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NUCLEAR
Confronting `NOO-kyuh-luhr' Proliferation
Film Probes German - Iraq Nuclear Link
28 at Florida A-Plant Exposed to Radiation
Congress Lets Slip The Dogs of War
The hijacking of America
MILITARY
Outrage as Iraq views UK arms
A LIVING WEAPON
America's For-Profit Secret Army
Film Probes German-Iraq Nuclear Link
Iraq choice similar to Taliban
Iraq Denies Rejecting Terms of U.N. Inspections
Two Palestinians Killed in Israeli Demolition of Gaza Homes
Land Mine Explosion Brings Out Hero
Pakistan Stays in Anti - Terror Coalition - Musharraf
Why the CIA thinks Bush is wrong
N. Korea's Secret Mission
Concerns over US chemical war gear
Rumsfeld Orders War Plans Redone for Faster Action
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Florida Might Edit Death Penalty Law
Easy Access to Public Records Online Raises Privacy Questions
182 killed, 332 hurt in Bali's explosions
Officials See Signs of Revived Al Qaeda
ENERGY AND OTHER
Why all of the West is looking down a barrel
Air Pollution Spikes in California
ACTIVISTS
Who will speak out for GWS research
Stop war
In France, Thousands Protest a War on Iraq
Chanting 'No, We Won't Go'
-------- NUCLEAR
Confronting `NOO-kyuh-luhr' Proliferation
October 13, 2002
New York Times
By JESSE SHEIDLOWER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/weekinreview/13SHEI.html
IN recent weeks, throughout the public discussion of Iraq's weapons capabilities, Americans have heard the word "nuclear" pronounced "NOO-kyuh-luhr" by the president, many members of Congress, a general or two and even a few news anchors.
Of the many language controversies that arouse passions, no other - not "hopefully," not the split infinitive, not "most unique" - seems to bother people as much as this. Even though this pronunciation is now included as a variant in all major American dictionaries, a usage panel convened for the "Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage" rejected it by a factor of 99 to 1. Steve Kleinedler, the pronunciation editor of the "American Heritage Dictionary," said complaints about this variant are the most frequent comment he gets. Merriam-Webster editors have written a special form letter to respond to those who write in to criticize the inclusion of this pronunciation.
Yet the use of "NOO-kyuh-luhr" is not uncommon, even among prominent and educated people, including four of the nation's last 10 presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was widely admonished for it; Gerald R. Ford; Jimmy Carter, who did graduate work in nuclear physics, and also used "NOO-kee-yer"; and now George W. Bush.
There are two main explanations for the altered pronunciation. The process of swapping two sounds is common. An old example is the word "third," which used to be "thrid" (like "three"). The pronunciation as "third," with the "r" and the vowel transposed, didn't become standard until the 16th century. A modern example is the word "comfortable"; its usual pronunciation, "CUMF-ter-buhl," doesn't seem to bother anyone, though the "r" and "t" are transposed.
Linguists call this process metathesis, and through it even highly educated people can unknowingly create pronunciations like "INT-ruh-gul" for "integral" or "ir-REV-uh-lent" for "irrelevant." However, metathesis - in the case of "nuclear," the transposition of the "l" with its following vowel - still doesn't answer the "why?"
The real reason is the powerful force of analogy. Words ending in a two-syllable "klee-er" are extremely rare; besides nuclear, the only marginally common such word is cochlear. But a "kyuh-luhr" pronunciation is found in many common words: spectacular, particular, muscular, circular, molecular and others.
Analogy is responsible for a number of linguistic forms, from spelling ("miniscule" for "minuscule," by analogy with "mini-") to pronunciation ("et cetera" becomes the metathetic "EK-set-er-uh," for the many common words with "ex" overwhelm the one beginning with "ets") to grammar (the plural of book should be beech, not books - just as goose becomes geese - but for the influence of the mass of words forming their plural with "s").
SO why is "NOO-kyuh-luhr" so particularly irritating? It's hardly a new pronunciation - the "Oxford English Dictionary's" first example is from 1943, or around the time that nuclear was becoming a familiar word to nonscientists. A driving reason is that it's so common among people who hold prominent positions in society. Most people don't get upset by pronunciations like "PO-lice" or such words as "ain't" as long as these common utterances occur only in dialectal use. But when nonstandard forms like these get used in mainstream contexts, they get noticed. And while folksiness can be acceptable in nontechnical contexts, mispronouncing a technical term is rarely considered O.K. It is viewed as a sign of ignorance, not quaintness.
But in the end, language changes because of the people who use it, not by appealing to any external factor, like spelling or history. People criticizing "NOO-kyuh-luhr" should also condemn "CUMF-ter-bull," yet they don't. Merriam-Webster's form letter about "nuclear" spends only two sentences discussing the word itself: most of the letter is an explanation of why spelling is not a valid basis for determining pronunciation. It offers the example of the words electric, electricity and electrical, in which the one letter "c" represents three different sounds.
In other words, "NOO-kyuh-luhr" is a lost cause, and no amount of pleading on the grounds of technical context or historical novelty can expunge its use. But as Enid Pearsons, the former Random House pronunciation editor, once said, "If we're so upset about `NOO-kyuh-luhr' proliferation, we can only hope that technology will come up with a new source of energy that we can all pronounce."
-------- iraq
Film Probes German - Iraq Nuclear Link
October 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Germany-Stealing-the-Fire.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- A new investigative film traces the roots of the Iraq nuclear crisis to links between German industry and Baghdad's bomb builders, and questions the lenient sentence -- probation -- handed a German engineer for treason in aiding the project.
The documentary, ``Stealing the Fire,'' also offers a rare close-up look at a ``proliferator,'' the engineer Karl-Heinz Schaab, who emerges on film as a bland, gray, fastidious 68-year-old technician who protests he's ``too small to be turned into a scapegoat for the others.''
The film, produced and directed by Oscar-winning documentarian John S. Friedman and Eric Nadler, premieres Tuesday at a New York theater.
Blueprints and other documents Schaab and associates brought to Iraq in the late 1980s, along with Schaab's own hands-on skills, were a vital boost to Baghdad's development of gas centrifuges -- machines whose ultra-fast spinning ``enriches'' uranium by separating U-235, the stuff of nuclear bombs, from non-fissionable U-238.
Much of Iraq's nuclear infrastructure was subsequently wrecked by American and allied bombing in the 1991 Gulf War and in 1998. More was destroyed during U.N. inspections inside Iraq in the 1990s, and Baghdad officials deny they are working on atomic weapons today.
But reconnaissance photos released by the Bush administration this week, as it seeks support for a potential war against Iraq, indicate the Iraqis have been rebuilding sites previously used for nuclear development. A newly released U.S. intelligence report says they may have nuclear weapons by 2010. ``Stealing the Fire'' looks at the source of these capabilities.
Iraq was failing with other enrichment technologies when German centrifuge experts Bruno Stemmler and Walter Busse, recruited by a German company, H&H Metallform, came to Baghdad in 1988 and sold the Iraqis old designs for centrifuges. The next year they brought Schaab, who provided components, technical reports and, most important, a stolen design for an advanced ``supercritical'' centrifuge.
The design, classified secret in Germany, was used in enriching nuclear power fuel at the European government consortium Urenco, for which a small Schaab-owned company worked as a subcontractor. The Iraqis paid $62,000 for the key documents.
In an on-film interview, Schaab says that on his last Baghdad visit, in April 1990, he personally helped install Iraq's first test centrifuge. Bomb-making would require thousands of such centrifuges.
A German court eventually -- on June 29, 1999 -- convicted Schaab of treason and sentenced him to five years' imprisonment and a $32,000 fine, but then suspended the prison term because he previously served 15 months in a Brazilian jail.
He had fled to Brazil in 1995 after U.N. inspectors uncovered documents in Iraq exposing the German connection. At Germany's request the following year, the Brazilians arrested the fugitive engineer, but freed him when a Brazilian court held that his alleged crime was political and he could not be extradited.
In 1998, Schaab returned to Germany anyway, to be with his dying mother and surrender to authorities, apparently assured his cooperation would win him leniency.
The light sentence he received raised questions, however, among nonproliferation specialists. American physicist David Albright, who was on the U.N. inspection team, suggested that the German government wanted to minimize public perception of Schaab's crime.
``I think they wanted the Schaab story to disappear. It was intensely embarrassing,'' Albright says in ``Stealing the Fire.''
The film suggests some people wanted Schaab himself to disappear. His lawyers tell the filmmakers that Brazilian authorities had warned them that foreign secret services wanted to kill or kidnap their client, and suggest that the closely timed deaths of associates Stemmler and Busse in the early 1990s may not have been natural, as reported.
``Stealing the Fire'' leaves such questions unexplored. But it firmly establishes that German companies, more broadly, supplied technology usable in Baghdad's plans. One high-ranking defector from Iraq's nuclear program says Germany was an ``open field'' for Iraqi ambitions in the 1980s, particularly for purchases from such companies as chemical giant Degussa and its subsidiary Leybold.
A top Degussa executive retorts that ``by the German laws, there were no illegal deliveries'' during this pre-Gulf War period.
German export controls, widely regarded as too lax, were toughened after the Gulf War. German industry was not alone, however, in helping develop Iraqi capabilities. In 1985-90, the U.S. Commerce Department, for example, licensed $1.5 billion in sales to Iraq of American technology with potential military uses.
Schaab ``of course did it for the money,'' says his lawyer Michael Rietz. But the centrifuge expert -- described by wife Brigitta as ``very quiet, very well-behaved; he doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink'' -- insists he was focused as much on the technological challenge, and not on illegality and international repercussions.
``I stumbled naively into this thing,'' he says.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- florida
28 at Florida A-Plant Exposed to Radiation
October 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/national/13NUKE.html
HUTCHINSON ISLAND, Fla., Oct. 12 - Federal officials are investigating how 28 nuclear power plant workers were exposed to radiation during a maintenance operation.
Florida Power & Light, owner of the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant, said that plant employees and several outside contractors inhaled radioactive particles during maintenance work on one of the plant's two units on Oct. 6.
The company described the radiation as having been a "very low" level and said that none of the workers reported feeling sick.
Company officials said they had expected some radiation to be released during the operation and two workers who were pressure-cleaning beneath the top part of the reactor in the 230-foot-tall building were wearing protective suits. The 28 workers who were 62 feet above them were not wearing protection.
"The dose is expected to be kept as low as reasonably achievable, and in this incident we're not sure that's what occurred," said Len Wert, a branch chief in Atlanta for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In August, the commission ordered 69 of the nation's 103 nuclear reactors to test certain reactor heads after inspections revealed corrosion and cracks at two plants in South Carolina and Ohio. This was the first such cleaning at St. Lucie.
-------- us politics
Congress Lets Slip The Dogs of War
October 13, 2002
New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/weekinreview/13LEWI.html
WASHINGTON - IN the Congressional debate over empowering President Bush to wage war against Iraq, much of the argument centered on which words to use. Would they give the president too much power or too little?
But in the end, legal scholars and constitutional historians said, the very act of Congress approving an explicit resolution authorizing force, as it did on Thursday, rendered those concerns moot.
"This statutory authorization is the last word on the domestic legal basis for the use of force in Iraq," said Prof. Peter Raven-Hansen of the George Washington University Law School. He said it was now difficult to conceive of any legal or constitutional challenge to Mr. Bush's removing Saddam Hussein from power and destroying his most destructive weapons.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. But while presidents have sent troops into action perhaps 200 times, Congress has declared war on just five occasions: the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, the Mexican War, World War I and World War II.
In fact, according to the Congressional Research Service, many military ventures throughout the nation's history have been authorized by statute rather than by formal declaration of war. The nation's first military action was authorized in this way, with Congress enacting a series of statutes in 1798 to prevent France's interference with American trading vessels.
Last week's resolution, then, was not a legislative innovation, though it was more broadly worded than many authorizations used by past presidents to wage war. The 1990 resolution used by Mr. Bush's father to begin the gulf war required the president to inform Congress that diplomacy had failed before he launched any military action. The current resolution allows President Bush to wage war as long as he informs Congress within 48 hours after the onset of military action.
The earlier resolution also referred to specific United Nations Security Council resolutions that could be enforced by military action. The resolution enacted Thursday is more vague, allowing military action to enforce "all relevant" resolutions.
Even the flimsiest resolutions, once enacted by Congress, are hard to challenge. The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing President Lyndon B. Johnson to use force because of an asserted attack on United States vessels in Asian waters has come to stand for an inattentive Congress unintentionally authorizing the Vietnam War. But it withstood years of legal challenges.
Still, the latest resolution voted by both chambers was designed to inoculate them from some legal attacks. It is specific to Iraq, while the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was more open-ended and was based on the allegation of American forces having been attacked. Further, it could certainly never be plausibly argued that members of Congress did not understand the administration's intentions in Iraq.
"The vices of that resolution have not been repeated," Professor Raven-Hansen said.
In addition, the new resolution's reporting requirements take account of the War Powers Resolution enacted after the Vietnam War to give Congress a role. The Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, seemed to have this in mind when he noted the enormous power being put into Mr. Bush's hands.
"We are giving the president extraordinary authority," he said on the Senate floor. And he admonished the president not to use the resolution to ignore Congress.
Whether or not he does, the power to wage war has now passed clearly from Congress to the White House.
----
The hijacking of America
But now many conservatives are speaking up against U.S. foreign policy
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor
October 13, 2002
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_oct13.html
LOS ANGELES -- The United States Congress has spoken. Not with a roar, but with a whimper, handing President George W. Bush a blank cheque to go to war against Iraq because of the "imminent threat" it supposedly poses to America. One is reminded of the revolting spectacle of Roman senators groveling at the feet of emperor Tiberius.
The notion of Iraq, a demolished nation of 22.3 million posing an "imminent threat" to the United States, a nation of 281 million, is ludicrous. In fact, anti-Saddam Kurds and southern Shia Muslims comprise 17.7 million, or 79%, of Iraq's population, leaving only 4.6 million Sunnis who more or less support the regime. That's about the population of Hong Kong.
But a steady drumbeat of bellicose propaganda, pressure from powerful special interests thirsting to destroy Iraq, and election year politics have combined to stampede Congress and many Americans into believing this grotesque, Orwellian fiction.
Illustrating war fever in Washington and the growing irrationality of the White House, President Bush last week compared his impending jihad against Iraq to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and himself to John F. Kennedy. I was in Washington during the Cuban crisis and vividly recall its drama and dangers. The Soviets had nuclear-tipped missiles ready to strike the U.S. What the U.S. faces with Iraq - which has no long-range missiles or other delivery systems for bulky chemical munitions or highly complex systems for dispensing germs - is nothing comparable. And George W. Bush is no John F. Kennedy.
Not content with this silly comparison, Bush went on to actually claim Iraq was poised to attack the United States using remotely piloted aircraft guided from Baghdad, a mere 13,000 km away. Bush must have cribbed this preposterous fantasy from Dr. Fu Manchu and His Drones of Death. In the mighty U.S., long-range drones are still in the testing stage. The claim that Iraq has perfected such sophisticated technology - which extensively uses satellite guidance - and can remotely pilot an ancient crop duster from Baghdad to New York is laughable.
Last week, CIA Director George Tenet took the courageous step of publicly refuting Bush's claim that Iraq was an imminent threat. Tenet's unprecedented rebuke was a warning to America, but it also signalled the deep resentment felt in the U.S. intelligence community over the way Israel's intelligence service, Mossad, and its American helpers, have become the White House's primary source of decision-making information on Iraq, Palestine, Iran and Afghanistan.
Attacked and denounced
Tenet was immediately attacked and denounced by pro-Israel commentators, though a number of senior Israeli officers have echoed Tenet's assertions that there was no immediate risk from Iraq unless it is invaded.
Meanwhile, another revolt has erupted, this time in conservative ranks. A new magazine, The American Conservative, was launched in Washington this month. Created by veteran politician Patrick Buchanan, columnist Taki, and former New York Post editor Scott McConnell, the magazine features hard-hitting attacks by noted Republican theorist Kevin Phillips; Justin Raimondo, editor of the excellent Web site, antiwar.com; and pieces by Buchanan, Peter Brimelow and this writer on Bush's promotion of war psychosis and the corruption of the conservative movement.
Phillips sums up the reasons for the rebellion, accusing the Bush administration of representing "the economics of privilege, the foreign policy of war, and the culture of guns and Sun Belt fundamentalism."
Phillips rightly blames the meltdown of the U.S. stock markets on an "Enron-Armageddon fusion." The Bush administration, writes Phillips, "mixes greed, inept economic management, business corruption, crony capitalism, triumphalist Pentagon sabre-rattling and Axis of Evil foreign policy theology on a scale that already boggles foreign commentators."
Many traditional conservatives are now accusing neo-conservatives and Christian fundamentalists of having hijacked not only the conservative movement, but U.S. foreign policy as well. Neo-conservatives are militant ideologists representing the views of Ariel Sharon's far-right Likud Party in Israel (though by no means the views of all Israelis).
These neo-cons view the world through the lens of what they deem is good for Israel and bad for its enemies and, accordingly, are pressing the U.S. into a war against much of the Muslim world. In many ways, these war-lusting neo-cons are the mirror image of Osama bin Laden and his anti-western al-Qaida movement. Both want an all-out clash of civilizations and religions.
Varying views
It's harder to say what America's conservative rebels represent: their views vary greatly from Buchanan-like neo-isolationists to European-style conservatives like myself who are strict with public finances but liberal on social issues. But the conservative rebels are united on one point: the burn-Baghdad neo-cons and religious Sun Belt Armageddonites like Jerry Falwell do not speak for America's mainstream conservatives.
True conservatives hark back to two leaders of great moral stature, honesty, and true patriotism, men who bore the American flag inside their hearts, not on their lapels: President Dwight Eisenhower and Sen. Barry Goldwater.
Sadly, the conservative revolt is probably too late. Rather than face a collapsing stock market and enraged voters, President Bush has chosen to distract them with a jolly little war against a nation that cannot effectively fight back.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com. Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
Outrage as Iraq views UK arms
Peace campaigners angered as Saddam's top brass 'rub shoulders' with British firms at weapons bazaar
Jason Burke, chief reporter
Sunday October 13, 2002
The Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,10674,811112,00.html
A British Minister will lead a major sales drive by UK weapons and military technology firms at an exhibition attended by high-ranking Iraqi military officials this week.
The news has sparked outrage among arms control campaigners and groups opposed to military action against Iraq. 'It is absurd that we are gearing up to fight a war against these people and simultaneously rubbing shoulders with them at an arms bazaar,' said Martin Hogbin of the Campaign Against Arms Trade.
Around a dozen British firms will be displaying equipment such as tanks, thermal imaging night sights and state-of-the-art air defence missiles at the exhibition in Amman, Jordan. Machine tools that could be used to produce weapons will also be on show. The government-run Defence Export Services Organisation will also have a stall.
Promotional material for the Sofex military fair boasts that Saddam Hussein is sending an official delegation. Sultan Hashim Ahmad, the Iraqi Defence Minister, attended the last Sofex. Sudan, Syria, Libya and Iran - all listed as sponsors of terrorism by the US State Department - are also expected to attend.
'It's an appalling example of double standards. Where there is a buck to be made, we're there,' said Andrew Bergen, spokesman for the Stop the War Coalition, which campaigns against military action against Iraq.
In the Eighties the UK and US supplied Iraq with millions of pounds' worth of military equipment. Baghdad used British companies to procure 'dual-use' machine tools to make ammunition. Even though the UK had imposed an embargo on 'lethal equipment', the Conservative Government let the sales proceed.
The Ministry of Defence confirmed last week that Lord Bach, the Defence Procurement Minister, would be attending the fair. 'Sofex allows the UK defence industry to demonstrate its product range to a number of potential overseas customers very effectively,' said an MoD spokesman.
There is no suggestion that the British firms are doing anything wrong. 'We exhibit there. The Government decides what we can sell to whom,' said a spokesman for the American military aviation giant Lockheed Martin, whose British arm is attending the fair. Lockheed Martin makes the Longbow 'fire-and-forget' and the Hellfire 2 anti-tank missiles. Both would be expected to play a key role in any attack on Iraq.
Some senior industry figures, however, have expressed surprise at the British presence. 'Are we there to show the Iraqis what we are about to drop on them?' one asked. Exhibition organisers list Raytheon, the American company which makes the long-range Cruise missiles that experts predict would spearhead any US bombardment of Iraq, among companies at the fair. Vickers, the UK arms company which makes the Challenger, the Army's main battle tank, will also be exhibiting.
Sales by British firms are carefully vetted, but other nations are less rigorous. The Russian state arms export corporation, Rosoboronexport, which will be at Sofex, provided Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe with 21,000 AK-47s and eight attack helicopters.
A Romanian firm which offered banned anti-personnel mines for sale at an arms fair in the UK three years ago, will exhibit, as well as Vazovski, a Bulgarian company, which makes grenade launchers, missile and anti-aircraft systems. Vazovski small arms were shipped to Unita rebels with false 'end-user' certificates in the late Nineties.
Britain has always had a tradition of military co-operation with Jordan and the strong representation of UK companies at the fair is being seen as an expression of support for the government of King Abdullah. The Jordanian economy benefits hugely from trade with Iraq. Any military operations will have a massive impact in the kingdom.
The Middle East has long been a good market for British weapons firms. According to recent Foreign Office figures, the UK licensed arms exports worth £1.4 billion to the Middle East and North Africa between January 1999 and December 2001.
-------- biological weapons
A LIVING WEAPON
White House Debate on Smallpox Slows Plan for Wide Vaccination
October 13, 2002
New York Times
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/health/policy/13SMAL.html
This article was reported by Lawrence K. Altman, William J. Broad and Denise Grady and was written by Mr. Broad.
Intense debates in the Bush administration over smallpox vaccinations have delayed critical decisions in the nation's program against germ terrorism for months, participants say.
They say officials, including at times Vice President Dick Cheney, have argued that the nation should move quickly to vaccinate widely even in the absence of a bioterrorist attack. But others, including President Bush, have been more cautious, worrying about the vaccine's risk of causing serious illness or death.
The result has been confusion and delay, even as preparations for some immunizations move ahead.
Though state health officials have been asked to prepare to vaccinate health workers who might confront any smallpox cases, they have not been told how many workers they should immunize. Federal health officials said this month that the government should also consider making the vaccine available to everyone who wants it - an option that would require complex public education campaigns and extensive logistical preparations - but President Bush has not announced his decision.
The hesitancy reflects the magnitude of the issue and the difficulty of resolving it, given the uncertainties over whether the United States faces a smallpox attack and how the population would respond to the hazardous vaccine, both physically and emotionally.
Still, emergency plans are advancing. The Pentagon is completing plans to vaccinate up to 500,000 troops. Last month, federal health officials sent the states a detailed blueprint for preparing to vaccinate all Americans. Its particulars include two-pronged needles, paper gowns, cots, medical screeners, security officers and vaccination times per patient of 30 seconds to two minutes.
Moreover, the upholding of mass vaccinations as a viable option, which officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies did on Oct. 4, was a large expansion from the modest plans endorsed as recently as a few months ago. The about-face has caused government officials, health experts and the public alike to pay new attention to questions about smallpox, the vaccination that prevents it and the likelihood of its use as a weapon.
A disease of high fevers and open sores contracted by inhalation, smallpox was one of humanity's great scourges. Until it was declared eradicated in 1980, it killed up to a third of those who contracted it - as many as 500 million people died in the 20th century alone.
Today, only the United States and Russia have publicly declared stocks of the virus. But if clandestine supplies exist - and terrorism experts say they do - smallpox could be a potent weapon of mass destruction, one that could put all of the United States at risk.
American officials fear that Iraq may have the smallpox virus and might use it. That, officials say, is a crucial factor driving the Bush administration's accelerated planning for smallpox defenses.
Extensive reviews of documents and interviews with germ authorities show only circumstantial evidence that Iraq has the virus - plausible enough, most experts say, to warrant the defensive efforts under way, but as a senior official with access to intelligence data conceded, not conclusive. "That's the problem," he said.
Caught between worries about vaccination side effects and Iraqi germ attacks, Washington is preparing for wide protections and quietly encouraging allies to do the same.
"Every week that goes by, we're in a better position to deal with this, even a substantial outbreak," a health official who briefs the White House said. "We've got to be ready to respond."
The Scourge A Deadly Weapon That Floats in the Air
American officials worry about smallpox because they know that the United States and Soviet Union prepared decades ago to use the virus as a weapon.
Though infected volunteers, so-called smallpox martyrs, could spread the disease, each country developed more efficient methods. Moscow made a liquid, Washington a powder, said Jonathan B. Tucker, an arms expert and author of "Scourge," a book on smallpox.
Smallpox virus weaponized this way can float in the air over long distances, potentially infecting thousands of people.
In 1966, the United States Army considered sowing smallpox on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam, former officials say. But that idea was dropped, and by 1969, President Richard M. Nixon had renounced all germ weapons and championed a global treaty to ban them. The treaty was unveiled in 1972 and signed by more than 100 nations, including Iraq.
As doctors were redoubling a global effort to eradicate smallpox from the wild, an effort that succeeded in 1980, Soviet scientists secretly developed the means to make 100 tons of smallpox a year. In one Soviet field test, American and Russian experts say, the virus escaped and sailed nearly 10 miles over open water to start an outbreak.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many Soviet smallpox experts found themselves impoverished, leading Western experts to fear they might be tempted to sell the virus or their knowledge of how to weaponize it, or both. In 1994, the Defense Intelligence Agency cited an unidentified source as saying Russia had shared smallpox technology with Iraq and North Korea in the early 1990's.
But Iraq could have developed its own supply of the virus from a natural outbreak that struck there in 1971 and 1972, infecting at least 800 people.
"It is most unlikely that Iraq would have missed the opportunity," Richard O. Spertzel, a microbiologist who in the 1990's led the United Nations biological weapons inspections of Iraq, told a House committee last December.
In 1994, United Nations inspectors examining Iraqi medical facilities found an industrial-size freeze dryer, 4 feet high, 5 feet wide and 5 feet deep, the type of dryer microbiologists use to put germs into a kind of suspended animation that extends their life span.
The dryer was labeled "smallpox machine" in Arabic, an inspector recalled.
Iraqi officials insisted the dryer was not for smallpox but for the vaccinia virus, the active ingredient in the smallpox vaccine. The answer was judged plausible since the vaccines are often freeze-dried for storage.
But in 1995 the Iraqis admitted to a clandestine program for making germ weapons. A cache of documents Baghdad turned over to the United Nations that year included at least three papers on smallpox, Dr. Spertzel said in an interview.
A final clue, he said, came from Dr. Hazem Ali, a senior virologist involved in Iraq's biowarfare program, who told inspectors he had worked on camelpox, a relative of smallpox that infects camels.
His statement was judged a cover story. Dr. Spertzel said, "I'd say there was a high likelihood they were messing around with smallpox instead of camelpox."
In 1998, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House that Iraq probably kept clandestine stocks of the smallpox virus for military use.
Biologists say growing the smallpox virus would be easy for Iraq or any group familiar with basic microbiology. It multiplies readily in chicken eggs and can be harvested on a large scale. Any state or group proficient in germ warfare could turn it into a weapon.
"There are no significant hurdles," said Ken Alibek, a former top Soviet germ warfare official now at George Mason University. "Iraq would be able to do it."
No smallpox detectors exist. So if a smallpox attack occurred, the authorities would probably learn of the strike in two weeks or so - the disease's incubation period - when sick people started to exhibit symptoms and head for clinics and emergency rooms.
Vaccination against smallpox can be effective after exposure to the virus, but only up to four days afterward, so it would come too late for the first wave of victims. For them, doctors would have little to offer but comfort as the disease ran its course.
At a Senate hearing in July, Richard Butler, who from 1997 to 1999 directed the United Nations hunt in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, called the possibility of Baghdad's having smallpox a "deeply disturbing" issue that required "urgent attention."
The Defenses Vaccine Stockpiles and Outbreak Plans
As worries about germ terrorism grew in the late 1990's, Washington began a low-profile program to rebuild national stocks of smallpox vaccine and update vaccination plans. When routine smallpox vaccination ended in the United States in 1972, only 15.4 million doses were left. In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contracted with Acambis of Cambridge, Mass., for 40 million more, at a cost of $343 million.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, that effort expanded, with the goal of having enough vaccine for every American, by late this year or early next.
The plan has old and new elements. Clinical studies showed that the 15.4 million Dryvax doses could be diluted five times to yield 77 million doses. To that would be added 209 million new doses by Acambis Baxter, making a total of 286 million - enough for every American.
Meanwhile, the drug company Aventis Pasteur disclosed that it had, in cold storage, an additional 75 million to 90 million old doses, which officials now view as an emergency backup. Studies are under way to see if they, too, could be diluted.
For security reasons, storage sites and exact vaccine inventories are kept secret.
As the stockpile took shape, Bush administration experts and officials began to clash over who should be vaccinated and when. The most pressing issue was pre-attack immunizations of emergency personnel and doctors who would vaccinate wider groups of people.
Officials said President Bush and Vice President Cheney eventually became deeply involved in the disputes, with Mr. Bush hesitant and Mr. Cheney more willing.
Minimalists argued for vaccinating only 15,000 health workers, citing the vaccine's dangerous side effects and the June recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel reporting to the federal government that made that suggestion.
On the other side, maximalists by July were pushing for 500,000 individuals or more, arguing that a sizable number of protected people would be needed in the event of a serious outbreak. Officials at the time said an announcement of that number was imminent.
Complicating the decision were doubts about "ring vaccination," the tactic used to eradicate the disease, in which health workers would isolate infected patients and vaccinate people around them. But critics of the approach argued that while ring vaccination worked with natural outbreaks, it would be ineffective in an attack involving thousands of people infected simultaneously.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, went so far as to argue that a major attack could virtually shut down the economy and cost $177 billion per week. At a public meeting in June, he asked if even truck drivers and airplane pilots should be vaccinated.
This summer, outside the administration, some experts began calling for vaccinations soon for anybody who wants them, arguing that this would help lessen chaos in a bioterror attack.
A senior official who has briefed President Bush said no consensus had been reached, even as the idea of wide vaccination gained adherents. "The president is clearly concerned about the adverse effects of the vaccine," the official said.
Smallpox vaccine is not given by injection; rather, it is scratched into the skin with about 15 jabs of a special needle that carries two thin prongs. Suspended between them is an exact amount of vaccine. Vaccinators must be taught the immunization technique, but doctors say it is not hard to learn.
The license for the old vaccine has expired, leaving it classified as an "investigational" drug. As a result, anyone who receives it must read about its risks and sign a declaration of understanding, paperwork that slows and vastly complicates the vaccination process. Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, has said the government is trying to license the vaccine like any other as soon as possible.
At least a million undiluted doses of Dryvax are expected to be licensed in the next few weeks, officials said. Meanwhile, the licensing of the Acambis Baxter vaccine, which requires detailed safety and effectiveness testing because its manufacturing technique is new, is not expected before the end of next year. The Aventis emergency stockpile is not to be licensed, officials said.
In the event of an outbreak, there is a critical adjunct to vaccination: isolating the sick to contain the contagious disease. States are under pressure from federal officials to revise their patchwork of quarantine laws to make them uniform and address concerns that giving police powers to public health officials could violate basic liberties.
Dr. David Fleming, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said people in quarantine would receive "the best care if they became ill."
Though doctors have no recent experience with smallpox, they hope that modern drugs and treatments might save more lives than was the case in past epidemics.
The Side Effects Risks That Include Rashes and Death
The immunizations for most diseases are made with dead or crippled germs. By contrast, smallpox vaccine is made with a live virus, a smallpox relative called vaccinia, that can multiply aggressively in people with impaired immune systems, cancer or certain common skin conditions.
When vaccination was routine, complications from vaccinia killed about one person in a million and struck one in 10,000 with serious skin infections, brain inflammations and other ills. Since routine vaccination halted, millions of Americans have contracted the AIDS virus, which can suppress the immune system, and some 200,000 others take immunosuppressive drugs because of organ transplants. Also, rates of skin disorders like eczema are much higher now.
People with eczema, or even a history of it, are at risk for a condition called eczema vaccinatum, which can produce high fever, a severe rash, scarring and even death. Patients whose immunity has been lowered by illness or by medicines used to prevent transplant rejection have an increased risk for a potentially fatal reaction known as progressive vaccinia, in which the sore that normally forms at the vaccination site expands abnormally, damaging tissues all over the body.
Pregnant women, babies and patients with cancer and autoimmune diseases like lupus are also at risk for severe reactions.
Even if they are not vaccinated themselves, vulnerable people can be infected by someone who has recently been vaccinated, since the live virus can be shed from the sore at the vaccination site for weeks. So health officials are looking at special bandages to keep shedding to a minimum.
Many experts contend a drug called vaccinia immune globulin or V.I.G., can counter some adverse reactions. Obtained from the blood of vaccinated people, it contains the proteins known as antibodies that the immune system forms to combat germ invaders.
Few people have been vaccinated in recent years, and the nation has only enough V.I.G. to treat up to 700 patients. At a cost of about $100 million, the government recently contracted with a Canadian company, Cangene, to produce thousands of doses of V.I.G. by late this year or early next.
But V.I.G.'s effectiveness has never been tested in a rigorously controlled study. Dr. John F. Modlin, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said he was skeptical that it worked. "It seems to me an important issue if we are going to spend tens of millions of dollars" to build up a supply, Dr. Modlin said.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the government was making more of the drug "because you don't have anything else."
So officials are hunting for a safer vaccine. One is a modified vaccinia called M.V.A., which has an unusually low rate of adverse reactions. In late July, the government asked companies to submit proposals for developing the vaccine and producing up to 30 million doses.
That effort will take several years, Dr. Fauci said, adding that M.V.A. "is not in the Iraq picture."
A more futuristic alternative is antivirals, an emerging class of drugs that fight viruses directly. One, known as cidofovir, is undergoing federal study in animals to see if it can help allay the side effects of smallpox vaccination or perhaps even fight the disease itself. That would be a breakthrough, making treatment possible for the first time and possibly saving many lives.
Because cidofovir has to be injected and can damage the kidneys, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is supporting research to develop a form that can be taken by mouth, making administration easier and possibly safer. The findings are encouraging.
The Global Response Israel Is the First to Start Vaccinations
Vice President Cheney, at the start of his 12-country tour in March to drum up support for the removal of Saddam Hussein, reportedly warned the British prime minister, Tony Blair, that a military attack on Iraq could be met by germ reprisals. On April 12, British officials announced that they had placed an order for 30 million doses of smallpox vaccine. Other countries are following suit, often at the urging of the United States.
In August, Israel became the first nation known to have started vaccinating emergency workers against smallpox.
"They're doing it," said Edward H. Kaplan, a Yale public health specialist who recently talked to Israeli health officials. "And the total time it took them to figure it out was quite a bit less than here."
Dr. Kaplan nonetheless praised the new American planning for mass vaccinations.
"Finally, we have something that says we're taking this possibility quite seriously," he said of a smallpox attack. "It says, `If something happens, we can deal with it,' and maybe it lessens the chance that this kind of thing would happen."
-------- business
America's For-Profit Secret Army
October 13, 2002
New York Times
By LESLIE WAYNE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/business/yourmoney/13MILI.html
With the war on terror already a year old and the possibility of war against Iraq growing by the day, a modern version of an ancient practice - one as old as warfare itself - is reasserting itself at the Pentagon. Mercenaries, as they were once known, are thriving - only this time they are called private military contractors, and some are even subsidiaries of Fortune 500 companies.
The Pentagon cannot go to war without them.
Often run by retired military officers, including three- and four-star generals, private military contractors are the new business face of war. Blurring the line between military and civilian, they provide stand-ins for active soldiers in everything from logistical support to battlefield training and military advice at home and abroad.
Some are helping to conduct training exercises using live ammunition for American troops in Kuwait, under the code name Desert Spring. One has just been hired to guard President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the target of a recent assassination attempt. Another is helping to write the book on airport security. Others have employees who don their old uniforms to work under contract as military recruiters and instructors in R.O.T.C. classes, selecting and training the next generation of soldiers.
In the darker recesses of the world, private contractors go where the Pentagon would prefer not to be seen, carrying out military exercises for the American government, far from Washington's view. In the last few years, they have sent their employees to Bosnia, Nigeria, Macedonia, Colombia and other global hot spots.
Motivated as much by profits as politics, these companies - about 35 all told in the United States - need the government's permission to be in business. A few are somewhat familiar names, like Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company that operates for the government in Cuba and Central Asia. Others have more cryptic names, like DynCorp; Vinnell, a subsidiary of TRW; SAIC; ICI of Oregon; and Logicon, a unit of Northrop Grumman. One of the best known, MPRI, boasts of having "more generals per square foot than in the Pentagon."
During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, one of every 50 people on the battlefield was an American civilian under contract; by the time of the peacekeeping effort in Bosnia in 1996, the figure was one in 10. No one knows for sure how big this secretive industry is, but some military experts estimate the global market at $100 billion. As for the public companies that own private military contractors, they say little if anything about them to shareholders.
"Contractors are indispensible," said John J. Hamre, deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton administration. "Will there be more in the future? Yes, and they are not just running the soup kitchens."
That means even more business, and profits, for contractors who perform tasks as mundane as maintaining barracks for overseas troops, as sophisticated as operating weapon systems or as secretive as intelligence-gathering in Africa. Many function near, or even at, the front lines, causing concern among military strategists about their safety and commitment if bullets start to fly.
The use of military contractors raises other troubling questions as well. In peace, they can act as a secret army outside of public view. In war, while providing functions crucial to the combat effort, they are not soldiers. Private contractors are not obligated to take orders or to follow military codes of conduct. Their legal obligation is solely to an employment contract, not to their country.
Private military contractors are flushing out drug traffickers in Colombia and turning the rag-tag militias of African nations into fighting machines. When a United Nations arms embargo restricted the American military in the Balkans, private military contractors were sent instead to train the local forces.
At times, the results have been disastrous.
In Bosnia, employees of DynCorp were found to be operating a sex-slave ring of young women who were held for prostitution after their passports were confiscated. In Croatia, local forces, trained by MPRI, used what they learned to conduct one of the worst episodes of "ethnic cleansing," an event that left more than 100,000 homeless and hundreds dead and resulted in war-crimes indictments. No employee of either firm has ever been charged in these incidents.
In Peru last year, a plane carrying an American missionary and her infant was accidentally shot down when a private military contractor misidentified it as on a drug smuggling flight.
MPRI, formerly known as Military Professionals Resources Inc., may provide the best example of how skilled retired soldiers cash in on their military training. Its roster includes Gen. Carl E. Vuono, the former Army chief of staff who led the gulf war and the Panama invasion; Gen. Crosbie E. Saint, the former commander of the United States Army in Europe; and Gen. Ron Griffith, the former Army vice chief of staff. There are also dozens of retired top-ranked generals, an admiral and more than 10,000 former military personnel, including elite special forces, on call and ready for assignment.
"We can have 20 qualified people on the Serbian border within 24 hours," said Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, the company's spokesman and a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "The Army can't do that. But contractors can."
For that, MPRI is paid well. Its revenue exceeds $100 million a year, mainly from Pentagon and State Department contracts. Retired military personnel working for MPRI receive two to three times their Pentagon salaries, in addition to their retirement benefits and corporate benefits like stock options and 401(k) plans. MPRI's founders became millionaires in July 2000, when they and about 35 equity holders sold the company for $40 million in cash to L-3 Communications, a military contractor traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Within the military, the use of contractors is Defense Department policy for filling the gaps as the number of troops falls. At the time of the gulf war, there were 780,000 Army troops; today there are 480,000. Over the same period, overall military forces have fallen by 500,000.
Pentagon officials did not respond to many telephone calls and e-mail messages requesting interviews, but they have maintained that contractors are a cost-effective way of extending the military's reach when Congress and the American public are reluctant to pay for more soldiers.
"The main reason for using a contractor is that it saves you from having to use troops, so troops can focus on war fighting," said Col. Thomas W. Sweeney, a professor of strategic logistics at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. "It's cheaper because you only pay for contractors when you use them."
But one person's cost-saving device can be another's "guns for hire," as David Hackworth, a former Army colonel and frequent critic of the military, called them.
"These new mercenaries work for the Defense and State Department and Congress looks the other way," Colonel Hackworth, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, said. "It's a very dangerous situation. It allows us to get into fights where we would be reluctant to send the Defense Department or the C.I.A. The American taxpayer is paying for our own mercenary army, which violates what our founding fathers said."
They are not mercenaries in the classic sense. Most, but not all, private military contractors are unarmed, even when they oversee others with guns. They have even formed a trade group, the International Peace Operations Association, to promote industry standards.
"We don't want to risk getting contracts by being called mercenaries," said Doug Brooks, president of the association. "But we can do things on short notice and keep our mouths shut."
That, some critics say, is part of the problem. By using for-profit soldiers, the government, especially the executive branch, can evade Congressional limits on troop strength. For instance, in Bosnia, where a cap of 20,000 troops was imposed by Congress, the addition of 2,000 contractors helped skirt that restriction.
Contractors also allow the administration to carry out foreign policy goals in low-level skirmishes around the globe - often fueled by ethnic hatreds and a surplus of cold war weapons - without having to fear the media attention that comes if American soldiers are sent home in body bags.
At least five DynCorp employees have been killed in Latin America, with no public outcry. Denial is easier for the government when those working overseas do not wear uniforms - they often wear fatigues or military-looking clothes but not official uniforms.
"If you sent in troops, someone will know; if contractors, they may not," said Deborah Avant, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University and author of many studies on the subject.
Only a few members of Congress have expressed concern about the phenomenon.
"There are inherent difficulties with the increasing use of contactors to carry out U.S. foreign policy," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chairman of the foreign operations subcommittee. "This is especially true when it involves `private' soldiers who are not as accountable as U.S. military personnel. Accountability is a serious issue when it comes to carrying guns or flying helicopters in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy goals."
In the House, Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, led the battle against a Bush administration effort to remove the cap that limits the number of American troops in Colombia to 500 and private contractors to 300.
"American taxpayers already pay $300 billion a year to fund the world's most powerful military," Ms. Schakowsky said. "Why should they have to pay a second time in order to privatize our operations? Are we outsourcing in order to avoid public scrutiny, controversy or embarrassment? Is it to hide body bags from the media and thus shield them from public opinion?"
SUCH concerns are hardly slowing the pace across the Potomac, at MPRI in Alexandria, Va. The company may look like hundreds of other white-collar concerns that fill small office buildings in northern Virginia, but there are telltale signs to the contrary: the sword that serves as the corporate logo and conference rooms named the Infantry Room, the Cavalry Room and the Artillery Room. Its art consists of paintings of celebrated battles, largely from the Civil War.
It's hard to tell where the United States military ends and MPRI begins. For the last four years, MPRI has run R.O.T.C. training programs at more than 200 universities, under a contract that has allowed retired military to put their uniforms back on. It recently lost the contract to a lower bidder, but MPRI offset the loss with one to provide former soldiers to run recruitment offices.
The company, which has 900 full-time employees, helps run the United States Army Force Management School at Fort Belvoir. It also provides instructors for advanced training classes at Fort Leavenworth, teaches the Civil Air Patrol and designs courses at Fort Sill, Fort Knox, Fort Lee and other military centers.
The Pentagon has even hired MPRI to help it write military doctrine - including the field manual called "Contractors Support on the Battlefield" that sets rules for how the Army should interact with private contractors, like itself.
Overseas, MPRI is, if anything, more active. Under a program it calls "democracy transition," the company has offered countries like Nigeria, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Croatia and Macedonia training in American-style warfare, including war games, military instruction and weapons training.
In Croatia, MPRI was brought in to provide border monitors in the early 1990's. Then, in 1994, as the United States grew concerned about the poor quality of the Croatian forces and their ability to maintain regional stability, it turned to MPRI. A United Nations arms embargo in 1991, approved by the United States, prohibited the sale of weapons or the providing of training to any warring party in the Balkans. But the Pentagon referred MPRI to Croatia's defense minister, who hired the company to train its forces.
In 1995, MPRI started doing so, teaching the fledgling army military tactics that MPRI executives had developed while on active duty commanding the gulf war invasion. Several months later, armed with this new training, the Croatian army began Operation Storm, one of the bloodiest episodes of "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans, an event that also reshaped the military balance in the region.
The operation drove more than 100,000 Serbs from their homes in a four-day assault. Investigators for the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague found that the Croatian army carried out summary executions and indiscriminately shelled civilians. "In a widespread and systematic matter, Croatian troops committed murder and other inhumane acts," investigators said in their report. Several Croatian generals in charge of the operation have been indicted for war crimes and are being sought for trial.
"No MPRI employee played a role in planning, monitoring or assisting in Operation Storm," said Lieutenant General Soyster, the MPRI spokesman. He did say that a few Croatian graduates of MPRI's training course participated in the operation.
Yet what happened in Croatia gave MPRI international brand recognition and more business in that region. When Bosnian Muslims balked in 1995 at signing the Dayton peace accords out of fear that their army was ill-equipped to provide sufficient protection, MPRI was called in.
"The Bosnians said they would not sign unless they had help building their army," said Peter Singer, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution who is writing a book on contractors. "And they said they wanted the same guys who helped the Croatians."
That is who they got. Under a plan worked out by American negotiators, the Bosnian Muslims hired MPRI using money that was provided by a group of Islamic nations, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia. These nations deposited money in the United States Treasury, which MPRI drew against.
"It was a brilliant move in that the U.S. government got someone else to pay for what we wanted from a policy standpoint," Mr. Singer said.
At the moment, MPRI is advertising for special forces for antiterrorist operations, is bulking up to train American forces in Kuwait and is looking for people with special skills like basic-training instruction and counterintelligence. Recently, however, it lost a $4.3 million contract to provide training to the army in Colombia when officials there complained about what they called the poor quality of MPRI's services.
In Africa, MPRI has conducted training programs on security issues for about 120 African leaders and more than 5,500 African troops. Most recently, it went toe to toe with the State Department, and won, gaining permission to do business in Equatorial Guinea, a country with a deplorable human rights record where the United States does not have an embassy.
After two years of lobbying at the State Department, and after being turned down twice on human rights grounds, MPRI was finally given approval last year to work with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, whom the State Department describes as holding power through torture, fraud and a 98 percent election mandate. MPRI advised President Obiang on building a coast guard to protect the oil-rich waters being explored by Exxon Mobil off the coast.
More recently, when MPRI and President Obiang proposed that MPRI also help the country build its police and military forces, the State Department objected and the project is now dormant.
"We thought helping the coast guard would be pretty innocuous in terms of human rights," Lieutenant General Soyster of MPRI said. But Ms. Avant of George Washington University disagreed, saying any alliance with United States military contractors would strengthen President Obiang's power.
MPRI is not the only company to have run into problems overseas. DynCorp, a privately held company in Reston, Va., with nearly $2 billion in annual sales, has been tapped to provide protection for Mr. Karzai in Afghanistan. DynCorp also provides worldwide protective services for State Department employees.
In late September, DynCorp settled charges - for an undisclosed sum - brought by a whistle-blower the company had fired after he complained of a sex ring run by DynCorp employees in Bosnia. In August, a British court, meanwhile, ruled in favor of another former DynCorp employee in a separate whistle-blower case. DynCorp is appealing.
The two employees made similar accusations: that while working in Bosnia, where DynCorp was providing military equipment maintenance services, DynCorp employees kept underaged women as sex slaves, even videotaping a rape. Among the charges was that while the DynCorp employees trafficked in women - including buying one for $1,000 - the company turned a blind eye. Since the DynCorp employees involved were not soldiers, their actions were not subject to military discipline. Nor did they face local justice; they were simply fired and sent home.
In both cases, after complaining, the two employees who blew the whistle were fired. Ben Johnston, one of them, said last April in Congressional testimony: "DynCorp employees were living off post and owning these children and these women and girls as slaves. Well, that makes all Americans look bad. I believe DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want overseas."
A DynCorp spokesman, Chuck Taylor, said the company "felt horrible" and held its own internal investigation before firing the employees who operated the ring.
DynCorp also handles aerial anti-narcotics efforts for the United States government in the skies over Colombia and nearby countries - where several employees have been killed. Because of Congressional caps on the use of private military contractors, DynCorp has hired local citizens; two were recently killed.
Still, in its recruiting material, the company plays up the excitement of this type of work: "Being the best is never easy and when your office is the cockpit of a twin-engine plane swooping low over the Colombian jungle, the challenges can often be enormous."
Incidents like these - sex rings, deals with dictators, misused military training and tragic accidents - raise questions about the use of contractors. To whom are they accountable: the United States government or their contract? When such incidents occur, who bears the responsibility?
Moreover, while the general mantra about military privatization is that it saves money, there are few studies to prove the case - and in fact, reports exist to the contrary.
For instance, Kellogg Brown & Root, which was paid $2.2 billion to provide logistics support to American troops in the Balkans, was the subject of a General Accounting Office report entitled, "Army Should Do More to Control Contract Costs in the Balkans." The office found that the Army was not exercising enough oversight on Kellogg Brown & Root as contract costs rose, to the benefit of the company. Still, the company continues to pick up new business.
Questions about security and control are even more basic. In the battlefield, a commander cannot give orders to a contractor as he can a soldier. Contractors are not compelled by an oath of office, as soldiers are, but instead by an employment contract that provides little flexibility. Nor are contractors subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Contractors cannot arm themselves - they risk losing their status as noncombatants if they do and, in the extreme, could be declared mercenaries and subject to execution if captured. Yet in the gulf war, contractors were in the thick of battle, providing maintenance to tanks and biological and chemical vehicles as well as flying air support.
Should there be a war in Iraq, the line could be even blurrier.
"There are no rear areas anymore," Colonel Sweeney of the Army War College said. With chemical and biological weapons, "no place is safe," he said.
"You can't draw a map and say `no contractors forward of this line,' " he added. "The American concept of combat is to take the battle to the rear areas and be as disruptive as possible. The other guy is thinking the same thing."
One tenet of warfare is that soldiers handling support functions can grab a gun and hit the front lines if needed. While this is often dismissed as a quaint World War II concept, it happened in Somalia in 1993 when Army rangers were in trouble and military supply clerks came to their rescue. When the support staff is filled with contractors, would they do the same? Or would commanders in the field become responsible for the safety of the growing number of contractor employees at the expense of advancing the battle?
The issue is just beginning to generate some attention in military circles.
"We sort of blur the lines," Col. Steven J. Zamparelli of the Air Force said in an interview. In an article in 1999 for the Air Force Journal of Logistics, Colonel Zamaparelli said: "The Department of Defense is gambling future military victory on contractors' performing operational functions in the battlefield."
Others in the military are more blunt about the effect on soldiers. "Are we ultimately trading their blood to save a relatively insignificant amount in the national budget?" said Lt. Col. Lourdes A. Castillo of the Air Force, a logistics expert, in a 2000 article in Aerospace Power Journal. "If this grand experiment undertaken by our national leadership fails during wartime, the results will be unthinkable."
-------- germany
Film Probes German-Iraq Nuclear Link
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
Oct 13, 2002, 1:27 PM EDT
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_GERMANY_STEALING_THE_FIRE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
NEW YORK (AP) -- A new investigative film traces the roots of the Iraq nuclear crisis to links between German industry and Baghdad's bomb builders, and questions the lenient sentence - probation - handed a German engineer for treason in aiding the project.
The documentary, "Stealing the Fire," also offers a rare close-up look at a "proliferator," the engineer Karl-Heinz Schaab, who emerges on film as a bland, gray, fastidious 68-year-old technician who protests he's "too small to be turned into a scapegoat for the others." Advertisement
The film, produced and directed by Oscar-winning documentarian John S. Friedman and Eric Nadler, premieres Tuesday at a New York theater.
Blueprints and other documents Schaab and associates brought to Iraq in the late 1980s, along with Schaab's own hands-on skills, were a vital boost to Baghdad's development of gas centrifuges - machines whose ultra-fast spinning "enriches" uranium by separating U-235, the stuff of nuclear bombs, from non-fissionable U-238.
Much of Iraq's nuclear infrastructure was subsequently wrecked by American and allied bombing in the 1991 Gulf War and in 1998. More was destroyed during U.N. inspections inside Iraq in the 1990s, and Baghdad officials deny they are working on atomic weapons today.
But reconnaissance photos released by the Bush administration this week, as it seeks support for a potential war against Iraq, indicate the Iraqis have been rebuilding sites previously used for nuclear development. A newly released U.S. intelligence report says they may have nuclear weapons by 2010.
"Stealing the Fire" looks at the source of these capabilities.
Iraq was failing with other enrichment technologies when German centrifuge experts Bruno Stemmler and Walter Busse, recruited by a German company, H&H Metallform, came to Baghdad in 1988 and sold the Iraqis old designs for centrifuges. The next year they brought Schaab, who provided components, technical reports and, most important, a stolen design for an advanced "supercritical" centrifuge.
The design, classified secret in Germany, was used in enriching nuclear power fuel at the European government consortium Urenco, for which a small Schaab-owned company worked as a subcontractor. The Iraqis paid $62,000 for the key documents.
In an on-film interview, Schaab says that on his last Baghdad visit, in April 1990, he personally helped install Iraq's first test centrifuge. Bomb-making would require thousands of such centrifuges.
A German court eventually - on June 29, 1999 - convicted Schaab of treason and sentenced him to five years' imprisonment and a $32,000 fine, but then suspended the prison term because he previously served 15 months in a Brazilian jail.
He had fled to Brazil in 1995 after U.N. inspectors uncovered documents in Iraq exposing the German connection. At Germany's request the following year, the Brazilians arrested the fugitive engineer, but freed him when a Brazilian court held that his alleged crime was political and he could not be extradited.
In 1998, Schaab returned to Germany anyway, to be with his dying mother and surrender to authorities, apparently assured his cooperation would win him leniency.
The light sentence he received raised questions, however, among nonproliferation specialists. American physicist David Albright, who was on the U.N. inspection team, suggested that the German government wanted to minimize public perception of Schaab's crime.
"I think they wanted the Schaab story to disappear. It was intensely embarrassing," Albright says in "Stealing the Fire."
The film suggests some people wanted Schaab himself to disappear. His lawyers tell the filmmakers that Brazilian authorities had warned them that foreign secret services wanted to kill or kidnap their client, and suggest that the closely timed deaths of associates Stemmler and Busse in the early 1990s may not have been natural, as reported.
"Stealing the Fire" leaves such questions unexplored. But it firmly establishes that German companies, more broadly, supplied technology usable in Baghdad's plans. One high-ranking defector from Iraq's nuclear program says Germany was an "open field" for Iraqi ambitions in the 1980s, particularly for purchases from such companies as chemical giant Degussa and its subsidiary Leybold.
A top Degussa executive retorts that "by the German laws, there were no illegal deliveries" during this pre-Gulf War period.
German export controls, widely regarded as too lax, were toughened after the Gulf War. German industry was not alone, however, in helping develop Iraqi capabilities. In 1985-90, the U.S. Commerce Department, for example, licensed $1.5 billion in sales to Iraq of American technology with potential military uses.
Schaab "of course did it for the money," says his lawyer Michael Rietz. But the centrifuge expert - described by wife Brigitta as "very quiet, very well-behaved; he doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink" - insists he was focused as much on the technological challenge, and not on illegality and international repercussions.
"I stumbled naively into this thing," he says.
-------- iraq
Iraq choice similar to Taliban
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021013-576331.htm
President Bush, who recently changed his message on Iraq to persuade Congress and the United Nations to support the use of force, has begun to offer Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a final choice - a choice similar to the one he offered the Taliban regime just before sending U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
The president this week said Saddam can avert U.S. military action by fully complying with the terms of his surrender in the 1991 Persian Gulf war and 16 United Nations resolutions passed over the last 11 years.
"He has to make a choice. We're a patient nation. He's got a choice to make. His choice is he must do what he said he was going to do. He said he wasn't going to have weapons of mass destruction. That's what we expect," Mr. Bush said at a White House event Wednesday.
That is similar to the message the president delivered to Afghanistan's Taliban regime the day before he ordered troops to dismantle the government that harbored Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.
"The United States is presenting a clear choice to every nation: Stand with the civilized world, or stand with the terrorists. And for those nations that stand with the terrorists, there will be a heavy price," he said on Oct. 6, 2001.
A few days later, the president said of the Taliban: "We gave that regime a choice: Turn over the terrorists or face your ruin. They chose unwisely."
On Thursday, Mr. Bush said: "The days of Iraq acting as an outlaw state are coming to an end."
Over the course of the past few weeks, Mr. Bush has massaged his message on Iraq to include two facets seen by the administration as having been crucial to securing congressional support.
First, the president began to talk of building a coalition - possibly outside the United Nations - instead of vowing to act unilaterally.
Second, Mr. Bush in his televised address on Monday night detailed the specific threat posed by Saddam to the safety of Americans and began to use graphic language - such as the statement that "wives and mothers of political opponents have been systematically raped as a method of intimidation, and political prisoners have been forced to watch their own children being tortured" - to cast the Iraqi dictator as a vicious ruler.
Together, the modifications helped solidify support in the House, which voted overwhelmingly Thursday to authorize the president to use force against Iraq. The Senate early Friday followed suit, voting strongly in favor of a war resolution.
The administration's decision to abandon a unilateral policy toward Iraq won over the staunchest Senate opponent, Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.
"Like many Americans, I was concerned by the way the administration first proposed to deal with that threat," Mr. Daschle said Thursday. "The president's desire to wage war alone, without the support of our allies and without authorization from Congress, was wrong.
"Many of us - Democrats and Republicans - made it clear that such unilateralism was not in the nation's best interests. I now commend the administration for changing its approach and acknowledging the importance of working with our allies," he said.
Mr. Bush began to alter his message after the White House announced at the end of last week that the president would deliver a prime-time address on Iraq on Monday. He used two speeches - last Friday in Boston and the following day in Manchester, N.H. - to unveil the new rhetoric.
"The choice is theirs and the choice is also Mr. Saddam Hussein's choice," the president said at a fund-raiser in Massachusetts, urging the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution authorizing the use of force.
"For the sake of our freedom, for the sake of peace, if the United Nations won't make the decision, if Saddam Hussein continues to lie and deceive, the United States will lead a coalition to disarm this man before he harms America and our friends," he said to applause.
A senior administration official said the president privately is angered about news reports that the United States lacks European support. "We have 17 countries in Europe who support us," Mr. Bush says in frustration, according to the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The president began to point out the obvious, the official said: That the United States already has a substantial coalition - albeit with varying degrees of commitment - of some 20 nations.
Mr. Bush expanded on the message in Manchester in a speech to supporters at the state's National Guard Armory.
"For the sake of our peace, for the sake of our children's future, if the United Nations will not act in strong force, if they continue to be ineffective, if Saddam Hussein makes the choice not to disarm, the United States and a lot of our friends will disarm him," he said.
To make sure no reporter missed the new passage, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said aboard Air Force One: "For those who question whether the United States will do anything unilaterally, the question is answered: The United States will not."
In his prime-time address Monday, Mr. Bush laid out his case of the threat posed by Saddam to the security of the United States.
The president said U.S. intelligence had discovered that Iraq has "a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using UAVs for missions targeting the United States.
"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliances with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America - without leaving any fingerprints," he said.
That new message clearly affected top lawmakers.
"It is clear from this debate that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction are the principal threat to the United States," Mr. Daschle said Thursday, "and the only threat that would justify the use of United States military force against Iraq."
"It is the threat that the president cited repeatedly in his speech to the American people Monday night. It may also be the only threat that can rally the world to support our efforts," he said.
----
Iraq Denies Rejecting Terms of U.N. Inspections
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 13, 2002; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18004-2002Oct12?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 12 -- The Iraqi government today denied that it had rejected a list of terms for new weapons inspections in Iraq, saying that it is ready to resolve any differences it has with the United Nations. But the Iraqi leadership declined to provide ironclad assurances that inspectors would have the right to conduct surprise inspections at President Saddam Hussein's palaces and did not submit to U.N. terms for interviews of Iraqi scientists.
A senior Iraqi official, Gen. Amir H. al-Saadi, sought to assure Hans Blix, the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, in a letter today that Baghdad would provide full cooperation to inspectors. He said his failure to respond to Blix's appeal in a letter on Tuesday for Iraq's commitment to abide by U.N. procedures for inspections should not "be understood as an objection to the Oct. 8 letter but rather an explanation of our understanding" of the rules governing inspections.
Saadi left open the possibility that Baghdad would provide security assurances to inspectors traveling to U.N. offices in northern and southern Iraq. In a letter on Thursday, Saadi said that "the aggressive military acts by the U.S. and British air forces" enforcing "no-fly" zones in northern and southern Iraq would "hamper" Iraq's capacity to guarantee the safety of weapons inspectors. Although Saadi stopped short of explicitly offering such guarantees, he said that Blix's position on the matter "can be accepted."
Iraq came under fire from the Bush administration today after Saadi had raised new obstacles to U.N. inspections in his letter Thursday. He had said that Iraq could not assure safety to U.N. aircraft flying in the no-fly zones. He had also ignored Blix's request to confirm Iraq's commitment to honor U.N. procedures for inspections of national security sites, interviews of scientists, surveillance operations and travel to suspected weapons facilities.
Today's letter, which was addressed to Blix and Mohamed El-Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was aimed at avoiding a new confrontation with the United Nations while negotiations are underway in New York over a resolution that would strengthen the U.N. inspection regime, diplomats said.
"We assert our complete readiness once again to receive the advance team on October 19 as per our preliminary agreement with you and our readiness to resolve all issues that may block the road to our joint cooperation," Saadi said in the letter, obtained by Reuters.
U.S. officials said Iraq's latest move failed to demonstrate a seriousness about meeting its obligations to eliminate chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. "The Iraqis still don't say yes to unconditional, unrestricted inspections," said Richard Grenell, the spokesman at the U.S. mission to the United Nations. "This is the same old game."
U.N. diplomats said the new letter failed to remove uncertainty over inspections. Saadi, for instance, made no new commitment to provide immediate access to eight presidential sites that contain more than 1,000 buildings, palaces and lakes.
"Regarding the presidential sites, we have taken note of your position," Saadi said in today's letter. He also dismissed Blix's request to permit inspectors to "choose the mode and location" of interviews with Iraqi arms specialists, saying Iraq would facilitate such interviews "in a manner that would guarantee the rights of Iraqi citizens under the law."
-------- israel / palestine
Two Palestinians Killed in Israeli Demolition of Gaza Homes
October 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Two Palestinians, one a toddler, were killed and more than 30 wounded in the Gaza Strip on Sunday when Israeli troops raided a crowded refugee camp to raze houses it said contained arms-smuggling tunnels.
The raid in Rafah came amidst revelations that the United States, Israel's main international ally, had criticized the Jewish state for failing to ease living conditions for ordinary Palestinians and for raids in which civilians have been killed.
Witnesses in the Rafah refugee camp said a three-year-old Palestinian child was crushed to death under his family house which collapsed from the force of explosions set by the raiding tank and infantry force to adjacent houses. Twenty-five other Palestinians were also wounded.
Witnesses and Palestinian medics said another 26-year-old Palestinian man was killed by Israeli machinegun fire and five people were wounded in the overnight tank raid.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, an adviser to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, said the raid was part of a ``dangerous policy and escalation which targets not just the Palestinians but also puts the whole area in danger.''
Since a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began in 2000, the army has often raided Rafah in operations it says are aimed at destroying tunnels dug by militants to bring arms and fighters into the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
In its latest operation, it said soldiers found a tunnel access point behind a baby's crib and another in a kitchen.
Rafah is a militant stronghold and at least one Israeli army vehicle came under grenade attack during the raid.
In a separate incident, soldiers shot dead two Palestinian gunmen who tried to penetrate the Israeli town of Yevul near the frontier with Egypt, a few miles south of Israel's border with Gaza. Two Israeli soldiers were wounded in the clash.
``We had a warning of a breach in the border fence and responded quickly with a pursuit. The two terrorists spotted us and opened fire. We shot them,'' Major Gal Amar told Reuters.
The Israel-Egypt border has been largely quiet since Egypt signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979.
The Ahmad Abu al-Rish Brigades, an offshoot of Arafat's Fatah faction, said the fighters belonged to it. ``This operation was a gift to martyrs who have fallen in Gaza,'' it said in a faxed statement.
U.S. CRITICIZES ISRAEL
Israeli diplomatic sources said Washington gave a letter to Israel on Friday criticizing it for not fulfilling promises to ease the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and for Gaza raids in which civilians were killed.
Violence has increased since an Israeli air raid in the Strip last week killed 17 Palestinians and wounded about 80.
Addressing his cabinet, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel, which reoccupied Palestinian cities in the West Bank in June after suicide bombings, ``has a great interest in easing up on Palestinians who are not involved in terrorism.''
But he said ``the Palestinian Authority is not enabling Israel to move forward as fast as we would like with this policy,'' a reference to what Sharon has called Arafat's failure to rein in militants.
Sharon was scheduled to meet President Bush in Washington on Wednesday for talks which Israeli political sources said would focus on the conflict with the Palestinians against the backdrop of a possible U.S. war on Iraq.
At least 1,612 Palestinians and 604 Israelis have been killed since a Palestinian uprising for statehood erupted two years ago after peace talks stalled.
-------- landmines
Land Mine Explosion Brings Out Hero
October 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-A-Friends-Courage.html
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) -- An earsplitting boom shattered the air outside Bagram Air Base, where a dozen trucks waited to make Sunday deliveries. One wrong step just off the road, and truck driver Mukhdar Ahmed became the latest victim of the country's thousands of hidden land mines.
``Help me!'' he screamed, bleeding in the dust just a few perilous yards from the other drivers, who lined the edge of the mine field, trying to find a way to rescue him.
Sunday had been a bad day for Ahmed to begin with. After driving all night from their home in Pakistan, Ahmed and his partner, Mukhdar Shah, arrived at the air base to find security tightened for the arrival of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was flying to Turkey.
Ahmed, 42, and Shah, 36, were carrying jet fuel from Khibar, on the Pakistani-Afghan border. They parked their gaily decorated tanker truck behind the others and prepared for a long wait to get into the base. Ahmed went off to talk with the other drivers.
Like much of Afghanistan, the area around the Bagram airfield is riddled with mines. Many were planted by the Russians during their occupation in the 1980s; others date to the civil war after the Russian withdrawal. The U.S. military has painstakingly removed mines from the base, where soldiers are stationed, but much of the surrounding area remains untouched after years of war.
The HALO Trust, a mine-clearing organization, says Afghanistan is the world's most-mined country, with some 640,000 laid since 1979.
Some mine fields are marked with signs, others with rocks painted red and white. But there was nothing in the field next to this road, just a small path in the grass. So Ahmed stepped about 40 feet off the road to relieve himself.
Suddenly, a searing pain shot through his right leg. Blood spurted from his ankle and below it there was nothing. He toppled to the ground.
``Oh God! Help me!'' he screamed. Other truck drivers came running, but stopped at the edge of the road, afraid to enter the minefield.
``Don't move!'' one shouted. Another dashed to the guardhouse. ``Please, ambulance! Please!'' he begged the troops in English.
Back at the truck, Shah heard the blast and the screams. As he pushed through the crowd, someone grabbed him. ``Don't go, don't go,'' the other man pleaded. ``There are mines everywhere out there.''
But Ahmed was pleading to his friend, ``Mukhdar, help me!''
Shah hesitated for a moment. Then he dashed into the mine field.
Seizing his wounded friend by the arm, he struggled to lift him. Then two other men joined him, stepping as carefully as they could through the same route Shah had taken.
Together they carried the moaning Ahmed to the shoulder of the road. U.S. military police with helmets and assault rifles walked toward them down the road.
``Listen, there is an ambulance coming, but I need you all to step back,'' Sgt. Brian Branley told the crowd. ``Back, back!''
``Where did all these kids come from?'' another soldier said. Hundreds of Afghan students from the Bagram Air Base school were marching by, single-file, to greet the president. They were no more than 60 feet from the site where Ahmed had stepped on the mine.
The children looked at Ahmed, but kept moving. Land mine victims are a common sight in Afghanistan.
A U.S. army reservist knelt by Ahmed and started binding a shawl around his bleeding foot. Minutes passed. Ahmed was growing quieter and going into shock.
A sport-utility vehicle sped out of the gate and stopped near the group. Shah started to lift his friend toward the vehicle. Branley stopped him.
``That's just an escort vehicle -- the ambulance is coming. Two minutes,'' he said.
``Two minutes? Two hours!'' Shah shouted. He began to cry.
Minutes later, an Army Humvee ambulance slalomed through the roadblocks, and paramedics loaded Ahmed on a stretcher. Then it roared off through the gate, past the hundreds of silent children and the colored trucks.
Branley walked back to the guardhouse. The reservist who had tended to Ahmed squirted some hand sanitizer onto his bloody hands.
``This happens all the time around Bagram,'' Branley said, shaking his head. ``We once had four in one week. The Russians put signs on their minefields, but the Afghans never marked theirs.''
At the base hospital, Ahmed was given two liters of blood, and surgeons had to amputate the rest of his lower leg, said Dr. Shuja Ahmad Hamed.
``He's lost a lot of tissue and blood, but he's going to make it,'' Hamed said.
After being assured that he could visit his friend on Monday, Shah rode in the ambulance back to the gate. He carried a plastic bag with his friend's bloody clothes.
He shrugged off questions about his run into the mine field.
``He's my friend, and he was shouting my name -- I couldn't leave him there,'' he said.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan Stays in Anti - Terror Coalition - Musharraf
October 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-musharraf-usa.html
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf said on Sunday the country would remain committed to helping Washington's war on terrorism after an election this week aimed at restoring civilian rule.
``Pakistan is and will remain a key member of the coalition against international terror,'' Musharraf said in a speech at a Turkish military event in Istanbul where he is attending a regional economic summit on Monday.
``We are striving to make Pakistan a strong force for regional peace and stability,'' Musharraf said.
He said this week's elections heralded the creation of ``real democracy'' in Pakistan.
``A new government will keep national interests and will run Pakistan on the basis of honesty and courage...and we feel confident that the path of progress that we have set for the nation will be followed by the new government,'' he said.
A party loyal to President Musharraf led the way but was well short of an overall majority in the election designed to restore civilian rule after a 1999 military coup.
Hardline Islamic parties opposed to the U.S. role in Afghanistan made surprising gains in the election, potentially giving them the balance of power in any coalition.
``I think we had very transparent, very good elections, problem free, and we will probably have a very healthy government in Pakistan,'' Musharraf told reporters on his arrival in Istanbul earlier on Sunday.
The European Union, which observed the election, was highly critical of the military's tactics, which it said included supporting the party closest to Musharraf.
-------- spy agencies
Why the CIA thinks Bush is wrong
The president says the US has to act now against Iraq. The trouble is, his own security services don't agree. Neil Mackay reports
Sunday UK Herald
13 October 2002
http://www.sundayherald.com/print28384
GEORGE Bush was about to be hoist by his own petard. It was Monday last week, and the president was glad-handing with the great and the good at the Cincinnati Museum Centre in Ohio as he waited to give one of his most bellicose speeches yet.
In the audience were Ohio state governor Bob Taft and a host of business and political luminaries. As the deadline approached for the Senate and House of Representatives vote on whether or not to give Bush the backing he wanted to attack Iraq, this speech was to be the president's final flourish in the propaganda war to get the US marching in line behind him.
Calling Saddam Hussein a 'murderous tyrant', he made it clear why America had to finish off the Iraqi dictator. 'Facing clear evidence of peril,' he told the audience, 'we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.' He went on: 'We have every reason to assume the worst and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from happening.'
What Bush could not have guessed was that his claims that Iraq was intent on attacking the USA had already began to unravel. The denouement started a few days before, on Thursday, October 3, when Senator Bob Graham, chair of the Senate intelligence committee, metaphorically donned his hob-nailed boots and began delivering some well-aimed kicks to the head of George Tenet, the director of the CIA. The CIA, Graham said, were monkeying with democracy. The agency was not telling his committee what they needed to know about the Iraqi regime. Tenet was damaging the ability of Congress to assess the need for military action.
With one week until Congress voted on authorising Bush to use force, Graham was impatient. These are serious times, he said , and he needed serious answers. Graham and the committee had received an anodyne intelligence report from the CIA on the threat posed by Iraq the day before -- Wednesday, October 2. This, however, answered none of the questions the Senate committee wanted answered: would Saddam use weapons of mass destruction (WMD); how would his regime react if attacked; and what would be the consequences of war?
On October 9, almost a week after Tenet received his whipping at the hands of Graham, the senator's hardman approach paid off when the director of the CIA admitted that the only reason Saddam would use WMDs against the United States was if he was backed into a corner -- due to a strike by the American military -- and realised he was about to fall. Saddam, Tenet was saying, would only become the nightmare that Bush envisaged, if Bush attacked him first. Within two days, then, of Bush's flag-waving call to arms, his most senior intelligence officer had pulled the rug from under the biggest project of his presidency.
Tenet's admission left Bush in disarray with revelations making it appear as if the president was exaggerating the threat from Iraq, to say the least. Tenet, a loyal subject of the Bush administration, had no option but to come clean -- no matter how difficult a position it put the president in.
The CIA director's hands were tied on October 3 by Senator Graham, a democrat who represents Florida, when he told the CIA it was acting 'unacceptably', and added: 'We're trying to carry out a very important responsibility, and given the nature of this classified information, we are the only means by which the intelligence community can communicate to the legislative branch of government.'
There was no way that Tenet could play fast and loose with the Senate. Both the FBI and CIA have been attacked repeatedly in Congressional hearings since September 11 for a series of intelligence cock-ups.
Later on October 3, after Graham met with Tenet, his mood had changed -- Graham seemed to be cooler, calmer. He said the meeting had been frank and candid. What Graham wanted was a flavour of the classified National Intelligence Estimates, prepared by the National Intelligence Council, whose analysts report directly to Tenet. On Monday, October 7, around the time Bush was in Ohio cheerleading for war , Graham received just what he had been looking for -- it came in the shape of a letter from the CIA director. It made astonishing reading. Two days later, on Wednesday, October 9, the Senate intelligence committee voted to make the full text of Tenet's letter public.
Tenet's letter said he was declassifying selected material to help the Senate's deliberations on whether or not to support the president over attacking Iraq. 'Baghdad, for now, appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW (chemical and biological weapons) against the United States,' the declassified material read.
'Should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions. Such terrorism might involve conventional means ... or CBW.
'Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD attack against the US would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.'
Tenet went on to declassify formerly secret evidence given at a closed hearing of the Senate's intelligence committee in which democrat Carl Levin, was told by a 'senior intelligence witness' that the 'probability ... would be low' of Saddam initiating a WMD attack. The agent also said the chances were 'pretty high' that Saddam would launch a WMD attack 'if we initiate an attack and he thought he was in extremis'. Tenet's revelations left the entire basis of Bush's call to arms in ruins, and the CIA director swiftly became an embarrassment to the president as the propaganda war backfired . Tenet was not deliberately trying to undermine Bush -- he was simply forced into a corner by the Senate and compelled to reveal his true understanding of the Iraqi crisis.
Kenneth M Pollack, who worked as a military analyst at the CIA before serving as a top aide on Persian Gulf affairs on President Clinton's National Security Council, said: 'The agency line is that it is basically unlikely that Iraq would give WMDs to terrorists under most circumstances. The Bush administration is trying to make the case that Iraq might try to give WMDs to al-Qaeda under certain circumstances. 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 White House tried to put a different spin on the Tenet letter. Sean McCormack, the White House National Security Council spokesman, said the portions of the letter released by Graham gave a misleading impression of the CIA's overall conclusion. 'There were parts of the Tenet letter that weren't read in,' he said. Other parts were 'taken out of context', he said. However, Graham's spokesman, Paul Anderson, denied there had been any misquoting, and the full document, which the Senate committee has released, supports Anderson's line.
Lee Hamilton, the former chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, added pointedly: 'It's an overwhelming temptation to manipulate intelligence to serve policy and, to some extent, I think that's what's happening here with Iraq.'
Tenet did, however, leave the Bush conspiracists something to cling to. In his letter to Graham, he played up the alleged links between al-Qaeda and Iraq, saying: 'We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade.
Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression ... we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaeda members ... we have credible reporting that al-Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq, who could help them acquire WMD capabilities ... Iraq has provided training to al-Qaeda members in areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.'
This was not a smoking gun, but it kept suspicions alive that Iraq might just pass terrorists WMDs any day now. Tenet's tentative connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda is a far cry from the findings of his counterparts in Europe. Try as it might, the UK has been unable to produce any evidence clearly linking Saddam to bin Laden, and the French have positively ruled out any connection. Jean-Louis Brugui?re, France's leading terrorist investigator, says years of investigation into radical Islamic terror groups have not produced a trace of evidence linking them to Iraq.
Brugui?re is an investigative magistrate empowered to view French domestic and foreign intelligence material. Much of the material he sees is passed on to the CIA and FBI by French intelligence. He says: 'We have not found any link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Not a trace. There is no foundation to our investigations for the information given by the Americans.'
The French believe the secular nature of Saddam's regime deters him from getting into bed with the likes of bin Laden. It also makes cosying up to Saddam an anathema to the fundamentalists of al-Qaeda. Despite the admissions in the Tenet letter, the Senate voted 77-23 in the early hours of last Friday morning to authorise Bush to use force against Iraq. Earlier, the House of Representatives had voted the same way by a margin of 296-133.
It seems that most of the Senate listened to the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's reply to claims that the White House was exaggerating the Iraqi threat.
'Each of us has a solemn responsibility,' he said, '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.'
The doubts of the intelligence community were washed away against such patriotic phrase-making. It should be noted, however, that a few senators listened to Tenet's admissions and voted 'no'. Among them was Senator Bob Graham.
--------
N. Korea's Secret Mission
Details Emerge of Long-Term Spy Project to Gain Influence in Japan
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 13, 2002; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18308-2002Oct12?language=printer
TOKYO -- The spies used "Don Quixote" to decode messages from their headquarters in North Korea. They slipped ashore on made-in-Japan life rafts and used Japanese cell phones for their contacts. When they went home after a mission, they hauled bags of pens, shirts and sweaters as gifts.
These and other glimpses of the espionage carried out by North Korean agents in Japan starting in the 1970s are emerging as their spy activities here are flushed into the open.
The clues are coming from interviews conducted this month by Japanese officials in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, with five people who were kidnapped from Japan; from old cases now being reexamined; and from evidence found in a sunken North Korean spy ship that Japan recently raised.
The emerging picture, though far from complete, is one of a long-term infiltration project in which dozens -- perhaps several hundred -- North Korean agents sought to build a network to gain intelligence, money and influence in Japan, Korea's historical enemy, and in South Korea, through Japan.
The espionage efforts were sometimes bumbling and often ineffectual. The "secrets" they brought back to Pyongyang were mostly from textbooks or guides bought in bookstores. They were more proficient at snatching Japanese off the beach on the way out and taking them back to North Korea, a practice that apparently grew as a sideline to their main mission.
The agents were on the prowl for politicians whose votes could be bought, journalists and scholars whose opinions could be swayed, businessmen who would contribute money and provide a cover, and even tourists who would go to South Korea and report back on what they saw.
"They tried to create public opinion sympathetic to North Korea," said Kazuhisa Ogawa, an independent defense analyst in Japan.
The spies' main resources in Japan were some of the more than 100,000 ethnic Koreans here who are officially citizens of the North. Many of them had relatives living in North Korea and were vulnerable to pressure from the spies.
Other than the abductions, there is no public evidence that the spies tried to carry out violent plots or terrorist acts in Japan. But authorities here suspect that they did engage in drug smuggling and passed counterfeit bills to raise money for North Korea.
For the most part, they were more like glorified lobbyists, "information agents" used to give the closed and reclusive North Korean government a small window on the world, said Ogawa. They carried orders from Pyongyang to sympathizers in Japan.
Hideshi Takesada, an expert at the government-funded National Institute for Defense Studies, said that North Korea trained several thousand spies at five centers, but only about 100 or fewer actually came to Japan each year.
But they did so with startling ease and regularity. Spy ships appeared off the Japanese coast between five and 12 times a year, Takesada said, disgorging smaller boats, which in turn launched rubber rafts to take agents to Japan's coast and pick them up.
A boat believed to be on such a mission was spotted near Japanese waters in December and was sunk in a gun battle with Japanese vessels. To learn what it could about the craft and its use, Japan spent $50 million to raise it last month from the bottom of the East China Sea.
The vessel turned out to be a military craft, complete with mounted guns, disguised as a civilian craft. It had bay doors in its hull from which to launch and retrieve a 33-foot, high-powered speedboat. Also recovered were a Toshiba-made Japanese cell phone -- investigators hope that calls made from the phone will lead to collaborators in Japan -- and two Japanese-made rubber rafts.
The evidence fits accounts coming from interviews with kidnapping victims produced by North Korea two weeks ago for a Japanese investigation team.
One couple, Yasushi Chimura and Fukie Hamamoto, told the investigators they were placed in bags by four men who attacked them as they watched the stars on a beachside date in 1978. They were transferred to other boats twice before being taken to North Korea, they said.
The evidence also plays into previous stories -- some of which had been discounted as too bizarre -- of how the North Korean spies went about their business.
A Korean woman in Japan, Pak Jun Sung, 65, said in an interview last week that she lived with a North Korean agent from 1973 to 1976, and that he told her he went back and forth between Japan and North Korea, arriving in Japan on a rubber raft. The agent, Shin Guang Su, was later arrested in South Korea and put on trial, during which he described his modus operandi in detail.
Shin testified that in North Korea, agents went through a painstaking study of Japanese politics, society, economy, the military and culture, all to prepare to assume a false identity. He was told to look for someone in Japan who was his age, single, with no family or criminal record and who had never before gotten a passport or been overseas.
After arriving in Japan, Shin settled on Tadaaki Hara, a 43-year-old loner who was working as a cook at a Chinese restaurant in Osaka. He befriended the man, got him drunk and delivered him into the hands of men from a North Korean boat in 1980.
The sobered-up Hara found himself trapped in North Korea. Shin spent six months with him to learn details of his background, and then returned to Japan, where he used Hara's identity. North Korean authorities said last month that Hara died in 1986 of a liver ailment.
In Japan, Shin would listen to Radio Pyongyang at midnight on a shortwave radio, copy numbers broadcast on the station, and decipher messages using a book -- Don Quixote -- or a table of random numbers, Pak said. "After he would listen to the radio, he would go to the post office and send a letter to North Korea," she recalled.
On a trip she took with him to the seashore on Kyushu island, she said, he used a North Korean rubber raft to haul two large bags to a meeting place. The bags were filled with pens, lighters, shirts and sweaters bought in Japan to be taken back to North Korea.
Pak said that she had a falling out with Shin over 4 million yen -- worth about $16,000 then -- that he asked her to keep for him. Instead, she lent it out and couldn't get it back. When Shin learned of that, Pak's brother in North Korea was imprisoned, she said. "I begged him to help my brother. He said, 'Give me the 4 million yen and I will help you,' " she related.
Pak said she did not know he was a spy until he was arrested by South Korean agents on a trip to Seoul in 1985. She believes that her brother was executed after his arrest. Shin was imprisoned in South Korea until 1999, and then sent back to North Korea in 2000.
Ethnic Koreans in Japan with relatives living in North Korea are particularly vulnerable to such manipulation by the North Korean spies.
Of approximately 632,000 Koreans in Japan, more than 110,000 are officially registered as North Korean citizens. Many of those families were forcibly brought to Japan as laborers during World War II, and Japan has found it politically difficult to crack down on their pro-Pyongyang activities. They travel regularly to North Korea by ferry from Japan, and for years have been a source of income and political support for Pyongyang.
Their influence with some Japanese politicians has long been a source of speculation. But now some of those Koreans, disillusioned by the kidnapping revelations, have started to reveal the secrets, according to Japanese news media accounts.
One Korean businessman in Japan working with a North Korean agent found himself in business with a former Japanese cabinet member as a partner, the Sankei Shimbun newspaper said, without naming the politician or the businessman.
The agent ordered the businessman to "bring in a politician as a collaborator and set up a company to get foreign currency," the businessman said, according to Sankei. "I carried out the orders."
Much of the North Korean espionage was aimed more at learning about South Korea than Japan, according to Takesada and other accounts. Some Koreans in Japan who had pro-North views were encouraged to switch their official affiliation to Seoul, and to visit South Korea to learn what they could and report back.
Apart from the abductions, the agents in Japan rarely harmed anyone. But elsewhere, that was not the case. Agent Kim Hyun Hee was carrying a Japanese passport when she boarded a Korean Airlines plane in Iraq in 1987. She disembarked in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, leaving behind a bomb planted in a radio. It exploded in flight, killing all 115 people aboard.
Japanese who were kidnapped as part of the web of espionage were often kept in the dark as to why they were taken. Chimura and Hamamoto, the couple abducted while star-gazing, beseeched their captors to explain why they were prisoners. All they got, they said, was ideology: "We were told North Korea needs young Japanese for the sake of the Korean revolution and reunification of the motherland."
Correspondents Akiko Yamamoto and Sachiko Sakamaki contributed to this report.
-------- us
Concerns over US chemical war gear
Oct. 13, 2002
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021013-030745-3205r.htm
SALT LAKE CITY, An inspection of the Army's supply of gas masks and chemical detectors last autumn found a majority of them to be potentially defective due largely to lax maintenance policies, according to a published report Sunday.
The Deseret News said documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that auditors had warned last November that 62-percent of the Army's gas masks and nearly all of the equipment used to detect chemical agents in the air were potentially defective.
"Up to 90 percent of the monitors and 62 percent of the masks were either completely broken or less than fully operational," said the report from the Army Audit Agency, which added, "The actual status, requirements, surpluses or shortfalls, and true costs of Army efforts to defend against aggression through chemical and biological weapons weren't known."
The problems could cost nearly $8 million to remedy, the audit concluded, and have left commanders with an inaccurate picture of "the true abilities of units to survive and win in chemically or biologically contaminated environments."
The audit, which was dated Nov. 9, came out as the United States was gearing up for retaliation against the Afghanistan-based al Qaida, a campaign that has since led to the increased likelihood that the United States could find itself in Iraq fighting against a foe that is believed to have a significant arsenal of gas weapons that some analysts fear Saddam Hussein would use to remain in power.
The root of the problem, according to the Deseret News, was the Army's requirement that only "mission-essential" equipment be regularly checked and maintained. Of the 66 separate items in the Army's defensive chemical warfare inventory, only three were deemed mission essential even though it appeared obvious that much of the gear was indeed vital to operations in the field.
"Without fully operational chemical agent monitors, deployed units in a chemically contaminated environment can't be certain of when the threat from contamination has diminished," the report said. "Yet this item wasn't deemed mission-essential."
The audit also cautioned that evidence of problems with gas masks and other equipment were never passed up the chain of command or shared among commanders. As a result, for example, a high rate of replacement for parts known as "drift tubes" in chemical detectors did not signal a pattern of potential problems.
The audit recommended increased attention to maintenance and the creation of an office that would oversee chemical defense equipments on an Army-wide basis and establish a system for reporting, tracking and correcting equipment issues.
----
Rumsfeld Orders War Plans Redone for Faster Action
New York Times
October 13, 2002
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/international/middleeast/13MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that he had ordered the military's regional commanders to rewrite all of their war plans to capitalize on precision weapons, better intelligence and speedier deployment. That way, he said, the military could begin combat operations on less notice and with far fewer troops than thought possible - or even wise - before the Sept. 11 attacks.
The approach, driven by the defense secretary and his ranking military advisers, is already shaping the work of Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the United States Central Command, in his planning for a possible war against Iraq, senior Defense Department officials said.
The command has stockpiled weapons and positioned some troops in the Persian Gulf in an effort to be able to stage a quick offensive against President Saddam Hussein that planners say would be vastly different from the 1991 war over Kuwait.
The broad outlines given to the military's regional war-fighting commanders were described in an interview today with Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both declined to discuss details of war plans for Iraq, and repeated that President Bush had made no decision to attack.
A faster mobilization could give Mr. Bush extra time to pursue more avenues of diplomacy or to allow weapons inspections to run their course.
The speedier use of smaller and more agile forces could also provide the president with additional time to order an offensive against Iraq that could be carried out this winter, the optimal season for combat in the desert.
The new approach for how America goes to war, Mr. Rumsfeld said, reflects an assessment of the need after Sept. 11 to refresh war plans continuously and to respond faster to the threats from terrorists and nations possessing biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. Mr. Rumsfeld said too many of the military plans on the shelves of the regional war-fighting commanders were freighted with outdated assumptions and military requirements, which have changed with the advent of new weapons and doctrines.
"Looking at what was overwhelming force a decade or two decades ago, today you can have overwhelming force, conceivably, with lesser numbers because the lethality is equal to or greater than before," he said.
It has been a mistake, he added, to measure the quantity of forces required for a mission and "fail to look at lethality, where you end up with precision-guided munitions which can give you 10 times the lethality that a dumb weapon might, as an example."
With a need for fewer bombs to strike designated targets, the military would also require fewer ships to haul the munitions to the war zone, General Pace said.
General Pace, the four branches of the armed services and the Joint Staff are conducting studies to measure how quickly the military can deliver its firepower anywhere on the globe.
"If you can deliver five divisions anywhere in the world in 90 days, might you have the same impact by getting three divisions there in 30 days?" he said. "Because speed is a force enhancement, force multiplier."
Through a combination of pre-deployments, faster cargo ships and a larger fleet of transport aircraft, the military would be able to deliver "fewer troops but in a faster time that would allow you to have concentrated power that would have the same effect as waiting longer with what a bigger force might have," General Pace said.
In a new wave of such pre-deployments to the Iraqi front, Pentagon officials said on Friday that planning staffs from the headquarters of the Army's V Corps, based at Heidelberg, Germany, and from the First Marine Expeditionary Force, from Camp Pendleton, Calif., have been ordered to Kuwait. Troops involved in the deployment would number in the hundreds, officials said.
Mr. Rumsfeld's order to rewrite war plans that were several years old and to review them more often has long-range consequences for the kinds of weapons the Pentagon buys in the future.
The new emphasis on speedy deployments, for instance, could well mean that the Defense Department buys more cargo planes or invests more in designing ships that sail two to three times faster than the vessels used today, General Pace said.
Even so, Mr. Rumsfeld's emphasis is causing consternation among some in the military who argue that concern for the troops requires overwhelming numerical superiority to assure victory. Those officers view Mr. Rumsfeld's approach as injecting too much risk into war planning, and have said it could ultimately result in American casualties that might be prevented by amassing larger forces.
Mr. Rumsfeld, in Congressional hearings, has described the military's traditional war-fighting requirements as bound by a history of duplication - "belts and suspenders," he called it.
Critics in the military argue that there are several reasons to deploy a force of overwhelming numbers before starting any offensive with Iraq. Large numbers illustrate American resolve, and can intimidate Iraqi forces into laying down their arms or even turning against Mr. Hussein's government.
Large numbers in the region also would be required should the initial offensive go badly. Also, once victory is at hand, it might require an even larger force to pacify Iraq and search for weapons of mass destruction than it took to topple Mr. Hussein.
To those critics who say he is accepting too much risk in American war planning, Mr. Rumsfeld said he had ordered rigorous reviews and was satisfied. "We are prepared for the worst case," he said, but added that it would be impossible to structure the military to be prepared for "every conceivable thing.`
While some news reports have described the Joint Chiefs and the senior military ranks as opposing war with Iraq at this time, interviews across all four services and at the highest level of the officer corps found agreement on the threat posed by Mr. Hussein and his arsenal of unconventional weapons.
General Pace said he welcomed the tough line of questioning raised by senior officers, saying it was helpful and not divisive.
In Congress, some critics of the war planning about Iraq said it diverted attention from the larger war against terrorists operating around the globe. But General Pace said the military was fully capable of executing all of its assigned missions.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- death penalty
Florida Might Edit Death Penalty Law
New York Times
October 13, 2002
By DANA CANEDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/national/13DEAT.html
MIAMI, Oct. 11 - A measure on the November ballot in Florida seeks, among other things, to change one word of one phrase of the state constitution as it applies to the death penalty.
Supporters say it will strengthen the state's death penalty law, making it more resistant to legal challenges and to certain types of appeals.
But opponents see danger in the switch. They say it will have a consequence that was never intended and is hidden in the obscure ballot language: It will effectively lower the minimum age at which killers can be put to death to 16 from 17.
The amendment would change the state constitution's prohibition against "cruel or unusual" punishment to the stricter federal prohibition against "cruel and unusual" punishment. Criminals appealing their death sentences would have to convince a court that their punishment met both those standards.
"Those who are on death row in Florida file an average of 12 appeals over a 14-year period," said State Senator Victor Crist, a Republican and co-sponsor of the measure, "and every single individual always files one of those appeals contesting the semantic difference between the Florida statue and the federal statute, and every time the court rules in favor of the federal statue. All we're doing here is using the same words in the state statute that the federal statute uses."
But critics say the proposal - theoretically, at least - would also allow 16-year-olds to be executed. This is because United States Supreme Court rulings upholding the death penalty for 16-year-olds would take precedence over a 1998 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court that declared capital punishment unconstitutional for people under 17.
"Passage of this amendment would restore the death penalty in Florida for 16-year-old offenders," said Stephen Harper, coordinator of the Juvenile Death Penalty Initiative, a coalition seeking to eliminate the death penalty for juveniles. "We see that as a major step back given how other states are dealing with this issue and given how the international community has all but eliminated the death penalty for offenders under 18."
These critics say voters would have no way of knowing the implications of the change for juvenile offenders from reading the amendment, which makes no mention of it.
Proponents of the measure insist they never intended to put youthful killers to death. Indeed, no one on either side of the debate expects Florida to suddenly start executing teenagers.
"You'd have to have a very unusual case" in order for a person who was 16 at the time he committed a crime to be put to death, said Locke Burt, a Republican state senator and another co-sponsor of the measure. "Given the fact that the Supreme Court of Florida has said we don't want to execute 16-year-olds, I don't think you'd get the votes to do it."
Of the 38 states that authorize the death penalty, 17 permit the execution of criminals who were 16 when they committed murder. Five, including Florida, prohibit the execution of murderers who were younger than 17 when they committed their crimes, and 16 states prohibit anyone who committed a crime under the age of 18 from being executed.
There are at least three people on death row in Florida who were 17 when they committed their crimes. The state has not executed a juvenile in more than four decades.
Florida voters approved a similar amendment in 1998, but the State Supreme Court struck it down, ruling that the ballot description was misleading. While people on both side of the debate say the language on the November ballot is not misleading, more than a dozen elections supervisors unsuccessfully sued the state in August to remove the issue from the ballot because of its complicated, lengthy wording.
"It's ridiculous to present something this long, this convoluted and this complex to voters and expect them to come to a clear understanding of what they'll be voting on," said Ion Sancho, the supervisor for elections in Leon County who was among the election officials seeking to remove the 714-word amendment from the ballot.
Proponents of the amendment say its wording was intended to correct language in the original proposal that the Florida Supreme Court ruled was misleading. "I know what the intent of the law is and I know my personal policy," Senator Crist said, "and that is not to execute minors."
-------- privacy
Easy Access to Public Records Online Raises Privacy Questions
New York Times
October 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/national/13DOCU.html
CINCINNATI, Oct. 12 - Before the Internet, public records were essentially private because of their obscurity - they sat gathering dust in courthouses across the land. Now governments are examining what information should be made public on the World Wide Web and whether different rules should apply to electronic documents.
Since the late 1990's, courts have posted records online to manage cases more efficiently and provide easier access. But complaints have followed.
Crime victims, jurors and witnesses fear that assailants can easily identify and find them. Others worry about identity theft. Former inmates want their pasts hidden, not publicized. Divorced couples grumble that their neighbors now know their business.
Jim Moehring knows firsthand the pros and cons of making public court records available online.
A general manager at Cincinnati's hockey arena, Mr. Moehring has used the Hamilton County court's Web site to check out potential employees. He has even turned away a few because of what he found.
But someone used the site to get Mr. Moehring's Social Security number and other personal details from a 1996 traffic ticket, opening seven credit cards in his name and charging $11,000.
"It was absolutely terrifying," Mr. Moehring said. "I got smoked in a bad way. The information is way too accessible."
Though officials knew records would be made more available, "there was an underestimation of the impact that was going to have on the individuals whose documents now were online," said John Bessey, a Franklin County judge and chairman of the Ohio Supreme Court's technology committee.
This month, a coalition that includes the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va., is to recommend guidelines for states drafting online policies.
The federal court system decided last year that documents in civil and bankruptcy cases, but not criminal cases, should be available electronically without personal information like Social Security numbers, birth dates and names of minors.
The Florida Supreme Court is considering a moratorium on online court records while lawmakers review a 2000 Florida law that requires courts to post by 2006 scanned images of all official records.
Other states, including Ohio, New York, Arizona and Wisconsin, have task forces studying the issue. But some fear lawmakers might use the Internet as an excuse to deny the public access to information off-line.
"I'm deeply suspicious of anyone tinkering with open records laws because they're usually doing it for a specific self-serving reason," said Timothy Smith, director for the Ohio Center for Privacy and the First Amendment at Kent State University. The better solution, he said, would be to limit the amount of personal information that many public documents require.
Randal Bloch, a divorce lawyer in Cincinnati, often hears complaints about privacy from her female clients. Most are concerned, Ms. Bloch said, that criminals may surf the Web for names and ages of children, their addresses and the layouts of their houses.
She now asks judges to prohibit her clients' cases from being posted on the Internet.
"People don't have good intentions, and the county is laying a road map for them," Ms. Bloch said. "It goes beyond stolen identity. It speaks to personal safety."
-------- terrorism
182 killed, 332 hurt in Bali's explosions
By Sukino Harisumarto
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
October 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021013-023317-5160r.htm
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- A series of explosions that rocked and then burned packed nightspots on the tourist island of Bali killed 182 people -- including victims trapped in the inferno from the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and throughout Europe, authorities said Sunday.
More than 330 people were being treated for injuries in the vastly overburdened island hospitals.
"The indiscriminate, brutal and despicable way in which lives have been taken away on this occasion by an act of barbarity will, I know, deeply shock all Australians," Australian Prime Minister John Howard said. "The warnings of the last year or more that terrorism can touch anybody, anywhere, at any time have been borne out by this terrible event."
Officials at Bali's main hospital said the death toll in the Saturday midnight blasts is expected to continue to rise as more bodies are discovered in the debris and those most severely hurt succumb to their injuries.
"The Government of Indonesia strongly deplored the brutal and shameful bombings in Bali which caused many victims," President Megawati Sukarnoputri said in a brief news conference before flying to Bali.
She spoke to the Australian prime minister by telephone and was told a medical team was on its way in a military plane capable of bringing back 30 injured to Australia for treatment.
She said that according to the latest reports the death toll had climbed to 182 and 332 others were injured.
Megawati said the government welcomed the humanitarian aid offered by the Australian government.
At least seven members of a soccer club from Perth, Australia, were among the missing, according to the Voice of America. Australia's Qantas Airways was arranging special flights to ferry surviving Australian tourists home.
The emergency immediately overwhelmed the resort island's medical facilities, ill equipped to treat the serious burns suffered by many of the injured. The morgue was jammed beyond overflowing with bodies.
Meanwhile, Putu Putra Wisada, spokesman for Sanglah's hospital, said most of the dead were foreigners, many of them American, Canadian, French, German, British, Japanese and Australian.
The series of explosions went off simultaneously through areas popular with foreign visitors. Two of the blasts destroyed a restaurant and a pub in Kuta, Bali's well-known tourist spot, while another one went off about 100 yards from the U.S. consular building in downtown Bali's capital of Denpasar, police and eyewitnesses said.
Most of the dead had been burned beyond recognition when the flaming roof of the Sari Club collapsed on them in a fire apparently fed by escaping gas.
Officials declined to confirm immediately whether the blasts involved car bombs, saying the bomb squad was investigating. "It's still too early to say it came from car bombs," he said. But an engine block from a car was recovered, suggesting the rest of the car was destroyed by a blast.
A statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta said the United States was offering "all appropriate assistance to the government of Indonesia to see that all responsible for this cowardly act faced justice."
The Embassy advised that it is "still trying to assess the number of American victims."
The attack, "comes on the heels of previous warnings of Americans at risk, and highlights the mounting threat to Americans wherever they are in Indonesia," the advisory said. "The embassy is currently re-evaluating the extent of its presence in Indonesia. Americans visiting or residing in Indonesia are advised to examine the necessity of continuing to remain in Indonesia."
In Washington, a State Department official said Saturday that the U.S. government was aware of the situation in Bali and that the matter was under investigation. A guard at the Indonesian Embassy in Washington said no staff members were available.
More than 200 people had been jammed into the Sari Club café, which was destroyed by the blast, an employee said. The club had been patronized mainly by foreigners.
In addition to destroying the cafe and restaurant, the blasts in Kuta also heavily damaged dozens of cars, shops and homes nearby, local residents said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the explosions, the worst ever to hit Bali and one of the worst acts of apparent terrorism on record anywhere -- but part of a series to hit Indonesia since several churches were bombed in December 2000.
The Press Trust of India reported Sunday that a bomb had been concealed in a Kijang, a Jeep-like vehicle.
Indonesian officials have denied that radicals linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network are active in Indonesia. But authorities in neighboring Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines assert that members of an Islamic militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah, are based in Indonesia. The group allegedly is seeking to establish a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia.
Local authorities were "selectively restricting" entrance to the resort island, including Ngurah Rai airport and seaports in Benoa and Gilimanuk that link Java and Bali, Suyatmo said.
Another explosion, believed to be from a homemade bomb, hit the Philippine consulate general in the North Sulawesi provincial capital of Manado, at 7 p.m. local time Saturday. A gate was damaged, but no injuries were reported and the incident may have been unrelated to the Bali explosions, timed to be simultaneous.
"The Indonesian government offered condolences and deep sympathy to the family of the victims -- both of the Indonesians and the foreigners -- from the brutal and uncivilized violence, against the religious teaching and moral values," Megawati said before departing to Bali to inspect the scene.
She said security authorities are working hard in order to "capture the perpetrators and bring them to justice," adding that the government called on the community to stay calm.
In Jakarta, top security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he was deeply concerned and said the explosions were the work of terrorists.
"I hope there is no more comments that the government invents stories about terrorists in Indonesia," Yudhoyono said. "Terrorists are alreeady all around us."
"What happened in Bali extremely hurts the image, not only of Bali but also of our country," he said. "That would seriously damage our economy," he said, adding that while the targets were foreigners, that in the end the Indonesian people would suffer.
Yudhoyono expressed hope that there should be a preliminary conclusion about responsibility for the blasts, but he declined to identify any suspects, saying "it could be committed by the Indonesians, it can be foreigners or could also be locals and foreigners."
"I'm shocked by the blast," Putu Wardana, a nearby resident said. "It never happens here ... . It is so secure," a sentiment expressed by a number of residents.
----
Officials See Signs of Revived Al Qaeda
New York Times
October 13, 2002
By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/international/middleeast/13TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - American officials say they fear that attacks attributed to Al Qaeda in the past week and taped messages from the group's leaders signal the beginning of a new wave of terrorist activity and possibly a large-scale attack.
Senior government officials also say that a blast in Yemen that crippled a French oil tanker and that attacks in Kuwait that killed a United States marine demonstrated that the terror network had reconstituted itself, with smaller groups prompted to launch new attacks by inflammatory new messages from Qaeda leaders.
The group's latest round of attacks may be a response to the Bush administration's Iraq policy, the officials said. An audiotape of Osama bin Laden's closest lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, threatened continued attacks on "America and its allies," and denounced American plans to attack Iraq.
"The campaign against Iraq has an objective that is far beyond Iraq to reach the Arab and Islamic world," Mr. Zawahiri said on the tape. United States officials said his message appeared to be an attempt to justify and incite renewed violence against American targets.
Another audiotape, which officials say is of Mr. bin Laden, repeated Al Qaeda's threats against the United States. Both tapes were broadcast in the past week by Al Jazeera, the satellite channel based in Qatar, and one American official said the two messages might have been intended to be a green light for Al Qaeda to launch large-scale attacks.
Officials said that in the past week intelligence analysts had received reports of a spike in reported threats against the United States and American interests abroad.
"I'm afraid you'll see a lot more of this," said Senator Richard C. Shelby, an Alabama Republican. "We always warned that there would be more attacks because we have not finished off the Al Qaeda group. We've disrupted it. We've had them on the run, but they are still around."
The government's latest intelligence analysis is based in part on the tanker explosion off Yemen a week ago, and on the shooting of two American marines on an island off Kuwait on Tuesday, an attack that killed one and wounded the other.
Kuwait's interior minister said today that a statement from the gunmen's leader suggested a link to Al Qaeda and that the group had planned other attacks. [Page 17.] But other officials said it was not known whether the attackers were operating under direct orders from Al Qaeda's senior leaders.
"The marines in Kuwait and the ship off Yemen - those could be precursors of more to come," one senior administration official said. "We believe this is a serious development."
So far, the government's response to the two attacks has remained deliberately low key. On Wednesday, the Bush administration discussed whether to raise the color-coded threat alert warning level from yellow to orange. But after a White House meeting, officials decided the threat was not yet specific enough.
Instead, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Homeland Security issued a threat alert to the country's 14,000 state and local police agencies, saying the recent messages showed that "Al Qaeda continues to plan major attacks against U.S. interests."
"The statements suggest that an attack may have been approved," the alert said, "while the specific timing is left to operatives in the field."
The threat warning said Al Qaeda had issued similar messages before the bombing of two American embassies in East Africa in August 1998. "The content of the statements and the context surrounding these threats reinforces our view that they may signal an attack," the message said. "One senior detainee maintains that Al Qaeda would only release such a statement after approving a specific plan for an attack."
Officials are also concerned that another large-scale attack, perhaps in the United States, could be imminent because it usually takes at least one year for Al Qaeda to organize an ambitious attack. Nearly a year separated the attack on the American destroyer Cole in a port in Yemen in October 2000 and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The latest wave may be linked to earlier attacks this year. In June, a suicide bomber blew up a truck outside the American Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killing 14 Pakistanis. Since then, the authorities have linked Al Qaeda to at least five attacks or thwarted attacks, though none in the United States.
Even if terror groups do not launch another large and concerted strike, officials say, the concern is about small groups of Qaeda members carrying out attacks in the United States that are similar to the recent ones in Kuwait and Yemen.
"There are remnants that are still out there somewhere, and they still have all that training," one senior government official said. "They may come in groups of ones and twos and threes. Small arms, chemicals or explosives, it's all right here."
For months, senior officials feared Al Qaeda would emerge after its members' escape from Afghanistan as a more dispersed but deadly network that would be far more difficult to contain. They worried that the network's old hierarchy, led by Mr. bin Laden, had been replaced by tactical operatives with makeshift alliances to militant groups in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria and Yemen.
The issue of whether Mr. Zawahiri survived the war in Afghanistan seemed to be settled by the release of the recording with references to recent events, like the Iraq debate. But the absence of video images of Mr. Zawahiri suggested to some analysts that he had been injured or had somehow changed his appearance to elude capture.
In the taped message, Mr. Zawahiri also takes credit for several recent terrorist attacks, including several against German and French targets in the Middle East. One goal of American policy, he said, was to make Israel the dominant power in the region. Another objective, he said, was to divide Saudi Arabia into four regions, with its oil fields under the direct control of the United States.
Intelligence officials said they thought that the voices on the audiotapes were those of Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri. But they said that only the Zawahiri tape appeared to be recent, possibly recorded within the past month and no later than last summer, officials said.
Greater skepticism surrounds the bin Laden tape, released on Oct. 6 by Al Jazeera. In it, he refers to the Sept. 11 attacks as having already occurred but does not cite any other specific events that could be used to date the recording.
Mr. Zawahiri said in his tape that Mr. bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, had survived the war. But the tape provided no evidence to support that claim, and officials remain divided over whether Mr. bin Laden is alive. But they say that Mullah Omar survived the war and is in hiding.
The tape thought to be of Mr. bin Laden contained an anti-American message that is familiar from his previous video and audio messages. "Let America increase the pace of this course of conflict or decrease it," it says, "we will retaliate in kind, God willing, and, God is our witness, that the men of Islam are preparing for you what would fill your hearts with terror, and they will target the hinges of your economy until you stop your injustice and aggression or either one of us dies first."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Why all of the West is looking down a barrel
But long war will exhaust them
BY CHRISTINA HOAG choag@herald.com
Sun, Oct. 13, 2002,
Miami Herald
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/4266894.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
As Washington's war drums beat ever louder, the big question is not whether oil prices will soar if the United States invades Iraq: It's for how long.
Energy analysts fully expect prices to spike -- some say as high as $60 per barrel -- at the outset of an attack, but then the scenario gets blurry.
''There are a lot of wild cards,'' said John Kilduff, oil analyst with Fimat USA.
The key question, as oil observers see it, is not if the United States would win a war with Iraq, but how much of a fight Saddam Hussein will put up -- and how far the unpredictable and ruthless dictator will go.
Experts do not discount the possibility that Saddam could fire missiles to blow up neighboring oil fields in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer, or, in the face of imminent defeat, sabotage his own country's drilling rigs to spite the incoming victor.
That would disrupt supply chains and make prices skyrocket.
Along the same lines, other fears hinge upon Saddam's terrorist sympathizers. Some experts see the recent explosion on a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen, largely attributed to an al-Qaeda-linked nucleus, as a harbinger of what lies ahead.
''Back in the Iran-Iraq war there were attacks on tankers on a fairly regular basis,'' recalled Ron Planting, an economist at the American Petroleum Institute in Washington.
Tankers and vital shipping lanes are not the only targets for vengeance on the oil-dependent West. Pipelines that snake across the Middle East are also vulnerable, particularly in countries whose moderate, pro-American policies could make them ripe for retaliation.
''Fanatics could try to launch attacks on infrastructure,'' Kilduff said. ``When you're talking about Saudi Arabia's deserts, there's a lot to secure.''
Iraq's Revolutionary Guard may also be grittier than estimated, leading to a protracted battle. ''Everybody knows the outcome -- we will win,'' said Jack Aydin, oil analyst at McDonald Investments.
``The question is how quick. If it's short-lived and without damage to Iraqi or other fields, prices would be down substantially. If we go for a long period of time and there is a big interruption, it's anybody's guess.''
Such a scenario could sustain crude prices at stratospheric levels -- and send Western economies into a tailspin. The United States would be particularly affected as the nation's crude stocks currently stand at 26-year lows.
Over the last few months, as Washington's war beat has ratcheted up prices some $8-10 to around $30 a barrel -- the so-called war premium -- refiners have been using up their inventories of crude bought at prices in the low $20-range. The gamble is that prices will eventually dip afresh.
It's likely a losing bet in the short-term, analysts say. When refiners start buying again, it will be at inflated prices, leading to more pressure on an already anemic economy.
''The low inventories are a huge factor,'' noted Neal McAtee, oil analyst with Memphis-based Morgan Keegan.
Washington has already started preparing for the worst. The government has been slowly buying crude to fill its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, housed in huge caverns in the Southwest, designed to keep the economy humming in the event of a strangled supply.
Analysts say the reserve is at its highest level -- almost 600 million barrels -- in years. ''The U.S. could easily release one million to three million barrels a day for 90 to 100 days and weather the storm,'' Aydin said. ``Even with that, you will have a [price] spike.''
Other countries, including China, Russia and Japan, have also been warehousing oil, he said.
Another factor in the scenario is Iraq's own oil. An invasion would cut off Baghdad's already fickle exports, which slide up and down from one million to two million barrels daily, largely depending whether the country's dilapidated wellheads and drilling rigs are functioning.
Currently, Iraq is sending about two million barrels legally overseas under the United Nations' oil-for-food program, which allows Baghdad to sell its crude for six months at a time in order to raise hard currency for humanitarian purposes. (Another 200,000 barrels are smuggled out, mostly via truck, through Turkey and Syria.)
One of the nations high on Baghdad's customer list is the United States.
In July, the latest figures available from the American Petroleum Institute, Iraq was the ninth-largest U.S. foreign supplier with about 566,000 barrels a day.
Analysts say that number has since plunged by about half, as refiners are already veering away from Iraqi purchases in anticipation of an attack-prompted supply cutoff.
With the flow of Iraqi crude to the U.S. reduced to a trickle, Washington won't feel much of a direct pinch if it's cut off completely.
''We've done without Iraqi crude several times over the last several years when the U.N. couldn't reach agreement with Iraq,'' noted Planting of the API.
But the United States would indeed feel the effects of the squeezed world market generated from an Iraqi production shutdown, at least until other producers ramp up their output to breach the gap.
Countries such as Saudi Arabia have already volunteered to alleviate supply pressure if needed, and OPEC would probably raise its members' production quotas, analysts said.
In the long term, experts say a new pro-Western regime in Iraq that would open its vast oil fields to foreign investment would benefit the crude market with lower prices.
With proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of oil, chiefly comprising the light crudes that refiners covet, the country potentially rivals Saudi Arabia as the globe's hydrocarbons powerhouse.
''Iraq's true potential may be far greater than this, however, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions,'' states a U.S. Department of Energy Country Analysis Brief.
Companies are champing at the bit to get in. Before the Gulf War, Baghdad was turning out 3.5 million barrels of crude a day.
''They could easily get back to three million to four million [barrels] a day with small improvements and maintenance to their fields,'' Kilduff said. ``In a few years, they could get up to six million.''
That would mean lower prices for oil consumers, as well as a flow of hard currency that would pay for rebuilding the deteriorated nation.
''The conventional wisdom is that the U.S. will make a quick victory. That's why the market is still only at $30 a barrel,'' Kilduff said. ``But as war talk gets stronger, we'll probably see $33-34 prior to the initial strike. After that, who knows?''
-------- environment
Air Pollution Spikes in California
October 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Air-Pollution.html
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- California has endured its worst air pollution season in several years, reversing what had been years of improvements to the state's air quality.
All of Orange County and parts of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties have experienced 49 days when ozone readings exceeded federal standards, according to data collected by the South Coast Air Quality Management District. That is a 36 percent increase over last year. Advertisement Alt Text
Experts said smog levels were up across the state as a result of hot, dry weather along with a series of wildfires that polluted the air over formerly smog-free places such as Death Valley National Park and the eastern Sierra Nevada.
Los Angeles, however, and the southern part of Los Angeles County fared better, recording no days this year when ozone readings exceeded federal standards. Readings that exceed federal standards can cause headaches, nausea or shortness of breath.
In the Sacramento area, air violated the federal ozone standard on 10 days -- more than three times as many violations as last year, officials report.
``High heat, calm winds, temperatures over 100 degrees for days on end. That is the perfect recipe for smog stew, and that's what we had this year,'' said Kerry Shearer, spokesman for the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Who will speak out for GWS research
From: "Venus Hammack" <jagmedic@gulflink.org>
Houston we have a problem.
[1] Blood and Tissues samples which were collected by military facilities from gulf war veterans, without their knowledge is stored by the AFIP.
[2] the VA-RACGWI, research advisory committee for research on gulf war illness have failed to recommend the Samples be made available for Civilian Research.
[3] Why would a Committee to help gulf war vets, block having their Samples evaluated by Independent Research Scientists?
We need your emails and fax(s) on this Issue. JAGMEDIC of Desert Storm Battle Registry
Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans Illness Department of Medicine 0995 UC San Diego School of Medicine 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0995 resadvcom@aol.com
Contact data for AFIP: Attn: Florabel Mullick - Deputy Director of Pathology Armed Forces Institute of Pathology Walter Reed Army Hospital Complex Building 54 6900 Georgia Ave. Washington, DC 20307 202-782-2503
----
Stop war
From: Jiøí Klicpera [mailto:klicpera@iol.cz]
Sent: October 13, 2002 9:10 AM
In Czech Republic and East Europe generally is problematic situation in acceptation of argumantation against the Bush-Iraq War, by DU missiles killing. Many people see only black-white.... And is problematic to organize the Demonstration. My initiative by Internet for support of 26.October demonstration in the US and World: This Day we will declare our support Action against the War simply - we will this Day dressed with red colour - Red Caps, Red Hoods, or other parts of clothes in Red Colour. Red is STOP for the War !
Ing Jiri Klicpera PhD Za Skolkou 647 533 41 Lazne Bohdanec Czech Republic tel.+fax: +420 466 921 106 mobil +420 602 649 164
----
In France, Thousands Protest a War on Iraq
Chirac Weighs Demands of Public, U.S.
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 13, 2002; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18329-2002Oct12?language=printer
PARIS, Oct. 12 -- Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Paris and other French cities today to protest any American-led military strike on Iraq, underscoring the difficult choices facing French President Jacques Chirac and his center-right government as they try to find a compromise with the Bush administration on how to deal with Saddam Hussein.
While today's protests were relatively small -- about 6,000 people in Paris -- the French public appears largely opposed to any military action against Iraq. The U.S. push for another Gulf War feeds into long-held anxieties about America's unparalleled power in the world and French perceptions of their own reduced role on the international stage, according to analysts.
Chirac has called for a tough U.N. Security Council resolution on resuming arms inspections in Iraq, but he has insisted that any threat of military force come later in a separate resolution. The administration of President Bush wants one resolution that joins a demand for a return of inspectors to Iraq with an immediate threat of military action if Baghdad fails to comply.
A compromise is likely, many analysts say, if only because Chirac would not want France left out of a key international decision by its most important strategic ally, the United States. But the anti-war sentiment here -- also displayed earlier this week in a spirited National Assembly debate -- shows the delicacy of Chirac's balancing act.
"France is in a very difficult position," said Philippe Moreau Defarges of the French Institute for International Relations. "France is an ally of the United States and knows it -- we know we belong to the Western camp. On the other hand, we don't know what would be the outcome of a war. Mostly, public opinion is against the war. Most people in France do not understand why this war now. Even if Saddam Hussein is a dangerous man, why now?"
Like Chirac, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin also appears to be facing tough choices, analysts said. Although elected to a five-year term in June with a solid majority, the center-right government is wary of the potential for the kind of social unrest that toppled the previous right-wing government, in 1997. Raffarin is already facing sporadic labor unrest because of a faltering economy and continued moves to privatize state-dominated industries and would want to avoid arousing public anger over an unpopular war with Iraq, the analysts said.
In the debate, leftist members of Parliament demanded that the government use its U.N. veto to block a march to war. Raffarin called Iraq "indisputably a threat to the security of the region," but said using force should be a "last resort." Bowing to anti-U.S. sentiment, the prime minister also said the Bush administration had a "simplistic vision of a war between good and evil."
For France, the question of how best to approach Iraq is wrapped in a complex web of geopolitical interests, economic and commercial concerns, a long history of relations in the Middle East, geographic considerations, and its own volatile population mix.
Among the most pressing concerns are:
• Population. France is home to an estimated 4 million to 5 million Muslims, mostly of North African descent, making it the second-largest community in France. It is also home to some 700,000 Jews. A series of anti-Semitic attacks in the spring underscored how events in the volatile Middle East can easily spill over into France. Many of the attacks were blamed on youths of North African origin responding to Israel's April reoccupation of most of the West Bank and the siege of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
"I don't think economic interests are central to the French position but rather marginal," said Philip H. Gordon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a French affairs expert. "Much more important is fear of explosion throughout the Middle East that could also spill over to France, as we saw glimpses of last year."
• Geography. France's proximity to the Middle East always raises a fear that instability there could cause an influx of refugees here. "The proximity of the Middle East worries the Europeans generally," said Francois Heisbourg, a French strategic affairs analyst. "It worries the countries that would be hit by the tidal waves of refugees from the Middle East.
• Fear of U.S. domination. This theme was featured among today's protesters.
"If the U.S. attacks Iraq, later they will continue to attack Syria, Iran and other countries," said Michel Samlmon, 49, a financial analyst.
• Fear of unilateral action. There is a general concern in France about the United States acting unilaterally in military affairs, and many French were upset that their armed forces were not called up to do more to help the U.S. operation in Afghanistan last year.
One way France maintains its world role is through its position as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, and any action taken without the council's blessing is seen here by many as diminishing French influence.
• Economic interests. France has a long history of commercial ties with Iraq, dating back to the early 1970s, when Hussein traveled to Paris, his first trip to a Western capital, and Chirac, a rising political star, returned the favor two years later by visiting Baghdad. Chirac is considered the architect of France's early Iraq policy that provided Hussein with a nuclear reactor (bombed by Israel in 1981) and then supplied Baghdad with Mirage F-1 fighter jets, Exocet missiles and Etendard aircraft during its war with Iran. In exchange, France received oil -- an important concession, because French companies had been largely shut out of the Gulf's oil supplies by U.S., British and Dutch firms.
At the time, the French government regarded Hussein and his Baath Party as a bulwark against Ayatollah Khomeini's fundamentalist regime in Iran. The secular Baathists were modernizing and giving equal rights to women.
Iraq owes French companies about $5 billion. Also, the French oil concern, TotalFinaElf, has been pursuing exploration and development rights to two sites in Iraq, but has been unable to sign a contract as long as U.N. sanctions are in place.
Most of today's anti-war protesters said oil interests were driving U.S., and French, policy. Many carried signs that said, "No war for oil" and similar slogans. "This is a war for power, said Tarek Abdel Malik El Fawaz, a 31-year-old nurse, "for oil, economic interest."
However, few analysts and journalists believe that commercial concerns are at the heart of French policy, and many note that France participated in the first Gulf War. The $5 billion debt, many said, is marginal, and some analysts said that France would actually have more commercial opportunities if Hussein were ousted.
----
Chanting 'No, We Won't Go' . . . to War or to This Drugstore
New York Times
October 13, 2002
By MATTHEW PURDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/nyregion/13TOWN.html
WOODSTOCK, N.Y. - WE shouldn't picket until 6 o'clock," Toby Heilbrunn said Thursday afternoon, cutting short the daily demonstration at the locally loathed CVS drugstore. "We should conserve our energy for tonight."
That night would bring a rally in nearby Kingston against an invasion of Iraq. The threat of war is creating cause congestion for the truly committed. "You don't know which way you're going," Ms. Heilbrunn said. "You run from picketing CVS to the antiwar rally."
The left is struggling to fight a two-front war, even here in Woodstock, where activism is so establishment that the elected supervisor called it "activismism." (The supervisor, Jeremy Wilber, should talk: he broke onto the local political scene by writing a play protesting sewer rates, titled "Man and Sewerman.")
These are tough times on the protest lines. Terrorism has cast dissenters as unpatriotic. In the tumbling economy, corporate cutbacks are a bigger worry than corporate domination.
"One does feel impotent right now," said Roger Lazoff, an architectural history writer, who was among those trying in vain to keep the CVS from opening, saying a supermarket was needed more. "If they couldn't stop that, activism is in a trough."
Local activists' recent success at stopping a proposed town garage on park property pales against the antiwar task. And who has time to fight the proposed expansion of the local Tibetan monastery? "It's the bigness," one activist explained. Certainly not the Buddhismness.
To some, this period resembles the early 1960's, when opponents of the Vietnam War still felt lonely. If there is a groundswell now, it is not coming from the kids, but from the former granny-glasses set who these days wear stylishly small trifocals.
At Not Fade Away, a clothing store named for the rock 'n' roll song, the owner, Martin Leffer, 54, said: "Tie-dye has hit the mainstream. Tie-dye is bigger than it ever was."
But he remembers tie-dye when it was a statement, not a fashion statement. Way back when, Mr. Leffer fasted his way to a draft deferment, and he would not think of setting foot in the new CVS. But he lamented, "There's an apathy in the country."
His employee Lindsey Elston, 21, piped up. She sees those anti-CVS protesters every day. "It's ridiculous," she said. "You've made your point. Go to work!"
Doesn't the prospect of war worry her? "I don't pay much attention," she said. "Bomb the hell out of him."
Opposition to CVS grew here, as elsewhere in the region, because the drugstore chain bought the lease of a Grand Union that closed when the chain went bankrupt. It was the only supermarket in a town that already had a chain drugstore. There have been daily protests since CVS opened its store two weeks ago.
OTHERS see a larger issue. A Bard College social studies professor, Joel Kovel, said the building looked much better than it did when Grand Union was there, but he called the CVS a local metastasis of the cancer of "relentless expansion of capitalism."
Looking at the CVS on Thursday, he said, derisively, "All this plastic." He hit on a connection between the Iraq invasion (driven by the thirst for oil, he said) and CVS. "If you did a survey of all the products in CVS," he said, "I bet 98 percent of them are petroleum derivatives." Yuck. Even the toothpaste?
The protesters can match George Bush's fer-us-or-agin-us worldview. "I think it's safe to say," Ms. Heilbrunn said Thursday outside of the CVS, "that anybody who shops here won't be at the rally tonight."
That night, outside the Ulster County office building in Kingston, the antiwar protest drew about 80 people, including a handful of CVS protesters from Woodstock. Michael Veitch, who carried a "STOP CVS" sign by day, carried a sign at night that said "Hillary + Chuck Rubber Stamps."
The protesters were a determined, if small voice shouting into a growing storm. As they gathered, the House of Representatives had already approved the war resolution. The Senate was on its way. Later that night, the Ulster County Legislature soundly defeated a proposed resolution urging Congress to oppose military action.
By that time, those protesters who started their day outside CVS had returned to Woodstock from Kingston.
John Wonderling, a music producer, headed home in frustration. The CVS was open, the war looking ever more certain. Not a winning season for activists. "The powers that be are the ones pulling all the strings," he said. "You've got to keep going, and eventually us gentler people maybe will be heard."
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