional peace mission.
Bloc official Cheick Diarra told The Associated Press that mediators and rebels were due to meet Thursday. He said foreign ministers would try to establish contact with the rebels early Thursday to work out the details of the meeting. He did not elaborate.
Ivory Coast's government has been receptive to peace efforts, but mediators apparently have had difficulty simply identifying and contacting rebel leaders.
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Sailing-Anti-nuclear protesters greet French cup boat
Story by Paul Tait
REUTERS NEW ZEALAND:
October 2, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18004/story.htm
AUCKLAND - A small group of anti-nuclear Greenpeace activists in kayaks protested against the French nuclear-sponsored America's Cup yacht as it left Auckland harbour yesterday for the first race of the Cup challengers series.
About 10 protesters formed what the environmental group described as "a guard of shame" as the bright green hulled Le Devi Areva boat left its mooring for their first Louis Vuitton Cup race against Swiss favourites Alinghi.
"We want to make sure we use as many opportunities as possible to get the message across to people like Areva that their dirty nuclear industry is not welcome," Greenpeace spokeswoman Bunny McDiarmid told Reuters.
The French appeared unconcerned as they were towed past the protesters to the race course in the Hauraki Gulf and have welcomed Greenpeace's interest in their campaign.
Le Defi's principal sponsor for their $30 million campaign is Areva S.A., the French nuclear power supplier, a connection which has angered many in New Zealand, where nuclear-powered vessels have been banned from entering its waters. Areva is estimated to have contributed about 60 percent of the team' budget.
Greenpeace delivered organic New Zealand cheese and kiwi fruit wine to the Le Defi camp when their two boats arrived in August.
Some local observers have described the boats' iridescent hulls as "radioactive green" but syndicate head Xavier de Lesquen's team promptly threw a small party to thank Greenpeace for their gifts.
French Greenpeace activists earlier this year branded Areva's involvement as the height of contempt because of the 1985 sinking of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour.
The vessel was blown up by two French secret agents working for the General Directorate of External Security, the French equivalent of the CIA.
The explosion killed Dutch-Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira and left the Rainbow Warrior half-submerged in Auckland harbour.
The Rainbow Warrior had been about to set sail for Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia to join protests against French nuclear testing there. France angered many in the Pacific 10 years later when they staged more nuclear tests.
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Women and children would suffer most in war on Iraq, Nobel winner warns
Interview with Bishop Desmond Tutu
By Haroon Siddiqui,
2 Oct 2002
Forwarded by: Marita McComiskey - mccomisk@uconnvm.uconn.edu
I INTERVIEWED Bishop Desmond Tutu in Toronto last Friday. The previous day, he had told a meeting in Scarborough he was saddened by the increasing intolerance of the post-Sept. 11 world. He had compared current public discourse to that of apartheid South Africa in which all blacks were demonized as savages, out "to drive the white folks into the sea," and Nelson Mandela and other liberation fighters were all labelled terrorists. The interview begins with a reference to the bishop's comments from the day before.
SIDDIQUI: Yesterday you expressed dismay at the "jingoistic" American media being "utterly supportive of aggressive policies," rather than playing their critical role in a free and democratic society. Why do you think that is so?
TUTU: Part of the problem of the American system is that they are all driven by polls. They would be at a different place if President (George) Bush's ratings were very low. Now that his ratings are high, there seems to be a sense that you are digging your own grave if you attack him. I am only glad that they were on our side in the struggle against apartheid because I am frightened to think of what would have happened if they had not been.
S:That doesn't speak much to their principles, does it?
Tutu: That's what I'm saying. No one seems to ask: What are the merits of a case? Is this thing right or wrong? There doesn't seem to be a great deal of concern for that.
S: There are some dissident voices but you are very close to the kind of things that characterized the McCarthy era.
Tutu: It's almost bizarre, the war-mongering and the principles they are trying to invoke, such as pre-emptive strikes. On what evidence is this being premised? Is this a principle that is of universal application? Or is it something that applies only to the U.S. because they are the only superpower? Is it saying, in a sense, that might is right? Is there something called the rule of law? Is there an international law, which acts to rein in power so that power is accountable?
S: Do you find this doctrine of pre-emptive strikes frightening?
Tutu: It is scary in the sense that if it is legitimate and valid, then we'd have a heck of a business holding back mavericks saying, "Such-and-such country harbours terrorists and is posing a threat to us." India and Pakistan, I think, are particular examples where it is going to be very difficult to say to them, "No, you can't." If the idea is, "We've got to remove a particular ruler because that obnoxious ruler does not abide by the norms of a decent society," why should it end with Saddam? What stops us from going further to include Iran, include North Korea? But even if all of that were not to happen, one is fearful of the casualties. And who are the likely casualties? It's not going to be mainly military targets. We know that it is going to (mean) many civilian casualties. If the loss of civilian lives is reprehensible in New York and at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, how is it not equally reprehensible when it happens in Iraq or in Iran or in Afghanistan? You can't slide out of this by using the awful euphemism of collateral damage: "Sorry, we were targeting military targets, but they were caught." But who are caught? It is women and children. These people have flesh and blood, similar to the people who died on Sept. 11.
S: But is there not a hierarchy of lives, with some lives more valuable than others?
Tutu: One has to keep saying that we are all one family. We will never win the war against terrorism as long as there are conditions that make people desperate and, therefore, make them vulnerable to being recruited and used by unscrupulous people.
S: Our Prime Minister made a similar point the other day...
Tutu:... And he got clobbered. But it is a fact that until we win the war against poverty, disease, ignorance, etc. we are really playing marbles. There's no way you're going to have security in isolation.
S: You have been making the same point about the Middle East.
Tutu: That's what we learned in South Africa - you will not get true security from the barrel of a gun.
S: Yesterday, you were also critical of the demonization of Arabs and Muslims post-Sept. 11.
Tutu: It is a self-defeating strategy, if you want to call it that. Christians would resent it very, very deeply if Christians were characterized by some of the weird fundamentalists in our camp. Christians would resent it very deeply if it is said that we are like the people in Northern Ireland who are forever at each others' throats.
S: But terrorism is being blamed on Islam.
Tutu: Nonsense, absolute nonsense. If you have a sense of history, you know that the Crusaders were Christians, and you realize that the civilization about which we boast now would not have been available to us had it not been for the Muslims.
S: But some so-called experts on Islam are saying that Islam itself is to blame because its theology lends itself to jihad and violence.
Tutu: As I was saying, where did the Crusades originate? Is that a justification for saying that Christianity is an aggressive religion? Who was responsible for the Holocaust? Because some Christians did that, would we then say that Christianity is a violent religion? Fascism ? where did that come from? Europe. Nazism? Europe. Colonialism? Europe. Does that justify our saying that all of that was due to Christianity? Apartheid was supported by one of the major Christian churches in South Africa. Do you then say, "Ah, Christianity is responsible for all this racism?"
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