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NUCLEAR
The spoils of war
Depleted Uranium Research Controversy
Caught in the Crossfire
Most Iraqis don't like Saddam, like idea of U.S. troops even less
Filipino Moros, Christians score U.S. war plan vs Iraq
Israel's Arrow antimissile system
U.S. Envoy Kelly Briefs Japan Officials, Goes Home
U.S. Plays Down Talks With N. Korean Officials
U.S. Envoy Tells North Korea of Arms Concerns
Israel Ready to Deploy Missile Shield
Going nuclear on plant safety
The Weight of American Empire
War as a Con Game
MILITARY
Swiss Call a Meeting to Re-examine the Geneva Conventions
After the Taliban: facts and figures
Amid trans-Atlantic tension, EU vows to build army
Iran Won't Treat Stray U.S Warplanes as Enemy
Iraq could face fresh nightmares in post-Saddam era
Iraq May Drop Inspection Limits
Israel Set to Use New Missile Shield to Counter Scuds
No Iraqi missiles pointed at Israel
For the U.S. Military, A Transforming View From the Maginot Line
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
ICC treaty 'not a license for impunity'
Bin Laden still alive, reveals spy satellite
Chemical labs show al Qaeda still active
ACTIVISTS
THE SACRED EARTH AND SPACE PLOWSHARES II has been born!
Belgian police arrest 'bombspotting' protesters
Un-American Arrests
October 6th Day of Resistance
Rally in New York Protests Possible Iraq War
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
The spoils of war
by Dr. Helen Caldicott
October 6, 2002
Baltimore Sun
http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.nuclear06oct06.story
NEW YORK -- As the Bush administration prepares to make war on the Iraqi people -- for it is the civilian population of that country and not Saddam Hussein who will bear the brunt of the hostilities -- it is important that we recall the medical consequences of the last Persian Gulf war. It was, in effect, a nuclear war.
By the end of that 1991 conflict, the United States left between 300 and 800 tons of depleted uranium 238 in anti-tank shells and other explosives on the battlefields of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
The term "depleted" refers to the removal of the fissionable element uranium 235 through a process that ironically is called "enrichment." What remains, uranium 238, is 1.7 times more dense than lead. When incorporated into an anti-tank shell and fired, it achieves great momentum, cutting through tank armor like a hot knife through butter.
What other properties does uranium 238 possess?
First, it is pyrophoric. When it hits a tank at high speed, it bursts into flames, producing aerosolized particles less than 5 microns in diameter, making them easy to inhale into the terminal air passages of the lung. Second, it is a potent radioactive carcinogen, emitting a relatively heavy alpha particle composed of two protons and two neutrons. Once inside the body -- either in the lung if it has been inhaled, in a wound if it penetrates flesh, or ingested since it concentrates in the food chain and contaminates water -- it can produce cancer in the lungs, bones, blood or kidneys. Third, it has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, meaning the areas in which this ammunition was used in Iraq and Kuwait will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time.
Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the effects of radiation than adults. My fellow pediatricians in the Iraqi city of Basra, for example, report an increase of six to 12 times in the incidence of childhood leukemia and cancer. Yet because of the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Statesand the United Nations, they have no access to antibiotics, chemotherapeutic drugs or effective radiation machines to treat their patients.
The incidence of congenital malformations has doubled in the exposed populations in Iraq where these weapons were used. Among them are babies being born with only one eye and with an encephaly -- the absence of a brain.
However, the medical consequences of the use of uranium 238 almost certainly did not affect only Iraqis. Some American veterans exposed to it are reported, by at least one medical researcher, to be excreting uranium in their urine a decade later. Other reports indicate it is being excreted in their semen.
That nearly one-third of the American tanks used in Desert Storm were made of uranium 238 is another story, for their crews were exposed to whole body gamma radiation. What might be the long-term consequences of such exposure has not, apparently, been studied.
Would these effects have surprised U.S. authorities? No, for incredible as it may seem, the American military's own studies prior to Desert Storm warned that aerosol uranium exposure under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects. Do President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld understand the medical consequences of the 1991 war and the likely health effects of the next one they are planning? If they don't, their ignorance is breathtaking. Even more incredible, though, and much more likely, is that they do understand but don't care.
Helen Caldicott, founder and president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, has devoted 25 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age. Her most recent book is The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex (The New Press, 2002).
----
Depleted Uranium Research Controversy
Friday, October 04 2002,
CBC Newfoundland & Labrador
http://stjohns.cbc.ca/morningshow/features.html
A chemist from Memorial University has quit her job and moved to the United States under controversial circumstances. Pat Horan's work analyzing human urine samples for depleted uranium publicly linked her to work on Gulf War Syndrome almost two years ago. Her work also brought international attention to Memorial University. Heather Barrett has been looking into this story, and joined Jim Brown in the studio with details.
Listen Here http://stjohns.cbc.ca/morningshow/realaudio/20021004barrett.ram
----
Caught in the Crossfire
The young people of Iraq have known nothing other than hunger, disease, poverty and isolation
by Lynda Hurst
Sunday, October 6, 2002
by the Toronto Star
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1006-04.htm
LOT OF people are going to be killed if, as looks increasingly certain, there is war in Iraq. Maybe one of them will be Saddam Hussein. Maybe not.
"Of the several thousands who have been killed so far in Afghanistan, not one had been named Osama bin Laden," Phyllis Bennis, Middle East specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, points out dryly.
"So let's be very clear about who is going to pay the price in Iraq."
Ordinary people.
Despite reports of Pentagon plans for a quick, clean invasion of 10 days to two weeks aimed solely at "regime targets" and not innocent civilians, no one knows what Iraq's response will be. Weeks on end of bloody ground fighting - village by village, even street by street in Baghdad and Basra - cannot be ruled out.
Nor can the spectre of Saddam desperately unleashing his much-vaunted stockpile of chemical and biological weapons, especially if, as Washington predicts, his troops capitulate early on. Whether he uses the weapons to harm his enemy or his own people is unlikely to be a consideration: Saddam has done both in the past.
"Assuming he has these weapons," says James Reilly, a University of Toronto Middle East specialist, "it's reasonable to assume that being attacked will be the trigger to use them."
Then, too, as military planners are fully aware, the lethal arsenal of gases and viruses could inadvertently be released by American bombs.
As U.S. President George W. Bush prepares to address the nation tomorrow night, observers say that whatever lies ahead, one thing is sure: It will be innocent Iraqi civilians who suffer.
They have done little else in the past 12 years.
Iraq was once a wealthy, literate, secular state of 24 million with a flourishing middle class, an efficient health-care system and the security of sitting atop the world's second-largest oil reserves. All but the oil is gone today.
Older Iraqis may remember the way life used to be; the young can have no idea. All they have ever known is hunger and disease, poverty and isolation from the rest of the world.
Their existence is harrowing today, and about to become unimaginably worse, says Roger Normand, director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights in New York, which has been tracking the state of Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
"These people have been living on their knees for a long time. The vast majority, 80 per cent, depend on government food rations, but they will come to an end the moment war begins.
"And that's just the tip of the iceberg that's ahead."
Reports that the markets in Baghdad are full of goods are hugely misleading, Normand says vehemently.
What's there is black market and it's only for the "smuggling elite" of regime minions and members of Saddam's extended family who've managed to enrich themselves despite rigorous trade sanctions imposed by the United Nations.
"The people have no safety net," Normand says. "They can't stockpile food. They have no money. Everyone has sold everything they had long ago."
In the past decade, the continuing plight of ordinary Iraqis has been documented by a phalanx of organizations, from a Harvard University study team and the International Red Cross to, ironically, several of the U.N.'s own affiliates, including UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the World Food Program.
Their reports all conclude that the effects of the Gulf War and the sanctions - the most comprehensive and punitive ever employed by the U.N. - have been catastrophic.
As many as 1 million Iraqis have died as a result of them, they say - and 400,000 of the victims were babies or young children.
Iraq's bitter eight-year war with Iran had been over only three years when Operation Desert Storm began in January, 1991.
During 43 days of bombing, U.S. and British warplanes strategically targeted and wiped out virtually all of Iraq's civil, not just military, infrastructure, from electricity-generating stations and water-pumping and treatment plants to bridges and transportation lines.
Before the war, 95 per cent of Iraqis had access to safe drinking water. Afterward, with raw sewage pouring into rivers and canals, an epidemic of water-borne diseases, cholera, typhoid and diarrhea raged out of control, killing hundreds of thousands, particularly children.
The infant mortality rate doubled in the ensuing years and now stands at 62.5 deaths per 1,000. (Canada's is 5.5.)
After the Gulf War, a senior U.S. Air Force officer told the Washington Post that most people have the wrong idea about warfare, thinking "of force on force, soldier A against soldier B."
In fact, it is aimed at striking "all those things that allow a nation to sustain itself."
Human collateral damage is unfortunate but unavoidable, U.S. Vice-President Richard Cheney, then secretary of defence, told the Harvard study team (later renamed the Center for Economic and Social Rights).
"We had a significant impact on Iraqi society that we wished we had not had to do."
Nevertheless, every target was "perfectly legitimate," said Cheney. "If I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing."
The chance to do it over again is fast approaching - with or without U.N. inspections - and the United States will do precisely the same thing, speculates Bennis, who visited Iraq last year.
"The next war is supposed to be quick and fast," she says, "but not necessarily. They'll have more strategic `smart bombs' this time but that doesn't guarantee civilians won't get hit.
"And no, it is not okay to say that it will be Saddam's fault for using people as human shields."
Normand foresees a replay of last time - "only more intensive, bigger, with more bombing. And these are people we're supposed to be fighting to liberate. It's going to be like it was in Vietnam: `Kill a village to save a village.' It's going to be a huge tragedy."
And the aftermath, just like last time, will be devastating.
Today, a patched-together electrical system sporadically functions, but now only 60 per cent of Iraqis have access to safe water.
The middle class has ceased to exist, says UofT's Reilly, while Saddam's "parasitic cronies" have remained unaffected.
Fundamentalist Islam is on the rise among the young after Saddam (whom Osama bin Laden once criticized for lack of religious devotion) went on a spate of mosque-building, "mobilizing and using religion for his own purposes," says Reilly.
According to UNICEF, chronic diarrhea, malnutrition and respiratory infections are still killing 4,500 Iraqi children every month.
That fact alone staggered the three U.S. Democratic congressmen who visited last month and described the suffering they saw as "horrific and barbaric."
"What worries me and my colleagues is that, if we go to war again, we would simply double or triple the problems we created in 1991," said California representative Jim McDermott.
Hunger and disease are not the only repercussions from the last war. Initially unreported environmental damage also took a grim toll.
As many as 50,000 children are believed to have died of the effects of radioactive dust from the depleted uranium contained in thousands of shells fired or dropped by coalition forces.
In southern Iraq, where huge areas were polluted by the depleted uranium, the rate of cancer, specifically leukemia, is thought to have increased by almost 200 per cent.
The countrywide health service has been severely handicapped by power outages and irregular water supply, let alone a lack of medicines and equipment.
The importation of chlorine to treat water, for example, is still banned by the United Nations because it is a "dual-use" chemical that could be used for nefarious purposes.
Critics charge that the sanctions, which began in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, have amounted to "collective punishment," specifically prohibited by the Geneva Convention of 1949, and may even breach the U.N. convention on genocide.
Most voluble among the critics is Denis Halliday, the former U.N. assistant secretary-general who headed the Iraq humanitarian relief program until he resigned in disgust in 1998, as did his successor, Hans von Sponeck, 18 months later.
"We cannot have the U.N. sustaining a regime of sanctions that impact only on the people, not on the decision-makers, not on the government," Halliday said last year. "It more than impacts; it kills people."
The view isn't shared by Washington decision-makers. They say that, since 1996, when the U.N. allowed Iraq to sell oil again to buy food, medicines and equipment to rebuild its infrastructure, it has sold $55.8 billion (U.S.) worth of reserves - more than enough to meet the humanitarian needs of its people.
If they haven't been met, it is because "the regime has little or no concern for the suffering of its own people," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch argued recently.
"It has consciously manipulated and allowed that suffering to take place in order to gain the sympathy of people in the West."
An extensive assessment by a coalition of 14 aid organizations released in August says Iraq may have sold $55.8 billion under the oil-for-food program, but after 33 per cent was subtracted for Gulf War reparations to Kuwait and for U.N. operations, the amount was reduced to $35.8 billion.
As of July, only $23.5 billion worth of goods had actually arrived in Iraq.
The report says a combination of "holds" imposed by the U.N. and the U.S. and Iraq's own obstructiveness and mismanagement accounts for the missing $12.3 billion. The result? A per-capita income of less than $1 a day.
If war comes again to the people of Iraq and Saddam's brutal 23-year regime is finally destroyed, as it is almost certain to be, what happens then?
Post-war reconstruction is an open question, says Reilly.
"Will the U.S. impose a neo-colonial rule? A sustained military occupation won't be popular at home. Or will it just walk away? No one knows what will happen until it happens."
The worst scenario is that Iraq breaks down along ethnic and religious lines - Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds - which no country in the region wants, each deeply suspicious of how the others would exploit the situation.
One thing is sure, though, says Normand. "What Iraq won't be after the next war is a democracy. It will have a friendly dictator rather than an unfriendly one, but the people will still be oppressed."
And the United States?
"It will be gone," he says. "We don't `do' peace."
----
Most Iraqis don't like Saddam, like idea of U.S. troops even less
Sunday, October 6, 2002
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/89851_kristof06.shtml
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- From their perch in Washington, President Bush and his advisers seem to have convinced themselves that an invasion will proceed easily because many Iraqis will dance in the streets to welcome American troops.
That looks like a potentially catastrophic misreading of Iraq.
Consider Dahlia Abdulrahim and Intidhar Abdulrahim, two young women I met at an English-language used-book shop in Baghdad. Dahlia reads romance novels, while Intidhar favors Thomas Hardy. So will they be cheering the American troops rolling through Baghdad?
"I will throw stones at them," Dahlia said.
"Maybe I will throw knives," Intidhar said brightly.
Those two women are broadly representative of Iraqis I spoke to. If American military strategy assumes popular support from Iraqis facilitating an invasion and occupation, the White House is making an error that could haunt us for years.
After scores of interviews with ordinary people from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south, I've reached two conclusions.
1. Iraqis dislike and distrust Saddam Hussein, particularly outside the Sunni heartland, and many Iraqis will be delighted to see him gone.
2. Iraqis hate the U.S. government even more than they hate Saddam, and they are even more distrustful of America's intentions than Saddam's.
"America is a new colonial power that wants to dominate," warns Rahim Majid, a farmer from Karbala.
"Americans are not coming to help us, but for our oil," frets Naseem Jawad, a merchant in Najaf.
Public opinion is very difficult to gauge in a dictatorship as brutal as Iraq's, where reporters are mostly accompanied by government minders and where anyone who criticizes Saddam risks having his tongue amputated. It takes quite a bit of arak, the national alcohol drink, before conversations even begin to get interesting.
Still, Iraq is not as Orwellian as North Korea, and Iraqis listen openly and constantly to the BBC, Iranian radio, Israeli radio and especially to an excellent new American broadcast called Radio Sawa, which mixes popular music with news -- and is a triumph of the Bush administration's focus on public diplomacy abroad. Furtive conversations with Iraqis leave a strong impression that most people know what's going on, worry about a war and hate what Saddam has done to their country.
Corruption is so widespread and morale is so poor that it sometimes seems the whole Iraqi system is close to disintegrating. A company of Marines could perhaps slip through an Iraqi army checkpoint on payment of a modest bribe. (But carrying all the bribery money would slow the marines down, for the Iraqi dinar is almost worthless. When I paid a hotel bill, I had to lug a shopping bag with 20 pounds of dinar bills to the front desk.)
Still, while I found few people willing to fight for Saddam, I encountered plenty of nationalists willing to defend Iraq against Yankee invaders. And while ordinary Iraqis were very friendly toward me, they were enraged at the United States after 11 years of economic sanctions.
"You see this?" asked a seething university president, waving a pencil in the air. "It took 15 months just to import pencils for our students." (The reason was both bureaucracy and the possibility that graphite could be misused for weapons.)
Worse, U.S. bombing of water treatment plants, difficulties importing purification chemicals like chlorine (which can be used for weapons), and shortages of medicines led to a more than doubling of infant mortality, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
In addition, every Iraqi knows that Basra is suffering a surge in cancer, childhood leukemia and grotesquely deformed fetuses. Some foreign and Iraqi specialists blame American use of depleted-uranium shells during the Gulf War, and most Iraqis take this as established fact.
"We blame the U.S.," sputtered Dr. Amir Nissa, an obstetrician in Basra. "It was the U.S. that put in sanctions against Iraq. Every Iraqi blames the U.S. 100 percent."
So if Saddam thinks the average Iraqi is going to miss him, he's deluding himself. But if President Bush thinks our invasion and occupation will go smoothly because Iraqis will welcome us, then he too is deluding himself.
----
Filipino Moros, Christians score U.S. war plan vs Iraq
By ROMER SARMIENTO
TODAY Correspondent
Sunday, October 6, 2002 10:56:57 p.m
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=Provincial&OID=5173
KORONADAL CITY - Concerned about the plight of their Muslim brothers in Iraq, a broad alliance of Muslims and Christians in the country has condemned US President George W. Bush's war stance against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, saying the Iraqis have yet to restore their devastated lives from the effects of the 1991 Gulf War.
At the same time, the group lambasted President Arroyo for her apparent support to Bush's planned invasion of Iraq, by offering the country's air space to US forces, owing to Hussein's refusal to allow the United Nations weapons inspectors all-out access to suspected nuclear and biological laboratories.
Amira Ali Lidasan, secretary-general for the Muslim Christian Peoples Alliance (MCPA), stressed that the looming threat of war against Iraq will pulverize the still ailing 1991 Persian Gulf War-torn Iraqis.
"Until now, the grave effects of the 1991 US aggression on Iraq continue to take their toll on the lives of the Iraqis. US-imposed food blockade on Iraq is continuously causing massive death and starvation, especially of Iraqi children," she said.
In a strongly worded news statement, Lidasan added: "The demonic results of US's malevolent use of UN-banned radioactive weapons, specifically, the 320 tons of depleted uranium munitions has, for the past 12 years, caused the death of 1.7 million Iraqi children due to leukemia and other types of cancer. More crucial, a steady increase in congenital malformation among new-born children remains a grave threat to the continuity of the Iraqi race."
According to the MCPA, this glaring situation reflects the evils behind what the Bush government arrogantly calls war on terror.
While the Bush government repeatedly accuses Iraq of the manufacture of weapons-of-mass-destruction, Lidasan said that world leaders and the people must remember that "it [US] is the biggest producer of such."
Proving her point, Lidasan cited the mass slaughter of Muslims during the 1991 US war of aggression in the Gulf War that was led by former US President George Bush, the father of the incumbent US President.
Lidasan described the younger Bush's resolute war drive against Hussein, that would eventually affect the people of Iraq, as a "palpable arrogance and a self-attributed supremacy."
The group also directed its anger at President Arroyo, which, it claimed, her government does not have the balls to oppose the US war of aggression lest the country will be tagged as sympathizers of terrorists.
In his fight against the global war on terrorism, Bush earlier said: "It's either you are with us [US] or you are with the terrorists."
Lidasan said that the Arroyo government did not hesitate to give its full support to the US government in its aggressive stance against Iraq.
"The MCPA is opposing the US-led war on Iraq. There is no justice when the innocent suffers the consequences of a war bent on revenge and palpable arrogance. We say no to US war of terror that is a genocide of Muslims. The Arroyo government should withdraw its support to the US," the group said.
Please send your comments or feedback to newsfeedback@abs-cbn.com
-------- israel
Israel's Arrow antimissile system
New York Times,
October 6, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/international/20021006_iraq_MISSILE/for_iraq_MISSILE_01.html
Graphic: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/images/international/20021006_iraq_MISSILE/for_MISSILE_01.gif
Israel's antimissile system, known as Arrow, is intended to protect the country from Scud and other missile attacks. With two more batteries planned, Israel is likely to become the first country in the world to have a nationwide antimissile defense.
-------- japan
U.S. Envoy Kelly Briefs Japan Officials, Goes Home
Reuters
Sunday, October 6, 2002; 4:46 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49757-2002Oct6?language=printer
TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. special envoy James Kelly headed back to the United States Sunday after briefing Japanese officials about talks with North Korean officials that he said were frank but useful.
Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and the most senior U.S. official to visit North Korea since President Bush said it was part of an "axis of evil," told the officials that Washington was committed to dialogue with Pyongyang.
In the hour-long briefing, attended by Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, he said he had told North Korean officials the United States was concerned that the secretive communist state's conduct could have implications for regional and global security.
The Japanese side told Kelly that Tokyo shared the U.S. concerns, especially about weapons of mass destruction, missiles, and missile exports, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
"Our thinking is that Japan will approach North Korea (on these issues) in future normalization and security talks while keeping in close contact with the United States and South Korea," the Japanese side was quoted as telling Kelly.
No particular speaker was specified.
In his Pyongyang visit, which lasted from Thursday until his return to Seoul Saturday, Kelly resumed a dialogue that had tailed off in the last weeks of Bill Clinton's administration after a visit to Pyongyang by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in October 2000.
After Bush took office in January last year he reviewed policy toward North Korea for five months before agreeing to resume dialogue. It took another 15 months to set up the Kelly trip.
Kelly's highest-level encounter was with Kim Yong-nam, North Korea's number two and nominal head of state.
-------- korea
U.S. Plays Down Talks With N. Korean Officials
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 6, 2002; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48930-2002Oct5?language=printer
TOKYO, Oct. 5 -- As Japan and South Korea take highly visible steps toward resolving contentious issues with North Korea, the Bush administration's first official talks with North Korean officials this weekend took on the appearance of a stealth mission.
Reflecting the administration's discomfort with being pushed by its allies into dealing with a country President Bush has branded part of an "axis of evil," Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly sought to minimize publicity about his three-day visit to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
Kelly refused to take reporters along on the trip, declined to answer questions after returning to Seoul today, and canceled a session with reporters planned for Sunday in Tokyo.
Kelly issued a statement in Seoul saying he had expressed to the North Korean officials "our serious concerns and raised the implications of North Korean conduct" on regional peace and relations with the United States.
He noted there were "no decisions on additional meetings at this time nor did either side expect any" soon.
Bush abruptly halted communication with North Korea after taking office, aborting negotiations pursued by the Clinton administration. As his term ended, President Bill Clinton said those negotiations had set the stage for an agreement with North Korea to curtail missile sales and extend a freeze on its nuclear program. But Bush balked at the strategy.
South Korea, which pursued a goodwill policy with North Korea that earned President Kim Dae Jung a Nobel Prize, has chafed at Bush's stance. Kim has argued vigorously for Washington to soften its approach.
Japan also publicly veered from Washington's line with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's surprise summit in Pyongyang on Sept. 17. The visit produced movement toward resolving Japan's most sensitive quarrel with North Korea -- the alleged abductions of Japanese citizens -- and started a process aimed at building diplomatic ties.
The United States has no diplomatic ties with North Korea. Analysts here and in the United States said Washington's posture left it vulnerable to losing influence as Japan and South Korea entered into new relationships with North Korea.
Kelly's statement in Seoul said the United States would "review the results of my meetings and take consideration of what our next steps should be." Kelly is the first high-level U.S. official to visit Pyongyang since then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright went there in October 2000.
Before Kelly flew to Pyongyang on Thursday, the State Department played down the prospect of significant progress. He said discussions were "frank, as befits the seriousness of our differences."
Kelly met with Kim Yong Nam, the president of the Supreme People's Assembly and the second-highest official in North Korea, but the meeting was described as a "courtesy call." Most of Kelly's four meetings were with lower-ranking officials.
Koizumi, after his summit in Pyongyang, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il agreed to extend a freeze on testing long-range missiles and repeated a pledge to permit inspections of the country's nuclear sites. The United States also seeks a reduction in North Korea's conventional forces.
--------
U.S. Envoy Tells North Korea of Arms Concerns
New York Times
October 6, 2002
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/international/asia/06KORE.html
TOKYO, Oct. 5 - A senior State Department envoy to North Korea said today, at the end of a three-day visit, that he had useful talks with the country's leaders.
The envoy, James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, revealed nothing about the substance of his discussions in Pyongyang, the capital, though, and said no new talks were planned.
"I felt that our exchanges in Pyongyang were frank as befits the seriousness of our differences and they were useful too," said Mr. Kelly, the highest-ranking Bush administration official to visit North Korea.
He said the United States' concerns with North Korea included the possibility that it might be developing weapons of mass destruction, its missile development and export programs, the threatening posture of its conventional forces, its human rights failings and the dire circumstances in which its people are living.
Mr. Kelly's statement was read with a single American official by his side, in lieu of a previously scheduled news conference in Seoul, South Korea, which was hastily canceled. The envoy also abruptly canceled plans to speak to the press in Tokyo on Sunday, where he will stop to brief Japanese officials.
North Korea and the United States have not have substantive, high-level talks since the end of the Clinton administration, when the two countries appeared to be close to reaching agreement on ending North Korea's testing and international sale of ballistic missiles.
The Bush administration abandoned efforts at engagement with North Korea and spent five months early last year on carrying out a sweeping review of American policy toward North Korea.
Relations between the United States and North Korea chilled further when Mr. Bush designated the country part of an "axis of evil" in January, along with Iraq and Iran.
The United States appeared to be edging toward a resumption of discussions with North Korea this spring, but the efforts were abandoned after a naval gun battle between North and South Korea raised tensions in the region.
Since then, North Korea has been undergoing significant shifts in a number of its policies, and both Japan and South Korea, the United States' two major allies in East Asia, have urged the Bush administration to engage more with North Korea.
In recent weeks, the North has agreed to rebuild road and rail links with South Korea and to resume visits between families separated by their 1950-53 war. It also had a visit from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan that has put the countries on an accelerated path toward normalization of relations.
In his brief statement, Mr. Kelly showed little sign that the United States took encouragement from any of this. "After I return to Washington the U.S. government will review the results of my meetings," he said, and added: "Of course also the meetings I'll have with our Korean and Japanese friends and take consideration of what our next steps should be."
-------- missile defense
Israel Ready to Deploy Missile Shield - N.Y. Times
By REUTERS
October 6, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-israel.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Israel is read to deploy a new missile shield to protect Tel Aviv and other major cities if they come under fire from Iraq's arsenal of Scud missiles, the New York Times reported in its Sunday editions.
Known as the Arrow, the system cost more than $2 billion and was partly financed by the United States, the paper reported. Israel has already deployed an operational missile defense at the heavily guarded Palmachim air force base south of Tel Aviv, it said.
The paper cited Danny Peretz, the program manager for the Arrow at Israel Aircraft Industries, which makes the system, and Lt. Col. Shahar Shohat, who commands the Arrow battery at Palmachim Air Force Base. According to The Times, if the Bush administration goes ahead with its threats to attack Iraq, and Saddam Hussein retaliates against Israel, the Arrow could be put to the test in what would be an important trial of antimissile technology.
``It would be the first time in history that an interceptor that was developed strictly to shoot down incoming missiles is used,'' an unnamed Pentagon official is cited as saying.
``The Patriot used in 1991 was designed to shoot down airplanes and modified to give it some kind of antimissile capability. But from the start, the Arrow was built to intercept ballistic missiles. The whole world will be watching to see what happens, and we will be watching,'' the Pentagon official added.
The newspaper said that when the final interceptors and radars are installed about two years from now, Israel will be the first nation in the world to have a nationwide missile defense system.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Going nuclear on plant safety
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
October 6, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021006-73482360.htm
Is it really "alarmist and irresponsible," as Ralph Beedle claims ("In defense of nuclear energy," Op-Ed, Wednesday), to point out that nuclear power plants remain vulnerable to terrorist attack? Let's forget "conjecture" and review the facts.
Multiple studies by some of the nation's leading laboratories, including Sandia National Laboratories and Argonne National Laboratory, have taken issue with the nuclear power industry's claim that the containment structures at nuclear power plants can withstand the impact of an airliner.
Furthermore, some of the most vulnerable sections of a plant - the control room, the spent-fuel pools and waste storage areas - are all outside the containment structure. Brookhaven National Laboratory concluded that a major release from a spent fuel pool could result in some 28,000 cancer deaths, $59 billion in damages and render 188 square miles uninhabitable.
A recent survey conducted by the Project on Government Oversight also belies the claim that security guards at nuclear power plants are adequately armed and skilled in counterterrorism tactics. The study found that these guards feared being outnumbered and outgunned by terrorists in an attack. This is supported by the results of force-on-force drills conducted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in which nuclear power plants had a nearly 50 percent failure rate in defending against attacks.
The truth is that there is enough evidence to demonstrate continued vulnerability at the nation's nuclear power plants and none to suggest otherwise, since mock attack tests have been halted since September 11, 2001.
PRIYA DOSHI Communications associate Safe Energy Communication Council Washington
-------- us politics
[To reply - mailto:OPED@washpost.com]
The Weight of American Empire
RESOLVE: The Right Response for Our Times
By John Keegan
Sunday, October 6, 2002; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46471-2002Oct5?language=printer
WARMINSTER, England
The statement of principles that will guide the national security strategy of the United States during the war on terrorism, and against states that acquire weapons of mass destruction for nefarious purposes, is presented in the language of American statecraft at its most traditional. The allusions from the past proliferate -- allusions to the Four Freedoms, to the Atlantic Charter, even to President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. The values that President Bush promises to defend with all the power at his disposal are central to the American way -- democratic self-government, free association, freedom of expression, equal rights for individuals. It is a very American, and very old-fashioned, document.
At the same time, it makes commitments that are unprecedented in the language of American national policy. To put it bluntly, the president makes threats. He warns terrorists that they will be opposed by every weapon and every means at America's disposal. That might be expected and is no more than terrorists deserve.
But he also warns that states that harbor terrorists -- or are compromised by terrorism -- will be held to account, by which he means military account. He goes on to say that enemies of the United States who are preparing weapons of mass destruction (enemies unspecified but by implication already identified by the Pentagon and State Department) will find themselves targets of U.S. action, even if -- and this is a particularly menacing note -- such preparations are not complete and the threats to America and its allies are not fully formed.
No doubt it is America's readiness to make threats that contributes to the anti-Americanism now rampant in Europe. Fifty years of peace have skewed the European outlook on the world. Apart from some minor Balkan troubles, Europeans have not known war since 1945, and they have fallen into the habit of viewing war as an alien activity to which they have found a superior alternative -- the building of pan-European institutions, free trade and the convening of tedious international conferences. They conveniently forget the threat posed until 1990 by the vanished Soviet Union and they show no appreciation at all of the effort and expense undertaken by the United States in acting as the leading military member of NATO during the Cold War.
There can be no doubt that the American approach to the future is far more realistic than the European and would have been so, if stated, even before the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed, the logic of President Bush's statement depends less on the emergence of terrorism as a serious threat to civilized states, or even on Saddam Hussein's specific defiance of U.N. resolutions requiring him to admit weapons inspectors, than it does on factors already apparent as the Cold War was drawing to its close.
Students of the Cold War perceived that it imposed, for all the rhetoric of nuclear threat and counter-threat, an artificial stability in international relations. The existence of two superpowers, and the confrontation between them, obliged almost all states to choose sides -- and, having chosen, to accept a consequent restraint on their foreign and military power. The superpowers offered protection to their clients. But they also expected and got a measure of obedience.
In no respect was that more true than in the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. On whatever else they did not agree, the United States and Soviet Union -- as the world's only fully equipped nuclear powers -- concurred that possession of nuclear weapons should be confined to the smallest possible number of states. From their points of view, the ideal number would have been two. But failing America's ability to constrain its wartime nuclear partner, Britain (which had acquired most of the necessary expertise to build bombs), and then France (which could not bear the indignity of nuclear inferiority to its ancient enemy), the United States reluctantly accepted a troika of Western nuclear powers. The Soviet Union would have preferred to remain the only communist nuclear power, but China's size and strength prevented Moscow from constraining Beijing.
Thus the nuclear balance of the Cold War years was established on a basis of five powers; and, as each was a stable state, experienced in the ways of the world, the tacit agreement between the superpowers to maintain world order worked. Indeed, it survived even unilateral superpower efforts to win local wars at the boundary between the spheres of influence -- Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola.
The more farsighted observers perceived, however, that, should the Cold War ever come to an end, so would the stability it had imposed. While most states, particularly the richer and longer-established ones, would choose to go on as before, a minority of others, those with grievances against their neighbors or with their standing in the world order, would rebel. They would try to become local superpowers and they would challenge the right of the United States and Russia, the Soviet Union's successor, to maintain the old Cold War order.
So it has turned out. The emergence of India and Pakistan as nuclear powers, though undesirable, was predictable and is containable. They deter each other. The dissidences of Iraq and of Chechnya are of a different order. Chechnya, traditionally disruptive of Russia's efforts to maintain order in its borderlands, is a menace and Moscow deserves Washington's support in its effort to bring the Chechens under control. Iraq is a far more serious problem, since it is a comparatively advanced state and potentially very rich. Under a regime that would cooperate with the international community, it would be nothing but a force for good in the Middle East. Its society is not Islamic and its population is well educated. But because power in Iraq has, lamentably, passed to a megalomaniac and his hometown clique, it has become exactly what students of post-Cold War politics feared the future might bring at its worst.
Unspoken in Bush's national security document is the idea that small, unstable, self-seeking states under dictatorial control must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq happens merely to be the first in that category to appear. Its pretensions to nuclear power must be quashed. But -- and this is the real import of the president's statement -- so must similar pretensions, if and when they appear, forever. The president has committed his country to a fearsome duty. It will never go away.
John Keegan writes regularly about security issues for the Daily Telegraph in London, where he is defense editor. He is the author of more than a dozen books on military history, including "A History of Warfare" (Knopf, 1993).
--------
[Interesting ally.]
War as a Con Game
Review of the News,
Week of October 6, 2002,
from The John Birch Society
http://www.jbs.org/reviewonline/021006_transcript.htm
Hello and welcome to Review of the News Online. I'm William Norman Grigg, Senior Editor for The New American magazine - an affiliated publication of The John Birch Society.
In early October, Representative Ron Paul of Texas offered Congress an opportunity to carry out its constitutional duty regarding issues of war and peace. During a hearing in the House International Relations committee, writes Rep. Paul, "I attempted to force the committee to follow the Constitution and vote to declare war with Iraq." Not a single member of the committee voted in favor of the proposed resolution - including Paul, who proposed it as a way of calling his colleagues' bluff.
"Congress would rather give up its most important authorized power to the President and the UN than risk losing an election if the war goes badly," observed Paul. "So members take half steps, supporting confusingly worded `authorizations' that they can back away from easily if necessary." The reaction to Paul's proposed declaration of war dispelled the dense rhetorical fog generated by the Bush administration and its political allies: Apparently the purported threat from Iraq is not as grave as we are being told.
Of the "use of force" resolution written with White House approval, Paul comments: "It's astonishing that the authorization passed by the committee mentions the United Nations dozens of times, yet does not mention the Constitution once.... By transferring its authority to declare war to the President and ultimately the UN, Congress not only violates the Constitution, but also disenfranchises the American electorate."
Some conservative Republicans are willing and eager to alienate the war-declaring power to President Bush. Among them is Utah Senator Robert Bennett, who has stated: "I will be voting for the resolution not because I have figured out all of the unknowables and imponderables relating to it, and not because I am absolutely sure that the presidential power will be used in the right possible way in every possible circumstance. I will be doing it because I trust George W. Bush's instincts."
Why should we trust George W. Bush's "instincts" regarding the exercise of our government's most formidable power - that of making war? What insight and wisdom has he displayed that make him qualified to sort out what Bennett calls "the unknowables and imponderables" involved in this decision? Or do Bennett and others of his ilk subscribe to a doctrine that could be summarized thus: "When the President speaks, the thinking has been done"?
Reciting what has become something of a Republican Party mantra, Bennett insists that President Bush intends to "use his power to expand and defend liberty throughout the world.... That should be the policy that we lay down and hold now for generations to come.... It resonates with the decision of the Founding Fathers when the country was created.... That is the kind of flag to which I can repair. That is the kind of flag I can follow."
Bennett has it exactly wrong. None of the Founding Fathers subscribed to the idea that our nation should embark on grand international crusades to "expand and defend liberty throughout the world." In his Farewell Address, George Washington - the wisest and noblest of the Founders - urged America to preserve our "detached and distant situation [which] invites and enables us to pursue a different course" from quarreling kingdoms abroad. By preserving our enlightened neutrality and refraining from intervention in the affairs of other nations, Washington predicted, we would earn the favor of honorable people and the respectful fear of potential adversaries. Most importantly, by maintaining our neutrality we would preserve the liberty to "choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel."
This precious independence is directly threatened by the Bush administration's insistence that we make war on Iraq in order to bolster the credibility of the United Nations.
While the Bush administration is trying to wrap its war plans in the Stars and Stripes, the flag we would follow into Baghdad would be the sickly pale blue banner of the United Nations. Consider the following statements from the President's October 7th speech:
- "America wants the UN to be an effective organization that helps keep the peace. And that is why we are urging the Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough, immediate requirements."
- "America is challenging all nations to take the resolutions of the UN Security Council seriously."
- "Saddam Hussein has chosen to build and keep [chemical and biological] weapons, despite international sanctions, UN demands and isolation from the civilized world."
- "I have asked Congress to authorize the use of America's military if it proves necessary to enforce UN Security Council demands."
- "The resolution [to use force against Iraq] will tell the United Nations, and all nations, that America speaks with one voice and it is determined to make the demands of the civilized world mean something."
The last statement illustrates the cynical deception being perpetrated by the Bush administration. Our nation does not, and cannot, "speak with one voice" in favor of an aggressive war, particularly one waged to enforce UN resolutions. This is why the President and his handlers insist on gilding their Iraq policy with sentimental invocations of the September 11th atrocity. This is a despicable con game, specifically a bait-and-switch.
In the swindle commonly called a "con game," the key to the swindler's success is to earn, and then betray, the confidence of his victims. Our Founding Fathers were painfully aware of the fact that every government can degenerate into an immense con game, with grave consequences for liberty and prosperity. In his 1798 Kentucky Resolution, Thomas Jefferson warned:
"It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights.... [C]onfidence is everywhere the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther, our confidence may go.... In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
With the help of willing accomplices in Congress, George W. Bush is prying apart the few remaining links in those constitutional chains. Nothing is more dangerous than an unchained government.
There is cause for optimism, however. In a September 10th San Francisco Chronicle column, David R. Henderson, an instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, described a recent encounter with White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez. In his remarks to the young naval officers, Gonzalez "tried to justify not just war without a congressional declaration, but also the government's decision to imprison U.S. citizens ... without charging them with a crime or allowing them a lawyer," recalled Henderson. Gonzalez also insisted that by acquiescing to the president in a series of undeclared wars Congress has effectively given up its war-declaring powers.
As Henderson observes, "Congress' failure to defend its powers, and the courts' unwillingness to enforce Congress' powers, don't change the words and meaning of the Constitution. `We can get away with it' is hardly a strong argument, whether used by an aspiring Supreme Court justice [like Gonzalez] or by his boss, who took a sacred oath to defend the Constitution." Henderson's students agreed with this conclusion: Of thirteen questions posed to Gonzalez, "12 were hardball questions that challenged Gonzalez's expansive claims for presidential power," Henderson reports.
Following the speech, Gonzalez tried to reassure Henderson regarding the purity of the president's motives: "Condi Rice and others and I are looking out for how the president will play in history. We don't want him to look like some monster who destroyed our freedom. Trust us." Henderson's reply was that of a true patriot: "The Constitution is not based on trust, but on distrust."
This vital principle was understood by the capable young military officers in Henderson's class, who are willing to risk their lives to defend the Constitution that George W. Bush and his minions neither understand nor respect.
Thank you for listening. Please join us again next week.
For more information about what you can do to preserve our freedoms, call: 1-800-JBS-USA1
-------- MILITARY
Swiss Call a Meeting to Re-examine the Geneva Conventions
October 6, 2002
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/international/europe/06GENE.html
ZURICH, Oct. 5 - Switzerland will convene a meeting of officials from a representative group of countries in January to try to update how the Geneva Conventions, the nearly 150-year-old rules of warfare, are applied.
The principles of the conventions - fair and humane treatment of prisoners and civilians - will not be up for discussion, Daniel Haener, a spokesman for the Swiss Foreign Ministry, said on Friday. Switzerland, as depository for the conventions, acts as caretaker of the agreements. "It's the application, not the principles, that will be explored" at the informal meeting, which will be at Harvard University, Mr. Haener said.
The three-day meeting, scheduled to begin Jan. 27, will focus on the application of international law given the changing ways of modern warfare. The meeting will also identify areas where further legal refinements are required, according to a memo sent to select countries and obtained by The New York Times.
One Swiss official said that although the issues to be raised were highlighted by the events surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the questions were not limited to them and were topical even before then.
The Geneva Conventions were written in 1864 at the urging of Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, to establish a code for the care and treatment of the sick, wounded and dead in wartime. They were later revised to include issues like the humane treatment of prisoners and the protection of civilians.
The conventions are also used as the basis for seeking remedies against war criminals, as in the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Switzerland has sent notice of the meeting to senior officials of 15 countries and the European Union, though the list of participants has not been made final. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations, as well as independent legal, military and human rights experts, are also being asked to take part.
An American diplomat said that the United States, which was among the countries to receive the proposals, was studying the specifics and that a representative would attend.
The Swiss government hopes to reach a consensus with other nations to reaffirm basic principles relating to human rights, to explore ways to interpret the ideals in light of modern warfare and to harmonize views on applying the conventions, the memo said. The conventions came under public scrutiny this year when human rights groups complained about the American treatment of prisoners from Afghanistan being held at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.
"One of the reasons for the timing was the war on terror," said Mary S. Richardson, project manager of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard, which Switzerland has asked to research the legal issues. "It put into focus a lot of questions."
Among the topics proposed in the memo are how a military objective is appropriately determined and defined in contemporary conflicts, whether it is possible to protect civilians during aerial bombardments and whether facilities essential to public health, like water treatment plants, should be military targets.
The meeting is also expected to explore when the application of laws on human rights should properly begin and end in new conflicts like the American campaign against terror, how long prisoners can be detained in an open-ended war and how to distinguish between civilians and combatants in such conflicts.
-------- afghanistan
After the Taliban: facts and figures
Sunday October 6, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,805551,00.html
· At least 3,600 Afghan civilians are believed to have been killed since the conflict began a year ago.
· Ten thousand tonnes of bombs were dropped, half the amount that hit London during the Blitz.
· $15 billion in Western aid is needed for reconstruction. $4.8bn has been pledged but so far only $1.8bn has arrived - most of which has been spent preventing seven million Afghans from dying of hunger.
· Sixteen Americans died in combat while 23 were killed in aircraft crashes or on other duty. Three British soldiers have died, one by friendly fire, two in an argument.
· Eight foreign journalists were killed.
· 1.7 million refugees have returned, about 70 per cent more than expected. The return has increased the number of street children in Kabul to 38,000.
· In March schools opened to 1.5m children, many of whom had not been to school for six years under Taliban rule. Thirty per cent of pupils are girls but 3m children are still not in school.
· 96 per cent of girls are illiterate and 60 per cent of boys.
· Unicef delivered 7m textbooks, 8m notebooks and 18,000 blackboards to 3,000 schools across the country.
· Opium production, banned under the Taliban, has risen from 185 tons in 2001 to 2,700 this year.
· The first post-war British tourists to Afghanistan departed at the end of August for a 10-day sightseeing trip in Kabul, Herat, Bamian and Mazar-e-Sharif.
-------- europe
Amid trans-Atlantic tension, EU vows to build army
AFP
Sunday October 6, 11:07 AM
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/021006/afp/021006030712top.html
RETHYMNO, Greece (AFP) - The EU vowed this weekend to set up its own army next year despite financial and political clouds, including a clear disagreement with the US over threatened military action against Iraq.
While massively outgunned by the US military might, the 15-member European Union (EU) underlined its determination to stick to a timetable to build its long-stalled Rapid Reaction Force.
"We agreed on a clear political commitment to building the Rapid Reaction Force within the year 2003," said Greek Defence Minister Yannos Papantoniou, on Saturday at the end of two-day talks between EU defence ministers.
"This goal will be met. This is our first priority, even though there was doubt at one stage about whether we could achieve it," he added.
The idea for the EU force was launched in 2001 with the aim of having it ready to deploy, within 60 days and for missions of up to one year, by 2003.
But the global economic slowdown has strained defence budgets across the bloc, while political difficulties and the changed security landscape since September 11, 2001 have raised serious questions over the force.
Europe's military expenditure is dwarfed by the United States, which spends more than double the EU's combined defence budget, which stood at 118 billion euros (116 billion dollars) in 2001.
The latest military fallout from September 11, the threatened war against Iraq, was not on the formal agenda of the ministerial meeting on the Greek island of Crete.
But it overshadowed the talks from the start.
"Our objective is not regime change," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters, demonstrating the clear trans-Atlantic gulf over the Iraqi question.
"The inspectors have to go and to do their job. For that we have chosen together with many countries including the United States the route of the United Nations," he said.
Another potential source of trans-Atlantic tension, also dominated debate at the meeting: a US proposal for a NATO Rapid Reaction Force, made by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a meeting in Warsaw last month.
"That proposal did come as a surprise to some Europeans," said a diplomatic source, admitting to some confusion over the similarity of the names of the two forces.
-------- iran
Iran Won't Treat Stray U.S Warplanes as Enemy
By REUTERS
October 6, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-usa-iran.html
KUWAIT (Reuters) - Iran does not expect Washington to attack it and will turn a blind eye if U.S. warplanes unintentionally enter its airspace while waging war on neighboring Iraq, its defense minister was quoted as saying.
``I believe that the probability of America attacking Iran is very weak,'' Defense Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani said in an interview published Sunday in Kuwait's al-Rai al-Aam daily.
The United States has identified Iran as part of a global ``axis of evil'' along with North Korea and Iraq.
When asked about the possibility of U.S. warplanes entering Iranian airspace in the event of a war against Iraq, Shamkhani said: ``We do not consider the forced and unharmful entry into our airspace by any country as an act of enmity.''
The minister last week hosted talks with Defense Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Hamad al-Sabah of Kuwait, a base for U.S. forces and a likely launchpad of any attack on Iraq.
Iran says it is opposed to a U.S. attack on Iraq and the presence of foreign forces in the vital oil-rich region. It has called on Gulf Arab neighbors to jointly assume the responsibility of security in the waterway and the area.
Officials in Tehran describe their policy on Iraq, which Iran fought for eight years in the 1980s, as one of ``active neutrality'' and have said they will not be drawn into any conflict.
The United States cut diplomatic ties with Iran after students seized its embassy in Tehran in 1979 following the Islamic revolution.
-------- iraq
Iraq could face fresh nightmares in post-Saddam era
By Alistair Lyon,
Middle East Diplomatic Correspondent
06 Oct 2002
Reuters
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L06456683?view=PrinterFriendly
LONDON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - If the United States and Britain have far-sighted plans for reshaping a post-war Iraq without destabilising the Middle East, they have yet to reveal them.
Assuming the two powers most determined to rid Iraq of its alleged arsenal of doomsday weapons eventually invade, victory will remove Saddam Hussein and unleash pent-up pressures in a land laced into a Baathist straitjacket by a man who has ferociously crushed all challenges to his 23-year-old rule.
That will impose awesome responsibilities on the United States and its allies, who may include regional leaders with their own ambitions or fears regarding a Saddam-free Iraq.
In the immediate aftermath of Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, Kurds and Shi'ite Muslims staged separate uprisings marked by revenge attacks on Baathist targets. Saddam's troops then mercilessly crushed the revolts once it became clear that the United States would not impede their tanks and helicopters.
Given that experience, a strong hand will be needed immediately to hold bloodletting in check.
"The Americans will be duty bound to hold the country together," said Iraq expert Toby Dodge of Warwick University. "It would be an act of folly and recklessness not to go in with enough troops to impose order once the regime is toppled."
President George W. Bush has talked of democracy in a free Iraq -- a vision to which his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has said the United States is committed.
But doubts, articulated even by some hawkish members of the U.S. administration, persist. Pentagon official Richard Perle said last week that criticism that the Bush team lacked a "vision" for a post-Saddam Iraq was "entirely justified".
COMPETING COMMUNITIES
Iraq's population divides broadly into a Kurdish minority in the north, majority Shi'ites in the south and a Sunni Muslim minority that has long dominated the central government.
Each will want a say in any future order, though analysts, citing the national loyalty shown by the army's mainly Shi'ite rank and file in the 1980-88 war with Shi'ite Iran, say fears of territorial disintegration may be exaggerated.
Such worries may be less keenly felt by Iraqis than by neighbours such as Turkey, aghast at the idea of Iraqi Kurdish autonomy, let alone independence, and Saudi Arabia, nervous at Iran's potential influence over resurgent Iraqi Shi'ites.
The United States, which has fitfully encouraged Iraqi opposition groups gathered under the umbrella of the Iraqi National Congress, seems undecided about their future role.
The INC, led by Ahmed Chalabi, has powerful friends in the Pentagon and Congress. But the State Department and CIA question whether exile groups wield influence inside Iraq -- and some officials are said to argue that replacing Saddam with another military ruler would best serve Iraqi and regional stability.
Iraq's Kurds reopened their long-dormant regional parliament on Friday, aiming to put years of feuding behind them and stake a claim for autonomy from Baghdad if Saddam is overthrown.
"There is a vision of Iraq we share with the United States. The U.S. government approves a democratic, pluralist and federal Iraq. The details have not been sorted out yet, but we have been assured they will not replace one dictatorship with another," said Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
The Kurds, who have held three provinces with the help of allied air power since 1991 and have vivid memories of Saddam's 1988 poison gas attacks, hope this is not wishful thinking.
The main Shi'ite opposition, the Tehran-based Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, also backs a federal solution for Iraq, but publicly refuses to accept U.S. aid.
Sunni opposition forces are more fragmented, with many centred around defectors from the armed forces or intelligence services. Their level of support inside Iraq is hard to gauge.
STRONG-ARM RULE
Dodge was scathing about theories favoured by some U.S. hawks that Western-oriented free-market liberal democrats would emerge triumphant in Iraq as soon as Saddam was out of the way.
"There is no one outside the country, especially the INC, who has any influence or detailed understanding of what is going on in Iraq at the moment," he argued.
Dodge, who visited Iraq last month, said cash-starved state institutions had withered and died since the last Gulf War.
"The only one that got stronger is the (food) rationing system, leaving unofficial networks of patronage and influence," he said, adding that Saddam's anti-democratic and violent networks were the only existing means to exercise power.
"The Iraqi state is one of most effective dictatorships in the world. Society is broken and atomised. The only structures are patronage, clan and tribe that have been encouraged by the regime and would not be a healthy seedbed for democracy.
"But the Pentagon hawks are not advocating state-building and no one has done any contingency planning," he said.
The United States openly advocates toppling Saddam, but its main ally Britain, insists that it has more limited goals.
"Regime change, desirable as it may be, is not the British government's objective," a senior official said on Friday. "The British government's objective is disarmament."
The official, who asked not to be named, said Britain and its allies were committed to Iraq's territorial integrity.
"No one is thinking of redrawing the map of the Middle East. We want Iraq to emerge as a law-abiding member of the international community that does not threaten its neighbours or its own people, or develop weapons of mass destruction."
He said that if U.S.-led forces overthrew Saddam, rebuilding Iraq would be as vital an imperative as rebuilding Afghanistan.
"We can't just walk away without ensuring a transition to a new and legitimate Iraqi government," the official said, but offered no detailed views on how this could come about.
Dodge, citing the Afghan experience, said he doubted the Americans would apply the money, concentration and intelligence needed to rebuild a stable and benign state in Iraq.
The likely alternative?
"Well, what do I know? But one possibility is a series of rolling coups till one particularly astute and vicious general consolidates his grip on power," he said.
----
Iraq May Drop Inspection Limits
Presidential Sites Have Been Barred
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 6, 2002; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48873-2002Oct5?language=printer
Iraq may soon announce it is prepared to drop restrictions covering United Nations inspections of Saddam Hussein's eight presidential sites in the face of a U.N. Security Council resolution that will call for "any time and any place" visits, and thus eliminate a 1998 agreement that governed those sensitive sites, according to U.N. and U.S. officials.
"The threat of what is coming will make Iraq move, so that they appear to be taking the initiative and not being forced to do it by the U.N.," said one official familiar with the international discussions. "It is all part of getting rid of the 'cat-and-mouse game.' "
In December 1998, U.N. inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq after Hussein's intelligence and security groups either blocked inspectors from entering facilities, or gained advance information on where they were going and removed equipment and materials before they arrived.
One reason for searching presidential palaces was to obtain documents on Iraq's concealment program, which was run by Hussein's Special Security Organization, headquartered in one of the palaces. That organization played a major role in tracking and surveilling the U.N. inspectors, said Charles Duelfer, the former deputy executive chairman of the U.N. inspection group who led the team that conducted did the 10-day initial survey of the eight presidential sites in March and April 1998.
At a meeting last week in Vienna to set the stage for inspectors, the Iraqis told Hans Blix, chief of the U.N. inspection team, and Mohamed ElBaradi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that the returning teams could inspect the headquarters of the Special Security Organization and Hussein's Special Republican Guard, which also participated in the concealment program.
However, Iraq's officials in Vienna announced the overall 1998 agreement governing the palace visits would remain in effect. That brought an immediate reaction from the United States and Britain, whose draft resolution set the "any time and any place" standard.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called the palace restrictions unacceptable. Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz immediately defended the 1998 agreement, adding that Washington was trying to create "a belligerent resolution."
Nevertheless, as the Security Council begins meeting this week to settle details of the new resolution, U.N. and U.S. officials believe Baghdad will reverse its position as it did last month. Iraq then agreed to the inspectors' return not long after some of its top officials said inspections were finished.
While the question of the palaces appears to be under control, sources said there are a range of detailed issues that have to be worked out before the new resolution is final.
High on the list are such controversial matters as how it will be decided whether Iraq is cooperating with inspectors, and what will be done with regard to U.N. economic sanctions now in place if Hussein does not interfere with inspections.
In addition, the U.S. and British draft resolution calls for Iraq to provide a detailed list of its chemical, biological and nuclear programs within 30 days after Baghdad officially accepts the new inspection regime.
The Iraqis have said there is no need for such a declaration because they no longer have such programs. "They are stonewalling the declaration," one official involved in the process said yesterday.
The United States has insisted Baghdad's programs have continued. A CIA report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, released Friday, said, "Iraq probably has concealed precursors, production equipment, documentation and other items necessary for continuing its CW [chemical warfare] effort." It adds that Baghdad never adequately proved it had destroyed tons of chemical precursors and thousands of unfilled munitions.
During the 1991 to 1998 inspections period, the Iraqis secretly destroyed undeclared materials after it appeared they were about to be caught, or submitted additional declarations under similar circumstances.
At Vienna, the Iraqis delivered several compact computer disks with data on equipment and materials that could be used to produce prohibited weapons. Delivery of this "dual-use information," required to be provided every six months to the U.N. inspectors, had stopped at the end of 1998 when the on-site program was ended.
One official said yesterday that the information is being reviewed and could provide leads on new facilities to be inspected.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Set to Use New Missile Shield to Counter Scuds
New York Times
October 6, 2002
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/international/middleeast/06MISS.html
PALMACHIM AIR FORCE BASE, Israel - Israel has deployed an operational missile defense and is ready to use it to protect Tel Aviv and other major population centers if they come under fire from Iraq's arsenal of Scud missiles.
Known as the Arrow, the system is designed to avoid the pitfalls of the American Patriot system, which Israelis say had little success in stopping Iraq's Scud missile attacks during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
The program, which will cost more than $2 billion, is partly financed by the United States. One battery is already deployed here, and when the final interceptors and radars are installed about two years from now, Israel will be the first nation in the world to have a nationwide missile defense system.
If the Bush administration follows through with its threats to attack Iraq, and Saddam Hussein lashes out at Israel, the Arrow could be put to the test in what would be an important trial of antimissile technology.
"It would be the first time in history that an interceptor that was developed strictly to shoot down incoming missiles is used," a Pentagon official said. "The Patriot used in 1991 was designed to shoot down airplanes and modified to give it some kind of antimissile capability. But from the start, the Arrow was built to intercept ballistic missiles. The whole world will be watching to see what happens, and we will be watching."
At the heavily guarded Palmachim air force base south of Tel Aviv, the Israeli military has been preparing for one of Israel's worst nightmares: a salvo of Al Hussein Scud missiles from Iraq, possibly carrying chemical or biological agents. The flight time for an Iraqi Scud to a target in Israel is only about six or seven minutes.
Wearing gas masks and protective suits, Arrow crews practice reloading the Arrow missile launcher in an environment contaminated with chemical agents. In the fire control center, Israeli officers practice tracking and intercepting incoming Scud missiles under various attack scenarios. Unlike the Patriot system used in the gulf war, whose fire control system was essentially automated, the Israeli system allows military officers to decide when to fire the Arrow interceptor.
At a firing site, huge launchers, each loaded with six Arrow interceptors, stand at the ready while Israel's Green Pine radar scans the skies.
"We did a lot of testing, and most were successful," said Danny Peretz, the program manager for the Arrow at Israel Aircraft Industries, which makes the system. "But we know in our hearts and put it in the design that this weapon will be tested only in war."
The Arrow has its origins in President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. After Mr. Reagan began his "Star Wars" program, Israel joined in the research and development effort. At first there was considerable debate in Israel as to whether it really needed a missile shield, a dispute that was essentially ended during the gulf war when 39 Iraqi Scud missiles struck Israeli territory.
"There were lot of arguments that Israel was so powerful that nobody would launch a missile at us," Mr. Peretz said. "But that all changed in 1991. Would anybody dare launch a missile at Israel? Well, somebody did."
After the conflict, the Israeli government decided that it needed its own antimissile system and that the system needed to do a better job of stopping Scuds than the Patriot did. The Arrow program moved into high gear.
The Arrow is what military experts call a theater defense system, meaning it is designed to intercept medium- and short-range missiles, not ocean-spanning intercontinental missiles. But because Israel is such a small country, the three batteries it plans to deploy will be a true nationwide system, protecting all of Israel's territory.
The primary threats are from the east and north, and they are growing. Iraq has a small covert force of Al Hussein Scuds, according to American and British intelligence. Iran is on the verge of fielding the Shahab-3, which will have the range to strike Israel. Syria is also building up its force of Scud missiles. Israel has used the Green Pine radar to monitor tests of Syria's Scud-D missile. If Libya improves its missiles, Israel will face a potential threat from the west as well.
Operated by the Israeli Air Force, one Arrow battery has been operational here at the Palmachim base for two years. The deployment of the second battery in central Israel was delayed when people who lived nearby complained that the Green Pine radar might endanger their health.
The Israelis are trying to make the second battery operational before any American attack on Iraq. As a stopgap, the Arrow missile launchers from the second battery can be linked to Palmachim battery to improve its effectiveness, an Israeli Defense Ministry official said.
"We can cover the heart of the country and the largest population centers in central Israel and in the north," said Lt. Col. Shahar Shohat, who commands the Arrow battery here.
The United States paid about half of the $1.6 billion cost of developing the Arrow system, a Pentagon official said, while Israel paid the entire several hundred million dollars needed to develop the Green Pine radar, which tracks incoming missiles and guides Arrow interceptors toward their targets.
The Arrow differs from the Patriot in several important respects. During the gulf war, the Patriot intercepted Iraq's Scud missiles toward the end of their flight. By then, the missiles - purchased from the Soviet Union, modified by the Iraqis to extend their range and called Al Hussein - often fell apart in flight and broke into pieces. This confused the Patriot system, which fired lots of interceptors at the pieces or sometimes was unable to discern which was the warhead and fired no interceptors at all.
So the Israelis did it differently. They designed a system that is intended to intercept the Scud at a higher altitude. Destroying the warhead sooner, and farther from Israeli territory, is also prudent if the missile is carrying a chemical or biological warhead.
"The Iraqi Al Hussein missiles separated when they got inside the atmosphere," Colonel Shohat said, "So if we intercept at a higher altitude, we don't have to deal with separation."
The Arrow is not what the Pentagon calls a "hit to kill" system, meaning it would not destroy the incoming missile by smashing into it. Instead, it would maneuver close enough to the incoming Scud to destroy it with an explosive charge.
Israeli officials said the Arrow had been integrated into the nation's military planning. If Iraq staged an attack, the first warning would come from the Americans, whose spy satellites can detect the heat from rocket plumes as soon as they ignite. The information would be quickly transmitted to Israel.
Soon after, Israel's Green Pine radar would begin to track the Scud, probably in the ascent phase. Using tracking data from Green Pine, Israeli officers would determine the probable launching point. That information could be immediately transmitted to the Israeli Air Force, which could carry out airstrikes on the Iraqi Scud launchers, which are mobile, before they could move or shoot again.
Data from the Green Pine system would also be used to estimate the point of impact. Based on this information, Israel's Home Front Command would sound an alert in the target area. Israeli citizens would have several minutes to go to their shelters and put on gas masks.
Then the Arrow batteries would swing into action. Interceptors would be fired toward the incoming Scuds. The Arrows would be directed toward their target by Green Pine and would then close in using sensors that detect the Scud's heat. Then the Arrow's warhead would explode, destroying the Scud warhead.
But the Israelis are still in a touchy situation. They have a limited supply of Arrows, which cost $3 million a missile. Boeing is teaming up with Israel to increase the production of interceptors. But the additional interceptors will not begin to become available for about two years, too late if war breaks out soon between the United States and Iraq but in time for possible new threats from Iran and Syria.
So Israel must husband its inventory of Arrow interceptors. That is one reason why the Arrow, unlike the Patriot, does not rely exclusively on computers to make the decision to fire. An Israeli officer can override the computer and decide whether to fire and with how many interceptors.
"The only sure thing in war is that the unexpected is going to happen," Mr. Peretz said. "You cannot build a weapon system that will rely on a computer only. You have to be able to work manually as well as fully automatic."
Any Scud that eluded the Arrow could be attacked by Patriot systems, which work at lower altitudes and are also part of the Israeli arsenal. The United States is also likely to send additional Patriot batteries in the event of war. They will be under the command of Colonel Shohat, who was trained in air defense at the United States Army base at Fort Bliss, Tex.
Thus, the Israelis now have a two-track capability: a high-altitude defense using the Arrow and a lower-tier Patriot.
The initial Arrow test failed when there was a computer mishap and the interceptor was blown up five seconds into the test by the range safety officer. The two next tests also failed. But Israeli officials said eight of the last nine tests had been successful. Still, officials acknowledge, the real test will be in war.
"If this war is going to emerge it, could be a test case of 14 years of development by a lot of people," Mr. Peretz said.
-------- mideast
No Iraqi missiles pointed at Israel
Margot Dudkevitch
Oct. 6, 2002
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/PrinterFull&cid=1033853394035
There are no missiles currently deployed in western Iraq that can be launched against Israel, OC Intelligence Maj-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash) said Saturday.
Ze'evi told Channel 2's Meet the Press, that to his knowledge, the army has received no information suggesting the presence of missiles or any plans to deploy them in the area in the future. He said Israel estimates that the US action against Iraq will occur any time between November and next March, adding that the US has not informed Israel of any timeline or specifics of the action it plans to take.
Ze'evi's comments came a day after Chief of General Staff Lt-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon told participants at the Industry and Commerce Club in Tel Aviv that Israel will respond if attacked by Iraq. The situation with Iraq, he said, "doesn't cause me to lose any sleep."
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may attempt to deploy warplanes to fire missiles with chemical or biological warheads at Israel, said Ze'evi, adding that the distance involved and Israel's strengthened defensive capability would make such an action difficult. He said he believes that if Hussein feels threatened he may be tempted to act in an attempt to garner support from the Arab world.
"Our capability since the Gulf War has strengthened on all parameters, and theirs has weakened," Ze'evi said. "Those who should be worried are Saudi Arabia, the Iranians, Hizbullah, and Syria, and only then Israel," he added. According to intelligence estimates, Iraq is two, three, or four years away from possessing nuclear capability, he said.
It is very clear the Iraqis are involved in Palestinian terrorism, Ze'evi said, adding that there are direct contacts between them and several Palestinian terrorist organizations who they supply with millions of dollars to be paid out to the families of suicide bombers and those wounded in the "Aksa intifada."
Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat accused Israel of taking advantage of the world's focus on Iraq in order to harm the Palestinians. He said he has demanded that all terrorist organizations halt terrorist activities inside Israel.
"Neither my military honor nor our Islamic religion accept the killing of a woman in the street or at a cafe, or a civilian man or child, or in a university," he said.
However, Arafat has never called on terrorists to refrain from attacks against Israelis in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
Ze'evi said it was too early to make conclusions about the IDF operation at Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, but declared that since troops pulled out there have been no suicide bomb attacks inside Israel.
Ze'evi said senior Palestinian officials are meeting with officials from Hamas and Islamic Jihad and demanding a halt to terrorist activities. "We saw this before the Mukata [compound operation] and we are seeing more increased efforts since troops pulled out a week ago," he said.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1033853394035
-------- us
For the U.S. Military, A Transforming View From the Maginot Line
By Vernon Loeb
Sunday, October 6, 2002
Washington Post; Page B02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46461-2002Oct5?language=printer
BOUILLON, Belgium
In the dense Ardennes forest, where the Germans began their daring blitzkrieg invasion of France, Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs arrived one afternoon last month in search of answers.
The four-star commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe seemed puzzled by what had happened here in May 1940, when the Germans, having learned from their defeat in World War I, punched through this forbidding terrain, crossed two rivers, maneuvered around the supposedly "impenetrable" Maginot line and knocked France out of World War II in just six weeks.
"Why does the loser learn quicker and better than the winner?" Meigs asked as we began a drive along the Semois River, which elements of Germany's XIX Panzer Corps forded on their way through Belgium. "You've got to think about this. Because, right now, the American military is the winner. And how do we not let [what happened here] happen to us?"
Meigs was leading a group that included two dozen of his subordinates, myself and a handful of generals from Germany, Russia and Britain on what the Army calls a "staff ride," a century-old teaching device that lets up-and-coming commanders walk historic battlefields, study the terrain and ponder the decisions taken by the great and not-so-great generals of the past.
His questions also carried a subtext, questioning the latest Pentagon obsession -- military "transformation," which President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld promise will finish turning a supposedly plodding industrial-age military into a nimble information-age force. Bush's faith in transformation is based on the belief that the U.S. military is in the midst of an "RMA," or "revolution in military affairs." That idea, associated most closely with Andrew Marshall, the director of the Pentagon's in-house think tank, suggests that emerging technologies and new concepts periodically change the nature of war and produce dramatic gains in military effectiveness. This belief is guiding the Pentagon's plans for future acquisitions. Some people worry that it's also feeding overconfidence about U.S. fighting capabilities in the event of a war with Iraq.
The Ardennes forest offers a powerful lens for viewing the transformation debate because the blitzkrieg occupies a special place in RMA theory. If the United States is in the midst of the third and last RMA of the 20th century, built upon precision, stealth and high-speed data, the German blitzkrieg is generally considered the first. RMA theorists believe that the Germans fused new tactics and emerging technologies -- the internal combustion engine, the radio, the mounted machine gun and improved aircraft design -- to produce a highly mobile style of warfare that left the French, hunkered down along the Maginot line and other defensive perimeters, simply unable to cope.
Meigs is a skeptic. He doesn't subscribe to the theory that there are periodic "revolutions in military affairs." And he is downright dubious about the idea that the U.S. military must either radically "transform" itself with "skip-a-generation" technologies -- to use Bush's phrase -- or risk meeting the same fate as the French.
"Transformation," Meigs believes, has become an ideology in a Pentagon where dissenters are not particularly welcome, even though this "transformed" future force has never been clearly defined and the amount of money needed to create it could jeopardize highly effective current capabilities. He describes the prevailing Pentagon mood like this: They say, "There's an RMA [underway], we're going to use it to transform the military, and anybody who disagrees with us is a Luddite."
Meigs is no Luddite. He has embraced technology, but he's also developed innovative ways to rapidly deploy heavy tank and armored units left over from the Cold War in a world where far-flung contingencies have become an everyday fact of life. "We ought to leverage what's changed and realize what hasn't," Meigs told me. "The new technology is not a panacea. There's still no silver bullet. What wins or loses is your ability to shatter the will of your opponent -- that's how you win wars."
Indeed, the paradoxical lesson of traipsing through the Ardennes for three days was that human factors -- leadership, tactics, training and discipline -- were the keys to success for the XIX Panzer Corps under Gen. Heinz Guderian as it sliced through the Ardennes in Belgium, crossed the Meuse River at Sedan, and pushed deep into France between the Maginot line to the south and the main French force to the north.
According to blitzkrieg mythology -- the invention of Nazi propagandists after France fell -- German technology (better tanks and airpower) were the keys to victory. In fact, it was old-fashioned German foot soldiers who fought their way across the Meuse so the tanks could follow. They took advantage of an autocratic French leadership, which based its static strategy on defensive perimeters, not rapid maneuver. The Germans actually did not hold much of a technological edge. The French had superior tanks in greater numbers and battlefield materiel that was roughly equivalent.
Indeed, it can be argued that the French fell victim to faith in technology, believing that the Maginot line would protect France's eastern border with Germany, while the forest, ravines and rivers of the Ardennes to the north would be a natural barrier. The Maginot line was the ultimate in military high-tech, with tunnels linking networks of armored bunkers and command centers. Though wildly expensive and still incomplete at the time of the German assault, it was considered impregnable -- until Guderian went around it.
Led by three military historians, Meigs's staff ride stopped at the crest of a hill to survey the ruins of a cast-iron fortress that was once the Maginot line's northernmost outpost. "This is a combination of what [World War II Gen. George S.] Patton called the false security of the fortress -- and a misapplication of technology," Meigs said, standing atop the devastated structure, which was overrun by German infantry.
Meigs has a compelling background, lending pedigree, if not weight, to his views. His great-great-uncle, another Maj. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, was Lincoln's quartermaster general during the Civil War and is credited with transforming a small, disorganized force into a large, well-organized war-fighting machine. His father, Lt. Col. Montgomery C. Meigs, was killed in France at the age of 24 on Dec. 11, 1944, commanding a tank battalion in the Lorraine region.
Meigs was born a month later in Annapolis. He graduated from West Point in 1967 and commanded an armored cavalry unit in Vietnam. In the early 1980s, he taught history at West Point. With a PhD in history from the University of Wisconsin, Meigs could have become an Army intellectual and served in senior staff jobs at the Pentagon and the National Security Council.
Instead, he took over an armored cavalry regiment in 1984. By 1991, he was a colonel leading the 1st Armored Division's 2nd Brigade across the Iraqi desert. There, above the northwest corner of Kuwait, his brigade stumbled upon the Iraqi Madinah Division's 2nd Brigade, the last significant formation Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's military would field during the Gulf War. Meigs gave the order to fire, and 166 American M1A1 tanks destroyed 60 Iraqi T-72 tanks and dozens of personnel carriers in 40 minutes.
"I was just doing my job -- doing what I was trained to do," he said. Meigs considers his later command of the 1st Infantry Division and NATO's peacekeeping mission in the northern sector of Bosnia in 1996 and 1997 far more "abstract and difficult." Who would ever have thought, he said, that an armored unit built to stop the Soviets at the Fulda Gap could perform a peacekeeping mission in the Balkans?
That's one reason he has reservations about transformation. RMA theorists disparage the Army's so-called "legacy" forces, which Meigs says remain highly effective, particularly in the mountains of Afghanistan or the cities of Iraq, where precision strike capabilities are limited. "How much of that total capability are you willing to throw out to optimize precision strike [capability]?" Meigs asked, noting that it is impossible for Pentagon planners to predict who the nation's adversaries will be -- and what capabilities will be needed to fight them -- five or 10 years from now. A high-tech future military could be vulnerable to countermeasures and new tactics, he said, pointing out the Serbs' success in hiding and protecting their armor in Kosovo throughout the 78 days of NATO airstrikes in 1999.
"Combat and peacekeeping operations always involve risk of failure," Meigs wrote in a recent essay on the four qualities required of Army generals -- force of intellect, energy, selflessness and basic humanity. "Despite the best plans and the best training, the outcome is always subject to random factors and to error and is in doubt. The difference between winning and not winning lies often in the faith of the unit in their leader and in the ability together to persevere through the last final push that breaks enemies' will."
And that's part of the lesson I took away from my ride with Meigs. The revolution in military affairs that took place in the Ardennes was a revolution in thinking. While both sides shared new motorized tank technology, only Germany applied it with determination and innovative maneuvers to create a new way of fighting.
What does that mean for today's U.S. military? The American video-guided bombs that flew down ventilator shafts in the Persian Gulf War and the unmanned Predator drones that fired anti-tank missiles at fleeing al Qaeda leaders in four-wheel drives in Afghanistan made the saturation bombing of World War II and carpet-bombing of Vietnam look like World War I trench warfare. But how America's new technologies are applied remains critical. The single biggest mistake made by U.S. commanders in the Afghan war came in December, when they used air power to bomb the caves at Tora Bora but didn't use U.S. forces to block the escape routes into Pakistan -- and hundreds of al Qaeda fighters, and possibly Osama bin Laden himself, got away.
When revolutionary changes do happen, they flow as much from leadership and creativity as from silver bullet, "leap ahead" technologies, maybe even more. As one of Meigs's aides put it, with an eye squarely on a possible invasion of Iraq: "We may never need a tank again -- until next month." While precision strikes have changed warfare -- and hold great promise -- winning wars in the future will probably still require some old-fashioned military tools and, yes, putting American boots on the ground.
Vernon Loeb covers the Pentagon for The Post.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
ICC treaty 'not a license for impunity'
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
October 6, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021006-73482360.htm
In response to the worrisome note sounded in "EU to let members sign pacts on ICC" (Page 1, Tuesday), readers should be told that Article 98 of the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty is not a license for impunity. The U.S. government claims its lobbying of other governments to sign bilateral agreements to prevent the surrender to the ICC of personnel accused of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity is authorized by Article 98 of the ICC treaty. These agreements, however, are anything but legitimate, as Article 98 (2) was never intended to serve as a license for undermining the court's jurisdiction. Article 98 (2) was drafted to ensure that obligations under existing Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) would not conflict with obligations under the ICC treaty. While SOFAs assign responsibility for investigating and prosecuting crimes committed by members of the armed forces stationed in another country and require each country to provide the other with assistance in such investigations and prosecutions, the sole purpose of the agreements the United States is seeking is to prevent the ICC from exercising its jurisdiction. Countries that enter into such agreements are not required to investigate and prosecute covered persons and surely will be under intense political pressure from the United States not to do so. The United States has made clear that it will only investigate and prosecute persons for the worst possible crimes in the world "when appropriate." Moreover, the United States does not have legislation defining all crimes in the ICC treaty as crimes under U.S. law when such crimes are committed abroad. Thus, if the United States is unable or unwilling to investigate or prosecute, neither the ICC nor the courts of any country that enters into such an agreement can step in as courts of last resort. For this reason, the so-called Article 98 agreements are more aptly described as impunity agreements.
VIENNA COLUCCI
International justice specialist Amnesty International USA
-------- terrorists
Bin Laden still alive, reveals spy satellite
A year of life on the edge
Jason Burke in Jalalabad
Sunday October 6, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,805618,00.html
Osama bin Laden is alive and regularly meeting Mullah Omar, the fugitive leader of the Taliban, according to a telephone call intercepted by American spy satellites.
In the conversation, recorded less than a month ago, Omar and a senior aide were discussing the American-led hunt to track them down. The two men, using a mobile Thuraya satellite phone, spoke about tactics for several minutes. Omar then turned to a third person who was within a few yards of him, voice analysis has revealed. After exchanging a few words, Omar said that 'the sheikh sends his salaams [greetings]'. Senior Taliban figures habitually refer to bin Laden as 'the sheikh'.
Voice analysis appears to corroborate the identification of bin Laden. 'It shows he was alive recently at least,' said a senior Afghan intelligence officer. 'Some people might like to think he is dead, but that's just wishful thinking.'
The revelation comes amid growing speculation that bin Laden is dead. He has looked gaunt and unwell in videos released by al-Qaeda, and appeared unable to use his left arm. There has been no public statement from bin Laden since early this year.
Some analysts say this lack of communication indicates that he might be dead, but others say he is biding his time. 'He does not want to be rushed into saying something reactive. He wants to make statements on his own terms,' said Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of al-Quds newspaper in London.
Other analysts feel Omar could have been bluffing, knowing he was being listened to by the Americans.
Bin Laden's whereabouts are unknown, but it is thought he is moving between Pakistan and Afghanistan via the border between the Afghan province of Paktia and the Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan. There were unconfirmed sightings of him in eastern Afghanistan in March and April. The only confirmed location for him was at Tora Bora, the cave complex south of Jalalabad, in December.
----
Chemical labs show al Qaeda still active
By Ralph Joseph
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 6, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021006-9707730.htm
KARACHI, Pakistan - Three small chemical labs found in terrorist hide-outs in Karachi in recent weeks indicate that al Qaeda's bid to build chemical, biological and perhaps even nuclear weapons did not end with the destruction of its bases in Afghanistan.
The labs, in which undisclosed quantities of cyanide and other toxic chemicals were stored, were found in safe houses used by local cells of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi group, whose operatives trained in Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks. The local terrorists have been working with al Qaeda in Pakistan since the fall of the Taliban.
Officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said the discovery of the makeshift labs in July came as a surprise to Pakistani authorities, who had believed that al Qaeda had moved some of its weapons-making operations from Afghanistan to other points in the Middle East, but not to Pakistan.
Pakistani intelligence officials now say Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, whose operatives are not sophisticated enough to build even a car bomb themselves, probably received help from al Qaeda members in the labs.
Earlier arrests made during a raid on a smugglers' village near Karachi led the authorities to believe that al Qaeda had moved much of its lab equipment to other countries in the region with the help of gold smugglers who had been operating for decades between Pakistan and several Middle Eastern countries.
The al Qaeda shipments, which reportedly also included several sacks of gold, were made just before the U.S.-led coalition forces began bombing Afghanistan last year. The terrorists had foreseen the bombing operations and made full use of the smugglers' services.
By the time the Pakistani authorities swooped down on the smugglers' village, called Ibrahim Hyder, the entire operation was over. Much of the gold reportedly went to Sudan.
Meanwhile, attempts to locate other weapons labs could be a challenge for the Pakistani intelligence community.
Al Qaeda and its local allies, including Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and the Jaish-i-Mohammed group, have now reorganized into small cells of three to five persons, each charged with a specific operation.
Lt. Gen. Javad Ashraf Qazi, a former Pakistan military intelligence chief, says trying to find a group of three to five persons in a city of more than 10 million "is next to impossible."
Nevertheless, investigations over the past few months indicate that al Qaeda fighters have taken shelter mainly in eight or nine suburbs of Karachi where the group's Pakistani and Afghan sympathizers are concentrated.
Most of the arrests in Karachi so far came with assistance of FBI agents using equipment that enables them to monitor cell-phone traffic and to pinpoint where specific calls originate.
Thousands of al Qaeda members hiding in Pakistan use cell phones to keep in touch and seem to communicate mainly in Arabic, but recognizing who is who is often tricky.
However, Ramzi Binalshibh, a key al Qaeda leader arrested last month, apparently slipped when he allowed himself to be interviewed on tape by a reporter working for Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based television network. The voice pattern obtained from the broadcast gave investigators something to work with in Karachi.
A neighbor of Binalshibh in Karachi said Pakistani intelligence agents began watching the terrorist's safe house after the interview was broadcast, but commandos "did not move in until September 11, to coincide with President Pervez Musharraf's trip to New York."
None of the numerous cell-phone calls intercepted in Karachi gave police any hint of the presence of al Qaeda chemical labs there.
-------- ACTIVISTS
THE SACRED EARTH AND SPACE PLOWSHARES II has been born!
From: "Jonah House" disarmnow@erols.com
6 Oct 2002
We got a phone call about 5:00 p.m. today from Carol. She reported that she, Ardeth, and Jackie were en route to the Women's Detention Center in Greeley CO. They were indicted by the state of CO (to date) for felony destruction (of, it seems, a farmer's fence); further charges are anticipated when they appear in court in the a.m.
THE SACRED EARTH AND SPACE PLOWSHARES II has been born!
The story Carol shared went something like this:
At 7:30 this morning (Sunday, October 6, 2002) they cut through a gate and entered a missile silo site N-8 near Greeley CO. The walked a bit further and cut through a second gate and entered the silo area. Upon arriving inside the silo, they used their hammers to hammer on the tracks (on which the lid of the silo is pulled to the side to allow the missile to be released); they also hammered on the silo itself. They used their blood to make the sign of the cross on the tracks and on the silo. They then began defencing - cutting through the fence in 3 places.
Upon completing the action, they began their liturgy. They were able to complete the liturgy and sing many songs and hymns before they saw air force personnel in the distance. By 8:30 they were ringed with humvees and machine guns pointed at them by military personnel.
They were placed under arrest; at some time in the process they were questioned by the FBI; they gave those important persons only their names (but maybe their addresses) and that was all. Never being very fast, it was 5:00 p.m. before they were ready to be shipped to the local jail.
The only other piece of information that we got from Carol was that the 3 were dressed in white mop up suits - as used by crews doing toxic clean up. On the back of their suits they had stenciled : CWIT (Citizen Weapons Inspection Team); on the front they had stenciled: Disarmament Specialists.
All three are well, in good health, grateful, ready, interested in all their friends. Attached are their statement and a photo of the three Dominican sisters. Love to you. Liz et al at Jonah House
----
Belgian police arrest 'bombspotting' protesters
06 October 2002
New Zealand Stuff
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2071322a12,00.html
Belgian police on foot and horseback came out in force yesterday to arrest more than half the protesters at an air force base where nuclear bombs are allegedly stockpiled.
As a helicopter hovered overhead, police in riot gear arrested 1117 out of an estimated 1700 people taking part in the peaceful "bombspotting" protest at the base near the town of Kleine Brogel near the Dutch border, a police spokesman said.
A few politicians were also handcuffed during the annual protest against the alleged stockpiling of 10 US B-61 nuclear bombs at the base.
Police released the protesters shortly afterwards.
Protesters - some wearing gas masks, others carrying banners - tried to enter the base and occupy it to demand the removal of the bombs.
Organisers of the protest invited people to bring sandwiches for a picnic in case they managed to get into the base.
"As long as we occupy the base, the planes carrying nuclear weapons cannot take off," their website said.
Belgium's government has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of the bombs at the base.
----
Un-American Arrests
Mass detainments of the innocent may be the ultimate form of crowd control, but the tactic is unconstitutional.
Sunday, October 6, 2002
Washington Post; Page B08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42867-2002Oct4?language=printer
The urgent calls began late on the first day of the World Bank- International Monetary Fund protests: Students who were either reporters or bystanders had been swept up in mass arrests. The accounts had one common element: All the students were arrested while trying to comply with the law.
The D.C. and National Park Service police had used the same technique in each instance:
Surround the crowd. Tell its members to disperse or face arrest. And then, as people try to disperse, block their escape with rows of officers in riot gear and arrest them.
This happened to a number of student reporters from various universities who were arrested while older reporters were allowed to exit through police lines. One student photographer was clubbed by police while taking pictures. The students then were held in handcuffs on buses for as long as 10 hours before being taken to holding areas for the night, where they slept with one wrist handcuffed to an ankle. Police told them they would be held until Monday if they challenged the arrests but would be released immediately if they pleaded no contest.
Obviously, with thousands of protesters and fluid conditions, police can make mistakes. However, the practice of intentionally encircling large numbers of people for mass arrests, whether or not any law is being broken, was no mistake.
The protests occurred outside the dormitories of some George Washington students, and the university's law school is located across from the International Monetary Fund and down the street from the World Bank. Many students who were arrested report that they were never told to disperse. The Constitution protects a person's right to witness public events. While the city may prohibit protests without a permit, it is not allowed to arrest people who are not engaged in such protests. It must give people, including bystanders, an opportunity to leave the area. The error some people made last week was not in their understanding of the law but in their expectation that the D.C. police would comply with it.
The practice of preventing withdrawal seems calculated to maximize arrests in order to remove large numbers of people from the streets. This view is reinforced by the fact that hundreds of people were held until Saturday evening, then released in a perfunctory manner. While they could have been released within hours of their arrest, their continued detainment achieved the purpose of disrupting the protests.
Most officers showed professionalism and restraint during the demonstrations. Moreover, some protesters who sought to interfere with traffic or to protest without a permit were legitimate targets for arrest. But many seemed to have been taken into custody through the trap-and-arrest policy.
It is hardly difficult to make the D.C. streets as orderly as Beijing's if police can arrest large numbers of people without cause. However, this technique is both distinctly unconstitutional and un-American.
The D.C. Council should investigate whether police:
• Prevented crowds from dispersing by closing off exit points as a prelude to arrest.
• Kept people in shackles for more than 24 hours.
• Used excessive force when people tried to disperse through police lines or in the course of the mass arrests.
• Held hundreds under the pretense of administrative delays in order to deplete the protests. If the council finds that there was such a policy, police management (including Chief Charles Ramsey) should be held accountable. A trap-and-arrest policy may be the ultimate form of crowd control, but it is neither a constitutional nor a commendable practice. Unless there is an investigation and corrective action is taken, this convenient policy of crowd suppression is likely to become standard operating procedure in our nation's capital.
-- Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University.
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Not In Our Name Announces
October 6th Day of Resistance In Central Park, New York
Not In Our Name (NION)
212-533-2125 Voice/Fax
www.notinourname.net media@notinourname.net
Date: Sunday, October 6
Time: 1:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Place: Central Park, New York
East Meadow (5th Ave. and 97th St.)
At a time when President George W. Bush is attempting to rally forces behind him for an attack on Iraq, thousands of people will gather in New York City's Central Park on October 6th to declare that the U.S. government do not speak for them. "The government is trying to use the deaths of thousands of innocent people on September 11, 2001 as justification for their war on the world and the shredding of civil liberties here at home," says Reecha Sen, one of the event organizers. Additional events will be held in San Francisco, Los Angeles and smaller cities and communities across the country.
Martin L. King, III says "[Not In Our Name] brings people together to resist all the unjust acts being perpetrated as part of the War on Terrorism. It highlights the responsibility of people in this country to oppose the illegal and immoral acts of this government. Resistance to the war moves of the government and the repressive laws and policies being enacted must be taken to a higher level now, before another country is invaded and before more groups of people become targets of the repression."
The highlight of the day will be when everyone gathered takes the Pledge of Resistance. The pledge begins:
"We believe that as people living in the United States it is our responsibility to resist the injustices done by our government, in our names."
(Full text of the Pledge of Resistance is available at www.notinourname.net)
Partial List of Speakers include:
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
Colleen Kelly, family member of WTC 9/11 victim
Meg Bartlett, NYC EMS worker, Ground Zero for Peace
Masuda Sultan, members of extended family killed in Afghanistan by U.S. bombings
Shokriea Yaghi, wife of a former post 9/11 INS detainee
Saul Williams, poet/musician and star of the motion picture "Slam"
Tom Duane, NY State Senator
Lynne Stuart, attorney
Randall Hamud, attorney
Rev. Peter Laarman, Sr. Minister, Judson Memorial Church
Imam Talib Abdul-Rashid, Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood
Rabbi Michael Feinberg, Greater NY Labor-Religion Coalition
Ismail Merchant, filmmaker
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Rally in New York Protests Possible Iraq War
October 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa-protest.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - About 10,000 protesters gathered in New York City's Central Park on Sunday to demonstrate against a possible U.S. military strike on Iraq, witnesses said.
A range of people of all ages and including Muslim leaders and U.S. war veterans recited a ``Pledge of Resistance'' saying in part that ``not in our name will you wage endless war, not in our name will you invade countries, bomb civilians, kill more children.''
The organizers -- a group called Not in Our Name --estimated the crowd in the East Meadow of the park at 50,000, but independent witnesses said it was closer to 10,000-strong.
The rally was one of a series planned across the country on Sunday including protests in Anchorage, Alaska, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver, Colorado.
Speakers, including actor Martin Sheen who plays the U.S. president in the television show ``West Wing,'' asked protesters to put pressure on their congressional representatives to oppose President Bush's quest for the all-clear to wage war with the aim of toppling the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Bush is due to make his case for possible military action against Iraq, which he claims has developed weapons of mass destruction and poses a grave danger, in a nationally televised speech on Monday night.
Last week, more than 150,000 protesters turned out in Britain to oppose a possible military strike against Iraq. On Saturday, thousands demonstrated across Italy and in Greece to voice their opposition.
``It's great to see a public debate on such a critical issue,'' Sheen said, adding that 40 years ago the then President John Kennedy used diplomacy to prevent the Cuban missile crisis sparking a war.
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