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NUCLEAR
Clean lies, dirty wars
Medical Consequences of Attacking Iraq
FERC says Dominion may launch LNG plant restart
STATES - Michigan
Nuclear Agency Takes Blame for Ohio Reactor Damage
American Aides Split on Assessment of Iraq's Plans
Subtle shift on 'regime change'?
Excerpts From House Debate on the Use of Military Force Against Iraq
War Service Is Iraq Debate Factor
House Passes Iraq Resolution With 297 to 132 Vote
Senate Roll Call for Iraq Vote
MILITARY
Helping Iraq Kill with Chemical Weapons
For the Record
White House makes offer on toxic chemical dispute
IRAQI MISSILES DEEMED AS INEFFECTIVE FOR WMD
Iraq Shows Suspected Nuclear Site
U.N. Arms Inspector Seeks U.S. Intelligence Assistance
Saddam seeks German aid for 'supergun'
Rift Over Plan to Impose Rule on Iraq
Iraq Denies Efforts to Rearm
Israel Begins Effort to Remove Illegal Settler Outposts in the West Bank
Investigation points to NATO exercise in mass whale beaching
Polls in Pakistan Open With a Shootout
General Musharraf Hails Pakistan's Gains
Russia's View of Chechnya Clashes With Reality
Media gag on alleged plot to kill Gaddafi
War's Unknown Financial Costs
Military Reveals Testing Of Nerve Agents in Md.
US Could Be Ready for War in Iraq This Year
Guerrilla Warfare, Waged With Code
CIA undermines propaganda war
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
F.B.I. Urges Heightened Vigilance as Result of Videotaped Threats
F.B.I. Admits Surveillance Excess
U.S. Indicts Head of Islamic Charity in Qaeda Financing
Yemen Says French Tanker May Have Been Attacked
ENERGY AND OTHER
US ethanol output rising with or without law
White House Joins Fight Against Electric Cars
Bush Administration Sued Over Utah Energy Project
U.S. feels safe from any trade threats over Kyoto
ACTIVISTS
Venezuela Braces for a New Round of Antigovernment Protests
After Indictment, Protesters Rally
Tiananmen 'Black Hand' Chen's 13 - Yr Sentence Ends
Chavez Foes Gather for Venezuela Opposition March
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Clean lies, dirty wars
As the United States continues to ponder war with Iraq, a military scientist and writer now living in Reno recalls the truths she learned during a trip to post-Desert Storm Iraq.
By Patricia Axelrod,
October 10, 2002
Reno News Review
http://www.newsreview.com/issues/reno/2002-10-10/news.asp
Images:
http://www.newsreview.com/issues/reno/2002-10-10/news-1.jpg
http://www.newsreview.com/issues/reno/2002-10-10/news-2.jpg
Twenty-two months after Desert Storm, I was finally on my way to Amman, Jordan, the gateway to Iraq. Somewhere over Europe, I caught a glimpse of the Kafkaland to come when I heard that 50 black-market merchants had been hanged there before cheering crowds of Iraqis. My introduction to the hell of Iraq was complete when I learned that their bodies had been left hanging for the birds to peck eyes from, rotting reminders of what happens to traitors who price necessities out of the affordable range.It was October 1992. The first George Bush was in his second bid for the presidency. Central to his campaign was the glorious Desert Storm victory. Desert Storm, said the president, was a model war. A hundred thousand tons of explosive power had been dropped on a nation one-third smaller than the state of Texas, from which Bush hailed. The official line was only good news. America's new wonder weapons--depleted-uranium-tipped munitions and precision-guided missiles--had destroyed the Iraqi army but spared Iraqi civilians. The media in their enthusiasm had labeled Desert Storm a "clean war."
The years I've spent as a weapons system analyst told me otherwise, as did Desert Storm veterans I'd interviewed, who spoke of civilian slaughter and brought home photographs of blackened corpses melted by depleted uranium--bodies nicknamed "crispy critters" by soldiers. And so I set out to uncover the dirty lie.
After months of negotiation with the Iraqi government, I traveled to Iraq with a plan in place to investigate Desert Storm bomb sites, interview survivors and review mortuary records.
A decade has passed since my journey. Today, as I sit listening to President George W. Bush speak of what he says is America's need to finish off what his father started, my memories take shape and I find myself revisiting Iraq.
The Destruction
A few days after arriving in Iraq--and assuring officials that I was not an American spy--I became a Desert Storm sightseer, complete with a botched guidebook entitled The Destruction, courtesy of Takliff, the head of the Iraqi Press Center. Its ink wet from the propaganda mill, The Destruction related the tale of Desert Storm according to Saddam Hussein. One chapter enumerated thousands of civilian structures destroyed, while another touted miraculously low civilian casualties. These numbers tallied so that two and two made three. Defying basic arithmetic, The Destruction claimed "8,243 civilian martyrs and injured."
Remembering the U.S. estimate of about 13,000 Iraqi civilians killed, this was a find that prompted a series of questions: Why not inflate rather than deflate that total? Why not use a natural propaganda tool and make the Allies look worse rather than better? How could it be that the only thing Saddam Hussein and George Bush agreed upon was that so few had died, when more than 10,000 tons of mostly U.S. explosive power had bombarded Iraq non-stop for 43 days?
Hoping to gain Takliff's confidence, I held my silence. Assigned a car and Walid, a driver/guard, I went along for the ride to the Desert Storm War Museum, where the curator showed me The Destruction exhibited in pictures pasted next to missile shrapnel. Then, like a warhorse with blinders, I was driven through the city, allowed to see only what Walid permitted. Civilian bombing damage was strictly off limits. Barreling through Baghdad, Walid pointed to bombed but reconstructed government factories and ministries as well as restored power and water plants. Along the route I glimpsed flattened houses and apartment buildings and asked Walid if this was bomb damage. "Yes," he answered, "but nobody dies."
Finally, I was taken to the death-scented altar of the Ameriyya air raid shelter, where about 300 people, mostly women and children, had died. Hit head-on with a bunker-busting bomb, the ruin was preserved as a shrine and tended by a grieving, black-haired, black-dressed woman, her young face ravaged by the loss of her children. Accompanying her was her only surviving child, a shell-shocked 10-year-old--old before his time.
Descending into the shelter, I picked my way through the rubble along haphazardly lit, makeshift wooden planks until we came to a trail of burning candles that illuminated the photographed faces of the killed. The woman paused to show me her children's pictures. At the bottom, tears streaming, she peeled a darkened film from the wall. "Skin," she said, gently cupping it in her hand. Taking my hand, she placed the morsel in my palm. I realized she was right. Looking like skin peeled from a bad sunburn, distinguished by its swirls, it was human skin that I held.
Above ground, we smoked together, and I felt that I'd failed to convey my sympathies for her losses in her language until I slipped a ring from my finger onto hers. We bid tearful goodbyes to each other approvingly noted by Walid, who clumsily patted my shoulder with the comment that he "would tell Takliff that I had cried at Ameriyya."
In Baghdad
Left alone that night, I slipped out of my hotel and came to know Baghdad as an armed funeral parlor where everyone was afraid, most of all Saddam Hussein. Fearing assassination, the Iraqi president would send look-a-like stand-ins of the same age, coloring and stature into crowds. They would stop bullets and knives meant for him. This is the secret of his life as a despot.
Like Big Brother, he believes his own press, securing his omnipotence by order that every home and business display his picture. No one speaks ill of him. Any dissenter risks death or imprisonment, and his or her cellmates will be family and friends. Phones are tapped, and Hussein's spies are well treated with payment of food and money.
The next day, Takliff set me free to roam the streets of Baghdad. Joining me to translate was a young Iraqi reporter assigned to write the story of an American researcher investigating the Iraqi death toll of Desert Storm. Walid sped around Baghdad until I told him to stop at a teeming city block. Getting out, I posed questions to randomly selected passersby, many of whom had come to their capital city from other parts of the country: Where were you during the bombing of Desert Storm? Did family or friends die? How many people do you think died? Do you think more or less than 9,000 civilians perished?
It was like opening a floodgate.
"Do you think we are the Roadrunner cartoon--you bomb us and we don't die?"
"There is no house safe from the bombs."
"Every night and day, the planes brought death."
"Even in a picture, the children scream when they see an airplane."
"Every person lost at least one from their family."
"More houses than I can count exploded."
All day long, in varying degrees of outrage and sadness, from neighborhood to neighborhood, these were the answers I received.
People eager to talk to an American invited me to cafés and to their homes, calling in neighbors to recall incidents of bombed bridges, marketplaces, bus stations, factories and mosques where civilians died. Even the poorest served drinks and biscuits, along with condemnation of the "American government-controlled press."
"How can you think only 9,000 died?" was also frequently asked.
Staring at ever-present portraits of Saddam Hussein, I was loath to say that the source of my information was their government, not mine.
They told me also of starvation and deprivation, begging me, as though I had power to lift the United Nations sanctions.
"Please don't talk against us. We are suffering too much. The babies have no milk. Mothers' breasts dry up. There is no food for the children. No bread. People are dying every day."
Word spread that an American researcher was investigating the death toll of Desert Storm, and a self-described "friend of the truth" contacted me. Eluding Walid for a secret meeting, I was surprised to find myself talking with a well-placed Hussein family member. In a meeting so brief as to appear accidental, he told me, lips barely moving, of a civilian casualty cover-up. He hypothesized that as many as 300,000 civilians died in the conflict.
By way of example, he pointed to the many Iraqi civilians who died at war's end, fleeing Kuwait along what the Western press called "the highway of death."
Going on, my friend explained how, in the first days of the bombings, Iraqi television announced a nightly civilian death toll, but when the "bodies mounted" the practice was discontinued. Already the war was "not popular" and becoming less so when Iraq aligned with its old enemy Iran to allow for the flight of Iraqi fighter jets to Iran. With the country fresh from fighting and killing Iranians, this move "disgusted Iraq's citizens," he said.
"We did not know our angels from our demons. We were tired of dying and did not want this war."
High civilian casualties became politically untenable for my friend's illustrious relative. Fearing overthrow, with the Allied army approaching Baghdad and battling a coup assisted by the dual-faced Iran, the beleaguered Hussein plotted to save face and make the dead disappear.
Devil's deals
The U.S. military custom of burying dead enemies disposed of the problem, the man said, when "thousands of Bedouins and other families were buried side by side with warriors in mass graves around Iraq." Fire, as well as inadequate and decentralized record keeping, assisted in making the dead vanish. Afterward, my friend explained, Iraqi officials planted the idea of the "clean war" by furnishing American census-takers with the same casualty count, 8,243, listed in The Destruction.
"It was a devil's deal," said the Hussein family member.
Ironically, a female census taker recounted and corrected the numbers listed in The Destruction and, after discussion with the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations, announced 13,000 Iraqi civilians killed in Desert Storm.
A decade later, President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell conspire to make their own devil's deal to finish off what the elder President Bush started. As for the civilian casualties of Desert Storm, former President Jimmy Carter has publicly stated that "maybe more than 150,000 Iraqi [civilians] were killed in [the] massive bombing."
Powell, who directed Desert Storm as the head of America's armed forces, finds the whole matter of civilian casualties simply inconvenient. "That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in," he said.
Patricia Axelrod, who now lives in Reno, is the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Award for her work in weapons systems analysis. Her work has received a Project Censored award, and she was a founding member of the State of California Reserve Officers' Association Committee on Persian Gulf War Illness and director of the Desert Storm Think Tank and Veterans' Advocate.
----
Medical Consequences of Attacking Iraq
by Helen Caldicott
Thursday, October 10, 2002
by the San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1010-04.htm
As the Bush administration prepares to make war on the Iraqi people -- and make no mistake, 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 Gulf War. That conflict was, in effect, a nuclear war.
During the 1991 Gulf War, the United States deployed hundreds of tons of weapons, many of them anti-tank shells made of depleted uranium 238. This material is 1.7 times more dense than lead, and hence 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 tiny aerosolized particles less than 5 microns in diameter that are easily inhalable into the terminal air passages of the lung. Second, it is a potent radioactive carcinogen, emitting a relatively heavy alpha particle composed of 2 protons and 2 neutrons. Once inside the body -- either in the lung if it has been inhaled, or 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 during Gulf War 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 town of Basra, for example, are reporting an increase of 6 to 12 times in the incidence of childhood leukemia and cancer. Yet because of the sanctions imposed upon Iraq by the United States and United Nations, they have no access to 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 born with only one eye or missing all or part of their brain.
The medical consequences of the use of uranium 238 almost certainly did not affect only Iraqis. Some U.S. 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. (The fact that almost one-third of the American tanks used in Desert Storm were themselves made of uranium 238 is another story, for their crews were thereby exposed to whole-body gamma radiation.)
Would these effects have surprised the 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 George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld understand the medical consequences of the 1991 war and the likely health effects of the next one they are now planning? If they do not, their ignorance is breathtaking; even more incredible though -- and alas, much more likely -- is that they do understand, but do not care.
Helen Caldicott has devoted the last 25 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age. She spoke in San Francisco recently in a benefit for the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, which she founded.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maryland
FERC says Dominion may launch LNG plant restart
REUTERS USA:
October 10, 2002
WASHINGTON - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said this week that Dominion Resources could proceed with its plans to restart a liquefied natural gas plant near the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Maryland.
The agency gave its approval a year ago for restarting the Cove Point LNG plant despite concerns that the facility could be subject to sabotage that would threaten the nearby nuclear plant owned by Constellation Energy Group .
Following last year's Sept. 11 attacks, several U.S. lawmakers and activists had raised safety concerns with FERC over the LNG plant. Dominion bought the plant on Sept. 5 for $217 million from Oklahoma-based energy company Williams .
Opponents feared that LNG tankers entering the Chesapeake Bay to deliver imported gas supplies could be attacked by terror groups. An explosion of an LNG tanker could harm the nearby nuclear plant, they argued.
FERC said the LNG plant would be safe to operate. In its order this week, FERC said Dominion had complied with several safety and inspection requirements and therefore could begin construction of the plant's expansion facilities.
The Cove Point plant was built in 1974. The plant stopped importing natural gas in the early 1980s, but reopened as a natural gas storage site about 10 years later.
LNG is kept at ultra-cold temperatures and compressed for transport aboard special tankers. It begins as natural gas in a vapor form. The manufacturing process cools the gas to minus-259 degrees Fahrenheit, changing the gas into a liquid and shrinking it to less than 1/600th of its original size.
LNG, which is odorless and colorless, is then loaded into tankers and shipped to markets, and converted back into dry gas for electric power generation or another use as a fuel source.
-------- michigan
STATES - Michigan
USA TODAY
Thursday, October 10
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/mimain.htm
Bridgman - A violation of safety regulations at D.C. Cook Nuclear Power Station was of low to moderate importance, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded. Operators powered down the plant on the Lake Michigan shoreline in August after silt and zebra mussels clogged cooling-water intakes. Inspectors say workers improperly installed a strainer on a water intake.
-------- ohio
Nuclear Agency Takes Blame for Ohio Reactor Damage
By J.R. Pegg
October 10, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-10-10.asp
WASHINGTON, DC, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined that it is partially to blame for the events that allowed a boric acid leak to eat almost entirely through the lid of the reactor pressure vessel head at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant.
A report was published yesterday by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) task force, charged with investigating the agency's handling of events at the plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio about 25 miles east of Toledo. It reveals that a web of misinformation, poor regulatory oversight and operator negligence allowed a preventable problem to become a serious safety hazard.
Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant (Photo courtesy Ottawa County Emergency Management)
Of the three entities involved, the NRC, the plant operators and the nuclear industry, "no one connected the dots," said Ed Hackett, coauthor of the report. "When all the information was there, it should have been put together."
Last spring plant operators at Davis-Besse discovered that boric acid from a leaking nozzle had created a hole six inches deep and nearly five inches wide in the reactor lid. A smaller hole was found a few weeks later.
Borated water is used in pressurized water reactor plants as a reactivity control agent to aid in control of the nuclear reaction. The leak had also caused cracks in five of the 69 vessel head penetration (VHP) nozzles.
The plant's operators, FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company, reported the damage to the NRC, which sent inspectors to the plant on March 12, 2002. The leak and the subsequent damage, however, began as early as 1998.
The report cites three primary reasons why the degradation of the reactor pressure vessel head and the plant's VHP nozzle leakage occurred for so long without detection or action.
First, the agency, the plant's operators and the nuclear industry failed to adequately review, assess, and follow up on relevant operating experience.
Second, plant operators failed to assure that plant safety issues would receive appropriate attention.
Finally, the NRC failed to integrate known or available information into its assessments of the Davis-Besse plant's safety performance.
For example, the NRC and the nuclear industry were aware of cracks in VHP nozzles in a similar plant in France in the early 1990s and in the Oconee plant in South Carolina in the spring of 2001. Rather than focusing on preventing leaks, the agency simply requested that plant operators inform the agency of how they planned to monitor cracking in VHP nozzles.
Besse reactor vessel head insulation showing the damage caused by boric acid (Photo courtesy NRC)
The NRC went along with industry's assessment that these cracks were not much of a safety risk and that corrosion could be easily spotted long before it caused a problem.
Evidence of boric acid deposits was identified at the Davis-Besse plant as early as 1998, but was not taken seriously by either the NRC or the plant's operators.
"There was a mindset among all three parties that boric acid deposits on the head weren't a big deal," Hackett said. "There was a belief that degradation of this type wasn't likely to happen, even though there had been a history of these things in U.S. and foreign plants showing that degradation could be quite rapid."
The task force concluded that a great deal of blame ultimately lies with FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company, which the report cites as repeatedly failing "to assure that plant safety issues would receive appropriate attention."
The Davis-Besse plant remains offline and its operators do not expect to restart the plant until next year. FirstEnergy has estimated the shutdown alone could cost it up to $400 million.
In total the task force offers more than 50 recommendations, including stronger and more vigorous oversight of the nation's nuclear power plants. These recommendations are currently under review by senior agency officials, who will face an even tougher task in finding money to fund any changes.
Hole in the reactor lid at Davis-Besse (Photo courtesy Ohio Citizen Action)
Industry watchdogs remain concerned that similar problems at other reactors remain undiscovered. There are 69 pressurized water reactor plants in the United States; the other 34 U.S. nuclear plants are powered by boiling water reactors.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), nuclear power plant operators have also found cracks in 49 of the 59 nozzles on the reactor vessel head at North Anna Unit 2 near Richmond, Virginia.
The Washington, DC based nonprofit science policy group cites similar problems at plants in South Carolina, Missouri, Florida and Arkansas.
"The North Anna and Davis-Besse nuclear power plants operated for months or even years with reactor vessel head cracks leaking cooling water," said David Lochbaum, UCS nuclear safety engineer.
"Under NRC safety requirements, nuclear power plants are only permitted to operate for six hours with a cracked reactor vessel head. Owners risk catastrophic failure by operating any longer," Lochbaum warned.
The reactor vessel crack issue also raises concerns over the pending renewal of operating licenses for many aging nuclear power plants.
"These widespread leakage problems clearly demonstrate that the NRC is not requiring a thorough safety overhaul of aging nuclear power plants," said Lochbaum. "Tens of millions of dollars will be spent on these reactor vessel replacements. If the NRC doesn't enforce federal safety regulations like the six-hour rule, the price tag could include an avoidable accident."
FirstEnergy Corp. is being urged to investigate whether converting the Davis-Besse nuclear plant to oil or coal would be feasible.
Four members of Congress from northern Ohio have signed a letter to the company making the request, together with the consumer group Ohio Citizen Action, according to a report in the "Cleveland Plain Dealer" Wednesday. They are Representatives Dennis Kucinich and Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Cleveland, Sherrod Brown of Lorain, and Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, all Democrats.
FirstEnergy spokesman Ralph DiNicola told the newspaper the utility is focused on repairing Davis-Besse and restarting it as a nuclear power plant early next year.
-------- us politics
American Aides Split on Assessment of Iraq's Plans
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/politics/10INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - A letter to Congress from the director of central intelligence has brought into public view divisions within the administration over what intelligence shows about Iraq's intentions and its willingness to ally itself with Al Qaeda.
The letter and other reports from the C.I.A. paint a worrisome picture of Iraq's pursuit of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. But they do not support the White House's view that Iraq presents an immediate threat to the American homeland and may use Al Qaeda to carry out attacks at any moment.
Current and former administration officials say divisions between the C.I.A. and the White House and civilian Defense Department officials over intelligence on Iraq have been simmering for months.
But with the Oct. 7 letter, sent in the name of the director, George J. Tenet, the divisions came into the open.
As some Democratic lawmakers sought to use the letter to challenge the administration's case for attacking Iraq, the C.I.A. told the Senate Intelligence Committee today that it would not declassify additional material the panel wanted.
At the heart of the debate, officials said, is the question of whether Iraq would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists to attack the United States.
Seeking to mobilize public support for a possible military campaign to overthrow President Saddam Hussein, President Bush, in a speech on Monday in Cincinnati, cast Iraq as an imminent threat and asserted that Baghdad might seek to strike targets on American soil with the help of terrorist groups or by moving drones filled with germs or chemical weapons close to the United States.
"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," Mr. Bush said. "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraq regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."
In the Tenet letter and in testimony to Congress, the C.I.A. took a less alarming view. The agency argued that Iraq's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and build its arsenal of biological and chemical weapons were a serious concern that could encourage Iraqi "blackmail."
But it also argued that Iraq would refrain from "the extreme step" of assisting terrorists in attacking the United States with weapons of mass destruction if Washington did not invade. Iraq, the agency suggested, has little reason to provoke Washington to march on Baghdad.
The agency also noted that using chemical or biological arms would undercut Iraq's claims that it no longer has such weapons.
"Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or C.B.W. against the United States," Mr. Tenet's letter read, referring to chemical and biological weapons. "Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions."
Intelligence specialists said the letter opened a window into a dispute that had been kept under wraps.
"The agency line is that it is basically unlikely that Iraq would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists under most circumstances," said Kenneth M. Pollack, who worked as a military analyst at the C.I.A. before serving as the top aide for Persian Gulf affairs on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council. "It is not Iraq's method of operation.
"The Bush administration is trying to make the case that Iraq might try to give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda under current circumstances," he added. "But what the agency is saying is that Saddam is likely to give such weapons to terrorists only under extreme circumstances, when he believes he is likely to be toppled."
The case for taking military action against Iraq, proponents of such action say, should not depend on establishing Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Iraqi's acquisition of nuclear weapons, a senior Bush administration official asserted, could alter the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and embolden Mr. Hussein to take aggressive action.
Such considerations, however, might seem remote to much of the American public. Ever since 9/11, hard-line administration officials have sought to establish that there is an Iraqi link to Al Qaeda.
The White House assertion of a terrorist link hits an emotional chord and plays on the American sense of vulnerability, said Daniel Benjamin, an expert on terrorism for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, who has asserted that there is not a strong connection.
There have also been tensions between the Pentagon and the C.I.A. over the strength of intelligence indicating an Iraq-Qaeda connection.
Within the government, neither the C.I.A. nor the White House is eager to advertise their differences. The dispute, in fact, was forced into the open by Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has argued that fighting terrorist groups should be a higher priority than invading Iraq.
Senator Graham asked the C.I.A. in July to update its classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs and make it available before lawmakers voted on whether to authorize the use of military force against Iraq. The agency gave the estimate to the committee on Oct. 1.
Senator Graham's next move was to seek to declassify the agency's assessment so it could be a part of the Congressional debate. After several requests, the agency declassified some information, a spokesman for the senator said.
Seeking to dispel reports of divisions within the administration, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, insisted that Mr. Tenet's letter did not undercut the White House's position. Other administration officials asserted that Mr. Bush was right to force the issue at this time because Mr. Hussein's intentions were uncertain, and that even a small risk that Iraq's weapons might fall into the hands of terrorists was unacceptable.
"The only person who has sure knowledge of whether Saddam Hussein will use those weapons is Saddam Hussein," Mr. Fleischer said. "If Saddam Hussein holds a gun to someone's head, while he denies he even owns a gun, do you really want to take a chance that he'll never use it."
The C.I.A.'s assessment and Mr. Bush's presentation also differed in the nuclear realm. In assessing Iraq's nuclear ambitions, the agency said it would take Iraq until the second half of the decade to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Mr. Bush omitted this forecast on Monday.
But Mr. Bush did include the C.I.A.-related warning that the Iraqi government could develop a nuclear bomb within a year if it managed to smuggle fissile material into Iraq.
----
Subtle shift on 'regime change'?
For Bush, the heavily used phrase may have taken on shades of meaning beyond merely the ouster of Hussein.
By Howard LaFranchi
The Christian Science
Monitor, October 10, 2002
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1010/p01s04-uspo.html
UNITED NATIONS - For months, whenever President Bush spoke of "regime change" in Iraq, the assumption was he meant Saddam Hussein had to go.
Now, Mr. Bush is signaling he could accept a world where Mr. Hussein - though a fully disarmed Hussein - remains the man in charge in Iraq.
Just as the president shifted in the months after 9/11 from a focus on Osama bin Laden to saying the chief enemy was not one man but international terrorism, he seems to be saying now that the aim is not removing one man but disarming Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.
The new stance, hinted at in a buried line in Bush's speech Monday, suggests a retreat from the ambitious - and for some critics worrisome - goals that the president had previously set out for Iraq, including democracy and full respect for human rights. Indeed, for both domestic and foreign skeptics, a disarmed Iraq is one thing, but an Iraq remade in America's image is quite another.
That may explain why Bush, after laying out the demanding steps that Iraq must take to disarm and to divorce itself from terrorism, added: "These steps would also change the nature of the Iraq regime itself. America hopes the regime will make that choice."
In part, the president's subtle backoff from the "Saddam must go" line may be a tactical move to improve prospects for tough action on Iraq, both in the US Congress and the United Nations Security Council. Yet even if it is a tactical move, the new stance appears to give some additional time to administration forces favoring international action and war only as a last resort.
It wasn't just happenstance that Bush's change of tack came a few days after Secretary of State Colin Powell, considered the administration's "chief dove," declared that "regime change" - US policy on Iraq since the Clinton administration - does not necessarily mean that Hussein would have to be deposed.
"This was a Powell-esque softening of the previous position, perhaps to let those around Saddam know how a war could be avoided, but certainly another audience was the UN Security Council," says James Phillips, a Middle East expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "The thinking was undoubtedly that this will make it easier to garner support for a new weapons-inspections resolution there."
Just how long the "war as last resort" forces will hold the upper hand remains unclear. Bush himself said in his speech that he had "little reason to expect" Hussein to fulfill the full disarmament demands he faces. He said that this is why both his and the Clinton administration's have seen regime change in Iraq as the "only means of removing a great danger to our nation."
Most observers say Bush still believes that Hussein is incapable of doing what would be necessary to avoid a war, but they say Bush still wants to convince the world he is not a wild-eyed warmonger.
"Bush's words, in that sense, weren't even so much about Saddam. They were about Bush and his desire to convince people that he is a reasonable man, that he doesn't want war," says Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "What hasn't changed is his thinking on whether Saddam Hussein will do what he'd have to [do] to avoid a war."
Seeing Bush's focus on this point is drawing the broadest national and international support possible, he adds. "It remains true that you draw more flies with honey than with vinegar."
One administration official says the president's language on regime change reflects the importance the US and the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council place on achieving "council unity" if it's possible. But he says the administration powers that have little patience for the "Powell line" - particularly in the Pentagon and in the vice president's office - won't stand by indefinitely.
Carnegie's Mr. Wolfsthal says it isn't coincidence that the normally expansive Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of Defense, has been unusually quiet over recent days. "I think somebody looked at what the president wants to accomplish at this point and said, 'Don, take a vacation.' "
But officials inside the administration said they don't expect the "war is inevitable" camp to remain quiet for long. "I give the [Security] Council to the end of the month [to agree on a new weapons-inspection resolution], no more," the official says. "After that, all bets are off on holding the other forces - call them the hawks or the unilateralists - at bay."
Mr. Phillips says he does see a risk in the US backing down from regime change as removal of Hussein. "I still think the only way to be certain that Iraq is disarmed is to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, but Powell has convinced Bush there is another way, at least for now."
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Excerpts From House Debate on the Use of Military Force Against Iraq
New York Times
October 10, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/politics/10HTEX.html
Following are excerpts from the House debate yesterday on the use of force against Iraq, as recorded by The New York Times. Speakers included Representatives Pete Stark, Democrat of California; Michael N. Castle, Republican of Delaware; Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas; Earl Pomeroy, Democrat of North Dakota; Gerald D. Kleczka, Democrat of Wisconsin; John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire; and Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia.
Representative Stark
I rise in opposition to this resolution. I'm deeply troubled that lives may be lost without a meaningful attempt to bring Iraq into compliance with U.N. resolutions through careful and cautious diplomacy.
The bottom line is I don't trust the president and his advisers. Make no mistake, we are voting on a resolution that grants total authority to a president who wants to invade a sovereign nation without any specific act of provocation. This would authorize the United States to act as the aggressor for the first time in our history and it sets a precedent for our nation or any nation to exercise brute force anywhere in the world without regard to international law or international consensus. Congress must not walk in lock step behind a president who has been so callous to proceed without reservation as if the war was of no real consequence.
You know, three years ago, in December, Molly Ivins, an observer of Texas politics wrote, I quote, "For an upper-class white boy, Bush comes on way too hard, at a guess to make up for being an upper-class white boy." Somebody, she wrote, should be worrying about how all this could affect his handling of future encounters with some Saddam Hussein. Pretty prophetic, Ms. Ivins.
Let's not forget that our president, our commander in chief, has no experience with or knowledge of war. In fact, he admits that he was at best ambivalent about the Vietnam War, he skirted his own military service and then failed to serve out his time in the National Guard. And he reported years later that at the height of the conflict in 1968 he didn't notice "any heavy stuff going on."
So we have a president who thinks foreign territory is the opponent's dugout and Kashmir is a sweater.
What is most unconscionably is that there's not a shred of evidence to justify the certain loss of life. Do the generalized threats and half-truths of this administration give any one of us in Congress the confidence to tell a mother or father or family that the loss of their child or loved one was in the name of a just cause? Is the president's need for revenge for the threat once posed to his father enough to justify the death of any American? I submit the answer to these questions is no.
Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination. The administration admits to a cost of around $200 billion. Now, wealthy individuals won't pay; they've got big tax cuts already. Corporations won't pay; they'll just continue to cook the books and move overseas, and send their contributions to the Republicans. Rich kids won't pay; their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W.
Well, then who will pay? School kids will pay; there'll be no money to keep them from being left behind - way behind. Seniors will pay, they'll pay big-time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and continue to rob the trust fund to pay for this capricious war. Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable and there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on a war.
Working folks will pay through loss of jobs, job security and bargaining rights. And our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality. And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women's rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.
Representative Castle
For the past several months I have participated in intelligence hearings on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and studied the hatred some nations and groups have toward America. Saddam Hussein is encouraging and promoting this hatred by openly praising the attacks on the United States. The director of central intelligence recently published an unclassified summary of the evidence against Saddam Hussein and it is substantial.
We know that Iraq has continued buildings weapons of mass destruction, energized its missile program and is investing in biological weapons. Saddam Hussein is determined to get weapons-grade material to develop nuclear weapons. Its biological weapons program is larger and more advanced that before the Gulf War. Iraq also is attempting to build unmanned vehicles, U.A.V.'s, to possibly deliver biological warfare agents. All of this has been done in flagrant violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Some may react to this evidence saying that in the past other countries have had similar arsenals and the United States did not get involved. But as President Bush has told us and as Secretary Rumsfeld reiterated yesterday in a meeting, Saddam Hussein's Iraq is different. This is a ruthless dictator whose record is despicable. He has waged war against his neighbors and on his own people. He has brutalized and tortured his own citizens, harbored terrorist networks, engaged in terrorist acts, violated international commitments, lied, cheated and defied the will of the international community. I have examined this information in some of the more specific classified reports. The bottom line is we don't want to be caught off guard. We must take all precautions to prevent a catastrophic event similar to Sept. 11.
In recent meetings the national security adviser, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, rightly called this coercive diplomacy. It is my hope that through forceful diplomacy, backed by clear resolve, we can avoid war. Unfortunately, Saddam Hussein's history of deception makes a new attempt to disarm him difficult. Additionally, our goal to disarm him must also be connected to a plan to end his regime, should he refuse to disarm.
For all these reasons, I would encourage all of us to support this resolution.
Representative Reyes Thirty-five years ago I found myself half a world away in a place called Vietnam. I can tell you war is hell.
There are a lot of us here today that have had that same experience but are taking different positions on this resolution. Some of my colleagues have asked when they hear my friend and colleague Duke Cunningham talk about his experience and his favoring and support of the resolution, and I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues that I intend to vote against this resolution.
I intend to do so because in meetings I have held in the district mothers and fathers and veterans come to me and tell me, please don't let us get back into a war without exhausting all other venues. I think every one of us in this House brings our own experiences as we represent our constituents. Every one of us here wrestles with a very tough decision as to whether or not to go forward with the resolution on war.
Every one of us understands that we are a nation of laws, that we lead the world by example, that we have a great respect for process and to protect the rights of everyone. That is why, Mr. Speaker, I reluctantly today rise in opposition against this resolution, because I think that the president has not made a case as to why Iraq and why attack Saddam Hussein.
As a member of the Intelligence Committee I have asked consistently the questions to those that have come before us with information, I've said - I've asked the question of what is the connection between 9/11 and Iraq and Saddam Hussein? None. What is the connection between Iraq and Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda? Very little, if any.
Representative Pomeroy
Mr. Speaker, when it comes to Iraq it's time for the United States of America to state forcefully and without equivocation enough is enough. Either Saddam Hussein yields to the resolutions of the United Nations, providing for completely unrestricted inspection and disarmament, or the United States and other nations will use military force against his government to enforce his compliance. This is terribly, terribly serious business, potentially one of life and death for those that will be involved in prosecuting this action. Therefore I, like so many others have expressed, view this vote as one of the most important votes that I'll ever cast in this chamber on behalf of the people of North Dakota.
I reached the conclusion that the resolution authorizing the president to use force should pass and I do that based upon the following undeniable and uncontroverted facts. First, Saddam Hussein is a uniquely evil and threatening leader. His past is absolutely replete with nonstop belligerence and aggression as well as atrocities.
Two, he has been determined to have developed weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. He continues to seek nuclear capacity and is believed to be within mere months of having that capacity in the event he could get his hands on the requisite materials.
Three, he now continues to produce weapons of mass destruction having effectively completely thwarted the inspection and disarmament requirements of the United Nations. And has made it increasingly difficult to detect his production facilities even as he continues to add to his arsenals.
Four, he is harboring and has well-developed relationships with terrorists including senior Al Qaeda operatives.
And five, he certainly has demonstrated that he is not above using weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, he's used them on his own people.
Now, under these terrible circumstances I have concluded that doing nothing is simply not acceptable for the United States of America. We need to act and determining exactly how to act is the question before this chamber. I believe that we should support the president as he builds an international consensus to reinstitute completely unfettered inspection or to use force in the event it is not forthcoming.
Representative Kleczka
Although we all know this war resolution will pass, I nevertheless must question the wisdom and morality of an unprovoked attack on another foreign nation. The guiding principle of our foreign policy for over 50 years has been one of containment and deterrence. This is the same strategy that kept the former Soviet Union in check, a power whose possession of weapons of mass destruction had been proven and not speculated, and in fact led to its downfall.
The administration asserts that this time-tested policy is not sufficient to deal with this, yes, a dangerous, but small economically weakened Middle Eastern nation. Instead they support a new policy of a unilateral preemptive attack against Iraq citing the unproven possibility that Saddam Hussein might be a risk to the security of the United States.
The long-term effects of this go-it-alone, shoot-first policy will be to lose the high moral ground we have exercised in the past to deter other nations from attacking military when they felt their security was at stake. The next time Pakistani and Indian troops amass at their borders, with both nations' finger on nuclear triggers, what moral authority will we have to prevent a potential catastrophe? They would justifiably ignore our pleas for diplomatic or negotiated approaches and instead simply follow our lead.
The administration continues to assert that Iraq is an urgent threat to our national security and that we are at risk of an Iraqi surprise attack. But the resolution before us offers no substantiation of these allegations, speaking only of hunches, probabilities and suspicions. That is not sufficient justification to start a war.
Further, there is reference to the 9/11 terrorism we suffered and the assertion that members of Al Qaeda are in Iraq. After extensive investigation, our intelligence community could find no link between the Iraqi regime and the plot to led to last year's deadly terrorist attacks.
Also, it's been reported that Al Qaeda members are in Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Do we attack them next?
The resolution further asserts, also without any evidence, that there is a great risk that Iraq could launch a surprise attack on the United States with weapons of mass destruction. It is fact that Saddam does not possess a delivery system that has the throw power of 8,000 miles or anything even close.
And if there is such a great risk that he has and will use biological and chemical weapons against us, why didn't he do so in the Gulf War? The answer is because he knew that our response would be strong, swift and fatal.
Hussein is not a martyr, he's a survivalist.
Similarly, the evidence is not so that Iraq has any nuclear capabilities. Gen. Wesley Clark, former commander of NATO forces in Europe, contends that, despite all the talk of loose nukes, Saddam doesn't have any or the highly enriched uranium or plutonium to enable him to construct them. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently concurred, admitting that the consensus is that Saddam Hussein does not have a nuclear weapon, but he wants one.
One of the goals of the president is to force a regime change of Iraq. Who are we to dictate to another country that their leadership must be changed? What would be our reaction if another country demanded or threatened to remove President Bush? All of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, and each and every American would be infuriated by such inference and interference, and rise up against them. Changes, my friends, in regimes must come from within.
The result of voting for this resolution will be to give the president a blank check with broad authority to use our armed forces to unilaterally attack Iraq. He merely has to tell us why he believes that continued diplomatic efforts will fail and doesn't have to give that information to Congress until 48 hours after he has begun the war.
The more meaningful provision would be to provide for a two-step process, where after all diplomatic efforts have failed, the president would come back to Congress and make the case that military force is now necessary. Our colleague, Mr. Spratt, has that provision in his alternative and it deserves our careful consideration.
Representative Sununu
I rise today in support of the resolution, a resolution which I believe will send a clear and an unmistakable message or our own citizens, our allies and our enemies, as well, that Congress stands behind our president in defense of America's national security interests.
Mr. Speaker, there's no more serious an issue for Congress to debate than the question of authorizing the use of America's armed forces. We're a peaceful nation, preferring instead to rely on diplomacy in our relations with other countries. In the question of Iraq in particular, the United States and the United Nations have been exceedingly patient, working steadily to integrate Iraq into the community of law-abiding nations, but to date we have failed.
In the decade since Desert Storm, Iraq has chosen a very different path. Iraq has worked to develop weapons of mass destruction including chemical and biological agents. And Saddam Hussein has repeatedly ignored U.N. resolutions demanding that he disarm and he's refused to allow weapons inspectors access to potential sites. Thus the threat of obtaining stocks of these terrible weapons continues to grow.
Most troubling of all, Saddam Hussein has shown, has demonstrated his willingness to use such horrible weapons against other nations and against his own people. Only when military action is imminent does the Iraqi regime begin to discuss allowing inspectors to return, but the restrictions they wish to place on these inspectors would effectively render their mission useless, and instead simply delay action and allow a covert weapons program to begin to bear terrifying results. If we wait until Iraq succeeds in achieving these goals, we will have waited too long.
The resolution we're debating today encourages a diplomatic solution to the threat that Iraq poses to our national security. The president has called on the U.N. to act effectively to enforce Iraq's disarmament and insure full compliance with Security Council resolutions. But if the U.N. cannot act effectively this resolution will provide the president with full support to use all appropriate means.
Mr. Speaker, neither I nor any member of this body want to see a renewed conflict in Iraq. We must be prepared to act, give the president flexibility that he needs to respond to this gathering threat to protect American lives and address the threat to global peace. I urge my colleagues to support the resolution, and yield back the balance of my time.
Representative Goodlatte
On the eve of potential military action abroad, I'm reminded of President Reagan's speech before the British House of Commons when he said, if history teaches anything it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. Reagan was speaking to a people who knew well the ravages of war and the terrible price of appeasement.
Churchill called World War II the unnecessary war. He did not mean that it was unnecessary to rise to the occasion and defeat Nazism. He meant that had we taken early notice of Hitler's clearly stated intentions rather than naïvely drifting through the 1930's, a world war may not have been necessary. Weary of conflict, some of the allies adopted a policy of peace at any price, but no peace that freedom-loving people could tolerate.
While the circumstances are different, there are lessons to be drawn from the annuls of history. Just because we ignore evil does not mean that it ceases to exist. Appeasement invites aggression. Dictators, tyrants and megalomaniacs should not be trusted.
Saddam Hussein has used weapons of bioterror against his own countrymen. He has committed genocide, killing between 50,000 and 100,000 people in northern Iraq. His regime is responsible for widespread human rights abuses including imprisonment, executions, torture and rape. Just in the past 12 years he has invaded Kuwait, he has launched ballistic missiles at Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, previously at Iran. Following the Gulf War, he arrogantly defied the international community, violating sanctions and continued in the development of weapons of mass destruction while evading international inspectors. His regime has violated 16 U.N. resolutions devoid of consequences.
Most ominously, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Saddam has quantifiable links to known terrorists. Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contact stretching back a decade. We know based on intelligence reports and satellite photos that Saddam is acquiring weapons of mass destruction. He poses stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and he's aggressively seeking nuclear weapons. Every weapons he possesses is a violation of the Gulf War truce, a crazed man in possession of these instruments of death is a frightening prospect indeed. Had Saddam possessed nuclear capabilities at the time of the Gulf War we may not have gone into Kuwait. Should he acquire nuclear capabilities, his aggressions would be virtually unchecked, deterrence can no longer be relied upon.
President Bush was accurate to characterize Saddam as a grave and gathering danger. The president challenged the U.N., calling into question their relevance should they leave unchecked Saddam's blatant disregard for their authority. He consulted Congress and made a case to the American people. The president should continue to push for a U.N. resolution with uncompromising and immediate requirements for the Iraqi regime, thereby rejecting the tried course of empty diplomacy, fruitless inspections and failed containment.
Americans looked on in horror as the events of Sept. 11 unfolded. At the end of the day the skyline of one of our greatest cities was forever changed. The Pentagon, a symbol of America's military might, was still smoldering. And a previously indistinguishable field in western Pennsylvania had suddenly and terribly become an unmarked grave for America's newest heroes. . . .
Americans have been asking questions, some of which we may never have satisfying answers to. But today we know that a sworn enemy is pursuing weapons of mass destruction. It is incumbent upon the free world, led by the United States, to dismantle these destructive capabilities.
We have before us a resolution which will authorize, if necessary, the use of America's military to enforce the demands of the U.N. Security Council. There is no greater responsibility for us as elected officials than to provide for the common defense of our fellow countrymen.
In voting for this resolution we send a message to a tyrant that he should not rest easy, that those who would venture to strike at our nation will encounter consequences. We send a message to the Iraqi people that the world has not forgotten them and their suffering at the hands of a madman. We send a message to the world community that we are unified as a nation, that the president possesses the full faith and backing of this distinguished body, that we are committed to defending the liberties which are the very foundation of our republic, and that we are steadfast in our resolve in the war on terror.
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War Service Is Iraq Debate Factor
October 9, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hawks--Doves.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some lawmakers pressing for war with Iraq never saw combat themselves. Some urging caution have fought. In a nation that does not require military service, one distinguishing factor in the war debate is who wore a uniform and who did not.
``It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war,'' said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a decorated Vietnam veteran who has urged President Bush, a fellow Republican, to be cautious with his Iraqi war plans.
``They come at it from an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off,'' Hagel said.
Congress is debating whether to grant Bush the authority he seeks to use force against Iraq, with or without U.N. backing. The House was to vote Thursday; a Senate vote was expected next week.
War advocates contend Saddam Hussein is too great a threat to wait until he strikes first, and among them are some who never suited up in the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines.
In the post-World War II generation and with the Vietnam era receding, too, combat experience is becoming inevitably scarcer in Congress and the administration. Decisions about going to war are increasingly likely to be made by those who have not done so.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., a possible presidential candidate in 2004 who did not serve in the armed forces, favors action. ``Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States,'' he said.
Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., a Vietnam-era veteran and one of three anti-war House Democrats who recently visited Iraq, says Bush should pursue diplomacy before war. Bonior said he was just an Air Force cook in California during the Vietnam War but saw enough to know that ``war destroys lives in such a profound way.''
Combat veterans who have taken a go-slow approach to war against Iraq include Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a decorated Vietnam War veteran.
It's that firsthand experience of war that is feeding the opposition, says Michael Klare, who teaches peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. But are war-hardened critics the only ones fit to say when the country should go to war?
Not necessarily, Klare said. But ``at least that experience gives you the sense that things could go wrong in war.''
``If you're responsible for the lives of young men and women being sent into combat and you're aware of these uncertainties and you know that things can go wrong, you're going to be much more cautious and reluctant than people who think these things are all hunky-dory,'' he said.
Still, many proponents of using force recognize the task may not be simple or bloodless.
Case in point: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for more than five years, is outspoken about removing the ``tyrant'' leading Iraq.
Any student of history, even a non-veteran, knows war-making can go wrong. Advocates of a tough war resolution say the effort is needed despite the risks.
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, wants a swift attack.
``America can't wait,'' said DeLay, another militarily inexperienced lawmaker.
The lack of combat experience extends to Bush's advisers, including some who are pushing hardest for war, in an echo of the backgrounds of many in the administration of Bill Clinton -- a president who avoided the draft.
Among Bush officials without a combat background: Vice President Dick Cheney, a former defense secretary; White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card; presidential adviser Karl Rove; national security adviser Condoleezza Rice; and Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary and a leading hawk.
Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard; he was not sent to Vietnam. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was a Navy aviator and flight instructor from 1954 to 1957.
The administration's most prominent veteran, Secretary of State Colin Powell, fought in Vietnam in a long military career topped by his years as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Powell is promoting Bush's tough policy on Iraq despite his reputation as a reluctant warrior.
In his 1995 memoirs, he touched on the subject of non-warriors wanting Americans to fight: ``The intellectual community is apt to say we have to 'do something,' and diplomats fire off their diplomatic notes. But in the end, it is the armed forces that bring back the body bags and have to explain why to parents.''
Anthony Zinni, the retired Marine general and former head of the U.S. Central Command, noted that he and other ex-generals, including Brent Scowcroft, believe attacking Iraq will cause more problems.
``It might be interesting to wonder why all the generals see it the same way, and all those that never fired a shot in anger and (are) really hellbent to go to war see it a different way,'' Zinni observed in a recent speech in Florida. ``That's usually the way it is in history.''
Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., supports using force despite the personal stakes involved. Although he has not been to war, his 30-year-old son is a staff sergeant in an Army unit likely to be sent to Iraq.
``The attitude of my son, Brooks, is that I should do what's best for the country and he should do his best as a soldier and nothing else really matters,'' Johnson said in an interview.
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House Passes Iraq Resolution With 297 to 132 Vote
October 10, 2002
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/international/10CND-IRAQ.html
The House voted 296 to 133 this afternoon to give President Bush authority to use military force against Iraq.
The resolution gives Mr. Bush the authority to use military force as he determines is appropriate to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and to "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions against Iraq."
Earlier in the day, the Senate voted, 75 to 25, to limit debate on the resolution, meaning a vote come as early as this evening or by early Friday.
The Senate's cloture vote came after the majority leader, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, announced from the Senate floor that he was supporting the resolution. "For me, the deciding factor is my belief that a united Congress will help the president unite the world," Senator Daschle said. "And by uniting the world we can increase the world's chances of succeeding in this effort and reduce both the risks and the costs that America may have to bear."
Senator Daschle had been one of the last holdouts among Democratic leaders, and he said he decided to support the resolution after revisions were made to the original proposal.
"Because this resolution is improved and because I believe that Saddam Hussein represents a real threat and because I believe it is important for America to speak with one voice at this critical moment I will vote to give the president the authority he needs," Mr. Daschle said. "But I respect those who reach different conclusions."
Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia had led the effort to delay a Senate vote until next week.
Earlier in the day, the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, commented on the expectation that the resolution would be passed.
"The president hopes that this vote will send a strong message to Iraq and to the world that if Iraq does not comply with United Nations resolutions, the United States and our allies are prepared to use force to make certain that Iraq does comply so that the peace can be kept," Mr. Fleischer said.
Mr. Fleischer added: "The president has made no decisions about what the next step would be. Clearly, we will continue to talk to the United Nations about the inspection process. And that's where the matter currently stands."
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HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 455
H J RES 114 YEA-AND-NAY 10-OCT-2002 3:05 PM
http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=2002&rollnumber=455
QUESTION: On Passage
BILL TITLE: To Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq
YEAS NAYS NONVOTING
REPUBLICAN 215 6 2
DEMOCRATIC 81 126 1
INDEPENDENT 1
TOTALS 296 133 3
[Includes breakdown of how individual members voted.]
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Senate Roll Call for Iraq Vote
Fri Oct 11,
By The Associated Press
Politics - U. S. Congress
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021011/ap_on_go_co/senate_rollcall_us_iraq_1
The 77-23 roll call by which the Senate voted Friday to authorize President Bush (news - web sites) to use military force, if necessary, to disarm Iraq.
On this vote, a "yes" vote was a vote to pass the resolution and a "no" vote was a vote to defeat it.
Voting "yes" were 29 Democrats and 48 Republicans.
Voting "no" were 21 Democrats, one Republican and one independent.
Alabama
Sessions (R) Yes; Shelby (R) Yes.
Alaska
Murkowski (R) Yes; Stevens (R) Yes.
Arizona
Kyl (R) Yes; McCain (R) Yes.
Arkansas
Hutchinson (R) Yes; Lincoln (D) Yes.
California
Boxer (D) No; Feinstein (D) Yes.
Colorado
Allard (R) Yes; Campbell (R) Yes.
Connecticut
Dodd (D) Yes; Lieberman (D) Yes.
Delaware
Biden (D) Yes; Carper (D) Yes.
Florida
Graham (D) No; Nelson (D) Yes.
eorgia
Cleland (D) Yes; Miller (D) Yes.
Hawaii
Akaka (D) No; Inouye (D) No.
Idaho
Craig (R) Yes; Crapo (R) Yes.
Illinois
Durbin (D) No; Fitzgerald (R) Yes.
Indiana
Bayh (D) Yes; Lugar (R) Yes.
Iowa
Grassley (R) Yes; Harkin (D) Yes.
Kansas
Brownback (R) Yes; Roberts (R) Yes.
Kentucky
Bunning (R) Yes; McConnell (R) Yes.
Louisiana
Breaux (D) Yes; Landrieu (D) Yes.
Maine
Collins (R) Yes; Snowe (R) Yes.
Maryland
Mikulski (D) No; Sarbanes (D) No.
Massachusetts
Kennedy (D) No; Kerry (D) Yes.
Michigan
Levin (D) No; Stabenow (D) No.
Minnesota
Dayton (D) No; Wellstone (D) No.
Mississippi
Cochran (R) Yes; Lott (R) Yes.
Missouri
Bond (R) Yes; Carnahan (D) Yes.
Montana
Baucus (D) Yes; Burns (R) Yes.
Nebraska
Hagel (R) Yes; Nelson (D) Yes.
Nevada
Ensign (R) Yes; Reid (D) Yes.
New Hampshire
Gregg (R) Yes; Smith (R) Yes.
New Jersey
Corzine (D) No; Torricelli (D) Yes.
New Mexico
Bingaman (D) No; Domenici (R) Yes.
New York
Clinton (D) Yes; Schumer (D) Yes.
North Carolina
Edwards (D) Yes; Helms (R) Yes.
North Dakota
Conrad (D) No; Dorgan (D) Yes.
Ohio
DeWine (R) Yes; Voinovich (R) Yes.
Oklahoma
Inhofe (R) Yes; Nickles (R) Yes.
Oregon
Smith (R) Yes; Wyden (D) No.
Pennsylvania
Santorum (R) Yes; Specter (R) Yes.
Rhode Island
Chafee (R) No; Reed (D) No.
South Carolina
Hollings (D) Yes; Thurmond (R) Yes.
South Dakota
Daschle (D) Yes; Johnson (D) Yes.
Tennessee
Frist (R) Yes; Thompson (R) Yes.
Texas
Gramm (R) Yes; Hutchison (R) Yes.
Utah
Bennett (R) Yes; Hatch (R) Yes.
Vermont
Jeffords (I) No; Leahy (D) No.
Virginia
Allen (R) Yes; Warner (R) Yes.
Washington
Cantwell (D) Yes; Murray (D) No.
West Virginia
Byrd (D) No; Rockefeller (D) Yes.
Wisconsin
Feingold (D) No; Kohl (D) Yes.
Wyoming
Enzi (R) Yes; Thomas (R) Yes.
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Helping Iraq Kill with Chemical Weapons:
The Relevance of Yesterday's US Hypocrisy Today
by ELSON E. BOLES
October 10, 2002
CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/boles1010.html
You may feel disgusted by the hypocrisy of US plans to make war on Iraq and sickened at the inevitable slaughter of thousands of people. But if you could only vaguely recall the details of how deep the hypocrisy goes, then read on.
The US not only helped arm Iraq with military equipment right up to the time of the Kuwait invasion in 1989, as did Germany, Britain, France, Russia and others, but also sold and helped Iraq to integrate chemical weapons into their US-provided battle plans while fighting Iran between 1985-1988.
According to a New York Times article in August, 2002, Col. Walter P. Lang, a senior defense intelligence officer at the time, explained that D.I.A. and C.I.A. officials "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose" to Iran. "The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern," he said. One veteran said, that the Pentagon "wasn't so horrified by Iraq's use of gas." "It was just another way of killing people _ whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn't make any difference."
Now consider just how deceptive the recent comments from the White House are. In late September spokesman Ari Fleischer said that British Prime Minister Blair's dossier of evidence is "frightening in terms of Iraq's intentions and abilities to acquire weapons." A few days later, while making his case against Saddam, President Bush said "He's used poison gas on his own people." Bush deceives because he hides the fact that US officials, including his father, had no qualms about helping Saddam gas Iranians. What is truly frightening are the US policies toward Iraq, the cover ups of those policies, and the US officials who personally profit in the millions of dollars from those policies. To whatever degree Saddam is a tyrant, he would not be that without the US government.
The question is not whether Saddam is willing to use chemical or other weapons of mass destruction again. The question is whether the US is currently selling and helping countries use weapons of mass destruction.
Details about Iraq killing Iranians with US-supplied chemical and biological weapons significantly deepens our understanding of the current hypocrisy. It began with "Iraq-gate" -- when US policy makers, financiers, arms-suppliers and makers, made massive profits from sales to Iraq of myriad chemical, biological, conventional weapons, and the equipment to make nuclear weapons. Reporter Russ Baker noted, for example, that, "on July 3, 1991, the Financial Times reported that a Florida company run by an Iraqi national had produced cyanide -- some of which went to Iraq for use in chemical weapons -- and had shipped it via a CIA contractor." This was just the tip of a mountain of scandals.
A major break in uncovering Iraqgate began with a riveting 1990 Nightline episode which revealed that top officials of the Reagan administration, the State Department, the Pentagon, C.I.A., and D.I.A., collectively engaged in a massive cover up of the USS Vincennes' whereabouts and actions when it shot down an Iranian airliner in 1987 killing over 200 civilians. The "massive cover up" Koppel explained, was designed to hide the US secret war against Iran, in which, among other actions, US Special Operations troops and Navy SEALS sunk half of Iran's navy while giving battle plans and logistical information to Iraqi ground forces in a coordinated offensive.
In continuing the probe, as Koppel explained in June, 1990, "It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush [Sr.], operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy."
A PBS Frontline episode, "The Arming of Iraq" (1990) detailed much of the conventional and so-called "dual-use" weapons sold to Iraq. The public learned from other sources that at least since mid-1980s the US was selling chemical and biological material for weapons to Iraq and orchestrating private sales. These sales began soon after current Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad in 1985 and met with Saddam Hussein as a private businessman on behalf of the Reagan administration. In the last major battle of the Iran-Iraq war, some 65,000 Iranians were killed, many by gas.
Investigators turned up new scandals, including the involvement of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), the giant Italian bank, and many of the very same circles of arms suppliers, covert operators, and policy makers in and out of the US government and active in those roles for years. The National Security Council, CIA and other US agencies tacitly approved about $4 billion in unreported loans to Iraq through the giant Italian bank's Atlanta branch. Iraq, with the blessing and official approval of the US government, purchased computer controlled machine tools, computers, scientific instruments, special alloy steel and aluminum, chemicals, and other industrial goods for Iraq's missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
However, the early reports on BNL's activities and the startling revelations that the US government astonishingly knew that BNL was financing billions of dollars of purchases illegally, were rather comical in view of later revelations regarding who was involved. US government officials didn't just know and approve, but some were employees at BNL directly or indirectly. It was Representative Henry Gonzalez (D-Texas) who relentlessly brought key information into the Congressional Record (despite stern warnings by the State Department to stop his personal investigation for the sake of "national security").
Gonzalas revealed, for example, that Brent Scowcroft served as Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates until being appointed as National Security Advisor to President Bush in January 1989. As Gonzalez reported, "Until October 4,1990, Mr. Scowcroft owned stock in approximately 40 U.S. corporations, many of which were doing busies in Iraq." Scowcroft's stock included that in Halliburton Oil, also doing business in Iraq at the time, which had also been run by current Vice President Dick Cheney for a time. Recall that this year President George Bush Sr. faced suspicion of insider trading in relation to selling his stock in Halliburton. The companies that Scowcroft owned stock in, according to Gonzalez, "received more than one out of every eight U.S. export licenses for exports to Iraq. Several of the companies were also clients of Kissinger Associates while Mr. Scowcroft was Vice Chairman of that firm." Thus, Kissinger Associates helped US companies obtain US export licenses with BNL-finance so Iraq could purchase US weapons and materials for its weapons programs.
Many US business-men and officials made handsome profits. This included Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, who was an employee of BNL while BNL was simultaneously a paying client of Kissinger Associates. Gonzalez reported that Mr. Alan Stoga, a Kissinger Associates executive, met in June 1989 Mr. Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. "Many Kissinger Associates clients received US export licenses for exports to Iraq. Several were also the beneficiaries of BNL loans to Iraq," said Mr. Gonzalez. Kissinger admitted that "it is possible that somebody may have advised a client on how to get a license."
Perhaps the most bizarre revelations about the involvement of former US officials concerned a Washington-based enterprise called "Global Research" which played a middleman role in selling uniforms to Iraq. It was run by, none other than Spiro Agnew (Nixon's former VP who resigned to avoid bribery and tax evasion charges), John Mitchell (Nixon's chief of staff and Watergate organizer), and Richard Nixon himself. In the mid-1980s, more than a decade after Watergate, Nixon wrote a cozy letter to former dictator and friend Nicolae Ceausescu to close the deal. Global Research, incidentally, swindled the Iraqis, who thought they were getting US-made uniforms for desert conditions. Instead they received, and discarded, the winter uniforms from Romania.
By late 1992, the sales of chemical and biological weapons were revealed. Congressional Records of Senator Riegle's investigation of the Gulf War Syndrome show that that the US government approved sales of large varieties of chemical and biological materials to Iraq. These included anthrax, components of mustard gas, botulinum toxins (which causes paralysis of the muscles involving swallowing and is often fatal), histoplasma capsulatum (which may cause pneumonia, enlargement of the liver and spleen, anemia, acute inflammatory skin disease marked by tender red nodules), and a host of other nasty chemicals materials.
To top it all off, there is the question as to whether Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was a set up. Evidence indicates that the US knew of Iraq's plans -- after all, the military and intelligence agencies of the two countries were working very closely. Newspaper reports about the infamous meeting between then-Ambassador Glaspie and Iraq officials, and a special ABC report in the series "A Line in the Sand," indicated that, although the US officials told Iraq that it disapproved, they indicated that the US would not interfere.
Bear in mind the attitude of the US policy makers not only regarding Iraq's use of gas against Iranians, but in general. Richard Armatige, then Asst. Sec. of Defense for International Security Affairs and now Deputy Secretary of State, said with a hint of pride in his voice that the US "was playing one wolf off another wolf" in pursuing our so-called national interest. This kind of cool machismo resembled the pride that Oliver North verbalized with a grin during the Iran-Contra hearings as "a right idea" with regard to using the Ayatollah's money to fund the Contras. The setting up of Iraq thus would be very consistent with the goals and the character of US foreign policy in the Middle East: to control the region's states either for US oil companies or as bargaining chips in deals with other strong countries, and to profit by selling massive quantities of weapons to states that will war with or deter those states that oppose US "interests."
The problem that Armatige refers to was the fact that by 1990, the US and allied arming of Iraq had given Iraq a decisive military edge over Iran, which upset the regional "balance." The thinking among the US hawks was Iraq's military needed to somehow be returned to its 1980 level. An invasion of Kuwait would enable the US to do that.
But initially many arms suppliers opposed the war on Iraq because they had been making huge profits from arms sales to Saddam's regime during the 1980s. Indeed, one US official interviewed expressed his disappointment with Iraq's invasion and the subsequent Gulf War because the relationship with Iraq could have continued to be "very profit...uh mutually profitable."
Bush Sr. and others expected that after the war, Saddam would capitulate to US designs on the region. With a heeled Saddam, the interests of arms suppliers, defense contractors, and the many US oil corporations could be renewed. Iraqi would have to re-arm itself and invest in oil drilling and processing facilities that were destroyed by US forces. And to pay for all that, Iraq would have to sell oil cheap, which served the interests both of the giant oil corporations and the American public who had begun buying GM SUVs en masse. It would be good for US business.
The invasion today is, above all, to renew US firm's access to Iraqi oil. As reported recently in the New York Times, former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who has been one of the leading advocates of forcing Hussein from power, argues that, "It's pretty straightforward, France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them. If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them."
His views are of course supported by the new Iraqi government-in-waiting. Faisal Qaragholi, the "petroleum engineer who directs the London office of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella organization of opposition groups that is backed by the United States" says that "Our oil policies should be decided by a government in Iraq elected by the people." Ahmed Chalabi, the INC leader, put it more bluntly and sadi that he favored a U.S.-led consortium to develop Iraq's oil fields, which would replace the existing agreements that Iraq has with Russia and France. "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," Chalabi said.
Note also that Bush and company have a personal stake in unilateral action. According to Leroy Sievers and the Nightline Staff at ABC, "Dick Cheney's Halliburton Co. had interests in Iraqi oil production after the [Gulf ] war."
Thus, following the Gulf War, Cheney, Bush Sr. and others didn't expect that Saddam would refuse to abide by US interests and join the so-called "family of nations." This is really what President Bush Jr meant when he said at a cabinet meeting on Sept. 24, 2002 that he intends "to hold Saddam Hussein to account for a decade of defiance."
There is no shock about any of this, nor of the sordid assortment of officials and individuals directly or indirectly involved -- from the infamous US-based international arms dealer Sarkis Songhanalian and former Gen. Secord, to Oliver North and Richard Nixon -- and many others. They had been part of covert US arms and drug deals and Mafia dating back decades. Iraqgate was in fact also part of Irangate, and both are about a shadow government that circumvents domestic and international laws in arming regimes and terrorist organizations to enhance the profits of US businessmen and corporations.
The public learned since the mid-1980s that the shadow government folks played all sides of various wars, and made curious business alliances. Profits were good, but there were also ideological reasons. While arming Iraq and putting proceeds into their pockets, the covert operators also armed Iran. Israel of course, had also been arming Iran since the Ayatollah came into power in order to counter Iraq. The US soon joined these operations after Regan came to power.
Oliver North, Bush Sr., Robert McFarlane, and Gen. Secord, and others purchased from the CIA spare parts for US-made weapons and more than two thousand TOW missiles, which the CIA had purchased at discount rates from the Pentagon. Secord and North sold the weapons and parts to Iran in exchange for cash and the release of US hostages in Lebanon.
In public, Ronnie Reagan repeatedly condemned negotiations with terrorists in principle and even stated on national TV that there had been no negotiations with terrorists. He went back on air a few months later and said that while he still didn't believe "in his heart" that the US had negotiated with terrorists, the facts told him "otherwise." He escaped impeachment because he "couldn't remember" signing detailed instructions for sales of weapons to Iran and for the diversion of money to the Contras.
Insiders considered these trades "business as usual." Former General Secord, for instance, unashamedly told Congressional investigators during the Iran-Contra hearings that his arms-dealing firm, the "Enterprise," which sold the TOWs to other brokers and then to Iran, was a legitimate profit-making business. And as we all know, at the other end of the deal, North channeled a portion of the proceeds from those sales through Swiss banks and to the terrorist Contras in Honduras. Their job was to overthrow the Sandinista regime that overthrew the brutal 43-year Somoza family dictatorship supported by the US.
Again, in legal terms, the scandal was not only that Reagan's administration circumvented the Boland Amendment which outlawed military support to the Contras, but also that the CIA had also mined the harbors of Nicaragua. When the US was taken to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and convicted of violating international laws, President Reagan disregarded this conviction saying the ICJ had no jurisdiction over the United States.
Bush Jr. has stated the following reasons for invading Iraq, all of which are accurate except the last: (1) Iraq used chemical weapons, (2) Iraq tried to build nuclear weapons, and (3) the US tried to bring Iraq into the "family of nations" (said first by Bush Sr). He is correct that Iraq was willing to use chemical weapons and has been trying to build nuclear weapons for years. Of course, he just fails to mention that the US was willing to sell, and to help Iraq use, chemical weapons of mass destruction and that his friends profited handsomely in so doing. He also fails to note that today Hussein is not seen as an immediate threat by it's Arab neighbors, none of whom have called for his ouster, and that Iraq has only a shadow of the power it had in 1990. There is no evidence to support Bush or Blair's claims that Iraq has and is preparing to use chemical or biological weapons.
Lastly, what about Bush Jr.'s third contention, that the US had tried to bring Saddam into the "family of nations?" In view of the thousands upon thousands of women, children, and men butchered with US battle plans and arms, as well as arms from Europe, one could only characterize that family as being composed of unscrupulous, profiteering, vile accomplices to mass murder. Perhaps this is also a reason why the Bush administration opposes the formation of the World Court and needs US politicians and military personel exempt from international law.
Elson E. Boles is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Saginaw Valley State University University in Michigan.
He can be reached at: boles@svsu.edu
-------- business
For the Record
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Washington Post; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3750-2002Oct9?language=printer
Led by House Republicans, negotiators working out final details of a $355.4 billion defense bill deleted language that would have barred U.S. firms using foreign tax havens from receiving Pentagon contracts in the 2003 fiscal year. Several GOP lawmakers who voted to strike the provision had voted for similar language on nondefense bills earlier this year. At that time, the congressional spotlight was on issues involving corporate accountability and wrongdoing. The Senate had attached the provision to the defense measure.
-------- chemical weapons / toxics
White House makes offer on toxic chemical dispute
Thursday, October 10, 2002
By John Heilprin,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/10/10102002/ap_48665.asp
WASHINGTON - The White House left open the possibility Wednesday it would consider adding chemicals at some time in the future to a list of a dozen toxic substances being phased out worldwide under an international treaty.
The compromised, outlined in a letter to Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., is an attempt to resolve a dispute with Jeffords over implementation of the Stockholm Convention for Persistent Organic Pollutants, a treaty signed last year and hailed by the Bush administration as a major environmental breakthrough.
But until now, the White House had offered Congress no advice on how to meet the global treaty's goal of adding future pollutants to the list of 12 chemicals specifically earmarked for elimination.
The administration has made no commitment to add chemicals but proposed Wednesday to require that the Environmental Protection Agency consider - but not necessarily be bound by - another nation's evidence when deciding whether to accept an addition to the list.
"EPA would be required to consider the international record and the final international decision about a chemical, but the U.S. would retain the legal right to make an independent regulatory decision," said John Graham, who oversees regulatory review at the White House Office of Management and Budget.
EPA Administrator Christie Whitman send legislative language to accomplish the proposal to the Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Jeffords.
Erik Smulson, a spokesman for the committee, said the proposal reflects "the industry proposal we've already seen" and "does nothing to move the process in any direction."
Jeffords had introduced a bill to have Congress implement the Stockholm treaty on persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, and require that the EPA phase out additional chemicals if other nation's found them to be a threat. The 12 chemicals - including PCBs, dioxins, and furans as well as DDT and other pesticides - are no longer produced or used in the United States, although some are still widely used in developing countries.
Whitman in her letter to Jeffords said the new proposal "should not be construed as a final opinion" by the administration.
Graham called it a conciliatory gesture. "We hope that this will narrow the differences between the administration and Sen. Jeffords," he said.
It would take several years for the treaty to take effect, though production and use of nine of the 12 chemicals would be banned once it did. The use of DDT to combat malaria according to World Health Organization guidelines would be allowed to continue in about 25 countries until safer means were developed.
-------- iraq
IRAQI MISSILES DEEMED AS INEFFECTIVE FOR WMD
October 10, 2002
MENL
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2002/october/10_11_1.html
LONDON -- Iraq's arsenal of short- and medium-range missiles has been deemed as largely incapable of delivering weapons of mass destruction.
A report by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies asserts that Iraqi missiles are not sufficiently developed to carry either biological or chemical weapons. The report said the WMD would be destroyed upon impact of the missiles.
The institute said Iraq can produce large amounts of biological and chemical weapons agents, including mustard gas, sarin and VX. But the report said Iraq appears to lack the impact fusing and warhead design to effectively disseminate WMD.
"BW agent could be delivered by short range munitions including artillery shells and rockets," the report said. "Delivery by ballistic missile is more problematic given that much of the agent would be destroyed on impact and the immediate area of dispersal would be small."
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Iraq Shows Suspected Nuclear Site
October 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Banned-Weapons.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi generals threw open a sprawling complex Thursday that the United States suspects may be developing nuclear arms. Iraq insists it turns out nothing more deadly than toothbrushes.
As Western and Iraqi reporters clambered on machine parts or skidded on machine oil, the latest tour showed what past outings have: How hard it would be for any eyes -- untrained, in the skies, or expert -- to see what Saddam Hussein might wish concealed.
``This shows that this site has nothing to hide. You can see for yourself,'' said Gen. Hussan Mohammed Amin, surrounded by machine parts heavily shrouded in plastic.
The stacks of covered gear were machines that workers dismantled and scattered for fear of a U.S. attack, said Amin, director-general of the Iraqi commission that has worked with U.N. arms inspectors.
``I told the people here they should have buried them'' for protection, the general added under his breath. Journalists were told the plant made dies, molds, and steel structures.
Iraq's top military industrialization minister repeated Thursday that his country has no programs for weapons of mass destruction -- but said it could retaliate for any attack nonetheless.
``If the Americans commit another such crime against us, we will teach them something they will never forget,'' Gen. Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish said at a news conference in Baghdad.
Sprawling over two square miles north of Baghdad, the Nassr industrial site twice has been the target of U.S.-led attacks -- during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and in 1998 after U.N. inspectors withdrew to protest what they called Iraq's noncooperation with efforts to monitor its weapons programs. After each strike it was rebuilt.
U.N. resolutions after the Gulf War ordered Iraq to destroy all nuclear, biological and chemical weapon programs and the missiles to deliver such arms.
As President Bush tried this week to build his case with the American people for action against Iraq, he and the White House cited the Nassr plant and three others as being sites used in Iraqi efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The White House produced what it said were satellite photos of two of the sites.
Iraq has agreed to the return of weapons inspectors, absent since 1998. But before the inspections resume, the United States is holding out for a tougher U.N. resolution that would demand access to Saddam's many presidential palace sites, among other stipulations.
The Americans ``don't want the inspectors to come ... (because) they will visit the accused sites and see that nothing has taken place,'' Amin told reporters outside the Nassr plant.
``For Americans, this will create a crisis, a crisis for their credibility,'' he said.
In recent months, Iraqi officials have escorted journalists to a number of suspected sites, to dispute American claims.
At the White House, press secretary Ari Fleischer dismissed the tours as ``cat and mouse games.''
Journalists ``walk away scratching their heads, wondering what it is they just saw and what was concealed,'' Fleischer said.
``I think Iraq has shown a 10-year-long history of being able to take guests into Iraq, having moved facilities around, having mobile facilities available, hiding information, allowing things to be seen that only they want to be seen,'' he said.
Iraqis said they would take Western reporters on Saturday to a second of the four alleged nuclear sites specified by Bush.
The second site, Al Furat, south of Baghdad, conducts electronics research for civilian use, Huweish said. U.S. intelligence officials charged last week that the Iraqi government has made repeated attempts to smuggle in goods for Al Furat that could be used for a centrifuge in nuclear work.
At the Nassr plant Thursday, Amin led reporters through four vast buildings. Plant director Tahssin Salman Mousa called it a ``surprise visit.'' Officials said journalists were free to see anywhere in the plant, but there were dozens of tin-roofed structures in the complex that journalists did not have time to view.
There was little sign of trucks with goods going in or out of the plant. Amin said some production had been shut down as a precaution against U.S.-led attacks.
At issue for U.N. inspectors is machinery that can be used either for civilian or military ends. Amin said the Nassr plant does have some ``dual-use'' technology, including 3-dimensional computer imaging for molding complex parts, but only for civilian ends.
Inside, cameramen climbed atop machines to video the crowd and random machine parts. Reporters surrounded Iraqi officials, who sometimes tried to edge away.
Journalists were shown workers laboring at a fierce furnace and welders sweating over oil tankers. Brochures in English showed the plant producing goods including something called a ``heart machine'' and the bases for toothbrushes.
Without the expertise to know what to ask about or where to look, the crowd looked more like a kindergarten class touring a soft drinking bottling plant.
``Oh, yeah, it's the D-D-D triple X,'' one cameraman muttered sarcastically as an official offered no sound explanation to what the machine does.
Iraq denies it has ever had a nuclear weapons program. In 1993, Hans Blix of the International Atomic Energy Agency declared that Iraq's nuclear weapons program had been ``either destroyed or neutralized.''
Soon after, U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq said they had discovered a nuclear weapons program well under way. Aides say the chagrined Blix, now foremost in the renewed inspections effort, has been put on his guard by that event.
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U.N. Arms Inspector Seeks U.S. Intelligence Assistance
But Blix Warns No Quid Pro Quo in Iraq
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 10, 2002; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3771-2002Oct9?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 9 -- Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, has appealed to senior Bush administration officials to substantially increase U.S. intelligence assistance to U.N. inspectors operating in Iraq, saying it is "crucial for the success of the inspections," according to U.S. and U.N. diplomats.
Blix, executive director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), made the request in a meeting Friday with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz. He also asked the administration not to "micromanage" the information it provides or to expect the United Nations to return the favor by supplying the United States with intelligence gathered in the course of its inspections.
Blix's appeal for new evidence of Iraqi efforts to conceal its weapons comes as the Swedish disarmament expert is urging Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to permit the United Nations to use U.S. intelligence equipment in Iraq.
In a letter Tuesday to Gen Amir H. Al-Saadi, a senior adviser to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Blix said he may need clearance for American U2 and French Mirage surveillance aircraft. He also said the United Nations would use advanced sensors, surveillance cameras and communications equipment, including satellite telephones.
The pursuit of new intelligence assets underscores the inspection agency's dependence on foreign intelligence, especially from the United States, to ensure credible inspections of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. But it also points to Blix's challenge of enticing U.S. intelligence agencies to cooperate with the inspectors while ensuring they do not compromise the agency's reputation for impartiality.
The debate over the role of intelligence in the inspections has already led to friction between Blix and the Bush administration.
While Blix has welcomed Washington's effort to strengthen his inspection mandate, he has expressed reservations over a provision in a U.S. draft resolution that would allow the United States and other permanent members of the 15-nation Security Council to direct inspections, tailor interviews and request confidential reports on Iraqi activities. Blix has also voiced concern about a U.S. proposal that would compel Iraq to allow the inspectors to interview Iraqi witnesses outside the country.
Blix's concerns that these initiatives could compromise his agency's integrity are shared by key Security Council members. France told representatives of the council Monday that it would oppose any new resolution that granted new privileges to the United States and other permanent council members. Britain, which is seeking to broker a deal on inspections, is urging the United States to drop some of the most controversial proposals opposed by Blix.
France, along with Russia, also strongly opposes a provision in the U.S. proposal authorizing the automatic use of force by member states if Iraq does not cooperate with a new inspections regime. Bush called French President Jacques Chirac today in an effort to overcome French resistance, but there was no indication progress was made during the 25-minute conversation.
A White House spokesman said Bush stressed that a strong resolution would increase the likelihood that "this matter can be resolved peacefully." Chirac spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said that Bush repeated what he said in a Monday speech that military action was neither "imminent nor unavoidable." But while Chirac told Bush that France supported "inspections that are as effective and strong as possible," Colonna said, he said it "could not accept" any resolution that included an automatic use-of-force trigger.
Since his appointment in March 2000, Blix has sought to enhance the inspection agency's independence and assure the Security Council that it would not repeat its predecessor's venture into espionage to thwart Iraqi deception.
The U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), which led the hunt for Iraq's weapons from 1991 to December 1998, was dismantled in 1999 after disclosure that U.N. inspectors had used American eavesdropping equipment to listen in on Iraqi government communications. Some former U.N. inspectors maintained that UNSCOM was manipulated by U.S. intelligence to collect evidence on Hussein's whereabouts.
Blix has tried to bolster the new agency's intelligence-gathering capacity, purchasing satellite imagery from private French and American firms and employing analysts at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Monterey, Calif. But Blix has pledged that the inspection agency would never employ electronic espionage, or engage in any information trading with governments. "It is in everybody's interest that UNMOVIC is in nobody's pocket," Blix said.
U.S. intelligence agencies are concerned that classified information passed to the United Nations may not be secure, according to U.N. sources. It will likely take some time, they said, to restore trust between U.S. officials and the U.N. agency's intelligence unit, which is headed by a former Canadian intelligence official. The United States may require that the inspectors cede some of their independence in exchange for help.
"No one is going to give information for free. It's not the way it works in the real world," said Timothy McCarthy, a former U.N. inspector and consultant to UNMOVIC at the Center of Nonproliferation Studies. "They'll want to make sure they are comfortable with the people who are receiving and using the information and they will want to get feedback. There is always a two-way street."
Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.
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Saddam seeks German aid for 'supergun'
By Michael Smith
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
October 10, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021010-48589039.htm
LONDON - Iraq has been building a new 33-foot-long "supergun" capable of firing biological or chemical shells with equipment from German companies, prosecutors said yesterday.
A senior Kremlin official meanwhile said in Moscow that Russia would take a "pragmatic" approach to a U.S.-sponsored campaign against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein - the clearest signal yet that Moscow would not stand in the United States' way.
Prosecutors in Mannheim, Germany, said two businessmen from the small town of Pforzheim will go on trial in January. They are accused of being the middlemen in an Iraqi operation to procure machine tools to drill the gun's barrel.
The disclosure is seen as further evidence of Saddam's attempts to build delivery systems for his weapons of mass destruction. CIA Director George J. Tenet warned this week that a military attack on Iraq could prompt Saddam to use chemical or biological weapons.
The huge gun, which has a 209 mm bore, is not nearly as powerful as the largest of the so-called superguns designed for Iraq by Canadian weapons expert Gerald Bull in the late 1980s.
They had 170-foot barrels with a 350 mm bore. Two were destroyed by U.N. weapons inspectors when they entered Iraq after the 1991 Gulf war.
But the al-Fao 209 mm gun, also designed by Mr. Bull, has a range of more than 35 miles, twice that of the largest British artillery piece, the AS90, and would pose a substantial threat to thousands of allied troops who are expected to be sent to Kuwait.
"Guns of this caliber are capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction," the German prosecutors said.
After being approached to provide the equipment, Bernd Schompeter, 59, an engineer, is accused of having contacted the co-defendant, who has not been named.
Together they obtained the equipment and arranged for it to be exported in 1999 to Jordan, from where it was shipped to Iraq.
Mr. Bull was fatally shot outside his Brussels apartment in April 1990. Suspicions arose that his slaying was the work of Israeli agents, and it came just two weeks before British officials halted a shipment of steel tubes, preventing Iraq's largest gun from being completed before the Gulf war.
Based on the size of the tubes and other intelligence information, U.S. officials estimated this gun would have been up to 400 feet long, with a bore larger than 3 feet. It would have been capable of firing a projectile - potentially a nuclear, chemical or biological shell - up to 600 miles.
Despite Mr. Bull's death and the destruction of his superguns, the designs for the weapons are believed to have survived, making it possible for Saddam to try to build more.
In Moscow, meanwhile, a senior official suggested Russia would go along with a strong U.N. resolution on Iraq provided it got assurances that it would not suffer economically from any war.
"The devil will be in the details of these resolutions, but our position is essentially pragmatic. What is interesting for us is our economic and financial interests," said Sergei Yastrzhembsky, chief spokesman for President Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Yastrzhembsky spoke on the eve of a visit to Moscow by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a staunch supporter of the U.S.-led effort to destroy Saddam's arsenal of deadly weapons.
France also moved closer yesterday to accepting the inevitability of war in Iraq, even as it continued to criticize the United States for its hawkish stance.
After a parliamentary debate on Iraq on Tuesday night, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said France would not use its Security Council veto, because that would deprive it of its influence.
While France still appeared wedded to its insistence that there must be two U.N. resolutions on Iraq, it was not clear whether Russia would maintain a similar stance.
Under the French proposal, the first resolution would instruct Saddam to admit inspectors to destroy his weapons of mass destruction, and the second would authorize force if he obstructed their work.
Britain and the United States would prefer a single tough resolution.
In a British Broadcasting Corp. interview, Mr. Blair played down suggestions that Mr. Putin would be demanding huge financial guarantees in return for offering his support in a war against Iraq.
"Obviously, there are interests that Russia has in this issue, but I don't think it's a question of price tags," Mr. Blair said.
"It's a question of making sure that we do this in such a way that the world is made a safer place, that Iraq can develop and that the interests of everybody, including Russia, are taken account of."
Mr. Yastrzhembsky said the Kremlin's policy on Iraq was driven by economic concerns.
At the heart of Russia's fears are the effects that a war in Iraq might have on the price of oil.
Moscow, which relies on oil for half of its external income, fears that if Saddam is deposed, the United States may attempt to flood the market with cheap Iraqi oil to bolster its own economy.
"We are heavily dependent on world oil prices, and it is difficult to anticipate the consequence of an attack on Iraq," Mr. Yastrzhembsky said.
The price of oil, about $29 a barrel, is widely expected to fall if Washington wages a successful war on Iraq. Mr Yastrzhembsky said Russia could cope with a fall in price to $18 a barrel, but not any lower.
----
Rift Over Plan to Impose Rule on Iraq
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By JAMES DAO and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/international/middleeast/10EXIL.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - The Bush administration is considering plans to create a provisional government for Iraq that could provide a base for opposition to President Saddam Hussein and form the core of a new government if Mr. Hussein is ousted, senior administration officials said.
But the proposal, which is being pushed by several Iraqi exile groups has received mixed reaction inside the administration. It has strong support among Pentagon officials, who want to incorporate it into invasion plans. But the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have been cool to the idea.
One proposal calls for American troops to seize and defend territory inside Iraq where exile groups could set up an interim capital before or during an invasion to topple Mr. Hussein. Proponents contend that creating an alternative government on Iraqi soil would encourage military commanders and government officials to break with Mr. Hussein during the initial phases of an attack. That, they argue, could hasten the collapse of the Baghdad government.
"It's like the role of the French resistance during World War II," said one Iraqi opposition leader. "The United States stood up DeGaulle, gave him a P.R. role, gave him credibility, and helped establish a government the French people could rally around."
But senior officials in the State Department and C.I.A. argue that the administration should encourage a homegrown leadership, not impose one. A provisional government would give the exile groups a head start in controlling the country's vast oil wealth, causing resentment and perhaps even civil war, they say.
"The idea of a provisional central government is just a power grab, as far as I can see," said a person involved in State Department planning for a post-Hussein government.
In his nationally televised speech on Monday, President Bush spoke only in broad terms about how the administration and its coalition partners would deal with a post-Hussein Iraq, a series of plans that White House officials say is still evolving.
"If military action is necessary, the United States and our allies will help the Iraqi people rebuild their economy and create the institutions of liberty in a unified Iraq at peace with its neighbors," Mr. Bush said.
The differences over a provisional government exemplify a rift on Iraq policy that has bedeviled the Bush administration for months and disrupted planning for reconstructing Iraq if Mr. Hussein is deposed, Iraq experts and exile leaders say.
Hawks close to the Pentagon blame the disruptions on the State Department, arguing that the agency has been slow to plan for a post-Hussein government because it dislikes the exile groups, particularly the Iraqi National Congress.
"State has been reluctant to think about Iraq after Saddam, in part because that would force them to think about who we are dealing with among the opposition," said Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "We should have developed a government in exile long ago."
But State Department officials contend that it has been difficult to plan for a new regime because it has not been clear - and is still not clear, they say - how Mr. Hussein may be deposed. Planning for all those contingencies is complex and has only recently begun, the officials said.
"In the end, it's not going to be a made-in-Washington blueprint," the senior official said. "Will we parachute in our government-in-exile and say, `Here are your new rulers.'? Let's be realistic. People who are inside Iraq are going to decide Iraq's future."
An alternative to the provisional government plan circulating in the State Department calls for creating an interim council representing Iraqis from both inside and outside the country that could help guide reconstruction. But under that plan, the central government - and particularly the oil industry - would be administered by the United Nations and the United States military until a democratic government could be created, a process that could take years, officials said.
"Oil is key to holding the country together," said one person involved in planning for a post-Hussein Iraq.
To encourage planning by the Iraqi opposition, the State Department has begun bringing together Iraqi political leaders and intellectuals to develop position papers on a range of topics, including democratic institutions, the judiciary, the media, water and agriculture, oil, health care, education and public finance.
But many Iraqi opposition leaders deride the effort as an academic exercise. The United States should be helping to organize and preparing to recognize a provisional government that can take power the moment Baghdad falls, they contend.
They want the administration to endorse a provisional government before a major conference of opposition groups that may take place in Brussels later this month. That conference is intended to demonstrate that the politically and ethnically diverse groups, who have squabbled frequently in the past, can unite behind a new government.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has been developing its own plans for Iraq following an invasion. They include maintaining a large multinational army in Iraq for at least a year to track down and eliminate Iraq's clandestine weapons programs, ensure stability around the country and deal with potential problems in providing assistance to civilians.
In northern Iraq, military forces would probably protect the oil fields around Kirkuk and Mosul to prevent rival groups from trying to seize them. The largest foreign presence would likely be in the central part of the country around Baghdad, Mr. Hussein's power base.
In addition to military security forces, thousands of military civil affairs specialists, familiar with the linguistic and cultural differences within Iraq, would probably be deployed throughout the country, officials said.
Some influential advisers say the post-Hussein planning process is too disjointed, with State Department and Pentagon planning operating on completely separate tracks. Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, oversees the administration's planning.
The advisers, who include former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Mr. Perle, argue that the White House should create a high-level interagency group to coordinate the military and reconstruction planning before an invasion takes place. That sort of powerful council could overcome the bureaucratic and philosophical divisions that have hindered reconstruction planning, the advisers contend.
"It was a mistake we made in Afghanistan," said Mr. Gingrich, who sits on the Defense Policy Board. "You shouldn't go into a country militarily without having thought through what it should look like afterward."
--------
Iraq Denies Efforts to Rearm
October 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq repeated denials that it is rearming and said Thursday that even without sophisticated weapons, it will teach the United States an unforgettable lesson if it is attacked.
Minister of Military Industrialization Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish spoke at a news conference Thursday, after U.S. officials claimed that Iraq is rebuilding at weapons research and development sites.
``I am in charge of the weapons programs and I am saying here and now that we do not have weapons of mass destruction and we do not have programs to develop them,'' Huweish said.
After President Bush's speech Monday in which he accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of pursuing a nuclear weapon and plotting to attack the United States with biological and chemical arms, the White House released satellite photos of two alleged weapons sites. An analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency identified two more Tuesday.
Iraqi officials have repeatedly denied they are working on nuclear weapons. U.S. intelligence does not believe Saddam has developed any, but thinks he may by 2010.
All four sites -- the Al Furat centrifuge development center, the Nassr-Taji Steel Fabrication and Military Production Facility, the Al Qa'im uranium ore refinery and the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center -- were bombed, during either the Gulf War or the four days of U.S. and British airstrikes in 1998 that began after U.N. inspectors accused Iraq of failure to cooperate and left the country.
While Huweish said Iraq was not pursuing mass weapons, the minister said it had a right to rebuild at the sites.
``We have rebuilt some of what the evil aggressors destroyed because Iraq has not vanished and we have the right to live like any other people.''
On the possibility of a U.S. strike, he said, ``If the Americans commit a new stupidity, we will teach them a lesson that they will not forget.''
Asked what Iraq could do to match the American superiority in weapons, he said: ``They will concentrate on airstrikes to destroy our infrastructure, but when they are on the ground they will not be able to move even one inch.''
``We are peaceful people but when we fight we fight fiercely because we are defending our existence, our heritage and our future,'' he said.
Iraq's Deputy Premier Tariq Aziz, who is traveling the region trying to rally support, told reporters upon arrival in Lebanon Thursday that U.S. threats against Iraq were threats against ``the Arab nation.''
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Begins Effort to Remove Illegal Settler Outposts in the West Bank
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By JOEL GREENBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/international/middleeast/10MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 9 - The Israeli Army dismantled two uninhabited settlement outposts in the West Bank today in what defense officials said was the start of a campaign to take down more than 20 illegal encampments.
In clashes in the Gaza Strip, two Palestinian teenagers were killed and at least 15 other people were wounded by Israeli gunfire, residents and medical officials said.
The removal of the West Bank outposts, ordered by Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, drew harsh criticism from leaders of the settlers, who accused the minister of trying to placate dovish members of his Labor Party ahead of a closely contested election for the party leadership next month.
The prospect of the removal of more outposts, including inhabited sites, raised the possibility of a confrontation pitting Mr. Ben-Eliezer against the settlers and their supporters in the governing coalition.
Some commentators speculated that Mr. Ben-Eliezer was seeking such a confrontation in order to appeal to left-leaning Labor members in the race for the leadership of the party, where he is facing a strong challenge from two dovish contenders, Haim Ramon and Amram Mitzna, the mayor of Haifa.
A spokesman for Mr. Ben-Eliezer dismissed that idea, saying that the minister had decided to act after talks with the settlers about removing the unauthorized outposts had proved fruitless.
Scores of outposts, in which people typically live in mobile homes, have been put up by settlers on West Bank hills since 1996 in an effort to expand existing settlements and scuttle plans to hand over more land to the Palestinians. The Peace Now movement, which monitors the outposts, says it has counted more than 100.
Today the army removed empty mobile homes and shipping containers that had been placed by the settlers in two locations west and south of Nablus, a Defense Ministry official said. He added that 20 to 30 outposts would soon be removed.
Deputy Defense Minister Weizman Shiri said the outposts were illegal and had become a burden on the army, which had to to post soldiers to guard them.
"There cannot be a situation in which people who say they are an indivisible part of the territory of the state will be above the law of the State of Israel," Mr. Shiri said.
Leaders of the council of settlements expressed dismay, saying that despite continuing negotiations, they were informed at an overnight meeting with the chief of the army's Central Command that orders had gone out to remove the outposts.
"At a time of war removing the outposts is a victory for terror, and that's exactly what the Palestinians want," said Shaul Goldstein, deputy chairman of the settlers council. "Removing an outpost today means removing a settlement tomorrow."
The council said tonight that it would fight the removal of outposts by democratic means, and it urged settlers not to clash with soldiers.
The clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip took place in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, and left two youths, 16 and 17, dead. Among the at least 15 people wounded was a 1-year-old boy, residents reported.
According to some accounts from the scene, Palestinian gunmen traded fire with Israeli soldiers and tanks guarding bulldozers that were demolishing buildings, while other reports said that the Palestinians had only thrown stones. The army said soldiers returned fire after shots were fired at an armored patrol along the border road.
At Salfit, south of Nablus in the West Bank, the army blew up the family homes of two members of the militant group Hamas who are accused of killing an Israeli couple and wounding two of their children in August.
-------- nato
Investigation points to NATO exercise in mass whale beaching
Thursday, October 10, 2002
By Jerome Socolovsky,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/10/10102002/ap_48667.asp
MADRID, Spain - Preliminary scientific tests on dead whales point to undersea noise from naval maneuvers by Spain and other NATO countries as the likely cause of the mass stranding of 15 whales in the Canary Islands, a scientist said Wednesday.
The tests, commissioned by the regional government of Spain's Canary Islands, is strengthening suspicions that powerful sonar equipment used in these and other naval exercises may interfere with the sound waves emitted by the species known as the beaked whale, which they use to locate food.
"This would be the seventh time there is a coincidence ... between NATO exercises and the stranding of beaked whales" since 1985, said Michel Andre, a veterinary scientist leading the tests.
Nine Cuvier's beaked whales were found dead on Sept. 24-25 after they washed up on the Canary Islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. Six more beached whales were released back into the sea while another two were spotted floating lifeless off the coast.
At the same time, 10 NATO countries - Germany, Belgium, Canada, France, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Britain, Turkey, and the United States - were conducting a multinational exercise known as Neo Tapon 2002. The maneuvers are meant to practice securing the strategic Strait of Gibraltar, 900 kilometers (550 miles) northeast of the islands, according to the Spanish Defense Ministry.
Defense Minister Federico Trillo, responding to a question in the Senate from a Canary legislator, said the ministry was investigating the beachings. He added that there were no plans to suspend the annual exercise.
Andre, a veterinary researcher at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, stressed that the findings did not establish a direct relationship between sonar from the NATO vessels and the stranding. However, he added that after preliminary tests "the only cause which we cannot rule out ... is acoustic impact."
The researcher said autopsies on the dead whales found brain damage consistent with impacts from military sonar signals. The tests also demonstrated the whales were otherwise "healthy and in good shape" before their deaths. A second set of tests focussing on the inner ears, expected to take a few weeks, is expected to establish the cause of the beaching with greater certainty, he said.
The Cuvier's beaked whale is a toothed cetacean found around the world, usually in groups of up to 25 family members. Adults range from five to eight meters (17 to 26 feet) in length. Beachings of beaked whale groups coinciding with military exercises have previously occurred in the Bahamas, Greece, and one other time in the same Canary Islands, according to Andre.
Last weekend, more than 1,000 people demonstrated in front of a Spanish government building, demanding that the waters around the islands be declared a whale sanctuary off limits to military maneuvers, according to Spanish press reports. Richard Page of the environmental group Greenpeace said military exercises are just another environmental threat - along with oil drilling, shipping, and industrial pollution - that "are pushing animals out of their preferred feeding and breeding places."
-------- pakistan
Polls in Pakistan Open With a Shootout
October 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Elections.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Shootouts among political rivals killed three people Thursday and marred the first general elections held in Pakistan since a 1999 military coup led by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf ended democratic rule.
Some 72 million people were eligible to vote and nearly 100 political parties were standing for the national parliament and four provincial legislatures. Polls closed with most major cities reporting a light to moderate turnout.
Pre-election opinion polls predicted a tight race despite complaints that the result will change little. Two exiled former prime ministers were effectively blocked from standing. Musharraf has already put in place laws that would keep him in ultimate control with sweeping executive powers and the army's backing -- whatever the ballot's outcome.
When he cast his vote in the city of Rawalpindi, Musharraf told reporters a new prime minister would be sworn in on Nov. 1.
Musharraf has insisted he will allow the prime minister to run the country, but he has given himself the power to dissolve parliament and sack the prime minister whenever he sees fit. The general won a controversial referendum earlier this year and will remain president for at least another five years.
International observers monitored the election amid opposition and human rights workers' claims that the vote was being manipulated by the military to consolidate its control. The government has denied those charges, promising the election would be ``transparent and fair.''
Throughout the country, security was tight. There were fears of attacks, possibly by extremists opposed to Musharraf's alliance with the United States in its war on terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistani authorities have also arrested several suspected spies accused of working for rival India to disrupt the vote.
Within hours of the polls opening, one person was killed in a gunbattle between supporters of rival political parties in southern Sindh province. A second person later died of his wounds.
In Multan in eastern Punjab, the country's most populous province, one person was shot to death when an argument spun out of control. In a seemingly unrelated incident nearby, three people suffered gunshot wounds. In a third attack another on a polling station in eastern Punjab province 11 people were wounded, several of them critically, police said.
Election day violence at polling stations is common in the rough and tumble of Pakistani politics. Most voting Thursday was incident-free.
Razia Parveen, her head wrapped in a traditional scarf, carefully pressed her inked thumb next to her name at a polling station at a boy's school in Islamabad.
``This is my right to vote. God willing, the election will bring some positive change to the country,'' she said as she slipped her ballot into a battered green box.
The country's two main parties, both led by were expected to give a stiff challenge to pro-Musharraf
The leaders of the two main parties -- former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan Peoples Party and Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League -- are both out of the race.
Still, their parties were expected to provide the stiffest challenge, running neck-and-neck with pro-Musharraf parties in pre-vote surveys.
A Musharraf decree that bars anyone convicted of a crime in absentia eliminated Bhutto, who has been convicted of corruption and is living in self-imposed exile. Sharif, who was ousted by Musharraf in 1999, is also on the sidelines, having accepted a 10-year exile to Saudi Arabia in return for his release from prison.
A coalition of Islamic hard-liners called the United Action Forum also was expected to win support amid a strong undercurrent of resentment among many Pakistanis over their nation's support for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
The election was being held under controversial new rules decreed by Musharraf earlier this year. All candidates must have a university degree, a law that eliminated 90 percent of Pakistan's mostly illiterate population.
Musharraf defends his reforms as protection against a return of corrupt and incompetent politicians. But several of the leading candidates running on the ticket of the pro-government party, called the Qaid-e-Azam faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, are tainted by graft allegations.
Musharraf has promised to stamp out religious extremism but has allowed the leader of an outlawed militant Sunni Muslim group to run in the elections for the National Assembly.
The man, Azim Tariq, heads Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, or Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet, which has been implicated in scores of vicious attacks on Shiite Muslims.
Investors were hoping the election would spark a recovery in Pakistan's flagging economy. Marked by a history of military takeovers, a recent spate of attacks on foreigners and minority Christians, and tensions with India, foreign investment has dropped significantly.
--------
General Musharraf Hails Pakistan's Gains
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/international/asia/10MUSH.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 9 - Extolling the achievements of his government and urging Pakistanis interested in reform to vote for "new faces," Gen. Pervez Musharraf delivered a nationwide address tonight on the eve of the first legislative elections since he seized power in a bloodless coup three years ago.
Pakistani voters will elect members of a new national Parliament on Thursday, followed by elections for four provincial assemblies.
But General Musharraf limited their authority in advance this summer when he enacted a series of constitutional amendments that give him the power to dissolve Parliament and appoint governors while retaining command of the military. In addition, measures enacted by the general effectively bar the country's two former prime ministers and 40 percent of the members of the last Parliament from running for office.
Pakistan's two main political parties, as well as Pakistani and international rights groups, have accused the government of skewing the elections before they occur.
Dressed in a military uniform and speaking in Urdu in his speech tonight, General Musharraf promised to turn control of the government over to a newly elected prime minister. But he vowed to monitor officials' performance. "One power I shall always keep with me, there will be no compromise on it," he said. "And that is the solidarity and survival of Pakistan run by a government free from corruption and dishonesty shall be my demand from the future government."
Although recent opinion polls have contradicted one another, they generally show the Pakistan People's Party of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto more or less tied with a newly created party backing General Musharraf. As a result, neither party is expected to win a clear majority of seats; either would have to build a coalition with smaller parties to form a government.
A group of religious parties is running on a platform assailing General Musharraf for his support of the American-led campaign against terrorism. Polls show those parties receiving 18 percent to 20 percent of the vote, a slightly larger amount than in past elections.
In his speech tonight, the general listed the achievements of his government since he seized power, saying they amounted to a "silent revolution." He promised not to allow the country to return to the "sham democracy" of the past, a reference to the political infighting, misrule and corruption that marked the terms of Ms. Bhutto and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
"People say they do not see any important leaders in this election," he said, referring to the absence of the two former rulers. "In my view, our nation has many capable leaders, and given a chance their capabilities will emerge before the people and they will take this nation forward."
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia's View of Chechnya Clashes With Reality
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/international/europe/10CHEC.html
GROZNY, Russia, Oct. 2 - This is how the commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, Col. Gen. Vladimir I. Moltenskoi, sees life here.
"I watched with pleasure how 217 schools began their new school year this year," he said in his heavily fortified headquarters near here, "how the university works, institutes work, how people visit markets, move about the republic, even travel beyond the republic."
"The situation," he added, "is quite normal."
This is how it seems to Zarema Baisukhanova, a 21-year-old Chechen, the oldest of four sisters for whom life without war is but a youthful memory.
"Our mother doesn't allow us to go to the central market," she said in her family's single room in a hostel on Grozny's outskirts, shared by the sisters, their parents, the husband of one sister and their baby. "Anything may happen on the road. Something may explode. Russian soldiers may get drunk and shoot around."
"Practically speaking," she added, "we stay at home."
What is most staggering about Chechnya today is not just the shocking scale of destruction, but the dissonance between the pronouncements of Russian officialdom and the realities of life in a place battered first by one war, and then, for the last three years, by another.
President Vladimir V. Putin and other Russian officials have declared more than once that Chechnya is now on the road to peace and stability.
Yet even a four-day visit organized by the Kremlin's special press office for Chechnya could not disguise the through-the-looking-glass quality of Russia's campaign here.
"The war is over, but there is no peace," said Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin-appointed chief of the republican administration.
Russian soldiers kill and are killed in almost daily clashes and attacks. While commanders report all is under control, a 19-year-old conscript in a mountain redoubt at Itum-Kale offered another view out of earshot of the official escorts.
"It's tense, as usual," Junior Sgt. Aleksei V. Polezhayev said quietly, adding that he was just biding the days until he can go home.
Despite repeated announcements that the number of military and security forces in Chechnya would drop, more than 85,000 men remain in an area roughly twice the size of Connecticut, manning checkpoints by day, retreating to bunkers with the curfew at night, when lawlessness reigns. The republic is supposed to set up its own security force, but its formation has been delayed by what the Russians say is the difficulty of drafting and training enough qualified Chechen recruits.
The Kremlin also pledged to hold a referendum on a new constitution cementing Chechnya's place as part of Russia. Officials at first said the vote would be held this fall, but now say it will not come before next spring. Then, officials said, the troops could begin to withdraw. Mr. Kadyrov, however, said the referendum could not be held until after the troops withdrew.
As a sign of progress, General Moltenskoi said he had "significantly cut the number of checkpoints." They once numbered more than 400, but he did not say how many there are today.
General Moltenskoi also reported high morale and discipline among Russian troops, despite persistent reports of desertion. Although drafted into the military, only volunteer soldiers serve in Chechnya, lured mostly by the pay of $130 a month, compared with less than $3 for a regular draftee.
Chechens and international human rights organizations have listed what they say are repeated abuses by Russian forces, especially during mopping-up operations known as zachistki, in which troops surround an area and comb through houses in search of rebels or weapons.
General Moltenskoi praised his troops for "an exceptional sense of responsibility," dismissing accusations of abuses as exaggerated. Any wrongdoing is vigorously investigated, he said, citing the punishment of 19 soldiers this year on charges that he did not detail.
"There have been no rapes," he noted, evidently meaning none since the case of a 43-year-old Chechen widow who told Human Rights Watch that she had been gang-raped in February by drunken Russian soldiers.
Earlier this year Mr. Putin famously said the zachistki - literally, cleanup operations - would be halted, or at least conducted more politely, with civilian prosecutors present. Nikolai P. Kostyuchenko, Chechnya's chief prosecutor, said that his deputies were present 87 percent of the time, but he acknowledged that he had not been informed of all the operations.
Mr. Kadyrov said Mr. Putin had reiterated his pledge on Sept. 26. Still, the operations continue, albeit under a new name: "operative search measures." Mr. Kostyuchenko said they remained a necessity. "There are places where servicemen are killed every day," he said.
Order is indeed elusive. Schools did open last month, though textbooks and supplies remain scarce, as do jobs for those who acquire an education.
Economic activity is limited to meager roadside stands or Grozny's battered central market, near which an explosion killed 11 civilians earlier this month.
The Kremlin has promised billions of rubles for reconstruction, but almost the only sign of work is an effort to patch up six apartment buildings near the ruins that were once Lenin Square.
The only buildings fully restored in Grozny include Mr. Kadyrov's building, Mr. Kostyuchenko's office, and the headquarters of Grozny's electric company, Grozenergo. The company managed to restore electricity to parts of the city this summer for a few hours a day. There is still no running water.
By contrast, the bases of the Ministry of the Interior's 46th Brigade and the Red Army's 42nd Motorized Infantry Division are neat, tidy oases in Grozny's ruins. The 46th's base is next to what remains of the civilian airport, where trees have now taken root on the terminal's roof.
When Russian troops occupied Grozny in February 2000, there were just two burned-out buildings at the bases. They have been rebuilt as officers' quarters. New brick mess halls and barracks have risen, and 15 new barracks are under construction, each designed to hold a company of 120 soldiers. The troops, it seems, are to stay in Chechnya as a permanent garrison. They will police the peace, whenever it comes.
-------- spy agencies
Media gag on alleged plot to kill Gaddafi
By Paul Daley,
October 10 2002
The Age (Australia)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/09/1034061258269.html
London - The British media have been gagged from reporting sensational courtroom evidence of former MI5 spy David Shayler, including his alleged proof that the British secret service paid $270,000 for al Qaeda terrorists to assassinate Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 1986.
In its efforts to contain Mr Shayler's allegations to the privacy of the court, the government has even stopped the media from reporting its successful attempt to win a gag order.
The decision by an Old Bailey judge to stop the media from reporting parts of Mr Shayler's evidence came on Monday after two senior ministers, David Blunkett and Jack Straw, signed Public Interest Immunity certificates.
The certificates, which were submitted to the court, insisted that the media and the public leave the court if the activities of the security and intelligence agencies were raised by the defence.
The then Labour opposition strenuously opposed the Tory government's use of the certificates during the arms-to-Iraq prosecution in the early '90s. Some guilty verdicts were subsequently overturned on appeal because the defence successfully argued that it had been deprived of relevant information.
When such certificates are issued, it is standard practice for the judge to read the applications and publicly hear the arguments for and against a gagging order, before ruling. But in the case of Mr Shayler - a 36-year-old former MI5 officer who is accused of disclosing government secrets to the media and in a book - the government wanted the judge, Justice Alan Moses, to consider the application in private.
The British media widely reported on Monday that lawyers acting for Mr Shayler had accused the government of trying to "intimidate" Justice Moses. But on Tuesday the newspapers - many of which had mounted their own legal case against the application of the certificates - reported simply that the court had heard legal arguments relating to Mr Shayler's trial. "The judge ruled that they (the legal arguments) cannot be reported," The Guardian reported.
Although Mr Shayler's jury trial is expected to begin next week in the Old Bailey, any evidence relating to sensitive security or intelligence matters will be kept private. After the judge's ruling on Monday, several articles detailing Mr Shayler's anticipated evidence - and the government's efforts to keep it secret - were withdrawn from newspaper websites across the country.
It is believed the government successfully applied to have parts of the trial heard in camera. This applies to evidence on "sensitive operational techniques of the security and intelligence services".
It is also believed that the court agreed to keep the identities of MI5 agents secret and to allow them to give evidence from behind screens.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/09/1034061258269.html
-------- us
War's Unknown Financial Costs
Budget: Estimates are as high as $200 billion. But while some lawmakers ask about the monetary impact, the questions go mainly unanswered.
By JANET HOOK
LOS ANGELES TIMES STAFF WRITER
October 10 2002
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-warcost10oct10,0,3716765.story
WASHINGTON -- As Congress steams toward authorizing a possible war against Iraq, it's blank check time for U.S. taxpayers.
No one knows exactly how much money it would cost to wage war against Iraq because President Bush has not said what kind of military attack he envisions, should he decide one is necessary.
But Bush's top economic advisor has said it could cost as much as $200 billion, a significant drain on a federal budget already swimming in red ink.
The Congressional Budget Office, while declining to predict an overall figure, estimates that combat could cost as much as $9 billion a month--a figure that dwarfs current fiscal concerns. The entire U.S. budget for the 2003 fiscal year is stalled in Congress over a $9-billion difference between Bush and congressional Democrats.
Lawmakers generally view the decision to go to war as a moral and strategic choice, not one that hinges on economic or budget policy. But they are still asking questions about what financial impact to expect--and those questions have been left largely unanswered during the congressional debate on Bush's push to confront Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
"Estimating the cost of a still-undefined and undeclared war with Iraq is a difficult undertaking, to say the least," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said recently. "But let's be clear. This debate should not be driven by how much it will cost U.S. taxpayers."
Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) said Wednesday it was appropriate that fiscal concerns were "conspicuously absent" from House debate. But he also urged lawmakers to recognize the pressures a war would put on a federal budget that is already projected to run $452 billion in deficits over the next four years.
"The cost, whatever the cost is, is not beyond our means in a $10-trillion economy. But it is beyond our budget," Spratt said.
One factor could ensure that the price tag for attacking Iraq would be greater for the United States than in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
That conflict cost about $61 billion, but other countries in the international coalition put together by the United States contributed $48 billion.
It is uncertain that in a new fight with Iraq, Bush would be able to assemble such a broad coalition of allies and potential partners in sharing the cost of combat and postwar reconstruction.
"The forces to carry out this mission and to pay for this mission will come from the United States," said Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), a leading critic of Bush's Iraq policy. "There can be little question of that. If the rest of the world doesn't want to come with us at the outset, it seems highly unlikely that they would line up for the follow-through."
Some Democrats are concerned that the cost of waging war and of coping with its aftermath would make it harder to find room in the U.S. budget for such priorities as education aid and prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients.
"Schoolkids will pay" for a war with Iraq, said Rep. Pete Stark (D-Hayward). "There'll be no money to keep them from being left behind--way behind.... And there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on a war."
On the other hand, war spending could simply add to the deficit, if Congress refuses to choose between guns and butter and instead finances both. That could rile fiscal conservatives like Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., Bush's budget director, who said Wednesday an armed conflict with Iraq "should not leave a residue of bigger government and higher taxes, as many wars have."
Daniels estimated that the cost of responding to last year's Sept. 11 terrorist attacks added $80 billion in federal spending.
He said he had no idea what a possible war with Iraq would add to government spending.
That is in part because Bush says he has not yet decided whether to launch a military strike. And if he does, the cost will be affected by whether it is predominantly a land or air attack, whether it is a quick or protracted conflict and by the role the United States plays in Iraq in the aftermath.
Lawrence B. Lindsey, Bush's chief economic advisor, estimated in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal that a war with Iraq would cost from 1% to 2% of the gross domestic product--which amounts to from $100 billion to $200 billion. Lindsey did not detail how he arrived at those figures.
If it cost that much, it would amount to nearly four times the amount the president requested for the Department of Education.
The most detailed effort to estimate war costs has come from the CBO, which projected $6 billion to $9 billion a month in combat expenses, depending on the nature of the warfare. In addition, the CBO estimated it would cost:
- Up to $13 billion to deploy U.S. forces to the Persian Gulf region.
- Up to $7 billion to return U.S. troops to their home bases after the war.
- Up to $4 billion a month for occupation of postwar Iraq.
The estimate did not include potential costs of humanitarian assistance and postwar rebuilding of Iraq, which could be considerable.
The CBO also did not try to calculate potential casualties or the cost of responding if Iraq uses chemical or biological weapons.
"Unknown factors abound in considering how a conflict with Iraq would actually unfold," the CBO report says.
----
Military Reveals Testing Of Nerve Agents in Md.
1960s Open-Air Trials Also Done in 4 Other States
By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 10, 2002; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3806-2002Oct9?language=printer
The U.S. military conducted secret open-air tests of highly lethal nerve agents in Maryland at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal in the 1960s, one of a series of chemical and biological tests across the nation that Department of Defense officials disclosed yesterday.
While the Maryland tests may have exposed military personnel in protective gear to the chemicals, Pentagon officials said they do not believe the agents would have affected residents near the Harford County military installation along the Chesapeake Bay.
"They were not inhabited areas," said Michael Kilpatrick, a senior Pentagon health official. "They were open areas."
The disclosure about the tests in Maryland, which included VX and sarin nerve agents, came as the Pentagon acknowledged for the first time that the military had conducted land-based tests of chemical and biological weapons. The Pentagon disclosed earlier this year that it had conducted such tests involving some of its ships at sea.
Outdoor land tests also were conducted in Alaska, Florida, Utah and Hawaii, as well as in the United Kingdom and Canada in conjunction with those countries' governments, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
Moreover, civilians in Hawaii -- and possibly in Alaska and Florida -- were exposed to "simulants," biological agents believed at the time to be harmless that were used in the place of deadly ones. Thousands of civilians may have been exposed to such simulants during one exercise on the island of Oahu. The simulants contained live bacteria, such as E. coli, and some could have caused problems for people with damaged immune systems, officials said.
The records released yesterday do not show any testing of biological agents at the Army installation in Maryland, now known as the Edgewood area of Aberdeen Proving Ground. Officials said that they do not know the exact location of the nerve gas tests at Edgewood but that they likely took place on land bordering the water. The airborne gases would have lasted little more than a day, officials said.
Details of the tests were revealed at a hearing on Capitol Hill and a media briefing at the Pentagon.
As many as 5,500 members of the U.S. military, including about 5,000 at sea and 500 on land, were involved in the tests. While most would have known they were participating in such tests, some may not have been fully informed, officials said.
The Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs is trying to contact the veterans to warn them about possible health effects, but finding all of them has been difficult, officials said.
Thus far, more than 50 veterans have filed claims of health ailments related to the testing. Pentagon officials said no positive connection has been established between any health problems and exposure to the agents.
The land and sea tests were not medical experiments aimed at measuring the effect of chemical and biological weapons on troops, but rather operational tests designed to assess procedures, equipment and tactics, officials said.
Rep. Mike Thompson, a California Democrat who led the push for disclosure of the testing, called the Pentagon's behavior "deplorable" at a hearing held yesterday by a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee. Thompson said that when he initially asked about the matter several years ago, Pentagon officials told him the testing "never happened." Later, he was told the testing did occur but "not to worry, they only used simulants."
"It's taken a long time to get this far, and quite honestly, I don't think we're there yet," said Thompson, who said the Pentagon needs to aggressively urge the veterans to get tested.
Jack Alderson, a retired Navy officer who was in charge of some transports used in the sea-based testing, said illnesses that claimed the lives of several shipmates in recent years may have been related to the testing.
"I'm relieved it's coming out," Alderson said after the congressional hearing. "I am angry that so many of my guys have died."
The chemical and biological testing in the 1960s stemmed from a review of the U.S. military ordered by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in 1961. One of the initiatives, dubbed Project 112, was a program for researching, testing and developing chemical and biological weapons in response to concerns about similar programs in the Soviet Union.
Nerve agents were first used at Edgewood in 1965 in a test called Elk Hunt II, involving 11 trials between Oct. 27 and Dec. 17 of that year. Army vehicles were used to trigger mines loaded with VX nerve agent, a liquid that can cause death within 15 minutes of exposure.
A second series of tests, DTC Test 69-12, took place at Edgewood in the spring of 1969. It involved four nerve agents, including VX and sarin. The latter is a deadly agent that was used in the 1995 subway attack in Tokyo. The two other nerve agents, tabun and soman, are also lethal. Soman is a persistent agent that can easily remain in an area for a day or longer, according to the Pentagon.
Only three of 54 scheduled trials in the second series were completed before the program was suspended because of the imposition of restrictions on open-air toxic testing.
State health officials have been briefed on the tests by the Pentagon and were told that "there were no reports of health side effects at that time," said J.B. Hanson, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
John O'Neill, the Harford County administrator, said the local government had not received any information about the testing and was not prepared to comment on it.
----
US Could Be Ready for War in Iraq This Year
October 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa-war.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military could be prepared for war with Iraq as soon as December even though President Bush has not decided whether to pull the trigger on Baghdad, according to U.S. officials and analysts.
Experts in and out of government said five U.S. aircraft carriers with 350 warplanes could be off Iraq before year's end if ordered and tens of thousands of troops could be sent much more quickly than the six-months build-up to the 1991 Gulf War.
``We are not now on a war footing,'' stressed one of the U.S. officials, who asked not to be identified, in interviews with Reuters. ``But this isn't 1991. We have tanks, lots of stuff in the region waiting for drivers and shooters.''
``If there's a fight, winter would be better,'' a senior military officer said, referring to major discomfort that U.S. -- and perhaps British and other strike troops -- would suffer if forced to don bulky biological-chemical warfare protective suits in Iraq's summer desert heat.
A contrasting background of cold ground would also help heat-seeking missiles and bombs to find warm targets from anti-aircraft missile emplacements to tanks.
Even as the Bush administration presses the United Nations and U.S. Congress to give strict disarmament deadlines to Baghdad, the White House and Pentagon expect that President Saddam Hussein, who Washington accuses of developing chemical, biological and nuclear arms, will trigger a war by eventually halting unfettered U.N. arms inspections.
While the Pentagon is counting on major military help from Britain and other European and Gulf allies, officials said U.S. military preparations had been accelerated since August, including plans to send up to three aircraft carriers from bases in California and Japan if ordered.
POWERFUL PUNCH FROM CARRIERS
They could join the carriers Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf and the George Washington, now in the Mediterranean. Five battle groups would include several dozen cruisers and destroyers armed with long-range cruise missiles.
The carrier jets would join nearly 300 U.S. aircraft already in the region at bases from Turkey to a British airfield on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
The U.S. officials confirmed a New York Times report that some elite Special Operations forces have been told to separate temporarily from the military and join up with clandestine CIA paramilitary units for any early ``shadow'' campaign against Saddam and his top supporters.
British newspapers have reported that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government is ready to offer at least 20,000 troops and dozens of warplanes to the war effort. And the Jerusalem Post reported last week that Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer predicted an American attack on Iraq by late November.
While media reports of U.S. war plans have varied widely from the use of 50,000 to 200,000-plus troops, officials and private experts have said an invasion would lean heavily on air power and not require the massive U.S.-led assault of 500,000 troops used to drive Iraqi forces from Kuwait 11 years ago.
``You could start a reasonably good war in December by getting at least a couple of heavy divisions (about 40,000 troops) into the region,'' said former Assistant Defense Secretary Larry Korb, now with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
``You could start bombing them and initially send troops in from the south and see what happened. That could be accelerated, but if the Iraqi military quickly collapses from air strikes, it's going to take about 100,000 troops to hold down the country,'' Korb added.
FINAL BUILD-UP HARD TO HIDE
He and other analysts stressed that any unscheduled movement of carriers could not be kept secret and would signal a final build-up.
Bush, they said, would also have to use emergency powers to call tens of thousands of part-time U.S. military reserve and National Guard troops to active duty ahead of any action.
There are 60,000 such ``weekend warriors'' on active duty from a major call-up for the war on terrorism declared after last year's attacks on America. But many more would be needed for tasks from fighting and refueling attack planes to providing intelligence and directing traffic.
The U.S. Central Command, which would oversee fighting in Iraq, openly reported last month that it would move 600 members of its key headquarters staff from Florida to Qatar near Iraq for an exercise in November and was considering making that shift permanent.
Central Command chief Army Gen. Tommy Franks will take part in what is scheduled to be a three-week deployment to modern Al Udeid Air Base near Doha in friendly Qatar for command post exercise ``Internal Look.''
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has flatly refused to discuss any war plans and denounced detailed media reports on military options being studied by Bush to end Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and perhaps oust Saddam.
But he suggested to reporters who traveled with him to a NATO meeting in Warsaw last month that any invasion of Iraq would directly target Baghdad's ``dictatorial, repressive'' government while attempting to spare the Iraqi people.
The Washington Post reported that massive U.S. air strikes and simultaneous ground attacks could concentrate on ``regime targets'' such as Saddam's palaces, bodyguards, bunkers and hometown power center of Tikrit.
There are more than 250 U.S. attack jets based in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey and being used to patrol ``no-fly'' Zones over northern and southern Iraq. The Saudis have indicated that jets based on their territory could not be used for an invasion of Iraq unless it was fully supported by the United Nations.
But a large number of warplanes could be flown out of al Udeid in Qatar, and the United States is discussing with Britain permission to build shelters for bat-wing B-2 stealth bombers on Diego Garcia.
-------- propaganda wars
Guerrilla Warfare, Waged With Code
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/technology/circuits/10hack.html
WHEN the reports started trickling out in early September, they were met with disbelief and then outrage among technophiles. The Chinese government had blocked its citizens from using the popular search engine Google by exercising its control over the nation's Internet service providers.
The aggressive move surprised Nart Villeneuve, a 28-year-old computer science student at the University of Toronto who has long been interested in Chinese technology issues. Blocking one of the most popular sites on the Internet was a far cry from Beijing's practice of restricting access to the Web sites of dissident groups or Western news organizations.
From his research, Mr. Villeneuve knew that the Chinese firewall was less a wall than a net. It was porous, and the holes could be exploited. So he sat down at his home computer and within three hours had created the basics of a program that would enable Chinese Internet users to get access to Google through an unblocked look-alike site.
"It's a very simple solution," Mr. Villeneuve said. "It's kind of crude, but it works."
Mr. Villeneuve considers himself a "hacktivist" - an activist who uses technology for political ends.
"I think of hacktivism as a philosophy: taking the hacker ethic of understanding things by reverse engineering and applying that same concept to traditional activism," he said.
He takes part in Hacktivismo, a two-year-old group of about 40 programmers and computer security professionals scattered across five continents. It is just one of a handful of grass-roots organizations and small companies that are uniting politically minded programmers and technologically asute dissidents to combat Internet surveillance and censorship by governments around the globe, including those of Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Laos, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates as well as China.
Some protect the identities of computer users in countries where Internet use is monitored closely. Others are creating peer-to-peer networks that allow for anonymous file sharing. Some have taken established techniques for encrypting data and made them easier to use. Still others are adopting techniques used by commercial e-mail spammers to send political e-mail messages past restrictive filters.
"They are computer scientists who have principled causes," said Ronald J. Deibert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto who has studied the activities of such groups and runs the Citizen Lab, a political science technology laboratory that supported Mr. Villeneuve's work. "They are developing technologies not for commercial purposes, but for political purposes."
One group, the Freenet Project, has built an anonymous file-sharing network from which Internet users can download anti-government documents without fear of reprisal. Dynamic Internet Technology, a small company in Asheville, N.C., provides technical services to efforts by the Voice of America to get e-mail newsletters into China, using spammers' techniques like altering subject lines or inserting odd characters in key terms (like "June{tilde}4,'' the date of the crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989). Chinese Internet service providers use filters that scan e-mail for such politically sensitive terms.
SafeWeb, a maker of networking hardware in Emeryville, Calif., that has drawn some financing from the Central Intelligence Agency, recently provided free software called Triangle Boy that protected Internet users' identities by routing their browsing through SafeWeb's server. The service was popular in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and China but has been suspended for lack of money.
Mr. Villeneuve's project, which he calls a "pseudoproxy,'' is fairly simple. A computer user in China who knows the right Web address - usually learned through word of mouth - can visit the Google look-alike site on unblocked computers that run Mr. Villeneuve's software. Those computers call upon Google's servers and return the search results to the user.
Other Hacktivismo members are taking Mr. Villeneuve's concept and applying it into a more secure and flexible program that can be distributed to computer users around the world to help Chinese users gain access to sites if and when they are blocked. (Google's main site is no longer blocked by China, although search requests are being filtered. The words "Falun Gong," for example, the name of a spiritual sect that has been outlawed by the Chinese government, do not return search results.)
Most groups are ad-hoc operations made up almost entirely of volunteers with shoestring budgets. The impact of their David-versus-Goliath struggles can be difficult to gauge. But lately these groups and companies have been receiving more attention from United States government officials. In August the House Policy Committee issued a policy statement that included a call for the United States to "aggressively defend global Internet freedom" by supporting nonprofit and commercial efforts.
Fighting restrictions on the use of the Internet can be difficult because the governments imposing the limits often control the technological infrastructure in their countries. The Saudi government, for example, filters all public Internet traffic. The Chinese government has public security bureaus across the county that monitor Internet use.
In its statement, the House Policy Committee noted that the Syrian government, for example, is able to monitor e-mail messages because it controls the single Internet service provider. Tunisia's five Internet service providers are also under direct government control, the statement said.
So the technology activists sometimes have to get creative to get around the restrictions. The activists include computer industry professionals as well as teenage geeks. (Hacktivismo's youngest member lives in India and says he is 15 years old.) Most are in their 20's and early 30's.
"There is a lot of apathy among my generation with political processes," said Ian Clarke, the 25-year-old founder of the Freenet Project. "The nice things about writing code to address the political issues is that we are playing the game on our own turf."
Some of the groups are careful to distance themselves from protest-oriented forms of hacking that attack or deface computer systems. Hacktivismo members, for example, say they are trying to be constructive rather than destructive.
"Hackers like to see stuff built up, not torn down or defaced," said the group's 51-year-old founder, who identified himself only as Oxblood Ruffin. "You don't want to attack the infrastructure."
So far many of the groups have focused on China, which with some 46 million users has the third-largest online population in the world (after the United States and Japan) and some of the most sophisticated controls over service providers (along with Saudi Arabia's).
Among Hacktivismo's current projects is an encrypted file-sharing technology called Six/Four, a name derived from the date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. This technology would provide a layer of encryption that would allow computers to request and pass information without leaving an easily traceable trail.
Six/Four makes it difficult to determine whether a computer is requesting information or simply relaying a request on behalf of another computer, making it harder to trace the path that information is traveling.
The Freenet China project uses the publishing technology of a broader organization, the Free Internet Project, known as Freenet, to disseminate information about China on the Web. People who install Freenet software on their computers can anonymously place information in a global information library shared by the network of Freenet users. While users of the World Wide Web ordinarily make direct connections with Web sites to obtain information, Freenet users make indirect requests to other Freenet computers, which in turn send the request onward if they do not have the requested document.
Among the documents that have been released through Freenet China are the Tiananmen Papers, a compilation of transcripts of 1989 meetings among Chinese leaders about the protests.
Siuling Zhang, a Long Island-based developer of the project, said that it had received 10,000 requests for the Freenet China software. Since the program is small enough to fit on a floppy disk, she said, it has undoubtedly been copied many times over.
Because any computer can communicate with any other computer on the Freenet network, the Chinese government would need access to each individual machine to censor the entire Freenet library. "So far we haven't heard anything about Freenet being blocked," Ms. Zhang said.
Groups are also trying to create user-friendly versions of encryption technology. Digital steganography, the art of hiding one piece of information within another, has drawn more attention over the last year because of concern that terrorists could communicate by embedding text messages in graphics on the Internet. Until recently most security researchers have agreed that steganography is more glamorous in theory than in practice because it is hard to use.
But in July Hacktivismo released a program called Camera/Shy that makes steganography more accessible to ordinary users. The program rides atop Internet Explorer, automatically scanning images for hidden messages as the user browses through Web pages. The user needs to know the decryption key required to unravel the messages. It does not help users encrypt data, though tools for doing so are available for downloading on the Internet.
Hacktivismo members say that Camera/Shy has been downloaded an average of 300 times a day from the release site, sourceforge.net/projects/camerashy. A shortage of funds prevents some promising technologies from being widely promoted. Dynaweb, an "anonymizing'' service that makes it hard for Chinese servers to identify users, was introduced six months ago by Dynamic Internet Technology and is available at dwang.orgdns.org. That site is more difficult for China to block because while its Web address remains the same, its numerical Internet Protocol address (which the government often uses to identify sites to block) changes regularly.
Dynaweb is seeking money from foundations to promote its service. "We actually hope we can have one full-time programmer to maintain it," said the 29-year-old Chinese immigrant who runs Dynamic Internet Technology and goes by the name Bill Dong.
If some members of Congress have their way, more money may soon be available for efforts to circumvent Internet censorship. Representative Christopher Cox, a California Republican and chairman of the House Policy Committee, has introduced legislation that would create a sister agency to the Voice of America called the Office of Global Internet Freedom. It would receive $50 million a year over the next two years.
"We want to organize and support our government-directed effort to defeat state-sponsored jamming of the Internet," Mr. Cox said.
Some remain wary of any alliance with the United States government. "The most effective strategies are always done on a grass-roots level," said Professor Deibert of the University of Toronto. "Anything that emanates from large bureaucratic organizations tends to be heavy-handed, misconceived and ill-planned."
But many politically minded technology specialists welcome the institutional support and money. "The government has lots of manpower and resources to put in," said Mr. Dong, the Dynaweb manager. "If you have two companies, it's nothing compared to resources the government has."
--------
CIA undermines propaganda war
Thursday, 10 October, 2002
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2315967.stm
[GREAT AP photograph of Bush and Tenet: http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38318000/jpg/_38318741_tenetbush300ap.jpg]
CIA director George Tenet with President Bush Tenet (left) insists he is not at odds with Bush Paul Reynolds BBC News Online World Affairs correspondent The CIA Director George Tenet has become the unlikely source of embarrassment to President George W Bush, undermining Mr Bush's warning of catastrophic threats from Saddam Hussein and exposing disagreements within the intelligence world about the nature of the danger.
In a letter to Congress, Mr Tenet said: "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical and biological warfare against the United States."
Mr Tenet says that only if attacked would Iraq use whatever weapons of mass destruction it has.
George Bush said in his Cincinnati speech to the American people: "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
Assessing intentions
A central issue here is one of assessing Iraq's intentions. Numerous reports over the past few months have detailed its capabilities, though even some of those are in dispute.
Think tanks have put out several summaries. The British Government added new detail with its own dossier. The CIA has this month joined in with a document of its own.
In the propaganda war preceding military action, government are always prone to casting any threat in the most dramatic possible way.
Mr Tenet's assessment, however, deals more with intentions than with hardware.
And it raises the question whether President Bush has been exaggerating the threat to justify military action.
The president has, for example, made much in his speech of the links that Saddam Hussein has had with "international terrorist groups" and that he and Osama Bin Laden "share a common enemy" (ie the United States).
He suggested that it was but a short step from there to providing such terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.
The three Ts
This is known as the threat of the "three Ts" - tyranny, terrorists and technology.
But experts say that Saddam Hussein comes from a different background to Bin Laden. Saddam is a secular revolutionary socialist dictator.
Each of us has a solemn responsibility to do everything in our power to ensure that, when the history of this period is written, the books won't ask why we slept
Donald Rumsfeld His links with al-Qaeda are tenuous at best and do not seem to exist at senior level.
His support for Palestinian groups is well known and was probably what Mr Bush was referring to. Notorious figures like Abu Nidal (who died in Iraq recently) and Abu Abbas have been given shelter.
But there is no evidence that they would be given weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Bush also suggested that Iraq had developed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and that the United States was "concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAV's for missions targeting the United States".
It is known that Iraq is trying to turn a Czech made trainer the L29 into an UAV but it has a range of only 600 kilometres (370 miles). It could hit American bases in the Middle East but not the United States itself.
Propaganda war
In the propaganda war preceding military action, government are always prone to casting any threat in the most dramatic possible way.
And the Bush administration's reply to claims that it is exaggerating is simple - after 11 September, it cannot take a chance.
The Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has made warnings about Saddam Hussein into a speciality, said to the House Armed Service Committee on 18 September:
"We are on notice - each of us. Each of us has a solemn responsibility to do everything in our power to ensure that, when the history of this period is written, the books won't ask why we slept."
Against such rhetoric, the doubts of some in the intelligence community do not make much headway.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
F.B.I. Urges Heightened Vigilance as Result of Videotaped Threats
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/national/10THRE.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - The F.B.I. warned law enforcement authorities today to take "additional prudent steps" to detect and deter potential terrorist attacks.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it did not have "information on a specific time, date or location of an attack" but said the warning was prompted by threats contained in audio tapes of two leaders of Al Qaeda broadcast in recent days. In one of the tapes, broadcast on Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic language satellite television network, Osama bin Laden's chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, threatened attacks on the United States economy.
The Associated Press reported from London that the tape of Mr. Zawahiri had probably been made in the last few weeks but could have been made as early as August. On Sunday, Al Jazeera broadcast an audio tape of Mr. bin Laden in which he threatened attacks on American economic interests. The F.B.I. said it could not say when the it was made.
The F.B.I. said tonight that it could not authenticate the tapes, but American officials decided to issue the warning as a precaution.
"The content of the statements and the context surrounding these threats reinforces our view that they may signal an attack," the bureau said in a letter to state and local law enforcement agencies. "One senior detainee maintains that Al Qaeda would only release such a statement after approving a specific plan for an attack."
American officials have not been sure whether Mr. Zawahiri survived the attacks on Al Qaeda since last October. The tapes could be an indication that he is still alive. Mr. Zawahiri declared in the tape that the United States' campaign in Afghanistan had failed to kill top Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
"Neither America nor its allies have been able to harm the leadership of Al Qaeda and Taliban, including Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheik Osama bin Laden, may Allah protect them all," Mr. Zawahiri said. "They are both in good health."
Because the F.B.I. could not point to a target or method of attack, the Department of Homeland Security did not raise the threat advisory system beyond code yellow.
On Capitol Hill today, the Congressional committee investigating Sept. 11 postponed by a week testimony by Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
The committee offered no reason for delaying the testimony by a week, but government officials said the decision was reached after a closed session of the panel in which lawmakers questioned F.B.I. officials about the bureau's handling of a San Diego informer who, a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, rented rooms to two of the hijackers.
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F.B.I. Admits Surveillance Excess
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/politics/10SEAR.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - An F.B.I. memorandum recently provided to Congress disclosed that the bureau exceeded its mandate on several occasions in 2000, when it put in place secret surveillance operations against foreign agents.
The document, released today by a member of Congress, showed that agents acted improperly in at least 10 incidents in the first quarter of the year. Agents illegally videotaped suspects, intercepted e-mail messages after court permissions had expired and recorded the telephone conversations of an innocent person who had taken over the cellphone number of a terrorism suspect.
Representative Bill Delahunt, the Massachusetts Democrat who received the memorandum from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said through a spokesman tonight that he was angered because the incidents suggested that the agency had concealed the problems from Congress when it was considering legislation on surveillance.
"This was all known to the agency at the time of the hearings on the U.S.A. Patriot Act," said Steven Schwadron, Mr. Delahunt's chief of staff.
Mr. Schwadron said that in the hearings on the measure a broad antiterrorism bill enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Delahunt and others had expressed concerns about provisions to loosen restrictions on the law that governs court permission for covert surveillance.
"We had specific concerns about abuses," he said. "And this information was never disclosed."
The memorandum, sent on April, 14, 2000, from the counterterrorism division of the bureau to all field offices, listed examples, including unauthorized searches and the monitoring of incorrect addresses.
The bureau sent a cover letter to Mr. Delahunt saying it had changed procedures to prevent a recurrence of the improper activities. In addition, a senior F.B.I. official said tonight that the document showed that with more than 1,000 applications, about 1 percent had problems.
-------- terrorism
U.S. Indicts Head of Islamic Charity in Qaeda Financing
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/national/10CHAR.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - The leader of a prominent Islamic charity was indicted on conspiracy and racketeering charges today in Chicago in what officials said was the most significant criminal case that federal officials have brought as they seek to shut down Al Qaeda's terrorist money pipeline.
The man, Enaam M. Arnaout, 40, a father of four from suburban Chicago, faces up to 90 years in prison if convicted on the seven counts in the federal indictment, which alleges that his charity, the Benevolence International Foundation, was a financial front for Osama bin Laden's terrorist activities.
Benevolence International, which is based in Chicago, has raised tens of millions of dollars over the years for what it maintains are strictly humanitarian relief efforts worldwide.
But in announcing the indictment, Attorney General John Ashcroft said in Chicago, "In fact, funds were being used to support Al Qaeda and other groups engaged in armed violence overseas."
Congressional officials said the indictment of a major figure in the Islamic charitable community could give momentum to the Bush administration's financial war on terrorism, an effort bogged down by international roadblocks and bureaucratic infighting.
An initial run of freezing assets after the Sept. 11 attacks slowed in recent months, and law enforcement officials cited factors including legal impediments, the difficulty of tracking gold and other commodities favored by some terrorist groups, the bickering among federal agencies and complaints that some allied nations were not devoting enough attention to tracking terrorists' money.
Lawyers for Benevolence International denied that the charity or Mr. Arnaout, its executive director since 1997, have ever financed terrorism. They accused the Justice Department of engaging in a politically inspired witch hunt based on what Matt Piers, one of the group's lawyers, said was "an amalgamation of falsehoods, of half-truths and of guilt by association."
Many Muslim and Arab-American organizations have asserted that the Justice Department has unfairly sought to portray innocent charities, particularly ones operating in sensitive parts of the world, as covert funding mechanisms for terrorism.
Mr. Arnaout, who was born in Syria and is a naturalized United States citizen, has been jailed since April on federal perjury charges that he lied about his ties to Mr. bin Laden. A judge threw out an initial perjury charge on Sept. 13, but prosecutors brought a new perjury charge that same day based on another statute.
The indictment returned against Mr. Arnaout today by a federal grand jury goes far beyond the earlier charges both in scope and severity. It relies on an archive of documents discovered this year at the charity's Bosnia office that show the organization as having links to terrorist and militant groups dating to the 1980's in Afghanistan. Prosecutors said the documents not only detailed Mr. Arnaout's early ties to Mr. bin Laden and other terrorists but also offered previously undisclosed evidence about the formation in the late 1980's of the organization that would become Al Qaeda, when it was dedicated to fighting Russia in Afghanistan. By the mid-1990's it had declared a holy war against the United States and turned to terrorist attacks.
Included in the seized documents were notes from a 1988 organizational meeting in Afghanistan that Mr. bin Laden attended, along with the text of the oath of allegiance, or bayat, that prospective Qaeda members were required to take, prosecutors said.
"It is chilling that the origins of Al Qaeda were discovered in a charity claiming to do good," Mr. Ashcroft said.
Asserting that Mr. Arnaout and Benevolence International had deceived many donors into believing that they were aiding humanitarian relief, Mr. Ashcroft said, "It is sinister to prey on good hearts to fund the works of evil."
Among other accusations laid out against Mr. Arnaout in the indictment, prosecutors said that the defendant:
¶Worked under Mr. bin Laden's direction in the late 1980's and early 1990's at a mujahedeen camp in Afghanistan, buying and distributing rockets and rifles for military camps operated by Al Qaeda members.
¶After beginning work in the United States with Benevolence International in the early 1990's, helped launder some of the charity's proceeds to pay for armed conflicts and terrorism overseas, and concealed the true use of the money from the charity's donors and the government.
¶Allowed Saif al Islam el Masry, a military adviser to Mr. bin Laden who was part of Al Qaeda's inner circle, to serve an officer of Benevolence International's affiliate in Chechnya in the late 1990's.
¶Sought earlier this year to destroy photographs and documents linking himself and his charity to Mr. bin Laden and other terrorists, and instructed a Benevolence International worker in Bosnia-Herzegovina to disguise the true purpose of money that went to an injured fighter there.
The indictment alleges that from June 2000 to September 2001, Benevolence International wired $1.4 million from a Swiss bank to an account in the United States to be "co-mingled" with legitimate donations. Prosecutors did not say how much money they believe the charity diverted to terrorist or violent causes.
But Michael Chertoff, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, said today in testimony before Congress that Mr. Arnaout had directed Benevolence International "to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to accounts overseas that are suspected of affiliation with Chechen rebels in Georgia."
With offices in nine countries, Benevolence International has for years been one of the largest Islamic charities in the United States. Its most recent charitable disclosure statement, for last year, showed more than $3.6 million in annual contributions and $1.7 million in assets. The Treasury Department froze its assets last year in the crackdown on suspected terrorist financiers after Sept. 11, and its operations have been on hold since then.
Mr. Piers, the lawyer for Benevolence International, said in an interview that the Justice Department was seeking to "rewrite history" in portraying Mr. Arnaout as a financier of terrorists. He said Mr. Arnaout's activities in war-torn regions like Afghanistan in the 1980's and Bosnia in the 1990's came on behalf of many of the same rebel fighters the United States was backing then.
"If this is our government's idea of a war on terrorism, I suggest that our country is in deep trouble," Mr. Piers said.
Mr. Piers said the only good news from today's developments was the Justice Department's surprising decision not to bring criminal charges against Benevolence International itself, in addition to the charges against Mr. Arnaout. A Justice Department official said prosecutors considered such a move, but with the charity already bankrupt already, they felt that not much would be gained. "The benefit of continuing to prosecute Benevolence International was outweighed by the cost of prosecution," the official said.
Federal officials said the indictment opened a new phase in the financial war on terrorism, in which agencies are stepping up their criminal prosecutions after moving for more than a year on the civil front to seize assets from suspected charitable and financial groups. In other recent cases in Lackawanna, N.Y., and Portland, Ore., prosecutors have filed financial criminal allegations of material support. But those have come as smaller charges in broader cases involving allegations of Al Qaeda support.
"This is a sign that we're now reaching a point where we've picked all the low-lying fruit and now we're getting to the more difficult money-funneling systems that are tougher to crack," a Congressional official who works on financial terrorism issues said.
The Bush administration considers the effort to shut down the money pipeline to groups like Al Qaeda to be a crucial prong in the war on terrorism. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration has frozen an estimated $112 million from dozens of companies, charitable groups and individuals that the government asserts have tied to terrorists.
Though the effort had slowed recently, James Gurule, the Treasury Department's under secretary for enforcement, told Congress today that he saw "significant progress" in tracking terrorist money.
"I think we've made a dent," Mr. Gurule said, but "we have a long ways to go."
----
Yemen Says French Tanker May Have Been Attacked
October 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-yemen-tanker.html
MUKALLA, Yemen (Reuters) - Yemen said on Thursday a guerrilla attack could have caused the blast that gutted the French-flagged Limburg, while U.S. and French anti-terror teams examined the stricken supertanker for evidence.
Yemen, trying to shed an image as a haven for Islamic militants, had earlier maintained that a fire caused Sunday's explosion in the Gulf of Aden, not an attack similar to the October 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden.
But Transport Minister Saeed Yafai cast doubt on this theory for the first time and told reporters it was possible the explosion that gouged the ship's hull had been deliberate.
``We are not ruling out anything, but we don't want to take a hasty decision before the end of the investigation,'' the minister, who heads the Yemeni committee probing the blast, told a news conference in Mukalla.
``I have to remind you that we are at the very beginning of the investigation,'' he added. ``The teams have just gone on board the ship and they are still there.''
He also said police had arrested an unspecified number of people as a ``pre-emptive measure.'' He did not elaborate but security sources said earlier up to 20 people had been detained.
The Limburg's owners, Euronav SA, quoted crew members as saying the blast occurred shortly after a small boat was seen speeding toward the tanker as it waited for a tug to take it to Mina al-Dabah near Mukalla, about 500 miles from Sanaa.
Lloyds Shipping Service said photographs of the hole caused by the blast supported the view that the ship had been attacked.
Reports of a boat approaching the tanker recalled the attack on the Cole, which was hit by suicide bombers in a boat stuffed with explosives, killing 17 U.S. sailors.
Washington blames the attack on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network which is also its chief suspect in last year's September 11 attacks. Last month, the U.S. Navy warned of possible Qaeda attacks on tankers in the Gulf and the Red Sea, which carry about one third of global oil trade.
In Brussels, Euronav executive Francois Detavernier said 16 U.S., French and Yemeni anti-terror and explosives experts had boarded the tanker, about 15 miles offshore.
He also insisted that the explosion was a ``terrorist'' act, saying that the tank affected by the fire had been 98 percent full, allowing very little gas to build up and ignite.
``There is no way an internal explosion would have blown a hole at the waterline,'' he said.
PROBE COULD TAKE MONTHS
The Limburg's captain, Hubert Ardillon, said he expected the team to have a ``fairly good idea'' about the cause of the explosion by the end of the day but Yafai said the probe would last for a long time.
A Yemeni government source said it would take a month at least for the final report to be issued. Yemen and the United States are still probing the Cole attack. The Arab state, which arrested over 100 suspected militants after September 11, took days to declare the Cole bombing a terror attack.
France has refused to speculate on the blast and U.S. anti-terrorism coordinator Francis Taylor said on Wednesday it was too early to tell what had caused it.
The investigators returned from a full-day inspection visit to the ship with bags of what appeared to be items collected from the vessel, but declined to comment on their observations.
A Lloyds report said photographs of the 26-ft wide oval-shaped hole with its jagged metal edge facing inwards supported claims of a deliberate attack.
``The location of the hole at the waterline and the absence of any noticeable blast damage to the deck of the vessel would also support the bomb theory,'' the report said.
Sunday was the eve of the anniversary of the start of the U.S. military campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
All but one of the 25-member French and Bulgarian crew survived the blast on the supertanker, which was carrying 400,000 barrels of Saudi crude when the explosion occurred.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
US ethanol output rising with or without law
Story by Eric Noe
REUTERS USA:
October 10, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18113/story.htm
CHICAGO - While congressional negotiators struggle over the terms of a federal energy bill, Midwestern producers of ethanol are wasting no time in ramping up production capacity, eyeing a windfall from a mandate for increased use of the corn-based gasoline additive.
The bill, which would call for a tripling of ethanol use, promises to be a boon for the industry, even if a scaled-down version favored by environmental groups and coastal-state lawmakers carries the day.
Such a mandate would accelerate a trend toward increased use of the additive that is already well under way. The industry has seen a surge of new ethanol plants in recent years as corn processors and farmer-owned co-ops look to profit from the demand created by the government's attempt to expand domestic fuel supplies.
"We've seen ethanol use go up double digits over the last three or four years and nothing in the law changed," said Monte Shaw, spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol industry trade organization. "That's a trend that will only be added to if you have (the energy bill)."
Ethanol is a gasoline additive that helps gas burn cleaner. Federal law requires that an oxygen-enhancing additive such as ethanol be added to gas in cities with air pollution problems, and gas with a 10-percent ethanol blend already receives a 5.3-cent-a-gallon exemption from the 18.4-cent federal fuel tax.
The Bush administration has also promoted renewable fuels as a means of reducing U.S. dependence on foreign petroleum. That goal has risen on the national agenda with the possibility of a second Gulf War, which could disrupt supplies of crude oil produced in the Middle East.
EVERY MONTH A NEW HIGH
Monthly ethanol production has hit all-time highs every month for the past two years, and total U.S. production capacity is expected to rise to 2.7 from 2.3 billion gallons in 2002. U.S. production this year is expected to total about 2 billion gallons, according to the RFA.
There are now 66 functioning ethanol plants in the United States, with another 12 under construction.
The Senate bill under negotiation would guarantee 2.3 billion gallons of ethanol use by 2005 and 5 billion by 2012. House lawmakers last month proposed pushing the mandate back a year and slowing the phase-in of ethanol use.
Shaw said that growth would continue in the near term regardless of the bill's passage.
"Even without an energy bill, under the status quo we're going to grow in the early years just as fast as we would under a fuels agreement," he said.
Despite the apparent advantages of alternative fuels, increasing ethanol production has its critics.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year cited ethanol production plants for alleged violations of environmental laws. EPA findings showed that several plants were emitting carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds that pollute the air.
Last month the Sierra Club, a leading environmental advocacy group, sued two ethanol plants for alleged emissions violations and suggested that further suits were forthcoming.
David Bookbinder, senior attorney with the Sierra Club, said the group believes the ethanol industry has evaded laws designed to protect air quality.
FROM THE COASTS, SOME CONCERNS
Lawmakers from East and West coast states fear a requirement they use ethanol would amount to a handout to Midwestern farm states and large corn processors such as agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. , the No. 1 U.S. ethanol producer. ADM controls about 40 percent of U.S. ethanol production.
A group of California and New York lawmakers has also voiced concerns that an ethanol mandate could cause gasoline price spikes. With no pipeline in place from Midwest ethanol plants to West Coast refineries, the cost of shipping the ethanol by truck or rail could inflate the cost of ethanol-gasoline blends.
In March, California Governor Gray Davis pushed back by one year to 2004 a ban on the competing gas additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). MTBE is being phased out in many states because it was shown to contaminate groundwater, but Davis cited concerns that the quick shift to ethanol could push gas prices higher.
Despite the delay, four of the state's biggest oil refiners, Phillips Petroleum, BP, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Shell Oil Co. , will switch from MTBE to ethanol as a gasoline additive by the end of this year. California is the largest U.S. gasoline market, consuming 1 million barrels a day.
Last week the EPA announced an agreement with 12 Minnesota ethanol plants on terms to remedy alleged emissions violations. EPA officials are hopeful the settlement will become a model for future industry pollution issues.
"We're confident that the emissions are going to be controlled. There are a lot of steps in the process that make us feel good about the direction they're going," said Tom Skinner, an EPA regional administrator.
The EPA agreement includes provisions for the addition of emissions control equipment such as thermal oxidizers that can cost up to $2 million.
The cost of adding thermal oxidizers could make it difficult for small, farmer-owned ethanol plants to become profitable and create an unbalanced market for larger producers like ADM. There are currently 26 farmer-owned ethanol facilities accounting for 24 percent of total U.S. ethanol production, with another seven under construction.
----
White House Joins Fight Against Electric Cars
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
New York Times
October 10, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/politics/10POLL.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - The Bush administration went to court today to support the automobile industry's effort to eliminate requirements in California that auto manufacturers sell electric cars.
President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., was the chief lobbyist for General Motors, one of the plaintiffs in the case. Mr. Card was also head of an auto industry trade association when California proposed to require electric vehicles, and has publicly opposed such a requirement.
Under California clean air rules, 10 percent of the vehicles sold in the 2003 to 2008 model years must be electric or "zero-emission vehicles." But the state, recognizing that the car companies were not ready to meet that goal, offered to let them sell hybrid vehicles, which run on gasoline and electricity, to satisfy part of the requirement.
Still, the industry wants to avoid having quotas at all and was not satisfied with that relaxation of the rules. It sued the state, arguing that the hybrid provision violated federal law.
Katherine Kennedy, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports the California rule, said that California "attempted to make things more flexible for the car manufacturers, and cheaper, and this lawsuit is what they got as thanks."
In a brief filed today with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, the Bush administration endorsed the industry's argument that this substitution was improper because it would, in effect, regulate fuel economy standards, over which the federal government holds exclusive jurisdiction. The car companies would get credit toward the electric-vehicle quota depending on the fuel economy of the hybrids.
The brief does not appear to raise any new substantive arguments, but it carries some political significance in that it appears to favor Detroit over Los Angeles. Mr. Bush lost Michigan in 2000 to Vice President Al Gore, and while Mr. Bush was defeated in California as well, the vote was far closer in Michigan. Mr. Bush has been reaching out to union voters and is hoping to capture the state in 2004 while the likelihood of California voting for him appears more remote.
"The major issue isn't the substance of the brief but the fact of the brief," said Daniel Becker, director of the global warming and energy program for the Sierra Club. "The fact that the Bush administration, with the former chief lobbyist of G.M. as a chief of staff, is weighing in on the side of G.M. to overturn California's efforts to clean the air that Californians breathe is outrageous."
Scott McLellan, a spokesman for the White House, dismissed the accusation that the administration was siding with General Motors because of Mr. Card's past connection.
"Congress long ago made clear there should be a uniform fuel economy standard," Mr. McLellan said. "The American people would be best served if the leadership of special interest groups worked with us in our efforts to increase fuel efficiency, promote safety and improve air quality."
Congress has long allowed California to set its own emission standards because smog there is so bad. As a result, the state has set emission requirements that have forced car companies to invent new technologies for pollution control.
Since 1990, California has been trying to incubate an electric car industry, putting it on the leading edge of battle between clean-air advocates and the automakers. What California does, states in the Northeast tend to adopt as well, another reason the car companies are trying to block the electric car, which they say is impractical in California and even worse in cold climates.
Environmentalists said that the auto industry initiated contact with the Bush administration to file the brief on the industry's behalf. Jon S. Coifman, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, "It's our understanding that this whole thing is expressly at the behest of auto industry plaintiffs."
The administration brief acknowledges that the hybrid option is one of several ways that the car companies could meet the requirements. But it noted that a lower court found that "these other alternatives are in fact impractical, and that manufacturers seeking to minimize their costs will be forced to produce hybrid vehicles that meet the state's fuel efficiency standard."
It also said that the state cannot list compliance options in matters - like fuel economy - where only the federal government is allowed to regulate.
In a statement tonight, Gov. Gray Davis said: "Fuel cell and hybrid technology is a decade ahead of where it would have been in the absence of zero-emission vehicle regulations. I am disappointed that the federal government would intervene with our efforts to protect our air quality."
-------- energy
Bush Administration Sued Over Utah Energy Project
October 10, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-10-09.asp#anchor2
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Three conservation groups have filed suit to halt the largest oil and gas exploration project ever approved in Utah.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), the Wilderness Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), represented by Earthjustice, sued the Bush administration over a project located south of Dinosaur National Monument, in a remote area known as the Book Cliffs.
The project would encompass more than 3,000 square miles of public lands, including seven areas proposed for wilderness designation. The project would require 5,000 explosive detonations along 457 miles of seismic lines, and would take up to two years to complete.
"We are seeing a repeated and senseless pattern in which the Administration is actually targeting for exploration the most fragile, important, and scenic lands," said Pam Eaton, regional director of the Wilderness Society's Four Corners States Office. "There is a place for oil and gas development activities on public lands, but it's absurd for BLM to simply ignore critical values such as wilderness and impacts to wildlife and vegetation."
Just weeks after receiving a record breaking number of public comments - including critical comments from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - the BLM found that the project would have "no significant impact on the environment," and declined to prepare a comprehensive environmental impact statement.
Veritas DGC Inc., of Houston would conduct the work for its clients, oil companies that it has refused to identify. Veritas is one of the largest oil exploration companies in the world with more than $456 million in revenue in fiscal year 2002. It has operations in 19 countries on six continents.
"We have never seen this extreme, single minded approach to oil development that the BLM is taking now," said Steve Bloch, SUWA staff attorney. "With orders from Washington to make oil drilling its 'No. 1 priority,' both Utah's wildlife and magnificent redrock landscapes are being ruined forever for the chance to produce a few months of oil."
The BLM granted its approval on October 4, and put the decision into "full force and effect." The agency also had pre-work meetings with Veritas that day. The BLM would not release its decision record to conservationists unless they made the day long trip to the BLM's Vernal office, and then refused to release additional correspondence files, all of which are public documents.
"The BLM's actions here - including its disregard of the comments of thousands of concerned citizens and its refusal to share documents - make a mockery of Interior Secretary [Gale] Norton's oft repeated commitment to 'Consultation, Cooperation, and Communication in the service of Conservation.' Here in southern Utah, their actions speak louder than words," said Johanna Wald of NRDC.
The BLM disregarded comments by the EPA which noted that "the [environmental assessment] does not adequately characterize the direct and indirect effects to wildlife habitat and soils; the effects of [subsequent off-road vehicle use]; or disclose similar actions, cumulative effects and reasonably foreseeable development within or adjacent to the Project area." The agency also ignored over 25,000 public comments in opposition to the project.
"This is another outrageous example of the Bush administration pushing through energy projects without considering their impacts on natural resources," said Susan Daggett, attorney for Earthjustice who is representing the coalition. "The public should have a voice in this process. Let's not sacrifice the public's interest at the alter of the Bush-Cheney energy plan."
-------- environment
U.S. feels safe from any trade threats over Kyoto
Thursday, October 10, 2002
By Robin Pomeroy,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/10/10102002/reu_48658.asp
BRUSSELS, Belgium - The top U.S. negotiator on climate change said Wednesday the United States may face future trade disputes because of its rejection of the Kyoto pact, but such challenges were unlikely to succeed.
The United States has been portrayed as the global environmental villain by green groups since it pulled out of Kyoto climate change pact last year, and some campaigners would like to see legal and trade sanctions against Washington.
But U.S. Senior Climate Negotiator Harlan Watson said he doubted any country could successfully use trade rules to challenge the U.S. position on global warming. "The trade issue is a concern voiced by the business community," Watson said in response to questions from reporters while on a visit to Brussels.
Some environmentalists say U.S. exporters should be penalized as they will have an unfair competitive advantage over companies in places such as Europe and Japan that will be forced to cut their emissions under the Kyoto pact.
"We do not believe that, based on what came out of Doha (the 2001 agreement to launch a new round of world trade talks), it will be a problem, but it won't prevent perhaps action being undertaken at some point.," said Watson. "We do not believe we can be penalized for not entering a treaty regime that we have not agreed to."
Watson said he was even less concerned by legal challenges already launched against the United States, which emits around one-quarter of the world's human-made greenhouse gases blamed by some scientists for blocking heat in the atmosphere.
The tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu, which faces annihilation from rising sea levels that some scientists think are a result of global warming, has threatened the United States with a lawsuit.
Boulder, Colo., teamed up with two green groups to launch a case against U.S. government finance agencies for funding fossil fuel projects that, they claim, harm their interests because of the climate change threat.
"We don't take that seriously right now, but obviously it is a long-run concern," Watson said.
Watson will represent the United States at the next global climate change negotiations in New Delhi later this month, the first since the Kyoto pact was salvaged from the U.S. pull-out by an agreement in Bonn, Germany, last year.
Although no longer a part of the Kyoto Protocol, which requires developed countries to reduce their greenhouse emissions by 5.2 percent of 1990 levels by 2012, the United States remains a party to its parent treaty, the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Venezuela Braces for a New Round of Antigovernment Protests
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/international/americas/10VENE.html
CARACAS, Venezuela - Thursday, Oct. 10 - With its armed forces deployed in the capital, the government of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela braced for an antigovernment march today that might be the largest since the April 11 demonstration that briefly toppled him.
Throughout the week, tanks and troops have been positioned to protect the presidential palace as government loyalists accused protest organizers of plotting to remove the president from power.
"They must not think that behind the march they are going to be able to stage a coup," Mr. Chavéz said Wednesday in a speech in the capital, Caracas. "The people and the armed forces are on the alert."
Government forces in recent days have raided the homes of a former foreign minister and military officers who were accused of taking part in a conspiracy against Mr. Chávez, though they have not been charged. The government also said it had proof that leaders of the Democratic Coordinator, an umbrella organization for anti-Chávez organizations, were orchestrating a coup.
The coordinator "has fallen into the hands of rightist extremists who, utilizing the media, propose the return to the old politics and play to the fascist sectors of the country," said Guillermo Garcia Ponce, a member of Mr. Chávez's left-leaning Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement.
Opponents of Mr. Chávez said the government had failed to provide evidence. They also said the raids and the militarization of the city were unnecessary and authoritarian.
"In a dictatorial regime, these procedures form part of the terror machine," said Tal Cual, an influential Caracas newspaper, in the lead editorial on Wednesday. "In a democratic regime, they are absolutely illegitimate."
The government has been on edge since April, when Mr. Chávez was removed from office after an antigovernment march by hundreds of thousands of people ended in violence. A popular uprising returned Mr. Chávez to power two days later, but tensions have grown as efforts to start a dialogue between Mr. Chávez and his opponents have failed.
Opponents describe Mr. Chávez's government as radical and incompetent, and they claim that the president's supporters killed at least 19 unarmed protesters on April 11. Many diplomats and rights groups say that the deaths were caused by both sides in a series of gun battles, and that the opposition has been recalcitrant and impractical.
The turmoil has hobbled the economy, which contracted by 7.1 percent in the first half of the year.
The situation has worried the United States, which is dependent on Venezuelan oil. The Bush administration, which seemed to welcome Mr. Chávez's removal in April, went so far last month as to announce it would oppose any effort to meddle by "illegal and/or violent actions" with the "constitutional and democratically elected government of Venezuela."
"The United States has distanced itself from an opposition that's weak and inept," said Michael Shifter, who tracks Venezuela for the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy analysis group in Washington. "It's not an embrace of Chávez, but they want to have a hands-off, neutral position."
Opposition leaders, though, say that the only solution is for Mr. Chávez to resign or call early elections. The president, whose term ends in 2006, has refused to do so, though he has said he would welcome a referendum on his rule.
--------
After Indictment, Protesters Rally
New York Times
October 10, 2002
By JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/national/10PROF.html
CHICAGO, Oct. 9 - Chanting and waving signs, demonstrators gathered outside a downtown federal building today to oppose war against Iraq and protest the indictment here of a Muslim charity's leader on charges of funneling money to Al Qaeda.
The protesters rallied as Attorney General John Ashcroft held a news conference inside the building to announce the seven-count indictment, which accuses Enaam M. Arnaout, 40, of money laundering, fraud and conspiracy to engage in racketeering as executive director of the charity, the Benevolence International Foundation, based in Chicago. Mr. Arnaout has been in federal custody here since April, charged with perjury in lying about ties to Osama bin Laden.
Andy Thayer, a spokesman for the protesters, said the rally had been organized on a few hours' notice after they learned that Mr. Ashcroft had scheduled the news conference.
The protest drew several dozen demonstrators, among them members of Neighbors for Peace and the Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism, who called the jailing of the Syrian-born Mr. Arnaout and other Arab-Americans since Sept. 11 last year, and now the indictment today, an "attack on civil liberties."
"Mr. Arnaout is not the only one being held," Mr. Thayer said. "This is tantamount to kidnapping. This is tantamount to tearing up the Bill of Rights."
Mr. Thayer also accused the Bush administration of "trying to whip up a hysteria" and fuel a "drive toward war" against Iraq.
"Many of us are saying in increasing numbers we will not be manipulated," he added. "We do not accept the rationale that this administration is giving for this war."
Some of the protesters made their way inside the federal building, and at least half a dozen managed to get as far as the 11th floor, outside the room where the news conference was held, but only after it had ended.
"We demand justice!" they shouted before they were escorted out of the building. "No war on Iraq!"
At his news conference, Mr. Ashcroft vowed that the government's investigation of terrorism's financing would continue.
"We will find the sources of terrorist blood money," he said, "we will shut down these sources, and we will ensure that both terrorists and their financiers meet the same swift, certain justice of the United States of America."
Mr. Ashcroft also said the indictment of Mr. Arnaout was not an indictment of those "well-meaning" people who had contributed to the foundation without knowledge that the money might be used for terrorist activities.
"What we're alleging is that some money went to legitimate use and some did not," said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney here, who appeared with Mr. Ashcroft.
At their own news conference this afternoon, lawyers for Mr. Arnaout and the Benevolence International Foundation, or B.I.F., denounced the indictment. They contended that any relationship between Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Arnaout was limited to a period before the foundation was created in the 1990's, and before the onset of conflict between Al Qaeda and the United States.
"It's a sad day for the Arnaout family, the six million Muslim Americans and the war on terrorism," said Joseph Duffy, Mr. Arnaout's lawyer. "Mr. Ashcroft should have come to Chicago to reprimand the U.S. attorney for holding a citizen without a charge for what is not a crime. Mr. Arnaout is now a pawn in the war on terrorism, a paranoid war on any Muslim who had any contact with any terrorist or suspected terrorist."
Matthew J. Piers, the lawyer for the foundation, said there was "no evidence that we are aware of that B.I.F. ever supported terrorism."
Mr. Piers described the charges as "an amalgamation of falsehoods, half-truths and guilt by association compounded by an effort to rewrite history for the past several years."
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Tiananmen 'Black Hand' Chen's 13 - Yr Sentence Ends
October 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-china-dissident.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese dissident Chen Ziming, labeled a ``black hand'' behind-the-scenes organizer of 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, ended 13 years in jail and under tight house arrest on Thursday.
It was not immediately clear whether Chen was yet a free man as he had bureaucratic procedures to go through.
``Today is definitely the day'' his sentence ends, a relative told Reuters. ``He should be getting back his residence permit,'' the basic document which allows Chinese to function, the relative said.
Arrested shortly after the ill-fated demonstrations, Chen was sentenced to 13 years in jail in 1991 for ``counter-revolutionary'' activities in 1989.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters and Beijing residents were killed when Chinese troops and tanks advanced into the square on the night of June 3-4, 1989, to crush the movement.
Chen, 50, was not immediately available for comment on Thursday as he sought to get his residence permit back.
``Once that's done he will consider the next step,'' another relative said.
In the 1980s, Chen and colleague Wang Juntao headed a progressive, private think-tank called the Beijing Social and Economic Sciences Research Institute. With other sympathetic intellectuals they gave advice and organizational support to student protesters in 1989.
After the protests were crushed, a warrant was issued for the two men's arrest and police nabbed both that October.
``I don't know of anyone who has been in jail longer,'' Jeffrey Wasserstrom, an Indiana University specialist on protests in China, said of Chen.
PAROLE AND HOUSE ARREST
Chen won medical parole in 1994 in a move widely seen as a successful bid by Beijing to prevent Washington from revoking China's Most Favored Nation trade status on grounds of human rights violations.
Human rights have been a persistent irritant in Sino-U.S. ties strained by trade disputes, arms proliferation and Taiwan. U.S. diplomats had brought up Chen's case frequently in talks with Chinese counterparts.
In 1994, his colleague Wang was also released and sent to the United States for medical examination. He is now pursuing a PhD at Columbia University.
Chen, however, was thrown back in jail in June 1995 after joining calls on the Communist Party to release political prisoners and reverse its verdict that the Tiananmen Square protests were seditious.
In November 1996, he was freed from jail once again for medical treatment but was held under strict house arrest since then, unable to leave the building.
He has been treated for cancer, heart disease and hepatitis, and suffers from several other ailments. But one of the relatives said on Thursday Chen's health was ``not bad.''
STAY OR GO
China has emasculated the remnants of the domestic democracy movement in the years since the 1989 crackdown by arranging for high-profile dissidents to leave the country on medical parole.
``I think, in retrospect, the government's had considerable success in neutralizing people by having them leave the country,'' Wasserstrom said.
``It wouldn't surprise me at all if they made it easy for him to leave,'' he said of Chen.
Among those who have left besides Wang Juntao were student leader Wang Dan and long-time pro-democracy activist Wei Jingsheng.
Wang Juntao said Chen turned down the chance to go to the United States after his release in 1996 and said he was unlikely to opt to leave China if given the choice again.
``He wants to stay there because it's our motherland,'' Wang said by telephone from New Jersey.
``I think his situation will certainly improve after the sentence, but I don't think he will have opportunities to take any political action,'' Wang said. ``I feel happy for him.''
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Chavez Foes Gather for Venezuela Opposition March
October 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-venezuela.html
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Thousands of opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gathered in Caracas on Thursday to press the beleaguered leftist leader to call immediate elections six months after he survived a short-lived coup.
The march in the capital was billed by organizers as one of the biggest opposition challenges to the president since the April coup, which rattled investor confidence in the world's fifth largest oil exporter.
Tensions had been rising ahead of the protest after former paratrooper Chavez condemned it as part of a new coup conspiracy against him.
The populist president, democratically elected in 1998 six years after staging a botched coup bid, has refused to heed opposition calls for early elections.
As foes of the government headed to the east Caracas park where the march was due to start, local television and radio reported that Chavez supporters had tried to block with burning tires some roads leading into the capital. Chavez followers also reportedly threw bottles and stones at the government opponents. Clashes broke out and National Guards fired tear gas. Several injuries were reported, according to local media.
In Caracas, National Guards in combat gear patrolled near the Miraflores presidential palace.
To ease fears of possible violence, Defense Minister Jose Prieto, flanked by the country's military chiefs, appealed for calm in a nationwide television broadcast and said the armed forces were ready to guarantee order.
Despite a resurgence of coup rumors, opposition leaders insisted the march would be peaceful. They said it would reflect the strength of their demands for a national poll on whether Chavez should continue his rule.
``This is going to be a live opinion poll,'' Enrique Mendoza, the anti-Chavez governor of Miranda state, told reporters.
MILITARY TENSIONS
Several hundred anti-government protesters demonstrated in Caracas late on Wednesday in support of army generals opposed to Chavez. Beating pots and pans, they blocked the attempted detention of two of the officers.
The dissident officers, who are facing courts martial for their alleged role in the April 11-14 coup, appealed to their armed forces colleagues not to act against Thursday's opposition march.
They are among about 300 anti-Chavez officers who are under investigation and sidelined from active command duties for their alleged role in the coup.
The public divisions in the armed forces have raised fears of another coup attempt or of violence between pro- and anti-government military factions.
``The saber rattling is deafening from all sides,'' political analyst Teodoro Petkoff, who edits the TalCual daily, said.
But Defense Minister Prieto said, ``We soldiers are at the service of our country and we must respect the safety of everyone.''
Thursday's march was taking place six months after the huge anti-government march that ended in bloodshed when gunmen opened fire on protesters near the presidential palace.
At least 19 people were killed, triggering a rebellion by several hundred officers, who deposed Chavez for 48 hours. Chavez was later restored to power by loyal troops amid street protests in which more than 60 people were killed.
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