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NUCLEAR
Treat Iraq, N. Korea the Same
TRIAL TO BEGIN IN CASE OF DEPLETED URANIUM WORKER
Timeline: India
New Sites May Be Inspected in Iraq
Japan Mulls Constitutional Changes
North Korea warns of nuclear retaliation
UN Wants Talks with N.Korea on Nuclear Arms Reports
N. Korea missile threat increases
N. Korea Official Defends Nukes
Russians Now Fault N. Korea on Nuclear Talk
U.S. Rules Out Talks With N. Korea
U.S. Skips Talks, Shows Displeasure with N.Korea
Lawsuit to Block President Bush's Withdrawal from ABM Treaty
Study: No Cancer Jump Near Pa. Plant
Normal Cancer Rate Found Near Three Mile Island Plant
Global Eye -- Into the Dark
Bush's Iraq adventure is bound to backfire
Exposing Karl Rove
MILITARY
Veterans Sue Over Secret Biological, Chemical Tests
ASEAN leaders to weigh counterterrorism agenda
U.S. Tested Sarin in Hawaiian Rain Forest
U.S. Tested a Nerve Gas in Hawaii
U.S. Bioterror Readiness Assessed
U.S. Finds Hurdles in Search for Nonlethal Gas
Iraq VP Sends U.S. Harsh Warning
Crucial US allies on Iraq fall out over oil
Iraqi Intelligence
Metzger arrives for consultations ahead of Iraq war
Sharon Said to Offer Foreign Ministry Post to Netanyahu
U.S. Official Omits Disputed Charge Against Syria
Conflict Between Chechens and Russia
Satellite To Be 'Boosted' By Microwave Beam Proposed
The Space Industry: Supporting U.S. Supremacy
CIA Touts Successes In Fighting Terrorism
Shift Toward the U.S. Stand on Iraq Is Noted in Council
Rivalry between Defense Department, CIA reportedly growing
Doubt in the Ranks
Pentagon takes over program to gather intelligence on Iraq
130,000 troops sought for invasion force in Iraq
Pentagon agrees to Navy's new generation of carriers
U.S. Orders Large Volume of Ammunition to Gulf
Fighting terror
Russian Deputies Back New Post-Siege Media Curbs
Russia Backs New Restrictions on Press Freedom
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Qaeda Uses Teeming Karachi as New Base, Pakistanis Say
ENERGY AND OTHER
Scientists Say a Quest for Clean Energy Must Begin Now
Massive Solar Development Underway in Arizona
U.S. scientists say fossil fuel alternatives lacking
At Climate Meeting, Unlikely Ally for Have-Nots
Syrian Kurds Speak Out for Equality
ACTIVISTS
Nuclear Threat Initiative Fact Sheet
9/11 Relatives, Suing Saudis, to Protest Today
New Action on Iraq
Halloween Parade - NYC
-------- NUCLEAR
Treat Iraq, N. Korea the Same:
Nonmilitary Means Can Work
COMMENTARY
By Stansfield Turner
November 1, 2002
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-turner1nov01,0,1864459.story
In responding to North Korea's confession of nuclear perfidy, we are missing the bigger picture.
The issue is not whether North Korea or Iraq is the greater threat to us today. It is that we have every reason to believe both countries are striving to acquire nuclear weapons. Both should be stopped cold, not just for what they might do with such weapons but for the precedent it would set for other would-be proliferators.
Back in 1990, the United Nations Security Council agreed that it was important to denuclearize Iraq. It forced a highly intrusive inspection-and-destruction regime on the Iraqis, an unprecedented interference with a sovereign nation, in the name of preventing nuclear proliferation. That regime, unfortunately, was allowed to lapse in 1998.
Why is it any less important today? Should not the Security Council be even more concerned, in light of North Korea's admitted effort to acquire nuclear weapons? Or is the world community going to give up on preventing the spread of nuclear weaponry?
If the Security Council or some other group does not reinstate the inspection/destruction regime in Iraq and begin one in North Korea, a moment of opportunity may pass.
Rather than debate whether we should deal with Iraq through war and North Korea through diplomacy, we should insist on the same treatment for both.
That would be an even more coercive approach than the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the 1990 sanctions on Iraq or the 1994 agreements with North Korea. It could include economic sanctions, such as those now in effect with Iraq; diplomatic isolation, including suspension from the U.N.; physical isolation, including flight bans; and financial isolation, including denial of access to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
This would be an ambitious undertaking. The United States would have to sell it to the Security Council, NATO or some other enforcing grouping.
That would not be easy, but there are reasons to be hopeful. One is that applying the same rules to both nations would lessen the sting for nations that support one or the other. Another is that there would be a long-range objective, limiting the numbers of nuclear powers to those existing today, with which few nations could take issue.
In short, we must look past Iraqi and North Korean programs for weapons of mass destruction to a broader purpose. The hour is getting late, but if the world community sets an objective of preventing further nuclear proliferation, there is at least a chance it could work.
The United States should not pass up such an opportunity in a rush to settle scores with Saddam Hussein, stop him from supporting terrorists or some other objective.
A world of many nuclear powers could easily be a world that experiences the use of nuclear weapons. Is that the world we want to leave to our children and grandchildren?
Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, a former CIA director, is on the faculty of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland.
-------- depleted uranium
TRIAL TO BEGIN IN CASE OF DEPLETED URANIUM WORKER WHO BLEW THE WHISTLE ON SEVERE DEFICIENCIES AT INEEL
From: Clare Gilbert <clareg@whistleblower.org>
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2002
MEDIA ADVISORY
FOR: Friday, November 1, 2002
CONTACT: Tom Carpenter, GAP,
tel. (206)292-2850
(206)409-5829 (after 11/3/02)
Clare Gilbert, GAP, tel. (206)292-2850
(206)579-5466 (after 11/3/02)
Clint Jensen, an employee at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEEL), is suing his employer for harassment and discrimination against him for his raising of safety and health concerns involving exposure to Depleted Uranium (DU). Mr. Jensen worked at INEEL's Specific Manufacturing Capability, which processes DU to line the U.S. Army's M1-A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks. After observing numerous health and safety violations at the SMC program and developing Gulf War Syndrome-like symptoms, Mr. Jensen began raising his concerns that his ill health, and the ill health and pre-mature deaths of his co-workers, might be a result of occupational exposures. Mr. Jensen's employer responded by engaging in numerous retaliatory and discriminatory acts, in an attempt to silence Mr. Jensen and remove him from the workplace.
WHISTLEBLOWER TRIAL
WHO: Clinton Jensen v. Bechtel B&W Idaho LLC
WHEN: Tuesday, November 5, 2002 - Thursday, November 7, 2002
9:00 am - 5:00 pm each day
WHERE: Bonneville County Courthouse
605 N. Capitol
Idaho Falls, ID 83402-3582
Fact Sheet, and Frequently Asked Questions are attached (embargoed until Monday November 4, 2002) and will will be available at www.whistleblower.org on November 4 , 2002. Feel free to contact Tom Carpenter or Clare Gilbert with any questions before then.
-------- india / pakistan
Timeline: India
Friday, 1 November, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1155813.stm
A chronology of key events:
1858 - India comes under direct rule of the British crown after failed Indian mutiny.
1885 - Indian National Congress founded as forum for emerging nationalist feeling.
Mahatma Gandhi Mahatma Gandhi: Revered as father of the nation 1920-22 - Nationlist figurehead Mahatma Gandhi launches anti-British civil disobedience campaign.
1942-43 - Congress launches "Quit India" movement.
1947 - End of British rule and partition of sub-continent into mainly Hindu India and Muslim-majority state of Pakistan.
Newly independent
1947-48 - Hundreds of thousands die in widespread communal bloodshed after partition.
1948 - Mahatma Gandhi assassinated by Hindu extremist.
1948 - War with Pakistan over disputed territory of Kashmir.
1951-52 - Congress Party wins first general elections under leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru.
Regional tensions
1962 - India loses brief border war with China.
1964 - Death of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
1965 - Second war with Pakistan over Kashmir.
1966 - Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi becomes prime minister.
1971 - Third war with Pakistan over creation of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan.
1971 - Twenty-year treaty of friendship signed with Soviet Union.
1974 - India explodes first nuclear device in underground test.
Democratic strains
1975 - Indira Gandhi declares state of emergency after being found guilty of electoral malpractice.
Indira Gandhi Indira Gandhi: State of emergency led to mass arrests 1975-1977 - Nearly 1,000 political opponents imprisoned and programme of compulsory birth control introduced.
1977 - Indira Gandhi's Congress Party loses general elections.
1980 - Indira Gandhi returns to power heading Congress party splinter group, Congress (Indira).
1984 - Troops storm Golden Temple - Sikh's most holy shrine - to flush out Sikh militants pressing for self-rule.
1984 - Indira Gandhi assassinated by Sikh bodyguards, following which her son, Rajiv, takes over.
1984 December - Gas leak at Union Carbide pesticides plant in Bhopal. Thousands are killed immediately, many more subsequently die or are left disabled.
1987 - India deploys troops for peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict.
Rajiv Gandhi coffin The body of Rajiv Gandhi after his killing by pro-Tamil assassin 1989 - Falling public support leads to Congress defeat in general election.
1990 - Indian troops withdrawn from Sri Lanka.
1990 - Muslim separatist groups begin campaign of violence in Kashmir.
1991 - Rajiv Gandhi assassinated by suicide bomber sympathetic to Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers.
1991 - Economic reform programme begun by Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao.
1992 - Hindu extremists demolish mosque in Ayodhya, triggering widespread Hindu-Muslim violence.
BJP to the fore
1996 - Congress suffers worst ever electoral defeat as Hindu nationalist BJP emerges as largest single party.
India's nuclear-capable Agni missile Nuclear tests raised fears of an arms race 1998 - BJP forms coalition government under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
1998 - India carries out nuclear tests, leading to widespread international condemnation.
1999 February - Vajpayee makes historic bus trip to Pakistan to meet Premier Nawaz Sharif and to sign bilateral Lahore peace declaration.
1999 May - Tension in Kashmir leads to brief war with Pakistan-backed forces in the icy heights around Kargil in Indian-held Kashmir.
1999 October - Cyclone devastates eastern state of Orissa, leaving at least 10,000 dead.
Population: 1 billion
2000 May - India marks birth of its billionth citizen.
2000 - US President Bill Clinton makes groundbreaking visit to India to improve ties.
2001 January - Massive earthquakes hit western state of Gujarat, leaving at least 30,000 dead.
2001 April - Sixteen Indian and three Bangladeshi soldiers killed in their worst border clashes. High-powered rocket launched, propelling India into ranks of select club of countries able to fire big satellites deep into space.
Pakistani-Indian summit: Musharraf and Vajpayee meet but fail to achieve a breakthrough 2001 July - Vajpayee meets Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the first summit between the two neighbours in more than two years. The meeting ends without a breakthrough or even a joint statement because of differences over Kashmir.
2001 July - Vajpayee's BJP party declines his offer to resign over a number of political scandals and the apparent failure of his talks with Pakistani President Musharraf.
2001 September - US lifts sanctions which it imposed against India and Pakistan after they staged nuclear tests in 1998. The move is seen as a reward for their support for the US anti-terror campaign.
Kashmir tensions rise
2001 October - India fires on Pakistani military posts in the heaviest firing along the dividing line of control in Kashmir for almost a year.
2001 December - Suicide squad attacks parliament in New Dehli, killing several police. The five gunmen die in the assault.
2001 December - India imposes sanctions against Pakistan, to force it to take action against two Kashmir militant groups blamed for the suicide attack on parliament. Pakistan retaliates with similar sanctions, and bans the groups in January.
Fires of hate rage for weeks after Muslims attacked a train carrying Hindu activists in February 2002 Religious strife: A body is removed after a train attack which sparked weeks of rioting 2001 December - India, Pakistan mass troops on common border amid mounting fears of a looming war.
2002 January - India successfully test-fires a nuclear-capable ballistic missile - the Agni - off its eastern coast.
2002 February - The worst inter-religious bloodshed in a decade breaks out in western India after Muslims set fire to a train carrying Hindus returning from pilgrimage to Ayodhya. More than 800, mainly Muslims, die in revenge killings by Hindu mobs over the next two months.
2002 May - More than 30 people killed in raid on Indian army camp in Kashmir, which India blames on Pakistani-based rebels. Moderate Kashmiri separatist leader Abdul Gani Lone shot dead at a meeting in Srinagar.
Vajpayee tells front-line troops that the time has come for a decisive fight.
Kashmir, India, May, 2002 Fear of war: Villagers flee the Kashmir front-line as cross-border shelling intensifies Pakistan test fires three medium-range surface-to-surface Ghauri missiles, which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Musharraf tells nation that Pakistan doesn't want war but is ready to respond with full force if attacked.
India accuses Pakistan of stoking tensions and says there will be no talks or military pull-back until Pakistan halts "cross-border terrorism".
2002 June - Britain and USA maintain diplomatic offensive to avert war, urge their citizens to leave India and Pakistan.
2002 July - Retired scientist APJ Abdul Kalam is elected president. Dr Kalam - known as "Missile Man" - was the architect of India's missile programme. He becomes India's third Muslim president.
2002 October - India says its troops have begun withdrawing from the border with Pakistan; Islamabad says it wants proof before starting its own pull-back.
--
Timeline: Pakistan
Friday, 1 November, 2002, 11:02 GMT (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1156716.stm
A chronology of key events:
1906 - Muslim League founded as forum for Indian Muslim separatism.
1940 - Muslim League endorses idea of separate nation for India's Muslims.
1947 - Muslim state of East and West Pakistan created out of partition of India at the end of British rule. Hundreds of thousands die in widespread communal violence and millions are made homeless.
1948 - Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the first governor general of Pakistan, dies.
1948 - First war with India over disputed territory of Kashmir.
Military rule
1951 - Jinnah's successor Liaquat Ali Khan is assassinated.
1956 - Constitution proclaims Pakistan an Islamic republic.
1958 - Martial law declared and General Ayyub Khan takes over.
1960 - General Ayyub Khan becomes president.
War and secession
1965 - Second war with India over Kashmir.
Pakistani troops Pakistan and India have fought three wars
1969 - General Ayyub Khan resigns and General Yahya Khan takes over.
1970 - Victory in general elections in East Pakistan for breakaway Awami League, leading to rising tension with West Pakistan.
1971 - East Pakistan attempts to secede, leading to civil war. India intervenes in support of East Pakistan which eventually breaks away to become Bangladesh.
1972 - Simla peace agreement with India sets new frontline in Kashmir.
1973 - Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto becomes prime minister.
Zia takes charge
1977 - Riots erupt over allegations of vote-rigging by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP). General Zia ul-Haq stages military coup.
General Zia General Zia: Killed in mysterious air crash 1978 - General Zia becomes president.
1979 - Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto hanged.
1980 - US pledges military assistance to Pakistan following Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1985 - Martial law and political parties ban lifted.
1986 - Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's daughter Benazir returns from exile to lead PPP in campaign for fresh elections.
1988 August - General Zia, the US ambassador and top Pakistan army officials die in mysterious air crash.
Bhutto comeback
1988 November - Benazir Bhutto's PPP wins general election.
Benazir Bhutto Benazir Bhutto: Dogged by corruption charges 1990 - Benazir Bhutto dismissed as prime minister on charges of incompetence and corruption.
1991 - Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif begins economic liberalisation programme. Islamic Shariah law formally incorporated into legal code.
1992 - Government launches campaign to stamp out violence by Urdu-speaking supporters of the Mohajir Quami Movement.
1993 - President Khan and Prime Minister Sharif both resign under pressure from military. General election brings Benazir Bhutto back to power.
Politics and corruption
1996 - President Leghari dismisses Bhutto government amid corruption allegations.
1997 - Nawaz Sharif returns as prime minister after his Pakistan Muslim League party wins elections.
1998 - Pakistan conducts its own nuclear tests after India explodes several devices.
1999 April - Benazir Bhutto and her husband convicted of corruption and given jail sentences. Benazir stays out of the country.
1999 October - Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif overthrown in military coup led by General Pervez Musharraf. Coup is widely condemned, Pakistan is suspended from Commonwealth.
2000 April - Nawaz Sharif sentenced to life imprisonment on hijacking and terrorism charges.
2000 December - Nawaz Sharif goes into exile in Saudi Arabia after being pardoned by military authorities.
Prime minister Nawaz Sharif, overthrown in 1999 coup Ousted in coup: Premier Nawaz Sharif 2001 20 June - Gen Pervez Musharraf names himself president while remaining head of the army. He replaced the figurehead president, Rafiq Tarar, who vacated his position earlier in the day after the parliament that elected him was dissolved.
2001 July - Musharraf meets Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in the first summit between the two neighbours in more than two years. The meeting ends without a breakthrough or even a joint statement because of differences over Kashmir.
2001 September - Musharraf swings in behind the US in its fight against terrorism and supports attacks on Afghanistan. US lifts some sanctions imposed after Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998, but retains others put in place after Musharraf's coup.
Protesters burn President Bush in effigy, October 2001 Anti-US anger: Pakistanis protest against US attacks on Afghanistan
Kashmir tensions
2001 October - India fires on Pakistani military posts in the heaviest firing along the dividing line of control in Kashmir for almost a year.
2001 December - India imposes sanctions against Pakistan, to force it to take action against two Kashmir militant groups blamed for a suicide attack on parliament in New Dehli. Pakistan retaliates with similar sanctions.
2001 December - India, Pakistan mass troops along common border amid mounting fears of a looming war.
Pakistani soldier near Line of Control in Chakoti, Pakistan-administered Kashmir Mountain flashpoint: a Pakistani soldier on guard duty in Kashmir 2002 January - President Musharraf bans two militant groups - Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad - and takes steps to curb religious extremism.
2002 January - Musharraf announces that elections will be held in October 2002 to end three years of military rule.
2002 April - Musharraf wins another five years in office in a referendum criticised as unconstitutional and fraught with irregularities.
2002 May - 14 people, including 11 French technicians, are killed in a suicide attack on a bus in Karachi. The following month 12 people are killed in a suicide attack outside the US consulate in the city.
2002 May - Pakistan test fires three medium-range surface-to-surface Ghauri missiles, which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Musharraf tells nation that Pakistan doesn't want war but is ready to respond with full force if attacked.
2002 June - Britain and USA maintain diplomatic offensive to avert war, urge their citizens to leave India and Pakistan.
2002 August - President Musharraf grants himself sweeping new powers, including the right to dismiss an elected parliament. Opposition forces accuse Musharraf of perpetuating dictatorship.
2002 October - First general election since the 1999 military coup results in a hung parliament. Parties haggle over the make-up of a coalition. Religious parties fare better than expected.
2002 October - Pakistan says it wants proof of India's promised troop withdrawal from their common border before starting its own pull-back.
-------- inspections
New Sites May Be Inspected in Iraq
November 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq-Sites.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. and U.N. officials preparing for tough new weapons inspections in Iraq are comparing notes on sites inspectors will want to check for evidence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
At the top of the list are known ``dual use'' sites that could provide a legitimate civilian cover story for illicit weapons work. Those facilities include laboratories that Iraq says make vaccines but inspectors suspect make biological weapons, and chemical factories Iraq says are legitimate but intelligence agencies say could make chemical weapons.
Former U.N. weapons inspector Jonathan Tucker said inspecting those facilities would make it impossible for Iraq to use them to make weapons.
``That would force Iraq, if it intends to violate U.N. resolutions, to do so in clandestine facilities which are inherently more difficult to use and riskier,'' Tucker said.
The United States is working at the U.N. Security Council to develop a resolution outlining conditions for new weapons inspections in Iraq and threatening consequences if Iraq does not comply. Russia, China and France -- which each has veto power -- have opposed resolutions the United States has presented thus far that authorize the use of military force against Iraq if inspections are thwarted.
U.N. inspectors first entered Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War to enforce Security Council resolutions demanding that Saddam Hussein give up all of his weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. The inspectors left in 1998 in a dispute over Iraq's refusal to let them inspect presidential sites and because they knew U.S and British airstrikes on Iraq were about to begin. Four days of those airstrikes followed, and the inspectors have yet to return.
If inspectors return, part of their mission will be to inspect known weapons sites to see what has changed since 1998. A more important and sensitive part of the mission will be to inspect other sites where banned weapons or the equipment to make them could be hidden.
Intelligence from the United States and other countries will help that search. For example, U.S. intelligence has a few hundred suspected underground weapons sites in Iraq it wants information on, said a defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Any sites weapons inspectors look at also would be possible targets of a U.S.-led military campaign. Officials from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, have said they will not share their findings with U.S. intelligence agencies until they report to the United Nations.
But former inspectors say information sharing has to go both ways to be effective.
``My experience is you have to discuss the information given to you,'' said former weapons inspector Terrence Taylor of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. ``You can't just have someone give you a note with information, say, 'Thank you very much,' and walk away.''
A push to investigate sites where weapons are hidden -- or the grounds of Saddam's palaces -- could provoke a confrontation with Iraq.
Hans Blix, the head of UNMOVIC, is not seeking a deliberate provocation, said Ronald Cleminson, a Canadian UNMOVIC commissioner.
``I don't think he's looking at his actions as pushing a confrontation,'' said Cleminson, who also was a member of the previous U.N. inspection commission. ``If he found he didn't have the cooperation from Iraq that he feels is essential, I think he would reflect and go back to the Security Council.''
Many of the sites are clustered in and around Baghdad, Iraq's capital and largest city. That's where UNMOVIC's Iraq headquarters and 80 inspectors will be.
Most of the other sites are in the central belt of Iraq not covered by northern and southern no-fly zones patrolled by U.S. and British warplanes.
Some sites likely to be targeted include:
--Possible biological weapons facilities at Daura and Amiriyah, both near Baghdad. Both have civilian cover as vaccine facilities, but Iraq admitted to U.N. inspectors that both had been used in its biological weapons programs. Iraq announced last year it was renovating the Daura vaccine plant, damaged by U.S. and British airstrikes in 1991 and 1998.
--Chemical plants at al-Sharqat, Fallujah, al-Qa'qa and Tarmiyah. Chlorine and phosgene plants at Fallujah and al-Qa'qa have been rebuilt since allied airstrikes destroyed them; those two chemicals are precursors to the kinds of nerve agents Iraq has used in the past. Iraq has built a new chemical plant at al-Sharqat, a former uranium processing site, that U.S. and British intelligence agencies suspect could be part of a chemical, nuclear or missile program. The Ibn Sinah Company at Tarmiyah employs the scientist whom Saddam ordered to keep his chemical weapons experts together after the Gulf War, according to a British dossier on Iraq.
--Nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha. Iraq has done extensive rebuilding at this large complex, which was the heart of its nuclear weapons program, since 1998.
--Missile testing sites at al-Rafah and al-Mamoun. Iraq has built a test area at this site that's larger than the test areas used for its now-banned Scud missiles.
--Presidential palaces in Mosul and Radwaniyah. U.S. and British officials have released satellite photos of the sprawling Radwaniyah complex near Baghdad superimposed with outlines of the much smaller grounds of the White House and Buckingham Palace, suggesting the site is too large to be simply a retreat for Saddam. U.S. officials also have released satellite images of the Mosul site, identifying possible hardened bunkers and warehouses.
``These facilities suggest that presidential sites perform functions other than supporting the lifestyles of the rich and famous in Iraq,'' John Yurechko of the Defense Intelligence Agency told reporters.
On the Net:
UNMOVIC: http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/
CIA document on Iraq: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/iraq--wmd/Iraq--Oct--2002.htm
-------- japan
Japan Mulls Constitutional Changes
November 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-No-War-Constitution.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese lawmakers received a parliamentary report Friday that raised the traditionally taboo issue of scrapping a clause in the constitution that renounces war.
The supreme law, written by U.S. occupation forces after World War II, is a cornerstone of Japanese democracy and has not been amended since its 1947 adoption.
But after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a growing number of Japanese lawmakers have expressed interest in changing Article 9, the section that renounces Japan's right to wage war.
The report presented Friday outlined the pros and cons of changing the constitution, but did not give recommendations.
Lawmakers in the current special session of Parliament may consider a bill to outline the role of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, the euphemistic term for the military, in case of invasion.
At the same time, more politicians are advocating changes in Article 9 to give the government more freedom to participate in international peacekeeping operations and to assist allies in conflicts.
Japan needs to spell out its right to aid allies if they are attacked, a subject of debate among legal scholars, according to the report.
The government found itself restricted by Article 9 last fall when it debated whether to help the United States in the war on terrorism. While Parliament eventually sent troops to the Indian Ocean, they could only provide non-combat support.
A March poll of Parliament's upper and lower houses by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper showed 55 percent of lawmakers favor amending Article 9, up from 41 percent five years ago.
Despite the trend, amending any part of the constitution is likely to be difficult. Public opinion is still cautious and many opposition lawmakers remain strongly opposed.
-------- korea
North Korea warns of nuclear retaliation
By Dmitry Zaks in Moscow
November 2 2002
Agence France-Presse
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/01/1036027036787.html
North Korea has a right to develop nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction because of a threat by the United States to its sovereignty, Pyongyang's ambassador to Moscow has said in the first firm defence of the Stalinist state's clandestine military program.
Rejecting US claims that it is acquiring these weapons, Pak Hui Chun denied that North Korea was developing a nuclear arsenal, calling the accusations groundless.
"We unambiguously told the US presidential special envoy that, facing a growing nuclear threat from the US, we have the right to possess not only nuclear but even more powerful weapons in order to defend our sovereignty and the right to survive," news agencies quoted Mr Pak as saying.
"If the US tries to crush us with tough policy, we will retaliate to this with super toughness," he warned.
On a more conciliatory note, Mr Pak said North Korea preferred to resolve its conflict with the US "through talks, not deterrence".
The ambassador further rejected US allegations that North Korea had abandoned a 1994 agreement in which Pyongyang had agreed to halt development of its nuclear program in exchange for Washington's assistance for its civilian nuclear energy program. However, Mr Pak said the US had "long ago lost its right to speak about observing the agreement" because Washington viewed North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq.
In a rare appearance before Russian reporters, Mr Pak argued that the US had "failed to present any proof" that North Korea was enriching its uranium to weapons-grade during a visit there by the US State Department representative, James Kelly.
Washington officials said Pyongyang admitted to developing nuclear weapons one day after Mr Kelly presented irrefutable US intelligence information that showed North Korea was enriching uranium. Pyongyang, however, had remained silent over the report.
Moscow has often attempted to act as a mediator between Pyongyang and Washington.
Russian officials have said they have no evidence that North Korea has a nuclear weapons program, but at the same time scolded Pyongyang for its refusal to address the US allegations.
In an unusually harshly worded statement, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Losyukov, said recent statements on nuclear arms used by North Korea "contain some ambiguity".
----
UN Wants Talks with N.Korea on Nuclear Arms Reports
Reuters
Friday, November 1, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50400-2002Nov1?language=printer
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday that reports North Korea had a secret nuclear weapons program were shocking and that it wants talks with Pyongyang as soon as possible.
"The new revelations or reports that they have in addition to plutonium also a uranium-enrichment program were quite shocking to us," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters in an interview.
The United States said North Korea had admitted to having a secret nuclear weapons program during a visit to Pyongyang early last month by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly.
ElBaradei said that the reports, if true, were not a complete surprise as Pyongyang had been in violation of its Safeguards Agreement with the U.N. agency since 1993.
"They have been in violation of their agreement with us since 1993 when we came to the conclusion that that they have developed more plutonium than was declared to us," he said.
After learning North Korea might have a uranium-enrichment program that could be used to make nuclear weapons, the IAEA requested immediate talks in Pyongyang or Vienna.
"We have received no response," said ElBaradei.
Earlier on Friday, Pyongyang's Ambassador to China defended North Korea's right have to nuclear weapons, without saying whether his country actually had any.
President Bush has labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran and unveiled a doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against states allegedly developing weapons of mass destruction.
Although the IAEA has been carrying out very limited inspections in North Korea since the early 1990s, it has never been able to conduct intrusive inspections under the Safeguard Agreement needed to flush out any secret weapons program.
----
N. Korea missile threat increases
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 1, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021101-11616336.htm
North Korea is continuing to develop long-range missiles that threaten the United States and a basic defense system against them is about two years from deployment, the Pentagon's missile-defense chief said yesterday.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said North Korea's first long-range missile test in 1998 caught U.S. intelligence by surprise. As a result, missile-defense development efforts have shifted to meeting a range of threats rather than any specific danger from a single nation.
"Along the way, if we get threatened by North Korea, I think the American people understand we would not just sit by with five missiles in the hole and do nothing," Gen. Kadish said.
Asked if North Korea was continuing to develop its long-range Taepodong-2 missile without any flight tests, Gen. Kadish told a group of defense reporters: "All the indications that I see and watch, the answer is yes."
The Defense Intelligence Agency stated in a report made public by the Senate last month that North Korea's 1999 ban on missile flight tests was having "minimal" impact on continued development of the Taepodong-2 (TD-2).
"By precluding flight testing, the moratorium probably would delay deployment of TD-2 missiles as long as it remains in place," the DIA said, noting that the missile could be deployed without a flight test, although it would be unlikely.
"North Korea likely perceives its TD-2 ballistic missile capability primarily as a tool for deterrence and political coercion," the DIA said. "During a conflict, the North also could attempt to strike U.S. and U.S. interests with ballistic missiles, if North Korea's leadership were attacked directly or was facing imminent destruction."
The DIA stated that North Korea had one or two nuclear weapons.
Gen. Kadish said U.S. efforts to defend against threats of missile attack no longer are focused on the former Soviet Union and China but rogue states.
"It's not about the Soviet Union," he said. "It's about North Korea, it's about Iran, it's about Iraq, it's about Libya and other states that might threaten us in the process."
Iran is continuing to test missiles and "they continue to make progress," he said.
Nations that are building missile systems also appear willing to share missile technology, he said.
"They are moving from the capability of having very good systems in short-range missiles, to the intermediate and longer-range missiles that we're seeing," Gen. Kadish said. "And that's the trend."
North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya are key missile-developing states of concern against which the United States is preparing to build defenses, he said.
Gen. Kadish said the missile-defense test site being built at Fort Greely, Alaska, is moving ahead and by late 2004 or early 2005 will provide the nation with an emergency defense against a North Korean missile attack.
"Once the test bed is in place, there will be some amount of capability because of its location to handle any threats from North Korea that might arise, but it will be extremely limited," he said.
Five anti-missile interceptors will be deployed at the site.
Gen. Kadish singled out Libya as a state working hard to buy and build long-range missile systems.
"The Libyans have been pretty active in trying to get missile capability," he said. "And not just short range I will say this: They have enough money to buy it."
The Libyans appear to be having problems developing an indigenous missile capability, he said.
The CIA stated in an analysis made public by the Senate Intelligence Committee last month that Libya was "continuing its efforts to obtain ballistic missile-related equipment, materials, technology and expertise from foreign sources."
"Outside assistance is critical to Libya's ballistic missile development programs and may eventually result in Libya achieving its long-desired goal of a [medium-range ballistic missile] capability within a few years."
Gen. Kadish said the administration's withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty has made it easier to design and build missile defenses without the restrictions imposed under the Cold War-era agreement.
"My life got a lot better after the treaty, in terms of our ability to get the job done," he said.
Critics of the Bush administration's withdrawal from the treaty had warned that abrogating the pact would lead to a new arms race and a strategic missile buildup.
Gen. Kadish also said the military should step up purchases of a new Patriot missile system known as PAC-3, the first defense system built from the ground up to counter missiles. Earlier versions of the Patriot were designed as anti-aircraft systems.
"My recommendation has been and will continue to be to buy Patriot-3s as quickly and as fast as we can afford to buy them because they're ready to be bought," he said.
The U.S. military faces missile threats in the Middle East and in Northeast Asia.
Iraq's Scuds and short-range missiles can be countered more effectively today than during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when Patriots had some success against Scuds, Gen. Kadish said.
The U.S. military and several nations in the Middle East have either a few Patriot PAC-3s or larger numbers of an earlier version known as PAC-2.
Israel is defended by the Arrow missile-defense system.
------
N. Korea Official Defends Nukes
November 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-NKorea.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51370-2002Nov1?language=printer
BEIJING (AP) -- North Korea's ambassador to China on Friday defended his country's right to develop nuclear weapons, calling the United States a bully that used ``gangster-like'' tactics.
North Korea shocked the world with its admission last month that it has an active program to develop nuclear arms. The disclosure came in talks with Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
But Ambassador Choe Jin Su said the U.S. envoy ``asserted with no evidence'' that North Korea was engaged in an enriched uranium program to make nuclear weapons.
He complained that Kelly said unless the program is halted, there would be no talks between North Korea and the United States, and North Korea's links with South Korea and Japan would be harmed.
``The U.S. unilateralism and high-handedness took the DPRK (North Korea) rather by surprise,'' the ambassador said at a lengthy news conference at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing. ``The U.S. is sadly mistaken if it thinks such gangster-like logic would work with the DPRK.''
The ambassador sidestepped questions about whether Pyongyang was actually developing nuclear weapons.
``The DPRK has neither need nor duty to explain something to the U.S.,'' Choe said.
The Bush administration considers the North Korean program a violation of its international non-nuclear commitments. Choe said the North is no longer bound by them since President Bush included it as part of the ``axis of evil'' with Iran and Iraq.
``Obviously, this was a declaration of war against the DPRK,'' Choe said.
He said North Korean officials told Kelly ``that the DPRK was entitled to possess not only nuclear weapons but any type of weapon more powerful than that.''
However, Choe said North Korea is prepared to talk about a nonaggression pact with the United States. Pyongyang has said that might clear the way for North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program, but administration officials have not indicated interest in such a treaty.
Meanwhile, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea said Friday he would visit Pyongyang soon. Donald Gregg, ambassador in Seoul in 1989-93, would not say whether he will discuss the nuclear weapons issue.
``I am going as an unofficial person,'' Gregg said. ``They invited me to come and we will talk freely.''
He had hoped to arrive in North Korea on Saturday but said he needed more time to arrange travel documents.
----
Russians Now Fault N. Korea on Nuclear Talk
From Associated Press
November 1, 2002
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-norkor1nov01,0,4495089.story
MOSCOW -- In a sharp change of course, Russia on Thursday accused North Korea of being insufficiently forthcoming about its alleged nuclear weapons program, the Interfax news agency reported.
The U.S. said last month that North Korean officials admitted having a nuclear weapons program. A U.S. official then went to Russia to present Moscow with evidence of the alleged uranium-enrichment effort.
Moscow reacted with caution, saying it would like to independently check the information before drawing any conclusions.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said that Moscow had received an explanation from the North Koreans but that it was insufficient, Interfax reported.
"There is some ambiguity in the statements by North Korean representatives," Losyukov was quoted as saying. "In our view, such ambiguity is very dangerous because it leads to mutual suspicions."
----
U.S. Rules Out Talks With N. Korea
November 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Korea-Japan.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration Friday ruled out any talks with North Korea until it dismantles a program that a senior U.S. official says is capable of producing one or two nuclear weapons.
Declaring North Korea's announcement last month that it was embarked on enriching uranium ``a cause of grave concern,'' Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said North Korea had produced enough plutonium for one and possibly two nuclear weapons.
Bolton said North Korea led the world in export of missile technology and has active chemical and biological weapons programs.
Ruling out any talks with North Korea until it ``completely and verifiably'' dismantles its nuclear weapons program, Bolton said ``it's pretty hard to see how we can have conversations with a government that has blatantly violated its agreements.''
The Bush administration seeks a peaceful solution and is trying to apply diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang, he said at a conference on terrorism sponsored by the Hudson Institute.
The United States has not been in touch with North Korea since the disclosure last month that it has a nuclear program, said Philip T. Reeker, a State Department spokesman.
He said the ``channel'' to Pyongyang remains open if North Korean officials wish to use it to say the program is being dismantled.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith will consult in Japan and South Korea next week. Administration officials said Feith's week-long trip will be focused on coordination with the two closest U.S. allies in the region.
Some U.S. experts regard North Korea's acknowledgment of a nuclear program as a strategy to gain new economic and other concessions for the impoverished nation.
----
U.S. Skips Talks, Shows Displeasure with N.Korea
Reuters
Friday, November 1, 2002
By Jonathan Wright
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53637-2002Nov1?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States showed its displeasure with North Korea this week by boycotting a meeting of the organization which helps Pyongyang with its energy supplies under a 1994 agreement, officials said on Friday.
The boycott was in response to North Korea's defiant attitude toward U.S. demands that it dismantle the uranium enrichment program it acknowledged to a U.S. official who visited Pyongyang last month, diplomats said.
But the move did not necessarily indicate the United States will stop cooperating, or that it will block the next shipment of heavy fuel oil to North Korea, which is due to leave Singapore in about 10 days, the officials said.
The fuel oil, funded by the United States, is meant to cover North Korea's energy needs until two light-water reactors come on line under the 1994 Agreed Framework.
Legal and technical experts from the U.S. State and Justice departments skipped a regular meeting of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, called to discuss technical aspects of building the reactors in North Korea.
The working-level meeting took place at organization headquarters in New York, starting on Wednesday and ending on Friday.
State Department spokesman Philip Reeker, asked why the experts did not attend, said: "In light of North Korea's admission of a uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons purposes, and their declaration that they considered the Agreed Framework nullified, we are consulting with allies and friends to consider next steps in our approach with (the energy organization)."
Experts from Japan, South Korea and the European Union -- the other members of the energy organization's executive board -- attended the meeting, and North Korea sent a delegation of nine people to negotiate "nuclear liability issues," a diplomat said.
The North Koreans received their U.S. visas last week, after North Korea admitted the uranium enrichment project.
But denying the North Koreans visas would have been an exceptional measure, because the energy development organization is an international organization with privileges similar to those enjoyed by the United Nations in New York, the diplomat said.
SENT COMMENTS IN WRITING
The United States, in another sign that it is not withdrawing completely from the energy development process, sent technical comments and instructions to the meeting in writing, said the diplomat, who asked not to be named.
"They (the United States) just said they were not ready to meet the North Koreans, but they did not want to block the meeting as it was arranged before," he added.
The United States says it has not yet decided what to do if North Korea persists in refusing to dismantle the uranium program, which violates the Agreed Framework, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other international obligations.
It says that it wants Asian allies Japan and South Korea, as well as Russia and China, to put diplomatic pressure on the North Koreans and that it will consult those allies before reaching a joint decision on their next steps.
The next major decision will come after a tanker carrying about 40,000 tons of heavy fuel oil leaves Singapore for North Korea around Nov. 10.
The energy organization's executive board will meet in mid-November and could, in theory, recall the vessel on the high seas, if the United States decides to withhold the fuel.
But the North Koreans could interpret that as a sign the United States is withdrawing completely from the arrangements agreed under the 1994 deal, leaving them free to pursue their own nuclear weapons plans.
The North Koreans have argued that their uranium project was in response to President Bush's inclusion of their country in an "axis of evil" and U.S. threats to launch preemptive strikes on countries it sees as a threat.
But U.S. officials have argued that the uranium project began years ago under the Clinton administration, well before Bush's "axis of evil" speech in January.
The purpose of the meeting this week was to prepare the arrangements for dealing with a nuclear accident at the two light-water reactors, which cannot easily produce material for nuclear weapons. The arrangements would have to be in place before any nuclear material arrives on site, but that is not scheduled to happen for several years.
-------- treaties
Oral Arguments Held in Lawsuit to Block President Bush's Withdrawal from ABM Treaty
From: Jackie Cabasso <wslf@earthlink.net>
For Immediate Release: October 31, 2002
The oral arguments in Kucinich v. Bush on Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment and Defendants' Motion to Dismiss took place today in Federal District court in Washington, DC. A written decision by Federal District Judge John Bates is expected in the next few weeks.
Thirty-one Members of Congress led by Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich filed the lawsuit on June 11, 2002 to block the President from withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The lawsuit, which names President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as defendants, requests a decision on whether or not the Constitution permits the President to withdraw from the treaty without the consent of Congress.
"By withdrawing from the ABM treaty, the Administration puts global security at risk, by altering the careful balance of nuclear deterrence that has protected the world for 30 years," stated Kucinich.
"The President's termination of the ABM treaty represents an unconstitutional repeal of a law duly enacted by Congress. If the President is allowed to repeal laws at his own instance, it would be destructive of our Constitution. It is our position that the President should respect the Constitution and bring the issue of withdrawing from the ABM treaty back to the Congress from which it originated."
According to attorney John Burroughs, Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy: "The Members of Congress bringing this lawsuit are reminding the country that the under the Constitution the President is not a king who can rule by fiat. Decisions as momentous as withdrawal from the ABM Treaty must involve Congress if the United States is to remain a democracy."
Co-counsel Michael Veiluva, an attorney with the Western States Legal Foundation, added: "Unilaterally declaring the ABM Treaty defunct was an unconstitutional usurpation of Congress' role in enacting and promulgating treaties. This usurpation was particularly harmful here because the ABM Treaty is such a cornerstone of American arms control law."
Veiluva concluded: "The President's decision to do away with this 30-year old treaty without Congressional approval is part and parcel of his Administration's attitude with respect to international law and international relations -- namely to go it alone. The Bush administration across-the-board methodology in abolishing treaties and undertaking unilateral military action is almost eerie."
The thirty-one Members of Congress bringing the lawsuit are:
Dennis Kucinich, D-10-Ohio;
James Oberstar, D-8-MN;
Patsy Mink, D-2-HI;
Tammy Baldwin, D-2-WI;
Peter DeFazio, D-4-OR;
John Olver, D-1-MA;
Sam Farr, D-17-CA;
Barbara Lee, D-9-CA;
Maurice Hinchey, D-26-NY;
John Conyers, D-14-MI;
Hilda Solis, D-31-CA;
Janice Schakowsky, D-9-IL;
Alcee Hasting, D-23-FL;
Fortney (Pete) Stark, D-13-CA;
Bernard Sanders, I-1-VT;
Earl Hilliard, D-7-AL;
Carolyn Kilpatrick, D-15-MI;
Lane Evans, D-17-IL;
Jim McDermott, D-7-WA;
Bob Filner, D-50-CA;
Cynthia McKinney, D-4-GA;
George Miller, D-7-CA;
Lynn Woolsey, D-6-CA;
William Lacy Clay, D-1-MO;
Edolphus Towns, D-10-NY;
Maxine Waters, D-35-CA;
Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-2-IL;
Gregory Meeks, D-6-NY;
Marcy Kaptur, D-9-OH;
Jerrold Nadler, D-8-NY;
Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-11-OH; and
Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-18-TX.
They are represented by James Klimaksi, Klimaski & Grill, P.C. Washington, DC; Peter Weiss and John Burroughs, Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, New York, NY; Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science,Yale Law School, New Haven CT ; Jeremy Manning, Esq., New York, NY; Jules Lobel and Michael Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, NY; Edward Aguilar, Philadelphia Lawyers Alliance for World Security, Philadelphia, PA; and Michael Veiluva, Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, CA.
The main papers filed in the case are available on line, in pdf format, at http://www.lcnp.org/disarmament/ABMlawsuit/indexoflinks.htm
Contact:
John Burroughs, Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy (cell): 917-439-4585
Jackie Cabasso, Western States Legal Foundation: (cell) 510-306-0119
Katie Auerbach, office of Rep. Dennis Kucinch: (w) 202 225-5871
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- pennsylvania
[To reply - mailto:OPED@washpost.com]
Study: No Cancer Jump Near Pa. Plant
The Associated Press
Friday, November 1, 2002; 5:42 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50109-2002Nov1?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- People who live near the Three Mile Island nuclear plant show no significant increase in cancer deaths more than 20 years after an accident at the plant released low amounts of radiation.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh studied deaths between 1979 and 1998 among people who reside within five miles of the Pennsylvania plant. Their findings are reported on the Web site of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
"This survey of data, which covers the normal latency period for most cancers, confirms our earlier analysis that radioactivity released ... does not appear to have caused an overall increase in cancer deaths among residents of that area," principal investigator Evelyn Talbott said in a statement.
The researchers did note that overall deaths among the residents near the plant were higher than would have been expected, but most of the increase was the result of heart disease, not cancer.
The researchers looked at 32,135 people who lived near the plant at the time of the accident in 1979 and who were interviewed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health at the time.
The new findings are similar to those reported earlier in an analysis of the same population covering 13 years, except that an apparent increase in breast cancer at that time was no longer evident in the 20-year study.
After adjusting for smoking, educational level and other factors, the researchers say there was no significant difference in the number of deaths in the plant area population compared with the expected number of deaths in the general population.
The researchers studied causes of death that included heart disease and cancers, in particular cancers known to be sensitive to radioactivity such as bronchial, throat and lung, breast, lymph system, blood-forming organs and the central nervous system.
The only elevated risk of cancer, they said, was a slight increase in the risk of lymphatic and blood cancers among men, which the researchers said was related to radiation exposure from the accident, and an increased risk of death from lymphatic and blood cancers in women, which they said was related to everyday background radiation exposure.
"While these findings overall convey good news for TMI residents, the slight increased risk of death from lymphatic and hematopoietic (blood) cancers may warrant further investigation," the team said in a statement.
On the Net:
Environmental Health Perspectives: http://www.ehponline.org
----
Normal Cancer Rate Found Near Three Mile Island Plant
November 1, 2002
New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/health/01NUKE.html
A new study of 32,100 people living within five miles of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa., found no significant difference in the overall rate of cancer deaths compared with the general population. The study did find some differences when cancers were analyzed by time period, type of cancer and sex of the patient.
The study, by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, said that their surveillance "provides no consistent evidence that radioactivity released during the nuclear accident has had a significant impact on the overall mortality experience of these residents."
But the study also said that "several elevations persist and certain potential dose-response relationships cannot be definitively excluded."
The study generally agreed with earlier evaluations, that the 1979 accident did not add significantly to cancer risk. But the researchers said their study was stronger because it covered from 1979 through the end of 1998 and that cancers that take years to develop would have done so by then.
The study is to be published today on http://ehis.niehs.nih.gov, a Web site that is part of the National Institutes of Health. It will be published later in the institutes' journal, Environmental Health Perspectives.
The lead author, Dr. Evelyn O. Talbott, said in a telephone interview, "When you compare observed with expected cancer, there was virtually no difference."
But Dr. Talbott added, "We did see one blip." From 1985 to 1989, 24 women in the group died of lymphoma or hematopoietic tissue (blood-forming organs), up from 14 that were expected to contract the disease during that period.
Among men, she said, the rates of those cancers were the same as what was expected, but the cancers were more common in those whom researchers believe were exposed to more radiation from the accident than in those who are thought to have received less. (The accident exposures were calculated, not measured.) Even the largest dose from the accident, though, was "very tiny," she said.
"You would expect, really by chance, when you do 20 or more analyses, you're going to have a couple that by random chance come up," Dr. Talbott said.
But she added, "You still need to report it when you see it."
The study was not thorough enough to capture other risk factors, she said. "Did we adjust for everything under the sun? No," she said.
Among the questions that researchers might pursue, she said, is whether those with higher cancer rates had more exposure to medical X-rays, pesticides or other possible risk factors.
After the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor, in Ukraine, in 1986, researchers found numerous cases of thyroid cancer. But the new Three Mile Island study found only one thyroid cancer death in the area over the period.
-------- us politics
Global Eye -- Into the Dark
By Chris Floyd
Friday, Nov. 1, 2002.
Moscow Times Page XXIV
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2002/11/01/120.html
This column stands foursquare with the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary, when he warns that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. We know, as does the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary, that this statement is an incontrovertible fact, a matter of scientific certainty. And how can we and the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary, be so sure that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large?
Because these attacks will be instigated at the order of the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary.
This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story, which was itself submerged by mounds of gray newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times. There -- in an article by military analyst William Arkin detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon -- came the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception."
According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization -- the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" -- will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.
In other words -- and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan -- the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people -- your family, your friends, your lovers, you -- in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.
For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice -- a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy. (Or should we use the Regime's own preferred terminology and just call it "evil"?) No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action -- by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? -- they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."
The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire. And what if the territory you fancy doesn't actually harbor any convenient marauders to use for fun and profit? Well, surely a God-like "super-Intelligence Support Activity" is capable of creation nihilo, yes?
The Rumsfeld-Bush plan to employ murder and terrorism for political, financial and ideological gain does have historical roots (besides al-Qaida, the Stern Gang, the SA, the SS, the KGB, the IRA, the UDF, Eta, Hamas, Shining Path and countless other upholders of Bushian morality, decency and freedom). We refer of course to Operations Northwoods, oft mentioned in these pages: the plan that America's top military brass presented to President John Kennedy in 1963, calling for a phony terrorist campaign -- complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans -- to provide "justification" for an invasion of Cuba, the mafia/corporate fiefdom that had recently been lost to Castro.
Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but on a far grander scale, with resources at his disposal undreamed of by those brass of yore, with no counterbalancing global rival to restrain him -- and with an ignorant, corrupt president who has shown himself all too eager to embrace any means whatsoever that will augment the wealth and power of his own narrow, undemocratic, elitist clique.
There is prestuplyeniye here, transgression, a stepping-over -- deliberately, with open eyes, with forethought, planning, and conscious will -- of lines that should never be crossed. Acting in deadly symbiosis with rage-maddened killers, God-crazed ranters and those supreme "sub-state actors," the mafias, Bush and his cohorts are plunging the world into an abyss, an endless night of black ops, retribution, blowback, deceit, of murder and terror -- wholesale, retail, state-sponsored, privatized; of fear and degradation, servility, chaos, and the perversion of all that's best in us, of all that we've won from the bestiality of our primal nature, all that we've raised above the mindless ravening urges and impulses still boiling in the mud of our monkey brains.
It's not a fight for freedom; it's a retreat into darkness.
And the day will be a long time coming.
--
The Secret War Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27, 2002
Friendly Fire: Operation Northwoods ABCNews.com, May 1, 2001
Making a Killing: The Business of War: Overview Center for Public Integrity, Oct. 29, 2002
Making a Killing: The Business of War Center for Public Integrity, Oct. 29, 2002
Privatizing Combat: The New World Order Center for Public Integrity, Oct. 29, 2002
Deeper Into the Big Muddy Consortiumnews.com, Oct. 27, 2002
America's Secret Armies US News & World Report, Nov. 4, 2002 issue
An American Invitation to Deter America International Herald Tribune, Oct. 24, 2002
Vidal Claims 'Bush Junta' Complicit in 9-11 The Observer, Oct. 27, 2002
Operation Endless Deployment The Nation, Oct. 3, 2002
U.S. Weapons Secrets Exposed The Guardian, Oct. 29, 2002
The Rumsfeld Intelligence Agency Slate.com, Oct. 28, 2002
------
Bush's Iraq adventure is bound to backfire
Marching into a trap
Youssef M. Ibrahim
IHT
Friday, November 1, 2002
http://www.iht.com/articles/75500.html
(The writer, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, covered the Middle East for 30 years for The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.)
NEW YORK Let us not be fooled: The upcoming war against Iraq has nothing to do with the war against terror.
President George W. Bush's war is fueled by two things: bolstering the president's popularity as he attempts to ride on the natural wave of American patriotism unleashed by the criminal attacks of Sept. 11; and a misguided temptation to get more oil out of the Middle East by turning a ''friendly" Iraq into a private American oil pumping station.
Both will backfire and may indeed cost this president and his warmongering cabinet their sought-after second term.
To begin with, the emperor is naked because the real war on terror is far from finished. If anything it is falling apart.
In Afghanistan, where it all started, things are so bad that the puppet president the United States installed, Hamid Karzai, is now guarded by U.S. special forces because he cannot trust his life to his own people.
Al Qaeda, according to the CIA and the Pentagon, is reconstituting itself. In fact every Middle East and Muslim affairs expert is saying that Al Qaeda's ranks will be fattened by new recruits right now and will have more of them when the United States attacks Iraq.
Those joining are no longer Muslim religious fanatics. They now include secularist young men and women angry at the impact of U.S. policies on the world's 1.2 billion Muslims.
In other words, a new Al Qaeda, far more dangerous than the existing one, is in the making. Witness the attack on the tourist resort of Bali, on U.S. Marines in Kuwait and on a French oil tanker off Yemen. In Afghanistan the United States' main enemies, Osama bin Laden's cadre of leadership, has disappeared, while his shock troops, the Taliban, are there in their homes and villages sitting on their weapons, patiently waiting for the right moment to go back into action when America gets busy attacking Iraq.
Thus far, all the arguments presented for sending American boys and girls into one of the world's most dangerous neighborhoods are half-truths, spurious assumptions and utter nonsense. Washington simply cannot prove the case that Iraq is tied to Al Qaeda.
Saddam Hussein has neither nuclear weapons nor the means to deliver them on missiles or in suitcases to America. His immediate neighbors, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, feel he is better contained than aroused. Indeed they have all publicly and privately told the administration that attacking Iraq would open a Pandora's box.
If this is how they feel, why is America afraid of Saddam? For my money, North Korea is a far clearer and more present danger. It has just announced it does have missiles and nukes and that it will expand its arsenal further. So why isn't the United States going to war against North Korea?
The fact that Saddam Hussein tortures, jails and oppresses his people, which Bush keeps repeating in every speech, has been going on for 30 years without disturbing Americans. Many countries, including the Russians in Chechnya , the Chinese in Tibet and elsewhere, and scores of American friends and allies including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, to mention just a few, repress their people's freedom.
When Saddam took on Iran in 1980 the United States joined in attacking the Iranian navy and destroyed Iranian off-shore oil platforms, crippling Iran's economy and making sure he survived the war he started. In 1991, the first President Bush saved Saddam again when the uprising against him turned into an uncontrolled civil war.
So all the talk about spreading democracy and changing the whole Middle East, starting with Iraq, does not hold water. The United States, obsessed with oil and something called "regime change," wants to create a totally pro-American Middle East. The problem is that it will not work. You don't impose democracy by installing an occupying power in a region that has no tradition for it.
What's more ominous is not the 100,000 people who demonstrated in Washington against the war the other day, nor the fact that the United States will go ahead with or without allies, with or without a UN seal of approval. Rather it is that the suits in the Pentagon are ignoring a significant number of senior military commanders, serving and retired, who have warned the president that U.S. forces are marching into a deadly trap with no exit strategy.
Most commanders of the previous Gulf War and many inside the army now are saying that Washington is about to place American men and women in one of the world's most anti-American regions. Why? Things are very different from 1990, when the United States had a vast Arab and international coalition with it and much of the Arab and Muslim world looked to America with love and admiration.
Iraq's 22 million people would welcome the death of Saddam Hussein, his family and his Ba'ath Party troops, but it does not follow that they will welcome Americans with open arms.
Eleven years of American-inspired economic sanctions have embittered Iraqis. Their standard of living has collapsed, while Saddam and his clique of 100,000 have lived very well indeed. Yet America hangs on to those sanctions. When Iraqis finish settling their very bloody internal account with Saddam's folks, they will turn against America's troops and against one another.
Next door, for 11 years Iran has been training 40,000 Shiite Iraqi fighters for just this moment, when American troops are about to become sitting ducks.
Remember Hezbollah and Beirut? The United States lost 240 Marines there. This year the president declared Iran part of the "axis of evil." The Iranians are waiting to settle some scores with us-this time on their own ground.
Finally, it is almost a certainty that a U.S. attack will trigger a wider regional war that will drag in Israel, Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah in Lebanon, another Iranian creature, will start this one, or Israel, America's best friend and ally in the region, will do it if attacked by Iraq.
It is a disgrace that Congress has failed in its duty to debate properly the Tonkin-like resolution that Bush has been given. Americans' elected representatives will have to explain themselves when the body bags begin to come back. U.S. forces, caught in a bloody civil war in Iraq, will become the target of attacks by Iranian and Iraqi guerrillas.
For any president, 60 percent popularity ratings are not worth paying such a price: This president is wrapping himself in the American flag for the wrong reason.
The war on terror so far is a failure. This administration has confiscated the civil rights of millions of people in America, encouraged Americans to spy on one another, alienated America's Arab and Muslim friends and let Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda's top lieutenants slip through its fingers.
I hope wisdom prevails before the United States jumps into the Iraqi inferno.
The writer, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, covered the Middle East for 30 years for The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
Marching into a trap
NEW YORK Let us not be fooled: The upcoming war against Iraq has nothing to do with the war against terror.
President George W. Bush's war is fueled by two things: bolstering the president's popularity as he attempts to ride on the natural wave of American patriotism unleashed by the criminal attacks of Sept. 11; and a misguided temptation to get more oil out of the Middle East by turning a ''friendly" Iraq into a private American oil pumping station.
Both will backfire and may indeed cost this president and his warmongering cabinet their sought-after second term.
To begin with, the emperor is naked because the real war on terror is far from finished. If anything it is falling apart.
In Afghanistan, where it all started, things are so bad that the puppet president the United States installed, Hamid Karzai, is now guarded by U.S. special forces because he cannot trust his life to his own people.
Al Qaeda, according to the CIA and the Pentagon, is reconstituting itself. In fact every Middle East and Muslim affairs expert is saying that Al Qaeda's ranks will be fattened by new recruits right now and will have more of them when the United States attacks Iraq.
Those joining are no longer Muslim religious fanatics. They now include secularist young men and women angry at the impact of U.S. policies on the world's 1.2 billion Muslims.
In other words, a new Al Qaeda, far more dangerous than the existing one, is in the making. Witness the attack on the tourist resort of Bali, on U.S. Marines in Kuwait and on a French oil tanker off Yemen. In Afghanistan the United States' main enemies, Osama bin Laden's cadre of leadership, has disappeared, while his shock troops, the Taliban, are there in their homes and villages sitting on their weapons, patiently waiting for the right moment to go back into action when America gets busy attacking Iraq.
Thus far, all the arguments presented for sending American boys and girls into one of the world's most dangerous neighborhoods are half-truths, spurious assumptions and utter nonsense. Washington simply cannot prove the case that Iraq is tied to Al Qaeda.
Saddam Hussein has neither nuclear weapons nor the means to deliver them on missiles or in suitcases to America. His immediate neighbors, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, feel he is better contained than aroused. Indeed they have all publicly and privately told the administration that attacking Iraq would open a Pandora's box.
If this is how they feel, why is America afraid of Saddam? For my money, North Korea is a far clearer and more present danger. It has just announced it does have missiles and nukes and that it will expand its arsenal further. So why isn't the United States going to war against North Korea?
The fact that Saddam Hussein tortures, jails and oppresses his people, which Bush keeps repeating in every speech, has been going on for 30 years without disturbing Americans. Many countries, including the Russians in Chechnya , the Chinese in Tibet and elsewhere, and scores of American friends and allies including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, to mention just a few, repress their people's freedom.
When Saddam took on Iran in 1980 the United States joined in attacking the Iranian navy and destroyed Iranian off-shore oil platforms, crippling Iran's economy and making sure he survived the war he started. In 1991, the first President Bush saved Saddam again when the uprising against him turned into an uncontrolled civil war.
So all the talk about spreading democracy and changing the whole Middle East, starting with Iraq, does not hold water. The United States, obsessed with oil and something called "regime change," wants to create a totally pro-American Middle East. The problem is that it will not work. You don't impose democracy by installing an occupying power in a region that has no tradition for it.
What's more ominous is not the 100,000 people who demonstrated in Washington against the war the other day, nor the fact that the United States will go ahead with or without allies, with or without a UN seal of approval. Rather it is that the suits in the Pentagon are ignoring a significant number of senior military commanders, serving and retired, who have warned the president that U.S. forces are marching into a deadly trap with no exit strategy.
Most commanders of the previous Gulf War and many inside the army now are saying that Washington is about to place American men and women in one of the world's most anti-American regions. Why? Things are very different from 1990, when the United States had a vast Arab and international coalition with it and much of the Arab and Muslim world looked to America with love and admiration.
Iraq's 22 million people would welcome the death of Saddam Hussein, his family and his Ba'ath Party troops, but it does not follow that they will welcome Americans with open arms.
Eleven years of American-inspired economic sanctions have embittered Iraqis. Their standard of living has collapsed, while Saddam and his clique of 100,000 have lived very well indeed. Yet America hangs on to those sanctions. When Iraqis finish settling their very bloody internal account with Saddam's folks, they will turn against America's troops and against one another.
Next door, for 11 years Iran has been training 40,000 Shiite Iraqi fighters for just this moment, when American troops are about to become sitting ducks.
Remember Hezbollah and Beirut? The United States lost 240 Marines there. This year the president declared Iran part of the "axis of evil." The Iranians are waiting to settle some scores with us-this time on their own ground.
Finally, it is almost a certainty that a U.S. attack will trigger a wider regional war that will drag in Israel, Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah in Lebanon, another Iranian creature, will start this one, or Israel, America's best friend and ally in the region, will do it if attacked by Iraq.
It is a disgrace that Congress has failed in its duty to debate properly the Tonkin-like resolution that Bush has been given. Americans' elected representatives will have to explain themselves when the body bags begin to come back. U.S. forces, caught in a bloody civil war in Iraq, will become the target of attacks by Iranian and Iraqi guerrillas.
For any president, 60 percent popularity ratings are not worth paying such a price: This president is wrapping himself in the American flag for the wrong reason.
The war on terror so far is a failure. This administration has confiscated the civil rights of millions of people in America, encouraged Americans to spy on one another, alienated America's Arab and Muslim friends and let Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda's top lieutenants slip through its fingers.
I hope wisdom prevails before the United States jumps into the Iraqi inferno.
-------
Exposing Karl Rove
CounterPunch
November 1, 2002
by WAYNE MADSEN
http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen1101.html
He's America's Joseph Goebbels. As a 21-year old Young Republican in Texas, Karl Rove not only pimped for Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti but soon caught the eye of the incoming Republican National Committee Chairman, George H. W. Bush. Rove's dirty tricks on behalf of Nixon's 1972 campaign catapulted Rove onto the national stage. From his Eagle's Nest in the West Wing of the White House, Rove now directs a formidable political dirty tricks operation and disinformation mill.
Since his formative political years when he tried to paint World War II B-24 pilot and hero George McGovern as a left-wing peacenik through his mid-level career as a planter of disinformation in the media on behalf of Texas and national GOP candidates to his current role as Dubya's "Svengali," Rove has practiced the same style of slash and burn politics as did his Nixonian mentor Segretti. Many of us remember the Lincolnesque Senator Ed Muskie breaking down in tears during the 1972 campaign over Segretti-planted false stories in a New Hampshire newspaper that accused Mrs. Muskie of being a heavy smoker, drinker, and cusser and accused Muskie of uttering a slur in describing New Hampshire's French Canadian population. Rove's hero also forged letters on fake Muskie campaign letterhead, disrupted rallies and fundraising dinners, and spread false stories about the sex lives of candidates. Segretti's brush also smeared George McGovern, George Wallace, Shirley Chisholm, and McGovern's first vice presidential choice, Senator Tom Eagleton. Segretti of course did not go on to a high-level White House job -- he was sentenced to six months in federal prison for distributing illegal campaign material.
In many respects, however, the apprentice Rove has far exceeded the chicanery and evil-mindedness of his mentor Segretti. Rove is a tech-savvy puppet master for Bush. Take, for example, last June's discovery of a "lost" CD-ROM in Lafayette Park across from the White House. Contained on the CD was a PowerPoint presentation given by White House political director Ken Mehlman to Rove on the strategy for next Tuesday's off-year election. The slide show showed First Brother Jeb Bush being vulnerable in Florida. Jeb Bush later joked that the disc was part of a plot cooked up by him and his brother to make it appear that he was vulnerable in order to rally an otherwise complacent GOP base in the Sunshine State. Or was it a joke? Jeb Bush and his political minions like Katherine Harris have shown us that if anyone thinks what the GOP has done in Florida is funny they have an incredibly sick sense of humor.
Rove's own tendency to be sick-minded originates with his mentor Segretti. The 2000 GOP primary was a chance for Rove to hone his skills in dirty tricks. His target then was Senator John McCain who appeared to be within striking distance of Dubya in South Carolina after the then-GOP maverick's surprise upset victory in New Hampshire. Rove's operation proceeded to target McCain with false stories: McCain was a stoolie for his captors in the Hanoi Hilton (this from a lunatic self-promoting Vietnam "veteran"); McCain fathered a black daughter out of wedlock (a despicable reference to McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter); Cindy McCain's drug "abuse"; and even McCain's "homosexuality." In the spirit of Segretti, Rove engineered a victory for Dubya but at the cost of trashing an honorable man and his family. Muskie, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Hart, Tsongas, Clinton, Biden, Dole, Perot, and others had all seen the Segretti/Rove slash and burn tactics before.
And Rove's penchant for fascistic demagoguery and outright lying continues to this very day. After Paul Wellstone's sons asked that Vice President Dick Cheney not attend the Minneapolis memorial service for their father, mother, and sister, the White House explained that the real reason wasn't the surviving Wellstone family's abhorrence for Cheney but the fact the family didn't want Cheney's Secret Service protection to interfere with public access to the service. Of course, the Rove and Ari Fleischer disinformation machine forgot to take into account that two attendees, Bill and Hillary Clinton, had their own Secret Service details. But such is the case with a White House that takes its lessons from Goebbels and the editorial staff of the old Soviet News Agency Tass.
Rove's dirty fingerprints could also be seen in the Iowa Senate race between Tom Harkin and GOP candidate Greg Ganske. A few months ago, a story was leaked that the Harkin campaign had employed a spy within the Ganske campaign. To put this in a Rove context, we must go back to the 1986 Texas gubernatorial race in which Rove's candidate Bill Clements was taking on Democratic Governor Mark White. Just before a debate between the two candidates, Rove spun the story that his office had been bugged. No proof. But the insinuation that White's people had carried out the bugging was reported by the media. In the election, Clements defeated White. Rove stashed away more political capital into his already heavy knapsack of ill-gotten IOUs.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, we were obviously treated to more Rove chicanery when the following Associated Press story hit the wires: "A woman who worked for a media company that produced ads for President George W. Bush's campaign was indicted for secretly mailing a videotape of Bush practicing for a debate to Vice President Al Gore's campaign." Yes, that videotape, along with a 120-page briefing book, just happened to turn up in Gore's headquarters as fast as the CD-ROM turned up in Lafayette Park. The sourcerer Segretti must be very proud of his apprentice. In 1980, no Republican bemoaned the fact that Jimmy Carter's debate briefing book was swiped and found its way into the hands of the Reagan-Bush campaign. In Rove's world, its only an affront when someone "steals" your own campaign secrets and not when your are on the receiving end of a heist.
"If you're not with me, you're against me." Bush's binary view of "good and evil" and "friend and enemy" sits well with the Rove strategy. Georgia's conservative but libertarian-minded Representative Bob Barr found out about this in last August's primary when his GOP primary opponent John Linder began spreading around stories that Barr was "soft on terrorism." Because Barr was skeptical about a number of aspects of the Bush-Ashcroft USA PATRIOT Act, he became a target for the Rove machine. However, it was likely that Barr became a target earlier on when he supported Steve Forbes against Bush in the 2000 primary. Bush apparently means to say, "If you've not always been with me, you're against me." It must have really been a dilemma for Bush and Rove to have to come to the support of John Sununu, Jr. in the New Hampshire Senate race. Although Daddy made George W. unceremoniously give the axe to Sununu's father as White House Chief of Staff during the Bush 41 administration, the man who the junior Sununu defeated in the primary, Bob Smith, was even more of a problem. He had the temerity to quit the Republican Party in 2000 and run against Dubya for President. So in Bushspeak, which is obviously borrowed from Forrest Gump's scripts, "if you're less with me than the other guy, you're more against me."
Undoubtedly, Rove was also behind the campaign to "get" Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney who was the first nationally-known politician to question what Bush may have known beforehand about 9-11. She was defeated by a former Republican state judge who had supported the wacky Alan Keyes for President in 2000. Never mind, McKinney was "less with Bush" than Keyes, so it was more important to get McKinney who was "more against" Bush.
In all seriousness, rewarding the GOP on November 5 will only increase the appetite of Rove to amass more and more power into the White House. The advent of a Democratic-controlled Senate and House might even begin to spell the end of the road for Segretti's star pupil. German opposition figures in the mid-1930s often lamented the fact that they could have stopped the rise of the Nazis if only they had been more united in a common front when they had a chance. However, they fell prey to the media manipulation of Goebbels and fought among themselves more than they did against the menace from the far right. We Americans also have an early opportunity to stem an out-of-control and anti-constitutional regime with the Rasputin-like Rove at the after steerage helm of our ship of state. That opportunity presents itself next Tuesday--Election Day.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
-------- MILITARY
Veterans Sue Over Secret Biological, Chemical Tests
November 1, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-01-09.asp#anchor4
WASHINGTON, DC, Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) has joined a class action lawsuit in federal court that seeks redress for the consequences of exposure to hazardous agents during the government's secret weapons testing programs.
Project SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense), part of a much larger weapons testing program called "Project 112," involved the intentional exposure of military personnel to biological and chemical, and perhaps radioactive, agents to determine the vulnerability of naval vessels to such attacks. Similar tests were conducted on land.
These tests, which took place during the 1960s and 1970s, have resulted in illness and disability to which the government is only beginning to respond, the lawsuit charges.
The class action is based upon government officials' alleged attempts to conceal relevant records, many of which are the veterans' personal medical records that would allow them to seek health care and compensation for the adverse health effects of being test subjects.
The complaint seeks monetary damages for the violation of the affected veterans' constitutional rights, and court ordered disclosure of information that will assist them in obtaining Veterans Administration (VA) health care and benefits for the consequences of exposure to hazardous agents during their participation in the SHAD and Project 112 testing programs.
While the class action is not designed to seek individual VA compensation benefits, the proceedings should help to facilitate access to records that would allow these veterans and their service representatives to do so.
"America's veterans deserve proper health care for illnesses that may be due to exposure to harmful agents as a result of their military service," said VVA national president Thomas Corey. "Veterans deserve to be told the truth about their military service, as well as accountability from senior bureaucrats and other government officials. Justice for our nation's veterans is at the heart of VVA's mission. This class action will help veterans obtain the justice to which they have long been entitled."
The class of veterans that are eligible to join the lawsuit might number in the thousands. The named defendants include former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who first ordered the testing program in the early 1960s under President John F. Kennedy, as well as current and former employees of the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.
"The problem has been that certain individuals have been acting in their own interests, rather than serving the military personnel and veterans to whom this country owes so much," Corey said. "VVA will continue to work with appointed officials, leaders in Congress and through the courts until justice is accorded these veterans."
VVA hopes that by holding these officials accountable for their actions, the situation will not repeat itself as troops prepare for possible biological and chemical exposure on the battlefield.
-------- asia
ASEAN leaders to weigh counterterrorism agenda
By P. Parameswaran
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
November 1, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021101-12114486.htm
MANILA - Southeast Asian leaders at their annual talks next week are expected to seek stiffer counterterrorism measures and sign a landmark pact with China to forge the world's largest free-trade area, officials said.
The 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders will meet Nov. 4-5 in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, for the first time since the deadly Bali blast, the biggest terrorist strike since the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
The terrorism threat - and the reported presence of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda-linked cells in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia - is seen as the biggest challenge to Southeast Asia in about 25 years.
"Today's international terrorism is probably the most serious security threat in the region since the Indochina conflict," ASEAN spokesman M.C. Abad said.
The Vietnam War was followed by a long civil war in Cambodia that provoked an invasion by Vietnamese troops in 1978 to oust a Chinese-backed regime. Beijing responded with a brief incursion into northern Vietnam.
Since then, ASEAN has been preoccupied with managing interstate relations and conflict, not with nontraditional security issues, such as terrorism, regional diplomats say.
"The leaders of ASEAN have taken cognizance of this threat to regional stability and economic recovery and the imperative of regional and international cooperation to combat it," Mr. Abad said.
The ASEAN leaders are expected "to exchange views on how to further intensify the ongoing collaboration to counter this nontraditional security threat."
The Oct. 12 terrorist attack on Indonesia's Bali island tourism paradise killed more than 190 people, mostly foreigners, and injured hundreds more.
There are growing suspicions that Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist group believed linked to al Qaeda, had a hand in the Bali carnage, which dampened not only Southeast Asia's vibrant tourism industry, but also frightened off potential foreign investors.
Investment house Morgan Stanley has warned that the Bali incident could permanently raise the risk premium for the whole of Southeast Asia.
There is growing doubt among international investors that the region can contain its geopolitical and domestic sociopolitical risks, given its "strong and inseparable ties to Islam," Morgan Stanley economist Daniel Lian said in a recent report.
Muslims account for more than half of the 500 million people in Southeast Asia. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. ASEAN member states - Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - have already signed a regional counterterrorism agreement and have another pact with the United States to fight the scourge.
Mr. Abad, the ASEAN spokesman, said that while terrorism would place high on the agenda of the group's eighth summit, "the leaders are expected to remain focused on the economic agenda, such as enhancing the region's competitiveness through economic integration."
The ASEAN leaders are slated to sign a pact with Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji for a giant free-trade area (FTA) covering 2 billion people of Southeast Asia and China.
The ASEAN summit is usually followed by a meeting with the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea. This year, India will make its debut with the participation of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Details of the ASEAN-China FTA plan are to be incorporated in a "framework agreement on ASEAN-China economic cooperation," regional diplomats said.
"Under this agreement, we hope to commence negotiations for tariff reduction and elimination for goods in early 2003, to be concluded in about a year," a senior diplomat told AFP.
He said the objective was for China to have a free-trade area with senior ASEAN member states Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand by between 2010 and 2013, and the newer members Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam between 2013 and 2016.
The ASEAN leaders are also expected to sign with China a hotly debated declaration to resolve disputes in the South China Sea.
Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as China and Taiwan, have laid claims to the Spratly Islands, a potential military flash point in the South China Sea.
-------- biological weapons
U.S. Tested Sarin in Hawaiian Rain Forest
5,000 Troops Involved in 1967 Experiments Are Urged to Contact Pentagon
Reuters
Friday, November 1, 2002; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48950-2002Oct31?language=printer
The U.S. military in 1967 conducted tests using the deadly nerve agent sarin in a Hawaiian rain forest as part of a Cold War series of chemical and biological experiments on land and sea, the Pentagon said yesterday. .
Military units involved in the Hawaii test, dubbed "Red Oak, Phase 1," were not identified, and there was no indication of harm to troops or civilians from explosions to determine the effectiveness of artillery shells using sarin in the jungle.
But the Defense Department, releasing five new reports in a continuing series on tests conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, urged any of the more than 5,000 troops involved who might have suffered ill effects to contact the Pentagon.
The Red Oak tests in April and May 1967 were conducted in the Upper Waiakea Forest Reserve on Hawaii and near Fort Sherman in the Panama Canal Zone. The Panama phase used a simulated nerve agent, not sarin.
Sarin is a volatile, deadly nerve agent that can be inhaled or absorbed through the eyes and skin. A sufficient dose within minutes causes difficult breathing, runny nose, confusion and dimming vision -- then coma and death.
Very little information is available involving the long-term effects of low-level exposure to sarin.
The Pentagon yesterday also released details on four other tests -- three in the Panama Canal Zone and a fourth in an unspecified jungle environment -- but said none used deadly chemical or biological agents.
In addition to the riot-control agent tear gas, however, some of the tests used normally occurring bacteria that more recent information has indicated can cause acute infections of the ear, brain lining, lung, urinary tract and other body sites.
The tests were all part of a major U.S. military review put in motion by then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1961 shortly after President John F. Kennedy's inauguration. That study consisted of 150 separate projects.
The United States acknowledged in reports during the summer and earlier this month that it carried out a sweeping Cold War-era test program of chemical and germ warfare agents at sea in the Pacific and on American soil and in Britain and Canada.
--------
U.S. Tested a Nerve Gas in Hawaii
November 1, 2002
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/politics/01CHEM.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 - In the latest release of once-classified reports on chemical warfare tests during the cold war, the Pentagon said today that it detonated artillery shells and rockets filled with deadly Sarin gas in Hawaii in 1967.
There were no reports of military personnel or civilians being exposed to the nerve agent during the tests, conducted in the Upper Waiakea Forest Reserve, a dense rain forest on the island of Hawaii, Pentagon officials said.
Sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent that is absorbed through the nose, mouth, eyes and, to a lesser extent, the skin, can block breathing, dim vision and, in sufficient doses, bring on coma and death.
It dissipates to nondeadly levels after a few hours, Pentagon health officials said. Even so, the Pentagon report said, "very little information is available regarding long-term health effects following exposures to low levels that do not cause acute symptoms."
According to the reports, released today by the Deployment Health Support Directorate, a branch of the Pentagon office of Health Affairs, the Army detonated warheads filled with Sarin in the forest reserve in April and May of 1967.
The goal of the test, named Red Oak, Phase 1, was to "evaluate the effectiveness of Sarin-filled 155-mm artillery projectiles and 115-mm rocket warheads in a tropical jungle environment," the report states.
Barbara Goodno, a spokeswoman for the Deployment Health Support Directorate, said the tests were in a "remote location, far away from any populated area."
The five new studies released today are the latest in a series of declassified reports about the chemical warfare experiments. Pentagon officials said 46 exercises were conducted by the Deseret Test Center, based at Fort Douglas, Utah, from 1962 to 1973. Today's release brings to 41 the number of tests whose reports have been declassified.
The tests were not conducted to study the effects of chemical and biological weapons on human health. Instead, those on land were to learn more about how chemical and biological weapons would be affected by climate, environment and other combat conditions. Tests at sea were intended to gauge the vulnerability of warships and how they might respond to attack.
The Defense Department is working with the Department of Veterans Affairs to identify an estimated 5,500 people believed to have participated in the land and sea tests. It is not known whether all the military personnel were fully aware of the nature of the exercises and the potential risks.
The new reports also describe three previously unknown tests that were conducted using less-toxic substances in the Panama Canal Zone, and another in an unspecified jungle location.
CS gas, commonly known as tear gas, was used in the jungle location.
In tests conducted in the Canal Zone, a biological agent called Bacillus globigii, in the same family as anthrax, was sprayed to simulate the dispersal of a more lethal biological warfare substance.
At the time, Bacillus globigii was considered harmless, but in the intervening years medical experts have determined that it could cause acute infections in people with weakened immune systems.
One series of tests in the Canal Zone, in which Bacillus globigii was sprayed by aircraft, was conducted near the Fort Sherman Military Reservation in February and March 1963. In a related series of tests, the substance was exploded from bomblets in Hawaii in April and May 1966.
--------
U.S. Bioterror Readiness Assessed
November 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bioterrorism-Preparedness.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government has truckloads of medicine and vaccines ready to deploy should bioterrorism strike, but only one state is fully prepared to receive and distribute those treatments.
Federal officials say that while states have made considerable progress in preparing for bioterrorism, much work remains.
``Our biggest concern is we will get to a location and a state or a city will not be ready,'' said Jerry Hauer, assistant secretary for public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Even Florida, the one state deemed ready to receive the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, still must conduct drills to make sure its plans will work.
Federal officials emphasize that states still could handle an emergency if they had to, even if they are not considered prepared. After the Sept. 11 attacks, when the stockpile was deployed for the first time, it took New York City officials ``several valuable hours'' figuring out where to send 50 tons of general medical supplies and how to secure them -- but eventually the medicine was delivered, said Steven Bice, who runs the program for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Friday was the deadline for states to report progress in preparing for bioterrorism. Key questions asked by HHS included how they will distribute medicine, where they can provide 500 hospital beds in case of mass casualties and how hospitals will isolate highly contagious patients.
Most regions are not prepared to dedicate 500 beds in an emergency, much less the 1,500 beds that they are supposed to have in place by next year, Hauer said. Even fewer communities have rooms in place inside hospitals that could used to isolate infectious victims of bioterror attacks.
Meanwhile, states have until Dec. 1 to produce detailed plans for vaccinating their entire populations within days of a smallpox attack. So far, plans have been filed by only 20 of the 62 states, large cities and territories that are receiving federal bioterrorism money. And those plans, not yet scrutinized, may have serious holes, health officials say.
Many states admit they are far from ready.
In Kentucky, officials have not yet figured out who will deliver the shots or where to find the people to do it, said Dr. Steven Englender, the state epidemiologist. He said it could take 60,000 people at 250 clinics to vaccinate Kentucky's 4 million people over five days.
``That's the math. The practicality is something different,'' Englender said in an interview this week.
Hauer says that math could be conservative if there were an outbreak of smallpox -- a highly contagious, fatal disease.
``Five days might actually be a luxury,'' Hauer said.
Early this year, the federal government began distributing $1.1 billion to help cities and states improve communication systems, upgrade labs, hire disaster coordinators and otherwise build up neglected public health systems. At the last progress report, in June, HHS identified several problems.
In Arkansas, officials had plans to train people to respond to bioterrorism, but not to detect disease in the first place. In Delaware, planners identified hospital beds for 250 unexpected patients, just half of what federal rules require. In Kansas, officials were planning on spending $250,000 to handle the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile; federal officials said they should count on needing $1 million.
Nearly one in three states failed to show how they would work with bordering states, and about half the states failed to include Indian tribes in planning.
Jack Pittman, administrator of public health preparedness at the Florida Department of Health, agreed that working with tribes is a problem.
``We've invited them to formally sit with us on advisory committees. To this date they have not taken us up on that,'' he said.
Another concern is states with budget crunches will have federal money to hire needed workers, but won't be allowed to spend it because of state hiring freezes.
The most urgent issue may be the handling of the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile.
The federal government can deliver 50 tons of medical supplies to any city in the United States within 12 hours. But communities must be ready to take control of these supplies from the airport. They must have transportation and security for the supplies and a place to distribute them. They need people who can repackage huge cartons of antibiotics into individual doses.
Federal officials use a traffic light metaphor to characterize readiness for the 62 projects, which include the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the cities of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, the territories of American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands, and three associated independent states: Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.
Just one project, Florida, is ``green,'' meaning ready to go, pending a rehearsal. Two states are ``red,'' Wisconsin -- HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson's home state -- and Hawaii, meaning they are making little or no progress. Also red: Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Six projects haven't been reviewed yet; the remaining 51 are rated ``amber,'' meaning they are making significant progress toward readiness but aren't there yet.
For instance, some state plans relied on the National Guard, but HHS pointed out that the Guard might be unavailable in an emergency, said Bill Raub, who is reviewing state plans for HHS.
Preparedness is an ongoing process, and HHS doesn't expect this week's progress reports to be the final word, Raub added. ``We just want to make sure they are moving down the right road.''
-------- chemical weapons
U.S. Finds Hurdles in Search for Nonlethal Gas
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 1, 2002; Page A30
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48722-2002Oct31?language=printer
The quest for an effective "nonlethal" chemical agent like the one that killed more than 100 hostages in Moscow last weekend has tantalized U.S. military and law enforcement officials for years.
But even though the government has undertaken several research projects into incapacitating gases and aerosols since the mid-1990s, the effort has proceeded slowly in the face of thus-far insurmountable technical hurdles and concern about violating the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.
A Pentagon spokesman this week issued a statement saying "the U.S. military is not currently involved in any programs or research related to the development or procurement of incapacitating agents," did not plan any such research and has not stockpiled any agents.
But as recently as May 2000, the Defense Department paid $69,931 to a Michigan-based firm to begin a multiphase project "to demonstrate the feasibility of innovative, safe and reliable chemical immobilizing agents."
The first phase of the project was to include animal tests, and the second phase was to include "human volunteer studies." Officials at the Bel Air, Md., office of OptiMetrics, Inc., the contractor, did not respond to telephone inquiries seeking information about the project.
Also in 2000, the Pentagon-funded Applied Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University issued a report on incapacitating agents that concluded their development is "both achievable and desirable."
"There was no hard research done, and there has been none done here" on such agents, said Andrew Mazzara, director of the laboratory's Institute for Emerging Defense Technologies. He characterized the study as a review of existing literature on the subject.
Still, Mazzara, a retired Marine colonel who ran the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate before joining the laboratory in 1999, suggested that "what we saw in Russia almost cries out for more rather than less research into this."
His views clashed sharply with those of Edward Hammond, director of the Austin-based Sunshine Project, a leading opponent of U.S. ventures into nonlethal technology:
"Using chemical weapons, including incapacitating chemical weapons, is a slippery slope," Hammond said. "We've gone down it before, but it seems like we're going down it again."
Next week, the National Academy of Science is scheduled to release "An Assessment of Non-lethal Weapons Science and Technology," which will, in part, evaluate the utility of incapacitating agents. The report was commissioned by the Marine Corps' Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate and the Office of Naval Research.
Advocates and opponents of incapacitating agents agree that the idea is a noble one -- a gas or aerosol that would gently yet immediately render large numbers of people harmlessly unconscious, instantly terminating a hostage crisis or a riot without gunfire, billy clubs or needless violence.
In practice, however, as the Moscow theater debacle showed last weekend, implementing such a remedy is fraught with dangers. When it comes to using these disabling "calmatives," as they known, the margin of error is so narrow as to be nonexistent.
"There is no such thing as a knockout drug," said Alan P. Zelicoff, senior scientist in the Center for National Security and Arms Control, at Sandia National Laboratory. "I can put you down with morphine; I can put you down with valium, I can put you down with barbiturates. But in all cases, I have a high risk of hurting you very badly."
Zelicoff said the opioid drug fentanyl, acknowledged by Russian authorities as the basis of the aerosol pumped into the Moscow theater, has an extremely low "therapeutic index" -- the difference between rendering a person unconscious and hurting or killing the person is very small. Anesthesia, Zelicoff said, is "controlled death."
This problem -- that anesthesia, relaxants or anti-pain analgesics are highly individualized at high doses -- has never been overcome. Many experts agreed that knocking out a heterogeneous population of several hundred people of all ages, all sizes, both sexes and with some of them sitting close to the vents and others far away, is simply not possible with current technology and should never even be attempted.
"The whole idea of nonlethal chemical warfare agents is a myth," said Elisa Harris, a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland and a former Clinton administration National Security Council official. "Anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is ignoring the evidence."
Discussion of this dilemma pervades government studies of incapacitants. C. Parker Ferguson, a key researcher for the Army in the mid-1990s, acknowledged that "it's a very complex situation -- it's hard enough to use them in the operating room without compounding the problem with larger groups."
Still, the difficulties have not stopped researchers. Ferguson, now working as an independent consultant and contract researcher, is listed as principal investigator for the OptiMetrics contract, which dismisses "previous approaches" to the problem as "deficient in one or more technical aspects." Ferguson said he was no longer connected with the project, and would not describe the results to date.
Opponents of incapacitants suggest not only that the research is a waste of time, but also that the use of the agents undermines the Chemical Weapons Convention in many respects.
"You just know our people are saying, 'What the hell are the Russians up to?' " said the University of Maryland's Harris. "Incidents like that could engender greater efforts not only on our part, but in other countries."
Still, noted Ted Prociv, a deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for chemical and biological matters in the Clinton administration, the stakes could be huge in a world where the United States is involved in "police actions" like those in Haiti, Somalia and Bosnia, where large numbers of civilians were involved.
"These rogue countries think nothing of drawing you into a situation where you're surrounded by noncombatants and where you can't kill anybody," said Prociv, president and CEO of the Springfield engineering firm Versar. "You have to have something besides billy clubs and machine guns."
-------- iraq
Iraq VP Sends U.S. Harsh Warning
By Dusan Stojanovic
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 1, 2002; 3:14 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52383-2002Nov1?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's deputy warned Americans on Friday they would be "sent to hell" if they attack Iraq.
Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan also called on the U.N. Security Council to prevent the United States from pushing through a tougher resolution about Iraq's weapons programs, seen by critics as an automatic green light to attack.
"The aggressors will be sent to hell if they attack Iraq," Ramadan told reporters.
He called on Russia, China and France, all three veto-holding Security Council members, to reject the U.S.-sponsored draft resolution that threatens Iraq with "serious consequences" if it does not allow U.N. weapons inspectors unhindered work when they return to Iraq.
"There is no need for a new resolution," Ramadan said, "but the U.S. administration is exerting economic and political pressure in order to force some countries to bow to the U.S. demands."
The United States does not want the inspectors to return, Ramadan said. Instead, "It wants either that Iraq refuses the formula proposed by the U.S. administration so it can say that Iraq is not complying with U.N. resolutions, or that the inspectors come with obstacles that prevent them from performing their job properly."
The Bush administration wants the Council to support a resolution that strengthens inspections, warns Iraq of "serious consequences" if it fails to cooperate, and declares that Iraq is still in "material breach" of its obligations to get rid of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
The administration said it was working on a new version of its resolution, but it wasn't clear whether it would address Russian, French and Chinese opposition to language they believe could trigger U.S. military action against Baghdad.
----
Crucial US allies on Iraq fall out over oil
Owen Bowcott in Ankara
Friday November 1, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,823646,00.html
Two of the United States' closest strategic allies in its campaign against Saddam Hussein - Turkey and the autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq - have fallen out amid a chorus of belligerent pre-election rhetoric.
As party minibuses are touring the streets broadcasting arabesque folk music and political slogans to drum up support for the weekend poll, the veteran prime minister Bulent Ecevit and senior generals have threatened to seize the oil-rich Iraqi cities of Kirkuk and Mosul in the event of war.
But the outburst of nationalist rhetoric in Ankara is having a limited impact on an election in which politicians across the political spectrum would prefer to avoid an American-led war for fear of it destabilising a weak economy.
In party headquarters - uniformly decked out with carnival-style bunting and streamers - the crippled economy is the main issue.
Turkey is crucial for America's military preparations. The air base at Incirlik, in southern Turkey, is used daily by British and US planes patrolling the no-fly zones over northern Iraq.
Air assaults on Iraqi defences north of Baghdad would be difficult to launch without these Turkish bases.
But earlier this month Mr Ecevit, 77, who has served as prime minister five times, declared: "We know that the United States cannot carry out this operation without us. That is why we are advising that it abandon the idea. We're telling Washington we are worried about the matter."
Few doubt that Turkey would fall into line once war became inevitable, but it remains anxious about the economic chaos war would bring. As it frequently points out, enforcement of sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime has cost the country between £25bn and £40bn in lost trade over the past decade.
Unemployment, in a population of 68 million, is well over 10%, and inflation is running at 35%. An influx of Iraqi refugees would further hinder recovery.
But last month, the army reluctantly began preparing emergency tents at sites along the border.
On top of the economic worries, Mr Ecevit's recurring nightmare is that war would lead to the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
The outgoing prime minister, whose protracted illness led to the collapse of his governing coalition and early elec tions, fears that Turkey's 12 million Kurds, mainly in the south-east, would break away and fragment the country.
Reconciliation between the two Kurdish factions in northern Iraq earlier this summer sharpened Ankara's suspicions that America had secretly offered independence in return for Kurdish cooperation.
The Turkish government further reasoned that if the Kurds occupied Kirkuk and Mosul, once Ottoman cities, the oil wealth in the area would boost their political aspirations.
Threats have come from government spokesmen and retired generals, suggesting that Turkish troops would occupy cities in northern Iraq once fighting began.
Rightwing parties have urged preventive occupation of the oilfields. Opponents have warned of a Cyprus-style crisis.
Hoshar Zebari, the head of international relations for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, held talks with the government in Ankara. Afterwards he told the Guardian: "Mr Ecevit and Mrs Ciller have been competing with each other over who is more nationalistic on the issue of attacking the Kurds in northern Iraq.
"We made clear we will oppose unilateral intervention by Turkey. People will resist."
Mr Ecevit, the leader of the Democratic Left party, has not been a persuasive election campaigner. Few expect his party to poll above the 10% threshold which allows a party is parliamentary representation.
The threshold has also proved a barrier for Turkey's Kurdish groups. To improve its chances of success, the main Kurdish party, Hadep, has teamed up with two smaller leftwing parties.
The authorities are clearly worried about this strategy. More than 20 members of the party have been banned from standing as candidates.
At Hadep headquarters in a quiet Ankara side-street, Kemal Pozoz, the vice-president, sits warming his hands on a tulip-shaped glass of sweet tea.
"Turkey's rulers have their eyes on the oil-producing areas," he said. "The Kurds in Iraq want a federal country. In Turkey we just want our basic human rights and to be able to receive education in the Kurdish language."
Support is growing, he insisted. Last weekend in Istanbul at least 300,000 people, mainly Kurds forced out of their villages in the south-east, attended a party electoral rally.
"Maybe every Kurd has a utopia in his mind of an independent state," Mr Pozoz says, "but we are demanding our rights within the Turkish state."
----
Iraqi Intelligence
American Conservative Magazine,
November 2002
http://www.amconmag.com/11_4/iraqi_intelligence.html
A funny thing happened on the way to the war. President Bush had enraptured an invited crowd - if not the networks - with his "full force and fury" battle plan. Congress was primed to vote consent. Public opinion was breaking toward the White House, and all the president's men looked to be lining up behind.
Then CIA Director George Tenet sent a letter to the Senate. Seems the spy chief is in possession of intelligence - a rare commodity on the Washington scene - that convinces him Saddam Hussein might indeed pass weapons of mass destruction to terrorists - but only if the U.S. strikes first.
The administration needed a missing link - proof positive that Saddam was complicit in the atrocities of 9/11. Instead it got an expert assertion that "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting attacks with conventional or chemical or biological weapons." Rather than the global threat of President Bush's incarnation, Tenet casts the dictator as a cornered animal, fierce if provoked but unlikely to initiate aggression.
The CIA memo is not cavalier. It warns that Saddam is still in pursuit of the world's deadliest weapons. But it makes clear that the threat to American territory, either by direct attack or terrorist delivery, is not imminent. Unless we choose to make it so.
"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," the president said in his Cincinnati speech. Perhaps. But Tenet ascribes far less arbitrary intent. Instead of any given day, he sees a date certain, set not by Baghdad but by President Bush.
"Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions," the CIA director writes. In other words, the man Bush describes as a "homicidal dictator...addicted to weapons of mass destruction" is behaving like any rational leader. He is stocking an arsenal that he will use if attacked and empty if threatened with extinction.
If logic so governs, then the time-tried constraints of containment and deterrence should be tools of choice. Countries across the globe - some friendly, others not so - possess the same weapons and have historically been corralled by diplomatic means. Saddam differs only in that, from the ashes of his 1991 defeat, he agreed to open his cache and strip it as the victors required. He has not been forthcoming on that score, but none can argue that the inspection regime has failed, for in the last 11 years Saddam has neither acquired nuclear weapons nor deployed chemical agents. Noncompliance therefore justifies more rigorous inspections, but not invasion.
Should the president decide otherwise, over the objection of his top intelligence officer, he could make of his scant evidence a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a fight to the death, Saddam would do the things the administration deems him eventually capable of but cannot immediately prove. The pinned despot would likely vindicate the latter half of Bush's good vs. evil dichotomy. But at what price?
After hearing Tenet's assessment, Sen. Ron Wyden concluded, "Pursuit of a first-strike war - absent any credible sign that Saddam Hussein is preparing to wage war against our nation or other nations - will leave this nation less secure than before."
That is President Bush's constitutional mandate: the security of the country he leads. Not selecting which dictator next abuses the long-suffering Iraqis, or reconfiguring the balance of Middle Eastern power, or cashing in on the domestic rewards of war-making. The duty of an American president is to defend these borders and to spend our blood sparingly. This administration makes exception for itself because its professed goals have noble names like democracy and liberation. But imposing "freedom's power" does not inoculate even a superpower against the natural consequence of tramping through a minefield. Beating despots into submission comes with just one guarantee: we will only remain good in our own eyes.
In the wake of September 11, the same voices calling for Saddam's head claimed we were hated for our virtue. How much more will we be despised when the crusade begins in earnest? George Tenet knows. So too does Saddam Hussein, and if we ask through a hail of bombs, he will likely answer.
-The Editors
-------- israel / palestine
Metzger arrives for consultations ahead of Iraq war
Will liaise between Israel and U.S.
By Amos Harel and Aluf Benn,
November 1, 2002
Ha'aretz
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=225807&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0
Admiral James Metzger, assistant to Gen. Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the U.S. armed services, and one of two officers responsible for coordinating with the Israeli defense establishment in case of an American war on Iraq, met yesterday with outgoing Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer. A senior Israeli defense source said yesterday that the American assault is inevitable. "They are very determined," he said, adding a colorful metaphor: "The herd of elephants has started running."
Defense establishment sources said the Bush administration is likely to freeze preparations for war until after the Congressional elections next week. But immediately after the elections, the administration is expected to step up pressure on the United Nations Security Council for a military campaign against Saddam Hussein's regime. The sources admitted, however, the campaign could be delayed for some time, especially if Iraq accepts UN weapons inspectors. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that a weapons inspectors mission could take months and "the president knows it."
Ultimately, the Israelis are convinced the Americans will strike - and forcefully, sometime from the end of December on. The senior source said the Americans already have positioned enough force to start a campaign "if they want."
Metzger told his hosts that if the U.S. does attack Iraq, he'll be stationed in Israel "and will make sure to pass on your every message and request to Washington." He promised the U.S. would make every effort to ensure Israel is not harmed.
In addition to meeting with Ben-Eliezer, Metzger saw Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon; Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze'ev Farkash; head of military planning, Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland; chief of operations, Maj. Gen. Dan Harel; and National Security Council chairman Ephraim Halevy. The meetings were dubbed "getting-acquainted" sessions.
A senior defense source said that "in this coming round, unlike 1991, the U.S. regards Israel as a main arena, and not a `side show.' They understand that harm to Israel could complicate their efforts, so they want to tighten the coordination with us."
Metzger's visit is the first in a series of top-level security dialogues between Israel and the U.S. in the coming weeks. Ya'alon goes to the U.S. next week for the first time as chief of staff, and will meet with top political and military officials as well as tour some American bases. His trip has taken on new importance in light of the coalition crisis in Israel and the changes in the Defense Ministry. His hosts will discuss preparations for the war in Iraq and ways to prevent escalation in the conflict with the Palestinians. Ya'alon will be meeting, among others, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Powell, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
On November 13, another round of "strategic dialogue" is slated between the countries, with Israel's team led by Minister without Portfolio Dan Meridor and Halevy. They'll present the Americans with Israel's view of "the day after" the war in Iraq, and its expected ramifications for the region. Following the dialogue sessions, the "Tides" forum for cooperation, headed by Defense Ministry Director-General Amos Yaron and Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Lincoln Bloomfield will visit the headquarters of the Pacific fleet in Hawaii.
--------
Sharon Said to Offer Foreign Ministry Post to Netanyahu
November 1, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/international/01CND-ISRA.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 1 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met today with the chief rival within his own Likud Party, the former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and offered him the job of foreign minister, Israel radio reports said.
There was no immediate word on whether Mr. Netanyahu would accept the offer, which some Israeli politicians said on Thursday would be a smart move by Mr. Sharon.
If the prime minister finds himself forced to hold a general election following the resignation from his government on Wednesday of the left-leaning Labor Party, Mr. Netanyahu would have a chance to unseat Mr. Sharon in a Likud primary.
Accepting the foreign ministry post, however, could box Mr. Netanyahu in politically, although turning it down could make him look petty and self-interested.
For similar reasons, when he was prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu picked a prominent rightist rival to serve as his foreign minister - Ariel Sharon.
Today's offer follows a move by Mr. Sharon to shore up a suddenly fragile, rightist government, by recruiting as his defense minister a former army chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz, who has advocated aggressive measures against Palestinians, including the exile of Yasir Arafat.
Israeli officials said Thursday that Mr. Mofaz had accepted Mr. Sharon's offer. The newspaper Haaretz reported on its Web site on Thursday night that he had agreed in principle to take the post but had requested a few days before giving a final answer.
If confirmed by Parliament, Mr. Mofaz, a retired lieutenant general, would replace Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the leader of the Labor Party.
As the head of the armed forces, General Mofaz put the greater part of Israel's arsenal, from fighter jets to wire-guided missiles, into the fight against Palestinian militants. He also tightened military restrictions on Palestinian society in hopes of ending the current conflict, which began roughly halfway through his four-year term.
Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian leader, expressed deep concern about the appointment of Mr. Mofaz and a perceived rightward drift in the Israeli government.
"I expect an escalation against us," he said in a television interview on Thursday, "especially if we're talking about such a new government."
Mr. Arafat also warned against United States military action in Iraq, saying, "I hope this war will not take place, because this will lead to a catastrophe for the whole region."
Even before Mr. Mofaz retired as chief of staff in July, he was seen as a rising star in rightist politics, though he lacks the political background of past defense ministers. His appointment highlights how Labor's withdrawal has narrowed Mr. Sharon's government, rendering it a coalition of rightist and religious parties.
The 25 Labor members of the 120-seat Parliament now move into the opposition, with Mr. Ben-Eliezer as the opposition leader. Mr. Sharon is left for the moment with a minority of 55 seats.
He has not only lost moderate allies but gained leftist antagonists. Where before, Labor's political interest lay in blurring its differences with Mr. Sharon, it now lies in spotlighting disagreements as the party tries to define itself as an alternative government.
With his resignation technically not in effect until this evening, Mr. Ben-Eliezer adopted a barbed tone toward the government. Asked if he thought Mr. Sharon could offer the Palestinians a "diplomatic horizon," he said: "There is no chance, with the makeup of this government. It's an illusion. It's a joke."
In breaking up the unity government after 19 months, Mr. Ben-Eliezer accused Mr. Sharon of financing Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip at the expense of the elderly and the poor. Mr. Sharon, in turn, accused the Labor leader of seeking to appeal to his party's antisettler base before a primary vote on Nov. 19.
Natan Sharansky, the housing minister and deputy prime minister, said Mr. Sharon would try to avoid any major shift in policy, despite his right-leaning coalition.
"In this government it's easier, for example, to make decisions that will be a tougher response to terrorist attacks," said Mr. Sharansky, the leader of a small party appealing to Russian immigrants, Yisrael B'Aliya, which remains in the coalition.
"On the other hand," he said, "it will be much more difficult to implement the decisions without causing public protests, because the opposition will be much louder. As a result, I think the government will have to be very careful."
With Mr. Sharon vulnerable to a vote of no confidence by Parliament, small factions will have the power to endanger the coalition at every turn. If the government falls, Mr. Sharon will be forced to call elections within 90 days.
Without Labor as a counterweight, Mr. Sharon seems likely to face more trouble balancing the demands of his rightist base: things like greater expansion of settlements or more aggressive military tactics against the Palestinians, which could annoy the United States. The Bush administration has sought to calm the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as it prepares for a possible war in Iraq.
"Sharon as prime minister has certainly been much more centrist than his image, or his past," said Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist at Hebrew University. "That's why he wanted Labor in his government, because it gave him some flexibility vis-à-vis the extreme right-wingers, and also different standing internationally."
As part of the coalition, Labor tried to moderate Mr. Sharon's policies, and it assisted in moderating his government's image. Mr. Sharon had as his foreign minister Shimon Peres, a dove and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating the Oslo peace agreement of 1993 with the Palestinians.
Now Mr. Peres is gone, along with the rest of the Labor ministers. So far, he has resisted Mr. Sharon's entreaties to stay in the government despite his party's departure.
Israeli press reports said on Thursday that Mr. Sharon is considering replacing him with Avigdor Lieberman. Mr. Lieberman, the leader of a hard-line nationalist party, is a settler who opposes territorial concessions to the Palestinians.
Mr. Lieberman's faction, National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu, an amalgam of three small parties, would bring Mr. Sharon seven votes, giving him a majority government, albeit a narrow one. But Mr. Lieberman has repeatedly said in recent days that he will not sign on with Mr. Sharon.
Mr. Lieberman and other right-wing leaders believe that after two years of conflict with the Palestinians, Israeli voters will give them additional parliamentary seats in a new election. Mr. Lieberman is an ally of Mr. Netanyahu.
-------- mideast
U.S. Official Omits Disputed Charge Against Syria
Reuters
Friday, November 1, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51299-2002Nov1?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chief U.S. arms control official on Friday omitted Syria's nuclear research from his catalog of U.S. concerns about what he called rogue states.
The official, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, angered Syria last month when he said the United States was "very concerned" about Russian assistance to a Syrian nuclear program. Syria called in the U.S. ambassador to protest.
Bolton, speaking on Friday at a conference in Washington, repeated allegations that Syria is trying to expand a chemical weapons program and is able to produce small amounts of biological warfare agents.
He listed in detail the standard U.S. allegations against Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya and Cuba but did not mention Syria's nuclear program, which, according to a CIA report in January, is for the purposes of research and civilian nuclear power.
For each country, he detailed U.S. allegations about their nuclear, biological or chemical weapons programs.
Syria has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allows inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Bolton's office had no immediate explanation for why he did not mention concern about Syria's nuclear program.
Bolton also did not mention Israel's nuclear program, which is believed to have produced 200 nuclear warheads. Israel has declined to deny or confirm it has nuclear weapons.
-------- russia / chechnya
Conflict Between Chechens and Russia Is Steeped in Czarist Past, Stalin-Era Exile
By David McHugh
Associated Press Writer
11-01-02
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAXZZ5V08D.html
MOSCOW (AP) - On his tough bricklayer's fingers, Akhmad Arsamakov ticks off the members of his family who suffered under Moscow's rule.
Father deported by Stalin; grandfather joined a hopeless mountain rebellion against the Soviets in the 1940s; great-great grandfather led resistance to Czarist troops in the 1860s, was captured and then disappeared.
"All of us suffered," Arsamakov, 51, said. "But this is the story of every Chechen. Not 'almost' every Chechen. Every Chechen."
Considering that within living memory the entire population of Chechnya was expelled from its homeland, the lanky construction worker's remark doesn't sound like an exaggeration.
Arsamakov says his turn came in 1999, when Russian shells destroyed his house in the Chechen town of Sernovodsk. He now stays with friends and on construction sites in Moscow, where he works to support his wife and three children living in a decaying village about 100 miles northwest of Moscow.
He condemns the Chechens who seized a Moscow theater last week as "dunces." But that doesn't soften his view of Russia.
"Russia spreads lies about us," he said, his steady gaze growing more intent. "They say we were backward people before they conquered us. But we know we lived well and had a better life before the Russians.
"And so we have self-confidence and have always had the desire to free ourselves from them."
Sharply etched folk memories of conflict with Moscow are a big part of being from Chechnya, a Muslim chip in the mosaic of ethnic groups that make up the North Caucasus.
The current conflict, as Arsamakov's family history suggests, is only the latest chapter. The other North Caucasus groups eventually gave up or were defeated. But the Chechens have been resisting Russian rule since the early 19th century.
It took the Czarist army 42 years to subdue the New Jersey-sized territory and attach it to the expanding Russian empire in 1859. Russian troops burned villages, executed resisters and battled fighters under legendary rebel leader Imam Shamil.
The Chechens' will to resist is often attributed to their "mountain democracy." Councils of elders used to make most important decisions and settled disputes according to unwritten law. Courts, written laws and government were alien Russian imports.
They had no aristocracy, meaning top-down authority played little role. Ties between members of extended clans and religious brotherhoods have been far stronger than allegiance to any central government.
Chechens initially supported Soviet rule in 1918, thinking the Bolsheviks would be better than the Czars. When they learned otherwise, they staged uprisings in 1920, 1929 and 1940, with a few fighters holding out in the mountains into the early 1950s.
Even in the 1970s and '80s, people in Grozny, the Chechen capital, kept blowing up a statue of a Czarist general, Alexei Yermolov, one of the most brutal of Russian commanders in the campaign to subdue the Chechens.
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin deported 600,000 Chechens in railroad cars to the frozen steppes of Kazakhstan in 1944 during World War II. At least 100,000 died from cold and hunger.
Stalin claimed they supported the invading Germans, though historians consider this an excuse to crush a restless ethnic group. Thousands of Chechens were serving in the Soviet army at the time, and some were decorated for valor.
Chechen historian Dzhabrail Gakayev, now at Moscow's Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology, was 2 years old at the time and remembers a childhood of cold and hunger, at first spent in dugout huts hacked into the Kazakh steppe.
"It was very hard the first two years," he said. "The worst was, there was a myth that we would soon return, so no one planted potatoes or other crops. This was a mistake. Then, after a year or so, we understood and started to adjust."
After Stalin died in 1953, the Chechens were allowed to return home.
Some became high Soviet achievers, among them Dzhokhar Dudayev, an air force general who would later lead breakaway, post-Soviet Chechnya. Some became teachers and professors, despite discrimination that forced them to work harder than Russians to get ahead. They also gave birth to organized crime syndicates sometimes compared with the Sicilian Mafia.
Many Russians blame Chechens en masse for the crimes and terrorist attacks committed by a minority, and ethnic slurs and disparaging comments are common. The widely read Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, for instance, said Wednesday that "all Muscovites understand perfectly that Chechens living in Moscow pose a potential danger."
When the Soviet Union began to crumble, the Chechens again challenged Moscow's rule. A heavy-handed attempt by President Boris Yeltsin to bring Chechnya back under control in 1994 provoked furious resistance - and a stunning defeat for the much larger Russian forces, which withdrew in 1996.
The war left Chechnya damaged and chaotic, with rebel bands trafficking in drugs, weapons and hostages. In 1999, Russian troops stormed back in, and have since crushed most organized resistance, though sporadic clashes still occur.
Many Chechens worry the war has bred a new generation that obeys no authority, not even the elders.
Thousands of Chechens displaced by the fighting have been driven to the margins of Russian society. Police routinely - and illegally - deny them residency registration in Russian cities and settlements.
That makes it difficult to enroll Chechen children in school or get state-paid medical care. And after the theater attack, which ended in the deaths of more than 100 hostages, Chechens fear a new wave of prejudice.
-------- space
Satellite To Be 'Boosted' By Microwave Beam Proposed
Nov 01, 2002
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-02zk.html
Huntsville - Plans to make the first known attempt to "push" a spacecraft in Earth orbit using energy beamed up from the ground will be announced next week at the First International Symposium on Beamed-Energy Propulsion at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Scientists from the University of California at Irvine and Microwave Sciences, Inc., will discuss the Planetary Society's plans to launch its Cosmos Sail mission next year using a Russian launch vehicle.
Once the spacecraft is in orbit about 800 kilometers up and its sail is deployed, a microwave beam emitted from the Jet Propulsion Lab's Goldstone 70-meter antennae in California's Mojave Desert will be used to give the spacecraft an extra push, according to Dr. Gregory Benford, a professor of physics at UC-Irvine. Instruments on board the satellite will measure how much the sail accelerates due to the microwave boost.
Benford's identical twin, Dr. James Benford, the president of Microwave Sciences, will chair two sessions on microwave powered propulsion during the symposium and is scheduled to present information about the mission on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2002.
They will also answer questions about the upcoming mission at a press conference at 5:30 p.m. CST, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2002. Press conference specifics follow at the end of this message.
While the push received from the Goldstone microwave beam will be tiny compared to the effect of solar radiation on the sail, the spacecraft's mission is to test the feasibility of beam-boosted sails, said Greg Benford. "The basic ability to move energy and force through space weightlessly is key to a genuinely 21st century type of spacecraft."
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The Space Industry: Supporting U.S. Supremacy
Volume 7, Number 13
November 2002
By Loring Wirbel
http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol7/v7n13space.html
Editors: Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS)
Issue Editor: John Feffer
- During the 1990s, the commercial space industry flourished and ties to the military lessened.
- Recent disasters, cost overruns, industry shifts in technology, and post-9.11 security measures have increased military ties to civilian space programs.
- Foreign competitors represent only a minor challenge to the U.S. space program.
The mid-1990s were heady years for the commercial space industry. Space buffs had been promoting the privatization of space applications for some time, so the satellite industry could lessen if not sever its ties to the military. When manned planetary exploration fell victim to spiraling cost overruns, advocates of space privatization looked to the proliferation of satellites in near-earth space, particularly to personal communication technology. Just as investors in the 1990s considered anything Internet-related as an instant gold mine, space advocates viewed the success of small low-earth-orbit (LEO) communication satellites as a litmus test for the commercialization of space.
On the balance sheet, this strategy appeared to pay off. The commercial satellite industry posted double-digit growth trends to yield an industry aggregate in 2001 of $97.7 billion in revenues worldwide. This total includes $42 billion in satellite services, $17 billion in satellite manufacturing, $18 billion in ground stations, and $9 billion in launch services and vehicle manufacturing.
These numbers do not convey, however, the crisis in the satellite industry. Several recent disasters, including the simultaneous loss of 12 Globalstar satellites in Kazakhstan, have rocked investor confidence. Cost overruns imperil key projects. In perhaps the most significant blow, the telecommunications industry pulled the rug out from under the commercial satellite industry by turning to cellular networks based on the ground rather than in space. Throughout most of the 1990s, the average number of satellite launches per year was 90, but in 2001 the number shrunk to 60, of which only 15 were true commercial satellite launches.
Because of these problems, the commercial industry remains dependent on the military for technology and capital infusions. LEO networks have depended on technology developed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO); without technology transfers and handouts from the military, networks like Iridium never would have made it past the design stage. With the help of the military, the space industry in the U.S. remains the strongest in the world. There are some competitors. The European Space Agency (ESA) is still sending up Ariane satellites from the Kourou launch facility in French Guiana. The European Union (EU) still supports the Galileo navigation network, despite intense U.S. pressure to cancel the program. And China is on the verge of introducing an ambitious manned-mission and satellite program. But these foreign competitors represent only a minor challenge to the U.S. space program.
Although the melding of the U.S. Space Command into the Strategic Command appears to have placed space dominance in limbo, efforts to maintain unilateral control of space are as strong as ever, implemented by the enlarged Strategic Command and the new Northern Command, which has taken over the facilities of the former Space Command in Colorado Springs. The directors of the Strategic Command and of the NRO have argued forcefully in public for using existing strategic assets against any nation, any terror group, any drug dealer, to help reinforce U.S. invulnerability.
After the September 11 tragedy, even the so-called civilian programs within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began serving the government in a more explicit fashion. For example, NASA satellite systems like Sea-Wide Field Studies (Sea-WiFS) played a critical role in spotting Taliban forces during the Afghan War. And ties between NASA and the intelligence community are about to become even closer; the NRO announced in September 2002 the opening of a Transformational Communications Office to link Pentagon, NASA, and NRO communication networks in space.
Satellites and satellite launches are an integral part of the U.S. government's vision of achieving control over space for both military and economic purposes. The Space Command's 1996 document, Vision for 2020, talks of controlling planetary space in order to protect the current global division between economic haves and have-nots. In the 1990s, the notion of preserving "permanent preeminence," as defense analyst Michael Klare calls Washington's unspoken assumption of undisputed planetary hegemony, found unanimous favor as a philosophical baseline in almost all sectors of the Democratic and Republican parties. When the Bush administration took power in early 2001, this unilateralism and its application in space became an element of pride rather than merely a quiet reality as had been practiced by the Democrats.
Problems with Current U.S. Policy Key Problems
- Ever since low-earth-orbit telecommunication satellite plans proved infeasible, civilian launch platform and satellite efforts have faltered, and the growth of the space industry has hinged upon Pentagon ambitions.
- Globalization of the space industry directly serves Pentagon efforts to control planetary space for purposes of political and military power projection.
- "Globalization" of space has facilitated the consolidation of space control under Lockheed-Martin, Northrop-Grumman/TRW, Boeing, and Raytheon.
The U.S. government is committed to achieving military supremacy in space and maintaining dominant market share in the satellite industry for U.S. corporations. The mission of space supremacy did not suddenly appear when President Bush took office in 2001. It evolved from infrastructures that were borrowed from intelligence and weapons networks and were developed over forty years as part of the cold war. After the cold war ended, the U.S. sought a space-based, 24-hour reconnaissance network and the construction of a national missile defense (NMD) system to extend its economic might. Although the aerospace industry is not powerful enough to set the agenda for U.S.-based transnationals at large, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has consistently stressed that the implementation of global free markets serving large corporations would not be possible without the "hidden iron fist" of the military, which is led by the aerospace sector.
As an indication of the central role space dominance continues to play-and the intimate connection between commerce and the military-consider the many hats worn by Peter Teets, former chief operating officer at Lockheed-Martin. Teets now serves as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), undersecretary of the Air Force, and chief procurement officer for all of military space, controlling a budget in excess of $65 billion, a figure that includes $8 billion a year for missile defense and $7 billion annually for NRO spying. Teets is a firm believer in the conclusions of the Rumsfeld Commission's January 2001 report on the military in space, which warns of a "space Pearl Harbor" if the U.S. does not thoroughly dominate all aspects of space. In addition, key lobbyists for Lockheed-Martin, Bruce Jackson and Stephen Hadley, played central roles in developing space policy, and Hadley later took a post within the Pentagon.
To underpin NMD and space supremacy, the U.S. uses multiple space systems, and the Pentagon is spending billions to update each of these. Space-based intelligence collection is dominated by gargantuan geosynchronous satellite networks that represent windfall profits for prime contractors and have generated significant cost overruns. These systems range from satellite launchers to different tiers of satellites circling the earth.
From its inception in 1998, the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) was designed to reduce the cost to the U.S. government of imaging and signals-intelligence satellite launches. Large rockets like Titan-4 cost more than a billion dollars each, but the Atlas-5 and Delta-IV EELVs use streamlined designs and cheaper components to reduce launch costs by as much as 80%. Although the NRO heavily promoted the commercial spin-off possibilities of EELVs, the commercial prospects for the new launchers now appear minimal. Contractors see it as a potential bailout program for their cost overruns. The public may never learn how much the government has spent on EELVs. The NRO worked with contractors to insure that most information remains "vendor proprietary"-even if the information is declassified, it can remain secret to meet the wishes of the vendor. To date, it is believed that the NRO has provided slightly more than $500 million each to Lockheed Martin and Boeing, but even Defense Department inspector general auditor studies on EELV expenditures are classified.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) can provide precision targeting for military missions, while civilian customers use less accurate frequencies as navigational aids. Newer military enhancements to the GPS provide support for what the Pentagon calls "Navwar." Warning of impending missile launches has been the domain of an aging infrared satellite system called Defense Support Program (DSP). A critical part of the missile defense program involves the replacement of DSP satellites with a two-tiered network of satellites called the Space-Based Infrared System, deployed in two portions called SBIRS-High and SBIRS-Low. SBIRS-Low is still in its early phases, but SBIRS-High, managed by Lockheed-Martin, is facing a congressional review due to cost overruns exceeding $4 billion.
Intelligence distribution is a function of the Global Broadcast System (GBS). During the war in Afghanistan, the GBS provided "instant situational awareness" to troops and pilots by integrating intelligence from satellites, unmanned aerial vehicle flights, and ground signals intelligence stations. Imaging satellites will be replaced by Boeing's 8X Future Imagery Architecture, a satellite project with total procurement costs in the tens of billions of dollars. The signals-intelligence equivalent is the Intruder, a program that has amassed significant cost overruns.
As contractors retool international defense programs for missions serving the homeland defense duties of the Northern Command, the four consolidated defense contractors will increasingly develop dual-use capabilities. To cite but one example of the blurring of public and private sectors, the NRO and the National Security Agency (NSA) elected to outsource to Raytheon much of the intelligence processing for Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado, the largest electronic intelligence downlink base in North America. In 2001, Raytheon announced that it would set up secure-hosted Web services for corporate America in the same massive classified facility in which it performs intelligence processing. In August 2002, Raytheon announced a billion-dollar expansion at the same site to develop ground systems for the National Polar-Orbit Operational Environmental Satellite, a joint weather-satellite program of the Defense Department, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Raytheon's multitasking may represent the norm in a system dominated by U.S.-based defense contractors.
Toward a New Foreign Policy Key Recommendations
- It is important to have a space industry outside Pentagon control.
- Besides being ineffective, achieving nonproliferation through tighter export control, as advocated by some arms control groups, allows the current "keeper of the keys" to determine the legitimacy of foreign space projects.
- A uniform rule should apply to both the U.S. and to other nations: No nation should weaponize space, and no nation should use military platforms in space in ways that encourage or reinforce power projection.
In the Clinton era, some efforts at controlling the proliferation of space technology were made through international bodies such as the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). When such agencies participate directly in preventing the export of multistage rockets from a nation like North Korea or Iraq to emerging states, the mission appears to be a legitimate one. But arms control advocates sometimes put too much faith in false multilateral agencies that do not confront existing inequities. In the same way that small nations object to the Non-Proliferation Treaty because of the inaction of the major states in eliminating nuclear weapons, arms control professionals must be wary when the current "keepers of the keys" promote technology limitation that serves the interests of unilateral supremacy. The NSA should not be in the position of single-handedly determining encryption and security technology for the world, and the NRO should play no direct role in determining which nations are "allowed" to have a given level of space technology.
Since the advent of the Bush administration, multilateral bodies like the MTCR have become almost irrelevant. A truly independent and peace-oriented space program needs multiple centers of gravity, though that is not necessarily easy to attain. Just as David Ricardo's rules of "comparative advantage" make it all but impossible to return to an era of tariffs and national commerce, the economies of scale in the space industry make it unlikely that scores of space programs in other countries will survive.
European institutions are an important counterweight to Pentagon dominance, whether through ESA or EU funding of large European space conglomerates, but European programs are not wholly independent. For example, German activists have exposed the role of some ESA radar programs in aiding forward-based missions of NATO and the EU Rapid Reaction Force.
In examining space-based communication and intelligence systems, whether funded by military or commercial interests, citizens should ask: Does this system serve multilateral or unilateral interests, and will its further development increase or decrease stability? Any system failing the multilateralist or stability test should be opposed without compromise. Citizens can also accelerate and expand opposition to militarization of space by highlighting the hazards of unilateralism within the United States. As the Department of Homeland Security introduces surveillance tools that infringe upon the civil rights of U.S. citizens, it will have to rely on defense contractors to bolster space supremacy networks. Legal challenges to the USA Patriot Act and related Justice Department executive orders should specify limits on aerospace corporations that ply their wares for domestic surveillance. Boeing and Raytheon, for example, have developed analytical tools for the space intelligence community that will be applied to new airport security and border security systems. Oracle, a private software company tightly linked to the CIA and NSA, is working with top defense contractors on unified databases for civilian profiling. Although groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) quickly grasped the dangers of the USA Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Department, few civil libertarians realize that many of the tools of domestic repression were perfected when the intelligence systems developed for the cold war were retargeted in the mid-1990s.
A technology base involving several national governments and corporations of various sizes, divorced from U.S. military interests, may take five years or more to emerge. Relying on a unilateralist and empire-building U.S. military as a transitional source of funds for commercial ventures in space, however, may place space proponents in the Faustian position of supporting preemptive warfare technologies.
The overwhelming role played by large U.S. corporations in building space systems that only the U.S. government is permitted to use represents the backbone of U.S. unilateralism in space. Though it is true that European defense contractors can't keep up with Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman/TRW, and Raytheon, U.S. transnationals are not providing the impetus. Instead, the supremacist tail of unilateral policy is wagging the globalist corporate dog.
Loring Wirbel <LWirbel@aol.com> is editorial director at CMP Media LLC, a member of the board of directors of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and a member of Colorado Springs-based Citizens for Peace in Space.
Sources for More Information Organizations
Center for Defense Information 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW Washington, DC 20036-2109 Voice: (202) 332-0600 Fax: (202) 462-4559 Email: info@cdi.org Website: http://www.cdi.org/ Contact: Theresa Hitchens
Federation of American Scientists Space Policy Project 1717 K St. NW, Suite 209 Washington, DC 20036 Voice: (202) 675-1025 Fax: (202) 675-1010 Email: cpvick@fas.org Website: http://www.fas.org/spp/ Contact: Charles Vick
Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space Box 90083 Gainesville, FL 32607 Voice: (352) 337-9274 Email: globalnet@mindspring.com Website: http://www.space4peace.org/ Contact: Bruce Gagnon
Publications
Walter J. Boyne, Beyond the Horizons: The Lockheed Story (New York: St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books, 1998).
James Dao, "Solitaire: One Nation Plays the Great Game Alone," Sunday New York Times, Week in Review, July 7, 2002.
Heather Draper and Brad Smith, "Space Race," Rocky Mountain News, August 17, 2002.
Richard Falk, "Going Solo: The New Bush Doctrine," The Nation, vol. 275, no. 3, July 15, 2002.
Frances FitzGerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2000).
Bradley Graham, Hit to Kill: The New Battle over Shielding America from Missile Attack (New York: Public Affairs/Perseus, 2001).
Karl Grossman, "Space Corps: The Dangerous Business of Making the Heavens a War Zone," Covert Action Quarterly, no. 70, April-June 2001.
John Kelly, Chris Kidler, and Kelly Young, "$1 Billion Question: Where Has All the Air Force EELV Money Gone?" Florida Today, August 25, 2002.
Michael Klare, "Endless Military Superiority," The Nation, vol. 275, no. 3, July 15, 2002.
Brendan I. Koerner, "The Security Traders," Mother Jones, vol. 27, no. 5, September-October 2002.
George Leopold, "U.S. Network to Tie DoD, Intelligence Agencies, NASA," EE Times, September 9, 2002.
Sebastian Mallaby, "The Reluctant Imperialist," Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 2, March/April 2002, p. 2.
Oliver Morton, "The New Air War in Europe," Wired, August 2002.
Eric Schmitt, "Wider Military Role in U.S. Is Urged," New York Times, July 21, 2002.
Bernard Simon, "Where Rockets' Red Glare Reflects Hard Times," New York Times, August 18, 2002.
U.S. Government Printing Office, Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, January 2001.
U.S. Government Printing Office, Report of the Commission on the Future of the National Reconnaissance Office, November 2000.
Loring Wirbel, "The Language of Space Supremacy," Non-Violent Activist, vol. 19, no. 3, May-June 2002.
WorldNetDaily/StratFor, "Bush's Battle Doctrine for Space-Agency Reorganization Has Implications for Future War Fighting," July 2, 2002, available at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28153.
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CIA Touts Successes In Fighting Terrorism
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 1, 2002; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48721-2002Oct31?language=printer
CIA Director George J. Tenet and other intelligence officials have been attempting to counter criticism of their failure to disrupt the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last year by speaking more openly about successes in thwarting what the government believes were planned terrorist actions.
Last year, for example, U.S. authorities stymied plots to kidnap Americans in three countries by using information from a captured senior associate of Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader. Attacks on U.S. facilities and personnel in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the Incirlik air base in Turkey, as well as against U.S. embassies in Rome and Paris, also were disrupted.
In 2000, the United States was able to break up planned attacks against U.S military and civilian facilities in the Persian Gulf and Europe. The previous year, U.S. agencies disrupted use of a chemical weapon in a planned Dec. 31, 1999, millennium attack in Jordan.
In 1998, U.S. intelligence agencies used information gleaned from human sources and intercepted communications to prevent the hijacking of a U.S. airliner. The hijacking was designed to pressure the release from prison of Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in 1996 of conspiring to bomb the Statue of Liberty and other New York landmarks.
Tenet and other intelligence officials detailed these successes in a series of public and closed-door appearances before Congress in recent weeks.
In only a few cases did the United States have access to informants who provided the approximate time, place or participants in a planned attack, according to the officials. More often, they said, information leading to disrupted attacks came from interrogations of suspected terrorists, intercepted communications and information provided by foreign police and intelligence services.
An invaluable tool, they said, is the practice in which U.S. agencies transfer individuals arrested in one country to another allied country that is able to extract information from them and relay it to the United States.
"We give them leads and tell them where to look," Tenet told the House-Senate intelligence panel Oct. 17. The panel held hearings on the performance of intelligence agencies leading up to Sept. 11, 2001.
"There's a great deal of specificity overseas about places and times and events," Tenet said, "and the pattern of racing to stop it has been pretty successful."
The record is far from perfect. Tenet disclosed that two or three months before a French oil tanker was attacked in a Yemeni harbor Oct. 7, there were an increasing number of reports that an attack was being planned against shipping in the area. "They mentioned U.S. warships, tankers, shipping in the [Persian] Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz, Yemen," a U.S. official familiar with the record said. "There was a considerable increase in chatter and when the tanker was struck, no one was surprised."
As Tenet told the lawmakers, "You go back and look . . . and the reporting out there on the French tanker was two or three months old, but it was there."
The interception of increased communications among suspected terrorists in 2001 prior to Sept. 11 helped disrupt other attacks, one U.S. intelligence official said. In June of that year, the arrest of two bin Laden associates with the help of a Middle East country, he said, blocked plans to attack U.S. facilities in Saudi Arabia. Another terrorist caught in the area was preparing plans for an attack on the U.S. Embassy or cultural center in Paris.
Around the time of the July 2001 meeting in Genoa, Italy, of President Bush and other leaders of the Group of Eight industrial powers, officials said, they were able to disrupt attacks in Paris, Turkey and Rome through intercepted communications and the help of foreign intelligence agencies.
In his testimony, Tenet used the example of tracking two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhamzi, after they entered the United States in early 2000 to show the problems and techniques in pursuing al Qaeda adherents.
Khalid was believed to be a terrorist because he had been identified as someone who had been at a suspected logistics facility in Yemen. In December 1999, according to a U.S. official, electronic intercepts and information provided by informants revealed that suspected al Qaeda members were to hold a meeting in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia.
In early January 2000, through the cooperation of a foreign intelligence service, Almihdhar's passport was photographed as he traveled to Malaysia, providing for the first time his full name and the fact he had a multiple-entry visa for the United States. At that point, Tenet said, there was enough information to put him on a watch list -- meaning he could not get another visa.
But that was not done since U.S. intelligence agencies wanted to observe him and see if he led to more senior al Qaeda adherents. Not putting him on a watch list meant that when Almihdhar's visa expired, he was able to get a new one in Saudi Arabia in June 2000, enabling him to return to the United States.
"The al Qaeda practice is to keep their most lethal plots within a small, tightly knit group of fanatics," Tenet said. "This is not an impossible target, but it is among our hardest. . . . Total success against such targets is impossible. Some attackers will continue to get through us."
-------- un
UNITED NATIONS
Shift Toward the U.S. Stand on Iraq Is Noted in Council
New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/international/middleeast/01NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 31 - Seven long weeks into negotiations in the Security Council over a resolution to disarm Iraq, there has been a shift this week toward the United States and British draft proposal for aggressive weapons inspections backed by a clear threat of war, according to Council diplomats representing the United States and some nonpermanent members.
France and Russia, both permanent members, are still demanding a second vote based on United Nations arms inspections before authorizing military force. But indications from the two chief United Nations weapons inspectors that they are comfortable with the strong inspections plan proposed in the draft helped persuade nonpermanent Council nations that the proposal was not far off the mark.
Ireland, Mauritius and Cameroon reacted more favorably than American officials anticipated, United States officials said.
In closed Council sessions since Monday on the American and British draft, at least seven nonpermanent members indicated that they could support it, the diplomats said, giving the United States new confidence that the measure has the nine votes needed to pass.
With neither France, Russia nor China threatening to veto, American officials said today that they were preparing to put the resolution to a vote next week.
The administration stayed with the talks longer than many countries expected after President Bush opened his campaign against Iraq here in September warning the United Nations that it was becoming obsolete. With Secretary of State Colin L. Powell personally steering the globe-spanning negotiations, and Mr. Bush himself frequently picking up the phone, several envoys from nonpermanent member nations said the Council had been persuaded that a skeptical administration gave multilateralism a fair try.
For weeks France and other permanent Council powers seemed to be talking a loner American administration back from an impulsive war against President Saddam Hussein of Iraq that could bring chaos to the Middle East.
But as France and Russia sat unmoving on their positions, they ran the risk of sounding more concerned about protecting their power on the Council than convincing Mr. Hussein that United Nations arms inspections will be his last chance to avoid war, diplomatic analysts said.
"That's the French way," said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations. "It is the classic play out of the Charles de Gaulle playbook: hold out to the end, get more leverage."
To be sure, its allies' opposition has brought the Bush administration a long way from its opening bid. In August, when Vice President Dick Cheney announced that Washington was gearing up for war with Iraq, he dismissed United Nations weapons inspections as dangerously ineffectual.
In its first draft of the resolution, the United States offered an arms inspections plan that many Council diplomats judged too intrusive for Iraq to accept. Its call for "all necessary means" to make Iraq disarm, regardless of the progress of the inspections, was broadly rejected.
After revisions, the current draft sets up an arms inspection plan that requires Iraq to give the inspectors immediate access to any site. Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the chiefs of the United Nations inspections teams, welcomed most of the strong provisions in the draft this week, persuading Council nations that it was not so far off after all.
In meetings Wednesday with the chief inspectors, Mr. Bush promised to help them with American intelligence data, and administration officials stressed that they wanted to see the inspections work.
Recently American diplomats have assured the Council that they do not intend to take the resolution and run into battle. They said they embraced the hope widely shared here that Mr. Hussein will give up his illegal weapons to the inspectors so war can be averted.
"This resolution is not an attempt by the United States to seek an excuse for going to war," James B. Cunningham, the deputy representative, told the Council. "It is an attempt to send a clear message to Iraq and to get a good inspection regime under way."
French officials distrust Washington's compromises. They argue that a phrase in the draft resolution citing Iraq's "material breach" of its past obligations could be used by the United States to justify unilateral war.
"We don't want any ambiguities," a senior French diplomat said. But international lawyers said the draft resolution presents an accurate statement of legal facts.
"We have the right to use force because there has clearly been a material breach" of past Council resolutions by Iraq, said Richard N. Gardner, a professor of international law at Columbia University. "No administration is going to allow the French to take away from us a right we clearly have."
Requiring a second vote, said Thomas M. Franck, professor emeritus of law at New York University, "would irredeemably weaken the resolution."
"The inspectors become hostages if you have to go back to the Council for a vote where there could be a veto," he said.
A number of council nations supported France's efforts to clarify the meaning of clauses in the draft that could refer to military force. American and French diplomats, sensing that a compromise between them could still be reached, worked hard to find the language.
If France, Russia or China abstain in the vote on the resolution, and it is adopted mainly with votes from nonpermanent nations, the measure would still have legal force, but would not carry the same political weight.
Despite good relations between Mr. Bush and the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, Moscow has been the most unbending in the negotiations. An alternative resolution it proposed informally neither strengthens the weapons inspection plan nor threatens force if Iraq fails to comply. Russia remained deeply reluctant to invite a new military conflict in Iraq, its backyard.
Russian officials insisted that the threat from Iraq's weapons was not immediate.
"Do you have any new information linking Iraq to terrorism?" the Russian ambassador, Sergey Lavrov, asked reporters here this week. "Neither do we." British officials ran interference between the feuding permanent powers. London came up with the idea of revising the draft to allow for the possibility, but not the requirement, of a second Council vote.
"Britain is committed to a two-stage process," Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador, has said.
Administration officials said their bottom line was that they would not allow the Council to limit Washington's scope of action. Mr. Bush, they note, already has authority from the Congress to lead a military assault.
But the Security Council is waiting to see if the Bush administration merely softened its tactics for this negotiation, or whether it changed its goals, opening the possibility that Mr. Hussein could stay in power if he gives up all his illegal weapons.
"We will know in time if this was wonderful Kissingerian verbal acrobatics," Mr. Holbrooke said, "or whether sometime in this process we moved away from a military change" of the Iraqi regime.
-------- us
Rivalry between Defense Department, CIA reportedly growing
by Leona C. Bull senior staff writer
Journal of Aerospace and Defense Industry News
Nov. 1st, 2002
http://www.aerotechnews.com/starc/2002/110102/DOD_CIA.html
A special unit has been created in the Pentagon that provides senior policy-makers with alternate assessments of intelligence about Iraq and is producing analyses of raw intelligence reports.
The CIA is not pleased.
Insiders claim that a rivalry is brewing between hard-liners long distrustful of the U.S. intelligence community and professional military and intelligence officers who fear the hawks are shaping intelligence analyses to support their case for invading Iraq.
The Iraqi opposition's intelligence-gathering activities, known as the Information Collection Program, recently were transferred from State Department to Pentagon control.
A major source of contention is the Pentagon's heavy reliance on data supplied by the Iraqi National Congress. The INC, the largest group within the divided Iraqi opposition, has a mixed reputation in Washington and a stake in whether President Bush makes good on his threat to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by force. Its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, sees himself as a potential successor. Chalabi has strong backers among senior civilian officials in the Pentagon, and in Congress and the White House. But the group, and Chalabi in particular, are viewed with suspicion by many CIA and State Department officials.
CIA officials are skeptical of Chalabi's veracity, and some even suspect that he had a hand in aborting a U.S.-backed coup attempt against Hussein in 1995. That allegation is unproven.
The CIA severed its relationship with the INC after the group was unable to account for millions of dollars in covert aid.
Chalabi is so distrusted by some managers in the CIA's covert arm, the Directorate of Operations, that they have not forwarded INC-generated intelligence , that they probably should have, the former official said. Pentagon officials say the INC has been a valuable conduit of information from Iraqis inside the country and has helped arrange the recent defection of four members of Hussein's regime, including one with intimate knowledge of hidden Iraqi facilities for weapons of mass destruction. Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory group, said the CIA had consistently misread developments in the Middle East, from the 1979 revolution in Iran to the rise of radical Islam. Its analysis "isn't worth the paper it's written on," Perle recently said.
The CIA refused to meet with the defectors until ordered to do so and has systematically disparaged the Iraqi opposition, the Pentagon officials said.
The INC's track record "is far and way better than anything else," said a Pentagon official. "Not everything's 100 percent," but that is always the case with intelligence, the official said. But Pentagon officials "believe their reporting is far more accurate than it actually is," he said. "The INC is in many cases their primary source of information."
INC officials predict that Hussein's regular army, as well as the Iraqi Republican Guard, will not fight U.S. troops. Only specialized units personally devoted to Hussein, including the Special Security Organization and the Special Republican Guard, will put up resistance, they say.
If true, that would allow U.S. troops to take Baghdad and the rest of the country without the kind of massive military force used in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. If wrong, U.S. troops could face a much fiercer fight. The feud between the intelligence community and professional military and intelligence officers also reveals long-standing divisions over U.S. intelligence capabilities.
Top Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, have long been critical of the CIA and what they see as the spy agency's overly cautious views, while career intelligence officials accuse the Pentagon group of politicizing an intelligence process that is supposed to be unbiased and nonpartisan.
"The entire intelligence community hates this," said one former intelligence official who asked not to be identified.
"Our guys working this area for a living all believe Chalabi and all those guys in their Bond Street suits are charlatans. To take them for a source of anything except a fantasy trip would be a real stretch," one official said. "But it's an article of faith among those with no military experience that the Iraqi military is low-hanging fruit." Rumsfeld has defended the unit's creation as a way for Pentagon policy-makers to familiarize themselves with information on which CIA assessments on Iraq are made.
"People are doing that all over town. They do it at the State Department. They do it in my office. I do it," he said. "I take this information and read it and think about it and sort and ask questions and talk to other people about it.
"Any suggestion that it is an intelligence-gathering activity or an intelligence unit of some sort, I think, would be a misunderstanding of it," Rumsfeld said.
----
Doubt in the Ranks
By David Ignatius
Friday, November 1, 2002
Washington Post; Page A35
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49218-2002Oct31?language=printer
Mobilizing the United States for war is hard enough, but it becomes truly difficult when the State Department, the Pentagon brass and the intelligence agencies are all, for somewhat different reasons, expressing doubts about the mission.
Congress is running scared on Iraq, for fear of seeming unpatriotic on the eve of midterm elections. But that political silence has masked the increasingly vocal grumbling throughout the Washington bureaucracy.
That's the dilemma President Bush faces over Iraq, and it's no surprise that he has been trimming his own rhetoric over the past month. That doesn't mean the United States won't march on Baghdad in the end. As the president said in his Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati, "I hope that this will not require military action, but it may."
The policy debate that surrounded the Cincinnati speech marked a sharper turn in U.S. policy than has generally been recognized. For it committed the Bush administration to consult with its allies and seek a new United Nations resolution on inspections as a prelude to war.
Today, nearly a month later, that U.N. process is still dragging on, with its mix of sanctimonious public statements and devious backroom bargaining.
Perhaps Bush imagines that a France-approved U.N. inspection regime will be intrusive enough to contain Iraq's biological weapons threat -- and thereby buy more time for "regime change." Perhaps he will decide to ignore U.N. resolutions and do what he likes in Iraq, sooner rather than later. But whatever the rationale, this diplomatic interlude is having the perverse effect of worsening the split between America and its allies rather than alleviating it.
Six months ago, when analysts such as Robert Kagan were celebrating America's cult of military strength, the common view was that the Europeans were powerless to stop Washington. It turns out that's not exactly true. The Europeans are discovering that they can use institutions such as the United Nations as a brake against what they consider America's "hyper-power."
In the "soft power" arena of these international organizations, the United States is vulnerable. So is Bush's only reliable ally, Britain's Tony Blair, who was dissed this week by a newly emboldened French President Jacques Chirac. The French leader said Blair had been "very rude" for daring to question a Franco-German deal to maintain the farm subsidies that underlie the European Union's "free" market. But the deeper message of the spat was that France and Germany can be just as "unilateralist" in pursuing their national interests as the United States.
Bush's real problem is that his Iraq policy has few passionate allies at home, either. That's increasingly true within the great bureaucracies that shape U.S. foreign policy.
The skepticism starts with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who remains as skittish about fighting a war in the streets of Baghdad as he was in 1991. His wariness extends to hundreds of U.S. diplomats around the world who spend their days listening to foreign governments complain about U.S. Iraq policy.
Washington's dissent extends further, into the ranks of the military. The extent of Pentagon mistrust of the leading Iraq hawk, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was revealed in a remarkable article last month by Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks of The Post. They reported that military anger over Rumseld's "frequently abusive and indecisive" style was "influencing the Pentagon's internal debate over a possible invasion of Iraq, with some officers questioning whether their concerns about the dangers of urban warfare and other aspects of a potential conflict are being sufficiently weighed."
Another skeptical bureaucracy is the Central Intelligence Agency. At a time when the CIA is waging a global anti-terrorism war against al Qaeda, the Iraq talk strikes many intelligence officers as a dangerous distraction. CIA analysts fear that in its eagerness to find an Iraqi "smoking gun," the Bush administration may be "cooking" the intelligence -- that is, implying connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that have not been established.
Rank-and-file CIA officers "don't want to do this war," says one former agency official of his former colleagues. They fear, in part, that an Iraq war will jeopardize the "liaison" relationships with other intelligence services that are crucial in fighting al Qaeda.
If President Bush is going to lead the country into battle, he needs to begin by convincing his own national security bureaucracy. The effects of Iraq, like Vietnam, could last a generation. It's crucial to get it right -- and to have a united country that will stay the course behind the president, even when things turn nasty and optimistic assumptions prove wrong.
One of the most poignant aspects of Vietnam was that Lyndon Johnson was pushed into a war he suspected would go badly. The pressure to fight came from hawks in the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies and the State Department. Bush won't have that excuse. He may choose war, but if he does so today it will be despite widespread, if largely silent, dissent.
----
Pentagon takes over program to gather intelligence on Iraq
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 1, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021101-91504674.htm
The Pentagon has rescued an intelligence-collection program in northern Iraq from critics in the Senate and State Department who held up U.S. funds for an Iraqi opposition group that has scored major successes in getting information from defecting government officials in Baghdad.
The $8 million program to support activities by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an opposition group based in London and northern Iraq, was held up for several months by the Senate Appropriations Committee because of political opposition to the group, said congressional and administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The INC's covert information-collection program scored several major intelligence coups in getting information from Iraq and in communicating with opposition sources inside the country, the officials said.
One senior Iraqi defector who was part of the program recently provided valuable data on the location of storage sites in Iraq used to hide chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and materials.
Officials said that several other Iraqi government officials are also involved in helping the program.
The program also uses television broadcasts and other information programs to communicate to opposition groups inside Iraq.
The funding cuts to the information-collection program were imposed in May, resulting in operations being shut down or severely restricted since the summer.
According to the officials, the $8 million has been approved for release to the INC to cover expenses for operations that already were undertaken in June and July.
However, the State Department objected to using $619,000 of the total $8 million package needed to fund the information-collection program. It claimed that the program is involved in covert intelligence activity and therefore inappropriate for the State Department to run.
The department's Near East and South Asia office instead demanded that the Pentagon or CIA take over the program.
The Pentagon began running the program recently, but the decision to hold up funding has undermined the INC's efforts to conduct more intelligence gathering that could be used in the U.S. campaign to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the officials said.
The INC wants the $619,000 in funds to be used for the information-collection program kept as part of the $8 million package. However, officials said this is being opposed by the Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat.
Asked about the funds, a subcommittee aide familiar with the program said the State Department's Near East affairs bureau asked the panel to withhold the money for the information program.
Mr. Leahy believes the information program should not be funded by the State Department, the aide said.
Several Republican senators are fighting to keep the program going because of the prospect of U.S. military action against Iraq. They have appealed to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to fix the problem.
An official at the INC said the group wants the subcommittee to release the $619,000, which is urgently needed to pay agents in the field and operations that were already conducted and paid for with credit.
"We're not prepared to do that," the subcommittee aide said. "It's been recognized that this is not an appropriate program for the State Department to run and ought to be funded by the Department of Defense. It makes no sense to fund what is essentially a covert program with overt money."
But an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that an agreement had been reached with Mr. Leahy to release the funds.
"I think we've finally worked out a deal with Leahy and he will lift the hold," the official said.
Republican Senate aides blamed the funding hold on opponents of U.S. military action in Iraq, especially key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Five of the 22 Senate Democrats who voted against the recent congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq are members of the Appropriations Committee, including Mr. Leahy, and Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia.
----
130,000 troops sought for invasion force in Iraq
BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY jlanday@krwashington.com
Fri, Nov. 01, 2002
Miami Herald
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/4417222.htm
WASHINGTON - The commander who is planning a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq has won Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's support for a ground force well in excess of 100,000 American troops, according to senior defense officials and military analysts.
Some top civilian aides to Rumsfeld had argued that the Iraqi army could be defeated and Saddam Hussein ousted by a much smaller number of troops relying on speed, surprise, air power, psychological operations and help from Iraqi opposition groups, the officials and analysts said.
But they said Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of American forces in the Middle East as head of the Tampa-based U.S. Central Command, and other top officers countered that Iraq is not Afghanistan and Hussein's forces could be much more formidable than the ragtag Taliban militia.
Franks and others insisted that an invasion force be big enough to deal with a worst-case scenario in which Iraqi resistance does not quickly collapse, as widely forecast, and U.S. troops become embroiled in heavy combat in Baghdad or other densely populated areas.
''Franks wanted to go in there loaded for bear,'' said one senior military official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity. Rumsfeld's ``approach was you need to justify what you have.''
A ground force of around 130,000 American troops would be a small fraction of the half-million-strong contingent that drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
COMMANDING EDGE
But the 375,000-man Iraqi army is plagued by low morale and obsolete weapons. Those factors plus new precision-guided bombs, other advanced technologies and weapons, better tactics and the experiences of wars in the Balkans and Afghanistan give the U.S. military a commanding edge, experts said.
''With the right force, with the right options, with an excellent psyops [psychological operations] campaign, we will have a relatively short, sharp attack that will bring down the [Iraqi] regime,'' predicted former Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th Infantry Division during the 1991 war. ``If we screw it up, we could end up with a political debacle.''
Rumsfeld has declined to discuss any details of a possible Iraq invasion. He repeatedly has said that President Bush has not yet decided whether to make good on his threat of military attack if Hussein refuses to comply with a new round of U.N. weapons inspections.
Before Rumsfeld accepted Franks' arguments for a large ground force, he repeatedly challenged the general to explain his reasoning, senior defense officials said.
''The secretary accepts the fact that you have to plan for a worst case,'' a second senior defense official said. ``There are others who have agendas and who surround the secretary and who challenge from an unintelligent point of view. Sometimes it's pure stupidity. But the secretary is very, very practical.''
In fact, it is not clear that Rumsfeld ever supported his aides' push for an invasion force of 80,000 troops or fewer. The second senior defense official said news reports of those options were ``disinformation.''
Defense officials and experts outside the Pentagon said higher-than-expected Iraqi resistance was not the only concern. Sufficient numbers of U.S. troops will be needed to capture Iraq's biological and chemical weapons and missiles before they can be used. They also will have to secure long supply lines.
BIG ENOUGH
Moreover, the invasion force will have to be big enough to ensure that Hussein's removal is not followed by an explosion in political, religious and ethnic tensions that could tear Iraq apart.
Many experts worry that once Hussein is gone, Iraq's Shiite Muslims, who are in the majority but have been repressed and denied political power for years, might slaughter ruling Baathist Party officials and their families, most of whom are from the Sunni branch of Islam. In addition, neighboring countries fear that Iraq's ethnic Kurds could try to use Hussein's ouster to carve out an autonomous republic in the north.
But an American ground force also can't be too big. It must be fast and agile, which means keeping its logistics ''tail'' of fuel and ammunition supplies to manageable proportions. And it can't be so large that it offers easy targets for Iraqi missiles, perhaps carrying chemical or biological weapons, especially as troops and vehicles are assembling in neighboring Arab nations.
INVASION PLAN
Defense officials and experts said the invasion plan, which was still evolving, called for a ground force of two or three Army heavy divisions -- each of which typically includes more than 400 tanks and armored vehicles -- an Army light division and a Marine Expeditionary Force.
An Army division numbers about 17,000 soldiers. A Marine Expeditionary Force has about 45,000 troops.
Other U.S. units also are expected to participate, including special forces, as well as about 15,000 British troops, bringing the ground force to at least 115,000 soldiers, they said.
The invasion is expected to be bolstered by large naval and air forces. It also is expected to be preceded by massive strikes on Iraqi air defenses, military and regime facilities, and weapons of mass destruction sites. Those strikes would be carried out by cruise missiles and planes carrying precision-guided bombs flying out of bases in the region and from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea.
----
Pentagon agrees to Navy's new generation of carriers
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 1, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021101-2187430.htm
The Navy has won a budget battle within the Pentagon to build its futuristic aircraft carrier, and is now negotiating when the first big-deck CVNX can be constructed.
A meeting was scheduled this morning between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and top Navy officials, including Navy Secretary Gordon England, during which the CVNX's construction schedule could be decided.
The CVNX has been viewed as a vulnerable program that might be canceled by the Pentagon in favor of smaller, faster ships as it seeks to transform the armed forces.
But defense sources said yesterday that key Rumsfeld aides have agreed to fund the next generation of supercarrier to replace Nimitz-class ships now at sea. With the future of big-deck carriers now assured, the debate is over the timetable.
There are two main options. Some Pentagon civilians want to cancel the first ship, the CVNX-1, which will use the hull of the Nimitz-class carrier and cost about $10 billion. Construction on the CVNX-2, a more advanced ship with a new hull design and $11 billion price tag, would start in 2009, not 2007 as planned for CVNX-1.
The Navy has countered with a different plan. Cancel the CVNX-1, but start CVNX-2 in the same time slot - 2007.
Navy officials, and the shipbuilding industry, argue that the two-year gap in carrier construction at the Northrop Grumman yard in Newport News, Va., would cost the government a significant amount of taxpayer dollars to preserve the work force.
One defense source described the industry's thinking this way: "They believe you are going to destroy the industrial base if the Pentagon does not build a ship in '07. They won't be able to reconstitute the base."
The Navy also argues that the CVNX's advanced technologies are the kind of advancement that Mr. Rumsfeld seeks in transforming the military.
The CVNX will have a new nuclear power plant, improved electrical generation, a smaller, stealthier superstructure and a new system for launching and recovering aircraft.
The CVNX-2 is to have these features, as well as a more modern hull, a better flight deck and manpower savings of about 800 from a 5,000-sailor crew.
With the schedule moved to 2007, the Navy is not sure it can develop a new hull in time.
The Navy's 12 big-deck carriers are backbones of the fleet, leading battle groups that include attack submarines, surface combat ships and 70 aircraft. The Navy feared the Rumsfeld team's push to modernize and transform the armed forces could result in killing the CVNX in favor smaller, less-observable ships.
Defense and congressional sources said another factor in the Pentagon's decision to save the CVNX is political fallout on Capitol Hill. They believe the CVNX retains support from a majority of lawmakers, and a decision to kill it would be met with fierce opposition.
The Pentagon is now writing the 2004 budget and plans to present President Bush with his most significant decisions to date to meet his goal of reshaping the military for newer threats, such as terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
Pentagon officials want most decisions made by the end of November so Mr. Bush can be presented with options in December. The budget would go to Congress early next year and take effect Oct. 1, 2003.
Besides the CVNX, Pentagon analysts are looking at whether to cancel or curtail the Army's Comanche helicopter, the Air Force's F-22 stealth fighter and the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey aircraft.
----
U.S. Orders Large Volume of Ammunition to Gulf
Fri Nov 1, 2002
By Stefano Ambrogi
Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20021101/ts_nm/usa_military_shipping_dc_1
LONDON - The U.S. Navy (news - web sites) is seeking more merchant ships to carry a large quantity of ammunition and additional pieces of armor to the Gulf for arrival in November and December, shipping tender documents seen by Reuters show.
The navy has also placed an order to shift quantities of ammunition between Gulf ports, evidence of more pre-positioning, as the United Nations (news - web sites) moves closer to a new resolution on disarming Iraq.
One of the orders showed the Military Sealift Command (MSC) had been seeking a vessel to move 550 containers of ammunition and explosives from the east coast of the United States to four ports in the Red Sea and the Gulf.
"That's a big chunk of ammo'," said one shipping source who has chartered ammunition ships for the British Ministry of Defense. He estimated the vessel was capable of carrying up to 10,000 tons.
MSC is a branch of the U.S. Navy charged with transporting armor and military supplies for the U.S. armed forces.
A spokeswoman for the MSC in Washington, Trish Larson, confirmed the original order but said the requirement had now fallen to 319 containers.
"It's just closed (the tender) but nothing has been awarded yet. The requirement is slightly less now -- it's a fluid process," she said.
Larson declined to comment further on the quantity of ammunition being moved to the Gulf.
The vessel carrying ammunition is due to load on October 31 and to discharge at the various ports between November 19 and December 3.
AMMO SHIPS
In shipping industry terms, the movement of 319 so-called twenty-foot-container equivalent units (TEUs) is small.
The largest freighters can carry up to 7,000 TEUs, but moving ammunition and explosives is done on a far smaller scale.
For safety reasons ammunition-carrying ships require special ventilation, temperature control and fire-fighting equipment and additional features, experts say.
The MSC confirmed it was seeking a roll-on-roll-off merchant vessel to carry 28,000 square feet of "rolling stock and track vehicles" from northern Europe to the Gulf in November.
The latest commercial orders bring the known number of merchant ships requested to move tanks, helicopters and other military supplies to the Gulf to eight.
That is in addition to the Department of Defense (news - web sites)'s own massive sealift capability, some of which is anchored at the British base of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, within a few days' sail of the Gulf.
Separately, the MSC had been seeking a ship to shift 197 containers of ammunition weighing some 2,700 tons between one unidentified Gulf port and two others, further evidence of pre-positioning activity.
MSC's Larson said a decision had now been taken to move the quantity on a government-owned as opposed to merchant ship.
Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Friday Russia and the four other U.N. Security Council permanent members had moved closer toward agreement on a new resolution aimed at disarming Iraq which Washington suspects of developing weapons of mass destruction.
But, he said, "serious differences" still had to be worked out.
-------- propaganda wars
Fighting terror
U.S. drafts secrecy guidelines for data
St. Petersburg Times,
November 1, 2002
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/11/01/news_pf/Worldandnation/Fighting_terror.shtml
WASHINGTON -- The White House is drafting guidelines to define a new category of government information that would be withheld from the public in order to avoid making it available to terrorists.
Currently being called "sensitive homeland security information," the category could include everything from blueprints of critical government and private buildings to scientific research of potential value to terrorists.
No one knows what it will encompass, because the White House Office of Management and Budget has not released the guidelines.
A White House official said Thursday that OMB is working to define the information at the request of the Office of Homeland Security.
Administration officials have taken pains to say that no information that is currently available to the public would be included in the new category. It merely represents a desire to treat information that terrorists might use consistently throughout the government, they say.
But some representatives of private groups that have been consulted by OMB about the pending guidelines have expressed concern that the move will lead to a general tightening of public access to government information. Agents raid Tenn. homes of two Iraqi immigrants
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Agents with a terrorism task force raided the homes of at least two Iraqi immigrants Thursday, and authorities said other searches were being conducted in the city.
No immediate arrests were made, but FBI, Customs and IRS agents spent about three hours at the home of Fadhil Abbas Al-Sahaf, 34. They were seen leaving with boxes, plastic bags, papers, envelopes, FedEx packages and videotapes. A travel trailer in the back yard also was searched.
Agents also searched an apartment less than 2 miles away rented by Mahdi Al-Tamimi, his wife and young son. Bank documents, IRS forms and other papers were removed.
Douglas Riggin, an FBI agent in charge of the task force, said the moves were not connected to "any terrorist act which might pose a threat to the city." As for whether the raid was related to terrorist threats elsewhere, he said: "The task force investigated it. Draw your own conclusions."
Al-Sahaf, reached by telephone after the raid, said he was not sure why the house was searched, but "I think it is because I sent money to my family." He said he is an Iraqi native who moved to the United States in 1994.
Al-Tamimi, an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen who sought political asylum in 1994, said that when agents searched his home they asked him about sending money to his family in Iraq. Moroccan said to have close relations with Atta
HAMBURG, Germany -- A Moroccan accused of supporting the Sept. 11 terrorists often prayed with suicide pilot Mohamed Atta, a witness told a German court Thursday, describing the lead hijacker as a close friend of the defendant.
The witness, 29-year-old student Holger Liszkovski, lived for roughly three years in the same university housing complex in Hamburg as defendant Mounir el Motassadeq. He testified that Atta frequently visited el Motassadeq and shared meals with him.
"I would describe their relationship as a close friendship," Liszkovski said. "They often prayed together."
El Motassadeq, the first Sept. 11 suspect to stand trial, has acknowledged being friendly with members of the Hamburg al-Qaida cell, but he denied knowing of their plot to attack the United States.
The 28-year-old Moroccan, who has also admitted attending a training camp in Afghanistan, faces life in prison if convicted of belonging to a terrorist organization and more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder. No leads reported in slaying of U.S. envoy
AMMAN, Jordan -- Investigators reported no new leads Thursday in the killing of a U.S. diplomat Monday in Jordan's capital.
Security officials have been questioning dozens of Islamic militants as they try to discover who was behind the assassination of Laurence Foley, a U.S. aid agency administrator. The gunman escaped.
"The investigation is continuing, but there is nothing new," Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abul-Ragheb said.
----
Russian Deputies Back New Post-Siege Media Curbs
Reuters
Friday, November 1, 2002
By Larisa Sayenko
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50421-2002Nov1?language=printer
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian deputies on Friday approved tough new media curbs during "anti-terrorist" operations, giving authorities greater control over coverage of crises such as last week's Moscow theater siege.
The measures, brought to the State Duma lower house of parliament long before last week's mass hostage-taking by Chechen guerrillas, passed a third reading, 231-106. The draft next faces a vote in the upper house Federation Council.
The draft law will again focus attention on President Vladimir Putin's patchy record on media freedoms after controversy over private television channels that were effectively neutered after being critical of his rule.
The Kremlin was angered by media outlets that accused authorities of failing to pursue talks with the guerrillas before launching the raid to free about 800 hostages. Critics also questioned the use of a knockout gas that killed 117 hostages and left hundreds more in hospital.
"I don't think this is a limitation of democratic freedom," said Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the defense and security committee of the Federation Council.
"In such situations, only information from official sources should be used," he said. "Third-hand information should not be broadcast."
It was not immediately clear who would enforce the new rules but Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, who used a newspaper interview on Friday to say the siege had highlighted the need for new rules, appeared the most likely candidate.
"The terrorists had a well-worked-out media plan," he told the Izvestia daily. "They were very well prepared in terms of knowing the Russian media, journalists and newsmakers."
"People's lives are more important than the right to information," Mikhail Fedotov, secretary of Russia's Union of Journalists, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
"If you understand that your words could worsen the hostages' situation, then you should shut up. Keeping quiet is not a problem," he said.
INFORMATION CATEGORIES PROSCRIBED
The new rules specifically prevent the media from publishing information about technology, arms, ammunition and explosives used in anti-terrorist operations. That could have complicated reporting the Moscow theater siege.
Under the new measures, the media might well have been unable to report the use of a powerful anaesthetic to knock out guerrillas intent on blowing up the theater if authorities stormed it. Almost 200 hostages remain in hospital.
The United States criticized the delay in identifying the gas, saying secrecy had cost lives. After four days of silence, Russia's top health official confirmed the gas was based on Fentanyl, a powerful opiate used in routine surgery.
The draft media law would bar the dissemination of information that could hamper the conduct of anti-terrorist operations or endanger the lives or health of people involved.
It would also bar the media from quoting individuals seen as threatening the conduct of anti-terrorist operations or any remarks judged as propaganda or seen to justify resistance to counter-terrorist measures.
During the siege, the authorities banned the private NTV channel from broadcasting comments by Movsar Barayev, the commander of the guerrilla force in the theater.
Nevertheless, most newspapers and national television stations lavished praise on Putin's handling of the crisis, which won 85 percent support in the first post-siege poll.
That contrasted with the savaging the newly installed president received for his initially sluggish response to the August 2000 Kursk nuclear submarine disaster.
--------
Russia Backs New Restrictions on Press Freedom
November 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-media.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian deputies on Friday approved tough new media curbs during ``anti-terrorist'' operations, giving authorities greater control over coverage of crises such as last week's Moscow theater siege.
The measures, brought to the State Duma lower house of parliament long before last week's mass hostage-taking by Chechen guerrillas, passed a third reading, 231-106. The draft next faces a vote in the upper house Federation Council.
The draft law will again focus attention on President Vladimir Putin's patchy record on media freedoms after controversy over private television channels that were effectively neutered after being critical of his rule.
The Kremlin was angered by media outlets that accused authorities of failing to pursue talks with the guerrillas before launching the raid to free about 800 hostages. Critics also questioned the use of a knockout gas that killed 117 hostages and left hundreds more in hospital.
``I don't think this is a limitation of democratic freedom,'' said Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the defense and security committee of the Federation Council.
``In such situations, only information from official sources should be used,'' he said. ``Third-hand information should not be broadcast.''
It was not immediately clear who would enforce the new rules but Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, who used a newspaper interview on Friday to say the siege had highlighted the need for new rules, appeared the most likely candidate.
``The terrorists had a well-worked-out media plan,'' he told the Izvestia daily. ``They were very well prepared in terms of knowing the Russian media, journalists and newsmakers.''
``People's lives are more important than the right to information,'' Mikhail Fedotov, secretary of Russia's Union of Journalists, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
``If you understand that your words could worsen the hostages' situation, then you should shut up. Keeping quiet is not a problem,'' he said.
INFORMATION CATEGORIES PROSCRIBED
The new rules specifically prevent the media from publishing information about technology, arms, ammunition and explosives used in anti-terrorist operations. That could have complicated reporting the Moscow theater siege.
Under the new measures, the media might well have been unable to report the use of a powerful anaesthetic to knock out guerrillas intent on blowing up the theater if authorities stormed it. Almost 200 hostages remain in hospital.
The United States criticized the delay in identifying the gas, saying secrecy had cost lives. After four days of silence, Russia's top health official confirmed the gas was based on Fentanyl, a powerful opiate used in routine surgery.
The draft media law would bar the dissemination of information that could hamper the conduct of anti-terrorist operations or endanger the lives or health of people involved.
It would also bar the media from quoting individuals seen as threatening the conduct of anti-terrorist operations or any remarks judged as propaganda or seen to justify resistance to counter-terrorist measures.
During the siege, the authorities banned the private NTV channel from broadcasting comments by Movsar Barayev, the commander of the guerrilla force in the theater.
Nevertheless, most newspapers and national television stations lavished praise on Putin's handling of the crisis, which won 85 percent support in the first post-siege poll.
That contrasted with the savaging the newly installed president received for his initially sluggish response to the August 2000 Kursk nuclear submarine disaster.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- terrorism
THE TERROR NETWORK
Qaeda Uses Teeming Karachi as New Base, Pakistanis Say
November 1, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/international/asia/01STAN.html
KARACHI, Pakistan - As the United States hunted worldwide for leaders of Al Qaeda this summer, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a key planner of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was living quietly in an apartment about 10 miles from the American Consulate here, according to Pakistani law enforcement officials.
He and his Qaeda friends spent their days logging on to the Internet via satellite telephones. At night, neighbors saw them playing cards and laughing.
The story of Mr. bin al-Shibh's final month of freedom and his chaotic arrest - on Sept. 11 of this year, as it happens - illustrates why it is proving so difficult to eliminate Al Qaeda.
Pakistani officials say that through support from local people, elaborate secrecy and Internet communication, Qaeda members like Mr. bin al-Shibh are trying to re-establish their network. In some ways they appear to be succeeding. Since Mr. bin al-Shibh's arrest, no senior Al Qaeda officials have been captured in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials are convinced that Al Qaeda's head of operations, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, remains in Karachi, hiding in an apartment in this maze of 14 million people, just as Mr. bin al-Shibh did. Mr. Mohammed, whom American investigators consider responsible for masterminding the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, is one of America's most sought men.
At some point in August, Mr. bin al-Shibh and six others suspected of being Qaeda members began arriving at an apartment building in the middle-class Defense Housing Authority area of Karachi, Pakistani officials said.
Their new home was two large apartments on the top floor of an empty four-story apartment building with small shops on the ground floor. There are thousands of similar apartment buildings across Karachi.
A Pakistani militant had been instructed to rent the apartment in his own name two months earlier and wait, officials said, adding that the Pakistani had not been told who would live there.
Each suspected Qaeda member took elaborate precautions to avoid detection as he arrived at the apartment, the officials said. "They came one by one," said one official. "It took them 15 days to assemble there."
For the next month, Mr. bin al-Shibh and his associates never left the building, officials said. The Pakistani man and the wife of one suspected Qaeda member took food and other supplies there.
Mr. bin al-Shibh and the other men spent their days using three satellite phones and five laptop computers to log on to the Internet, the officials said. A compact disc writer, a set of earphones with a microphone and more than five hundred compact discs were found in the apartment, along with a television.
The men appeared to have no shortage of money and weapons. The police found what Pakistani officials called a large amount of Pakistani currency in the apartment and a small arsenal of hand grenades, rifles and pistols.
Pakistani officials say they believe that the group was manufacturing compact discs in the apartment, possibly for recruiting purposes. They also say they believe that Mr. bin al-Shibh communicated with other members of Al Qaeda online. American law enforcement officials who, according to the Pakistanis, seized the money and the equipment found in the apartment declined to comment.
Pakistani officials say Mr. bin al-Shibh's arrest disrupted Al Qaeda's network in the city but did not eliminate it. A yearlong crackdown by the country's ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has failed to stop Pakistani militants from aiding Qaeda members.
"There are a lot of Pakistanis helping them," said a Pakistani law enforcement official. "I'm sure that right now there would be Pakistanis renting apartments. If they are feeling insecure they just go to another one."
Karachi has long been a center of militancy, but it is not the lone site of such support or of anti-American sentiment. A threatened war with Iraq and American support for Israel are stoking rising anger at the United States.
In October a coalition of Islamic religious parties vowing to eradicate corruption, establish Islamic law and remove American soldiers and law enforcement agents from Pakistan won a record 20 percent of seats in the lower house of Parliament.
Mr. bin al-Shibh's case shows the importance of even a modicum of local support. While officials in Washington attributed his capture to American surveillance of satellite telephone calls, Pakistani officials insist that a tip from a local source led them to Mr. bin al-Shibh. They said some people in Karachi had helped hide the senior Qaeda operative, while others had betrayed him.
The description of Mr. bin al-Shibh's activities given by Pakistani officials is similar to that of a reporter for Al Jazeera television who interviewed Mr. bin al-Shibh and Mr. Mohammed in a Karachi apartment in June.
The Jazeera reporter, Yosri Fouda, said Mr. bin al-Shibh sat on the floor surrounded by three laptop computers and five cellphones and spent much of his time quietly "fiddling with his laptops."
Mr. bin al-Shibh said in the interview that he and Mohamed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, had used an elaborate code to remain in contact by e-mail and chat rooms while Mr. Atta attended flight school in the United States.
One of the final conversations between the two men, who were roommates in Hamburg in the late 1990's, involved Mr. Atta pretending that he was a German student in America speaking to his girlfriend Jenny in Germany in a chat room, Mr. Fouda said.
The chaotic raid that netted Mr. bin al-Shibh appears to have caught him by surprise, investigators said. The Pakistani police raided several apartments on the night of Sept. 10 and entered Mr. bin al-Shibh's building about 8 a.m. on Sept. 11.
Ten heavily armed policemen burst into one of the two adjacent apartments, surprising four groggy Arab men lying on the floor, according to two witnesses. One of the men hurled a grenade, wounding three policemen. A second Arab lunged toward a bag and was shot dead by a policeman. The bag turned out to be full of grenades and ammunition, according to two witnesses.
As the police subdued the three remaining men, Mr. bin al-Shibh and other men in the adjacent apartment fired a rifle and threw hand grenades at the police. One bullet struck a policeman in the chest.
Shocked by the resistance they were encountering, the police hustled their three prisoners and four wounded colleagues downstairs. Using a megaphone, they ordered the remaining men to surrender. Mr. bin al-Shibh and two other men refused, but they sent out one Arab man's wife and child.
For the next two hours, the police fired dozens of bullets and tear gas canisters at the apartment, but Mr. bin al-Shibh and the two other men did not emerge. Around noon, five policemen again entered the building. Witnesses said they were muttering prayers to themselves and feared for their lives.
Mr. bin al-Shibh and two others made a last stand in a windowless kitchen in the corner of the apartment, firing a rifle at policemen in the hallway. Officers shouted for them to surrender, according to two witnesses. They shouted back, "Bastard! Bastard!" in English. When one of the men ran out of the kitchen, the police shot him dead.
At some point the rifle the surrounded men were using jammed. They then hurled kitchen knives, forks and a pan at the officers. The police finally fired a canister of vomit-inducing tear gas into the kitchen. Ten seconds later, Mr. bin al-Shibh and another man walked out coughing, with their hands up.
"By then, we were expecting we would find Osama bin Laden," said one of the officers involved in the raid. "I was very annoyed when I did not see Osama."
While the other man quickly got down on his knees, Mr. bin al-Shibh tried to grab an officer's gun and was tackled, according to witnesses. He struggled furiously as he was bound, recited verses from the Koran and shouted at the officers: "You're going to hell! You're going to hell!" in Arabic, according to one witness.
Most of the policemen involved in the arrest have since moved because they fear being killed in retaliation, Pakistani officials said.
But one officer said he was proud of the arrest. "They are letting us down, us Muslims down," he said, referring to Al Qaeda's use of violence.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Scientists Say a Quest for Clean Energy Must Begin Now
November 1, 2002
New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/science/01CLIM.html
Meeting the world's rising energy needs without increasing global warming will require a research effort as ambitious as the Apollo project to put a man on the moon, a diverse group of scientists and engineers is reporting today.
To supply energy needs 50 years from now without further influencing the climate, up to three times the total amount of energy now generated using coal, oil, and other fossil fuels will have to be produced using methods that generate no heat-trapping greenhouse gases, the scientists said in today's issue of the journal Science. In addition, they said, the use of fossil fuels will have to decline, and to achieve these goals research will have to begin immediately.
Without prompt action, the atmosphere's concentration of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, is expected to double from pre-industrial levels by the end of this century, the scientists said.
"A broad range of intensive research and development is urgently needed to produce technological options that can allow both climate stabilization and economic development,"the team said.
The researchers called for intensive new efforts to improve existing technologies and develop others like fusion reactors or space-based solar power plants. They did not estimate how much such a research effort would cost, but it is considered likely to run into tens of billions of dollars in government and private funds.
The researchers, a team of 18 scientists from an array of academic, federal, and private research centers, said many options should be explored because some were bound to fail and success, somewhere, was essential.
The researchers all work at institutions that might themselves benefit from increased energy research spending, but other experts not involved in the work said the new analysis was an important, and sobering, refinement of earlier projections.
As they now exist, most energy technologies, the scientists said, "have severe deficiencies." Solar panels, new nuclear power options, windmills, filters for fossil fuel emissions and other options are either inadequate or require vastly more research and development than is currently planned in the United States or elsewhere, they said.
The assessment contrasts with an analysis of climate-friendly energy options made last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international panel of experts that works under United Nations auspices. That analysis concluded that existing technologies, diligently applied, would solve much of the problem.
One author of the new analysis, Dr. Haroon S. Kheshgi, is a chemical engineer for Exxon Mobil, whose primary focus remains oil, which along with coal generates most of the carbon dioxide accumulating in the air from human activities.
Still, Dr. Kheshgi said on Thursday that "climate change is a serious risk" requiring a shift away from fossil fuels. "You need a quantum jump in technology," he said. "What we're talking about here is a 50- to 100-year time scale."
Dr. Martin I. Hoffert, the lead author and a New York University physics professor, said he was convinced the technological hurdles could be overcome, but worried that the public and elected officials may not see the urgency.
In interviews, several of the authors and other experts said there were few signs that major industrial nations were ready to engage in an ambitious quest for clean energy.
Prof. Richard L. Schmalensee, a climate-policy expert and the dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, said the issue of climate change remained too complex and contentious to generate the requisite focus. "There is no substitute for political will," he said.
The Bush administration has resisted sharp shifts in energy policy while Europe and Japan have accepted a climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, that includes binding deadlines for modest cuts in gas emissions. At international climate talks that end today in New Delhi, leaders of developing countries rejected limits on their fast-growing use of fossil fuels, saying rich countries should act first.
President Bush has called for more research, led by the Energy Department, on many of the technologies examined in the new analysis. But some energy and climate experts said the extent of the challenge would likely require far more focus and money than now exists.
Among the possibilities are space-based arrays of solar panels that might beam energy to earth using microwaves. The panel described various nuclear options, including the still-distant fusion option and new designs for fission-based power plants that might overcome limits on uranium and other fuels.
Planting forests, which absorb carbon dioxide, cannot possibly keep up with the anticipated growth in energy use as developing countries become industrialized and as global population rises toward nine billion or more, the panel said.
Some environmental campaigners criticized the study's focus on still-distant technologies, saying it could distract from the need to do what is possible now to reduce emissions of warming gases.
"Techno-fixes are pipe dreams in many cases," said Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace, which has been conducting a broad campaign against Exxon Mobil. "The real solution," he said, "is cutting the use of fossil fuels by any means necessary."
----
Massive Solar Development Underway in Arizona
November 1, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-01-09.asp#anchor3
PRESCOTT, Arizona, The first phase of what will be one of the largest solar generating facilities in the world was dedicated Wednesday in Prescott.
The completed Prescott Airport Solar Power Plant will distribute 450 kilowatts (kW) of solar generated electricity onto the grid of APS, Arizona's largest electricity utility. By March 2003, Phase 1 will be complete with 1.5 megawatts (1,500 kW) available to APS customers.
Within the next three to five years, APS plans to expand the facility's capacity to five megawatts, providing enough power for more than 2,000 homes.
Workers put the finishing touches on the first phase of what eventually will become one of the largest solar photovoltaic power plants in the world. (Photo courtesy APS)
"Arizona, home of the Grand Canyon, will host a new landmark - the largest photovoltaic generating station in the world - once the Prescott project is complete," said Glenn Hamer, executive director of the Solar Energy Industries Association. "I salute APS for making such a commitment to developing solar energy. It is a model for others to follow."
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the largest existing photovoltaic solar power plant is a 3.3 megawatt facility in Italy. Other such facilities may come on line before the scheduled completion of the Prescott Airport facility, but Hamer said he is not aware of any planned with this scope.
The plant will occupy about 50 acres near the Prescott Municipal Airport. The Prescott site was selected based on its high elevation, clear skies and cool temperatures, which allow the photovoltaic panels to operate efficiently.
Construction of the plant began in July. It features photovoltaic technology that tracks the sun's movement for maximum efficiency.
In addition to this project, APS has constructed solar facilities in Flagstaff, Tempe, Scottsdale, Gilbert, Yuma, Glendale and at Prescott's Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. APS plans to have three megawatts (3,000 kilowatts) of solar capacity installed by the end of 2003.
The dedication of the Prescott Airport site comes at the end of Solar Energy Month, as proclaimed by Arizona Governor Jane Hull.
"The sun is Arizona's most abundant natural resource, and we need to find new ways to harness its energy," Governor Hull said. "I applaud APS for being among the leaders in this effort and I urge the industry to continue exploring opportunities to realize solar energy's full potential. The Prescott Airport Solar Power Plant will help put Arizona at the forefront of solar technology."
Electricity generated by the plant will feed directly into the electrical grid system that serves APS' 874,000 customers in 11 of the state's 15 counties. It is financed in part by APS and participating customers who, as APS Solar Partners, pay $2.64 per month to have 15 kW hours of their electricity needs generated by solar power. There are about 3,000 Solar Partners in Arizona.
----
U.S. scientists say fossil fuel alternatives lacking
Friday, November 01, 2002
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/11/11012002/reu_48859.asp
WASHINGTON - U.S. scientists Thursday called for a major investment into research and development of alternative energy sources, saying no current technology provides an adequate replacement for the the fossil fuels that contribute to global warming.
The scientists said they evaluated possible future energy sources, including wind and solar power, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, that do not produce carbon dioxide, one of the gases believed to be trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere.
Writing in the journal Science, they said they had identified several promising technologies, but none presently are a suitable alternative that could meet growing energy needs around the world. They called for a broad range of investment in research and development of those and other technologies.
"What our research clearly shows is that scientific innovation can only reverse this trend if we adopt an aggressive, global strategy for developing alternative fuel sources that can produce up to three times the amount of power we use today," New York University physicist Martin Hoffert said. "Currently, these technologies simply don't exist, either operationally or as pilot projects," Hoffert said.
The energy alternatives were evaluated for the ability to supply mass amounts of carbon-emission-free energy and their potential for large-scale commercialization.
The study noted several limitations of current technology. For example, replacing combustion engines with fuel cell engines may cut carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles. But the current process of producing the hydrogen required to power fuel cells actually generates more carbon dioxide emissions than the combustion engines would create, Hoffert said.
"We conclude that a broad range of intensive research and development is urgently needed to produce technological options that can allow both climate stabilization and economic development," the scientists said.
-------- environment
At Climate Meeting, Unlikely Ally for Have-Nots
November 1, 2002
New York Times
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/international/asia/01DELH.html
NEW DELHI, Friday, Nov. 1 - When India's prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, finished speaking at the international conference on climate here on Wednesday, the fissure between richer and poorer countries over how best to tackle global warming could no longer be papered over.
In his speech, he argued that poorer countries could not be expected to invest money in tackling the causes of global warming. They bear little responsibility, he said, producing fewer greenhouse gases than industrialized countries, and yet have been hit harder by the natural calamities, from drought to floods, caused by climate changes. They have weaker economies, and with pressing needs in everything from health to education, can little afford to invest in clean-air technologies.
His speech articulated sentiments - resentments, in some cases - widely shared among developing nations. So while it produced little new of substance, the conference, the eighth since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992, illuminated the challenges in crafting a global response to global warming.
It highlighted a divide between north and south, between the industrialized and developing worlds, over who should bear the obligations and burdens of trying to reduce the emissions that cause global warming.
But on several points, the south found itself with an unlikely ally: the United States, which under the Bush administration has also blanched at joining efforts to reduce emissions.
Instead, the United States joined India and other developing countries in encouraging a focus on developing the technology and finding the resources to adapt to climate change.
India and others argued that developed countries should offer technical and financial assistance to help developing countries adapt.
It was not clear whether the conference's final declaration, which was still being negotiated this morning, would contain a reference to the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 climate pact completed last year and endorsed by most of the world's countries.
The Bush administration had rejected the pact, saying that fulfilling its requirements to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases could hurt America's economy. The United States is the largest producer of greenhouse gases, and many believe its rejection of the pact has undercut its potential effectiveness.
A draft declaration drawn up earlier this week did not mention Kyoto at all. But the latest version included an innocuous reference that said that parties that have ratified the protocol should encourage those that have not to do so "in a timely manner."
The pact must be ratified by at least 55 countries and by the industrialized nations that emitted at least 55 percent of the industrialized world's carbon dioxide in 1990. With the United States out, that number can only be reached if Russia ratifies the treaty. At the conference, the Russian delegation indicated that ratification was eventually likely, but only after Parliament passed a law in favor of ratification.
If Russia has been hesitant about ratifying the Kyoto pact because of the withdrawal of the United States, India may have been emboldened by America's rejection of formal commitments to reduce emissions of warming gases.
"We do not see targets and timetables as realistic for developing countries," the head of the American delegation, Paula Dobriansky, the under secretary of state for global affairs, said in an interview today.
Instead, the American delegation here repeatedly sounded two themes: that adapting to climate change is as essential as preventing it, and that economic growth is the key to environmental progress.
The European Union and Japan, accordingly, have been pressing developing nations to commit to reducing the emission of warming gases.
But it was exactly such pressures that seem to have contributed to the estrangement between north and south. A member of the Indian delegation said that the pressure from the European Union and Japan had crossed the line from "persuasion" to "aggression." Mr. Vajpayee's speech was partly in response.
-------- human rights
Syrian Kurds Speak Out for Equality
Fri Nov 1, 2002
By ZEINA KARAM,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021101/ap_on_re_mi_ea/syria_kurds_1
Most of Syria's Kurds live along the border with Iraq and have watched enviously as their Iraqi brothers govern themselves and make money from oil - all with U.S. and British planes protecting them from attack by Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).
Now that Iraqi Kurds are gaining even more stature as potential allies in a war on Saddam, the Kurds next door in Syria are starting to speak out about their own demands for equality and the right to teach their children and publish newspapers in their own language.
Use of Kurdish in schools and publications is illegal, and Syrian authorities have traditionally viewed the 8 percent Kurdish minority with suspicion. But lately the government has appeared willing to at least show more openness to Syria's Kurds.
"Kurds are an integral part of Syrian society and should have the same rights as Syrian citizens," said Marwan Zirki, head of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Gathering, one of 14 Kurdish groups in Syria, none of which is recognized by the government.
"I was born in this land and have lived and served in this land," says 60-year-old Ibrahim Omari. "My blood is one hundred percent Syrian."
The Kurds are descendants of an ancient people who lived in what today are parts of Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Throughout history they have bridled under the rule of others, and in the last decade thousands of Kurds have been killed as Turkey and Iraq put down Kurdish revolts.
Syrian Kurds have been spared such upheaval, but they - and Western human rights groups - complain of a lack of basic rights of official neglect in the poor provinces of Hasakeh and Qamishli where most live.
The Syrian Constitution does not mention the 1.5 million Kurds in this country of 18.3 million.
In the poor and mainly Kurdish neighborhood of Rokn El-Din in Damascus, the only sign of Kurdish identity is in street names, and Kurds say most of the residents speak their language only indoors.
About 160,000 Kurds have been denied Syrian nationality, meaning they cannot vote, own property, go to state schools or get government jobs. They carry special red identity cards that identify them as "foreigners."
Also, some 75,000 Kurds are not recognized at all and have no identity cards. They cannot even be treated in state hospitals or get marriage certificates. They are called "maktoumeen," or unregistered.
One "maktoumeen," 18-year-old Rankeen, said he is so discouraged he wants to emigrate to Germany as a refugee.
"It's like I don't exist. If I die, there is nothing to prove I was ever alive," said Rankeen, who gave only his first name.
He said he was born in Syria, but his grandfather was stripped of citizenship in a 1962 census aimed at finding Kurds who came illegally from Turkey. Those who could not prove they had lived in Syria since 1945 lost their citizenship.
The government maintains that Kurds who fled from Turkey or Iraq are not Syrians, but that Kurds who are citizens enjoy the same rights as other Syrians.
Syria, Turkey and Iran fear a war on Iraq would split the country, leading to an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq and new demands for independence by the region's other Kurds.
Now, Iraqi Kurds are seeking to convince surrounding nations - and the United States, which also opposes a breakup of Iraq - that all they want is autonomous status in an Iraqi federation.
In an unusual move, Syrian Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam met with an Iraqi Kurdish delegation recently. And when Syria's Kurdish groups recently held an unprecedented round-table discussion of their plight, many Syrian intellectuals participated and authorities did not interfere.
Syria's nascent human rights groups have complained about the suffering and poverty of the Kurds.
In August, President Bashar Assad made what is believed to be the first visit to Kurdish areas by a Syrian leader since the country's independence in 1946. Assad did not mention the Kurds in his speech; he spoke of "national unity" and the "need to abide by law and order (news - Y! TV)."
Abdul-Hamid Darwish, head of the Kurdish Progressive and Democratic Party in Syria, told The Associated Press the Syrian Kurds do not want separation from Syria.
"We do not seek the establishment of a Kurdish area," he said. "We just want to administrate our area and to freely practice our cultural, social and political rights."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Nuclear Threat Initiative Fact Sheet
http://www.nti.org/b_aboutnti/b4_programs.html
The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) is a charitable organization that was established in response to two central challenges:
Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons represent the world's single greatest threat. There is an increasingly dangerous gap between the global threat and the global response.
NTI is working to close the growing and increasingly dangerous gap between the threat from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the global response by:
Taking direct action to reduce the threat through start-up, pilot, and model initiatives that the government and private sector could replicate on a larger scale. Encouraging others to take action to reduce the threat by being a catalyst for action, working to promote dialogue, building common ground, and increasing public awareness of the gaps between the threat and the response. These gaps include a gap in the way governments are organized to address the threat, a gap in resources and a gap in thinking about this issue.
NTI seeks to contribute to policies and activities that:
Bring nuclear, biological and chemical weapons materials under secure control and reduce their quantities; Restrict the spread of weapons know-how; Reduce the risk of intentional or accidental use of weapons of mass destruction; Develop better strategies and means to guard against the threat from biological weapons; Bring about changes in nuclear forces to enhance safety, security and stability; and Increase public awareness, encourage dialogue, catalyze action and promote new thinking about reducing the dangers from weapons of mass destruction on a global basis.
NTI was established in January 2001 by Ted Turner who has pledged to provide $250 million to the organization - believed to be the largest sum any private individual has ever invested in these security issues. Mr. Turner is the founder of CNN and Vice Chairman of AOL Time Warner, Inc.
Former Senator Sam Nunn and Mr. Turner co-chair the foundation. Senator Nunn, who also serves as Chief Executive Officer, served as a U.S. Senator from Georgia for 24 years (1972-1996). He served as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and is known for his leadership on national security issues and international affairs. The foundation's activities are directed by Senator Nunn and managed by President Charles B. Curtis.
NTI is a global initiative, concentrating in the United States, Russia, other nations of the former Soviet Union, and on those regions of greatest proliferation concern in Asia and the Middle East. Our main office is in Washington, DC and in January 2002, we opened an office in Moscow to more directly engage in our work there.
NTI's experienced, international Board of Directors who guide the overall direction of the foundation, include:
Ted Turner, Co-Chairman Sam Nunn, Co-Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Charles B. Curtis, President & Chief Operating Officer; U.S. Senator Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico); Susan Eisenhower, President of The Eisenhower Institute; Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, Chairman of the Board, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute; General Eugene Habiger USAF (Ret.), former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Strategic Command; HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan; Dr. Andrei Kokoshin, Deputy of the Russian Duma; U.S. Senator Richard G. Lugar (R-Indiana); Ambassador Vladimir Lukin, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Duma; Dr. Jessica Mathews, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Dr. William Perry, former U.S. Secretary of Defense; Dr. Nafis Sadik, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General Professor Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College at Cambridge University; Rt. Hon. Shirley Williams, House of Lords, UK; and Professor Fujia Yang, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Mission and Programs
NTI is working to strengthen global security by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
All activities of NTI will be conducted with full transparency with the U.S. and other governments. As a general rule, NTI will not undertake activities that are inherently the responsibility of government, with the exception of educational efforts or demonstration projects designed to "show the way."
We hope that part of what NTI offers is fresh thinking on long-standing problems. But we also aim to do more than think. We intend to match our thoughts with actions. For this reason we have established NTI as an operational organization - actively engaged in developing, shaping and implementing the projects we fund. Our activities focus on projects that can be replicated on a larger scale by governments and the private sector, promoting dialogue, building common ground and increasing public awareness of the threats.
NTI's approach to grant-making differs from traditional foundations because of our operational orientation. The majority of NTI's awards support operational activities that NTI has taken a strong hand in developing. While we do not have a formal award-making cycle, NTI does fund some traditional grants.
NTI will consider unsolicited projects that:
Address significant high-risk situations involving weapons of mass destruction and weapons materials; Generate additional funding and leverage action for threat reduction; and Promote core objectives of NTI.
NTI is currently engaged in activities in five key program areas:
Communications and Education NTI seeks to help close the gap between the global threats and the global response by taking direct action to reduce the threats and encouraging others to take action to reduce the threats. It's this second mission - to be a catalyst for action - that is at the heart of NTI's communications and education program.
The focus of NTI's communication and outreach work is to:
Increase the quality and accessibility of information about the threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; Promote dialogue and common ground solutions to reduce imminent global dangers; Support new thinking and the development of new expertise to reduce the risk of use and prevent the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; and Take the debate on these issues beyond the small group of policymakers and experts who work on them into the mainstream public policy debate.
Russia/New Independent States Ten years ago, the Soviet Union broke apart, leaving as its legacy approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads and enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium to make 60,000 more; 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons; an elaborate bioweapons research apparatus, and tens of thousands of scientists who know how to make weapons and missiles, but whose jobs are no longer assured. Over the last decade, a sustained U.S.-Russian Cooperative Threat Reduction effort has reduced these dangers, but much more needs to be done. Dismantling weapons, securing material, eliminating infrastructure, and directing know-how to peaceful pursuits - all of these play an essential role in fighting the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
NTI's Russia/NIS programs are focused on:
1.Securing, consolidating and reducing the essential elements of nuclear weapons: highly enriched uranium and weapon-grade plutonium. The relative ease of obtaining weapons designs and non-nuclear components makes control over nuclear materials our first line of defense for preventing terrorist groups or hostile forces from developing or obtaining nuclear weapons.
2.Leveraging additional resources to address proliferation threats posed by nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and their associated materials, infrastructure and human capitol.
3.Developing projects in partnership with host countries with local approaches and perspectives as an inherent part of the projects. Our work is guided by the successful history of scientist-to-scientist cooperation between U.S. and Russian specialists and the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program.
Biological
Unlike nuclear or chemical weapons, biological weapons are relatively easy to produce, inexpensive, and capable of inflicting significant damage even in the absence of large quantities of material or elaborate delivery mechanisms. Pathogens suitable for bioweapons can be concealed and transported with little difficulty. Many are commonly found in nature, as well as in government, university and industry laboratories. In addition, information about how to obtain and prepare bioweaponry is increasingly available through the Internet and open scientific literature.
Compared to the nuclear arena, both the strategic and analytic framework for addressing the bioweapons threat, as well as the breadth and depth of expertise, are much less developed. By its very nature, the bioweapons threat - with its close links to naturally occurring infectious agents and disease - requires a different paradigm. The growing concerns about the biological weapons threat challenge traditional ways of thinking about prevention, deterrence, nonproliferation, and response, and require us to think anew about how to define and implement enduring solutions.
While most of the current focus of public attention has been on the response to a biological attack, the myriad intrinsic difficulties in mounting an effective response to a biological attack once it has occurred - and the casualties that will inevitably result - compel us to more closely examine what can be accomplished to prevent and reduce the fundamental threat, as well as to improve early warning and rapid detection systems to minimize casualties in the face of an event.
The NTI bioweapons threat reduction framework is focused on:
Increasing education, awareness and communication;
Engaging the scientific community to reduce access to dangerous pathogens and establish normative standards for the conduct and practice of scientific research;;
Scientific cooperation and collaboration with the former Soviet Union;
Enhancing global infectious disease surveillance, early detection, and rapid response;
Building new partnerships among the public health/science and intelligence/law enforcement communities;
Furthering bioterrorism preparedness and consequence management; and
Addressing agricultural terrorism.
Regional NTI's regional program focuses primarily on three regions of proliferation concern - the Middle East, South Asia, and Northeast Asia. The nature of the threat varies among these regions and includes such challenges as:
State-controlled weapons of mass destruction and missile programs are increasing in number and gaining momentum;
Terrorist organizations are establishing their cells and seeking to procure the wherewithal for weapons that can inflict mass casualties;
Illicit cargoes containing ingredients for weapons of mass destruction programs are transiting ports and crossing borders undetected;
Small but dangerous inventories of weapons of mass destruction-usable materials are stored in the absence of accountancy and physical protection that meet international standards; and
Long-standing disputes and non-conventional weapons aspirations combine to increase the likelihood that nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction will be used.
NTI's threat reduction efforts will be designed to address the unique circumstances of each region. Unlike threat reduction efforts in Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union, where a substantial track record of effective cooperation already exists, international experience in these three regions is relatively limited - especially on the part of non-governmental institutions seeking to reduce tensions and avert weapons of mass destruction threats. In addition, the thinking on how to approach regional threats is much less developed than it is in the U.S.-Russia context. Yet, we recognize that the most acute and destabilizing weapons of mass destruction threats of the 21st century are likely to arise in the Middle East and Asia.
While we work to complete our regional strategy, we have gone forward with some initial project activities - in some cases, concept development studies to define frameworks and activities for potential program action, and in other cases to address needs, for example, the need to strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency's program to secure vulnerable nuclear materials worldwide.
United States There is a growing realization that the current U.S. nuclear force posture was designed for a world that no longer exists; that stability is weakened because symmetry is in doubt; that the U.S. needs to re-define deterrence; and, that it can be achieved with far fewer weapons. There is also growing understanding that Russia's weakened economic condition and degraded warning systems, coupled with the large nuclear rapid strike potential of the United States, is moving Russia toward a force posture that is more reliant on "launch-on-warning" and more prone to accidents and miscalculations.
During the Cold War, quick launch status carried important deterrent value. But it also came with a high risk that it could force a quick - and catastrophic - decision. Today, for two nations at peace, these risks are no longer necessary. We must expand decision time in both the United States and Russia to reduce toward zero the risk of a catastrophic mistake made from too little information and too little time.
Changing the force postures will require bold and determined Presidential leadership. It will also require new thinking about how to speed the pace of nuclear force structure change by both the U.S. and Russia without losing the transparency, verifiability and stability that are the benefits of traditional arms control. Yet, the large value of these aims should provoke a common purpose - and a basis for reaching consensus.
NTI supports a fundamental governmental review and policy discussion of the role and purpose of nuclear weapons in the aftermath of the Cold War. Specifically, this includes an examination of: (a) options for consideration by governments on the operational force posture of U.S. and Russian forces; (b) the prevention of accidental launches; and (c) potential changes in each country's response systems that will give each President more nuclear decision-making time -- to move their fingers further from the nuclear trigger; and (d) further arms reductions.
Projects underway include the development of:
Specific proposals for consideration by governments to increase decision time for launching U.S. or Russian strategic nuclear systems and an assessment of the impact of those proposals on overall strategic stability; and;
Complementary means for monitoring implementation of any unilateral arms reductions undertaken in the United States and Russia so as to achieve some of the benefits of traditional arms control - predictability, stability and transparency.
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9/11 Relatives, Suing Saudis, to Protest Today
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 1, 2002; Page A36
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49278-2002Oct31?language=printer
Relatives of people who died in the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are scheduled to hold a rally at the U.S. Capitol today to protest what they fear are plans by the Bush administration to delay or block their lawsuit against prominent Saudi individuals for an alleged role in financing al Qaeda.
The suit -- filed in federal court here in August against dozens of wealthy Saudi business figures, members of the Saudi royal family and leading Muslim charities -- has caused concern among U.S. officials, who believe it could damage relations with Riyadh, government sources said.
But U.S. officials say they have not decided whether to submit a motion seeking to restrict the lawsuit or take some other legal action.
U.S. officials likely would not try to block the lawsuit outright, but might seek to limit it in scope by informing the judge of the diplomatic sensitivities, international lawyers said. The suit, whose plaintiffs include about 3,000 relatives of the Sept. 11, 2001, victims as well as some survivors, seeks up to $1 trillion in damages.
David White, a spokesman for the legal team that filed the lawsuit, said the Sept. 11 families will stage the rally to express their "deep concern'' at the prospect that the government might intervene.
"Mr. President, your decision in this matter will determine whether our government stands with American families or Saudi royalty," 28 of the plaintiffs said in a letter sent yesterday to President Bush.
Among the defendants are Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister; and Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to Britain.
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New Action on Iraq
From: "Adam Hughes" <ahughes@psr.org>
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 15:30:10 -0500
PSR has posted a new action for activists on Iraq on the PSR Legislative Action Center. Now you can automatically send a letter to the President expressing your concern over the rapidly intensifying war effort and urge the President to allow U.N. weapons inspections to disarm Iraq.
You can access the action through the Legislative Action Center at http://capwiz.com/physicians/issues/ or directly at http://capwiz.com/physicians/issues/alert/?alertid=816066
For a listing of PSR resources on Iraq, go to www.psr.org/iraq.htm
Adam Hughes, M.A. Policy Analyst Security Program Physicians for Social Responsibility 1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW Suite 1012 Washington, DC 20009 Phone: 202.667.4260 x252 Fax: 202.667.4201 ahughes@psr.org
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Halloween Parade - NYC
By Erin McClam
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 1, 2002; 7:29 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50352-2002Nov1?language=printer
NEW YORK -- The spectacle towered over Sixth Avenue - a 16-foot, papier-mache likeness of President Bush, clad only in a cowboy hat and diaper and reaching for toy missile launchers.
"You're supposed to scare people for Halloween, and nothing is scarier than war," said Talia Braude, who rigged up the mock president and marched with it in Greenwich Village's rollicking parade.
The Bush sendup was one of dozens of floats and costumes that spoofed current events at the parade, which organizers say draws a million people a year....
Last year, for a parade held less than two months after the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, the theme was a phoenix rising from the ashes....
On the Net:
Parade site: http://www.halloween-nyc.com
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