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NUCLEAR
Testimony in Support of Baltimore's Anti-Iraq War Resolution
U.N. Inspectors Get Training in N.J.
''Iraq's nuclear non-capability''
Japan May Speed Up Missile Shield Plans
Pakistan's Benazir oversaw Korea nuclear deal, says sources
N. Korea Open to Salvage Nuke Pact
North Korea, Accusing U.S., Says Nuclear Pact Has Collapsed
CIA: N. Korea Can Build More Nukes
Memo Discloses Missing Lab Equipment
As water levels rise, Va. nuke exits unusual event
Senate OKs bill on haven for Iraqis
Spending Deadlock Will Delay Some Programs of New Security Department
MILITARY
Albanians Indicted for War Crimes
War Crime Convict Seeks New Trial
NATO to have first joint exercise with EU
Eurofighter crashes in Spain
Blood for oil?
In Response to Bus Bombing, Israeli Forces Enter Bethlehem
Chavez said to arm Venezuela vigilantes
Kuwaiti Officer Shoots U.S. Soldiers
NATO leaders make radical changes to bloc
NATO admits seven new members
NATO new boys 'ready for war'
NATO Leaders Join Demands for Iraq to Disarm
NATO Leaders Approve Strike Force
Pentagon confirms 'snooping' system
CIA Concerned About Data Overload
America's Intelligence System
Rumsfeld gives 'blank sheet' to update special operations
Pentagon Unveils Security Upgrades
The Downside of Foreign Military Intervention
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Euro-police 'can chase British suspects'
F.B.I. Officials Say Some Agents Lack a Focus on Terror
What Price Freedom?
DEA takes on proliferating 'club drugs'
Afghan Poppy Planting Season Begins
College will continue enrolling illegal aliens
How will the new homeland security bill affect you?
U.S. Officials Identify Captured Al Qaeda Leader
Terrorism: Fascism's best, most loyal, helpmate
OTHER
Experts Debate Global Warming
ACTIVISTS
Veterans Against The Iraq War
S.Koreans Injured in Clash During Anti - U.S. Protest
Learning to dodge the draft in Russia
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Testimony in Support of Baltimore's Anti-Iraq War Resolution
Thursday, November 21 2002
Palestine Chronicle (palestinechronicle.com).
Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA)
By William Hughes
http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=200211211922408
Re: Council Bill No. 02-0944, "In Opposition to A Declaration of War Against Iraq"
Public Hearing-November 20, 2002
Mr. Chairman, the Hon. Robert Curran, and Members of the Baltimore City Council's Judiciary and Legislative Investigations Committee:
My name is William Hughes. I'm a resident of the 2nd District. I'm here tonight to lend my support to the "Anti-Iraq War Resolution" and to also to express my objections to the editors of the Baltimore Sun for criticizing this legislative body, in a Nov. 13 editorial, for holding this hearing.
The right of the people to Petition their government is a right older than the Republic itself. When the Sunpaper disparaged that right, it only demonstrated its own ignorance of our history, and its indifference to the important issues being considered tonight before this Committee.
I believe that there is no justification whatsoever for any U.S. led war against Iraq. And, under no circumstances, should President George W. Bush Jr. take any military action against Iraq, absent the approval of the UN's Security Council.
Bush's "Preemptive Strike Doctrine" is just a fancy way of allowing him to attack someone "first" hat he doesn't like. In the Nuclear Age, conducting foreign policy in that kind of reckless manner can lead one tragic day to a nuclear exchange, with possibly Russia, Red China, or North Korea.
The nuclear club is growing as I speak. This new and dangerous policy, created by Bush's "Dr. Strangelove," Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, makes us more prone to a nuclear attack, and not less. Also, our war on terrorism should be against the el Qaeda network, and not the innocent people of Iraq.
We know that Iraq has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. We also know that Bush and his Vice President Dick Cheney have been, in the past, part of the lucrative business of "Big Oil." This could be a possible motive for the U.S. wanting to now attack Iraq.
After Gulf War I, we left 600,000 pounds of depleted uranium in Iraq. It's a radioactive poison, with a half life of 4.5 billion years. Now, we're planning to do it again, contaminate Iraq, and our own troops, too.
Israel, also, wants us to attack Iraq first, and then, Iran! Meanwhile, Israel continues to brutally subjugate the Palestinians, making us more enemies in the Islamic world. Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela both have said: The Israeli oppression of the Palestinians must end!
Finally, if we had a foreign policy based on the values and principles of our Republic, and not on the role of "Global Cop," we could have huge peace dividends for our people. And that money, in the billions of dollars, could be used to make our streets safer, educate our children, restore fully this city, and renew the economy of our state.
Put America's national interest first. Say "No" to any war with Iraq and pass this Anti-Iraq War Resolution.
William Hughes is the author of "Andrew Jackson vs. New World Order" (Authors Choice Press) and "Baltimore Iconoclast" (Writer's Showcase), which are available online. He can be reached at liamhughes@mindspring.com.
-------- inspections
U.N. Inspectors Get Training in N.J.
November 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Weapons-Inspectors-Training.html
HAINESPORT, N.J. (AP) -- Gearing up for duty in Iraq, a team of U.N. inspectors received training at a New Jersey supply company Thursday, learning how to spot industrial equipment that could be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons.
Twenty chemists -- from China, Germany, Australia, Poland, Peru and elsewhere -- spent the day at Perry Videx LLC, walking through an equipment yard to get a firsthand look at the kinds of heat exchangers, scrubbing columns and reactors that can be used to make mustard gas, sarin and other deadly agents.
Perry Videx supplies equipment to the chemical, pharmaceutical and plastic industries.
On Nov. 8, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution threatening ``serious consequences'' if Iraq fails to cooperate with inspections. Iraq must declare its nuclear, chemical, biological and long-range missile programs by Dec. 8.
``It will depend on these inspectors to verify what Iraq has said,'' said Nikita Smidovich, chief of training for the U.N. Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission, who led the delegation Thursday. ``They have to go to Iraq and watch that Iraq is not producing chemical weapons at the chemical plants.''
The group, which has already undergone a five-week basic training program, will await orders to go to Iraq.
Perry Videx president Gregg Epstein, along with sales engineer Michael Ricchini, led the inspectors through a 70-acre yard where hundreds of pieces of used equipment lay, stopping to describe how to tell whether an item might contain the types of corrosive liquids or gases used to make chemical weapons.
Wearing hardhats, notebooks in hand, the inspectors listened intently and scribbled notes about the different types of flanges, bolts and linings they saw.
Vessels made of stainless steel inside and out, for example, should be of no concern, because they could not hold corrosive substances without breaching.
``Glass-lined stainless steel is different,'' Epstein told them.
Smidovich watched over the inspectors, at one point admonishing them -- in a thick Russian accent -- to learn all they could.
``Ask, ask, ask and ask,'' said Smidovich, standing on an 8-foot-long scrubbing column. ``We want to know all information about these.''
Smidovich would not let reporters speak to the inspectors.
The United Nations sought out Perry Videx because of the company's experience in supplying the chemical industry, according to Epstein.
``They asked us,'' he said, ``and we thought it was a good way to contribute -- in a small way -- to the peace effort.''
On the Net:
Perry Videx LLC: www.perryvidex.com
--------
''Iraq's nuclear non-capability''
Printed on Thursday, November 21, 2002
Guest Editorial By Imad Khadduri
YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (Canada)
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=874
(YellowTimes.org) - As the war storm against Iraq swirls and gathers momentum, seeded by the efforts of the American and British governments, serious doubts arise as to the credibility of their intelligence sources, particularly the issue of Iraq's nuclear capability. It has been often noted that reliable intelligence on this matter is not immediately forthcoming. Moreover, such intelligence as has been presented is spurious and often contradictory. Perhaps it is not too late to rectify this misinformation campaign.
I worked with the Iraqi nuclear program from 1968 until my departure from Iraq in late 1998. Having been closely involved in most of the major nuclear activities of that program, from the Russian research reactor in the late sixties, to the French research reactors in the late seventies, the Russian nuclear power program in the early eighties, the nuclear weapons program during the eighties and finally the confrontations with U.N. inspection teams in the nineties, it behooves me to admit that I find present allegations about Iraq's nuclear capability, as continuously advanced by the Americans and the British, to be ridiculous.
Let us go back to 1991. A week before the cessation of a two-month saturation of bombings on the target-rich Iraq, the Americans realized that a certain complex of buildings in Tarmiah, that had just been carpet bombed for lack of any other remaining prominent targets, exhibited unusual swarming activity by rescuers the next morning. When they compared the photographs of that complex with other standing structures in Iraq, they were surprised to find an exact replica of that complex in the north of Iraq, near Sharqat, which was nearing completion. They directed their bombers to demolish the northern complex a few days before the end of hostilities. My family, along with the families of most prominent Iraqi nuclear scientists and the top management of the northern complex, were residing in the housing complex. The Tarmiah and Sharqat complexes were designed for housing the Calutron separators, similar to those used by the American Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bombs that were dropped by the Americans on Japan.
At the end of 1991, after that infamous U.N. inspector, David Kay, got hold of many of the nuclear weapons program's reports (reports whose maintenance and security I had been in charge of), the Americans realized that their saturated bombing had missed a most important complex of buildings: that complex at Al-Atheer, which was the center for the design and assembly of the nuclear bomb. A lone, single bomb, thermally guided, had hit the electric substation outside the perimeter of the complex, causing little damage.
The glaring and revealing detail about these two events is the utter lack of any intelligence about these building complexes -- information that should have caused the repository of American and British intelligence to overflow. That is to say, American and British intelligence had no idea of the programs that those buildings harbored -- programs that had been ongoing at full steam for the previous ten years!
What really happened to Iraq's nuclear weapon program after the 1991 war?
Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, the entire organization that was responsible for the nuclear weapons project turned its attention to the reconstruction of the heavily damaged oil refineries, electric power stations, and telephone exchange buildings. The combined expertise of the several thousand scientific, engineering, and technical cadres manifested itself in the restoration of the oil, electric and communication infrastructure in a matter of months -- an impressive accomplishment, by any measure.
Then the U.N. inspectors were ushered in. The senior scientists and engineers among the nuclear cadre were instructed many times on how to cooperate with the inspectors. We were also asked to hand in to our own officials any reports or incriminating evidence, with heavy penalties (up to the death penalty, in some cases) for failing to do so. In the first few months, the "clean sheets" were hung up for all to see. As the scientific questioning mounted, our scientists began to redirect the questioners to the actual technical documents, themselves, that had been amassed during the ten years of activity. These documents had been traveling up and down and throughout Iraq in a welded train car. Then the order was issued to return the project's documents to their original location. At that point, David Kay pounced on them in the early morning hours of September 1991. Among the documents were those of Al-Atheer and the bomb specifics.
In the following few years, the nuclear weapons project organization was slowly disbanded. By 1994, its various departments were either elevated to independent civilian industrial enterprises, or absorbed within the Military Industrial Authority under Hussain Kamil, who later escaped to Jordan in 1996 and then returned to Baghdad where he was murdered.
Meanwhile, the brinkmanship with the U.N. inspectors continued. At one heated encounter, an American inspector remarked that the nuclear scientists and engineers were still around, and hinted accusingly that those scientists and engineers may be readily used for a rejuvenated nuclear program. The retort was, "What do you want us to do to satisfy you? Ask them to commit suicide?"
In 1994, a report surfaced claiming that Iraq was still manufacturing a nuclear bomb and had been working on it since 1991. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors brought the report to Baghdad, demanding a full explanation. The inspectors requested my opinion on the authenticity of the report, inasmuch as I was the responsible agent for the proper issuance and archiving of all scientific and engineering documents for the nuclear weapons project during the eighties. It was my opinion that the report was well done, and most probably had been written by someone who had detailed knowledge of the established documentation procedures. However, as we pointed out to the IAEA inspectors, certain words used in the report would not normally be used by us, but, rather by Iranians, and we supplied an Arabic-Iranian dictionary to verify our findings. The IAEA inspectors never referred back to that report.
During these years, crushing economic inflation was growing. It would spell the end for most of the Iraqi nuclear scientists' and engineers' careers in the following years.
In 1996, Hussain Kamil, who was in charge of the entire range of chemical, biological and nuclear programs, announced from his self-imposed exile in Amman that there were hidden caches of important documentation on his farm in Iraq. (Apparently, he had had his security entourage stealthily salvage what they thought were the most important pieces of information and documentation in these programs.) The U.N. inspectors pounced on this, and a renewed string of confrontations occurred, until the inspectors were asked to leave Iraq in 1998.
In the last few years of the nineties, we did our utmost to produce a satisfying report to the IAEA inspectors concerning the entire gamut of Iraq's nuclear activities. The IAEA finally issued its report in October 1997, mapping these activities in great detail. The inspectors raised vague, "politically correct" queries which seemed obligatory in their intent.
In the meantime, and this is the gist of my discourse, the economic standing of the Iraqi nuclear scientists and engineers (along with the rest of the civil servants and the professional middle class) has been pathetically reduced to poverty level. Even with occasional salary inducements and some insubstantial benefits, many of those highly-educated persons have been forced to sell their possessions just to keep their families alive. Needless to say, their spirits are very low and their cynicism is high. Relatively few have managed to leave Iraq. The majority are too gripped by poverty, family needs, and fear of the brutal retaliation of the security apparatus to even consider a plan of escape. Their former determination and drive, profoundly evident in the eighties, has been crushed by harsh economic realities; their knowledge and experience grow rusty with the passage of time; their skills atrophy from lack of activity in their fields.
Since my departure from Iraq in late 1998, one cannot help but notice the mien of those former nuclear scientists and engineers as being but a wispy phantom of a once elite cadre representing the zenith of scientific and technical thought in Iraq. Pathetic shadows of their former selves, the overwhelming fear that haunts them is the fear of retirement, with a whopping pension that equates to about $2 a month.
Yet, the American and British intelligence community, obviously influenced by the war agenda, vainly attempts to continue to provide disinformation. For example, a consignment of aluminum pipes (the intelligence experts opine) might conceivably be used in the construction of highly advanced, "kilometers long" centrifugal spinners. The consideration that there are no remaining Iraqi personnel qualified to implement and maintain these supposed spinners seems to have eluded the intelligence agencies' reports.
Last month, a group of journalists was taken on a guided tour of a "possible" uranium extraction plant in Akashat in western Iraq. The Iraqi guide pointed to the obviously demolished buildings and asked tongue-in-cheek, "Who would make any use of these ruins? Maybe your experts would tell us how."
It is true that the Iraqi nuclear scientists and engineers did not commit suicide. But for all the remaining capability they possess to rebuild a nuclear weapons program, they may as well have.
Bush and Blair are leading their public by the nose, attempting to cloak shoddy and erroneous intelligence data with hollow patriotic urgings and cajolery. But the two parading emperors have no clothes.
[Imad Khadduri has a MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan (United States) and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). Khadduri worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 till 1998. He was able to leave Iraq in late 1998 with his family. He now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada.]
Imad Khadduri encourages your comments: imad.khadduri@rogers.com
YellowTimes.org is an international news and opinion publication.
-------- japan
Japan May Speed Up Missile Shield Plans
November 21, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-japan-korea-north-abe.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan has not closed the door on North Korea in their dialogue on normalizing ties, but Tokyo may step up efforts to develop a missile defense shield to counter the threat of an unpredictable Pyongyang, a senior aide to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Thursday.
Deputy Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, a key government point man for North Korea policy, told Reuters it was only natural for Japan to consider a missile defense system as it currently had no means to protect itself from a missile attack.
``The threat is already there. North Korea has 100 Nodong missiles deployed and we have no means to protect ourselves from them,'' Abe told Reuters in an interview.
``So it is an obligation for us to consider missile defense,'' he said, adding that he did not rule out the possibility of Japan moving from the research stage to actual development.
Tokyo is conducting research with Washington on a missile defense system but has stopped short of beginning development because of concerns about cost, feasibility and diplomacy.
China and Russia are opposed to the missile shield, which they see as Washington's way of keeping their military capabilities in check.
But calls to take the next step in the project have grown within Koizumi's cabinet since North Korea admitted last month that it was pursuing a nuclear weapons program in violation of a landmark 1994 agreement with Washington.
Washington is also thought keen to see Tokyo step up its efforts on the project, which was agreed after North Korea launched a missile which flew over Japan in 1998.
North Korea has criticized moves to proceed with the missile defense as undermining efforts to improve bilateral ties, and has threatened to resume missile tests in response.
NO FAMILIES, NO TALKS
Tokyo and Pyongyang resumed stalled talks on establishing diplomatic ties late last month after North Korea admitted abducting 13 Japanese citizens decades ago.
But initial negotiations left the two sides far apart on the key issues of Pyongyang's nuclear arms program and Tokyo's demand that the children of five surviving abductees now visiting Japan be allowed to join them.
Abe, widely seen as a leader of those favoring a tough stance toward Pyongyang, said North Korea must agree to let the abductees' North Korea-born children come to Japan before normalization talks could continue.
But he said Japan was willing to talk.
``It's not that we don't want to come to the negotiating table. We have to work toward setting the conditions so that the normalization talks can continue,'' said Abe, who has often criticized Japanese diplomats for putting the normalization of ties ahead of resolving the abductee issue.
JAPAN HAS UPPER HAND
At normalization talks in Malaysia late last month, the two sides agreed to discuss security issues in November. But Pyongyang has said it would postpone those discussions unless Japan returned the five abductees now visiting their homeland.
Abe, whose late grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was prime minister, said it was North Korea that had a lot to lose from not holding the security talks.
``The security talks are vital for them. There are a plenty of suspicions about them and unless they clear them up, they won't be accepted into the international community,'' he said.
``They can do that at the security talks.''
He also said a recent decision by an international consortium to stop shipments of fuel oil to the North might force Pyongyang to come to the negotiating table.
Analysts have said the freeze on oil shipments may deal a serious blow to North Korea, which faces a chronic energy shortage, particularly ahead of its severe winter.
Japan, South Korea, the United States and the European Union agreed last week to stop the oil shipments in response to North Korea's shock admission in October that it was proceeding with a nuclear weapons program.
The 1994 deal required North Korea to freeze its nuclear program in return for an annual delivery of 500,000 tons of fuel oil and two light-water nuclear reactors, not easily converted into weapons production, by a consortium called the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization.
-------- korea
Pakistan's Benazir oversaw Korea nuclear deal, says sources
Thursday, November 21, 2002
By Jane Macartney,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/11/11212002/reu_49001.asp
SINGAPORE - North Korea had the nearest thing to a nuclear delivery system suitable for Pakistan's purposes. Pakistan had the bomb and the means to teach Pyongyang to make its own.
The time was the mid-1990s, both states were beleaguered. North Korea was isolated from the world of its own volition, by its dogged adherence to the ideology of juche, or self-reliance, created by late Great Leader Kim Il-sung.
Pakistan was a pariah, in trouble and slapped with sanctions because everyone - or at least the United States - was pretty sure it was clandestinely engaged in trying to obtain missile and fissile technology from China.
In what has become a classic manoeuvre, the two outcasts found a way into each other's arms and arsenals and created one of the most frightening nuclear threats on earth, say Pakistani sources close to the talks who declined to be identified.
Negotiations must have gone on for at least a decade between the two militaries - the Koreans eager to develop nuclear weapons, the Pakistanis desperate for a strategic delivery system that would ensure a potent deterrent to neighbouring India.
MILITARY MANEUVRES
A heaven-sent opportunity presented itself in 1993 when newly elected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto decided her first foreign visit should take her to close ally China. Oddly enough, she then made a two-day side-trip to Pyongyang.
That visit seemed incongruous at the time. Bhutto said her visit would focus on economic relations, including North Korean assistance in building small hydroelectric dams in Pakistan.
In fact, the trip had other power systems in mind, said one Pakistani source.
Bhutto had undertaken the tour at the behest of her military, which wanted a chance to sit down with their North Korean counterparts and hammer out details of a deal they had been negotiating for some time, the source said.
"The military basically just told her what to do and she went along," said the source. "That was the deal she made with the army for winning office."
A spokesman for Benazir Bhutto in London could not be reached for comment. She was accompanied by Defense Minister Aftab Shabban Mirani, but he played no key role, the source said. Taking a quiet back seat in the delegation but running the show were Pakistan military officers, if not also the powerful Inter Services Intelligence agency, the source said.
Those two days of talks were a chance to start the laborious business of reaching a deal to enable Pakistan to swap its uranium enrichment technology for North Korea's Nodong ballistic missile.
The Nodong is not hugely sophisticated. It is believed to be an enhanced version of the Soviet Scud B surface-to-surface missile with a range of 1,000 km (600 miles) - long enough to deliver a device against South Korea, or India.
Uranium enrichment was perfect for North Korea. Using gas centrifuge technology it could enrich uranium to weapons-grade status and stash it underground. That was not the case with less versatile plutonium, available at the Yongbyon plant but above ground and easily monitored by space imaging.
No one is prepared to go on the record about just who did what when.
RUMORS, BUT WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE?
Reports go that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist known as the father of Pakistan's bomb, has visited North Korea several times, at least once in recent years.
In 1999, the Times of India reported a 1995 deal between a North Korean firm, Changgwang Sinyong (CSC), and Khan Research Laboratories. According to North Korean expert Aidan Foster-Carter, CSC is an arm of the Fourth Machine Industry Bureau of Pyongyang's Second Economic Committee, which means it is military. Few doubt that Pakistan's Ghauri-III missile is essentially a North Korean design, the British expert wrote last year.
Just last year, the commander of the North Korean air force, Colonel-General O Kum-chol, paid a week-long visit to Pakistan, Foster-Carter said. Local news sources were tight-lipped on the agenda, most merely saying that the two sides "discussed matters of professional interest."
This month Pakistan denied a report suggesting it had given recent assistance to North Korea's nuclear program. The Washington Post said Washington had evidence suggesting that Pakistan had assisted Pyongyang's nuclear efforts just a few months ago - much later than previously disclosed.
Whatever the timing, the issue faces the U.S. administration with a difficult choice since, under U.S. law, the president must suspend economic and military aid if a country transfers nuclear technology without international safeguards.
Pakistan was sanctioned for such behaviour in the past but penalties were waived after Washington's antiterror war began in the wake of the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on U.S. cities. Current military leader Pervez Musharraf may still be flavor of the month in Washington for his aid in that war.
But more answers may be forthcoming from exiled Benazir Bhutto who was in Pyongyang when the military seized the opportunity to buttress their own defences with a deal that has since shocked the world.
----
N. Korea Open to Salvage Nuke Pact
By JAE-SUK YOO
Associated Press Writer
Nov 21, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NKOREA_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said Thursday that a 1994 nuclear agreement with the United States collapsed because of the U.S.-led decision to suspend fuel oil deliveries to the communist country.
But in a vaguely worded statement, North Korea's Foreign Ministry appeared to leave open the possibility that the deal might be salvaged. It said an earlier appeal for a nonaggression pact with the United States was aimed at preventing the nuclear agreement from being "derailed at any cost."
It said such a pact was the only "realistic solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula" and did not say it had any plans to restart a suspected nuclear weapons program that was frozen under the 1994 deal.
Last week, the United States and its allies, South Korea, Japan and the European Union, suspended deliveries of fuel oil to the energy-starved North to punish it for violating the 1994 pact by embarking on a second nuclear weapons program.
The oil deliveries are part of the pact known as the Agreed Framework that required a U.S.-led consortium to build two modern nuclear reactors in North Korea. In exchange, the North agreed to dismantle a suspected nuclear weapons program using plutonium.
Despite recent revelations that the North has a second nuclear program, an unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said the blame for the erosion of the Agreed Framework lay with the United States.
"Now that the U.S. unilaterally gave up its last commitment under the framework, the (North) acknowledges that it is high time to decide upon who is to blame for the collapse of the framework," the spokesman said in a statement carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA.
It was the first time that North Korea had publicly said it considered the agreement to have collapsed.
In Washington, a senior State Department official declined comment Thursday, but noted that North Korean officials took a similar position when Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly visited Pyongyang last month.
After his trip, Kelly said North Korean officials told him they considered the 1994 agreement dead, and they admitted to the second nuclear program that uses highly enriched uranium to build bombs.
In recent months, North Korea had repeatedly threatened to abandon the accord, complaining about delays in the construction of the reactors. It also accused Washington of trying to undermine its political system and even invade, citing President Bush's labeling of the North as part of an "axis of evil," along with Iran and Iraq.
The North Korean spokesman said the U.S. assertion that the North violated the Agreed Framework "is a burglary logic of America-style superpower chauvinism that a big country may threaten a small country as it wishes but a small country should not try to cope with such threat."
The North has offered to resolve U.S. security concerns if Washington signs a nonaggression treaty with it. But the United States has ruled out any talks unless the North first scraps its uranium-based nuclear program.
Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul, speculated that the North Korean statement was "a diplomatic card to pressure the United States" into negotiations.
Earlier Thursday, China, North Korea's biggest ally, urged the two sides to salvage the Agreed Framework.
The agreement "is useful in realizing a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said. "China hopes that the relevant parties can carry out their obligations."
----
North Korea, Accusing U.S., Says Nuclear Pact Has Collapsed
November 21, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/21/international/21CND-KORE.html
TOKYO, Nov. 21 - Invoking a decision last week by countries including the United States to cut off fuel supplies, North Korea said today that a 1994 agreement intended to prevent it from producing nuclear weapons had collapsed, and accused Washington of destroying it.
The North Korean statement comes just weeks after the Bush administration confronted the impoverished communist country with intelligence evidence showing that Pyongyang had already secretly violated the so-called agreed framework by importing equipment needed to produce highly-enriched uranium. After an overnight delay, North Korean officials reportedly confirmed their secret program to visiting American diplomats, but said the weapons program was justified by continuing American threats. Pyongyang pursued that logic again today, blaming the outside world for the breakdown.
In today's statement, the North Korean government said the supply of fuel by the United States was the only one of four articles of the framework that Washington had respected. Citing American hostility, it said a "proposal for concluding a nonaggression treaty is, in essence, the only realistic solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula."
Since the uranium-enrichment program was disclosed last month, the United States and its regional allies have struggled to come up with measures to force North Korea to verifiably abandon the program.
Consultations with Japan and South Korea resulted last week in a decision to suspend indefinitely deliveries of heavy fuel oil, which the United States had agreed to provide North Korea under the framework until the allies can build two proliferation-resistant reactors for the energy-starved country. The United States was joined by Japan, South Korea and the European Union in suspending the oil shipments.
The agreed framework was negotiated amid a major crisis between the United States and North Korea that led to preparations for war after North Korea refused to open its Soviet-era plutonium-based nuclear reactors under international inspection. Under the framework, North Korea shut down the reactors and allowed inspectors into the country in exchange for fuel supplies and the promised construction of replacement reactors.
In theory, the abandonment of the framework agreement now puts the two countries back on their original collision course, with North Korea free to use its plutonium supplies from the mothballed reactors to produce nuclear weapons, rather than waiting for the much more cumbersome and lengthy process of uranium enrichment to bear fruit.
After weeks of tough talking, the United States had recently spoken with a more measured tone on North Korea, with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, for example, saying that Washington could help North Korea if it ended its "destabilizing" weapons programs.
Regional analysts say Washington's recent modulation does not stem from a change of heart about the country, but rather from a lack of levers readily available to influence North Korean behavior.
Neither overt military threat nor even an economic embargo on a state recently subject to repeated famines would likely be supported by China or Russia, and perhaps not even by the United States' principal allies in East Asia, South Korea and Japan.
The United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea, and cooperation between the two countries is extremely narrow. They are essentially limited to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization consortium and a little-publicized program that allows the Department of Defense to search for the remains of American soldiers who died in the Korean War.
The intermediary step that Washington has chosen, meanwhile, suspending the delivery of liquefied coal, known as heavy fuel oil, which it provided at a rate of 500,000 tons a year under the framework, may have far less impact than is commonly believed.
"We feel pretty confident that within a 10- to 15-percent range of accuracy that the fuel oil accounts for only about 2 percent of the energy they consume," said Peter Hayes, director of the Nautilus Institute, a United States-based global security research group with extensive experience in North Korea in the field of energy.
"People think this fuel is keeping them standing up, but that is a joke. It is of far more political significance than economical, and because of its high sulfur content it is very difficult to even use."
Foreign experts with extended experience inside the country doubt that the cutoff will cause an abrupt falloff of power, simply because North Korea long ago adjusted to life without heat and little electricity.
"When you walk down the corridors in schools and hospitals in the winter, it is colder than inside than outside," said Masood Hyder, the chief resident United Nations representative in Pyongyang.
"Even in the meetings with senior officials in these palatial settings, it is very, very cold. When we stay in government guest houses in the winter, the toilets are freezing over."
Japan and South Korea had vigorously lobbied the United States to maintain agreed framework and to continue participation in the energy development program, citing reasons ranging from strategic concerns over being within striking range of a missile attack, to a financial stake in the construction of safer replacement reactors for North Korea, which is called for under the framework agreement.
Even as it urges restraint on Washington, however, Japan is quietly exploring the limits of another kind of pressure on North Korea. For weeks, the two countries have been locked in increasingly contentious negotiations over the fate of five survivors, and their families, out of a group of 13 Japanese kidnapped by North Korea a quarter century ago.
All this year, Japan has abstained from making food donations to its neighbor, despite traditionally being one of the largest givers. International relief officials, who are appealing for contributions from Japan to avoid the return of mass hunger this winter say this is no coincidence.
The United States has traditionally insisted that food aid decisions should be made on a purely humanitarian basis. With passions running high here over the abduction issue, however, Japan has privately insisted on settlement of the problem before food aid resumes, and in deference to these sentiments, the United Nations has not yet publicly called upon Japan to make a donation.
"We have enough food to feed the most critically needy people for one month," said an international relief official who asked not to be identified.
"We need someone to say yes now, and we are saying please don't insist that the starvation of child somewhere in North Korea has something to do with the abduction issue."
--------
CIA: N. Korea Can Build More Nukes
November 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- North Korea has enough stored plutonium to make several more nuclear weapons in addition to the one or possibly two it already is believed to possess, the CIA says in a new estimate.
The plutonium has been under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency through a 1994 U.S.-North Korean agreement.
But that agreement has begun to unravel with North Korea's acknowledgment last month that it has initiated a uranium-based nuclear program in violation of the accord.
Since that admission, the fate of the remaining provisions of the agreement has been in doubt, including the IAEA's supervision. The North has made no move to expel the agency even though it informed U.S. diplomats last month that the 1994 agreement was nullified.
On Thursday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said the agreement had collapsed as a result of last week's U.S. decision, made in cooperation with other allies, to suspend shipments of heavy oil to North Korea.
The unclassified CIA assessment, distributed to Capitol Hill staff on Tuesday, said, ``Reprocessing the spent ... reactor fuel now in storage at Yongbyon site under IAEA safeguards would recover enough plutonium for several more weapons.''
A copy of the assessment was made available to The Associated Press.
The document repeated an earlier CIA assessment that North Korea produced one or possibly two nuclear weapons before the 1994 agreement took effect.
As for the weapons program disclosed to U.S. officials last month, the CIA said it recently learned that North Korea ``is constructing a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational -- which could be as soon as mid-decade.''
The analysis said North Korea began work on a uranium-based bomb about two years ago. North Korean officials said last month it undertook the uranium program early this year in response hostile rhetoric from Washington, including President Bush's designation of North Korea as a member of an international ``axis of evil.''
Henry Sokolsky of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center said the CIA assessment plus data from other sources suggests that North Korea could have seven or eight nuclear weapons by the end of next year.
He said Chinese government figures indicate that North Korea already has five or six weapons, many more than the CIA estimate.
Once two additional plutonium-producing nuclear reactors, now under construction, are completed, Sokolsky said the North's bomb production capacity would greatly increase.
He added that, politically, there is not much difference between one nuclear bomb and eight because an adversary country, such as South Korea, would have to take measures to protect against all potential targets, not knowing which one or ones would be attacked.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Memo Discloses Missing Lab Equipment
November 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Los-Alamos-Lab.html
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- A newly disclosed memo from a Los Alamos National Laboratory supervisor said nearly $1.3 million worth of computers, phones and other property was unaccounted for over a yearlong period.
The memo, dated April 10, was released to the Associated Press on Wednesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Project on Government Oversight, which said it received it anonymously. Other news organizations also received copies this week.
Pete Stockton, senior investigator for the group, said missing computers pose ``one hell of a potential security problem.''
``There's no way they can assure us those computers didn't have classified information on them,'' said Stockton, who was a special assistant to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson -- now New Mexico's governor-elect -- in the Clinton administration.
Lab spokeswoman Linn Tytler did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Steve Aftergood, who coordinates the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, said any information left on computers would be so specialized that it would be ``useless or even incomprehensible'' to the average user. Foreign intelligence experts, however, might be able to make sense of it, he said.
If nothing else, Aftergood said, the situation ``illustrates a serious flaw in the security procedures at the lab -- and if this particular incident did not pose a threat, it suggests that a future incident could well do so, unless the defects are corrected.''
The disclosure followed a report Sunday by the Albuquerque Journal that internal lab documents indicated nearly $3 million worth of lab-owned items disappeared or were reported missing between 1999 and 2001. The newspaper cited a March report from the lab's Office of Security Inquiries.
Investigators from the Energy Department inspector general's office were at the lab this week investigating allegations of wrongdoing.
The memo released Wednesday was from the nuclear weapons laboratory's chief financial officer and referred to the budget year 2001.
On the Net:
Lab: http://www.lanl.gov
Project on Government Oversight: http://www.pogo.org
-------- virginia
As water levels rise, Va. nuke exits unusual event
REUTERS USA:
November 21, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18701/story.htm
NEW YORK - Dominion told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) the water level in the lake used to cool the North Anna nuclear power station in Virginia rose, reducing the likelihood the plant will need to shut.
The Southeast has been stuck in a drought that could result in tight power supplies this winter as the capacity of the region's hydropower, fossil and nuclear power plants decline.
"We're still in a drought and are looking for ways to pump water from other sources to keep the lake level up. For now, we're out of danger, but we need more rain," said a spokesman at Dominion.
In two reports posted on the NRC web site on Monday, Dominion said the water level in the North Anna lake is dangerously low, which could result in the shutdown of the plant.
In the first report dated Aug. 9, Dominion declared an unusual event because the water level in the lake fell below 246 feet due to a lack of rainfall and may continue to drop if the drought continues.
In an update to the Aug. 9 report issued on Monday, Dominion said the water levels rose to 246.9 feet.
If the level reaches 244 feet, the company said it is required to shut the plant until the water level returns to 246.4 feet.
The North Anna station in Mineral, Virginia consists of two units rated at 921 megawatts each capable of lighting almost two million homes.
-------- us politics
Senate OKs bill on haven for Iraqis
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021121-24469721.htm
Iraqi scientists yielding information on their country's weapons of mass destruction would receive safe haven in the United States under a bill the Senate approved yesterday.
The bill, which would cover up to 500 weapons scientists and their families, comes as the United States threatens war against Iraq unless leader Saddam Hussein agrees to disarm.
"We owe it to Iraq's people and its neighbors to do everything we can to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill with Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican. "We owe it to our own people to do all we can to achieve that end peacefully."
The Senate adopted the measure by voice vote just before adjourning for the year. If the House does not approve it tomorrow when it meets for the last time, lawmakers will have to begin work on the measure anew when the new Congress convenes in January.
--------
THE REORGANIZATION PLAN
Spending Deadlock Will Delay Some Programs of New Security Department
November 21, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/21/politics/21HOME.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 - President Bush and Congress finally resolved this week their yearlong battle over creating a Department of Homeland Security, but some of the department's most ambitious programs will have to be put off for a few months because of the continuing political deadlock over spending legislation.
For instance, grants to strengthen local police and fire departments will be delayed. For a while longer, overseas inspections of container ships bound for United States ports will not be conducted. Financing for bioterrorism research at the National Institutes of Health will be limited.
The reason is that only 2 of the 13 appropriations bills to provide money for the government's departments and agencies have been enacted, mainly because the president does not want to spend as much as Congress does. The government is now operating under what is called a continuing resolution, which limits departments and agencies to spending at last year's levels.
Many Democrats in Congress maintain that the delay in providing full financing for the new department could be dangerous. In a speech in the Senate last week, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, who opposed the legislation creating the department, said it was "an irresponsible path" to put "funding for homeland security on autopilot."
Amy Call, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, said the White House was not displeased. For the time being, Ms. Call said, the government has enough money to pay for domestic security programs from the continuing resolution and from money already appropriated for other activities that can be shifted to more pressing security needs.
Ms. Call calculated that on an annual basis, $30 billion was available of the $35 billion the president requested in the current fiscal year for the agencies that are to be part of the security department.
"It's not a big problem," she said.
But even some Republican leaders in Congress are concerned. In a memorandum last month to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, listed more than a dozen domestic security programs that would be hurt. Among them were airport, maritime and trucking security; Coast Guard harbor patrols; additional Border Patrol agents and immigration inspectors; and hospital preparedness.
The continuing resolution expires on Jan. 11, but it will probably have to be extended. In January or February the new Republican Congress is expected to wrap the 11 unpassed appropriations bills for the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30 into a single omnibus bill, which will presumably include what the president sought for domestic security programs, and then turn its attention to the budget for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1.
On Tuesday, the Senate approved the legislation that merges 22 agencies into the new department after arm-twisting by the president. Final Congressional action is expected this week.
But as much as Mr. Bush wanted the department, he has been less concerned than Congress about putting money into its activities.
For example, last summer Congress approved an emergency appropriations bill that included $39 million to upgrade federal inspections of container ships for dangerous cargo. But the president never allowed the money to be spent because he did not consider the problem an emergency.
Last month, a study of domestic security by a group led by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren B. Rudman concluded that the failure to adequately inspect cargo ships entering United States ports was one of the government's most serious security lapses.
For the current fiscal year, Mr. Bush asked Congress for about $750 billion for discretionary government programs - all the programs for which there is an annual appropriation. About $360 billion of this is for military programs. What the president and Congress are haggling over is the remaining $390 billion, and they were about $10 billion apart when negotiations ended for the year.
That is only about 2.5 percent of the total amount under dispute, but neither side would budge. After the election, the president told Mr. Young and Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the Republican who will be chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, that he was unwilling to go beyond $750 billion.
-------- MILITARY
-------- balkans
Albanians Indicted for War Crimes
November 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Kosovo-War-Crimes.html
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Four former ethnic Albanian rebels have been charged by an international prosecutor for war crimes committed during the province's armed conflict, an official said Thursday.
In the first such indictment, Rrustem Mustafa and three associates were formally charged for crimes including illegal detentions, inhumane treatment, torture and murder of civilians, said Izabella Karlowicz, a U.N. spokeswoman.
The indictment, the first of its kind against former ethnic Albanian guerrilla fighters, was filed on Tuesday.
It came four months after Mustafa was arrested by NATO-led peacekeepers and U.N. police in the province's capital Pristina. Three of his wartime associates were rounded up in a separate operation in January.
Then officials said the four were arrested under suspicion of wrongdoing against at least five fellow ethnic Albanians during the war.
Mustafa was one of the most senior former commanders in the defunct Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla force that fought against Yugoslav forces in the province's 1998-1999 armed conflict.
He and three other former rebels under arrest controlled the region of Podujevo, some 40 miles north of Pristina, known as ``Llap.''
Their arrest sparked protests by ethnic Albanian supporters throughout the province. The former rebels, who fought for the province's independence, are largely regarded heroes by their ethnic kin.
The province remains officially part of Yugoslavia, but has been administered by the United Nations and NATO since mid-1999 when the alliance's air war halted a crackdown by Yugoslav forces on independence-minded ethnic Albanians.
International judges and prosecutors are mainly appointed to investigate and run sensitive cases in U.N.-run courts.
No date for trial has yet been set, but the four suspects will remain in custody, Karlowicz said.
--------
War Crime Convict Seeks New Trial
November 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Crimes-Appeal.html
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- A Bosnian Croat general sentenced to 45 years imprisonment asked the U.N. war crimes tribunal Thursday for a new trial based on evidence from previously secret Croatian archives.
The lawyer for Tihomir Blaskic, Russel Hayman, argued that Blaskic was denied a fair trial because crucial evidence that cast fresh light on the case was unavailable at the time.
U.N. prosecutors, however, rejected the defense assertion that the files could exonerate Blaskic, and argued that a new trial was unjustified.
After listening to both sides, the court adjourned without setting a date for its ruling. If the request for a new trial is granted, it would be the first such decision for the 9-year-old tribunal.
Blaskic, a commander of the Bosnian Croat militia during the 1992-95 war, was found guilty of ordering an ethnic cleansing campaign against Muslim villages in central Bosnia, an operation which left hundreds dead and sent thousands fleeing the area.
Among the villages was Ahmici, where more than 100 Muslims were slaughtered by Croat militiamen in a single day in one of the most notorious outrages of the war.
The new evidence came mainly from the Croatian war archives that the new pro-Western Croatian government released days after Blaskic's conviction in March 2000 following a trial that lasted 25 months.
The previous nationalist Croatian government kept those archives secret ``to protect Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, who had a hand in the dealings of Bosnian Croats,'' Hayman said.
The appeals chamber had earlier agreed the new evidence was ``clearly admissible,'' and ordered Thursday's hearing to establish whether a new trial was justified.
Hayman told the court the evidence should prove that Croat units acted without his client's knowledge or consent.
The lawyer said the defense is now in possession of an official report that clearly identifies the perpetrators of the Ahmici massacre and exonerates Blaskic.
It shows that Dario Kordic, a Bosnian Croat political leader, held a secret meeting without Blaskic's knowledge at which a decision was made to commit a massacre to scare the Muslim population out of the area.
The new evidence also shows that Blaskic had ordered an investigation of the massacre and tried to punish the perpetrators, Hayman said.
-------- europe
NATO to have first joint exercise with EU
By Gareth Harding
UPI Chief European Correspondent
November 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021121-125145-9786r.htm
PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- The European Union and NATO will have their first joint exercises next year, alliance leaders announced Thursday in a decision that boosts the chances of the EU developing its own military arm.
For more than a year, the European Union and NATO have been locked in negotiations on how to cooperate more closely on military matters, but a deal has been held up because of a long-standing row between Brussels and Turkey over access to NATO assets.
The 15-member club wants automatic access to the alliance's planning capabilities when setting up its 60,000-strong rapid-reaction force. However, Turkey, which is a member of NATO but not of the European Union, fears this force could be used against its interests in the eastern Mediterranean.
The spat has forced the European Union, which has ambitions to become a bigger player on the international stage, to delay its first military maneuver in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
The European Union had hoped to replace the NATO peacekeeping force in the fragile Balkan state earlier this fall, but failure to reach an agreement with Ankara means this has been shunted back to next June.
"I hope this will help finalize relations between the EU and NATO as soon as possible," said one alliance official, who declined to give further details of the deal.
Thursday's decision to have joint exercises at an unspecified date in 2003 surprised many Brussels-watchers because Turkey initiated the move.
The country's moderate Islamic government, which was voted into power earlier this month, is keen to get closer to Brussels in order to get the green light to start talks on joining the European Union at a mid-December meeting in Denmark.
The proposal, agreed by NATO leaders at a historic enlargement summit in Prague, is likely to increase Ankara's chances of receiving an invitation to start membership talks from EU leaders.
John Palmer, an analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Center, told United Press International, "The time when the EU assumes responsibility for its own affairs is getting closer."
The think-tank director added it was "logical" the European Union and NATO should start joint exercises given their overlapping interests.
--------
Eurofighter crashes in Spain
Thursday, 21 November, 2002, 15:14 GMT
BBC News
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2499783.stm
A Eurofighter jet has crashed during a training exercise in Spain, about 110 kilometres (70 miles) from Madrid.
It is the first accident involving this type of plane, which is said to be the world's most advanced fighter jet and has been developed by Germany, Britain, Spain and Italy.
The two pilots ejected from the plane and were unhurt, the Spanish Defence Ministry said in a statement.
According to the ministry, the Eurofighter Typhoon DA6 was flying at an altitude of 15,000 metres (45,000 feet) when both engines stopped simultaneously.
The pilots - a Eurofighter training pilot and a member of the Spanish air force - tried to reignite the engines but failed.
It is understood that they managed to guide the plane away from populated areas before ejecting.
The Spanish Ministry of Defence said there were no casualties and no damage to property when the plane came down in the countryside near the village of Belvis de la Jara, in the province of Toledo.
Multi-purpose aircraft
The UK and Germany have been responsible for most of the construction of the Eurofighter.
British Aerospace has built the nose, the cockpit, inboard flaps and rear tail with rudder. Rolls-Royce makes the engines.
The centre fuselage has been the responsibility of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) at assembly lines in Germany.
EADS sites in Spain have built the fighter's right wing and the leading edge of both wings.
Alenia of Italy makes the left wing and outboard flaps. The rear fuselage is built jointly in the UK and Italy.
The Eurofighter is designed as a highly agile multi-role aircraft, capable of ground-attack as well as its primary air defence role.
Its entry into service has been dogged by delays.
-------- iraq
Blood for oil?
David Isby
November 21, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021121-23126058.htm
That the United States is really preparing to fight Iraq to assure domination over oil has been a common theme abroad. Iraq, Iran and North Korea have used their state-controlled media to promulgate this motivation. They would not want their populations to think that their leaders' desires for missiles and nuclear weapons may lead to conflict. While this rationale is not limited to such regimes - it is widespread among critics of U.S. policy - current geopolitics underline that security concerns, rather than an attempt to secure future supply, appear to be driving U.S. policy.
Indeed, in the United States, opponents of the administration's confrontation with Iraq - or lovers of conspiracy theories in general - have been slow to credit it with a strategy of energy domination. The confrontation from Iraq follows directly from U.S. vulnerability to asymmetrical - including terrorist - threats after the events of September 11.
A U.S. invasion of Iraq will not automatically produce cheap oil and peace in the region. If the United States wanted to send oil prices down in the short term, then embracing rather than challenging the status quo and removing sanctions from Iraq would be the logical approach. Before September 11, the U.S. oil industry was lobbying for this policy. The change in U.S. priorities following September 11 changed all that.
In the words of French Iraq expert Jean-Pierre Luizard: "The previous situation was ideal with a view to controlling oil flows and prices. Iraq was muzzled and, by means of sanctions, the United States was in control of oil matters worldwide."
If control of oil is the U.S. goal, better to stick to the status quo that prevailed before September 11. Before then, the United States was buying about 78 million barrels per day from Iraq, some of that being refined as aviation fuel and transformed into jet noise above the no-fly zones of northern and southern Iraq. Because there was no way the status quo in the Middle East could provide the United States with security - energy or other - the United States had to reassess its policies to prevent a future threat from a rearming and resentful Iraq, weakening and feckless Saudis, and apocalyptic-minded terrorists that offer a potential for a powerful blow to the world economy downstream.
In the near term, the potential for a U.S. war with Iraq could send energy prices higher, both in the United States and in the less-robust economies of many trading partners. In 1991, the war with Iraq doubled oil prices at their height, and a "fear premium" of more than $5 a barrel has burdened world economies in 2002. Iraq's market output of 2.5 million barrels per day will vanish from the world market at the start of hostilities.
ven given the best possible military case of a short victorious war, the U.S. ability to "control" the oil of post-Saddam Iraq is, in reality, going to be limited. Extensive investment is likely to be required to restore the Iraqi oil industry. Some feel Saddam is likely to try and carry out widespread destruction if he believes his regime is threatened. Even the Iraqi opposition - dependent on Washington's support - denies that the United States would receive any special future treatment
This means that the United States is not going to be able to use Iraqi oil revenues to pay for the war. Any oil revenues will be required, post-war, to keep the Iraqi economy alive. Investments may not flow to Iraq post-war; unlike other countries, the United States has no state oil company that can be sent in. Oil companies do not invest to drive down prices. A sudden surge of Iraqi oil at the end of the war is unlikely.
Market forces remain paramount in world energy. Going against market forces would lead to undercutting the legitimacy of an Iraqi successor regime and would lead to problems with Russia and France. Had the U.S. goal been domination of oil, encouraging (rather than limiting) their opposition to the U.S.-led liberation would have laid the groundwork for excluding their oil companies from a post-Saddam Iraq. Even without the assurances that are likely to have been given in connection with U.N. Security Council resolutions, it is unlikely French and Russian companies can be kept out of the development of Iraqi oil.
Investment rather than war is a better way to assure future energy security. However, the threat of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction being used against the oil shipment points of the Gulf needs to be removed, or all energy consumers will face, in the future, blackmail made all the more effective for the knowledge that retaliation, however powerful, cannot undo its effects.
David Isby is a Washington-based author and national security consultant.
-------- israel / palestine
In Response to Bus Bombing, Israeli Forces Enter Bethlehem
November 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) -- Israeli forces entered the West Bank town of Bethlehem early Friday, retaliating against the home town of a Palestinian suicide bomber who blew up a Jersusalem bus, killing 11 and wounding dozens.
The first Israeli forces entered Bethlehem from the south, witnesses said, and surrounded the Dheisheh refugee camp next to the town.
Troops headed for the Church of the Nativity, said Israeli military spokesman Doron Spielman. He said the object was to prevent gunmen from seeking refuge in the church.
In April, dozens of gunmen fled into the church ahead of invading Israeli troops, setting off a tense 39-day standoff. It ended when Israel and the Palestinians agreed to send 26 of the gunmen to Gaza and exile 13 others to Europe.
Spielman said the goal of the mission was ``to change the reality in Bethlehem.'' He said since the August pullout, Palestinians have set up a ``terror infrastructure'' and prepared suicide bomb attacks. He said the Palestinian Authority had ``failed miserably'' in its responsibility to prevent attacks.
Hours earlier, the army ordered residents of about 30 homes in el-Khader, on the outskirts of Bethlehem, to leave their homes so the army could take up positions, residents said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who met with his defense minister and other officials, decided the army would carry out a ``pinpoint operation,'' which would include entering Bethlehem, Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin said.
On Thursday, a 13-year-old Israeli girl who loved to draw was buried at sunset Thursday on a Jerusalem hilltop, one of 11 people killed when a Palestinian man blew himself up on a crowded bus. Four of the dead were children.
It was the first attack in Jerusalem since August, and the bomber's hometown -- Bethlehem -- braced for retaliation that began early Friday as Israeli troops moved into the city, surrounding the Church of the Nativity, which marks the traditional birthplace of Jesus. Israeli military spokesman Doron Spielman said the object was to prevent gunmen from seeking refuge in the church.
Two militant Islamic groups claimed responsibility for Thursday morning's bomb attack: Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Gissin said Hamas would be the group targeted.
Hamas participated in talks with Egypt and Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement to negotiate a freeze on Palestinian attacks at least until Israel's Jan. 28 election. A first round of talks in Cairo ended inconclusively.
A continuation of bombings and shootings would strengthen Israel's right-wing parties going into the elections.
Among the dead were four children: two 13-year-olds, an 8-year-old boy who died along with his grandmother, and a 16-year-old boy whose mother also was killed.
Hodaya Asaraf, an 8th grader at a Jerusalem arts school, was the first to be buried. Shortly after sunset, the 13-year-old was laid to rest at a hilltop cemetery amid the wails of her mother.
``Her friends said the last thing she drew were leaves,'' said a teacher, Chena Ben-Yaakov. ``The leaf has fallen.''
Passengers and police said the bomber boarded bus No. 20 and detonated the explosives belt at about 7:10 a.m., as the bus was stopped in Jerusalem's Kiryat Menachem neighborhood, police said.
The blast blew out the bus windows and sent glass shards and body parts flying. Hours later, a man's arms dangled from a broken bus window and a torso was covered with a blue and white checkered blanket.
Maor Kimche, 15, was among those on the bus, which was jammed with high school students, soldiers and the elderly.
``Suddenly, it was black and smoky. There were people on the floor. Everything was bloody. There was glass everywhere and body parts,'' Kimche said.
The 10th grader jumped out of a bus window and was scooped up by a taxi driver who took him to Hadassah Hospital, where he was treated for a leg injury.
He said he'd ride buses again. ``How else will I get to school?'' he asked.
Eleven people were killed and at least 48 wounded, eight of them seriously. Israel Radio said many of the casualties were students, though hospital officials declined to give a breakdown.
Israeli police identified the bomber as Nael Abu Hilail, 23.
Abu Hilail's father, Azmi, said he was pleased with his son. ``Our religion says we are proud of him until the day of resurrection,'' Abu Hilail said. ``This is a challenge to the Zionist enemies.''
He said Israeli troops had arrested another son and a nephew after the bombing.
Several of Nael Abu Hilail's friends said he was a supporter of Islamic Jihad.
President Bush condemned the bombing, saying the goal of the United States is to see two independent states -- Israel and Palestine -- living side by side in peace.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the attack ``utterly reprehensible'' and appealed to Palestinians and Israelis not to be blinded by hate.
Sharon adviser Gissin accused the Palestinian Authority of assisting the attackers and said that with such violence, it seemed futile to bring about a limited truce and withdraw from some Palestinian areas.
``All our efforts to hand over areas .... and all the talk about a possible cease-fire, that was all window dressing because on the ground there was a continuous effort to carry out as many terrorist activities (as possible),'' Gissin said.
There was no official comment from the Palestinian Authority, but Ghassan Khatib, the Palestinian labor minister, accused Israel of provoking the attacks with strikes against militants.
The Israeli army has enforced stringent travel restrictions on Palestinians in the past 26 months of fighting, and has reoccupied most West Bank towns in an attempt to stop the attacks. However, Israeli security officials say they continue to receive dozens of warnings every day about planned attacks.
Israel's range of responses is restricted by the possibility of a U.S. strike against Iraq.
Several Israeli hard-line leaders have called for Arafat's expulsion in retaliation for bombings, but such a step is sharply opposed by Washington, which is eager to maintain the support of moderate Arab governments at a time of confrontation with Iraq.
Israel's new Labor Party leader, Amram Mitzna, repeated his pledge that if elected prime minister, he would fight terror, but would also disengage from the Palestinian territories. Mitzna has said he would pull settlers and soldiers out of the Gaza Strip and would restart negotiations with the Palestinians unconditionally.
``It's very hard, to stand on this stage when those killed by terror are being buried,'' he told a Labor Party conference. ``It is natural that a person feels revenge, hate, to hurt them, but we, a chosen leadership, must look past the horizon and offer Israeli citizens another reality.''
Palestinian leaders have welcomed Mitzna's call although they have stopped short of endorsing him, apparently for fear of hurting Mitzna's chances.
-------- latin america
Chavez said to arm Venezuela vigilantes
By Mike Ceaser
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021121-20663065.htm
CARACAS, Venezuela - Bolivarian Circles, the Cuban-inspired neighborhood vigilante groups charged with protecting the populist revolution of President Hugo Chavez, are being armed with weapons diverted from the military, according to army officers.
The increased firepower raises the risk of violence between them and anti-Chavez groups who have marched almost daily to protest the president's order last week to fire the chief of the Caracas city police and place his forces under the control of the national guard.
Members of the Bolivarian Circles say they exist to perform community social services and support the president. But others see a more sinister purpose to the circles, comparing them to Cuban groups that keep watch on their neighbors and report any counterrevolutionary activity.
"The Bolivarian Circles are a sort of militia," said Gen. Nestor Gonzalez, who charged that weapons belonging to the armed forces have been diverted to the groups. "They are progressively replacing [the army]."
Members of the Bolivarian Circles deny the charge and blame escalating violence in the capital on Mr. Chavez's opposition.
"[The Bolivarian Circles] are armed," said Jose Luis Perez, a Chavez supporter. "But with values, courage and purity."
The smell of smoke and tear gas is becoming a daily feature as militant "chavistas" confront anti-Chavez protesters, who are demanding a referendum on the president's rule. There is fear that the political impasse could break into a full-scale civil war.
Demonstrators yesterday blocked a busy highway in Caracas with cars, trucks and flaming piles of trash to protest the government's militarization of the city's police.
National guard troops fired tear gas and pellets to prevent Chavez supporters from clashing with the opposition marchers.
Mayor Alfredo Pena and other opposition leaders say Mr. Chavez is provoking violence as a pretext to declare martial law and to avoid demands for a referendum.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is considering whether to issue an injunction against Mr. Chavez's takeover of the police. Congress is also to debate the decision.
The court has handed down several rulings against Mr. Chavez's government in recent months.
On Monday, it dismissed a bid by Mr. Chavez to void an elections law, opening the way for a nonbinding referendum on his administration next month.
The National Elections Council meanwhile is verifying petitions with 2 million signatures demanding the referendum, which would ask Venezuelans whether Mr. Chavez should resign.
Venezuela's constitution says a binding referendum can be held halfway into a president's six-year term, in Mr. Chavez's case, in August.
Bolivarian Circle member Aura Rodriguez dismisses any suggestion that her group is intent on violence against the anti-Chavez protesters.
Mrs. Rodriguez, a short, silver-haired 68-year-old who carries Mr. Chavez's picture in her purse, calls the accusation impossible. "[The Bolivarian Circles] are not like they say - about terror," she said. "It's meetings, marches - support for our president."
To Mr. Chavez and his supporters, the Bolivarian Circles - which claim 2.3 million members in more than 230 chapters - are grass-roots groups committed to helping the poor, teaching literacy and organizing disenfranchised communities.
To Mr. Chavez's opponents, who say the groups are heavily armed and call them "Chavez circles" or "fascist circles," they are shock troops for a Cuba-style communist revolution, which the opposition believes Mr. Chavez intends to bring to Venezuela.
Disarming both sides of the civilian population is one of the points on the agenda of ongoing talks between government and the opposition sponsored by the Organization of American States.
The nation's main opposition union and business federation meanwhile are threatening to call a national strike if early elections are not set by Dec. 4.
The Bolivarian Circles have contributed to the capital's atmosphere of insecurity. In Caracas, their members often roar through the streets on motorcycles, blowing horns and waving flags, while pedestrians scurry off the sidewalks and shopkeepers slam their security doors. Wealthy Caracas neighborhoods have armed themselves against the circles and made plans to barricade streets in case of rioting.
The opposition frequently blames the Bolivarian Circles for violence such as bombs detonated recently outside the headquarters of an opposition union and rioting near the National Assembly on Tuesday. But Guillermo Garcia Ponce, who heads the Bolivarian Circles with the title of national commander of the Political Command of the Revolution, calls those charges "totally untrue."
"The government doesn't need to arm the circles, because it has the loyalty of the armed forces," he said.
Highly organized, the Bolivarian Circles proved invaluable to Mr. Chavez in April when a group of military officers arrested him during a two-day coup.
-------- mideast
Kuwaiti Officer Shoots U.S. Soldiers
By PAUL GARWOOD
Associated Press Writer
Nov 21, 2002 1:31 PM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KUWAIT_SOLDIERS_ATTACKED?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Rumsfeld says the continuing attacks on American service members in Kuwait and elsewhere are not a new phenomenon. (Audio)
KUWAIT CITY (AP) -- A Kuwaiti policeman shot and seriously wounded two U.S. Army soldiers Thursday on a highway south of here, the Kuwaiti government said. The incident was the latest in a string of attacks on American troops as the United States prepares for a possible war in Iraq.
A statement by the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry said the policeman, who was identified only as a junior officer in the highway patrol, fled to Saudi Arabia after the shooting.
Officials said they had no details about the policeman's motive.
But the attack took place as anti-Americanism is rising in the Middle East and raised concern about the safety of U.S. troops, even in a country that considers itself an American ally.
The shooting happened about 10:30 a.m. while the victims were traveling between the U.S. military base of Camp Doha and the town of Oraifijan, some 35 miles south of Kuwait City, a U.S. military spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
A Kuwaiti official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the policeman apparently flagged down the victims' car, possibly for speeding, and the shooting followed. Other reports indicated the attacker fired from his car while the Americans' vehicle was also moving.
One soldier was shot in the face and the other in the shoulder, the U.S. spokesman said. Both victims were airlifted to a Kuwaiti military hospital where their conditions were said to be serious but not life-threatening.
The U.S. spokesman said the soldiers, who were wearing civilian clothes and riding in a civilian vehicle, did not return fire. The victims managed to drive to Oraifijan, where they had been headed on "official business," before being flown to hospital. The U.S. military maintains a camp in the Oraifijan area.
The victims were not identified, but a woman told KPLC-TV in Lake Charles, La., that Army officials told her one of the wounded soldiers was her brother, Larry Charles Thomas, of Lake Charles. Rose Thomas said her brother underwent surgery Thursday.
The U.S. Embassy said there was no evidence the attack was linked to terrorism. In Prague, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the attack was not necessarily linked to the U.S. military buildup in Kuwait in anticipation of possible military action against Iraq.
"There have been terrorist attacks in that region for my entire adult lifetime, and that's a long time," said the 70-year-old defense secretary, who was attending the NATO summit in the Czech capital.
The attack was the most serious against U.S. forces here since Oct. 8, when one U.S. Marine was killed and another wounded by two Islamic fundamentalists, who were shot dead by other Marines.
U.S. and Kuwaiti officials have played down several subsequent incidents in which gunshots were heard near American forces. Those were blamed on hunters and officials from both countries stressed that there was no evidence Americans were targeted.
However, the shooting Thursday appeared to confirm the belief that the presence of 10,000 U.S. troops and negative views of American policy in the region are fueling anti-Americanism, even though the government and many Kuwaitis support the U.S. military's role here.
The U.S. military personnel are based in Kuwait under a defense pact signed between both countries following the 1991 Gulf War, during which an American-led coalition drive Iraqi invaders from the country.
While Kuwait owes its independence and security to U.S. forces, anti-American sentiment is rising here and elsewhere in the Middle East because of U.S. support for Israel, the war against terrorism and threats of an American attack on Iraq.
-------- nato
NATO leaders make radical changes to bloc
By Gareth Harding
UPI Chief European Correspondent
November 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021121-122230-7208r.htm
PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- A new NATO was born Thursday as alliance leaders signed up to the most radical transformation of the military bloc in its 53-year history.
In addition to accepting membership applications from seven former communist states, NATO heads of state agreed to set up a 21,000-strong force of elite troops and upgrade military hardware to combat global terrorism.
"We came determined to make a good organization better and that is precisely what we have done," NATO Secretary-General George Robertson told reporters in the Czech capital.
In their first meeting behind the former Iron Curtain, alliance leaders invited former Warsaw Pact members and three former Soviet states to join the 19-member club.
Barring any glitches in the ratification process, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia will become members of the world's most powerful military alliance in spring 2004.
Following Thursday's historic decisions, the new countries will join an organization transformed from an essentially defensive bloc founded to defend European states against invasion from the East into an alliance whose main goal is to defeat global terrorism and protect civilians from deadly weapon attacks.
In a statement that redefines the bloc's core philosophy, alliance leaders said: "NATO must be able to field forces that can move quickly to wherever they are needed ... to sustain operations over distance and time, including in an environment where they might be faced with nuclear, biological and chemical threats."
In order to respond more effectively to the threats posed by terrorists, failed states and so-called rogue regimes, heads of state agreed to set up a 21,000-strong NATO response force consisting of a "technologically advanced, flexible, deployable, interoperable and sustainable force including land, sea and air elements ready to move quickly to wherever needed."
The elite army, credited as the brainchild of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is scheduled to come into force by October 2004 but will not be fully operational until two years after that.
NATO leaders meeting in the heavily guarded Czech capital also signed up to the Prague Capabilities Commitment, which aims to bridge the gap between European and U.S. defense spending.
EU member states, with their 375 million inhabitants and a combined gross domestic product of nearly $10 trillion, spend $150 billion a year on defense, while the United States, with 280 million citizens and a GDP of nearly $7 trillion, is set to fork over $380 billion on defense in 2003.
Robertson said eight NATO countries -- Britain, the United States, France, Portugal, Norway, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland -- had pledged to boost defense spending at the meet.
"In a very dangerous world, if you want your people to be safe, you have to spend money to make sure they are safe," Robertson, a former British defense minister, said.
NATO members signed up to a raft of timetabled commitments to improve capabilities in the areas of chemical, biological and nuclear defense; intelligence gathering, air-to-ground surveillance, precision-guided weapons, long-range troop transport planes and air-to-air refueling.
They also agreed to a radical shake-up in NATO's organizational make-up aimed at creating a "leaner, more efficient, effective and deployable command structure."
In the future, the alliance's European headquarters in Mons, Belgium, will be responsible for planning all military operations, while the American base in Norfolk, Va., is to be charged with transforming NATO's military capabilities.
----
NATO admits seven new members
By Gareth Harding
UPI Chief European Correspondent
November 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021121-053803-9314r.htm
PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- NATO leaders Thursday formally invited seven former communist states to join the world's most powerful military alliance in a move aimed at ending Europe's post-war divisions.
The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were Soviet republics until a decade ago, received the green light to enter the alliance, along with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
NATO's biggest enlargement increases the alliance's numbers from 19 to 26, but will add little to the military strength of the 53-year-old bloc. Most of the new members, which are formally due to enter the Brussels-based organization in May 2004, are small, poor and militarily weak.
However, U.S. President George W. Bush said Thursday the former Warsaw Pact members would boost the alliance's power.
"The addition of seven new member states will not only add to our military capability, it will refresh the spirit of this great alliance. It reaffirms our commitment to freedom and a Europe that is whole, free and at peace," Bush said.
In a speech on the eve of the alliance's first summit behind the former Iron Curtain, Bush also held out the prospect of a further enlarged alliance encompassing all the continent's law-abiding states.
"Every European democracy that seeks NATO membership and is ready to share in NATO's responsibilities should be welcome in our alliance," he said.
Offering reassurance to Albania, Croatia and Macedonia, which have applied to join the club but did not receive invitations in Prague, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said: "The door remains open. Today's invitees will not be the last."
Thursday's decision to enlarge the alliance was steeped in symbolism. It was taken in a country which was invaded by both Nazis and Communists in the past century, in a city where the Warsaw Pact was wound up and in the congress hall where the Czech Communist Party once met.
Danish Premier Anders Fogh-Rasmussen, whose country has the presidency of the European Union, said the meeting "leaves the remains of the cold war division of Europe behind."
In less than a month, five of the seven new NATO members -- along with three other former communist countries -- are expected to be invited to join the European Union at a summit in Copenhagen.
Rasmussen said the "enlargement of NATO and the European Union will be of unprecedented historic importance for European integration and for freedom, peace and security on our continent."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair added that the addition of seven central and eastern states would "deepen the stability of Europe," while Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi described Thursday's decision as a "further step towards the reunification of Europe."
In addition to expanding the alliance to the borders of Russia, the summit is due to endorse plans aimed at modernizing NATO's military hardware and setting up a 21,000-strong rapid reaction force capable of fighting anywhere in the world.
Bush said the changes represented the "most significant reforms to NATO since 1949," the year the bloc was founded.
----
NATO new boys 'ready for war'
By Martin Walker
UPI Chief International Correspondent
November 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021121-114054-2495r.htm
PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- NATO's new members, gathered into a group called the Vilnius 9, issued a strong statement of support for American policy toward Iraq, emphasizing that they are ready to back military action if required to enforce the U.N. Security Council resolution requiring Iraq to disarm.
The statement, which has been seen by United Press International, goes further than the agreed statement demanding Iraqi compliance by the current 19 NATO members and reflects American hopes that the new members from Central and Eastern Europe will be far less squeamish on the use of force and far more ready to back the United States than some of the older NATO allies such as Germany and France.
The new members were all formerly members of the old Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact of the Cold War and the three Baltic States were formerly constituent parts of the old Soviet Union. As such, they feel a deep loyalty to the United States and are keen to show their determination to be loyal and supportive allies.
The Vilnius 9 group, named after the capital of the Baltic state of Lithuania where they met and agreed to work together for NATO membership, are also prepared to see NATO's security responsibilities widen far beyond Europe.
"NATO has to transform itself to become a global alliance, despite the fears in some European countries that this would made NATO into a tool of the American superpower," former Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek told UPI Thursday. "NATO's future depends precisely on its readiness to become a global alliance and our people understand the global nature of the terrorist threat much better than many politicians think."
The new NATO members, although not yet formally part of the alliance, have agreed "to act as if we already are members" and gave strong support Thursday to NATO's new U.S.-inspired plan to establish a rapid-reaction force of 21,000 troops available for swift deployment around the globe.
NATO must be able to "field forces that can move quickly to wherever they are needed ... to sustain operations over distance and time, including in an environment where they might be faced with nuclear, biological and chemical threats," the alliance agreed in a formal statement Thursday.
In his opening speech to the Prague summit, U.S. President George W. Bush said the new rapid-response force -- consisting of highly trained and well-equipped air, ground and sea forces -- should begin as soon as possible.
"Never has our need for collective defense been more urgent," Bush said.
The force is to consist of 21,000 combat-ready troops, on standby from all the NATO allies and trained and equipped to U.S. war-fighting standards, and capable of being deployed within seven days to trouble spots around the world. It will be designed to play a key role in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, under a new U.S. general to be appointed Strategic Commander for Worldwide Operations.
"Terrorism poses a grave and growing threat to alliance populations, forces and territory. We are determined to combat this scourge for as long as necessary," the NATO statement said.
The new force is supposed to answer U.S. concerns that through under-funding, most of the European allies are barely capable of fighting alongside well-equipped U.S. forces. The disparity between the Europeans and the U.S. military machine, with its "smart" weapons and Stealth warplanes and battlefield sensors, became embarrassingly visible during the 1999 Kosovo war.
The new force is supposed to be highly mobile, thanks to the lease of new heavy military cargo transports, with advanced and secure communications and new training schedules designed to make the European forces compatible with the American comrades in arms. It will also require costly investment in smart weapons, air-to-air refueling, and new electronics that will allow NATO warplanes to suppress enemy air defenses.
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NATO Leaders Join Demands for Iraq to Disarm
November 21, 2002
New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/21/international/21CND-PREX.html
PRAGUE, Nov. 21 - The 19 leaders of NATO joined today in demanding that Iraq "fully and completely" comply with a United Nations resolution to disarm, noting that the Security Council threatened "serious consequences" if President Saddam Hussein continued to violate its conditions.
But the four-paragraph statement contained no explicit suggestion that the allies would join or support any military action against Baghdad if the demands to disarm were not met.
"We deplore Iraq's failure to comply fully with its obligations which were imposed as a necessary step to restore international peace and security," the statement said.
It added that the allies "stand united in their commitment to take effective action to assist and support the efforts of the U.N. to ensure full and immediate compliance by Iraq, without conditions or restrictions."
Germany, which joined in signed the statement, nevertheless continued to voice strong opposition to any military action.
"Our position is completely clear: we will not take part in a military strike against Iraq." Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said, The Associated Press reported.
The statement was issued on the first day of a two-day summit meeting in which seven former communist countries - Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - were invited to joined the alliance.
In other action today, NATO leaders approved the creation of a 20,000-member rapid response force and other measures designed to enable the alliance to fight terrorists or states that might threaten member nations.
The force will come from a pool of units like the mountain troops maintained by Romania, which has sent such troops to Afghanistan. They will train together and rotate for six-month stints on standby for a short-notice NATO deployment. By using existing units, NATO officials said the force would not place too great a strain on defense budgets.
The alliance also agreed to streamline its military structures, with a United States general to be appointed strategic commander for worldwide operations.
The allies also made commitments to improve their military hardware and narrow the gap between American and European forces in areas like strategic airlift, air-to-air refueling, precision-guided missiles and suppression of enemy air defenses.
Release of the statement on Iraq came a day after President Bush threatened Mr. Hussein in dire terms, vowing "the severest of consequences" if he did not fully disclose Iraq's inventory of weapons by Dec. 8, the deadline set by the United Nations.
Mr. Bush made the threat during a speech that called for a fundamental transformation of NATO, the trans-Atlantic alliance born of the cold war to contain the Soviet Union. He called on the alliance to re-create itself as a leaner and swifter military force to take on the new threat of terrorism - including, by clear implication, Mr. Hussein.
Mr. Bush said NATO must develop more modern military skills, including more precise bombs, more streamlined command structures and bigger special operations forces, like the elite commandos who were the first Americans in the plains and mountains of Afghanistan.
More than 40 heads of state began to gather on Wednesday in this gray and historic city for a meeting on how the alliance will fight what Mr. Bush called the "great evil" stirring the world, and Mr. Hussein loomed large.
"Saddam Hussein has been given a very short time to declare completely and truthfully his arsenal of terror," Mr. Bush told a student forum at the Prague Hilton on Wednesday afternoon.
"Should he again deny that this arsenal exists, he will have entered his final stage with a lie. And deception this time will not be tolerated. Delay and defiance will invite the severest of consequences."
Mr. Hussein's failure to disclose fully what Western experts believe to be more than 100 weapons sites would clearly constitute a "material breach" of his obligations, as laid out in a tough new United Nations resolution demanding weapons inspections, administration officials say.
But the officials were vague about whether such a breach would be considered grounds for an attack on Iraq. The most hawkish members of the administration say it would, but few NATO allies support that view.
"Our NATO alliance faces dangers very different from those it was formed to confront," Mr. Bush said.
"Yet never has our need for collective defense been more urgent. The Soviet Union is gone, but freedom still has enemies. We're threatened by terrorism, bred within failed states, it's present within our own cities.
"We're threatened by the spread of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons, which are produced by outlaw regimes and could be delivered either by missile or terrorist cell."
Significantly, though, Mr. Bush did not call on NATO to join him in any future attack on Iraq.
This reflected what national security experts saw as the United States' reluctance to be slowed down by the large and aging alliance, especially after having led the war in Afghanistan virtually on its own.
Instead, in a news conference on Wednesday morning with Vaclav Havel, the Czech president, in the splendor of Prague Castle, Mr. Bush said it was up to each country to decide whether it wanted to take part in a war with Iraq.
"If the decision is made to use military force," Mr. Bush said, "we will consult with our friends, and we hope that our friends will join us. It's a decision Germany will make, just like it's a decision the Czech Republic will make, just like it's a decision Great Britain will make."
But in his speech on Wednesday afternoon, in a clear criticism of Germany and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has refused to take part in any military campaign against Iraq, Mr. Bush added: "The world needs the nations of this Continent to be active in the defense of freedom, not inward-looking or isolated by indifference. Ignoring dangers or excusing aggression may temporarily avert conflict, but they don't bring true peace."
Mr. Bush and Mr. Schröder have had strained relations since the chancellor campaigned for re-election this fall on a platform opposing a war in Iraq. At a dinner for NATO leaders at Prague Castle, there was no noticeable interplay between Mr. Bush and Mr. Schröder, who sat opposite each other at a round table for 40.
The men were also far apart during a ceremony in the throne room before the dinner, and could not be seen making contact.
"Tomorrow, NATO grows larger," Mr. Bush said, referring to the seven formerly communist nations. "Tomorrow, the soul of Europe grows stronger."
The new members, he added, will bring "greater clarity" to the alliance because they have experienced tyranny and repression.
"Those who have lived through a struggle of good against evil are never neutral between them," Mr. Bush said.
"Czechs and Slovaks learned through the harsh experience of 1938 that when great democracies fail to confront danger, greater dangers follow."
For the past century, Mr. Bush added, the names of European cities - Verdun, Munich, Stalingrad, Dresden, Nuremberg, Yalta - "have often stood for conflict and tragedy and loss." Now, he said, "we do have the power to write a different story for our time."
Mr. Bush spoke in the Grand Ballroom of the Prague Hilton after the White House abruptly switched the site from the headquarters of Radio Free Europe, which in the Communist era was the Parliament building. Officials insisted that the switch had not resulted from a specific threat but from "generalized concerns" about the site.
Radio Free Europe, which defines its mission as broadcasting information and ideas to promote democracy, has long been considered a potential target of terrorist attacks.
The security in Prague remained intense. American F-15 and F-16 fighter jets patrolled the gray skies over the Vltava River, which runs through the center of town, and whole blocks of the city were closed.
Many streets were empty, and business was slow. Schools have been closed for a week; authorities have urged parents to take their children to the countryside. Even Prague residents without children have temporarily left town rather than face the headaches from the heightened security.
Two years ago, during a meeting here of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, more than 100 police officers were injured in battles with protesters.
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NATO Leaders Approve Strike Force
November 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NATO-Response-Force.html
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- NATO leaders approved the creation of a 20,000-strong rapid response force Thursday and other measures designed to retool the alliance to fight terrorists or states that might threaten members of the 19-nation alliance.
NATO adopted a military strategy that breaks from its traditional focus on Europe to deploy forces quickly against threats wherever they emerge.
The lack of a combat-ready force was one reason the United States declined NATO's offer of help in the campaign against al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
The force -- involving land, sea and air units from Europe and North America, including some U.S. troops -- is expected to become operational in 2004, although NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said last week that some elements could be ready next year.
However, it's unlikely such a force would see action in Iraq.
Allies are expected to agree on details at a meeting of NATO defense ministers next June.
Countries are expected to contribute elite units from their own rapid-deployment forces, such as Britain's 16 Air Assault Brigade, Germany's KSK special commandos and Norway's mountain brigade.
Expertise could also be gained from NATO newcomers who were formally invited to join the alliance Thursday. The seven ex-communist candidate countries include Romania, which has highly trained mountain troops and has deployed them to Afghanistan.
The force will come from a pool of such units who will train together and rotate in for six-month stints on standby for a short-notice NATO deployment. By using existing units, NATO officials said the force would not place too great a strain on defense budgets.
U.S. officials say it will be used for high-intensity conflict or forced-entry type missions in a hostile environment, and should be self-sustaining and capable of fighting alone for at least 30 days.
A NATO statement Thursday stressed the need to prepare forces to neutralize threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Leaders also agreed to streamline the alliance's military structures, with a U.S. general to be appointed strategic commander for worldwide operations.
Allies also made commitments to beef up their military hardware and narrow the gap between U.S. military might and European forces in areas such as strategic airlift, air-to-air refueling, precision-guided missiles and suppression of enemy air defenses.
``Terrorism ... poses a grave and growing threat to alliance populations, forces and territory,'' the leaders said. ``We are determined to combat this scourge for as long as necessary.''
The alliance also initiated a NATO missile defense study to examine how it could join the United States in setting up an international shield to intercept incoming missiles.
-------- spying
Pentagon confirms 'snooping' system
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021121-80027736.htm
The Pentagon yesterday confirmed that a high-tech data-collection system that will monitor credit-card transactions and airline ticket purchases, described by critics as "a supersnoop's dream," is being created to thwart terrorist attacks.
Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and a retired Navy admiral, said the program, Total Information Awareness (TIA), is an "experimental prototype" that will attempt to search "vast quantities of data to determine links and patterns indicative of terrorist activities."
Critics have charged that the program will give the Defense Department the power to conduct research into the personal habits of Americans.
The program is being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is headed by retired Adm. John Poindexter, the national security adviser during the Reagan administration who was convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal. The convictions were overturned on appeal.
"DARPA's purpose is to demonstrate the feasibility of this technology," Adm. Aldridge said. "If it proves useful, [TIA] will then be turned over to the intelligence, counterintelligence and law-enforcement communities as a tool to help them in their battle against domestic terrorism."
Adm. Aldridge said information gathered with the technology would be subject to legal restrictions currently in place. Law-enforcement and intelligence authorities must seek the approval of a federal court to conduct surveillance activities in pursuit of criminals, spies and terrorists.
The language authorizing TIA was tucked inside the homeland security bill and became a matter of widespread public knowledge only last week.
The program will fund research and development of technologies that will allow the federal government to track the e-mail, Internet use, travel, credit-card purchases, phone, bank records and every type of available public and private data in what the Pentagon describes as one "centralized grand database."
The project first appeared in the Senate Democratic proposal to create the Homeland Security Department. The Democrats' bill was defeated, but the program was included in the Republican-brokered agreement that passed the House last week and the Senate this week.
Outgoing Rep. Bob Barr, Georgia Republican, tried last week to eliminate what he called the "outrageous" plan, but to no avail.
"You would think the Pentagon planning a system to peek at personal data would get a little more attention," Mr. Barr said.
Backers of the homeland security bill, including spokesmen for both outgoing House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Texas Republican, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, have dismissed such concerns.
Richard Diamond, spokesman for Mr. Armey, chairman of the special committee that wrote the House version of the homeland security bill, said the department has specific protections for privacy, including a privacy officer whose job will be to monitor the new department and make sure it doesn't intrude on privacy rights.
The officer reports to Congress, which has final oversight.
The TIA program has three parts designed to assist anti-terrorism efforts, Adm. Aldridge said.
The first part would create technology that will allow for rapid language translation.
A second component will be used to identify "connections" among various transactions.
For example, the system will try to find any terrorist links between people issued passports, visas or work permits and the purchase of weapons or explosive materials, Adm. Aldridge said. It would cull data from credit cards and purchases such as airline tickets and rental cars.
Lastly, the program will seek to determine "what kind of decision tools would permit the analysts to work together in an interagency community," he said.
Adm. Aldridge said the war on terrorism demands searching for clues in a mass of data.
"It's kind of a signal-to-noise ratio. What are they doing in all these things that are going on around the world? And we decided that new capabilities and new technologies are required to accomplish that task," he said.
The program is part of the Bush administration's new strategy of seeking to stop terrorists before they attack rather than treating terrorism as a law-enforcement matter, Adm. Aldridge said.
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CIA Concerned About Data Overload
CURT ANDERSON
Associated Press
Thu, Nov. 21, 2002
http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/politics/4574640.htm
WASHINGTON - Broad new surveillance powers granted the Justice Department come with a risk for investigators: There may be such an information overload that agents could overlook a critical fragment of information that would prevent a terrorist attack, a senior CIA lawyer said Thursday.
Provisions of the USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, permit the FBI and Justice Department to share with the CIA previously off-limits information gathered in secret grand jury proceedings and through wiretaps and other domestic eavesdropping.
This already is producing an avalanche of information that poses new challenges for analysts at the CIA and other intelligence services, said John Rizzo, senior deputy general counsel at the CIA.
"One thing I am concerned about: What do we do with all that information?" Rizzo told an American Bar Association conference on national security. "Woe be it for us if we lose one shard of information that in retrospect would have been key if, God forbid, we had another terrorist attack."
This week's ruling by a secret U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review enhances the government's domestic surveillance powers to track suspected spies and terrorists.
CIA Director George Tenet has repeatedly said that to succeed against terrorism, the agency must recruit and adequately pay more talented people, including intelligence analysts.
Another change for the CIA will come with establishment of a Homeland Security Department, which will provide its own analysis of intelligence data from multiple sources and, for the first time, connect state and local law enforcement officials with the CIA.
"CIA has never dealt with state and local officials. We will have to learn to do so," Rizzo said.
The CIA's concerns come as the FBI struggles to shift its primary mission from solving traditional crimes to detecting and stopping would-be terrorists. Rizzo said the CIA has assigned 30 officers to help the FBI improve its analytical intelligence capabilities.
"It will be, frankly, a daunting task for FBI agents," Rizzo said. "It will not be easy and it will not be quick. But everyone agrees it's time for this to happen."
The FBI itself shares that concern. In a recent e-mail to all 56 field offices, FBI Deputy Director Bruce Gebhardt urged special agents-in-charge to "instill a sense of urgency" in the counterterrorism mission and make sure all information is shared with FBI headquarters in Washington.
"You are the leaders of the FBI," the e-mail said. "You cannot fail at this mission."
FBI spokesman Bill Carter said Thursday that Gebhardt regularly communicates with FBI field agents to "emphasize or re-emphasize" points considered important by senior bureau officials.
FBI Director Robert Mueller last week sent a message to all employees, from file clerks on up, reinforcing counterterrorism as the bureau's top priority, Carter added.
Attorney General John Ashcroft spent two days this week visiting federal prosecutors and anti-terrorism task forces in Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., and Tampa, Fla., to emphasize the focus on fighting terrorism.
"These task forces are an important part of our effort to safeguard the U.S. people," Ashcroft said in Charlotte. "We must never forget we are still at war."
The FBI's general counsel, Kenneth L. Wainstein, told the Bar Association conference that the quality and quantity of counterterrorism intelligence produced by the FBI will increase following this week's appeals court ruling. Part of that ruling removes a legal wall that had separated FBI intelligence agents from prosecutors and law enforcement agents.
In the past, Wainstein said, FBI agents from the criminal and intelligence wings sometimes might be working on the very same targets and not know it.
The decision gives the FBI greater leeway in obtaining surveillance warrants by requiring only that foreign agent intelligence be a "significant purpose" of the eavesdropping, opening the door to using this power for cases that ultimately result in criminal prosecution.
ON THE NET
CIA: http://www.cia.gov
FBI: http://www.fbi.gov
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America's Intelligence System: Part I - Bloated and Ineffective
by Jim Grichar (aka Exx-Gman) mailto:exxgman@netscape.net
November 21, 2002
LewRockwell.com
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/grichar4.html
This is Part I of a three-part essay on America's intelligence system. This first part deals with what it is and how it has failed. Part II will discuss the specific reasons for its failure. Part III will describe how it is morphing into an instrument of a police state and, given that we are currently stuck with a protection racket government, how we should cut the intelligence budget down to size.
America's intelligence system has grown into a multi-agency bureaucracy that has failed in its primary mission - to provide warnings of impending attacks on the United States or serious threats to U.S. national security - on numerous occasions over the last fifty years. Despite the end of the Cold War, this mammoth system was trimmed down only marginally during the 1990's, and now, despite its failure to predict the 9/11 attacks on the United States by Al Qaeda, the public is being conned into spending more on this failed system. Worst of all, it is being turned into an American version of the former Soviet Union's Committee for State Security (the KGB), an apparatus that our leaders will use to destroy our rights to life, liberty, and property, all in the name of protecting us from Islamic terrorists.
What American Intelligence Does
The U.S. intelligence budget today is massive by any standard, and it is designed more for an empire than for the defense of our nation from enemies foreign and domestic. Educated public guesses as to the total intelligence budget of the United States run at about $40 billion per year. And how is this pie divided among those agencies, or members, of what is called the intelligence community?
According to a recent article in USA Today, at least $7.5 billion of that goes to the National Security Agency (NSA), which is responsible for signals intelligence, including the collection and decoding of telephone and radio messages thought to be necessary to preserving U.S. security. NSA's focus has been on intercepting foreign communications; it supposedly does not spy on American conversations within the country or on Americans overseas.
The second big agency feeding off the intelligence community's $40 billion budget is the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Its annual budget is probably in the range of $7 - 10 billion per year. The NRO designs, buys, and operates America's spy-in-the-sky satellites that take pictures of potential adversary's military assets and activities. It probably also designs, buys, and operates satellites that can provide warnings of missile launches. Both the NSA and the NRO are essentially run by the military, although they provide products to other agencies in the intelligence community.
The military also spends more money - probably another $10 billion per year - on its own intelligence collection system. It has its own human spies collecting information on military matters. Like the CIA, it does its own analysis and reporting, and it is in the covert action business (i.e.,paramilitary and other actions taken to influence or destabilize other countrieswhen the U.S. has not formally declared war). These functions are carried out mainly through the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA, the military's answer to the CIA, was started by Robert Strange McNamara after the CIA's Bay of Pigs fiasco) and the specific intelligence components of each of the four military services. More recently, in 1986 the Congress created the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), a high level Pentagon unit designed to support, manage and coordinate the activities of such groups as the Delta Force, the Navy Seals, the Green Berets, and other classified covert-action type components.
Next on the list of intelligence organizations is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with a budget of roughly $4 - 6 billion, if not more. CIA is supposed to integrate and analyze information from all sources to produce a coordinated analysis (that is, the results are "agreed to" by other departments and agencies so that one view is sent to the president) of important foreign intelligence questions that affect U.S. national security. CIA uses spies to gather additional information on foreign governments and apparently is also still involved in covert action, given the news that its operatives are involved in the war on terrorism around the world. Recent press accounts of a CIA unmanned aircraft firing a missile to kill some Al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen - including one that was an American citizen - are further indications that CIA is back in the business of conducting paramilitary operations (much likely to the chagrin of the power-hungry Donald Rumsfeld and his Pentagon lickspittles).
Other organizations, such as the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (I&R), and the FBI's national security apparatus, which is supposed to hunt down spies and terrorists within the U.S., also spend money on the intelligence mission.
While this massive outlay on intelligence might have been justified during the Cold War (the threat of thermonuclear annihilation certainly existed), the current threat climate, even including that from Islamic terrorists, should lead most people to question the size of the intelligence budget and how it is being spent. Even more important is the fact that major intelligence failures have occurred over the years, and this should cause citizens to demand, at the minimum, a thorough review, housecleaning and downsizing, redesign, and reorganization of the intelligence community.
What Should Intelligence Do?
The rationale for producing intelligence - collecting information, analyzing it, and then disseminating it to those who can make decisions based upon it - is basically an exercise in applying the economics of information. Gathering, analyzing and disseminating better information should help reduce costs associated with an activity. In this case, intelligence should have improved the national security of the United States and allowed us to avoid wars and spend less on defense. (Note that covert actions - political and military assassinations, including those designed to get rid of terrorists, and other activities designed to destabilize other countries - are not, in the strict sense of the term, intelligence activities.) Thus, intelligence activities should more than pay for themselves.
During the Cold War, properly used and focused intelligence should have enabled the United States to minimize military outlays by reducing unnecessary and wasteful defense spending. Used properly, intelligence should have helped focus U.S. defense resources on those programs most likely to deter an adversary, and, if necessary, to win a conflict. While a significant part of the intelligence budget was apparently used this way, it is obvious that our political leaders were also interested in building a worldwide American empire based upon a vast and overwhelming military superiority used to influence events around the world. While Americans were protected from the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, it is obvious that they paid an extremely high and excessive price for that protection.
Intelligence Failures
Despite this massive outlay on intelligence, the U.S. has had numerous, significant, and almost continuous intelligence failures since World War II. While no one bats 1.000, the scope and extent of such a large government operation is bound to produce many serious failures. At the risk of being pedantic, I offer the reader this lengthy list of failures that includes, but is certainly not limited to:
1) failure to predict the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb, the Iron Curtain, and the Berlin blockade;
2) failure to predict China's entry into the Korean War;
3) the CIA's MK-Ultra project, in which U.S. Army scientist Frank Olson was given LSD unwittingly and Olson's subsequent (according to information made public by the CIA) suicide;
4) failure to predict the Soviet space effort, starting with Sputnik and the failure to point out that there was no U.S. missile gap vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. You can arguably add the May 1960 Soviet downing of Francis Gary Powers in a CIA U-2 to this failure;
5) failure to predict the Berlin Wall;
6) various CIA-backed coups designed to prop up U.S.-friendly dictators in Latin America and elsewhere, that, although sometimes initially successful, always came back to haunt the U.S.;
7) the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a CIA covert action designed to overthrow Fidel Castro and his budding communist regime;
8) failure to predict the Cuban missile crisis, which brought the U.S. to the brink of thermonuclear war;
9) the failure to predict the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968;
10) failure to predict the Arab oil embargo in 1973, which followed the Egyptian attempt to recover the Sinai peninsula it lost to Israel in the 1967 war, an event that almost brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to a thermonuclear confrontation;
11) failure to predict the abdication of the Shah of Iran in 1979, his replacement with an Islamic cleric-run regime, the taking of American hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and the subsequent oil crisis;
12) the failure of the Delta Force to rescue those hostages from Iran;
13) failure to predict the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979;
14) failure to predict and prevent the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983;
15) failure to predict the economic and political collapse of the Soviet economy during the 1980's, which led the U.S. to spend billions of dollars on unnecessa